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EpDis: The Lost Tales: Over There

Over There

  • A -- Excellent

    Votes: 3 18.8%
  • B -- Good

    Votes: 6 37.5%
  • C -- Average

    Votes: 6 37.5%
  • D -- Poor

    Votes: 1 6.3%
  • F -- Failure

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    16
I gave this one s C because while the production values are still very low (very sparse sets, almost deserted station, etc.), the cast was better, the story was better and the Starfury stuff was very good. The CGI of NYC destruction was disappointing because in the process of the destruction, it seemed that not much was really being destroyed. Didn't seem like the beams were really doing much except creating a heat/wind for Sheridan to react against. The NYC pre-destruction scenes were great, as was the clip of the future Earth-Centauri battle, all of which were over much too quickly.

Not a bad effort, but the budget was obviously threadbare.
 
Just got these two eps, and watched them. While the first one was meh, this one I really liked.

Although I never got Sheridan's animosity for reporters (Clark-era ISN aside, which was completely understandable)--a functioning and informative press is important in a free society, and she was asking pretty harmless questions anyway--I found his somewhat sardonic treatment of the reporter who'd never experienced the effects of quantum-space travel amusing ("was that a new dress?").

And of course the dilemma posed by Galen over what to do with this Prince Vintari (the old "if you could go back in time to kill the boy Adolf Schicklgruber before he became Hitler, would you do it" question--only without the complications of a disrupted timeline, since it's not the past being changed)--the answer he came up with shows what a great and big-hearted man he was.

I don't remember any other mention of this Vintari though, in the Centauri Trilogy or elsewhere (if he was in the Trilogy, I don't remember him)--certainly no mention of him in the Sheridan household with David, although he may not have been there that long. Of course, that would have spoiled this episode since the Trilogy came out first (I think), so probably for the best anyway. A book about his stay there and what he learns (and what Sheridan and Delenn might have learned from him) would be interesting--along with seeing if he reconciles with Emperor Vir Cotto, the man who killed his father Cartagia (and likely saved his life in the process, from the imminent Vorlon attack*). Indeed I've often wondered what the reign of the enlightened Vir would have been like.... Remember Londo's tongue-in-cheek line in "Objects at Rest" that "after I'm gone, the Centaurum will probably find a way to do away with the position of Emperor"? I actually thought that that might be a reform that Vir makes--guiding his people toward something more democratic, or at least not so autocratic (which would have by that time proved conclusively dangerous to the Centauri people, as witness where the last three had led them--with or without keepers). Maybe not (or maybe he tries and gets thwarted, by either Vintari in the "old" timeline or someone else in the "new")....

I gave the episode an A because it was a good character piece for Sheridan, it had Galen in it (who's a favorite character of mine), and had that cool view of New York in the late 2200s. And Vintari, just introduced in the B5 universe, was an intriguing character to speculate about.


*We find Cartagia had a son, something I'd never have guessed--because it makes his indifference to the destruction of his world even more strange.
 
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*We find Cartagia had a son, something I'd never have guessed--because it makes his indifference to the destruction of his world even more strange.

Well, if you realize that Cartagia is a take-off on Caligula, and how Caligula feared any offspring of his would rival his own godhood, it's not so strange.
 
And of course the dilemma posed by Galen over what to do with this Prince Vintari (the old "if you could go back in time to kill the boy Adolf Schicklgruber before he became Hitler, would you do it" question--only without the complications of a disrupted timeline, since it's not the past being changed)--the answer he came up with shows what a great and big-hearted man he was.

.

If time travel were possible, I am not sure it be necessary to kill Hitler. The thing to do would be persuade that art school that rejected him to accept him as a student. While Hitler had had problems before this - a bad relationship with his dictatorial father which probably amounted to being abusive, and an over-protective mother, it was after that he was rejected from art school that Hitler began to go strange.

It is interesting to consider a world where Hitler went to art school, and perhaps go on scrape a living from art - he wasn' that great I understand. Or maybe he would have died in WWI. Now - that would have been the ideal time to kill him if a time traveller wanted to do it. Make it look like he died in battle. Just another dead soldier.
 
As I mentioned in the "Over Here" thread, I just watched both of these for the first time in about ten years. I only watched it once before, when I first got the DVD. I was VERY excited about this DVD, and I have to admit, I was rather disappointed when I watched it, and thus, never watched it again. My usual experience re-watching some of the B5 movies and some of the episodes that aren't my favorites (I hasten to add that my love for B5 overall overshadows everything :p ), is that they always seem much better than I remember them. That's not really the case here, though. I can see why I wasn't crazy about it. This is especially true for the first half ("Over Here"), which is just not my cup of tea (though, as I said in the other thread, I do like the idea of an anthology series a lot). This one is more up my alley, though it's far from my favorite thing in the B5 universe.

Pretty much the ONLY thing I remembered about it is the reference to Dr. Franklin going to explore beyond the rim with G'Kar, because that was painful, but a lovely thing to put in to remember those actors.

What I really like about it is once again the upgraded visuals. The exterior shots of the station and the battle scenes are nice to look at. I like seeing Sheridan again. I like that he's totally Sheridan, with the mannerisms and everything, except older and with a lot less patience for protocol/diplomacy/bullshit :) I do not like how he deals with the reporter, though. It's like Alioth said upthread, there's no reason for him to feel so hostile towards reporters at this point in time. Unlike Alioth, though, I was not particularly amused by that interaction. It seemed kind of cruel and not that Sheridan-like. Also, the way he practices saying "it was an accident." It doesn't seem the most Sheridan thing to assassinate someone and then lie about it being an accident, good reason or not. And of course he ends up NOT doing that, so it does fit with the character in the end, I suppose.

A minor question I have: Prince Vintari says he is third in line for the throne, and Vir is second in line. Who is first in line??
 
So this is definitely the real winner of the LOST TALES. This is also the Tale with real arc implications as you have the Vintari / Sheridan relationship establishment. WOW! what JMS could have done with that. My only real complaint about this one is the vision of Earth. As I've said before elsewhere, and probably here, the visual representation of New York was not what I ever imagined New York of the Babylon 5 Universe looking like - especially given the fact that it looked like a rip-off of so many other Science Fiction film and TV metropolises, Metropolis (1927) excluded. :LOL: That scene aside everything about OVER THERE looks great and I love the story. On another note I will say that the brighter lit docking bay was originally a problem for me, but then I reminded myself that all aspects of Babylon 5 could constantly be upgraded in the logical progression of the history of Babylon 5 as long as the budget allowed for it. :LOL:

On a side note that I was reminded of by Lennier's Tears, I too went many years without revisiting THE LOST TALES. I may have pointed this out before, but there is no reason to not point it out again. I pre-ordered THE LOST TALES originally and maybe watched it three times around the time it came out. It then sat on a shelf for many years. When I did decided to re-watch it I found the DVD no longer worked. I could not get it to load and play on multiple devices including DVD players, Blu-Ray players, laptops, desktops, and an XBOX 360, There was ZERO sign of wear or damage to the disc. It just flat out would work. So if you haven't watched your LOST TALES DVD in a long time you might want to check it out to see that it still loads. I have no idea what could have happened here. I literally have thousands of DVDs and this has happened before, but RARELY will the disc refuse to load on every device I have. I mean the DVD did load on a couple of the devices, but it wouldn't play properly if I made it past the menu. Anyway, just a word of warning to check your DVDs in case you need to find a replacement. You can still find THE LOST TALES DVD for a reasonable price, but that may not be true forever. We can't count on WARNER ARCHIVE re-releasing it like they did with LEGEND OF THE RANGERS TO LIVE AND DIE IN STARLIGHT.
 

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