Babylon 5: TKO

[Dînadan]

If Doctor Who gets divided between Classic and NuWho, then NuWho could get a turn.

Does it get worse than "Love and Monsters" or "Fear Her?" Maybe it does; I haven't seen all the later seasons.

Kill the Moon was pretty dire. Capaldi has had some poor episodes, although not quite on LaM or FH level; but I believe Chuck really likes Capaldi’s Doctor so it could come down to a judgement call of an ep that’s not all that terrible in and of itself, but because it wastes Capaldi’s talents it gets dragged down in his eyes below the other bad stuff.

[Wargriffin]

Bad justice league episodes

Hawk and Dove is usually up there due to a rather in-personal plot, WW written like her parody ALWAYS angry self and well

Hank and Don as always are victims of The Writer unable to give them any nuance outside of Whatever political agenda they want them to represent and aren't portrayed as particular powerful despite MM recommending them as the ONLY backup... plus all they do is bicker and snark at each other... Yes I know Joss Whedon made that a character filler trait but you got to have more to it.

Why is it that Gail Simone and the Kesels are seemingly the only people who try to write Hawk and Dove as people instead of their powers? What is the ****ing disconnect here?

[RobbyB1982]

When I was going through B5 for the first time, I had heard chuck rag on TKO in his other reviews, and was pretty excited to watch the worst B5 episode. But, as far as bad episodes go, it's not terrible. It's just boring as hell. There's gotta be some season 5 episode that beats TKO in sheer awfulness.

The trick there is that while basically all the episodes involved in the Byron plot kind of stunk... it was a bunch of episodes and they were all tied together. You can't really pluck any single one of them out to be THE bad one.

They all suffered the same problem. That it was supposed to be an Ivonova story with Leetah on the side. Claudia Christian leaving the series meant that not only was that plot now only on one lead character instead of two, but ALSO that Markus was now gone, and that Lochley was introduced super late into the series and (through no fault of the actress) just couldn't carry the weight of being the new character tossed in at the end of the series to replace an old one, that hadn't been through all the big events. (Ezri on DS9 as a straight up last season replacement for Dax trying to fill basically the same role runs into similar issues.)

Yes, with Sheriden's promotion someone else probably needed to come in anyway, but Lochley should have been a counterpoint to Ivonova, not a replacement. So basically you've lost two main characters (and JMS has said he would have kept Markus alive if he knew Claudia was going to leave), and have a weaker replacement, trying to fill out a plotline that just went a bit too long.

On top of all that you add the fact they'd rushed some things in order to wrap up in season 4 so most of the other leads didn't really have character arcs left.

It was a compound of problems... but they were problems that hit that entire first half of the season, not just one episode.

[Durandal_1707]

Does it get worse than "Love and Monsters" or "Fear Her?" Maybe it does; I haven't seen all the later seasons.

Nothing gets worse than "Love and Monsters." Ever. The only thing I've seen since that could even compete with LaM is that one episode of The Orville with the blue date-rapey guy in it. Nothing from NuWho Season 3 on.

Capaldi's first season stumbled a bit (although I don't get the "Kill the Moon" hate at all—it was scientifically implausible, sure, but this is Doctor Who we're talking about. I thought it was enjoyable enough :shrug:), but I loved his other two seasons pretty much unreservedly. You might say that that was just because Capaldi was, y'know, born to play the role, but I dunno, there were some real classics in there (hello, "Heaven Sent"). And the 12/Bill/Nardole/Missy quartet was a real treat to watch every time the characters were on screen.

[G-Man]

Chuck has already done BOTH "Fear Her" and "Love and Monsters." I don't remember if "Love and Monsters" was a Christmas special, though. Just click on "Doctor Who" on the front page and you will see the list includes both (although neither one is available at the moment, presumably due to the hosting transition).

[FaxModem1]

Capaldi's first season stumbled a bit (although I don't get the "Kill the Moon" hate at all—it was scientifically implausible, sure, but this is Doctor Who we're talking about. I thought it was enjoyable enough :shrug:), but I loved his other two seasons pretty much unreservedly. You might say that that was just because Capaldi was, y'know, born to play the role, but I dunno, there were some real classics in there (hello, "Heaven Sent"). And the 12/Bill/Nardole/Missy quartet was a real treat to watch every time the characters were on screen.

The problem with 'Kill the Moon' is, essentially, once you get past the stupidity of the science, is that the issue the plot revolves around makes the Doctor look callous and Clara look like an idiot. The episode's premise is that the moon is causing huge tidal waves, earthquakes, and other problems, on Earth, already killing millions of people. The astronauts have come here to help the human race by blowing up the moon so that they won't be killed off as a species. Eventually, they discover that the moon is an egg . And this brings up the issue of the episode, is one 'innocent' life worth the entire human race? The Doctor says 'Not my problem', and leaves Clara and the kid to die with the astronauts. Clara then puts the issue to a vote for the entire human race on whether they want to sacrifice their own lives for the equivalent of a giant chicken. And here is the issue, we're supposed to side with Clara here. But, there's been no establishment of how smart the space chicken is supposed to be, and how this thing hatching is a good thing, especially as newborn creatures are usually hungry, and the only nearby buffet is the planet Earth.

Even accepting that the space chicken is wonderful and everything, we're talking about the survival of the human race versus one life. The Trolley Problem writ large, and the episode takes a position, and cheats to make sure that the one life is always the correct choice. Apparently human survival is less important than a very large, non-sentient space creature. And the already countless dead don't matter.

This, combined with the stupid things like Mexico having a mining program on the moon but nobody having the capability to send a spaceflight to the moon, giant germs, and the Doctor acting smug about humans nearly being wiped out leaves a rather bad taste in everyone's mouths.

[Durandal_1707]

Yeah, but he's from the future, he knows it's gonna be fine (no matter what he says; the Doctor lies), wibbly wobbly timey wimey. As Donna would say, I'm not bovvered.

We should probably get this thread back on topic to B5 though

[CrypticMirror]

Watching this, it hit me. TKO has a near identical plot to... Power Punch 2. The NES game that was meant to be the sequel to Punch-Out! but was so awful Nintendo pulled the plug on it.

Near identical to a movie called "Arena" too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_(1989_film)
A movie about a human getting into an alien fightclub that doesn't welcome humans. It also starred Claudia Christian too.
Here is the trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHKnU-YkOE4

(also starring Gul Dukat and Quark from DS9)

[Durandal_1707]

On the one hand—stupid looking plot.

On the other hand—Alaimo, Shimerman, and Claudia Christian?

Tough call.

[Aotrs Commander]

Yeah, I have to agree with Chuck.

Infection I have a bit of a soft spot for (being one of the early episodes, I watched it time and again during the initial run, because at that time we recorded everything on the telly). TKO... Stoof out to me as being A Bit Paff. The B plot did nothing for teenage me, not a great deal for adult me and the main plot was just... So utterly pointless (I'm not a fan of boxing/wrestling or martial arts as a sport, so I wouldn't have been that bothered even if it didn't suck).

But, as someone noted above, at least it isn't offensively stupid or anything, like many of the other worst episodes...