New fan

[KoshN]

I rewatched the Legend of the Rangers last night and was struck once again by how it seems impossible for Joe Straczynski to write a bad story.

In Legend of the Rangers, IMHO, JMS succeeded in writing a 99% bad story, However, the reason he went that direction at all was because Sci-Fi (US, now Syfy) and Warner Brothers made it impossible to continue Crusade. Warner Brothers would not let Sci-Fi (part of Universal-Vivendi) have ownership of part of Crusade. Also, Sci-Fi would not continue Crusade without owning part of the show.

Part of the reason for Legend of the Rangers being a bad story was the resulf of budget limitations (typical, tightwad Sci-Fi Original Movie budget), and Warner Brothers losing, destroying or selling much of the Babylon 5/Crusade resources that had been built up over the years of producing Babylon 5 and Crusade, e.g. CGI resources, props, sets, wardrobe, etc. When those resources are no longer available, they have to be re-constructed, and that had to come out of the meager Sci-Fi Original TV Movie budget. Were those resources still available, all that time and money could have been saved. If that money had been saved, maybe JMS could have afforded his gunnery chair and avoided the VR punching/kicking, conniption fit woman in space thing.

Also, when you don't have the original people (crew) working on the project, you introduce the possibility of making errors, IF somebody isn't watching to make sure the new project is consistent with the past episodes and movies of Babylon 5 and Crusade, and this led to the screw-up of the backwards flying Minbari Nial fighters, flying aerodynamically instead of flying with the viewing window and gun ports forward (remember Lennier lying on his stomach in a Nial when he was assigned to the White Star fleet, and he recorded the Centauri Vorchan cruisers firing on Alliance ships?). In Legend of the Rangers, Duck Dodger must've been flying the Nials and had the silly things stuck in reverse.

 

[Teep Trick]

Where were those little Minbari fighters? I missed them when watching... but yeah that would be obvious. I liked the crazy little teardrop design and the way they flew. I also missed, while watching the series that they were called Nials. But then that's why I like rewatching it over again, there's always a ton of new stuff to rediscover. And Warner Brothers is just atrocious. What an awful, awful company. They've screwed up sooo many projects. From album to movie rereleases and everything in-between. And don't even get me started on the nonsensically-named Swhy Fwhy....

 

[Elric]

I really used to watch all the Star Trek shows indiscriminately, I was too big a fan to be overly critical, I have to admit. I remember being interested to find out that in a Middle Eastern dialect, Feringi means 'thief'. I wonder if that was on purpose, considering their mercenary, wheeling - dealing nature?

I've not posted here for a while but I do lurk now and again so hi to everyone old and new. Saw this post and thought I'd chime in as I recently discovered the (probable) origins of the word in the most unlikely of places. The following is taken from the description of the title track of the album Farewell Ferengistan by Banco de Gaia (not his best work but check out his earlier stuff if you feel so inclined).

Ferengi is probably an old Arabic name for European traders, or for Westerners in general. It is also pronounced 'Feringhee' and similarly. The name is likely derived from the Arabic word 'Faranj' or 'Ifranj' which is a corruption of the Germanic 'Frank', or alternatively from the Indo-European word meaning 'alien' or 'foreigner'. From it comes the word 'Varangian', which was the Byzantine Greek name for the Vikings, and foreigners are still referred to as 'Farang' in Thailand and other parts of South-east Asia.

Ferrengistan was the name used by inhabitants of remote parts of central Asia for the land over the mountains where white people came from. It later came to have connotations of greed, materialism and untrustworthiness.

And that was probably more than you wanted to know about it but thought it was worth sharing and certainly a good choice of word for the race in ST

 

[KoshN]

Where were those little Minbari fighters? I missed them when watching... but yeah that would be obvious.

They were seen overhead when the Liandra was taking off for the first time. I'll check the DVD for the exact time (minutes:seconds). They were seen in several sequences from 32:18-32:41. Look to the upper right. They're closest at the end, 32:41. It IS obvious, but wasn't obvious to the CGI people who were new to Babylon 5, and no B5 veteran caught it. Fanwank: It was the Duck Dodgers squadron.


BTW, the best part of the Rangers pilot was from 20:51-20:55, when Martel hits his head offscreen when Dulann told him "....Tannier was given command of the Valen today." That was a well written, funny exchange.