Babylon 5 officially being rebooted

[Mindwalker]

Not sure I like it.

[The Dragon Demands]

 

 

Edited September 28, 2021 by The Dragon Demands

[SpaceChampion]

 

[Kalbear]

Rebooting it on a second rate pg13 network does not spark joy.

[The Anti-Targ]

There is surely a whole new fanbase that can be harvested for this show. I'm just not entirely sure what's going to be in it for me. Star Trek was awesome as a series of TV series because there was no rehash of past series.

But on the other hand, like any truly classic entertainment, there is nothing wrong with telling the same story again after a decent gap with a slightly fresh perspective and a new coat of paint. I've watched more than one version of Romeo and Juliette, and a few versions of Jane Austen adaptations. So maybe it will be worth a second go around.

[karaddin]

As someone that's bounced off the original more than once I'm happy to see it get a chance with updated effects etc. The acting style of the time of the original is as much as issue for me as the effects so that at least is likely to be resolved.

If JMS is in charge I don't see any reason for major concern, the CW budget is enough for it to look decent and any issues with the usual CW issues should be addressed by a trustworthy show runner. Also season 2 of The 100 was great, a lot of its wider issues were again down to the show runner - but there's plenty of very talented hot young actors that they dig up that can do the work while being hot. I guess you might have to worry about them making aliens hot? Lol

[The hairy bear]

While I'm very skeptical, I'm also very excited to see what JMS can deliver this time.

I assume he'll want to stick to his original plans  for the show that were hampered by real-world issues: a single captain throughout the whole run, transgender Delenn, the second in command being a traitor, etc.   I hope he'll also be able to improve some of weaker resolutions from the original show, such as the Valen time-travel or the climax of the Shadow-Vorlon conflict.

Edited September 28, 2021 by The hairy bear

[sifth]

The CW, the show that gave us 5 good seasons of Supernatural......................and 10 pretty bad ones. Even if this show is popular, expect it to go on well past it's proper ending point.

[Myrddin]

My first thought was: Reboot already?

But then I did the math. It was 24 years between the end of OG BSG and the Miniseries.

It's 24 years between the last season of B5 to 2022.

The only difference is the 24 years between BSGs took a LOT longer to pass...

[drawkcabi]

Fire up those Amigas!

Still, as a week to week, season to season, record every episode on VHS watcher from back in the day, strange one of the things I'll miss the most is...

P...T...E...N

coming up at the beginning of each episode triggering that Pavlovian response getting me excited for the show.

Yeah, I missed it in season 5 too....

 

[Myrddin]

20 minutes ago, drawkcabi said:

Fire up those Amigas!

Still, as a week to week, season to season, record every episode on VHS watcher from back in the day, strange one of the things I'll miss the most is...

P...T...E...N

coming up at the beginning of each episode triggering that Pavlovian response getting me excited for the show.

Yeah, I missed it in season 5 too....

 

I still have a pavlonian response to the 20th Century Fox fanfare. It still means "Star Wars is starting!" in my head no matter what movie it precedes. I blame the long playing records I had as a kid of the original trilogy soundtracks.

[Ran]

23 minutes ago, drawkcabi said:

Still, as a week to week, season to season, record every episode on VHS watcher from back in the day, strange one of the things I'll miss the most is...

Me, too! My parents still have the tapes in storage somewhere.

[drawkcabi]

28 minutes ago, Ran said:

Me, too! My parents still have the tapes in storage somewhere.

Yeah, I still have mine too. I also used to take pages out of the TV Guide with ads for up coming B5 episodes and tape them to the slip covers of the tapes in a crude attempt at cover art.

[Lord Varys]

3 hours ago, The hairy bear said:

While I'm very skeptical, I'm also very excited to see what JMS can deliver this time.

I assume he'd want to stick to his original plans  for the show that were hampered by real-world issues: a single chapter throughout the whole run, transgender Delenn, the second in command being a traitor, etc.   I hope he'll also be able to improve some of weaker resolutions from the original show, such as the Valen time-travel or the climax of the Shadow-Vorlon conflict.

I'd expect that he'll definitely go with one commander throughout the entire run - or at least with one character with whom the future Delenn romance is going to be set up. He could also introduce and develop the Rangers earlier by having somebody do the stuff Sinclair later does off-screen as ambassador to Minbar. The Rangers - especially those human rangers - really come somewhat out of the left field in the show.

If they made the new commander a woman - which might not be a bad idea - it could be very interesting to turn Delenn into a trans man considering they are not all that well-represented in fictional contexts as well as real world activism (at least that's my outsider impression).

The second-in-command as a traitor is a plot they should really go with. During the course of the series we learn how far back and how deeply rooted the Shadow faction within EarthGov is - the Minbari may have chosen the commander of Babylon 5 but the Shadow cabal would have ensured that one theirs would be second-in-command.

The entire telepath plot should also work much better this time - have one telepath throughout the entire show and/or multiple recurring telepaths doing stuff on B5. It might also make sense to actually include the Telepath War into the show this time - and, of course, one would also like to see the entire debacle with the Drakh and the Centauri in the end, something they could do if they were to be doing a spinoff show.

I think they should go with the original run this time, i.e. make season 5 about the retaking of Earth. Playing up this plot could really work well.

[SpaceChampion]

I wouldn't be so certain any of the specific plots from the original will be in the reboot.  On the macrolevel it should be a lot of the same broad strokes, but the microlevel why would JMS want to do the same things?  A lot will depend on what additional themes and ideas he wants to introduce.  He said he doesn't want to do the exact same thing.

I mean take the Telepaths for instance.  If the culmination of that 5 year arc is another Byron, then please don't.  Get there some other way.

Will there even be a Z'ha'dum?  Will there be a Valen?  Probably.  Will there be a Londo Mollari and a G'kar and a Delenn?  All the characters are vehicles for the story but he may choose entirely different vehicles.  Those 3 in particular are so iconic I don't see how you can have them played by other actors, so JMS may just choose to create entirely different characters for his new story.

It's too early to make assumptions those character will be included.  All we know is John Sheridan is the center of it.  That implies he'll revisit the old characters, and so I'd tend to expect much of the rest, but we just don't know yet.

If Takashima was the traitor, then she probably had Garibaldi's season 4 arc at some point.

Edited September 28, 2021 by SpaceChampion

[Lord Varys]

35 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

I wouldn't be so certain any of the specific plots from the original will be in the reboot.  On the macrolevel it should be a lot of the same broad strokes, but the microlevel why would JMS want to do the same things?  A lot will depend on what additional themes and ideas he wants to introduce.  He said he doesn't want to do the exact same thing.

Sure, I just wanted to say that if they change things one way to do that would be to do with the original plan that was changed in the show for pragmatic reasons.

I don't expect that we are going to get exactly the same characters or exactly the same plotlines.

35 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

I mean take the Telepaths for instance.  If the culmination of that 5 year arc is another Byron, then please don't.  Get there some other way.

That was never the plan here. Originally, Ivanova was supposed to be the leader of the telepaths on the station which was scrapped when Claudia Christian didn't return for the fifth season.

35 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Will there even be a Z'ha'dum?  Will there be a Valen?  Probably.  Will there be a Londo Mollari and a G'kar and a Delenn?  All the characters are vehicles for the story but he may choose entirely different vehicles.  Those 3 in particular are so iconic I don't see how you can have them played by other actors, so JMS may just choose to create entirely different characters for his new story.

Yes, I could see them creating new ambassodors because the old ones were so iconic. For instance, the Narn ambassador could be either Na'Toth or a character based on her.

I'm also not sure they would have to keep John Sheridan or a character based on him. He was just the guy replacing Jeffrey Sinclair, so they could go with a character based on him and his background - and Sinclair's background with the Battle of the Line is much more powerful than Sheridan's involvement in the war.

I'd expect that JMS will also create new important characters to be played by the surviving actors of the original show. We could, for instance, have an older guy as political advisor on the station being played by Bruce Boxleitner, say.

[Denvek]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The second-in-command as a traitor is a plot they should really go with. During the course of the series we learn how far back and how deeply rooted the Shadow faction within EarthGov is - the Minbari may have chosen the commander of Babylon 5 but the Shadow cabal would have ensured that one theirs would be second-in-command.

That sub-plot would be great to see actually play out. Was Takashima meant to be a traitor to the Earth Alliance in general, or was she someone who was already part of (Vice-)President Clark's conspiracy, and would have spent Season 1 destabilising the station prior to Santiago's assassination in order to then try and take command as a Clark loyalist?

[williamjm]

7 hours ago, sifth said:

The CW, the show that gave us 5 good seasons of Supernatural......................and 10 pretty bad ones. Even if this show is popular, expect it to go on well past it's proper ending point.

That was one thing I was thinking that as long as the ratings for the first season aren't a flop it will probably go on for as long as JMS wants to.

At some point in the earlier development of B5 wasn't there some sort of plan to do 5 season of B5 and then a sequel show about Babylon 4 being used in the war against the Shadows?

Alternatively, he could remake Crusade as a sequel and make it longer-lived and a bit less rubbish.

[Werthead]

One of my Hollywood contacts pointed out that a lot of the infrastructure at Warners set up to support PTEN was basically transferred into The WB, which of course was then folded into The CW during the merger with UPN*. So in a weird way, Babylon 5 is back kind of where it started up.

I'm also kind of glad that B5 is on a network which favours longer-than-13-episode seasons. Seasons 1 and 5 could do with tightening up, sure, but Seasons 2-4 are pretty packed and very well-paced given their immense (by modern standards) lengths. I also think the tight budget for B5 encouraged creativity, and can do so again. The CW is also extremely generous to its shows, renewing them short of cataclysmic ratings failures, so an early cancellation is unlikely.

* US TV needs less acronyms, ASAP.

[Lord Varys]

4 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I'm also kind of glad that B5 is on a network which favours longer-than-13-episode seasons. Seasons 1 and 5 could do with tightening up, sure, but Seasons 2-4 are pretty packed and very well-paced given their immense (by modern standards) lengths. I also think the tight budget for B5 encouraged creativity, and can do so again. The CW is also extremely generous to its shows, renewing them short of cataclysmic ratings failures, so an early cancellation is unlikely.

* US TV needs less acronyms, ASAP.

I'd also like to see them making longer seasons, because that would recreate the old feeling more. They could do seasons with 10+ episodes if they were to increase the total number of seasons.

1 hour ago, Denvek said:

That sub-plot would be great to see actually play out. Was Takashima meant to be a traitor to the Earth Alliance in general, or was she someone who was already part of (Vice-)President Clark's conspiracy, and would have spent Season 1 destabilising the station prior to Santiago's assassination in order to then try and take command as a Clark loyalist?

I'd think the best way to make it work would be to have her as a part of the Shadow cabal - although whether she would be working with them willingly or unwillingly - say, because they have dirt on her which they use to blackmail her - would depend on how the character should go.

Having a seemingly good character turn full villain intentionally could work well, actually.