Current TV Boxset Addiction

[TordelBack]

We lasted until somewhere early in Episode 4, and just sort of gave up. An interesting premise, good work from the two initial leads, but just all over the place. You could imagine Abnett making something good out of this setup, but alas.

[Dandontdare]

ah .. so it's not the semi-autobiographical comedy by Caitlin Moran that we're discussing?

[von Boom]

That's what I was wondering.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Brian Blessed...

I can't watch that episode without thinking of Alan Partridge... 

Bugger again,   I'm very well-versed in the life and times of Partridge but I'm not getting the reference.  Help me out, man!

[spoiler]'..you could hit someone over the head with it, and eat the evidence..'[/spoiler]

If you'll forgive me:  A-HAAA! I'm with you now.

[sheridan]

Last night I made it though the first 20 minutes of the first episode of 'Another Life' on Netflix before bailing.

Quite possibly the worst Sci-fi show I have ever seen, and I've been watching this shite for 4 decades.

Why's that then?  Poor acting?  Bad dialogue?

[pictsy]

Babylon 5

I'm finished.  It has problems.  Even though the ending is messy and sloppy, I think there would have been problems with the show paying off what it promised.  Those first three seasons were an excellent build up, but I don't think the conclusion would ever have been satisfactory if there wasn't the mess of cancellation/not cancellation.  This is probably most emblematic with the telepath plot.  Honestly, that plot thread was all over the place from the start.  It never really became a coherent thing and when they tried wrapping up it utterly failed to do anything.

At some point the show started avoiding, to its detriment, having anything to say.  A situation was created for the show that oozed social commentary and the dangers in the rise of fascism, nationalism and racism and it does nothing with it.  Ultimately it's stance ended up being that it can be justifiable for the military to be complicit in crimes against humanity because of honour and duty.  What a load of horseshit.

Overall, that's the problem with the show.  It promises so much and doesn't deliver.  It asks tough questions but doesn't like that they are tough.  It has intrigue and then naively shoves it aside with silliness.  Season 5 is a microcosm of the problems with the show at large and it all became much more apparent when I was shown, at length, what those problems were.  There's just a lot of weird choices, threads that go nowhere and ideas that are left dangling in the wind.

It's a shame really.  I think it's still worth a watch, but it isn't going to be entering my regular rotation.  It'll be something for when I'm in the mood for it, like the Battlestar Gallactica remake and Stargate Universe.

Those first three Seasons are still good, though.  There is some stellar acting and great characters.  It's a mixed bag.  I was going to make the obvious comparisons to DS9, but that's unfair.  DS9 is easily the better show and B5 has enough problems without me hitting it whilst its down.

[wedgeski]

Ultimately it's stance ended up being that it can be justifiable for the military to be complicit in crimes against humanity because of honour and duty.  What a load of horseshit.

I admit it's been a few years since I watched the full run, but I can't fathom coming out of B5 with that takeaway.

Those first three Seasons are still good, though.  There is some stellar acting and great characters.  It's a mixed bag.  I was going to make the obvious comparisons to DS9, but that's unfair.  DS9 is easily the better show and B5 has enough problems without me hitting it whilst its down.

This is in danger of turning into an episode of Spaced , but... I remember B5 riveting me to the TV in ways that DS9 didn't. DS9 excelled in standalone episodes, but its ongoing arc was comparitively amateurish. I wouldn't put Sisko's feeble Chosen One trope up against the Londo/G'Kar arc, the Dominion War against the Shadow War, or 'What You Leave Behind' against 'Sleeping in Light'. It's just no contest.

DS9 wins in so many other departments, I'm not surprised it's better standing the test of time. Better dialogue, better sets, great modelwork and CG that doesn't look like it was rendered at 320x240. So many amazing episodes that if you fall into one it's likely to be really good. But in terms of high-stakes story-telling, B5 wins for me, hands-down. It did greater work with much less money, and paved the way for everything we're enjoying now in terms of long-form storytelling.

[pictsy]

I admit it's been a few years since I watched the full run, but I can't fathom coming out of B5 with that takeaway.

It's a Season 5 thing, but there are hints of it in other Seasons, particularly 4.

I'll disagree with the ongoing arc thing as well.  B5 fumbles nearly all it's arcs in a bad way.  It sets up some stuff better than DS9, sure, but it fails much harder than DS9 at resolving it.  The Emissary arc just is better than any arc in B5.  The Dominion War suffers from rushing to it's conclusion, but it's not on the scale of how crap the end of the Shadow War is.  DS9 is just more coherent and it's character arcs are generally more satisfying. 

If B5 had lived up to it's promise I would have agreed with you, but Season 4 is a rushed mess and Season 5 is sloppy and badly written.  Whether we put it down to circumstance or whatever, we have a final product and it just doesn't deliver.  In many ways, what Season 5 of B5 showed me is that the whole series is mired in production issues that required the story to be patchworked and repaired to accommodate changes in real-life situations.  Actors having issues, leaving the show, the cancellation thing.  It's all right there from the pilot onwards. 

This is pretty disappointing for me.  By the end of Season 3 I thought I may have re-evaluate my opinion on the comparison.  Season 4 affirmed my original opinion.  Season 5 had the unfortunate effect of making re-evaluate my opinion of B5 as a whole and I saw the gaping cracks.

Like I said, I didn't really want to do the comparison.  It isn't fair to B5.  I still like B5 and I don't regret watching it.  I'm glad I did rewatch it because I got to discover what worked for the show and what didn't.  B5 is great in concept.  There is a good foundation there for a real wonderful and epic space opera and there are three very excellent seasons.

I don't know what I'm going to watch next.

[The Legendary Shark]

Queen's Gambit is rather good.

[Colin YNWA]

Struggling with The Expanse Season 4. There's been moments, but there have also been moments when its been pretty bad. The moustache twirling villian, the stand off between Inners and Belters in the settlement, Bobbie's arc hasn't been great and boundaries on cliche. Only half way through so plenty of time for it to pick up, but man this has been a come down after Season 3!

[pictsy]

Struggling with The Expanse Season 4. There's been moments, but there have also been moments when its been pretty bad. The moustache twirling villian, the stand off between Inners and Belters in the settlement, Bobbie's arc hasn't been great and boundaries on cliche. Only half way through so plenty of time for it to pick up, but man this has been a come down after Season 3!

Oh dear.  I was considering The Expanse for a future watch, but I'm not sure I'll be ready for another late season slog.  I've only seen the first two seasons of the show.

I decided, rather hastily, to start rewatching Stargate Universe.  I'm halfway through the first episode and I'm already remembering the good and bad of this show.  Hopefully this'll be fun and maybe I've got over it's untimely cancellation.  Whatever happens, I know Robert Carlyle will steal the show (he already has, to be honest).

[Trooper McFad]

Struggling with The Expanse Season 4. There's been moments, but there have also been moments when its been pretty bad. The moustache twirling villian, the stand off between Inners and Belters in the settlement, Bobbie's arc hasn't been great and boundaries on cliche. Only half way through so plenty of time for it to pick up, but man this has been a come down after Season 3!

Oh dear.  I was considering The Expanse for a future watch, but I'm not sure I'll be ready for another late season slog.  I've only seen the first two seasons of the show.

I decided, rather hastily, to start rewatching Stargate Universe.  I'm halfway through the first episode and I'm already remembering the good and bad of this show.  Hopefully this'll be fun and maybe I've got over it's untimely cancellation.  Whatever happens, I know Robert Carlyle will steal the show (he already has, to be honest).

I'm 2 episodes from the end of season 5 and yes it has its up & down episodes and cliche characters but overall I've enjoyed the last 4 weeks of binge watching 5 seasons. I don't know if it will all end in the last 2 episodes but I would give season 6 a shot as there still seems a lot to tie up.

[pictsy]

Struggling with The Expanse Season 4. There's been moments, but there have also been moments when its been pretty bad. The moustache twirling villian, the stand off between Inners and Belters in the settlement, Bobbie's arc hasn't been great and boundaries on cliche. Only half way through so plenty of time for it to pick up, but man this has been a come down after Season 3!

Oh dear.  I was considering The Expanse for a future watch, but I'm not sure I'll be ready for another late season slog.  I've only seen the first two seasons of the show.

I decided, rather hastily, to start rewatching Stargate Universe.  I'm halfway through the first episode and I'm already remembering the good and bad of this show.  Hopefully this'll be fun and maybe I've got over it's untimely cancellation.  Whatever happens, I know Robert Carlyle will steal the show (he already has, to be honest).

I'm 2 episodes from the end of season 5 and yes it has its up & down episodes and cliche characters but overall I've enjoyed the last 4 weeks of binge watching 5 seasons. I don't know if it will all end in the last 2 episodes but I would give season 6 a shot as there still seems a lot to tie up.

OK, I'll keep watching people reviews on the show and won't dismiss it too hastily.

I finished the first episode(s) of Stargate Universe.  This is going to be an interesting rewatch as I remembering this show.  One uncomfortable thing about the early episodes is the pathetic backstabbing and childish micro politics of the characters.  I really don't know whether the writers intended them to be largely pathetic sacks of shit, but that's what we got.  It has an uncomfortable resonance with real life experiences.  Robert Carlyle is being positioned as an antagonist, but we're mostly getting this from how he is treated by other characters.  He is just universally disliked and we don't really see why.  So it makes other characters like Young come across as vindictive as well as incompetent.

So this time through I'm going into this that these are extremely flawed characters and it's a commentary on the attitudes from it's predecessor programs, especially towards the military.  I'm curious how far that reading will carry me.  Really I'm looking forward to the sci-fi goodness, cos this show certainly has it's share of that.

Once I'm done I can be disappointed that the show doesn't really have a proper end and get angry about it's cancellation again.  Good times.

[Tiplodocus]

Struggling with The Expanse Season 4. There's been moments, but there have also been moments when its been pretty bad. The moustache twirling villian, the stand off between Inners and Belters in the settlement, Bobbie's arc hasn't been great and boundaries on cliche. Only half way through so plenty of time for it to pick up, but man this has been a come down after Season 3!

The whole thing feels a bit like a side quest but there is enough to keep me going.

[Bolt-01]

Black Sails finale.

Well, I expected 'some' of that, but that was a fantastic finale. What a great show.