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Also, I feel the need to point out the abject irony of complaining about how the characters in BSG were awful people and that it was too grimdark while discussing B5. Oh no, there were alcoholics and killers on BSG, better not say that around Dr. Franklin the stim addict or Garibaldi the recovering alcoholic. Better not mention all the mutual attempts by the Narn/G'Kar and Centauri/Londo to exterminate one another in acts of genocide. How about Lennier leaving Sheridan for dead so he could have Delenn for himself? Or how Garibaldi betrays Sheridan? Better not mention the whole Earthgov civil war bit that results in the planet being nuked back into prehistory, or the whole Centauri Prime being burned to the ground bit.

God I could go on about how dark B5 is and how awful the characters in the show could be. The only reason BSG was darker is because it came 10 years later in the post-9/11 era and pulled no punches in showing the darker side of humanity, but for its own time B5 was pretty dark itself.

i'll certainly be interested to see what a reboot could look like

although if crusade was anything to go by it could end up being a major dissapointment

I really love B5. All I can do is wait and see how this new thing turns out. Being modern TV I will set my expectations to Zero. If I had my way it would be a further continuation of the story and not a reboot but whatever happens happens.
A recasting of Londo will have big boots to fill.

 warhead01 wrote:
I really love B5. All I can do is wait and see how this new thing turns out. Being modern TV I will set my expectations to Zero. If I had my way it would be a further continuation of the story and not a reboot but whatever happens happens.
A recasting of Londo will have big boots to fill.

With Londo and G’Kar needing new actors, it’s a great excuse to revisit and redefine their relationship. So long as they remain true to their species archetypes, there’s a fair amount of wiggle room. A new pairing with a similar if not exact dynamic could be ace.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 warhead01 wrote:
I really love B5. All I can do is wait and see how this new thing turns out. Being modern TV I will set my expectations to Zero. If I had my way it would be a further continuation of the story and not a reboot but whatever happens happens.
A recasting of Londo will have big boots to fill.

With Londo and G’Kar needing new actors, it’s a great excuse to revisit and redefine their relationship. So long as they remain true to their species archetypes, there’s a fair amount of wiggle room. A new pairing with a similar if not exact dynamic could be ace.

Sure. I just enjoy them as they were and don't see anything to change. I feel like they were the reason to watch to show, for me anyway. I enjoyed them more than any of the other characters or other plots. They both had a lot of character development as their stories built. I am not sure what needs to be redefined, or what you mean by that or how.
I'd be more excited to see more of Vir Cotto as his career progresses and what kind of rivalries he grows into and the troubles that make it interesting.

I'm not looking for reasons not to at least watch the pilot or dislike the new show. I just know what I'd be excited to see and I know some characters from the original will be difficult imop, as I said big boots to fill.

My problem with much of the modern stuff I watch or have seen is mostly that I just dislike lazy dialog and catch phrases like "you got this". That sort of thing ruins most show for me.
If the new B5 isn't to my liking I still have all the original episodes and seasons on a hard drive, I'll survive...some how.

I'm pretty optimistic.

I think it needs a big and diverse writers room, The Good Place style, to really hone the dialogue and keep all those multiple plots and subplots spinning. JMS did a fine job a quarter century ago, and B5 is still one of my fave anythings ever, but it could be SO MUCH BETTER with what we know about making good TV today.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
i'll certainly be interested to see what a reboot could look like

although if crusade was anything to go by it could end up being a major dissapointment

It'll be interesting to see what JMS has in mind.

It could be fun to take a page from the ST movies and treat it like a "Kelvin timeline"/"What If?" where certain events happened differently and led to (maybe more dramatic than the ST films) changed political/societal/technological situations among the same factions. That way longtime viewers can dive into the new mythology and chew on what changed and how, while new viewers can just watch it as is. I'm just spitballing...I'm sure JMS has more interesting ideas than me right now.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 warhead01 wrote:
I really love B5. All I can do is wait and see how this new thing turns out. Being modern TV I will set my expectations to Zero. If I had my way it would be a further continuation of the story and not a reboot but whatever happens happens.
A recasting of Londo will have big boots to fill.

With Londo and G’Kar needing new actors, it’s a great excuse to revisit and redefine their relationship. So long as they remain true to their species archetypes, there’s a fair amount of wiggle room. A new pairing with a similar if not exact dynamic could be ace.

I wouldn't be surprised if those 'species archetypes' changed quite a bit. They were a bit different in the original pilot (G'kar was a fair bit more effeminate and flounced around with a perfumed handkerchief, for example. Though I'd not suggest going back to that specific take on the character) and even early in the series before the Narn vs Centauri power dynamic flipped. By the end there was a fair bit of degeneration of nuance and it became 'evil French aristocrats' vs 'plantation slaves turned terrorists.' And Vir was basically the only decent Centauri in the whole of existence- his engagement episode was particularly nauseating for lack of anything other than big moral anvils landing on the guest characters with a distinct splat.

I'd also hope that JMS would be savvy enough to not just recast all the original characters as the same people and hope they can carry the show. It'd be more interesting, for example, if the Shadow agent(s) skipped the Centauri because their Ambassador didn't have Londo's drive for glory and recognition and fear of a dead end career with no prospects. (And given the summary suggests they're just skipping Sinclair and starting with Sheridan in command says they're doing at least some of this).

 warhead01 wrote:


My problem with much of the modern stuff I watch or have seen is mostly that I just dislike lazy dialog and catch phrases like "you got this". That sort of thing ruins most show for me.
If the new B5 isn't to my liking I still have all the original episodes and seasons on a hard drive, I'll survive...some how.

I mean, JMS isn't necessarily known for writing great dialogue, the dialogue in the original wasn't particularly great (and by that I mean that a lot of it gives George Lucas a run for his money for how dryly written and uninspired it is). The show is more known for its dramatic one-liners than it is banter or verbal sparring, but even the dramatic one-liners are more awkward than they are punchy - they look great written down on a message board or whatever, but when you actually watch the scenes they come from they just come across as hamfisted.

Voss wrote:

I wouldn't be surprised if those 'species archetypes' changed quite a bit. They were a bit different in the original pilot (G'kar was a fair bit more effeminate and flounced around with a perfumed handkerchief, for example. Though I'd not suggest going back to that specific take on the character) and even early in the series before the Narn vs Centauri power dynamic flipped. By the end there was a fair bit of degeneration of nuance and it became 'evil French aristocrats' vs 'plantation slaves turned terrorists.' And Vir was basically the only decent Centauri in the whole of existence- his engagement episode was particularly nauseating for lack of anything other than big moral anvils landing on the guest characters with a distinct splat.
I'd also hope that JMS would be savvy enough to not just recast all the original characters as the same people and hope they can carry the show. It'd be more interesting, for example, if the Shadow agent(s) skipped the Centauri because their Ambassador didn't have Londo's drive for glory and recognition and fear of a dead end career with no prospects. (And given the summary suggests they're just skipping Sinclair and starting with Sheridan in command says they're doing at least some of this).

I think the idea of "species archetypes" is dead (unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by the use of the term). Its the sort of thing that a large segment of mainstream pop culture consumers have actively rebelled against in various forms of media for the last 10 years or so. People want characters to be individuals rather than being avatars playing out the stereotypes of their race. G'Kar and Londo can continue to be portrayed the way they always were, but I would expect that the Centauri and Narn as a whole will be portrayed with more nuance and depth with individuals having their own beliefs, behaviors, and agendas that sometimes align with and sometimes don't align with those of the cultures that created them, rather than every character being a two-dimensional personality clone acting out a predefined role based on racial traits/characteristics that have been applied as a universal label to the species.

nuBSG definitely came out right in the middle of that horrid grimderp period of 2000s when everything had to be smeared in blood, semen and hopefully shreds of torn love letters. Fortunately, with the flop that the final season of GoT was, it seems to be largely beyond us. I'm sure the usual zombies in exec chairs at movie/broadcasting studios will try to push for it for a while, but the impetous is basically gone, as usual whenever one trend dominates media for such a long time.

So hopefully the B5 reboot will have characters more down to earth and human than BSG.

It's very, very weird to me how angry and possessive some of you guys get over *tone*. I have the ability to enjoy entertainment with all kinds of different tones...and I think that's true of most people, LOL. Dark stories with self-destructive characters weren't exactly invented two decades ago, and we can see that in Euripides to Shakespeare to Scorsese to countless more.

It's okay if you strictly limit yourself to light fare such as Marvel movies, Star Trek episodes, cartoons intended for children and the like...enjoy yourself! But in that instance, you need to understand that you're the one working from a very limited menu, and that other people might like more variety in their diet. Everything doesn't have to be for you and your taste and there's nothing wrong with that. There's no reason to criticize it for being different or people for enjoying something different.

Besides, there are a lot of works of entertainment that get quite a bit darker than BSG. So it's also odd to be pointing at that as some kind of imagined nadir.

gorgon continues to lay down the *T*R*U*T*H*.

 gorgon wrote:
It's very, very weird to me how angry and possessive some of you guys get over *tone*. I have the ability to enjoy entertainment with all kinds of different tones...and I think that's true of most people, LOL. Dark stories with self-destructive characters weren't exactly invented two decades ago, and we can see that in Euripides to Shakespeare to Scorsese to countless more.

It's okay if you strictly limit yourself to light fare such as Marvel movies, Star Trek episodes, cartoons intended for children and the like...enjoy yourself! But in that instance, you need to understand that you're the one working from a very limited menu, and that other people might like more variety in their diet. Everything doesn't have to be for you and your taste and there's nothing wrong with that. There's no reason to criticize it for being different or people for enjoying something different.

Besides, there are a lot of works of entertainment that get quite a bit darker than BSG. So it's also odd to be pointing at that as some kind of imagined nadir.

That's a potentially interesting, but irrelevant tangent. It isn't that dark things shouldn't exist or that they're strange or unwatchable.
Its about the context of the specific show, and the decades long campaign that had been going on to create a faithful, meaningful reboot of a specific series (one that was, frankly, a fairly lighthearted sci-fi serial). Imagine if Star Trek the Next Generation had kicked off with Picard sexually assaulting Troi or Crusher and snapping Wesley's neck.

Or, indeed, a reboot of Star Trek that suddenly switched from utopian ideal to some crazed, militant state with rampant racism & bigotry and instead of impassioned speeches about the rights of free beings and the importance of intellectual discourses, its suddenly drug addicts and incoherent swearing...
Context and expectations shape reactions, strangely enough. For the genre, format and influence on what other drek was produced, it was something of a nadir.

Though Cronch is right that it was part of an infestation of an entire period of television, one I was happy to skip out on and not bother getting cable.

Voss wrote:
I'd also hope that JMS would be savvy enough to not just recast all the original characters as the same people and hope they can carry the show.

Well it is on the CW, and with their DC stuff they've had a great track record of bringing back as many previous actors from other related shows but putting them in different roles, like, Dean Cain playing Supergirl's human father, Terri Hatcher playing an evil Daxamite ruler, the original Supergirl movie actress playing Supergirl's human mother, Kevin Conroy playing an old Batman, all the way up to John Cryer, who played Lex Luthor's cousin... nephew (?)... in Superman 3 back as the Arrowverse's version of Lex Luthor. Hell, they even had Brandon Routh play a version of Superman opposite himself playing a completely different character, and John Wesley Shipp - the 90's Flash - play the Flash's father, Earth-2's Flash and 90's Flash all in the same show!

So I don't think they'd get the same actors back to play the same roles, but back to play other roles - supporting, reoccuring or even just guest roles - that's a possibility, and one that could be quite fun.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

Oh, gods, no, do not look to BSG rebooted for inspiration. B5 fans do not want the main characters to be such awful people that by the third season we're rooting for the Shadows to win just to wipe the lot of them out...

If your take away from nBSG is that the characters are all awful people then you took away the wrong message. The point was that they were all flawed people (well, except for Gaius, he was an awful person though he had a solid redemption arc) - i.e. they were all normal, regular people with their own challenges, issues, and demons traveling down the road to hell, paving it with good intentions as they went along. It was a refreshing change of pace from the more typical dramatic presentation of characters as all being somewhat rigid 2-dimensional paladins of truth, justice, and the American way or whatever.

Sorry, but my takeaway was that the Cylons should have been the protagonists, as they were far better people than the 'average' awful people of the refugee fleet.

I agree that the original series characters were, by modern standards, pretty much parodies of real people. Still, is it too much to ask that the heroes at least not be total jerks who are arguable worse than the villains of the piece?

100% this was my feeling too.

They changed so much of the original characters that the new BS wasn't really the same story any more. Sure the ship looked the same and the character names were the same and the whole "running from the cylons" was there, but after that it basically was totally different. It also felt like at the same time they were trying to put more women into the story (in a very ham-fisted way) they were also trying to just have more overt sex, which I dunno just felt wrong in Battlestar. Or at least the way they presented and showed it felt wrong.

Ok, but if they left everything basically the same then it would just be watching the same exact gak that you watched previously, just with better sfx and more room to make direct comparisons to the original - which would be miserable (imagine the discourse if they did this for B5: "Peter Jurasik was so much better as Londo than Idris Elba is, the way Idris said 'Mr. Garibaldi' in scene 4 of episode 21 is just wrong without the odd inflection and characteristic growl used by Jurasik in the same scene 20 years ago." - no thanks).

I'd honestly have likely enjoyed it more if it was totally fresh as a theme and if they'd just done the whole similar story pitch as Battlestar.

Then you would just be complaining that they ripped off and plagiarized BSG and that they should have just remade BSG instead. And sure - even if you personally wouldn't have said that, someone else would have. This is how it works, you can't please everyone. In general the approach taken by nBSG and now with this B5 reboot is the best approach to take IMO (and evidently the film/tv industry generally agrees).

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
So I don't think they'd get the same actors back to play the same roles, but back to play other roles - supporting, reoccuring or even just guest roles - that's a possibility, and one that could be quite fun.

Given how many major cast members aren't with us any more, that could prove tricky - I was hoping that Vir's actor could maybe play Londo, but didn't realise he'd died a few years back :(

Sadly alot of them have gone.

Those few who are left include:

Claudia Christian (56)
Walter Koenig (85)
Andrea Thompson (61)
Bill Mumy (67)
Tracy Scoggins (67)
Peter Jurasik (71)
Patricia Tallman (64)
Ed Wasser (57)

And Bruce! (71)

chaos0xomega wrote:


Agreed. Books, film, television, and video games are all distinct mediums and the method and manner of storytelling for each one needs to differ as a result. Spending the last 20 out of 100 episodes on "resolution" would be absolutely miserable if all the action peaked during episodes 41-60 and largely settled from 61-80.

That was from assumption shadow war was all B5 was about...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And it’s the same head honcho in the driving seat - a writer who’s stock has arguably only increased since B5 concluded. So he may enjoy far greater creative freedom this time around, as both he and the concept are very much tried, tested and dare I say trusted?

He has already stated he has great creative freedom regarding the project. Of course it's possible he is lying.

Also for "there won't be any surprises". Well it's not retelling same story with new CGI but new story...so if you are expecting things to go same way I would be willing to bet you will be off the marks all the time. Knowing JMS he will throw curve balls at you. Hell first he will hint it goes same way and then he throws unexpected curve ball at you. While trolling naysayer's while at it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
You say “then don’t watch it.” I already told you I stopped watching it. I’m not against other people enjoying it—I’m against making the B5 reboot in its image. That is the topic of the thread. B5 would absolutely be ruined if given the same treatment. Fundamentally B5 is an optimistic show, where humans (and the younger races) grow and learn to stand on their own. BSG is fundamentally a pessimistic show where “it has happened before and it will happen again.” It reiterated again and again that humanity is trapped in an endless cycle of hatred, violence and misery. The characters for each show fit their themes; inserting BSG-style characters into B5 would break it..

Eh only optimism really B5 had was that humans will keep on living.

It also showed humans will keep screwing up blowing each other up far in future.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Sadly alot of them have gone.

Those few who are left include:

Claudia Christian (56)
Walter Koenig (85)
Andrea Thompson (61)
Bill Mumy (67)
Tracy Scoggins (67)
Peter Jurasik (71)
Patricia Tallman (64)
Ed Wasser (57)

And several of those would be risky to recast to any recurring character. JMS's backdoors would be quite likely need to be used.

So if you wanted to do sequels you would need to recast basically entire cast anyway.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Sadly alot of them have gone.

Those few who are left include:

Claudia Christian (56)
Walter Koenig (85)
Andrea Thompson (61)
Bill Mumy (67)
Tracy Scoggins (67)
Peter Jurasik (71)
Patricia Tallman (64)
Ed Wasser (57)

Cameo prediction:

Claudia, Pat, and Andrea as Molari's wives.
Walter (85, bloody hell!) as the original Centaturi Emperor
Bill as the caretaker of the Great Machine
Ed as the Commander of Babylon 4
Tracy as President Santiago

Sounds a lot like you expect it to be same story as original...

tneva82 wrote:
Sounds a lot like you expect it to be same story as original...

The nerd demand, whether we're talking entertainment or rules supplements to tabletop games, is usually "give me exactly what came before...but better and more of it...but the same." So JMS will probably trigger some folks.

 gorgon wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Sounds a lot like you expect it to be same story as original...

The nerd demand, whether we're talking entertainment or rules supplements to tabletop games, is usually "give me exactly what came before...but better and more of it...but the same." So JMS will probably trigger some folks.

Well, it was in jest, the old guard could just return as visiting officers/reporters/ politicians on the space station or be on the other end of the frequent video calls to Earth Central. I am expecting a 'Old Galactica to new Galactica' style retelling but some major elements remain. It'll be fun seeing the differences.. and the similarities. But no, I'm not expecting it to be the exactly the same.

MarkNorfolk wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Sadly alot of them have gone.

Those few who are left include:

Claudia Christian (56)
Walter Koenig (85)
Andrea Thompson (61)
Bill Mumy (67)
Tracy Scoggins (67)
Peter Jurasik (71)
Patricia Tallman (64)
Ed Wasser (57)

Cameo prediction:

Claudia, Pat, and Andrea as Molari's wives.
Walter (85, bloody hell!) as the original Centaturi Emperor
Bill as the caretaker of the Great Machine
Ed as the Commander of Babylon 4
Tracy as President Santiago

I like almost all of these casting suggestions (especially Walter!) but Claudia, Patricia and Andrea need to be captains of massive spaceships at the very least!

And Bruce as either some form of admiral, or a ship's computer in full Tron costume.

On that note, I'll point out that we never see any admirals on B5 - the rank is mentioned twice, but all the flag officers we see are generals, including those in command of ships and fleets. Likewise, while there are "Captains" in command of vessels, a few of them are also commanded by Majors and Colonels.

Regardless of the dated CGI I always loved the ship designs for all the different powers and really hope they dont throw all that out for totally new....

I could never get into B5 because of the effects, but I have lots of friends who professed it's greatness.

Over 15 years ago I decided to give it another shot and rented the pilot from Netflix. It came on a double-sided DVD with a tv movie. I put the DVD in and watched it not realizing that "In the Beginning" wasn't the pilot...

Never got around to revisiting it after I realized the mistake.

So, that being said, I'd be open to the reboot. My guess is that the current TV executives realize how valuable cult tv is, so even if it isn't a hit in the ratings, if they can get in on the merchandising they can still do really well.

As far as nBSG, it was two of the greatest seasons of TV ever.

Aye, the ship designs were great (and the licensed designs produced for the various tabletop games even better). Curious to see how they are reimagined and redesigned, I think some of them will prove challenging to update while keeping true to the originals.

petrov27 wrote:
Regardless of the dated CGI I always loved the ship designs for all the different powers and really hope they dont throw all that out for totally new....

Yeah I am the same - very cool ships

The ship design was almost universally excellent. I even have a soft spot for the Vree saucers.