Babylon 5...
Nov. 13th, 2006 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fajrdrakoI just read that they're making a Babylon 5 movie.
I have mixed feelings about this. There were episodes and characters I loved, and expisodes and characters I didn't. I hated so much about fifth season (and what they did with my favourite character) that I was left with negative feelings about the show; and I'm not a big fan of Boxleitner, and quite dislike Tracy Scroggins. I did, on the other hand, like Crusade, and if Peter Woodward is going to be in the movie.... Well. I'm there. He's one of my short-list of irresistible guys.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-11-13 07:29 pm (UTC)My problem with B5 is woman-in-refrigerator syndrome, which I guess comes from JMS's comic book geek background as it's so prevalent in that world. Every time he needs to motivate one of his male protagonists into doing something rash or just doing anything at all (but usually in a fit of anger and despair), JMS kills off or maims or trashes "the only woman (the guy) ever loved!!!" JMS writes relationships and romance at the level of a 14 year old boy, and that's the sort of thing 14 year old boys think is very dramatic and romantic. It's like none of the women are characters in their own lives, they only live to serve the story of their S.O. He goes back to that well so many times that someone was able to do a drippy, romantic vid for Vividcon on the concept, with woman after woman being horribly destroyed, then cutting back to their man's tragic face, prompting me to blow a freakin' gasket when I saw it.
The only woman Londo's ever loved gets murdered, motivating his alliance with the Shadows.
John Sheridan's much-loved, dead wife shows up, she is essentially a puppet controlled by the Shadows. She was destroyed many years ago and now exists solely to act as a prompt to John's story.
The only woman Alfred Bester ever loved (and I never want to hear Pavel Chekov say, "She was my lover" again) is made half-mad and incorporated into a Shadow vessel. This motivates his alliance with the crew of B5.
Franklin didn't get a lot of action, but I believe his honey was murdered or dies of Love Story disease one point.
Finally we have a female protagonist! YAY! Ivanova is great! But no, a guy doesn't get trashed, it's still a woman (Talia) driven mad and being carried off frothing at the moutn, because Ivanova is a Lesbian.
Finally a guy gets trashed for a woman's story, but it's such an odd circumstance, I never knew what to think of it. Marcus Cole, who has a major, completely unrequited crush on Ivanova, willingly kills himself so that she can live, but he's supposedly a HAHAHAHAHA! virgin, much to the surprise and dismay of the actor playing him, so that whole relationship was not a going concern from the start -- I mean, did he purposely pick someone who preferred someone NOT his sex in order to preserve his virginity? Was that the (very odd) point JMS was making? So I guess we can say that finally a guy died to motivate a female character to action, but all it did was make her act all glum and leave the station (the actress jumped ship, so any dramatic story Marcus' death might have motivated was cut short.) Just unsettling and non-worky.
You would think Delenn could be counted as a major female character in her own right, and she sort of was, except really she isn't: she exists to be loved by Sheridan and as the means to his becoming Valenn and living a whole involved dramatic story off somewhere without her. Her own dramatic (traumatic) transformation was done soley to make her pleasing to her (hu)man, and that idea is carried forward with her little princess-cut silk gowns and wee, pretty tiara of bone, like some sort of Disney princess. In the end, while it's Sheridan who "dies", it's Delenn who ceases to matter as a seperate character in that universe once he's gone (he's off being Valenn in the past.) Delenn has an extended life as The Widow Sheridan, devoting herself to his legend.
Stung by criticism, JMS finally does a straight "guy gets trashed to motivate a chick" story near the end of the series. Byron is hunted by the Psi Corps and kills himself rather than be captured, and Lyta Alexander founds a planet for telepaths and becomes the leader of a rebel movement against Psi Corps. The world yawns because it turns out trashing a guy to motivate a woman to action is just as boring as the other way around.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-13 07:54 pm (UTC)I had many friends who were crazy over Talia and Ivanova, one way or another, but I didn't like either of them and therefore (sigh) never much cared about their relationship. I liked Sinclair very much, but he left at the end of season 1 - and his subsequent appearances didn't make up for his lack. I wanted to like Marcus Cole, but the never seemed real. Who else? After Sinclair left, my favourite character by far was Garibaldi - and he ended up with the worst character assassination of all.
So I was left disgruntled, what with one thing or another. Which is too bad, because the show had a lot going for it, and the good episodes were enertaining. I liked what was done with Londo and G'Kar. The problem with the main storyline was that it was too predictable - that led to numerous small disappointments, and increasing, cumulative disaffection with the story.
I think JMS has done his best writing since Babylon 5, mostly in comics, mostly in Spider-Man, where he has done some superb stories - and perhaps his weakness with female characters is less obvious because he can stay tightly in Spider-Man's point of view.
(Come to think of it, he may be doing good work in other comics, I don't know because I'm not reading them.)
no subject
Date: 2006-11-14 12:59 am (UTC)God, I don't even remember what happened to Garibaldi. I'm willing to bet some woman he was in love with got killed, though.
One problem that JMS had no control over was the hijacking of Sinclair by the powers that be at the network, who decided the actor was too morose and wanted someone livelier. Sinclair was supposed to marry Delenn and one day become Valenn (that's why they found Valenn's DNA in him when they were torturing him in the pilot), so despite all the tap-dancing JMS did, his beautiful symmetry was destroyed.
Another unanticipated bug-out was the woman who played Talia wanting off the show (and into NYPD Blue) -- I think her marriage to the guy who played Garibaldi was falling apart and she wanted out. Lyta would have stayed a minor character, but got Talia's cobbled-together story arc (she was supposed to come back from her mental-trashing and want revenge on Psi Corps.) I think the actress who played Talia had a gravity that the woman who played Lyta just didn't have.
Also, JMS wrote almost every script, and that was such a bad idea. If he'd just written 5 or 6 of the major arc stories and let others write the rest under his direction, there would have been more life and breath to the scripts.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-14 04:07 am (UTC)Oh dear. I fear you are right.
I don't even remember what happened to Garibaldi.
He turned into Dagwood Bumstead. He retired to an upper-middle-class lifestyle with teen-aged kid, dog and (I think) wife, and a nice house in the suburbs. I was horrified.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-13 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-13 08:08 pm (UTC)This led me to wonder why I liked Crusade more than Babylon 5. Was it that I liked Gary Cole, Daniel Dae Kim and (especially) Pete Woodward? Was I, in my infatuation with Galen, willing to overlook other flaws in the story? I certainly never liked the premise much - in contrast to Babylon 5 where I did like the premise, just didn't end up liking what they made of it.
Or maybe it was that Crusade never had time to really screw up before it was cancelled.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-14 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-14 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-19 09:10 pm (UTC)