I just started watching Babylon 5. I'm like 6 episodes in and I've already seen a Nazis bad allegory, a "poor black man was experimented on by the government, and also is the only guy that the hot blonde has had any romantic interest in" episode, and a "humans saying that Earth should be for humans are evil scum maggots" episode.
I hear that the series gets good and has a cool story arc, but I'm not willing to put up with much more of this. I'm just waiting for the "men are bad" episode and then they'll pretty much have the '90s leftist propaganda bases covered.
Pay very close attention to which episodes were actually written by the lead writer, and which were not. The ones that were not are the worst, most propaganda driven episodes in the whole show.
I'm almost done with season 2 on a first time watch. Once I realised who the subversives were (and reading their bios lead you to the worst episodes of trek, and how those episodes could have been even worse if the author had gotten away with it) I started ignoring anything not written by Straczynski.
I think it's a damn good show so far, but those "filler" eps were absolutely hardcore propaganda. It was the one where "parental rights are a bad thing!" that got me looking into who was actually writing this trash, and why was it so clearly bad in every way compared to the episode before it.
For what it's worth, B5 S1 has always been notoriously terrible even leaving the propaganda aside. It quickly gets better in S2, although it's been some time since I've seen the show in its entirety.
S2-S4 in particular are what make it a glorious ride.
It's kind of funny how part of the reason for the faster and more dramatic pacing is because at one juncture they really thought they were going to get cancelled soon, so Straczynski really wanted to advance the story and get it going.
Related:
I just started watching Babylon 5. I'm like 6 episodes in and I've already seen a Nazis bad allegory, a "poor black man was experimented on by the government, and also is the only guy that the hot blonde has had any romantic interest in" episode, and a "humans saying that Earth should be for humans are evil scum maggots" episode.
I hear that the series gets good and has a cool story arc, but I'm not willing to put up with much more of this. I'm just waiting for the "men are bad" episode and then they'll pretty much have the '90s leftist propaganda bases covered.
Pay very close attention to which episodes were actually written by the lead writer, and which were not. The ones that were not are the worst, most propaganda driven episodes in the whole show.
I'm almost done with season 2 on a first time watch. Once I realised who the subversives were (and reading their bios lead you to the worst episodes of trek, and how those episodes could have been even worse if the author had gotten away with it) I started ignoring anything not written by Straczynski.
I think it's a damn good show so far, but those "filler" eps were absolutely hardcore propaganda. It was the one where "parental rights are a bad thing!" that got me looking into who was actually writing this trash, and why was it so clearly bad in every way compared to the episode before it.
That's a good suggestion; I might just start doing that. I'm not interested in wasting any more time with propaganda masquerading as sci-fi.
For what it's worth, B5 S1 has always been notoriously terrible even leaving the propaganda aside. It quickly gets better in S2, although it's been some time since I've seen the show in its entirety.
S2-S4 in particular are what make it a glorious ride.
It's kind of funny how part of the reason for the faster and more dramatic pacing is because at one juncture they really thought they were going to get cancelled soon, so Straczynski really wanted to advance the story and get it going.