The Reasons why I always liked B5 more than Star Trek

[Strider]

Recently i watched Babylon 5: A call to Arms, the 4th and final movie of the saga for the first time in i think 3 years. For some reason the Space network doesn't show b5 here anymore... anyways, back to the main topic, the main reason(s) why i liked it a lot more was
a) It had an ongoing story, not like ST which was mainly spontaneous except for DSNine
b) It had large scale battles, far superior to any star trek production
c) It used special effects in a far superior way at much higher scales

Anyways, I'm gonna post up some pictures from A call to Arms, and Crusade, the mini series which followed b5 and was the last b5 related production afaik.

I made this pictures pretty small and organized them onto a sorta storyboard so ill describe each of the pictures individually

In this image, the top two pictures are of the prototype ship "Excalibur" (the ship which crusade revolves around) charging up its main guns... (they look really cool in action in the movie ;))
The bottom left picture is of alliance ships at Earth waiting for a Drack (sp?) assault.
The bottom right is a lot of drack ships moving in

[Strider]

Top left: Excalibur charging up normal forward guns
Top right: more drack ships speeding up
Bottom left: even more drack ships
Bottom Right: Close up view of an Earth Destroyer class ship being fired upon near the beginning of the battle

[Strider]

(only 1 image this time obviously :p)
The Excalibur and the Victory (other prototype ship which gets destroyed) coming through a jump gate, this is the last image from A Call to Arms, now to the Crusade

[Strider]

Top Left: Excalibur from a sort of chase view in front of the ship,
Top Right: several smaller guns which fire extremely fast pulses designed to take out smaller weaker interceptor type ships (little ships which swarm targets and do a lot of damage by closing in really close and firing with accumulating power)
Bottom Left: Excalibur firing on little drack ships, little drack ships firing on Excalibur

well, thats the last of the pictures, just wanted to post em up to show the people who dont like or dont know of b5 what they were actually missing

[kain425]

im totaly with in the sence that B5 is far supirior to any ST show.
B5 is on of the few show that i saw EVERY single episode and movie that came out. im just so sad that there is nothing GOOD continuing that amazing show.
"what is your name?" "kosh, we are all kosh" i loved that part

[Strider]

heh, same here, i still dunno why a lot of star trek fans didnt like b5 though, it has some cheesy humour in it but nothing worse than any of the star treks tried to pull off... i guess im just the kind of person who doesnt like shows which focus too much on exploration, in b5 you just sit at ground zero and wait for the action to come to you ;) crusade was also pretty much based on exploration (although i did like the 13 episode series) so you cant say that all of b5 is stagnant either

[Boltzmann]

Greetings,

I'm a big Star Trek fan (as everyone knows by now ;) ), but I do like B5. Of course IMO it's not half as good as ST, but it has it own merits.
The special effects are really better than the ST ones (altough I don't think special effects are a big deal), and many alien races are better depicted. There's a race that I particularly like (being a fan of Lovecraft's works), though I forgot their name. Maybe you know them: they're "cthulhoid" beings, having tentacles in their faces (they're like 'squids' in many aspects).

BTW, nice pics Strider.

Live long and prosper.

[Metalmurphy]

I must say I don't like ether :p I just think their too booring :)

One I really like is StarGate don't know why but i watch it every time :p

[Strider]

boltz: i think those were the Pak’ma'ra, i remember in one of the episodes they thought one of em ate the remains of a minbari military leader of some sort :p

metal: well, u dont have to like it i guess, i personally never liked stargate though, i dunno why, my brother liked it but ive always felt apathetic towards it

[Boltzmann]

Greetings,

You were right Strider, the aliens that I talked about where the Pak’ma'ra. I saw them a long time ago on TV, and read something on the internet, but couldn't remember their name. Now I've found a pic of them on the internet:

http://www.tp2b.de/league_worlds/pakmara_pakmara.jpg

Live long and prosper.

[DarkAurora]

B5's aliens are more original than Star Trek's... o_O

[Strider]

not to mention the ship designs... a disked saucer, some v shaped and t shaped klingon ships, and a bunch of cones and rectangles... ever see an earth destroyer? heh well, the white stars, the vorlon's ships, and the excalibur have always been my faves ;)

[Demigod]

I used to really like ST before but I stopped watching a few years ago. I didn't like it for the action or special effects though, but by the mystery and intrigue that the series spawned (IMO Captain Picard was far superior to Captain Kirk:p). I don't need big space battles and explosions to keep me entertained.

[kain425]

babylon had a far supirior story, charecters and actors. sheriden could kick pickards ass any given day. the srory in babylon is huge and sprawling trough 4 seasons.season 5 was simply horible.
i loved at the end of season 4 when the shadow war was raging sheriden was talking to the shadows and the vorlons and he goes "what do YOU want, do u know who YOU are" i loved that but i gues u have to know the show to understand why it was so cool.

[Boltzmann]

Originally posted by Demigod
I used to really like ST before but I stopped watching a few years ago. I didn't like it for the action or special effects though, but by the mystery and intrigue that the series spawned (IMO Captain Picard was far superior to Captain Kirk:p). I don't need big space battles and explosions to keep me entertained.

I agree with you on almost everything, except about Picard and Kirk :mad: . They should bring back Captain Kirk (http://www.bringbackkirk.com) to Star Trek :p
The internal conflicts of the characters, the science (and the occasional pseudo-science and/or gibberish) and the aliens are what I like in ST.

In the movie "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country", there's a scene that IMO is simply wonderful. When the Klingon chancelor is killed, the artificial gravity systems of his ship were disabled, so all is floating around. His blood is spilt all over as he is shot, and is floating too. But instead of getting the shape of a drop of water the blood gets a spherical (or eliptical) shape (it floats in little round droplets). In earth a drop of water has it's characteristical shape because of Earth's gravity. In space, with the artificial gravity disabled, a drop of water would be naturally round, without gravity's pull. Sometimes a little science gets you a long way.

Live long and prosper.

[Strider]

>babylon had a far supirior story, charecters and actors. sheriden could kick pickards ass any given day. the srory in babylon is huge and sprawling trough 4 seasons.season 5 was simply horible.
i loved at the end of season 4 when the shadow war was raging sheriden was talking to the shadows and the vorlons and he goes "what do YOU want, do u know who YOU are" i loved that but i gues u have to know the show to understand why it was so cool.


yeah, that was a pretty cool part... although i still liked the earth-b5 war season almost as much as the shadow war one... i always liked garibaldi the most of the characters though, anyone remember the scene where everyone had to enter their militarial usernames and passwords into the computer for some reason, and then you find out garibaldis password was peekaboo? "hey, you wouldn't have guessed it" :p my alltime favourite part mustve been in the first episode featuring lita alexander, when she scans the crew for the psi corps spy and garibaldi pretends to be affected by it, then goes back to normal and says gotcha :p oh man, that guy was pretty funny in a lot of episodes, but considering he watches cartoons from the 1900s and has a daffy duck painting on the wall of his quarters its not much of a surprise ;) Marcus Cole was also one of my fave chars, too bad they killed him off later, i liked that episode where he was fighting with the nimbari general to keep him from getting to the ceremony which made delenn leader of the rangers...londo mollari, and lennier g'kar were also some of my preferred characters although i didnt like em AS much...

I sometimes like ST episodes but most of the time i find em boring, theres only a limit of excitement that can be achieved with 50s effects, and theres only a limit to the suspense that can be provided with a story that revolves around complete randomness