ALT.SF4M

  B5: 2/9/97 episode (spoilers)

   • j********o@***.com
     11/02/1997 00:00:000 UTC

     Very disappointing. The whole Shadow War seemed quite perfunctory. The

     characters' interchangeable monologues on the horrors of war
     ("Something's

     coming, and it scares the Hell out of me.") the actuality of which

     (terrible sacrifices, lies, killing of the innocent, ...) were pretty
     much

     omitted, both bugged me a lot. What about the hardening of hearts in
     war,

     the petty bickering, and serious, vicious disagreements that result from

     that kind of stress? (The general interchangeability of the characters,

     save for Garibaldi, has always bothered me). They've never dealt with

     the question of proportion: all of a sudden, we can fight Vorlon ships

     (from a technology billions of years ahead of ours) effectively

     (Science-Fiction-wise, where is the technological advancement... the

     science?) The unaligned races never emerge from joke status, no ugly

     bargains need be struck, no messy alliances are needed, no danger of

     mutiny among the mutineers, no pride of uniform to threaten the
     rebellion,

     no influential NPC's, no involvement by Earth, all left me wanting. The

     continued Mimbari-worship/Tolkien aspirations pissed me off further.
     B5's

     (giant) space battles have always struck me as singularly ineffective:

     who can tell what's going on in that mess? I never liked the "White
     Star"

     when there was just one of them: now there's a horde of (readily

     rendered) clones.

     Funny: whenever I have this conversation with TOG, he comes out on the

     other side, but I still say Space: A&B was largely what B5 should have

     aspired to, war-wise.

     Gorno

     "Cry Haddock, and let fin the dog-fish of War!"

       • f*******e@n*****t.com
         11/02/1997 00:00:000 UTC

         I liked the ending of the war. I found it cool that the solution was
         'what if there was a war a

         nobody showed up?' It was an iteresting twist taht the Vorlons, long
         held to beconsidered the good

         guys if mysterious weren't so good after all and the Shadows, while
         certainly the bad guys, were not

         evil. At least their argument for their cause was convincing. I
         found the ending satisfying as

         well as kind of nifty that while there was a space battle, the war
         didn't end with it as in standard

         sci-fi. However, it wasn't Star Trek preachy speach solution either.
         Yes, SHeridan and Delenn

         "lectured" the Vorlons and Shadows, but they didn't argue that their
         way was morally superior or

         "Can't we all just get along". They pretty much said they were just
         going to ignore the Vorlons and

         Shadows, to not be an audience.

         Jerry

       • a****4@f******.********n.ca
         12/02/1997 00:00:000 UTC

         (j********o@***.com) writes:

         > Funny: whenever I have this conversation with TOG, he comes out on
         the

         > other side, but I still say Space: A&B was largely what B5 should
         have

         > aspired to, war-wise.

         I guess what the subtext of your message is "I want a War, a GOOD

         War". Unfortunatly, Babylon-5 is not a show about war. That is why
         you

         don't like it. The Shadow War was a *subplot*...a big one, but still
         a

         subplot.

         ttyl

         Farrell