I cry over movies. And books. And, in rare cases, televisions shows. And yeah, I'm not exactly keen on letting people see it. It's okay when I'm watching a movie at home with my wife. Chances are she'll be needing the Kleenex box too. But when I'm out with "the guys" watching Revenge of the Sith and I can't talk afterwards because I'm sobbing inside...well, I'm not opposed to displaying emotion, necessarily. It's just sometimes my level of emotion seems out of proportion with the subject material. I mean come on, it's not like the ending was a SURPRISE!
Fortunately I was more or less alone when I watched the final episode of Babylon 5 the other night. Talk about heart-rending! It's not just that the series was ending--I barely got misty over the ending of ST:TNG. But these are characters I cared about, people who taught me a lot about myself during the course of 110 episodes. I was a wreck by the end.
And then last night I went back and watched it again with the director's commentary track. I still cried, even when I could barely hear the dialogue or the soundtrack. The director's summation(and indeed, much of the cast's) was that shows like that don't happen very often. The level of synergy was incredible. The show deserves every award it ever received and then some.
I've never had the chance to see anything J. Michael Straczynski has produced since then (which, checking at IMDB, isn't much), but I suspect it would be rather difficult to top Babylon 5. I'll probably lose my geek card over this, but if I could only own one Sci-Fi series on DVD it would be Babylon 5, hands down. Not that I don't love Star Trek or Star Wars, but as a cohesive whole, B5 holds together better than the others and has more to say worth listening to. Babylon 5 transcends its genre, even its medium.
And that's worth a tear or two.
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4 comments:
Well, speaking as the geek that does only own Babylon 5, I agree. It is the only series that has that much staying power. My kids, who weren't even alive when it was broadcast watch it constantly. In fact, they have just about wore out the boxes for three seasons. They watch it over and over. Sure they have their favorite episodes, but on the whole, they watch them all equally. That is a testament to how well the series was written, acted and produced.
And yes, I cried, too.
I guess to be fair to the other series (serieii? seriea?), it's like comparing apples to oranges in a way. The others out there were limited to a degree by the nature of episodic television (and multiple writers). Star Trek is episodic, whereas B5 is a chapterized video-novel.
Not that others shows couldn't do it, but no seems to try the depth and detail of plot arcs that Straczynski managed. Most shows focus on a single over-arching plot (though not a terribly complex one) and leave the individual character arcs to develop as time permits amid the "nastiness of the week."
Deep Space Nine was beginning to approach the complexity of B5 (is it any surprise, as they were contemporaries/competition?), but ultimately lacked the long-term vision. Probably because Star Trek has long been more about the franchise than the quality of the product. I won't say that a writing team CAN'T write a B5, but so far no one else has come very close.
I didn't watch B5, but I did watch Deep Space Nine. Of all the Star Trek series, I felt that one had the most depth and some of the best writing.
I was late to the table with DS9. I got involved around season three, I think, and I do recall it being very much different from "traditional" Trek, in a good way. I thought the writing was pretty good, too. There were some episodes that just floored me.
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