This page was created to get the fans to try to push the networks to show Babylon 5 and it’s spin-offs again, to try to increase the fan base and perhaps bring about demand for another show.
Given that we’re coming up on the 20th anniversary, it would be good to see it on TV again.
On my end, even though I’ve owed the DVDs for like 15 years, I bought season 2 from iTunes (to watch on the bus) last month and season 3 this month.
Too many of the B5 cast sleep in light these days, and JMS has pretty well shown us he had only one idea.
A full reboot in someone else’s hands… maybe.
No Andreas Katsulas? No thanks.
Ok maybe a reboot in the hands of someone good.
A reboot? No thanks. It will end up just like Star Trek, not Battlestar Galactica.
I’d like to see more in the universe, but absolutely wouldn’t want to see a reboot. Blech. Set it say, 80 years forward or so. Maybe a Minbari ranger, a soldier/diplomat from Earth, a technomage and one other character (say, a Centauri–what happened to them after the series?) exploring or searching for a cure for the plague on earth that was started in the Crusade series and never wrapped up.
But not a reboot.
B5 is pretty much the only franchise in the world I’m interested in seeing rebooted. The story is so strong, but the series was marred by cheap budgets, a few poor actors and constant studio messing about.
Would love to see someone give JMS a pile of cash and tell him to start over.
What I’d like to see would be a 2013-era revamping of the CGI, without fooling with the live action scenes (except where they were integrated).
I’d imagine they could redo them these days for a fraction of the cost of the original CGI effects, but with an order of magnitude better quality.
I mean, your average Xbox can do better real-time in-game graphics than they could produce with all that effort and processing time back in 1995 or so.
Fenris has the right idea. (Did I actually say that out loud?)
Play with the universe, but leave the original story alone. Give JMS a couple of decent collaborators (because he only had one great idea, and can use all the help he can get) and a shit-ton of money and launch a new series on HBO.
Everything outside the main B5 series, including the elements shoehorned into the 5th season, pretty much sucked Narn balls, and not just because of the budget. The JMS that created the concept could have done wonders with that last 2 or 3 part addition, on a shoestring (visualize what they did with the bare set and 2 actors of the Sheridan torture episode) - and everything about it, from sets to script to dialogue to acting, just plain sucked. I wouldn’t care to see any more attempts to hang collateral stories on the framework.
A BSG-like reboot, with JMS as advisor and someone younger and sharper at the helm, is about the only further thing I’d care to see in the B5 universe.
There is no fucking way a reboot is going to end up with another Andreas Katsulas as G’Kar. I don’t think that can be replicated, or the chemistry between him and Peter Jurasik, and I don’t want to see anyone try and fail.
God, I hated the BSG reboot.
I don’t want to see a B5 reboot either, and I loved it. Further stories in the universe might be great. I don’t know why we have to reboot everything. Sometimes it was right the first time.
And by 2013-era revamping, I mean shot-for-shot remaking of the CGI effects. I’d think they could do a much cooler jumpgate, and clearly much better explosions than the first few seasons (they were noticeably better by season 5).
I’m not advocating a reboot. I’m saying that if ANYTHING further is done in B5-world, a reboot would be the first step. Everything else would be a waste of time. We don’t need “B5:TNG.”
I’m pretty meh about a CGI makeover, too. It won’t make the series any more appealing to non-fans; you get it/love it or you don’t.
I’d much rather Zelig in some replacements for some of the awful, awful acting: The girly-girl Marine who had it in for Uncle Garibaldi. Bruce McGill’s zombie captain. Wanda de Jesus’s bitchy streetwalker officer (and she STILL can’t act; seen her on Sons of Anarchy?) And, just as a gift for JMS, a complete replacement for Robert Foxworthy.
There may have been a few poor actors, but there were also a lot of good ones, and a few absolutely astounding. Taking the acting quality as a whole, I think B5 actually ended up on the high end of the bell curve, which makes a re-casting awfully risky.
Also? Forbid him to EVER do anything “relevant” or “Very special episode”-esque. His “Superman walks across AmeriKKKa and deals with the problem of drugs by giving candy to little boys while they watch drug dealers try to escape from a crack-house that Superman set on fire (because, pointless cruelty and putting kids in harm’s way is what Supes does, amirite?)” stuff was awful, as opposed to most of his comics runs (he hit some bad notes here and there with Spidey, but it was still a great book)
Well, what was left barely touched and hinted at was the end of the Centauri Empire, where Vir became Emperor. I would be willing to take a short series (2-3 seasons) based on that, with some hesitation, even lacking Andreas Katsulas’ G’Kar coming in to strangle Molari on the throne. The original actors have all aged the appropriate amount, since that was supposed to be 17-20 years after the series end. It could, if done right, open the Universe for more stories.
If done wrong, it puts the final stake in it and we fans clutch our original DVDs to our bossoms and rock back and forth muttering about how great it was.
+1
I loved it; but the most dated things to me are the effects, especially in some of the earlier seasons.
A CGI makeover would probably be the most bang-for-the-buck type upgrade that could be done; hell, they probably still have the original models on some hard drive somewhere, and could update them and use them.
Plus, in the process, they could remaster to HD perhaps.
Exactly what I came in to say.
WB lost or destroyed virtually all the show materials in the years right after the series ended. All of the original digital modelilng and most of the master CGI footage is lost. That’s the specific reason there is no HD version.
There are also some really, really bad CGI moments (remember the little holographic warriors on the tabletop in the casino?) that had to be taken from the original SD, 4:3 release material because the 16:9 material was lost. There are endless scenes that are sharp and in focus in the closeups and fuzz out to bad-VHS quality when the whole comped GGI shot is shown.
I don’t think it could be redone without almost a frame-by-frame fixup for 75% of the run. Never happen. At least ST:TOS was shot very sharply on quality film stock and gives restoration/HD transfer/CGI replacement a bed to work on. B5 is pretty close to hopeless in that regard.