A recent tweet from Straczynski told us that due to some deadlines moved too close, he had to call off the visit to Bogforum (Book Fair) in Copenhagen this year.
He also told us that this was in accord with the organizers of the book fair, and they will try to arrange for this another time.
So my plan of going to the book fair all three days has changed. I will go there just one day this year.
This cancellation also opens the option of a second arrangement, so it is not all too bad.
As you may already know, when I found Babylon 5 I also found its creator J. Michael Straczynski.
I did get to meet him almost 10 years ago at Phoenix Comicon, at the 20th anniversary celebration for Babylon 5 (B5), where I attended the “Promise Panel”, where he told, for the first time in public, the background story of Michael O’Hare who played the lead, Commander Sinclair, in the first season, and his struggle with mental illness.
If you don’t know the story, and want to, just go on Youtube and search “straczynski promise panel”. Please be aware that this contains spoilers for the B5 series if you have not seen it.
Having followed him for quite a while, I know a bit about his writing career.
He has worked as a journalist, writing for much else:
I have had the wish to meet Straczynski in Europe after he was involved in Sense8, so I did not have to go to the US to do it.
I, and others, have suggested to invite him to Fedcon in Bonn, but for some reason unknown to me, it did not happen.
Today I saw an announcement from the Danish book fair (Bogforum) that they are going to have Straczynski as a guest at this year’s fair in Copenhagen in November this year. I also saw the announcement by Straczynski himself on his Twitter feed.
Now my wish comes true. Straczynski visiting, not just Europe, but within 20 minutes drive from my home.
I am excited.
J. Michael Straczynski reported that he finished script for the pilot episode of the new Babylon 5, and it has been approved.
The pilot is a go. Now we will have to wait for CW’s reaction to the filmed/finished pilot.
It has been announced that Time/Warner has set up the CW network for sale. JMS has told fans to relax. No one has been reported to be interested yet, and the sale must mass all the administrative bureaucracy, including monopoly checks etc. It should take a year, at the least, enough time to establish the show as being viable. After all those companies want to make money 😉
I am not worried about that aspect. Now we wait for the CW network to give their answer. Patience …
A few days ago, Straczynski answered a query from a fan about the possibilities of new Babylon 5, saying (quoted from memory) “This may not be as far fetched as you might think”.
Yesterday the news broke via several sources:
The CW channel, owned by Warner Bros, now has a re-boot of the Babylon 5 series in development. The new show will have J. Michael Straczynski (JMS), the creator of the original series, at the helm. JMS is busy writing the pilot episode.
When hearing about re-boots of older series I am usually a bit of a skeptic. Hearing that JMS will be running the show makes me optimistic and excited to see what he can do with his much larger writing experience and modern techniques of production. Having followed a good deal of his other work over time, I get the sense that we will not get just a re-hash of the original story, but taking into account all that JMS has learned over timr, about what works and what doesn’t. I think that the experience of working together with the Wachowskis on Sense 8 has further added to this.
Additionally, he said in a Twitter thread that he is not just just going to tell the old story all over again – we have seen that story already – but that it should be fresh water in the river of story telling. I have faith in his ability to craft stories that catch many people.
The reactions in the fan community is understandable very diverse, from people simply saying no, don’t want a re-boot, to people saying I’m all in. For me I will watch and then judge the new series on its own merits, even if I see it in the light of the original series that I have seen several times (I lost count).
When it comes to JMS, expect the unexpected. Exciting times ahead!
After a pause in binge watching of Babylon 5, I re-started, because I expect to meet with a lot of other B5 fans soon.
I just finished the first season, and I will say that I still do not understand the people calling Michael O’Hare’s acting “wooden”. It may be a bit understated, but at times, just a facial expression tells more than many words.
While season 1 is not the strongest of the series, it serves very well for setting up the story, and a great introduction to the main characters, and a glimpse of what is to come.
Here is an example: The much maligned episode TKO has one of the really strong character moments for Ivanova. I know that many skip the episode, but then they miss out on this excellent character moment, and a follow up to a small thread from a previous episode.
I will rate my re-viewing of this season as 8/10
A little less because of travels and other planned activities. This came out a bit late, but I shall endeavour to continue this type of posts, maybe monthly, maybe covering a few months at a time.
Here is the list with quick ratings:
TV:
Finishing The 100, season 4 re-watch 7/10
Finishing season 5 of “The 100”. Good show Final 2 episodes 8/10, all over 7/10
Finishing The Americans, season 6, with a friend8/10
Jeremiah, S1 continue/DVD with a friend
Finishing Scorpion, season 2 7/10
Chernobyl mini series 10/10
Sense8 re-watch, whole series. still 10/10
Krypton Season 2 finished 8/10
Into the Badlands: finished 2nd half of season 3, average 7/10
Scorpion: Season 3: 7/10
Scorpion: Season 4: (it went down hill) 6/10
Scorpion as a whole: Average 7/10
The Flash, season 5 a solid 7/10
Film:
Spiderman: Homecoming 8/10
Gravity with a friend 8/10
I Am Legend, a solid 7/10
The Dark Crystal 7/10
Read:
Becoming Superman – JMS 10/10
Babylon 5: Technomage trilogy – Jeanne Cavelos:
“The Passing of the Technomages”
1) Casting Shadows
2) Summoning Light
3) Invoking Darkness
I like this trilogy a lot
9/10
Graphic novels:
Superman: New Krypton, vols 1 – 4:
Enjoyable, interesting take on Zod’s character
8/10
Yoko Tsuno: vols 2,3 and a few more.
#29 arrived at Fantasticon – “Engle og Falke” (Danish title, Eng.: Angels and Falcons)
7/10
A few years ago I was able to pick up the B5 20th Anniversary book at Phoenix Comicon, in 2013. The book is since then out of print, and will not be available again.
However, a multimedia edition is now available from B5Books.
Today (PST, I think) is the last day to purchase at the reduced price of $37. Tomorrow the fast response price will be the double.
If you have discovered Babylon 5 since the book went out of print, or you missed the print book for whichever reason, here is an opportunity to get the material in electronic form.
On top of that, there is some additional video material in the multimedia edition.
If you want to get it, you can go to
b5books.com and order.
Disclaimer : I am not affiliated with B5Books, but I have been a happy customer to many of their releases.
Have fun !
Sometimes fans can blow a particular story completely out of proportion.
This is what happened to the story of Peter David (PAD) who wrote 2 episodes of Babylon 5, in particular “There all Honor Lies”, where B5 should be, at least in a small part, be financed my merchandize.
JMS made a small re-write as a response to receiving a Teddy Bear from PAD as a gift. JMS has gone on record as not liking “cute”, so the re-write resulted in the bear being spaced by captain Sheridan.
Later PAD put a story of a spaced bear into another story, saying that it was done by a race called the “Straczyn”. There was a bit more back-and-forth, and suddenly the fans were blowing this up to be a feud between PAD and JMS.
The truth is that it was all a friendly tease between the two, as Peter David wrote on his blog in 1997.
Please read the above link for the full story. I found it quite amusing.
Some of you may not be familiar with #FreeBabylon5, so here is a short description :
There have been several attempts to revive the interest in the Babylon 5 TV series, including JMS’ attempt to buy back the rights for everything. He already has the rights for a theatrical movie, but can not do much with that.
Come September 2013 he had enough of this and made a not on his Facebook page, saying that he could do no more and encouraging the fans to “be organized and be loud”, in order to get Babylon 5 back on TV screens and streaming services. Babylon 5 has been away from TV screens for over a decade in the US. He (and we, the fans) want casual viewers to be able to stumble across the series.
So – the fans started a campaign – letter writing and attention creating measures. The campaign has already been partly successful. The full 5 year series has been shown on the UK Watch channel, with a trailer referencing #FreeBabylon5, and is currently running in Denmark, Germany and Italy.
I have been participating by giving away FreeBabylon5 stuff at a few conventions, and had some fun with that.
Now on to my draft text for an article for the FreeBabylon5 website :
“This is a personal account of my (Babylon Lurker’s) attendance of Loncon3 also known as Worldcon 2014.
Since I live in the Netherlands this was the first Worldcon I have had available near me since I started to go to conventions.
I met Jan M Schroeder at Phoenix Comicon 2013 and Space City Con 2014, and she provided me with some #FreeBabylon5 treats to give away at conventions.
The first two conventions were small local conventions in Copenhagen, Denmark with 30 – 150 attendees – and I got to give away a bit of this. One Swedish writer saw my “#FreeBabylon5” badge and immediately reacted by saying that B5 is a brilliant show.
The third was Fedcon in Düsseldorf, Germany, a media oriented convention with about 5000 attendees. I did get to give away a fair amount of the #FreeBabylon5 stuff, since I met a fair amount of B5 fans there.
Having gone to bigger conventions I decided to go to Worldcon in London this year with a fair supply.
I did not have a table, but just walked around, talking to people. I was slightly surprised by the sheer number of Babylon 5 fans I met there. I must have talked to about 100 people during the 5 days, and my impression is that about 80% of those were B5 fans who happily received the FreeBabylon5 stuff. I am aware that B5 is more popular in the UK than in the US, but among the US people I met the number of fans was high. Essentially everyone knew B5, and many of the non-fans had the show on their to-do list.
I have to assume that this is because Worldcon attendees have a very wide range of Science Fiction interests, books, films, TV, comics etc. I guess I should not have been surprised at all .
On Saturday a Babylon 5 fan meeting was arranged, and in spite of it coinciding with the masquerade we had 40 – 50 people there. Not everyone I met had even heard of the fan meeting. I am sure it could have been bigger if it had been more widely announced.
Jan had indicated that the temporary tattoos were quite popular at SDCC, at Worldcon I found that the #FreeBabylon5 ribbons were more sought after. I ran out of the ribbon supply, but I still have some of the tattoos left, and a few buttons/badges, too.
Loncon 3 has been a very good convention experience in general, and a good B5 fan experience in particular. I will certainly continue being a roving Ambassador/Ranger at other conventions that I will attend.”
Jan M Schroeder has just finished a transcript from the JMS announcement. She has encouraged sharing, so I bring it here as well :
Updated 2014-08-10 due to a glitch.
“Whew! Okay, I’ve finally transcribed the relevant portions from my audio recording:
Quote:
JMS recaps what’s coming up and then:
So we’ve been having a really, really good year at Studio JMS. And where that comes in handy – where it’s kind of important involves this (B5 logo comes on screen). So… Fact: When I made the Babylon 5 deal with Warner Bros. it was just short of indentured servitude. Financially, I’ll never seen a dime out of Babylon 5 ever. I have no problems with that; I knew what I was signing when I go into it, but I mention it to piss them off every once in a while. One thing that I was able to withhold was the film rights. I still own the movie rights to Babylon 5. I’ve been pushing Warner’s for the last…ever since the early cretaceous period…to “Let’s do a Babylon 5 movie – a proper big budget feature film.” And they’ve always dragged their feet [because] that’s what Warner Bros. does. They knew that they had the upper hand because I couldn’t take it to any other studio because these days all the studios want all the rights. So if I brought it to say, Sony or Fox, they’d want the TV rights which Warner Bros. controls. Warner Bros. will never give those rights up so we were always handcuffed by that.
Turns out, however, there’s one studio in Los Angeles…Distributors, by the way, don’t care about the TV rights. Distributors just [care] about the movie, they don’t care about the TV part. There’s one studio in town that doesn’t care if it doesn’t have the TV rights…that wants to see this movie made and will do it with or without Warner Bros. (Studio JMS logo comes on screen).
Here’s the plan: We’re going to have, through Studio JMS, at least two, maybe three TV series on the air next year. We’re going to have at least one or two movies going ahead. And we’ll use that to parlay serious investment in the studio. I’m not talking Kickstarter, I’m talking about one hundred million dollars, two hundred million dollars; we already have people who are lined up and interested in doing that.
So in 2015 I will write a Babylon 5 screenplay. I’ll be giving Warner Bros. the opportunity – if they want to step up, “Help yourself”. If they don’t, 2016: We make it. I’m not going to wait around for more of our cast members to die. So that’s the long term plan and those are the current updates on everything that’s going on right now.
Question from a fan: Asked if JMS might crowd-fund for a million of the investment so that fans can be part of it.
JMS: I would rather not. Here’s the reason why, though. I come from the ranks of fandom – I’m as rank as any of you. To me, much as I understand that Kickstarter and crowd-sourcing are a way for those outside to get involved with the process, show their appreciation for the process, I am resistant to that lure because it feels to me like taking advantage of the fans and I have a hard time with that on a moral and ethical basis. I’d rather have an investor come up and say “Here’s a check for a hundred million dollars” – which I would gladly take, by the way; if anyone in the audience happens to have one of those lying around, let me know – than to come to the fans and try to get it. Science fiction fans, and horror fans, to a degree, are the most exploited folks out there. “Line up, buy the merchandise, watch the show.” And I just see this money suck happening. So the answer is no.
Question from a fan: Are you considering a reboot to bring in new viewers or are you thinking of a continuation with the cast and crew from the original series.
JMS: It would have to be a reboot because it’s now been twenty-plus years since we started that show and some of the age ranges wouldn’t always work with some of the characters. So we’d have to move a few people around. But what I want to do is use the original cast one way or the other and move a few things around. I’d love to see Bruce as President of the Earth Alliance; that would be the perfect role for him.
I love playing around with the cast anyway. The one story that I wanted to do for the original B5 and they wouldn’t let me do it was, when Londo was injured and had this dream sequence, I wanted to have different actors play different roles. So Jerry Doyle would play Londo. Claudia Christian would play Delenn and Delenn (Mira) would play Ivanova. Peter Jurasik would play Jerry Doyle’s role. Andreas Katsulas would be the Commander of the Station and Bruce would be G’Kar. They said, “People would be way too confused.” JMS: “They won’t be confused, trust me! Listen, they have the intelligence for this.” It was the only story that they said “No, no, no, no and by the way, no.” The chance to [ ] play around with the cast and have some fun with it could be a good thing.
Any errors are mine. Feel free to share.
Jan “