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2004-12-29 Entry: "The Crazy Plan"

I'm going to at least finish this disk of the Jetsons... in "Elroy's Pal" Elroy is obsessed with the Nimbus The Great TV show. When he finds out there's a contest to win a visit from Nimbus, but the contest involves telling them why you love Moonies breakfast cereal.

And in "Test Pilot" both Cogswell and Spacely invent an indestructible jacket, and there's a race to test it to get it to market first. As such, Spacely needs a test pilot, and George, after having a physical, thinks he's shortly going to die, so he accepts the position.

Then I watched an hour of Bond marathon on Spike TV - I knew I'd be out for quite a few hours, so didn't want to get into anything seriously. I can't even remember what Bond film it was now... Moonraker I think, but it was one of those unmemorable Roger Moore films.

Anyway, I watched that, went hour for a few hours, came home, watched about an hour of A View To A Kill while I made phone calls, and then decided to actually follow through on my really stupid plan to watch all of the Babylon 5 storyline now I actually own it. So, even though I watched it fairly recently, I'm back with "The Gathering" and then tomorrow it'll be on to Season 1.

To be fair, I could skip to season 4 fairly safely as I'd watched up to the end of 3 at some point (at least, if my list of unwatched disks is anything to go by... I don't remember when I did it though). But I'm feeling crazy, and I desperately want to get even further behind on my viewing by spending a couple of weeks watching episodes I've already seen... so if you don't want to read about B5, you can probably skim the next few weeks in the hope I get bored and watch something else now and again...

Anyway, The Gathering - the introduction (and subsequent disappearance) of Lyta Alexander, the funny looking Delenn, having to put up with Laurell Takashima and whoever the doctor is before they're conveniently replaced, and the crazyness that a skin-topical poison can somehow penetrate Kosh's encounter suit. But enough with the bad things... what works?

Well, Michael O'Hare is already up to speed as Geoffrey Sinclair, and the Michael Garibaldi / Londo Mollari dynamic is already in full force here. It's presented in fullscreen, so there's no nasty cropping of CGI scenes (but then, there aren't all that many CGI scenes in it). G'Kar is pretty manipulative, which shows just how far he comes in the course of the series. And they throw in the back-story between Delenn and Sinclair, which is obviously the big hook for the series.

Minor plot hole - Delenn claims she's interested in meeting a Vorlon... but hasn't she already met one? I'll need to check this as I watch (but it's probably in In The Beginning, so it'll take me a while to get to and I'll probably have forgotten by then!). Now we need to see if there are any other holes (other than the one in my mind...).

Oh, and Sinclair's mysterious girlfriend number 1 is here... I'm fairly sure he gains a different one once the series gets going...