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I really don't give a damn about sfx as long as they're not so bad they detract from the story.

I consider the star trek axenar preview to be a better trek films than all 3 of the JJA abominations combined.

That said i do think the improvements made to TOS are positive as they are doing what GR wanted to do and would have done had budget and technology allowed. We now see actual alien ships, not just animated lights on a screen, for example. When we see a rear camera view on the viewscreen, we see the nacelles in it. We seen ships moving and not just the same stock footage shot over and over. Likewise i genrally approve of the updates to STTMP, except for cutting the computer translation of the klingon dialog in the beginning.

Remastered Trek is great for showing us what the ships should have looked like, but nothing beats the charm of a roomful of actors staring at a blinky light.

TOS has shown 2 things

a show made to be watched on small screen will always look "bad" on large screen, no matter how good the remaster is because cheap studio decoration will look cheap

the other point is that cheap CGI will not age well, no matter how new it is
it might be good when it comes out but dated a year after


so a full update for the B5 CGI would have been a problem, because there won't have been enough money to make it look good

Would love to get this but can't even on stream nevermind actual physical product rather than permission to view on web site which might or might not be removed in future.

Ah well.


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 aphyon wrote:

Yes everybody was pissed about the season 4/5 debacle....but what were they supposed to do when they though it was not getting a 5th season? i can imagine how much better it would have been had they fully finished the shadow war and earth civil war arc over another season.

Keep in mind civil war would have ended on around ~ep 3 or 4 of season 5 originally...S5 was never going to end with civil war. There was going to be telepath and centauri crisis in S5 anyway. The rushing up to end in S4 was only ~3 or 4 episodes as per JMS.

Bigger issue was JMS's prewritten plans and notes etc were either lost or stolen(don't recall which) between the seasons before he had had chance to start writing so at that point he had to start from scratch in a hurry with only shaky memories of plotlines he had written years ago to guide him...

For crusade it annoyingly stopped before it got good. If you haven't read the written scripts for future episodes that didn't get filmed yet well worth it. For here again worth keeping mind crusade wasn't about the plague. That would have been solved early 2nd season. It was going to be about earth black operations with shadow technology(and even that might not be the ultimate arc). Plague was crusade's "sinclair & his battle of the line mystery". Kickstart show for the real event.

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 bbb wrote:

So, by this point I've forgotten most of what I saw, and it might be worth trying to revisit it from the actual start, but at the time I thought it was pointless to watch anymore since it was all spoiled for me in the beginning...

As JMS always said end isn't important, road is.

We saw scene that basically told ending of series in first season. Season 3 there's huge "spoilers" for future. Didn't matter.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Remastered Trek is great for showing us what the ships should have looked like, but nothing beats the charm of a roomful of actors staring at a blinky light.

Have you watched any of the fan series star trek new voyages?


It is a take on the original 1960 TV series with cameo roles from many of the original cast-chekov, sulu and uhura all make appearances and updated graphics for the space scenes but they still have the look of the 1960 series.

It was made before the axanar lawsuit so they still were able to do a proper fan series. they even included the 1060s NBC peacock logo intro.


https://www.youtube.com/user/startrekphase2DE/playlists

I’ve seen a few TOS fan shows, and they were mostly decent. I don’t remember the names. However, I’m more of a TNG fan and I prefer the novel continuity for the TNG timeline past nemesis to any “episode of the week” stories.


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I’ll give this one a shot next time I’m ready for some ToS.

They really tried (and succeeded) in replicating the TOS feel of episodes in both the acting, sets, and effects. Neither New Voyages nor Continues are a modern day version of TOS but instead a loving homage to it.

Speaking of babylon 5 and trek, one thing i hated about b5 was the way its fans seemed to need to gak on trek and trek fans during the early days of the net and BBSs.

Now i can like b5 as an example of what a series can be when one talented and creative man has a vision and is able to keep a legion of 'audience experts', marketing analysists" and other empty soulless suits from coming in and 'improving' things.

 Matt Swain wrote:
Speaking of babylon 5 and trek, one thing i hated about b5 was the way its fans seemed to need to gak on trek and trek fans during the early days of the net and BBSs.

Now i can like b5 as an example of what a series can be when one talented and creative man has a vision and is able to keep a legion of 'audience experts', marketing analysists" and other empty soulless suits from coming in and 'improving' things.

Well that is true of any fandom, back in the 90s the "big 3" were trek, wars and B5. and fans compared them (and still do) by various standards-tech, FTL speeds, firepower, resources etc...it was a good bit of fun with fans gravitating towards one show or another. as more of a newtonian physics guy and a realist about human nature/history i was more drawn to B5 than i was to the technobabel and utopian future of post kirk trek. that doesn't mean i didn't enjoy the various universes.

But a good fan crossover video like those on the old spacebattles forums or the fine parody "star wreck in the perkining" (an early fan film by the creator of iron sky) are always fun to see (both are available on youtube now)

Meanwhile I was in the corner chanting 'Shel Kek Nem Ron!'

I never got to enjoy B5 growing up - it was always on Channel 4 which by and large was so erratic with reception for us it basically wasn't there or worth watching most of the time (and when Channel 5 appeared it didn't even exist).

But that's what you get when you put your Tv aerial up a pear tree

Well it was on PTEN (prime time entertainment network) a loose coalition of independent stations and networks. so there was no set time slot, you just had to get lucky and catch it when you could. even so it was such a great show it grew to rival the big kids even with the handicaps.

tneva82 wrote:
For crusade it annoyingly stopped before it got good. If you haven't read the written scripts for future episodes that didn't get filmed yet well worth it. For here again worth keeping mind crusade wasn't about the plague. That would have been solved early 2nd season. It was going to be about earth black operations with shadow technology(and even that might not be the ultimate arc). Plague was crusade's "sinclair & his battle of the line mystery". Kickstart show for the real event.

Yeah, ending crusade early was a bummer. When the apocalypse box appeared, you knew that shadow and vorlon remnants were going to start to feature and mess things up. Pity...

That unfortunately is what happens when a network tries to tell JMS how to run his show. he packs up his toys and goes home.

Some b5 recent uploads popped up on my YouTube recommended feed last night and I plunged deep into the jumpgate. There is a definite and immediately increase in both the quality of the live action and crispness of the CGI. It best reminds me of a 720p HD video with some added film grain which is a huge improvement over the substandard blurry sooner and dropped crap that previously was available. After about a dozen clips covering various plot twists last night, I really didn't remember just how much of a soap opera the show really was!

 Matt Swain wrote:


I consider the star trek axenar preview to be a better trek films than all 3 of the JJA abominations combined.

Agreed 100%. Axanar is much better than any new and official release, including Picard (which I liked except the last episode).

As to Babylon 5, it is my second favourite s-f show (after ST:TNG), and I would really like to see something new in that universe, as long as it stays true to the franchise (so there are no ugly surprises like trek had with mentioned above JJA abominations, which I call his SW demos, or Discovery, which I call a DIS(aster)).

 aphyon wrote:
That unfortunately is what happens when a network tries to tell JMS how to run his show. he packs up his toys and goes home.

Uuh order to stop came from above.

Unfortunately it seems any reboot or new development of B5 works is unlikely to ever happen. Per JMS, Time Warner owns the TV rights and some adjacent licensing rights, while JMS has the film rights. According to him, TW has no intention of doing anything with the license/IP, nor allowing anyone else to do so (i.e. they won't sell the rights), and even though he could *in theory* produce a B5 film, no producer or distributor wants to even discuss it with him unless they can also get the tv/other media rights as part of the deal.

Kinda makes you wonder why he doesn't just create a new IP with a similar premise, maybe call it, I dunno, like Hammurabi 7 or something, and have fun with it.

Well, that sucks. Plenty of expensive films with no immediate TV rights/spinoff plans or significant merchandising potential (get your Irishman action figures and PS5 game here!) get made every year but admittedly the "potential" for cross media spin offs is technically there. I wonder why they won't sell of the rights; maybe they're just asking for too much for a frankly dead for decades franchise? Honestly, I don't see B5 ever being profitable on an MCU style budget but I think it would have been a great Expanse style/quality movie. YMMV.

At this point, personally, though.. I'd prefer a BSG reboot rather than a continuation of the original. I realize that may be a heretical hot take but it's just been too many years to pick up where the previous left off without a century long TNG style time jump that would preclude all the previous characters/actors from guest staring (not too difficult since seemingly half of them have prematurely passed away with some sort of Space Mummy's Curse unfortunately).

I think it's a case of a combination of 'too expensive to make something for the audience' but also 'this could potentially be successful, so we don't want anyone else to do it.'

So it gets locked in limbo.

Theres apparently some internal politicking involved from what I gathered, apparently B5 was headed by a now-defunct studio or subsidiary or whatever within Warner Brothers or Time Warner or whoever it is and there is some bad blood between the people involved with that organization and the current execs and senior leadership of Warner Bros or whoever, so they are intentionally trying to bury any trace of anything that the other group had ever touched or some gak. As far as why they won't sell, JMS said it would "embarrass" them if they sold it and the property did well with another studio.

At least thats the story JMS is selling, in truth I suspect that the real reason is that theres bad blood between the WB/TW/whichever company execs and JMS directly (or maybe its the fact that Babylon 5/Crusade was massively unprofitable and WB don't feel like it could ever be a winner given its past history). With one exception (where he was hired directly by the films producers, who are his personal friends, at the very last possible minute to rewrite a script within 3 days), he hasn't worked on anything film/tv wise that WB has been involved in that I could find since B5/Crusade ended, other than that his only involvement with the organization has been via DC Comics which might be sufficiently far removed from whatever execs he has pissed off that it didn't come into play. He also seemed to have trouble getting film/tv work for a period of time after B5/Crusade ended which may have been the result of an industry blacklist or something resulting from an undiscussed falling out he had with the studio.

I suppose I'm partly to minisculely blame for everything post season 4 as I mostly didn't tune. I watched the final season of the show proper (although possibly in part with reruns) but the films/show after that I probably skipped half of them during their initial runs. And I haven't tuned back in in any meaningful way since. This thread is probably the most time I've devoted to b5 over the past 15+ years other than a single demo at gencon of the ACTA game.

Still, it's sad to hear that the all to common combo of mean girls and greed might prevent a real return of the IP.

Chaos0xomega, was that one exception the Marvel Movie Thor?

I have to say I am glad that something like a reboot is not happening

I am not very happy with most things that come out of Hollywood these days and most remakes are usually just copies to please fans without doing justice to the show

so seeing it once is ok, but not something you watch several times or want to watch twice to get all the foreshadowing

same with Buffy, I rather watch the original show again than a reboot were people think that new special effects will make up for bad writing/acting

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Chaos0xomega, was that one exception the Marvel Movie Thor?

No, Thor had nothing to do with WB. It was a Wachowskis film by the name of Ninja Assassin.

The problem with reboots and remakes and all that is that they very often aren't interested in telling the original story and want to tell their own.

Sometimes this is because the original story was never shown, it got cut up, sliced up and changed in the original production.
Sometimes its because someone has a load of theories on what does and doesn't generate money and attract audiences. So suddenly a tale without any romance gets an elf falling in love with a dwarf over a few scant lines of poetry.
Sometimes its because the person in charge wants to make their own thing, but can't get funding so they "steal" another show for a reboot/remake and then change as much as they can to try and tell their own story they wanted to tell (eg the recent The Watch Tv show from BBC USA which is not the Discworld story nor characters in the least).


This is before we even get to the issue of too many chiefs where you've got investors, actors, producers, directors and more all wanting to make changes. Actors that don't want to be typecast or do certain scenes or roles; directors who want their own vision; the writer*; investors who want certain elements included from the check-list to ensure full "market penetration" etc....


Now these are all things new productions also have to suffer as well. Indeed one of my examples above is from a new production (or at least new for live action - The Hobbit); where the adaptation from the original is from a book. Book adaptations sometimes get away with it more because the book isn't often heavily advertised. Indeed sometimes its quite a surprise to learn that there's things like a book behind Jurassic Park and such (which honestly has got to be rather painful for the author who's work was adapted).



So yeah remakes/reboots can be a minefield of issues.


*who from what I can tell might often do a good job of adapting, but often are the smallest in the set and get overruled all the time

there is a difference between re-imagine a story or making a film from a book and a reboot/remake of an original movie/tv show

who many movies and mini series are made from the Odyssey
some have a different focus on the story, and others want to make it just an original with better effects

but we have not seen a straight 1:1 reboot of the 1954 Ulysses movie and it would make no sense to do one

for Ben Hur there are 6 movies based on the book with only 1 being really successfull

another TV Show or movie inside the B5 universe, something about the Rangers, Mimbari War, or taking on Valen and doing a show about the Shadow War could work well
but doing a reboot of B5 will fail from the start

The only thing B5 needs are new effects.

Even when it was released, they weren’t as good as Star Trek, who were still based in model work.

The pure CGI approach was innovative, sure. And the originals should always remain. But because of how quickly that art advanced, they looked tired super quickly.

B5 absolutely needs a reboot, it remains a relatively obscure scifi franchise with basically zero name recognition outside of its relatively small cult following. A prequel/sequel film or tv series would fail on launch because "this is a story in a 20 year old setting that most of you have never engaged with and probably are only vaguely aware of it having existed" is not a particularly strong selling point when your goal is to make money - and thats the *only* goal for Hollywood when they decide to fund development of a tv series or a film.

The fact of the matter is that the target audience for any future development on the franchise at this point is *not* targeted towards the established B5 fanbase - theres no money to be made there, because it was never a particularly large population of people to begin with. The goal is to appeal to "the masses", the large swathes of consumers who by and large don't know what B5 or the Minbari War or the Shadow War are, who the Rangers or Valen are, etc. but are ready to hand over their money if you can hook them in with a dramatic plot that features some complex narrative twists and some deep-seeded mysteries for them to unravel wrapped up with stunning set and costume design and impressive visual effects.

Could you tell that sort of a story about the Rangers, or the Earth-Minbari War, or the Shadow War, Valen, or what-have-you? Sure, but its a much steeper mountain to climb for B5 than it would be if we were talking 'Trek or 'Wars which have spent decades in the public conscious and as a result have widespread name recognition coupled, large semi-dedicated fanbases, and a far-reaching casual viewership at least passively familiar with certain basic concepts of the story and setting.

Most normies knew, vaguely, that Boba Fett was a Mandalorian and that had something to do with his helmet or armor, even if they couldn't quite explain to you what a Mandalorian is.

Most normies know Jean-Luc Picard was a starfleet officer of some sort and could probably tell you he was the captain of the Enterprise, even if they couldn't tell you *which* Enterprise or what stardates he commanded, or what he did as a captain.

What do most normies know about B5? Well, they know it was a space station, probably, and thats basically the extent of it. Shadows - What are those? Valen - Who? Rangers - You mean the hockey team from New York, or is it more like Walker, Texas Ranger? Minbari - Never heard of them.

so we should never make anything new because if the "normies" have no previous knowledge that there is already something behind, it cannot work