I Tried To Watch Babylon 5
I tried to watch Babylon 5. I really did. Several times. You know what stopped me? The lousy dialog, primarily. Dialog is the foundation of good writing. If your characters can’t speak believably, then they can’t be believed. I’ve known many fans of the show, and with each and every one, no matter how devoted (and some were the paying-hundreds-of-dollars-for-scripts-on-Ebay devoted) not a one has every disagreed with this point. They all concede that B5’s dialog sucked the big nuclear wangdoodle.
B5’s acting also distinguished itself as being on the crap end of the scale. I still can’t scrub that episode when the doctors goes on walkabout from my mind. Did they hire a casting agency or did they stock the cast with family members? But wait, there’s more. B5 also stands out in the absolute worst stunts I’ve ever seen. Thirdspace contains fight sequences that look like first rehersals. Seriously, if you want a laugh, watch that loser from Taxi pretend to take a punch from an amateur in prosthetic makeup.
“But if B5’s fans are so devoted,” my internal devil’s advocate asks, “then how can you be right?” Because, and this is a sad fact that any long-standing fan of SF must eventually admit, our beloved genre suffers from a preponderance of people blessed with above average intelligence and cursed with poor taste. These are your friends (or you) who’ll read every novel cranked out by Piers Anthony, no matter now many times he proves that he can’t plot or successfully end a novel (“He said that he’s going to write eighteen Zanth books, so I figure I’ll just read them all”). And there are more like him than I’d care to recall. Sure, every genre has its hacks, but I worked for years in bookstores and in my experience it’s not romance recluses who sport the ridiculous loyalty badge. We have seen the enemy and he is us, so screw your self-respect to the sticking place and either put the junk down or switch it off.
B5’s acting also distinguished itself as being on the crap end of the scale. I still can’t scrub that episode when the doctors goes on walkabout from my mind. Did they hire a casting agency or did they stock the cast with family members? But wait, there’s more. B5 also stands out in the absolute worst stunts I’ve ever seen. Thirdspace contains fight sequences that look like first rehersals. Seriously, if you want a laugh, watch that loser from Taxi pretend to take a punch from an amateur in prosthetic makeup.
“But if B5’s fans are so devoted,” my internal devil’s advocate asks, “then how can you be right?” Because, and this is a sad fact that any long-standing fan of SF must eventually admit, our beloved genre suffers from a preponderance of people blessed with above average intelligence and cursed with poor taste. These are your friends (or you) who’ll read every novel cranked out by Piers Anthony, no matter now many times he proves that he can’t plot or successfully end a novel (“He said that he’s going to write eighteen Zanth books, so I figure I’ll just read them all”). And there are more like him than I’d care to recall. Sure, every genre has its hacks, but I worked for years in bookstores and in my experience it’s not romance recluses who sport the ridiculous loyalty badge. We have seen the enemy and he is us, so screw your self-respect to the sticking place and either put the junk down or switch it off.
posted by Christopher A. Dellario at 12:02 AM
1 Comments:
Well I will be the first (this I find hard to believe) to say that i disagree that the dialog sucked. Performances from Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas (RIP) were brilliant. As far as TV actors go I can not fault most of the performances, there are a few that were shockingly aweful, however as I hole I found most of the actors portrayed a believable image. I think the biggest factor B5 suffered from was the 'talking head syndrome'. This is when you have little cammera work other then a face shot and lots of talking. Now I noticed you used the example of walkabout where Dr Franklin is 'searching for himself', I don't know what exactly you think was wrong with the acting here, but I will say that one example does not prove your conclusion. Let me give several examples and you tell me what you think.
1) The series of scenes with Londo and G'kar stuck in the elevator after and explosion.
2) The scenes with Lauren and Sheridan at Z'Ha'Dum where he is asking Sheridan if he has anything worth living for.
3) The scenes with Delen and Mr Sebastian
4) The episodes where Sheridan is captured and interrogated by Earth.
Now I will concede one fact. B5 never had the typical 'over acting' that plagues TV and movies of today. Everything was more subtle, more human then what is put up in most movies. Now this is a 'taste' factor. Some people enjoy the fact that in most TV shows and movies there is no ambiguity whether or not some one is happy or sad or confused, as the actor accentuates the emotion. For me however this removes the humanistic performance. People tend to be subtle in thier emotions, unless they know they are on film.
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