Is Babylon 5 dead as a property?

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I was looking through an old PC Gamer mag the other night and they had a preview for the Babylon 5 space sim that would let you fly Star Furies in a game like X-Wing/TIE Fighter. I forgot about it so I looked it up and it said it was only months from release before cancelled. That led to another site talking about how that for some inexplicable reason the property just winked out (one blamed Star Wars, which I don't believe). Yeah the B5 story was tied up, but the universe is awesome and the writing was arguably better than anything ST came up with in that period (despite ST not having one cohesive story line). It was ripe for merchandising, but except for a couple of models, some patches, and some PC entertainment things (encyclopedia and desktop sounds) nothing was done with it. There was talk of doing a movie, but at this point a lot of the major actors have passed away so it would be hard to do now. It just seems like JMS gave up on it.

 

[Apollo]

B-5 was no "deep space franchise" that's for sure!

 

[edge10]

Is the Pope Catholic?

I loved B5 but the 5th season was week. If memory serves, Crusade left me cold.

I think it just ran it's course.

 

[SmilingOtter]

I loved the show, but it seems pretty much dead. There was one "Babylon Tales" DVD they came out with two short stories, supposedly it was going to be an ongoing thing, but nothing ever came of it. There was the really bad "Legends of the Rangers" which, luckily, didn't make it past the pilot. It made B5's pilot look like gold by comparison.

I remember the simulator, and I couldn't wait to see it in action. The controls would have been interesting, though, since heading and facing wouldn't have to be the same thing.

 

[Solo4114]

There are a few reasons, I think, why B5 didn't really go anywhere.

1. Screwups with filming. The F/X shots are, unfortunately, never, ever going to improve. If anything, they'll look worse and worse over time. That's because, while the show was shot in HD, the F/X shots were never preserved in HD format. Only in SD. Meaning that, when you see a CG shot of a ship with a window through which our characters are talking, that shot will ALWAYS look like crap, because the only material we have is the SD combined shot. There are no HD elements. This means that basically selling the show on any format other than DVD is pretty much impossible because there's no effective way to upscale to modern resolutions. So, right there, you're cutting off the franchise at the knees, because you have no way to push the main show after the DVD era.

2. Very limited exposure. The show was on, I believe, the PTEN, which was produced by WB, but was not shopped around that well. It ended up on TNT for a while in the early 2000s, but after that...it basically disappeared. It's not on in reruns anywhere. Again, I think a lot of this has to do with point #1. Why would a station buy a show when the composite F/X shots are gonna look like crap on an HDTV? simply put: they won't. They'll get, like, BSG, or remastered Star Trek, or whatever.

3. Extremely weak sequel/spinoff material. The original show is terrific. I gather that the original show is the ONLY terrific aspect of the franchise. Crusade was garbage, Legend of the Rangers (which I think was supposed to be a pilot for another show) went nowhere. Lost Tales or whatever didn't really go beyond, like, 2-3 films. So, again,

4. The Curse. Many of the original actors have died since the show wrapped. Richard Biggs, Michael O'Hare, Jerry Doyle, Adreas Katsulas, and Jeff Conaway are all dead. That basically means that any kind of reunion show is a no-go, and you lack the ability to springboard new material with old characters.

5. It was just never really that widely popular. It was its own brand. For whatever flaws one might claim it has, the Trek franchise is a MUCH stronger brand with MANY more years of goodwill behind it. B5 had, arguably, 3 really enjoyed seasons, and two fair-to-middling ones (1st and 5th), and a bunch of mediocre material otherwise.



Bottom line: it's a cult sci-fi show. A very, very niche audience. So, yeah, it's dead.

That said, there IS a space combat sim game out there. http://ifhgame.ru/main/info.php

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I've played that sim years ago. It's like someone tried to make flying a Starfury as complex as possible. They tried to make you handle everything, when in a real, I imagine, Starfury some functions would be automated. You wouldn't have to individually fiddle with each thruster manually to maneuver. Wing Commander 3 did a much better job of pulling the rotating in place and firing behind you maneuver.

The problem with exposure, IMO, was due to people thinking that it was a ripoff of DS9. That's what I thought when it came on. It was just so much better than DS9. DS9 feels like an empty space station in comparison.

 

[Apollo]

Another big problem when it aired was its schedule it's mid season break was to long imo and some cities could'nt get it.

It did have a VERY die-hard following though and I tried as well as others to get the Trek fans to watch it.

 

[mash3d]

There are a few reasons, I think, why B5 didn't really go anywhere.

1. Screwups with filming. The F/X shots are, unfortunately, never, ever going to improve. If anything, they'll look worse and worse over time. That's because, while the show was shot in HD, the F/X shots were never preserved in HD format. Only in SD. Meaning that, when you see a CG shot of a ship with a window through which our characters are talking, that shot will ALWAYS look like crap, because the only material we have is the SD combined shot. There are no HD elements. This means that basically selling the show on any format other than DVD is pretty much impossible because there's no effective way to upscale to modern resolutions. So, right there, you're cutting off the franchise at the knees, because you have no way to push the main show after the DVD era.

In case any one is curious as to what happened and why.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5
"While the series was in pre-production, studios were looking at ways for their existing shows to make the transition from the then-standard 4:3 aspect ratio to the widescreen formats that would accompany the next generation of televisions. After visitingWarner Bros., who were stretching the horizontal interval for an episode of Lois & Clark, producer John Copeland convinced them to allow Babylon 5 to be shot on Super 35mm film stock. "The idea being that we would telecine to 4:3 for the original broadcast of the series. But what it also gave us was a negative that had been shot for the new 16×9 widescreen-format televisions that we knew were on the horizon."[113]The widescreen conversion thing was executive short sightedness at its finest!!! We offered to do ALL ofBabylon 5 in widescreen mode if Warner Bros would buy us a reference monitor so we could check our output. (only $5000 at the time) Ken Parkes (the "Business affairs" guy) and Netter (penny wise, but pound foolish) said no! So we did everything so it could be CROPPED to be widescreen! Each blamed the other by the way. Doug Netter said, "Ken Parkes said no". Ken Parkes said, "Doug Netter said no". SHEESH!!! So for $75 an episode they could have had AWESOME near Hi-Def.

— Ron Thornton, 2008[114]
Though the CGI scenes, and those containing live action combined with digital elements, could have been created in a suitable widescreen format, a cost-saving decision was taken to produce them in the 4:3 aspect ratio. The intention was to then crop the top and bottom of the images, and upscale the resolution for any future widescreen release or broadcast. In 2000, when the show was transferred to widescreen for airing on the Sci-Fi Channel prior to its eventual DVD release, the plan was not followed, as John Copeland recalls: "They did another video hack, and simply used a digital post production device like a DVE (Digital Video Effects) to blow the material up. They essentially stretched it approximately 1/3 to fill the larger aspect ratio."[113]
The scenes containing live action ready to be composited with matte paintings, CGI animation, etc., were delivered on tape already telecined to the 4:3 aspect-ratio, and contained a high level of grain, which resulted in further image noise being present when enlarged and stretched for widescreen.[115] For the purely live-action scenes, rather than using the film negatives, "Warners had even forgotten that they had those. They used PAL versions and converted them to NTSC for the US market. They actually didn't go back and retransfer the shows."[116]
With the resulting aliasing, and the progressive scan transfer of the video to DVD, this has created a number of visual flaws throughout the widescreen release. In particular, quality has been noted to drop significantly in composite shots"


I knew I should have grabbed the master tapes and B5 art work when Netter Digtal was going down :/
Wonder where all that stuff is now?

 

[SethS]

JMS is up to a lot of things at once. He never stops working. That means sometimes you don't hear stuff-- but as recently as a few months back he was still talking about a reboot B5 movie.

Personally, I think if B5 had a real budget and FX that didn't come out of a Boris screen saver, people would have given it more of a chance and seen how great the writing was.

 

[Solo4114]

Last I heard...it's just gone. There's nothing left of it. All we have at this point is the stuff that made the DVDs.

I watched the DVDs originally on my old 4:3 CRT 26" TV. It was GREAT! Then years later, when I got a true 16:9 1080P plasma, I started rewatching.

For the most part, my blu-ray player's upscaling tech managed pretty well. The live action stuff is fine. Nowhere near as good as a true bluray/HD source, but pretty good for a DVD. But the composite shots? Those look like GARBAGE. If you've seen, for example, the 2006 "Bonus Disc" versions of the Star Wars OT, it's like that. You're dealing with, basically, the kind of image you'd get with a 4:3 letterboxed format that you tried to stretch to fill your screen. Or, put another way, it looks like -- if you were watching a streaming feed -- all of a sudden your ISP started throttling your bandwidth or your router had an aneurysm.

- - - Updated - - -

JMS is up to a lot of things at once. He never stops working. That means sometimes you don't hear stuff-- but as recently as a few months back he was still talking about a reboot B5 movie.

Personally, I think if B5 had a real budget and FX that didn't come out of a Boris screen saver, people would have given it more of a chance and seen how great the writing was.

I think the writing...well, these days, the writing would be seen as hokey. It's very, very "Good vs. Evil." I mean, I love it. Don't get me wrong. But I think modern audiences wouldn't sit for it. It's too...earnest. Personally, I don't think it's corny, but I could see where other people would. That said, the overall structure of the story is fantastic and, I think, could be rebooted effectively with a slightly more modern take on how the core sentiments are expressed.

 

[SethS]

Oh I agree-- it's on the nose, but very fitting for the time. But structurally, with the ins and outs of the plotting, how things were called back to and delivered upon was masterful. It's cause of B5 that I called BS on shows like Lost. B5 shows if you have a plan it can be pretty awesome.