Netflix's Castlevania

I watched the first episode of the new Netflix animated series based on the Castlevania games.

I hated it.

I had a great rant all saved up to tell you about it too, and then Brian Niemeier went and made all the same brilliant points in this stellar episode of Geek Gab:

Go give it a listen. 

Babylon 5: Diplomats, Hustlers, Entrepreneurs, and Wanderers

There's one thing you have to have if you want a story to catch an audience, and that's interesting characters.

How many shows have you watched where the characters are paper thin cutouts of people rather than actual persons? Movies can get away with this a little more, as shorter overall run time and higher action/special effects budgets can limit the boredom. But people want stories about people, even when they're anthropomorphic cars.

This is a two-fold responsibility in the visual medium of television and film. You need writers who can create fully orbed characters and actors who can bring them to life.

Now, not all the characters on Babylon 5 are that interesting (sorry, Warren)

But a great many are. All of the main cast and several supporting characters, such as Bester and Neroon, are given well-rounded motivations and room to grow over the show's five season run.

Better yet, several characters are placed in direct opposition to one another, giving us the basis for some fantastic story arcs. Whether the evolving relationship between ambassadors Londo and G'Kar, the noir-style thriller of Bester vs Garibaldi, or the meta-conflict of....well, watch the show and find out.

If you've already seen the show, who's your favorite character and who's your favorite opposing pair?

Babylon 5: The Closed Circle

Say what you want about J. Michael Straczynski, he understands story structure.

There were always questions about the way Babylon 5 was conceived as a story. The networks weren't sure that a television audience would have the patience for a tale that asks you to hang in there for five seasons to see the payoff. In the age of binge watching Netflix shows, it seems that this is still an active question.

By creating a story framework with definite events mapped out, Straczynski freed up the writers to hang fun, self contained stories off of it and made it possible to add touches of foreshadowing all throughout the show as well.

One episode about halfway through season one of Babylon 5 literally shows you something that will happen in season five. It's completely without context, adds a sense of urgency and foreboding to earlier seasons, and is extremely cathartic in the season five payoff. It rewards careful watching and re-watching.

That sound you hear is Chechov's Gun chambering. It's a trope for a reason and when handled well, it is emotionally satisfying for the watcher (or reader).

(It also allows for time travel plots that are handled in a far more believable way than some more recent shows have done. *coughcoughDCcoughcough*)

I love it. I wish more shows were made in this fashion.

What are some other shows or writers that do structure well, either within episodes or over series?

Babylon 5: Understanding is a Three Edged Sword

Good dialogue is something I really struggle with as a writer, but Babylon 5 has it in spades.

Comedic one-liners: "I don't care if they agreed to wear bunny suits and sing the Hallelujah Chorus."

Grim threats: "Rest assured that while your body may one day be found, it could never be identified from what was left."

Deep questions: "You're getting dressed in the morning, You're pulling on your pants. Do you zip and then fasten or fasten and then zip?"

Clarifications: "Slight difference in how you pronounce. Za-thras. Za-thras. Za-thras. You are seeing?"

And then there's the music critiques:

Seriously, show creator J. Michael Straczynski does some of his best work with small frame dialogues between two characters. Season 3 has an episode where two characters are trapped in an elevator and their interaction is tense, funny, and mesmerizing.

Please post some of your favorite lines or scenes in the comments. I'd love to discuss them.

Babylon 5: Our Last, Best Hope

There's a tendency in a lot of science fiction television to gear everything toward the dark and dystopian. Look at shows like Black Mirror, Dark Matter, Into the Badlands, and the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Even Firefly, with all its humor and a likable cast, is set in a dystopia complete with both a totalitarian government AND environmental disaster.

Now, these settings are fun to play around in. But for my money, fiction needs hope to entertain over the long haul. Characters, and the audience experiencing the narrative through them, have to believe that their actions matter and that they can make the world better. How can this be done if the Alliance will implacably expand its reach, the Cylons are inescapable because we are the Cylons, and we can never, ever atone for our past?

In Babylon 5, by contrast, the future is a place of possibility and wonder, but to make peace a reality takes constant work from all sides. And hope is the fuel of such action. Characters change and grow because they begin to believe that they can.

This comes through in the very idea of the Babylon Project.

The series plays with this theme of hope in every season. Hope that peace can be maintained, hope that old wounds can heal, that relationships can be restored, that life can have meaning, that sacrifice is not without purpose, that our inheritors will find a better world than the one we were born into.

Part of this comes through in the show's handling of religion. Unlike the subversion or nullification of religion in the other shows, faith in the transcendent is a good thing in the Bab-5 universe. While some characters are shown to distort or misuse religion, legitimate belief is shown to be a source of strength and hope. And this lends motivation for action.

If hope is illusory, then characters can stoically suffer, party in antinomian denial, or kill themselves. If the wheel always keeps spinning, then the best you can hope for is to never see the shake-up in your lifetime. Every action of every character is futile, because nothing lasts.

But, if hope has real grounding beyond the material and if actions actually matter, then hope becomes the driving force behind the scenes and characters can dream and aspire.

In Babylon 5, characters find hope and share it with the viewer. And, to quote one such character, "Hope is all we have."

Babylon 5 is What Sci-Fi is Missing (or My Yearly Pilgrimage to a Place That Doesn't Exist)

When I ask people about their favorite science fiction shows, I see a lot of wistful looks for one show in particular. People get angry or depressed, or angry and then depressed, and go on and on for hours about how they wish they could go back and watch it again for the first time. The halls of the internet echo with complaints that there just isn't more.

Of course they're talking about Firefly.

When I ask them if they've watch other sci-fi shows, the usual grab bag of geek pop culture shows up: Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr. Who, etc.

Almost never mentioned is my favorite show, Babylon 5. I consider this show to be one of the best space operas of all time.

I'm honestly not sure why it doesn't get more credit. The show has everything you could want: epic space battles (with some actual tactics; missile interceptors and capital ships say what?), mysterious alien races, ancient prophesies, political intrigue, romance, loss, redemption, telepaths, sword fights, and time travel.

And it does something almost no show ever gets to do: it told a complete story, with a definite beginning, middle, and end. (DS9 is the closest thing I've ever seen to it, and it ran too long and ended up with too many filler episodes.)

This past week, I began my yearly re-watch through Babylon 5. As I go through the seasons, I want to post some thoughts about why I enjoy the show so much and maybe shed a little light on a quiet classic of television.

 I'll start tomorrow with the biggest advantage Babylon 5 has over almost anything else on television today: hope.

Wonder Woman

(This review may contain spoilers)

Expectations: I had been excited for this movie from the moment Diana Prince first showed up in Batman vs Superman. As I stated previously, Gal Gadot was a bright spot in that film and her performance there gave me hope that this movie would be a much better outing for the DC film franchise. I was not disappointed.