Babylon 5 - 3x21 "Shadow Dancing" - Battle of Sector 83
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- čas přidán 25. 08. 2014
- The big battle between the Alliance of Light and the Shadows in Sector 83, the first major confrontation between these forces. The FX centerpiece of the penultimate episode Season 3 of B5.
I do not own any of this material, and this excerpt is intended as fair use under the owner's copyright. - Zábava
*B5 Rewatch: 3x21 "Shadow Dancing"*
All the Ships fight All the Ships! Franklin fights himself! Delenn drops that damned snow globe again! Z MINUS 2 DAYS!
One of the best episodes of the series, highlighted by the biggest space battle to date, as well as a gut-stabbed Franklin arguing with himself whether he deserves to live. Fun stuff.
Full review: hill-kleerup.org/blog/2014/08/26/b5-rewatch-3x21-shadow-dancing.html
#babylon5 #b5 #nb
+Dave Hill Thank you for uploading this!
Dave Hill I hated the cutting away to Franklin back on Babylon 5. I was screaming, " I don't care if he lives or dies, could we get back to the battle, please!"😀
victory is pay in not in money but in lives. how many we lost.
I love it when Sheridan said break and attack
2:17 I find this to be one of the more chilling shots of the series. The Minbari war cruiser has long been considered the pinnacle of military might of the younger races; we can all remember earlier this season when Delenn showed up with three of them plus her White Star to save B5 from a numerically superior Earth fleet. And here, the Shadows just *shred* a Sharlin like it was made of paper.
Rest in Peace Delenn (Mira Furlan)
I loved her
Never realised she died. RIP.
We are the universe made manifest trying to understand itself!
@@mikecrownshaw1646
That was deep👍
We are star stuff...
That shot of the Narn coming in clutch (knowing the status of their race and fleet) and STILL being able to commit to the cause.
Specially knowing that was the last known active Narn warship it was very satisfacting see them exacting a bit of payback on the Shadows
@@sparrowlt this cruiser took down 2 Shadow warships, more than the rest of the Narn fleet combined.
And than participated in attack on Centauri Prime, killing unknown but very high number of Centauri civilians
I'm impressed with how well the cgi has held up over time. One of my favourite shows as a kid.
If I recall correctly all the CGI for B5 was made on banks of Amiga 2000s!
Am not surprised at all. At that time, in the 90s, CGI was still a young technology and they had to prove it's value.
Means, they actually put in a lot of human work to make sure that it was used right and looked as good as reasonably possible.
These days, CGI is often marked by over-reliance on the technology itself and is just .... sloppy.
In terms of the plot and character depth B5 is still unbeatable, definitely the best show. And Shadows are as scary as hell, so the visual part is great too.
one of the shows creators said at the start they were tired of battles where ships just go straight at each other. that's why B5 always has someone actually giving orders, making a plan of battle and working as a team.
Some of the really early stuff was also *really* inspired by how the nature of space combat would be. You can see them really focusing on it with the Star Furies, Raiders, and Babylon 5. Also they had to punch in the coordinates manually to get ships to move around in the environment, instead of how we can just drag them around these days. Made the animators really think about how 3D space works.
@@OpenMawProductions I was thinking the same thing about the somewhat 3D design of the battle. Even now most space shows have the battles in 2D. Even Start Trek suffered from this problem.
Though they did subvert that to excellent effect in Wrath of Khan.
An future scifi battles followed this battles lead. Makin for a whole multiverse full of epic space battles
@@robertagu5533 Star Citizen with all its faults shows the reality of 3d combat especially when you start using celestial and other bodies
Glad to see the sole surviving Narn-Cruiser get some revenge.
Actually according to G'Kar about 10 Narn cruisers survived, this one just took exile in B5. I assume the others did so in Minbar.
@@podemosurss8316 I think the other ships survived but were left inoperative or adrift..the G'Tok was the last Narn operational cruiser.. there was also some other ships.. i think they mention a Dreadnough wich was never seen onscreen but there is shots arround (looks quite cool)
@@sparrowlt Well, I'm taking that from a conversation between G'Kar and the captain of the G'Tok (Na'Fal?), he says that "about 10 Narn warships have survived, a mixture between dreadnoughts and cruisers", and he later mentions that in adition to that, the Centauri had been in a hurry so most Narn ships were only left inoperative instead of fully destroyed. On seasons 4 and 5 we actually see a few Narn warships (besides the G'Tok), on the chapters covering the space battle near Mars and the Centauri war.
I was so happy to see the long suffering Narns finally getting a chance to dish out some payback, I practically screamed "YEAH!" when the Shadow ship exploded.
@@dongilleo9743 Ditto.
Also, hearing the normally terrifying Shadow Ship Scream sound more like a panicked wail of pain? Was SO satisfying.
Love seeing that Vree saucer just wrecking Shadow fighters left and right. Antimatter cannons FTW
That Vree anti-matter "shower" weapon is god damn deadly.... Shredded those shadow "fighters" like they weren't even there...
Anti-Matter Shredder is its technical name
Shadows never are.
Oh man, I remember coming home from school hoping to see a battle. The CGI wasnt top notch but it didnt matter, you got so caught up in the story all these battles would be such a treat.
The show is 26 years old so of course when compared to today the CGI isn't great however Babylon 5 was a head of it's time in CGI back in 1996 when this season was released it was better than most other SCIFI shows at that time like star trek and it did space battles right and it had half their budget
2:25 Narn “Gorash VII - never forget!”
One of the things I love about Babylon 5 is that the show understands 3 dimensional space combat. Look at how the Narns and the Rangers are attacking a Shadow craft from below and above from the Shadows point of view.
1987MartinT When that Narn cruiser made that kill shot on a Shadow ship, I actually screamed, "YEAH!!!" Great to see the poor, long suffering Narn finally dish out some payback.
that, and seeing parts of destroyed ships causing a hazard
Yeah it was something that Star Trek didn't understand for a long time
Khan has left the chat.
@@Lightingwarrior Dominion war battles did a decent job showing that.
considering the special effects available, pretty impressive.
The look in both their eyes at the end... yes, they "won", but more than the victory they see how much it cost them.
Sheridan and his Alliance won, but paid dearly for that victory. It is sayed later in the episode that although they surprised the Shadows and outnumbered them, they lost at least 3 of their own ships for every destroyed Shadow ship.
In many other shows there would have been some cheering that they "won" the battle. But B5 shows that there is no real winners in winning the battle.
This is why later on Sheridan tries to find the other First Ones, who were the only ones Ble to go toe to toe
@@SantomPh
That was the goal initially when they started to search for them earlier this season. Pretty soon after this battle it became obvious that there aren't enough First Ones left to win this war due to military might. Younger races managing to enlist remaining First Ones against both Vorlons and Shadows were I opening experience for them and they pretty soon opened a dialogue with the younger races.
..of course First Ones wiping out a Vorlon planet killer was a nice bonus.
Not that bad, in Halo humans lost 10 ships for 1 enemy ship.
Although this is how the story is told, I think something is overlooked. The Shadows fled as soon as those numbers were about to be reversed. Had this battle gone on for even a couple of more minutes, you would have seen the Shadows defense completely shatter and their losses would have mounted quickly. This is how you know somebody or something is also running the fleet operations for the Shadows. The ships all make the decision to flee all at once. Somebody had to have made that order.
That episode did a great job to convey that "Yes we can win but at what cost" mentality.
We could fight them to stale mates we could even win but we will loose so much in doing so.
I love how chaotic the shot at 1.27 is, with ships in different orientations and courses.
Deleted scene (after the battle is over)
Sheridan: Pak'ma'ra! Errr... Grave detail...
The Drazi always fought well, looks like they held their own here. This battle scene was well filmed, agree with the 3 dimensional comments by everyone.
The drazi field almost entirely a light escort fleet. That they could even account for themselves in a battle like let alone holding a flank largely on their own is damn impressive.
I didn't really look but in the confusion of a furball battle was there one fighter that shot at an enemy, missed but hit one further away? Or like the WW-II gun camera of the fighter shooting at an enemy but then a friendly fighter flies into the bullet stream and gets hit?
They were medium class ships, but were good enough to bombard the Centauri homeworld to bits later.
Calling them medium is a bittttttttttt of a stretch, most weren't much bigger than large shuttles lol
@@Deepingmind ship classification is due to hardware rather than size. The Sunhawks look simple but pack a punch and can carry a lot more than most.
what i like is that A. space is 3 dimensional and they use it. 2 space debris causes damage.
Yes, B5's space battles set some new standards for space battles.
Dave Hill Beautifully filmed, with some dialog at first, then none. Just perfect music and a visual wild melee as the two sides go at each other. None of this "fire phasers" and then standing around waiting to get shot back at.
B5 Was a show a head of its time
man, that Vree ship was shredding the shadow fighters
Borkborkwoof That was another of my favorite moments; to see each and every race working together, to see everyone getting their shots in.
@Zerebrat Eightyseven Somebody has to survive to take the credit and make the movie featuring themselves.
@Zerebrat Eightyseven the biggest non Minbari ship that gets damaged is a Brakhiri ship. Unlike the Sharlin it survives, too. Brakhiri make good metal.
I always cheer whenever that Vree ship unleashes its barrage.
It's so nice to see some variety in warship weapons and tactics. Like when the First Ones obliterated the Vorlon planet killer.
2:25 This one's for Gorash 7!
2:37 and this one's for Kosh!
2:37 in Will Smith Voice Did you shoot this green shit at me??
Imagine how humiliated Shadows felt. It`s like professional MMA fighter was beaten by amateur teenager
If 100 teenagers attacked single MMA fighter simultaneously then that MMA fighter would get defeated. Lot of teenagers would die, but still.
No Shadows, this isn't a 1000 year flashback, you're losing to the Mimbari again.
Minbari were just a bit better than Brakhiri in this particular battle. Drazi and Vree killed it
@@insertanynameyouwant5311 yup. Their cruisers looked like big targets mostly.
@@insertanynameyouwant5311 I dunno, those white stars really pull the rest along. Not to mention the Minbari cruiser was the only thing to tank a hit from the Shadow murder beam.
Awesome space battle from one of the coolest, beautifl, smart and mystical sci-fi ever made! Special effects are great for a 1995 series and I love the colors of Mimbari ships and The White Star. ^^
The holographic "bridge" used by the Minbari is way cool! Plus, it allows for multiple commanders to watch different parts of the battle.
Gotta love how the whole "Shadow War" was a hissy fit between two Elder Species over how the younger races should run the galaxy.
The nostalgia hard on is real with this. Sheridan and the others working their butts off to find cooperation with hostile aliens to fight elder hostile aliens. I do give the Drazi a shoutout as their fighters have the balls to chase down a battlecrab with their pewpew weapons. And the iconic Vree Saucer unleashing their antimatter weapons...
I loved this show.. way before it's time.. here in Norway it went very early in the morning at Saturdays or very late at night on week days... Really ruined my sleep
All that without one single person shouting "attack pattern omega" for like the 50,000th time the line was used!
Or any other Greek letter maneuver. 😂
I find it a very powerful moment when the minbari capital ship Sheridan redirected to save the drazi is immediately blown to pieces. It compounds the sense of loss you get from that final shot of the fleet surrounded by it's own wreckage.
Edit: Just noticed the detail that the white stars aren't bothering to use their secondary weapons, just the main beam, nice bit of continuity.
Later edit: Just noticed a detail in the retreat: Shadow fighters can jump...
Also compounded by the White Stars using their smaller pulse cannons to take out fleeing Shadow fighters. Ships using the appropriate weapons for the targets... way ahead of its time this show.
I'd forgotten that the Shadow's ships never opened jumpgates, they just sort of shimmered off into hyperspace.
I don't think we ever got to see an Omega class destroyer fire on a Shadow vessel throughout the entire series.
At that point their was only one omega class ship on their side and it was on the run from Earth Force.
The Shadows being the parents of the younger races were probably proud of them after this battle
I guess the abusive father perspective would be "The finally stood up for themselves! They couldn't do that without me toughening them up!"
Actually they were pissed. They wanted the young races to fight each other not them.
They got very pissy over symbiosis it would seem
@@wrath2501 than why where they openly atacking unless the Brakire SP? Where just not fighting enough for their liking.
Yes one of my fave B5 scenes
Quentin Sciascia One of the best shots ever, at the end of the battle, to see a Shadow ship bleeding out and dying, while the rest are retreating, was so gratifying.
It is so exciting to see the combined fleet go after the Shadow fleet.
Of course seeing the good guys winning is great and all, but shadow ships just slicing through even minbari cruisers is just so cool.
Exactly at 3:25... That augmented bass drum in the soundtrack made all the difference in showing the impact of the battle!
Great stuff right here
Well it seems that the Shadows got a big old black eye that day!!!!!!!!!!!!! A real good win for Sharaden and friends!!!!!!!! An excellent episode that WAS!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks FOR showing IT!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think this is my favourite Babylon 5 battle
A shame no earth alliance ship was in the Shadow war. Would be nice to see how the new ones would perform.
same way they performed against white stars, they'd get sliced n diced
Talk about a knife fight in a phone booth
Spectacular!
My fave parts are when the g'quan cruiser unloads into the shadow battle cruiser and when the vree rips through the fighters. Wish those two ship classes got more action time.
Her voice literally put me to sleep back when I remembered the light and the shadows. I miss such times! Peace knowing u only had to close your eyes to find to find the ones u wur looking 4
Rewatching it, looks to me like the Shadows could have won, but decided it would be to costly. They lost 2 of the big ones to how many alliance ships? Also this fight validates the shadow philosophy. Its the first big fight the White Stars show up in iirc, so they'd already forced the younger races to develop via war.
Wasn't the White Star fleet constructed with Vorlon technology?
@@mattlemmons6647 4 months late but yes. It was. That's not the point. The Shadow's philosophy is that war and conflict are what fuels growth and evolution. The Vorlons believed stability and order were better. However the show actually proves the Shadows correct as it was through conflict and war that they saw the development of newer, more advanced ships like the Whitestars. And it was also through war and conflict that the races themselves grew and came together and supported one another allowing them to defeat a race millions of years more advanced.
They drove off the Shadows. It cost them terribly, but they did it.
Love the tactics and ships. Just wish it was brighter and easier to see.
"It would seem that you are being outcompeted"
We wouldn't see anything like this for the most part till Mass Effect 3.
It's OK if you think that this is old looking, video quality is basically VHS, sound always good to excellent IMHO but really, if, like me, you waited to see this episode for 1 WHOLE FACKIN WEEK back in the day, then it still raises the hairs on the back of your neck...
A VERY MUCH UNDER RATERD TV SERIES IT WAS MORE LIKE SCFI OPERA THEY SHOULD BRING IT BACK ON TV
Brakiri, Drazi, Minbari, Uhm...shoot. forgot the name of the Roswellian Grey's with the Saucers...ah! The Tzymm I think? No that's the saucer name...
While the commanding isn't.... Great (for space battles like this a fleet command like homeworld or nlders game is needed), I love the final touch where there's no cheering or celebration, just the commanders realising how much they lost just to win. I think the only better touch would be a scene of damage control/medical crews responding, and emergency rescue ships launching to reach survivors on the wrecks.
Everyone else break and attack
It was always creepy that they curled up like a spider when killed
A) I hope the reboot has space battles as amazing as this
B) It would be amazing if the reboot had greater variety of ships in the space battles. Imagine if when Sheridan ordered the carrier groups to engage, it showed actual carriers, instead of more of the same ships.
Instead of fighting the Shadow vessels individually it would be better to have a group of ships firing on a single Shadow vessel ... It's the only way they've been able to destroy them
There was some of that. If you noticed two sets of White Stars ganging up on shadow vessels. There were some other clips of more than one ship firing on each shadow vessel.
Amen Mira
why haven't you posted the destruction of Za ha dum? in my opinion it was a BRILLIANT episode, especially with Bester.
I never really liked how that one went down. All those poor people who would never have their lives just because Lita wanted to spite 1 asshole
@@InfernosReaper the planet was deserted. Big deal
@@geoffwilliams4478 But the refugees went to Centauri Prime..
Good thing the Shadows didn't use their entropy cloud weapon.
Is Babylon 5 streaming anywhere for free? I haven’t been able to find it anywhere unless it’s paid by episode.
I don't see any free streaming at the moment. It's main home presently is on HBO Max.
@@DaveHill47 ah ok thanks.
From a bug to another bugs: hi there. We are one
Жертвенный атака, большая цена была дана победа..
Notice how they ignore this series but attempt to ressurect just about everything else?
what are you talking about? Are you saying they not trying to create a B5 mastered edition? If so I guess you didn't read up about how old the cg is, and how much it would cost to try to even update all of it, and even if they did, the cg was rather bad (even at that time) that it wouldn't appear right on blu-ray.
@@lorenexus4917 - Exactly. I liked Babylon 5 at the time but the effects were always pretty poor because the show was produced on a shoe string budget. Something like Deep Space Nine or TNG has stood the test of time far, far better.
It's far easier to remaster TNG etc because each episode cost $1.5m back in the late 80's. TNG filmed with expensive models and effects, the sets were better, the matte shots were more realistic and they filmed on location far more than Babylon. Conversely, the effects for the 1st season of Babylon were done on a network of 32 bit Amiga computers. Later on Babylon used Pentiums but the effects were still not great.
TNG only needed sympathetic updates. Babylon on the other hand, would need all the effects redone from scratch.
@@lorenexus4917 I don't think this is about a blu ray remaster. There has been a tendency of "rebooting" some SciFi series like Battlestar Galactica, for example.
@@Timberwolf69 It might be a rights issue.
Pretty sure JMS said he wouldn't allow it.
Amazing and still unique effects, all done in a low budget stringing home PCs together to boost computing power.
486 CPUs using Linux clustering and Linux rendering software. Current clusters using the new versions with the same number of machines have millions of times more power. Networks are now fiber where the top speed was 10 Mbits/sec back in the day. 64 bit multiprocessors where it was 32 bit single cores. I worked at a place where we did things like this. Weeks of render time at 525 resolution. I was a hardware/network tech and kept the clusters running. Mechanical hard drive clusters to keep the systems fed and store the results. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Heathen shadow vessels
Orginal Cluster FK
From the title I was expecting to hear Andy Gibb in the background
With all that technology, why no shields?
Part of the reason was the lack of budget. Babylon 5's producers couldn't really afford to implement it. Lore wise very few species used shields as it was considered a high-level tech. I'm not even sure the Vorlons and Shadows used shields anymore because they grew their ships instead of constructing them. Their vessels were organic, alive and covered with an adaptive, biological armor.
@@JH24821the vorlons did use shields occasionally.
Lucky they got the highly military trained strategic officer Delain with a whole life of military experience to be there and give orders
Millan Tronni Delenn served at one of the highest levels of Minbari government. One doesn't get to that level without some training in military matters, if not front-line experience. Also it's Sheridan giving the orders to the fleet, not her. But you already knew that, and I'm pretty sure you're just shit-posting.
Naaa, i just express my opinion that Delain was a such boring role character in a sarcastic way, you know, there is always someone that you feel should be removed from a film/show,
Like that guy carrying a ring in a chain around his neck for all 12 hours of the Lord of the Rings
Or the guy with a scar on his forehead in the Harry Potter movies.
Delenn is/was a member of the gray counsel and trained to lead from a very young age.
She was the one who ordered the extermination of the human race and also the one how cancels it
So no training? he's using for the first time that system in an actual battle? Kind of stupid
Not captioned...not watching. Blocking channel!
Star Trek Deep Space Nine Space Battles were better.
Except DS9 forgot their ships have shields, re-used old battle scenes, and introduced starfighters in a universe that made no sense for them, but they had to shamelessly copy B5 :)
@OriginalTharios Perhaps, but this is science "fiction" here. Babylon 5 had starfighters in-universe right from day 1. DS9 just suddenly threw them in out of nowhere. DS9 could have just used their existing runabouts in a starfighter-role. DS9 could have made some freaking effort to introduce starfighters into universe lore. Maybe they're remote controlled, or thanks to the Fed's expertise in AI (Cmdr. Data), the fighters are unmanned drones. But nope, just another square peg shamelessly stolen from B5, to try and squeeze into DS9's round holes.
Yeah as much as a Trek fan that I am, DS9 was a poor Trek series. yes better then the garbage of Discovery and miles better then the JJ film re-barfs. But B-5 is by far a much better series then DS9 ever hoped to be....
It's not, putting aside that Star Trek use models instead of CG. They didn't just re-use most of their combat, they get to re-use those scene because most of their battle are not plot relevant... DS9 battle are usually disconnect to the plot or characters, also the less said about their 'logistic', the better. Where as B5's battle tended to be crucial to plot development and therefore each major battle are tailored to specific episodes. B5 can't reuse even if they wanted to. Logistics also matters a lot more in B5.
@Ronnie Smith Actually, Michael J. Straczinski wrote DS9 as well, he just got ripped off.
it looks so trash
Everything about this show sucked.
Really? I loved it personally, but I do understand if shows like Babylon 5 isn't everyone's cup of tea...
@@DanielBrongers I blame the production company, Warner Brothers. They had a gem in their midst and they just buried it under a pile of shit. So much wasted potential.
Really? The acting, the story lines...everything sucked? I'm going to disagree, and just say that you're simply trying to sound "edgy" or intellectual (and not doing a very good job of either).
Babylon 5 was one of the best shows to ever air on television, hands-down.
@@arekpetrosian4965 B5 should have been the 90s BSG-2004, dark, gritty, ruthless and violent! But it came out tame, campy, teenagerish, broody. Your kind uncles science fiction world. Nothing space operatic, or white knuckles in execution. It's an afterthought at best in my Sci-Fi memories.
@@thomaslowe4774 Well, you're entitled to your opinion, of course. And I'm entitled to disagree with that opinion. :D
"Tame, campy, teenagerish, broody"? Not by a long shot, in my mind. It was deep, intelligent and sometimes a bit dark, but there was always hope, always the light at the end of the tunnel, the message that our better natures could and should prevail.
If that's campy, then give me more of that. If that's teenagerish, then may I be young forever.
And I'm not sure what sort of "space opera" you're looking for, so I'll leave that alone, but I think if you're saying there was nothing "white knuckle" about the show, I'd suggest that perhaps you missed a lot of episodes, or have forgotten too many of them.
Regardless, I have two things to make clear: Your viewpoint is your own, and not every show is going to tick every box for every viewer. Your opinion is no less valid than mine, because it's your opinion, based on your tastes and likes, just as mine is. Second thing: BSG-2004 was a freakin' awesome show, and I truly loved it. I had deep reservations when they announced a reboot of the original, and I was so happy to be wrong.