🔥 Babylon 5 or Deep Space 9



  • Topic says it all.

    I submit that Babylon 5 had more and better wham episodes, but that Garibaldi dragged the show down and that Sheridan was a goodie-two-shoes but still an atom bomb using bad ass.

    Deep Space 9 is great Star Trek though. Especially the arc episodes. The stand-alone episodes were mostly okay. Allamaraine, you count to four.

    Sisko was often fairly bad ass but never as bad ass as Sheridan was at his peak.



  • You see, both of those numbers are bigger than two, so they can't possibly exist.



  • I counter your DS9 with that damn baseball.

    Also, Londo Mollari.



  • Yeah, the baseball episode sucked, but the baseball card episode was pretty good.


  • Fake News

    Blake's 7. 🎤 💧



  • Clearly the ideal compromise candidate.



  • Firefly


  • FoxDev

    b5? eeh that's cool

    DS9? meh

    Seaquest DSV FTW!



  • Seaquest was fun, Blake's 7 was fun.

    I like both DS9 and B5.

    With my good friends Vir and G'Kar!



  • Two of my favourite shows in one thread. I feel at home here. Still trying to expose @Arantor to all the seasons of both.

    I'm quite fond of plain, simple Garak.



  • Also, did Commander Tomalok ever turn up in DS9, because then he'd have been in both?



  • Majel Barrett was in both. As the Emperors wife and Lwaxana. Or the lady who plays Na'Toth is also Grilka.



  • @Arantor said:

    With my good friends Vir and G'Kar!

    I always imagine that in the booming voice of Londo.

    "Ah, G'Kar! So good to see you!"



  • I do a reasonable impression. ;)



  • It has a bit of "Italians in Space" 😄

    Always very excited, the clothing style is extravagant and very loud (both voices and clothing).



  • And now you know why I will never buy @Arantor a coutari. He'd go bug-hunting in the flat and accidentally sever our lighting.



  • @Captain said:

    but the baseball card episode was pretty good.

    See the reason people age is because their cells get bored...



  • @Arantor said:

    Seaquest was fun,

    Season 2 was like a war crime.

    @Arantor said:

    Blake's 7 was fun.

    Most episodes of Blake's 7 were depressing, not fun.



  • You and I have different definitions of what that word means, in this case "a thing to do that is not terrible"



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Most episodes of Blake's 7 were depressing, not fun.

    But surely you have to admit that Servalan and Avon are both great characters.



  • Right; it's a good show, it's not a fun show. Farscape is a fun show. DS9 could be a fun show, like the baseball card episode.



  • @Arantor said:

    You and I have different definitions of what that word means, in this case "a thing to do that is not terrible"

    There is nothing about Seaquest DSV that is not terrible. Season 2 is transcends "so bad its good" into "plain awful". Not worth watching even to make fun of.



  • I'm British, we tolerate even terrible things and politely applaud afterwards.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Captain said:

    Garibaldi dragged the show down

    What? Garibaldi was awesome.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @lolwhat said:

    Blake's 7. 🎤 💧

    Pro tip: Never ask the woman who played Tegan Jovanka what she thinks of B7.



  • @Captain said:

    Deep Space 9

    Oh gawd....

    AAAAAHHHHH...... fire.... fire.....

    I suppose if Star Trek and Cheers and Jar Jar Binks had a baby, you'd have DS9.

    I was going to say "the worst of the Star Wars Prequels". Then just wrote Jar Jar instead


    DS9: Days of our lives for geeks, or Star Trek for old ladies?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    There is nothing about Seaquest DSV that is not terrible. Season 2 is transcends "so bad its good" into "plain awful". Not worth watching even to make fun of.

    It was as if someone was watching Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and said "let's make a show like this, only worse in every way."



  • @RevCurtisP said:

    It was as if someone was watching Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and said "let's make a show like this, only worse in every way."

    "Let's copy the Star Trek: The Next Generation formula, but only the shitty parts they discarded in season 2."



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Let's copy the Star Trek: The Next Generation formula, but only the shitty parts they discarded in season 2."

    At least in Star Trek, when they meet creatures from other planets they were in outer space, and not on Earth, under the ocean.

    Filed under: I'm agreeing with Blakey and actually feel good about it.



  • Did you see the Seaquest where they fight LITERALLY NEPTUNE?!



  • If I did, I blanked it. I remember "liking" it when I was a child watching it. Especially the teen genius (who was so relateable) and Darwin the Dolphin. But I do not remember it any better than He-Man or Transformers at this point, and I don't remember that at all either. (Beast Wars was good, though)



  • I suppose if Star Trek and Cheers and Jar Jar Binks had a baby, you'd have DS9.

    GTFO my thread



  • DS9 was a monster problem of the week show and did the usual ST thing that the only real changes happened in the last and/or first episodes of seasons. B5 had a story that continued from one episode to the next — that alone settles it for me.

    I have to say about DS9, though, that it had the same thing going for it as TNG: the moment one of the main characters grew a beard, the show improved quite a bit.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @royal_poet said:

    plain, simple Garak.

    He was a legend. His friendship with the Doctor was fun to watch, especially all of the :trollface:ing that Garak did.

    I also really enjoyed the way that Quark and Odo played off each other.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    B5 is fun to watch through after you've seen the whole show. It's interesting what foreshadowing you can pick up when you know what's coming. A lot of the apparently meaningless things can really stand out.

    With DS9, I liked the show overall. Especially the Dominion War part (most of it anyway). The thing that stands out to me is how I reacted to Avery Brooks (Sisko). When I started rewatching it recently, I couldn't believe how odd he is. Towards the end of the last season I thought he must have been getting acting lessons because he didn't seem as weird in character as in the beginning. Then I went through the earlier seasons watching episodes I had skipped and he didn't seem weird then. I had adjusted to his weirdness, scary! Go watch some interviews with him, he's an odd duck.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    First of all, I know you meant Bashir. Since you capitalized Doctor, for a moment I thought you meant The Doctor. It would be a lot of fun to see those two characters interact. I'm thinking the David Tennant or Matt Smith Doctors for this.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    I'm pretty sure Garak is my favorite non-main Star Trek character.



  • @mikehurley said:

    Avery Brooks ... he's an odd duck.

    Yup. I think he would be less weird on the stage. It seems like he's overdoing it for TV, like all his movements are too big, and he keeps taking huge deep breaths when he talks even though the other person just a few feet away. But all that stuff is just fine in a live theater. Dude can sing pretty well, too.

    As for the OT: One thing to keep in mind when comparing the shows is that each episode of DS9 cost as much as an entire season B5. (Yes, that's an exaggeration.) B5 did more with less than any other SF show.



  • Babylon 5 is probably my favorite TV show of all time. It's a shame it only ran for 5 seasons. It's also a shame that Crusade was canceled so soon, I quite liked it.

    Anyone ever picked up on the jabs between B5 and DS9? I forget exactly what they were but they did subtly make fun of each other a few times.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    Yes.

    Also, one amazing thing about DS9 is how, every single episode, all the characters had something to do. It either advanced the plot or deepened their characters.



  • @mott555 said:

    Babylon 5 is probably my favorite TV show of all time. It's a shame it only ran for 5 seasons. It's also a shame that Crusade was canceled so soon, I quite liked it.

    I'll slightly disagree in that I'm glad the original B5 series ended when the story was over. Definitely sucks that Crusade didn't get enough time to develop. Damnit, I want to know what the hell is up with the Apocalypse Box.

    @mott555 said:

    Anyone ever picked up on the jabs between B5 and DS9? I forget exactly what they were but they did subtly make fun of each other a few times.

    From "There All the Honor Lies": "We're not some deep space franchise, this station is about something!"



  • @Dragnslcr said:

    I'll slightly disagree in that I'm glad the original B5 series ended when the story was over.

    The story didn't have to be over. They wrapped everything up in the fourth season because they weren't sure if there would be a fifth. Then it was renewed and the fifth season ended up being kind of a standalone thing and suffered as a result. The writing was good enough that had they known from the start it would have run for 6, 8, or 10 seasons or whatever, I think it would have been fine.



  • @mott555 said:

    The story didn't have to be over. They wrapped everything up in the fourth season because they weren't sure if there would be a fifth. Then it was renewed and the fifth season ended up being kind of a standalone thing and suffered as a result.

    Season 5 was always supposed to be mostly the way it was. Season 4 was supposed to end only a few episodes earlier ("Intersections in Real Time", if I remember correctly), so there was really only 3 or 4 episodes worth of material in Season 5 that wasn't originally planned for it.

    @mott555 said:

    The writing was good enough that had they known from the start it would have run for 6, 8, or 10 seasons or whatever, I think it would have been fine.

    The danger would have been falling into a Star Trek style of series, with just a bunch of standalone episodes instead of a single story. In many ways, it would be better to have a new story line with new characters in the same universe, which is what Crusade was supposed to be.



  • so there was really only 3 or 4 episodes worth of material in Season 5 that wasn't originally planned for it.

    The trouble was, the telepath story had to be fleshed out (a lot), and it wasn't. A rebellion by the teeps should have been a galaxy-wide problem, not something that happened "down below" with no effect outside of the station.

    There was also no scope for diplomacy. A teep rebellion could/should have threatened to break up the alliance, as the less committed members tried to gain influence with the telepaths for power, or the telepaths tried to infiltrate the alliance, etc.



  • DS9 was a monster problem of the week show and did the usual ST thing that the only real changes happened in the last and/or first episodes of seasons. B5 had a story that continued from one episode to the next — that alone settles it for me.

    This is true (full stop) in the first two seasons. But later, there are lots of episodes focused almost entirely on the Dominion war and the Jem Hadar and the changlings. They may have been "problems of the week" but they fleshed out the story a lot, and had consequences down the line.



  • The Telepath War has been purposely left as a large hole so that it can be used as a feature film (and possibly a new series). There are a lot of other fans around who are annoyed that nothing has been done with it yet, but the upcoming movie is giving us some hope again.



  • Yeah, but it was really an accident. J. Michael Straczynski would have loved to do it on TV. The "new series" is what the second half of Babylon 5 was planned to be.



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    Also, one amazing thing about DS9 is how, every single episode, all the characters had something to do.

    (Except Jake, who was lead actor "in credits only" for like 3 of the 7 seasons.)



  • They did try with Crusade, but it never took off.



  • Yeah, I'm sure he would much rather do it as another multi-year TV series. I just meant that the reason it hasn't been done in another medium (e.g. a series of books or comics) in the past 15 years is so that he can do it as a movie or TV series instead.


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