Bullshit is the most primal form of acting.

One of them should have simply disappeared without a trace.

I had no idea Jeff Conaway or the guy who played Franklin died.

I always wanted Andreas Katsulas to get more roles. I thought he was amazing. Same goes for Jerry Doyle. At least Mira Furlan is still getting work these days. I think she's the only one.

Shit this is sad. Also, which actor disappeared?

Sorry, I misread that. Who should have disappeared without a trace?

The fourth one, of course.

Only to reappear mysteriously some years later and then go back in time to start the whole time loop.

Sinclair disappeared, then reappeared in a halfway house then died.

Very sad story. http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=150058

Because people who hold different opinions than you deserve to die?

It's weak in season one, good in 2-4, and shit in 5.

Overall a pretty fun series.

B5 gets so good you might like DS9 a little less after you watch it.

^This is very much the case. Love both shows but while DS9 was in a long boring phase at the time, B5 moved on from monster of the week episodes to some excellent -for the time- storylines!

The CGI has not aged well in B5, that can put off a new viewer but stick with it.

I agree with the B5 > DS9 sentiment. I am actually curious about rewatching B5 myself.

Just don't expect it to be Lexx, the human heart can't take that kind of breaking.

The biggest problem with B5 reruns is that you can't see it for the first time a second time. You can't rewatch it with the same sense of "how the hell are they going to get out of this?"

I still prefer DS9 all in all.

Thanks to alcoholism, oh yes I can!

Superpower!

Spoiler: they beat the Shadows by all going to church and accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

Drunk again uncle Michael?

I enjoyed Babylon 5 more than TNG. I think it had a lot to do with the lighting and art direction. Star Trek was annoyingly pristine to me. Bab 5 also had a race of rotting carrion eaters that looked like squids. They tried really hard to get away from the People With Various Ridges on Their Faces model of alien.

B5 vs DS9

Acting: DS9 edges out ahead of B5 only because the latter had a couple weak links like Claudia Christine dragging it down.

Sets: B5 blew DS9 out of the water in this department. B5 actually felt like a huge space station. DS9 felt like nothing existed outside the bridge, the bar, and corridors.

Plots: DS9 had a couple good standalone episodes, but the overall plot of B5 was much more interesting and better handled. Strange that both shows went with "Character undergoes transformation into another race and then bones their sworn enemy".

Space scenes: The cgi of B5 has aged a lot worse, but the direction, flow, and tension of the battles were a hell of a lot better. DS9 was the cast pretending to shake while spewing techno babble which would eventually, magically resolve the battle. That worked for past Treks when the battles weren't the point, but when DS9 tried to ape B5 with its own version of the shadow war, the battles became the point and the old trek shit just didn't cut it.

"when DS9 tried to ape B5 with its own version of the shadow war"

There was never any such thing. There was a war with the Dominion / Cardassians, but that was a conventional war of competing empires rather than being caught between warring angels and demons (figuratively speaking). And really, how do you introduce a new sector of space with its own empire and NOT go to war with them? Story-wise, it's a nearly irresistible proposition.

To me, the Dominion War was about the Cardassians. The evolution of their alliances, society, and politics during the war was pretty close to the level of character development all the aliens got to have in B5. If the Romulans, Federation, Breen, Ferengi, Klingons, Founders, Jem Hadar, and others had been written to have as big a shift in culture as Cardassia, it would have been B5 levels of attention. Every alien had its day in B5, which I really liked.

Gul Dukat was the Michael Scott of the Cardassian Empire, gripped with a pathetic need to be loved rather than doing his job well.

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=139825

"When I grow up I'm going to conquer a hundred Bajorans ..."

He was never completely satisfied with Cardassian life, and his daughter was a symbol of that to him. She represented genetically what he felt socially, torm between two torn apart worlds.

Compare Cardassian culture to the Klingons, where a houseless dog like General Martok can rise from nothing to everything just by being a badass. Dukat was an entitled slaver (he had leverage only over the Bajor-animal and was screwed over by the home office) forced to turn reformer forced to turn religious dichotomy. His power grew in magnitude, but only slid laterally in personal control. In the end, just like everyone else, he only served an alien causality bound by proximity to his broken dreams.

The Wormhole Aliens really ruled the two quadrants.

Dukat wanted to not just be obeyed by the Bajorans, but to be appreciated. He was more merciful than the governor he succeeded, but as we saw on more than a few occasions, he expected the Bajorans to cheer him for it, both publicly and on the individual level. And when he realized, sometime after his daughter's death, that the Bajorans would never love and adore him, he decided it was time to let the place burn.

There's a good contrast with Sisko in there that the show never bothered to make. Sisko just showed up to do his job, he didn't want to be loved, he merely wanted to help Bajor get back on its feet. No matter how fucked up the Bajoran people were, they still couldn't make him turn his back on them. And of course, being a religious icon who didn't preach humility but lived it ... after a while Sisko became the most beloved man on Bajor. Dukat had to find that infuriating.

http://www.brandonbird.com/of_bajor.html

There are no best Garibaldi moments. Garibaldi is the answer to the question, "What if we had Bruce Willis but with no charisma?" Look, Garibaldi likes Daffy Duck! And now Garibaldi is wearing a hat!

Sorry, was never a Garibaldi fan.

Wasn't post Die Hard Bruce Willis Bruce Willis but with no charisma?