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posted by chromas on Tuesday September 28 2021, @04:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the my-shoes-are-too-tight dept.

‘Babylon 5’ Reboot in the Works at The CW

Original series creator J. Michael Straczynski will pen the script for the update.

The CW is heading to space.

The younger-skewing broadcaster is teaming with original series creator J. Michael Straczynski for a reboot of Babylon 5.

Described as a “from-the-ground-up reboot” of the original, Straczynski will pen the script for a new potential version of the former syndicated drama from Warner Bros. TV. The new take revolves around John Sheridan (originally played by Bruce Boxleitner), an Earthforce officer with a mysterious background, who is assigned to Babylon 5, a five-mile-long space station in neutral space, a port of call for travelers, smugglers, corporate explorers and alien diplomats at a time of uneasy peace and the constant threat of war. His arrival triggers a destiny beyond anything he could have imagined, as an exploratory Earth company accidentally triggers a conflict with a civilization a million years ahead of us, putting Sheridan and the rest of the B5 crew in the line of fire as the last, best hope for the survival of the human race.

From Gizmodo:
Babylon 5 Is Getting Rebooted, With J. Michael Straczynski at the Helm

Variety reports that Warner Bros. has ordered a reboot of Babylon 5, produced and written by Straczynski as part of a deal between Warner Bros. TV and Straczynski’s Studio JMS. The series is not a continuation of the show, but a “from the ground up” reboot of the cult classic 1993 series, which ran across five seasons and seven made-for-TV movies until 1998.

[....] The series was beloved for its dark sci-fi plots and its approach to a massive, intertwined narrative over the course of its seasons and movies [...]

If only we could see the original vision of B5 as it would have been if no actors would have had to leave the show.

The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us. -- Emperor Turhan


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:00AM (26 children)

    by looorg (578) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:00AM (#1182156)

    Considering that half the main cast is dead, not only in the show but in reality, I guess it was hard to just continue or make something new with them. That said this rebooting thing appears to be very hit and mostly miss when it's done. It never (or rarely) gets as good and it doesn't really attract a new following while at the same time also piss off the old following or fans. Why not just make something new? Why this urge to constantly reboot or prequel something instead of just continuing on. I guess it worked for BSG, that said I didn't care for the original and didn't care for the reboot either. So no counting for personal taste.

    That said I'll probably watch a few episodes, complain how it has been utterly dumbed down and ruined everything and how it is not the same anymore and then I'll gradually stop watching. Hopefully I'm wrong but I seriously doubt that since as noted by others the reboot is mostly doomed to flop.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:10AM (3 children)

    by PiMuNu (3823) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:10AM (#1182159)

    > Why not just make something new?

    Free advertising. If they made a new show, it wouldn't be on SN, for example.

    • (Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:18AM (2 children)

      by looorg (578) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:18AM (#1182164)

      As a general common that would probably be true. But if J. Michael Straczynski made a new show about the life of handpuppets in eastern Europe that would still probably make news here. Whatever he would do on TV would probably make the news. So no need to flog the B5 over and over again. I guess one could say that they already did the side projects of the parent show with all the (tv-) movies and Crusade so in that sense perhaps it makes sense to reboot. At least it's not a prequel (yet).

      • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:50AM (1 child)

        by PiMuNu (3823) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:50AM (#1182175)

        Babylon 4. Sounds like a boy band.

        • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday September 28 2021, @05:36PM

          by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @05:36PM (#1182315) Journal

          Babylon 4, with their newest song "Narns, and Vorlon and Centauri, oh my".

          --
          --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
  • (Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:19AM (8 children)

    by Marand (1081) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:19AM (#1182166) Journal

    Why not just make something new?

    It's kind of their thing, from what I've seen: they get the rights to something and use it as the foundation of something new, to varying degrees of success. Sometimes it's an old TV show that's restarted and only uses the original idea as a starting point that goes in a new direction, and sometimes it's a comic IP that they'll follow loosely.

    Like I said in my other comment, from what I've seen they're usually good with casting good actors and most other aspects of production, but don't do the best job with some of the writing. Having JMS on board might avoid that problem, which gives a B5 reboot a better chance than I'd give it on the network without him. I don't think their writers could manage the kind of long-term plot investment that the series was known for without him around.

    • (Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:25AM (6 children)

      by looorg (578) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:25AM (#1182167)

      Lets hope for the best then really. As you note perhaps the long term story (and plot) lines won't make it. That said Supernatural at least had seasonal arcs didn't it? That was on the same network. After all not a lot of shows get that many seasons these days it seems. The networks are fast on the chopping block when things don't instantly get the numbers or retain them.

      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday September 28 2021, @03:17PM (4 children)

        by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @03:17PM (#1182242)

        Blarg, there I go posting before reading all the comments again.

        Yeah, Supes had season-long arcs, although they started getting a bit lazy with them towards the end. I want to say there were a few seasons where it was halfway through when the writers seemed to wake up and say "oh shit, we need a big bad guy".

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday September 28 2021, @03:23PM (3 children)

          by looorg (578) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @03:23PM (#1182245)

          Not all of them was great so to speak. I think I preferred the one of the early seasons, when it was more monster hunting and such. Then it was somewhat cheesy fun. When it evolved into the whole "we are going to save the whole world (parallel worlds and later the whole universe)" things somewhat went down hill. Still it's interesting that it lasted as long as it did. Not a lot of shows today get as many seasons as they did. Now it's the axe if it doesn't instantly perform masterfully out of the gate and keep that up for season after season.

          • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday September 28 2021, @04:40PM (2 children)

            by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @04:40PM (#1182276)

            While the first couple seasons were a bit too much on the bloody side for me, yeah, I'd broadly agree. The season with the Leviathans was where it started to fall apart IMO.

            Did you actually finish the show? When it just kept going and going, at a certain point I told myself I'd just have to see it through :) Working on the final season now and it's not bad so far.

            It's got to be trippy when your job when you were 23-38/27-42 wraps up and you're looking at the future.

            --
            "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
            • (Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday September 28 2021, @06:09PM

              by looorg (578) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @06:09PM (#1182343)

              Yes. Sort of. While I liked it at the beginning and usually watched those the longer the show went on I guess the more episodes I started to miss here and there. But I did watch the final once. I just didn't really get into the stories in the end. You sort of just watched cause you knew it was the end and you wanted to see how it ended.

              Yes God is a arsehole and he doesn't care

              That can only carry the show for so long or so many seasons.

              It's kind of weird when you think about it that you have sort of watched it then for more or less 15 years. One wonders what that does for the actors. Some of them appear to apparently like it, it's a steady gig for a long time. Some are probably now type-cast forever. They know it's coming to an end so I guess they sort of try their best to sort of go out strong, compared to other shows that sort of just get cancelled and then things just end very abruptly. Here I guess they could tie it all, or a lot of it, together. No matter how far fetched some story arcs was.

            • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Marand on Tuesday September 28 2021, @09:32PM

              by Marand (1081) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @09:32PM (#1182447) Journal

              [I'm going to reply to both of you (tango and looorg) in this one comment just to avoid duplication]

              Supernatural at least had seasonal arcs didn't it?

              It did, and they try it with some of their other shows to varying degrees of success, usually due to writing quality issues. For example, having a season-long plot doesn't work well if you ignore it too much early on in favour of filler, then scramble to wrap everything up in the last few episodes of the season, leaving it feeling disjointed and incoherent.

              That's the thing about the writing on CW shows: when it's good, it's really good, but when it's bad, it's really bad.

              That, and Supernatural, which somehow dragged itself across the finish line of season 15 and they finally called it quits last year, LOL.

              Which is not to say I'm down on the show, but it's been clear it's been old and tired for like the last 5 seasons.

              I actually mentioned Supernatural in a different comment! I got into it via Netflix, along with a couple other CW things. It definitely dragged toward the end, but it makes sense why, with some context about the show's production and history. (More on that in a moment)

              Not all of them was great so to speak. I think I preferred the one of the early seasons, when it was more monster hunting and such. Then it was somewhat cheesy fun

              The season with the Leviathans was where it started to fall apart IMO.

              These are both because Supernatural was only supposed to run for five seasons. It had a definitive beginning, middle, and end, with the Heaven v. Hell apocalypse arc of season 5 being the show's climax. For those five seasons, the show's creator, Eric Kripke, was the showrunner and managed everything with a specific endgame in mind.

              Except the show was too popular to end. After his story was done, Kripke stepped down as showrunner and someone else took over, looking for a way to keep things going. I just checked and that person, Sera Gamble, handled seasons 6 and 7 (the Leviathan arc), and then they had a couple other changes after that. So Supernataural as it was originally intended was those first five seasons, and after that other people tried to find a way to keep it going.

              Something else that happened to the show was fan pandering, which seemed to affect the direction of the show over time. It ended up really popular with a younger female demographic despite the early, more gruesome content; a demographic that was really vocal on sites like tumblr, and very strongly into "shipping" the main characters.

              The earliest example I can think of is a prominent character from season...3 I think? Bela Talbot. She was supposed to be recurring, but there was a huge backlash over the character because she was a jerk to the Winchesters, and the vocal fans reacted very poorly to it, so they wrote her off the show permaturely. That sort of thing kept happening, with strong negative reactions especially to female characters and potential love interests. I guess the vocal fans didn't like "competition", because about the only female character that had a decent run on the show was the one prominently shown as lesbian, which meant she wasn't a threat to people's Dean/Castiel romance headcanons.

              The point here is that, especially after Kripke stepped down, they seemed to be really sensitive to appealing to and appeasing the vocal tumblr fanbase specifically, which led to some weirdness as the show went on.

              This has happened with some other CW shows as well. Their first DC comics show, Arrow (aka "we wanted to write Batman but only had access to the rights to Green Arrow") had a strong start, but leaned hard into pandering to a subset of the fanbase that was shipping the main character with the showrunner's attractive-nerdy-hacker-girl original character. It started out fine, the character was great, but over time they started modifying or neglecting other aspects of the show to make rom for more shipping-bait, and it hurt.

              The insane fan shipping thing is a common theme with these shows; with Flash, which started as a stealth pilot on Arrow, the shipping fans went from "vocal" to "hostile" there from what I understand, with cast members getting insults, threats, and even attempts to get them removed from the show by rabid shipper fans, all because they made the mistake of being female and potentially competition for someone's preferred ship.

              They also got a guy fired off the show by dredging up dumb, cringe-worthy "edgy comedian" tweets he made years before getting cast for the show. Entire plotlines shredded and thrown away in an abrupt dismissal, which didn't do any favours for the writing of that show.

              After all not a lot of shows get that many seasons these days it seems. The networks are fast on the chopping block when things don't instantly get the numbers or retain them.

              Ah yes, the Fox style of television management. RIP Firefly.

              Anyway, CW's actually pretty good about not abruptly canceling shows. They seem to actually pay attention to online streaming views as well as live watching, and a lot of their shows do well as streaming offerings from what I understand. They seem to go for 3-5 seasons pretty reliably, sometimes more, as a result, often with a set beginning/middle/end plan.

              Lets hope for the best then really.

              If they get the writing right (and with JMS, maybe) there's some hope, I think. Like I said, they seem to build at least some of their shows as a long-form, multi-season story, at least initially. That's the kind of format that B5 followed, so it seems like a good fit

              Though, like Supernatural, sometimes those concrete story plans turn into a show that lasts far longer than originally intended.

              Finally, if either of you are interested in a sort of spiritual successor to Supernatural, check out CW's "Nancy Drew" show. Yes, that Nancy Drew, from the kids' mystery books. No, that's not a joke. I watched a couple episodes out of a sense of morbid "stare at the train wreck" curiosity, and it ended up being legitimately good. In a way it fills the same niche that early Supernatural did, but with more suspense/horror and less gore.

              Spoiler-free explanation is that it's set years after the things that happened in the books, Nancy's an adult, kind of a smug know-it-all, and it ends up biting her in the ass because there's some truth to some of the supernatural stuff, so her Scooby Doo "debunk the ghost, solve hte mystery" thing sometimes works, sometimes doesn't.

              The idea of Nancy Drew with horror elements sounds fucking insane, but it works, and makes the character less of a Mary Sue.

      • (Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday September 28 2021, @09:34PM

        by Marand (1081) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @09:34PM (#1182450) Journal

        Heads up so you know I didn't ignore you: I didn't want to duplicate a lot of the same content, so I responded to both you and tango in this comment [soylentnews.org].

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday September 28 2021, @03:11PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @03:11PM (#1182237)

      It's kind of their thing, from what I've seen: they get the rights to something and use it as the foundation of something new, to varying degrees of success.

      That, and Supernatural, which somehow dragged itself across the finish line of season 15 and they finally called it quits last year, LOL.

      Which is not to say I'm down on the show, but it's been clear it's been old and tired for like the last 5 seasons. Just now finally watching the last season, which seems to have gotten a little pep injected into it once they decided to end things.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
  • (Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:25AM

    by loonycyborg (6905) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:25AM (#1182168)

    I'm pretty sure JMS wouldn't do as good job at it as before since doing the same thing all over again is boring. Also times and expectations have changed so the new B5 won't be as groundbreaking as old one was. Those concerns affect all reboots.

  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday September 28 2021, @03:07PM (8 children)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @03:07PM (#1182234)

    At least the original creator is involved (significantly, it sounds like!), which is more than you can say about the vast majority of reboots.

    But yeah, that's why I didn't watch Star Trek: Discovery or Picard. Watched somebody review them and they said it was a pile of suck, so evidently my suspicion of them shitting on my good memories was warranted.

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday September 28 2021, @05:03PM (5 children)

      by cmdrklarg (5048) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 28 2021, @05:03PM (#1182291)

      I have found that reviewers are completely worthless as far as knowing what I'm going to like or not. More often than not it's being reviewed by someone who has vastly different tastes than I do. There are also far too many reviewers who suffer from "it's not the old shows" or "omg itz wooooooke" disease. Others are so completely clueless about the show that they simply don't get it (I still remember the old TV Guide review of ST: Voyager that panned Tim Russ' "wooden and emotionless" portrayal of Tuvok).

      I found that I enjoyed Discovery well enough, and I absolutely loved Picard. You may not, and that's perfectly fine! Just don't give too much credence to reviewers; decide for yourself.

      I will very likely watch a B5 reboot, as I also loved watching the original.

      --
      The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
      • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday September 28 2021, @05:45PM (2 children)

        by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @05:45PM (#1182321) Journal

        The one reviewer i saw said that B5 was a comedy. Wow.

        I'll take a reboot too: if it's good, good...even if different. I enjoyed BSG original (when i was a teen i guess?) and BSG reboot.

        I loved STOS and am enjoying the reboots: different, but enjoyable. Orville... :)

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
        • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday September 28 2021, @06:12PM (1 child)

          by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @06:12PM (#1182347)

          Orville is fun, but it's not technically a reboot. More "in the style of"...although Trek was never comedic.

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
          • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday September 28 2021, @08:00PM

            by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @08:00PM (#1182410) Journal

            Yeah, sorry. That was just an after-add-on thought.

            --
            --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday September 28 2021, @06:10PM (1 child)

        by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday September 28 2021, @06:10PM (#1182344)

        I have found that reviewers are completely worthless as far as knowing what I'm going to like or not. More often than not it's being reviewed by someone who has vastly different tastes than I do.

        I mean, professional critics, sure. Here I'm talking about RedLetterMedia, a bunch of rough Wisconsinite guys who were already Star Trek fans, so I trust their reviews of Discovery and Picard.

        There are also far too many reviewers who suffer from "it's not the old shows"

        Putting a bit of a new spin on stuff is fine, but when it goes as far as "they're shitting all over the core things that make the original what it was", at some point you have to draw the line.

        I found that I enjoyed Discovery well enough

        I think they liked season 2 better than 1, although the plot still sounded like a huge mess.

        and I absolutely loved Picard

        Ah yes, the Star Trek where former captains are living in a trailer (they have currency now...?) and addicted to drugs, the Federation has a race of slave robots and wouldn't lift a finger to help the Romulans evacuate their homeworld (why couldn't they do it themselves either?), and there's a torture porn scene where a Borg gets its eyeball ripped out onscreen while screaming. But at least they found a way to crowbar in inept social commentary about refugees in between the fight scenes, which is why we watch Star Trek after all /s

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday September 28 2021, @09:32PM

          by cmdrklarg (5048) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 28 2021, @09:32PM (#1182448)

          I don't know anything about RedLetterMedia, but they possibly sound like "not the old shows" types. Still, better than the "pros".

          If the shows are breaking new ground, then "shitting on what came before" is entirely subjective. I didn't see much of that in the new shows. If anything they took quite a bit of effort to fit them into existing canon.

          Discovery season 2 was an improvement over 1. ST:D season 1 was WAY better than TNG season 1 IMHO. I had no trouble following the plot for Discovery.

          If you expected ST:Picard to be TNG Season 8 I can see why you didn't like it. The story went into why those things happened, and they seemed plausible to me. I did NOT care for the giant standoff between cookie-cutter fleets, but whatever, nothing's perfect.

          --
          The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @05:03PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @05:03PM (#1182292)

      At least the original creator is involved (significantly, it sounds like!),

      I've been burned too many times by terrible prequels, worse sequels, reboots, remakes, alternate universes, alternate timelines to get excited over a Babylon 5 reboot in any way even if JMS is involved.

      Remember, when we were so ecstatic that Lucas was directing the Star Wars prequels? We expected the newness of ANH, the maturity of ESB, and the awesome stomach-sinking-feeling-inducing space battles and closure from ROTJ. We expected everything that made Star Wars great, but with even more great.

      Instead we got "Meesa eesa, Anni-popanni", a Jedi order where everyone seems angry behave more like a cult than noble knights in shining armor, and the anticlimactic fight on hovering surfboards over lava. Oh and the hilariously infamous "Noooooooooooo" by Darth Vader.

      To quote Londo:"I don't like the sound of this Vir. No, i do not like the sound of this at all."

    • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday September 29 2021, @09:49PM

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 29 2021, @09:49PM (#1182935) Homepage Journal

      Picard was very good. And quite different from the usual Star Trek format.

  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday September 29 2021, @03:03AM (2 children)

    by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday September 29 2021, @03:03AM (#1182566) Homepage

    Agreed with that. I'd rather see an extension from the same base than a reboot. Give us something new extrapolated from the old-and-familiar, and you get the best of both worlds -- the old viewers not pissed that you ruined it, and the new viewers enjoying it for itself.

    --
    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
    • (Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday September 29 2021, @11:25AM (1 child)

      by looorg (578) on Wednesday September 29 2021, @11:25AM (#1182696)

      I don't really have a good reason for why they couldn't do say "Babylon 5 - the next generation", or whatever the equivalent would be from a Star Trek perspective. People liked TOS and people liked TNG, one sort of built on the other in that it shared a continuing universe. There should be ample threads about in the story etc to continue. Make a skip a hundred years into the future or something. They could build a Babylon-6 by then if they wanted to or some other thing. Instead of trying to update and reinvent (or retell) the same thing again with the same characters just played by new people. Find some new people. Make new stories. Isn't that what they are supposed to do.

      But as noted now a few times, I guess we wait and see. After all this won't make the screen for at least another year or two or however long it takes.

      • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday September 29 2021, @05:12PM

        by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday September 29 2021, @05:12PM (#1182826) Homepage

        Yeah, that's about the long and the short.... haven't seen the other extended bits, but I loved Crusade, and it showed how the universe could easily expand with new characters and ideas. Babylon-6 would be a great title, instantly obvious what it is to anyone who ever saw the original. Build on the old to bring us something new, don't break it with a reboot.

        But yeah, it's all speculation at this point, so we'll see in due course.

        --
        And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.