Niners Unite...around Babylon 5! - The Lost Threads

[Phily B]

A series which should be remade is B5. I'd love to see it remade with some proper script writers. I mean, can you imagine the impact the show would have if they killed the President at the end of the Season 1 - with us actually knowing the guy? I'd much prefer them to "Battlestar" up the B5 series. Avoid filler episodes, and expand on the actual political background, stuff like that. Just some rando, thoughts.

 

[Jan]

^I wouldn't be interested in a remade B5, not at all. Not because B5 as it is is sacrosanct, it's just that it wouldn't be the same show at all if it were 'Battlestarred' as you say. And I'd drop it, just as I have BSG because of its unrelenting grimness and lack of character development.

There really isn't any one episode of B5 that didn't have arc material in it at all and even if they served no other purpose, the stand-alones made the characters more real to us. Material in them would often telegraph something coming down the road (another beef I had with BSG-stories coming out of nowhere).

Jan

 

[Mal]

Phily B said:
A series which should be remade is B5. I'd love to see it remade with some proper script writers. I mean, can you imagine the impact the show would have if they killed the President at the end of the Season 1 - with us actually knowing the guy? I'd much prefer them to "Battlestar" up the B5 series. Avoid filler episodes, and expand on the actual political background, stuff like that. Just some rando, thoughts.

i agree. cut that puppy down from 110 episodes + half a dozen movies, to something like an even 100. get rid of Infection, Byron, Keffer, and other crap that just mucks things up. re-write some of the corny "humor", and incorporate To Dream in the City of Sorrows, so we get a little bit more of Sinclair and Sakai even after season 1.

of course, before i would bother "battlestarizing" B5, i would much rather someone make miniseries for the three trilogies.

oh, and something about the Teep war, please!!!!!!

 

[Mal]

one last thing, an episode that could really use a Battlestarizing, is By Any Means Necessary. if you want a super-solid union ep (especially in light of the ongoing strike), Dirty Hands is your episode par excellence.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

I'm not sure if I'd want B5 'Battlestared'....but I must selfishly confess that I'd love it if one day I popped in a DVD and the CGI were of today's quality.

I think that is the one thing that kinda dates the show...but other than that, I wouldn't change a thing.

Well okay...maybe I'd change Byron.....

 

[Neroon]

Not me. B5 doesn't really need to be reimagined, with the possible exception of improving upon the CGI... but even then I am reluctant. I am not a big believe of having lightning strike again to the same effect. What's more, the overall perpetually grim darkness of BSG seems incompatible with the B5 story. Both are effective. Both have their strong points and weak spots. Yet, you will run into real trouble when trying to translate the principles that are successful for the one, over to the other.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

^ Well, I think that B5 had it's own darkness - Down-below, Zahadum and the whole concept of the Shadows, the grimness of what the Centauri did to the Narn, the fall of Centauri Prime and Londo's fate, etc.

But then that was contrasted against more hopeful and 'light' themes and places. I always loved the look of Minbar, for example - it looked so....bright, serene, and mystical. And there were some very positive characters on that show...and positive events. Not everything was grim and a huge struggle.

I quite like BSG - it's probably my favorite of the scifi shows currently airing new episodes. But it can get overwhelming sometimes. Even for a DS9/Ron Moore fan such as myself.

Sometimes you want to just say: Can SOMETHING good happen to these characters, please?

 

[Kegek]

Forget B5 as BSG.

We should have B5 as Dexter, and everything is subjected to the ironic, cheery viewpoint of Mr. Morden, as he goes about his daily routine, nobody aware that he's really an agent of the Shadows. With Vir Cotto in the Erik King role.

But seriously, I'd love to see the CGI updated. But I don't think a reboot is warranted.

 

[Neroon]

^ I meant to differentiate things a bit more, just as you did. B5 did have that darkness, but there did seem to be more of the hopefulness. When it comes to such philosophies, to each their own. I just think that the more pervasive sense of hopelessness ala BSG doesn't fit the B5 mold.

Otherwise, how could Lorien have ever made his well-known quote to Sheridan?

 

[Tzenkethi]

Drahk and the Xindi
Anyone ever thought how similar these two are?
Both are multiple races that serve energy beings and attempt to destroy earth.

 

[DWF]

Tzenkethi said:
Drahk and the Xindi
Anyone ever thought how similar these two are?
Both are multiple races that serve energy beings and attempt to destroy earth.

The Drahk aren't a multiple race and the Shadows weren't energy based beings, they could be killed with energy weapons or PPGs.

 

[Mal]

The Drahk aren't a multiple race and the Shadows weren't energy based beings, they could be killed with energy weapons or PPGs.

the Drahk certainly seemed like a multiple-race society, in that there were at least three kinds of Drahk i can remember:

the "ambassador" who met Delenn, and was all time-shifty;
the standard drahk including the dude who put the keeper on Londo;
and that red-eye "count-dracula" looking drahk who seemed like a leader or some such - from crusade maybe?

 

[Harvey]

The Drahk aren't a multiple race and the Shadows weren't energy based beings, they could be killed with energy weapons or PPGs.

the Drahk certainly seemed like a multiple-race society, in that there were at least three kinds of Drahk i can remember:

the "ambassador" who met Delenn, and was all time-shifty;
the standard drahk including the dude who put the keeper on Londo;
and that red-eye "count-dracula" looking drahk who seemed like a leader or some such - from crusade maybe?

I think the red-eyed one and the "ambassador" who met Delenn are actually the same, but yeah, the Drakh certainly seemed to be a multiple-race society, as they were depicted on Crusade and Babylon 5.

 

[Jan]

I always thought of it as more of a separation of types for different jobs, such as with bees. The 'drones' would be the soldiers and messangers while the 'thinkers', such as Shivkala on Centauri Prime actually ran things. Technically, the Keepers were Drakh, too, and an outsider would think that they were a separate race if they didn't know that they 'budded' from another Drakh. Wasn't it established in the novels that the Drakh have something of a hive mind?

Jan

 

[Harvey]

I always thought of it as more of a separation of types for different jobs, such as with bees. The 'drones' would be the soldiers and messangers while the 'thinkers', such as Shivkala on Centauri Prime actually ran things. Technically, the Keepers were Drakh, too, and an outsider would think that they were a separate race if they didn't know that they 'budded' from another Drakh. Wasn't it established in the novels that the Drakh have something of a hive mind?

Jan

You know, there's definitely more about the Drakh in the Legions of Fire books, but I can't remember anything off the top of my head.

 

[scorpius1701]

The Drakh are one race, the ones seen that put the Keeper on Londo. The timeshifty guy only refers to himself as "Emissary" meaning he isnt really a Drakh.I guess this was done to preserve the surprise in season 5 when the Drakh reveal themselves.

 

[Harvey]

The Drakh are one race, the ones seen that put the Keeper on Londo. The timeshifty guy only refers to himself as "Emissary" meaning he isnt really a Drakh.I guess this was done to preserve the surprise in season 5 when the Drakh reveal themselves.

Except we see that time-shifty guy later on, early in season five sans time-shifting, and again on Crusade. If my memory is correct.

 

[Dusty Ayres]

....but good new scifi is in pretty short supply these days, IMO.

Tried Painkiller Jane and Flash Gordon, but both were so terrible they made my hair hurt.

Blame the useless, dumbassed, cynical, mundane fucktards that make up the majority of the TV audience for this state of affairs and for both Painkiller Jane and Flash Gordon. If it weren't for their over-love of Battlestar Galactica
that the critics developed, and if it weren't for the way that certain network executives are so cheap and unwilling to spend the money on programs that have traditional space themes, we'd be getting sci-fi that's just as amazing as the show we're talking about in this thread. But no, all we can get is really dark shite that's good for a while, but then get tiresome, and that are also 'open ended story arcs' because they're really plotless shit.

John Kenneth Muir talks about this state of affairs in an article on his blog called Making Lemonade: Or How I Feel The Need, The Need For Speed...on the new Battlestar Galactica, which I will excerpt here;

[FONT=arial]God I really, really want to like this new show, the "re-imagined" Battlestar Galactica, developed by Ron Moore and currently airing in reruns on The Sci Fi Channel (before a second season starts soon).


I keep telling myself I shouldn't be an Old Fogey (even though I'm only 35) about this. I should not keep stating that the old show was better, more fun, more successful in terms of its characterizations, effects and production design. After all, the new show is winning critical accolades right and left. It's not just the second coming of Battlestar Galactica. It's the Second Coming for Science Fiction on TV, we're supposed to believe.


Well. Okay. I guess. I can almost swallow that Kool Aid. But then again, I am old enough to remember when people said that about...er... Manimal...


I wrote a book all about the underpinnings of the original Battlestar Galactica in 1997, which was published by McFarland in 1998, entitled An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica. You can buy it at Amazon.com. I argued there -- hopefully persuasively -- that the original Battlestar Galactica had its flaws, but that despite them, it was a unique and interesting series. And for a number of reasons, I claimed this was indeed so. The great expense of the original 1978 series (more than a million dollars per episode...) assured imaginative costumes, impressive sets, and the best and most convincing special effects yet developed for American television (Space:1999 was British...). On top of production values, enormously appealing actors like Dirk Benedict and Richard Hatch made the show more than the Star Wars rip-off the MSM wanted to make it out to be, and as the show developed over the weeks, it actually boasted something akin to a story arc. Finally, I also felt the original Battlestar Galactica had an interesting hawkish philosophy that differentiated it from Star Trek, and an interesting use of Christian and Greek/Roman mythology.

On the latter front, for instance, Battlestar Galactica made more than a token attempt to remind us that the lead characters were all from another planet, another solar system. The characters had names like Athena, Apollo, Lucifer, and Adama, and in the first episode, the survivors of the Twelve Colonies crossed a red-hued mine field that was the equivalent to the Red Sea. The characters said "yahren" instead of year. When they cursed, it was "frak" or "felgercarb." When they smoked a cigar it was a "fumarello." When they counted down time units, it was "centons" and "microns." Dogs were "daggits," and dollars were "cubits." It might have been ham-handed or silly at times, but this attempt at a legitimate Colonial language/lexicon granted the Battlestar Galactica world a veneer at least of otherworldly reality. We actually believed that these were "brothers of man," out in space; people like us, but not actually from Earth. We could suspend disbelief.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial]And for me, that's the thing that's almost wholly absent in the ripped-from-the-headlines, September 11th-style re-imagination. I was shocked to hear Starbuck quote the Tom Cruise movie Top Gun (1986) in one episode, noting a pilot cadet's "need for speed." I was disappointed to hear thoroughly earthbound references to "stogies" (instead of fumarellos) and "lemonade." I was disappointed that all the characters wear contemporary-style ties, business suits, and glasses, and that on occasion, are wont to exclaim "Jesus" rather than say "Oh Gods" (as they often do in later episodes). Whoa!


The feeling that these people are from another world (another friggin' galaxy maybe!) - and not models starring in Pier One commercials - is totally lost in this new Galactica. And for that reason, I keep wanting to scream at the screen --- you ain't from Earth! You haven't seen Top Gun! Come on, Ron Moore, you can do better than that! I saw Carnivale - it rocked!! And the work you did on DS9 and Next Gen -- friggin' brilliant stuff, dude!


And then I start get bitter, you see. And here's why: This new and (improved?) Battlestar Galactica was never designed to be faithful to the original. Never. Oh, the execs and the story editors say so, but they just aren't being honest, perhaps even with themselves. What is quite obvious from the TV episodes is that the writers want this show to be about us. Here. On Earth. In 2005. Dealing with Abu Ghraib. Dealing with Faith-Based Politics. Okay, that's cool - actually daring even - but it's not, repeat NOT true to the history and character of Battlestar Galactica. If truth be told, it's a helluva lot closer to Space: Above and Beyond(1995) than it is Battlestar Galactica. These new creators are simply using the title Battlestar Galactica as quick franchise identification. The name is a marketing tool, nothing more.[/FONT]

http://reflectionsonfilmandtelevision.blogspot.com/2005/06/making-lemonade-or-i-feel-need-need.html

At least, 'we've always got Babylon 5'.

 

[Harvey]

You'd probably be best of taking that to the Battlestar Galactica forum, Dusty. Personally, I thought Muir's book, which I received for Christmas and read over the holidays was interesting, but also quite flawed. Here, too, he blows a lot of things out of proportion, like one use of "Jesus!" that was improvised on-set by Michael Hogan and never heard on the series again, and ignores some of the facets of his own argument (sometimes the hawkishness of the original Galactica is an asset, sometimes it's a source of criticism in his argument). He goes on to make the usual gallery of "GINO" complaints, bemoaning the series' use of American political commentary (even though the original did the same, only in the era of the cold war).

But, then again, I've managed to enjoy both Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica (new and old), so what do I know?

 

[Dusty Ayres]

Sorry, Hirogen Alpha, but I had to get that off my chest, even though I like Battlestar Galactica. The mundanes are wrecking sci-fi TV completely, to the point that if a show like Babylon 5 was sold to TV today, it would be changed from what we love it as to what Battlestar Galactica is. It seems that mundanes think that sci-fi can't be anything unless it looks normal or low-budget (Flash Gordon) or half-fantastic (Bionic Woman and Smallvile). I wish that Joe and Jane Average would just watch the shows and like them for their fantasticness, or stick to the mundane sludge they usually watch, because turning Flash Gordon and the Bionic Woman into the drab crap they are on TV now does nothing for them at all.

Better yet, instead of watching and reading sludge, I'd suggest that they turn the TV off and read some sci-fi, so that they can understand the tecnological world they live in, and to not fear it so much.