Mixed feelings about this. Babylon 5 is probably my favorite scifi. It's depth of character development is phenomenal and the arc of the series was ground breaking at the time. Many of the...
Mixed feelings about this. Babylon 5 is probably my favorite scifi. It's depth of character development is phenomenal and the arc of the series was ground breaking at the time. Many of the original cast are dead, but I'm not convinced we could see the performance from Andreas Katsulas recreated. I am pleased to see JMS still at the helm, and probably with incredible creative control, but I'm also hesitant about the reputation of the CW... We'll always have the original, at least, and the original is extremely strong scifi. I would implore anyone who has shown interest to move past the poorly aged CGI and give the show a try. Seasons 3 and 4 are a real ride.
I mostly agree. I thought the first season was a little slow to get going. I ended up dropping it, and tuned in again a couple years later and thought it was phenomenal!
I mostly agree. I thought the first season was a little slow to get going. I ended up dropping it, and tuned in again a couple years later and thought it was phenomenal!
I'm quite interested in this. I thought B5 had some good ideas and some really great characters - the hair guy and the lizard dude were particularly good - but did suffer somewhat from being quite...
I'm quite interested in this. I thought B5 had some good ideas and some really great characters - the hair guy and the lizard dude were particularly good - but did suffer somewhat from being quite long-winded, over-complicated and in places confusing (and other places downright boring).
I did eventually watch it all - although not the movies or spinoffs - and I couldn't really articulate exactly what happened very clearly, although if I'm honest it started to lose me after the way they ended the Shadow war. But it often felt very ramble-y, like the points being made were very important to the writer and they felt the need to go into huge amounts of detail about something which probably could (and should) have been wrapped up rather quicker. So perhaps a reboot with some tighter oversight on runtime - if only via the medium of budget - could do a little better.
I dunno. Sci-fi on TV is hard. There's not a lot of it which really works, and I say that as a huge fan of the genre in written form. B5 is probably worth having another run at.
In a broader sense with reboots I do feel quite strongly that there must be some original ideas out there that deserve making instead of endlessly rehashing everything in sight. (also why has nobody rebooted Blake's 7 yet?)
Good reboots and sequels bring new ideas to the franchise. The world may not be original, but the series still can be. Good examples are Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek Discovery, and before...
In a broader sense with reboots I do feel quite strongly that there must be some original ideas out there that deserve making instead of endlessly rehashing everything in sight.
Good reboots and sequels bring new ideas to the franchise. The world may not be original, but the series still can be. Good examples are Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek Discovery, and before that Star Trek the Next Generation. There are also loads of mediocre sequels and reboots, but you can say the same for original works, too.
I'm of the opinion that being a reboot or not doesn't mean much about how original or high quality something is. The biggest thing it affects is expectations. And since most things that get rebooted were highly successful and loved the first time around regression to the mean means that a lot of them will be disappointments, even if they are as good on average as an average original show.
BSG was a really good reboot, a huge improvement on the original. I don't know about the various Treks, the only one of those I really like is Lower Decks. I'm not completely against reboots, for...
BSG was a really good reboot, a huge improvement on the original. I don't know about the various Treks, the only one of those I really like is Lower Decks. I'm not completely against reboots, for the exact reasons you mention - but there seems to be an awful lot of them about, perhaps more than there should be given production resources are limited and there's shedloads of great original TV going unmade.
HBO are already rebooting True Blood and that only finished six years ago! Seems pointless.
Oh god, yes! As mentioned, I stopped a few episodes into the first season. About 2 years later, I was bored and it was on as I was flipping channels, and it had gotten a lot better. I watched the...
but did suffer somewhat from being quite long-winded, over-complicated and in places confusing (and other places downright boring).
Oh god, yes! As mentioned, I stopped a few episodes into the first season. About 2 years later, I was bored and it was on as I was flipping channels, and it had gotten a lot better. I watched the rest of the series and really liked it. But man was it slow to start. It didn't feel like it was doing "character development", it just felt like it was boring at the start. But they eventually worked it out.
So good that you can't even recall their names? Further, since you didn't provide any examples - I'll have to presume here - what you call "long-winded" others call "character development". Not...
some really great characters - the hair guy and the lizard dude were particularly good - but did suffer somewhat from being quite long-winded, over-complicated and in places confusing (and other places downright boring).
So good that you can't even recall their names?
Further, since you didn't provide any examples - I'll have to presume here - what you call "long-winded" others call "character development". Not everything is designed for the 5 second attention span of today.
It's been quite a few years since I watched it and yes, I can't remember the character names. Especially because they probably had apostrophes in the middle because for some reason a certain type...
It's been quite a few years since I watched it and yes, I can't remember the character names. Especially because they probably had apostrophes in the middle because for some reason a certain type of sci-fi writer thinks that is how to make things sound alien. I do remember them being good though. The only name I can remember from Babylon 5 is Garibaldi and that's probably only because he was named after a biscuit.
B5 ran for 110 episodes of 45 minutes each. That's 3.5 days! I don't think it's too unreasonable for me to only recall how it made me feel rather than exact moments. I consume a lot of fiction, I don't commit it all to memory - especially when I only thought something was OK rather than amazing. B5 I remember as being pretty good, overwritten in places, very self-important towards the end and not much more. I recall one specifically bad bit - the suspension-of-disbelief breakingly bad ending of the Shadow war - and very little else.
I'm a big fan of long-form fiction. My favourite books are often the kind of doorstops that publishers insist on splitting into multiple volumes (The Night's Dawn sequence is nearly 3000 pages!). There is a difference between "long" and "long-winded" though. Telling long and complicated stories doesn't have to get boring or feel stretched and padded out - but in the case of B5, I think it did. I'm glad you enjoyed it though.
I own the full dvd set. It's one of my all time favorite shows (I own no other television series cds), but for the life of me I cannot remember character names. Maybe hair guy is Londo? Lizard...
So good that you can't even recall their names?
I own the full dvd set. It's one of my all time favorite shows (I own no other television series cds), but for the life of me I cannot remember character names. Maybe hair guy is Londo? Lizard guy, I know who they are talking about, but for the life of me I cannot remember his name. (Husband informs me the name is G'Kar)
Londo Mollari, that's the one. I spent a bit of time on the wiki. The big hair aliens are such a hilariously 90s bit of character design. I do get that for entirely practical reasons in TV sci-fi,...
Londo Mollari, that's the one. I spent a bit of time on the wiki.
The big hair aliens are such a hilariously 90s bit of character design. I do get that for entirely practical reasons in TV sci-fi, alien races are so often just people-shaped with funny hair, weird ears or lumps on their heads, but it still makes me laugh. Sometimes it gets a bit silly, like when Delenn did some humanifying transformation business that was clearly written in so the actor didn't have to spend so long in makeup getting stuff glued to her head. But y'know, that's fine.
One of the things I liked about B5 compared to other sci-fi of the time was they had races like the Vorlons and the Shadows, who were properly weird, on non-human bodyplans. I liked that the Vorlon on B5 was always in an encounter suit, that was a good touch. It's a bit jarring when everyone is bipedal humanoid and oxygen-breathing (Star Trek, looking at you...)
Hopefully in a reboot situation the B5 designers can expand these kind of things a bit more with modern CG, and have some really alien aliens.
I only barely remember Londo's name because he was my favorite character. He had a lot of depth, and the actor who played him did a great job making him believable in spite of the funny hair.
I only barely remember Londo's name because he was my favorite character. He had a lot of depth, and the actor who played him did a great job making him believable in spite of the funny hair.
Back in the day I ignored both Babylon 5 and DS9. The idea of a trek-like show on a "ship that never moves" seemed dumb to younger me. I was very wrong about DS9, but never watched Babylon 5.
Back in the day I ignored both Babylon 5 and DS9. The idea of a trek-like show on a "ship that never moves" seemed dumb to younger me. I was very wrong about DS9, but never watched Babylon 5.
I'm in the same boat, it wasn't until many years later that I finally gave DS9 a try and I'm so glad I did. I've been meaning to do the same with B5 as it still has a loyal fanbase. I may just...
I'm in the same boat, it wasn't until many years later that I finally gave DS9 a try and I'm so glad I did. I've been meaning to do the same with B5 as it still has a loyal fanbase. I may just wait for this reboot and then backtrack to the original if I like it enough.
But...... The CW? Yikes. I'm not sure a successful show is possible from there. It's worse than Fox.
I loved the crap out of DS9, but Baylon 5 was almost as good, especially in the area of character development. Where Babylon 5 really suffered was in their terrible CGI. Not so bad back in the...
I was very wrong about DS9, but never watched Babylon 5.
I loved the crap out of DS9, but Baylon 5 was almost as good, especially in the area of character development. Where Babylon 5 really suffered was in their terrible CGI.
Not so bad back in the day, but today, ugh.
To give you an idea though, Walter Koenig, the guy that played Chekov on the Star Trek The Original Series for seasons 2 and 3 was in Babylon 5 for 12 episodes, and if you ask him at a convention which role he enjoyed more, he'll go for Babylon 5.
I could post many Babylon 5 clips, but that would give too much away.
Wow, I didn't even recognize him. He was incredible in B5. One of the standout characters for me. Now I wonder why they didn't do more with him in Star Trek.
To give you an idea though, Walter Koenig, the guy that played Chekov on the Star Trek The Original Series for seasons 2 and 3 was in Babylon 5 for 12 episodes
Wow, I didn't even recognize him. He was incredible in B5. One of the standout characters for me.
Now I wonder why they didn't do more with him in Star Trek.
I have only fond memories of this show. I rewatched the original a few years back and I still enjoy it. It is a nice blend of mythology and sci-fi with a good storyline that covers multiple years....
I have only fond memories of this show. I rewatched the original a few years back and I still enjoy it. It is a nice blend of mythology and sci-fi with a good storyline that covers multiple years. It deals with the rise of totalitarianism, the deep state (before this was a popularised term), order vs chaos in their extremes. The struggle of doing good in a bad situation. Unrequited love. Religion... And blends all this in a well executed way.
It has some memorable side characters with interesting character development arcs like Susan Ivonova, G'kar, Garabaldi and Londo.
All in all I can warmly recommend the original series. The spin-off series "Crusade" was rubbish IMO so just ignore that one;
Mixed feelings about this. Babylon 5 is probably my favorite scifi. It's depth of character development is phenomenal and the arc of the series was ground breaking at the time. Many of the original cast are dead, but I'm not convinced we could see the performance from Andreas Katsulas recreated. I am pleased to see JMS still at the helm, and probably with incredible creative control, but I'm also hesitant about the reputation of the CW... We'll always have the original, at least, and the original is extremely strong scifi. I would implore anyone who has shown interest to move past the poorly aged CGI and give the show a try. Seasons 3 and 4 are a real ride.
I mostly agree. I thought the first season was a little slow to get going. I ended up dropping it, and tuned in again a couple years later and thought it was phenomenal!
I'm quite interested in this. I thought B5 had some good ideas and some really great characters - the hair guy and the lizard dude were particularly good - but did suffer somewhat from being quite long-winded, over-complicated and in places confusing (and other places downright boring).
I did eventually watch it all - although not the movies or spinoffs - and I couldn't really articulate exactly what happened very clearly, although if I'm honest it started to lose me after the way they ended the Shadow war. But it often felt very ramble-y, like the points being made were very important to the writer and they felt the need to go into huge amounts of detail about something which probably could (and should) have been wrapped up rather quicker. So perhaps a reboot with some tighter oversight on runtime - if only via the medium of budget - could do a little better.
I dunno. Sci-fi on TV is hard. There's not a lot of it which really works, and I say that as a huge fan of the genre in written form. B5 is probably worth having another run at.
In a broader sense with reboots I do feel quite strongly that there must be some original ideas out there that deserve making instead of endlessly rehashing everything in sight. (also why has nobody rebooted Blake's 7 yet?)
Good reboots and sequels bring new ideas to the franchise. The world may not be original, but the series still can be. Good examples are Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek Discovery, and before that Star Trek the Next Generation. There are also loads of mediocre sequels and reboots, but you can say the same for original works, too.
I'm of the opinion that being a reboot or not doesn't mean much about how original or high quality something is. The biggest thing it affects is expectations. And since most things that get rebooted were highly successful and loved the first time around regression to the mean means that a lot of them will be disappointments, even if they are as good on average as an average original show.
BSG was a really good reboot, a huge improvement on the original. I don't know about the various Treks, the only one of those I really like is Lower Decks. I'm not completely against reboots, for the exact reasons you mention - but there seems to be an awful lot of them about, perhaps more than there should be given production resources are limited and there's shedloads of great original TV going unmade.
HBO are already rebooting True Blood and that only finished six years ago! Seems pointless.
Oh god, yes! As mentioned, I stopped a few episodes into the first season. About 2 years later, I was bored and it was on as I was flipping channels, and it had gotten a lot better. I watched the rest of the series and really liked it. But man was it slow to start. It didn't feel like it was doing "character development", it just felt like it was boring at the start. But they eventually worked it out.
So good that you can't even recall their names?
Further, since you didn't provide any examples - I'll have to presume here - what you call "long-winded" others call "character development". Not everything is designed for the 5 second attention span of today.
It's been quite a few years since I watched it and yes, I can't remember the character names. Especially because they probably had apostrophes in the middle because for some reason a certain type of sci-fi writer thinks that is how to make things sound alien. I do remember them being good though. The only name I can remember from Babylon 5 is Garibaldi and that's probably only because he was named after a biscuit.
B5 ran for 110 episodes of 45 minutes each. That's 3.5 days! I don't think it's too unreasonable for me to only recall how it made me feel rather than exact moments. I consume a lot of fiction, I don't commit it all to memory - especially when I only thought something was OK rather than amazing. B5 I remember as being pretty good, overwritten in places, very self-important towards the end and not much more. I recall one specifically bad bit - the suspension-of-disbelief breakingly bad ending of the Shadow war - and very little else.
I'm a big fan of long-form fiction. My favourite books are often the kind of doorstops that publishers insist on splitting into multiple volumes (The Night's Dawn sequence is nearly 3000 pages!). There is a difference between "long" and "long-winded" though. Telling long and complicated stories doesn't have to get boring or feel stretched and padded out - but in the case of B5, I think it did. I'm glad you enjoyed it though.
I own the full dvd set. It's one of my all time favorite shows (I own no other television series cds), but for the life of me I cannot remember character names. Maybe hair guy is Londo? Lizard guy, I know who they are talking about, but for the life of me I cannot remember his name. (Husband informs me the name is G'Kar)
Londo Mollari, that's the one. I spent a bit of time on the wiki.
The big hair aliens are such a hilariously 90s bit of character design. I do get that for entirely practical reasons in TV sci-fi, alien races are so often just people-shaped with funny hair, weird ears or lumps on their heads, but it still makes me laugh. Sometimes it gets a bit silly, like when Delenn did some humanifying transformation business that was clearly written in so the actor didn't have to spend so long in makeup getting stuff glued to her head. But y'know, that's fine.
One of the things I liked about B5 compared to other sci-fi of the time was they had races like the Vorlons and the Shadows, who were properly weird, on non-human bodyplans. I liked that the Vorlon on B5 was always in an encounter suit, that was a good touch. It's a bit jarring when everyone is bipedal humanoid and oxygen-breathing (Star Trek, looking at you...)
Hopefully in a reboot situation the B5 designers can expand these kind of things a bit more with modern CG, and have some really alien aliens.
I only barely remember Londo's name because he was my favorite character. He had a lot of depth, and the actor who played him did a great job making him believable in spite of the funny hair.
Back in the day I ignored both Babylon 5 and DS9. The idea of a trek-like show on a "ship that never moves" seemed dumb to younger me. I was very wrong about DS9, but never watched Babylon 5.
I'm in the same boat, it wasn't until many years later that I finally gave DS9 a try and I'm so glad I did. I've been meaning to do the same with B5 as it still has a loyal fanbase. I may just wait for this reboot and then backtrack to the original if I like it enough.
But...... The CW? Yikes. I'm not sure a successful show is possible from there. It's worse than Fox.
I get you. However, their new Superman & Lois is pretty good.
I loved the crap out of DS9, but Baylon 5 was almost as good, especially in the area of character development. Where Babylon 5 really suffered was in their terrible CGI.
Not so bad back in the day, but today, ugh.
To give you an idea though, Walter Koenig, the guy that played Chekov on the Star Trek The Original Series for seasons 2 and 3 was in Babylon 5 for 12 episodes, and if you ask him at a convention which role he enjoyed more, he'll go for Babylon 5.
I could post many Babylon 5 clips, but that would give too much away.
Watch it.
Wow, I didn't even recognize him. He was incredible in B5. One of the standout characters for me.
Now I wonder why they didn't do more with him in Star Trek.
I have only fond memories of this show. I rewatched the original a few years back and I still enjoy it. It is a nice blend of mythology and sci-fi with a good storyline that covers multiple years. It deals with the rise of totalitarianism, the deep state (before this was a popularised term), order vs chaos in their extremes. The struggle of doing good in a bad situation. Unrequited love. Religion... And blends all this in a well executed way.
It has some memorable side characters with interesting character development arcs like Susan Ivonova, G'kar, Garabaldi and Londo.
All in all I can warmly recommend the original series. The spin-off series "Crusade" was rubbish IMO so just ignore that one;
Shit, man. The feels!
"All love is unrequited, Stephen. All of it."