evanpelt

The Discovery Channel billed this as a show that would show us things we have never seen before. By the time the four hours are over, you will see the same things over and over and over but little of it will be new to you.

The cinematography in this production was fabulous. The way the footage was put together was terrible. The same footage was used many times. In some cases the narration was practically a word for word repeat of a segment shown an hour or two before. I lost count how many times we saw feeding frenzies of tuna/dolphins/sharks/diving birds preying on sardines/herring/mackerel.

There are so many wondrous things in the oceans. Unfortunately this show doesn't show many of them. *At least* half of the four hours was spent on Tuna, dolphins, whales, sharks, sardines, mackerel, polar bears, penguins and the like. I think most of us have seen them on film before ;-)

The amount of time spent of the unusual things was so disappointing. I would have liked to have seen more on the phytoplankton and zooplankton. They are so tiny yet are the basis of life in the ocean and they have such beautiful shapes. More time could have been spent on the deep sea animals (although seeing the same footage two and three times over the course of the four hours was useless). So many things were left out it was frustrating.

Another really big failing was the lack of a logical flow or progression. It was sometimes difficult to keep track of where in the world the action was happening. The action moved from ocean to ocean and from surface to deep sea and back and forth again and again in a very confusing manner.

A sense of the scale of many of the animals was totally lacking. In many cases you had no idea if the creature was microscopic or several feet long.

If they had cut out the repeats and had progressed logically from the ocean surface to the sea floor this could have made a great two hour show.

In short, I loved the cinematography, it was beautifully shot, but whoever put it together and wrote the narration blew it.

Rangers !? These people are cowboys. Gone is the intelligent, cool, skilled ranger. In the original series Rangers were a highly trained group of multi-talented people, kind of like a special forces unit. They were trained in Minbari ways, had a lot of personal control and subtlety was an important part of the way they worked. This group of rangers seems to have practically no knowledge of Mimbari ways, little self control, and no subtlety.

The ship is ridiculous. The Whitestar ships were beautiful and elegant. This one is poorly lit and silly. Some of the control stations are in hallways -- that's where you want crucial system controls -- in the hallway so the operators can block people rushing from one station to another. That way they can get blocked when something hits the ship and all the actors have to do the old "Star Trek" "something hit the ship boogie" (yes, they do resort to that in this movie). The ship is constantly losing weapons systems. It seems like their ships should be better equipped than that, but then again, if they didn't keep losing weapons there would be no other way to make the "plot" work. With properly working weapons it would be a half hour movie !

I am an avid fan of Babylon 5. I love the series and all the other movies. This movie is nowhere close to the same quality. The acting is stilted, the characters are shallow and the special effects are lame (the lady "punching" the projectiles is really funny).

This movie has been promoted for months, yet it has the feel of a movie that they didn't have enough time or money to do properly.

Oh Marcus, we miss you!

I have never seen the original film so I went into this with no pre-conceived notions. The movie started out slowly and I was tempted to switch channels, but there was nothing else on. I'm glad I stuck with it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Once things got going I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. The style and subject matter reminded me of the original "Twilight Zone" series (the mind bender episodes, not the Sci-fi ones). It's dark and intriguing.

The story starts with Dennis Pitt being released from an institution. Why he was there is a mystery at first. Dennis wants to run his own life now that he is out. He does, for a while. The beginning and ending narration talks about a river. There is a river that plays an important part in the story, but more important is the emotional river. Once caught in those currents it is hard to see how anyone will get out.