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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)."
If it's good enough for Bab5, it's good enough for Firefly!
You can't take the sky from me!
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.
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.
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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
The problem in the world today is communication. Too much communication - Homer Simpson
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.
>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.
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.