Jack Bohn wrote:
> Mac Breck wrote:
>
>> Jack Bohn wrote:
>
>>>>> 1999
>>>>> *Farscape (2003)
>>>> Really liked it.
>>>
>>> Coming in late to this, and Stargate, I never started watching
>>> either. Totally my fault for missing them.
>>
>> There's always the DVD route (e.g. via NETFLIX). I bought Stargate
>> SG-1 on DVD, but not Farscape (except for the finale, Peacekeeper
>> Wars).
>
> I've been meaning to join Netflix. When I do, I'll post an
> announcement, and if anybody has problems with shows not coming
> back in stock, ya can drop me an e-mail to send them back in. :)
Ha, Ha. I joined at 1 at a time, unlimited per month. Works out great.
I turn 'em around as quickly as possible and usually get 6 or 7 per
month. With tax, it costs me $9.62/month, or $1.37 to $1.60 per rental.
Netflix Rentals this year (I joined on 01/01/2007.)
Jan. 2008: 7
Feb. 2008: 6
Mar. 2008: 6
Apr. 2008: 2, so far
>>>>> 2001
>>>>> *The Chronicle (2002)
>>>> I could watch it. (Never saw all of the eps.)
>>>
>>> Somehow missed it, but I'm a big fan of Weird Al's song about
>>> such a paper, "Midnight Star." DVD set?
>>
>> Not on DVD yet. Check at tvshowsondvd.com
>>
>> http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/shows/Chronicle/4975
>> (You have to be logged in.)
>
> I figure if there's a DVD release, they'll replay the series to
> advertise it, like they did with the original Battlestar and the
> Cylon Head Box Set.
Why chance it? On tvshowsondvd.com, you can *VOTE* for the shows you
want to see on DVD, and the industry seems to pay attention to that
site, plus the site sends you emails about the shows in which you've
expressed an interest, notifying you of release information, cover art,
etc. For me, tvshowsondvd.com is an invaluable resource. It's how I
find out about releases.
>>>>> *Crusade
>>>> I could see loving this
>>>> show as much as Babylon 5.
>>>
>>> To me, this was one step to sf/fantasy conventions and away from
>>> the "reality" of Babylon 5: the "guild" of thieves,
>>
>> JMS explains some of this on the Crusade DVD set.
>
> Now that's a reason to find a way to buy or rent this set.
It was on sale at http://www.deepdiscount.com/
for $14.76 in February,
****pping included, and I bought a set for a friend, but now it's back up
to $44.25 (MSRP=$59.99). Note that the JMS extras are only going to be
in the first pressing, because WB edited out JMS's comments about the
TNT interference after they said they wouldn't do that. It was a
condition of JMS doing the extras that they wouldn't edit his comments.
See:
http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17127
Question: Is there anything of your current projects that you can talk
about? (huge laughter)
JMS: Well... the comics. The books (shared universe-Distant Worlds and
the Quote Book) um...(Jan: DVDs.)
Oh! Yes, DVDs. Well, we've finished up the commentaries for the set of
movies that are coming out. And we're working currently on the Crusade
DVDs. The hiccup we have hit on the Crusade DVDs...And by the way,
they're selling great. I've heard that they've netted - netted, mind
you, over 70 million dollars just from the first three and a half
seasons. (applause) When they said, do you want to do the Crusade
commentaries, assuming of course that we get the rest of them
(something), I said "Absolutely." (they said) What do you want to talk
about?" JMS: "I want to say what happened." (they stutter) "What do you
mean?" JMS: "The TRUTH!" I want to put the truth out there. We are now
on our fourth (something) of Legal Affairs. "He wants to do what??" "The
TRUTH!" I have another conference call scheduled on Thursday with Legal
Affairs. We're running out of time for the DVDs. I said, "Look if I
can't get the truth out, then I don't want to sup****t the DVDs."
Audience: I can see some big-ass disclaimers over that one.
JMS: I want the real truth to come out. Including the fact...I ran into
some guys who worked for TNT about two years after Crusade went down.
And they said, "Did you ever hear the rest of the story?" JMS: "What
rest of the story?" TNT guys: "We found out, we did a research survey, a
five year long study of our ratings. This was just after Crusade got
going. And, we found out that the audience for B5 came for B5, then left
afterward. And the TNT regular viewers didn't stick around for B5 and
went away and came back. B5 wasn't adding to our viewer base." So...they
decided to pull the plug on Crusade for that reason and use the money to
buy another show. But they couldn't say that because they'd be in breach
of contract with Warner Bros. So their job was to make it impossible for
us so they could then say, "We aren't getting the show we want, our
notes aren't being dealt with, therefore we aren't responsible, we're
canceling the show, this is your nut Warner Bros., you take care of it."
That is why all the notes became so egregious. If I had given them
everything they wanted, they still would have pulled the plug. They just
wanted out. Yeah, I want that information out there. (Audience: We'll
take care of that) On the DVDs. You all heard the tenor of the notes?
(agreement, requests for JMS to tell some anyway) That's all right.
Other questions... Yes, sir.
http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17253
http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17279&query=future%20pressings
> (This seems the place to mention visiting my brother while he was
> in the middle of Netflixing his way through B5. He was watching
> all the extras, because, you know, they're _there_; but he was
> suffering through the cast commentaries by late fourth season
> when they had degenerated to a bad-joke fest and the only time
> anyone paid attention to the screen was to do a Mistie riff.)
I know exactly what you mean, the Claudia and Jerry "commentaries".
<rolleyes> Bruce's were much better.
>>> the easy acceptance of the Technomage,
>>
>> Technomages have been around in the Babylon 5 universe for over a
>> thousand years.
>
> As a powerful, mysterious, rare, and slightly ominous presence,
> not as the captain's sidekick. I don't know what to compare it
> too. Maybe the way Mr. T went from a vicious, dangerous boxer in
> Rocky III to just a big palooka in The A Team.
Nooo, nooo, nooo, nooo, Galen is hardly the captain's sidekick. They're
friends and can count on one another, but calling Galen a sidekick is
like calling one of the most powerful beings in the universe the
captain's sidekick. You'd have a different take on it if you read the
two JMS unfilmed scripts, "To the Ends of the Earth" (a mid-Season 1
episode) and "End of the Line" (the Season 1 finale), and "The Passing
of the Techno-mages". They were up on bookface, and are going to be
published in the Crusade scriptbooks.
>> Londo talks about them in "The Geomerty of Shadows" as
>> being around in the time of the first Centauri emperor. Elric, one
>> of the mages in TGoS, was Galen's teacher. This part is really
>> fleshed out in "The Passing of the Techno-mages" trilogy.
>> Technomages are also in the Centauri trilogy.
>
> I read and enjoyed the Centauri trilogy.
Especially Garibaldi's last words to ****v'kala? Vir's last words to
****v'kala?
> I have a vague memory
> of having bought the Psi Corps trilogy for the promised _Fate of
> Alfred Bester_, although if I read it I couldn't tell you said
> fate now.
I could. It was a drier read than the other two trilogies.
> I'll have to look if I own the Techno-mage trilogy.
I liked the Centauri and Technomage trilogies so much I read 'em twice.
>>> the Excalibur main gun.
>>
>> You can't have the ****p be TOO powerful, because otherwise there's no
>> dramatic tension. A weakness has to be built in. All of this is
>> explained in the bonus materials in the Crusade DVD set.
>
> I just could never understand how it could work that way. Loss
> of power before firing as they divert it to charging the gun I
> can see.
So can I. If it's an energy storage device like a capacitor, some
energy is always used keeping it topped off at full voltage. It's also
possible that the gun introduces even more of these losses, and that
could account for the power loss before firing, as soon as power is
routed to the gun. The main gun is Vorlon based, but on a Vorlon ****p,
the gun is probably more efficient, and the ****p's energy generation
capacity is greater.
> But after it fires, what is keeping the generators from
> making power? Or, if they are making power, where is it going?
It makes sense. Think of it as a capacitor bank. It's sitting there
all charged up, before firing the gun or using the jump engines. It can
be switched to *either* the gun *or* the jump engines. Once used
(depleted), the capacitor bank needs to be recharged before either the
jump engines or gun can be used again. That charging process takes
time. I=C*dv/dt, where C is the capacitance. If you short a charged
capacitor, dv/dt (change of voltage over time) is huge, and so current I
= C * huge. Discharge can happen extremely quickly, but recharge
doesn't. Think of it like a flash on a camera discharging and
recharging, discharge is a step change, but recharge is a gradual
ramping up..
> It just _feels_ to me like a dramatic device, not an actual
> device, and a sad realization that JMS does not have enough of an
> understanding of how things work to even fake it.
No, *he* got that right, probably by accident, or maybe JPL helped him
there. JMS got some things blatantly wrong, but this isn't one of them.
In fact, the power loss before firing is more problematic. After
firing, it's readily understandable.
All of this plays a key role in one of JMS' unfilmed scripts where
Excalibur needs to make a lot of short jumps in a row. It'd place a
great deal of stress on the ****ps generation/recharge systems.
>>>>> 2002
>>>>> -start of Sci Fi original films
>>>>> -Legend of the Rangers
>>>
>>> The next step away.
>>
>> Nooo, many steps away from both B5 and Crusade. Crusade is a lot
>> closer to B5 than this is to either B5 or Crusade. Didn't even feel
>> like it was in the same universe as B5 & Crusade. It was almost as
>> if it had been written by somebody else, not JMS, but using the
>> characters and races of the B5 and Crusade universe.
>
> And -correct me if I'm wrong- introducing a big bad race that the
> Shadows were afraid of.
Yes, The Hand, and please don't remind me of that horrid, horrid movie.
:-( IMHO, it's *BY FAR*, the worst thing ever produced in the B5
universe. It makes "Thirdspace" and "The River of Souls" look like Emmy
material. I could edit "To Live and Die in Starlight" down to ~10
minutes of good material. In fact, that's the only way I'd call it
watchable.
>>> From the way your adverse reactions or "Never watched it"
>>> responses ac***ulate post 2004, I can see where it fell into near
>>> uselessness for you.
>>
>> Well, Sci-Fi moved to "Digital Cable" here in late December 2003 or
>> very early 2004, and I didn't follow, because I was getting fed-up
>> with the channel in 2003, and because I was getting fed-up with the
>> cost of cable.
>
> ...
>
>> A lot of my past viewing is a blur, mainly because I was working so
>> much. For example, when Brimstone first aired (on FOX) from October
>> 1998 to February 1999, I never even knew it existed. I only caught
>> it because of Peter Woodward being in Crusade, and somebody
>> recommended Brimstone on Sci-Fi to me because they knew I liked him
>> in Crusade. Peter Woodward was in the Brimstone pilot. You miss a
>> lot when all you have time to do is work, commute, eat and sleep,
>> and sometimes not much of the latter two.
>
>> Thinking back now, the only show I watched regularly (religiously),
>> was Babylon 5 starting around Sept. 1996. Since then, I've gotten
>> more serious about watching shows regularly, timer record all of my
>> favorite shows (to not miss 'em and be able to FF past the
>> commercials), and now watch 9.5 hrs/week (19.5 with late night). I
>> don't watch *anything* live.
>
> Ah, good times, good times. I remember catching every episode of
> B5 (and its twin brother from another mother, DS9). I remember
> racing home one Saturday I'd had to work, in order to change the
> VCR to the "Babylon 5" tape.
For me, DS9 had a lot of stuff that I absolutely couldn't stand, stuff
that got on my last nerve. I was watching DS9 and getting fed-up with
it back when Voyager started. It seemed to me that an interesting show
could not be made around a space station. So, I switched to Voyager,
hoping that a "road show" like TOS and TNG, might be interesting, but
no, Voyager was even worse. It was then that a friend recommended B5 to
me, and lent me a few of his tapes (random episodes of Season 1, in EP,
not very good), and I was hooked. I never went back to DS9 or Voyager.
For me, the sweet spot is B5 & Crusade, the low ebb was that Legend of
the Rangers backdoor pilot, and a slight recovery was the worn-out
shoestring budgeted Lost Tales DVD. One day, I hope somebody uses the
jaws of life to open Warner Brothers' wallet to give B5/Crusade a full
season order and a good budget of about $2 million per 44 minute ep.
> I missed a few episodes of the last season of DS9, I don't know
> if it was the lack of B5 causing me to lose focus, or the
> existence of Voyager causing me to lose interest in life in
> general.
Oh, believe me, I can empathize. After B5 and Crusade were over, I
transitioned to Farscape.
--
Mac Breck (KoshN)
-------------------------------
"The Dresden Files" (2007)
Harry Dresden: [re. Bianca] What is it about bad girls? They lie,
cheat, won't suck your blood even when you beg them to, and for some
reason, no matter how badly they treat us, we still can't walk away.
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