The Birth of Babylon 5

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

The real question is, exactly when it was made. Most likely at some point before the Great Burn but after Delenne died.

Possibly shortly before the Great Burn, and the technology used in the recreation may have been the same tech used by Daniels in his attempt to craft a propaganda, um goodfacts, film.

 

[Elemental]

I was always kinda bugged by the idea that a documentary being made hundreds of years in the future still needed all those people to be filmed - we're almost at the point now where we don't need live actors in a movie.

Ah, but maybe it WAS CGI - state-of-the-art 2200s CGI, which will be, of course, indistiguishable from reality.

Realistic to the point of even including the occasional bad acting.

 

[Mooch]

I was always kinda bugged by the idea that a documentary being made hundreds of years in the future still needed all those people to be filmed - we're almost at the point now where we don't need live actors in a movie.

Ah, but maybe it WAS CGI - state-of-the-art 2200s CGI, which will be, of course, indistiguishable from reality.

How do you explain the bad cgi in the space shots then?

 

[chrisspringob]

I've always thought that these debates about B5 being a docu-drama or not, and how that could practically work within the confines of the B5 universe were rather silly. ***Either way, it's a fictional story.*** What difference does it make if you add another layer to it, making it a "play-within-a-play"? The underlying story is identical either way. So why bother worrying about the plausibility of that extra layer?

 

[RoJoHen]

I've always thought that these debates about B5 being a docu-drama or not, and how that could practically work within the confines of the B5 universe were rather silly. ***Either way, it's a fictional story.*** What difference does it make if you add another layer to it, making it a "play-within-a-play"? The underlying story is identical either way. So why bother worrying about the plausibility of that extra layer?

Hi, I'm the Internet. You must be new here.

 

[Lindley]

How do you explain the bad cgi in the space shots then?

It's a Retro thing. As usual with such things, they overcompensated by a couple of centuries.

 

[DWF]

Well if you take everything seen on screen at "in universe" face value then the people responsible seen at the end of 'Sleeping in Light' included costume people, makeup artists, a VFX crew etc. So yes it would mostly be a re-creation rather than a bunch of secure-cam footage cut against music. It's still a documentary and the inclusion of created footage doesn't change that since I'm sure I've seen plenty of History Channel documentories that included actors, music and CGI effects re-creating real events in order to tell a story.

The real question is, exactly when it was made. Most likely at some point before the Great Burn but after Delenne died.

Delenn didn't die she just disappeared.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

I've always thought that these debates about B5 being a docu-drama or not, and how that could practically work within the confines of the B5 universe were rather silly. ***Either way, it's a fictional story.*** What difference does it make if you add another layer to it, making it a "play-within-a-play"? The underlying story is identical either way. So why bother worrying about the plausibility of that extra layer?

Of course it is, and in the end that's all that matters is the story. But I am fascinated by the intent of a creator/writer and how he/she executed that intent and whether or not it was successful.

JMS intended B5 to be a documentary-type telling of the events of 2258-2262. How well he executed that intrigues me, and something I enjoying debating.

 

[Forbin]

I was always kinda bugged by the idea that a documentary being made hundreds of years in the future still needed all those people to be filmed - we're almost at the point now where we don't need live actors in a movie.

Ah, but maybe it WAS CGI - state-of-the-art 2200s CGI, which will be, of course, indistiguishable from reality.

How do you explain the bad cgi in the space shots then?

Yeah, I was thinking that as I was typing.

 

[Neroon]

Ah, but maybe it WAS CGI - state-of-the-art 2200s CGI, which will be, of course, indistiguishable from reality.

mayeb that was Daniel's downfall - in "Deconstruction of Falling Stars". The holosimulations were TOO good.

 

[CaptJimboJones]

I've always thought that these debates about B5 being a docu-drama or not, and how that could practically work within the confines of the B5 universe were rather silly. ***Either way, it's a fictional story.*** What difference does it make if you add another layer to it, making it a "play-within-a-play"? The underlying story is identical either way. So why bother worrying about the plausibility of that extra layer?

I'm utterly astonished that someone with more than 2,000 posts on a Star Trek BBS would ask this question.

 

[David cgc]

It's the "it was all a dream" factor. We already accept a layer of unreality in that the show is obviously fictional, but to say that it also didn't happen in its own fictional world is just irritating. Same reason people get upset with the dream-ending copout.

 

[chrisspringob]

I've always thought that these debates about B5 being a docu-drama or not, and how that could practically work within the confines of the B5 universe were rather silly. ***Either way, it's a fictional story.*** What difference does it make if you add another layer to it, making it a "play-within-a-play"? The underlying story is identical either way. So why bother worrying about the plausibility of that extra layer?

Of course it is, and in the end that's all that matters is the story. But I am fascinated by the intent of a creator/writer and how he/she executed that intent and whether or not it was successful.

JMS intended B5 to be a documentary-type telling of the events of 2258-2262. How well he executed that intrigues me, and something I enjoying debating.

Yeah, it's his "intent" in a sense, in that he decided to add on this extra layer of unreality with the framing device, but it really only manifests itself in a few voiceover narrations here and there throughout the series. There's nothing else in the show that demonstrates that we're supposed to look at this as a docudrama. I'm not aware of any creative decisions that JMS made where he's said that he was thinking "Well, if this had been a straightforward story, I would have done it this way, but since it's a docudrama, I decided to do it that way." (again, aside from the voiceovers)

It just doesn't appear to be something that was going into his day to day thinking when he was making the series. It's also pretty clear that the none of the other people associated with the show (actors, directors, FX, production people, etc.) did their jobs with the intention that they were producing a fictional docudrama, rather than just a straight fictional story. So they why worry about this issue?

Yeah, yeah. I know that this is the internet. This is an SF forum, and there are lots of nitpicky discussions here, and I've participated in a great many of them. But this one just strikes me as being particularly silly. Either way, docudrama or not, the underlying storyline is identical, and the docudrama aspect seems to have had extremely minimal impact on the creative choices that were made. So what's the big deal? For those who don't like the docudrama aspect, it's easy enough to ignore that aspect of things. I for one never watch B5 while consciously thinking about the fact that it's supposedly a fictional docudrama instead of a straight fictional story.

 

[chrisspringob]

It's the "it was all a dream" factor. We already accept a layer of unreality in that the show is obviously fictional, but to say that it also didn't happen in its own fictional world is just irritating. Same reason people get upset with the dream-ending copout.

I hate the "it was all a dream" copout when it's used as a reset button....when, say, a particular episode or set of episodes within a long-running series is discarded from the show's continuity by saying "it was all a dream, and this isn't going to count in future episodes".

But when the entirety of what we're shown is "all a dream", then I honestly don't see what the gripe is. In B5, we're never even shown the "real" fictional world. All we ever see is the "sub-fictional world" of the docudrama. The sub-fictional world is the one that we're actually invested in. Why worry about whether that sub-fictional world is "real" in the fictional world? It just seems like one is taking an "angels on the head of a pin"-type argument to a ridiculous extreme.