Babylon 5 Direct-To-DVD Project In Production

ajs writes "As previously announced, 'Babylon 5: The Lost Tales' is a direct-to-DVD project based on the popular series from the mid-1990s. Lost Tales first DVD, titled 'Voices of the Dark' has now begun production. As usual, J. Michael Straczynski and Doug Netter will be running the show with Straczynski directing. The characters, President John Sheridan (Boxleitner), Captain Elizabeth Lochley (Scoggins) and the technomage Galen (Woodward) are returning. The Lost Tales is an anthology series of sorts with two movies (previously three) per DVD starting in 2007. Straczynski has commented on Usenet that a more CG-intensive installment is coming in the next batch, featuring the character of Michael Garibaldi (Doyle)."

Comments

I never saw the appeal of this series

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I didn't watch enough but the few episodes I saw were so incredibly boring I was amazed that this series lived for as long as it did.

What WAS the appeal? Did I just not give it a chance? I'm a fan of star trek and other sci-fi series, just not this one.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[aka1nas]

The first half of the first season is a bit slow. Keep in mind that B5 is basically a 5-season long story arc, so season 1 sets up for the meat of the series. There are a few key episodes in that season, particularly the finale, that are important to the plot. The rest could probably be skipped.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[dorward]

It took a fair while to warm up, and it was arc heavy so it doesn't look good unless you stick with it for a while. Its worth the effort though.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Dachannien]

The rest could probably be skipped.

In particular, God kills a kitten every time someone watches TKO.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Trespass]

Well, the acting was often terrible. Let's get that out of the way. That wasn't it.

For me, the big appeal was that things of significant scope actually happened and the story progressed and changed with time. At the point that Babylon 5 came out, I was really fed up with the Star Trek franchise: Good acting and effects, but a horribly pedestrian and smarmy humanism seemed to infest most of the writing. It also pulled far too many punches. B5 made the universe seem strange and mysterious again, even if the acting was strictly community theater sometimes. War seemed dangerous, instead of a stageset for some belabored morality tale. It's dumb to say it was better than Star Trek, but B5 really spoke better to the sorts of stories I wanted to hear at that time.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Hazrek]

The appeal of Bab5, in a nutshell, was a solid and engaging story with interesting characters. Too many of the Star Trek series devolve into episodic "interstellar anomaly" of the week doldrums, which in my opinion gets boring very quickly. While Bab5 did feature its share of one-off episodes that didn't advance the plot, in general it was a serial show that kept you watching to see what would happen next...

Much like the current crop of popular tv shows such as Lost, Heroes, Jericho, 24, Prison Break, etc.

That said, it DID start off really slow in the first season. But the later seasons were some of the finest sci-fi I've ever seen on television.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Khomar]

That said, it DID start off really slow in the first season. But the later seasons were some of the finest sci-fi I've ever seen on television.

I would also add that the second season was also very, very dark. I know some friends who had a hard time watching the series because of all of the bad things that happened in the second season, but I guarantee you, the payoff in seasons 3 and 4 are worth it. You certainly cannot stop watching before you get to Severed Dreams, the episode that forever hooked me to Babylon 5 never to recover. In order to truly enjoy the victory, you have to first taste the defeat.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[jedidiah]

Babylon 5 was the MacPlus that led the way for the Atari ST, the Amiga, NeXT, Windows, CDE, KDE, Gnome & Be.

It looks cheesey now only because everyone else followed behind and forged ahead building on the original.

A lot of groundbreaking stuff looks lame once everyone else joins in.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Anonymous Coward]

It was an easy to not like series, I'll give it that. In fact when it was first on I got bored. Boring aliens having boring conversations and I didn't know who anyone was cause I didn't watch it from the beginning. ahhh. Now I think it's one of the all time best sci-fi series easily bypassing Star Trek: TNG and others (but you just can't beat Kirk). TNG has the opposite of what B5 has, a story arc, I stopped watching TNG after awhile cause it had that sitcommy feel where no matter what the story of the day was, everything was going to be back the the same as it was at the beginning of the episode, so no mystery, no wondering what will happen next.
 
B5 has a slowly changing feel to the whole storyline, in the beginning you'll like people who turn out bad in a few seasons, people who looked bad end up looking alright later on, a mission of peace and interstellar commerce becomes a battle station, a war is fought on the grandest scale I have ever come across in a sci-fi epic - really it's freaking huge, and it starts so incredibly slowly that people get dragged into the big war without knowing exactly what's going on. Some lines are hokey, including the dissapointing "get the hell out of my galaxy" speech, acting bad in spots, special effects are dated now. But, if you can get passed the first season, which has some must watch to know the plot episodes, than starting into the 2nd season you start to see the real changes and once the shadow emmisary starts making appearances saying "what do you want" to various leaders, that's when the best stuff kicks off and the shadow war begins it's slow start.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[itsdapead]

Well, the acting was often terrible. Let's get that out of the way. That wasn't it.

I think the other problem was that B5 was largely presented in the "classical tradgedy" style, with lots of melodrama, exposition, soliloquies and "comic relief" (or, on occasions "comic" relief!). There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this (especially when half your plot lines are "inspired" by Macbeth, Lord of the Rings and Lensmen) - its the same style as Star Trek - but it was already falling out of favour c.f. the pseudo-naturalistic fly-on-the-wall style of other TV and hasn't aged gracefully.

OK, there was some duff acting as well. I have a theory that some good actors give great auditions and then turn into a two-by-four as soon as they walk onto a spaceship set. This seems to be the only explanation of some of the acting in otherwise great TV SF (SciFi channel's Dune, anyone?) and would explain the Bujold/Janeway incident in ST Voyager.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Kjella]

It took a fair while to warm up, and it was arc heavy so it doesn't look good unless you stick with it for a while. Its worth the effort though.

Arc heavy is an understatement, and most of all it never ever gave anyone a chance to catch up. It has NO "previously on Babylon 5" or other helpers at all, and when I first tried to watch it sometime in the second season I gave up. I managed to start watching in the middle of the 3rd season (Alliance vs Vorlons vs Shadows was understandable) which is probably the only entry point except starting at episode 1. It's great for back-to-back DVD viewing, it feels like a long film flowing with different arches, but pick out any one episode and you're completely lost. Granted, you're a bit lost in many series but at least they give you a few flashes in the beginning of the episode so you don't sit like a huge question mark. Because that's what I did after watching a loose episode or two, like what was that all about?

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[SetarconeX]

Agreed, when B5 came out it was going head to head with Star Trek DS9 for the title of "best series about guys on a space station."

The thing was, the early seasons of D29 followed the old Star Trek formula of pressing the "reset" button after every episode, while B5 went off on its arc, with massive plot elements changing from episode to episode. After a few seasons, it was clear that B5 was going somewhere, while DS9 was still mostly about some guys hanging out in Quark's bar. Cheers in space. Fun, and I watched it, but not great stuff.

But then, in the later seasons, even DS9 made itself a nice little plot arc, which I always saw as a late admission that the Babylon 5 way had something going for it.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

a war is fought on the grandest scale I have ever come across in a sci-fi epic

And it ends with Sheridan saying "go away" and the warring factions just get up and go. After waiting through three seasons that was the biggest let down I have known in TV...ever. B5 was great for the first couple of seasons but after a while it really started to drag. I'm still working on finishing season 5...

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[91degrees]

You didn't give it a chance. Which isn't surprising. It required quite a lot of commitment. The dialogue was ropey, the acting from many of the actors was wooden, and a lot of the individual earlier episodes were a little uneventful out of context with the big picture.

But there was a very strong backstory, a lot of really quite clever political stuff, and was generally a lot more daring than other shows - especially science fiction shows - of the time. Characters developed. There was no big plot reset button. There was often no right or wrong answer. A lot of the episode conclusions were far from ideal.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[bigpat]

Much like the current crop of popular tv shows such as Lost, Heroes, Jericho, 24, Prison Break, etc.

I agree, but B5 was probably more like the current Battlestar Gallactica in terms of the balance between arc and episodic storylines. But the key thing was that JMS promised us that the main story would be told in no more than 5 seasons, which was almost cut short to 4 seasons. That sort of finiteness really gave a sense to the story that it was more than just leading us along to milk the audience for all it was worth. B5 was in effect the antidote to the original Battlestar Gallactica. A show based on an overarching story which we knew would come to some resolution. Something that I don't necessarily feel is the case with the current crop of soap opera-ish arc focused series.

When a television show asks its viewers to invest years of their lives watching a show and following the story arc over many episodes and seasons, then it helps to have a sense that there will be some point to the story arc. There is a difference between leaving a few loose ends open for dramatic effect and screwing over your audience by having no resolution to the plot. I think an entire generation of television watchers could be treading down the path to disappointment if most of the current crop of shows don't follow through on their main storyline arcs.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[RevAaron]

...but does god kill said kitten using the sacred alient art of MU-TAI?!

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[merikari]

The problem with the first season is that it is slow and it contains probably 40% of the worst episodes in the whole series, but you cannot skip it. There's just too much going on there in the background even in the early episodes. Even TKO, which was a steaming pile, has a lot of important character development for Ivanova (the death of her father). For someone with a low tolerance for the worst episodes, the first season can be a steep climb.

I would still say that any sci-fi fan who has not watched the first four seasons of the series has missed out on something unique. It is no longer the series that you have to measure up to, but it used to be, and many of the later and in many ways better sci-fi shows owe a lot to this series. Nowadays writers and their vision for a series is trusted more and maybe, for some part, B5 helped pave the way.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[kalidasa]

Mostly, the DS9 change was two things.

1. The writers wanted arcs, they knew the fans wanted arcs, but the syndication partners wanted bottle shows so they could show them in any damned order they liked, so Paramount forced them to limit the number and depth of multi-episode arcs.

2. There were changes in the production staff, including bringing Ron Moore onboard in the second season, and promoting him to co-executive producer for the last few seaons. As in Battlestar Galactica Ron Moore.

However, I wouldn't dismiss the idea that JMS's talks with the Star Trek junta before DS9 came out had a lot to do with the inspiration of that series, and may have had a lot to do with the development of the arc-heavy later seasons; or the idea that B5's minor success helped to prove that bottle shows weren't the only way to go.

It's worth noting that Enterprise was very much a bottle show for its first two seasons - and it was terrible. In the third seaon, they tried to do a big, large-scale arc, but it simply didn't work out well - I think they were doing *too much* service to an arc that wasn't well thought out (or very good); and I don't think they had the chops for it. When Manny Coto took over, they went to multi-episode arcs that were rooted in the original idea for the series, and it was much better, albeit much too late.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[RevAaron]

It took a fair while to warm up, and it was arc heavy so it doesn't look good unless you stick with it for a while. Its worth the effort though./i.

I second that, and my wife thirds it. A friend of mine got me into B5, but my wife thought it looked like a bad sci-fi show with crappy acting and crappier sets. Some nights when we were watching B5, she sat there while we watched it, on her computer. Somewhere in Season 2, she stopped making fun of it. A few episodes later, she was sucked in and was the one asking me if we were going to watch B5 that night. It can take a while, but it is totally worth it. By season 3 you will most certainly thank me. Not to say that it takes that long before it's watchable, but that's when the pay-off starts to return.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[garyok]

The evocative episode names were what got me hooked. It seems daft, but that someone went to the trouble to preface the production with a title that was metaphorical and intriguing showed that there was a hell of a lot more ambition behind the show than previous brain-damaged sci-fi efforts. And that it had a finite plot helped - you could see there was a definite story to tell. It wasn't an unsatisfying soap opera like Dallas (or, let's face facts, Lost).

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Anthony]

Well said. A setting in which heroes fail, and are even vanquished. A setting where the enemy is hidden and it's power unknown but horrible. The fog of war palpable. Allies plot against one another. The human condition mirrored in alien races and species. Other alien species with no correspondence to humans. This is true drama and suspense. This was not the setting of any TV show besides B5.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[ajs]

I don't think it took all that long to warm up to... at least not by today's standards. I was halfway through the first season before I knew I was hooked on B5. It was (aptly enough) Signs and Portents in the middle of the first season that knocked my socks off. I was halfway through the episode when I said, "wow, that was great... can't wait to see the next one!" When the person I was watching it with pointed out that it was only half over, I couldn't believe it. More happens in that one episode than anything I had ever seen on TV... but that didn't last. Chrysalis, the season finale for the first season did the same thing all over again, but seemed to pack even more into one episode. The Coming of Shadows and The Fall of Night in the second season served the same roles, and in the third season there was Severed Dreams which I got to see in LA at a tiny con where JMS presented it 10 minutes before the sat. uplink.

Some (I'm no longer recalling which) of these episodes earned awards, but I always thought that they existed on a level above simple annual awards. These were episodes that moved the bar in terms of TV show-writing. They made the episodic noise coming from the Star Trek folks seem rather dull and uninteresting (though I will note that even through the terrible filter of the Star Trek machine, Ron Moore's work on DS9 shown through).

Sit down and watch B5 in small chunks (1-2 episodes at a time, with a day or two between at least). Talk to people about the episodes you've seen. Invariably, people who "marathon" the seasons don't enjoy them nearly as much... I think that, much as there is an arc, there is a pacing that's uniquely aimed at serial viewing with plenty of time between to think about what's going on, and what the last episode did to the story. Once you get to Signs, if you still think the series takes a while to warm up to (compared to something like BSG which I was still iffy about up to the end of season 1, and into season 2, but now love), then I guess you and I just appreciate different things in our SF, and cheers to you.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[TrekkieGod]

There were changes in the production staff, including bringing Ron Moore onboard in the second season, and promoting him to co-executive producer for the last few seasons. As in Battlestar Galactica Ron Moore.

Battlestar Galactica is awesome, but it's not like Ron Moore wasn't a heavy-weight in the Star Trek universe before the second season of DS9. He was a producer in TNG and have you seen the list of Ron Moore-written TNG episodes?:

• Yesterday's Enterprise
• Sins of the Father
• Family
• Redemption, parts 1 and 2
• Ethics
• Chain of Command, part 1 (ok, the meat was in part 2)
• Tapestry
• Descent, part 1
• All Good Things... (eh...not very good for a series finale, but it wasn't a bad episode by any stretch of the imagination)

The above isn't an exhaustive list. And it doesn't count episodes where he has credit as "Story Editor" which includes Best of Both Worlds. Honestly, I have no idea how much a "story editor" is really responsible for the story, so I won't argue for that. Either way, he's responsible for some of the best of TNG.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[fitten]

Ditto... It took my wife a little while to get into it (I had to keep begging her to watch the shows). After we got into Season 2, she started wanting to watch them. By Season 3, she was hooked like me. "Sleeping in Light" made her cry (heh, and I always seem to get something in my eye when I watch that episode as well). It's now a standing joke between us that anytime she says she's bored, I suggest watching "Sleeping in Light", which she always refuses.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[RockyPersaud]

Well, maybe what really happened went over your head. He didn't just say go away. He created an alliance of worlds that said to the Vorlons and Shadows that they would no longer be their puppets, so there was absolutely NO point for the Vorlons or the Shadows to stick around. Once you pull aside the curtain, the Wizard of Oz has no more power. If the Vorlons or Shadows had continued to fight they would have had to annihilate all the other races; which means both the Vorlons and Shadows would lose, because they would have no one left to carry on their philosophy. It was lose-lose scenario for them, so they left.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[SpooForBrains]

I'm currently re-watching it, as I initially caught it very late at night on C4 in the UK, and I think I meandered in some time in season two, and started really paying attention in season three.

Anyway, I think anyone wanting to see what all the fuss is about should watch 2x14: And Now for a Word". It's a classic Bringing In the Newbies episode, has a good mix of all the elements that go into the show (political machinations, space battles, dark humour in places), showcases most of the characters pretty well (especially the late great Andreas Katsulas as G'Kar) and will give you a pretty good idea whether you like the show or not.

Personally, this season is blowing me away.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Anonymous Coward]

In particular, God kills a kitten every time someone watches TKO.

I thought that was Grey 17 is Missing? Or are we only talking S1 stinkers here?

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[BalanceOfJudgement]

It has NO "previously on Babylon 5" or other helpers at all

Those kinds of helpers didn't really catch on until the very late 90's, even up to 2001 and 2002. I do remember seeing a few of them Star Trek TNG and DS9, and a few other non-sci-fi shows, but they were really not that popular.

On the other hand, B5 did make much of its name by breaking out of the box so it might have been helpful to have them, but I didn't really get into the series until the end of the 2nd season. Even still, I thought it so well done that I stuck through the parts that didn't make sense and eventually the pieces fell into place. Watching the re-runs eventually helped and made me appreciate the first 2 seasons even more, since I knew what they were foreshadowing.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Fordiman]

Nothing. Bad acting, worse writing.

I'll say one thing, though; Babylon 5 is the best argument for BitTorrent as a 'try before you buy' there ever was. Downloaded five seasons. Got three episodes in before my eyes and ears started to bleed. Deleted the whole crop. Try returning DVDs like that.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Dragonslicer]

In case anyone didn't know, this style was intentional. The series was meant to feel more like a play on a stage than a television show. Personally, I don't have all of these huge problems with the acting that other people seem to have. It wasn't perfect, but I think it fit the style of the series pretty well.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Anonymous Coward]

I trust the Psi-Core, the Psi-Core is my friend.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Anonymous Coward]

(Insert traditional "give it a chance past the first season -- everyone admits season one was lousy" comment here. Or just pick a comment in this thread at random and read it there.)

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[kentrel]

I'll say one thing, though; Babylon 5 is the best argument for BitTorrent as a 'try before you buy' there ever was. Downloaded five seasons. Got three episodes in before my eyes and ears started to bleed.

Downloaded five seasons was trying before buying? Pull the other one, that was blatant theft, if you were trying why would you download that much? And I highly doubt you would have suddenly rushed out and bought all five seasons had you actually liked the show.

This is a disgraceful attitude. I'm all for using bittorrent to try out new shows before buying them, but this is just the kind of abuse of a wonderful technology that could be beneficial for users and studios. It's no wonder they're cracking down on it. It's clear here your motivation was "try because I'm too cheap to buy". I have no sympathy for you.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

The more you watch, the better it gets.

When I saw the first season in reruns after having seen the rest of the series, I could have sworn the acting and writing had improved between the first showing and the rerun. Knowing the context made that much difference. Dialog that seems unimportant the first time around becomes poignant or prophetic in hindsight.

It's a great nerd show. Little things are done right, like space fighters that fire thrusters when they turn instead of swooping like airplanes. Then the overall structure is a single intricate unit, with a coherence and scale that could compete with some of the classics of the software world.

The characters are fully realized people but it takes a while to see them defined.

Straczynski summarized the series as being about "choices and consequences". That's invisible at the scale of a single episode.

It's worth putting on your Netflix list.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Jerim]

You probably just didn't give it enough time. B5 had this whole "Blade Runner" vibe going. The future is a dark, often dangerous place. Yet, it was also an exciting, technologicaly advanced place. The appeal for me was that the future was presented in a more realistic approach. The station was often dark, even in open, friendly places. It just had this "edge" to it. This wasn't a nice clean Star Trek set. There was a seedy underbelly with lurkers and areas of the station pretty much abandoned. But at the heart of it all were humans, still being humans. Curious, courageous, loving, brutal, sadistic and often times wise. The aliens looked like aliens. You had compelling species and interstellar diplomacy. You had lots of political intrigue. An emperor falling in love with the wrong woman could send shockwaves throughout the galaxy. You never really get this "grand scale" with other sci-fi.

B5 just seemed to play on a grander stage. Other sci-fi is concerned with a small group, and the "powers they be" are often abstracted. How much do we know about the United Federation of Planets anyway? What are the member worlds? Who are their representatives? What are their meetings like? Do you often time have conflicts among member worlds? What about Starfleet Academy? Who runs it? How did they get that job? What are their motives? This were all questions that B5 jumped right into.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[LordLucless]

You're an idiot. I've downloaded tonnes of shows and movies over BT, only to purchase the full series when they arrived on DVD. Just because you're a skinflint who'd rather stick with an illegal copy over the real thing, don't try and project that attitude on to everyone else. As to why he downloaded all 5 seasons, it was probably because the torrent contained all 5 seasons, and he just let it run.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[kentrel]

If you're going to flame me and call me a skinflint, find the part in the post where I said I even download illegal copies at all. Check my posting history here - I'm pretty much against piracy, most of the time, however I'm for people who just want to try it out with the intention to buy later if they like it. I don't actually do it myself, because with the exception of one show which I buy on DVD, and on itunes I don't watch current TV at all. So please find the quote where I said I do this.

As to why he downloaded all 5 seasons, it was probably because the torrent contained all 5 seasons, and he just let it run.

The advantage of bittorrent is that you can select individual files to download. Clearly this guy is an idiot and doesn't know how to use that, wasting bandwidth, or he's a thief and thought he was getting himself 5 years of TV for free.

Also, please list in total all the shows you've ever downloaded, and also the number of shows you've bought on DVD, just for comparison. You sound like a saint, buying everything you've watched online. Just want to make sure, so I can send you your medal.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Joe Mucchiello]

I do believe most of the "serial" dramas of the 80s like Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere to name two often had "Previously On..." intros. Or I'm just misremembering the decade.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Steve B]

Basically, the alliance Sheridan put together confronted the Vorlons and the Shadows with an unbeatable dilemma ("you can kill us, but you can't make us play your game any more").

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[gijoel]

In particular, God kills a kitten every time someone watches TKO.

I don't want to even think what God does to a kitten if someone watches Grey 17 is Missing

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Bishop923]

ends with Sheridan saying "go away"

Actually it was "Get the Hell out of our Galaxy!"

Had to appreciate the realistic dialogue, showed that Sheridan was at heart a normal guy, not an Oxford scholar that also happens to know how to captain a space ship (I'm looking at you Picard)

I love Star Trek, but it is a little grating when you KNOW that a word of dialogue was written for no other reasons than to make the character seem "advanced" and to impress the writer's contemporaries (using "ennui" instead of boredom for example.)

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[AeroIllini]

For me, the big appeal was that things of significant scope actually happened and the story progressed and changed with time. At the point that Babylon 5 came out, I was really fed up with the Star Trek franchise: Good acting and effects, but a horribly pedestrian and smarmy humanism seemed to infest most of the writing.

Seconded. I really enjoyed the longer story arc, and the fact that characters disagreed on principle, not on plot points. It was breaking new ground in television storytelling, because it was a multi-season show with a definite beginning, middle, and end.

However, the writing of each individual episode (on a dialog level) was sometimes downright painful, even during the best seasons of the show, and the poor acting didn't make it any better.

I like to say that the writing was just like the special effects: the farther back you stood, the better it looked.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[syousef]

Last week I re-bought Babylon 5 - all 5 seasons - on DVD. I have them on VHS tapes which I'll be giving away.

Season 1 must have put off a lot of people. Actors were finding their feet, and the plots weren't nearly as good as later seasons. Some of the acting, as the seasons progressed was awful to the point of being embarrassing (especially when the humour in the writing failed) but some of it was absolutely fantastic. Mira Furlan (as Delen) and Bruce Boxleitner (Sheridan) certainly had their moments, but so did the supporting cast. Peter Jurasik (Londo), Andreas Katsulas (G'Kar) Stephen Furst (Vir) and Walter Koenig (Bester aka Chekov from Star Trek) put in some incredible standout performances. Andrea Thompson (Talia), Claudia Christian (Ivanova) and Patricia Tallman (Lyta) also put in some good performances and were easy on the eyes. Many of the other character were likeable and well acted. The characters were flawed and many faceted.

The story was also incredible. The whole Sheridan down the rabbit hole coming back as Jesus thing was a bit much - and there were certainly other mistakes and deficiencies, but on the whole you couldn't watch 3 consecutive episodes of the show from seasons 2 through 4 and not get a good or even great plot in one.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

And how long would such an alliance last? It's completely unstable and a completely unbelievable outcome. All the Shadows, say, would have to do, is wait for the next major conflict, and everyone would forget about this alliance.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Fordiman]

Sorry, but if it was good, I'd have hardly stuck with the VCR transcodes I was able to find. I had worse copies of Lexx, but at least I bought the DVDs after realizing, 'yeah, this is funny'.

As for "try 'cos I'm too cheap to buy", without downloading the whole five seasons, I wouldn't have been able to sample the show across its lifetime, picking from episodes others thought were good. The three I watched sucked hard, and they were the 'good' ones.

Meanwhile, I would submit that your attitude's disgraceful of itself. What if I were too strapped to buy? What if it were something for which DVDs aren't available? Should I defer my enjoyment until I can afford it? Shall I wait with bated breath for the studios to release DVDs?

I'll bet you consider my weekly download of the latest episode of "Torchwood" theft, even though I can't otherwise watch it here in the states. I suppose you'd suggest I wait for Sci Fi to pick it up (hardly guaranteed), or wait for the DVDs.

Yeah. No. There's no technical reason for me to wait. When the DVDs come out, I'll buy them (as I did with Dr. Who 2005, and will with '06). In the meanwhile, I'm getting my 'try' on.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Fordiman]

FYI. I downloaded all five seasons for two reasons: 1) it gave me the freedom to check out anything I was suggested. 2) Some asshat had the torrent wrapped around a RAR file. Why do people do that shit on BT? Especially on video; you get no extra compression.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[fzammett]

Every time I see this argument, and I've seen it often over the years, it is obvious that the person saying it didn't get B5. I mean no disrespect with this comment, but I believe it to be true.

I think what many people miss is that B5 is one big coming of age story. The scope and stage it is played out on is larger than many other such stories, but that's ultimately what it is.

Every human being, excepting those that grow up in broken homes and other atypical environments (although, sadly, they aren't as atypical as they used to be or should be) goes through a rebelious stage where they are fighting their parents for their own independance. They have to find their place in the world, figure out for themselves what their purpose is, what they're going to make of themselves. And at some point, the parents, who have been guiding them all their lives towards these answers, have to step aside and let their child go and either sink or swim for themselves. It's a painfully difficult process on both sides.

Now imagine that completely normal situation when the two parents have vastly different ideas about how their children should develop. Do you think that makes things easier? F**K no! It makes infinitely more difficult. That's the dilema B5 presented, and the coming of age of the younger races is the underlying story being told. It's the exact same story you yourself probably played out, just in a grander scale.

Sheridan forcing his "parents", so to speak, in the Vorlons and Shadows, was the tipping point. It was the point at which the younger races declared they are ready to stand on their own, for better or worse. This is akin to a 16 or 17-year old beginning to take on responsibility for their own life and actions. Now, the Shadows and Vorlons had to be forced a bit to see the inevitability of this, had to be forced to step aside and let the natural course of evolution occur, just as a teenagers' parents have to begin to step aside and let their child fend for themselves largely.

No, the way the Shadow war ended wasn't stupid, wasn't cheap, wasn't a disappointment... it was the ONLY WAY THE STORY COULD POSSIBLY HAVE ENDED without being stupid. Forget that fact that we all know the Shadow and Vorlons could have cleaned up against the entire alliance. That's obvious. So a military victory would have been dumb, no matter how clever. No, Sheridan's declaration was about as perfect as it could get... continuing the analogy between the alliance and a teenager, that's just the way a teen would say it too!

I remember when I first saw Into The Fire, the episode the war is resolved in, and I felt cheated too for a while. That's because I didn't get it. I think I really got it when I had my first kid. He's only 7 now, but I can definitely envision the future, definitely understand all the things my parents told me and continue to tell me. I see it now, and I see why the resolution of the war was spot on.

If you think otherwise, you don't get it, plan and simple. It's nothing to be ashamed of, I think you haev to have certain life experiences to TRULY get it (you can understand, but there's a difference... sort of like in White Men Can't Jump when Sidney says you can listen to Hendrix, but you can't HEAR Hendrix... or something to that effect).

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[LordLucless]

You said that you didn't believe he'd buy the series if he liked it; you accused him of being a thief, just because it was your opinion that he wouldn't do what he said. You had no real basis for that comment. You said that if someone downloaded the full series, then there's no reason for them to buy it, and they are therefore a thief. Since this is your attitude, I extrapolate that you see no difference between the series downloaded from bittorrent, and the series bought from a store. For some, however, there is a difference between the two, not just of quality/packaging/extras, but in the satisfaction of owning a legitimate copy.

The advantage of bittorrent is that you can select individual files to download. Clearly this guy is an idiot and doesn't know how to use that, wasting bandwidth, or he's a thief and thought he was getting himself 5 years of TV for free.

AFAIK, you can't do that using the basic client (although it's been a while since I used it). So, he might just be using the vanilla client. Or he might have wanted to see the whole series before he bought it (a lot of stuff is mostly good, but has a really crappy ending that lets the whole thing down - I generally don't buy a series unless I've watched it through).

As for the list:

Buffy (All 7 Seasons)
Firefly
Stargate (Currently own first 3 seasons, working on the rest)
Scrapped Princess
Full Metal Panic
Vision of Escaflowne
Angelic Layer
Mai Hime (only partially released in Aus)
Planetes (only partially released in Aus)
Whisper of the Heart
10 Things I Hate About You
The Dark Crystal
Fight Club
Finding Neverland
Knight's Tale
Lord of the Rings (all 3)
The Matrix
Neverending Story
Shrek 1 & 2

They're all things I've downloaded, and later bought. I'm not going to list every DVD I own, as I've got more than 200. Currently, the stuff I've still got on my HD:

Hikaru no Go (Unreleased in Aus)
Gakuen Alice (Unreleased in Aus)
The Snow Queen (Unreleased in Aus)
Ocean Waves (Unreleased in Aus)
Mysterious Cities of Gold (Unreleased in Aus)

There are other movies I've downloaded and not bought, and later deleted. Can't remember all of them, but they included Highlander, Existenz, bunch of others. Can't remember them because I wasn't too impressed with them. Also a whole bunch of anime in here that I can't particularly recall either: Kiddy Grade, Witch Hunter Robin, few others.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[YowzaTheYuzzum]

Grey 17 really isn't that bad. Sure, it had a crappy looking monster, but it had a good B-story.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[YowzaTheYuzzum]

Wait... So you just watched three episodes from somewhere in the middle of the series? That's like picking up a book, opening it to the middle and reading. Seriously, do yourself a favour, watch the show in order until at least episode 8 (And The Sky Full Of Stars), or even better, episode 13 (Signs and Portents). By that stage, you'll either be interested, or you'll find that its not for you. With B5, you really can't get a taste of the series by just watching a few episodes at random, and if this is all you've done, then its completely understandable that you didn't enjoy it.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[Korvar]

That's the real problem with Grey 17. They A plot is really dire (not just a naff monster, but bullets acting in ways firmly outside the laws of physics, and other problems), but the B plot is really quite good. So you can't just jettison the entire episode, like you can with TKO.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[GaryPatterson]

Wow.

You hear about people with no imagination, no real dramatic urge, no understanding of motivations beyond the purely physical but you never really expect to meet them.

And then you post.

Not only did you fail to actually understand what you were watching, you tell everyone that you just don't have a clue.

Here's one for you - the alliance forced the Shadows and the Vorlons to actually look at their actions for a moment. The presence of the ancient races plus Lorien (most importantly, as they respected Lorien above all others) highlighted their pettiness. They were giants in the playground, kicking sand in the faces of babies. Finally they saw that and realised that they'd stayed long past their time. Throughout the previous few series there were many hints that both races had stayed around to guide and help the younger races, that they could have gone beyond the veil long ago.

But you took the pivotal moment ("Get the hell out of our galaxy"), completely misunderstood it and posted how you thought it was, like, so lamerz.

Maybe they should've fought for the Universe, like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Oh - that's right! Luke managed to turn Vader using only words and his pain. The violence was a sideshow to the story. Perhaps they should've fought to the end like Ender and the Buggers in Ender's Game. Except... yes! Ender felt guilty for killing the race and that was a source of great drama in the book, setting the stage for the later and more complex books. Maybe they should've battled like... well, you might be starting to see the outline of a point here, your lack of subtlety notwithstanding.

A fight to the end was utterly pointless. If you can't see that, then all the subtlety and plot will forever be lost on you. Just watch more episodes of Dragonball Z and you'll get your violence fix without having to engage your brain or any emotive function whatsoever.

Unfair? Rude? Damn right! I'm ten years past tired of bozos who look for the fight against the big boss dude at the end of a film, who were raised on Doom and Duke Nukem and use that as a benchmark for character development. You post how disappointed you were, but clearly you *fundamentally* missed the point. After watching four years worth of the series, that's just sad. It's not that I'm a B5 fan-boy who feels personally attacked by your post, but that you seem like someone who would listen to Mozart and say "too many notes" or would read the sonnets of Shakespeare and ask why they didn't rhyme on every second line like a real song.

Unfair? Rude? Damn right! I'm tired of people who miss the most obvious of points, the ones that take literally four *years* to hammer home.

Feel free to flame me and mod me down to -5000.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[BalanceOfJudgement]

I do believe most of the "serial" dramas of the 80s like Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere to name two often had "Previously On..." intros. Or I'm just misremembering the decade.

You might be right, although to be fair I never watched those shows when they were on :) I did catch a few episodes of St Elsewhere but never really got into it.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

They were giants in the playground, kicking sand in the faces of babies.

Yes, it's the science fiction cliché, the same one that's repeated over and over again in every science fiction series and anything but the worst of science fiction movies (which, as you point out, has even worse clichés). This cliché is the idea that human ethics and values are so obvious that all you have to do is point them out to the enemy, no matter how different from humans they are, and the enemy will just "get it" and realise that the human way of doing this is right after all. This is the same lame lecture we get from every other episode of Star Trek, whether it's humans teaching Vulcans the value of emotions, or humans teaching the Borg about "individuality" or humans lecturing Klingons on looking after your parents or whatever. Sheridan's speech was a classic example. The turning point was him making the speech, and the Shadows and Vorlons, despite being older and wiser than humans in the way that we tower over ants, just "got it".

One day someone will have the guts to write science fiction about aliens that are actually interesting and different from humans. Aliens that are like your proverbial giants kicking around babies and yet are intelligent and don't give a shit about some pathetic human crying "but what about the children?". The Borg came close, but then the Star Trek writers immediately trashed the concept because they couldn't sustain the idea.

You've displayed very nicely to me your complete inability to reocgnise one of the most reused science fiction cliches of all and mistake it for something profound and subtle and lecture me on the same. That's funny.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[PortHaven]

You didn't watch enough episodes.

Babylon 5 is not like most sci-fi shows that came before it or even after it. It is not a bunch of daily stand on their own stories. It is one contiguous story.

The reasons fans love it so much is because this is not as clear in the beginning but as you later progress thru the series it becomes more so. As fans discover seemingly innoculous episodes in the first season or two were in fact significant plot preps and more come seasons 3,4, & 5. Seasons 3 & 4 are by far the strongest. 5 was weakened by doubt of financing.

Prattlestar Galactica is one of the few sci-fi series that has really tried to take the epic story arc approach. However, I feel that most of the episodes really lack much substance. Often I walk away feeling like there was only 15 minutes of story. And I am left wondering if the Prattlerstar Galactica writers even know where they are going.

Babylon 5 weaves those layers deep. It doesn't need numerous flashbacks to fill in what wasn't before because it was thought out ahead of time. Even with a few major character changes, things were in place so that alternative flows could be implemented in case of the lost of a major or minor character.

Watch the first two seasons of Babylon 5 (in sequence)...if you have a mind you'll likely find yourself hooked. By season 3 & 4...drooling.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[PortHaven]

Three episodes and you canned it...

On a series where every thread where people have criticized it has said you need to watch it into season 2.

Well you got what you deserved. Go enjoy Prattlestar Galactica. I mean, I've watched 3 seasons and I swear the whole story could be fit into about 3 hours and not have lost much substance. Oh wait, they fit the first two seasons into an hour long episode "The Story So Far".

*lol*

Look, B5 is not your normal sci-fi show where the twists are added at the end. They're in the beginning. But you can't see that until the end.

It's the same reason so many liked the film "The Sixth Sense".

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[kalidasa]

Thanks, I had forgotten some of those stories were Ron Moore's. Well put. I had "refreshed" my memory by looking at IMDB but didn't see a "story editor" credit. Story editors tend to be the folks who shoehorn the stories that other writers have written into the series' milieu. He'd be responsible for anything from mere continuity to basically rewriting everything that came in the door, depending upon how active he was. To give you some idea, D C Fontana was a story editor on the original Star Trek series, and Douglas Adams was a story editor (or script editor, which I believe is the same thing) on Doctor Who.

Re:I never saw the appeal of this series

[RevAaron]

Ha- I could've written what you wrote verbatim! My wife, our friend and I all shed some tears while watching "Sleeping in Light," I've never been able to get either of them to watch the episode over again with the commentary. No dis against anyone who regularily cries at movies or because of television show, but I'm the kind of person who just doesn't do that. Ever. But I did it when watching "Sleeping in Light"...

Firefly?

[Fezmid]

If it's good enough for Bab5, it's good enough for Firefly!

You can't take the sky from me!

Re:Firefly?

[CastrTroy]

I think that many shows could make pretty good money with Direct to DVD. I think it's much better than having a show come out on TV, and then getting cancelled because it got low ratings. Low ratings don't mean the show wasn't good or that people didn't like it. Often, they put it in a bad timeslot, or moved it to a different timeslot every week, or don't show it for 3 weeks after showing the first 2 episodes, and people forget about it. If I could get DVDs at the same point that the shows came out on TV, I'd cancel my cable and just buy the DVDs. No commercials, no schedules, high quality picture and sound. Sounds a lot better than cable TV to me.

Re:Firefly?

[Trails]

The main thing preventing any further Firefly development is that Fox owns the rights, and Whedon refuses to work with them cause of how they bollocksed (bolloxed?) the first season.

Re:Firefly?

[xENoLocO]

Best show ever. Period.

I don't care if the backdrop is made of paper mache... give us SOMETHING!

Re:Firefly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fox doesn't own the rights anymore.

Before Serenity could be made Fox gave Whedon the rights to firefly so he could market the series to another market. So right now Whedon is the only one with the rights to Firefly. And the reason why a second season isn't in production is because Whedon is busy with Wonder Woman and another series he's contractually obligated for and hasn't had time to find someone willing to produce a parallel series (same universe different story) like he's said he wants to.

There is a large movement from the browncoats trying to get up enough money to fund creating a second series and Whedon is entertaining the idea if they can get everything worked out and prove that it will be profitable or at least be able to break even with production costs.

Re:Firefly?

[Anonymous Coward]

How did I know this would be first post? : )

I would totally be down for Firefly to come out with this delivery system. I can think of four other families that I have converted that would buy as well.

Success!

[User 956]

Lets hope this will be as big of a success as one of Mr Straczynski's earlier projects, Captain Power and the soldiers of the Future.

Re:Success!

[SetarconeX]

Only if I can get a toy that I can use to shoot at the screen during episodes. Those things were awesome.

Re:Success!

[Jonny_eh]

I had no idea he was responsible for that! That show rocked!!

I had that gun too. Never worked right, but was fun.

Re:Success!

[david.given]

Talking of B5-related shows...

Jerry Doyle, who, as all B5 fans will know is the other cast member who could act, was one of the voices in a short-lived and very tongue-in-cheek cartoon series called Captain Simian And The Space Monkeys along with Michael Dorn, Malcolm McDowell, Maurice LaMarche (t.a.w.p. Brain) and others. I saw this on TV and loved it --- it had intelligent and very silly scripts, which is a rare combination. (The chief villain, for example, is a Power From Beyond Space And Time who wants to destroy the universe because he's allergic to it and it makes him sneeze all the time. How's that for motivation...)

But I never found it again.

Does anyone know where I can lay my hands on a copy of the series? I'd love to watch it again, particularly as I missed the first couple of episodes...

Re:Success!

[Anonymous Coward]

Huzzah!

Re:Success!

[chrish]

Damn, no seeders.

Babylon 5's time...

[tenchiken]

Babylon 5's time has come and gone. That's not to take anything away from it. It represented a age where only Star Trek existed. All of the Sci-Fi series that have started to get traction sense, in particular Firefly, Stargate and Firefly have benefited from it leading the way. Even some of the more mainstream series like LOST, which has the actress Mira Furlan who played Delenn on B5, are in it's footsteps to some degree.

But we have also moved past that story into new and interesting stories with much higher production values. I hope for the series, but I think that when you go back and look at B5, you have to appreciate what it did, rather then what it is now (which is dated, and a bit cliched).

Not that I won't buy it anyways I suppose.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[Jardine]

All of the Sci-Fi series that have started to get traction sense, in particular Firefly, Stargate and Firefly have benefited from it leading the way.

But what about Firefly? You forgot about that series.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[Jerf]

Why would you assume that a movie made today would use the same production values and look of the Babylon 5 of ~ten years ago?

I've never seen B5. It just seems weird to see you leap to the conclusion that they somehow aren't going to take advantage of the advances in technology since then.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[JhohannaVH]

Yeah, but a lot of the stories have gone left untold. *sigh* I would like to have seen more of the Minbari and such.. and Gkar was always my favorite character. I would like to see what we missed. Again... for probably the 10th time through the series again. I'm a sucker.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[From A Far Away Land]

It's a bit like trying to bring Star Trek Original Series back.

The doctors are both dead, and the funny sounding guys you'd least like to meet in a bar fight are too (Scotty, and G'Kar).

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[nuzak]

Why would you assume that a movie made today would use the same production values and look of the Babylon 5 of ~ten years ago?

I don't know, but if the quality of acting is the same, it would be tightly hugging the very bottom of the ratings charts. Bruce Boxleitner and Claudia Christiansen could stink up anything. Mira Furlan is an otherwise good actress forced to hiss every one of her clumsy lines, and it's only the talents of Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas that ever managed to make that show watchable for me.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[sterno]

Traditionally television has been more about taking excerpts from people's lives and showing them as they happen. Today in court, the lawyers did X, Y, and Z, the doctor saved 3 people, and the family down the street had this most comedic run-in with the mail man. These shows are safer for networks to produce because you don't need background to get into them. If I watch an episode of Law and Order, I can get 95% of it without any need for background.

Babylon 5 helped to establish that a TV show with a defined story arc could be successful. If you walked into Babylon 5 during season 3, you'd be completely lost. Yet because of the defined arc, those who did follow it followed it very loyally. The real struggle though was if you didn't start from the beginning it was hard to catch up.

Well since they broke that ground we've seen the advent of two things that make such shows possible:

1) Season by season DVD releases of TV shows
2) ITunes

With Lost, for example, I heard good things about it all during the first season but never got around to watching it. AS the second season approached I decided to give it a try. After watching two episodes I was totally hooked. A friend of mine just finished the season one DVD's in a marathon and is now eagerly awaiting netflix to deliver season 2. Then for season 3, they can catch up via Itunes.

But ultimately Babylon 5 is what broke this ground and whatever may be said about it's production values, it did make for some great televison that even now is relevant. Go back and watch Intersections in Real Time as a prime example. This is the episode where Sheridan is tortured to get him to turn against his friends in favor of the government. Now go and read about waterboarding and some of the crap that's legal for our government to do to people right now and it's just chilling.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[infochuck]

"stories with much higher production values"?

Jackass. There's more to a good story than the production value. So what if it's not glossy and HD and state-of-the-art? So what if Brad and Angelina aren't in it? Does that really make it less good? Perhaps to the mainstream. And idiots like you who just want pretty shit to look at while they drool in their recliner.

Personally, I'll take a poorly-lit set with grainy footage and a top-notch story and universe over perfectly produced crap any day.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And yet- the HDTV remake of STTOS and Star Trek New Voyages Direct-To-The-Web episodes are some of the best Star Trek I've ever seen.

I think Direct-To-DVD itself is a passing fad- I'd be for a website that allowed downloads in a variety of formats to subscribers instead....

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[Tripster]

Unfortunately, G'Kar is now gone and will never get to tell us those stories, I too would have loved to have him in the new offerings but I am also glad JMS is not recasting the character since the original actor passed away.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[JhohannaVH]

I know... and it breaks my heart. *sigh* Sometimes I think I've just been around too long. But well, I've just been a grown-up for far too long. Happens to most military brats, I suspect.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[Phoenix666]

I agree with this--B5 was a ground-breaking series that made the Battlestar Galacticas of our time possible.

One thing I'd add that made the series great was that it showed that space was messy, and that there's almost no such thing as total victory because the group or person that lost this time will be back with a vengeance next time, or that the person who's your deadly enemy can turn into your chum tomorrow or vice versa. In a word, it was political, and that made it feel real and interesting.

Just like Battlestar Galactica, it entertained and also made you think. Just like great science fiction should.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[ajs]

Yes, Babylon 5's time has come and gone. That's why it's one of the highest grossing DVD series of all time.... oh wait ;-)

Seriously, Babylon 5 is in part horribly dated and in part timeless. The horribly dated parts are certainly related to the changes in the industry since the mid-90s. The first season of B5 was rendered on Amigas. That's right Commodore Amiga home computers. They were all the rage among the 3D rendering crowd at the time, and B5 looked flawless to the untrained eye of the average viewer at the time, but we've become jaded now. The static backdrops and blocky textures leave the average viewer lacking a suspension of disbelief from the first second now. We're also not shocked to see people in full facial/head makeup all the time now, but B5 pioneered a lot of that work.

The arc-driven story that is a staple in TV now is directly a consequence of Straczynski's work on B5. Before him, it was unheard of in US TV science fiction (though the original BSG had a very loose arc). Even for TV in general, only Hill Street Blues had really done an arc for TV in the US. Now, many others have done it. We compare B5 to BSG, but understand that BSG would never have been greenlighted without the success of B5.

So, was Straczynski just stuborn enough to be the first one to do these things, or is he a true visionary who can change the world of TV SF once again? There are already rumblings from the likes of Warren Ellis over the idea of direct-to-DVD science fiction being the next outlet for creative storytelling.... we'll see.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[sterno]

Definitely. All the characters had their imperfections and that all played into what happened. When the big war was over it set the seeds for the next big war. Truly ony of my favorite bits was how the Vorlons and Shadows were in a way almost more childish than the other species that came after them even though they were heald up as a kind of god-like creature initially. Good stuff :)

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and let's not forget Firefly!

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[Penguuu]

There was one interesting post in rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5 by JMS about Karl Rove and President G.W Bush watching Babylon5.

I suppose Karl Rove is avid fan for character Mr. Morden :-)

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[Marillion]

Actually I did walk into it on season three. The transition was made easier with two things. A good mentor and Lurker's Guide. I think Lurker's Guide still sets the benchmark for what an episode guide should be.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[Phu5ion]

But what about Firefly? You forgot about that series.

Firefly is so good, it gets mentioned twice.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[prgrmr]

Personally, I'll take a poorly-lit set with grainy footage and a top-notch story and universe over perfectly produced crap any day.

So then, you're a Neverwhere fan?

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[peragrin]

>>I suppose Karl Rove is avid fan for character Mr. Morden :-)

One day can i have Rove's head mounted on a pole as a warning to the next few generations that twisting the truth only gets your head twisted off. so i can smile and wave at it?

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[GaryPatterson]

When another series builds up through many episodes into powerful and emotional events such as the torture of G'Kar, then I'll accept your point. Until then, all I see are Soapies In Space or Comic Book Characters in Space. That's not to say B5 was completely above that sort of thing, just that when it soared it was light years above most Sci Fi, and it soared a lot.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[teknomage1]

Wow, you have one heck of a reverse nostalgia filter going on. I mean how long has it been since you watched the series? I think it's still very enjoyable and it has som of the best monologues of any series. I mean firefly was a great premise, but it looks like that idea will never be allowed to flower. B5 on the other hand got to deliver it's creator's complete vision. It's rare to find that these days.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[rholland356]

When another series builds up through many episodes into powerful and emotional events such as the torture of G'Kar, then I'll accept your point.

Bend over, bub, here comes your point...

The build up over many episodes to the simultaneous torture and fucking of Gaius Baltar.

You may now admit defeat...

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[rholland356]

Yeah, but a lot of the stories have gone left untold. *sigh*

What?!? How can this be? There are a lot of fans here who said that B5 is the greatest show because the stories were told to completion!!! It can't be both ways...

I'm a sucker.

Straczynski is banking on this.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[Associate]

...and wave at it like this. [waves mockingly]

Mod parent up.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[GaryPatterson]

who?

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[davisonja]

Same here. Various friends told me it was a must watch, so I gave it a go. There were definitely things that made more sense, or seemed more significant, to them (since they'd watched from the start) but it struck me as a good yarn regardless of previous stuff. The lurkers guide was a brilliant addition to the show itself, but mostly provided trivia for me. I must confess that I've still not seen most of seasons 1 or 2, nor any of season 5, bar the final episode which all fans know about. :) I was/am a big fan of the background, consistent, progressing arc. Lost ended up losing me because I couldn't see the pattern. It appeared to be episode after episode of story with no direction. I never got past episode 1 of season 2 as it looked like more of the same.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[bill_mcgonigle]

I suppose Karl Rove is avid fan for character Mr. Morden :-)

Don't you think a Keeper is a better analogy?

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[rholland356]

who?

Wrong show, Gary.

The new Dr. Who is nicely done and quite entertaining, though. Thanks for pointing out yet another good use of green-screen video tech in current Sci-Fi TV.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[Tungbo]

Ummmm.

Just what great series do we have now that is comparable in scope and interest?

I would accept BSG. But what eles?

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[PortHaven]

Actually, I've taken a look back. And even watched it with a now ex-g/f who became enraptured (but not until season 2).

That said, I still find the series terribly more enjoying then the new Prattlestar Galactica. The Stargates are fun, campy but not as deep nor gripping - brain fodder. Farscape was a touch to whacked out from reality. Firefly was superb but not an epic story. Prattlestar Galactica prattles on, giving little bits and pieces of arc to keep you interested but making you droll thru some of the worst crap in sci-fi.

Yes, let's all give Prattlestar the hand(job) it deserves.

Re:Babylon 5's time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not do unto G'Kar what was done unto Na'toth?

bab5 pivotal

[thelost]

B5 was one of the pivotal sci-fi series of my teenage life, because it was real drama and didn't treat me like a child (star trek, tut tut).

'the very long night of lono mollari' has to rate as one of the greatest and most evocative sci-fi episodes ever made.

I'm not sure if it's such a great idea to revive the series though, in any way. other opinions?

Re:bab5 pivotal

[andphi]

I'm not sure whether it should be revived or not. At the end, it seemed to be struggling to go forward. Excalibur was good, but I didn't much care for The Legend of the Rangers movie and probably wouldn't have watched the series. I'm glad it ended well (at least on balance) - a 5 year run, a good spin-off series, a handful of TV movies, and a cult following that has lasted for years. It was spared the fate of the Star Trek franchise - the horror of ST: Voyager, the almost literal ignominy (that is, not having its proper name) of Enterprise, and the timesink known as Nemesis. The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari was very good, though. I agree on that. It was one of the episodes Harlan Ellison was heavily involved in, and it shows. Londo pulling up a floor panel to look at his own dying heart?

Re:bab5 pivotal

[SSCGWLB]

Agreed. I enjoyed ST; TNG and DS9, but absolutely loved B5. It had rich characters, mystery, danger, and groundbreaking CG (at least to me at that age). A lot of people criticize the acting, it honestly never bothered me (caveat: I liked Farsape, acting and all).

I haven't seen the series in a while (have it on DVD), so the names of my favorite episodes escape me. Honestly, aside from a few setup episodes in season 1, I liked them all.

Personally, I don't think a revival is possible. It's almost doomed to failure. If they change anything, the people who like the original will not like it. If they don't change anything, it will be B5 regurgitated. They tried that with Crusade, which didn't work out. I hope they learn from the success of B5/Farscape/SG and try something new!

~nate

Re:bab5 pivotal

[morcego]

Excalibur was good, but I didn't much care for The Legend of the Rangers movie and probably wouldn't have watched the series.

Oh my, could they make The Legend of the Rangers suck any more ?
I too enjoyed Excalibur, and was said when it ended. The only thing I missed on it was more politics, which was the hallmark of B5. A few episodes telling what was happening on earth would have did the show a lot of good (and maybe saved it).

Re:bab5 pivotal

[Dragonslicer]

Crusade met its unfortunate end primarily because of pressure from the executives at TNT. The execs tried running the show and giving JMS orders about what to do creatively, which didn't work at all. It's not quite certain if TNT genuinely wanted to make the show the way they were telling JMS to make it or if they were just doing everything they could to sink the show. Either way, Crusade got killed before it had a chance to be good. I'm about as big a fan of B5 as anyone, but I would still admit that just the first 13 episodes of the first season of B5 would make a fairly bad story, just like it did for Crusade.

Re:bab5 pivotal

[BalanceOfJudgement]

but I didn't much care for The Legend of the Rangers movie and probably wouldn't have watched the series.

In fact, Babylon 5 as a series was [is] so moving and inspiring to me that the mere production of Legend of the Rangers almost pushed me to abandon the series entirely. But I decided I would just ignore the fact that movie was ever made and enjoy the other great productions.

In regards to the Very Long Night.. I once had a very difficult night to get through, years ago, and spent the entire night writing something I entitled "The Very Long Night of ___", as an homage to the grace and power that episode contained.

Ehhh. In many ways that series changed my outlook on the world, and I gladly give it its due.

Re:bab5 pivotal

[91degrees]

t's not quite certain if TNT genuinely wanted to make the show the way they were telling JMS to make it or if they were just doing everything they could to sink the show.

If the TV industry is anything like the games industry, they genuinely thought they were being helpful. Unfortunately the people trying to be helpful had no idea just how hard creating these things actually is, and think that a few simple formulas (e.g. more sex = higher ratings) were as good as actual creativity.

Re:bab5 pivotal

[shmlco]

Some people are being helpful. And others just want to screw with the guy because they hate each other, and others are building or defending their turf. Joe thinks there should be more sex because that's what "people" want to see, and John thinks too much sex is destroying American values, and we need to set a "moral" example.

The end result is bland, watered-down, and a prime example of what happens when "creativity" is managed by a committee.

Sort of like the Zune....

Re:bab5 pivotal

[YowzaTheYuzzum]

Excalibur was good

I too enjoyed Excalibur

You couldn't have enjoyed it that much, seeing as you've already forgotten the name of the series :P

Indeed, Crusade was good.

Shucks!

[waif69]

I can't pre-order on Amazon yet! This is truly good news for those fans who miss the show and wish it continued through to the end of JS's 5 year plan.

[OT] Firefly?

[YA_Python_dev]

Now can we have direct-to-DVD Firefly?

Please?

Pretty please?

Re:[OT] Firefly?

[l3v1]

Well, if JMS would say he'd make a season, they'd probably not say no. Otherwise...

Tastes like beef

[mdouglas]

So I gather JMS has an issue with SFX magazine. What's that about?

This is the best I've found via google:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.tv .babylon5.moderated/msg/88b1ea53e7879c63

Re:Tastes like beef

[BalanceOfJudgement]

So I gather JMS has an issue with SFX magazine. What's that about?

Yes, he and they had a falling out a few years back...

Hell if I can remember why, anymore, but he vowed never to do another interview with them nor to ever allow them to publish any article relating to his work.

Oh yes.. now that I read the article I remember. To summarize.. people were illegally showing copies of B5 in various places and when JMS and Warner attempted to put a stop to it, SFX got in the middle of it and acted like the people showing the videos were some sort of underdog. JMS kindly attempted to set the record straight, at which point SFX got belligerent, and JMS responded by cutting them out of the B5 loop entirely.

I remember when that happened actually.. few people I knew had any sympathy for SFX.

Best of breed.

[Trevelyan]

Some people don't like B5 because you can't drop into it. Unlike star trek with it's closed episodes, the B5 story spans 4 seasons (with some expansion in a fifth season).

I consider B5 to be one of the best sci-fi series ever made, and its long term story is one of the reasons for that.

I think that some other sci-fi series may have had a chance to come close to B5 (eg firefly) but never got the chance to last long enough.

Its a shame that it came to such a conclusion it was (would be) difficult to continue it. The creators do keep coming back to it, but never something quite so epic, and I had hoped that one of the spins offs (eg crusade) would have lived longer.

Anyway B5 will always remain as a definitive series for me.

Re:Best of breed.

[l3v1]

ts a shame that it came to such a conclusion it was (would be) difficult to continue it

I think quite the opposite. It was one story, to be told, and told well. JMS managed to do just that. It was never intended to be an endless many year long series. And just because it had a good storyline, a beginning, an end, and a very well done in-between, it will remain my all-time sci-fi favourite, despite my friendly :) relation to all ST (and DS9 above all) and Firefly.
 

Re:Best of breed.

[Tony]

The creators do keep coming back to it, but never something quite so epic, and I had hoped that one of the spins offs (eg crusade) would have lived longer.

That would've taken better writing. B5 had some of the *best* writing in SF TV, consistently. There were a few lame episodes, but for the most part, the entire series was excellent.

Crusade, however.

Crusade shat. It started off OK, and the premise wasn't terrible (though not great). I would've very much liked to see it expanded into a real show. But the writing was painfully terrible. A few of the episodes were OK, but then you get complete scudge like the X-Files episode ("Visitors from Down the Street").

Anyway. I wish Crusade would've been better, but the episodes that aired didn't really deserve to be continued.

Re:Best of breed.

[morcego]

Oh my, that XFiles episode was a pain.
But the real thing missing on Crusade was not better writing. The writing was comparable to many other series that lasted a long time.
Crusade was to be a B5 spinoff, so the target audience should be B5 fans. But it lacked the main point that made B5 so unique: politics.
That is why most B5 fans didn't enjoy it.

Re:Best of breed.

[soliptic]

Some people don't like B5 because you can't drop into it.

I, on the other hand, didn't like B5 because I thought it was, well... sort of crappy.

I had no problem dropping into it - I started watching from the very first episode. But I only lasted about 5 or 6 episodes, not enough to see this amazing multi-season storyline, on account of the absolutely awful acting, dialogue, make-up and special effects.

Straight to video!!

[Threni]

"Bargain buckets on standby"
"Aye aye, captain!"

CGI and Garibaldi

[Sponge Bath]

They could give him some CGI hair. Maybe a mullet.

I guess they can't bring back Ivonova.
From her statements on the DVD set commentary, she plumped up like Jabba the Hut.

Re:CGI and Garibaldi

[quill_n_brew]

She didn't plump up. I can personally vouch for that. What's never been released to the public, as far as I know, is a rather sickening contract dispute that took place. JMS is not the benevolent wizard some people might paint him as.

Re:CGI and Garibaldi

[Shawn is an Asshole]

They could give [Garibaldi] some CGI hair. Maybe a mullet

Wouldn't they have to change is name to Garihairi, though?

Re:CGI and Garibaldi

[RevAaron]

Care to elaborate on what you do know about the contract dispute?

Re:CGI and Garibaldi

[Anonymous Coward]

She was in a (not very good IMH) comedy show last year called "broken news". She didn't look to be a plumper in that...

Re:CGI and Garibaldi

[Sponge Bath]

She didn't plump up.

I stand corrected. In the B5 commentaries she said something
about 'being too big to fit through a door' or similar statement.
Recent photos show that is not true.

I guess that statement was probably self-deprecating humor
about gaining a pound or two. Silly.

Re:CGI and Garibaldi

[Drakino]

It's been a while since I heard about it at a convention in 98, but by what I remember, the dispute is why Claudia wasn't in the 5th season (except the final episode that was actually shot during the 4th season). She was saying the reason was due to some mis communication and JMS really didn't add much to the conversation. The impression most people got was that she or her agent had said she was busy, so they moved on to find a replacement for her role in the 5th season. She did want to be in it, but by the time she tried to talk to JMS, they had already brought in the new actor. JMS and Claudia were clearly not happy with each other at this convention as they stayed away from each other.

She was involved in some of the TV movies though made after this, and on the commentary tracks of the DVDs, so I doubt that old issue would cause her to be skipped in these direct to DVD shows. The only two characters that I know of that won't be shown are Dr. Franklin (Richard Biggs) and G'kar (Andreas Katsulas), as sadly both actors have passed away.

Re:CGI and Garibaldi

[mbourgon]

How many episodes of that were there? I caught one online and loved it, but never saw signs of any more.

Re:CGI and Garibaldi

[dafoomie]

The way I heard it, around the end of season 4, they had no idea if there would be a season 5 or not. Scifi was interested, but since it was so late, their budget was already spent. They weren't picked up until very late in the game by TNT. The actors had to either commit to the 5th season before knowing if it would ever happen, and risk passing on other opportunities, or they could take the other opportunities. Claudia and her agent didn't want to commit with the show in limbo, so she moved on. They also seemed to be under the impression that she would be back, JMS made some comments to the effect of, they would've killed off Ivanova instead of Marcus if they knew she wouldn't be back.

They actually taped the series finale in season 4, just in case there was never a 5. I can't blame her for leaving, its a tough position for anyone to be in. I hadn't heard anything about any hard feelings or a miscommunication, though, but it would be interesting to find out more.

Re:CGI and Garibaldi

[Anonymous Coward]

The dispute started because Claudia was doing some movies, and needed time off from B5 to shoot. She asked JMS if she could be written out of four of the twenty-two episodes, and JMS said he'd do so, but couldn't "officially" guarantee anything, for various legal reasons. This wasn't good enough for Claudia. To JMS, and a lot of other people, this looked like Claudia didn't trust him... but the truth of the matter was that she needed "official" confirmation, for the sake of the producers of the various movies she was doing. One small miscommunication, which royally screwed up season five.

If this hadn't happened, season 5 wouldn't have sucked so much. Ivanova would have become Byron's lover rather than Lyta (who would just be another of his followers), because he reminded her of Marcus. Byron goes a little nuts (as he did in the season 5 that got made), and Ivanova realises this, it would have been her who called in Bester in "The Tragedy of Telepaths", rather than Lochley. That's right, Ivanova... calling in Bester. The rest of the Byron arc happens pretty much the same as in the actual season 5, and this of course makes Ivanova realise even more the chance she missed with Marcus, bringing back the old theme of unrequited love.

In short: If Claudia and JMS hadn't had that one small miscommunication, the whole Byron arc would have made a whole lot more sense.

Re:CGI and Garibaldi

[Gadget_Guy]

How many episodes of that were there? I caught one online and loved it, but never saw signs of any more.

There were 6 episodes (as is often the case with a TV series from Britain).

However, if you saw one episode then you saw them all. It was disappointing that it was all very template stuff. The first episode was the best, so I hope that it was the one that you saw.

Re:CGI and Garibaldi

[mbourgon]

Awesome, thanks. I saw the Bird Flu one, which I think was the first.

This explains...

[doit3d]

...why Mira Furlan got very pissy with me when I asked her at DragonCon this year if she was looking forward to the possibility of her returning in the upcoming productions of B5. I was very nice to her, but she turned into a rather hateful person in less than .2 seconds after I asked the question. I felt like she would kill me on the spot if she could have gotten away with it, judging by her expression & body language as well. It was a very disappointing experience meeting her, for I admired her work on the show, and thought better of her.

I can only assume that either she asked for too much money to return, or she ticked somebody off during her time on the show. After seeing a glimpse of her temper, and her almost insignificant parts on other shows since B5, I think I know the answer.

I am glad to see the series revived somewhat though, for it was a decent sci-fi show. I do not think they will regret the decision of producing the direct-to-DVD shows. It will do well, just as the past DVD releases have I'm sure.

Re:This explains...

[Anonymous Coward]

when I asked her at DragonCon this year...
brDragonCon? Nerd!

Re:This explains...

[Sponge Bath]

...her almost insignificant parts on other shows since B5

Woah now.
Are you calling her role in Rade Serbedzija's Ulysses Theatre Company's production of Euripides' Medea insignificant?
Croatian theater rocks the Casbah!

Re:This explains...

[Anonymous Coward]

> After seeing a glimpse of her temper,

You watched five years of B5 and didn't realize never to do anything that might even slightly irritate a Minbari? Particularly that Minbari?

To borrow a line from a lesser franchise: "You're braver than I thought."

Re:This explains...

[Dragonslicer]

I can't speak for Mira's reaction (maybe she was just sick of being asked about it every 15 seconds?), but the reason she won't be in either of the first two episodes is that the stories focus on human characters. This was stated by JMS quite a while ago. If the first episodes sell well, more will be made that begin to feature other characters.

Re:This explains...

[mblase]

I can only assume that either she asked for too much money to return, or she ticked somebody off during her time on the show. After seeing a glimpse of her temper, and her almost insignificant parts on other shows since B5, I think I know the answer.

I can imagine her response in words:

"Only one human has ever survived asking me that question. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your life... be somewhere else."

Technomage?

[wonkavader]

Crap. The one character I just HATED as painfully boring, stupid, empty, annoying, useless, etc. Is he maybe coming back so he can be killed in the first 5 minutes like a Police Squad Cameo?

Re:Technomage?

[otis wildflower]

I think you're thinking of Byron. Now _THAT_ was an unwatchable season...

Re:Technomage?

[Dragonslicer]

If you read The Passing of the Technomages trilogy of books, Galen becomes a far more interesting character than the small amount you see in Crusade.

Re:Technomage?

[Maltheus]

Agreed. B5 went south for me whenever it focused on Rangers and Technomages. Hell, there was even a lame-ass King Arthur episode. For me the show was about Vorlons, Shadows, telepaths and the Earth civil war. If these movies aren't going to focus on the TP war or pre-Shadow war events, then I don't see the point. I loved B5, but those follow-up movies simply weren't worth watching. I've never heard anyone express love for them. So far, this sounds like more of the same.

Interesting Business Model

[overtly_demure]

I have always wondered how big a production budget the Direct-to-DVD model could support. In principle, an enormous number of small groups around the world have the resources and potential talent to at least produce one-off movies. With distribution such as Netflix, it is not difficult for consumers to find niche productions that may appeal to relatively small audiences. Unfortunately, this may also reduce the size of the production budget that can be supported.

Can anyone point me to articles where this is discussed, especially with an eye towards small productions? All of us filmmaker wannabes are dying to know.

Re:Interesting Business Model

[rholland356]

With distribution such as Netflix, it is not difficult for consumers to find niche productions that may appeal to relatively small audiences.

Why go to media when you can distribute your small production through Google Video or another internet video service? That's what BattleStar Galactica is doing with its webisodes. Anyone with a green bedsheet, some clamplights, a dv cam and a computer can cobble together a webisode. Sure, good writing and acting come in handy, but lack of those never stopped B5 from making it to the screen.

Re:Interesting Business Model

[shmlco]

The other interesting question here is whether or not you can get the funding up front to do it.

A lot of people would probably give Whedon money for another Firefly, but I often wonder how many people would have given him the money to make a "Firefly" before there every was one and it was just a high concept. "Think mixing the post-civil-war Wild West... with Star Wars."

That's one of the major flaws with the "contract" models being tossed around for content production. I can probably get one to do something that people know about, but if I'm pitching something new...

Not to mention that's there's a limit to what you can pitch w/o spoiling the movie. I mean, I can tell the studio that the "hook" to the Matrix is the whole virtual reality thing, but you can't tell 10,000 people that w/o killing the surprise.

I hope the DVD packaging is purple

[Tumbleweed]

It would look *stunning* in purple.

I hope they further explore that mystery that every civilized species has a form of 'Swedish Meatballs'. That can't be a coincidence!

Re:I hope the DVD packaging is purple

[Goldenhawk]

>It would look *stunning* in purple.

No, I think green would be better.

(It's an insider's joke, people.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilizations_in_Baby lon_5#Drazi)

Re:I hope the DVD packaging is purple

[Tumbleweed]

Yeah, but Londo's drunken speech about how he looks stunning in purple was much funnier to me.

I also liked his perplexion about the Hokey Pokey.

Um... no thanks...

[Guppy06]

"and the technomage Galen (Woodward) are returning"

Oh, nevermind then.

I liked the series Babylon 5. I really liked it. But the franchise took a nosedive since the end of the series, and between Crusade and the post-series TV movies, the only change is that the fall has accelerated.

I'm about ready to put B5 in the same category as Star Wars, the one labelled "Should have known when to stop writing."

Drop the D&D/Kung Fu in space, drop the "technomage" and give me back my Garibaldi, Bester and Vir.

Re:Um... no thanks...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah Galen was pretty lame in Crusade....

Unfortunately, the really cool backstory for the Technomages was never really explored in the either B5 or Crusade. There's a trilogy of books on them that goes into what is really a very interesting story about who these guys are, where their technology comes from and what it does to them.

If JMS brings Galen back to expand the themes from those books, I would be all for it.

Too many Woodwards

[alanw]

and the technomage Galen (Woodward) are returning.

That's Peter Woodward who played Galen, as opposed to the more famous Edward Woodward (of Wicker Man fame), who also played a technomage (Alwyn, of the Golden Dragons) in the episode The Long Road

Speaking of stupid characters

[matt74441]

I hope they bring Jesus back from the dead.

Re:Speaking of stupid characters

[nhaas]

DONE, 2,000 years ago - ANYTHING ELSE?

First mention of B5 was during Captain Power

[Picass0]

From the BABYLON 5 FAQ:

In the Captain Power episode "Final Stand," Tank mentions that he's from the
Babylon 5 Genetic Engineering Colony.

Re:First mention of B5 was during Captain Power

[PortHaven]

I wish Captain Power was on DVD.

For whatever asanine reason my parents wouldn't let me watch it. But I liked it from the few episodes I saw. I remember reading that the next season, Sauron was to turn and actually side with the humans. That would've been cool

Re:WHAHAY

[Anonymous Coward]

1st rate trolling

thank you!

Deep Space Nine better than B5 or vice versa?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) who stole from whom? (I've heard both theories)
2) I prefer Deep Space Nine; after all, there is no Nicole de Boer in Babylon 5

Re:Deep Space Nine better than B5 or vice versa?

[Maltheus]

It was my understanding that B5 was pitched to all the major studios even before TNG came out. I liked both shows but it was clear that DS9 and Voyager were taking whole plot points from B5 towards the end. Not that I minded, I felt it really helped DS9 to have inter-galactic war arcs.

Re:Deep Space Nine better than B5 or vice versa?

[xenoc_1]

Yeah because after all, it's impossible for there ever to be more than one SF series set on a space station. Just like there could only be one series that ever was set on a spaceship.

Geez the JMS fanboyz need to get a clue - he didn't invent space stations. The backstory and universe-building around DS9 and B5 are quite different. Oh, they both had wars. Guess what, he didn't invent war stories nor war SF either.

Re:Deep Space Nine better than B5 or vice versa?

[blincoln]

Yeah because after all, it's impossible for there ever to be more than one SF series set on a space station.

I think the reason people make the comments the do about DS9 and B5 is that IIRC, before either was made, JMS took the B5 concept to Paramount and was turned down. Paramount then went on to make DS9 a few years later, and it had a suspiciously similar concept.

Of course, one of my personal theories is that JMS got a good chunk of his inspiration (and an actor or three) from the B-grade film Arena, so he's not entirely innocent either.

Re:Deep Space Nine better than B5 or vice versa?

[PortHaven]

JMS had gone to Paramount first with B5. They told him they were not interested. He then went to Warner Brothers. Paramount then happened to launch a series about a station, including a conquered race that had only recently regained it's freedom, it even had a shapeshifter (a character in JMS' original story design that was later dropped before production).

There was so much similarity that there is little doubt that Paramount is guilty of idea theft.

iTunes and HD

[robvs68]

Hey Warner Bros, this will/would undoubtedly sell well on iTunes. It would sell even better if you sell it on iTunes in High Def.

Hey Apple, selling this on iTunes in HD would be a great way to pioneer and promote mass distribution of HD content and would also work well at selling/promoting your new set-top box (the iTV thingy). So please convince Warner Home Video that you both stand to make a lot of money with this, not to mention the amount of buzz (read, free publicity) that this would create.

Thanks.

Re:iTunes and HD

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be happy if they'd just fucking release the rest of the seasons on iTunes first.

I'M I THE ONLY ONE?

[ancient_kings]

That thinks B5 is more a religious and philisophical experience than simply watching a "show" ? But then again the "Thief" video game series is also a religious and philisophical experience than simply playing a "game" to me.

Re:I'M I THE ONLY ONE?

[Sfing_ter]

Nope, 'Whatever Happened To Mr. Garibaldi' was my favorite episode of any show; Or when Kosh de-suited to save the dim-wit Sheridan from falling out of the tram and each species/race saw him as their own deity... tasty... Or when Sheridan had learn from Kosh, and went into brown sector and had to pay for his teaching... provocative... Yes, it did get cheezy at times but so does real life, the graphics at the time equalled most movies (of that time), but the experience of the show, 'and the ONE, YOU are not the ONE, Zathras knows the ONE and you are not him'. I still have a clip form "whatever htmg' on my computers, the part where sheridan is under z'ha'dum, between moments:
-~-~-~-
"There are only two possibilities. If you hit bottom, then you are dead. If you
did not hit bottom, you are still falling and all of this is a dream. Unless ..
you are in-between."
"Between what?"
"Between moments."
"Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Always running out of time. Yours is almost used up.
You're between seconds, lost in the infinite possibilities between tick and
tock. Tick, you're alive. Tock.. Well, it was a good life, but a short one.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick--"

"You're closer now, aren't you. Yes, I see you are. But closer to tick or closer
to tock? I don't know. Only time will tell. And here, between the moments, we
have all the time in the world."
        -- Lorien to Sheridan in Babylon 5:"Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?"

-~-~-~-

Damn, just reading the script gives me the feeling I got when I first watched this episode, (and then had to wait for the repeat to record it to vhs), and here on slashdot, we have all the time in the world... sorry Michael...

the series was amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked DS9, but I think Babylon 5 had a wayyyy deeper storyline, if u spent 2 weeks watching the series from season 1 to 5, you'll just be blown away by the depth of the characters and the complexity of the storyline, definitely a great series.

I'd love to have it come back, maybe not totally. Y cant the spinoff the Rangers just come back, that was a great pilot movie and they should bring that back if anything....only problem is replacing G'kar, :(

how can ppl dis the show? It was so real, enterprise is nice and all, but far too unrealistic of a future, B5 had levels on the station even the Captain was scared to go to, it had drugs, and hookers and everything we have today, cause these aspects of humanity are timeles...

The acting

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>Well, the acting was often terrible.

And often not. Some of that Eastern European talent was first rate.

Some of what looked like terrible acting wasn't. Sinclair seemed aimless, wooden, forced -- and that was a precise and workmanlike portrayal of the character, a purposeless man who wasn't sure why he was alive, was numbed by PTSD and survivor guilt, and pushing himself through the motions of being a diplomat. G'Kar didn't seem like much in the first season, but when the character grew enough to give Andreas Katsulas scope for his ability, he shone.

Re:The acting

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Personally, I'm always somewhat amused when anyone criticises the acting in B5, and then goes on to compliment the acting in the various ST series.

In B5, pretty much all of the regular cast could and did give outstanding performances when the writing was up to it. Ironically, the two regular characters I liked least were Sheridan and Delenn, but that is perhaps as much because they are forced by the story to be your stereotypical "noble leader" types. I think the more unusual characters for a big sci-fi series, for example the various aides to the ambassadors, often had more scope to build unique characters, and that is why classic scenes like Vir and Lennier in the bar worked so well. As I've said before, I still maintain that G'Kar is probably the best overall character of any sci-fi TV show, ever; Andreas Katsulas was indeed an actor of the highest calibre. And of course, they had some great regular guest stars: I'll take Walter Koenig's outstanding performance as Bester over Walter Koenig as... that guy who sat at the front on the bridge... any day.

In contrast, I think it rather ironic that the better actors in the ST series were frequently playing characters who are supposed to have no emotion: Spock, Data, the Doctor. Of course there are the gems in "stereotype" roles too, Picard being the obvious example, but I think the overall script-writing and acting in the ST series has always been some way behind B5.

Re:The acting

[alib001]

I see it as some of the actors went through a period when they grew into their characters. Early appearances were perhaps a bit disjointed but it was but a brief period when they were warming up. After that time I think there were many performances that I would characterize as excellent.

Re:The acting

[pandaba]

Wish I had mod points for you as I'm always happy to see a defense of Sinclair. I thought his role was acted perfectly and I preferred the reserved, dignified, haunted Sinclair to the happy-go-lucky Sheridan.

Re:The acting

[NulDevice]

Som of B5's talent was quite good - Katsulas, for example, was world-class.

Some of it was *awful*, low-end soap-opera country.

ST's was consistantly mediocre. Not great, but not terrible.

Both kind of balanced out, except for one thing - JMS wrote some of the most terrible dialogue ever. The guy had vision, yeah, and he had a great story arc plotted, but his dialogue was often stilted and very comic-book-ish. Often, the dialogue was way too expository, which meant that the characters had to basically explain to each other the episode plots - and while a good actor can pull that off, a bad actor will make that either seem really flat or seem like scenery-chewing. In the few non-JMS-penned eps, like the oft-cited, Gaiman-penned "Day of the Dead", we actually had dialogue with some subtext and implication instead, and it brought out better performances in most of the characters. In that case, it was sort of a goofy plot, but the writing was good enough that the episode didn't fall on its face.

The various treks had the advantage of a rotating cast of writers, so it didn't have the problem of one writer's flaws becoming the whole show's flaws.

CC's departure from B5

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two resources with this information:
a) Lurker's guide to B5 coverage, http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/misc/cc-leave.html
b) Google groups archive of rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated, a search for all words, Claudia Christian contract, in that group gives a nice selection.

To set the stage... the fifth season was totally up in the air. Previously, B5 had aired on in syndication via an entity called PTEN, but by the end of season 4, the syndication market was drying up as previously independent stations were vacuumed up by Fox, WB, and UPN. All of the talent had contracts with some sort of a drop-dead date for WB (the production arm, not the network) to pick up their option for a fifth season. As the drop-dead date approached, somehow or another they got negotiations going with TNT to pick up season 5 (as well as IIRC reruns), but there was no arrangement in time for the lapsing of the talent's contracts.

To buy more time, WB asked for short extensions from the talent, and got them from everyone but CC. Consequently, she was out of contract, and a new contract would have to be arranged prior to the start of production. I'm not sure to what extent there was ongoing negotation to try to get her back under contract, but the long and short of it is, at the point where they absolutely had to know whether she was in or out, there was no contract, so she got written out of the story.

There was some speculation during the days when this was playing out that there was a lapse in communication or CC's agent tried to play hardball without fully consulting her. However, subsequent statements from jms about the interactions of he and cast members with CC make it pretty clear that she was aware of the situation and the deadlines, although possibly she didn't fully realize that the final deadline was nonnegotiable (due to the production schedule requirements for when scripts would be written). I believe she tried to claim at one point that WB or jms didn't want her back, and has since backpedaled from that position.

Based on subsequent statements, it seems fairly likely that a movie deal got in the way. It's not as clear what the sticking point was. jms has stated that CC's reps wanted her to be paid for 22 episodes while only working 18, and WB was understandably not willing to go along with that (not least because previously, Stephen Furst had worked a reduced schedule due to an outside TV commitment and was only paid for episodes worked). There was some talk about her wanting availability for specific dates contractually, with jms saying that he could give a personal assurance of that but it couldn't be contracted; I don't know whether one side or the other was taking an extraordinary position there, or whether that was ultimately the breaking point. Considering the number of parties involved (jms, CC, her agent, WB, whoever the outside movie deal was with), there may have been inadequate communication of the various sides positions. Also, CC (or her agent) may have overestimated how much she was "needed" by B5 (although there was already ample evidence that jms was willing and able to write anyone out of the story if circumstances dictated, see Talia Winters).

Re:CC's departure from B5

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops, I should have read further on the Lurker's Guide before submitting the parent. It looks like the sticking point was that there were two possibilities for how her movie work would be handled:

1. She would be contracted down to 18 episodes -- such a reduction had previously been done with other cast members.

2. She would be contracted for the full 22 episodes, with an unofficial assurance from jms that if she needed time off to work around other commitments, she would get it -- this had previously been done with other cast members.

Apparently, she or her people wanted to to be contracted for working 18 episodes but paid for 22, which was WB would not agree to because it was a renegotiation that would invoke clauses in the contracts of the other cast members.

Communication from CC subsequent to all of this claims that option 1 was not on the table; as near as I can tell from jms, he believed both options were on the table. Whether one of them is incorrect, or something was not communicated correctly, I'm not sure. I get the impression from jms's messages that the contractual status of those four episodes was the sticking point, and very likely her other deal needed to have it in writing that she would be available.

I think the most probable explanation is that either she or her agent misread the situation and thought they could get work 18 / pay 22 written. I wouldn't care to guess whether either or both knew of the work 18 / pay 18 option and decided that it was not acceptable.

Re:CC's departure from B5

[quill_n_brew]

***To buy more time, WB asked for short extensions from the talent, and got them from everyone but CC. Consequently, she was out of contract, and a new contract would have to be arranged prior to the start of production. I'm not sure to what extent there was ongoing negotation to try to get her back under contract, but the long and short of it is, at the point where they absolutely had to know whether she was in or out, there was no contract, so she got written out of the story.***

Much of the chronicling AC collected on this issue is correct. But, further, on the above point...
The tactics used to execute these extensions for the cast were a hair's breadth away from guerrilla warfare. At the eleventh hour (literally!) before the contract termination -- with all cast members ensconced in a hotel in England while on convention tour -- each was roused from their beds near the stroke of midnight and *strongly urged* to sign. CC was not to be found during this legal-eagle brute squad activity, and was therefore considered ineligible. Efforts on her part to rectify the situation after the fact were greeted with cold shoulders by both JMS and WB. The result seemed to have been their intention all along. Motivation has never been clear, except for the likelihood of just plain Machiavellian behavior.

Re:CC's departure from B5

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding the actual execution of the extensions, I can understand WB not wanting to need to renegotiate with everyone, but at the same time, I think it worked out well for all concerned, except for CC.

I think that another statement is in dispute, however: "Efforts on her part to rectify the situation after the fact were greeted with cold shoulders by both JMS and WB." Not even Claudia's final statement supports this reading. Her final statement basically claims that: she wanted, in writing, time off for her movie opportunity, and believed that the only offer on the table was for a full 22-episode commitment with only a verbal agreement from jms that he would give her the time off. That's not exactly a cold shoulder -- it indicates to me that a good-faith offer was made for a new contract to have her on board for the fifth season, and negotiations fell apart over the details.

I went into this in the follow-up to my grandparent to which you replied... Taking her final statement from the lurker's guide at face value, she did not believe that an 18-episode commitment was on the table, whereas jms's statements indicate he believes that it was. That indicates two general possibilities: First, that one of the parties is lying. Second, that one of the parties is misinformed. (with multiple plausible scenarios in each...) For obvious reasons, I'd like to think it's the second.

Why I love the babylon 5 universe...

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine actually starring at a blackhole I would think it would be kinda scary!
Well babylon 5 is full of spooks and mystery not just science fantasy and has the dopest conventional space fighter
to ever be designed...the starfury! I just love the universe and I think it deserves
really good actors and designs which it obviously does!
p34c3
babcom out

Re:Best of breed? Naw, flawed prototype.

[rholland356]

It was one story, to be told, and told well.

In the sense that the one story was about the Shadow war, you are right. It was told well to the point of climax, then all the rest of the stuff happened. Why? Because B5 was a collection of minor stories, overshadowed by the shadow war story. These sideshows always paled in comparison to the main event, and were never enough to build audience interest in subsequent seasons.

It was never intended to be an endless many year long series.

Har! B5's sole intention was to keep Straczynski employed for as long as possible. That's why after his failures with Crusade and Jeremiah, he's back flogging the B5 horse again. The guy is a great businessman and knows how to mine the last $ from his franchise.

And just because it had a good storyline, a beginning, an end, and a very well done in-between,

That's accurate only for seasons 2 and 3. Season 1 had a clunky pace and except for a few key scenes, could be discarded. Seasons 4 and 5, the B5 movies and Crusade were sideshows. Extended denoument, really, and a search for the next big idea.

it will remain my all-time sci-fi favourite, despite my friendly :) relation to all ST (and DS9 above all) and Firefly.

Keep in mind that at the time, the only other US Sci-fi competition was the Trek franchise, so I can see why B5 endeared itself to you. But have you stopped watching sci-fi TV?

B5 was a prototype that evolved as cheap green-screen CGI made space stories affordable to tell. Since then, however there have been several sci-fi stories from the same mold, with better writing and graphics. Lexx, Red Dwarf, Farscape, Firefly, and now BattleStar Galactica all have long story lines, and have managed to keep their dramatic climax very near the end of the tale, instead of dead center.

Firefly has been particularly successful by using its movie to deliver the climactic moment and the story resolution. That worked quite nicely.

You gotta hand it to Straczynski. He is a savvy businessman and deserves to wring every last buck from his fan base. His work methods have proved a useful model for others, who now have the luxury of focusing on the creative process because they can simply follow Straczynski's trailblazing work.

I think Straczynski might benefit from knocking out a few webisodes to whet the appetite for the DVDs. I bet he comes around to that eventually. BSG is blazing that path, sci-fi-wise.

Re:Bab 5 Sucks

[CoJeff]

I wasn't going to reply to this one but I just couldn't stop my fingers. Each series (ST & B5) has its good points and bad. I just got sick and tired of the reset button each week that ST still did with the Enterprise series. I don't think you should generalize who the people are that like B5. I loved B5 more that ST but I also liked ST as well. I'm a huge Sci-fi nut and never watched those day time soaps. It sounds like you did but knowing that a luke and laura were possibly getting married. I enjoyed the campy feel that B5 had and the special effects I thought were way better than ST. I also don't understand why people can't join the b5 series mid stream cause thats what I did and was able to figure out what was going on. I just went back and watched the ones I missed later.

Some Facts & Figures

[piersb]

Earlier this year I did some thinking about business models for D2DVD series. Then I did some actual number-crunching.

It's all a bit back-of-an-envelope, but it's a good starting point for discussion. What it boils down to is that I don't think you can make your money back if you're spending more than three-quarters of a million an episode. And according to this week's Variety, the current spend on a US primetime TV series is averaging about $2.75m an episode.

Mad Pulp Bastard Bill Cunningham is also a good person to watch for information about D2DVD financial models.

B5

[jonaac]

B5 is about the creation of a Leviathan, of speculation on future technology, on the role and forms of religion picking things from Mircea Eliade, and also a look into Wilsonian and Post WWII American Idealism, also dwelling on System/Community/Society views of organizing politics, a view on war in the world and social relations in America, the limitations and errors of men and women that abuse alcohol, do drugs, make mistakes, have doubts, and an attempt to question the times, while the wall had collapsed and everything seemed possible... ... and all of this and much more wrapped up in glorious CGI space battles (in this it was a pioneer) and funny looking camp space aliens, great soundtrack, with the plus of some great scenes by Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas, with a story arc that would put you on your toes week after week. That's great television, a really wonderful series, but I have my doubts Straczynski can bring the magic back this time, another context, another time, we'll see.

Mircea Eliade was a Nazi

[Anonymous Coward]

How did the US Government let him immigrate? He was a member of the Iron Guard (a Nazi organization) in his old country. (Hungary. Romania or Bulgaria or oher similar country, I dont remember exactly which one)

Re:Mircea Eliade was a Nazi

[jonaac]

Geez that is a bit too off topic isn't it?...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade

Yeah he was a political radical and quite nuts, if I might add. He had moved on by the time he was invited to the states, although he continued to be a nationalist and an essentialist. His Treaty on the History of Religions is still one of the more fascinating books that anyone can read though, helps anyone that reads it to get new and thought provoking perspectives on religion , and the sacred in general.

Did I mention that, er, he was completely nuts though?

It's Like Citizen Kane

[Faizdog]

You know, just recently, within the last year, I finally watched Citizen Kane. When I saw it, I thought, meh, it's an ok movie, but I'm not sure why it's so highly regarded. Then I investigated and learned and how groundbreaking that movie was. In terms of camera angles, sets (first to show a room's ceiling for example) and plot. It didn't seem special because all the movies since have copied it.

It's the same with B5 and scifi on TV. Ignore firefly, stargate, lost, the new BSG, farscape, and any of the recent stuff. B5 was a defining sci fi TV series in soo many ways, technical, plot, scope, etc. It really set the stage. Besides that, it was just a damn good show.

Re:It's Like Citizen Kane

[NoMaster]

B5 was a defining sci fi TV series in soo many ways, technical, plot, scope, etc.

Yes, but JMS couldn't write dialogue worth shit (not that that has ever stopped anybody - look at Lucas!). Worse than that, he didn't seem able to put together a writing team that could write dialogue worth shit either.

Ultimately, I think that what makes B5 "defining" for so many people on the 'net now is that it was on TV during their nerdy teenage / young adult years.

Ponder on that for a moment - just as your parents had 'The Fugitive' as their 'defining' TV moment, so soon will we be coming into a time when '* Idol' is the defining series for many people, to be followed by a 'Lost' generation. And so on, and so on.

Thankfully, we seem to have gotten past the 'Charmed' generation rather quickly...

Re:It's Like Citizen Kane

[jonaac]

Actually the series had some of the best dialogue in sci-fi ever, he's known for that, Hill Street Blues, Murder She Wrote, Spider Man... in the last couple of years I've been gathering all the DVD's and that definitely has passed the test of time, with the CGI being the more dated aspect of the thing. It was revolutionary at the time, with the Star treck crew saying it was silly in one moment, and then two years later getting B5s FX team to work for them :)

Good, fun, sweeping galactic concepts, but ...

[wytcld]

... the thing that hooked me was the illustrations of how media fools the population. Those fake news shows were spot on perfect - maybe even a bit better, more professional, than any of our current newscasts.

It was prophetic. If our government were to ever go evil, this is how we should expect our broadcasters to cover for it. Just as they have these recent years.

one of the best sci-fi series ever!

[k1b2501tx]

If you go to Z'ha'dum you will die!

LOL LOL ROFL!!!

[Elemenope]

The build up over many episodes to the simultaneous torture and fucking of Gaius Baltar...

You missed: ...while arguing systematic theology and theodicy with a robot (who looks just a tiny bit like Xena).

...and you are right. BSG wins.

A Good Story Doesn't Grow Old

[manlygeek]

I think the enduring quality of B5 is not in the production values, which for the time were outstanding, but in the telling of a coherent story arc spread out over 5 seasons. And from that perspective I think B5 has all Star Trek series, Firefly, Stargate and any other long running Sci-Fi series I can recall beat. If you view all five seaons and then go back and look at pretty much any main story line episode in B5 you see how well it maintains canon. And the story is a good one too. So for my money, I'll be first in line to pre-order the new Direct-To-DVD productions of B5. Go MJS!!!!!!!!!!!