Babylon 5

Found this amusing story about a Babylon 5 pilot focus group screening....JMS is not a fan of a particular popular kids show (9:22)

Focus groups need to be really carefully curated because if you get badly tuned focus group, you get stuff like Square Enix being told that Nanashi no Game needs to be a first person shooter about aliens or I Am Legend needing an ending that completely ruins the point of the story.

Focus groups always make me think of that Simpsons episode.

The film is called "The Road Home", basically it's a multiverse movie with John Sheridan lost across alternate timelines trying to get home. Some characters are voiced by the originals, while replacement V As are used for characters that were played by the deceased.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/babylon-5-the-road-home-voice-cast-unveiled-1235483312/

NGL B5 jumping on the multiverse bandwagon doesn't really hype me for it.

Edited by dcutter2 on May 10th 2023 at 10:53:05 AM

Same, that completely lost my interest.

TBH, I think JMS can manage it. If his approach is to basically do one last huge hurrah for all the characters at once, regardless of their canon status and then open things up for, more or less, a continuation of the Lost Tales, I'd be up for this. It's not like alternate timelines and stuff haven't shown up before.

I'm cautiously optimistic about it.

We also know that he can be restrained about an idea. Babylon 5 only really has one time travel incident of note and he also avoided using the deus ex machina generator down on Epsilon III. Would have been dead easy to have the Great Machine contain the answers to basically everything.

If it were anyone other than JMS helming this, I would be extremely skeptical. With JMS in charge I'm also cautiously optimistic.

I dont think it'll be _bad_, I'm sure he can make this good. It's just.... not interesting me. Because the concept is played out and trite at this point, and also because, frankly, after so long I'm not really into reuniting with the characters I love but it's like "what if Ivanova was a Psi corp agent" or "Reality where Sheridan sided with Clark" or whatever.

It would be interesting if some of the timelines are ones where the show was going to do them but didn't make it. Like one where Talia didn't get moved off the board or the timeline where Sinclair didn't leave.

What about a timeline where Takashima was the mole and didn't just vanish?

I have no idea if they'll actually do that, but the show has enough "what if" moments and every character had that escape hatch thing, so there's a lot of potential branches that aren't "what if character but fascist".

Also, non-zero chance that at least one of them will be Ivanova and Lochley on the station at the same time.

Edited by Zendervai on May 10th 2023 at 6:23:06 AM

Yeah, getting some on-screen version of Babylon Prime would definitely be something I didn't expect to happen

Regardless, it's JMS, whatever this ends up being, I'm looking forward to seeing his take on it.

Hollywood reporter has a cast list

Returning Babylon 5 castmembers include: Bruce Boxleitner as John Sheridan

Claudia Christian as Susan Ivanova,

Peter Jurasik as Londo Mollari,

Bill Mumy as Lennier,

Tracy Scoggins as Elizabeth Lochley

Patricia Tallman as Lyta Alexander.

The voice cast also includes

Paul Guyet as Zathras and Jeffery Sinclair,

Anthony Hansen as Michael Garibaldi,

Mara Junot as Reporter and Computer Voice,

Phil La Marr as Dr. Stephen Franklin,

Piotr Michael as David Sheridan,

Andrew Morgado as G’Kar

Rebecca Riedy as Delenn.

Claudia Christian being back is a surprise. I thought her fued with JMS was ongoing.

Oh and the implication we're going to see David Sheridan presumably John's son not his father is interesting as well.

Edited by dcutter2 on May 11th 2023 at 9:25:22 AM

The dispute is 30 years old at this point. They've appeared at conventions together. Whatever the beef was it's been settled.

The impression they give now is that they get along fine and will do shorter projects together if they come up, but Claudia Christian isn't interested in doing full shows.

I think it's worth noting that while they spent like 15 years sniping at each other, neither of them actually ever said what the problem was and it never seemed to spill over into drama with anyone else in the cast, despite the rest of the cast (except kinda Jerry Doyle) being in pretty consistent contact with both Claudia Christian and JMS. I'm pretty sure Mira Furlan was asked about it once and she said it wasn't her business to talk about it but that no one had been asked to take sides. Christian also told people to knock it off when they were sending nasty messages to Tracy Scoggins.

Edited by Zendervai on May 11th 2023 at 4:57:38 AM

Sometimes people just don't get along well. I'm reminded of the Mythbusters, where Adam and Jamie have repeatedly stated that while they can work together, they're not friends, and don't get along particularly well.

JMS posted some stills on Twitter.

Anyone else here seen Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future? Going back to the top comment of the page, I wonder if one reason JMS was annoyed at the Power Rangers comparison was that he wrote for a kids show that was actually considered pretty good sci-fi.

I don't have a comment regarding the Power Rangers comparison, but oh wow, I remember Captain Power!

Scantly, I'll admit, and vaguely in some matters—but relatively-clearly in others. I think that I particularly liked Soaron amongst the villains.

Sounds like a bit of sour grapes over Power Rangers being more popular than his own show, to be honest.

The toys were awesome. And I remember some of the vfx would probably cause seizures.

Babylon 5 actually premiered at almost exactly the same time as Power Rangers and, for some reason, a lot of people behind the scenes (including advertisers) wouldn't compare it to Star Trek. They'd insist on comparing it to Power Rangers, apparently because Babylon 5 had an unusually small budget for a sci-fi show and so did Power Rangers.

There was also that time a focus group that viewed a later B5 spinoff movie had a person who refused to consider Babylon 5 science fiction because it wasn't like Power Rangers and, I have to be honest, that would be pretty rankling to anyone.

I really don't think JMS really cares that much about Power Rangers, it just keeps cropping up in these contexts where it gets directly contrasted to Babylon 5, which is a pretty weird and bizarre thing to happen.

Also, it took like five years for Power Rangers to really take advantage of the premise or setting. The original three seasons were like...an absolutely bizarre mush of high-school bullshit and monster fighting and very little was done to make it really cohesive. It's fun for what it is, yeah, but most people wouldn't look at that and go "this is the height of science fiction".

Edited by Zendervai on Jun 12th 2023 at 1:00:56 PM

Yeah, that does sound pretty frustrating. The sci fi ghetto was very real back then, clearly.