Series of direct to DVD movies
This pleases me greatly.
After season 5 and the Rangers stuff, I’m not too keen.
Woooooo!!! I like how he he got them to agree to his full creative control.
Babylon 5 was three seasons of sheer awesomeness. I missed the first and fifth season. I made up for missing the first by reading the Lurker’s Guide, but from what I heard I missed nothing by not seeing season 5.
The biggest problem Babylon 5 has is that JMS is its only good writer. Star Trek was a vehicle for a legion of SF writers, during the height of SF’s popularity, to do some great TV work. But Babylon 5 has remained JMS’ baby, and the design of the universe doesn’t lend itself to the kind of storytelling that allows other writers to march in and do their thing. What Roddenberry did right was create a framework within which writers could explore ideas; Babylon 5’s 5-year story arc is an idea from which a framework came.
So although Babylon 5 was a great literary achievement, I don’t think it’ll ever have the legs ST had.
JMS has to have creative control, because only he can execute his vision.
Or, maybe it’s B5’s biggest asset. We already have Trek and it’s five series, 10 movies, hundreds of books, games, etc. I don’t need or want B5 to be Trek- I like having a single creator behind everything and if JMS ever decides to drop it all together than I am more than happy with what we already have.
No, it’s definitely a weakness. I am convinced a major reason why the quality of B5 started declining in the 4th season and stayed pretty crappy through the 5th, the made-for-TV movies, and the spinoff, is simply because JMS got burned out from doing everything himself.
He was doing everything himself in the third season too. I think the reasons for the decline toward the end have a helluva lot more to do with truncating the arc because the show was going to have to end early after only four seasons only to get a last minute reprieve from TNT after the fourth season was in the can, losing a key cast member in the process who was slated to play a major role in the early S5 stuff, etc. It really made the beginning of the fifth season much sloppier than before but I thought they found their footing about halfway through the final season and really ended on a high note.
As for the made for TV movies- I think JMS’s strengths are in long form storytelling so the movies, which had to be very standalone, suffered for it which will certainly be a concern for the new direct to DVD series he’s doing since they are very shortform at only 30 minutes a piece.
One of the movies was pretty good actually…was the well one? I can’t remember. I just remember thinking one was really good.
In The Beginning was pretty good, really good for around 15 minutes.
I think JMS falls apart when he gets into creating a brave new world, like S5 of B5, and I noticed some of that stuff in Rising Stars.
I think JMS falls apart when he has telepaths start singing. Those were some of the most cringe-inducing television episodes I’d ever seen.
Good show otherwise and I look forward to seeing what he comes up with.
B5 available on iTunes. Season 1 only right, so if you want wooden acting, off you go.
Hey, it doesn’t look like the HD remaster I was hoping for, but this is better than nothing. Zooty, zoot zoot!
They could make an HD version if they want to.
The film 4:3 versions are just sitting in a vault:
I’d honestly be happy if they just literally processed the DVDs to clean up the film grain and fixes all the blatant mistakes in frame timing, interlacing, scaling, etc. Just a nice 480p copy would be a lot better than the existing ones which are a stuttery aliased mess.
Yes, that was an interesting thread. It was cool to hear that somewhere in a vault there were pristine masters sitting around. I had thought the good stuff in storage had been eaten by rats (which he later clarified or mentioned that the film elements in The Gathering/the pilot had turned into rat food) or flooded. I’d like 16:9 video to match the live element shots, but if it’s not realistic considering the state of CGI or composited shots of the time, yeah, 4:3 HD would be just great.
Can’t wait to do a re-watch. Would gladly give money for physical and digital copies that were 4:3 HD.
What a show.
Never gonna see an HD release of B5. The time and money to remaster the originals and the effects wouldn’t be worth what the studio would get back.
The point of the tweet is that they don’t have to remaster or redo anything if they keep it 4:3 instead of widescreen. They can just scan the existing 4:3 film prints in 1080p and call in a day. You’ll get real HD on the live action scenes, and a better 480p version of the currently terrible zoomed and stuttering CGI scenes, which will look a lot better because there are so many issues with the current CGI transfer method they used to blow it up to widescreen.