Babylon 5: The Gathering

So following the advice from my new chums, I've finally started my Babylon 5 odyssey with the pilot episode, The Gathering. I'm not going to give a summary of the plot as there are multiple great options on the web already. However I will share my thoughts. First up, when you start watching you do have to get over the fact that some of the effects and make up look dated (as do some of the haircuts which smell of the early 90s) but that is only to be expected and you get over it quite quickly. And even given the dated look the moment when the Vorlon fleet appears is great. But I am running ahead of myself, let me pick out some specific thoughts, but be warned there will be some spoilers.

The Good

The set up going forward is great, you have four races meeting at Babylon 5. Two were at war ten years earlier, one was a slave race to the other and there is one that we know almost nothing about. Plenty of room for tension.

Some of the characters are great, in particular I thought that the Londo the Centauri ambassador was really well drawn, with huge flaws but immensely likable at the same time. In fact all of the "alien"ambassadors were good...it's the humans you had to worry about.

There are lots of plot hooks for the future that you genuinely want to find out more about (the Grey council, why the Minbari surrendered, the "hole in your mind" etc)

There are also character hooks for the future (Garibaldi and Laurel's loyalty to Sinclair over official protocol, Londo's gambling problem, Delenn's short temper)

The not-so-good

Some of the acting was SHOCKINGly bad! I think Lieutenant Laurel and Del Varner deserve a special mention for being wooden and cheesy respectively. As does the moment when Commander Sinclair finds the Vorlon ambassador, Kosh collapsed and reacts with a slightly bored "Dammit" (although I grant that this may just be the quality of the audio on my DVD).

There seems to be quite a lot of padding in there. For example the fight scene at the end that goes on much longer than it needs to. And the pointless scene where Garibaldi tells Sinclair that he reckons that Del Varner has something to do with the attack on the Vorlon ambassador could easily have been cut and absorbed elsewhere. There are other moments as well and I reckon this could have been cut by 10-15 minutes without losing too much and actually ending up with a much better show.

Summary
If I'm honest if I'd come across this on a wet Sunday afternoon in 2009 then I probably would have found it mildly diverting but I wouldn't have thought it was great, or worried about spending too much effort trying to find out more. However, this is the light of having been exposed to some game changing TV over the intervening decade and a half (such as the West Wing, The Wire, Battlestar Gallactica et al) since it first came out along with the increasingly sophisticated use of CGI (think of the evolution across the three Lord of the Rings films)

But you have to put it in context of it being first broadcast in 1993, I think then the CGI would have been cutting edge and a huge surprise. More pertinently it was released into a world that had only just escaped from Dallas, Dynasty (although I believe that Knots Landing was still running). When the behemoths of the schedules looked like that...

Overall taking the context into consideration, the interest in wanting to find out more outweighs any negative thoughts, so further up and further in. Bring on Episode 1...

(BTW, in the interests of full disclosure, as I go I am going cross-post versions of these "reviews" at B5TV so don't feel cheated if you come across it there as well)