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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2017 12:06:11 GMT
The problem with Tracy Scoggin's character Elizabeth Lochley, is that I could easily replace her with another actress and you would not miss her from a single episode. Really wish that there was a way to switch her with Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek Voyager, Kate Mulgrew was an excellent choice, regardless of my long-term opinion of the show, she was great in it. Scoggins is attractive mind you, even more so when she was modeling. Not sure what you mean. Any actress could be replaced with another in a role - hell Kate Mulgrew was a replacement for another actor! I thought Scoggins did a fine job as Lochley myself. But then I've always liked her a lot more than most people seem to. Hmm, I tend to see that the other way around. The telepath war was built into the show from day one - it was the obvious culmination of the whole existence of the Psi Corps. Whereas the Shadow servants always seemed to me to be something that came out of left field. It's a few years since I've watched the show but to my recollection there was never any mention of Shadow servants until they went to Z'ha'dum and saw ships leaving and were like, "oh yeah, the Shadows had servants so there's a new bunch of enemies now. Surprise!" It also shows in how they did several different versions of the Shadow servants - the first having that weird and pointless 'time twisting' special effect on it - which to me screamed that they were making that particular element up as they went along. That said, I do agree with you that the telepath war, when it finally came, was not handled well. I thought Byron and his cult was a huge misstep for the show, the focus should have been on Lyta gathering forces and taking on Bester. I have only my suspicions, but I suspect that was all a result of how the show was almost cancelled. JMS had planned to spread the story he had over the final season. When it faced cancellation he wrapped all the main plotlines up early. At the time of the season 4 finale he said he could have walked away from the show a happy man right there. But then he suddenly had another season to fill and little in the way of story to fill it with. I'm guessing he also didn't have a whole lot of time or budget to play with. So he just didn't have the resources to go expanding the universe - and frankly I don't know that it would be a good idea to try and expand the universe in the last season anyway. So he took what story he did have - the telepath conflict - and spread it over the season, whilst trying to do it as cheaply as possible since he didn't have the budget for anything else. That's my guess, anyway. Troi was never very well used in TNG. The only occasion I can recall her doing anything useful in season 1 was in The Arsenal of Freedom, where she takes Geordi aside and tells him what a great job he's doing but notes that his bridge officers aren't coping with the situation as well as he is and he needs to handle them a little differently. But for the most part she'd state the fairly obvious, making some pronouncement that would leave the audience going "No, really? You sense aggression from the guy that's shooting at us? Well thanks for that, I never would have guessed!" More to the point, she just casually read everyone's mind all the time - and nobody ever seemed bothered by it. Which is weird and unrealistic. She did improve in later seasons. Best thing that ever happened to her was Jellico putting her into a real uniform!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2017 15:35:12 GMT
I loved this show, even if it had its weaker episodes and elements. Season five for Obvious reasons, but there were other episodes in earlier seasons that weren't that interesting. Mostly filler episodes if I recall correctly (it's been a while since I've seen it).
But as a whole, it was an impressive show. Straczynsky really had a great build-up of all the elements in season one and stuck with it, slowly revealing it all. It probably should have just ended with season four, add a few movies later on and not drag it out with that final season. But still, even with that fifth season, it's a true classic show.
I saw Claudia Christian at a fantasy fair in the Netherlands last year. She was slightly disappointed about the low turnout, there were maybe twenty people in the room, and of those twenty half or so hadn't even seen the show. A bit of a shame, probably also a sign that the show isn't seen by younger generations.
She had some fun anekdotes about the show, the usual things to say about personal favourite episodes and the like. Also that there was virtually no imput allowed from the actors, the scripts were law, which I found quite odd to be honest.
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Post by alpha128 on Mar 18, 2017 16:51:33 GMT
The Shadow servants always seemed to me to be something that came out of left field. It's a few years since I've watched the show but to my recollection there was never any mention of Shadow servants until they went to Z'ha'dum and saw ships leaving and were like, "oh yeah, the Shadows had servants so there's a new bunch of enemies now. Surprise!" That's incorrect. The episode you're referring to is "Epiphanies" (4x07), but a Shadow servant appeared as early as "The Long Dark" (2x05). It also shows in how they did several different versions of the Shadow servants - the first having that weird and pointless 'time twisting' special effect on it - which to me screamed that they were making that particular element up as they went along. It wasn't pointless, it was trying to hide that it was another guy in a rubber suit. JMS was quoted as saying, "I had everything darken when he comes near it because I was so burned with the 'Infection' situation and the 'Grey 17' thing."
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Post by alpha128 on Mar 18, 2017 17:08:27 GMT
Claudia Christian had some fun anecdotes about the show, the usual things to say about personal favourite episodes and the like. Also that there was virtually no input allowed from the actors, the scripts were law, which I found quite odd to be honest. Input was allowed from the actors, but before the scripts were written. Bill Mumy was the one who suggested to JMS that Lennier loved Delenn. Jeff Conaway's complaints about his jacket not fitting correctly went straight into Zack Allen's dialogue. It was Marshall Teague who suggested that Ta'Lon carry a sword. But once the scripts were written, they did become law. That's because JMS was setting things up so far in advance, an offhand comment from an actor could derail future plans:
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2017 17:22:39 GMT
Claudia Christian had some fun anecdotes about the show, the usual things to say about personal favourite episodes and the like. Also that there was virtually no input allowed from the actors, the scripts were law, which I found quite odd to be honest. Input was allowed from the actors, but before the scripts were written. Bill Mumy was the one who suggested to JMS that Lennier loved Delenn. Jeff Conaway's complaints about his jacket not fitting correctly went straight into Zack Allen's dialogue. It was Marshall Teague who suggested that Ta'Lon carry a sword. But once the scripts were written, they did become law. That's because JMS was setting things up so far in advance, an offhand comment from an actor could derail future plans: Aah, that does make sense. Thanks for that!
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Post by alpha128 on Mar 18, 2017 17:39:44 GMT
Input was allowed from the actors, but before the scripts were written. But once the scripts were written, they did become law. That's because JMS was setting things up so far in advance, an offhand comment from an actor could derail future plans. Aah, that does make sense. Thanks for that! You're welcome!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2017 20:27:05 GMT
The problem with Tracy Scoggin's character Elizabeth Lochley, is that I could easily replace her with another actress and you would not miss her from a single episode. Really wish that there was a way to switch her with Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek Voyager, Kate Mulgrew was an excellent choice, regardless of my long-term opinion of the show, she was great in it. Scoggins is attractive mind you, even more so when she was modeling. Scoggins was one of the main problems with the last season, it took so long to establish her character and then they wrote her as entering the show and bumping heads with Michael Garibaldi which ate up useless episodic time and then she had zero charisma when matched with the other members- even though she was a new member, this makes no difference as I have a hard time envisioning a season 6 with Scoggins taking the reigns of the show forward. I am not trying to beat up on her as an actress, she is O.K. and very nice to look at. Kate Mulgrew is a favorite of mine, the cast of voyager had the chemistry from the get-go and I am still very disappointed in this one. It would of been very cool to have not only a female character become captain but to have had an Alien species perhaps even a Drazi, where there is a culture of miscommunication- might be fairly hilarious at times. We had already explore the telepaths fairly deeply through all of the previous seasons and this storyline was a dud and we had explored the end path of the telepath and the origins of the telepaths and the divisions of the telepaths and the suffering of the telepaths and the conflicts with the telepaths,,what would you imagine would be left to explore besides a showdown with Bester and Earth? Agreed, Byron is a wordy bore and utters a bunch of mumbling beat-nickish let us all live-together platitudes,,,look sad Byron, look perplexed Byron, look anguished Byron,,just wrote the entire season 5 outline for this character. When you are faced by a budget crisis why not just narrow and explore an aspect of the show already popular with the fans, everyone wanted to get to the Narn home-world and poke around, why not develop around that? What was the original Star Trek budget, about a $1 an episode...the writing seemed to be walking a thin line between ending the series and tying up story-lines and hoping to add something that might catch fire into another season or series??? Love that qoute, "No, really? You sense aggression from the guy that's shooting at us?" that made my day, not to go trekkie on a Bab-5 thread but I am a STNG to season 4 then off to Deep Space Nine and onto the STNG movies. There are Huge swaths of later STNG episodes that put me straight to sleep that is why I rank Babylon 5 as a series above it.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2017 20:46:19 GMT
Re-watching the series a couple of times you really begin to appreciate Stephen Franklin, his character really brought the story arcs together, he was a pretty good actor, the character did alot to enrich the episodes. Maybe second favorite Space Doc? how long is that list? BTW - Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy
- Dr. Stephen Franklin
- All the other Star Trek doctors
- Dr. Benjamin Kyle
I agree with your space Doc list, would put the Emergency Medical Holographic program from voyager as 3rd, for the most part his character was an excellent one but was not handled that well later on. Robert Picardo pulled out all the stops on this one. Then fourth would be the 'healer' Zotoh Zhaan from Farscape (technically the ship's doctor- another character that I really like). Have to look over that article that you left on the time-line changes.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2017 21:40:57 GMT
The Shadow servants always seemed to me to be something that came out of left field. It's a few years since I've watched the show but to my recollection there was never any mention of Shadow servants until they went to Z'ha'dum and saw ships leaving and were like, "oh yeah, the Shadows had servants so there's a new bunch of enemies now. Surprise!" That's incorrect. The episode you're referring to is "Epiphanies" (4x07), but a Shadow servant appeared as early as "The Long Dark" (2x05). Okay, thanks for the correction. I meant pointless in universe. It was rather obviously a "our alien is crap, blur it!" moment.
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Post by alpha128 on Mar 18, 2017 22:05:42 GMT
I meant pointless in universe. It was rather obviously a "our alien is crap, blur it!" moment. JMS did try to justify it in universe as follows:
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2017 22:09:14 GMT
Yeah, that's some BS right there.
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Post by alpha128 on Mar 18, 2017 22:23:07 GMT
Yeah, that's some BS right there. I wrote that JMS tried to justify it in universe. Doesn't mean he succeeded.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2017 22:35:42 GMT
Heh
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Post by Jayman on Apr 5, 2017 23:19:09 GMT
Very good show. I watched the whole series.
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