Babylon 5 is good for my stamina

[jducoeur]

Having finished Star Trek: The Next Generation last week, today was the start of Babylon 5. First up was The Gathering, the introductory movie. As I remembered, it had lots of weak spots, but was still pretty intriguing. I'm looking forward to watching it side-by-side with Deep Space Nine for the next year. ("Year of the Space Stations", I suppose.)

Despite this being at least the third time I've watched the whole series, and probably the fifth time I've seen The Gathering, I'm still noticing details for the first time. My favorite this time around was when Ben is being attacked by the faux Lyta, and grabs a pipe off the wall to hit her with -- knowing the series (and his opponent) well enough by now, I practically cringed, going, "No, no, no -- worst combat mistake *ever*."

The hardest part of the morning run is keeping my mind off of how hard I'm working. Running is kind of like Douglas Adams' version of flying -- I can only really do it if I'm not paying attention. B5 is looking excellent for that: I set a new stamina record today, despite being pretty tired. 9.06 nominal miles in 99 minutes = 5.49 MPH at level 8 on the elliptical. Not bad -- I suspect that one will stand for a while...

Comments

[madamruppy.livejournal.com]

I'm rewatching Bab 5 too. I just finished disc 4. I am enjoying it very much. I love how much of the series is set up in the first year.

[bkdelong.livejournal.com]

I was really sad when they took the series off the air. I think I've watched it 3 times through via SciFi reruns. The detail of that universe is really quality and built for time. Tho towards the end it was clear things had changed and I'm not sure they could have kept going with.the B5 itself as the setting. The canon is rife with future story possibilities though.

[jducoeur]

Well, keep in mind that B5 per se was never *supposed* to run more than five years. The order of events wound up rearranged significantly due to the uncertainty about whether they would get the fifth season, but they told *roughly* the story that JMS intended, at roughly the pace he intended.

The tragedy is that there was always supposed to then be a *second* series, which was never supposed to be set on Babylon 5. (Indeed, in the original plans, B5 was supposed to be blown up at the end of that series.) That second series got massively mutated due to the changes that wound up happening in the original, and then got cancelled halfway through the first season. I've always been unhappy about that -- I'm really curious where Joe was going with it...