/hob/ - Hobbies

>>62464
feminist gaslighting soulless trash

he nailed the "Disgust for niggers" look

>>62618
*spunks in valyrian ……………. pussy*

Just finished Star Trek TOS. I was on the third season for a while, so it might be mostly about that. I gotta say, season 1 was pretty good, season 2 had some great episodes as well, and then season 3 was mediocre at best. Sure, there were mediocre episodes in all seasons, but I think it's most prevalent in season 3. By the time I was in the middle of season 3, I felt like I was missing out on other Star Trek series in a way. I felt like I was cheated a bit by watching it. Still, I think there were goodish episodes like "All Our Yesterdays", "Spectre of the Gun", "The Enterprise Incident", etc. Honestly, I think the series had a few good episodes per season while the others were okay. There were a lot of repeats of Romans, gangsters, etc. In fact, a lot of the plots in the series revolve around either some powerful entity, person, etc. get in the way of the Enterprise, Captain Kirk and co. manage to get captured in some way, and then they finally win. There's a lot of emphasis on the "powerful entity" part of it. When I saw "The Savage Curtain", where the episode was in the style of an arena instead of a powerful enemy, it was a bit refreshing, even if they did the same thing on "Gamesters of Triskelion". The formula was worn out by season 2. I'm very glad to be done with it. Season 2 also starts with a great episode too. It's where Spock actually shows emotion for the Captain's well being. A lot of the Romulan and Klingon episodes are good too. I loved those, and there were zero in the third season.

I guess I'm trying to say that the show was on the decline. The third season had the worst effects and plots. I'm just glad to be done with the series. I've been wanting to watch Deep Space Nine for a while, so now I can start it. I'm going to wait a bit on the animated series and movies probably. I really want something more modern. Like, something from the 90s, of course!

So I finally sat down to watch this. I remember when it came out, lots of people online loved to hate it. Never had an opinion about it myself because I never felt like watching it. Now I did watch about half of it and I can begin to form my own opinion on it. Besides, nobody cares about this show anymore, I don't think, so I think it's safe to post about it here without people getting too emotional about it.

First thing I notice is how it's already dated. There's not nearly enough video game and anime references for those guys to be considered nerds by today's standards. They're not even gaymers. They're mostly trekkies and DC fans but I'm not sure how many young people watch Star Trek these days, correct me if I'm wrong but that franchise relies mostly on older fans, pretty much like comic books. Sure, people watch the marvel movies but I think it's just older people who still read the comics. I don't know, but a lot of pop culture references in there felt like an old guy trying to write young.

As for the protagonists themselves, they really picked the crème de la crème nerds didn't they? 3 PHD astrophysicists and a NASA engineer. It's like if they made a TV series about gamers and the protagonists are perfected versions of Carmack, Pajitnov, Kojima and Gabe Newel. How can your average fatass DnD fan who can't even contain his tism in order to find a roleplaying group on roll20 identify with this shit? Incredibly sucessful protags with incredibly prospective careers and later on they're all in healthy relationships as well. Their social anxiety is very fragile, let's put it that way. Back when this was airing I remember a lot of self-professed nerds saying this was shit because those protagonists are fake nerds and the show is not at all how real nerd lives are. And I agree, but I also know this is fiction, and not trying to make an actual representation of nerds. Of course actual nerds have much different, worse lives than those fictional characters, but then again, the same can be said for the rest of humanity. And that's where I wanted to get at.

Those guys lives are perfect. It's literally all fun and games, all their concerns are superficial, all their problems are superficial, nothing bad ever happens, ever. It's Utopia Americana for zoomers. And honestly, that's not bad in itself. But the show do get repetitive rather quickly because of it. Yes, their lives are pretty good, they're all quirky and unique and they're nerds. But that's about it. The scope here is rather limited. I feel like half the jokes is about adults liking toys. I guess you can make that sound funny a couple of times but not all the time. I honestly don't have a favorite episode, all eps are so similar that in retrospect I don't even remember where one ends and another begins. I feel like this is Seinfield for kids. Situational comedy but very afraid to go a little darker. The darker they ever get is with Stuart, the comic book sales guy. But they straighten that guy's life eventually too and not by sending him to jail like Seinfield did.

Like the episodes, the characters are also unremarkable beyond their primary characteristic. Leonard is whiny, Sheldon is odd Holowitz is sarcastic, Rajesh is effeminate… and Indian. The succubi follow the same pattern. Again, this works fine but it's rather limited in scope. I think my favorite character is Amy, probably, it's the character that feels more like a person and not just a punch line, but that's just my impression.

And yet I'm still watching it, which is more I can say for a lot of series out there. The writing of this show is like white noise in many ways, because it's not bad enough to be annoying, you kind of just let it on and the pacing of it all is super fast, so it feels too agile to become an eyesore. Besides, like I said there is this 'life is good' optimism to it that you can pretend to believe while an episode is on. Not the worst feeling in the world.

I also read clothing brands would fight tooth and nail for the chance to have one of the main characters appear dressed with one of their products. Apparently A LOT of people bought shirts and belts just because they saw it on the show. This seems to indicate Big Bang Theory is particularly appealing to idiots, but then again, that in itself doesn't make a show a bad one.

All in all, decent pacing, very safe, harmless, a little bit of a milquetoast of a show. Doesn't challenge you on any level, it's like free candy. To me anyways because I downloaded all the seasons from a private tracker. I wouldn't buy discs of this like I did for Star Trek, Seinfield and The Twilight Zone, still, not the worst thing to ever come out of CBS. That would be Supergirl.

>>64687
You should watch Young Sheldon, it is the best show on the air about a boyhood autist genius, without any of the social geeks from BBT

And since he is a virgin at the start of BBT, it is contractually canonically guaranteed he must end the series without a gf

>>64687
If you don't think that show is terrible you must be one hell of a normie yourself.

>>64688
I tried but Iain Armitage is a god-awful actor, on top of that child actors give me the creeps. That's a personal thing but thanks, I appreciate your response.
>And since he is a virgin at the start of BBT, it is contractually canonically guaranteed he must end the series without a gf
I watch TV shows to forget I exist for 20 minutes at a time not to feel my virginity is represented in fiction, but yeah, I've seen wizzies complaining there's not enough virgins in fiction out there, so that's not bad. If they can stomach Armitage's acting that is.
>>64689
It's not terrible, it's a professionally put together situational comedy with enough self-awareness of its own shortcomings in plot and characters to have the perfect pacing. And the perfect pacing for that content is as fast as they can read the lines. It works well enough.
Why do you think it's terrible? Have you watched actual TV trainwrecks before for comparison? Try the last season of Ghost Whisperer or Are you there Chelsea, maybe you just think Big Bang Theory is terrible because you don't know how much worse television can be. It can be a lot worse, anon.

>>64687
>>64688
shit shows that appeals to le weird normalfags but can't be said to be worse than the anime some retards watch and think is any better

>>64690
>professionally
So, it's prefabricated rubbish to appeal to the masses and the hordes of fake geeks who wanted to feel part of the in-crowd and somehow that's a merit. Most of the stuff aimed at outcast is never "professional".
>television
Television must be the most normiefied medium there is and all its contents are aggressively produced and controlled for normies. That you compare this thing to other shows just as bad or worse means nothing.

The difference is the completely distorted version of what it means to be an outcast that this show came with, a soft, digestible, stupid and fake version. This caused the various outcast oriented communities that existed to be completely overrun by the new horde of idiots who saw this show and wanted to feel like they were part of the club without having any traits for it. The greedy companies saw this, and began to destroy and mold the hobbys to the tastes of the new wave of invaders. Eventually it wasn't the invading normies who were out of place, but the outcasts who were already there. They were gradually driven out of all their sites until they were reduced to a small group of refuges where there is hardly any activity.

There were more factors coming into this process, but series like that one were part of it.

>>64693
Things have changed since the HBO revolution of the 2000s and its imitators on AMC and FX, not to mention streaming, now TV is for serious classy artsy dramas while Movies are dumb pop corn action.

>>64694
just ignore >>64693 he clearly doesn't enjoy anything in life and calls everything remotely popular normie. Must be sad to be him. It's probably one of the dep suicide posters who complains endlessly.

>>64693
>The difference is the completely distorted version of what it means to be an outcast that this show came with, a soft, digestible, stupid and fake version.
Well, you guessed it, anon. It's fiction.
>This caused the various outcast oriented communities that existed to be completely overrun by the new horde of idiots
Yeah I read that a lot back in the day. Throughout the whole run of this show however not even once I saw an increase of Call Of Cthulhu players on Roll20, not did I see any significant increase of developers of YN fangames nor a bunch of new players wanting to try ss13. I did see an increase of scalpers on old video games and lego sets on ebay and a surge of people developing maps for old Doom, but I'm not sure it has anything to do with the show since they don't really mention old games, lego and doom all that much, if at all. That said, it's nice that we have a bunch of kids making new shit for Doom now, though I don't care that much anymore if I'm honest.

But what makes me curious is what outcast oriented communities can be reached and overrun by kids in bazinga shirts. None I know about got any increase in traffic, in fact SS13 and CoC could really use some of that. Care to tell me what communities got overrun because of this show? I'm curious because 9 out of 10 references in TBBT is either about capeshit movies which is not outcast oriented, Star Wars, which is not outcast oriented, comic books which were oriented to outcasts I suppose, during the 60s and 70s but are pop culture icons since at least the early 90s and comic book readership has only slowed over time anyway so it can't be that. They also mention social media sites like twitter and facebook, but again, not outcast oriented. Finally they talk about Star Trek a lot. I'm not a big fan of ST, I do enjoy TNG but that's about it. Maybe it's ST communities you're talking about? Ah, they also talk about LoTR a lot but what really made shit like The Rings of Power happen was the movie trilogy and Simon Tolkien, hardly anything to do with this sitcom, I think.

>>64700
>Well, you guessed it, anon. It's fiction.
Sad that you believe that all fiction must be like that, probably a result of expending too much time in a normie dominated medium like television.
>I saw an increase of Call Of Cthulhu
Wasn't that game jeopardized with a new version full of woke elements like most popular tabletop RPGs already have? Sounds exactly like an example of the cases mentioned above. Hobby gets filled with idiots, idiots take over, original fans leave and eventually the hobby dies. Impressive that you reached the conclusion that hobbies declining or dying is proof of said hobbies not being overrun previously.

>outcast oriented communities can be reached and overrun by kids in bazinga shirts
Except they weren't overrun by kids, but by powerful companies that wanted to make a profit on the new horde of fake geeks that wanted to join the new social club for them to hang-out, helped by manipulative people with sociopathic behaviour that thrives on highly social environments and usually took management or "speak-up" roles, supported usually be the normies themselves because they're easy prey to those sociopathic types.

>Star Wars, which is not outcast oriented
Star Wars WAS outcast oriented. Just because normies knew the name Star Wars and superficial things doesn't mean it wasn't a community largely dominated by outcasts who knew the history of its vast universe with dozens of novels, video games, animated series and the ever-growing lore that piled up year after year. It was one of the largest communities with a very high barrier to entry if you really wanted to be considered one of the proper fans. Sure there were the normies who knew a thing or two but that was never the real community of the series and the reason it survived for decades until it was eventually sold to Disney and a thing that had existed for so long is now dead. Proving once again that the invasion of the normies is followed by the death of the hobby.

>what really made shit like The Rings of Power happen was the movie trilogy and Simon Tolkien, hardly anything to do with this sitcom, I think.
The series was universally hated and despised by fans around the world, while the previous three trilogies were considered bad enough on their own.

Clearly you have no idea what you're even talking about. That's the problem with spending too much time with stupid sitcoms, you end up never having a real hobby.

Thoughts on a late 30s wizzie watching teen dramas like Degrassi?

>>64712
>normie normie normie
lol the media you consume is dominated by normies and made by normies. Keep coping.

>>62522
They probably did.
And those that DIDN'T get shoehorned were probably four eyed succubi that had convoluted requisites which the moment THEY weren't met (as though it was either of the two director's jobs) walked away before going all "oK, bUh-bYe".

>>64740
four eyes is only an insult for males. succubi with glasses are considered more attractive.

I gave up on Gotham the 1st ep of Season 2, after slugging it out through Season 1. Police procedural monster of the week with a few Bat mythos moments, just wasn't doing it for me.

Maybe I just missed the inflection point where Gotham started to take on an identity of its own.

just strange to see the weird directions it went in after I left, and its own lore and mythos it built up.

I caught clips of the last episode, and Riddler and Penguin looked just as goofy at the end as where they started.

>>54948
>>54988
>>55044
Over 2 years after finishing the third season I finally came back to watch the rest of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Just watched the last episode of the fourth season. What a nice show this is! It really feels coming back home, to wander the corridors of USS Enterprise again. The writing for this show is very good indeed. Human, all too human and alien rubber masks. It's silly, goofy, but it manages to play around with a lot of very interesting ideas and tropes, and it usually does it very well. The emphasis on diplomacy, mystery, exploration and technobabble instead of guns that go pew pew to zap aliens really makes Star Trek my favorite science fiction franchise, though I would say it's more like fantasy in space than anything to do with science but who cares. Let's talk about some of the episodes for season 4.

Here's my list of favorites to begin with:
The Best of Both Worlds part II
First Contact
The Nth Degree
The Drumhead
Redemption Part I

Season 4 has less outstanding episodes than season 3 imo but the quality of the mediocre ones improved. There's only two episodes I consider to be bad: Devil's Due and Qpid, but Qpid has a saving grace, the appearance of Q, played by the very excellent and hilarious John de Lancie, so just one that is actually bad.

It's funny, even the episodes focusing on love stories are interesting and give you nice ideas to think about. 'Half a Life' is about Troi's mother falling in love with an alien that has to return to his home planet to be euthanized. She's a pro-life and tries to convince the guy getting euthanized is dumb. 'The Host' has Dr. Crusher falling in love with a parasite! Actually she's attracted to the host and has to deal with the fact her lover is not exactly what she expected. 'In Theory' is an episode focusing on a succubus falling in love with Data, an android incapable of emotions. 'In Theory' is particularly entertaining because it focuses on Data, one of the better characters of the series. I don't really care for romance and love stories at all but they really managed to add some of that science fiction sauce in there to make them quite entertaining and interesting. Also I might add there are moments of genuine horror in this season, something you don't get in the previous ones.

'The Best of Both Worlds' is about the Borg again, so you know it's going to be good. 'First Contact' is a very heartfelt story about a planet getting contacted by aliens for the first time. In this case however, the aliens are the humans. It addresses issues like mass hysteria and tradition versus new ideas. 'The Drumhead' deals with a suspicion of sabotage aboard the Enterprise turning into a witch hunt, again, written in a very smart way: a tale about paranoia, unfair punishment and persecution.Ín 'Redemption' we get to explore more of the impending civil war in the Klingon Empire. A classic ST tale of the difficulties of implementing the prime-directive, its limitations and challenges.

And finally, probably the best episode of the first 4 seasons and possibly from the entire run of this show, 'The Nth Degree'. And what you know, it's about our friend Barclay (>>55086). I'm not giving any spoilers but basically he is hit by a flash from an alien probe and it starts affecting his intelligence… a lot. He turns into the smartest human ever born and then he decides to mess with the ship's computer and a lot of fascinating shenanigans happen. I was almost clapping by the end.

This season is also the last for Wesley Crusher, a particularly disliked TNG character. I also didn't like him in the first couple of seasons because he's the kid that breaks the other characters: better in engineering than LaForge, better at realizing security threats than Worf, outsmarts Picard, so on and so forth. I read an interview with one of the producers where he says Wesley was supposed to be a character to get kids into Star Trek (since he's a kid himself). Once he's an adult however, he's kind of just there. He can't be the main character when engineering shenanigans happen because that's La Forge's position so he just goes in and out of the bridge with nothing to add to the show. 'Final Mission' is the last episode he's part of and imo nothing of value is lost.

Speaking of Wesley, let me say a thing or two about the other characters. There are characters I really like: Picard, Data and Worf. Characters I'm neutral towards: Troi, Reiker, La Forge, and one I dislike: Beverly Crusher. I know nobody gives a shit about my opinion anyway so let me go on about this a little bit longer.

I never liked Dr. Crusher but I didn't dislike her from the beginning. She was at bottom of neutral for me but then they replaced her with Dr. Pulaski, I realized that I in fact didn't like Dr. Crusher at all. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, I'm sorry to say this but the actress playing Dr. Crusher can never, in a single scene, convince me she's a doctor. She always feels like she's pretending to be a doctor and call me crazy but I can see in her face she's unable to take the gadgets she uses in the show seriously. Every time she is treating a patient in critical condition, she fails to convey she's dealing with a potential casualty at her hands. When she's in danger, like in the episode 'Remember Me', not for a single scene she managed to convey to me she was in any actual danger.

The only episode I think she did a good job in was in 'The Host' where she falls in love with a huge bug. Maybe romance is her strong point. Now, Dr. Pulaski, here's a succubus I can believe to be a doctor. I guess most fans disagree with me since Crusher returns after just one season.

Another thing I wanted to comment on is how often the writers throw Deanna Troi under the bus. By now I lost count how many times we have a scene where an alien or person is very, very obviously angry, visibly angry. Then Picard or someone else asks for her expert opinion on the matter and she says something like "I sense he's very angry." Holy shit, no kidding counselor Troi, thanks! Really? Couldn't they come up with something actually psychic like "He's angry and will act on it." Or anything that is not just an obvious statement that any human with functioning eyes could tell. Having a character ridiculed by the writers also happens to La Forge a couple of times, in particular the episode 'Galaxy's Child' where he tries to arrange a date for himself. It's very cringy to watch, where he goes from a serious, self-contained brilliant engineer to a dense retard at the drop of a hat.

But here's the cool thing about Star Trek, even in its worst moments, it gives you food for thought. 5th season here I come.

So I just watched the first episode of Star Trek Strange New Worlds. I was curious about current ST so here we are. Honestly I was expecting to be awful but to my surprise it's not bad at all. I think I'll be commenting every single episode, why not. This post has spoilers, hide it if you want to watch it fresh and then come back. Here we go.

The first episode is a very safe and a well known ST trope: Two warring factions in an alien planet might destroy each other thanks to Starfleet accidentally showing them how to build world destroying bombs. OK. Also, they have to rescue some crew members captured by said aliens. OK. Now the Enterprise has to intervene. OK. The episode itself is nothing to write home about but it's actually very watchable. Most of the episode however is about introducing the characters, so let's talk about them, shall we?

Captain Pike. This guy is no Picard, nor he tries to be, which is good because he would not be able to pull it off. He doesn't look concerned about space and aliens, he looks concerned about having his eyebrowns waxed. This guy is a Kirk spawn but metrosexual because this is 2023. I really don't care very much about his personal drama (he knows exactly when he's going to die.) His hair cut is also completely ridiculous, it's one of those chicken's combs things but it's apparently very fashionable among people and by the reviews I read for the first episode he's a beloved character, so what do I know.

Spock. Yeah, I like this Spock, but then again, I never watched TOS so I don't have anything to compare it to. Regardless, it's a nice character and the guy playing it does a good job imo.

Una/Number One. She's just there so Pike can talk about his personal drama without it being a monologue. She was being held in captivity for this first episode, not much she could do anyways. I'm used to Number Ones being boring characters, Riker was also nearly useless in The Next Generation.

Christine Chapel. Assistant to the medical officer. It's fine, she's just there for now. But then I read the actress playing this character, Jess Bush, really likes bees. My grandfather was an apiarist and at one point I wanted to be one, too. So yeah, now I like this character a little bit better for completely unrelated reasons.

La'an Noonien-Singh/Chief of Security. A rogue type. Should be fired from the Enterprise, Starfleet is not a place for rogues, or at least not rogues higher than ensign. But Pike is something of a rogue himself so what do I know. I like her accent.

Nyota Uhura/Communications officer. She's nice I guess. She speaks 37 languages! And her parents were killed in a shuttle accident! And she's so humble! The show might be trying too hard for me to like her, I don't like when shows do that, we'll see how it goes.

Erica Ortegas/Pilot. She has a perpetual DreamWorks face https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DreamWorksFace and it's awful. She also has the chicken's comb haircut just like her captain but worse, the sides are completely bald. DreamWorks faces are annoying and I'm calling it right now, Ortegas and I will have the same problem I have with Dr. Crusher from TNG. This actress was not able to convince me for a single second she's an officer of any kind. An officer in a prep station at Arby's maybe, but not an officer in a ship in space. She also can't convince me she's in any real danger, the actress knows she's on a set in a studio somewhere and can't pretend she's anywhere else. BUT, it's too soon to tell, maybe the situation will improve, we'll see.

Dr. Joseph M'Benga. The medical officer onboard. It's hard to understand what the hell he's saying sometimes. Neutral so far.

Hemmer/Chief of Engineering. A blind alien with an attitude problem. Has the potential to be a cool character. We'll see.

And that's the crew. The first episode was just good enough to download the rest of the season. Let's do this.

Episode 2 (Children of the Comet) of Star Trek Strange New Worlds
This post contains spoilers.

So after we get to know all the characters in episode one it's time to throw them on the surface of a mysterious comet. I like some of the ideas here. A comet that is actually some sort of ship and whatever is inside likes to sing. That's goofy but good ST stuff right there. It's all fine and well, but the problem is this comet is on a course to collide with an inhabited planet. Now, Enterprise can't have that! Sure we have the prime directive that forbids the federation to intervene with the natural development of alien species, except in very specific cases: All the time. Can you imagine if the Federation was around back when the asteroid that formed the Chicxulub crater hit the earth? They would've saved the dinosaurs, preventing humans from ever come into being. Maybe we're unlucky they weren't around, so here we are.

Anyways, turns out this is an intelligent comet and it has an entourage too, an alien race called Shepherds. Yes, Shepherds. Star Trek. Now, those guys don't want the Enterprise messing around with the comet and are willing to destroy the Enterprise if they don't stop fiddling with it. After making a few bips and bops at the computer, the crew finds out the alien ship is faster, has superior fire power and its tech is superior, too. Oh-oh. Good thing it's the humans writing the script, so the Enterprise just do some evading maneuvers (Ortega has the DreamWorks dumb face all the way through, Jesus Christ) while the Shepherds can't get a good hit despite being faster, having better weapons and being RIGHT IN FRONT of the Enterprise. Ortega is that good. Thank God for that crooked smirk of hers.

This just gives enough time for Uhura and Spock to figure out if they sing to the comet it sings it back and it seems they can communicate! It's goofy, but it's good Star Trek. Seriously. Give it a try. But singing to the comet so it lights up inside is one thing, saying you need it to change course is a completely different matter. Time is running up however, so they put Spock inside a shuttle so he can shoot some resonance technononsense at the comet up close and change its course. And it works! Of course it does.

The Enterprise apologizes to the Shepherds and after a pretty please please they're allowed to part as friends. Good. But wait. As it turns out, the comet was already going to change course anyway. It can see into the future and it was counting on Spock to change its course before Spock changed its course. Nice, huh? And to wrap it all up, a huge ice chunk of the comet entered that planet's atmosphere during the maneuver, fundamentally changing the planet's weather, enabling the inhabitants to begin developing agriculture. A good and solid day for the prime directive and a nice Star Trek episode overall.

Episode 3 (Ghosts of Illyria) Star Trek Strange New Worlds
This post contains spoilers.

Alright, time to court martial a few characters. For this episode we have the Enterprise going to an Illyrian colony in order to investigate why the colonists disappeared. The Illyrians are an alien species that augment themselves genetically and like to play with their own genes. Genetic modification is a no-no in the Federation so they're barred entry and are treated as outcasts. An ion storm breaks out before Pike and Spock can leave the colony, so they have to find shelter and return later. The shelter they find is some sort of library, conveniently, so Spock can do some reading and figure out why the colonists are gone. They're not actually gone, they just turn into fire fairies (more of that ahead.)

Meanwhile, back on the ship, the people from the away team start to get sick. They become addicted to light and slowly begin to lose their minds. So in a way they're like moths. Some of them suffer third degree burns from standing too close to light sources on the ship. Fortunately Una can miraculously cure herself from this disease because, surprise surprise, she's an Illyrians herself and that means her genetic modifications can cure her of anything. Just in case you don't know why people call this science fiction instead of fantasy in space, well, this episode won't help with that any: this plot has more magic than Lord of the Rings, it's not even a low fantasy setting, more like a D&D session, really. I was waiting for Spock to pull out a healing potion from his breeches the whole time.

Then Pike and Spock get attacked by fire fairies (Illyrians that can fly and have their whole bodies made of fire because of genetic modifications. Sure, OK). But wait, they're not really attacked though, turns out they just want to help the human and the vulcan survive the storm. Cool. Back on the ship, everybody is getting sick, except Una of course. It's an epidemic. As Hemmer is running some diagnostics on the ship to figure out why this disease made it past the transportation filters, Dr. M'Benga looks really distressed, like he's hiding something… and he is.

He has his daughter on stasis inside the ship and that is using a considerable amount of energy. That somehow caused the filters to malfunction, which means the doctor here is responsible for this whole mess. The incompetence is astounding. Good thing we're just 3 episodes in and nobody can die yet, so everything is conveniently resolved. Pike and Spock manage to get back to the ship, Chapel manages to synthesize a cure from Una's plasma/blood/whatever and everything ends well.

In this episode it's revealed Una lied about her Illyrian background to get to Starfleet. Sure, I suppose it's a noble cause and she's a decent officer, but you know how it works. If you bend the rules, it breaks. You can't have that shit. You're fired Una. But wait. Captain Pike thinks the federation is unfair towards the Illyrians, so he decides to pretend Una didn't cheat her way to the Enterprise. Captain Rogue covering for her rogue first officer. Fine, fuck it.

There's more. Una, showing she really should be fired, hides the secret that it was Dr. M'Benga's fault they all the crew almost died and that he's hiding his sick daughter inside his office.

This crew doesn't make me feel I'm in a federation ship, it's a pirate shit pot. Average episode, some good moments there but not as good as the first two. Also, look at that picture. That's some nice quarters, isn't it?

Episode 4 (Memento Mori) Star Trek Strange New Worlds.
This post contains spoilers.

Just a brainless, unimaginative episode where space ants called Gorn attack the Enterprise and they use a black hole to escape. Going that close to a black hole would never work, not that it matters, the script is willing to fly very close to high fantasy territory. I would gladly excuse stuff like this if they were trying to pitch some interesting ideas while at it. Alas, it never happens. I like how Singh just straight up call the Gorn EVIL monsters. The characters know what's up, too. Maybe they should've gone inside the black hole just to check if the sword from King Arthur is in there somewhere. That would make it a cool episode at least.

Anyway, it's really silly how they're pairing up tragic backstories here. Nobody is allowed to have a normal upbringing. Nobody is allowed to have an unique tragic backstory, either. Spock's sister died? Singh's brother died too! Singh's parents died in a tragedy? Uhura's parents have to died in a tragedy, too! Is that the only way the writers can think to bond these characters? It's goofy and not the good goofy, either, more like lazy goofy.

if I wanted to watch something like this I would go for crap like Starship Troopers. Nothing to see here. Moving on.

Episode 5 (Spock Amok) Star Trek Strange New Worlds.
This post contains spoilers.

Well I suppose it had to happen sometime and here it is. Comedy Star Trek. You know, in TNG, when they did a comedic episode they would go with a parody of detective noir stories or Sherlock Holmes. Here they went with Freaky Friday. The episode is OK as a lighthearted ST episode but picking body swap as your plot A is kinda shitty. Couldn't come up with anything a little bit more sci-fi? I refuse to believe this is the best they could come up with. So anyway, yeah, Spock and his fiance T'Pring switch bodies after a Vulcan ritual they're doing to improve their relationship. Something goes wrong and now they have to spend the day with swapped bodies.

This feels a little too soon. I don't really care enough about these characters yet to follow them into their boring, civilian lives. Still it's watchable, just not that interesting. Spock and T'Pring has to attend to their duties while in a body swap. Dr. M'Benga goes fishing. Ehm, ok? Ortegas and Chapel discuss Chapel's relationship problem. I don't care. Una and La'an Singh remain on the ship and engage in harmless fun like shooting each other with phasers and play good cop bad cop on a couple of newbies. Fine. Finally, Hemmer is nowhere to be seen. What a pity. The only character I was actually interested to know how he spends his time outside Enterprise.

One harmless filler of an episode. One thing I can tell you however is that this show looks very expensive. And that's the half of the first season. Let's see what we have:
One above average episode (ep.1)
One good episode (ep.2)
One average episode (ep.3)
One bad episode (ep.4)
One bellow average episode (ep.5)
Would you look at that, it's hitting all marks. A perfectly mediocre, watchable show so far. But that's no cause to quit! Star Trek The Next Generation took 3 seasons to get really good! Maybe they're still finding their pace.

Star Trek Strange New Worlds
Episode 6 - Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach

This post contains spoilers.

The Enterprise pays a visit to Majalis, an alien planet as the population is about to celebrate the induction of a new First Servant. This First Servant happens to be nothing more than a boy. When the ship he's in is attacked by another small vessel, the enterprise tries to intervene (because, you now, the prime directive) and ends up getting shot at as well. As a response they shoot and destroy the vessel, and its burning carcass burns in the atmosphere. Because, you know, the prime directive. Anyways, with the boy safe aboard the Enterprise, Pike and the boy's entourage go to Majalis in order to have the ceremony performed.

At first I didn't quite like this episode. It started on the wrong foot for me because you have to endure the first quarter of it: a romance between Pike, his chicken comb hair and an alien servant for the boy soon to be First Servant, Alora. Since I'm coming to this show straight from The Next Generation where any sort of romantic relationships are extremely rare, SNW really tests my patience taking so much screen time to showcase the romantic lives of several members of the crew.

Once we're past that however, it does feel like classic Star Trek. Turns out this ceremony is not all happy songs and candy, but a sinister child sacrifice. Pike is appalled by this and tries to stop it, because, you know, the prime directive. Seriously, this crew just don't care about anything, they just do whatever the fuck they want and it kind of pisses me off. No respect for any of the federation procedures and laws. One can only wonder how they're allowed to wear Starfleet uniforms but whatever.

This sinister ceremony is revealed to the crew after Uhura translates a bunch of chips she shouldn't have, handed to her by Singh after she ILLEGALLY CONFISCATING them from the crash site in order to avoid filling the necessary forms. There you go, even our chief of security doesn't give a flying fuck about the law over here. Discommendations to everyone.

But here's why I like this one. The fact The Enterprise can't ultimately interfere (more than it has) and let the child be sacrificed in the end. And that's very Star Trek. If you're going to contact strange civilizations and strange new worlds, well, it's going to be strange. Your earth morals don't apply. Are you here to observe or to play God? This is the realization Pike has to go through. Their job is to observe and learn, not meddle.

Star Trek Strange New Worlds
Episode 7 - The Serene Squall

This post contains spoilers.

We're barely out of Spock Amok and already there's more cheese coming our way. It's much too soon to have another episode focusing on Spock's relationship and troubled identity but that's what The Serene Squall is, except it's worse since we already have Spock Amok two episodes ago. It's not an interesting outing. No interesting plot points, no interesting moments or dialogue, not even an interesting thought. Here's what's about: Space pirates and Spock kissing Chapel. What an uninteresting pile of trash. As if Freaky Friday on Spock Amok wasn't enough.

I watch Star Trek for the interesting sci-fi plots and involved political drama, the technobabble solutions and complications and the goofy aliens masks contrasting with intelligent dialogue. Well, there's none of that here. And don't you love an incompetent captain? Pike really outdoes himself this time.

After being called a boy scout (I don't know who would call this incompetent, rogue officer a boy scout but whatever) he decides to show his crew he doesn't play by the rules (we noticed!) and decides to go into dangerous territory, out of reach of backup to try to rescue some colonists, just because this one random person asks him to. So of course, despite several warnings from Spock about how stupid this is, he pilots the Enterprise into an asteroid belt where they can be easily ambushed. Not happy with just this amount of stupid, he decides to split up the party and have an away team to this derelict ship where colonists might be held hostage without properly scanning it for any enemies (or colonists) that might be inside. Also he'll lead the away team to prove he is in fact not a boy scout, but an idiot, instead.

Lo and behold, they immediately get caught by space pirates and the Enterprise is boarded, the crew on board surrendered. Conveniently we're never told how many people die on this, otherwise Pike would have to deal with it. This is supposed to be a swashbuckling episode with lots of cheese and comedy, but it's not a particularly good example of that, and then again, we're still dealing with all the cheese from Spock Amok. And what's up with this obsession with Spock's sex life? It's just ridiculous. I don't know if this is to attract a young viewership or what but Star Trek is not supposed to be Sex and the City in space, for crying out loud. Would this damn show try to focus more on the premise the title suggests? STRANGE NEW WORLDS. Jesus Christ.

The way the plot resolves itself here is barely worth mentioning. Pike decides to create a stir among the pirates by complaining about how bad the food is. I shit you not. This causes a mutiny and they're able to capture the pirate's ship and the Enterprise because the pirates on board are nice enough to surrender without a fight. I've seen more interesting plot resolutions from Scooby Doo. The actors are doing what they can to save this awful script and it's surprising how well they manage to make this watchable. Bravo indeed. Anson Mount, Ethan Peck and Jess Bush do a particularly good job here.

And where the hell is Hemmer?

>>65040
Your skull needs to be crushed for posting retarded normalnigger trash show on wizardchan.

Star Trek Strange New Worlds
Episode 8 - The Elysian Kingdom

This post contains spoilers.

Anyone who watched Star Trek is familiar with this episode. It's the one everybody hates: the dress-up adventure, or ST LARPing. We have them on TNG, too, like Qpid, where the crew plays Robin Hood. Boy those sorts of episodes are bad and in here they're bad, too. It's concerning when you have only 10 episodes per season and 3 of them are just cheese with absolutely nothing sci-fi about it. More concerning is the fact this show is incapable of telling the difference between science-fiction and high fantasy. This is my biggest problem with SNW right now. I now expect Gandalf to pop up in his own ship shaped like a ring anytime now.

Here's the plot and see if you can spot where this SNW is confused about what science-fiction is: The Enterprise enters a mysterious nebula that turns out to be a Boltzmann brain. OK, so far so good. What would you build from this premise? Maybe this brain found a way to push beyond Event horizon? Maybe this brain traps the Enterprise like lab rats and that brings up some ethical conundrums? Maybe the Boltzmann brain has a collection of extinct intelligent species and is planning to preserve them once this universe hits heat death? Maybe it wants to preserve the Enterprise and the crew, too, and now they have to convince the brain to let them go and convince it humans want to avoid death, but maybe not at all costs. You know? Science-fiction. Dilemmas. The stuff ST is supposed to be good at. So what do you think they do here?

They make the Boltzmann brain turn the entire ship in a medieval fantasy LARP, of course. Dr. M'Benga plays the king looking for his missing daughter (the sickly child he keeps trapped in the buffer). It's as bad as it sounds. So the crew plays dress-up and it's so dull I can't imagine anyone caring about any of this. In the end, guess what? He finds his daughter. But wait, there's a problem. The Boltzmann brain is able to cure her, but not really. You see, this entity is able to keep her soul (very sci-fi!) intact and she'll never die. In what supposed to be a very emotional moment, the succubus chooses to stay behind with her new friend. This decision doesn't take her more than a few seconds. Good bye dad! The end.

Awful. There's only one redeeming thing in this whole episode and that is Hemmer. He and the doctor are the only ones unaffected by this LARP brainwashing because reasons. This was supposed to be M'Benga's spotlight for the season but Hemmer completely steals the show by playing the wizard with the powers of science (as if this show knew what science is.) So once again one of the actors has to save an awful script. It's not good when this happens several episodes in a row.

Star Trek Strange New Worlds
Episode 9 - All Those Who Wander

This post contains spoilers.

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A rescue party is sent to re-establish contact to the crew of a space ship that is not responding to any calls. They find the derelict ship, and there's a little succubus who survived the massacre. Wondering around they finally figure out the creatures behind the killing: Evil aliens that spit acid at you. But that's not all, they can use other creatures as hosts to their eggs and once they're ready to hatch, they burst out from your chest cavity. Hm, where did I see this before..

This is what happens when the writers of a show are not smart and can't come up with any interesting ideas. They desperately ripoff whatever they can. This is a poor man's Aliens, and a shameless one at that. Not inspired by Aliens but straight out stolen Aliens. This might be the worst episode yet, even worse than The Elysian Kingdom and that was a bad one but at least they were trying. Here they just call the alien Gorn. That's the SNW treatment for ripoffs. Replace the names and you're good to go.

And now they killed Hemmer, the only character with the potential to be really interesting. Imo they could've killed any other character. You know what they could've done? Kill Spock instead. That would save us from more Chapel/Spock nonsense. Oh well, onwards to the final episode, I got this far.

Star Trek Strange New Worlds
Episode 10 - A Quality of Mercy

This post contains spoilers.

The whole "knowing exactly when I'll die" conundrum Pike is going through reach its logical conclusion in this episode. The choice of embracing his own death is made very easy for him now, when a Pike from the future appears and shows him a 'what if' scenario. If Pike saves himself, then Spock dies and a war with the Romulans becomes a certainty. Pike being a hero, however incompetent he is, can't allow that to happens just so he can live a few more years. Well, if you ask me that's pretty much wraps it up that loose end for captain Pike, pretty much the only thing we had going for this character. Sure we also have Una going to jail for being an Illyrian, so I guess that's what Pike will be going for next.

This is not a bad episode but maybe it's because half of this season was cheese pretty much. Meeting your future self from a different timeline is not exactly groundbreaking or anything, but at least this time the show actually tried. Anyways, by now it's very clear to me the problems of having a prequel. It is starting to feel very much this whole story is just catch up. Perhaps I should just go ahead and watch the original series. But I'll finish TNG for now.

I'll be checking the second season of SNW though. Why not? Torrents are free. I hope you've enjoyed the reviews. I'll be writing one soon for the TNG fifth season.

Been watching an old friend of mine. Good times were had whenever this was on during my younger years. It's on Amazon's Freevee if anyone wants to watch.

Anyone watched this? Just finished the first season of it and it's nice. Sometimes it tries to be smarter than it actually is but most of the episodes are entertaining. If you're into Star Trek this might be worth a watch. I'm getting the second season as I post this.

>>65318
im curious about the original japanese gameshow

Is anyone here into sci-fi shows at all? What are your favorites?

>>65342
I've yet to find the og show on the free streaming services out there. Perhaps it's time to sail the seven seas.

>>65346
I like Babylon 5

>>65350
Me too. I watched so much trek when I was a kid, B5 scratches that itch now

>>65350
>>65359
I'm going throuh The Orville right now after finishing ST:TNG, it's fun enough. I've heard a lot of good things about Babylon 5, I'll give it a try soon.
Here's a small list of shows I'm planing to watch in the near future, I'm curious to know if anyone watched any of these and what's your opinion on it if you did. Feel free to mention your favorite sci-fi show not on this list.
Babylon 5
Stargate SG-1
Battlestar Galactica
Red Dwarf

>>65350
https://screenrant.com/babylon-5-reboot-show-what-happened/

Allegedly there was supposed to be a reboot on The CW, but it looks like the Warner Bros Discovery merger put the kibosh on it.


Fucking Mergers…

>>65341
So I just finished watching all 3 seasons of The Orville. It's a nice little show but I think there are a couple of problems with it. The first season was much more humorous in nature and I feel it worked much better that way when you compare with the more serious turn it took in the second and specially third season. It works well when it's a spoof of ST:TNG but not so much when it tries to be TNG. The show starts to wear really thin the farther it gets from comedy and when it's not a comedy it becomes painfully obvious it's trying to be smarter than it is. Trying to be smarter than it is also happened from time to time in TNG (the episode "A Matter of Time" comes to mind) but in that show you had good dramatic actors to make it work even when the plot was kinda shitty. For the Orville you have this guy, pic related. Seth Macfarlene, the dicks and farts jokes cartoonist. This is the guy you send to handle delicate diplomatic missions with alien delegates? It works as a comedy but The Orville really doesn't want to be a comedy after the first season.

Imo, Seth wanting to be in front of the camera is the biggest problem with the show. He can't act to save his life. It's honestly embarrassing how bad he is compared to the rest of the cast and it's obvious the only reason he's there is because he's the creator of the show. He wasn't such a sore in the first season because of the lighthearted nature of the episodes but the more serious it gets, the more Macfarlene's presence makes the whole thing feels like a bad Star Trek LARP. Spoilers ahead.

While the show was more of a spoof and comedy, every character had a place but once it tries to be more serious the only thing they have to talk about is Moclan's misogyny and Kaylons wanting to destroy all biological life in the galaxy. And that's about it.
Even when they have a chance for more challenging drama they shy away from it. To give you an example, there's an episode where the Union ends their partnership with Moclus because Moclans are misogynists. This causes a severe problem because the Union is facing a two fronts war against Kaylons and Krill and basically find themselves completely defenseless without Moclans, as they're the single supplier of military grade weaponry for the Union's defense force. However the heroes never have to pay the price for their inability to compromise and diplomatic stupidity because 2 minutes after the Moclans walk out the door, human engineers come up with a super weapon that can kill all Kaylons anyways. Again, this works on a comedy but as a drama it's pathetic and simplistic and you start to roll your eyes a lot. Sure you expect the heroes to have plot armor but when every single decision the protagonists make is retarded and the universe has to constantly conspire to make them right, yeah, you start to roll your eyes a lot.

With all that said, The Orville does at least have something to say, and for that alone is much better than Star Trek Strange New Worlds, a show that effectively has nothing at all to say about anything. It's a show with substance, albeit limited and often with a misplaced tone. I think 3 seasons is a good enough size for it, though it could easily have ended after second season. If they renew The Orville, turning it back into a comedy again or replacing Seth Macfarlene for a more competent actor are the only things that would make me tune in for more. If not I think we saw pretty much everything there is to see here.


Anyway, I'll be watching Babylon 5 now.

>>65350
>>65359
>>65383
Alright anons I watched the first 3 episodes of Babylon 5 and holy shit there's way too much of opera in that space for my taste. There's so much buffoonery going on here with the aliens from Minbari's embassador Delenn wailings about soul eaters to Londo's hair, it's really putting me off.

Granted I'm only 3 episodes in but does it get more cerebral as it goes on? Is the story here really worth it?

>>65383
I don’t think it’s all mergers, Michael Straczynski has a Twitter where he occasionally talked about Babylon 5 and his publicity of the new series was very weird. He said he’d finished writing it and said the series would be filmed and on screens in the next year. Modern massive sci-fi project filmed and cgi done in under a year, his timelines and comments seem extremely hopeful. I don’t know how much I trust the information if he’s been the source.
On a side note, Straczynski had a patreon where he makes a few thousand a month. I thought it was nice he still had fans who wanted to learn from him.

>>65403
I'd tried to stick with it until the Shadows show up. They are really the seminal part of the show and give evil a deeper dimension than "they are just bad" like star wars, fantasy, and a lot of modern day media like to do.

>>65411
Thanks anon, I needed to hear that. Last night I deleted the episodes like an idiot and had to redownload again this morning after waking up. I'll stick to it this time. Are there other shows you like not on >>65371 that is sci-fi or space themed? I'm trying to build a small list of shows to binge for escapism.

>It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the Earth/Minbari war. The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last best hope for peace. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5.

I just started watching Babylon 5 and I like looking back after a while and reading my impressions of a show I'm watching for the first time. I figure this might be interesting for others to read as well and maybe it will even get you into watching it too, so I'll be reviewing every episode for now, let's see how far I get.

The first thing I want to say is that Babylon 5 is definitely not science fiction, but a space opera. There's enough magic in the first 5 episodes to be in equal standing to a D&D session and there's no particular effort to technobabble through any of the science of what we see and no real effort to clarify any of the technology involved to build the space station, the space ships, weapons, medical tools or how all aliens can breathe and live in the same space as humans or any other technicality, really. A science fiction show would love to explain those things to you, but no Babylon 5. The focus here are the political and ethical intricacies that entails having this space station filled with diplomats from different places and with different goals. It's also very theatrical and over the top at times, as one can safely assume by looking at the alien called Londo >>65412, believe or not that's an alien, a Centauri, if he appears like a farcical version of a bubbly Italian type from some XIX century opera that's just your impression, I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

For the first 2 episodes I'll do a quick review on this post and then I'll try longer reviews for the third episode on. The first episode Midnight on the Firing Line is pretty much just an introduction of the main characters, let's go to them one by one.

Sinclair is the commander and the person in charge of the station. He's a war veteran and the tough guy with a bit of a death wish and probably an alcoholic. Despite that he's the one upholding the peace, or trying to.

Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova is sort of the chief of security except she's not, but most of the stuff she deals with ends up being about security related issues. She's the second in command after Sinclair and a sort of pessimist with a troubled past.

Security Chief Michael Garibaldi is the actual guy in charge of security. He's a light hearted version of Sinclair. Enjoys Daffy Duck and might be a womanizer. He also has the eggiest shaped head I've ever seen in my life, he's like the live version of Homer Simpson in that regard.

Delenn is the Minbari ambassador and for now that's pretty much it.

Dr. Stephen Franklin is the medical doctor for Babylon 5 and also a damn idiot, though this is only clear by episode 4.

Talia Winters is a human telepath. Humans use telepaths in order to facilitate diplomatic missions across different alien species.

Finally we have G'Kar and Londo Mollari the diplomats of warring states and their over the top discussions and fist fights set the tone for the first episode.

The second episode, Soul Hunter, is about an alien species that goes around collecting the souls of people who die. And right there you already know this is a space opera and not science fiction. Babylon 5 makes absolutely no attempt whatsoever to hide that fact and it doesn't actually care about science if the plot needs some myth and magic. It will go for those too, and this is just one example. Delenn is terrified by these guys which doesn't really prompt any strong reaction from the humans in charge, Sinclair, Garibaldi and Ivanova. It's weird because the Simbari are way ahead of humans in terms of scientific and technological development and if the guys that know more than you do about the universe happen to be terrified of these soul hunters guys, I would be a little more concerned than what the crew here is. But anyways, it's mostly an uneventful episode meant to give us a scope of Babylon's 5 universe and the types of characters that inhabit this universe.

And that's that, a rather low start and I almost quit twice but since this is such a praised show I decided to power through and one anon here said I should stick around until a particular villain shows up so I'll be going at least that far.

Needless to say, if you want to watch this show there are tons of torrents out there.

This post contains spoilers.

I confess episode 3, Born to the Purple, is the one that made me want to quit the show prematurely. It's this tale about old Londo falling in love with a young slave succubus. She pretends to love him but is actually trying to fetch some secret information from his computer in order to purchase her freedom and get rid of her master, Trakis. To be brutally honest I just didn't care at all about the slave (called Adira) trying to start a new life as a free succubus. We're inside a space station supposedly filled with strange alien life everywhere and this is the story you want to tell? I almost quit.

The only fun part of this episode is the apparently unending incompetence of Londo as a head of state. Honestly I wouldn't trust this guy to sell gum, much less deal in interplanetary politics. Fortunately Sinclair is there and he helps Londo to retrieve the sensitive data (a file containing dirt on Centauri powerful families, enough to destabilize the Centauri republic) and at the same time they manage to arrest Trakis and free Adira, who apparently really like Londo, just not enough to stay with him. She boards back to her home planet the minute she has the chance. Oh well, I'm sure he can find another baldy bimbo somewhere.

The B plot is there to expose more of Ivanova's tragic past. On episode 1 it's revealed her mom was a telepath just like Talia but she didn't want to register with the telepath club. That left her with two choices: telepath castration in the form of injections or prison. Ivanova's mom chooses the injections but that fucks her mind so badly she ends up committing suicide. And that's why Ivanova doesn't like telepaths (something hinted at on the first episode.)

Not happy with just one tragedy for Ivanova, we also have the fact her dad is now dying after a lifetime of not giving a shit about his own daughter. Actually he loves her but because Ivanova decided to follow a military career, something he's against, their relationship got strained. So Ivanova is making these illegal phone calls to earth in order to patch things up with her dad. Why she can't just contact him legally is a mystery. Poor Garibaldi on this episode is just running back and forth trying to discover who's making the illegal use of the network just to find out it's Ivanova all along. He listens to the conversation and decides to let it slide because he's a bit of an idiot that can't think properly when the issue involves an succubus he finds attractive. I would at least give Ivanova a reprimand on her record. She should know better.

This post contains spoilers for Babylon 5 season 1 episode 4.

It's a good thing this episode was a monster of the week type of thing. Here Sinclair gets to flex his morals a bit (racial supremacy is bad m'kay?) as well as showing some heroism. This was also the opportunity to show a little bit more of Dr. Franklin and his idiocy.

The whole thing begins when Dr. Franklin gets a visit from old friend and mentor, xenoarcheologist Dr. Hendricks. He wants Franklin's help to analyze hi-tech organic artifacts he found on a dead world. I just copied that sentence from the Babylon 5 wiki, it's easier that way. Anyway it turns out the artifacts are actual biological weapons that target any race without the specific DNA of its builders. Turns out they make a mistake and their bio weapon ends up killing everyone, including the ones they were suppose to protect.

This bio weapon is like a armor that binds itself with a host and then becomes a frightning and cool looking super soldier monster. It's up to Sinclair and Garibaldi to stop it from destroying Babylon 5 and, surprise surprise, they manage to do it. This is a fast paced, fun episode that has enough technobabble, fantasy, action and mystery and a very welcome palat cleanser from Londo and the baldy slave from last episode.

The reason I mentioned Dr. Franklin is an idiot is because of the comments he makes when talking to Dr. Hendricks. He's against Hendricks going around finding invaluable alien technology in other planets because he feels it's A WASTE OF TIME DOING SO when they should instead be working to come up with their own tech. How much of an idiot can you be to actually believe that? He's basically suggesting humans should waste time reinventing the wheel instead of learning from other more advanced aliens. What a god damned moronic statement that was. Besides, that's the whole point of the Babylon space station, so humans can learn from aliens. Jesus Christ, Franklin is an imbecile.

On a side note, many of the negative reviews I read on IMDB and elsewhere regarding Babylon 5 talks about the shitty special effects and bad CGI but I have to tell I find this show very good looking. I like the CGI and also the effects. The monster here looks pretty cool, too.

In order to not flood this thread I'll be posting 3 reviews at a time starting next episode.

This review contains spoilers for the episode The Parliament of Dream (S01E05)

In this episode, The Parliament of Dream, we witness a weeklong festival when humans and aliens demonstrate their religious beliefs on board of Babylon 5. Surprisingly (maybe not for the fans of the series that know better but it was surprising to me), the show doesn't really care at all about this opportunity to better flesh out the cultures of the various aliens races living in the station but instead use it as a background event for an attempt assassination on the life of ambassador G'Kar, Londo's rival.

Actually this assessment is not entirely fair because the episode is in fact an attempt to better flesh out G'Kar, the Narn ambassador, giving him some background story. Since G'Kar is a high rank politician, he has many enemies, one of them hates him so bad that on his deathbed he gave all his belongings to an assassin guild that promises to kill G'Kar. The agent he sends to Babylon 5 fails. The end. There's not much to see here, really, so far G'Kar is not that different from Londo: Over the top, silly, maybe not all that fit for his position. Granted, he's much more competent than Londo, he can actually show up on time and has a little more organized lifestyle but that's about it.

In the B plot, the only religious ceremony we see is that of the Minbari. They hit some drums and eat a cherry tomato. On the C plot we have Sinclair going out with his former girlfriend. Garibaldi is pretty much useless here going back and forth trying to find the assassin but he never gets anywhere. It's up to G'Kar and Na'Toth, G'Kar assistant, to get the job done. Overall an OK outing.

-

This review contains spoilers for the episode Mind War (S01E06)

This is a very good one as we get some grit of what the hell is actually going on back on Earth and it's not looking good.

As if Ivanova's tragic backstory with the Psi Corps wasn't enough of a sign, with this episode it seems clear the telepath club is bad news. They've been doing all sorts of experiments in order to increase their psychic powers and there's basically no one there to interfere or supervise their operations. How could there be? They can read your mind. Ivanova's comment "Who watches the watchers" sums the theme for this outing pretty well.

The main plot here is about one of Talia's professors, Ironheart, who has been the subject of some very successful experimentation and he's now an incredibly powerful telepath, in fact he's now post-human. He kills the main scientist behind the experiments and flees to Babylon 5 with PSI cops hot on his tail.

Honestly I wouldn't know who to trust here but I would be inclined to just let the PSI cops do their jobs. Sinclair on the other hand decides to get involved up to his eyeballs on the matter and helps Ironheart escape the PSI guys. Ironheart eventually transforms into a nebula and goes to space, saying "See you in a million years" which I guess confirms virtual immortality does exist in the world of Babylon 5.He also gives Talia telekinesis powers, a very rare gift (only 1 in 10k telepaths have it.)