Babylon 5

[Kraig]

I bought the whole series a few years ago, and I'm finally getting around to watching it! I've only watched the pilot and a few episodes, but I'm enjoying it so far.

You're in for an amazing ride. It's a slow burner, but boy does it start a fire.

Stay with it!

And... take notes?

Better than taking notes, is watching the series from start to finish a second time. You will then realize that a lot of what you watched in earlier episodes in the series, was connected to later episodes.

 

[DonIago]

I bought the whole series a few years ago, and I'm finally getting around to watching it! I've only watched the pilot and a few episodes, but I'm enjoying it so far.

If you'd be interested, this board's very own KRAD is doing a B5 rewatch over on reactor.com. Just started the fourth season. Should be easy enough to find, and I believe it's mostly spoiler-free...mostly.

 

[V'Lias]

You're in for an amazing ride. It's a slow burner, but boy does it start a fire.

Stay with it!

And... take notes?

I'm already finding it pretty interesting, so good to know it gets even better!

Better than taking notes, is watching the series from start to finish a second time. You will then realize that a lot of what you watched in earlier episodes in the series, was connected to later episodes.

I'll probably end up doing that, like I did with DS9! I'm already seeing some things that look like they'll be followed up on in the future, so that'll be interesting.

If you'd be interested, this board's very own KRAD is doing a B5 rewatch over on reactor.com. Just started the fourth season. Should be easy enough to find, and I believe it's mostly spoiler-free...mostly.

I might have to check that out, thanks!

 

[Steve Roby]

If you'd be interested, this board's very own KRAD is doing a B5 rewatch over on reactor.com. Just started the fourth season. Should be easy enough to find, and I believe it's mostly spoiler-free...mostly.

I watched B5 when it first aired, bought the show on DVD and, later, the remastered version on itunes, but never managed to get very far into a rewatch until KRAD started his on Reactor. It's been a lot of fun so far.

 

[DonIago]

I watched B5 when it first aired, bought the show on DVD and, later, the remastered version on itunes, but never managed to get very far into a rewatch until KRAD started his on Reactor. It's been a lot of fun so far.

I'd watched 2-5 a number of times, 1 far less. Watching it along with him, spaced out but far less so than the original broadcast, has indeed been a lot of fun!

I'm still deeply disappointed that the Blu-rays are barebone (not even the commentaries???), but at least it's something.

 

[somebuddyX]

"Racing the Dawn" is the pilot episode and series premiere of the American science fiction television series Babylon Prime, which premiered on PTEN in the US on January 25, 1999. It was originally aired as a two-hour (with commercials) TV movie, and subsequent reruns typically split the episode into two parts.

In 2263, following the destruction of the space station Babylon 5 at the end of the titular series, a group of survivors regroup on the planet Epsilon III. Draal (Louis Turenne), caretaker of the Great Machine, has enacted a plan to send the survivors five years into the past, to the events of the Babylon 5 episode "Babylon Squared." There they will steal the space station Babylon 4 and bring it to the future, to operate as a new base of operations. A team led by Jeffrey Sinclair (Michael O'Hare) and his wife Delenn (Mira Furlan), along with Zathras (Tim Choate) enacts the plan. Returning to the present Babylon 4 is escorted into the refuge of deep space by several of the last remaining Narn warships led by G'Kar (Andreas Katsulas). Sinclair declares that the station will become a new shining beacon in space, the last best hope for liberating the galaxy from all the forces of evil, and renames the station Babylon Prime.

 

[Forbin]

Huh??

 

[Candlicious Ghost]

Same here I have never heard of Babylon Prime

 

[somebuddyX]

Babylon Prime was the proposed sequel series to the original version of Babylon 5. Babylon 5 would have ended with that station being destroyed I believe by the Minbari warrior caste. In the first episode of the spinoff series the surviving main characters would have then gone back in time to "Babylon Squared," grabbed B4 and brought it into the future to act as their base of operations. But after O'Hare left and JMS reevaluated his plans he condensed the original version of Babylon 5 and Babylon Prime into one series.

Synopsis of JMS's synopsis of the "original arc for B5" **SPOILERS**

***This thread includes huge spoilers for the entire 5 year arc of Babylon 5, including the details of JMS's earlier draft of the story, as of the start of production on the series.*** OK, doing this in reverse order: I've already written the rest of this post (so my fingers are getting...

www.trekbbs.com

I'm just making some fanart of if that series had actually existed.

 

[tenmei]

Im always curious we know a lot about the OG plans for B5 and what the plans were for Crusade, even in broad strokes, but absolutely nothing about the Rangers that I've ever seen

 

[Frightscape One]

The less said about THE LEGEND OF THE RANGERS, the better. (And I say this as a HUGE fan of the B5 universe.)

 

[David cgc]

Im always curious we know a lot about the OG plans for B5 and what the plans were for Crusade, even in broad strokes, but absolutely nothing about the Rangers that I've ever seen

The scriptbooks had some notes on JMS's original ideas for season 5 of B5 and the general premise of Crusade, written during season 4, before network realities got into the middle of things. He was interested in the same kind of core conflict that's at the center of the western genre; the necessity of using violent, uncivilized means in order to establish civilization. That gets a nod a couple of times late in season 4 and early in season 5, with the White Star flyover of Earthdome, the talking-heads discussion in the season 4 finale, Garibaldi telling Sheridan that he thinks he needs to get more comfortable with using force to impose his will on his nominal allies, and the various misadventures of the Drazi (and Narn and Brakiri, but mostly Drazi) trying to stab Sheridan in the back, but the original outlines had that as a much bigger focus of season 5/Crusade, with the Interstellar Alliance all but insisting on membership at a point of a gun in a rush to expand its sphere of influence and smother conflicts in the local region of space.

I think (the mystery of the Hand and their goons aside) that was still something he wanted to explore, and LotR would've been his vehicle to do it. It would certainly fit with the Ranger leadership being depicted as idiotically hard-assed and martial.

 

[somebuddyX]

Some fanart from the unmade Crusade episode 1x14 "To The Ends of the Earth"

The Shadow Hybrid returns

Excalibur enters an asteroid field in pursuit of the Shadow Hybrid

After the Shadow Hybrid explodes and the Excalibur crew speculate on its origin, we see the remains of the ship and amongst the debris is an old Kennedy silver half-dollar...

 

[tenmei]

Its also kind of a shame that Babylon 5 fanfic didnt take off in the way Trek and other random did. I've dug around on wayback machine and found Season 6 and Star and Circle, which were the two main ones that I remember.

 

[David cgc]

Its also kind of a shame that Babylon 5 fanfic didnt take off in the way Trek and other random did. I've dug around on wayback machine and found Season 6 and Star and Circle, which were the two main ones that I remember.

“A Dark, Distorted Mirror” was another big one.

Currently, there's an ongoing fan-comic, Babylon 6. It's a divergent take on post-season-5 events that takes some inspiration from the Centauri Prime novels and Crusade, but isn't necessarily consistent with them.

Oh, it's much more obscure, and not quite fan-fic, but there was also the Officer's Journal, an unofficial, never-completed novelization of the cancelled video game, "Into the Fire." I reached out to the author a while back to ask if it'd be cool to repost it to AO3 or something for posterity, and they preferred to let it lie, but if you happened to know that it had been available on the semi-defunct fan-site First Ones (which was Firstones.com at the time, before a domain renewal glitch), you could easily find about 95% of it on the Wayback Machine.

 

[bdub76]

Anyone know any details of Harlan Ellison's involvement in the show? Was he brought on so that JMS could use psicops, which are pretty much in one of his short stories?

 

[Kraig]

Anyone know any details of Harlan Ellison's involvement in the show? Was he brought on so that JMS could use psicops, which are pretty much in one of his short stories?

He was a conceptual consultant for the show as listed in Midwinter. Described by JMS as "a free-roaming agent of chaos." He had a written a "manifesto", or outline, that visiting writers could consult, so they could incorporate their stories into science fiction in general and the B5 universe, in particular. At least that is my understanding.

 

[David cgc]

He was a conceptual consultant for the show as listed in Midwinter. Described by JMS as "a free-roaming agent of chaos." He had a written a "manifesto", or outline, that visiting writers could consult, so they could incorporate their stories into science fiction in general and the B5 universe, in particular. At least that is my understanding.

I think JMS also bounced ideas off of him and took his suggestions. IIRC, he credited Ellison with remembering they'd need to set up a fan for the greenscreen shots of Sheridan falling from the core shuttle in the season 2 finale so it looked like was falling with some speed.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

And, of course, he voiced Sparky the Computer.

 

[V'Lias]

I bought the whole series a few years ago, and I'm finally getting around to watching it! I've only watched the pilot and a few episodes, but I'm enjoying it so far.

I'm up to about half way through season two, and still enjoying it! Most of the main characters are pretty interesting, the only one I'm ambivalent about so far is Talia. It's also taken me a while to warm up to Sheridan too, but he's been getting better. I still prefer Sinclair though!