I agree that a reboot seems really unnecessary for B5. To me it was a very specific story that was being told, and I don't really see how you can retell that story and have things different enough to make it unique without totally changing things to a point where it's not even recognizable as B5.
Well, I shall keep tabs on things. I loved B5 and enjoyed Crusade. I guess all we can surmise is that something good may happen, and that something horrible may have happened to Micheal O.
A new TV series sounds very good. Hope they find some outlet for it. I'm not holding my breath, though.
There were other story threads besides the Sinclair Arc/WB memo that got dropped for a variety of reason, according to several scriptbooks. And JMS stated that a reboot/reimagining was one avenue to explore in his Babylon Podcast interview. He also said there were other story threads that he didn't get a chance to explore. So a rebooted series might take one of those other threads and be something completely different from the originally aired B5 story.
Thing is though, did he mean "reboot" in the sense of a full on, clean slate, start over from scratch, retell the same story reboot (like say 'Battlestar Galactica') or a reboot in the sense that TNG was essentially a Star Trek reboot? That is to say a totally new show, with a new cast, story etc. but still set within the same continuity? We all seem to be assuming that it's the former but personally I think the latter is a little more likely. While certainly, B5 was never built solely on mysteries and plot twists; they were a significant part of the show and some of them were fairly big, game changing ones. To remake the series they'd have to either ban on the fact that most of their potential viewer never saw the original show (a fair assumption, I suppose) or go out of their way to change the pieces around so things don't go down in exactly the same way. Like the Valen/Babylon 4 thing for example. I don't know, I guess it just feels like a decade or three too soon to be starting over from scratch.
A reboot isn't that bad an idea. One of the problems that the Babylon 5 sequel projects have struggled with is the fact the original series basically mapped out the arc of the human race and its struggle with and around alien forces that had been influencing it for centuries. It did not just tell a story, it told the story of its universe. After that efforts to tell epics and adding new twists to the universe in subsequent works sometimes feel a little revisionistic or anti-climactic. Starting fresh to retell the basically interesting hook of the Babylon 5 story could be really worth my time. Could I see someone other than Andreas Katsulas as G'Kar, as a poster above suggested (or, more honestly, Peter Jurasik as Londo Mollari, the heart and soul of the series)? Well, I saw someone other than Leonard Nimoy as Spock, and I actually liked what Zachary Quinto did with the character. The issue then is if you're going to give us a new Londo or G'Kar, they need to be good - and possibly the decently budgeted series JMS wanted would have provided for that, one hopes. After Crusade, Legend of the Rangers, Lost Tales and that non-starter Coming of Shadows... what seemed a wry quip when uttered in season two looks more like a self-fulfilling prophecy (not that B5 doesn't want to be a franchise, but that it's been tried and found wanting). ...which would be just like the Battlerstar Galactica reboot you mentioned. The admittedly convoluted mythology BSG built around the relationship between humans and Cylons did not even at the start much resemble the original series (where the Cylons were robots made by aliens, not by human hand). I'm sure you could do a straight reboot, but that doesn't mean the role of the Vorlons or Shadows or the Earth Civil War and so on needs to be the same. So much of what happened in the series came from external pressures - like the fifth season - and the nature of TV at the time - which was less geared towards serialized dramas then than it is now. B5 could tell something approximating the thrust of the old series and still be a completely different animal rather easily, honestly.
Why can't we have something in the B5 universe not related to the dawn of the third age of mankind or any ancient threat? A new danger somehow. I'd drop the B5 branding too
Yeah it is always good to start fresh and believe me B5 is not the only series I think this should also apply too, Star Trek should start a new series in some future Trek timeline and skip all that Trek continuity to give a new face to the franchise. But Hay B5 should move on too, JMS should bring something new and not link it to old B5
I would not be interested in a re-boot of Babylon 5. I always felt that Crusade would have been great, a re-boot of this series might be ok
What are the odds of anyone being interested in doing that, when we can't even get Star Trek - a proven success in TV and movies, and a far more universally recognized mass-market brand name - back on TV? I'll take whatever JMS wants to write. Creatively burnt out, self-indulgent, or whatever, at least it'll be space opera and it's bound to be interesting. I'd take a reboot, too. The original actors are just too old now and of course some have passed on. Same here.
Calm down, dear. I said it's what I'd like to see - and I do when I visualise what I read on the page. I've long given up on TV being able to relieve me of the burden of using my imagination. I prefer to keep breathing also. I think JMS with B5 kind of emulated his hero Rod Serling, who pretty much burnt himself out during the original Twilight Zone.
Oh come on.. when will they give B5 a rest? JMS has been teasing for years, almost from the day the last B5 universe episode has aired that something is in the works.. you just wait for it.. any day now.. oh sorry, others have prevented me from doing an awesome/never before seen/grand/etc show. When will everyone just realize that JMS consists of hot air? He's had his epic run in the 90s and became a cult favorite but since then hasn't accomplished much and is living off his B5 years by getting gigs in related niches like comic books and the occasional novel or whatnot. As much as i love B5 and its 00s counterpart Firefly (another fan favorite that's grown to cult proportions) it's really time to lay them to rest permanenty instead of clinging to straws and getting excited about every little fart someone makes. How about some new groundbreaking shows instead of regurgitating old shows just because someone recognizes the name? I know i'd like that but i also know that it's very hard for new shows to find an audience that sticks to it and can surve the cutthroat business that is TV but it can be done.
Yeah, it's such a shame that Clint Eastwood directed his 'Changeling' screenplay and he was nominated for a Bafta Award for it after it debuted at Cannes. And what a pity that he had one movie for which he did the story (a little thing called 'Thor') come out this year and two other of his scripts ('Underworld 4', 'World War Z') are in production right now. Only a complete loser does multiple projects with people like Bruckheimer and the Wachowskis, right? And would Ron Howard buy an option on 'Lensman' for you if you weren't a total has-been? Regarding the reboot, JMS posted this last night: Jan
Oh, I'll readily concede that. None of his stabs at Babylon 5 spinoffs were really any good, including Crusade. I have never had any real hope for Babylon 5's future as a franchise as it's consistently failed to work as anything other than a five season TV series (plus that telefilm In the Beginning). But, if JMS really was going to make another Babylon 5 series... I'd give it a try. Can't those shows be both? Cf: Battlestar Galactica. Um, it's not that we can't get Star Trek back on TV and more that the franchise has been successfully rebooted as a film series. This is a rhetorical question, I'm guessing.
So to kind of summarize the "Ask me again in April" thing turned out to be a possible reboot of the series that would have been tied in to some kind of new network but things fell through and we're left with pretty much absolutely nothing again? I give JMS credit for trying to keep this thing alive as much as he has but it really does seem like a return to "Babylon 5" in any live action medium is simply not in the cards any more.
Having revisited B5 not long ago I'm not interested in seeing a reboot of it with the same characters and essentially the same story. I just don't see the point since it hasn't been that long ago. A reboot in the TNG sense where you're in the same continuity yet decades to a century later then that is more what I want to see. You don't need to call it B5 and its universe isn't nearly as mapped out as Trek's---there is so much you can do and so many places you can go. Crusade was a good idea coming on the heels so soon after B5. But after all this time you could tell a story or stories that are not so closely linked to the Shadow war and whatever else. Same universe/continuity but do something else unrelated to the previous story.
Personally, I'd love a New Earth series, starring the million-years-later energy-being humans--one of whom, I'd bet, is David Sheridan. I don't expect this to happen.
Regurgitated old shows are more likely to be made, compared with new names, or names that are really only known to sci fi lit fans. Given the very long odds against any space opera show being made, I'm happy to root for the most likely possibility.