"Sleeping In Light" aired 20 years ago today. If you immediately know what I'm talking about, this very likely was something of some emotional impact at the time.
Arjen said:"Intersections in real time" is the episode that I found most disturbing. It's the first thing that jumps into my mind when somebody mentions Babylon 5.
marauder2048 said:"Chrysalis" was incredibly jarring in and of itself; the cast reshuffle in "Points of Departure" (aired a week later) really added to the feeling of an unsettled universe.
Orionblamblam said:But few episodes can trump a *number* of episodes with Londo for being disturbing. Watching the bombardment of the Narn homeworld, and describing to a couple children the last stand of Humans against the Minbari are still hair-raising.
Biggs' and Doyle's passings were tragic as well, different circumstances of course but it's very sad how many we've lost from that show before their time.TomS said:O'Hare's condition was such a tragedy.
(For those who don't know, O'Hare was suffering from paranoid delusions throughout much of the filming of season one and had to leave the show for treatment. He barely managed top pull things together for his two later appearances on the show. The cast, production company, and JMS himself agreed to keep this all secret until he passed away, which happened in 2012.)
Foo Fighter said:I will always be a Trekkie but B5 was a far grittier depiction of life in the future.
I thought Sheridan, Delen and Vir were politicians too. Pretty effective at that. Kosh!Orionblamblam said:In B5, people are still people and politicians are scumbags.
Arjen said:I thought Sheridan, Delen and Vir were politicians too.Orionblamblam said:In B5, people are still people and politicians are scumbags.
Orionblamblam said:Foo Fighter said:I will always be a Trekkie but B5 was a far grittier depiction of life in the future.
It's interesting to compare ST:TOS and B5 in terms of their optimism and their back stories. TOS is of course an optimistic, nearly utopian vision of the future, where mankind has got its stuff together and humanity is just plain better. In B5, people are still people and politicians are scumbags. What could have caused this? Well, in the background history of B5 between "now" and "then," Earth muddled through and finally, sorta, came together. In ST:TOS... we had the Eugenics Wars, Colonel Green's War, World War III, etc. Humanity Done Blowed Itself Up Good.
ST, for all it's brightness, is built on a mountain of corpses. Which is not inaccurate: the Renaissance was built on a third to a half of Europe wiped out by the plague.
JeffB said:ST:TOS is set in a period just after a major conflict with the Klingon Empire.
Orionblamblam said:But few episodes can trump a *number* of episodes with Londo for being disturbing.
PaulMM (Overscan) said:Utopian in that all serious problems are outside the humans. Human society is pretty utopian (from a 1960s viewpoint at least).