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Television Sci-Fi

New 'Babylon 5' Reboot Being Developed By Original Creator J. Michael Straczynski (variety.com) 191

Posted by EditorDavid from the Babylon-5.1 dept.
Back in 2014 Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski answered questions from Slashdot's readers.

And now this week, long-time Slashdot reader Jaegs writes: According to many sources and the Babylon 5 creator/writer/director/producer himself, J. Michael Straczynski (JMS), the CW — partly owned by the original Babylon 5 producer and rights holder, WarnerMedia — will be rebooting the popular franchise. JMS will be writing and executive producing the series.

Per JMS:

"[W]e will not be retelling the same story in the same way... There would be no fun and no surprises. Better to go the way of Westworld or Battlestar Galactica where you take the original elements that are evergreens and put them in a blender with a ton of new, challenging ideas, to create something fresh yet familiar. To those asking why not just do a continuation, for a network series like this, it can't be done because over half our cast are still stubbornly on the other side of the Rim.

The last part refers to the recent passing of Mira Furlan (Delenn), as well as the untimely deaths of other primary cast members after the conclusion of the original run of the series: Richard Biggs (Dr. Franklin), Michael O'Hare (Jeffrey Sinclair), Jerry Doyle (Michael Garibaldi), Stephen Furst (Vir Cotto), Jeff Conway (Zack Allan), and Andreas Katsulas (G'Kar).
Straczynski points out on Twitter that "The original Babylon 5 was ridiculously innovative: the first to use CGI to create ships and characters, and among the very first to shoot widescreen with a vigorous 5.1 mix." But his tweets also seem excited about the questions that this new reboot will answer. "if I were creating Babylon 5 today, for the first time, knowing what I now know as a writer, what would it look like? How would it use all the storytelling tools and technological resources available in 2021 that were not on hand then?

"How can it be used to reflect the world in which we live, and the questions we are asking and confronting every day? Fans regularly point out how prescient the show was and is of our current world; it would be fun to take a shot at looking further down the road..."
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New 'Babylon 5' Reboot Being Developed By Original Creator J. Michael Straczynski More

New 'Babylon 5' Reboot Being Developed By Original Creator J. Michael Straczynski

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  • I don't think we need this, good luck anyway (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @11:38AM (#61856079)
    I really did like the Battlestar Galactica remake, but there was a world of difference in the technology from the '70s. Also, the new one had a much better plot. The only thing wrong with the first Babylon 5 is that they had to wrap up in season 4, then were given season 5 and had to come up with something. Hopefully the new version will have a more consistent plot. Hopefully Walter Koenig is still available, he was great in the show.

    • I personally love Caprice a lot more than Battlestar. I think despite technological difference, the writing is so much better which is why it's designed ore effectively as a sequel. I haven't looked for inconsistencies because I never completed the original Battlestar series but I wouldn't be surprised if the set of 3 series is relatively consistent with the timeline. That's Whitaker good writers and probably is quite unique for that series compared to many of sci-fi Series.

    • Re:I don't think we need this, good luck anyway (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @12:39PM (#61856303)

      >I really did like the Battlestar Galactica remake ... Also, the new one had a much better plot

      The basic series plot was the same, but the episode plots of the original were often a lot dumber (though some good enough they were remade in the newer show).

      However, the original made a huge mistake telling viewers Cylons have wiped out all of humanity except for those who escaped on a 'rag tag fleet' or are part of the mysterious missing colony of Earth... and then doing episodes-of-the-week where they visit planets populated by humans. Very bad writing, even for the 70s.

      Good start, poor follow-through, occasional charm and cool moments saved it. At least until the sequel series which was just bad no matter how much you were invested in it not being bad.

    • Well, you can argue that no one "needs" anything from Hollywood, so that's a weird way to put it. But I think it's a great time for a reboot of B5.

      I belatedly became a fan of the original after I borrowed a friend's DVDs and powered through all five seasons. The use of CG was innovative and let them tell an amazing story on a small-ish budget, but the technology just wasn't mature enough back then to really make it work. No problem with that these days. Even TV shows with modest budgets can feature brea

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mitreya ( 579078 )

        But I think it's a great time for a reboot of B5.

        Then I think you haven't been following the modern reboot/sequel/reimagining of every SciFi franchise ever in the last few years. It's a terrible time.

        here's hoping it still retains the core that made the show so enjoyable.

        All evidence, from every other franchise, points to the exact opposite. :(

        • There's always a danger that the reboot won't live up to the original. But I'm curious how many of those failed reboots you reference have had the direct involvement of the original creator? I think that fact alone gives at least a modicum of hope that this won't simply be a cash-grab shitshow that uses the name and high concept, but little else from the original. I could be wrong, of course, but it's not like it's going to cost me anything to hope otherwise. We'll just have to see.

    • The original Battlestar Galactica started out as a pilot episode with no plot beyond that point, and it was a huge hit. The producers basically dumped buckets of money on the table and said "I want new episodes by Friday." The writers were scrambling like mad to come up with plots and an overarching plot that was any good while the show was filming. There were days when the actors were handed their scripts literal minutes before shooting. In one episode they were all sitting around a table presumably in

    • ... Battlestar Galactica remake ...

      The reboot did have a better story than the original because it removed the Disney-fication in the original. That said, BSG and The Bionic Woman reboots were made after the 9-11 WTC attack and it shows: They're full of the traitor-among-us tropes that make the show enjoyably edgy but also exhausting to watch. The tropes were eventually spun into a new version of cop dramas such as Person of Interest.

  • I was never big into B5. I don't remember the order exactly but I remember think this is just a DS9 ripoff. I had a friend who was a diehard fan and if I recall right Babylon 5 was first.

    Either way it grew on me though the core store kind of seems like a classic epic tale. I think in particular the Minbari narratives were the most interesting and besides the light vs dark aspect, I think it's what really grabbed.

    Nonetheless, star trek just seems so more fleshed out and as a universe not so much a pure epic

    • Re:Trekie Perspective (Score:5, Informative)

      by crow ( 16139 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @11:51AM (#61856121) Homepage Journal

      JMS had pitched Babylon 5 to Paramount, and ended up suing them saying they stole his ideas for DS9. They settled, and apparently he received some money out of it. Really, though, the stories and feel of the shows were very different.

      • Re:Trekie Perspective (Score:5, Funny)

        by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @01:35PM (#61856471)
        Paramount's problem was that they tried to tack it onto their existing Star Trek franchise. There was really only one formula that the Star Trek fans liked, and that was boldly going where no one has gone before each week. This is why Paramount had to eventually give Sisko a ship. It's not very interesting when the Captain points to the viewscreen, says 'Engage', and your space station just sits there.

        • I laughed. Sounds reasonable.

        • Paramount's problem was that they...

          Made a successful show that made them a lot of money? I don't think it is a "problem" they regret.

          Actual "Star Trek Fans" (they were actually called trekkies) loved the show. And almost everybody else loved it too. It is the memories of hipsters that hate it, but there is no money in that.

          • DS9 got very good in the later seasons, especially once they started to give RDM a free hand during the war arc. But the GP has a good point wrt/ the seasons before they introduced the defiant and gave Sisko a beard. If you take off the rose-colored glasses and re-watch them, seasons 1 and 2 and about half of 3 are really cringeworthy.

            • A lot of people simply forget that the special effects technology underwent a lot of advancement during that same time period.

              And they forget what else was on TV. And they forget that tehy set a timer so they didn't miss the start of the show, even during the time period where they claim it wasn't very good.

              When they were watching it, they loved it. Then later when it got better, when the show runners could take on more awesome, because they finally had the tech to pull it off, they thought, "Oh, this is so

            • Seasons 1-2 of TNG sucked, 3 was ok, 4 was when it got good. Voyager was similar. My suspicion is Enterprise would be well-remembered if they'd been allowed to go 7 full seasons.

          • Most of the TNG fans I knew complained about DS9's formula throughout the entire run of the show. It was obvious that being on a space station all day wasn't cutting it, so Paramount kept asking the writers to do cheesy things to spice up the show. Like give them the Defiant, bring Q onto the show, add Worf, and other gimmicks.

            The first season of the show was regarded as its weakest. Even the intro music was panned as "the sleepy time intro".

        • Sisko: Engage
          Dax: Yes sir.
          (pause)
          Sisko: Why isn't anything happening?
          Dax: Sir, you know that this is a space station and we only have auxiliary maneuver thrusters for station keeping, right?

      • The shows are very different with some central commonalities in terms of the setting and the main arc. However, since Star Trek is very episodic (with DS9 perhaps being the least like this), the tangents that are built up into other story arcs are very different. I think the antagonists are radically different both in terms of individuals and groups.

        Probably still enough similarities for the lawsuit to be fair, especially consider the circumstances.

      • I keep hearing about this mythical lawsuit, but every source I can find with any legitimacy says no such thing existed. If there was some kind of settlement, it was not part of anything legal filing.
        • Well it's not like the rumor has zero basis. Patricia Tallman, who played Lyta Alexander on the show, and was involved both in business and romantically with JMS in the 2000s, explicitly said in a 2017 interview [youtube.com] there was a lawsuit and it was settled out of court.

          The truth is, Joe [JMS] had gone to Paramount with the bible for Babylon 5, pitched it to the Star Trek producers, left it for a year. They finally returned it back to him saying nah, we're not going to do it. Meanwhile they make Deep Space 9. So there was a lawsuit, they settled out of court. So yeah, they did, they ripped off the script and the idea. They had a character named Lyta, they didn't even change it, I mean, there's just some things, you know, the arrogance, is just kind of, are you kidding me. But it worked out, they settled it, uh, and that really did seem to be the end of it, and nobody cared after that, so. And I was very aware of what had happened when DS9 premiered a month before Deep Space 9 premiered, and it really was terrible for Joe and the team, because it would look like Babylon 5 was the, uh afterthought, or however you want to put that, and um that they wouldn't get then, because of course Paramount has this enormous platform and Babylon 5 had nothing, you know, so, the fact that it succeeeded, and obviously it was such a different show in the end. I'm glad they were able to sort it all out in the end. But it was tense, it was weird.

          If I had to guess lawyers sorted it out before it saw the courtroom, but something happened.

          • ...sorry goofed transcribing it, should be 'Deep Space 9 premiered a month before Babylon 5 premiered', my mistake, not Tallman's.
          • I think it is important to note the verbiage there, 'they settled it' is just a general use of the term, not legal. There is nothing there to say any kind of legal action was taken or even threatened, just that they talked it out. As such I don't think there was any real legal case to it. It was at best something highly suspicious but ultimately not something with any real legal weight and JMS probably knew such. Other indications also speak to this as beyond the basic premise, they diverge wildly, the
            • "There was a lawsuit and they settled it out of court" is a lot more specific though, come on dude I'm not saying she got it right, but isolating "they settled it" from "lawsuit" and "out of court" to claim it's not a legal issue is completely stripping the context. That's not a friendly conversation; I wouldn't take that as meaning anything less than lawyers suggested a suit might be possible and they negotiated a resolution before anything was filed, probably since Paramount agreed with JMS an actual fili
              • Well, then, if there was a lawsuit, by law, it has to have a filing, and those are public, so it is easy to prove. Either everyone has missed it, or she's wrong.
    • DS9 came out first, barely (it premiered a month before the B5 pilot movie), but there is suspicion DS9 was developed in response to the studio being pitched Babylon 5, rejecting it, then making a clone in Star Trek universe. DS9 also took much longer to get going on the main arc, so the similar notes between the shows were on Babylon 5 first, then mimicked by DS9 a season or two later.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Phact ( 4649149 )

        Something i noticed in the opening sequences is that star trek was as expected. But the B5 opening sequence showed life: cargo ships, welders, stuff happening that was more vibrant, and believable for a point of commerce and transit. Then after season 1 or 2 Star trek changed their introduction sequence, to mimic the more bustling, active, believable version of the space station, clearly playing catch-up, to not seem so dated.

        • The producers of post-Roddenberry Trek shows made them about the special effects. B5 couldn't compete on that budget so made the show about people; and with that mindset, of course they would include things about people in the set up every week (so many post credits scenes were at the immigration line ups). Trek shows had to play catch up because like all major studios, Paramount only understands the "it blowed up real good" or "if it looks cool, who cares about stories". Stories were so unimportant they wo

        • This is a fair point too. Though I will say the very first DS9 episode makes a point that the social aspect is important with how Sisko interacts with Quark. This being said, Babylon 5 does make the station life more a vibrant part of the story which is pretty much incomparable to anything else of the time. This is one of the unique aspects to DS9 in the star trek universe but it doesn't seem as central in most of the episodes.

      • This rings a bell. I know there was something off about my original understanding and that Babylon 5 was essentially the trend setter. The second point makes sense too, like DS9 has some idea how they want to develop Sisko but it's rather vague until the following seasons. I really like Sisko though and he is my second favorite ST captain though he has unique advantages over Picard (I feel like another Trekie will come in and rip me apart for saying this).

        • I always thought that DS9 was an investigation on how Starfleet interacts with religion.

          • Right. This is perhaps one of the big differences in DS9 vs Babylon 5 -- the former seems to focus much more on different approaches to religion with the main arc related to a "religious figure" (though I may be wrong about the total scope of religion in Babylon 5; I do remember there being an aspect to the Narns).

            I think you are also right about the Starfleet interaction, because Sisko plays a kind of "anti" "religious figure" in the sense that he doesn't always want to take on this role and it takes him a

    • I liked it, because at the time, most shows were done as if they could be viewed out of order, like TNG. This was the first real gamble at continuing story arch outside of soaps. It was also a bit different as it was a sci-fi soap opera. A lot of cast came from daytime soaps. After season one got out of the way things really started to click together. The Episode with B4 appearing, and then later retold from the other side as a heist a few seasons later was a good example.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Phact ( 4649149 )

        Yeah to my recollection this has to be one of the first genuine long-story-arc shows attempted. They're a common format now, but back then it wasn't done that way.

      • I guess that's why I really enjoyed TNG. I got into TV watching more sporadically, so I would commonly catch things out of sequence. There were long-story arcs but they were more subtle and "extra" to the everyday aspects. This was I think more profound in Enterprise and DS9. DS9 at the end I think spends a lot of time wrapping up these.

        This is a very good point though and probably why I enjoyed it more later in my life when I can download or stream it. Likewise, I agree it clicks a lot more after season 1.

    • Original Trekker perspective:
      I liked Babylon 5 even while at the same time I have to admit that the Babylon 5 actors, with few exceptions like Andreas Katsulas and Mira Furlan, were as stiff as cardboard (and often written that way). But its saving grace was that the stories were almost always about the people, not pumping up make believe technology into major plot devices a la Star Trek TNG et al. And that's even with the early use of CGI. It's why I could rewatch the first four seasons of it recently, whe

    • The first time I watched it I was not a big fan either. Like you, it grew on me. I think it did a great job of pointing out good can be bad and bad can be good, as well as how things like a psicorps can get out of control. All relevant to the real world. I also thought they did a great job on "god"(Lorien) in the final episodes. I am not sure how they reboot it though. It ended, cleverly I thought, with sheridan crossing the river styx(outer rim). They could go on from the ending in a post vorlon/shadow uni

    • Actually, DS9 ended up ripping off B5. The whole "story arc" thing that permeated the later DS9 episodes (especially the season-spanning Dominion War) only became a thing once they noticed that viewers like that kind of arc instead of their usual monster/problem of the week episodes when they lost viewers to B5.

  • The story arc was the best part IMO (Score:5, Insightful)

    by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @11:49AM (#61856109)
    What I and many people liked was there was a multi year story arc and the an overall plan to how the show was going to end. Some great shows do not know how to end *ahem* Game of Thrones, Dexter—and that leaves many fans disappointed.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by v1 ( 525388 )

      He had so much of the main story arc planned out before filming of the first episode of season 1. This created some incredible payouts in later seasons, and a level of story-cohesion you almost never see in a TV series. It's common to see strong cohesion within a season, but then they sort of "reboot" the series in the next season, with a new story arc. B5 had a few sub-arcs, but the real story arc was played out through the entire series.

      Time travel that links together episodes that aren't even in the s

    • Re:The story arc was the best part IMO (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Phact ( 4649149 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @12:19PM (#61856233)

      To be fair B5 has it story ending written by the Author before production, while GOT ran past what the Author had written and was "winging it" for an ending by the shows writers.

      • GRRM was *supposed* to be part of the team right to the end of GoT, and yet we still got the drivel that we ended up with - and GRRM still hasn't committed to the release of his next actual book in the series.

        After a lot of thought on this, I'm actually of the opinion that a lot of the blame lies with GRRM here and not the show writers - I think he lost interest and the book series won't ever get finished, and for the same reason the latter seasons of the show were similarly unfleshed out.

    • Re:The story arc was the best part IMO (Score:5, Informative)

      by Strider- ( 39683 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @11:44PM (#61858279)

      IMHO, the best parts were all related to Vir. Initially played as a bit of a fool, he's the only one that actually got precisely what he wanted from Mr Morden. [youtu.be]

  • B5. (Score:3)

    by GimpOnTheGo ( 6567570 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @12:15PM (#61856211)

    Video Toaster, lightwave. Amiga.

    I was at university downloading B5 backgrounds and shit from Usenet when the show first aired.

    Half of the cast are dead ?

    I feel old.

    The writing was pretty shit, and quite a few of the actors were shit (read "cheap") , but the FX was amazing for the time.

    Not sure if MS has the chops for a reboot though. Needs some grittier writing. Like BSG (new) on steroids. I think MS is too old.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msk ( 6205 )

      He goes by "Joe", and when referenced by initials, it's "JMS".

    • Half of the cast are dead ?
      I feel old.
      The writing was pretty shit, and quite a few of the actors were shit (read "cheap") , but the FX was amazing for the time.
      Not sure if MS has the chops for a reboot though. Needs some grittier writing. Like BSG (new) on steroids.
      I think MS is too old.

      To be fair, a lot of the cast died not very old relatively speaking these days. And yeah, many of the actors were stiff as cardboard with the exception of Katsulas, Furlan, and Bill Mumy. And actually the original commander played by Michael O'Hare. Maybe his mental issues made him a better actor in the role as it made him completely incapable of being stiff. But for sure, the rest were pretty lame, especially the doctor. I like the show quite a bit, but he made me cringe in anything he was in. But I think

      • Oh ya, those three were amazing, but I also loved Peter Jurasik. Over the top was the character concept but he could do the subtle bits too. Scenes with both Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas were amazing!

        Stephen Furst was great too. Something of comic relief early (he was best known prior for being Flounder in Animal House) but the role got more serious and he pulled it off very well.

        • Stephen Furst will be missed in quite a few ways - he directed several episodes and was involved in the production team as well, he was more than a cast member :(

    • Gotta disagree about the writing. The intricacy of the plot, the fun of having a line explain a mystery from years earlier, and the dialog that other authors have copied (David Weber had a character say "They are behind me. You are in front of me. If you want to survive, be somewhere else.") all point in the direction of good writing.

      Deconstruction of Falling Stars had the scope and sense of wonder of the best of the Golden Age.

    • A couple friends of a friend (who I briefly worked with) worked one some early Amiga ray tracing, which got used in the B5 pilot at least. And my friend was all excited about it and said "so-and-so's elbow can be seen in one scene!"

    • He will probably have writers helping him. But he HAS to be the guy running the show because otherwise I'd be worried that whoever got to it would misunderstand what made the show good. You don't want someone swooping in and deciding that nerds loved the show because the space battles were so cool. They were, but they were just a piece in a bigger puzzle.

      I read a few of the Thor comics that JMS wrote, and he has a real flair for telling a story, getting to the core of characters, trying to make you think ab

    • The acting got a lot better by season 3. They got off the video toasters eventually, too.

  • I never watched it. (Score:3)

    by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @12:16PM (#61856219) Homepage Journal

    Maybe it is time to go experience this classic! I'll queue it up!

  • That Delenn will be a male mimbari who becomes a female Mimbari-Human hybrid

  • Bad audio mix (Score:3)

    by MMC Monster ( 602931 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @12:45PM (#61856319)

    I didn't watch it when it came out and picked up a pirated version.

    The audio mix on it was horrible, with the special effects/space having very high volume and the dialogue low volume, making it hard to pay attention without getting my ears blown out when the special effects scenes started up.

    • Maybe that's because you bought a pirated version? I just recently re-watched the official DVD version and it did not have that problem.

  • The original babylon 5 is quite a very neat Video Toaster demo besides being a good show.

  • Unfortunately... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by VAXcat ( 674775 )
    ...this will be an unwatchable woke mess.

    • Re:Unfortunately... (Score:5, Informative)

      by andydread ( 758754 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @02:26PM (#61856633)
      Maybe any show where you have humanoids from different backgrounds mingling and dealing with diplomatic issues will be a woke mess no? I mean...even the original Star Trek was a woke mess. All that equality bullshit. There was so much outrage at the time because how dare they put a Black, a Russian, a Jap, all working together. Try sticking to shows where there is a monoculture and you'll be fine.
      • The reason that the reboot will likely be a "woke mess" is that it's going to be on CW, which panders to the woke fringe audience. Trans superheros and gay and lesbian lovers on just about every CW show do not give me any reason to think that it's going to be very watchable. Even the Flash, which was pretty solid for five seasons went off the rails with lazy writing and excessive multiverse and time travel. The CW reboot of Walker made me want to take a nap during it. Batwoman is just terrible writing with

        • Naw, those shows mostly lot my interest because they were all vehicles for a cast of twenty somethings... Boring. As far as woke, there's the anti-woke crap where all alien civilizations must be like conservative Earth because God created everything everywhere with only two sexes, which isn't even true on Earth. Star Trek did it that way because it cost too much to do more than a bit of latex on the forehead and nose, not because they wanted to push a 60s square agenda.

          Gays and lesbians exist, deal with

    • If JMS allows his show to become a platform for someone else's sociopolitical crusade, then yes. It will be bad on that basis alone. The original show did have some lesbians in it and also interspecial hanky-panky, but it wasn't a crusader for the gay rights movement of the time. It's really up to whether JMS can resist the temptation to push someone else's agenda. And that includes the anti-LGBTQ+ agenda as well. Trying assiduously NOT to be "woke" can just be bad as being "woke".

      The story should do i

  • will be hard to watch (Score:5, Interesting)

    by renegade600 ( 204461 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @02:41PM (#61856663)

    with the exception of the final season, B5 was one of the greatest scifi shows ever. The final season was too rushed and lost its appeal. I usually don't care for story arcs over episodes but the way this one was done over seasons is what made the show great, and thought provoking. In addition, the actors who played the different characters were perfect for their parts. I doubt I could picture or accept any other actor playing those characters. That is not to say I will not give it a try and follow the development of the show.

    • The final season was the opposite from rushed. The goddamn telepath war thing has been dragging on and on and on and on and on. Fuck Byron.

    • Television station that I watched it on canceled season 4 halfway through, because season 5 wasn't going to be on their network. That was a weird move and it meant a panicked scramble to try and pick up that week's episode in snowy form from a a city two hours drive away. Multiple stations would just change the time slot with little warning, pre-Tivo days, so I would find some days that it didn't actually get recorded and I'd stay up late to catch it on a different station late night. Watching it all at the

    • Season 5 *was* rushed, because it wasn't green-lit until very very late on in season 4's run - this meant that, in order to wrap everything up without any guarantee of another season, a lot of season 5 material was pushed into season 4, and when season 5 was finally green lit it had to have a load of new material written for it.

      I think the original storyline was going to be season 4 wrapping up the Shadow-Vorlon conflict, and then season 5 dealing with Earth and the telepath situation.

  • ... without rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5

  • Looking forward to it (Score:4, Informative)

    by jargonburn ( 1950578 ) on Sunday October 03, 2021 @10:05PM (#61858077)
    This is honestly pretty exciting to me. Babylon 5 stands out as my (so far) all-time favorite Sci-Fi series. I loved how much more realistic its universe felt, from the political tensions and out-right warring to the way cutting engines didn't bring a vessel to a relative halt to having an episode about worker rights/union negotiations for the dock workers. Heck, humans aren't even big players at the start; we were more-or-less brought to the big-boys table by the species that unexpectedly decided to NOT wipe out us out at essentially the last minute.
    I found the story wide-ranging and interesting, both the episodic plots as well as the seasonal/multi-season arcs. More shows could benefit from being planned out so far in advance.
    I'm always saddened to hear of the passing of another one of the original's actors. I will always fondly remember them and the characters they brought to life.
    A reboot by the original writer? I'm definitely going to be keeping tabs on this.
  • They better do a excellent or better job at the reboot. Just remember its not about fancy effects but a actual story line!

  • So I really liked B5. Realistic society, a story that was thought out ahead of time, accurate space fights and such.

    I just... um... could JMS please leave the dialogue and directing to someone else? I'm probably going to get modded down for this but if you come from watching BSG 2004 then watch B5, the acting and the dialogue just make me wince half the time.

    I'm just saying I would love to see B5 remade with the original story more or less and with the prestige TV treatment.

  • While it should work today - and why it won't (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday October 04, 2021 @06:06AM (#61858737)

    We were lucky we got the first one at all. Today, this cannot fly.

    The older ones here will be able to think back to when the first season landed. The rest can maybe imagine it. You have this show. A scifi show about a space station. With a weirdly I-want-to-diplomat-but-can't Sinclair, an enigmatic Delenn, a G'Kar who is apparently from some kind of warrior race who will cause trouble, a scheming Londo and a totally weird Kosh, who experience fairly nonsensical adventures every week. Sure, today we know where these things lead to and that what these characters did makes a lot of sense, but back then, we did not have that information and all we saw is a random selection of aliens and humans doing random stuff on some random space station for some random reason.

    Everyone here be honest: How many here have religiously watched B5 every week in the first season? How many actually cared what happened?

    B5 would be the perfect show for the way people watch shows today: Binge watching. We don't watch one show at a time. We watch seasons. You tune your Netflix to the start of the season of the show, grab a large bag of popcorn and watch 20 episodes en bloc. B5 is perfect for that.

    And at the same time, this is what will make this show fail.

    Because more than ever, ratings are everything. And B5 fans know that you can't just watch an episode of B5 a week. You'd forget the important details you didn't even consciously notice before the next episode, let alone before it becomes relevant in the plot. You'd have to watch the whole show again. Which you'll do anyway, but you don't want to do that. You don't want to wait a whole week for the cliffhanger to be resolved either.

    So what fans will probably do is to NOT watch it week by week, but wait for the season to finish to get their treat. But by then, the show execs will have noticed that nobody watches the show and will cancel it.

    B5 got lucky the first time. JMS obviously had a long term contract running, or else that show would never have survived past its second season. A show that only picks up steam after two whole seasons is a huge gamble for a studio, and one that none will enter these days. Especially not with an expensive SciFi show.

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