Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-02-06 (Thursday)

On 2/7/2025 8:58 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
 

Babylon 5 (blu-ray) - "Rising Star" Season 4, penultimate episode.  With
the liberation of Earth complete, Earth has to decide what to do about
Sheridan.  Meanwhile back on B5 the aliens form a new alliance, and it's
going to need a leader.  And Ivanova is clumsily written out of the
show.  :-/

 Claudia Christian wouldn't come to terms. She wanted paid time off
during production weeks, which would have forced production to increase
the pay for the other actors with triggers in their contracts to avoid
favoritism for specific actors. After she'd rejected the contract, Jeff
Conaway tried to talk her into renewing anyway. There was a lot of back
and forth nonsense that the renewal offers didn't give the actors enough
time to reconsider, given that the show had been cancelled but there was
still time to offer new contracts to actors if the show were to go back
into production, which is what happened with the TNT 22-episode order.
 I wasn't sympathetic toward her position and I have no idea what she
wanted to do that year in preference to Babylon 5.
 

I don't remember the specifics, but I do remember the controversy at the time with her wanting time off to film something else.  The way I recall it he offered her his word that he wouldn't write her into the episodes, but she wanted something in writing which he couldn't do for contractual reasons.  It's all a bit fuzzy, but I *think* I sided with her at the time, although obviously bummed she didn't come back.

"The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" - The hastily shot replacement
season 4 finale once season 5 was confirmed.  This episode reveals the
future history of B5 and Earth up to a million years in the future.  A
bit depressing at times, but OK.  I actually like this episode better
than the real finale that was shot and won't be shown until the end of
season 5.  Claudia Christian (Ivanova) was missed.

 Ahem. This wasn't hastily shot. THe show had resumed production and this
was the episode they made available to fulfill the obligation to PTEN.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Straczynski insisted that this script was intended although it would
have been further back had they gotten the season 5 episode order months
earlier.
 All Season 5 episodes had a compressed production schedule because they
were shooting one day less per production week.
 I didn't care for it. I thought it was largely self indulgent as the
fictional critics were representations of critics that Straczynski had
over the years, so the script had a lot of pettiness. He got his dream
project into production and broadcast. Don't let critics distract you.
 

It took me a minute to figure out which fictional critics you were talking about.  I think I liked the episode a lot more when I first saw it.  This time it was just OK.

"No Compromises" Season 5, episode 1 - Sheridan tries to get sworn in as
the president of the Interstellar Alliance while dodging an assassin.
B5 also agrees to be a safe haven for telepaths. And B5 has a new
captain from Earth.

 I liked the actress. I didn't care for the way she was written in a lot
of episodes.
 Do you have enough alchohol to watch the Byron episodes so you don't
have to remember him?

I won't be using the "play all" button for season 5.  That's for sure! I had no intention of watching so many season 3 and 4 episodes, but once they got going, season 4 in particular, it was hard to skip any.