Babylon 5: The Road Home

[Apollo]

Maybe even invite Michael York to appear in an episode of the Crusade cartoon as David "King Arthur" McIntyre from the Babylon 5 episode "A Late Delivery from Avalon." I had read that originally, his character was suppose to be in charge of the Excalibur, but TNT refused because they were worried about making all ship captains be British (and were trying to avoid comparisons to Star Trek, which frankly doesn't make any sense but this was TNT circa 1996, so...).

Sadly Michael York is not in the best of health right now, loved that Episode though

 

[CB2001]

Sadly Michael York is not in the best of health right now, loved that Episode though

I’m sorry to hear that. I wasn’t aware. I agree, that was an excellent episode.

 

[Solo4114]

I agree with you on some of these points (I thought the cornfield was a great foreshadow of the moment where Sheridan finally gets to go home). Other than the actors from the original cast, I do feel a lot of the performances caught the spirit of the characters though some did sound slightly off to me (for example, G'Kar. The performance felt dead on, but the voice didn't quite sound close to him at times. The same with Delenn, whose voice sounded a tad bit higher than Mira Furlan's natural voice. Though I do feel that Garibaldi and Zathras, as well as Franklin and Sinclair's voices sounded quite dead on to the actors who passed). I also had no issue with the animation, as I get that they were trying to go with a combination of 2D for most and having 3D when it was necessary (which kinda reminded me of both the live action and 3D elements when they were making the show, as well as The Iron Giant's combination of 2D animation with the 3D generated Giant).

For me, I was looking for two things in terms of the voice performances for cast members who passed beyond the Rim:

1. Audio fidelity. As in, their voice sounds like the actors' voices.

2. Character fidelity. As in, regardless of the shape and tone of their voices, they convey the same kind of performance as the previous actors.

#1 was...a mixed bag, I thought. To me, Phil LaMarr -- who is an AMAZING and prolific voice actor and a great actor overall -- didn't quite nail the audio fidelity, but he absolutely got the character fidelity, given the material with which he had to work (Franklin really isn't in the story much). Similar take on the Sinclair. Paul Guyet nailed Zathras, but his voice just isn't as deep and gravelly as Michael O'Hare's could be. Similarly, Rebecca Riedy's take on Delenn didn't capture Mira Furlan's English accent and the way she shaped words. Some sounds were accurate, but I could tell in an instant that she was American. Some words just slip. To be fair, I have similar criticisms when plenty of British folks try to do an American accent (and sound more "Amarrican"), and how their various UK dialects can sneak through in how certain words are pronounced.

#2, though, was dead-on in all cases, and ultimately I think that's what's more important. I'd rather have someone who can capture the overall feel of a character than just a soundalike who can't nail the emotion.

I'll also point out that even the original actors weren't perfect at sounding exactly like they did....oof...25 years ago. Peter Jurasik, for example, didn't get all of Londo's accent back, but that's to be expected. The guy isn't living the role, doing the same voice for hours on end, week after week, year after year. But he's still able to nail Londo's vibe and that's way more important. Claudia Christian doesn't sound exactly like she did when she was in her late 20s/early 30s, and that's ok. Ivanova was still Ivanova, and that's the important part.

Related to that, the writing was dead-on for everyone. JMS certainly didn't lose his sense of the characters' voices.

For the story, granted, we already knew that Sheridan was going to get home (I mean, come on, we already know how that story ended), but I do like the fact they leave it open at the end for a possible continuation (and from the Babylon 5 Forever featurette, the original actors are all willing to come back for more animated adventures, just so as long as JMS is doing the writing). Though I know a few people here feel that the film was "fan service", the fact is that the show was also the earliest example of fan service in that same regard (I recall reading that one episode of the show was written to answer a fan's question on the B5 BBS. Not sure how true that is, but it sounds like a nice thing to have been included if it is true). But more importantly, the original show's actors who are left came back not just because they believe in Babylon 5, but they did it not just to pay tribute to the actors lost along the way, but for the fans also. I'm not a diehard B5 fan, but as someone who has watched the show and appreciates it for what it is, I'm interested to see where the story goes with the alternate timeline.

Yeah, I thought the alternate timeline thing could be interesting. Might offer a chance to sort of rectify the issues of the latter portion of the series, where the Shadow War wound up being kind of rushed because they thought the show might get canceled in Season 4, and how Season 5 had problems in its first half because JMS lost a bunch of his notes and had to hastily reconstruct things. And hey, maybe we'd FINALLY get a chance to see the Telepath War! Gonna be hard to do that if Walt Koenig isn't willing to do it, though (and I don't know if he is or isn't). It's really hard to imagine someone else as Bester.

View attachment 1753420

I'm sorry, but the opinions of a fictional character on a 3-camera sitcom that I've literally never watched hold no weight for me. It also doesn't help that he's dead ****ing wrong.

On a very tangentially related note, I've found Deep Space 9 to be an incredible disappointment, given how the show was sold to me. But I think that's because I went into it looking for a general style of storytelling (i.e., that there's actually a coherent story running thru the show), and I didn't get it. I think if you went into it jonesing for more Star Trek as TNG was winding down, it was probably a revelation.

As compared to TNG and TOS, DS9 does a good job of including more in-universe continuity in its storytelling. Episodes don't just happen in isolation; they build on previous episodes. It's not exactly a coherent story, but it also doesn't do what a lot of prior Trek did, which was to just go week-to-week telling disconnected stories and only occasionally bothering to reference back to prior episodes. I gather DS9 develops an actual coherent story in its last season-and-a-half or so, but frankly, at the start of Season 5, I've found it really hard to keep watching given that I keep waiting for it to grow a real story.

 

[p51]

Just because some of you hate BBT so much in this context, I couldn't resist...