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people either hate sci-fi or they are hard core fans. For me I love
it when it's done well but can't watch if it's just for the sake of
alien invasions and special effects. The sci-fi format can be great
for exaggerating situations or social issues that entice the viewer
to think about similar issues in our own history. Rod Serling, Buck
Houghton and the other creators of The Twilight Zone were
pioneers at this and were able to make powerful statements about
war, racism and politics that would have otherwise been censored
from TV in that sanitized period of post-ww2 utopian escapism we
were forced to indulge in after that awful war. Things are much
different today, and when sci-fi or other fantasy films try to make
social statements now it seems transparent and pointless, so these
stories have gone back to telling simple tales of great adventures
full of action and wonder. Next Generation acheived and
surpassed everything that was lacking in the original series, and
it's successors DS9, Voyager and Enterprise tried to carry on that
tradition but, for the most part, simply ran out of new ideas.
Still great stuff but nothing revolutionary. It was during the DS9
period that Babylon 5 was released as an independant series
from Warner Brothers, and went pretty much unnoticed throughout
it's first season and barely made it back for a second, mainly
because that first season was a little slow and clumsy as the
characters developed and all the premices were put in place. If you
didn't watch every week it was hard to warm up to, and the
"stand-alone" episodes didn't stand alone very well. If you made it
to season 2, however, there was no turning back. I got hooked on B5 back when the show was originally run in syndication at 11:30 every Saturday night. It was at the end of season 3 that our local station dropped the series and replaced it with Baywatch reruns. My son, being much younger then and certainly not interested in anything so dark and depressing, could not understand what I saw in the show or why I was bummed when it was axed. Like a lot of people he kinda compared it to Next Generation , which is like comparing Gulliver's Travels to Lord of the Rings . However, when it was brought back to life by TNT we watched it from the beginning and he became more avid a fan than myself. We're both going to miss it, and the "Crusade" series that followed simply wasn't enough story arc to make it addicting. Unfortunately, too, the music made it difficult for me to sit through long enough to warm up to a new set of characters. After the final B5 "Sleeping in light" episode it's hard to imagine anything coming close to that kind of overwhelming bittersweetness. That final sequence of events and Ivanova's speech enhanced by Christopher Franke's piece still gives me goosebumps. I would have been content to say goodbye there, even with all the loose ends left unresolved (from previous episodes we all know what happens anyway). Since the show's demise my son has collected all 5 seasons on DVD, and as they were released we watched them all again, and they were nearly as much fun the second time as they were the first. Truly a unique melodramatic saga put together as a 5 year story that was "sci-fi" only in the sense that it took place in the future. Oh yeah, it had lots of aliens and special effects too. Anyway, here are a just a few pics and links to fill out this page. And for tons of info on new and classic TV check out the Links to other cool shows . |
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