Back in 1995 I watched the first few episodes of this show and then never watched it again. Others have said how wonderful it was and I had the opportunity to watch the series again, nearly twenty years later. I was 29 when the show premiered, so I had no childhood gush to be nostalgic about.
The first 3 or 4 episodes were painful to watch again. Lt. West's storyline is so boring, melodramatic and overacted--you cringe at the thought that the show will revolve around him. The lines and acting are bad. I had to force myself to watch some episodes. Others carried your attention better. Towards the end, I watched the end, but not with any particular enthusiasm.
Now, Babylon 5 had similar bad acting and some bad dialogue. It improved with time, except where Jeff Conaway was involved (bleah!). Like Babylon 5 there were ideas about this world that were interesting that could carry your interest. However, Babylon 5 also had a lot of interesting characters, and very interesting plots, especially their longer arcs. And the writing was sometimes wonderful. S:AAB doesn't weigh in well on these areas. I only found the two in-vitro characters, truly interesting. After the initial episodes, the In-Vitro and AI story lines really carry the show. They provide the most interesting story lines in mid-season. Then the story lines return more to the war, and frankly the quality of the stories rollercoasters.
The alien war, well it kinda sucks, and didn't make sense at times. I liked the references back to historic war maneuvers and battles. But, for instance, after many land and space battles over months, with 100's of thousands of infantry fighting... no one had ever taken the helmet of a Chig off and taken a photo of what they looked like. It was NEVER the intent of the military to capture one, to study the biology, language, etc. It was unimportant to the war effort. Of course, this is ridiculous, but they had to put forward this ridiculous concept to setup a storyline late in the season. Even though I seem to recall lots of scenes where they had the opportunity to look at one. I believe the helmet comes off one, but there is smoke and so much darkness you can't see anything.
One annoyance... the show is very dark. No, I mean the lighting. Maybe it was the video source I watched, but there were scenes that I couldn't figure out what I was looking at. I'm guessing they were trying to save money.
As a fan of soundtracks, the music for the show threw me. It seemed overly dramatic and bombastic all the time. Very militant, yet inappropriate for the action on the screen. It almost seemed to be written for the concept of the show, but not scored for what was happening on screen. Again, it just always seemed mismatched.
So, yes some interesting ideas along the way, but unless this style of show, acting, script clicks for you--you're gonna probably have to force yourself through the too-many bad episodes to see the pieces that are interesting.
The first 3 or 4 episodes were painful to watch again. Lt. West's storyline is so boring, melodramatic and overacted--you cringe at the thought that the show will revolve around him. The lines and acting are bad. I had to force myself to watch some episodes. Others carried your attention better. Towards the end, I watched the end, but not with any particular enthusiasm.
Now, Babylon 5 had similar bad acting and some bad dialogue. It improved with time, except where Jeff Conaway was involved (bleah!). Like Babylon 5 there were ideas about this world that were interesting that could carry your interest. However, Babylon 5 also had a lot of interesting characters, and very interesting plots, especially their longer arcs. And the writing was sometimes wonderful. S:AAB doesn't weigh in well on these areas. I only found the two in-vitro characters, truly interesting. After the initial episodes, the In-Vitro and AI story lines really carry the show. They provide the most interesting story lines in mid-season. Then the story lines return more to the war, and frankly the quality of the stories rollercoasters.
The alien war, well it kinda sucks, and didn't make sense at times. I liked the references back to historic war maneuvers and battles. But, for instance, after many land and space battles over months, with 100's of thousands of infantry fighting... no one had ever taken the helmet of a Chig off and taken a photo of what they looked like. It was NEVER the intent of the military to capture one, to study the biology, language, etc. It was unimportant to the war effort. Of course, this is ridiculous, but they had to put forward this ridiculous concept to setup a storyline late in the season. Even though I seem to recall lots of scenes where they had the opportunity to look at one. I believe the helmet comes off one, but there is smoke and so much darkness you can't see anything.
One annoyance... the show is very dark. No, I mean the lighting. Maybe it was the video source I watched, but there were scenes that I couldn't figure out what I was looking at. I'm guessing they were trying to save money.
As a fan of soundtracks, the music for the show threw me. It seemed overly dramatic and bombastic all the time. Very militant, yet inappropriate for the action on the screen. It almost seemed to be written for the concept of the show, but not scored for what was happening on screen. Again, it just always seemed mismatched.
So, yes some interesting ideas along the way, but unless this style of show, acting, script clicks for you--you're gonna probably have to force yourself through the too-many bad episodes to see the pieces that are interesting.