Posted on 03/07/2006 5:31:16 PM PST by KevinDavis
The Museum of Television and Radio’s 23rd Annual William S. Paley Television Festival in Los Angeles (which continues through March 15) got off to an impressive start last week. The festival selects a different TV series or personality each night and has screenings of episodes followed by Q & A sessions with the cast and creative teams. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA was the subject of such a panel on March 3rd, and iF MAGAZINE was there to get the scoop. Featured in the panel were the shows producers and creators: Ronald D. Moore and David Eick. Also on hand were series headliners: Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Katee Sackhoff, Jamie Bamber, James Callis and Grace Park. Here are a few highlights from the event.
(Excerpt) Read more at ifmagazine.com ...
Me, too. To me, the best part of B5 was that the Starfurries DID NOT fly thru space like airplanes! (a la "Star Wars" and the old "Battlestar Galactica") They flew and maneuvered just like they should if flying in a vacuum...
Just the best of Starfleet.
I'm certain there were lots of small patrol and recon craft left. Just the biggest ships of the line were destroyed.
The final season was much maligned. For me, it was more than redeemed by the "The Corp is Mother, the Corp is Father" episode where we see that the villainous Bester is, within Psi Corps to other 'teeps', a pretty nice guy.
Did you catch the bit in the last episode where Anders speculates about how many 'skin jobs' there are in the cafe they are about to blow up ?
'Skin jobs'. Wasn't that the slur for replicants Deckards lieutenant used in 'Blade Runner' ?
They just sent the Enterprise for that reason in Star Trek: TMO.
I think so..
I disagree.
Any fleet has a distinction between ships used primarily for patrol and recon and exploration and battle ships of the line which would be kept in the major starbases.
When the Borgs drove for Earth, the major starbases around Earth assembled the battle line.
What happend was that JMS was told that Season 4 was going to be the last season, TNT picked up Babylon 5 and order a new season, so he had to put a Season 5 together fast..
I agree, it's good in the sense that it forces the viewer to think for himself, instead of the way most shows practically come out and tell you right up front whom you're supposed to sympathize with and whom you're supposed to hate. Admiral Cain did some downright ugly things for which she deserved to die, but she also had a dogged commitment that I had to grudgingly respect. If it weren't for her, her ship and crew probably wouldn't have survived all that time.
Another thing about the show that really keeps my interest is the way their society so closely parallels ours, even in all but a very small number of areas of technology. It's hardly realistic, I agree, but I'm willing to forgive it as a form of artistic license, because it's the only scifi show I've seen that actually makes space seem so accessible. And we're not that far from the point (here in our own society, that is) where space tourism can become a regular thing, and once that happens, it can become cheaper and even more accessible as time goes on.
Sure you could. Let's say there are 100 planets in the Federation and each one has an average of a billion people. After "First Contact", a call goes out to replace the losses that Starfleet took. If a thousandth of a percent of the citizens answer the call, you've got a million new recruits. That's more than enough to restaff the lost ships, especially since the Enterprise is the only one that ever actually does anything. Every other ship seems to be guarding the mail run between Earth and Alpha Centauri.
Like the Japanese Navy after Midway you replace crack pilots with raw recruits. Like I said, Starfleet would not have recovered for a generation.
Noone remembers Space: Above and Beyond. Much better than the soap opera in space B5.
Of course, they had their share of drama, but the acting and camraderie was much better, and Morgan & Wong did just a great job of writing.
It's not really that he had to put season 5 together fast, the problem is there was so little sign of being able to get season 5 out that a lot of the big plot points that were originally going to be in 5 got moved forward to the end of 4 so when they finally got green lighted for 5 (after filming the intended last episode of the series, shows how much doubt there was) there wasn't much of the core plot left to work with. But IMHO the fall of Centauri Prime and the episode "View from the Gallery" (showing what it's like to be a little guy on B5) made the season worth while, yeah it lacked the focus and the oomph of seasons 3 and 4 but it was still a pretty good 22 episodes.
I liked SAB as well, though I often had a hard time suspending my disbelief that this nugget squadron of pilots would get sent out on grunt-level foot patrols constantly.
This is the part of the post where I whine about how badly I want Firefly back on my TV.
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