Gary N. Mengle said:
That said, give me B5 any day. Yeah, sometimes it stumbled, but it was a far more ambitious and better thought-out show than DS9 in my opinion. It raised the bar for TV sci-fi - something I don't think DS9 did.
OK, this gets to the heart of the matter. I both really agree with regards to B5 and really disagree on DS9.
B5 was far more ambitious. Its a thinking man's space opera, written for all intents and purposes by one man with a massive story to tell and plenty of things to say about human nature and history and historical conflict {mind you, not always sophisticated things, but for me that's one of the chief pleasures of scifi: tackling issues and themes that the artists who work in more "sophisticated" genres/modes deem unworthy}.
B5 also had some scenes that were, for me unrivalled in their power: the bombing-back-into-the-Stone-Age of the Narn homeworld where the POV zoomed into the view plate where Londo watched what he wrought with a look of barely concealed agony. That's the finest, most dramatic use of FX I've ever seen. That's a perfect example of what FX shots should be used for. Or the scene/speech where G'Kar is stripped of his ambassadorship, or Lord Refa being killed by G'Kar's partisans beneath the Karee chambers while the POV kept cutting back to the rollicking Baptist church service on the station --a scene that's sublime and ridiculous at the same time. Delenn facing G'Kar and explaing how they essentially sacrificed his people...
But...
There's a shoddiness to a lot of it: the acting {with a few standout exceptions}, most of the "everyday" dialogue, the depictions of relationships --my favorite was between Talia and Ivannova since you had to infer most of it-- even the plotting --not the central arc, but the rest. Cheesy. Like you get used to in scifi.
This is where DS9 raised the bar, and far higher IMHO than TNG. The characters, including the bit-regulars, were exceptionally written. They grew, they acted like real human beings, by the end they were far away for the stereotypical wooden and/or 2D characters that scifi has been lousy with for years. DS9 could almost be faulted for turning its back on scifi; it was a character-driven drama, even during the height of the Dominion War arc. There was, an overall polish to the show that B5 lacked.
So let me ask another question, a semi-hijack of my own thread. What do you look for in a scifi show? B5 is excellent science fiction, but it has all the faults that traditionally goes with the genre. DS9 is far less ambitious, even when it was aping B5, but it has a level of writing, of characterization, and overall dramatic sophistication {the sheer number and type of well done relationships on DS9 astounds me} that pretty far ahead of B5's.
For me, its still damn close. I love B5. Its scope, its ideas, the risks it took.... but I can't get around the fact I think DS9 is more successful as drama.
Hmmm, I still feel bad. Time to change my wallpaper back to a Minbari cruiser.
