Do you have any particular disappointments with B5?

Prove me wrong if you can

1. The Illusion Of Truth
WORST.EPISODE.EVER. 'nuff said

2. The Not-So-Great-Machine
I can understand JMS' reluctance to use The Great Machine more than a few times in the series but c'mon, when you have a machine the size of a planet, people want to know what it is capable of doing (just so long as it doesn't try to...oh I don't know, suck up a star...that would just be ludicrous ).

And now for some nit-picking, esoteric items I don't think I've seen discussed before:

3. Starfield rotation is wrong
See my separate post for this one

4. Lise Hampton Edgars Garibaldi
When we first meet Lise, she is Married...With Children (well one child anyway...couldn't resist the MWC plug). When we meet her later in the series she has remarried and lost custody of her child. REALLY?!? She is married to one of the most powerful businessmen on Mars and she can't get custody of her first child? Yeah right.

5. Mr. Garibaldi and PFC Dodger
When Garibaldi & Dodger first meet, he wusses out and can't sleep with her because he might possibly, maybe, if things work out, *might* have a relationship with Talia. REALLY?!? Later, when Dodger "returns from the dead", Garibaldi is now OK with sleeping with her even though he is now engaged to the love of his life Lise Hampton Edgars.

6. Marcus Cole
In Endgame, Marcus steps into a room and says "Computer, show me all records dealing with Death and Extreme Measures" (sorry, I can't remember exactly what he says). Later in the touching Franklin & Ivanova scene, Franklin says Marcus must have hacked his way through layers of security to find that record. REALLY?!? It sounds like all he did was do a keyword search. If I were Ivanova I would be PO'd with Franklin for not securing sensitive records.

7. Sheridan's marriage to Lochley
Yeesh, this also sounds more like Star Trek than B5. Sheridan appoints Lochley as commander of B5 because she's his ex-wife? REALLY?!? I wouldn't trust my ex-wife as far as I could throw her, let alone have her stationed at the same place I am.

8. Severed Dreams
My nitpick with this is the male ISN reporter (can't remember his name). As Clark's troops are storming ISN headquarters, he breaks into the news report to tell us that Mars & Proxima III have broken away from Earth. He then wastes the rest of the little time he has left to constantly remind us that there's information we need to know, things that have been happening in the past year blah, blah, blah.....Just tell us the freakin' information already, don't waste time telling us that there's information we need to know.

9. Same scene in 2 different episodes
In War Without End, Sheridan flash forwards 20 years into the future. An aged Londo points through the window to a scene of devastation and blames Sheridan for the attack. The same scene of devastation is used in The Fall Of Centauri Prime.



And just what do they do in Tijuana when they wanna snuggle tight???

It should have run over 10 seasons. 

Otherwise, no.

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A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.

1. The resolution of the Shadow War (Others have already touched on this, so I need not comment on it further.).

2. The meagre budget (I, for one, would've liked to have seen some location shooting.)

3. So few standalone episodes (I know B5 is basically a serialized series. Still, I think more episodes focused on plots unrelated to the main story arc could've helped the show breathe a little.).

A Superman without trunks isn't worth watching or reading about.

JMS said that we would see the Vorlon homeworld onscreen. He also said that we would see what Vorlons look like to each other (without the encounter suits, without their angelic appearances).

And we saw none of that.

season 5.

1a. Knowing the fate of the show with either PTEN staying in existence or knowing that TNT or another network was picking them up, from the get-go
I'd probably echo a number of people here and go with them actually knowing they were getting a season 5, even if it was going to be on a different network from the get-go.

I want to say that I do like "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars," and even with the weak start of season 5, I am still pleased overall with the entire run of the show. Any changes to the length of season 4 and season 5 would have probably meant that episode would have been in the bin... however, if they could have saved it until almost the end...

I'm not sure how they would have padded out Season 4 though. I suppose if they knew from the beginning, they could have another Shadow episode or two, or as someone else mentioned, they could have done that extended set of "Earth-Minbari War" episodes. The downside would have been that "In the Beginning" wouldn't have existed.

1b. Knowing the fate of the show with either PTEN staying in existence or knowing that TNT or another network was picking them up, not from the get-go, but at least a few months earlier
Let's say they had an extra 6 months to shift one or two episodes to season 5 instead.

We could have had "A View from the Gallery"-style story in the middle of season 4? With Shadows or their allies? With Earthforce as the enemy? Still with some alien race?

Would the season work any better (or worse) ending on "Endgame" and starting with "Rising Star"? Or ending with "Between the Darkness and the Light" and starting with "Endgame"?

Would "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" work as a penultimate episode of the entire series in season 5, or would it feel out of place being so close to the end of the series?

"A View from the Gallery", "Learning Curve" and "Day of the Dead" are probably easiest episodes to compress or dump in season 5. I like it, but "The Corps Is Mother, the Corps Is Father" could totally disappear from the series as well since it sets up the Telepath War, which we never end up seeing anything about.


2. Widescreen visual effects
Let's assume that the source files were still missing. The story goes that Douglas Netter was Penny Wise, Pound Foolish... not quite accurate, but he was good at saving money day-to-day, but because of that thrifty behavior, the show in the long run has suffered.

Apparently there was a machine that Netter could have approved to be purchased for just a few thousand dollars that would have done the correct blocking for all visual effects, and he passed on it. Had they invested in this, the widescreen releases wouldn't need to zoom in on all effects shots. They wouldn't be in true HD, but they wouldn't look as terrible as they sometimes do.


3. WB not losing the visual effects source files
If WB hadn't lost them, the visual effects could be re-processed to be true HD. There are photos floating around that claim (and at least one visual artist of them I believe) they took some original skins and did a HD resolution photo of the station (of course I couldn't find it when writing this post...). Even if they aren't original, new skins could be created with the right team in place, the expensive part was actually all the movement/placement, which would be saved in the source files.

No, not the mind probe!

My only three disappointments are that Claudia failed to sign her S5 contract (never really warmed up to Lochley), that JMS lost his notes right before starting to write S5, and that Crusade was deliberately scuttled by TNT.

The Shadow War wrapped up when it was supposed to, and was planned out before they knew PTEN had been cancelled.

The fact that S5 was not a certainty is the only reason Deconstruction exists.

From what I'd heard, no actual story arcs were cut from the series due to the S4-S5 shuffle, just some parts got pulled forward because they were deemed more important, and others got shuffled back because they were less so. Besides, G'Kar's arc from the back half of S5 was some of the best material in the series.

I've read the 5x2-year outline that JMS wrote before pitching the series, and I know he said the show was essentially the same as that outline, but I'm not the only one who feels that paring it down to five seasons made it a much stronger story than originally planned for.

However, I still hate the fact that Ivanova and Marcus' story had to be resolved in a short story that's almost impossible to obtain, and if she had been around for all of S5 that might not have been the case. The Teep War dragged on a bit too long, as a direct result of the fact that JMS was treading water while trying to rebuild his notes at the worst possible time. I do own a copy of the Technomage trilogy, so I know the basic gist of where Crusade would have gone...but man it would have been so cool to see that played out over a full five seasons.

You know what noone tells you about cooking with the Dark Side? The food is really good!

Other disappointments is Crusade never getting any resolution. With the Drakh plague, the Apocalypse Box, the Shadow Hybrid ship, etc. I would've liked to have seen Crusade resolved.