Babylon 5 is being rebooted - and JMS is involved

[Corvus]

I never thought I'd see this - but Babylon5 is being rebooted, and the creator of it, JMS, is running the show.

There is little detail so far beyond the initial description;

In a from-the-ground-up reboot of the original series, John Sheridan, an Earthforce officer with a mysterious background, 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.

[Fyraltari]

Interesting. My first thought was that it might have been an occasion to show the story as originally envisionned (with Sinclair all the way through and the original fifth season) but thinking about it, I think Straczynski is right about not attempting to cross the same river twice. What was fresh back then, wouldn't be today.

I will keep an eye on that one.

[Rynjin]

Could be interesting. The leaps and bounds in effects alone might make this worthwhile, but the original cast was SO GOOD for the most part I have a hard time envisioning replacements.

[AgentofOdd]

This one is fairly apprehensive about this. CW reboots (at least the ones I've seen) I've been subpar at best, sci-fi shows generally aren't very popular, and CW loves to cancel shows. Best case scenario, we'll get a terrible show that everyone will ignore. Worst case scenario CW will create an incredible reboot that fans will love... then cancel it after 1-2 seasons.

[Dire_Flumph]

I found it hard to believe until I saw JMS confirm it on Facebook. Babylon 5 was the last show I was really into in a massively fannish way while it was airing (I'd probably cringe now at my old usenet posts from the time), and while I'm excited, I also remember the decline of quality through Season 5 into Crusade into Legends of the Rangers (Lost Tales was good, but the budget was down to almost nonexistant at that point), so I'm hesitant to get too excited.

It's also a shame it's a complete reboot, but what can you do at this point? I'd love to see the Telepath War, but with so many of the cast passed on it would feel hollow.

And while the CW doesn't have the best track record, where exactly would be a better fit? Put it on Netflix and it's almost a guaranteed 2 season then cancel. HBO Max would likely have sky-high expectations and B5 has never managed more than a small but passionate fanbase. With JMS at the helm at least, the CW might not be a bad place for it.

But I'm still looking forward to seeing what magic JMS might still conjure. In a post Battlestar/Game of Thrones/Mass Effect world, Babylon 5 is no longer as unique as it was, but few series in the US have done long form storytelling as well as B5 did.

[Dragonus45]

I found it hard to believe until I saw JMS confirm it on Facebook. Babylon 5 was the last show I was really into in a massively fannish way while it was airing (I'd probably cringe now at my old usenet posts from the time), and while I'm excited, I also remember the decline of quality through Season 5 into Crusade into Legends of the Rangers (Lost Tales was good, but the budget was down to almost nonexistant at that point), so I'm hesitant to get too excited.

I try not to hold season 5 or crusade against JMS, both in their own way were an excellent example of just how badly a network can actually screw over a show. Crusade especially. I'm really curious what it looks like now that JMS is back to doing show running for network TV but now in a position where his name carries real weight to push back.

[Psyren]

And while the CW doesn't have the best track record, where exactly would be a better fit? Put it on Netflix and it's almost a guaranteed 2 season then cancel. HBO Max would likely have sky-high expectations and B5 has never managed more than a small but passionate fanbase. With JMS at the helm at least, the CW might not be a bad place for it.

Given what they did with The Expanse I'd have said Amazon, but they look like they have their hands full.

As it stands, those two cursed letters (CW) make me extremely leery.

[Wintermoot]

I try not to hold season 5 or crusade against JMS, both in their own way were an excellent example of just how badly a network can actually screw over a show. Crusade especially. I'm really curious what it looks like now that JMS is back to doing show running for network TV but now in a position where his name carries real weight to push back.

What "weight" do you imagine he has exactly? Looking at this credits for the last 20 years I really don't see much of anything. I liked Jermiah and... the first half of Sense8, but both were failures commercially and critically.

If anything, he's at the absolute nadir of personal influence and power. In fact, he's left a virtual playground of abandoned projects laying behind him at this point, each with the "creative differences" label which, increasingly, looks like he just doesn't play well with others wholesale. How many times do we take his side in an argument that happens again and again with relationship after relationship?

I'm not enthused about this. Not that I wouldn't like to see a reboot of Babylon5, but I'd like to see some infusion of new ideas and new voices. And CW? Oh man... that really makes me worry. Do they have the finances to do something that looks worthwhile?

[Dire_Flumph]

I try not to hold season 5 or crusade against JMS, both in their own way were an excellent example of just how badly a network can actually screw over a show. Crusade especially. I'm really curious what it looks like now that JMS is back to doing show running for network TV but now in a position where his name carries real weight to push back.

While a lot of that is true, his name is on those scripts. He was definitely screwed over by the network, but he also insisted on writing all the scripts for seasons 3, 4 and most of 5 and watching things as they aired, I can tell you, the decline was noticeable at the time. Listening to him on Usenet it was clear he was tired and stretched thin. He needed to find collaborators he could work with, who could turn out scripts he could work with and share the load. And it's not like none were available. I really wish Peter David had been able to do more with the show for example, I remember him expressing an interest in writing more for the show at the time, both of his season 2 episodes were very good, and he ended up writing the excellent Centauri Prime Trilogy as a capstone to the original series, which I would call required reading for B5 fans if it hadn't been out of print for decades now.

I wish I could see the results of a season 4-5 unencumbered by network troubles, and a Crusade that was a fully realized vision. But I also wish I could have seen those things made with a full creative team of writers JMS could share the load with. Later Babylon 5 works had bits of greatness to them, but the writing just is not up to the standards of the earlier show.

Given what they did with The Expanse I'd have said Amazon, but they look like they have their hands full.

As it stands, those two cursed letters (CW) make me extremely leery.

100% agree. Also 100% can't think of a better realistic option. Amazon is killing the Expanse after all without letting it get to where the books will end. Getting a B5 reboot made at all is kind of an out of left field thing at this point. Finding a home that will keep it for a full run of episodes? Maybe the CW isn't a bad option. A moderate hit has at least a decent chance there.

[Cikomyr2]

While a lot of that is true, his name is on those scripts. He was definitely screwed over by the network, but he also insisted on writing all the scrips for seasons 3, 4 and most of 5 and watching things as they aired, I can tell you, the decline was noticeable at the time. Listening to him on Usenet it was clear he was tired and stretched thin. He needed to find collaborators he could work with, who could turn out scripts he could work with and share the load. And it's not like none were available. I really wish Peter David had been able to do more with the show for example, I remember him expressing an interest in writing more for the show at the time, both of his season 2 episodes were very good, and he ended up writing the excellent Centauri Prime Trilogy as a capstone to the original series, which I would call required reading for B5 fans if it hadn't been out of print for decades now.

I wish I could see the results of a season 4-5 unencumbered by network troubles, and a Crusade that was a fully realized vision. But I also wish I could have seen those things made with a full creative team of writers JMS could share the load with. Later Babylon 5 works had bits of greatness to them, but the writing just is not up to the standards of the earlier show.

Season 2-3-4 were the peak of B5, and that's including season 4 being a cramjob because the network told JMS he wouldn't get a 5th season, so he had to wrap up all the open plot lines.

And then he got told to do a 5th Season. And the story goes he had a lot of leftover plots ready to go, but a cleaning maid lost most of the material he had written for Season 5; with the Telepath rebels plotline being the one surviving. So they went with that to start the 5th season, and by the time they got around to film after the Telepath enclave, JMS had actually managed to recreate his material. And, in my opinion, Season 5's second half got a lot better. The Telepath storyline just plain sucks in a vacuum.

[Dire_Flumph]

Season 2-3-4 were the peak of B5, and that's including season 4 being a cramjob because the network told JMS he wouldn't get a 5th season, so he had to wrap up all the open plot lines.

And then he got told to do a 5th Season. And the story goes he had a lot of leftover plots ready to go, but a cleaning maid lost most of the material he had written for Season 5; with the Telepath rebels plotline being the one surviving. So they went with that to start the 5th season, and by the time they got around to film after the Telepath enclave, JMS had actually managed to recreate his material. And, in my opinion, Season 5's second half got a lot better. The Telepath storyline just plain sucks in a vacuum.

I'd agree that Seasons 2-4 were the peak certainly. Season 1 had a lot of work doing worldbuilding out of whole cloth, getting production on firm ground, and dealing with a few weak scripts and weaker guest stars. Season 4 was very strong even with the uncertainty of renewal leading to some terrible pacing issues in the back half (I'm especially irritated that we went from "If Garibaldi shows up on the station again I want him shot on sight" to "All is forgiven with no lasting consequences" in the space of an episode or two). I remember watching the end of Season 4 and the distant finale of "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" and thinking that Season 5 was going to have to be really special to top that as a series finish.

I'm not sure I believe that scripts were lost, that wasn't the story at the time, and Word Processers were a thing in the 90's. Season 5 had other troubles. The momentum ground to a screeching halt at the end of Season 4 since they had to potentially finish the show, and it required building it up again. Claudia Christian left, and it's clear she was supposed to have taken over the station, and been a major presence in the last year (Can you imagine just how much Ivanova could have added to the Telepath storyline? No wonder stuff had to be thrown out and rewritten). Instead they had to create a new character to fill her shoes that never quite gelled with the story. The Telepath plotline was just badly written and realized, somewhat salvaged in my opinion only by Walter Koenig and Patricia Tallman. The second half of the season was better, but given no room to breathe given how big a story they were going for. Just as momentum was building up, everything had to wind down again without a proper resolution (Which at least, as I mentioned, Peter David's books admirably concluded). JMS was in a bad position, but he managed to work around real life difficulties more adroitly in the past, I still think stress and exhaustion from overwork due to the load he placed on himself were major contributors to the show's decline. And that at least was something he could have handled better.

[El Dorado]

I wonder if Christopher Franke will be doing any of the music. That would be amazing.

[Cikomyr2]

I'm not sure I believe that scripts were lost, that wasn't the story at the time, and Word Processers were a thing in the 90's. Season 5 had other troubles. The momentum ground to a screeching halt at the end of Season 4 since they had to potentially finish the show, and it required building it up again. Claudia Christian left, and it's clear she was supposed to have taken over the station, and been a major presence in the last year (Can you imagine just how much Ivanova could have added to the Telepath storyline? No wonder stuff had to be thrown out and rewritten). Instead they had to create a new character to fill her shoes that never quite gelled with the story. The Telepath plotline was just badly written and realized, somewhat salvaged in my opinion only by Walter Koenig and Patricia Tallman. The second half of the season was better, but given no room to breathe given how big a story they were going for. Just as momentum was building up, everything had to wind down again without a proper resolution (Which at least, as I mentioned, Peter David's books admirably concluded). JMS was in a bad position, but he managed to work around real life difficulties more adroitly in the past, I still think stress and exhaustion from overwork due to the load he placed on himself were major contributors to the show's decline. And that at least was something he could have handled better.

That's.. no proof that JMS is lying. Just because something exists doesn't mean JMS did use it. Or preferred to use it to carry around his own documents. Or even if he did, that he kept a software copy.

I agree that 5th season if very, very garbled, and I do think that if JMS had its way, we'd only remember season 1 as the odd black sheep, still very essential to the worldbuidling.

I do love that season 1 is.. basically pre-inciting incident. You rarely see that.

[Dire_Flumph]

That's.. no proof that JMS is lying. Just because something exists doesn't mean JMS did use it. Or preferred to use it to carry around his own documents. Or even if he did, that he kept a software copy.

Whoah, pump the brakes there! I never said he was lying. I've never heard him tell that story, and it doesn't gel with things I have heard him say about the writing process for B5. Do you have a link to where he said that, because it doesn't sound right.

It was pretty clear he didn't have a briefcase full of completed scripts for the series, by his own admission of how the writing process went. He did, however, have a detailed outline with the overall series storyline, and the history of the galaxy in about a few thousand years in either direction, and that was certainly not something that was destroyed in a mishap. There's a pretty large collection of his comments on the writing process in general and for episodes in particular on the Lurker's Guide, which is still up after all these years. There's some good reading in there for any B5 fan if you haven't seen it.

[Dragonus45]

While a lot of that is true, his name is on those scripts. He was definitely screwed over by the network, but he also insisted on writing all the scripts for seasons 3, 4 and most of 5 and watching things as they aired, I can tell you, the decline was noticeable at the time. Listening to him on Usenet it was clear he was tired and stretched thin. He needed to find collaborators he could work with, who could turn out scripts he could work with and share the load. And it's not like none were available. I really wish Peter David had been able to do more with the show for example, I remember him expressing an interest in writing more for the show at the time, both of his season 2 episodes were very good, and he ended up writing the excellent Centauri Prime Trilogy as a capstone to the original series, which I would call required reading for B5 fans if it hadn't been out of print for decades now.

He isn't totally blameless for the issues in season 4 and 5 but but the networks did give him the business. And Crusade was a case of literal sabotage.

100% agree. Also 100% can't think of a better realistic option. Amazon is killing the Expanse after all without letting it get to where the books will end. Getting a B5 reboot made at all is kind of an out of left field thing at this point. Finding a home that will keep it for a full run of episodes? Maybe the CW isn't a bad option. A moderate hit has at least a decent chance there.

If Amazon had had the Expanse from Day 1 I think it would be a very different situation. As it is, by the time they got a hold of it it really was just to late to right that ship.

What "weight" do you imagine he has exactly? Looking at this credits for the last 20 years I really don't see much of anything. I liked Jermiah and... the first half of Sense8, but both were failures commercially and critically.

The last 20 years? Of being an acclaimed comics writer who also wrote several successful movies, and despite not liking Sense8 at all myself if it had been anywhere but netflix it would still be going right now with a great deal of critical praise and awards heaped on. Jeremiah was also rather successful and it's cancelation is baffling to this day. Plus when you consider his lack of enthusiasm for pushing a reboot of this before then realistically, this isn't happening unless the CW actively wants it from him. Also, and this may be more important then any other factor, he is the executor of Harlan Ellison's estate and I imagine a fair few people wanting to play nice for a chance at getting a hold of some of those stories and IP. To say he has no weight when dealing with ****ty notes or other network shenanigans is kind of off.

[Palanan]

I liked the original pilot (which had a more diverse and interesting cast) but was unimpressed with the first season, and never came back to it.

So I wouldn’t be naturally drawn to this—but the fact that it’s planned for CW makes it a hard pass with no looking back.

[Wintermoot]

The last 20 years? Of being an acclaimed comics writer who also wrote several successful movies,

Perhaps I should have said 10-20 years then. Which is a long time in hollywood. But let's talk about "acclaimed comics writer" and "several successful movies"

Movies:

Changeling 2008
Ninja Assassin 2009
Thor 2011
Underworld Awakening 2012
WWZ 2013

And then.... nothing for 8 years? And which of those, other than Thor, would you call a successful movie? Using what metrics? {Scrubbed}And Thor is USUALLY down on the bottom of most people's lists of good marvel movies but it would've succeeded no matter WHO wrote it.

{Scrubbed} All I see, looking down through his bibliography, is a guy who keeps getting fired or leaving jobs over creative differences.

and despite not liking Sense8 at all myself if it had been anywhere but netflix it would still be going right now with a great deal of critical praise and awards heaped on.

{Scrubbed}

Jeremiah was also rather successful and it's cancelation is baffling to this day.

Hey, I for one loved that show{Scrubbed}

Plus when you consider his lack of enthusiasm for pushing a reboot of this before then realistically, this isn't happening unless the CW actively wants it from him.

Funny. Every single quote I've seen here or elsewhere indicates that it was WB who had the lack of enthusiasm. Not JMS.

Also, and this may be more important then any other factor, he is the executor of Harlan Ellison's estate and I imagine a fair few people wanting to play nice for a chance at getting a hold of some of those stories and IP. To say he has no weight when dealing with ****ty notes or other network shenanigans is kind of off.

Ah. Well I didn't know that. But if you are saying JMS's weight comes from his control over the estate of a far better writer you aren't really giving him any credit for his own worth. {Scrubbed} He can cdrtainly use his control over Ellison's estate as leverage to get his way in many arguments. That would be class-a respectable behavior.

[Dragonus45]

Perhaps I should have said 10-20 years then. Which is a long time in hollywood. But let's talk about "acclaimed comics writer" and "several successful movies"

Movies:

Changeling 2008
Ninja Assassin 2009
Thor 2011
Underworld Awakening 2012
WWZ 2013

And then.... nothing for 8 years? And which of those, other than Thor, would you call a successful movie? Using what metrics? {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Changeling was critically liked, has a very high audience rating, was nominated for and won multiple awards, and turned a profit. Sounds successful to me. Ninja Assasin was stupid but fun enough to have an over 50 audience score and turn a profit, I know jack **** about the Underworld franchise but WWZ was also liked by both audiences and critics and turned a profit. There I kept it nice and simple for you.

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}All I see, looking down through his bibliography, is a guy who keeps getting fired or leaving jobs over creative differences.

Oh no, stay right here buddy. It is admittedly difficult to find some details for sales numbers for indie comics. If you have any numbers for example Rising Stars or Midnight Nation that say they weren't successful go ahead and let me know. Looking at reviews for them both then and now they look pretty acclaimed to me, and that's before you get into an 8 year run at Marvel that included running the Amazing Spiderman for 6 that is highly regarded outside of One More Day, which he was wildly against doing in the first place. Supreme Power was also supposedly pretty good but I have not read it. Then you look over at his time at DC you see three number 1 best seller Superman: Earth One books... yea nothing here worth saying he was acclaimed.

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

{Scrubbed}

Hey, I for one loved that show, {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Just about every review for it I find from both then and now is glowingly positive and every story about it's cancellation comes down to it being screwed by some combination of back end production issues and not that it failed as a show. Sounds successful to me.

Funny. Every single quote I've seen here or elsewhere indicates that it was WB who had the lack of enthusiasm. Not JMS.

Last we heard about a reboot before this was talks about a movie and barely that and JMS has never seemed super wild about the idea. Warner Bros themselves have been pretty solid on not wanting to bother with the series for ages now. A reboot happening probably comes from the network. CW. Where JMS said specifically mentioned this was happening because of fans over at the network.

[Julian84]

Supreme Power was also supposedly pretty good but I have not read it.

I dunno who is saying Supreme Power is good, because it's really, really not. Very edgy, only goes for lowest hanging fruit, and shoehorns in a bunch of sexualized material bc it was a MAX imprint and hamfisted sex apparently sells, except when it doesn't. As a JMS fan, I have no idea what he was snorting when he wrote that.

[J-H]

I think this is a mistake.

I was going to compare it to rebooting Star Trek with new actors for Kirk and Spock, but I guess they did that... and nuTrek was not a great success (no more movies/not as profitable, very paint-by-numbers, not worth a rewatch). That's my opinion so let's not derail on it like it's the Sequel Trilogy (killer of threads).

All of the big plot twists have been revealed, so there will have to be changes made for the sake of being different. Different is not always better. I have heard that the Final Fantasy 7 remake works pretty well, but it's some sort of self-referential thing with timey-wimey shenanigans or future knowledge in play.

The cast of B5 is, frankly, a bit hammy at times (looking at you Bruce Boxleitner), but they worked well together and had a lot of character growth. I think it will be impossible to replicate the Mollari/G'Kar relationship with new actors. Some of the other roles are also so tied to the actor's style that it'll be hard to be equal to the original performance (Garibaldi, Delenn, Marcus, Ivanova).

The way to not make it a mistake would be to make it officially an AU where historical events went differently, and we have different characters in key roles, with some similar plotlines but also some substantial differences that make the arc of history develop in a different direction.... maybe the Narn work with the Shadows; the Psi Corp isn't evil, just misunderstood; the Minbari aren't running "Better Than Everyone" tech; etc.

[JadedDM]

Wow, who knew there were so many B5 fans in a forum called Giant in the Playground?

For what it's worth, I am pretty excited about it. JMS went into more detail on Twitter, here, if you are interested.

Or you can just read it here:

Spoiler

Show

To answer all the questions, yes, it’s true, Babylon 5 is in active development as a series for the CW. We have some serious fans over at the network, and they’re eager to see this show happen. I’m hip deep into writing the pilot now, and will be running the series upon pickup.

The network understands the uniqueness of Babylon 5 and is giving me a great deal of latitude with the storytelling.As noted in the announcement, this is a reboot from the ground up rather than a continuation, for several reasons. Heraclitus wrote—

— “You cannot step in the same river twice, for the river has changed, and you have changed.” In the years since B5, I’ve done a ton of other TV shows and movies, adding an equal number of tools to my toolbox, all of which I can bring to bear on one singular question:

if I were creating Babylon 5 today, for the first time, knowing what I now know as a writer, what would it look like? How would it use all the storytelling tools and technological resources available in 2021 that were not on hand then?

How can it be used to reflect the world in which we live, and the questions we are asking and confronting every day? Fans regularly point out how prescient the show was and is of our current world; it would be fun to take a shot at looking further down the road.

So we will not be retelling the same story in the same way because of what Heraclitus said about the river. There would be no fun and no surprises. Better to go the way of Westworld or Battlestar Galactica where you take the original elements that are evergreens and —

put them in a blender with a ton of new, challenging ideas, to create something fresh yet familiar. To those asking why not just do a continuation, for a network series like this, it can’t be done because over half our cast are still stubbornly on the other side of the Rim.

How do you telling continuing story of our original Londo without the original Vir? Or G’Kar? How do you tell Sheridan’s story without Delenn? Or the story of B5 without Franklin? Garibaldi? Zack?

The original Babylon 5 was ridiculously innovative: the first to use CGI to create ships and characters, and among the very first to shoot widescreen with a vigorous 5.1 mix. Most of all, for the first time, Babylon 5 introduced viewers accustomed to episodic television to —

— the concept of a five-year arc with a pre-planned beginning, middle and end…creating a brand new paradigm for television storytelling that has subsequently become the norm. That tradition for innovation will continue in this new iteration, and —

— I hope to create additional new forms of storytelling that will further push the television medium to the edge of what’s possible.

Let me conclude by just saying how supportive and enthusiastic everyone at the CW has been and is being with this project. They understand the —

— unique position Babylon 5 occupies both in television and with its legions of fans, and are doing everything they can to ensure the maximum in creative freedom, a new story that will bring in new viewers while honoring all that has come before.

Onward!

[LibraryOgre]

There is a line that I have consistently hallucinated is in the original for years, and I'd love to see a version in the reboot. That line is

"The Vorlons ask 'Who are you?' The Shadows ask 'What do you want?' The humans have a question as well. They ask 'What the hell is wrong with you people?'"

[Pex]

To do it over is an injustice against the original. The original was perfect. Everyone has their quibbles of what they didn't like, but no quibble demands the show be redone. A new epic set in the same universe is fine, but they would need to be careful not to make it a Star Trek clone now that the show ended with the creation of the galactic alliance. If they can't do that better to leave it alone and not do anything.

[GloatingSwine]

Amazon is killing the Expanse after all without letting it get to where the books will end. Getting a B5 reboot made at all is kind of an out of left field thing at this point. Finding a home that will keep it for a full run of episodes? Maybe the CW isn't a bad option. A moderate hit has at least a decent chance there.

I think the books put them in a bit of a bind there. There's a 20 year timeskip between books 6 and 7 and it then follows the same cast but now they're all old and creaky (also I envisaged the characters about 10-15 years older in the books to start with, especially Amos).

I liked the original pilot (which had a more diverse and interesting cast) but was unimpressed with the first season, and never came back to it.

So I wouldn’t be naturally drawn to this—but the fact that it’s planned for CW makes it a hard pass with no looking back.

Every SF series has a bad first season. All the budget gets eaten up by the sets, costumes, and recurring alien prosthetics. But all that stuff doesn't need paying for twice so subsequent seasons end up with more to spend on actual episodes. There are some right stinkers in Season 1 as a result (Infection*, TKO).

There's still some good in there though. Basically all the main arc episodes are good.


* Is episode 4 cursed? Infection is Episode 4, so is Code of Honor on TNG and Emancipation on SG-1, abject pish the lot of them.

[Fyraltari]

* Is episode 4 cursed? Infection is Episode 4, so is Code of Honor on TNG and Emancipation on SG-1, abject pish the lot of them.

It's a common superstition in Asia to think that 4 is an unlucky number (like 13 in Europe and its colonies) because the Chinese* words for 4 and death sound similar.

*Don't remember if it's in Mandarin or Cantonese or another dialect.

[JadedDM]

* Is episode 4 cursed? Infection is Episode 4, so is Code of Honor on TNG and Emancipation on SG-1, abject pish the lot of them.

Fun fact: Code of Honor (TNG) and Emancipation (SG1) were both written by the same person.

[Rynjin]

Fun fact: Code of Honor (TNG) and Emancipation (SG1) were both written by the same person.

Holy ****, really? This is a fact I probably knew since they were both SFDebris Christmas episodes, but I must have forgotten.

It's a common superstition in Asia to think that 4 is an unlucky number (like 13 in Europe and its colonies) because the Chinese* words for 4 and death sound similar.

*Don't remember if it's in Mandarin or Cantonese or another dialect.

I'm not sure what the Chinese equivalence is, but in Japanese they're both "shi".

[Spacewolf]

So I'm kinda interested kinda not, B5 was good but is this a case of the writer wanting to do it again, or to do something different or did he get a car full of money parked outside his house. If it's the first the Shadow war could probably be fleshed out abit more but the punch is going to be lost, if it's the second why not make a new setting and if it's the third it's probably not going to be any good. So yea not going to get my hopes up.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by GloatingSwine
Every SF series has a bad first season.

Firefly.

[Cikomyr2]

Firefly.

Obviously that series's worst season

QED