There was a great bit of fan…..something that I remember reading sometime during season 4 that really did a great job of summing up how utterly ludicrous it was to think that, just a couple years after they murdered billions, any sort of peace with the cylons would be remotely politically acceptable.

> If a man does it he is a stud. If a woman acts in the exact same manner she is a slut.

High on my list would be exactly WTF happened on Kobol, how the planet was cursed, and who the gods of Kobol were. Then some more subtle stuff like why the opera house. I mean, they shoehorned it in at the end there, but in a way that didn't really answer any questions, what was going on with the cylon hybrids…

>More diverse and complicated cultures

>I still do not understand the levels of hate/anger some people have for that ending.

There are many shows objectively better than Babylon 5, including its great rival, DS9. They have more consistent acting, better production values, and jokes that are actually funny. That said, I love babylon 5 in a way I don't love other shows. b5 tried to do something that no TV show had ever done before. Its…

I really like wheel of fire. More grand tragedy for Londo, and the "you aren't the only one who's been touched by the Vorlons" bit is just a great scene, and I love how damned scary b5 manages to make telepathy seem. It's just a shame we didn't get more of vorlon touched lyta and less byron. had she gotten there…

I happen to like the centauri design for the most part. Yes, it's space rome meets the hapsburgs, but they manage to sell it. the real problem with them is that designing what star conquerors would build in their decadent phase is a difficult prospect even with an infinite budget.

In general, babylon 5 did not portray Centauri Prime as it deserved. It never felt anything like the ornate, centuries old imperial capital that a race of starfaring conquers would have. I don't blame them, they didn't have the budget to do it right, and did a decent job of making what they had look good and…

didn't JMS always plan to do the telepath war as a big movie if he got the chance?

>B5 proposed to be "a novel for television." Well, it isn't that, but it's the sum of its intent and approaches.

that's what I hate most about it, how plain stupid Byron's demand is. he could have scanned each ambassador, and figure out what they wanted to know and what they didn't want others to know, quietly approached each one and cut a deal. they'd have had a planet in a week. but instead, they threaten everyone all at…

Say what you will about the telepath plotline, and boy ever is it terrible, but b5 did a better job than any show I know at portraying telepathy as utterly terrifying, which is completely appropriate. Imagine 99% of people were born without a sense of sight or hearing and the massive advantage at basically everything…

the better explanation would be that in the aftermath of the centauri reconquest (and presumably territorial concessions) they didn't have any planets to spare.

The problem I have with Byron is how just plain dumb he is. take the "we stole your secrets" bit. had they met with each of the ambassadors in private, informed them of the status of their secrets, suggested that they vote for a telepath planet, and then sweetened the deal by offering them some secrets they might be…

I can forgive Londo and G'kar showing up in in the beginning, they were presumably diplomats of some variety before the show, but Sheriden at the center of everything really bugs me, especially because every scene he's in seems to go out of its way to make him look like the only sane man in an earthforce filled with…

considering how quickly it all ended, and how the killing was almost entirely confined to the military, you could almost rationalize it….except that the human cast of the show is almost entirely military people who should all have seen most of their adult acquaintances killed off and sinclair seems to be to the only…

I think this is what we are supposed to think, but the show does a really bad job of selling the idea, especially with the whole "well fuck it, if I can't keep the aliens out I'll just murder everyone" ending. It's supposed to be hitler in the bunker, but hitler didn't start murdering germans when the russians…

Totalitarian isolationism does have real world examples, but as a way of preserving existing power, not a goal in its own right. The Tokugawa didn't take power to kick out the europeans, they kicked out the europeans in order to prevent anyone threatening their power a few decades after they established it.

The problem with clarke and his crew is that they don't seem to have anything like a plan. Hitler had a plan, he wanted to save the german people by carving out a continental empire in eastern europe and russia. Lenin had a plan, he wanted to set off world wide communist revolution. Those plans were, in their…