Babylon 5

[jgsugden]

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/

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.

[Khaldun]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[jgsugden]

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.

[Ingmar]

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.

[Numtini]

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.

[jgsugden]

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 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.

[Numtini]

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

[Margalis]

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 ...

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

[Ceryse]

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.

[Merusk]

Oh come now. Parappa the Gunner was brilliant!

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

[Tannhauser]

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. 

[Numtini]

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.

[HaemishM]

Oh come now. Parappa the Gunner was brilliant!

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

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.

[Evildrider]

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

[Tannhauser]

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.

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

[jgsugden]

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. 

[calapine]

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.

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

Here is the part where JMS talks about that. Audio - 7:22

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

[Polysorbate80]

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.

[jgsugden]

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. 

[Khaldun]

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

[Khaldun]

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.

[Numtini]

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.

[Margalis]

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.

[Tannhauser]

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.

[Khaldun]

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.

[Hoax]

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!

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.

[HaemishM]

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

[apocrypha]

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.

[Stormwaltz]

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.

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.

[Sir T]

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

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

[Ingmar]

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.

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.

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

no can do

[Sir T]

HERESY!!!!

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

[Margalis]

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.

[Evildrider]

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.