I was revisiting Babylon 5 on HBO Max when I learned that the whole thing was being rebooted and there was much rejoicing.

I love Babylon 5. It's a show that seems incredibly prescient in today's world. Way before its time, it tried to tell one overarching story in five seasons rather than make a series that had individual stories that unfolded one episode at a time. This model of making a series is now normal in 2021. However, the show hasn't aged all that well visually even if the special effects and sets were considered good for the time period in which it was made. I was alive in the early nineties, and I remember thinking that stuff being made then was soo much better than the entertainment options of the seventies and sixties. It's kind of shocking to look back on all that now, and think...man...these things were terrible and I actually liked them. Was I insane or just completely ignorant? The truth is neither of these things of course. I just had no idea what kind of technology would arise within the next thirty years.

So, am I happy about the reboot? Absolutely. There have been some discussions online (since the announcement dropped yesterday) that have complained about the CW being the station upon which it will be aired. I don't see a problem with this at all. I love the CW. I watch all the DC Universe stuff from The Flash to Batwoman to Superman & Lois and Stargirl and Supergirl, and I have enjoyed them all. My favorite indulgence is the Legends of Tomorrow. I even enjoyed The 100 until the point where I just fell behind and decided not to catch up as they kept killing off characters I liked. I've also enjoyed the Berlanti-related productions of Titans and Doom Patrol that air on HBO Max. So the choice of the studio doesn't bother me at all.

Furthermore, J. Michael Straczynski is helming everything. He's busy writing the pilot episode, and he's going to be heavily involved with the writing going forward. He's also serving as the showrunner and producer. It's going to be his baby. Sure, the characters will all need to be recast, but that's entirely okay. As a fan of Babylon 5, I know that (behind the scenes), J. Michael Straczynski didn't get to do the show the way he wanted to the first time around. He thought he only had four seasons to tell his story, and he compressed a lot of the Shadow and Vorlon war to fit in with that timeline. But it became such a big success that they renewed it unexpectedly for another season or two, and he had to scramble to come up with stories to tell and they were never as good as the Shadow and Vorlon war.

Going into this thing, he's got complete control. His seasons will probably be shorter as is the norm these days, but that will force him to compress for content and not drag things out like the Nancy Drew series ends up doing a lot. And I imagine he will have the same kind of special effects team as the Expanse gets with Amazon, and that has me completely excited. If you've at all checked out Babylon 5 on HBO Max, the Shadow look absolutely terrible. It's shocking how stupid they look. I cannot wait to see what this menace looks like in a rebooted Babylon 5. I have high expectations to be sure.

Another thing that Babylon 5 really had going for it were the numerous compelling subplots. The shining example of this was Londo and G'Kar. These were two politicians from opposite sides of a war that started out hating each other, and both of their characters and their respective relationship developed over time.

There is (of course) the question that gets asked most often: "Why not make a new thing entirely?" As being a creator of sorts (I write and run D&D games for people), I know that creating a new world is really hard. I created one in my youth that I still use for new D&D players thirty years later. And it's better, it has evolved as I have evolved, and I know its history. People compliment me all the time by saying, "I love playing D&D with you, because your characters and your world seem so real." I'm sure that J. Michael Straczynski has plenty of ideas. He's way more creative than me. But Babylon 5 is an idea that he's had for decades, and I bet it has evolved in ways that building something new (from scratch) simply wouldn't be as good or as satisfying (in the same way it would be for me were I to attempt to do the same thing). I remember when Berke Breathed retired Bloom County because he didn't want it to be Garfield. And then he started writing Outland, which then (over the course of time) slowly became Bloom County again. That's because he loved the ideas and characters he came up with in Bloom County and decided to incorporate those ideas into his new project. Well, then he scrapped Outland and now he's back to publishing Bloom County. So...he never should have stopped writing Bloom County, because that's what he enjoyed.

And finally, J. Michael Straczynski is excited. I think that right there is enough for me to be excited about this reboot. So, I think I'm going to put away rewatching the show and await the new reboot with eagerness.

Even if its visuals are terrible by modern standards Babylon 5 is still a series that is worth watching.

I stumbled across Babylon 5 the other day while looking for something to stream on the t.v. while I painted on my 3D printed Samurai/Japanese Castle that I ordered. I had watched the series back in the 90's (yes, I'm that old), and I remembered that (at the time) I thought it was really good. In rewatching it, I'm still impressed by its story, and the things that it tried to do for science fiction. I think it's an amazing series, yet there are (of course) some things that haven't aged well.

By today's standards, the visuals are terrible. Additionally, the costumes and alien designs are creative, but they would not hold up to the things that we see in a series like Game of Thrones. At the same time though, the alien ship designs are so imaginative that I wonder what they would look like if this series was rebooted for a modern audience by something like Netflix or HBO Max.

The real strength of Babylon 5 is the way that it is one continuous story. It isn't episodical like its contemporary, Star Trek: The Next Generation. And the first four seasons are all a slow boil for the Shadow and Vorlon war whose story is visited through the use of time travel and the fate of the Babylon 4 station. Furthermore, the time travel shows the effects that the Babylon 5 crew has on the history of the galaxy. You get to see aspects from characters in the first season which are only answered in season four.

I think what I like most about what Babylon 5 gave to us is that the whole story was plotted thoroughly (all of its seasons), before they even started to film the first episode. This is actually what made Game of Thrones great. The whole thing (more or less) had been plotted out by George R.R. Martin, whether or not he'd actually finished writing any books. He still had the lore and his notes, and he knew who was going to end up on the Iron Throne. The same goes for Babylon 5.

And the people who put up the funding for shows in today's world (of 2021) could learn a thing or two from Babylon 5. For one, the specter of renewal makes a lot of shows suck. Every season that is produced could be the last in the series, so a lot of shows cannot take the risks that Babylon 5 did in order to tell its story. At the same time, the invention of the 13 episode season (I think) has been a good one for television as a whole, because it has forced writers to cut out filler episodes that usually made for a 22 episode season. So now you get a lot more tight storytelling, and as a result, each episode of a good series is typically "movie level" quality.

Anyway, I've been enjoying revisiting the series, and I was quite overjoyed to see that it was available to stream on HBO Max. Anyone else here a fan of Babylon 5?