Babylon 5: A Distant Star

[Darth Wedgius]

Given that the Cortez is an exploration ship, I wonder if JMS was trying to drive home a distinction about pre-DS9 Star Trek and B5. Or maybe he was just fleshing out his world.

[Wargriffin]

Given that the Cortez is an exploration ship, I wonder if JMS was trying to drive home a distinction about pre-DS9 Star Trek and B5. Or maybe he was just fleshing out his world.

Eh just fleshing it out seems more likely

[FaxModem1]

Not really a comment on your response. But a question. Where does your avatar image come from? He reminds me of the Silver Shroud from Fallout 4. Thanks.

The avatar comes from the film Lost Horizon. My sig quote comes from the book it's based on.

What's a shame is that you ask me this in the A Distant Star thread, as opposed to The Geometry of Shadows thread, as the Technomages are pretty much up to the same thing as the monastery of Shangri-La.

[Wargriffin]

I honestly thought you were about to make a Blackbeard joke when building up to the Name to be remembered bit

I mean yeah Cortez works too

but no one remembers poor Maynard... the guy that hunted down and killed Blackbeard... and then got stiffed on the bounty and wasn't even promoted for it

[cdrood]

I didn't really mind Keffer. Of course I didn't know about the behind the scenes stuff. His best episode was probably Gropos, but I think that highlights the problem others have mentioned here. He doesn't have a lot of reason to interact with the command staff, regularly.

However, if he were still around in later seasons, there would have been no reason for Garibaldi to go out in that Star Fury in "Z'ha'dum". Admittedly, it was already a stretch for the Security Chief to be out there in the first place.

They also didn't really use the fighters much once the White Stars came into use. Maybe they could have had him disappear after Season 2 and come back as a Ranger.

[Tanan]

This is a complete aside, but I have to point out that Chuck's attempt at pronouncing "bagna cauda" made me chuckle.

[Yukaphile]

How do you pronounce it?

[Mickey_Rat15]

It's shocking how many people dislike this guy. Does everyone need to have a super deep backstory? Hell, he seems more like any secondary TNG or DS9 character to me. Like Muniz. What do we REALLY know about him? Nothing. He just helped the Chief recover from his time in prison, and then, he dies. That's it. I dunno, I still don't see the problem.

The key point is that Keffer doesn't naturally fit in with anyone else. Munoz from DS9 is an engineer, so of course it's natural that he and O'Brien get along. Lou Welsh is in Security, so of course he would have conversations with Garibaldi all the time. Corwin is in CnC, so of course he will have conversations and deliver exposition to Sheridan, Ivanova, or Sinclair.

The Earth command staff characters have reasons to talk to each other, for whatever reason.

Keffer has no one to talk to. He's a new character, made from whole cloth, who only seems to talk to guest characters. If we saw him handing in reports to Ivanova, or talking to Garibaldi about arresting one of his pilots for starting a fight, or whatever, or being healed after a space battle by Dr. Franklin, sure. But we don't get that. Keffer is in his own little world, doing nothing, and it only pays off in the season finale.

But let's run with that. Keep Keffer in only pilot related things. Do we get to see him grow, like Talia does in telepath related stories? No. Do we see how his actions affect the status quo, like we do with the command staff or the ambassadors? Not until his death. Keffer had to die to matter to the story, or as a character. That's why people have a problem with him.

Take Confessions and Lamentations. Keffer could have a scene, talking to Ivanova, about seeing all those Markab bodies on the ship he recovers and brings back to B5, and how it will haunt him for the rest of his days. We don't get that. He figures out that it's full of dead people, but that could have been done by Ivanova, Garibaldi, Lou Walsh, Corwin, or by a guest actor. There's very little narrative meat for us to get attached to. So at best we get apathy about him. He's just there, doing a few minutes, meh.

And without him, we could have a line saying that Zeta squadron found the ship full of dead bodies in one line, and spend more time on characters or stories we know are going somewhere.

From what I had heard was that JMS resented being compelled to create Keffer and purposefully did not develop him because of disinterest and a bit of rebellion and killed him off in a metaplot relevent way as soon as he could.

[Jonathan101]

Only now seeing that I called this Babylon 4 instead of 5.

Edited.

[Tanan]

How Do you pronounce?

I'm not entirely sure how to write this, but Chuck pronounced it kinda like "baghna clada".
I think the easiest way would be for me to link a video of an italian chef pronouncing the name: it's time-stamped right before he says the name https://youtu.be/5JRz1NDZ_N8?t=25