"Zathras warn": The trailer for BABYLON 5: THE ROAD HOME

It was released earlier today.  I've watched this trailer for Babylon 5: The Road Home at least five times now... and I am stoked.  It looks beautiful.  And it seems that they've done an excellent job at casting the voice actors for the characters whose original portrayers have "gone beyond the Rim" over the years.

(I'm hoping that we get at least one look inside Garibaldi's quarters aboard Babylon 5.  Just to see if the painting of Daffy Duck is still there.)

Anyhoo... enjoy!

Babylon 5: The Road Home hits digital download, 4K, and Blu-ray on August 15th, 2023.

Read More

"Faith manages": Babylon 5 returning with animated movie!

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...

 

Read More

The second coming of Babylon 5

Hey, do you have HBO Max?  Because if you haven't heard already, all the cool kids are binging on Babylon 5.

 

Yes, THAT Babylon 5.  The Nineties-era science-fiction television epic.  The story of that five mile long space station and the people inhabiting it, "all alone in the night."  Some have argued that it might be the single greatest television series of its time.  It was certainly ahead of that time.  Had it not been for Babylon 5 breaking the path ahead, a lot of series might not have seen the light of day.  It set out to tell a story spanning the length of five seasons, and it pulled it off magnificently.

And it has received a remaster of sorts.  The video has been cleaned up and its legendary CGI effects (which I think still hold up even today) have been sharpened a bit.  All five seasons plus the two-hour pilot movie "The Gathering" are now on HBO Max.  And it has become a raging success on that platform.

Having been a fan of Babylon 5 since first hearing about it in the pages of Starlog, I am having a hoot watching the reaction of others who are just now discovering this series.  It's definitely binge-worthy, indeed it seems tailor-made for binging.  You'll want to "watch just one more" every step of the way, especially when things crank up around the mid-point of season two (if your jaw doesn't drop during "The Coming of Shadows", you need dental work).  Actually, I envy the new fans.  They don't have to spend long months waiting for the next batch of episodes to drop.  I still remember well agonizing for "The Fall of Night" and its promised reveal of a major character.  Good times, those were!

If you don't have HBO Max, the remastered series is up on iTunes also.  I bought "Midnight on the Firing Line" - the first episode of season one - and it definitely looks much better compared to the DVD (I own all five seasons plus the TV movies collection and "The Lost Tales").  Who knows, I may spring for the entire series on iTunes eventually.

So if you've a hankering for solid television that will make you think, laugh, cry, and everything in between, you can't go wrong with Babylon 5.  And if you want to delve even further into the series, the legendary Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5 is still online, looking just as it did when it appeared in 1994.  Well worth visiting its episode guide as you progress through the show, especially for the notes and commentary by series creator J. Michael Straczynski.

Read More

"Sleeping in Light": The tenth anniversary of BABYLON 5's series finale

Ten years ago tonight, the Babylon Project came to a magnificent end as "Sleeping in Light", the series finale of Babylon 5 - considered by many to be the greatest television show of the Nineties - was broadcast on TNT.

I have not written nearly enough about Babylon 5 on this blog. J. Michael Straczynski's soaring, spanning epic about the Babylon 5 space station and the people within it, I can confidently attest, had the most profound impact on my personal philosophy of any work of televised fiction. From the first time I heard about it in an issue of Starlog in the summer of 1992, I knew this would be one to watch for. And it did not disappoint: the shot of the Vorlon fleet coming through the jumpgate in the pilot movie should have been fair warning to everyone that science-fiction television would never be the same.

But the effects, even those from episodes like "The Coming of Shadows" and "Severed Dreams", weren't the reason we stayed faithful to Babylon 5. It was because this was a show about very real characters, as rife with strengths and weaknesses as anyone in our own world. We could identify with the people of Babylon 5. Personally, I think the show's greatest gift was that it demonstrated something that has not been said nearly enough in either fiction or non-fiction: that it's okay to grow and change into something more than what we think we are. That we do not have to be what the world expects us to be.

Has there been anything so profound that has been taught as well on television as Babylon 5 did? If there is, I don't know of it.

Five years of storytelling came to its triumphant conclusion with "Sleeping in Light", an episode set twenty years after the rest of the series. And I don't know of any better way to celebrate this anniversary than with the final five minutes of the episode. If you're new to Babylon 5 and don't know what's going on here, I think that maybe you should watch this, 'cuz it'll ratchet up the "wanna know more" that oughtta leave you wondering what all happened that brought the story to so triumphant a conclusion...

Happy anniversary, Mr. Straczynski and Babylon 5. You fulfilled your mission well. And hopefully there will yet be many more stories to tell from that five-mile long space station burning bright, all alone in the night...

Read More

I finally have a complete set of BABYLON 5 on DVD!

Well, almost a complete set. But it is the part that counts most!

As I've said here before, I'm not much of a television watcher. A show has to be very good before I invest my valuable time in sitting down to enjoy it on a regular basis. And it takes nothing less than storytelling of the highest caliber to keep me captivated and coming. That's why I love Lost so much. And ten years before that, there was Babylon 5.

This was the standout science-fiction show of the Nineties. And easily one of the best shows of that era, period. Babylon 5 broke bold new ground and in my sincere opinion set the pace for all the good shows that have followed. I don't know if there had been this kind of thing attempted before with American television that Babylon 5 pulled off: a broad, sweeping epic boasting a definite arc with a beginning, middle and end. The show was programmed to last for five years, tell its tale and then bow out, without becoming bogged-down as a "franchise".

What was it about? Babylon 5 was set (for the most part) aboard a space station in the 23rd century, at a meeting-point in space between several interstellar superpowers (including a coalition of Earth-aligned planets) and several other minor races. Babylon 5 was five miles long, armed to the teeth, and always seeming to attract the wrong kind of attention. This was a show with terrific settings and special effects but above all else this was a show about characters. These were real three-dimensional people who grew and changed dramatically over the course of five years worth of plot. It was the first sci-fi show I ever saw that treated the subject of religion seriously, and without scoffing at it (my favorite episode is the one with the Baptist preacher... and if you know which one I'm talking about, guess what my favorite scene in that episode was :-). It had drama, heartbreak, horror and insane humor. And I don't know if I can keep singing its praises without being here typing all afternoon.

Well anyhoo, in spite of how much I loved this show, until last night I'd never had the complete series on DVD. And I've been such a big Babylon 5 fan that I taped it's complete run in broadcast not once but twice: first off of TNT when the show moved there from syndication and then when Sci-Fi Channel started running it in widescreen.

So the first Christmas that Lisa and I were married (2002) I wound up getting Season 1 on DVD as a gift. The following year I got Season 2. The year after that I received Season 3 and the Movie Collection, which has the 2-hour pilot episode and the four Babylon 5 made-for-TV movies. But all of this time, for one reason or another I never wound up getting seasons 4 and 5.

Well right now, Best Buy has all the Babylon 5 DVD season box sets on sale for $19.95 each, whereas they usually street for about $60. So last night I went to the Best Buy in Burlington and drove back home with Season 4 and Season 5 in my happy possession :-) Here's the entire set that I now own...

I also own the original DVD release of "The Gathering" and "In The Beginning", but since those are already in the Movie Collection I didn't put that here in this photo. Prominently absent are the DVDs of Crusade, the Babylon 5 spin-off series. Why don't I own those? Mostly out of frustration: I was really looking forward to Crusade... and then TNT had to botch it up beyond belief (the Wikipedia entry for Crusade barely even begins to describe the hell that this show went through). Because of TNT's machinations, Crusade became two wildly different shows mashed together with all kinds of continuity problems sticking out like sore thumbs. I would love to see this part of the Babylon 5 saga continued and resolved someday, but TNT put too bad a taste in my mouth to even try to enjoy Crusade as it became in its hands.

I also don't own (yet) the "Legend of the Rangers" DVD. I watched that when it first broadcast and it was... odd. Even for Babylon 5. But maybe I'll give it a shot again. That movie has the distinction of being the only thing of Babylon 5 that I watched while visiting Lisa's apartment at University of Georgia when we were dating.

And there is one new, made-for-DVD Babylon 5 movie called "The Lost Tales" that just came out. I'm probably going to get that soon, too.

But in the meantime, I'm relishing having the complete set of the core Babylon 5 series in my possession, where I can enjoy it - like any good book - in the years to come and where it can be waiting for my own children to discover and enjoy someday.

Now, since I finally have them all, I'm wondering what to make for dinner tonight as I start watching them anew. I figure that I've got two choices: bagna cauda (you will understand this if you've watched Babylon 5) or Red Baron's pepperoni pizza (two other people will understand that one :-).

Read More