Amph For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5 (The Road Home animated film)

A comic series is coming together, too. I'm looking forward to that.

 

I'm ashamed to admit I've never seen any of the TV movies, just the series.

 

I love Babylon 5. The entire arc, the characters, almost everything about it. Great series.

It would be really, really cool if Zoic went and redid all the special effects.

 

I too am a big B5 fan and I love re-watching it for all them little details i missed the first time around.

Such as in the Gathering where Kosh meets (albeit the fake) Sinclair and he greets him as "Entilzar(sp?) Valen" Just a perfect example of how close it ended up being to the original idea despite all the problems they had getting it made.

I love all parts of B5 but my least fave has to be Legand of the Rangers. To me it just got too many things wrong. Suposedly mimbari ships that just don't look at all mimbari. The fact that the rangers would kick someone out for not throwing away his lifer neadlessly. That stuped weapons system. Oh and at then end, where they see B5, Where was Epsilon? Its still good for some parts, I'm just not sure if the good outweiged the bad in this one.

 

I haven't seen any of the movies yet, my friend who has all of the boxed sets doesn't have that one yet.

 

LOST better than B5? I think not T2ndQ.

 

For the past few weeks, I had a very satisfying experience. It's unlike any I had before, and I kinda doubt that I will ever go through anything like it any time soon.

Namely, I had the distinct pleasure of seeing the entire Babylon 5 series back-to-back, starting at "The Gathering" all the way to "Sleeping in the Light". All that, without knowing any sort of spoilers, without knowing where the storyline was heading into, and without knowing who was going to survive and who wasn't.

It was a bloody satisfying experience.


Honestly, I've been quite a bit hyped about it ever since I've finished it, so I hopw you folks won't mind if I pour out my thoughts here, this might be quite long. Feel free to ignore, regardless, but I really have to get it off my chest.

(naturally, the rest of this particular post will have distinct B5 spoilers)

Season 1 started out quite nicely. Although I did get a Star Trek vibe from it at the start, it quickly dissolved when I started to notice neat lil' touches. The episodes seemed to overall fit on their own, and not quite the big arc as I had initially heard of. Naturally, as I would realised later, season 1 is practically about introduction us to the universe, as well as setting things up in various subtle ways. When I started to notice little continuity nods here and there, even minor nods to events that happened prior, I started to get into it. I have to admit that I found the vision that Sinclair got about the destruction of B5 rather haunted me throughout the rest of the seasons.

Overall, I liked quite a few characters, and took a very quick liking to Londo. When I generally mention him, I get the image in my head of him laughing at someone else's expense with a drink in his hand at the casino. That's how I generally liked him. At times, I felt that too much focus was placed on Sinclair, especially when he went into dangerous missions on his own. The rest of the cast seemed solid, aside from Talia Winters, whom felt off for me. Points go out for Morden, whom I found to be genuinely scary.

Generally, the latter episodes got me hooked. Kosh seemed to be more than a simple one-trick joke, something odd was going on with Delenn, I was curious about Morden's 'associates', and events were set in motions on Earth. Babylon 5 had captured my interest, I was along for the ride.


Season 2 is where I started to see what Babylon 5 was all about. The storyarcs began to develop. The Shadows were starting to reveal themselves. A few answers were given, and more questions raised. A new captain introduced, seemingly out of nowhere(which jarred me a bit). And of course, the "The Coming of Shadows" episode. I think that I was strapped in at that point. What had seemed to me to be overall a nice way to have snide comments and a possible plot for a episode storylines became an actual war. And was over surprisingly fast, but had genuine consequences.

At that point, Londo was a marked man. He had the blood of a few thousand aliens on his hands, more would come because of his decisions... frankly, there was no way that he would get a happy end, I was sure of it. And as the latter seasons would show, he would pay dearly. G'Kar evolved to a bit of a likeable character. Sheridan grew on me. Garibaldi was the fun roguish type. More was revealed each episode about the nature of the characters, organisations and the races... things were heating up for one big conflict.

One thing that I liked is how Season 2 ended. Overall, I found the story to get rather dark with little hope at all, until Kosh revealed himself. It genuinely gave a feeling that there was still hope. I mean, the good guys had a bloody angel on their side.


Season 3 is where the build-up was over. The pieces were in place, and by George, they were going to be utilised. The great shadow war started. Earth actually became bad, and Babylon 5 split off from Earth, one twist that really had my head spinning, I completely hadn't expected it to happen. And while it was all happening, a subplot that had been prepared with D

 

I love B5! Now granted, i've only seen the Begining, the Gathering, and the 1st season, but i'm hooked! Its So wonderfully made!

 

Here's a little bit of trivia those of you just getting into B5 may not know: "Sleeping in Light" was actually taped immediately after Season Four as JMS thought thought there would be no fifth season in syndication and JMS wanted to wrap up the series' most crucial points for the fans in the event he couldn't find an avenue for a fifth season. So "Sleeping in Light" was actually meant to be the Fourth Season finalie but was held until the end of Season Five after TNT came in and produce and air season five on their cable station.

Additionally Claudia Christian (Ivanova) left the series amid a messy contract dispute after Season Four. Since Ivanova was supposed to be the Captain of Babylon Five in Season Five, Tracey Scroggins Captain was created at the last minute, hence why the only time we see Ivanova in Season Five is in "Sleeping in Light." Which actually worked out better seeing as they had just killed Marcus off ( ) at the end of Season Four.

 

The2ndQuest

Mmm, truth be told, I have very little interest in learning more about the further exploits of the Babylon 5 season, mostly because of the excellent way things were summarised at the end of Season 4 and 5.

However, I did see "The Beginning" two days ago, which I have to admit was a nice way to go full-circle for me. A nice prequel to show how events got started for everyone. The only real complaint I had is the involvement of the many B5 characters. Of all the Narns out there, G'Kar had to be the one who was doing business with Earth? Of all the Centauri out there, Londo had to be the one who sabotaged a mission, leading to the Earth-Mimbari war to continue? I could understand Sheridan undergoing an important mission, but Franklin and G'Kar joining him on said mission? Granted, it is understandable to have familiar faces, but it still felt kinda off and made the universe seem a bit smaller. I could live with it, mind you.

Those nitpickings aside, I was amazed at how young the characters looked, especially Londo. I take it that this was filmed after Season 5, and the work they did to make the characters look younger was handled bloody well. And despite the fact that I did know how things were going to turn out, some scenes were beautiful. As with the Babylon 5 destruction, I take it that I wasn't the only one who was choked up when the president made her final plea for everyone to hold off the invasion, so only a precious few could escape and live on?

Finally, I liked that Londo was still able to entertain and tell his story right before he died.

DarthReven

Ach, hang in there, and I hope that you won't get to see too many spoilers. You're in for one helluva ride.

Juliet316

I've been doing quite a bit of reading regarding Babylon 5 after finishing the final season, but hadn't come across that, thanks Juliet. I suppose the fifth season finale would've worked nicely at the end of the fourth season, but I'm glad JMS got to wrap things up his way. At least this way, we got to see that the crew's actions would, ultimately, lead up to humanity become one of the Older Races.

Now I finally understand why Lochley didn't seem to have any sort of role in the Season 4 finale as it is. Granted, most of the crew had only known her for less than a year, and her role wasn't really as big as the rest of the cast, but I was surprised to note her absence during the farewell of Babylon 5 scene.

Regarding Claudia, I'm still somewhat confused on that. From what I've read, she had to sign a contract before a certain date, and in the end, she simply hadn't given any word about what her plans were, forcing to the producers to eject her from the fifth season?

Continuing on, from what I've heard, Ivanova was originally going to play the role that Lyta was doing? ie. the whole falling-into-love-with-Byron, joining the telepaths, yadda-yadda-yadda? On one hand, I can see that this might've worked out nicely(putting her latent telepath abilities to good use and the previous tragedy with Marcus could play a role in it), but I think that I kinda prefer that Lyta got the role. Overall, I always found her treatment, while understandable, rather unfair with the rest of the cast. She had quite a good reason to turn against the station, she had always pretty much been left out of the group, only invited when they needed her. Byron gave her a sense of what friendship could be about. Overall, I don't see how Ivanova could've been in her place.

On the other hand, I take it that the storyline would've been altered significantly had Ivanova taken that role. I've read about these trapdoors that JMS had for his characters, and I suppose Lyta was Ivanova's. But still, with the lack of Ivanova in the final season, Marcus' sacrifice seemed a bit... off. Granted, it was in-character, but it's too bad that they never really went further into it.

 

That's correct; it was tracked in by JMS and Ardwight Chamberlain for the 1998 TNT producer's cut. In the 1993 PTEN broadcast version, Kosh doesn't say anything during the docking bay scene (which itself used some drastically different camera angles from the later edition).

More broadly on that particular scene, the Vorlons knew that a Human was going to be important, and that the Human race in general would have an important role to play in the coming war, but it is unlikely that Valen would have given away too much about his own identity.

He'd want to keep as much as possible from them, in order to preserve the timeline. Don't forget that among the things that Valen knew about that Kosh didn't, is when Kosh was going to kick the bucket -- so he probably kept the Vorlons at arm's length and fed them information strictly on a need-to-know basis.

(As for speculation over the years that Kosh was surprised, it seems the most likely reason for him to think "Entil'Zha Valen," when he was confronted with someone who looked just like Jeffrey Sinclair. If he knew all along that he was going to meet Valen in his Human form, and that Sinclair was the commander of the station, surely something like. "Ah, Commander Sinclair" would be more likely to run through his mind.)

It was largely because Claudia Christian left effectively without giving notice, and on very bad terms with JMS and most of the cast. She then spent months waging a very public fight with JMS, falsely claiming he had fired her, that TNT and WB tried to cheat her of residuals, and a number of other absurdities.

(The basic SAG contract sets the conditions for residuals. No studio could evade them, or would be stupid enough to try. Residuals are calculated according to different formulas for basic cable shows than they are for first-run syndication shows, which may have been the source of Claudia's confusion.)

She later admitted that she had quit the show, but by then production on S5 was over. While they were still shooting the series, neither JMS nor most of the cast would have had any interest in bringing Claudia back for a guest shot, and it is unlikely that she would have accepted had one been offered. Michael O'Hare had left on good terms with JMS; his decision was made early enough that JMS was able to plan adequately for it, and not only did they agree to O'Hare's return for "War Without End" in S3, the actor also agreed to shoot the messages that Sinclair would leave for Garibaldi and Delenn before he left Los Angeles at the end of production on S1.

Though JMS and Claudia have since buried the hatchet and are friends again (appearing onstage together at cons a number of times these past few years), and Joe was fond enough of the character of Ivanova that he brought her back to B5 (and let her meet Capt. Lochley early in 2262) in

 

Right, it was (and Glen was working his little tail off trying to get Crusade secured at Sci-Fi or elsewhere), but the latent hostility was still there, largely due to such wonderful fandom mensches as "Robogeek" and "Herc" (both of whom would later take over AICN Coaxial at various points after Glen's departure).

And TNT knew this; there's a buddy of mine who was privy to much of the goings-on out there in LA at the time, and who was kind enough to fill me in on the *real* reasons for the scuttling several months before it became common knowledge.

For the newbies to the story, and who might be interested in checking out the series on DVD:

What happened after the second (February 1999) production hiatus was, TNT could have sold its rights to Crusade, or another network could have picked up the show once the 13 episodes had aired over that summer. (Because TNT ran the show twice each week, both its first-run and single-rerun exclusive would have been used up.) Indeed, the Sci-Fi Channel offered to buy the rights from TNT, despite the fact that their new-show budget for 1999/2000 had already been allocated.

The deal-breaker was the B5 reruns. From information I later received from my friend over a couple of phone conversations, who was connected with the negotiations (and as JMS later confirmed), Sci-Fi would not take a chance on Crusade if it didn't also have Babylon 5 -- a proven ratings-winner that it had lost in a bidding war to TNT a year or two earlier.

TNT demanded so much money to give up its rights to the B5 reruns early (my friend described their proposal as "a ransom note") that Sci-Fi was unable to make the numbers work, and had to withdraw its bid for Crusade...which was what TNT wanted all along. Not only didn't they want the show, they didn't want anyone else to pick it up, succeed with it, and make them look bad.

Nice bunch of folks. Very mature. Note that I'm using the term "TNT" to refer to a pretty small group of execs in their original programming department, many of whom are no longer there. (Which makes Warner Bros.'s position on the Crusade commentary situation doubly idiotic. JMS never named names in talking about these twits, some of them are gone anyway, and what happened between them and JMS is hardly a secret -- it's been the stuff of Internet gossip for six or seven years now. Who exactly are they protecting? And from what?)

---

[/blockquote]
...Oh, and [b]burrie[/b] -- knowing you're a major [i]Star Wars[/i] EU aficionado, run, do not walk, and grab whichever of the Del Rey B5 novels you can find.

They're every bit as canonical as the TV series, scenarized by Straczynski himself, and conclusively answer several of the burning questions left over from the show (David Sheridan and the flash-forward liberation of Centauri Prime in "War Without End," the history of the Psi Corps, Bester's final fate, Galen's history with the Technomages and several plot-points from [i]Crusade[/i], et al).

 

2ndQuest

You'll want to delve into the episode guides at The Lurker's Guide, awesome resource.

Now there's an awesome resource. Especially like the little insights that JMS provides at time. Especially cool to actually see the big man behind a franchise posting on messageboards, usenet and what have you.

It would have been a mix of the Lochley and Lyta roles- Ivanova would have been in charge of the station (the voice over in, i think it was Rising Stars, was added to have her reassignment cover her departure) and would have fallen for Byron, seeing him as someone similar to Marcus, while Lyta would have still be his second in command, essentially. Then Ivanova would realize Byron was not who he seemed to be, and be forced to call in Bester.

Ah, so Lyta was basically compressed into her own original story and Ivanova's? Well, I suppose it could've worked.

I suppose this is also why Lochley's role was, overall, rather small? It makes sense that they wouldn't give a new character such a prominent role without any real background to draw upon. Still, she gave a sense that Babylon 5's staff was basically moving on, and a new one was being introduced. Her final shot onboard Babylon 5 with the other crew seems to add to that.

Leto II

She later admitted that she had quit the show, but by then production on S5 was over. While they were still shooting the series, neither JMS nor most of the cast would have had any interest in bringing Claudia back for a guest shot, and it is unlikely that she would have accepted had one been offered. Michael O'Hare had left on good terms with JMS; his decision was made early enough that JMS was able to plan adequately for it, and not only did they agree to O'Hare's return for "War Without End" in S3, the actor also agreed to shoot the messages that Sinclair would leave for Garibaldi and Delenn before he left Los Angeles at the end of production on S1.

Well, it's quite a pity how some things worked out, especially with Ivanova. She was one of those characters that grew onto me, and her eventual leaving was quite tragic as it is, as was Marcus' demise. I'm still glad to see that she got a cameo in the final episode and gave her role some closure before the show ended.

Regarding O'Hare, I'm still amazed how well that came out. Although I was slightly considering that there might've been problems with contracts or the like due to the fact that his dissapearance was very sudden at the start of Season 2, War Without End solved things magnificently, making it seem as if it were planned from the start. Hell, I got such a different perspective from the seemingly random "Babylon Squared" after seeing that one.

(again, for the record, at first, I wasn't aware that B5 was so tightly planned, hence I was surprised early on when things from the past were referenced or plotlines easily picked up again)

I'm curious tho', if he had stayed on the show, would his story basically been the same as Sheridan's, with some slight alterations? As in, that the final episode of Season 5 would've actually shown the older Sinclair going back in the past to become Valen? Has there been any sort of light shed on that?

On the record, I'm surprised how quickly Sheridan grew on me. I think that it's quite a feat that they managed to completely swap captains, and give them both quite a different way of working. At first, I expected that Sheridan was gonna be a Sinclair-clone, but far from it.

(and I take it that I wasn't the only one slightly grinning when Sheridan and Sinclair were working together?)

I now suspect that the infamous "Atlanta Memo" was deliberately leaked to Aint-It-Cool News (a site already largely hostile to JMS and B5 to begin with) in an early bid to piss him off and make him walk off the show. Which is more or less the way things turned out, although he did return for a time. After the whole thing was over, Warner Bros. brieflly considered suing T

 

Though "Sleeping in Light" was filmed *during* the fourth season, intended to close out the show when it seemed that a fifth year was questionable, if not impossible...Claudia was still with the show, and hadn't yet pulled out.

When the TNT greenlight for Year 5 came through and she jumped ship, "Sleeping" was put on the shelf for a year, a new fourth season finale shot ("Deconstruction," which features a knowing reference to a certain "Captain Lochley," who'd already been cast), with production commencing the following week on the first fifth-season installment, "No Compromises."

You know the old saying? "A picture's worth a thousand words"?

Well, what we have here are *two* pictures:

B4/B5 Five-Year Arc Diagram

If Sinclair Had Stayed

Though, if you're looking for more microcosmic info, here's Joe's own words on the subject:

Posted on Usenet 6 December 1994:

Okay, alternate-universe time to answer your question....

"What if Sinclair had not left Babylon 5?"

(Isn't this kinda like the Marvel What If? comics... "What If Dr. Blake's Nurse Had Been The One to Find Thor's Hammer?")

The differences would be more noticeable in the later episodes of this season, rather than the first batch, which are still dealing in large measure with the after-effects of the season finale.

So the first few episodes would have been somewhat the same in some ways to what is there with Sheridan. The problem that I had was that he [Sinclair] was becoming (and would have become) mainly a problem-solver character; there's a squabble or a problem between other characters who are rising in profile (G'Kar, Londo, Delenn, etc.), and he solves the problem in some way. These, to me, were the least nteresting episodes of our prior season.

It would'v

 

Okay I have a couple of questions:

1) I remember, when I watched the first run of B - 5's first season the ep where B4 appears (I forget the ep title now), there's a scene of the older Sinclair in the space suit as his younger self, Garibaldi and the rest, get the heck out of dodge. We see a hand touching his shoulder and in the first airing of that episode, it's revealed to be Delenn as she was originally (bald with head crest) telling Sinclair it's time to go (I'm not imagining this people!). In later versions we just see her hand and Delenn's voice. In "War Without End part 2" the same scene plays again only this time only this time it's revealed to be Mira Furlan in Delenn's hybrid makeup.

So my question is, WAS I imagining the first run airing of the B4 first season episode, or did JMS edit first season Delenn out of later airings of that episode knowing that when "War Without End" aired it would be revealed all along that it was season 3 Delenn touching his shoulder in the first season ep?

2) does anybody know anything about Andrea Kastulas (G'Kar) dying of Cancer?

EDIT: I need more sleep