Joannas Diary: a TGirl Blog : Warning, May Contain Nuts

Monday, June 04, 2007

Lost Tales

I was a huge Babylon 5 fan. It was such a shame the show never got the treatment from the TV bosses that it really deserved. It was far superior to Star Trek in many ways and paved the way for great shows such as Battlestar Galactica. I still can't watch the final scenes of Sleeping in Light or listen to that final piece of music without shedding a tear.

There's been news of some new B5 shows, going straight to DVD called Babylon 5: Lost Tales which has got me quite excited. The offical site is now up, as are some videos on YouTube such as the offical trailer and a sneak peak from the first show.

6 Comments:

At June 04, 2007 6:40 PM, Connie Cox said…

I can't wait for this.
What I want is a HD version of the trailer. The new CGI models look gorgeous, especially B5.
And the music is just stunning.
Hmm think I need to drag out my B5 dvd's for another trip.
At June 04, 2007 7:54 PM, Isobel said…

Oh wow!

I can't wait for these to come out. I had all but one episode of B5 on VHS. To make room for everything else I donated my entire VHS collection to a charity shop. It's a pity I can't afford to buy all five box sets: I was looking at them the other day...
At June 09, 2007 1:09 AM, Emma G said…

Babylon 5 was definitely a first rate series. But Battlestar Galactica actually paved the way for it. The original series was done in 1978, broadcast by ABC in the US and ran only one season. The effects were state of the art then, which made it too expensive to produce. The current series is actually a remake. The first season of the new series left the original sript nearly intack, changing various characters genders (Starbuck to female, Boomer both race and gender), and updating the look.
I'm old even to remember useless things like this :-)
At June 09, 2007 9:03 AM, Joanna said…

Thanks Emma, I do know about the original BSG series. I even remember going to the cinema around the time of Star Wars to see the Battlestar Galactica movie.

What I mean by paving the way was that scifi was very much the "hit the reset button" type where every episode stood alone and everything was reset for the next time round...this helped syndication since you could show/watch them in any order and it didn't really matter.

They were self-contained. Any device shown in the first few minutes of a show would definitely be the thing that saves the day in the final few minutes. And the early BSG was no different to that.

Babylon 5 had a story arc planned out over 5 seasons, more like a novel. Little things that were mentioned in one episode had their payoff two or even three seasons later. The ultimate for that was the whole Babylon 4 / War Without End storylines

After that more scifi started to run longer story arcs - and shows like Stargate, new BSG etc have benefitted from this.

Babylon 5 was groundbreaking in its day, it's a real shame it never gets the credit that it deserves and is often just thought of as a bad Star Trek clone...
At June 09, 2007 11:34 PM, Emma G said…

Your right about the story arc. And it definitely wasn't another Star Trek clone. It seems to be the TV industries basic approach to keep things as weekly capsules and not commit to a more literate, intergrated whole. The entire output of all the various Star Trek incarnations might have made three really exceptional seasons to enjoy, instead of a repetitious buffet to sell ad space. Cable network competition in the US certainly helped stimulate many of the better writing efforts, shifting a bit of the control from advertisers to viewers via subscriptions. I'm not sure why Americans need to have unlimited (often interpreted as non existant) "story" developement in their TV. Most series would be better written if they were finite, and the writers could focus on tighter developement of character and conflict, instead of simply reshuffling the same deck, week after week.
Babylon 5 deserves alot more credit crically that it got.
At June 14, 2007 1:24 PM, Kate Weston said…

I'm looking forward to this too. Presumeably the 'he' in the clip causing the destruction is Sheridan's son? I always wondererd what happened to him with that 'thing' hidden in the vase Londo left for him. I agree with B5 being influencial even ST was effected with DS9 adopting longer story arcs and becoming darker, even Voyager to some extent. I do feel that BSG has raised the bar again though. And I love Firefly where the stories are just about a handful of 'normal' people trying to get by rather than the 'epic' stuff of BSG, B5 and ST where the fate of planets, races and the universe in general hang in the balance. I notice they went for 'noisy space' in the B5 clips. In space no one can hear you scream but explosions are obviously a different matter.