Are there THAAD batteries dotting the perimiter of london just hidden

There are literally just like, ten THAAD batteries in the entire world - the US has seven with an eighth on the way (although it may have already been delivered, not sure), one in Korea, one in Guam, three in in the US itself, and two were deployed to Israel to help defend against Iran, although I’m not sure if they’re still there or have been moved elsewhere since. The UAE has another two, and the Saudis another one, with six more ordered but who knows when delivery will actually take place. Beyond the number of batteries themselves, there’s also the question of munitions, a substantial portion of which were expended defending Israel, and will take a while to replace (No THAADs ’til 2027: Missile defense experts warn of interceptor ‘gap’).

When it comes to less advanced systems like the Patriot or SAMP/T, there’s a lot more of them, so I guess stopping a handful of missiles might be viable, but Ukraine, with probably one of the densest air defense networks around (courtesy of lots of inherited Soviet systems combined with Western military aid), way more capable than pretty much any NATO country other than the US, is still getting hammered, so it doesn’t really seem like anyone has an air defense that can handle a sustained campaign.

Oddly enough I think that the older B5 gets, the more forgivable the aged CGI is, because it’s more and more obviously “of its time”.

I haven’t watched Babylon 5 (yet), but I had a similar experience with the old Dune miniseries. Yeah, the costuming’s kind of silly at times, and the CGI environments look like a Command & Conquer cutscene (or just the actual Dune strategy game made by the C&C devs)… and that’s a good thing! I genuinely find it kind of endearing, and to me the series was quite beautiful, honestly way more than the Villeneuve movies which just… didn’t really do anything for me.

It’s like puppetry, most puppets are obviously not meant to be photo-realistic representations of humans (or other creatures), and any sort of movements are going to look quite stilted in comparison to a real human with muscles, but that’s part of the charm. It’s its own separate artstyle, with its own vibe. Realism and high fidelity are themselves artistic choices, and going for unrealism and low fidelity is a perfectly valid choice as well (although of course, in those old TV series, it wasn’t quite a choice so much as the technical limitations of the time - but some of the most beautiful art comes about due to limitations)