Shows and TV

The PsyCorps is your friend, trust the PsyCorps.

Over this season we see earth fall in with the secret police, who are different than the psycorps. Earth force is a very dangerous place for good people to be now.

The shadows and vorlons have revealed themselves as agents of good and evil respectively.

Lando is well onto the path of space Khan, naked hunger for expansionist empire. Right now he is somewhat reluctant, but when pressed uses grand anger as a shield. He is in the backseat, but he is responsible, and its tearing him apart. Who is to say where the shadows have also influenced.

We end the season with a Earth Centauri non-aggression pact, and Centurian expansionism into all of its neighbors.

The membari have been very quiet this season.

The purpose of Babylon 4 and its space jumping haven't been hinted at.

What will happen to the vorlon timelord jack the ripper now?

Overall - The season has good intrigue setup, I'm now emotionally invested. I'd say less filler in this season, but still quite high maybe 30% totally B plot episodes.

The pieces are on the chess board now!

Wow, the graphics look surprisingly clean, but very outdated!

Hahah, "Earth is some lost Centauri Tribe Making us distant relatives"

Vir is my spirit animal

League of Non-Aligned worlds, ohh yeah Space UN, but without the static veto security council

I do not like Santiago. I've always thought that a leader should have a strong chin. He has no chin, and his vice president has several. This, to me, is not a good combination.

The big mcguffin for episode 1 was the technical advisor for the raiders had archived communication between narn high command and the invasion fleet verifying the invasion was unprovoked. That seems like a wild operational choice, no compartmentalization for a sensitive operation.

PsyCore is super evil; Join us; Prison; or Lobotomy drugs.

Garabalis second favorite thing in the universe is loonytoons and not sex, as was so heavily hinted at. No way this joke setup could happen anymore

Be seeing you! Prisoner callback (again! first time was checkoff)

I love the techno mages, not gods, but philosophers of technology. The perfect hackers

Shag Tot - Soul Hunter - I almost thought the plot was going to revolve around bad communication but after the "shocked" kill it emotional outburst the ambassador actually explained herself, kudos.

Blesseded lunatics, ha

The soul hunter could be a Dr. Who

Kinda confused, at the end of the episode Delina breaks all the soul orbs, not just membari orbs. Since the souls could communicate was it consensual? The orbs appear to be able to move under their own power.

Opening Scene B5 Cabaret club?

Vir Continues to be my spirit animal.

Lando is a fool, loses his house secrets to a honey trap, but then is still in love after the plot is revealed.

Organic Machines! Hints of the vorlon

Organic Terminator! Protect!

Death by committee, the terminators would kill anything that isn't the perfect being... seems they never QA tested their programming

When you become obsessed with an enemy, you become the enemy

The wayland yutani corporation would really fit right in this universe.

What a absolute triumph of storytelling payoff.

The start of season 3 we see the civil war boil over to a point of no return, the shadows are acting more brazenly through their proxies.

In Episode 10 we have 2 season of buildup starting to come together and pay off, in a absolutely captivating and thrilling way. no single minute of screen time was wasted in this episode.

Babylon 5 is now independent, no turning back, it lives and dies by diplomacy now with no earth support.

We had first civil war, but what about second civil war? The membari also are divided and the religious casts come to the aid of B5.

Space Karen makes her appearance, quite unbothered by empathy for the Narns. Probably not a good match for our kind hearted Vir.

The shadows being agents of Chaos and the Vorlon agents of order was a interesting pitch in the finale. Not sure they motivated why the shadows care about "evolving" the younger races at all? Still not clear on what this war is all about yet.

It is weird earth has been so quiet

The checkov psycop seems to have totally disappeared

There are some good mysterboxes lined up.

Wow! Season 4 has been a absolute speed run!

The shadow war was resolved, and the Vorlons and Shadows turn out to be bickering preachers who only wanted to see who could "win" the hearts and minds of the child races. A forever competition that through boredom escalated into open conflict, but never with each other. Only through proxies

At various times we saw the Vorlons as Angels, and the Shadows as Devils. Then Vorlons as resisting evolution (kinda), and Shadows being absolute believers in evolutionary competition.... Then at the end as evangelical preachers that only cared about their message, and not about winning or losing, only to ultimately be afraid of being alone.

I'm not sure how I feel about the evolutionary pressure aspect of the ancient races as shepherds of evolution... why do they care? What is their incentive?

I suspected we were watching people gate the evolution into beings of pure energy, as we saw with the Psychic from season 1... But no, the Vorlons and Shadows, as well as the other elder races, and the progenitor, all leave in corporeal forms beyond the rim together...

That raises another curious quibble, why would these active, breeding, living, races not have intelligence and missions, and observers, and contact beyond the rim? Are we left with the galactic luddites who refused the big emigration and technology push and got left behind? Religious fanatics? That could explain why they care about the "younger" races.

I'd love to hear peoples thoughts on the purpose of the war, and where everyone is going.

Season 4... is zero filler, mad dash, it felt like i watched 4 season arcs in one.

Shadow War - Sorted

Earth Civil War - Sorted

Telepaths Taking over everything - Almost sorted

Surprise galactic government - Sorted

Membari Civil War - Believe it or not, Sorted

I'm having trouble really processing it all, very dense... The arcs really needed time to breath, at some point I was feeling plot fatigue and it was just rushing over me like a tidal wave.

After the shadow war, everything else felt like petty small potatoes, it was hard to get invested emotionally in anything. This is classic plot power creep, its hard to deescalate.

It got off to a rocky start, introducing a new supporting cast, some filler episodes in the start.

I enjoyed the psy arc, the super weapon vorlon super psychic was a nice mcguffin

The fall of Lando getting trapped in the shadows shadow was compelling, I would have liked to see it resolved.

I have to say the end of the season dragged out, but the ending was really emotional, in a good way, I was surprised it had such impact.

I realize i watched this out of order, the vorlons seem hyper militaristic and aggressive, but i suppose that fits in with their super controlling nature we see at the end of the shadow war.

The station seems sexier in the pilot!

The psycore seems much more interesting and dark, they must have toned it down after the pilot

How does the doctor treat a vorlon, who he sees as a angel?

Out favorite shadow's of shadows the Drazi strike out for symbolic revenge and attempt to destroy the earth on the 5th anniversary of Liberation day over the shadows.

The shadow cloud that would wrap a planet in a net of nuclear missile firing stations was destroyed by the new mega destroyers

As a consolation prize the Drazi drop a misconfigured plague on the planet that will kill everyone in 5 years.

This is all setup, no payoff... I think its to establish the premise for the TV series Crusade.

As far as planet killers go, relativistic rocks going through hyperspace could destroy a planet without all the fuss... or jumping into the center of a planet. The Shadow Net is way overdramatic.

This feels like a one-shot self-contained story, some billion year old threat comes, there is a client race doing the dirty work of some mystery race. We have a ranger ship overcome the odds.

This was a pilot for a possible series that never got picked up, pity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOizNEV5WNw

The start of the Earth Membari war, the first hint of the Vorlons.... the Shadows pestering Londo

The tragedy of losing the peace talks

Who was the prisioner referred to by Londo in the last scene?

Season was canceled half way through, due to some TNT executive fight. They wanted more sex appeal in the show, and it shows a few times.

A bunch of filler episodes in the 13 episode season, kinda a waste. A totally new cast, took some time to get used to them, but they do grow on me. The format changed to be more episodic wandering starship with lots of away sets. Must have been more expensive then a babylon 5 episode.

The themes of these season are Techno Mages, Cosmic Horror, Nano Machines and Central control.

The plague infecting earth isn't a biological virus, but nano-machines with central control. We run into a techno mange nano machine plague as well, which gets taken out by finding the central computer.

I think this could have been a good show with tighter plots, and more focus on the arcs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW6SReoSpQU

This feels super low budget, only a few actors in any scene, all cgi, no real sets.

The first story is introducing god and the devil, but its a weird fit since we have the vorlon and shadows in those relative positions, but this is going full god and devil in addition to vorlons and shadows. Felt forced

The second tale about the young prince, was nice, hopeful. Good to see sheradon returning to the station.

Interdimensional psychic space crabs!

Normal space, Hyper Space, Third Space... Many dimensions to explore for FTL travel purposes, not all of them will have space crabs that the vorlons are ashamed of.

Zathras and the great machine transcend realities time and space. Zathras is probably the most important creature that exists.

The Power of Love is a little cheesy especially to solve quantum tunnel effects.

Since we are talking about parallel dimensions i wonder how that compares to third space, hyper space, and quantum space.

The joke about lost in space being something they couldnt say was a little oddly meta.

They bioengineered beings of pure energy, and checkov is a asshole.

I suppose he is basically a god at this point. PsyCorps are really the bad guys in multiple episodes now. He says he will see the commander again in a million years, he can see through time too? That is quite the god! I get lovecraftian vibes

I wonder how he compares to the other older races like the vorlons

Checkov does that Prisoner thing! Be seeing you!

Narn - It seemed like a good idea at a time.

More hints of cosmic horror of the dark forest and elder races

There are things in the Universe billions of years older than either of our races. They are vast, timeless, and if they are aware of us at all, it is as little more then ants. And we have as much chance of communicating with them as a ant has with us. We know, we tried!

Earth First!

I think the coup wasn't really well thought out... killing the ambassadors on the station was the signal to kill more ambassadors on earth? Thats.... one way to do it.

What planet did y'all say you was from again?

Learn a new name, internal air bladder = Lungs

The episode was all B plot about spaceologists who don't believe in surgery

Gambling is a sin, and goes with soldiers everywhere! Opening side quest bribe a solider to delivery a battery? (grid power isn't enough) to run the mind-holo-deck....

That is some INTENSE deep journalistic techniques to get a better war report.

Something inside my head, it says maybe your still inside, maybe we are both still inside....

Kosh has got some game....

We will meet in red 3 at the hour of scampering

Wow, its like every main character in B5 has a kill on site list, where they will attempt to murder without regard to the situation, weapons, witnesses, etc....

Kosh

Understanding is a three edged sword

Death walker promises immortality for all life in the galaxy... that is quite the thing! The monkey paw catch is the recipe requires a life to extend life. Serum of Vampirism

And the vorlons kill the immortality scientist to prevent the mortals from learning about it.

You are not ready for immortality

Woof, very paternalistic. Nobody seems to have a problem with the Vorlon death squad....

Green Screen technology in 1993 left alot to be desired

This whole episode was also B plot filler, but it did establish the threat that Earth First is with a bombing of the bay doors before a presidential visit.

Ok maybe not all filler, we visited the different embassadors to see how much of the political gamers they are. Always willing to exploit a crisis.

Opening with a space traffic crisis, due to a computer malfunction? Contractors installed substandard chips throughout the whole system.... I see Intel exists in this timeline

Fussy bickering school children over a plant.

The strike act enabled the commander to divert funds from the military budget to the dock worker equipment, creating enemies in the government who would rather have crushed the strike and not created precedent.

Mostly a filler episode, but some real character moments for the ambassadors.

Ohh, i remember this guy, the shadow devil genie!

What do you want? Really well done, searching everyone for their weaknesses, their emotional blindness.

a gift from friends you dont know you have! What a great way to have mystery and political debt in one scene.

Urinal Design... who wants to have waist high center piler urinals?

Also.... how many shows do you know that have a urinal scene? Bold!

Sub plot A - Ambassadors corrupting each other

A veritable parade of internal organs.

eleventy-fifth - is that 115?

eleventy-seventh - is that 117?

Lando uses his penis to cheat at cards... wow, i totally forgot about that. Thats quite impressive.

Sub plot B - for this episode is a medical machine that is a reverse vampire machine, the operator donates life force to the patient to make the patient better.

I did the necessary thing, that is not really the same as the right thing.

Sub plot C - murder gets personality wiped, but needs a psy personality scan first? not sure why the scan is needed at all

Somewhere in the huge expanse of B5 they have a garden maze.

This episode really tees up the Shadow and Light diplomatic war, Lando gets his first taste of deliberate evil as he AGREES to getting shadow help to wipe out a Narn military base.

Would you push a button to kill 10,000 but it grants you any wish you want?

The Narn ambassador has a healthy appetite, more GoT vibes here.

Earth force has been taken over by a coup.

1990s TV is very slow, not punchy, lots of filler episodes that add "depth" to characters. I think you could get the same story arc here with 5 tight episodes and cutting the filler.

Overall, the time traveling, the ancient race artifacts, the vorlon and the shadows, setup lots of very compelling intrigue.

Lots of dark forest vibes.

The Planet Machine below babylon 5, clearly it was designed for a race of aliens with 4 arms, who knows how long it has existed, the current and former care taker were not of this race. It's quite a interesting mcguffin.

The pure energy evolution of the human psychic lays out a path for the evolution of species, they don't care about the sandbox anymore after a point, but maybe they leave their toys for the next children?

No questions have been answered, but the appetite is still strong.