The Gathering

[Joseph DeMartino]

...but our power went out in the middle of my post!

That's why God made uninterruptable power supplies. I have almost everything on UPSes and power conditioners. Saves the electronics losing programming every time there is a power hiccup, or getting cut off in mid-post.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Lousy_Dodgers]

I do wonder why Valen did not warn Kosh not to call him by name when he first saw Sinclair on B5. It surprised me that the Minbari impersonator did not react to Kosh's greeting...at least what we saw in Lyta's mind that is.

 

[vacantlook]

Kosh did not speak "Entil'zha Valen" when he saw Sinclair for the first time. He thought it, as perceived by Lyta. Kosh and the rest of the Vorlons' voice is the quasi-Vader wheezing chime sound. In "The Gathering" when we hear "Entil'zha Valen" from Kosh, there is no wheezing chimes; he's not speaking, he's thinking.

 

[Lousy_Dodgers]

Kosh did not speak "Entil'zha Valen" when he saw Sinclair for the first time. He thought it, as perceived by Lyta. Kosh and the rest of the Vorlons' voice is the quasi-Vader wheezing chime sound. In "The Gathering" when we hear "Entil'zha Valen" from Kosh, there is no wheezing chimes; he's not speaking, he's thinking.

Ah, well that would explain that but it was not entirely clear..to me at least. I had thought that maybe the reason we did not hear the chimes was that it was from Kosh's PoV or something along those lines.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Kosh did not speak "Entil'zha Valen"...

Exactly right. In fact, when they shot the pilot Kosh had no spoken lines at all. The reference to Kosh's "thought balloon" had been cut at an earlier script stage because JMS thought it might be too much of a spoiler (since he expect to go right into production on the series and the first episode to debut the week after the pilot aired.) So no voice actor was even cast for the Kosh role at that point.

Ardwright Chamberlain only recorded the line years later when TNT provided the funds to re-edit the film, complete, correct, and add to the CGI and restore deleted scenes, etc. Since the revised version of The Gathering was to air on the same night as In the Beginning, just a couple of weeks before the start of S5, the spoiler issue no longer seemed like such a big deal.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Lousy_Dodgers]

Kosh did not speak "Entil'zha Valen"...

Exactly right. In fact, when they shot the pilot Kosh had no spoken lines at all. The reference to Kosh's "thought balloon" had been cut at an earlier script stage because JMS thought it might be too much of a spoiler (since he expect to go right into production on the series and the first episode to debut the week after the pilot aired.) So no voice actor was even cast for the Kosh role at that point.

Ardwright Chamberlain only recorded the line years later when TNT provided the funds to re-edit the film, complete, correct, and add to the CGI and restore deleted scenes, etc. Since the revised version of The Gathering was to air on the same night as In the Beginning, just a couple of weeks before the start of S5, the spoiler issue no longer seemed like such a big deal.

Regards,

Joe

Ah ok, I see how that fits in now. I did not see The Gathering until that same night In the Beginning first aired...so my whole view of the pilot was biased by not having seen it in its original form.

 

[GKarsEye]

They should've gotten the narrator from The Wonder Years to voice that part.

"And it was when I saw Valen as a human the I realised nothing would ever be the same again."
*cue lame nostalgic 60s ex-hippie rock*

 

[Lousy_Dodgers]

Another strange part of watching The Gathering only after seeing much of the series was spotting Morden working in CNC. Ok...well just Ed Wasser but still...

 

[hypatia]

I saw B5 out of order, like you did. When I finally got to see Ed Wasser in the command center my first thought was "oh, WOW! What a plot twist, Morden used to work on B5..."

Then I realized, no... no... same actor, different character.

I like how they do that in science fiction (reuse guest stars). It lets the actor work a range of parts and it lets us see some fine guest stars more than once.

 

[Sindatur]

I saw B5 out of order, like you did. When I finally got to see Ed Wasser in the command center my first thought was "oh, WOW! What a plot twist, Morden used to work on B5..."

Then I realized, no... no... same actor, different character.

I like how they do that in science fiction (reuse guest stars). It lets the actor work a range of parts and it lets us see some fine guest stars more than once.

Hehe, even some us who watched the Pilot, and then the series from Ep1 were surprised when we saw the Gathering on TNT and noticed "Morden" was working in CandC. The Gathering aired a full year before Midnight on the Firing Line, so I didn't notice when I saw Morden for the first time in Season , that I had seen the actor on the show before.

 

[hypatia]

And his part in the Gathering was so tiny. Yes, he'd be easy to miss/forget.

Not so, Morden.

 

[PillowRock]

I like how they do that in science fiction (reuse guest stars). It lets the actor work a range of parts and it lets us see some fine guest stars more than once.

Just for the record, it's not just SF shows that do that. If you start actually looking at the guest credits for a show such as (for example) Law & Order you'll see a ton of people with multiple different guest credits. (For example, Michael O'Hare has 2 different characrter credits on L&O.)

Although, in SF shows such as B5 it's easier to reuse people without having it be visually obvious (even to constant viewers) because you can bury the actors' faces in different prosthetic make-ups for each character.

 

[Londos6]

I've also seen that SF shows tend to do it a lot with actors that can wear the prosthetics without problems, since many actors DO have problems with that. Hence the actors in B5 who played multiple roles as Drazi, Narn, Brakiri, etc.

 

[vacantlook]

Londos6 now has me thinking of poor Virginia Hey and her kidney damage. I love making actors look cool and alien for tv and movies, but it's ashame some of it can cause so much damage.

 

[PillowRock]

Well, in the specific case of B5, they have specifically said that their "B5 alien repitory(sp?) company" wasdone that way in large part to save money.

Apparently a nontrivial cost is the up front part of the process where they have to do full head casts of the actors etc. in order to start making the prosthetics. Using the same several actors all of the time for the various Narn, Drazi, Markab, etc. parts meant that they didn't have to keep making new head casts of new actors.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Apparently a nontrivial cost is the up front part of the process where they have to do full head casts of the actors etc. in order to start making the prosthetics. Using the same several actors all of the time for the various Narn, Drazi, Markab, etc. parts meant that they didn't have to keep making new head casts of new actors.

This is true of both detail prosthetic done in individual felixble parts, and for baic pull-over the head masks which were used for background aliens and non-speaking Drazi, Markabs, etc. So several of the crew also had head casts made, and in some shots a rep company actor who would normally be a "speaking" Markab might turn up as a background Drazi in an episode that had lots of those aliens. (You'll notice that except for episodes featuring the league, there weren't many that featured a lot of different aliens in speaking roles, because these added time and costs for makeup and costumes, even if they were mostly alterations and applications of existing items. Those which did have lots of aliens tended to have fewer FX shots to compensate.

Regards,

Joe