The beauty of Babylon 5 was that the entire story - from start to finish - was already preplanned by JMS. The biggest spanner in the works was the end of Season 4 - the studio claimed the show will not be renewed for the 5th and final season - so the last episode is a literal ''here's a condensed and completely unrelated story of how everything ends in 2,000 years.''

There were otherwise many minor details that would span over the entire show - such as Londo's uniform becoming ever so slightly darker with each passing episode - in Episode 1 it's completely white - by season 3 it's dark grey - and starting with season 4 it's completely black.

Otherwise - yeah, it had filler episodes, but the story as a whole was already set.

Oh, in case any fan has not heard of this site - Midwinter - offers analysis of each episode; has interesting tidbits and JMS usenet posts regarding many episodes.
Problem is - the entries are only worth reading after you've seen an episode. :/
They don't make any sense for passerby's.

Watched it the other night, found it quite enjoyable and it really made me want to get the new BD set and rewatch the whole series. While the animation style does look a bit stiff and cheap at times, the movie itself does look good overall and it was clearly made for the fans, with many plot points and fanservice that only true B5 fans are going to appreciate. Yes there's a heavy alternate timelines element to it that I was skeptical about, but it works in context.

Good point.

I'm not ashamed to say I hate Disney. It's not about their material (although it seems like that has gone a bit stale).

It's that they changed the copyright law (pushing away the time things enter public domains by decades), which affects pretty much everyone way beyond the IPs Disney holds (at least, IPs from the US anyways which is a lot) because they were too chicken to come up with new material instead of milking their existing franchises.

I'll forgive Disney when that ruling is reversed. Until then, they are the embodiment of Evil to me.

Well, I can only say how it felt to me. Truly, the great moments of Babylon 5 were greats, but its quality was inconsistent. I recall it had several episodes that didn't do a lot for me even in terms of developing the characters.

I think it speaks to how good its great moments were that it is in my top 3 for space shows regardless.

Looking forward to it. I'm not expecting a masterpiece like the STNG-restoration, but then again the show is not as old and doesn't need it as desperatly.

Are the movies included as well?

The movies are sadly not included, only the original TV seasons. I suspect if the BD does well the movies will get releases before too long though.

Thanks for the info.

Yes and no. The original concept changed significantly; there were many alternatives that JMS put in place to adjust for actors potentially leaving and so on. Speaking of which... I mean, having your lead actor replaced after one season due to mental health issues was a rather large spanner. ;) That changed things greatly; among other things, the flash-forward in Babylon Squared was not meant as a "possible future" (that was a retcon), but the actual future, and the show had a completely different and very dark ending, which would have led to the sequel show. Not quite; it was known that the show was expected to end with season 4 after season 3 was completed. This led to the final two seasons being condensed into season 4, hence the rather breakneck pacing. The final episode filmed for season 4 was the series finale shown at the end of the fifth season (note that Ivanova is in it; Claudia Christian left for good after season 4 and didn't come back for a guest spot or anything). The last-minute renewal led to filming the "1 million years in the future" episode as the first episode of season 5, which was shown as the season 4 finale. (The production codes were shuffled, so 501 became 422, season 5 starts with 502, and the finale was changed from 422 to 523.) Then JMS had to stretch out the scraps left out of the original season 4+5 plan and somehow make that into a complete season, which is why it takes like half the season to find its footing again.

Too bad as Sinclair was fantastic and Boxleitner isn't as good. That guy's voice is just AMAZING.

A show I could never "get into."

Don't get me wrong, I understand its importance to the scifi "community" and own the series (and subsequent tv movies... and even have a screenwriting book by JMS!) but I've never been able to get hooked on it like... say... STTNG. But reading this thread has gotten me interested in giving it another try!

Wit that said, my taste in scifi is kinds weird. I never "got into" FIREFLY (although I own that too!) but loved FARSCAPE. Guess I just love aliens and puppets. ;)

(strangely, my renewed interest in B5 came from watching the first few episodes of THE EXPANSE)

Ohhh! That show was awesome! A pregnant spaceship? Count me in! :D

What about Lexx ? =P

Ah, so no ''one true vision'' afterall... interesting... either my info was wrong or, more likely, my memory of events is wrong... in any case - thanks for the info!

Lexx was trash art.

Well, there absolutely was a plan, and it does show. It just had to be adapted to a lot of factors - that's what happens when you're telling a story over mutliple years with a ton of people involved. Thanks to the overall plan the changes that would have likely derailed most shows were "assimilated" by the story, so to speak. I can hardly think of another show that emerged from swapping the main character arguably unscathed.

That's one I could never get into. And I really wanted to. I'd be delighted to have another space sci-fi show to watch, but for some reason it never really clicked for me. And it's definitely not the puppets, I usually love that stuff. The show just kind of bored me. I actually had more fun with something like Andromeda, although I'll readily admit it was mostly trash, and I'll probably never rewatch it.

It took a long time for the original vision to come out, as JMS tended to downplay the various changes as he wanted the televised version to be the "real" one and for fans not to obsess over "the way it was supposed to be," which is entirely reasonable. While there was no "one true vision," there was definitely a plan, but it was highly flexible, which was the responsible way to do it.

Lexx was a bridge too far. ;)

Yeah, I really enjoyed the Flash Gordon feeling of season 1. After that I enjoyed the show -- and characters -- but the writing was middling. I applaud what they could accomplish on a severe budget, but they needed a stronger showrunner (sorry R. O'Bannon) to tighten those scripts... but IMHO many Henson Prods suffer from great ideas and visuals while lacking in pace, plotting, and general storytelling.