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EpDis: The Legend of the Rangers

The Legend of the Rangers

  • A -- Excellent

    Votes: 4 10.0%

  • B -- Good

    Votes: 8 20.0%

  • C -- Average

    Votes: 18 45.0%

  • D -- Poor

    Votes: 9 22.5%

  • F -- Failure

    Votes: 1 2.5%
  • Total voters
    40
fisheggs said:
This was a "D" from me, mainly because I expected much more than was given, saved only because of G'Kar ( Andreas). While I recall some roots on the "never retreat" idiocy in the episode on "terror',...
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Season 5 - "Learning Curve"
 
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Babylon5fan07 said:
Can someone explain to me the difference on the Ranger movies. I haven't seen Legend of the Rangers yet but I'm trying to figure out what the difference is on the title Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers: To Live and Die in Starlight which is shown at imdb.com. Is there a difference or are their 2 movies?
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There's only one Rangers movie. 'Legend of the Rangers' would have been the title of the whole series, if it had gone to series, 'To Live and Die in Starlight' was the actual installment, since it would have served as the pilot episode.
 
Thank You for clarifying that for me because I've been seeing people rating 'To Live and Die in Starlight' seperately from 'Legend of the Rangers' earlier in this thread. Even though I have already seen the series already a couple years ago I'm waiting until I finish the series again on my own before I see Legend of the Rangers.. my wife and I are in season 1 while I myself am in the middle of the 3rd season. Probably by next month sometime I will see the Legend which then I'll review it.

Alex
 
It comforts me to know that many others hated the weapons system as much as I did. I did not belong to any B5 message boards when it came out but that element just bugged me to no end. It just seemed like an excuse to have a woman punching, kicking, and otherwise showing herself off. While other shows with weak plots need to do such things to attract viewers, it seemed very un-B5 like.
 
Well, if what I recall hearing is accurate:

Originally she would have been seated with a kind of virtual screen come up, attached to her hands I guess, and she would guide the weapons that way. That actually would make sense. But the idea proved to be too expensive to film. So I think this was his "second idea".

The sad part is I recall his posts in his moderated board, and he was very excited about the idea of someone finally showing the audience just how the weapons are aimed, or something.

But yea, it turned out laughable. There's just no other word for it, for me, other than "laughable". :eek:
 
hypatia said:
Well, if what I recall hearing is accurate:

Originally she would have been seated with a kind of virtual screen come up, attached to her hands I guess, and she would guide the weapons that way. That actually would make sense. But the idea proved to be too expensive to film. So I think this was his "second idea".

The sad part is I recall his posts in his moderated board, and he was very excited about the idea of someone finally showing the audience just how the weapons are aimed, or something.
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> I've been a B5 fan for about 10 years or so but only recently got to see
> Legend of the Rangers. I'd heard about some of the problems which
> surrounded the production and one thing I read that left me curious was
> that the style of the weapons room (for lack of better words) was
> influenced by financial constraints.
>
> I've looked through some old posts and couldn't see any mention of this
> so I was wondering if it's true? And if it is the case I was hoping you
> could give me an idea of how the weapons room was intended to look. I've
> always thought it was pretty unique for a live action show and it seems
> like it wouldn't be out of place in some manga.
>

No, just the opposite. The traditional way these things are done is
to simply push a button and the ship fires. To create a zero-g
environment where a person is suspended in the center of a completely
CGI 3D environment was hideously costly and difficult, but I wanted to
try something a bit different.

<snipped the unrelated bit about World War Z>

jms
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How's that for a misleading answer? Swing and a miss! He didn't even get any wood on that ball.


I remember JMS saying that his original idea (Sarah in a sort of motorized chair that dropped into a virtual environment and operated sort of like the belly gunner in a B-17.) was too costly and that they went with Sarah doing wirework instead as their replacement idea, but I can't find the JMS post now, either. I'm looking up by keywords that I know were in the post, and the post just is not there now. It's almost as if somebody deleted it.

I did a search of rastb5m on Google Groups and jmsnews for "wire" and this is the closest thing that turned up in the Rangers production timeframe, and it's not the post I'm looking for.
http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-16261&query=wire
It's a very elaborate production, with everything from pyros to wire works and other stuff, in addition to the usual glut of CGI we tend to do, but so far it's all going quite well.
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But yea, it turned out laughable. There's just no other word for it, for me, other than "laughable". :eek:
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For me, it was/is cringe inducing, like fingernails on the blackboard, i.e. torture. Remember the Pink Panther movie where assassins from all over the world were out to kill Clouseau, and the mad, former Chief Insp. Charles Dreyfus is torturing Dr. Fassbender's daughter (scraping a knight's metal gauntlet on a blackboard. <SCREEEEEEECH!!!>) to get the doomsday weapon formula from the professor? Like that. :eek:

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075066/
 
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I remember JMS saying that his original idea (Sarah in a sort of motorized chair that dropped into a virtual environment and operated sort of like the belly gunner in a B-17.)
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That might have been cool...though I am not sure what was wrong with the whole console approach. It is not as if you are going to aim visually in a space battle anyway when your target is a great distance away.
 
Then there is me. I don't know why they had to have some lame new concept anyway. I always thought weapons should work like so:

Got sensors?
Good, get sensor lock on target.
Press Button.
Have a nice day.
 
Lousy_Dodgers said:
That might have been cool...though I am not sure what was wrong with the whole console approach. It is not as if you are going to aim visually in a space battle anyway when your target is a great distance away.
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He wanted something different, something not the same as "Person pushes button on console and something gets shot." Part of science fiction is imagining what the future technology is going to be like, and showing that.

Also remember that she could touch an area and magnify it, but chances are if it was too far away to see, it was also probably out of weapons range.

The problem with the system as depicted was that it would be exhausting to the weapons officer in a heated battle. "Time out, guys. Our weapons officer's tired." :LOL:

As for not aiming visually in space combat, it did have targeting aids. It wasn't completely manual.

Recoil said:
Then there is me. I don't know why they had to have some lame new concept anyway. I always thought weapons should work like so:

Got sensors?
Good, get sensor lock on target.
Press Button.
Have a nice day.
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Exactly. It seems like this is one area where when they mess with the tried and true formula, they screw it up. With the Excalibur, sometimes they tried to show the details of targeting and firing and it slowed things down and made it look unwieldy in combat. In To Live and Die in Starlight, punching and kicking doesn't look precise enough if you're firing weapons that don't seek (make course corrections in mid flight). The Liandra had pulse weapons that went on a straight line after they were fired.
 
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I do remember that vaguely but I have tried to push that element of the movie into the darkest recesses of my mind. I can understand JMS wanting to do something different than just hitting buttons but I still think it came across as more of an excuse to have a woman jumping about the enjoyment of male viewers. That may not have been JMS's plan but that his how it came across...and I say this as a male viewer myself...if I want that kind of thing, I can find it on any number of other shows.
 
KoshN said:
I remember JMS saying that his original idea (Sarah in a sort of motorized chair that dropped into a virtual environment and operated sort of like the belly gunner in a B-17.) was too costly and that they went with Sarah doing wirework instead as their replacement idea, but I can't find the JMS post now, either. I'm looking up by keywords that I know were in the post, and the post just is not there now. It's almost as if somebody deleted it.[/url]
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That sounds a little paranoid. Might it have been in the B5 magazine? Or in an interview elsewhere? Annoying as it is (really! ), not everything JMS has said in in the JMSnews.com archives. I run into that all the time and then find the source months later.

Anyway, once and for all, here's the actual description transcribed from the script:

[David orders "Weapons, prepare to fire!] Script pages 36-37.

INT. GUNNERY POD
--A round, black space that suddenly LIGHTS UP with the view of surrounding space in a complete 360 display, her seat suspended in the center of it all. (visually it's a cross between a WW2 flying fortress tail gunner, and the circular readouts on the fighters in the Lost in Space feature.)
<snip dialogue>
INT. GUNNERY POD
Sarah's chair and the display swivels with her --
ANGLE - ON HER EYE
reflecting the display and the alien ships...the system tracking the movements of her ehes. She locks on, CLENCHES a fist and
EXT. LIANDRA
The ship's guns FIRE.
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Fast-forward to the mine field. Script page 71-72. David orders Sarah to clear the road.
INT. GUNNERY POD
As Sarah swings around, facing the incoming mines. She FIRES madly, BLASTING the mines as she goes.
EXT. LIANDRA
The weapons FLASH in a blur of movement, BLASTING the mines barely feet from the ship.
INT. GUNNERY POD
Sarah is firing with everything she's got, spinning and firing, spinning and firing, pinpointing and hitting one mine after anothere, fast-fast-fast.
SARAH: (a growing yell)
It becomes a PRIMAL YELL as she scrambles to keep up with it all.
EXT. MINES
They're HIT over and over, EXPLODING into a FIERY CLOUD.
INT. GUNNERY POD
TIGHT on Sarah's eyes, frenzied, half-mad with effort.
EXT. LIANDRA
As if finally COMES THROUGH the cloud of fire which dissipatess at their passing.
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There, okay? Please point out to me anyplace where it's in the script that Sarah punches and kicks. Feel free to wait until the script book comes out and look it up yourself. In the meantime, let me know if you have any other passages you'd like me to transcribe.

Otherwise...maybe this could be put to bed?

Jan
 
See, I didn't necessarily mind the idea of trying something DIFFERENT with weapons --- but it had to be FUNCTIONAL. The old tried-and-true concept of weapons console was functional, but limited. I always wondered how these weapons people locked onto targets that they couldn't see (most weapons consoles had no screens on them in SciFi!)

I think B5 took things to the next level with the Minbari Cruisers "curtain screen" that came down and allowed someone to command a fleet. It had all ships, readouts, and everything else there --- even communications.

I always thought that a weapons console should be like that too. Allowing the weapons officer to see things around him. Then the virtual reality point-and-click might work better. I think this is what JMS was trying for, but when the funds ran out, we got what we got.

Actually, I really think a bridge should be more like Stellar Cartography in Star Trek Generations. EVERYONE on the bridge can see what is around them (similar to the Minbari Cruiser) but this allows weapons to target and aim in a full sphere view, as well as the captain to get a good idea of what is going on around him.
 
Actually, I think the weapons system on the Liandra was kinda interesting. But that scene with Sarah grunting and yelling as she fired off shots at the enemy was a little tacky. ;)
 
Does nobody else think that seeing Myriam Sirois get hot and sweaty doing that makes for some pretty sweet eye-candy? Is that just me? Oh well... :)
 
RMcD said:
Does nobody else think that seeing Myriam Sirois get hot and sweaty doing that makes for some pretty sweet eye-candy? Is that just me? Oh well... :)
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I do think she's pretty, but seeing her hot and sweaty wasn't really a turn on for me. :LOL:
 
RMcD said:
Does nobody else think that seeing Myriam Sirois get hot and sweaty doing that makes for some pretty sweet eye-candy?
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I'd rather have the guy playing David (his hair is just begging for some hands to be in it) or the guy playing Malcom. ...or both. :devil:
 
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