Babylon 5 - 1x0 "The Gathering" Full Reaction
Added 2021-06-30 23:14:56 +0000 UTC
Comments
B5 wasn't the 1st to use season-long arcs, but probably was the first to have been *planned* to feature a multi-season story arc as its central focus. It is the show that is considered the template for this becoming the common formula for future shows. Correct me if I'm wrong y'all. I've never seen either one, but I've seen comments citing Hill Street Blues and Twin Peaks as long story-arc shows. Even I Love Lucy had one arc that lasted at least most of a season - when Lucille Ball was pregnant and they wrote that into the show, which all (or at least almost all) of the 'suits' were against. NOBODY did anything like THAT at the time. Pregnancy was tabu on 1950s TV!
MertzRocks
2024-02-08 23:11:25 +0000 UTCOne of the many things I love about B5 is the attention to detail with the alien races, all of them look and feel unique and have a rich history that intersects with each other, as you got a taste of it in this pilot. Also just the fact that they included a whole level on the station just to accommodate races that have different atmospheric/gravitational needs is just amazing and rarely seen on other scifi shows especially not in the 90s.
AceBunny
2021-07-01 04:54:51 +0000 UTC"And so it begins..." I loved seeing this. Babylon 5 was my all time favorite TV show (until" The Expanse" came along and bumped B5 to second place.) The show won two Emmys, two Hugos, and several other awards. You can't really tell from this pilot but it was written as a five year long "novel for television," with a definite beginning, middle, and end. I believe it was the first American show to be structured in such a way. So think of what you watched as just the first two pages of a novel. With five seasons, it's probably too long to keep doing it on a request-by-request basis for each episode, but if you decide to add another series in the future, I hope you'll consider B5. Very few shows match the rich character development and great story arc seen in this show. The later seasons also showcase some amazing performances by some of the cast. As for the graphics, they seem dated now but I believe B5 was the first series to use computer generated special effects. It premiered in 1993 and we were stunned to see special effects that looked like nothing we had seen before on TV. I heard at first they used a room full of Commodore Amiga personal computers running for a week to generate the graphics for each episode.
Paul Fisher
2021-07-01 02:42:34 +0000 UTC
