These are the voyages...
er, wait, that's wrong.
It was the dawn of the third age of mankind.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vIVFgXaxsU
( A compilation of all five title sequences for Babylon 5. Most shows make, at best, minor changes to their title sequence. Babylon 5 recorded (or stitched together, for the last two) a brand new sequence and voice-over for each season. My favorite is 3, because Ivanova is the best. The rest are ranked thusly: 4,2,1,5. )
Intended to be the first show that had a defined beginning, middle and end with novel-esque dramatic structure, Babylon 5 told the story of the titular station across 5 years; with each season encompassing a year in the life. The important distinction, for me, is this: going in, there was an outline of all five seasons. The brains behind the operation, one J. Michael Straczynski (hereafter referred to as JMS for obvious reasons), was also the primary screenwriter for the show. Famously, he wrote the entire third season. In fact, according to wiki, of the 110 episodes aired, he wrote
92; 59 of those in an unbroken streak. Most shows could be called
shared-world, in the vein of comic books (and a niche style of book); many writers sending the same set of characters on various adventures. Babylon 5 belongs to JMS, through and through.
JMS recognized and prepared for many of the potential pitfalls of the television medium. Actors left the show and guest stars took other jobs. These had replacements (with unique personal arcs) ready and waiting. The show was almost cancelled in the fourth season; barely saved by TNT. The planned 5-year arc became condensed and both major conflicts were resolved by the end of the fourth season. This had two results: first, the fifth season meanders a bit and isn't as strong as the middle three; second, we got the fantastic
Deconstruction of Falling Stars as a new season 4 finale.
TNT, as an aside, did not do well by Babylon 5. The sequel (or spinoff, maybe) show, Crusade (and stop me if this sounds familiar) had episodes aired out of order followed by TNT pulling the plug due to low ratings and viewer confusion early in the first season.
Back to B5: The first season, with Commander Jeffrey Sinclair is widely regarded as the worst season. If you can struggle through, there's quite a bit of information in the background that sets up the future conflicts.
Dramatis Personæ ...selection, as of the third season.
Starting in the back row, left to right:
Vir Cotto: attaché to Londo Mollari
Londo: Centauri ambassador to Babylon 5
G'Kar: Narn ambassador to Babylon 5
Lennier: attaché to Delenn
Delenn: Minbari ambassador to Babylon 5 (why does she look different than Lennier? Watch the show!)
middle row:
Marcus Cole: Human Ranger, posted to Babylon 5
Zack Allen: a security guard
Dr. Stephen Franklin: Chief Medical Doctor
front row:
Lt. Cmd. Susan Ivanova: the second-in-command.
Captain John Sheridan: the commander of Babylon 5
Chief Michael Garibaldi: security chief.
Background
There are five major races: Humans, Narn, Minbari, Centauri and Vorlon. There are a fair number of other minor races.
About 10 years before the show begins, the Humans and Minbari had a major conflict. Roughly 2 minutes before the Humans were genocided, the Minbari
stopped. Why they stopped is the central mystery of the first season.
The Centauri used to occupy Narn. The Narn were not happy about this, and eventually made it too expensive for the Centauri to stay.
With the Earth-Minbari war on one side and the Narn / Centauri grudge match on the other, Humans decided to try the UN thing again. They built Babylon stations to serve as council chambers and attendant facilities. The first three stations blew up; the fourth vanished; number five survived. Each of the major races sent an ambassador to Babylon 5; each ambassador has one vote. The minor races form the League of Non-Aligned Worlds; together, they get one vote. The resident commander of Babylon 5 doubles as the Human ambassador; the Minbari sent Delenn; Centauri Prime gave Londo Mollari the job; G'Kar represents Narn; and Kosh (not shown) is from the Vorlon Empire.
Lennier and Vir were tapped to help out their ambassador - Lennier is happy to serve; Vir is just wondering how he ended up with a good job. G'Kar goes through a few. The Rangers aren't given an official introduction for quite some time; consider them a spy network for the good guys.
I found a map. It looks pretty fannish, though
Hyperspace
Where Star Trek has warp speed; Stargate has the titular artifact; and Farscape has both wormholes and starburst; Babylon 5 uses hyperspace to travel the stellar distances.
To enter hyperspace, one must be able to "punch through" the barrier to it. The resulting portal resembles a wormhole:
The opposing action opens a blue wormhole.
It takes a massive amount of energy to enter or leave hyperspace. While this is fine for cruisers and certain other large ships, smaller vessels need to rely on Jump Gates.
Jump gates are reactors capable of generating and then focusing the energy needed to open a portal to hyperspace.
edit: One of the best resources is
The Lurker's Guide. Episode summaries, questions about the larger story, and a (badly formatted) section with old usenet postings that JMS posted while the show was on the air. /edit
I've seen a bit of Babylon 5 discussion popping up over the past several weeks. As B5 is one of my favorite shows, this pleases me.
Scattered conversations are one thing, though; a thread is something else.
Will it survive?
Faith. Manages.
Posts
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
blastr.com/2013-5-28/straczynski-reveals-moving-story-why-michael-ohare-left-babylon-5
This is new though. Its JMS talking about why Michael O'Hare left the series. Turns out he had schizoprenia of some sort and it was really acting up on him.
WB's website has the first season and a rotating selection of the second.
I haven't found it on any of the others, no.
Holy cow.
I had introduced a couple of friends to this show a few years back. They couldn't sit through the first 3 episodes of season 1. As a result, I gave them a cliff notes version of it and we all hopped into season 2. It quickly became one of their favorite sci-fi shows.
"but where's Mr. Garibaldi?!"
Oh G'Kar.
Midnight on the Firing Line
Mind War
And the Sky Full of Stars
Signs and Portents
A Voice in the Wilderness (Parts 1 & 2)
Babylon Squared
Chrysalis
I know its almost half the season but important stuff happens in them, or set up for things down the road.
And who can skip the introduction of Bester?
In the episode where the crew is trying to catch a terrorist bomber, someone posits that
So they bring in a bunch of monks whose years of study have given them a nearly supernatural attention to detail and sit them in front of monitors until they recognize the same guy at multiple scenes.
Ahh, the 90s.
"You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."
Amazon and iTunes sell the individual episodes for $1.99 each.
The DVD collection is marked down currently, at $112. Probably the best deal - only a dollar per episode, plus any special features.
Seriously. Just absolutely love it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHpMAubwfQg
There are 5 seasons of B5. Anything after that is literally a different show. I'm not, like, nerd raging 'aliens 3+4 don't exist'; it was not the same series. And frankly, even in B5, anything after the shadow war is kinda disappointing, though there are some good moment.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ66wHRhe2U&feature=youtube_gdata_player
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http://babylon.hard-light.net/
There are people working to bring it up to date with the newest FS2 open release.
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?board=180.0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq-Ol1uF6ZY
I was speaking in particular about Crusades though, which was intended to have a 5 year plot arc and would have resolved the whole nano-plague thing after the first season or two then gone into other stuff like the psi-war on earth and mars and Mars eventually gaining it's own independence. Instead it was shafted by Network interference demanding more sexy and more 'splosions to fit in with the TNT lineup of (IIRC) monster trucks and professional wrestling.
I met Bruce Boxleitner last year at Denver Comic Con and talked to him for about half an hour. There was no line. The man has a huge chip on his shoulder with how they treated B5 at TNT. One story he told us is how they forced JMS to change the captain of the Excalibur. It was originally suppose to be Sheriden but one day they called him in, gave him the proverbial watch and pat on the back and said he wouldn't be.
Of course he and JMS have an interesting relationship. They get along but JMS works best when he has a lot of time to write. He didn't with Crusade and that is partially why it was jumbled also.
The other thing he said they had one more full series after Crusade mapped out already. They had another 9 years of shows with scripts and such planned. There was much more in the Babylon universe ready to be made but because of TNT it never was.
it wasn't just "best", it was...
- John Stuart Mill
Sounds about right.
Though, the other shots at doing new Babylon stuff (Legend of the Rangers, direct to video dvds) were also not great so who knows.
Put it on Starz or HBO.
Still won't be getting my hopes up, though. No good comes of getting my hopes up. Ever.
I know. It is supposed to be an human station. I don't understand why the cassino can't have earth gambling. "wooooo, it's in space, so we have to have weird games with strange looking cards and light." Christ. And Courtesans? on a station of several million people in the middle of nowhere? WTF. I don't understand why they couldn't just have an old fashioned, honest, sawdust on the floor whorehouse.
Maybe they'll install Dabo tables.
It's owned by Warner Bros. so premium channel options are not on the table. Though it'd be nice to have a reboot or continuation series on cable. JMS might not be involved if it gets off the ground - he's had a rocky relationship with WB over Babylon 5. That said, you're right. The chances that anything will happen are astronomically poor.
Quarter. A quarter of a million.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeNBJ5o-b7s#t=1m20s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYKloZRwLu4
I'd like to see the Telepath War, either in a season, mini-series or movie format.
Or this one, which was one of my favourites when I was a kid. Still awesome today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR7n4Gg-_ac
And yeah, to hell with TNT for shitting up what was something that managed to be more impressive in a few years than most of Star Trek had in however-many decades the different series ran. No wonder the stuff outside the main series went to ass; that all happened after TNT got everything, and it suddenly makes a lot more sense as to how their interference wrecked whatever future the series might have had if one of their steps for all that was to bag Boxleitner.
I honestly wouldn't want HBO or Starz to pick up the franchise, though. They'd just throw tits and ass in there as a cheap draw, and I'd hate to see something like B5 cheapened by low-grade antics like that. Not like WB would give it up anyway, but at least they got to wrap the important stuff before getting the Firefly treatment from a shitty network.
They actually did have the whole shebang up on instant streaming a few years ago. But I guess they lost the rights. It sucked cause I only got to the end of season 3 before they dropped it from Netflix.
Agreed.
HBO and Starz do utilize nudity to a greater degree since they're able to get away with it, but you're wrong about them only using that for cheap fanservice. Especially on HBO with Game of Thrones. Starz isn't as polished with nudity as HBO is though they can produce quality series around it, like Spartacus and Strike Back. It's not like their shows are 24/7 nudity. It's nice to see American shows enjoying sexuality rather than pretending it doesn't exist or hiding it off-screen like we're all children.