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Definitely not my favorite episode, but I got a kick out of the similarities to A Canticle for Leibowitz during one of the segments in it.

Based on other articles, the plan is to release an episode a week. They are giving us 90ties experience, I guess. They just somehow managed to screw it up.

They did not released episode 1, which gives an authentic 90ties experience In 90ties people missed episodes. And misnamed the pilot movie as episode 1 and mislabeled other episodes.

And they dont use playlist and will be simultanepusly releasing clips from episodes, so it will be wonderfull mess.

Officially? Yes, unfortunately. 4K is even more complicated. Technically 4K is the same discs, but sometimes they use the rare BD-XL 100GB discs that not all drives can read. There's also a bunch of extra DRM junk, so for 4K you need a new drive, new software and an Intel CPU from a specific time period as new ones don't include the bits for 4K Blu-ray DRM.

Unofficially you use MakeMKV and just rip the disc.

EDIT: Oh, apparently PowerDVD no longer supports UHD Blu-ray either so even the official way is dead now.

yes, somewhat incorrectly as its the pilot / first movie, that came out before season 1 started

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5#Pilot_film_(1993)

The numbering of the uploaded episodes seems to be off by one versus wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Babylon_5_episodes#Sea...

>Isn't the linked YouTube video title literally "Season 1, Episode 1"?

Yes and no It's the pilot (and consequently the first[2]) episode "The Gathering", which actually doesn't have an episode number.[0]

The first aired episode was S1E1 "Midnight on the Firing Line".

The former was released as a "TV Movie" even though it was the pilot episode.

[0] http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html for the episode listings.[1]

[1] Be careful, a wrong click can end up giving you spoilers. :(

[2] I'd note that the pilot episode has significant personnel, prop and make-up differences from the rest of the series.

It's very easy to watch. When I wanted to watch it a few years ago it took only a few minutes to find a torrent of the full series and less than an hour to download.

It was easy to watch on Tubi (with ads), though apparently as of very recently it was pulled.

Tubi stopped carrying all of B5 this month.

B5 has now appeared on Youtube.

Roku has all of B5 - with less commercials than the others

I find it hard to believe anyone on this site has a problem with piracy, nor technical nor moral.

I'd be delighted to spend that for a Blu-ray of the series but I'm afraid of getting the mangled version that they released on DVD.

For background, JMS knew the widescreen transition was coming so filmed everything in 16:9. As he put it at the time, it didn't really cost more, you just had to pay more attention to lighting at the wings. All CGI was done in 4:3 because it was thought to be easy to rerender in the future. Alas, the digital assets were not preserved properly and when the time came for DVD, nobody wanted to pay for more work. There may be places where they used the 16:9 masters, but anyplace where there was CGI, particularly where they were compositing over live action, basically chopped the top and bottom of the 4:3 resulting in a sub-VGA mess.

It made everyone weep.

I think the aversion to subscribing to a streaming service for a single series has more to do with the recurring nature of the subscription than it does the price. You have to remember to cancel it when you’re done, which is easy to forget with so many things bring for our attention these days. That $10 could easily multiply several times over if it slips your mind, at which point congratulations, you’ve paid a significant portion of the box set’s price to rent the series.

All streaming services should offer prepaid options, so you can add time in 30/60/90 day increments. Less mental overhead and it better matches how a lot of people pay for streaming anyway.

When I buy the box set, at least I'll be able to watch it in perpetuity. $10 to own a 5 hour miniseries would be more than reasonable, but I don't want to have to pay $10 each time I want to watch it. (If I even can watch it, and they haven't lost the license in the interim.)

It’s not just pure value analysis, it’s a lack of confidence that the money will go to the people that deserve it.

I’m not going to spend a hundred bucks to try a series I may not even like. It would be one thing if I loved it and wanted to watch it again, or if I had seen enough to know that I want to watch it all. But that’s a lot of money for an unknown quantity.

Having been alive at the time, I can tell you that the effects were amazing then. B5 was one of the first shows to use computer graphics and partially-virtual sets. It wasn't limited by the number of times you could re-composite a handful of models together, so it showed whole armadas of ships. Windows didn't open onto a black felt field of stars but a green screen that allowed ships to pull up right outside the window.

The effects don't hold up to what has followed in the past quarter century, and they weren't preserved in a good resolution, so they'll never look very good on a high-resolution monitor instead of an old CRT. But, at the time, they were amazing.

If I remember right, the graphics in early episodes were rendered on commodore amigas

fwiw the whole thing is free to watch on Tubi and the quality there is very nice.

Didn't rewatch it for decades. But isn't this romance a very background narrative arc until the very latest season?

Didn’t B5 do it first, by years? Kira/Odo didn’t become an item until B5 was off the air.

Claudia Christian, who played Susan Ivanova, is also well known for her documentary on alcohol addiction.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=crYU4xT1aRI

You should delete the spoilers. O'Hare's personal history is important, but the part of the comment about his chronological appearances in the show is not.

Could you list more spoilers!?

> I just found the acting in the first season really, "soap opera" like. I'm not sure how to describe it better.

When I first started watching, season 1 with its gratuitous 90s CGI, the dramatic musical cues, and Michael O'Hares rather stiff, wooden demeanor reminded me a lot of those live action cut scenes that some early CD-ROM games had. I remember thinking at first, that this is probably the kind of thing the local basement theater troupe would pull off if they were suddenly told to make a TV show.

> It's still one of my all time favorite shows.

Fully agree. If you haven't seen it yet, I'd highly recommend as well.

It’s partly that JMS favoured stage actors. Partly that he grabbed a number of his favourite actors from “Murder She Wrote”. Honestly brilliant, taking a couple of murderers of the week and giving them lead roles in a show.

Season one it was a traditional adventure of the week style show that was popular at the time and before. because having a multi season story arc was unheard of and still more or less is today so the first season was traditional TV and only when mildly successful did it have the ability to spread its wings. and it did so so well that it forced other shows like DS9 to also have seasonal story arcs.

Do we really need to upscale everything?

I don't think image quality really is an important thing to enjoy old movies / series as long as the story is good.

I think weird acting styles can be part of the joy of watching older media. Seems like films mostly switched over to "modern" acting in the 70s (?) and TV had a lot more variety in style (and quality lol) way up into the "modern era".

I'm not gonna say "it's not worse it's just different", coz TBH... It's worse lol. If modern acting was a rare minority style of practice I would seek it out voraciously. But, for the variety I do think it's fun to watch old stuff too!

There are some AI upscaled versions of Babylon 5, Star Trek Voyager etc. on torrent. Pretty decent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera

Honestly if it were some with live models even at SD it wouldn't be so bad... I just find it's from a time that's kind of painful to watch... Much like Transformers: Beast Wars.

I enjoy the story, but the FX are IMO literally worse than pre-60s serial Sci-fi content. The blurry, low res CGI just detracts from the show today. I'm not asking for a reboot or change of the material marathon... Just the special effects and CGI to what it should have been at the time.

> when they did the upscaling for HD release on HBO Max, they messed up a couple episodes.

Those were not upscales.

Yeah Londo and G'kar is a critical relationship to the overall effect. Also I find Garibaldi's arc compellingly tragic also...

Also I read JMS' autobiography [1] which added enlightening context

[1] J. Michael Straczynski, Becoming Superman: My Journey From Poverty to Hollywood

As a DS9 fan myself I felt like B5 was the better show. DS9 had greater variance throughout its run, the standout episodes were phenomenal but also lots of weak episodes & filler. If there was tighter editorial control over the episodes & at least 30% of them got cut then it could be a contender.

Can someone who is new to Star trek start with DS9 or need to watch earlier series for context?

Vir's toast in one of the later episodes about Londo was a wonderful scene.

There is good evidence that DS9 was (ahem) inspired by Babylon 5. However, Babylon 5 succeeds in its philosophical ambitions a lot of the time while DS9 turned into soap opera.

The disclaimer is just based on my own opinion, so inevitably there will be people to whom it does not apply. Some of the acting in season 1 is great, I would just say there are some spots where it kinda briefly falls through the floor. It may be just because I have seen it several times so am spotting things that I wouldn't have first time round.

With season 4, I believe what happened is that towards the start of production JMS was told there would be no S5 after all, so he put all of S4 and S5 into S4 ... but then there was an S5 after all!

I have a bunch of friends that either never made it completely through Season 1 or complained all through Season 1. Season 1 is rougher than normal. The problem though is that while it is easy to tell people "Skip Season 1 of TNG or DS9" (which is relatively common advice for both shows), Season 1 has so many moments of character building and foreshadowing that pay off in later seasons that even the "worst" episodes are hard to tell people to skip.

An example not quite off the top of my head is as early as Episode 2 "Soul Hunter". It's a goofy plot full of weird pseudo-scientific mysticism with a "special guest of the week" who basically never returns (excluding books and movies), so in most shows meets several definitions of skippable, but this episode also introduces Dr. Franklin, has several key Sinclair and Garibaldi moments, provides background lore for the Minbari and foreshadows certain Minbari things to come.

That's just the second episode of the season. (Truly a rough start for some.)

Another common example is "TKO". It's a silly boxing match episode, much of it doesn't do much for the series except set up some of Garibaldi's goofier side and maybe foreshadowing Garibaldi's flaws. But it's also the Ivanova confronts grief and her heritage episode, a key part of Ivanova's arc.

When I re-watched B5 a few years ago, I wad surprised by the amount of humor and small pieces of situational comedy. It’s really missing from most 2000s TV dramas, everything became really serious after 9/11. If there’s humor in a 00s or even 10s "self-respecting" drama series, it’s usually dry, dark, and/or ironic.

Completely unnecessary, yes. Babylon 5 is a product of its time, as is everything, but it is as fine a production as any other sci-fi-on-a-budget show from the early-to-late 90s. It’s a phenomenally intricate and interesting little universe with great characters and stories. No need for a disparaging disclaimer such as that.

Season 2 is good to great, not mediocre. It’s just that S3 and S4 are even better. Season 1 you can skip most of the fillers if you’re in a hurry. There’s a plenty of curated S1 episode lists on the internet that tell you which episodes you don’t want to miss. It’s much better this way than the usual "first season excellent, second season okay, the rest are crud and only exist to make money".

There are several stand-out episodes in season 1 and 2, as well as several stand-out scenes; plus the second half of season 2 is not mediocre. You also miss out on character and world-building that happens in those episodes that help contextualize a lot of the later seasons.

Plus, many reactors now have liked season 1 a lot better than when it initially aired.

"Suffering" would be putting it a bit strongly.

Unfortunately, there's some very important episodes that set up major plot arcs that you don't get to appreciate until later on, so maybe it's worth just watching the best episodes of season 1 if you're impatient. Season 2 is better than mediocre.

It has both positive and negative connotations depending on the context. For an example of the former, look at the lyrics to the Beatles’ Hey Jude. It’s been used that way since 1968!

yes, "get under your skin" can mean that, it can mean "can't stop thinking about" like the way somebody annoys you while it turns out you are falling in love

It was lauded for being made on Amigas. The Season 1 CGI really is rather rough compared to TNG, never mind DS9. But it improved considerably in S2.

Still, there are things like the starfield visible from C&C’s observation window never rotating because it was apparently too expensive to greenscreen it (presumably an actual physical rotating backdrop was also not feasible for whatever reason). On the other hand, I think B5 was the first TV series to use greenscreening to create large interior spaces like ship hangars.

One issue w/sci fi is that sci fi takes place in the future and/or has advanced technology then it is more likely to look dated than a typical sitcom where the sets are offices and living rooms.

This is what I was referring to in my original comment.

My suggestion is that had you endured S1 fully, you might have felt S4 had risen to a higher level than "ok". That's not to say I begrudge you skipping through S1 ... I'd probably have done the same if I'd come across it in recent years as opposed to however many years ago it was.

I'm not trying to change your mind really, but yeah - I think the value that you hear about in the characters and plot arise from the many small nuances which build up slowly over time.

A _real_ web site!

When I first returned to it rewatching B5 a couple of years ago, I actaully found it difficult to navigate. It took me a while to realise that my brain was parsing the block of navigation buttons at the centre top of the screen as a banner ad and filtering it out!

The original episodes were all recorded in wide aspect ratio, even though they were destined for broadcast TV. They were touted as future compatibility. So the original broadcasts were "pan & scan". Then, when the wide-aspect disc formats arrived, it turned out that converting them was not a simple matter of going back to the originals and plopping them on disc.

https://b5remasterissues.wordpress.com/the-good/

YouTube is still offering all five seasons for sale (not including "The Gathering" pilot.)

There is a choice of Standard Defintion and High Definition. Usually that only means a change in resolution, not different conversions.

SPOILERS.

In B5 the only thing close to ineffable alien were the ones that went beyond the rim. Most of the day-to-day aliens were stand-ins for human nations and cultures.

The OPA and Mars were effectively the day-to-day aliens for the Expanse. The gate-builders were the ineffable aliens.

Objectively? Many consider it the best of the three 90s Treks. And TOS is really too remote for a meaningful comparison with the three.

I'm talking about more then just the remaster. On a fundamental level the effects of TNG can hold up today. Babylon 5 can't. This is for both the space effects and the technology effects in the space ships themselves.

The LCAR interface still looks modern and it's way better than the babylon 5 CRT screens.

That explains why the effects looked so similar in the two...

Never did get into Babylon 5, but SeaQuest, for all its campiness, was my jam briefly in my childhood.

It's incredible that it still lives to this day. I remember running it on Pentium-133. The gallery they have there still has showcase renders from 2000s.

yes, you are right ... its been a few years :))

24 Amiga 2000's each with a 68040, 32mb of RAM and a Video Toaster, managed by a 486 server with a 12gb of storage.

[1]https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue166/68_The_makin...

you are right, i left this detail out ... but it went somewhat together with the amiga & the lightwave-software :))

I thought that project got turned into the animated film that got released not too long back? I got the impression JMS was done with B5 after he went back to focusing on comics again with his run on Captain America.

It was never about the graphics though, at least for me. As long as the writing, the stories, the acting, and so on was stellar, I don't mind how it looks (to an extent).

That said, I found the DS9 upscaled you talked about on a torrent site now, and I'll give it a shot.

I will always love Star Wars for the 15 minutes of Return of the Jedi that make the point that, with all of magic and technology at your disposal, love is still the strongest weapon in the universe. The rest of Star Wars (and all of Star Trek) is comparative fluff.

B5 spends most of the series saying that sort of thing.

To expand on that: B5 is about ethics, and it has a primordial good and evil that are decidedly kept in the mystical realm. It has a supernatural concept of souls, it has messiah-like characters, it seems to believe in a notion of fate. TNG on the other hand is steeped in renaissance enlightenment, it has the spirit that there is no supernatural, and that everything is rationally explainable. It often tackles ethics as well, but I dare say that beyond that it explores a broader territory in philosophical topics than B5. TNG is more down-to-earth, B5 is more vibe-heavy.

B5 in a fantasy setting wouldn't make much sense, the key issue is the namesake.

What would be the equivalent of B5 in a fantasy? A floating sky island? A neutral world in a multiverse? Both have been done, but I've never heard of one actually being the centerpiece and the namesake of a series. There's also the issue of "porting" B4 into such a setting.

Having a series of "prototype" worlds or prototype floating islands would likely make the series overly contrived.

TNG isn't actually about science, though. There is precious little actual science in the series, or even the franchise as a whole. Ironically the most scientifically grounded series is TOS because they didn't have a ton of franchise tropes to lean on and actually hired science fiction writers now and then. I remember one episode where they encountered a (Romulan?) cloaking device for the first time, a major plot point was the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the fact that such a cloak couldn't be perfect - it had to vent energy somewhere, somehow - which is a degree of scientific rigor no subsequent series would even attempt. And then in another episode they fought Space Lincoln so YMMV. By the time you get to TNG any pretense at science is abandoned for "teching the tech" and inverted space wedgies and whatever nonsense Q gets up to.

That said, B5 absolutely does wear its fantasy pretensions on its sleeve, and I think you're correct about the "forward looking" versus "backwards looking" themes. The technomages are wizards with robes and mystical incantations and everything - it's explained away as "technology so advanced it's indistinguishable from magic" but they wouldn't be out of place in any D&D setting. Mystical prophecies, gods, demons, "light vs. dark" motifs, the Minbari being so elf-coded it's ridiculous, the Great Man heroic ideal, sacred tomes, eldritch ruins, crystals crystals crystals. All the trappings are there. Crusade went even further in this regard. The hero ship in Crusade is named the Excalibur ffs.

Nope.

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That's the latest version of yt-dlp, just downloaded. I tried from two different IPs, both actually also having signed-in Google sessions (so not even really trying to hide).

As always with the surveillance industry, your experience may vary. I'm sure there are workarounds - less-hassled IPs you can get access through, etc. The point is that going for the straightforward libre software solution lets you avoid playing any of those constantly-churning games to begin with. It's much nicer to use software systems that straightforwardly work in your interests, rather than having to trick adversarial systems.

Sure, there is value to corporate top-down synchronization telling everyone to focus on a specific piece of media at the same time. I wasn't really complaining about that. In fact it would be interesting if we could recreate the effect some way in a more distributed culture.

But no, in my experience yt-dlp no longer just works unless you make your identity legible to Google (eg naive residential IP or supplying a logged-in session cookie).

Cannot say. Saying, I would know. Do not know, so cannot say.

Which Zathras? Zathras.... or Zathras?