From: Tavia tavia@btinternet.com
Interesting why some people choose to exclude certain episodes, or indeed to like others. 'Dawn of the Gods' (which I think was the episode that
Neil
was excluding?) isn't one of my favourites (in fact I suspect it made it into my 5 least favourites) but I wouldn't see that as a reason to exclude it. I could see two different possible reasons: first, that the Auron background doesn't fit too well with 'Children of Auron', and second, that the science is cringeworthily appalling. However, if one excluded episodes on science grounds, then one would be left with a short canon indeed...
Why pick on DotG? Well, for a start it's got a lacklustre script, with a very flaccid opening - that game of Space Monopoly and vacuous wittering about Newtonian physics. Then there's all the stuff about the legends of the Auronar, which flatly violates my altercanon (where the Auronar are originally from Earth). And all the black hole stuff which seems to be little more than Follett showing us what a marvellous science fiction writer he is because he can regurgitate stuff that ninety per cent of schoolboys know anyway. And those crap vehicles. And the Caliph (non-Islamic, so the script adds racism to its litany of sins). And the Thaarn. And Cally having her mind taken over yet again. And a load of tripe about bald dwarfs. And the general level of boredom pervading the entire episode from start to finish.
No other episode violates the ambient ethos of B7 even half as much as this one. It is not B7 at all, it is the work of a hack writer with skiffy pretensions parasitising the series to get his name on television. I have no qualms whatsoever about excising it from my altercanon. I wouldn't do it with any other episode.
What I found in compiling my least-liked episodes list some time back now is that many, indeed most, B7 episodes have bits that I cringe over. However, nearly all of them also have bits that I enjoy. DotG has some great lines of dialogue here and there, it has some insights into particularly Tarrant's character, and then there are those trousers, I suppose...
None of them are perfect, but some are less perfect than others. Even Star One has some donger moments (like, that alien invasion fleet), but I can forgive limitations of time and budget.
I think different people cringe over different things. Personally I really hate the naff monsters and aliens. I find it hard to watch for example, 'The Web', 'Rescue' and 'Moloch', all of which have abundant good points, simply because of this. (In the case of 'Moloch', I hardly even *see* the rest of the episode because of anticipatory cringing over *that* thing.) I also find it hard to watch 'The Way Back', an excellent episode with so many implications for the kind of fanfic I'd like to write, simply 'cos it lacks my favoured character.
Awww! I had to suffer 16 episodes without mine. Travis fans must be really up against it, especially if they're of the partisan variety. It follows that Jarriere fans are a lost cause, but then we knew that anyway:)
Neil