(Although, I wonder if the different writer is why Londo and G'Kar felt a little out of step to me in that episode compared to the overall consistency of the rest of the season, to an extent - not in a way that I could really put my finger on specifically, more like both of them felt a little like a throwback to their somewhat less developed characterization to me. I didn't connect it to the writer, I just thought that every show has slightly inconsistent episodes; but also, I didn't realize that JMS has been writing literally *all* of them, and I could see those two, who both have incredibly specific character voices, being hard to capture.)
"Day of the Dead" felt at the time and still feels to me like a blip in the voice of the show, which since I knew nothing from Neil Gaiman in 1998—it's more than possible that this episode was my first encounter with his work—I just chalked up to the difference in writers after more than two straight seasons of unfiltered JMS. Without getting into the retrospective problematics, I would say now that it feels like a Gaiman episode because he really is not a writer of science fiction; he found a way to niche a fantastic conceit into a show which was at home to it because B5 has always had an admixture of fantasy and horror in its sci-fi and then he was on his own ground. I still have no idea how he wound up guest-writing the episode. The mid-fifth season is a weird place for it to happen. In high school, I hoped fruitlessly for Harlan Ellison to do one before the show wound down.
(All of that said, agreed that Lochley deserved some actual characterization and she definitely gets it. I should be clear that I don't hate this episode! It's just a really odd object.)
she's probably the only one of his many dead who could have given him a positive experience - well, maybe Urza as well
I would have been completely down for that. ("Knives" left an impact crater in my adolescent id.)
(The one relatively low-spoiler vid I had watched a couple of times turned out to be too revealing once I got deeper into the series and knew enough about the clips I was seeing to put them in context ...)
no subject
"Day of the Dead" felt at the time and still feels to me like a blip in the voice of the show, which since I knew nothing from Neil Gaiman in 1998—it's more than possible that this episode was my first encounter with his work—I just chalked up to the difference in writers after more than two straight seasons of unfiltered JMS. Without getting into the retrospective problematics, I would say now that it feels like a Gaiman episode because he really is not a writer of science fiction; he found a way to niche a fantastic conceit into a show which was at home to it because B5 has always had an admixture of fantasy and horror in its sci-fi and then he was on his own ground. I still have no idea how he wound up guest-writing the episode. The mid-fifth season is a weird place for it to happen. In high school, I hoped fruitlessly for Harlan Ellison to do one before the show wound down.
(All of that said, agreed that Lochley deserved some actual characterization and she definitely gets it. I should be clear that I don't hate this episode! It's just a really odd object.)
she's probably the only one of his many dead who could have given him a positive experience - well, maybe Urza as well
I would have been completely down for that. ("Knives" left an impact crater in my adolescent id.)
(The one relatively low-spoiler vid I had watched a couple of times turned out to be too revealing once I got deeper into the series and knew enough about the clips I was seeing to put them in context ...)
That feels unfair!