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EpDis: The Gathering

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Chilli said:
Does anyone have ANY clue what he is talking about?
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No, but a big visual anomaly that springs to my mind is the stuntman who doubles for Garibaldi when he gets thrown through the air by an explosion during the fight with the assassin near the end. For a few seconds he has a very full head of blond hair.
 
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I'm not certain of this but I think that in one of the shots looking down on the witness stand, one of the characters is wrong. Either Sinclair is shown instead of Kyle or vice-versa. I think.

Jan
 
I gave this an A because in spite of its flaws it fulfilled its primary function masterfully: namely introducing characters and a story arc that holds your attention strongly enough to make you want to come back to the series.

Some call it too slow in other places whilst still throwing in too much at a new viewer for a pilot, but it was this pacing that made me trust JMS as a writer... I felt like he had all the details he needed in place and would only spend time on something if it turned out to be relevant later (future episodes would prove that many things which initially appear irrelevant or throw away come back around much later).

There is so much mystery in the pilot... how can you walk away from the series if you think the writer actually has a good story to tell.
 
Jan said:
I'm not certain of this but I think that in one of the shots looking down on the witness stand, one of the characters is wrong. Either Sinclair is shown instead of Kyle or vice-versa. I think.

Jan
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YES, that is it. Sinclair is being questioned by G'Kar. The wide shot shows Kyle in the stand. I have seen the Gathering a million times, and I did not notice this. Not once.

Amazing.

54 minutes in on the original version. As I don't yet own the TNT version on DVD, I cannot say where it is on it, or if it even is in it.

Some of the shots around 51 minutes in seem odd too. The backdrop behind Sinclair seems to alter, but that could just be angles fooling me.
 
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Skander said:
(also one of the reason's I'm one of the 6 people who think Starship Troopers is brilliant)
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Hah! I loved Starship Troopers. Of course, I was drunk when I saw it, so a lot of it escapes my memory, but what I recall was great.
 
Okay, two people have come out in open support of "Starship Troopers".

That tears it, this community is awesome!

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As if building a community focused around discussing the finer points of Babylon 5 wasn't enough of a clue for me, I know. :p
 
I've just seen the special edition of "The Gathering" for the first time.I've noticed that JMS has changed the appearance of Kosh's "hand" in the scene when he is poisoned.That's a very good move and now it looks like a real part of a Vorlon body unlike the older version where it looked just like a human hand.
 
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With it looking like a regular human hand, I always thought that that was part of what Lyta says prior to doing the mind pscan: that it's "subjective" in that she'd be seeing herself in Kosh's place. But yeah, then they made the hand glowing and everything for the The Gathering 2.0, so I guess Lyta's subjectivism isn't quite applicapble now.
 
I still can't understand the whole poisoning thing.How can you poison someone who has passed beyond the physical body into a being of pure energy?Or maybe the poison is created to drain life energy from the person and that's why Vorlons are vulnerable.
 
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Truth_Seeker said:
I still can't understand the whole poisoning thing.How can you poison someone who has passed beyond the physical body into a being of pure energy?Or maybe the poison is created to drain life energy from the person and that's why Vorlons are vulnerable.
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Vorlons aren't beings of pure energy. jms confirms that Vorlons have some form of a physical body:

Yes, that's a Vorlon...and there was a physicality to them,
shown by the fact that it could strike out and hit things. It's not a
ghost or anything of that nature, it can be hurt and killed.
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It's interesting that every time I rewatch "The Gathering" I notice something new.I've just seen it and what attracted my attention was that Sinclair and Garibaldi were standing up in the transport carriage in the core of the station and they had some devices similar to the bars of the roller coasters( I was a ride attendant in a park that had some of those during one summer in Wisconsin but I hate riding them:)) to keep them from floating in the low gravity area.Those devices were not used in the series, probably because of the final scene of "The Fall Of Night".

Another thing that I noticed was in the conversation between Sinclair and Delenn when he called her "old friend".This is strange considering that the station just got operational.Have they met before B5 was built?
 
I wonder what Sinclair himself thought of that. Of course they had met before, she made the hole in his mind...
 
maneth said:
I wonder what Sinclair himself thought of that. Of course they had met before, she made the hole in his mind...
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Yes, Maneth, I mean except for the Battle Of The Line when they were not exactly introduced to one another;).I think prior to B5 Sinclair was assigned on the Mars Colony during the food riots(so were Sheridan and Laurel Takashima), but where did he meet Delenn before becoming a CO of B5?
 
A_M_Swallow said:
We do not know how long the two of them had been on Babylon 5.
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I think that B5 was commissioned in 2256 and "The Gathering" took place in 2257.A lot of things may have happened in a year and knowing Delenn's mission, she did her best to become one of Sinclair's closest friends.
 
So, I've started my voyage into Babylon 5 with The Gathering and as promised I'm sharing my thoughts as I go. After 16 years, and on forum such as this, it's possibly redundant but be aware that my post contains spoilers...

The Good
The set up going forward looks 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 very well drawn, in particular I thought that the Londo the Centauri ambassador was fabulous, 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 also appear to be some clever character hooks for the future (Garibaldi and Laurel's loyalty to Sinclair, Londo's gambling problem, Delenn's short temper).

The not-so-good
For me 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 (although as Sindatur pointed out to me on a different thread "JMS didn't do random things often....most things are indeed set up and introduced before they play out" so there may well be things that happened that will become more relevant later).

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.

But, I think that 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 (even today, the moment that the Volon Fleet appears is great). 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, knowing what I know, the interest in wanting to find out more outweighs any negative thoughts, so further up and further in. Anyway these are just my thoughts. Would be interested to see if any of that chimes with others. In any event, bring on Episode 1...
 
Urban Roy said:
But, I think that 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 (even today, the moment that the Volon Fleet appears is great).
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You pinged on exactly what my biggest thought was back when I originally watched "The Gathering" during its original broadcast. The CGI, especially the Vorlon ships, really caught my interest. Having gotten so used to the undynamic spaceship shots from The Next Generation, the movement of ships and the particularly organic-looking unique design of the Vorlon ships, I was particularly impressed. I don't really remember my reaction back then to the acting or anything, though I can't help but to admit how bad some of the guest characters tend to be, especially early on in the show.

I look forward to reading your thoughts as you watch the show. Thanks for posting them!
 
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