BABYLON 5 to leave Amazon Prime next week

Babylon 5, one of the greatest SF shows of all time, is leaving its current streaming home on Amazon next week.

Babylon 5 has not had a regular streaming home, being bounced from service to service for several years. It landed on Amazon Prime in June 2018, but after eighteen months it will leave the service on 31 January. Where it will land next is unclear, but it's long-term home will likely be Warner Media's new streaming platform, HBO Max, which is due to launch in May this year.

If you haven't checked out Babylon 5 yet, it may be too late to do so unless you can cram 110 episodes into seven days. The show remains available on DVD.

Gratuitous Lists: Ten Shows That Should Be Rebooted

We live in the age of reboots. It feels like we can’t go a week or three without someone announcing a remake of a beloved, older property. From Ghostbusters (twice!) to Gremlins to Charmed to a third iteration of Battlestar Galactica, reboots are all the rage, many of them unnecessary or premature. 

But what about franchises that have been left fallow which should be rebooted, where a new version would be welcome because the original is very old, or because it was cancelled ahead of time, or because it never got enough recognition in its time? Here are ten shows which I think could rise again and be done interestingly.

Note that by the term reboot, I mean "a relaunch of an older franchise in a new form." This can be either a continuation of the original series but in a new viewer-friendly format – such as the 2005 Doctor Who and 2017 Star Trek “reboots,” and Sam Esmail’s recently-announced Battlestar relaunch – or a complete, from scratch remake of the original, such as Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica or the recent version of Charmed. Or even the rare franchise which attempts both (such as, arguably, J.J. Abrams’ 2009 take on Star Trek).

Space: Above and Beyond

Originally airing for just a single season in 1995-96, this space opera series focused on the Wildcards, the 58th Squadron of the United States Marine Corps Space Aviator Cavalry, as they engaged in warfare with the alien “Chigs.” Set in 2063, the series depicts a human race who is on the ropes, their extrasolar colonies destroyed and their fleets forced back to the Solar system. It also doesn’t help that humanity also has an ambiguous relationship with the Silicates, humanoid artificial intelligences who have rebelled against their creators, and “In Vitroes,” genetically-engineered humans grown in tanks to help fight both the Silicates and the Chigs.

Space: Above and Beyond wears its influences on its sleeves – particularly the Wing Commander video game series – and, it has to be said, left much to be desired in terms of writing, acting and worldbuilding, particularly the fact that the main characters are simultaneously both elite fighter pilots and experienced ground combat troops. But there are some very good ideas in the show, with the murky three-way relationship between the humans, Silicates and “tanks” providing some interesting drama and contrasted against the alien invaders. Coming from some of the same creative team as The X-Files, the show also started exploring murky conspiracies which added some interesting depth to the show just before it ended on a huge cliffhanger. You’re also not going to forget the appearance of David Duchovny as an android pool shark in a hurry.

Some may feel that the revamped Battlestar Galactica has rendered a Space: Above and Beyond reboot pointless, as that show had a far superior grip on the nuances of space fighter pilots and where the desperate premise gave a better grounding for the idea of the pilots as multi-purpose troops, but there’s something interesting of the purity of a show which focuses so much on humans versus aliens, but has some added complexity to spice things up.

Ultraviolet

This Channel 4 mini-series aired in 1998 to immense critical acclaim and limited viewing figures, but has enjoyed a cult audience to this very day for several reasons. One of them is that it provided the first major role for Idris Elba, who plays supporting character Vaughn. Another is that it took the slightly barmy premise – vampires are real and such a threat to society that a secret government taskforce has spend decades hunting them – and treated it with earnest seriousness. The result is something that feels closer to The X-Files or a spy thriller than a traditional horror series or Buffy, with fantastic writing and direction from Joe Ahearne.

The cast was exceptional, with a pre-Pirates of the Caribbean Jack Davenport and a pre-True Blood Stephen Moyer leading a spectacular roster also including Elba, Susannah Harker and the fantastic Philip Quast (as the morally ambiguous leader of the taskforce), and with the vampires treated more like a disease or force of nature than forces of handsome temptation…at least until the last two episodes, which do much to make the premise and the nature of the enemy more questionable. An attempted American reboot of the show in 2000 failed to go beyond a pilot, although it did introduce Elba to American casting producers and set the scene for his casting in The Wire two years later.

This feels particularly ripe for a reboot. We’ve had a whole string of slightly campy and funny vampire shows in the last decade or so, but nothing with the menacing energy and total conviction that Ultraviolet had, and it’d be interesting to see it go beyond the first season into the more apocalyptic tone the series seemed to be setting up at the end.

Firefly

I mean, no list like this is going to be remotely complete without at least mentioning the great “missed opportunity” of 2000s space operas, Firefly. Joss Whedon’s much-admired (if thematically-challenged; why are we rooting for the Space Confederates again?) space western lasted only 14 episodes in 2002 before Fox managed to kill it through a combination of corporate politics and inept scheduling, but immense DVD sales saw it brought back as the moderately successful movie Serenity in 2005. Comics, a roleplaying game and a very successful board game have kept the name alive, with both Fox and several streaming services saying they’d be happy to consider a new iteration of the series.

Whedon himself is busy at HBO with a new project, The Nevers, and most of the cast is in demand elsewhere, so this is probably off the cards for a few more years, but it’d be interesting to revisit the ‘Verse. A remake seems unnecessary, given that the original cast was mostly pretty young when they made it (Jewel Staite and Summer Glau are still only in their 30s, Morena Baccarin only recently turned 40), so a relaunch sent 15-20 years after the events of Serenity with a presumably very different ‘Verse in play would be the way to go, perhaps a “getting the crew back together” story when a new threat arises. Moreso than a lot of the shows on this list, there's unfinished business here.

American Gothic

No, not the weak-arsed 2016 show, but the terrifying semi-supernatural drama which aired for one, memorable season in 1995-96. Created and written by Shaun Cassidy, produced by Sam Raimi and starring a frankly disturbing Gary Cole (keen to fight back against his “cuddly dude” image from Midnight Caller), who may or may not be the devil, or a servant of the same, American Gothic was a glorious mash-up of Southern Americana and Stephen King on steroids.

Cole played Sheriff Lucas Buck, the seemingly easy-going sheriff of Trinity, South Carolina who collects favours from the townsfolk in return for his help, and then collects in a brutal and often-unexpected fashion. As the season continues, the serialised story evolves into a war for the soul of Caleb Temple (Lucas Black), a young orphan boy with unusual powers. Buck tempts him towards evil, but reporter Gail Emory (Paige Turco) and Dr. Matt Crower (Jake Weber) try to keep him on the side of good. The townsfolk find themselves caught up in the struggle, which starts as a slow-burning, subtle struggle before becoming more apocalyptic as the season goes on.

Way ahead of its time, some of American Gothic’s Southern-drenched horror atmosphere resurfaced in HBO’s True Blood, although that show arguably overdid the camp and humour to negate much of the dramatic impact of the premise. If someone brought back American Gothic with just the right tone, this could be a huge hit.

Dark Skies

As The X-Files ground its way through the 1990s and it became increasingly clear that the writers were making stuff upon the fly with no pre-planning, fans began to wonder what would happen if it had been written by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, famed for his mastery of foreshadowing and setting up plot points years ahead of time to make a much more cohesive storyline.

Dark Skies attempted to answer that question. Written by occasional Straczynski collaborator Bryce Zabel (along with Brent Friedman), the show had a pre-planned five-season arc that was going to unfold across decades. The first season spans almost a full ten years, from 1961 to 1969, and focuses on FBI agent John Loengard (Eric Close) and his wife Kimberly Sayers (Megan Ward) as they uncover evidence that the Roswell incident was real, and the beginning of a clandestine alien attack on Earth by the so-called “Greys.” Top-secret US agency Majestic-12 was formed to fight against the alien invaders, led by Frank Bach (a magnificent J.T. Walsh), but the long war has made the organisation ruthless and paranoid, trampling over civil rights and the Constitution.

As the season progressed, it pitted Loengard and Sayers against the aliens, their possessed human slaves and into an ambiguous relationship with Majestic-12, sometimes as allies and sometimes as enemies. Halfway through the season there was something of a rejig of the premise, with Kimberly being taken over the aliens and it being revealed that the Greys are just a front, with the real enemy being a parasitic species called the Ganglions, who have taken control of most of the Greys and use them as slaves. Towards the end of the season there was also an unexpected alliance formed between Majestic-12 and its Russian counterpart, with Juliet Stuart (a pre-Voyager Jeri Ryan) joining the team as a liaison, and the intriguing hint that the Cold War was actually just a feint created by the US and Soviet governments to believe that humanity was weaker than it really was.

The plan for future seasons was fascinating, with the second season expected to cover the period 1970-76, the third season 1977-86 and the fourth season in 1987-99, culminating with a full-scale Ganglion invasion. The fifth season, set in real-time (2000-01) would have depicted the fight back against the invaders. Obviously, these never happened.

With its rich period detail and a much greater sense of narrative direction than The X-Files, it’s a shame that the show was dismissed as just a knock-off. A remake of the same premise now would be extremely interesting.

Babylon 5
Speaking of Babylon 5, it’s entirely possible that J. Michael Straczynski’s own magnum opus, which aired five seasons from 1993 to 1998, could be due a reassessment. With its complex, rich five-year storyline and its cast of impressive, flawed protagonists, Babylon 5 certainly felt at least twenty years ahead of its time and was seriously underrated during its time on the air.

Some may argue that remaking Babylon 5 is redundant: the show completed its storyline (unlike most of the shows mentioned here) and aired 110 episodes, seven TV movies and half a season of a spin-off before wrapping up. B5 has also been influential on the current run of space operas, particularly The Expanse (Daniel Abraham has acknowledged his huge love of the show). But whilst that’s true, it’s also true that getting modern audiences to watch the original series is increasingly difficult. There’s no sign that Warner Brothers are interested in a HD remaster, and in many respects the show has not aged as well as it might have done. The first and last seasons are both very rough, and the guest cast could be particularly ropey. The original cast was, of course, fantastic but a sadly astonishing number have passed away very young, making a sequel series or continuation almost impossible to consider.

At its heart Babylon 5 was an epic space opera custom-designed for the small screen. A reboot handled in the right, respectful way (with Straczynski’s involvement and reusing the original cast in new roles where appropriate) could become the Game of Thrones of science fiction (and it’s worth nothing that George R.R. Martin was a huge fan of Babylon 5). Unfortunately, it sounds like Warner Brothers are not interested in the idea, at least for now.

Macross/Robotech

Back in 1982, Studio Nue and Shōji Kawamori created a hugely influential animated show: Super Dimension Fortress Macross. The show depicted an alien spacecraft crash-landing on Earth in the South Pacific, alerting the planet (then on the cusp of a Third World War) of the existence of possibly hostile alien life. Humanity rebuilt the starship, the Super Dimensional Fortress (or SDF-1), but when they reactivated the hyperdrive, they gave away the ship’s position to the Zentraedi, who were searching for it. After a pitched battle, the SDF-1’s hyperdrive misfired, delivering it (and 70,000 refugees from a nearby island) to the orbit of Pluto. With the hyperdrive apparently burned out, the ship had to head back to Earth on normal rocket power, which took two years.

During this period the crew fought numerous battles with the Zentraedi, who wanted to capture the ship intact and thus were constantly fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. The story featured both soap-opera-ish developments among the humans of the SDF-1 and within the Zentraedi fleet, as well as epic battles and huge revelations about the nature of the fortress, humanity and the aliens. A final pitched battle sees Earth mostly destroyed and the surviving humans and Zentraedi forced to work together to survive in the aftermath.

In 1985 the series was bought by Harmony Gold in the USA, but they deemed it too short for syndication. It was combined with two other unrelated-but-similar-looking shows (Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber Mospeada) to create a whole new show, Robotech. Drawing mostly on the Macross material for its backstory, Robotech expands the storyline to some thirty years after the original series, giving the Zentraedi a new master race (the Robotech Masters) and their own nemeses (the Invid) and exploring further conflicts with these two races. There was also an aborted spin-off, The Sentinels, depicting the original Macross characters taking the fight into space (and explaining their absence from the other series).

Macross itself also gained a large number of spin-off series in Japan, including the non-canonical Macross II, the prequel series Macross Zero and various sequels, including Macross Plus, Macross 7 and Macross Delta. Due to legal disputes between the Japanese companies and Harmony Gold, these latter series have not been released in the west. However, thanks to a new deal signed between the companies in 2019, there are plans to perhaps remedy this.

Both Macross and Robotech have their hardcore fans, and of course modern anime fans consider it sacrilege to rewrite and re-edit original Japanese material, so any reboot of the series would likely be contentious, whether it was a redoing of Macross or Robotech. But given Netflix’s success with relaunching Voltron and given the end of the long-running legal dispute between the US and Japanese creators, this project must be on their radar. With the much-mooted live-action version of Robotech apparently on the backburner (having gone through two directors in rapid succession), it might be time to see the SDF-1 and its crew back on the small screen again.

Rome

HBO’s epic retelling of the story of the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire to replace it was one of the most lavish TV shows ever made, with colossal sets, rich costuming and fantastic casting. It feels very much like a practice run for Game of Thrones, sharing a lot of DNA with the latter show in terms of brutal writing, graphic violence and, if anything, even more sex.

It was also short and curtailed. HBO aired two seasons in 2005 and 2007, but were left high and dry when the BBC bailed on cofunding a third season. HBO panicked at the show’s huge budget and dropped it, only to later recant after huge DVD sales and increased viewing figures through the second season’s run. By the time HBO felt ready to remount it, the moment had passed and the in-demand cast (including Kevin McKidd, James Purefoy and Polly Walker) had scattered to numerous other projects.

There are various options for a rebooting of the show. One idea might be to simply remake the original with a new cast (and perhaps a bit more fidelity to actual history, such as using Clodia rather than Atia and depicting the Battle of Philippi as the complex, multi-week campaign it really was), since the stories of Julius Caesar, Augustus, Mark Antony and Cleopatra are of course timeless.

A more interesting idea might be to pursue the notion that HBO themselves had five or six years ago which never took off. The original Rome was going to have a time-jump in the fourth season to the time of Jesus, with the descendants of Timon (Atia’s Jewish hatchet-man in the original show) playing a key role in events. However, after the show was cancelled HBO instead considered a fresh adaptation of Robert Graves’ I, Claudius and Claudius the God, previously adapted as a prestige BBC mini-series in the 1970s. Using the Rome sets (most of which are still standing in Italy, although some were damaged by fire in 2007), the story could be rejigged as a Rome sequel, with many characters returning in their later years of life.

UFO

In 1970, Gerry Anderson was best-known as the creator of a series of puppet shows for kids with insanely elaborate production views: Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (among many others). UFO was his first live-action project, combining real actors with his trademark elaborate sets and visual effects, courtesy of the late, great Derek Meddings.

UFO remains an outlier among Anderson’s work. It was adult, strange, paranoid, dark, grim and occasionally barking mad. If Anderson’s other shows (excepting maybe Captain Scarlet) reflected the colourful, optimistic tone of the 1960s, UFO reflected the dark side, musing on drug abuse, the PTSD of war and the paranoia that comes from fighting a secret war against an alien infiltration force.

The premise is that Earth is under attack by alien forces. Under great secrecy, an international organisation named SHADO (Supreme Headquarters, Alien Defence Organisation) is established to defend the planet. The defence network consists of Interceptors, space fighters launched from Earth’s moon; Skydiver, a sub-launched aerial combat craft; and rapid-response ground troops deployed from APCs. The series mostly follows operations from SHADO HQ (hidden under a film studio), where Colonel Straker (Ed Bishop) masterminds the fight against the aliens. Other characters include Colonel Foster (Michael Billington), SHADO’s newest recruit; Lt. Ellis (Gabrielle Drake), Moonbase commander; Colonel Freeman (George Sewell), SHADO’s second in command; Colonel Lake (Wanda Ventham), SHADO’s computer specialist; and Captain Carlin (Peter Gordeno), the principle Skydiver pilot.

If this all sounds a bit familiar, this may be because Julian Gollop “borrowed” elements of the premise for his 1993 video game UFO: Enemy Unknown (released as X-COM: UFO Defense in the US), which kick-started the X-COM video game franchise. This series was relaunched in 2012 with a new game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and continues today.

UFO was way ahead of its time in being dark, rather pitiless in how it killed off characters and rather realistic in how characters were promoted, reassigned or fired, with the cast moving around a lot in roles in a mere 26 episodes. As the show drew to a close, there were interesting revelations about the nature of the aliens and hints that some of the aliens wanted peace. A modern reboot of the show could be very interesting. 

Blake’s 7

At the top of almost every SF fan’s wishlist for a show to be rebooted is Blake’s 7. Created by Doctor Who writer (and creator of the Daleks) Terry Nation, the show ran for four seasons on the BBC in 1978-81. At its height it was – briefly – the biggest show on UK television, even defeating the super-popular soap opera Coronation Street in a ratings war (albeit for the series finale). This was remarkable given that Blake’s 7 was an unabashed, low-budget space opera, complete with wobbly plastic spaceships, even more wobbly sets and rudimentary visual effects.

What made Blake’s 7 work was its utter ruthlessness. The show started off with idealistic crusader Roj Blake (Gareth Thomas) and amoral computer genius Kerr Avon (Paul Darrow) joining forces after being imprisoned by the totalitarian Terran Federation, a blatantly evil version of Star Trek’s Federation (to the unsubtle extent of the Federation’s symbol being the Star Trek symbol turned all the way to the extreme right). Avon and Blake escape with a motley crew of criminals and chancers, find an advanced alien starship called the Liberator and then embark on a war of retribution against the Federation. So far, so Robin Hood.

However, the show had no truck with black and white hats and clearly-drawn lines of good and evil. Blake starts off as a hero, but becomes morally compromised as he becomes more and more willing to accept civilian casualties as “justified” in the battle to pull down the Federation. At a key moment in the series, he is asked if he can accept the hundreds of thousands and probably many millions of deaths that will result from destroying the Federation’s central control computer on Earth, disrupting food and water supplies. Blake says, rather quickly, yes, “because it’s the only way I’ll know I was right.” The moral lines become even more confused when a hostile alien race from Andromeda invades the Federation at the end of Season 2, forcing Blake into an alliance of convenience with his enemies to ensure that humanity is not just wiped out altogether.

In Season 3, Blake disappears and Avon takes control of the Liberator. Initially planning to use the ship for his own selfish ends, Avon constantly finds himself drawn into idealistic struggles and loses his own sense of identity, becoming a hero against his better instincts and loathing himself for it, as he knows he is a fraud. By Season 4, Avon is clearly suffering from paranoia and possibly a personality disorder as he can no longer determine his own motivations. The series ended with what is arguably still the most shocking finale of all time, as the entire regular cast is brutally gunned down by Federation troops, just before Avon – having just murdered a returned Blake after mistaking him for a traitor – makes a futile last stand of his own, leaving his fate ambiguous.

In truth, that finale was more of a happy accident. Another season was planned, which would open with the revelation that the crew had only been stunned and imprisoned, not killed, but the BBC decided to cancel the show on a high, leaving the bloodbath finale as the show’s last word.

Plans for a relaunch have abounded for years, including a Sky One project a few years ago that seemed to fundamentally misunderstand everything about the show and was fortunately abandoned in the planning stages. Many of the relaunch plans revolved around a “next generation” story where a band of new rebels arises, inspired by the legend of Blake and Avon. Paul Darrow would have returned, sometimes in a mentorship role to the new heroes and sometimes as an enemy, having ascended to high office within the Federation. However, the sad passing of Paul Darrow earlier this year seems to have put paid to such talk, making a full remake more likely.

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BABYLON 5 Viewing Order & Chronology

I've covered this before in a few different ways, but I thought it'd be good to put this one to bed by combining two distinct orders for Babylon 5 - the ideal viewing order and the actual chronological order of the episodes - into one post.

All episodes/TV movies are listed in optimal viewing order. I list next to them their chronological dates (where known) so viewers can assemble a chronological date if they really want to.

For the benefit of Amazon Prime viewers, you need to select the pilot episode, The Gathering, from the "Season 1 Bonus Features" at the bottom of the season list, and then watch Episode 1 (Midnight on the Fire Line) afterwards and go from there. The six TV movies and spin-off series Crusade are not yet available on Amazon Prime but apparently are on their way.


Optimal Viewing Order

The Gathering (original pilot movie)

Season 1 in order.*

Season 2 in order apart from making sure A Race Through Dark Places goes before Soul Mates and that Knives goes before In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum, as both Soul Mates and Z'ha'dum depend on character motivations changing due to events in the episode before.

Season 3 in order.**
Season 4 in order.

In the Beginning and Thirdspace (TV movies)

Season 5 in order.

River of Souls and Call to Arms (TV movies)

Crusade in one of the orders listed on the Wiki page. The precise order for Crusade is highly debatable.

Legends of the Rangers and The Lost Tales (TV movies)

Some fans will suggest holding back the final episode of Season 5 proper, Sleeping in Light until after everything else as it is set later and puts the final capstone on the Babylon 5 arc. This is a viable moderation to the viewing order.

Chronological Order of Episodes (spoilers)

This is not a viable viewing order, because the prequel movies and so on spoil events from chronologically later episodes. However, this may be of interest. Confirmed dates - ones given in dialogue, captions or can be inferred by the episode's relationship to episodes with confirmed dates - are given in bold. All other dates are speculative or unknown.

Please note that SPOILERS FOLLOW for new viewers so only click past the jump if you're sure:

BABYLON 5 hits Amazon Prime in the USA

Babylon 5 arrives on Amazon Prime in the United States as of today! You can watch the entire series right now for free if you're an Amazon Prime customer.

There are a few caveats. Amazon Prime's deal only includes the pilot movie, The Gathering, and the five seasons of the show itself. The six other TV movies (In the Beginning, Thirdspace, River of Souls, Call to Arms, Legends of the Rangers and The Lost Tales) are not included at present, although some reports are saying they may be added next month. Spin-off series Crusade is also not included at this time.

Also, awkwardly, Amazon have not placed The Gathering at the start of Season 1. Instead, it's listed under "Bonus Material" at the bottom of the Season 1 list, after the Season 1 finale. You should watch The Gathering first, followed by Midnight on the Firing Line and then on from there.

Babylon 5 is a great show, but it takes a while to really start firing on all cylinders. The early episodes are there to set up the world and characters, and some of them aren't great on their own terms. If you get to Episode 4, Infection, and find it's unwatchably awful, the show's creator agrees with you noting that he occasionally wishes the negatives would fall off a pier somewhere). Season 1 starts really taking off with episodes like The Parliament of Dreams (Episode 5), And the Sky Full of Stars (Episode 8) and Signs and Portents (Episode 13), and the last few episodes of the season are all absolute hum-dingers.

My own episode guide to Babylon 5 starts here and may be of interest (and yes, I need to go back and do Season 5 which can also be hard going).

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.

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.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods, which will also get you exclusive content weeks before it goes live on my blogs. SF&F Questions and The Cities of Fantasy series are debuting on my Patreon feed and you can read them there one month before being published on the Wertzone.

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.

BABYLON 5 Rewatch: Season 4, Episodes 19-20

D19: Between the Darkness and the Light

Airdates: 6 October 1997 (US), 27 November 1997 (UK)

Written by J. Michael Straczynski

Directed by David J. Eagle

Cast: Lt. Eisensen (Marc Gomes), Interrogator (Bruce Gray), Number One (Marjorie Monaghan), Captain James (David Purdham), Felicia (Musetta Vander), Guard (Greg Poland), Evan (J.P. Hubbel), First Guard (James Laing), Assistant (Anneliza Scott)

Date: Approximately 30-31 October 2261.

Plot:    Garibaldi, anxious to rescue Sheridan and start paying back for some the things he did whilst under Psi Corps’ control, attempts to contact the Mars Resistance. He is captured and brought before Number One, who offers Franklin the chance to kill him. Franklin almost agrees, but lets Lyta scan Garibaldi to learn the truth. They discover that he was used by Psi Corps, but is now free of their influence. After convincing Number One into helping them, Lyta, Garibaldi and Franklin set out for the Earthforce prison complex.

On Babylon 5 Delenn and Lennier discover that Londo has called a meeting of the Babylon 5 Advisory Council without informing them. They arrive just as the Narn, Centauri and League worlds unanimously vote to send ships to support Ivanova’s fleet.

The liberation fleet is moving towards the Solar system and successfully defeats the Earthforce destroyers Damocles and Orion in combat. In return for leniency at the war crimes tribunal, one of the captured crewmen reports that some of the ships that have joined Ivanova’s fleet are really still working for Clark and are providing intelligence to Earthforce on their movements. Clark is setting a trap involving some new-model destroyers employing lethal technology. Clark wants to destroy the rebel Earthforce vessels in Ivanova’s fleet to make it look like the liberators are really alien invaders. Ivanova decides to take the White Stars by themselves to intercept and destroy the new vessels before they can attack the Earth ships in the fleet.

Garibaldi, Lyta and Franklin arrive at the prison complex and Garibaldi manages to use his well-publicised face as Sheridan’s captor to get past the outer guards. Lyta uses her telepathic powers to overwhelm the inner guards and they rescue Sheridan from his cell. However, they then have to fight their way back out. With the help of the Resistance, Sheridan is put on a shuttle headed for the liberation fleet.

The White Star forces arrive at the ambush coordinates and encounter a large number of Earthforce destroyers fitted with Shadow technology, namely much improved hull armour and superior weaponry. Full-scale battle erupts and, despite heavy losses, the White Stars emerge triumphant. However, when the last enemy vessel explodes the White Star 2 is crippled and Ivanova severely injured. She and Marcus bail out in a lifepod and the ship explodes.

Sheridan’s shuttle reaches the liberation fleet shortly after Minbari, Narn, Centauri and League warships arrive to support them. He assumes command of the Agamemnon and orders a course set for the Mars colony.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

BABYLON 5 Rewatch: Season 4, Episodes 17-18

D17: The Face of the Enemy

Airdates: 9 June 1997 (US), 13 November 1997 (UK)

Written by J. Michael Straczynski

Directed by Michael Vejar

Cast: William Edgars (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.), Bester (Walter Koenig), Captain Edward MacDougan (Richard Gant), Lise Hampton-Edgars (Denise Gentile), Number One (Marjorie Monaghan), Alison Higgins (Diana Morgan), Captain James (David Purdham), Captain Leo Frank (Ricco Ross), Wade (Mark Schneider), Psi Cop (Harlan Ellison),

Date: Late September or early October 2261.

Plot:    Sheridan’s fleet launches an attack on an Earthforce outpost in an asteroid belt. The defending Earthforce warships, the Hydra and the Delphi, are critically damaged and both surrender after Captain MacDougan of the Vesta confirms that, contrary to ISN and government reports, Sheridan isn’t killing all the Earthforce crew who surrender to him. The EAS Agamemnon, Sheridan’s old command, arrives and Captain James, Sheridan’s former first officer, agrees to swap sides and join Sheridan’s cause.

On Mars Edgars agrees to tell Garibaldi the whole story of his operation in return for Garibaldi’s cooperation in capturing Sheridan. Garibaldi tells Edgars that Sheridan’s father - who has been missing for several months - needs to take a certain kind of drug once every few months to treat an illness he is suffering from. Through the movements of this drug Edgars is able to arrange for Sheridan’s dad to be arrested on Earth. Garibaldi contacts Sheridan on the Agamemnon and tells him that his father is in prison on Mars. Garibaldi has contacts willing to break him out, but only if Sheridan agrees to talk to them face-to-face. Sheridan agrees, despite suspecting a trap, and orders Ivanova to leave Babylon 5 and take command of the fleet in his absence. The Agamemnon has not yet announced its defection and has the latest access codes for getting through the early warning system around the Solar system, so it takes Sheridan to Mars and drops him off in a Thunderbolt. He arrives in a bar to meet with Garibaldi, but Garibaldi knocks him out with a tranquiliser and he is taken into custody by Earthforce personnel.

Back at Edgars’ home, Edgars spills the beans on what is really going on. There is a virus threatening telepaths, but Edgars himself created it. He believes that telepaths are the greatest threat the human race has ever seen and he is determined to remove the threat, for good. The virus is harmless against normal humans, but telepaths die from it. However, his plan is not genocide. The antidote that Garibaldi helped get through B5 Customs must be taken at regular intervals every two weeks or the result is fatal. Edgars plans to use this to keep the telepaths under control. After he leaves, Garibaldi goes into a trance-like state and activates a homing device in his tooth. He then goes to the vac-tube station where Lise tries to talk to him, having overhead some of Edgars’ plans, but Garibaldi tells her to leave. Bester than arrives and scans Garibaldi’s mind to learn Edgar’s intent. He tells Garibaldi that, through the Shadow allies who had infiltrated the Psi Corps (C14), Bester was able to arrange for Garibaldi to be captured when the Shadows surrounded Babylon 5 (C22). Garibaldi was brought to the Psi Corps base on Syria Planum and mentally reprogrammed, his natural tendencies towards paranoia and suspicion massively enhanced. The Psi Corps had long known that someone was planning to move against them, just not who and how. As they hoped, Garibaldi uncovered the conspiracy and now they can move against it. After considering killing Garibaldi, Bester instead removes the mental programming and leaves. A few minutes later Garibaldi wakes up, “normal” once again, and screams as he remembers what has happened to him. He rushes back to Edgars’, but finds Edgars and Wade dead and Lise missing.

Franklin and Lyta arrive on Mars with more than thirty of the frozen telepaths from Babylon 5. Number One dislikes telepaths and isn’t keen on helping them, but Franklin convinces her it is for the greater good. Ivanova takes command of the White Star fleet and, after hearing about Sheridan’s capture, resolves to carry on in his stead. She has standing orders posted that if Garibaldi turns up on Babylon 5, he is to be shot on sight. They proceed to the next target.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

BABYLON 5 Rewatch: Season 4, Episodes 15-16

D15: No Surrender, No Retreat

Airdates: 26 May 1997 (US), 30 October 1997 (UK)

Written by J. Michael Straczynski

Directed by Michael Vejar

Cast: Commander Sandra Levitt (Marcia Mitzman Gaven), Captain Edward MacDougan (Richard Gant), Commander Robert Philby (Neil Bradley), Captain Trevor Hall (Ken Jenkins), Lt. David Corwin (Joshua Cox), Guard (Skip Stellrecht)

Date: 2 September 2261.

Plot:    The White Star fleet arrives at Babylon 5 and Sheridan summons a meeting of the Babylon 5 Advisory Council. In return for the White Stars’ recent defence of their territories against raiders and aliens, he is declaring all the mutual defence treaties between the Earth Alliance and the Narn Regime, Centauri Republic and League of Non-aligned Worlds null and void. He tells them not to get involved in what is to come before asking they each contribute a destroyer-class vessel to the defence of Babylon 5. They agree.

Marcus takes a White Star to an area in hyperspace very close to Proxima III and contacts the rebels. More troops are assaulting the planet and they now think that they will have to surrender in a matter of weeks. Marcus has identified six Omega-class destroyers in orbit: the Heracles, Pollux, Vesta, Juno, Furies and Nemesis. According to the rebels the Heracles and Pollux have fired on civilian vessels, whilst the Vesta and Furies have apparently gone out of their way not to fire on civilians. Sheridan and the rest of the White Star fleet start arriving. They plan to attack in three waves to separate the enemy ships into easily containable groups. The Earthforce fleet begins to disperse to deal with the separate incursions and Captain Hall of the Heracles, commander of the fleet, orders all ships to open fire. However, Captain MacDougan of the Vesta proves reluctant: he used to teach Sheridan at the Earthforce Academy and doesn’t want to fire on him. Commander Philby tries to relieve MacDougan of command but he is overpowered by the bridge crew. MacDougan stands down. The battle is joined and the Furies also refuses to open fire. The Juno jumps out of the system rather than engage the enemy and the Nemesis is crippled by fire from the White Stars and surrenders. The Pollux manages to cripple a White Star, but the vessel crashes into the Pollux and explodes, destroying both ships. The Heracles takes colossal damage, but only surrenders after Commander Levitt relieves Captain Hall of command.

The commanding officers of the four remaining ships meet with Sheridan. Sheridan tells Levitt that the crew of the Heracles are going to have to answer to a war crimes tribunal after this is over, but for now they can decide on their own fate. Levitt decides to take the Heracles to the repair yards at Beta IX and sit out the rest of the war. The Furies will remain and guard Proxima III in case Clark sends another fleet against it. The Nemesis and Vesta both volunteer to join Sheridan’s forces and they are soon joined by other rebel cruisers, including the Alexander. They head for the next target on the way to Earth.

On Babylon 5 G’Kar and Londo decide to issue a joint Narn-Centauri statement approving of Sheridan’s actions. However, Garibaldi grows disgusted at the way Sheridan is handling the situation and leaves Babylon 5 for Mars, planning never to return.

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BABYLON 5 Rewatch: Season 4, Episodes 13-14

D13: Rumours, Bargains and Lies

Airdates: 12 May 1997 (US), 16 October 1997 (UK)

Written by J. Michael Straczynski

Directed by Michael Vejar

Cast: Neroon (John Vickery), Drazi Ambassador (Ron Campbell), Religious Caste #1 (Guy Siner), Religious Caste #2 (Chard Haywood), Brakiri Ambassador (Jonathan Chapman)

Plot: Delenn rendezvouses with the Minbari warcruiser Tukari, a ship controlled by the religious caste. Shai Alyt Neroon of the warrior caste has arrived on board as well. Delenn and Neroon discuss the growing crisis on Minbar – which has now broken out into full civil war – and agree to work together to stop the growing chaos. Some of the religious caste on board, however, believe that Delenn means to surrender to the warrior caste and decide to use poison gas to wipe out all occupants of the ship, including themselves, so the religious caste will keep fighting. When they learn that Delenn and Neroon plan to stop the civil war by cooperating, they panic and try to stop the gas spreading, only to find that Lennier has already dealt with the situation, despite taking some injuries in the process.

Back on Babylon 5 Sheridan sets a series of deceptions in motion, having Marcus and the White Star fleet attack barren asteroids in one sector, having Voice of the Resistance report that nothing of interest happened in that sector and having Londo vehemently deny that White Stars are protecting the borders of Centauri space. Confused, the League ambassadors begin wondering if their borders are under attack by some kind of new, invisible alien force and that Sheridan knows that something is going on and has sent the White Stars to defend Centauri space. They call a meeting of the Babylon 5 Advisory Council (the first in some time) and demand that Sheridan send the White Stars to protect their borders as well. Sheridan agrees, that of course being his plan all along: to get the alien governments to continue their mutual cooperation that began during the Shadow War.

Despite his earlier agreement with Delenn, Neroon leaves the warcruiser in secret at night and flies ahead to Minbar, sending a message to Shai Alyt Shakiri, head of the warrior caste, that the religious caste has fallen for the trap. He now has full access to all of the religious caste plans to defend themselves on Minbar.

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BABYLON 5 Rewatch: Season 4, Episodes 11-12

D11: Lines of Communication

Airdates: 28 April 1997 (US), 2 October 1997 (UK)

Written by J. Michael Straczynski

Directed by John C. Flinn III

Cast: Number One (Marjorie Monaghan), Phillipe (Paolo Seganti), Forell (G.W. Stevens), ISN Reporter (Carolyn Barkin), Emissary (Jean-Luc Martin)

Date: Within a few days of the previous episode.

Plot:    Forell, a member of the Minbari religious caste, arrives on Babylon 5 with disturbing news for Delenn. The Norsai, a peaceful, agrarian race living on the borders of Minbari space, have come under attack from unknown aliens. The Pak’ma’ra are also believed to have suffered raids. Delenn decides to take a taskforce of White Star ships out to investigate.

On Mars a hotel is bombed by elements of the Resistance working without the permission of the high command. Number One disciplines her supporters and Franklin and Marcus meet with the other rebels, offering Babylon 5’s full support. In return the rebels are not to hit civilian targets and are to keep a low profile until a plan for removing Clark and liberating Mars and Proxima III is fully worked out. In return, they will ensure that Mars is given its independence from Earth once President Clark has been removed from office.

The White Star taskforce reaches Norsai space and encounters a group of alien warships. Forell pulls a gun on Delenn and forces the White Stars to follow the alien vessels to their mothership. An alien shuttle docks with the White Star and a strange, humanoid creature who seems to shimmer in and out of existence comes on board. It identifies itself as a Drakh, although it refuses to disclose whether that’s its name or the name of its species (Delenn correctly identifies it as the species). Forell tells Delenn that events on Minbar are spiralling out of control. The warrior caste has evicted the entire population of a mixed-caste city and taken it over for themselves. The Minbari populace had to walk several hundred miles to the nearest city through freezing conditions and more than half of them died, including members of Forell’s family. The warriors are taking more and more power for themselves on Minbar and the religious caste is starting to oppose them. Forell fears that civil war may engulf the Minbari. He has contacted these aliens, the Drakh, and plans to ally them to the religious caste, even though Minbari do not use outsiders to settle inside affairs. Delenn agrees to further talks with the Drakh, but when the Drakh disclose that their homeworld was recently destroyed Lennier becomes disturbed and manages to warn Delenn that the Drakh may be the Shadow servants they saw fleeing Z’ha’dum several months ago (D7). Unfortunately, Forell mentions Delenn’s name, a name the Drakh recognise. Once the Drakh ambassador has returned to his ship the other Drakh fighters target the White Stars with their weapons. Thanks to some impressive manoeuvres the White Stars manage to escape to hyperspace, but Forell is killed in the battle. After effecting minor repairs, the White Stars return to normal space and destroy the Drakh fleet.

Sheridan, increasingly tired of ISN propaganda directed against Babylon 5, begins renovating the War Room with a new idea in mind. He plans to set up a rival news service, “The Voice of the Resistance”, with Ivanova as its main anchor. Ivanova isn’t thrilled about the idea but agrees to take part after her success in updating allied ships on enemy fleet movements during the Shadow War (D4-D5). Delenn arrives back on the station and tells Sheridan that there are troubles on her homeworld. She will be leaving for a while and hopes this time apart will also give Sheridan the resolve to deal with the situation on Earth. They have one last dinner together before she departs for Minbar.

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