Babylon 5

Wayne Alexander. Lorien, Sebastian the Inquisitor, a bunch of Drazi and Drakh... The name sounded familiar, but I don't think I ever put it together. He was good, as Lorien and Sebastian. I'm guessing he was more of a stage actor? Seems like he largely disappears from IMDB during the 2000s.

Doug Jones has been great. I don't know that I'd ever seen him in this much of a speaking, non-villainous role.

He's great in Hellboy as Abe Sapien. He was overdubbed in the first movie by David Hyde Pierce but when Pierce heard the lines Doug Jones had said for the sequel (because he had to say all the lines in order for Pierce to get the cadence right for the mouth movements), Pierce basically told Guillermo del Toro that Jones' acting was fantastic and that Pierce couldn't improve on it.

Oh, right! I forgot he played Abe. Knew he was in those movies, but I was thinking of the Angel of Death, and somehow I completely blanked on Abe. David Hyde Pierce was right, he's great for the voice as well as in terms of physical presence. And good of Pierce to say so.

Edited by Unsung on Jan 22nd 2021 at 10:56:02 AM

Actually, I think the religions episode was more about giving humanity a hat if nothing else - the hat of diversity. It is specifically what is supposed to make humans special compared to other races.

And it's worth noting that the other races did have diverse beliefs in their own ways. G'Kar likes to talk about the different religious followings on Narn. It was just in line with S1 G'Kar to talk about G'Quan as if that were the only one that mattered (ironic enough for a character that unwittingly became the leader of yet another Narn religious following). Similarly, when the Centauri talk about their gods, there's a joke about how they can't even agree on how many gods there are.

The Minbari seem to be relatively solid on all believing in Valen and his prophecy, but it's also implied that the Vorlons are enforcing this with their relatively close relationship with the Minbari. And even then we see that not all of the Minbari put equal weight on that either, with the Warrior Caste in particular being somewhat ambivalent about the whole thing, and nobody asking the Workers for their thoughts on the matter.

Edited by AFP on Jan 23rd 2021 at 3:39:30 AM

Considering that Valen was an actual historical figure, of which there are presumably plenty of records on Minbar, it should not be surprising that all Minbari ascribe to him.

As for G'Kar, I think that fits his initial narrow-mindedness. To G'Kar, G'Quan was the only one that mattered in the same way that to many Christians, God is the only one that matters. And that is of course also part of the nature of religion: you generally believe your religion is right and everyone else is unenlightened at best.

Didn't the creators regret that religious episode due to how smug it made them look?

I think so, yeah. And I agree, it looked really smug. Especially considering they were the ones making the other races monoreligious in the first place.

It was basically being smug to fictional aliens.

Edited by Redmess on Jan 23rd 2021 at 3:05:31 PM

Checking the Lurker's Guide page for that, and I'm not seeing anything to that degree. To the contrary, it looks like JMS's commentary was that he never actually said that the humans were unusual in having multiple faiths (IIRC, they only show Minbari and Centauri rituals, so we don't actually get to see the majority of the aliens' beliefs), just that Sinclair couldn't think of a good way to present Earth's multicultural belief system.

So if JMS was being smug, it was directed towards humans in the audience, not aliens in the show. Even he pointed out that the first guy in line was an atheist, "best dressed and smartest looking"

Edited by AFP on Jan 23rd 2021 at 6:13:34 AM

He may not have meant to, but that's what it came off as.

Yeah, smug is how it plays.

Ah, I didn't mean to suggest humanity didn't have a hat of its own. Just the opposite, really. There's a thread of Humans Are Special ("humans build communities", Humans Are Diplomats) that runs throughout the series. Planet of Hats isn't a bad thing, and the show generally does it well, but that was always one of the more conspicuous examples — limiting one character or group's characterization so as not to infringe on another's "thing". Or just having them act in contrived ways to shore up the message of the episode. It's pretty on the nose.

Edited by Unsung on Jan 23rd 2021 at 10:37:49 AM

Well, that's kind of what I mean. In a universe full of planets of hats, humanity's hat is not having a hat.

In JMS's memoir there's a part where he goes over all the B5 cast members who died before the book was released, but for some reason he didn't mention Stephen Furst. I haven't heard anything about any bad blood between him and JMS, so I wonder if there's a private reason why his death was omitted.

Depends on when that section was written or it could have just been an accident.

Did he die shortly before the book was released? That might be the reason.

I thought maybe his death was too recent, but JMS went over the death of Harlan Ellison, who died the year after Furst.

If he's been working on the book for a while, he may have finished one section before moving on, and didn't think to go back and add to it. Sometimes humans make goofs.

JMS is the executor of Harlan's estate in addition to his other jobs and creative projects - the man is very busy.

He's actually trying to get The Last Dangerous Visions published.

Anyone else who's read his memoir wanna give their thoughts about it? He didn't really talk that much about B5. Still worth reading, especially for learning just how hellish his upbringing was.

Edited by MFLuder on Jan 29th 2021 at 12:05:34 PM

Yeah, if even half of what he said about his home life is half accurate, it was really really bad. This is gonna sound kind of weird, but once he got stabbed in San Diego, it was all improvement from there.

I think my favorite part of the whole thing was him talking about when he was the lead writer for The Real Ghostbusters, and had his back-and-forth with the execs and consultants about what their data said about kids (stuff like glasses with corners scare them).

One exchange went more or less:

"This is what our data says." "I'd like to see your data." "You'd need a degree in psychology to understand it." "I have a degree in psychology." "..."

Anyways, that's apparently why he doesn't work in animation anymore.

JMS talked about the cartoon crash of the late 80's - shows couldn't promote toys anymore and the studios were cracking down on the creative side because there was less money it in.

When he started, there was mad money and every studio was looking for talent. As time wore on, the studios got nosy and a lot of hangers on ("psychological consultants" for instance) started to nag the writers and producers. In his book on script writing he tells of a producer who got out before the crash - he made so much money that he bought a village in France. That's not a typo, homeboy bought an entire village with the money he made producing cartoons in The '80s.

Confirmed, the show is being rebooted for the CW. JMS will write for it

Synopsis taken from the site:

"...the reboot revolves around John Sheridan, an Earthforce officer with a mysterious background, who is assigned to Babylon 5, a five-mile-long space station in neutral space, a port of call for travelers, smugglers, corporate explorers and alien diplomats at a time of uneasy peace and the constant threat of war. His arrival triggers a destiny beyond anything he could have imagined, as an exploratory Earth company accidentally triggers a conflict with a civilization a million years ahead of us, putting Sheridan and the rest of the B5 crew in the line of fire as the last, best hope for the survival of the human race."

What, seriously? Sounds great. Will it just be the same story, or a new one?

Can Claudia Christian come back to the show?

Wow, not many of the original cast are still alive. Boxleitner (Sheridan), Mumy (Lenier) and Jurasik (Londo) are still around, as is a very ancient Koenig (Bester).

Edited by Redmess on Sep 27th 2021 at 11:28:58 AM

I hope the Shadows win this time.