Hey guys! This episode of GBNF was made from suggestions from fans who emailed us demanding this show be covered on this series. If you want to make suggestions for future episodes of GBNF then e-mail GBNFSeries@gmail.com and maybe we’ll cover your show
@@craigh5236 Just wanted to get conformation about that , Amiga was the computer that made IBM jealous 😝. Not only you had very very many games that were Great but also 2D(D-Paint) and 3D(Turbo Silver) programs for home use 🥰. Software designers had the Amiga 1000 because they could use any operating system ...Ahh ❤Amiga ❤
Agreed, never had a major issue with the space ships looks/battles except for the biggest one in season 4 when “the first ones” show up and they all only have 1 ship each 😂😂😂
One of my favorite quotes of ALL TIME & the the best example of a "badass woman" I've ever seen is from Season 3, Episode 10 "Severed Dreams": [Delenn's fleet arrives after Earth Alliance attacks B5] Delenn: This is Ambassador Delenn of the Minbari. Babylon 5 is under our protection. Withdraw or be destroyed! Earth Force Officer: Negative! We have authority here. Do not force us to engage your ship. Delenn: Why not? Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari Fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else! The look on Delenn's face is iconic. That is one woman you do NOT want to mess with. She effectively single-handedly started the Earth-Mimbari war after the accidental death of Dukat.
I was watching the DVDs with commentary (like 12 years ago at this point), and JMS was commentating that episode, and when it got to that moment, he said something like "I'll just quiet down for this part".
My cousin was the set designer on this show and he was very proud of it. He sadly passed away a year ago, but this would make him so happy to see people who still enjoy this show
@@frankiehandsI hope he was very proud of his work. I remember pointing out to my father the amazing background detail and “lived-in” sets, and how compared to DS9, Babylon 5 felt the most “real”. He really did a fantastic job.
@@sharpie3811 He was extremely proud of it! This show, cast and crew meant a great deal to him. The show was originally pitched as a Star Trek from what he told me and they turned it down and then stole a lot of the ideas, one being the casino in outer space. That was my cousins idea.
Its a shame that so many of the cast have passed away.... Way more than should be. More members of the original Star Trek are still alive than this shows main cast...
Not quiet I think there is are 3 main cast members left out of seven, and with B-5 there is way more main characters like 15 with like 8 of them passed away. Now if your comparing it to TNG or DS9 then yes way more of the cast has passed beyond the rim.
Thing is, I can totally see how dated the CGI is... but they still work for me because of the design of the Ships and stations, the cinematography and the Color Scheme. I just dig the general *vibe* of these effects. Its fake but its cool.
Ugh… WRONGEST of takes on the vfx. B5 and Seaquest revolutionized TV with their adoption of the video toaster and lightwave. You simply do not get stuff like Firefly and Moore’s BSG without these pioneers. Booooooooo!
Babylon 5 remains one of my all time favorite series. I don't mind the VFX because - well I grew up on them. At the time, they were great. The stories, the characterizations, and the storytelling was pretty groundbreaking for the time. I don't hate S5, but it is my least favorite. When JMS thought S4 would be the last one, he crammed 2 seasons worth of story into it, and then had to come up with something fresh for S5. The telepath arc wasn't great, but the friendship between G'kar and Londo was great.
"Molari! Understand that I can never forgive your people for what they did to my world. My people can never forgive your people. But I… can forgive you."
I don't know of any other series that has so many memorable and thought provoking lines and scenes. If a client mentions confidentiality I just say........"I know what I know because I have to know it. If I don't have to know it I don't tell myself and I don't let anyone else tell me either.." And I live by "You do what is right because it is right, not because anyone will ever know about it." So many....quotes
This show was and is epic, yes the special effects might not be quite as good as today, but personally I feel they still stand up. Yes, the budget for the show was low, to the point that if you happen to look behind characters talking in the hallways of B5 you will notice the wood grain on what is supposed to be a metal bulkhead, lol. Yes, the show was filmed in an empty warehouse under a major airplane flight path that required them to stop shooting as jets flew over, but what made this show was the writing and the acting. It just goes to show that if you have those factors in your tv show then no matter how much you pump into special effects it doesn't matter, the show shines.
When I saw Deep Space Nine spotlight on "Gone, But Not Forgotten," I knew it was only a matter of time Babylon 5 got the Jesse Shade and David Arroyo treatment.
I watched both DS9 and Babylon 5 when they aired. I always had the same reaction to those arguing over the origin / similarities - "who cares." Both are great shows. Only fools argue over abundance of great things.
Not only they used CGI to be cost effective. But they also made the industry improve to keep the show going. They also used state of the art SGI stations at the time. No other TV series went that far.
No no, no matey, the special effects were just beautiful and terriffic and exceedingly well done. Bester was the greatest character ever, not just a villain but a guy later shown to have warm feelings towards his girlfriend. No no no matey you have totally missed the greatness of this show, it is the best science fiction TV series ever made, well maybe Firefly was equal, but for a show with so many episodes and TV movies it was the best ever. I certainly have nothing negative to say about it. The characters were just lovely, and the way J.M.S could remember episodes in the future and combine them with past episodes was unbelieveable. How he did this was mind boggling.
As for the VFX, yes Trek had the much better quality. But even as a kid growing up with TNG, I quickly realized it was basically always the same ship movement scene occasionally put on different background. B5 felt fresh, more in motion - and, damn, we kids dreamt about a Star Fury video game 😎
The rivalry between Babylon 5 and Star Trek: DS9 was intense amongst the scifi community in the early 90s. I preferred Sisko and his crew, but B5 was fine. Even with Chekhov's doppelganger wearing black gloves was cool.
Loved Babylon 5 . But they did so many story arcs and abandoned so many. G'kar and Mollari scenes together were amazing. Especiallyin the elevator. But Vir gets his gift is one of the best scenes in television for me when he goes into the garden and waves
I owned an Amiga in the 90's and the Amiga magazines of the time WOULD NOT SHUT UP about how Amiga's were used for the special effects in the pilot miniseries of Babylon 5. Might explain why the effects didn't age well.
this was the first time I heard a description of the process Jurasik used to land on his accent, what an interesting detail. I've always loved his performance so this just gave me more appreciation for the work that was put into bringing these characters to life. and yeah, anyone who recommends B5 is right. it's legitimately a one of a kind experience that is in many ways still unsurpassed in scifi television. the effects were bad then and aged worse, but just personally I've never cared. I probably benefitted a lot from seeing this show first as a child on a small CRT, so the imagination was already doing a lot of the heavy lifting. not sure how universally applicable this comparison is, but to me this show is a bit like the Morrowind of sci-fi. Both were ahead of their times, and both made me think the future was bright and inevitable. That these were just early attempts that the entertainment landscape would iterate on and improve. There's a bittersweet note in B5, like Morrowind, to this day remaining a bit of a high water mark within its genre. It pushed the envelope so damn hard we're still struggling to match it. The Expanse came close (and is clearly better on at least some metrics), but for my money we still haven't clearly surpassed this oft forgotten budget-friendly space station show from way before being a nerd was cool.
Alfred Bester had THE best 'parting shot' line of ANY psychic in any Sci-fi series EVER, meeting a poisonous glance from the B5 Head of Security with "Really Mr.Garibaldi, that's not physically possible". Walter Koenig was BRILLIANT in the part.
I worked for a sci-fi convention for 25+ years. We were able to get most of the cast over the years and all of them were wonderful to work with. I was working the camera when Jason Carter saw the big screens flanking the stage. He started to jump around the stage and I tried to keep up. He even sang to us “I am the Model of a Modern Major General.” Even the smaller rolls the room was always full. Tim Choate did a small monologue from his character “Zathras” using the same voice. Robin Atkins Downes told us about stepping into an ongoing production as Byron. If you go back to the first episode that Walter Koenig did you will notice that one of his hands was always in a fist as Alfred Bester. Walter asked JMS if he could do that and he said yes. The reason why is in the 3 books about Bester. The author of “The Stars, My destination “ was written by Alfred Bester.
Wasn’t that hard after the first season the big challenge was the movies. Like I said Legend of the Rangers started to break me and i was like ENOUGH when I hit Crusade but Lost Tales and Road Home made up for it
For it's age and budget, the CGI is good. All the backgrounds are from JPL. And as for the starship design, NASA contacted JMS, asking if they could do a variant of the StarFury, for future use, as it was fully feasible. Approval was given as long as they kept the name... And as for Michael O'Hare/Bruce Boxleitner I remember at the time, JMS saying it was not possible everything could happen to one person, which is why the main character was changed. It was a nice and fully believable reason, and stopped people questioning. And the way he brought Michael back, to become Valen...
Big fan of JMS and Harlan Ellison who worked on the show. I hear that JMS is the executor of Ellisons estate. That must mean that he takes care of HE's amazing home in LA. I kinda wonder if tours ever go on there. Ive seen videos of the house affectionately refered to as the lost Aztec temple of Mars and Ellison Wonderland. It must be amazing to be the custodian of all that.❤❤❤
I think I avoided seeing Babylon 5 for the longest time for the very same reasons you laid out, want until decades later when I could binge it all, I understood what all the hype was about
I don't think the CGI has aged that badly, but I would put a good part of that on how the space battles tend to have a well defined geometry. In DS9 for example, I feel like most battles were told more from the point of view of what was happening on the bridge,and you get cut-aways of ships banking and shooting, but in B5 you get much more of a sense of where ships are and why, and what they are looking to do. I'd love to see the visuals updated, but IIRC a lot of the files etc were lost, especially because of their narrative quality. The Expanse is probably the best show I've seen since B5 for how they created a sense of space and motion that made sense, even BSG I felt tended to try and create an effect of chaos rather than a narrative The Lennier thing to me was set up in early season 3 when he tries to spin his feelings as something higher and nobler (giving major stalker vibes). The telepath story is something I wish had been seeded in season 4. We could have done with more time to get the sense of how badly 'othered' telepaths are (not entirely unnaturally as someone who can violate your privacy at will, and almost imperceptibly is a hard person to relax around), and I would have liked to have seen more of a link between the cult and the group who volunteered to fight the shadows. If you maybe extrapolate from how Lyta is treated by the command staff you can infer some of what happens to the typical members, but it could have done with being drawn out in slightly better detail. With Crusade, I tend to recommend that people avoid it because of the Network interference and because a lot of it was set up for things we'd never get a resolution to. I don't remember thinking it was that bad, it's just about as useful as reading about half a chapter in a book. I'm also somewhat reticent about a reboot. Could JMS do some things better now, especially with advances in SFX? Almost certainly, but I feel like when you have multiple cracks at the same story they each get rendered less meaningful. I don't need too see any new Batman films, I'd sooner see studios invest in new properties and new ideas but alas, they don't seem to see the value in that when they can make something that already has an audience...
It wasn't just a game changer in the science fiction genre. It was a game changer for television as a whole. Lost and the subsequent rise of long-form storytelling in TV couldn't have occurred without Babylon 5.
Excellent job! Especially for someone completely new to the series, and skeptical about it to boot. Also kudos for doing such a great review considering you literally binge-watched the series. That's a lot of stuff to process in such a short time and appreciate it and do a good job in recounting the journey. Glad you are a fan now!
Well I did quite a number of episodes in season one since I followed a Reddit recommended viewing guide but like I said I could not get through Crusade
I think you underestimate 'Crusade'. I thought it had a lot of potential, but was stuffed up by executive interference and untimely cancellation. I liked the characters a lot and the planned storyline was fascinating.
I personally didn't enjoy dark city all that much, but I did really like the matrix (I'm glad they only made one.) I haven't seen the wire, but I'm not a huge fan of police procedural so I haven't really wanted to *shrug*. B5, however, was REALLY good and there's quite a bit of that style within stuff like ds9, and the new battlestar galactica, etc. it was also unusual for the time to do plot arcs for scifi shows on tv because the tv industry at the time wanted to do first run syndication and show episodes out of order, but it works really well in the case of B5. - and man the story benefits in B5 because of the season long arcs. particularly the story of the 4th and 5th B5 seasons with all the awesome wibbly wobbly timy wimy stuff.
I'm not a big fan of police procedurals but love The Wire. It's structured around police investigations (the first season is a single case), but it is a much more complex beast. The characters go across all levels, so you have some people who are low level drug dealers, others around the kingpin types, some in political circles in addition to the police and they are almost all flawed to some degree. I consider it to be more of a show about politics and social issues around police and the drug trade, rather than a typical police procedural. That's not to say it's for everyone, it's a fairly brutal, cynical show, just that if you're thinking of it as something like CSI/Law & Order or whatever, it's really unlike those
Hi! Thanks for the fine video. And thanks for honouring the actors' great performances. But how could you manage not to mention Ambassador Kosh (Vorlon)? In the other comments, nobody missed the Vorlons. Could it be possible, I just made them up? 👻
B5 reminds me of The Expanse in the sense that both depict universes with millions of years of history, a vast and mysterious universe. As opposed to Star Trek where a thousand year old ship is referred to as “ancient”. Trek comes close sometimes via artifacts like the Guardian or the planet killer. But mostly Trek comes across as a universe that’s “thousands” of years old, not “millions” of years old. That makes the Trek universe seem small-scale. Same with Star Wars of course, where only a handful of planets ever matter.
I loved this show when it first aired. I don't think I made it through all five seasons as my life got messy around 1996 with a painful divorce. It's a shame it's not available on any of the streaming channels now as I'd like to go back and check it out.
Aah, the Game of Thrones of the 90s! Shame the constant threat of cancellation meant the story had to be messed about with, but Season 5 wasn't completely awful. Just purchased the complete box set on Blu-ray so I need to make a start on it.
Thank you for this review. I have had a fond childhood memory of watching this show. Then my first marry, my wife got her to watch it. It was a blast to visit it again. It’s now been a number of years and this tempts me to start again.
I had seen some of "The Union Is Always Right" episode (season 1 ep "By Any Means Necessary"), and lost interest. Then I caught the last episode of Season 2, and was hooked. I got cable ONLY because that was the only way to get Season 5 (as well as finally letting me catch up with the rest of Seasons 1 and 2. I recorded all the episodes (VHS), and watched them all with my mom, and later with my wife. IMHO it was the best series ever on TV. Crusade could have eclipsed it, were it not for the idiot "suits" at TNT. If they had continued production, Bester would have appeared in a Season 1 episode. Also, JMS wrote 2 stories about events in the gap before "Sleeping in Light". One was about Marcus, who was only mostly dead. I had the foresight to save that one on my computer. The other story dealt with G'Kar and Lyta encountering a dangerous alien race. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to save a copy of that.
Ms. Cookies from the RUclips channel NerdCookies announced that the rights to Babylon 5 got bought some big network and they're remaking. And being a nerd, she's pretty excited by it.
No question, the biggest problem with season 1 and what makes it hard to rewatch is the overuse of the main theme song. It seems to play multiple times each episode, especially anytime they are in space…
Here's fun fact. In Assassin's Creed Origins videogame you can hear Egyptian heralds shouting something like this: "Hustlers! Entrepreneurs! Wanderers!.. Letopolis is a dream given form, a new home for you... It is not without its dangers... It is a shining lighthouse of hope, all alone in the desert night." Sounds pretty familiar to any B5 fan. Well, Templars are basically the Vorlons while Assassins are the Shadows...
I'm a fan of B5, and I agree the CG desperately needs an update. Frankly, I would rather they take the raw footage and replace the CG rather than rebooting the series.
Babylon 5 certainly wasn't perfect, but considering the budget and where it was being aired, I consider it to be one of the greatest science fiction shows of all time. In regard to the effects, certainly the pilot episodes effects were not great, but as the series progressed, the did improve, with The Lost tales, showing how far the effects had come. But at the heart of the show was the characters, and story. This was where the show shined. The build up through seasons 1-3 was excellent and this is a series where the payoff in season 4 was completely epic (It is just a pity it all happened in season 4). Season 5 felt like it was a bit of an after thought. The telepath war should have been great, but sadly with the cancellation after season 5, we never got the pay off (I have never read the novels). I would love to see a reboot of Babylon 5, with a slightly darker tone, as I think one of the major weaknesses, was the humour, which was at times cringeworthy. But the show if done right could surpass the original and any other science fiction film or tv series.
When I saw this show as a teen deep in my love for Trek I never minded the effects for B5. It looked different than anything else on at the time and the focus for me was the characters and the story.
Worth mentioning imho is that also Andreas Katsulas is of Star Trek alumni. Most memorable is his recurring Role as Romulan Commander Tomalak in Next Generation, besides a one-off in Enterprise.
It was one of the greatest Sci Fi shows ever made. Those who say otherwise have either never seen it, or aren't able to understand it. My favorite episode is "The very long night of Londo Molarie."
These are handy things to employ as a last resort. But the best thing is prevent floods in inhabited areas by landscape architecture and directing floods to uninhabited areas.
I proudly own Babylon 5 and it's movies on DVD. However I can remember borrowing 2nd generation VHS copies of Season 1 episodes to catch up. The show was so much better than Star Trek because you just didn't know if everyone was going to make it to the end of the story arcs. About the CGI, it wasn't that bad at the time and giving a unique look to the different alien spacecraft worked. You should try Crusade again, it's really not that bad and a damn shame that the network messed around with the show so much it got cancelled. Thanks for giving this old, but influential SF show some love.
Personally, I really liked Babylon 5, back when I was watching it, in the 90s. The Vorlons are some of my favorite aliens in sci-fi, and it was a fun, gritty future that didn't forget that, deep down, lots of us are just crap at base, regardless of how advancements in the future should give us a chance to grow out from beyond our needs, and be better, in spite of ourselves. Sure, there were good people, and heroes, but while the Federation at least tried to wear a veneer of utopia, B5 didn't even try to fool you. As things became more advanced, people just found more advanced ways to enact their bad desires. It also had fun characters, and cool growth. I loved the interplay between G'Kar and Londo, watching Kosh try to mentor Sheridan, despite both having yheir flaws, and whilevi wanted to slug Bestor in the face EVERY time he was on screen, he was one of my favorite characters, and I think part of it was just Walter Koenig doing such a good job with the role. It was fun to see several characters develop, and advance, but not necessarily leave the show. SG1 became harder to watch after O'Neil got promoted out of the program, because the actor wanted more family time, so having Sheridan stay, and Garabaldi, even though their "promotions" opened the way for other characters to grow, or be introduced, was great.
if they ever remaster this, they should go the way of Star Trek TOS rather than Star Wars, only touching the special effects, and color touch-ups, rather than changing story beats, this will prevent (most) riots and maybe I'll watch it then
Great essay about what I feel is the greatest science fiction space series ever made. But I totally agree with you about most of the special effects. They were terrible and had a shelf-life of barely a few years. There are a few exceptions, but they are rare. On the other hand, the model designs for the vessels are awesome. I had and still have a lot of the toys and still love them.
I loved Babylon 5 and was fortunate to watch it during its initial run in the 90s. I know it is highly improbable but I'd love to see B5 remastered into High-Definition like Star Trek TOS & TNG. Maybe AI will find a way to pull this off.
I saw this series when it aired. I remember that i bought my own tv set and not long after that Babylon 5 began and it was a joy to watch it on my own tv.
5 hrs ago JMS wrote a reasonably worded Tweet in support of this video.😳 I REPEAT! The creator of the show called this video "rather good" & said it contained "reasonably accurate background information".👌 A glowing recommendation from JMS if I ever heard one🤔
Season 1's CGI wasnt very good but Id argue season 2 onwards looked good. So good in fact that Star Trek hired their VFX team (Foundation Imaging) for the later seasons of DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise.
It‘s been a long time, but I think they kind of messed it up - as so very often - by launching the series with s01e01 and airing the pilot some weeks later on some late night slot.
Uhm actually,... Babylon 5 fans/fanatics have got back and up-scaled the CGI scenes. You can find them on RUclips. It is NOT that it is blasphemous. It is that if u just update the CGI the live action scenes look off, and a lot of original prints were lost during a "mysterious fire" and those can't be 4k rendered/restored. So it is almost a moot point.
That, and ‚Shadow Killer‘ aka White Star. Gods, the latter cost me a small fortune at the age of 15 - along with the tumble-not-mug from Andere Welten mailorder XD
Yeah the effects were... what they were. Though in my case, whenever I've watched it, eventually I stopped noticing and it felt just as real as Star Trek's ones did--I must have large reserves of suspension of disbelief lol. I love the ships. The most jarring thing to me now is not the old CGI but the CRT monitors!
Now I want to see footage of that softball game between the two casts. Damn they should have used the B5 cast for the Vulcan crew in "Take Me Out To The Holosuite."
I do love this series and bought the movies and series. I, too, didn't watch all of Crusade. I recorded the pilot on VHS when it originally aired and there had to be a major event in my life to keep me from watching every episode the night it aired. On of the most heart breaking episodes is S2EP18 "Confessions and Lamentations." When they open the Markab isolation vault with Delenn and Lennier.... gets me every time. This series has some great fist pumping scenes and some dark dark lows too. I often come back to this series to rewatch episodes. I just wish there were more reactors on YT to jump into it. It is a long commitment but I think it is worth the effort. Yes or no?
Hey guys!
This episode of GBNF was made from suggestions from fans who emailed us demanding this show be covered on this series. If you want to make suggestions for future episodes of GBNF then e-mail GBNFSeries@gmail.com and maybe we’ll cover your show
There have a been a lot of fans who've done 4K upscales for many of the notable battles. and the HD update on MAX was pretty good.
Gotta remember CGI was basically brand new at the time, but the designs of the ships were awesome
And done on my all time favorite computer of all time, the Amiga!
@@craigh5236 Just wanted to get conformation about that , Amiga was the computer that made IBM jealous 😝. Not only you had very very many games that were Great but also 2D(D-Paint) and 3D(Turbo Silver) programs for home use 🥰. Software designers had the Amiga 1000 because they could use any operating system ...Ahh ❤Amiga ❤
@supercrew63 totally agree. I had a lot of the little toys of them and still have most of them. And still love them.
Agreed.
Agreed, never had a major issue with the space ships looks/battles except for the biggest one in season 4 when “the first ones” show up and they all only have 1 ship each 😂😂😂
One of my favorite quotes of ALL TIME & the the best example of a "badass woman" I've ever seen is from Season 3, Episode 10 "Severed Dreams":
[Delenn's fleet arrives after Earth Alliance attacks B5]
Delenn: This is Ambassador Delenn of the Minbari. Babylon 5 is under our protection. Withdraw or be destroyed!
Earth Force Officer: Negative! We have authority here. Do not force us to engage your ship.
Delenn: Why not? Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari Fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else!
The look on Delenn's face is iconic. That is one woman you do NOT want to mess with. She effectively single-handedly started the Earth-Mimbari war after the accidental death of Dukat.
I was watching the DVDs with commentary (like 12 years ago at this point), and JMS was commentating that episode, and when it got to that moment, he said something like "I'll just quiet down for this part".
My cousin was the set designer on this show and he was very proud of it. He sadly passed away a year ago, but this would make him so happy to see people who still enjoy this show
John Iacovelli? Was that the name? Regardless, I'm sorry for your loss, B5 as a show has lost far, far too many people
@@neilbiggs1353 Yup, that was him. He also did Honey I Shrunk the Kids.
@@frankiehandsI hope he was very proud of his work. I remember pointing out to my father the amazing background detail and “lived-in” sets, and how compared to DS9, Babylon 5 felt the most “real”. He really did a fantastic job.
I loved this show
@@sharpie3811 He was extremely proud of it! This show, cast and crew meant a great deal to him. The show was originally pitched as a Star Trek from what he told me and they turned it down and then stole a lot of the ideas, one being the casino in outer space. That was my cousins idea.
Its a shame that so many of the cast have passed away.... Way more than should be. More members of the original Star Trek are still alive than this shows main cast...
Not quiet I think there is are 3 main cast members left out of seven, and with B-5 there is way more main characters like 15 with like 8 of them passed away. Now if your comparing it to TNG or DS9 then yes way more of the cast has passed beyond the rim.
Thing is, I can totally see how dated the CGI is... but they still work for me because of the design of the Ships and stations, the cinematography and the Color Scheme. I just dig the general *vibe* of these effects. Its fake but its cool.
Ugh… WRONGEST of takes on the vfx. B5 and Seaquest revolutionized TV with their adoption of the video toaster and lightwave. You simply do not get stuff like Firefly and Moore’s BSG without these pioneers.
Booooooooo!
Babylon 5 is a super underrated show. A classic. I'm glad a light is being shined on this hidden gem.
Babylon 5 remains one of my all time favorite series. I don't mind the VFX because - well I grew up on them. At the time, they were great. The stories, the characterizations, and the storytelling was pretty groundbreaking for the time. I don't hate S5, but it is my least favorite. When JMS thought S4 would be the last one, he crammed 2 seasons worth of story into it, and then had to come up with something fresh for S5. The telepath arc wasn't great, but the friendship between G'kar and Londo was great.
The character arch of gkar and molari alone makes B5 not just great scifi but honestly one of the best written shows ever....truly a masterpiece
"Molari! Understand that I can never forgive your people for what they did to my world. My people can never forgive your people. But I… can forgive you."
I don't know of any other series that has so many memorable and thought provoking lines and scenes. If a client mentions confidentiality I just say........"I know what I know because I have to know it. If I don't have to know it I don't tell myself and I don't let anyone else tell me either.." And I live by "You do what is right because it is right, not because anyone will ever know about it." So many....quotes
Finally Babylon 5, been waiting years for this.
This show was and is epic, yes the special effects might not be quite as good as today, but personally I feel they still stand up. Yes, the budget for the show was low, to the point that if you happen to look behind characters talking in the hallways of B5 you will notice the wood grain on what is supposed to be a metal bulkhead, lol. Yes, the show was filmed in an empty warehouse under a major airplane flight path that required them to stop shooting as jets flew over, but what made this show was the writing and the acting. It just goes to show that if you have those factors in your tv show then no matter how much you pump into special effects it doesn't matter, the show shines.
Oh man, that Mira Furlan quote really got me. So sad that we’ve lost so many of these actors so young.
When I saw Deep Space Nine spotlight on "Gone, But Not Forgotten," I knew it was only a matter of time Babylon 5 got the Jesse Shade and David Arroyo treatment.
I watched both DS9 and Babylon 5 when they aired. I always had the same reaction to those arguing over the origin / similarities - "who cares." Both are great shows. Only fools argue over abundance of great things.
Not only they used CGI to be cost effective. But they also made the industry improve to keep the show going. They also used state of the art SGI stations at the time. No other TV series went that far.
No no, no matey, the special effects were just beautiful and terriffic and exceedingly well done. Bester was the greatest character ever, not just a villain but a guy later shown to have warm feelings towards his girlfriend. No no no matey you have totally missed the greatness of this show, it is the best science fiction TV series ever made, well maybe Firefly was equal, but for a show with so many episodes and TV movies it was the best ever. I certainly have nothing negative to say about it. The characters were just lovely, and the way J.M.S could remember episodes in the future and combine them with past episodes was unbelieveable. How he did this was mind boggling.
As for the VFX, yes Trek had the much better quality. But even as a kid growing up with TNG, I quickly realized it was basically always the same ship movement scene occasionally put on different background.
B5 felt fresh, more in motion - and, damn, we kids dreamt about a Star Fury video game 😎
Babylon 5 was amazing. My family still binges it each year to this day. Thank you for the review.
Your welcome
Babylon 5 is the greatest science fiction TV show ever!
Agreed. And I'm a huge fan of "Chuck" and "Firefly"
@@caldodge i also loved sapce: above and beyond!
Also agreed. B5 Changed so much about how science fiction was done on TV
@@craiglortie8483 Yeah, I am a fan of Space Above and Beyond too
@@chheinrich8486 The expanse is terrible and the new BSG became terrible with one of the worst endings ever!
The rivalry between Babylon 5 and Star Trek: DS9 was intense amongst the scifi community in the early 90s. I preferred Sisko and his crew, but B5 was fine. Even with Chekhov's doppelganger wearing black gloves was cool.
I watched both shows and enjoyed both also.
I watched both, liked both, but Babylon 5 was my favourite.
Loved Babylon 5 . But they did so many story arcs and abandoned so many. G'kar and Mollari scenes together were amazing. Especiallyin the elevator.
But Vir gets his gift is one of the best scenes in television for me when he goes into the garden and waves
Straight out of Game of Thrones
I owned an Amiga in the 90's and the Amiga magazines of the time WOULD NOT SHUT UP about how Amiga's were used for the special effects in the pilot miniseries of Babylon 5. Might explain why the effects didn't age well.
this was the first time I heard a description of the process Jurasik used to land on his accent, what an interesting detail. I've always loved his performance so this just gave me more appreciation for the work that was put into bringing these characters to life.
and yeah, anyone who recommends B5 is right. it's legitimately a one of a kind experience that is in many ways still unsurpassed in scifi television. the effects were bad then and aged worse, but just personally I've never cared. I probably benefitted a lot from seeing this show first as a child on a small CRT, so the imagination was already doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
not sure how universally applicable this comparison is, but to me this show is a bit like the Morrowind of sci-fi. Both were ahead of their times, and both made me think the future was bright and inevitable. That these were just early attempts that the entertainment landscape would iterate on and improve.
There's a bittersweet note in B5, like Morrowind, to this day remaining a bit of a high water mark within its genre. It pushed the envelope so damn hard we're still struggling to match it. The Expanse came close (and is clearly better on at least some metrics), but for my money we still haven't clearly surpassed this oft forgotten budget-friendly space station show from way before being a nerd was cool.
Babylon 5, Farscape and Deep Space Nine. Three of the biggest sci-fi TV series ever.
Alfred Bester had THE best 'parting shot' line of ANY psychic in any Sci-fi series EVER, meeting a poisonous glance from the B5 Head of Security with "Really Mr.Garibaldi, that's not physically possible". Walter Koenig was BRILLIANT in the part.
I worked for a sci-fi convention for 25+ years. We were able to get most of the cast over the years and all of them were wonderful to work with. I was working the camera when Jason Carter saw the big screens flanking the stage. He started to jump around the stage and I tried to keep up. He even sang to us “I am the Model of a Modern Major General.”
Even the smaller rolls the room was always full. Tim Choate did a small monologue from his character “Zathras” using the same voice. Robin Atkins Downes told us about stepping into an ongoing production as Byron. If you go back to the first episode that Walter Koenig did you will notice that one of his hands was always in a fist as Alfred Bester. Walter asked JMS if he could do that and he said yes. The reason why is in the 3 books about Bester. The author of “The Stars, My destination “ was written by Alfred Bester.
You watched all five seasons and the movies in a week?!
Respect!
It took me two weeks.
Wasn’t that hard after the first season the big challenge was the movies. Like I said Legend of the Rangers started to break me and i was like ENOUGH when I hit Crusade but Lost Tales and Road Home made up for it
For it's age and budget, the CGI is good. All the backgrounds are from JPL. And as for the starship design, NASA contacted JMS, asking if they could do a variant of the StarFury, for future use, as it was fully feasible. Approval was given as long as they kept the name...
And as for Michael O'Hare/Bruce Boxleitner I remember at the time, JMS saying it was not possible everything could happen to one person, which is why the main character was changed. It was a nice and fully believable reason, and stopped people questioning. And the way he brought Michael back, to become Valen...
Big fan of JMS and Harlan Ellison who worked on the show. I hear that JMS is the executor of Ellisons estate. That must mean that he takes care of HE's amazing home in LA. I kinda wonder if tours ever go on there. Ive seen videos of the house affectionately refered to as the lost Aztec temple of Mars and Ellison Wonderland. It must be amazing to be the custodian of all that.❤❤❤
The Fourth one burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the Fifth one stayed up!
I think I avoided seeing Babylon 5 for the longest time for the very same reasons you laid out, want until decades later when I could binge it all, I understood what all the hype was about
Lando did the same thing Troi did. Came up with a unique accent, no one else from that world ever used.
I don't think the CGI has aged that badly, but I would put a good part of that on how the space battles tend to have a well defined geometry. In DS9 for example, I feel like most battles were told more from the point of view of what was happening on the bridge,and you get cut-aways of ships banking and shooting, but in B5 you get much more of a sense of where ships are and why, and what they are looking to do. I'd love to see the visuals updated, but IIRC a lot of the files etc were lost, especially because of their narrative quality. The Expanse is probably the best show I've seen since B5 for how they created a sense of space and motion that made sense, even BSG I felt tended to try and create an effect of chaos rather than a narrative
The Lennier thing to me was set up in early season 3 when he tries to spin his feelings as something higher and nobler (giving major stalker vibes). The telepath story is something I wish had been seeded in season 4. We could have done with more time to get the sense of how badly 'othered' telepaths are (not entirely unnaturally as someone who can violate your privacy at will, and almost imperceptibly is a hard person to relax around), and I would have liked to have seen more of a link between the cult and the group who volunteered to fight the shadows. If you maybe extrapolate from how Lyta is treated by the command staff you can infer some of what happens to the typical members, but it could have done with being drawn out in slightly better detail.
With Crusade, I tend to recommend that people avoid it because of the Network interference and because a lot of it was set up for things we'd never get a resolution to. I don't remember thinking it was that bad, it's just about as useful as reading about half a chapter in a book. I'm also somewhat reticent about a reboot. Could JMS do some things better now, especially with advances in SFX? Almost certainly, but I feel like when you have multiple cracks at the same story they each get rendered less meaningful. I don't need too see any new Batman films, I'd sooner see studios invest in new properties and new ideas but alas, they don't seem to see the value in that when they can make something that already has an audience...
Londo is a very tragic character he loses everything dear to him because he longed for the old glory days.
It wasn't just a game changer in the science fiction genre. It was a game changer for television as a whole. Lost and the subsequent rise of long-form storytelling in TV couldn't have occurred without Babylon 5.
Excellent job! Especially for someone completely new to the series, and skeptical about it to boot. Also kudos for doing such a great review considering you literally binge-watched the series. That's a lot of stuff to process in such a short time and appreciate it and do a good job in recounting the journey. Glad you are a fan now!
Well I did quite a number of episodes in season one since I followed a Reddit recommended viewing guide but like I said I could not get through Crusade
Mere fact that is video is nearly 50 mins long shows that’s Babylon 5 is worth the watch
My favorite sci fi series hands down.
I made sure I bought the series on Disc, along with all the movies. I rewatch every couple of years.
Listening to you choke up reading Mira Furlan's final words nearly got me going too! Gone too soon along with many more
I think you underestimate 'Crusade'. I thought it had a lot of potential, but was stuffed up by executive interference and untimely cancellation. I liked the characters a lot and the planned storyline was fascinating.
Bought the blu ray collection last Christmas. When I was young watching this originally I always thought Garibaldi was Bruce Willis
I personally didn't enjoy dark city all that much, but I did really like the matrix (I'm glad they only made one.) I haven't seen the wire, but I'm not a huge fan of police procedural so I haven't really wanted to *shrug*. B5, however, was REALLY good and there's quite a bit of that style within stuff like ds9, and the new battlestar galactica, etc. it was also unusual for the time to do plot arcs for scifi shows on tv because the tv industry at the time wanted to do first run syndication and show episodes out of order, but it works really well in the case of B5. - and man the story benefits in B5 because of the season long arcs. particularly the story of the 4th and 5th B5 seasons with all the awesome wibbly wobbly timy wimy stuff.
I'm not a big fan of police procedurals but love The Wire. It's structured around police investigations (the first season is a single case), but it is a much more complex beast. The characters go across all levels, so you have some people who are low level drug dealers, others around the kingpin types, some in political circles in addition to the police and they are almost all flawed to some degree. I consider it to be more of a show about politics and social issues around police and the drug trade, rather than a typical police procedural. That's not to say it's for everyone, it's a fairly brutal, cynical show, just that if you're thinking of it as something like CSI/Law & Order or whatever, it's really unlike those
One of if not the greatest sci fi show ever.
The cast were magic
I'm grateful I have the DVDs. I have that magic whenever I need it
Hi!
Thanks for the fine video. And thanks for honouring the actors' great performances. But how could you manage not to mention Ambassador Kosh (Vorlon)?
In the other comments, nobody missed the Vorlons. Could it be possible, I just made them up?
👻
I thought about it but the video was so long and somethings had to cut so he was sadly the victim of time
B5 reminds me of The Expanse in the sense that both depict universes with millions of years of history, a vast and mysterious universe. As opposed to Star Trek where a thousand year old ship is referred to as “ancient”. Trek comes close sometimes via artifacts like the Guardian or the planet killer. But mostly Trek comes across as a universe that’s “thousands” of years old, not “millions” of years old. That makes the Trek universe seem small-scale. Same with Star Wars of course, where only a handful of planets ever matter.
I loved this show when it first aired. I don't think I made it through all five seasons as my life got messy around 1996 with a painful divorce. It's a shame it's not available on any of the streaming channels now as I'd like to go back and check it out.
It’s on Tubi
Tubi has all 5 seasons of B5 and it is FREE!
Kimoitv all seasons, download and watch when feel like it 👍
Aah, the Game of Thrones of the 90s! Shame the constant threat of cancellation meant the story had to be messed about with, but Season 5 wasn't completely awful.
Just purchased the complete box set on Blu-ray so I need to make a start on it.
Fun fact: I would not have any Babylon 5 if not for Crusade, which was airing on the Sci-fi channel for a time.
Great video but I suspect you murdered Peter Jurasik's name pronunciation 😂😢
Thank you for this review. I have had a fond childhood memory of watching this show. Then my first marry, my wife got her to watch it. It was a blast to visit it again. It’s now been a number of years and this tempts me to start again.
I had seen some of "The Union Is Always Right" episode (season 1 ep "By Any Means Necessary"), and lost interest. Then I caught the last episode of Season 2, and was hooked. I got cable ONLY because that was the only way to get Season 5 (as well as finally letting me catch up with the rest of Seasons 1 and 2. I recorded all the episodes (VHS), and watched them all with my mom, and later with my wife. IMHO it was the best series ever on TV. Crusade could have eclipsed it, were it not for the idiot "suits" at TNT. If they had continued production, Bester would have appeared in a Season 1 episode.
Also, JMS wrote 2 stories about events in the gap before "Sleeping in Light". One was about Marcus, who was only mostly dead. I had the foresight to save that one on my computer. The other story dealt with G'Kar and Lyta encountering a dangerous alien race. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to save a copy of that.
I have to disagree, I thought the CGI looked decent enough for the time. Babylon 5 was an amazing show.
Ms. Cookies from the RUclips channel NerdCookies announced that the rights to Babylon 5 got bought some big network and they're remaking. And being a nerd, she's pretty excited by it.
No question, the biggest problem with season 1 and what makes it hard to rewatch is the overuse of the main theme song. It seems to play multiple times each episode, especially anytime they are in space…
I was going to read Midnight Nation, but now I have to wait 30 years :)
Here's fun fact. In Assassin's Creed Origins videogame you can hear Egyptian heralds shouting something like this: "Hustlers! Entrepreneurs! Wanderers!.. Letopolis is a dream given form, a new home for you... It is not without its dangers... It is a shining lighthouse of hope, all alone in the desert night." Sounds pretty familiar to any B5 fan. Well, Templars are basically the Vorlons while Assassins are the Shadows...
Thanks, I looked it up! Love it!
One of my all-time favorites!!
I'm a fan of B5, and I agree the CG desperately needs an update. Frankly, I would rather they take the raw footage and replace the CG rather than rebooting the series.
Babylon 5 certainly wasn't perfect, but considering the budget and where it was being aired, I consider it to be one of the greatest science fiction shows of all time. In regard to the effects, certainly the pilot episodes effects were not great, but as the series progressed, the did improve, with The Lost tales, showing how far the effects had come.
But at the heart of the show was the characters, and story. This was where the show shined. The build up through seasons 1-3 was excellent and this is a series where the payoff in season 4 was completely epic (It is just a pity it all happened in season 4). Season 5 felt like it was a bit of an after thought. The telepath war should have been great, but sadly with the cancellation after season 5, we never got the pay off (I have never read the novels).
I would love to see a reboot of Babylon 5, with a slightly darker tone, as I think one of the major weaknesses, was the humour, which was at times cringeworthy. But the show if done right could surpass the original and any other science fiction film or tv series.
When I saw this show as a teen deep in my love for Trek I never minded the effects for B5. It looked different than anything else on at the time and the focus for me was the characters and the story.
My favorite episode is the Season 5 Neil Gaiman written "Day of the Dead."
JMS cought lightning in a bottle. B5 is a perfect show.
Worth mentioning imho is that also Andreas Katsulas is of Star Trek alumni. Most memorable is his recurring Role as Romulan Commander Tomalak in Next Generation, besides a one-off in Enterprise.
It was one of the greatest Sci Fi shows ever made. Those who say otherwise have either never seen it, or aren't able to understand it. My favorite episode is "The very long night of Londo Molarie."
These are handy things to employ as a last resort. But the best thing is prevent floods in inhabited areas by landscape architecture and directing floods to uninhabited areas.
My favorite character on B5 was Milo Virini. Poor SOB only wanted to redo the palace in pastels.
To this day whenever my wife, brother, or I start a sentence with "I'm thinking..." the other finishes, "Pastels?"
He had a great death speech though
I proudly own Babylon 5 and it's movies on DVD. However I can remember borrowing 2nd generation VHS copies of Season 1 episodes to catch up. The show was so much better than Star Trek because you just didn't know if everyone was going to make it to the end of the story arcs. About the CGI, it wasn't that bad at the time and giving a unique look to the different alien spacecraft worked. You should try Crusade again, it's really not that bad and a damn shame that the network messed around with the show so much it got cancelled. Thanks for giving this old, but influential SF show some love.
Thanks for the props
Also you can find a compilation video of all the bloopers from the whole series. Hilarious stuff!
You should do an episode about WINGS!
I can't shut up about "Chuck". Absolutely love that show.
Personally, I really liked Babylon 5, back when I was watching it, in the 90s. The Vorlons are some of my favorite aliens in sci-fi, and it was a fun, gritty future that didn't forget that, deep down, lots of us are just crap at base, regardless of how advancements in the future should give us a chance to grow out from beyond our needs, and be better, in spite of ourselves. Sure, there were good people, and heroes, but while the Federation at least tried to wear a veneer of utopia, B5 didn't even try to fool you. As things became more advanced, people just found more advanced ways to enact their bad desires.
It also had fun characters, and cool growth. I loved the interplay between G'Kar and Londo, watching Kosh try to mentor Sheridan, despite both having yheir flaws, and whilevi wanted to slug Bestor in the face EVERY time he was on screen, he was one of my favorite characters, and I think part of it was just Walter Koenig doing such a good job with the role. It was fun to see several characters develop, and advance, but not necessarily leave the show. SG1 became harder to watch after O'Neil got promoted out of the program, because the actor wanted more family time, so having Sheridan stay, and Garabaldi, even though their "promotions" opened the way for other characters to grow, or be introduced, was great.
if they ever remaster this, they should go the way of Star Trek TOS rather than Star Wars,
only touching the special effects, and color touch-ups, rather than changing story beats,
this will prevent (most) riots
and maybe I'll watch it then
check out
Lexx, Farscape, Cleopatra 2525, UFO/Space 1999, Red Dwarf, Raumpatrouille Orion, Gene Roddenberry´s Andromeda
Yeah, youngsters like you don't get how great early ray traced graphics was like was used on the show. Only in a modern eye does B5's cgi look bad.
Yep. Compared to what us kids were used to from PC or console games, B5 fx blew our minds
I’m 47
Thumbs up for that dedication. 1 week!
The thing about DS9 and Babylon 5, they are both great shows. So we, the fans, won out.
Great essay about what I feel is the greatest science fiction space series ever made. But I totally agree with you about most of the special effects. They were terrible and had a shelf-life of barely a few years. There are a few exceptions, but they are rare.
On the other hand, the model designs for the vessels are awesome. I had and still have a lot of the toys and still love them.
I loved Babylon 5 and was fortunate to watch it during its initial run in the 90s. I know it is highly improbable but I'd love to see B5 remastered into High-Definition like Star Trek TOS & TNG. Maybe AI will find a way to pull this off.
I saw this series when it aired. I remember that i bought my own tv set and not long after that Babylon 5 began and it was a joy to watch it on my own tv.
What's the episode where they're putting together a sports bike?
I used it for my presantation in my Englsih Exam and got a an A- and I LOVE THE SHOW and great work there man👍👍
Thanks
I loved Crusade. ❤
5 hrs ago JMS wrote a reasonably worded Tweet in support of this video.😳
I REPEAT! The creator of the show called this video "rather good" & said it contained "reasonably accurate background information".👌
A glowing recommendation from JMS if I ever heard one🤔
Wow thanks I would have never know, really made my day to see him say that about my episode
Season 1's CGI wasnt very good but Id argue season 2 onwards looked good. So good in fact that Star Trek hired their VFX team (Foundation Imaging) for the later seasons of DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise.
Per JMS, Londo's story in 'A Tragedy of Telepaths" was based on an actual event in Russian history.
Funny - I re-watched the first 2 and a half seasons just last weekend. It had a really big influence on The Expanse.
Im going to watch the pilot episode now , i dont think it was aired in Austria/Germany at that time . Does anybody know if it was ?
It‘s been a long time, but I think they kind of messed it up - as so very often - by launching the series with s01e01 and airing the pilot some weeks later on some late night slot.
Uhm actually,... Babylon 5 fans/fanatics have got back and up-scaled the CGI scenes. You can find them on RUclips. It is NOT that it is blasphemous. It is that if u just update the CGI the live action scenes look off, and a lot of original prints were lost during a "mysterious fire" and those can't be 4k rendered/restored. So it is almost a moot point.
I’m happy to say I have the model kit of the station
That, and ‚Shadow Killer‘ aka White Star.
Gods, the latter cost me a small fortune at the age of 15 - along with the tumble-not-mug from Andere Welten mailorder XD
The Wire and Babylon 5 are two of the greatest series ever made. It isn’t debatable
Who hates Bester that guy is awesome
Yeah the effects were... what they were. Though in my case, whenever I've watched it, eventually I stopped noticing and it felt just as real as Star Trek's ones did--I must have large reserves of suspension of disbelief lol. I love the ships. The most jarring thing to me now is not the old CGI but the CRT monitors!
Now I want to see footage of that softball game between the two casts. Damn they should have used the B5 cast for the Vulcan crew in "Take Me Out To The Holosuite."
Great show with great effects
I do love this series and bought the movies and series. I, too, didn't watch all of Crusade. I recorded the pilot on VHS when it originally aired and there had to be a major event in my life to keep me from watching every episode the night it aired. On of the most heart breaking episodes is S2EP18 "Confessions and Lamentations." When they open the Markab isolation vault with Delenn and Lennier.... gets me every time. This series has some great fist pumping scenes and some dark dark lows too. I often come back to this series to rewatch episodes. I just wish there were more reactors on YT to jump into it. It is a long commitment but I think it is worth the effort. Yes or no?
Love B5, great video ☺️
Thanks