Babylon 5 officially being rebooted

[Corvinus85]

Mass Effect borrowed heavily from B5, so maybe the new B5 could borrow from ME and make the Minbari more like the Asari. Have them gender fluid and able to mate with multiple humanoid races.

[Kalbear]

30 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Mass Effect borrowed heavily from B5, so maybe the new B5 could borrow from ME and make the Minbari more like the Asari. Have them gender fluid and able to mate with multiple humanoid races.

As long as we maintain the canonical giant prehensile tentacle squid penises that Centauri have, sure!

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

5 hours ago, drawkcabi said:

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.

I’ll watch the tapes on occasion just to give my kids a chance to laugh at “Zima” commercials.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Kaligator said:

As long as we maintain the canonical giant prehensile tentacle squid penises that Centauri have, sure!

 

[IFR]

Has CW ever made a show that is actually good? Hopefully a precedence of quality will be set with this reboot.

I tried to get into some of the old serial genre series like Babylon 5 and Buffy. I found them to not be very accessible. My exposure was a bunch of awful special effects, poor dialog and general silliness. Poor special effects alone are not enough to put me off (I love I, Claudius, for instance), but if this is compounded by extreme cheesiness then I can't do it. I've read supporters advocate the show by saying that it gets better after the first season, but that's over 20 hours of suffering to get to the good stuff. Who has that kind of time? Plenty of shows out there start out great and stay that way.

Even slow burn shows like The Wire aren't actually bad at the beginning, it's a matter of acclimatizing to a dense plot. What I saw of Babylon 5, though, was just...not good, however you look at it.

Anyway, hopefully the creator will make improvements now that he's pulling a Hitchcock and remaking his stuff.

Edited September 28, 2021 by IFR

[karaddin]

7 hours ago, IFR said:

 I've read supporters advocate the show by saying that it gets better after the first season, but that's over 20 hours of suffering to get to the good stuff. Who has that kind of time? Plenty of shows out there start out great and stay that way.

Yeah, the first time i tried I didn't make it through season 1, but I really tried with the second attempt and bailed out midway through S2 which is just way too much television to get to the point where it may start hooking me. 

[Ran]

If one is interested in the wider story and the best episodes, the main "arc" episodes also tend to be the highest rated. Here's all the episodes from the first two seasons that fans back in the day rated 8.0 or greater, with bolded titles being the absolutely keep ones for major plot events:

 

Season 1

Episode 6 - Mind War, introduction of Alfred Bester (Walter Koenig). Could have been an arc episode, I guess, but there was a change of plans regarding the role of Talia Winters in the series.

Episode 8 - And the Sky Full of Stars, arc episode, big hints about why Sinclair has a hole in his memory.

Episode 9 - Deathwalker, not really an arc episode but a moral dilemma episode

Episode 13, Signs and Portents, major arc episode

Episode 18-19 - A Voice in the Wilderness, part I and II, not really an arc episode but introduces Draal who plays a part in later events.

Episode 20 - Babylon Squared, major arc episode, introduces the wonderful Zathras

Episode 22 - Chrysalis, season finale, major arc episode.

So of those 8, I'd say there are four absolutely essential for the major story arc of the five year plan. They are also all quite good episodes... but they are B5 episodes. If you dislike those, there's really no point pushing on.

Season 2

Episode 1 -  Points of Departure, just shy of an 8.0 but think this is needed just to explain the new status quo, as Sinclair leaves the show and Sheridan joins it. 

Episode 2 - Revelations, arc episode, advancing several major plot threads regarding the larger conflict, the local Earthforce conflict, and what's going on with Delenn.

Episode 7 - A Spider in the Web, not an arc episode, though it dives into Earthgov conspiracies a bit and reveals things are pretty messed up.

Episode 8 - A Race Through Dark Places, not an arc episode, but another Bester episode which are always fun. A detail in it plays off of the events of Mind War.

Episode 9 - The Coming of Shadows, major arc episode, and the third highest rated across the whole series. Pretty epic.

Episode 11 - All Alone in the Night, not a necessary arc episode but does foreshadow some future things for Delenn and Sheridan/B5.

Episode 13 - Hunter, Prey, just a good episode tied to the assassination of Earth's president from last season, plus a bit of Volron stuff. Not an arc episode.

Episode 15 - And Now for a Word, not an arc episode but a fun episode taking the form of an Earth news program sending a reporter to B5.

Episode 17 - In the Shadow of Z'ha'Dum, major arc episode.

Episode 19 - Divided Loyalties, good episode that resolves Talia Winter's story.

Episode 20 - The Long, Twilight Struggle, major Earth arc story, fine appearance by Roy Dotrice in a Neville Chamberlain role.

Episode 21 - Comes the Inquistor, not an arc episode but fantastic guest star who'll leave a mark on the series in another role later on.

Episode 22 - The Fall of Night, major arc episode.

 

If this proves useful to anyone, I can do the rest, but I figure if after those 9 episodes the bug hasnt' bitten you to go back and watch the ones you skipped, or go forward and get the other top episodes, there's definitely no point! That said, season 3 is the most well-regarded of the series, with arguably only one bit of a dud episode (lamentably, the episode Robert Englund guest starred in.)

 

[SpaceChampion]

Since the source code for the Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5 is on Github and anyone seems welcome to fork it.... I'm thinking of doing just that and updating it for the Reboot.  At least the text, not the awful html!

 

Edited September 29, 2021 by SpaceChampion

[Ran]

28 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Since the source code for the Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5 is on Github and anyone seems welcome to fork it.... I'm thinking of doing just that and updating it for the Reboot.  At least the text, not the awful html!

 

I think that would be a grand project. It'd be a sin to change that HTML, old reliable as it is!

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I was in the Lurker’s guide all the time while watching B5.  It helped as the show kept getting switched to different times and different stations due to syndication.

[SpaceChampion]

35 minutes ago, Ran said:

I think that would be a grand project. It'd be a sin to change that HTML, old reliable as it is!

It looks fine but under the hood appears to be quite the kludge.

I'm thinking of porting it to a wiki so the fan community can keep it updated.  Server costs are daunting me though.

[IFR]

@Ran

That's a nice list! I don't think the original is for me, but I do appreciate the enthusiasm for it here, and I hope you all get the series you want with the reboot. I hope I like it too, despite my skepticism.

[Werthead]

On 9/28/2021 at 9:43 PM, IFR said:

Has CW ever made a show that is actually good? Hopefully a precedence of quality will be set with this reboot.

The CW really tried with The 100, which had a (somewhat) harder SF premise than most of their shows and treated the premise seriously. After a meh first couple of episodes, it pulled together and the first season and a large chunk of the second were pretty good.

After that it got really deranged, really fast, and lost its uniqueness in favour of being Walking Dead without the zombies but with even more batshit insanity (though, amusingly, a higher budget than The Walking Dead despite having maybe 5% of the viewership globally).

[Corvinus85]

Pretty much every CW I watched, which is really just Arrowverse has had a solid or decent first season, then went downhill. I hope Superman & Lois doesn't follow the pattern.

[Werthead]

Yeah, the CW hit rate isn't great. Jane the Virgin, Nikita and Veronica Mars, plus the original five-season run of Supernatural, were all pretty strong (from what I watched of them anyway) but they do have a very common issue of a great first season, sometimes a good second season and then going downhill. Not sure why. It might be the amount of content they needed to produce in a small period of time, or a lack of focus, or something else.

Babylon 5 I think has certain advantages other shows don't have, though, like a pre-planned story arc and an existing template for them to use. There's also a "can't fail" aspect here: even if the reboot isn't great, it will likely generate renewed greater interest in the original. And if the reboot is cancelled, so what? We already know the ending.

[Derfel Cadarn]

1 minute ago, Werthead said:

Yeah, the CW hit rate isn't great. Jane the Virgin, Nikita and Veronica Mars, plus the original five-season run of Supernatural, were all pretty strong (from what I watched of them anyway) but they do have a very common issue of a great first season, sometimes a good second season and then going downhill. Not sure why. It might be the amount of content they needed to produce in a small period of time, or a lack of focus, or something else.

Babylon 5 I think has certain advantages other shows don't have, though, like a pre-planned story arc and an existing template for them to use. There's also a "can't fail" aspect here: even if the reboot isn't great, it will likely generate renewed greater interest in the original. And if the reboot is cancelled, so what? We already know the ending.

Despite a dip in seasons 6 and 7 I felt Supernatural bounced back. Thr final season saw

God/Chuck as the big bad

. 
I liked the season 11 finale where God’s sister is on the verge of destroying the world, with God, Crowley, Rowena and Castiel hanging out in a bar listening to ‘Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying’ while waiting for the sun to die.

[SpaceChampion]

Someone is upscaling B5 scenes in 4K using A.I.

 

[Mindwalker]

On 9/29/2021 at 6:06 PM, SpaceChampion said:

Since the source code for the Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5 is on Github and anyone seems welcome to fork it.... I'm thinking of doing just that and updating it for the Reboot.  At least the text, not the awful html!

 

But keep the slightly cheesy looks with the starry background!

It was  a great resource at the time (or rather, for me, a few years after the show had aired).

Edited September 30, 2021 by Mindwalker

[sifth]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

Yeah, the CW hit rate isn't great. Jane the Virgin, Nikita and Veronica Mars, plus the original five-season run of Supernatural, were all pretty strong (from what I watched of them anyway) but they do have a very common issue of a great first season, sometimes a good second season and then going downhill. Not sure why. It might be the amount of content they needed to produce in a small period of time, or a lack of focus, or something else.

Babylon 5 I think has certain advantages other shows don't have, though, like a pre-planned story arc and an existing template for them to use. There's also a "can't fail" aspect here: even if the reboot isn't great, it will likely generate renewed greater interest in the original. And if the reboot is cancelled, so what? We already know the ending.

The first 5 seasons of Supernatural were really good and told a complete story...............but the show was super popular at the time and we were given more content beyond the shows natural end point. This resulted in the show basically devolving into fan service, for nearly 10 years and very little else. To be honest, I worry this is going to happen to the MCU, now that we're past End Game. From time to time, we were given some really good comedy episodes in season 6 and beyond, but in terms of story arcs, the show was pretty horrible and very unfocused.

[SpaceChampion]

In case it wasn't clear before...