f13.net

JMS is writing a script to bring back B5 as a movie franchise. 

http://www.tvwise.co.uk/2014/08/babylon-5-movie-eyes-2016-production-start/ (http://www.tvwise.co.uk/2014/08/babylon-5-movie-eyes-2016-production-start/)

This is not his first attempt to go to film, but I have high hopes.  This is one of my favorite series of all time.  It has some warts, but there is a lot of gold in there, too.

I'm gonna be weird here and say that I both think this is a great idea and I think JMS needs to not be involved in it beyond being a creative consultant. When you watch the show in retrospect, you realize that his overall concept for the show and for its main arc was fantastic, but that the weaknesses of his scripting often dragged it down or led it astray.  It's not quite a George Lucas-level problem but it's time for him to maybe let someone else think about how to play in the universe he created.

No. NO.

Let me say it again.

NO.

B5 was one of my all time favorite TV shows and I think despite its variable quality, still one of the greatest achievements in filmed entertainment. It did this by a very curious series of coincidences and happenstances. It did this with the absolute career-defining performances of a number of actors, some of whom are sadly dead. It was lightning in a bottle, as evidenced by JMS's output since that day (very inconsistent and some of it downright awful - see his Spider-Man work).

I do not want, nor does the world need a reboot.

I'd rather see it rebooted on TV, as I think the concept works better over a hundred hours than 2 (or 4, 6 or 8 if he gets sequels to go), but I'll take what I can get.  B5 was already tarnished by Legend of the Rangers and those two shorts ... I see no reason to worry about further tarnishing it with a reboot that could be bad.  Let the chips fall where they may...

JMS had some stinkers in his scripts, but he also had some real gems, too.  I think the quality issues were more a factor of him trying to do too many scripts rather than an inability to write.  The failure of a lot of his other scripted work (Jeremiah) is not something I pin on him... the casting was horrible for that show - and was studio forced.  Obviously, he isn't the best writer in TV, but I would not be horrified if he writes it and takes his time with it.

He can't be left in charge of the casting. Outside of a handful of standout actors, the show was mostly populated by AWFUL actors.

I'd prefer to see it as a TV production as well. He and the Wachowskis already have the Netflix thing going and that'd probably be a good place other than being low budget. A studio is going to put a lot of pressure on it to dumb down. That's not where the strength lies.

I tend to think there were some bad casting choices, but there were a lot of great ones as well.  The studio was behind a lot of the more questionable ones.

The pilot movie had good (O'Hare, Furlan, Jurasik, Katsulas, Sekka) and bad (Tallman, Tomita) and mediocre (Doyle).  Mostly good, some real stinkers, and a few folks that neither shined in my eyes, or sucked.  I think that was true throughout most of the series for stars and guests.

Also money issues on the casting. This was done on a shoestring.

Did you not mention Crusade because you involuntarily blocked it from memory?

As a huge fan of Babylon 5 (I still rewatch it once a year.. though I do tend to skip through a number of episodes) I'd have to agree that if you're going to reboot Babylon 5 it should be on television rather than movies. However, I'm not that enthused with rebooting it period. In large part it worked because of Jurasik and Katsulas and little else at times. I'd feel bad for any actors trying to do better than those two with Londo and G'Kar. Also, you just know Doyle would try to force his way into any B5 reboot.

Also; Crusade. Wow. That shit was bad from top to bottom. So many horrible ideas in that one.

Oh come now. Parappa the Gunner was brilliant!

(kick. punch. it's all in the mind...)

Another B5 fan here.  I think JMS set a Guiness World Record for number of episodes written.  Great and some not so great episodes.  Yeah awful actors (I think the redhead was sleeping with JMS).  I THINK O'Hare was fake replaced by Boxleitner in the second season because O'Hare was the One for the Minbari. 

What they did on a shoestring budget was amazing. 

OH and Crusade was just a steaming pile.  They got the captain right and I liked the premise, but everything else suuuucked.

Personally I wouldn't mind seeing some new B5. 

Apparently O'Hare was mentally ill and basically breaking down and delusional through most of the first season. Whatever his acting abilities may have been (or I suspect not), we were mostly seeing everyone trying to work around him just plain losing it.

That wasn't Crusade, that was Legends of the Rangers. And yeah, it was kind of silly, though I didn't mind the rest of that show.

Crusade COULD have been good. It had Galen, one of my favorite characters ever. TNT insisted the thing be action-y from the get go, so you had a lot of extra shit shoehorned in there that the writer didn't want. Given time, I thought it could have been a decent show.

So this will come out a bit after the DS9 movie right?   :why_so_serious:

Oh wow I didn't know that.  Just read the wiki; I had no idea he was such an accomplished actor.  RIP.

Crusade had a rough start, but from what I know, they had a place to go.  I think it would have straightened out.  I read a script for an unmade episode that looked to be on par with some of the better stuff in B5. 

O'Hare was a phenomenal actor before his troubles.  Boxleitner was fine, but I think a full strength O'Hare and the original storyline intended by JMS would have been much better.  B5 was best from seasons 2 through 4.  Seasons 1 and 5 had some real nasty warts and a few moments of light.  Crusade was on par with seasons 1 and 5, IMHO - but I bet it would have been better as time went on, just like the original series.  Most of the movies were more flaw than strength... and the last two entries into the B5 television world were just unfortunate. 

Of all the space based shows, I liked the approach to space travel and science best in this show. It was not realistic - more sci-fantasy than anything - but it blended concepts that would have worked in a 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s sci-fi author's work, and yet it blended those different eras of sci-fi well without seeming dated. 

Here is the part where JMS talks about that. Audio - 7:22 (http://launch.newsinc.com/share.html?trackingGroup=69016&siteSection=breitbart&videoId=24843415)

I agree with most points here. The show wouldn't really work if compressed into a few movies. And without Peter Jurasik..meh.

I just can't watch Babylon.  I've tried more than once, but I quickly wind up just watching the first few minutes of each episode, then scanning forward to the last few minutes.  And I wind up losing interest altogether somewhere late in season 2 or early in 3.

Most of the acting is just too painful.

There is a list out there that suggests 'non-essential' episodes that can be cut.  And perhaps should be.  It is not all great.  Most of seasons 1 and 5 are cut, and most of seasons 2 through 4 are kept... I think all of the movies are cut, too.   I think a total of 70 hours of the show are kept.  On one rewatch I followed the list and found it worked well. 

It's one of those shows where today if you're going to watch it fresh, you have to have a very, very tight focus on arc-required episodes and on quality ones at that. Someone should do a supercut of important arc scenes in otherwise trash episodes so you could watch those in between whole episodes that both matter and are actually good. You would want to skip almost everything that centers on Garibaldi, Franklin, and Ivanova. You would want to skip most of what passes for JMS comedy--some of it was sort of funny in context but doesn't age at all well.

I think I'd go something like this:

Midnight on the Firing Line
[supercut of important bits from "Born to the Purple" that establish Londo's character]
[supercut of one or two bits from The Parliament of Dreams]
[brief supercut from Mind War introducing telepaths and Bester]
And the Sky Full of Stars
Signs and Portents
[supercut of bits from A Voice in the Wilderness: not the whole thing, for sure]
Babylon Squared
Chrysalis

Points of Departure
[stuff about Anna Sheridan and Morden in Revelations]
[technomages interacting with Londo in Geometry of Shadows]
Race Through Dark Places, maybe
Coming of Shadows
All Alone in the Night, maybe
Hunter, Prey
In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum
[Londo stuff in Knives]
Confessions and Lamentations, maybe, though I hate parts of it
The Long Twilight Struggle
The Fall of Night

A Day in the Strife
Voices of Authority
Dust to Dust
Messages From Earth, Point of No Return, Severed Dreams
Interludes and Examinations
War Without End, I and II
And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place
Shadow Dancing [remove Franklin walkabout]
Z'ha'dum

-----------

At this point, you have to decide whether to go on, because the wrap-up of the war is a bit disappointing. There's an even more minimal rewatch you could do that would be the episodes that almost stand alone in their sense of gravity and scale:

Signs and Portents
Babylon Squared
Coming of Shadows
In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum
The Long Twilight Struggle
The Fall of Night
Dust to Dust
The three-part break from Earth
Interludes and Examinations
War Without End
Rock Cried Out
Z'ha'dum

You wouldn't really get what was going on sometimes but those are all pretty great just by themselves. There's shit in there that still gives me shivers--Londo watching the bombardment of Narn, Refa getting chased, all of "Severed Dreams", Kosh talking to Sheridan in his dream just before being attacked, and the conclusion of Z'ha'dum.

-------

If you need to know how it turns out:

Hour of the Wolf
[Sheridan and Lorien scenes in "Mr. Garibaldi", skip the rest]
The Summoning
Falling Towards Apotheosis
The Long Night
Into the Fire

[supercut of the resolution of the war with Earth, none of those episodes are stand-alone great]
Endgame and Rising Star, I guess
Deconstruction of Falling Stars


Most of the fifth season is mandatory to skip.

All My Dreams Torn Asunder
Movements of Fire and Shadow
Fall of Centauri Prime
are bearable.

Objects at Rest is ok
Sleeping in Light only matters if you've seen a fair amount

The other thing I'd say, there are about 15-20 genuinely great scenes over five seasons that it would be a pity to miss.

I suspect a lot of old episodes might not be quite as interesting because of how much B5 changed SF TV. Other shows have come and done similar things and done them better and you're not going to have quite the impact of "really, they're doing a show about labor relations?" The politics are also very strongly linked to the 90s when the Republicans were intransigent isolationists which can give you a bit of whiplash.

It's interesting to see how on different shows the "monster of the week" episodes age compared to arc episodes.

I recently rewatched some of X-Files. The monster of the week episodes are the better episodes. The arc episodes become dull and repetitive after the first two or three, especially when you're robbed of the anticipation of resolution. When you evaluate the episodes without the ability to be hyped and hopeful the arc episodes don't stand up.

Star Trek TNG doesn't really have arc episodes. (It has some recurring things like the Klingon stuff, Lore, Borg, etc) Some episodes feel more slight than others, but that's more based on which characters they focus on and how they're pulled off. There's not much rhyme or reason to which episodes feel essential.

On Babylon 5 (which I have not watched since it came out) I remember the throwaway episodes feeling very throwaway, like the doctor taking part in some sort of intergalactic boxing organization. Deep Space 9 felt the same - here's an episode where they play baseball on a set that that looks like it cost $15!

When the arcs episodes stand up and others don't I think it signifies a good idea with mixed execution - bad acting or writing that show through when the plot can't carry the load.

From what I remember Babylon 5 was a show largely about great scenes and concepts. I don't want to get into spoilers, but some stuff involving the Vorlons for example.

Vorlons are awesome.  Really pretty much all of the alien races were great.  Plus they really dug into the history, culture and actions of the Narn and Centauri.  Also, almost all of the ships looked great.

Yes, there were some story duds, a fair amount actually.  But it was a great arc and a good ending to it within TV budge limits.

I'm ok with a movie.

I think the thing is that JMS couldn't do all-arc episodes because literally no one would let him. It's hard to remember that the concept of the arc was a kind of heresy, especially in SF-themed shows, and that he had to really fight to sell it.

And you can see why. It creates an issue with actors: if a character that's important to your story is played by an actor who leaves, what then? It ties the show-runners hand: if something's not working, you're still committed to the story.

And of course, it's hard for the show-runner and writer. It's one thing to have an outline that lays out most of the story, and another thing to write it in a long series of installments where you have to stay within the budget for a season.

I always got the impression in the first 2 seasons that the ending JMS had in mind originally was more tragic for most of the cast. On the other hand, the need to speed up the fourth season also makes clear that his original outline always had a pacing problem. It's actually hard to imagine the Shadow War being longer or the war to reclaim Earth being longer, so what was the fifth season going to have been? It wouldn't have had the awful telepath plot, sure, but what?

I assume that if they did a film that was a reboot of the baseline story of the show, it would maybe make the Shadows and Vorlons a bit more alien, get rid of the dumb Order v. Chaos thing. Drop a lot of the false starts and dead-ends. And make the falling action of the story more interesting and convoluted. But I think the big thing you'd miss is how much the Londo-G'kar relationship was as good as it was because it was a surprise (a surprise partly to JMS himself, I think)--G'Kar was so much the conventional schemer-villain at the outset and the ways in which he became something different were great because it was episodic television with lots of fits and starts and partial reversal and contradictions. Same for Londo. I think if you had to compress that into a film, you'd lose most of the richness of that evolution.

Yeah DS9 was really bad for this. Voyager did a better job actually of having fun throw aways but the plot was always ruined by it being all a dream or whatever.

I'm just watching S1 of the X-Files and I can't say I've seen bad arc eps yet. The alien ones have been quite good, the one with the truck carrying the alien for instance was one of the more memorable for reasons other than "LOL 90's" so far.

The X-Files arcs didn't get bad until season 4, I think.

I'd actually quite like to see B5 rebooted - there's always a chance it would come out well.

I really liked the original series, I watched them avidly back when they were on the telly. I tried re-watching them recently though and failed to stay interested long enough to get into the meat of the long arcs again. Too many duff episodes and too much bad acting.

A movie is not the right way to go about it and I hope that whoever's behind the wheel on this realises that.

What killed the last attempt at a movie was his insistence on using the original actors. Can't fault the man for being loyal to his people (he always has been, ref Michael O'Hare and Jeff Conaway), but now that so many have passed beyond the Rim, perhaps it's not an issue any more.

To partly agree with Haemish &c., having seen all the B5 stuff that JMS has done since (Crusade, Legend of the Rangers, Lost Tales), I'm prepared to say that he had precisely one good story concept for the universe. He told it, and well considering all the obstacles arrayed against it, but it's not worth revisiting.

Said it before, saying again: B5's plotting with Firefly's scripting would be the last SF series we ever need.

Season Three is when it got retarded. I literally remember when the series turned to shit. It was when Smoker Guy said "Nothing vanishes without a trace! Burn it!" at the end of season 2. Not because that wasn't a great moment, it was actually one of the highlights of the show (for reason of context that would be off the point to explain) But after that it just started spiraling into crap. The X-files was at its best when they took stuff that was just at the edge of possibility and pushed it to gave you that sense of "it could happen." The problem was that all the people who made the show obviously got bored of the premise, and the "arc" became totally twisted and contradicted what went before.

Its hard to look at B5 now in a universe where every show now pretends to have an arc and an underlying story, even if they are making it up as they go along. It created so much of the cliches that we take for granted today. It explored alien cultures in a respectful and intelligent way that really hasn't been done since. It was a bit rocky in places and I don't like some of the storyline decisions, but in context it was a stupendous achievement.

And I didnt know anything about Michael O'Hare's problems. It was fairly obvious JMS was lying about why he left (he gave 2 different reasons on his commentary on the season 1 and Season 2 DVDs, for example) but I never suspected something like this. Its inspiring, and frankly his performance in the latter part of Season one is all the more remarkable for knowing the truth, because it was just brilliant.

RIP

I really hate Whedon dialogue, so I can't go for that.

no can do

HERESY!!!!

And I'll be on the fire with you as I don't like Whedon's dialouge either...

Whedon is the male Diablo Cody. Keep him far away from anything remotely serious please.

Edit: I was recently reminded of the fact that Whedon worked on Alien: Resurrection. Great example of the problems with giving a guy like Whedon material that needs to be played somewhat straight. Movie is a jokey mess and a tonal disaster.

I liked Resurrection.  Mostly because of Ron Perlman.   :awesome_for_real:

JMS' loyalty to actors was actually a big problem even in the original run. Not only did he keep scripting subplots for actors who manifestly could not handle the attention, I think he really went soft on some of the harsher fates hinted at in the early foreshadowing because he liked the actors so much. That's part of the problem with the falling action, too: all the implied tragedy of the rising action goes out like air from a deflating tire. Even the G'Kar/Londo stuff loses some of its possible bite with the convoluted introduction of the Shadow allies, but at least that does the job of making something we saw early in the show have an interestingly different meaning.

The show had a lot of great little things that made it enjoyable.

And some good scenes too, although I wouldn't say that was the main attractions.

What do you want? (http://youtu.be/MUYpUMaEI88)

Did you know that Lemberg, Ukraine was once Austrian?

No WW1 if you hadn't shot our heir. No WW2 either of course. No post Sykes-Picot middle east, thus no Israel-Palestine, Iraq-Iran war (2nd, 3rd), no cold war, no Sebrenica

I WANT IT ALL BACK!

Fairly certain not serious but I was taught that WW1 was happening no matter what Germany, France and England (especially Germany ofc) wanted a war and were basically just waiting for something to kick it off.

Also wiki says Lemberg belongs to Poland if not Ukraine.

WW1 wasn't inevitable. Alot of how it escalated had to do with Germany's warplan which required a full-on commitment right from the start (to attack in the west while Russia was still getting ready). As for the politics of it most of the world thought that a world war was impossible since the world had become so prosperous thru trade where everyone (with modern weapons) profited from it so they wouldn't risk it all in some folly.

And Southern Poland use to belong to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (they helped partition Poland, along with Russia and Germany).  The province was called Galicia.

Not, quite serious no. I have been reading 'the sleepwalkers' (and some polandball...), so it was on my mind.

But yes, even though the assassination of the archduke Ferdinand was a classic example of trigger (as opposed to root cause), I don't think WW1 was really inevitable. If you add to that the plans of federalisation that Franz-Ferdinand had ("United States of Austria"), it makes for some interesting What-If scenarios.

Hitlers's (and the Nazi) rise was so closely tied to WW1. (Even after that it hinged on quite a few chance events, something little as not calling early election in 1930 could have thrown a spanner into it.) Or the Russian revolution. While it's certain that a revolution would have happened at some point, but the radicalisation of it n and takeover of the Bolsheviki was not. After the February revolution the czar was already gone, but being forced to continue the war was a main reason for the fall of the Mensheviks/bourgeois faction which lead to a second uprising in October.

In retrospect it seems the actual events where the worst possible outcome that could have happened.

Welcome to one of the longest-running mudfights among scholarly historians, which still is anything but resolved.

As mankind, generally speaking, is just a giant collection of assholes, WW1 was inevitable ... as our eventual destruction at our own hands.  I just hope we get a few more good movies before that happens.

So to recap the region was its own entity up until the 14th century:
-Annexed by the King of Poland and eventually rolled into the Poland-Lithuania Commonwealth.
-1772 the first partition that gave away tons of Commonwealth land because Russia was controlling the commonwealth anyways, and france, and that's how it was done helpfully gave the region to Austria.
-1815 Austria has been slowly taking over the rest of "Polish" land despite attempted insurrections against Austrian rule.
-1848 Revolution in Galicia and Krakow against Austrian rule
-1861 Galicia has won limited autonomy from Austria
-1918 Post WW1, the Poles and Ukrainians are asserting national independence and they fight each other over Galicia. Poland wins.
-1919 Paris Peace Conference gives Galicia officially to Poland until something something
-1920/21 Poland and Ukraine sign treaties signaling an end to the dispute. Galicia is Polan's clay they agree.
-1939 Russia surprise steals Galicia from Poland because they need to protect Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities. Stop me if you've heard that one before. According to wiki this was actually because of a secret pact with Nazis.
-1945 Poland and Russia sign a treaty where Poland accepts that this is how things will be. Galicia is now Ukraine. All the jews are dead.

How did I do? I'm still failing to see how Austria can try to make a claim? They had a claim once upon a time by the slimmest of margins. They can't claim they had it first, they can't claim they had it longest and they can't claim they had it most recently. That's Poland, Poland and Poland.

brb installing CK2  :awesome_for_real:

Oh, I wasn't trying to imply Austria had any legitimate claim to it.  Just saw she mentioned that it use to belong to Austria at one point, and was pointing out she was correct.  But yeah, here in Poland they are still rather bitter over the loss of Lvov.  But never let it be said Stalin was unfair.  To make up for expelling/exterminating all the Poles from Lviv so they could never claim it again, he expelled/exterminated all the Germans from one of their cities and said it was apart of Poland now, then sent the remaining Poles left living from Lviv to live there.

Problem solved.

They also had a (questionable) claim to the throne via their inheritance of the Kingdom of Hungary in the 1500s. Took them a long time to press the claim, which probably doesn't say much for the strength of it.

All we need is for Shephard to introduce humanity to the joys of bisexual alien psychic hotties and everything will be fine.

(http://i.imgur.com/qEhxwRu.png)

Po...who? I can't find this place you speak of!  :why_so_serious:

More seriously, the empire was a pre-nationalist entity, so any claim wasn't by a "people" to it's homeland but from the house Habsburg.

But as Teleku pointed out, I was only stating the fact is was within the borders once (to further the joke), not making a claim. I am not a monarchist.  :grin:


There is the famous anecdote with the three matches at the conference of Teheran. Churchill used them to represent the borders of Russia, Poland and Germany respectively. Then moved all three to the west. Russia expanded into Polish territory and Polands border moved into Germany as compensation.

Nothing like a slice of Polish history in your Babylon 5 thread.  :uhrr:

This is frankly a much better direction than I thought a thread about a remake of Babylon 5 would go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zJsrjOytG8

... people shit up the GoT thread, why should this be any better.

Bah. I am sorry.

How is this shitting up? Keep going. Hell, the Centauri Emperor in the first season more or less explicitly invokes WWI...

This is the perfect place to quietly discuss history, I only clicked on it by accident or would have totally missed the conversation.

This thread has prompted me to buy all five seasons of the show.

I've never seen any of this other than that prequel movie, which I liked quite a bit.  Does.....the series hold up ok?  It's always hard sometimes to go back and watch low budget Sci-fi.  Went back and watched first few seasons of next generation, which I loved as a kid, and it was rather painful.

I hear a lot of great things about the series though, so I'm tempted to buy it.  At the very least it will give me something to watch when I have no internet.

Keep in mind that the pilot movie is COMPLETELY DIRE. It is so bad you question how the show ever got made afterwards. So, don't give up after watching that.

Just can't emphasize enough: unless you're a completist, follow someone's guide to what to watch and not watch. The weak episodes are really weak and there are enough of them that anybody but a hardcore completist would give up in the early going.

To use an earlier analogy from my own writing, the only way kids stayed glued to the tube for all of a Saturday morning in the 1970s is through carefully honed strategies for navigating through dire periods of crap to get to the good stuff. Same here.

Babylon 5 introduced an overarching plot-line and seriousness into a SF show that made re-watching Startrek TOS look clichéd and a bit like a kids show. Now in 2014 I think there is a similar gap between BSG and B5 - in overall production values and "acting-polish", so yes, it has a aged a bit.

But it's still a great show.

B5 'invented' a lot of the shit we just assume is part of TV now. It's also really fucking old and its age shows. Still has lots of great in it.

I think you should watch all of it, the good and the bad, because there is a lot of stuff buried in episodes that makes sense later on. Even the dire pilot movie.

They need to get this thing on netflix because I'm a huge fan and even I'm not willing to cough up $120 for it.

Are the disks not on Netflix?

I still consider everything B5 to be watchable, even if some of it is only watchable because of how it complements the good stuff. It is best enjoyed immersively, without long gaps between episodes. The effects are aged, but they were some of the first real attempts at TV CGI...

I doubt anything will ever replace it as the most treasured SciFi  I've enjoyed. Even if this movie gets made and ducks, it won't tarnish B5 for me.

Babylon 5 is still my favorite epic scifi tv series and very few have since come even close to it in telling a story that grand in scale (nevermind so well). I'll be happy  content (happy if it isn't a total fail) with any new material.

B5 is the closest televised thing we've ever had to an old fashioned golden age Space Opera, with the good and bad that comes along with Space Opera stories.  It has Big Damn Moments, escalating stories and weapons/tech, and isn't afraid to monologue.  On the other hand, there is very little subtlety or ambiguity.  White Hats and Black Hats.  When characters/factions switch sides they go from reasonable to giant monsters.  Some of the themes are cloying.  Rampant borrowing from other material (LOTR stands out).

The saving grace is the Lando and G'Kar arcs which are really a testament to the ability of those actors.


Many of the claims of innovation are pretty overblown, though.  Story arcs?  Blake's 7, evening soap operas like Dallas, even shit like Pro Wrestling.  It's also a callback to old serials.  The "series long arc" stuff has been kind of debunked, considering JMS' original leaked ideas called for 3 series of 5 seasons each with a pretty different story.  Yah, he had general ideas and some specific moments planned but there was far more improvisation going on then JMS likes to admit.

I'll admit I've been pretty soured on the whole "genius of Babylon 5" by the bloviating and back-patting that JMS has done since the show ended.


The first season is atrocious, in general.  Second through fourth have some great moments and overall are pretty good, though you have to look past some pretty terrible storylines and whatever the fuck was wrong with the direction/writing that made many guest actors and stand-alones episodes bad.  The fifth is also pretty bad, such that I didn't bother to pick it up when I did a rewatch and posted on it here.  There was some good stuff and a couple of standout episodes, but I didn't have the willpower to batter my way through it after season one nearly broke me.

The effects are pretty bad the first season or two, but get an upgrade to passable some time around season two or three.

No, he had a 5 year plan from the get-go.  I recall reading that shortly after the TV movie was aired and the first season was approved. I was thrilled, it answered my one biggest problem with TV shows - that they all run past the point they were interesting.

Did he have to modify it? Sure, but it was conceived with a beginning, middle and end unlike the other shows you mentioned. Sure they had arcs, but the idea was to keep the show running as long as possible, like all TV shows.  B5 was indented to tell its story and then end, which was the revolutionary part.

From my memory it's also the first show with truly alien aliens as central characters. Star Trek had Spock, but he was half-human and acted more like a human than anything else. TNG had Worf but he was human-raised.  These were totally different cultures meant to be seen and acted as such, not filtered by human experiences and were central to the story rather than being novelty characters.  THAT was big.

I do agree though that if you followed him regularly, JMS' "bloviating and back-patting" (nicely put)  tended to cost him a lot of potential goodwill. Plus he tended to back himself into corners both in terms of what he wrote into the show and in terms of claims he made about the show.

Google it.

His original story outline was three shows, with five seasons each, covering two generations with the "magic kid" of Minbarri/human finishing it in the third series.  I think it was more tragic originally until Magic Kid fixes his parents mistakes in series three.  Basically JMS has been spending his time since patting himself on the back and talking up how much of it was groundbreaking and what a genius he is.  It's tough to disprove because he did pretty much all the writing.

I'd argue his output since then, leaving aside the counterpoint that he might be a one work genius who exhausted his talent finishing the series, has been mediocre at best.  In many cases it's been pretty bad.

I'm not saying that many of his original ideas didn't stick around from his manifesto, but it's pretty obvious that he readily adapted what he could and adjusted everything on the fly as well because reality, financing, and actor contracts don't let you do what he wanted to do.

Also, I'm not sure about "alien" aliens.  Most of his alien races were typical "planet of hats" (see TVtropes) types pretty similar to World cultures/empires (Narns were Soviet Russia, Centaurans? were declining Roman Empire).  ST did alot of "planet of hats" types and "rubber forehead aliens" types, but they also did the weird people that spoke in metaphors in TNG and the blob monster that was eating miners in TOS (turned out the miners were mining its eggs until Spock mindmelded it).  Even the Shadows and Vorlons, which did have a fair amount of alienness about them, were distilled into kids with abandonment issues as the resolution (and destroying their weird alienness) to that plot arc.

I'll say some good things about it now:

It is the "truest" Golden Age Space Opera we have ever had in TV, right down to stuff like in the future we have psychics and all that that used to be popular in the '50s/'60s when paranormal research/esp was more reputable.

It wasn't afraid to do Big Moment corny cheeseball stuff, which actually worked.  Big thanks to Boxleitner who sold the shit out of it.

Londo and G'Kar were amazing characters with amazing arcs.  When I did the rewatch, those two kept me in it despite the pure distilled terribleness of some of what went on around it.

It has all the giant space battles you ever wanted since you saw Return of the Jedi and wished that the Battle of Endor in space could have gone on for another half hour, and which hasn't been done too much since.


If you like SF, you should definitely give it a watch.  Just keep in mind that there are some pretty dodgy bits to it, and you will have to suffer through.  The payoffs are there.

Edit:

As a disclosure, personally I am very pro "evolutionary" versus "revolutionary".  I'd be the one who, when someone talks about how revolutionary X is, would talk about how A, B and C really paved the way for them and set the stage for X to be a big deal.

Especially in this case because the genius of B5 has been played up online since it ended by the diehard fan brigade and JMS spouting off about how amazing he is. 

I can recognize exactly how cheesy some of the monolog stuff is on an intellectual level, but I am totally JMS' bitch. I buy it every time whether it's the Shadow War or Spider Man.

One thing I absolutely love about the space battles is the big ships, particularly the Earther ships, slogging it out.

His script for World War Z is brilliant. It never got made, but it was brilliant.

I agree about the "planet of hats." I don't even know that the Londo/G'Kar arc was all that incredible or that it's just how great the actors were in the parts.

No, they were definitely planet of the hats for the most part but so were Humans if you look at the crew objectively.  I said that they were central characters with their own motivations vs. "oh here's a pet alien raised by humans so we understand/ can relate better." They also weren't the human in a rubber suit that would be forgotten in a week (planet of hats) though several of the non-central aliens were like this. (The sash war in particular comes to mind)

They weren't as alien as they could be now, but they were enough for the mid 90s. Certainly moreso than Worf or Spock.

It's both. There is some good writing in those arcs, some very tragic, Shakespearean characters who get caught up in a lot of different movements. Lesser actors would have fucked up some of that stuff. Those guys were able to transcend the cheesy as well as nail the great parts that all actors crave.

I'm not sure there's ever been a genuine alien-alien in TV or movies, in terms of motivation or psychology. There's not even that many in literary SF, because it's a crazy-hard thing to do right. Vorlons-Shadows turning out to be a 12-year old's version of a Michael Moorcock novel was disappointing; frankly he should have stuck with LoTR and just made them good and evil, or brought in Vinge as a consultant and used his Fire Upon the Deep stuff outright. But I'm not sure I actually hoped that they would turn out to be genuinely alien because that's so tough both in terms of visuals and writing.

The Horta.

Good example. That works pretty well. Though still pretty standard motivations (protect young).

Would love to see something that really honestly is saying 2 + 2 = flowers or something of that sort. But it's really hard to do week in and week out in a show without eventually saying "Klingons are like humans but..."

(http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj102/Versatek6/darmokyx7.jpg)

B5 is cheese at its highest. But there were some true bits of amazing there. Anything with Kosh and the Talia turn were absolutely worth the price of admission.

We'd have to check dates to be sure, but the bulk of the alien races in B5 were exactly as fleshed out as on TNG.  TNG gave us a few Klingon arcs at that point, including the "Worf leaves Starfleet to fight in the Klingon Civil War" arc that solidified Klingons as wearing the "Space Vikings" hat.

I'll give B5 2 points for the early portrayals of the Vorlons/Shadows as actually "alien".  We didn't understand their motivations, and they did shit that the characters couldn't really fathom.  Remove 1 point for the resolution as Khaldun said, as basically they were misbehaving kids with Daddy issues that Daddy called to the carpet.


Thank you!  I really liked that episode.

JMS has several ideas that he pitched around, but the thing is once he had the green light for one series he planed out the one series like an arc. The fact that he might have had other ideas that found their way into the bin does not change the fact that B5 was planned once pre-prodution started a as a 5 year arc. Things change before production and ideas get tossed or changed all the time. Its called Art through adversity. Google it.

1.  That hasn't been JMS' line at times.
2.  He had to redo everything because Sinclair left after Season 1.
3.  The actress that played Talia left after Season 2? which forced them to bring back Lyta.
4.  My Google it comment was about how he contradicts himself at different times.  The 3 series yadda was the last thing I saw that he released that landed on a website.


I'd give it all a pass, but JMS regularly talked up the genius of his own work for years after it ended and gave the whole "I planned everything" response regularly.  Did he plan O'Hare having to quit do to his illness?  He planned out all those wretched Garibaldi and Franklin arcs that treaded water for significant chunks of episodes?  Do we really believe that he didn't adjust the Londo/G'Kar stories once he realized how good they were in the show?  There really wasn't any cross-pollination due to current events or the fact that DS9 was on the air at the same time covering some of the same issues?

Basically, he was kind of a douche about it for years.  I'd give him a "well done" for planning out and telling interesting Space Opera style arcs and adjusting to forced changes and improvisation if not for that fact that he was a douche about it for years.  Also, that he and the diehards have pretty much tried to rewrite history to credit his genius.

The series is well done.  JMS had a plan drawn up that - at the core - made it to film.  When they sat down to make the movie, he had a vision of the entire 5 year journey.  He has mad his original notes available and a lot of it shifted, but the core story is there. 

However, studios stuck their fingers into his plans (as always happens) and he adjusted to accommodate.  Once things were underway, he had to adjust to account for more studio meddling, actor availability, and other factors.  When, in season 4 it looked like there would be no season 5, he made some serious adjustments to the timeline of the show to make sure the core storyline was resolved - but when they ended up getting the TNT Season 5, it left a lot of time to fill and too little story for it. 

Regardless, the man had a plan and executed it to the best of his ability.  It would have been better with an unlimited budget, had his original cast not been disrupted, had the studios not forced some of the crap like the 'alien zoo' in the pilot... but he DESERVED to be proud of what he achieved.  Far from perfect, but innovative and revolutionary for American TV.  He knew it at the time, too.  His posts from the early days of B5 predict that a lot of future sci-fi will follow his path.  It did.  CGI, season storylines, series storylines, depicting alien races as more than a single cliché (races had tendencies, but each character had their own character), etc....  Some of these things had been attempted, but this was the most cohesive success we'd seen to date on American TV. 

However, the more I think about it, the more hesitant I get about a B5 movie.  You can't do B5 as a series of movies.  The core of B5 is too big for a few films.  What we get may have a look and vibe that speaks of B5, but it will be something different.

Look, I also think there are misfires that are entirely about JMS.  So it's important not to buy too much into the argument that it was always something else, someone else.

Nobody is saying that the turds left in the B5 bathroom were all from guests.  JMS was not perfect.  However, the achievement (even when you factor in the warts) was monumental.  There is no reason to piss on his achievement because it was not perfect.  The quality of his contributions was outstanding most of the time - especially when you factor in the volume he contributed in that short period. 

I enjoyed "Babylon 5" for all the foreshadowing that occurred and how it looked like certain scenes were shot years in advance (and may have been, or versions were, or whatever).

I couldn't watch it again for all the bits that didn't work when the show was new, let alone after so much time has passed. For instance: whoever that main Ranger character was, who was completely wooden and couldn't fight with a staff if it mean moving his hands from a fixed position. It looked clunky then and it will be worse now.

However, a fresh look at the Babylon 5 universe could be interesting. Hopefully they get JJ Abrahms to direct it too.  :grin:

Don't you dare talk shit about my boy Marcus. I will cut a bitch.

Wait until the next patch, damage might be prevented. 

I agree. Marcus was awesome.

He'd have done just fine on Serenity, too.