“Better than JMS could do” isn’t exactly setting a high bar, you know. Even then, I doubt Abrams could get over it. The original B5 had some subtlety to it, and Abrams couldn’t spell “subtle” if you spotted him all the consonants and let him buy a vowel.
No, the best thing is to either let it stand (the best option) or turn it over to someone who understands what they are doing and can make something good. That takes JMS, Abrams, Bay, and about a hundred others out of the equation right from the start.
Now to start a war: How about giving it to Whedon?
I’m in favor of a reboot, either under JMS or under new management. Especially the latter, actually, since it’s always interesting to see a fresh take on an old story. Compare to the numerous screen adaptations of Starship Troopers (anime, film, direct to video film sequels, cartoon, animated film, video game, and Aliens).
EDIT: How about Stephen Moffat? The show will be terrifying, hilarious, and everyone will be ship-teased with everyone. Although B5 had plenty enough of that as it was G’Kar/Londo, OTP.
I don’t know. They got so so very lucky with Andreas Katsulas as G’kar, and his chemistry with Peter Jurasik. I cringe at the mere idea that some other director might tweak those characters and put the wrong actors in the roles.
To expand on Amateur Barbarian’s excellent post above - there was also the issue of lightning striking in the timing of the series. These days every show that goes past its pilot had its own wiki page, but the Lurker’s Guide to Babylon 5 was my first experience with an online fanbase community, and many of my fond memories of the show are related to interacting with other fans/obsessives.
I also feel that it wouldn’t be enough to just recast the roles and spiffy up the special effects. In order to really make the show work there would need to be a new mystery - it wouldn’t be enough to just redo the Shadow/Vorlon conflict all over again.
Beyond that, part of the reason the BSG reboot worked so well is that the 12 colonies, Kobol and the Cylons in general were very sparsely fleshed out in the original 1970s series, with the majority of the real plot elements taking place in the pilot and subsequent first 2 episodes of the series, leaving the remaining 20 or so episodes to be almost entirely episodic.
This left a great skeleton for someone to tweak a bit (the Colonials became the creators of the Cylons, instead of just their enemy), and restart, without having to really re-cover very many already-trodden paths.
B5 on the other hand, isn’t at all skeletal. We have a lot of development and a completed story. This isn’t at all like other reboots, which have primarily been episodic shows like Hawaii-Five-O or the original Battlestar Galactica.
Any B5 reboot would have to either rehash the same story, or would be a much looser “reboot”, with a significantly different story.
Babylon 5 without Londo and G’kar would be a hollow shell. Babylon 5 without Peter Jurasik playing Londo would be a travesty. Babylon 5 without Andreas Katsulas playing G’kar has some tiny change of being ok given some extreme care in finding the right replacement.
I wouldn’t mind a reboot along these lines–don’t directly use that story, but the departure point is a good one. Open with a quick recap of the series. Explain the Drakh in a sentence or two (“Minions of the Shadows who stayed behind”). Have the Drakh send a brief zap of energy back in time (“their last, final effort”). The burst shows up at the battle of the line and Sinclaire, avoiding it zigs instead of zags. When DeLenn is asked to pick a human, she picked someone else who did not activate the triluminary. Everything spirals out of that.
That said, I’d rather the story just move forward from the series. For the first time in a billion+ years, the galaxy is free of Shadow and Vorlon influence. Maybe, in addition to their little game with living pieces, maybe they’ve been holding back some greater threat? And now? There’s nobody there to protect us.
Well, the theme was the ancients hashing out their dark/light chaos/order differences and us young’ns telling them to die out already so we can do the same thing. Seems like a lot of potential material there.
