ive been enjoying Joost for the past week. one of the few shows worth watching is Babylon 5. I remember in 1998 when I was working at Reed College and a lot of the geekier students were really into the show. I never saw it until I found it on Joost. What made it initially interesting was, from the wikipedia article, the graphics were done with 1993 hardware, including the Amiga, for the first season anyways.

i've been really enjoying the series although i did not expect it to be so bad! the dialog is laughable in parts and the endless costumes are even more reliably laughable. as is the consistency of the humainoid/bipedal aliens. the very intro speech is inconsistent and campy. the name a specific race by referring to the 'human-minbari war' which is terrible sentence construction when spoken because if you've never heard of the minbari, you would have a hard time parsing those words run together. the rest of the intro simply refers to 'aliens'. it ends with "The name of the place.... Babylon 5". 'the place' sounds like someone who would next say 'whats the name a this here place??'.

the character development is all over the map. the russian lt. cmdr. Ivanova (Nova, get it?) is supposed to be rigid like a brick, strict russian military upbringing and such. in the episode i just watched she has a speech riddled with sarcasm and familiarism with the captain about knitting socks and pacing to and fro instead of going on a mission. there is a lot of good acting. that makes this show. the commander, the ambassadors, are very good actors. the minbari and narn ambassadors make me think of a broadway play when they speak. they make me think they've been acting a long time and have much experience.

I remember in '98 about the 'story arc', the story arc made it great. one five-year long story. well ive seen 5 or 6 episodes now and i can say its got as much story arc as budweiser commercials. there is one or two references to an earlier episode, maybe, and thats it.

Its a great way to watch something new (to me), while waiting for Battlestar Galactica to begin at the end of the month. So say we all!