HD version of BABYLON 5 may be possible after all

In a surprising move, Babylon 5 creator/showrunner/writer J. Michael Straczynski has revealed on Twitter (whilst announcing the news that B5 will be available on Amazon Prime next month, at least in the USA) that it may be possible to remaster the show in HD after all...with a few caveats.

The original Babylon 5 and EAS Cortez CG models re-rendered to modern HD standards (with a new background). Whilst the Warner Brothers film masters wouldn't look this good, they'd be big improvement over the DVD versions of the show.

To reiterate the previous situation: Babylon 5 was shot in widescreen on Super 35mm film - from which a HD image can be extracted from the original film stock rather easily - and then mastered (having CGI, sound and music added) on standard-definition video. The SD video master tapes of Babylon 5 have been the source for the original broadcast version of the show, the VHS and DVD releases and the various streaming options available over the last few years. It is not possible to extract a HD image from video, so that was assumed to be it for Babylon 5.

The only way to get a HD Babylon 5 would be to go back to the original film stock and extract a new HD image of all the live-action footage - which is time-consuming and tedious, but straightforward - and then re-render all of the thousands of CG effects and composite shots* in the show from scratch - which would be mind-bogglingly time-consuming and expensive. Star Trek: The Next Generation took this approach, but the show didn't have much CGI to re-render, as most of the effects were handled in-camera on film, so it was straightforward to remaster. It still took four years and cost $20 million, and took years to break even across multiple media releases and years of streaming on Netflix and CBS All Access. Babylon 5 would cost around twice that as it had far more CG than ST:TNG and in fact far more effects shots in total, despite being almost seventy episodes shorter in length. Given the relative obscurity of Babylon 5 compared to ST:TNG, this would appear to be commercially unviable.

(* a composite shot is one that combines live-action footage with effects, so any shot which has weapons being fired, the characters standing in front of a green or blue screen, interacting with CG characters etc)

However, Straczynski has completely upended this understanding of the situation with new information.

It turns out that at the end of every season of Babylon 5, Warner Brothers requested that every episode be completely re-mastered on 35mm film. This was for an archival copy to sit in the WB archives and to match the show as broadcast. This process involved taking the digital elements - including the original CG shots in their original resolution (noticeably higher than what we saw on TV from the video master) - and putting them on film.

So in order to get a full HD version of Babylon 5, all one has to do is extract a broadcast copy from each film reel, and since everything is on there already - including CG - that's all you need to do. It's extremely cheap.

This may sound too good to be true, and there is a hitch. Because this was an archival copy of the episode as already aired, it only involved the 4:3 TV format, not the widescreen master which only exists on video. Or to put it another way, Babylon 5's HD edition would only be available in 4:3, not widescreen, despite Babylon 5 being the first TV show ever filmed directly in widescreen. Which is both ironic and immensely frustrating. As long-term B5 fans know, the CGI for Babylon 5 only exists in 4:3, with the widescreen CG shots seen on the DVD release coming about from cropping the image (which is incredibly annoying, and loses information from the top and bottom of the image), so this would both restore the original CG image and in a much higher resolution, but at the cost of losing the live-action widescreen shots.

There is the possibility of going back to the original film stock for the live-action-only shots and combining those with this new master to get at least some of the show in widescreen HD at a still-reasonable price, but the series would need to switch to 4:3 for every CGI and composite scene, which would be rather distracting.

Whilst it's not a perfect solution, it does open up the possibility of seeing Babylon 5 in high definition, at level of visual quality never seen before. Whether Warner Brothers are prepared to invest such a remaster remains to be seen, but at least now, in the long, twilight struggle of rewatching your favourite twenty-year-old SF show, there is the possibility of hope.

Babylon 5 Rewatch: Canon and Sources

Before we start the Babylon 5 Rewatch series, some notes on the formatting, references and sources I'll be using in this guide.

Canon

Babylon 5 was the first multimedia franchise which tried to count everything passed under its banner as being fully, 100% creator-approved canon. Joe Straczynski, Babylon 5's creator, showrunner and chief writer, planned to approve every novel and comic, review every piece of merchandise and make sure everything fit together in the massive tapestry he was building.

However, due to simple workload and time, this ultimately provided unworkable and Straczynski was later forced to clarify what was canon and what was not.

All five seasons and 110 episodes of the TV show, plus the pilot and the six TV movies are counted as canon. The 13 produced episodes of the spin-off series Crusade are also counted as canon, although there is significant discussion among fans of the best viewing order for the series, since the production order, Straczynski's recommended viewing order and the actual chronological order of the episodes all differ from one another.

Of the novels, the three trilogies released by Del Rey (The Psi Corps Trilogy by Greg Keyes, The Legions of Fire Trilogy by Peter David and The Passing of the Techno-mages Trilogy by Jeanne Cavelos) are all counted as canon. The earlier novels The Shadow Within by Jeanne Cavelos and To Dream in the City of Sorrows by Kathryn Drennan are also both counted as 100% canon. The storylines for all of these novels were provided by Straczynski and these books were approved and reviewed by him.

The other seven novels are specifically non-canonical, as Straczynski was not as closely involved in their production and some of their elements contradict other sources. In particular, the events of the novel Personal Agendas do not appear to be possible as it is almost impossible for them to have taken place during the period they are supposed to happen. The first book, Voices, on the other hand features allusions to the main story arc and fits into the early Season 2 Psi Corps arc of episodes quite well, and helps resolve some minor continuity issues, so is often regarded as, at least, fanon.

Of the comics, the opening issue In Darkness Find Me and the following Price of Peace and Shadows Past and Present story arcs are both heavily referenced in the TV show itself (the TV show even features a later flashback to events in the comic, a notable first for multi-media projects) and are 100% regarded as canon. The Psi Corps and You! one-shot is likewise regarded as canon, since it features events later expanded on in Greg Keyes's novels.

The Laser-Mirror-Starweb duology, which was written by David Gerrold without any oversight from Straczynski, can be counted as non-canon due to featuring technology (such as energy shields on an Earthforce shuttle) and character developments not in keeping with the rest of the setting. The concluding story arc, In Valen's Name, was written by Straczynski directly and can also be counted as canon.

The Babylon 5 Interactive CD-ROM released in 1998 featured material directly written and contributed to by Straczynski, and is therefore counted as canonical. A lot of later materials, such as the timeline on the DVD box sets, also draws on this as a primary source and can also be counted as canon, even if debatable (such as the conflicting accounts given for the date of the Battle of the Line).

Other elements were not originated by Straczynski but created by others and found their way into common usage. These include many of the ship classes, names and technical specifications which were created by co-producers, other writers on the show or the effects teams at Foundation Imaging and Netter Digital. In many cases these names were picked up on fans and Straczynski himself, thus becoming canon after the fact.

The Babylon 5 Wars miniature game and the Babylon 5 D20 Roleplaying Game by Mongoose Publishing are both non-canon but draw on and incorporate a vast amount of canonical sources (including all of the above). Both projects got underway after Straczynski established an official channel for establishing canon information through his assistant Fiona Avery and thus incorporate a lot of reliable information. However, both also utilise a lot of original material created by the game writers themselves and this is often not differentiated from the canon material. Complicating matters further, Straczynski and Mongoose Publishing later fell out and Straczynski declared their material to be unreliable.

Material specifically regarded as non-canon includes The A-Z of Babylon 5 by David Bassom, The Babylon 5 Security Manual by Jim Mortimore and The Babylon Project Roleplaying Game by Titan Books (along with its sourcebooks). The almost-finished but unreleased Babylon 5 video game, Into the Fire, is also deemed non-canon.

Recently, a new, two-volume Babylon 5 Encyclopedia has been produced by B5 Books, a venture Straczynski is involved in. At over 800 print pages in length, the encyclopedia draws exhaustively on every episode, book and comic to create the most accurate guide to the B5 universe yet created whilst jettisoning non-canon elements. Unfortunately, it is also cripplingly expensive, so I have not been able to use it as a source. This is particularly irritating as the Encyclopedia also uses every single deleted scene from the series itself, which is material not available anywhere else. Hopefully at a future point the price will drop to the point where it becomes a reasonable purchase.

Sources

During the course of Babylon 5 being on-air and the nineteen years that have elapsed since, the show has been discussed and dissected online in astonishing detail (even by modern standards). Actors, writers, producers, effects personnel and, of course, J. Michael Straczynski himself would frequently comment on the series as it aired in online and print interviews, and Straczynski made a point of discussing each episode with fans after they aired. Almost all of this material is collected together at the still-extant Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5 (the first website I ever bookmarked, back in 1996) and the J. Michael Straczynski Message Archive, which collates discussions about the TV series going right back to January 1991, just after Warner Brothers formally optioned the project but twenty-five months before the pilot movie even aired!

Additional official sources include David Bassom's 1996 book Creating Babylon 5, which contains invaluable information on how the show was shot on a day-to-day basis, and the five Babylon 5 Season-by-Season books by Jane Killick, which contain episode-by-episode production discussions about the show. This series of books is particularly useful for sourcing comments and information by people involved in the show other than Straczynski. About 99% of the comments ever made about the show come from Straczynski, which is mostly great but occasionally these comments drown out the contributions of everyone else, so it's good to get an alternative perspective.

Likewise of value is the Babylon 5 Scrolls resource, which is currently being renovated but much of its content is available via Facebook. B5 Scrolls is an interesting project which looks at CG, production design and artwork and features extremely extensive interviews with just about every major behind-the-scenes figure apart from Straczynski, including producer John Copeland (who dealt with the nuts and bolts of production from the studio floor while Straczynski handled writing duties and post) and the late CGI genius Ron Thornton, who created many of the show's more iconic ships and designs. This site has been extremely useful in clarifying many technical points, particularly the early days of the show and how it was originally commissioned, as well as the contentious replacement of Foundation Imaging with Netter Digital halfway through the show's run.

Of the various books and websites covering the series from a critical perspective, Andy Lane's Babylon File (two volumes, published in 1997 and 1999) is easily the best, dissecting the series from various thematic angles and not being afraid of calling out weaker episodes and moments of confused and muddled storytelling. It also quite rightly praises the show for its strengths and better episodes.

The Guide

Throughout the guide the following system to is used to refer to episodes, comics and novels in the Babylon 5 universe. For the television series each season is denoted by a letter: A for Season 1, B for Season 2, C for Season 3, D for Season 4 and E for Season 5. A number denotes which episode of which season is in question. For example, A21 is the twenty-first episode of Season 1, The Quality of Mercy. D9 is the ninth episode of Season 4, Atonement. PM stands for "Pilot Movie" and denotes the pilot episode, The Gathering. The six Babylon 5 TV movies made for the TNT and Sci Fi Channel networks are denoted TVM1 (In the Beginning), TVM2 (Thirdspace), TVM3 (River of Souls), TVM4 (A Call to Arms), TVM5 (The Legend of the Rangers) and TVM6 (The Lost Tales). That covers all of the TV episodes.

The novels follow a similar pattern, with each book being branded NOV followed by a number. There is a slightly more complicated pattern here, because the novels do not take place in the same order they are published and they also tend to leap around the time-frame of the series, some taking place long before the series itself begins, others decades later. Additional confusion is caused because the books are published by two different companies. NOV1-NOV9 were published by Dell (Boxtree in the UK) and numbered as Babylon 5 #1: Voices, Babylon 5 #2: Accusations and so forth. However, the books from NOV10 onward were published by Del Rey. To clear up any confusion, The Psi Corps Trilogy is covered in NOV10-NOV12, The Legions of Fire Trilogy is NOV13-NOV15 and The Passing of the Techno-mages Trilogy is NOV16-NOV18. Just to create more confusion, the novelisations of the TV movies have extra scenes and background information not found in the episodes (but these are covered under the episode entries themselves).

As mentioned earlier, only NOV7 and NOV9 onwards are regarded as 100% canon.

The comics are slightly easier to follow, since they can be easily divided between three big stories which are all sequential and straightforward, and a few independent storylines. These are coded DC since they were published by DC in the USA (and as graphic novel collections by Titan in the UK). The only confusion to be found here is that what I have chosen to label DC12-DC14 (the In Valen’s Name storyline) was actually published as a stand-alone mini-series of comics with its own numbering system (i.e. Babylon 5: In Valen’s Name #1-#3) rather than as part of the on-going monthly series which wrapped up eighteen months beforehand.

Each episode, movie, comic or book is given a plot synopsis, notes on the arc and background info, and, where possible, a date. Dates are either directly given, appear on computer displays, or are worked out due to anyone mentioning how much time has elapsed since such-and-such event. The Babylon 5 DVDs also have a timeline included in their special features. It is assumed for the purposes of this guide that these dates are correct, save for where they conflict with the series itself. Each episode is also given its production number (since the order the episodes was made in was not always the same as the order it was transmitted in) and its first UK and US airdates. Notice that ten episodes aired in the UK before the USA due to a variety of production and scheduling factors.

The Series and the Spin-Offs

The story told by Babylon 5 is a huge one, spanning around two dozen major characters and extending back and forth across thirty-six years of history (from the start of In the Beginning in 2245 to the end of Sleeping in Light in 2281). This isn’t helped by the story being an essentially multimedia one. Unlike, say Star Trek, where the novels and comics are not canonical (i.e. they are never referenced in the series itself), Babylon 5's novel and comic spin-offs are considered as reliable as sources as the series itself (though the series is always considered right when the two sides contradict one another).

The continuity order for the different incarnations of Babylon 5 to be fully appreciated is as follows. Codes are as explained above and are followed in brackets by the years they take place in. NOV10 (2115-89), NOV11 (2195-2258), TVM1 (2245-47), NOV7 (2256-57), PM (2257), A1-A22, NOV16 (2258), DC1, B1-B2, DC2-DC4, NOV1, NOV 17, B3-B4, DC5-DC8, B5-B8, NOV3, DC9-DC10, B9-B10, NOV2, B11-B19, NOV6, B20-B21, NOV4, DC11 (2259), B22-C2 (2259-60), NOV5 (2260), C3-C17, NOV 9, C18-C22, NOV18 (2260), D1-D3 (2261), NOV8, D4-D6, DC12-DC14, TVM2 (2261), D7-E21 (2261-62), TVM3, NOV12 (2263), TVM5 (2264), TVM4 (2267), NOV13-NOV15 (2263-78) and, finally E22 (2281). The Crusade spin-off series takes place shortly after the events of TVM4, in 2267-68 (although it was supposed to run from 2267 to 2271).

The above list is not totally official and it should be pointed out it is the order events take place in, not necessarily the best order to view the series in to preserve the central mystery of the main storylines. My recommended viewing order for a beginner would be to simply start with the pilot and then watch the first four seasons in order, then the first two TV movies, then Season 5 and the third, fourth and fifth TV movies before sampling the debatable pleasures of Crusade. The books and comics generally add background detail not essential to enjoy the series by itself, but if possible try and read issues 5-8 of the comic series before watching episode C8, as it makes for quite an interesting (and possibly unprecedented) cross-over between the two mediums. Books 13-15 also resolve one of the major plotlines left dangling from the TV series, namely the fate of Londo, G’Kar, Vir and Centauri Prime after the events of Season 5. Book 12 also deals with the ultimate fate of semi-regular villain Bester.

The next entry will actually kick off the rewatch project with the pilot movie itself, The Gathering.

SF&F Questions: Will there ever be a BABYLON 5 reboot?

The Basics

Babylon 5 is a popular space opera television show which aired from 1993 to 1998. Set on a massive space station, it was notable for being a heavily serialised story which unfolded over five years. It’s been cited as a major influence on everyone from Joss Whedon to Damon Lindelof to the Wachowskis.

After the main series wrapped up twenty years ago, it was resurrected for a series of TV movies and a spin-off show, Crusade, which only lasted half a season. In 2007 there was a further straight-to-DVD movie which sold very well, The Lost Tales, but since then no further Babylon 5 material has been released. Since then fans have asked for either a continuation of the series via a movie or new TV show, or a HD remastering of the original series of the kind that many contemporary shows (such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: The Next Generation) have received, to keep it relevant and watchable for future generations.

Who owns the rights?

Babylon 5’s TV rights are held by Warner Brothers, who produced the first four seasons of the original series and the pilot movie, as well as the Legends of the Rangers and Lost Tales TV/DVD movies. TNT funded the fifth season, Crusade and several of the TV movies, but no longer have the rights to them.

Babylon 5’s creator, J. Michael Straczynski, held onto the movie rights and he alone has the right to make and market a Babylon 5 film for theatrical release.

Authorship

Babylon 5 is unusual in that it is almost completely identified with the work of one man, its creator J. Michael Straczynski. Straczynski wrote 91 of the show’s 110 episodes, most of Crusade and all of the TV movies, as well as acting as executive producer and showrunner. Most Babylon 5 fans would be reluctant to watch or accept a B5 project that Straczynski was not involved in or did not at least have his seal of approval. Although Warner Brothers have the legal right to make a new B5 series without Straczynski’s involvement, it’s clear they are reluctant to do so due to the negative coverage this would engender from fans.

Success of the Original Series

A B5 reboot, remake or remaster is only viable if the original show was successful in the first place. Babylon 5 actually had reasonably strong ratings when it was on-air, often outperforming its alleged rival, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It had a very strong and passionate fanbase. Most crucially, it has made a lot of money for Warner Brothers. Given the original show was made on a shoestring budget – 110 episodes for $91 million – it had made Warner Brothers over $500 million in profit by around 2010 in overseas sales, licensing, merchandising and DVD box sets alone. Podcasts, YouTube rewatches and rewatch blogs for the show are all very popular. Straczynski has a popular and well-followed Twitter account where he talks about the show and his other projects.

The show also has major name recognition, first among fans from that era and people who’ve watched it since, and also due to the show being the subject of a long-running joke on popular (but terrible) sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

The name recognition and the strong profits made by the show mean that the series is ripe for resurrection in some form.

Why a reboot or remake? Why not just make more stories with the original cast?

Tragically, despite having a relatively young cast and only airing a quarter of a lifetime ago, Babylon 5’s cast has had a ridiculously high attrition rate. Since the show ended the following castmembers have passed away:

• Michael O’Hare (Commander Sinclair)
• Jerry Doyle (Security Chief Michael Garibaldi)
• Andreas Katsulas (Ambassador G’Kar)
• Richard Biggs (Dr. Stephen Franklin)
• Johnny Sekka (Dr. Benjamin Kyle)
• Jeff Conaway (Security Chief Zack Allan)
• Stephen Furst (Vir Cotto)
• Tim Choate (Zathras)
• Robin Sachs (Satai Hedronn and Warleader Na’Kal)

Making a new Babylon 5 TV movie or series not involving any of these characters (almost all of whom survive to far beyond the lifespan of the series) would be logistically difficult, if not impossible.

Why not just remaster the original show in HD to introduce it to a new audience?

This has been mooted several times but it is particularly challenging for Babylon 5 due to the sheer volume of CGI (computer-generated imagery) used in the show. All of this CG was rendered in standard definition only and mastered on video, so it would need to be re-rendered from scratch. This includes not only every space scene, but every composite scene, every scene with weapons fire, every scene with the characters on a virtual set and every scene with a CG creature. A conservative estimate has it that Babylon 5 had approximately three times as many scenes involving a CG or effects element as Star Trek: The Next Generation, despite having 68 fewer episodes to work with.

This makes putting Babylon 5 through a HD remaster prohibitively expensive. Another conservative estimate of the process is that it would cost between $30 million and $40 million, twice what ST:TNG cost to go through the same process, and ST:TNG struggled to make a profit on its remastering despite being the most-watched and most popular space opera TV show ever made (which is why a HD remastering of Deep Space Nine and Voyager has not taken place yet).

In addition, Babylon 5 had production restrictions when it was made which might make remastering it less feasible: many of the sets were made out of wood and painted to look like plastic or metal, and the limitations of this would show up more in HD. In addition, all of the viewscreens in the show are actual CRT monitors, and of course it’s not possible to “fix” those without invoking time travel, otherwise you’d have pristine HD images of people looking at fuzzy viewscreens.

B5 was also digitally upscaled (a little) for the DVD release and running the DVDs through a Blu-Ray player (which upscales them further) results in a very fine, good-quality (almost 720p, but of course nowhere near 1080p) image that looks pretty damn sharp. The quality decreases whenever effects scenes take place, but the non-effects footage already looks perfectly decent. The whole show being shot in widescreen has already helped it age better than many of its contemporaries, which have had to run through hoops to be converted to widescreen (like Buffy and The X-Files) or it’s simply been impossible to render them in widescreen in the first place (ST:TNG).

Okay, so is anyone interested in doing a remake or reboot?

Yes. Warner Brothers has said they consider Babylon 5 to be a valuable franchise to them and it’s certainly in the zone for a remake/reboot. I can imagine Amazon or Netflix being interested in the idea if they proceed, especially if they can keep the budget down to a sane level (which is what led to Sense8’s cancellation). J. Michael Straczynski also said a few years ago he had plans for a Babylon 5 reboot movie before he started work on Sense8 with the Wachowskis. Both projects appear to have stalled – and never got beyond idle musings at Warner Brothers – but I imagine behind-the-scenes discussions on the idea take place on a regular basis.

One thing holding back the idea is that, at this point, Straczynski seems to favour a movie over a TV series. As he notes in this interview, he’s already made the TV show once and it was an extremely stressful and time-consuming process. So, making a film as an alternate (and presumably much more concise) way of telling that story is understandable. However, most B5 fans, I suspect, want to see a version of the story unfolding over the long-term, as that’s what Babylon 5 was most successful at. Reducing 80½ hours of storytelling into maybe three or four coherent movies would be extremely challenging.

The result of this appears to be a logjam: Warner Brothers are at least open to the idea of doing a new Babylon 5 series but seem to be reluctant to proceed without Straczynski’s involvement due to the fan blowback they’d likely receive. Straczynski seems more interested in the possibility of a feature film, which Warner Brothers don’t seem to be as interested in. If this logjam can be cleared, progress could be made on a new project.

Answer: A Babylon 5 remake or reboot seems inevitable at this point and there is interest from all quarters (studio, creator, fans), it just depends on the creative personnel having an alignment of vision and agreeing on a project that is acceptable to all of them.

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Happy 20th Birthday to BABYLON 5

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the American SF TV show Babylon 5. Its pilot episode, The Gathering, aired on 22 February 1993, with the first season proper following eleven months later. Never a mass break-out hit, Babylon 5 remained on-air for five seasons and 110 episodes (plus 4 TV movies and a straight-to-DVD movie), not to mention generating a spin-off called Crusade that lasted half a season before being cancelled and a pilot for a second spin-off that never went to series. Not too bad for a show that, even today, most people have never even heard of.

Some of the regular cast of Babylon 5 in its first season: Jerry Doyle as Security Chief Michael Garibaldi, Peter Jurasik as Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari (with the hair), Claudia Christian as Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova, Mira Furlan as Minbari Ambassador Delenn, Andrea Thompson as Talia Winters, Andreas Katsulas as Narn Ambassador G'Kar and Richard Biggs as Dr. Stephen Franklin, with Michael O'Hare as Commander Jeffrey Sinclair (seated).

Babylon 5 is noted for its structure. The series is arranged like a series of books, with each season having its own name (Signs and Portents, The Coming of Shadows, Point of No Return, No Surrender, No Retreat and The Wheel of Fire), title sequence and musical score. Each season acts as a movement in the traditional five-act structure of a story: introduction, rising action, climax, resolution, aftermath. This gives the entire series a sense of tremendous narrative momentum. Creator/showrunner/head writer Joe Michael Straczynski also layered a number of mysteries into the backstory of the series, giving fans something to discuss and theorise about online (B5 was easily the first show to make significant use of the Internet in building its fan community). However, he also explained and resolved these mysteries long before the end of the show, avoiding the problem of overloading the series resolution with too many elements to support (and in doing so avoided the pitfalls which made the endings to later serialised shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica so problematic).

The show is also notable for its case of extremely well-drawn characters, all of whom have significant backstories, and how they evolve over the course of the series. Babylon 5 was very much the TV equivalent of A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones in that regard (and, interestingly, Straczynski namechecks George R.R. Martin as an inspiration in an article for Foundation magazine in early 1995, though this was for his earlier work as A Game of Thrones didn't come out until Babylon 5's third season was already over), though Straczynski was moderately less ruthless with his characters. The casting was excellent, and in particular gave long-standing Hollywood supporting actors like Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas some meaty, solid roles to get their teeth into. The show was also praised for its still-impressive (if rather low-res by today's standards) CGI graphics, which allowed the show to have the most visually impressive space battles since the Star Wars trilogy on a tiny budget.

In terms of overall quality, Babylon 5 was conceptually bold and, at its best, was complex and satisfying, with multiple character arcs interweaving around one another and the main storylines of the series in a manner that was occasionally awesome. This was all accomplished at the same time that Straczynski also pursued a number of important thematic elements, as well as bringing in elements of realism to the setting (which was considerably more dystopian than Star Trek's). Babylon 5 was the first space-based SF show to comprehensively explore such issues as religious fundamentalism, substance abuse, alcoholism and political censorship. Other elements were not so lucky, with an examination of gender identification (via a male character - played by a woman in makeup - who would have become female in the second season and then pursued a relationship with the lead character of the show) torpedoed by the technology not being up to the job. A planned lesbian relationship between two lead characters was also ditched when one of the actresses involved left the show.

Unfortunately, whilst Babylon 5 at its best was easily the finest show on TV at the time, at its worst it stunk like weeks-old cheese. Unusually, the fans and writers were in agreement over the weakest shows of the series, and in several cases Straczynski even warned fans that that week's episode might be a bit sub-par ahead of time. This unusual honesty was refreshing, though notably it lessened as the series went along (with the near-unwatchable first half of the fifth season being defended to the hilt by the production team). The show certainly took a while to build its reputation, with the first season being 'variable' in quality and only becoming reliably good in its second year. Even then, good episodes could be let down by the odd jarring line or recycled plot element (the 'assassin/bomber loose on the station' storyline got a bit old after a while), whilst the show's production values were always only a bit above 'acceptable' (though what B5 achieved on a tiny budget was always impressive). Also, the show had a major problem with doing funny comedy episodes, with the show always falling flat on its face when it attempted it (the fact that the two funniest episodes were written by Peter David, not Straczynski, is rather telling).

Babylon 5 was flawed then, but somehow it's strengths shine all the more brightly because of its flaws. It hasn't aged brilliantly, but it's still a show that's worth watching now for its great performances (especially from Andreas Katsulas, Peter Jurasik and Mira Furlan), still-impressively-constructed central story arc and its formidable worldbuilding, not to mention some of the best spacecraft designs and space battles ever seen in the genre.

A Narn heavy cruiser parked alongside Babylon 5 in the episode Walkabout.

Conception and Genesis

Babylon 5 was conceived as a 'novel for television', a pre-planned story with a beginning, middle and end. That story was the creation of Joe Michael Straczynski, an experienced Hollywood scriptwriter who'd worked on series such as He-Man, The Real Ghostbusters, The Twilight Zone, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future and Murder, She Wrote before becoming executive producer and co-showrunner on B5.

Straczynski conceived of the show in 1987. A huge fan of authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert and TV shows like Star Trek, Blake's 7, Doctor Who and The Prisoner, he'd previously been working on two separate SF projects. The first was a small-scale, personal show set on a space station and focusing on characters. The second was a big, epic story told on a huge canvas. One day - whilst in the shower according to Straczynski - he hit on the idea of combining the two into a single show, with the potentially ruinously expensive big story told through the (much more affordable) lens of the space station setting. Originally he planned two five-year shows, Babylon 5 and its immediate sequel, Babylon Prime, but whilst working on the show's first season realised this was over-ambitious and conflated the two into a single, five-year storyline.

Straczynski's pre-planning and recruitment of respected producer Douglas Netter allowed Babylon 5 to be presented to studio execs with detailed costings, which suggested the show could be made for not much more than half of the budget of the then-on-air Star Trek: The Next Generation. Key to this plan was for the show's special effects to be completely computer-generated, eschewing the then-standard expensive and time-consuming use of motion-controlled cameras and models. Early CGI pioneer Ron Thornton (himself a veteran of British series such as Blake's 7, for which he built spaceship models in the final season) used a Commodore Amiga computer equipped with a Video Toaster plug-in card to produce an impressive image of the Babylon 5 space station orbiting a planet which wowed execs. However, most were still wary of the show, believing that there was only room for one space opera franchise on TV and that was Star Trek. Paramount themselves turned down the project in 1989 (the source of Straczynski's later grumbles when the superficially-similar Deep Space Nine was announced two years later).

In 1991, Warner Brothers agreed to develop Babylon 5 as a TV pilot. Straczynski was surprised: during the pitching session, he shattered one of his teeth and got through the rest of the session slightly spaced out on painkillers and ice. But Warner Brothers liked the idea and got behind the show with enthusiasm. SFF magazines, keen to see a non-Star Trek show on the air, also gave the project plenty of early coverage. Even computer magazines leap aboard, thrilled at seeing affordable home computers (the Amiga was huge around 1989-94, especially in Europe) being used to generate special effects for a Hollywood production. All of this enthusiasm was nearly wasted when Warner Brothers wobbled upon hearing that Deep Space Nine was in development, but they held the course and got the pilot onto the screens.

Their faith was rewarded: Babylon 5's pilot pulled in impressive ratings, got favourable reviews and sold gangbusters when it was released on VHS and LaserDisc for rental and sale a few months later. A first season was commissioned, which started airing in January 1994, with some modest cast changes (and impressive upgrades in CGI hardware). The final episode aired on 25 November 1998.

Happy 25th Birthday to BABYLON 5

Twenty-five years ago today, the pilot episode of Babylon 5 aired on US television for the first time. It was the culmination of five years of hard work, as I have detailed here.

Babylon 5 was an important and influential TV show. It was the first network American TV series to have a detailed, pre-planned, multi-year story arc. It eschewed the normal format of episodic television to deliver an epic, massive saga, told over five years and 110 stories that cumulatively tell one story with a beginning, a middle and an end. Although several writers contributed to the show - including veterans of the original 1960s Star Trek and even Neil Gaiman - it was largely the work of one man, J. Michael Straczynski, who wrote 91 of the 110 episodes (including the entire third and fourth seasons), plus the pilot and a further six TV movies. It certainly wasn't auteur television but in terms of being the creative vision of one showrunner who was responsible for the direction of the series, it helped consolidate a trend (previously hinted at by Stephen Bochco and David Lynch) that is in full flow in television culture today.

Babylon 5 is the story of the titular space station, a five-mile-long trade hub and diplomatic gathering place functioning as an interstellar United Nations. Five major powers - the Earth Alliance, Centauri Republic, Narn Regime, Minbari Federation and Vorlon Empire - and two dozen or so lesser ones (the League of Non-aligned Worlds) have come together to help keep the peace and facilitate interstellar commerce and diplomacy. It's revealed early on that the human race and the Minbari fought a devastating war that ended with the Minbari battle fleet closing in on a barely-defended Earth, only to mysteriously abandon the campaign and leave. It's regarded as an act of mercy by a more powerful and advanced race towards a lesser one...apart from by the station commander, Jeffrey Sinclair, who has no memory of the final 24 hours of the war, and was bizarrely chosen to command the station over a dozen more experienced officers.

Over the course of the first season, the show focused on crisis-of-the-week storylines, such as the station dockers going on strike after Earth refuses to pay for more advanced and safer equipment after a horrendous accident kills several workers, and also on a series of longer-running mysteries. Sinclair's missing memories (which gradually start to return) is the most prominent of these, but there are also the military provocations by the resurgent and belligerent Narn Regime against their former conquerors, the Centauri, which infuriate the proud Centauri Ambassador, Londo, whose constant plans to stymie the Narn are frustrated by what he considers to be a cowardly government...until he is offered a deal with the devil that rapidly spirals out of control. Other storylines are more mundane, such as Security Chief Garibaldi's constant struggles to stay sober and first officer Ivanova's constantly painful family and love life. In Season 2 the show unexpectedly has the Babylon Project's mission of peace ending as two of the major powers go to war, manipulated by shadowy forces behind the scenes. Later seasons see the outbreak of a massive galaxy-spanning conflict, with the station's crew going from bureaucrats and pen-pushers to big damn heroes, doing whatever it takes to make sure they and their homeworlds survive.

Babylon 5 is unapologetically big, brash and fun space opera, but layered inside it are many other stories, some of them comic, some of them desperately tragic. The cast of characters (regular and recurring) is huge, most of them well-played and given often joyously brilliant dialogue to play around with. Babylon 5 can also be a satire, particularly of the American Dream and how easy it is for democracy to be subverted into fascism. Babylon 5 is also a great tribute to many other works of science fiction, name-checking authors like Isaac Asimov and Alfred Bester and employing Harlan Ellison, David Gerrold and Neil Gaiman directly as writers. Babylon 5 is noteworthy for winning the Hugo Award for Dramatic Presentation twice, back-to-back, at a time when the award was still given to both TV shows and movies.

Babylon 5 also broke the mould in its ground-breaking use of CGI for visual effects, being way ahead of the curve in the use of computers to do what only models had done up to that point. It was also influential in how it was shot and filmed on an incredibly tight budget, becoming one of the most critically-acclaimed SF shows on-air despite having a budget roughly one-third that of the Star Trek series airing at the same time.

Babylon 5 was far from perfect. There are quite a few weak episodes, most of them in the first and fifth seasons, and there were frequently cheesy lines or slightly awkward exposition scenes. Several times the carefully-planned storyline was thrown for a loop by an actor quitting the show unexpectedly, leading to some course-correcting. But each time, Straczynski and his team righted the boat and got the show back on course.

The influence of the show is tremendous. Joss Whedon watched and enjoyed the show, and made the character of Xander on his Buffy the Vampire Slayer series a Babylon 5 fan (he even had the collector's plates!), as well as drawing on some of the show's structural ideas for his own shows. Firefly's use of actual Newtonian physics in space can also be seen as a nod to B5, which pioneered the idea. Damon Lindelof was also a big fan, citing Babylon 5 as a major structural influence on Lost. George R.R. Martin, an old sparring partner of Straczynski's from the SF convention scene, was an appreciator of the show. Daniel Abraham drew on the show for ideas for his Dagger and the Coin fantasy series (which also mixes politics, military action and economics alongside the return of an ancient, spider-like force). The Wachowskis were also big fans of the show, and later worked with Straczynski on the Netflix series Sense8.

Happy 25th Birthday, Babylon 5. Possibly no other series - book or TV - has had such an important impact on myself and my appreciation for writing and scriptwriting. It may also hold a special place in the pantheon of TV series, even today in the so-called "Golden Age of Television." There are shows since B5 aired that had better effects and better individual episode scripts but none (maybe excepting - and maybe only excepting - The Wire) have executed a multi-season, multi-character storyline on such a scale anywhere near as successfully. For that reason, it is a show that must be respected and given its due.

Just a reminder that I am also currently engaged in the great Babylon 5 Rewatch Project, which is approaching the end of Season 4.

Warner Brothers turn down BABYLON 5 model starship collection

This broke in January, so isn't new news, but had flown under my radar until now. Back in January, the team at Eaglemoss who handle their starship model collections - Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Aliens and others - confirmed that they had been in communications with Warner Brothers about starting a Babylon 5 collection, only to be rebuffed.

Apparently Warner Brothers' response was that Babylon 5 is currently an inactive franchise. However, this doesn't mean that they're not interested in generating licences, it's just that to do so Warners would have to assemble a licencing team for the property and those people would have to know about the show so as to be able to exert quality control over any tie-in products. This might not be worth it for one project which had no guarantee of long-term success (the head of Eaglemoss expands on this in the episode "Ship Shape" here at 1 hour and 1 minute).

The same excuse was used some years ago when Big Finish Audio, who make Doctor Who and Blake's 7 audio dramas, approached Warner Brothers to make full-cast audio plays with some of the original actors from Babylon 5 and were turned down. 

Understandable from a business perspective, but disappointing. Eaglemoss's models are pretty good value for money and reasonably good in quality; not as great as the best model kits, of course, but then you're paying triple the price and you have to assemble and paint them yourselves. The currently have 312 ships in their Star Trek collection, spanning all eras of the show (from The Original Series through Picard, with Lower Decks on the horizon and even catering for things like ships from Star Trek Online). They currently have 20 models in their Battlestar Galactica collection, spanning both the original 1978 show and the 2003-09 reboot (note that their BSG collection has a buy one, get one half-price currently going on for today only), with more planned, despite a relatively small number of ships being available in that franchise. They've even managed to put together ten ships to form an Aliens/Predator collection, with more figurines and statues available.

Babylon 5 has many dozens of ships that could make it into such a collection, including the titular Babylon 5 station, the Starfury fighter and capital ships such as the Omega-class destroyer, Sharlin-class warcruiser and Primus-class battlecruiser. Babylon 5 models have been available in the past, such as a Starfury fighter and a B5 station released by Revell in the late 1990s and a line of metal miniatures from the Babylon 5 Wars game from Agents of Gaming and Mongoose Publishing's A Call to Arms miniatures wargame in the early 2000s. There was also a line of small Micro Machines toys released in the late 1990s. However, based on the quality of their Star Trek and BSG lines, an Eaglemoss line would be superior in size and quality.

Warner Brothers have continued to treat Babylon 5 in a lukewarm fashion recently, resisting calls to release an upscaled version of the show for Blu-Ray, whilst sending mixed messages on the chances of a reboot or more comprehensive remaster. Babylon 5 is a relatively obscure property compared to Star Trek or Star Wars, but it has made WB over half a billion dollars in profit since its inception in 1993, which is nothing to sneeze at, and the show retains a loyal fanbase who'd snap up such a collection eagerly.

Warner Brothers considering HD update for BABYLON 5

George Feltenstein, Senior Vice-President for Theatrical Catalogue Marketing at Warner Brothers (translation: he's one of the guys in charge of the DVD and Blu-Ray department) has recently confirmed that the company are actively looking into the possibility of re-releasing Babylon 5 on Blu-Ray. Feltenstein acknowledged that this would be expensive and possibly impractical, but that the B5 fanbase is large enough to warrant making the effort.

"Babylon 5 is an extraordinarily important franchise to all of Warner Brothers. So much so that it is of course very much on the minds at everybody at Warner home video, and bringing Babylon 5 to a next generation shall we say, is very much on the minds of everyone involved. The fact that the show was post produced on video tape and FX were done on video tape makes bringing another iteration a very expensive proposition. But it is being discussed in the highest of quarters."

"There might be hope, but there is nothing to report that’s a fact. Lets just say that the powers that be are very smart and they know the fan desire is out there."

Babylon 5 aired 110 episodes (and seven TV movies, including the pilot) between 1993 and 1998, with additional TV movies being made in 2001 and 2007, as well as a short-lived spin-off series called Crusade which ran for 13 episodes in 1999. Though it enjoyed solid ratings for most of its run, Babylon 5 was never the ratings juggernaut that the various Star Trek shows were. However, its critical acclaim was immense, often eclipsing that of its contemporary Star Trek shows. It won two back-to-back Hugo Awards in 1996 and 1997, as well as various Emmies for its cutting-edge CGI effects work. The original series was released on DVD in 2003 and 2004 and according to some sources has made over $500 million in worldwide sales for Warner Brothers.

Like most US TV shows of the time, Babylon 5 was recorded on film but mastered - having special effects, music and sound effects added - on video tape. Video tape cannot be upscaled to high-definition resolution, preventing the show from being upscaled as-is and released on Blu-Ray. Instead, the only way to upscale the entire show is to go back to the original film elements, extract a HD image and then re-edit each episode from scratch. Whilst the original audio tracks can be re-used, the special effects would also all have to be remade from scratch and edited back in. In the case of Babylon 5, which sometimes had 100 CGI shots per episode, this would be extremely expensive and time-consuming.

However, last year CBS began re-releasing Star Trek: The Next Generation on Blu-Ray and put the show through this extremely laborious process. Each season takes over four months (and closer to six for the first couple) and $9 million to bring up to scratch. The Blu-Ray re-releases have been extremely successful and wildly acclaimed, and some of the same personnel are now allegedly working on a similar Blu-Ray re-release for The X-Files for next year, whilst the ST:TNG team is rumoured to be moving straight onto Deep Space Nine (which has many more CGI shots) once TNG is completed early next year. Warner Brothers have certainly been monitoring the situation and the sales to judge whether it is worthwhile to pursue a similar process for Babylon 5.

The viability of this plan would depend on the original film stock having been stored in good conditions. According to rumour, the Babylon 5 pilot episode's film has been damaged in storage, initially by flooding and later by rats getting into the facility. The status of the rest of the show is not known. If it has all been stored, then upgrading the show's live action scenes to HD will be relatively quick and easy. More complex are the CGI scenes and composite scenes (scenes mixing live action and CGI, including every time a PPG weapon is fired), which would need to be completely redone from scratch. The cost of this may be too much to be practical. Still, it's encouraging to know that WB are at least looking into the matter.

BABYLON 5 reboot in development with J. Michael Straczynski in charge

It's been rumoured and discussed many times over the years, but something is now officially happening: a Babylon 5 reboot is in the planning stages with original creator and writer J. Michael Straczynski attached.

The new project is being helmed by the CW, although reportedly the show will retain a similar sensibility to the original and will not skew younger, as a lot of their content does. The show will open with Earthforce officer John Sheridan being assigned to Babylon 5, a massive space station serving as a diplomatic exchange and trade hub. Simultaneously with his arrival, an exploratory Earth mission inadvertently triggers a conflict with a more advanced alien civilisation, threatening humanity and several other races.

So far, this is only a development announcement and the show has not yet been greenlit to series or a pilot stage. It is unclear if any of Babylon 5's other creative forces are involved, such as fellow executive producer John Copeland, composer Christopher Franke or the visual effects team, or if any of the actors from the original series such as Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Patricia Tallman, Peter Jurasik or Bill Mumy may return in new roles.

A reboot was considered the more likely form for the show to take, due to the deaths of so many original series actors (including Michael O'Hare, Jerry Doyle, Richard Biggs, Mira Furlan, Andreas Katsulas and Stephen Furst) making a sequel series unlikely. The original show is also considered a cult success without the familiarity of, say, a Star Trek or Star Wars, making a reboot of the original story more viable.

The original incarnation of Babylon 5 debuted in 1993 with a TV movie called The Gathering. Five seasons followed, totalling 110 episodes (with Straczynski writing 93 episodes in total), along with four TV movies and a spin-off series, Crusade, which ran for one season. Straczynski later penned a potential pilot for a second spin-off, Legends of the Rangers, and a straight-to-DVD movie in 2007 called Babylon 5: The Lost Tales. Warner Brothers expressed an interest in developing more content, but Straczynski bailed out of the project due to a lack of budget and interest in developing a spin-off feature film he'd penned. The franchise also extended to tabletop roleplaying games, miniatures wargames and a line of novels.

Babylon 5 won two Hugo Awards during its time on air and attracted immense acclaim for its heavily serialised, pre-planned story arc at a time when most TV shows were still episodic. Babylon 5's structure and storytelling ambitions inspired other writers, including Damon Lindelof, Joss Whedon and the Wachowskis, whilst Ronald D. Moore consulted with Straczynski during the development of his take on Battlestar Galactica. Babylon 5's epic story and meticulous worldbuilding drew on sources such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury and British SFF shows Blake's 7, The Prisoner and Doctor Who for inspiration, as well as the original Star Trek (Straczynski tapped a number of writers from the original Star Trek to work on the show in its first season). The show also won numerous awards for its cutting-edge (for the time) digital effects, which paved the way for CGI dominate the TV visual effects industry.

Warner Brothers recently released a high definition remaster of the original series on streaming services worldwide. Although the live action footage looks vastly superior, the CGI is variably upscaled.

Straczynski's star has risen since Babylon 5, with him penning multiple successful comic books, developing the story for the 2011 Thor movie (as well as cameoing in the film), being nominated for an Oscar for his script for the 2008 movie Changeling and co-writing the Netflix series Sense8 with the Wachowskis. Straczynski recently released a well-received autobiography, Becoming Superman, and a new novel called Together We Will Go. He also recently completed the editing of his friend Harlan Ellison's fifty-year-gestating short story anthology The Last Dangerous Visions, which is expected for publication next year.

This is a promising development, although fans will likely be concerned that the CW is developing the property rather than HBO or HBO Max, which could perhaps give the series the resources and exposure it deserves. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

BABYLON 5 Rewatch: Season 4, Episodes 7-8

D7: Epiphanies

Airdates: 10 February 1997 (US), 4 September 1997 (UK)

Written by J. Michael Straczynski

Directed by John C. Flinn III

Cast: Bester (Walter Koenig), Minister Virini (Damian London), Psi Corps Official (Victor Lundin), Earth Alliance Pilot (Robert Patteri), News Anchor (Lauren Sanchez)

Date: 27-31 January 2261.

Plot:    The Shadow War is over and a great celebration is held on Babylon 5. Just as Sheridan starts relaxing for the first time in six months, events take a turn for the sinister back on Earth. In the Psi Corps Building in Earthdome, Bester is summoned to a meeting with a high-ranking member of the Psi Corps bureaucracy. He is told that something has seriously rattled President Clark and he wants Babylon 5 shut down as soon as possible. To this end Clark has launched a four-pronged plan involving the Psi Corps, the Ministry of Peace, Earthforce and Nightwatch to discredit the station. Bester leaves for Babylon 5 soon after. Meanwhile, ISN reports that the Earth Alliance Senate has imposed a blockade on all Earth Alliance jump gates leading to Babylon 5. From this time forwards all trade and cargo shipments to Babylon 5 are prohibited.

Garibaldi receives a transmission in his quarters, but the transmission is just a patch of swirling colours. Garibaldi, almost as if hypnotised, deletes all trace of the message. He then goes to see Sheridan and the command staff and tells them that he no longer feels able to do his job as Security Chief properly. Now the Shadows are defeated, what next? They can’t go home, they can’t wage war on their own people and Garibaldi doesn’t feel like staying on as Security Chief until he dies of old age. He resigns, telling them he plans to set up his own private investigations firm to help out people who lost belongings and lost other people during the war. Zack Allan is promoted to the rank of Security Chief in his stead.

Bester arrives on Babylon 5 and immediately alerts the crew to Clark’s plans. Bester thinks the abrupt departure of the Shadows has seriously undermined Clark’s confidence and he wants Babylon 5 neutralised before it can move against him. He tells them that in a few hours a Black Omega Psi Corps squadron will attack and destroy the Earthforce patrol guarding the jump gate in Sector 49. Babylon 5 will be framed for the attack and its credibility seriously undermined. In return for this information Bester wants Sheridan to take him to Z’ha’dum to see if the Shadows have left behind any technology that might be useful in saving Carolyn and the other telepaths ‘altered’ by the Shadows. Ivanova takes a Starfury squadron from Babylon 5 to intercept the Black Omegas and successfully destroys the Psi Corps squadron, much to the bemusement of the Earthforce patrol who are under attack.

The White Star 2 arrives at Z’ha’dum but detects activity at the local jump gate. They see a large fleet of alien ships passing through the gate, but are far to away to positively ID the ships. They realise they are seeing the Shadows’ allies leaving with whatever technology they have ransacked from their former masters. Moments later the entire planet starts to break apart. The White Star 2 manages to just get away before Z’ha’dum explodes with tremendous force. They return to Babylon 5 and a thwarted Bester heads back to Earth, pausing only to check on Carolyn’s cryo-freezer. Later, Sheridan confronts Lyta Alexander and points out that the timing of the evacuation was a bit too convenient and that, theoretically, a telepath altered by the Vorlons might have been able to send a warning to the Shadows’ allies about Bester’s impending arrival. Lyta agrees that is possible, but also points out that such a telepath would have to have good reasons, such as not wanting Shadow technology to fall into Psi Corps’ hands, working under hidden Vorlon orders or simply hating Bester and thwarting him in whatever he tries to do. Sheridan is annoyed that she went around him, even though he accepts her reasoning. Zack later arrives to help her sort out her belongings, now she’s allowed to have some following the Vorlons’ departure.

Londo and G’Kar return to Babylon 5 separately. G’Kar’s wounded eye is treated by Dr. Franklin who agrees that it should be possible to replace it with a prosthetic. Londo has left a Centauri minister loyal to the memory of Turhan as Regent until the Centaurum can select a new Emperor. G’Kar refuses to speak to Londo and tells him they no longer exist in the same universe.

Back on Centauri Prime, the Regent awakens in the night from a horrible dream. He looks down at his shoulder and sees a parasitic, one-eyed alien attached to it...

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

SF&F Questions: Did Deep Space Nine rip off Babylon 5?

In our latest SF&F Question we address one of the biggest controversies in the history of science fiction television: did Star Trek: Deep Space Nine rip off its contemporary and "rival"space station show Babylon 5?

The Basics

Deep Space Nine was the second spin-off television series based on Star Trek. It ran for seven seasons and 178 episodes, debuting on 3 January 1993 and concluding on 2 June 1999.

Babylon 5 was an original science fiction television series which ran for five seasons and 110 episodes, along with an additional six TV movies and its own spin-off show which ran for half a season. It debuted on 22 February 1993 with a stand-alone pilot movie. Season 1 proper debuted on 26 January 1994 and the show concluded on 25 November 1998.

Both shows are set on enormous space stations, which the series is named after. Deep Space Nine is set on a space station near the planet Bajor, which is recovering from forty years of military occupation by the ruthless Cardassian Union. The United Federation of Planets and its space exploration wing, Starfleet, are called in to help run the station and advise the Bajorans on the rebuilding of their world.

Babylon 5's space station (which is considerably larger than DS9) is a sort-of United Nations in space, where representatives from five major governments and dozens of smaller ones meet to discuss important interstellar affairs. The impetus to build the station came from a devastating war between the Earth Alliance and Minbari Federation that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands and destabilised the galaxy.

The contention, made directly by Babylon 5's creator and executive producer J. Michael Straczynski at the time, was that Deep Space Nine had ripped off Babylon 5's concepts and ideas, from the broad idea of setting the show on a space station to some specific elements such as having a shapeshifting character (the Minbari assassin in B5's pilot was originally an actual shapeshifting alien) and the presence of an interstellar "gateway" near the station (the wormhole in DS9's case, the jump gate in B5's case).

Wait, Babylon 5 started after DS9. How can it have ripped it off?

It's true that DS9 aired its pilot episode, Emissary, six weeks before B5 aired its pilot, The Gathering, and took a lot longer to get its first season proper on air. In fact, DS9 was halfway through its second season before B5 could begin airing its first. However, this does not tell the full story of the two shows' development; Babylon 5 was created, conceived and outlined almost five years before DS9 was commissioned.

J. Michael Straczynski came up with the idea for Babylon 5 in 1986 or 1987; he seeded a mention of the name into Final Stand, one of his episodes for Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, which aired on 4 October 1987. He developed the Babylon 5 series bible around this time and wrote a pilot script (an early but still-recognisable version of The Gathering), plus a full set of 22 episode outlines for a full season of the show. Concept artist Peter Ledger also provided paintings of the titular space station and its crew. This package was shopped around CBS, ABC and HBO in 1988 to no avail.

In early 1989 Straczynski and his prospective production partners, Douglas Netter and John Copeland, received a boost when they met Evan Thompson, the head of a group of local stations called Chris Craft. Syndication - where a show is sold direct to lots of local TV stations rather than one of the big national networks - was experiencing a renaissance thanks to the success of Paramount Television's Star Trek: The Next Generation (which had launched in September 1987) and Chris Craft was interested in lining up a new show for the syndication market. Babylon 5 fit the bill, they felt, and they hoped a new science fiction show would do similar numbers to Star Trek for them.
To this end Thompson took the Babylon 5 project directly to Paramount Television. He presented them with the pilot script, the 22 additional episode outlines, the outline of a serialised five-year story arc and the detailed production notes which suggested that the show could be made for less money than TNG. Paramount sat on the notes for about eight to nine months and the producers he spoke to were enthusiastic about the project, but Paramount's senior management felt that having a second science fiction/space opera show set in a completely different universe would be too confusing and would cannibalise the Star Trek audience. By the end of 1989 they had formally passed on the B5 project and Thompson was given back the notes, scripts and outlines.

Eventually Babylon 5 found a home at Warner Brothers and their new Prime-Time Entertainment Network (PTEN), an alliance of syndicated stations. The show was formerly announced as being in development in the summer of `1991. Two months later, Paramount Television announced that they were developing a spin-off from Star Trek: The Next Generation, called Star Trek: Deep Space IX (later changed to Deep Space Nine after too many people wrote in asking what a "Deep Space Ix" was) that would be set on a large space station. Straczynski was not slow in calling foul and reminding people that Paramount had had the story notes for Babylon 5 for almost a year and could have cribbed whatever notes that'd wanted from them.

Okay, that sounds pretty plausible actually. So what is Paramount's side of the story?

Paramount's side of the story is pretty straightforward: they themselves didn't come up with the basic notion of DS9. Instead it came in with a new executive to the network who did not have prior access to any internal documents related to the 1989 Babylon 5 proposal.

Backtracking a little: despite risible critical notices, the first two seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation had done gangbusters for Paramount in terms of ratings and therefore advertising profitability. With the third season of TNG, including its epic Borg cliffhanger episode, The Best of Both Worlds, improving the show's critical and commercial success, they wanted to exploit this by developing more shows in the same setting. However, executive producers Rick Berman and Michael Pillar weren't sure how to approach this and, with TNG being a time-consuming show, they put these ideas on the backburner.

The situation changed in 1991. Brandon Tartikoff, one of the most feted and respected television executives in Hollywood, had departed NBC after fourteen years. During his time at the network he had displayed a canny eye for gauging what would work and what wouldn't, making such far-reaching decisions as renewing Cheers and Seinfeld even after the first few seasons of each show brought in terrible ratings and being rewarded when they both became the biggest shows on television. He was also involved in the creation of The Cosby Show, Miami Vice and The Golden Girls, all of which became immense successes despite Hollywood wisdom being set against them.
Tartikoff was asked to join Paramount Television, which was in the doldrums and needed some firing up. Tartikoff accepted the job and arrived in the post of chairman with one firm idea already in place: a new Star Trek television series. One of his first actions was to summon Berman and Piller to his office (they were terrified that he was going to cancel TNG) and presented them with a concept he'd already developed: if the original Star Trek series and TNG were both "Wagon Train to the stars" - a reference to a 1957-65 Western TV show about pioneers exploring the American West - than he wanted the new show to be "The Rifleman in space", a reference to a 1958-63 TV series focusing on a widowed sheriff trying to keep the peace in a fractious frontier town whilst also raising his young son. The new Star Trek show would therefore not be set on a starship but a starbase, one of the planetary bases frequently visited in both Star Trek series, and the show would deal with the problems of being stationary in possibly hostile surroundings rather than being able to roar off at the end of each week's adventure.

Piller and Berman ran with the idea - possibly a bit more literally than Tartikoff had expected - by proposing that a Starfleet base had been set up on a planet recently under hostile alien occupation, with a newly-widowed Starfleet officer assigned to command the base with his son. The officer's wife had been killed by the Borg in the Battle of Wolf 359 and he was suffering issues related to that event. They decided the occupying aliens would be the Cardassians - introduced in the then-recently-aired TNG episode The Wounded - and created the planet Bajor and its spiritual inhabitants as the planet in question. They also mused on using a stable wormhole (an idea introduced in Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979 and further expanded on in the TNG episode The Price, which had aired in November 1989) as a way of revitalising Bajor's economy and introducing strife with the Cardassians, who'd abandoned the planet before the wormhole was discovered.

However, they ran into problems just a couple of weeks later when costing the show. One of the appeals of doing the project was having regular location filming to make the show feel less claustrophobic than TNG and give it a very different look. The problem is that regular location filming would have meant either almost doubling the budget beyond TNG (at that point already the most expensive TV show on the air) or spending many episodes indoors without going outside, which seemed pointless. They decided that moving the show onto a space station made more sense: starbases were established as also being space stations in the original show and having the show set in space would allow for the exploration and space battles that viewers had come to expect. It also allowed them to have outings to other planets (Bajor or new worlds in the Gamma Quadrant beyond the wormhole) or stay on the station as budgets required. Indeed, the show's first official announcement poster indicated they would be using the already-established Spacedock design from the movie Star Trek III for the space station, but they later decided that using a Cardassian station would be more interesting.

Paramount's defences to the charge of ripping off Babylon 5, therefore, are that 1) the person who came up with the basic idea of DS9 hadn't been working at Paramount previously and arrived with the concept already in place before he'd seen any documents; 2) the B5 documents were all returned to Evan Thompson before 1989 was over and no copies were made (and indeed, it would been legally dubious to do so); 3) the original concept was for a planetary base and was only moved to a space station for budgetary reasons; and 4) that many of the concepts used in DS9, including the wormhole and even the original space station design, predated B5's original genesis by years.

More common sense arguments can also be made: a space opera TV show is going to be either set on a spaceship, a space station or a planet, and with Star Trek already having a starship-set show on the air and with the planet option eliminated by budgetary requirements, a space station was the only setting left.

Right. So what about the shapeshifting alien?

Straczynski's original 1987 The Gathering draft had a shapeshifting alien trying to kill Ambassador Kosh and being defeated. Visual effects limitations would have required this alien to have shifted form with some kind of blurry effect or even off-screen. It should be noted that this alien was only ever intended to appear in the pilot episode.

Deep Space Nine, on the other hand, was pretty much ordered by Paramount to include a shapeshifting alien to cash in on the craze for "morphing". This CG technology had been pioneered by the 1988 movie The Abyss by James Cameron but had exploded in the public consciousness with Cameron's film Terminator 2: Judgement Day, released in July 1991. The T-1000 android's ability to shift shape was accomplished by cutting-edge computer technology and it led to an insane craze for both TV shows and films to use the same software (as well as music videos, such as Michael Jackson's "Black or White"). Paramount wanted a shapeshifting alien as a regular character on DS9 to cash in on this craze, not because an unused TV outline from two years earlier had such a character as a one-off villain.

Okay, that sounds pretty convincing from their perspective. So why is this explanation not more widely known?

J. Michael Straczynski was a pioneer in the use of the Internet for discussing his work and his TV shows: he was sitting on chat groups as early as 1990 talking about the series. Most people in the United States didn't even know what the Internet was until circa 1995 and the Star Trek team were slow to start using the Internet as a means of communicating with fans. As a result, the full story of the creation of Deep Space Nine and Brandon Tartikoff's involvement was not publicly known until the publication of The Deep Space Nine Companion in 2000. Tartikoff himself passed away in 1997 and Michael Piller in 2005, so neither are still with us to comment on the situation. On the other hand, Straczynski was discussing it loudly and publicly from 1991 onwards, so his version of events became dominant in the media.

It should be noted that, many years later, Straczynski also withdrew his suggestion that DS9 ripped off B5, saying that he did not believe Rick Berman nor Michael Piller (whom Straczynski knew) would knowingly rip off another writer's material. He left open the idea that a Paramount executive may have "steered" some discussion with material from his notes, but no evidence for this has ever been produced.

Okay, but did the shows have an impact on one another during production and transmission?

This is clearer. For example, the Cardassians were supposed to have a clandestine intelligence agency known as the "Grey Order", introduced in Season 2 of DS9. One of the production staff pointed out that Babylon 5 had a "Grey Council" (the rulers of the Minbari Federation) and the Cardassian name was changed to "Obsidian Order" to avoid any confusion.

Ron Thornton, the creator of Babylon 5's cutting-edge CGI, also claimed in 1996 that the introduction of the White Star (a warship the B5 crew could use to get around in) was directly inspired by the introduction of the USS Defiant on DS9 a full year earlier, a claim furiously denied by Straczynski who pointed out that the show simply needed a ship bigger than the standard fighters and shuttles to take the fight to the enemy. It should be noted that the relationship between B5's producers and its CGI team at Foundation Imaging was breaking down at this point, so it's unclear if Thornton's comment was meant seriously or in jest (and Ron Thornton passed away in 2016, making it difficult to clarify further).

The acrimony between the two shows resulted in furious flame wars between their respective fandoms on the Internet, becoming notable enough that Straczynski dialled down his criticisms of DS9. This thawing of tensions may have also been down to the fact that Straczynski was good friends with Jeri Taylor, executive producer on Star Trek: Voyager, and wanted to cool things down. To this end he also convinced Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (Number One, Nurse Chapel, Lwaxana Troi and various Federation computer voices on multiple Star Trek shows) to guest star on Babylon 5 during its third season.

Answer: Deep Space Nine did not rip off Babylon 5, despite the fortuitous timing and some very superficial surface similarities which do not withstand detailed scrutiny. A spin-off from the very successful Next Generation was a natural progression for the franchise and a space station setting was a logical extrapolation once a planetary setting was ruled out. There is also no evidence Paramount made (highly unethical, if not illegal) copies of the B5 notes or passed these onto the DS9 producers, and the charge was later withdrawn by B5's executive producer.

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