If you somehow missed the Babylon 5 rumpus that's been taking place around here for the past week, fear not: all the links can be found right exactly here. Last Friday, I did an overview of the show. Monday was the show's best characters, Tuesday was its worst, Wednesday was its best aspects and Thursday and Friday covered its worst aspects. Today, we wrap up the whole thing.
It occurred to me while I was writing the 'worst things' posts that I might be grading Babylon 5 on an unfair metric. Comparing B5 to the three best sci-fi shows of the 2000s--Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who and Firefly) inevitably puts it at a disadvantage, and there are all kinds of mitigating circumstances relating to why it stinks at times. Its first four seasons aired on a network (PTEN) that was relatively unknown and probably doomed from its inception, its budget was poor, it was in an era of TV sci-fi that didn't have all that many standout shows, and so on. The best sci-fi shows of the 2000s benefited from ample budgets, well-known networks and better actors than B5 could muster.
I'm not so sure that's an excuse, though. Less than two decades after its release, Babylon 5 looks extremely dated. The bad CGI, the heavily made-up cast contribute to it and the pre-HD cameras contribute to it, but there's a certain look to the footage, sets and in the directing that just stamps the show as old-fashioned. (The camera basically remains at shoulder height for the entire series.) It gained a large cult following and is remembered fondly by many sci-fi fans, but against sleeker, more modern shows it just doesn't measure up.
Ultimately, it's hard to pin the show's faults on J. Michael Straczynski or on extenuating circumstances. The actors are wooden, the directing is ordinary and the dialogue is poor: is that Straczynski's fault, or was it the fault of the era? It's hard to prove one way or the other. Ultimately, though, the only real criteria upon which I can evaluate Babylon 5 is how it looks to me, a fan of sci-fi that came of age in the 2000s.
Viewed purely on its own merits, then, Babylon 5 falls short in most ways. As I've been saying throughout this weeklong review, the show is consistently mediocre. Straczynski often likened his creation to a novel, but it's not an exciting one if that's the case. Bad writing, a lot of bad acting, bad casting, bad set design and stories that took forever to tell drag this show down, and good acting, some good universe-building and a pair of good seasons resuscitate it. I think some of the show's appeal originally lay in its serialization and consistent mediocrity: you could turn on the TV every week and know what you were getting. It wasn't going to be more than occasionally good, but it wasn't going to be horribly bad either, perhaps because there was so little at stake.
If you're a fan of the shows I mentioned at the start of this post, Babylon 5 is probably not for you. It's not remotely in their league. If your standards are lower or you're a fan of '90s sci-fi, then give it a try.
More Or Less Arbitrary Grading Scale
Acting: B-
Set Design: D
Character Development: A-
CGI: D-
Average Episode Quality Relative to Itself: C
Imagination: B
Writing: D+
Universe-Building: A-
Good Villains: C- (good in seasons 2 and 3, terrible in 4 and 5)
Good Heroes: D-
Good Characters Who Are Both: A
Series Ending: F
Arc Continuity: A
Character Continuity: D+
OVERALL SERIES GRADE: C-
Showing posts with label firefly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label firefly. Show all posts
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Relationships, Time and Space, and Why Firefly Was Unique
Nine years after Firefly went off the air, online groups still maintain petitions for the series to be reinstated. Nathan Fillion even said that, given $300 million from FOX, he would buy the show himself and start producing episodes again. That wouldn't work.
I’d love to see Firefly complete its planned seven-season run as much as anyone else, but if Nathan Fillion bought the franchise tomorrow and was producing episodes by this Friday, what we’d get wouldn’t be the original Firefly. It would be different in a dozen subtle ways. It would not be the same.
A piece of artwork, like Firefly, is a unique snapshot of time and space. We may assume that there was only one chance for us to get Firefly, just as there was only one chance for any piece of literature or culture. Scientific discoveries build on previous discoveries in such a manner as to seem inevitable, but there was nothing predetermined about Shakespeare’s plays. If he hadn’t written them when he did, they would not exist as we know them. They capture a moment in the writer’s life, in his culture, in the lives of the people around him and of a dozen other factors of which we know nothing.
In much the same way, the existence and details of Firefly depended on thousands of different factors. The actors were each at a specific place in their acting careers, and were directed to act in a specific way. The writer was at a point where he wrote the dialogue a specific way. The creation of the show came from an idea that Joss Whedon had, which might not have occurred at any other time. CGI had advanced enough that good-quality images could be produced for the show. The show was influenced by outside factors; for example, FOX reportedly inserted the mysterious “two by two, hands of blue” men into the show to create a conspiratorial vibe. It’s topical and timely; the idea of Westerners and the Chinese going into space together and forming a joint civilization might not have happened fifty years ago. It’s timely in a greater cultural sense; the main characters largely disdain religion, casual sex is acceptable, violence is common and profit is king.
The point of all this is, without all of these factors working in concert (many of which everyone was unaware of), Firefly would not be the Firefly we know. And if it was produced again today, many of these factors would come into play. The actors are at different places in their careers; they are physically older, they have matured, or they have gone in different directions career-wise. The writers’ style of writing has no doubt evolved. The distinctive look of the show would be difficult to reproduce. It wouldn’t be the same.
Like a piece of artwork, relationships are also unique in time and space. They happen when two (or more) people come together at a specific time in their lives, wanting specific things and being specific people. And while they last, they can be absolutely wonderful. But when they’re over, trying to recapture them can be like trying to travel back in time, trying to recapture old feelings and lost possibilities.
Sometimes, you have to let those feelings go, and trust that maybe one day when the stars cross again, the two of you can make it work again. You (singular) look back on that time for what it was and for what you (plural) had, but you can’t remake Firefly this minute. Perhaps, one day, you can make something new, but for now you have to let it go. There's nothing wrong with looking back fondly, but you shouldn't try to shape the future in the image of the past.
I’d love to see Firefly complete its planned seven-season run as much as anyone else, but if Nathan Fillion bought the franchise tomorrow and was producing episodes by this Friday, what we’d get wouldn’t be the original Firefly. It would be different in a dozen subtle ways. It would not be the same.
A piece of artwork, like Firefly, is a unique snapshot of time and space. We may assume that there was only one chance for us to get Firefly, just as there was only one chance for any piece of literature or culture. Scientific discoveries build on previous discoveries in such a manner as to seem inevitable, but there was nothing predetermined about Shakespeare’s plays. If he hadn’t written them when he did, they would not exist as we know them. They capture a moment in the writer’s life, in his culture, in the lives of the people around him and of a dozen other factors of which we know nothing.
In much the same way, the existence and details of Firefly depended on thousands of different factors. The actors were each at a specific place in their acting careers, and were directed to act in a specific way. The writer was at a point where he wrote the dialogue a specific way. The creation of the show came from an idea that Joss Whedon had, which might not have occurred at any other time. CGI had advanced enough that good-quality images could be produced for the show. The show was influenced by outside factors; for example, FOX reportedly inserted the mysterious “two by two, hands of blue” men into the show to create a conspiratorial vibe. It’s topical and timely; the idea of Westerners and the Chinese going into space together and forming a joint civilization might not have happened fifty years ago. It’s timely in a greater cultural sense; the main characters largely disdain religion, casual sex is acceptable, violence is common and profit is king.
The point of all this is, without all of these factors working in concert (many of which everyone was unaware of), Firefly would not be the Firefly we know. And if it was produced again today, many of these factors would come into play. The actors are at different places in their careers; they are physically older, they have matured, or they have gone in different directions career-wise. The writers’ style of writing has no doubt evolved. The distinctive look of the show would be difficult to reproduce. It wouldn’t be the same.
Like a piece of artwork, relationships are also unique in time and space. They happen when two (or more) people come together at a specific time in their lives, wanting specific things and being specific people. And while they last, they can be absolutely wonderful. But when they’re over, trying to recapture them can be like trying to travel back in time, trying to recapture old feelings and lost possibilities.
Sometimes, you have to let those feelings go, and trust that maybe one day when the stars cross again, the two of you can make it work again. You (singular) look back on that time for what it was and for what you (plural) had, but you can’t remake Firefly this minute. Perhaps, one day, you can make something new, but for now you have to let it go. There's nothing wrong with looking back fondly, but you shouldn't try to shape the future in the image of the past.
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