• BillyClark@piefed.social
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      4 days ago

      The best Star Trek series was Babylon 5, just like how the best Star Trek movie was Galaxy Quest.

      • Ibuthyr@feddit.org
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        4 days ago

        So, I just started Babylon 5 and find it to be quite shit actually. Does it get better? It’s really just bad acting and not really engaging. I’m 4 episodes in.

        • BillyClark@piefed.social
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          4 days ago

          If I was recommending somebody how to watch B5 for the first time, I’d probably just say to skip the first season (as well as the pilot). In my opinion, Commander Sinclair is the weakest link in the acting, and he leaves after the first season. His replacement is a very good actor, in my opinion.

          Also, as far as acting goes, Ambassadors Mollari and G’Kar get more screen time as the series progresses, and I think they’re both great actors.

          The first season does have a lot of background that sets up later seasons, and I’ve grown to like it, but I’ve seen the entire series probably over 10 times now, and for the first 3-4 times, I disliked the first season.

          • Ibuthyr@feddit.org
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            1 day ago

            Nice, i was hoping to hear something like this! I’ll just stick to it. At the moment I’m enjoying a 2nd run of The Expanse, so I’ll likely pick up Babylon 5 after that.

        • PastelKeystone@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          The first season had the TV execs meddling to make it be like ST:TNG because they wanted to mimic the popular thing at the time.

          The writer got his way starting in season 2 and got to tell his story without the meddling.

          Yes it gets better is what I’m saying. 🙂

            • Taleya@aussie.zone
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              8 hours ago

              Season five is fucking great when you know the circumstances. This was a show with a meticulously planned five year arc. They abruptly got told “yeah nah, we’re cancelling you end of s4”. So a massive, massive rewrite to roll up and finish off the Shadow war and just after they pulled it off “actually the ratings pulled up, you can have your fifth season”

              With no more arc.

              So they pulled the entire fifth season out of their arses in a very short span of time. With no more story to tell. And you know what? It’s a fuckin’ testament to the skill of those involved it turned out half decent

            • BillyClark@piefed.social
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              4 days ago

              Season 5 is worse than 2-4, but not worse than S1. The problem is that B5 was always on the verge of being canceled, and so I think they finished the main story in Season 4, and so there’s as much going on in Season 5, except for tying up loose ends and finishing character arcs. So, they added weak filler shit like the colony of rogue telepaths.

    • M137@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      It is a joke compared to the three mentioned. It’s one series with a few shitty tv movies vs three whole franchises with multiple series, movies, books etc. that are all known by everyone, it’s very much not the same.

      • Thrawn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 days ago

        I have always seen the soft/hard sci-fi as a sliding scale. I imagine it is like the mohs scale for minerals with diamonds as a 10.

        Stuff like 2001 A Space Odyssey is a solid 10 until after HAL is shutdown and even with the bizarre ending it is fully in the “sufficiently advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic” and still something like 8.5-9

        Star Trek is pretty good about being internally consistent and having day to day stuff be pretty grounded but there is so much purely nonsense trecknobable that I only consider it a 6 out of 10.

        Very different story and world but I would rate Stargate about the same. Maybe actually a bit higher. Mostly because it is a newer series that was better able to track its own weird stuff it had claimed and keep it consistent.

        Star Wars something like 4.5. still gets ok because of mostly internal consistency but definitely leans strongly the fantasy elements that are mixed in.