Season5 DVD Question

[B5Maniac]

Hi everybody,

I am a Babylon5 fan (! ) and have some questions relating to the DVD-set. I have been watching through all the seasons with a buddy of mine over the summer, and now we only have 4 episodes left.

If I remember it correctly...

Episode17: "Movements of Fire And Shadow" ends with the various alien races bombing Centauri Prime, then it fades to credits.

Episode18: "The Fall of Centauri Prime" starts with Mollari, the Regent and the Drakh talking to each other. Mollari saying something like "The Drakh? I know you...".

Now the weird thing is that the Episode18 starts without anything before the introduction. It just goes right to going through 2258 to 2262 with the narration and then the cast-list. Is there not supposed to be something before it, like with all the other episodes?

[Ranger1]

Yeah, episode 17 ended with a cliffhanger, when episode 18 starts it starts with a "previously on Babylon 5", they remind you what happened in the previous episode, right after that the opening title (narration) starts.

Btw welcome to the forum, how do you like B5 so far?

[B5Maniac]

Thanks a lot for the hasty delivered message, Ranger!

I used to watch a lot of Star Trek, but now after almost finishing up Babylon5, I must say, I am never going back!

There is just too much that I love about Babylon5 to write about, but I just love the whole novelistic structure to it. The characters are great, loveable, and they can make mistakes just like real human begins. I also love the balance between drama, politics, and action/space sequences. I love the organic feel everything has, from the acting to the way the ship handles in space. ST just feels robotic in comparison.

And the humour is great too

As I said, too many things to sum up really. Another reason why I find the show to be so brilliant. There are so many details in it. It is complex in nature, yet easy to understand.

[Garibaldi's Hair]

Hi everybody,

I am a Babylon5 fan (! ) and have some questions relating to the DVD-set. I have been watching through all the seasons with a buddy of mine over the summer, and now we only have 4 episodes left.

If I remember it correctly...

Episode17: "Movements of Fire And Shadow" ends with the various alien races bombing Centauri Prime, then it fades to credits.

Episode18: "The Fall of Centauri Prime" starts with Mollari, the Regent and the Drakh talking to each other. Mollari saying something like "The Drakh? I know you...".

Now the weird thing is that the Episode18 starts without anything before the introduction. It just goes right to going through 2258 to 2262 with the narration and then the cast-list. Is there not supposed to be something before it, like with all the other episodes?

DOn't know where you are in the world, but certainly in Region 2 the DVD sets were produced wrongly and TFoCP didn't have the pre-credit sequence at all. These discs were replaced with correct copies by WHV in the UK, but you did obviously need to let them know that you had one and wanted a replacement.

If you are in the UK, I would imagine you can still contact them and get a replacement, correct disc, but I don't have the address immediately to hand. There was, however, a thread on the board (and over at B5tv.com) a while ago now going through this in some detail, so a search may yield the appropriate info. I will have a look on my other PC and see if I can find the address details.

If you aren't in the UK, then you will need to contact your local WHV office, wherever they may be.

[Jan]

I just found the address for the UK as that was where I remember hearing that the incorrect beginning to "The Fall of Centauri Prime" was:

Warner Home Video
Warner House
98 Theobold's Road
London
WC1X 8WB

As I recall, the turnaround time for them to send replacement disks was impressively short.

Good luck!

Jan

[Shabaz]

I have literally been trying for almost three years to get my German region 2 DVDs replaced by Warner Bros Home Video Germany, because of the mastering errors (in Season 1 and 5). Send about 7 e-mails, Called about 20 times about said e-mails, each time being told that I should wait a few months because the person handling them is busy or on vacation, and if I don't get a reply by then, send another e-mail, I send them paper transcripts of the e-mails by snail mail a couple of times... Zero reply ever. The last thing they told me, when I called again about this a few weeks ago, is that they have been directing me to the wrong e-mail address for 2 years (which they spelled out to me several times before), and that I should be sending my request to a totally different address. Which I did, but... you guessed it, still heard nothing. Grumble, grumble.

I sincerely hope for you that Warner Bros UK has a better costumer service.

[B5Maniac]

DOn't know where you are in the world, but certainly in Region 2 the DVD sets were produced wrongly and TFoCP didn't have the pre-credit sequence at all. These discs were replaced with correct copies by WHV in the UK, but you did obviously need to let them know that you had one and wanted a replacement.

Yeah, I'm in Europe, although not in the UK. But if all that is missing is a "recap" before the intro, I can't really be bothered to go through all that trouble to get the disc replaced. But thanks a lot for the info

[Shabaz]

Yeah, I'm in Europe, although not in the UK. But if all that is missing is a "recap" before the intro, I can't really be bothered to go through all that trouble to get the disc replaced. But thanks a lot for the info

There is a recap, which about a minute and a half, IIRC, and than there is 2-2.5 minutes worth of new introduction to the episode.

From what I remember:

New footage of the city being bombed, Londo saving G'Kar from a cell, Londo trying to find the regent, and finding him, and then the regent finally revealing the Drakh to Londo.

[B5Maniac]

Hmm, that sounds interesting. Guess I have to contact WB after all.

[grumbler]

... Grumble, grumble...

Treading on my ground, here!

[Garibaldi's Hair]

Yeah, likewise ... if it had just been the "Previously on Babylon 5" bit then it wouldn't have bothered me particularly either, but there is new material there, in particular I believe the big reveal of the Drakh to Londo is in there.

Haven't watched it for a while, though, so I could be wrong on that.

Oh ... and thanks Jan for pulling out that address. Saved me a hunt.

[phazedout]

y'know I honestly can't remeber if it's there, I think my season 5 DVDs are from region 1 so it should be OK. I'll have a look when I Get home from work later.

That's the problem with a multi-region DVD player that plays everything I stick in it, I don't track where I get the things from, just blithely purchase wherever seems cheapest.

Phaze
on the "overcome with exam/study/life stress atm" ID

[Shabaz]

Treading on my ground, here!

Apologies, good sir. I will leave the grumbling up to you in the future.

And in the interest of accuracy, I finally, after all these years, got a reply today. The new e-mail address I was given seems to belong to a company that WB Home Video Germany outsourced their costumer service to, and it seems to have worked. Only two weeks after I send the e-mail, I got an envelope from Germany in the mail today. It contained 3 DVDs, which corrected all the mastering errors the previous discs I had. The second disc of season 1, And the Sky Full of Stars didn't have wonky aspect ration changes anymore. The fourth disc of season 5 had the intro of the Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father changed with the 'trust the corps' version. And, most important, the fifth disc of season 5 had the complete Fall of Centauri Prime episode on it, and the complete JMS commentary track (which also is where you see that someone in R2 mastering deliberately cut a part of that episode of previously; the wrongly mastered version actually has the commentary track re-edited so that it starts with 'hi, this is Joe Straczynski', and then goes into his comments about the intro sequence).

Anyway, I'm happy that they outsourced the costumers service to a company that actually helped me, and not only that, but in a very speedy way. Waiting for an e-mail reply for almost two years was a rather frustrating experience. For anyone else who wants to know, this is the e-mail address they had given me two weeks ago:

[email protected]

Previously, they told me to send my request to [email protected], but, like I said, never any reply (and, like I said, I called them multiple times after sending my mails, and had them spell out the address for me, and asked if it was ok to send my mails in English).

[Ranger1]

Sorry about my previous answer, it was incorrect, there is indeed and intro before the opening sequence.

[B5Maniac]

So you just send them an email asking for replacement?

I saw "Sleeping in Light" yesterday. What an extraordinary great ending to this great TV-show