I'm feeling some geeky gears in my gray matter starting to rotate like they haven't in a VERY long time.
Babylon 5 - the single greatest television series that the Nineties ever spawned - is coming back as an animated film.
The show's creator J. Michael Straczynski unloaded the news on Twitter earlier this afternoon. More details are coming soon, including the movie's title and release date.
I cannot emphasize enough how stoked I am about this. Babylon 5 was like an extra few years of education on top of what I got in college. The five-season story about that miles-long space station all alone in the night, the "last best hope for peace" in a galaxy rife with plotting and intrigue, shattered the ceiling both as a broadcast series and for what the medium was capable of giving viewers. Had it not been for Babylon 5 paving the way, there may have never been a rebooted Battlestar Galactica, or Lost. Or The Walking Dead for that matter, along with an armful of other shows.
I'm really looking forward to seeing how this goes. One thing that popped into mind: wouldn't it be really sweet if we saw an animated Garibaldi watching Daffy Duck cartoons? That would be soooo meta.
If this show has always been just off your radar screen and you want to "get a feel" for it, I wracked my brain trying to think of a clip from the show to put in this post, just a little iota of what it's about. Someone on Facebook found one and it's perfect. From the third season episode "Passing Through Gethsemane", Brad Dourif as Brother Edward, telling Delenn (the late Mira Furlan) and Lennier (Bill Mumy) about the last night that Christ spent before His death:
Yes, a science-fiction series that is respectful toward the concept of religion. Just one of many such moments that Babylon 5 came to be renowned for.
This would be something that would compel me to get HBO Max, just to watch this. I've always loved this show, its universe and this amazing cast of characters. Ever since first reading about it in Starlog several months before it premiered in the winter of 1993, I've been enchanted by what this series was attempting. And it pulled it off beautifully.
And now, more is coming. Thing I'll celebrate by making some bagna cauda. Hey, it's easier to find than Zima...
More B5 YES!!! This was the only show I paid attention to in the 90s. Love the idea of Garibaldi watching Daffy, you know that JMS would do it too.
ReplyDeleteOh wow. I've never watched the show but that clip has me wanting more.
ReplyDeleteSGotGDS, you want more you say? The whole heap series is LOADED with stuff that's better than we deserve. Including some religious-themed material. One of my favorite episodes reaches its climax during a "revival meeting" led by a Baptist minister.
ReplyDeleteI am genuinely envious of you, that you want to watch Babylon 5 for the first time. And you can binge it now, where when the show was in first run we'd have to wait a few months in between batches of episodes. It's streaming on a few services, you shouldn't have a problem finding it. I'd make sure that you can get the pilot movie "The Gathering" and watch that first. The makeup was a little "off" in that but the movie does lay down some of the groundwork for the series proper.
You are in for a REALLY wild ride. I think you'll enjoy it :-)