5 ms·

Most Influential by what metric? Friends aired in the last 25 years and is still extremely popular, makes more money than almost anything else, made it's cast v

Most Influential by what metric? Friends aired in the last 25 years and is still extremely popular, makes more money than almost anything else, made it's cast vastly rich and is a big part of popular culture in so many countries. Or if you don't like sitcoms, how is Babylon 5 more influential than Game of Thrones.

Apocryphon 4y ago
Why don't you just read the article? Its thesis is that Babylon 5 pioneered many of the trends that led to the present golden age of TV- a multi-season serialized storyline, auteur showrunner, numerous morally ambiguous POV characters who develop over time. The article argues that B5 was a predecessor to Game of Thrones even before The Sopranos/The West Wing/The Wire kicked off prestige television (or Battlestar Galactica or Lost did the same for sci-fi TV). Granted, in the '90s you also have Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine which also shared in many of these trends, but TFA is still worth reading.
- crop_rotation 4y ago
  I did read the article. But none of it makes it the most "influential" TV show, unless influence was very very narrowly defined. Hence I ask by what metric. It certainly wasn't influential in other aspects compared to the two shows I mention.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    Pioneering stylistic trends is influential. Certainly people talk about The Sopranos, The West Wing, The Wire, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad as incredibly influential as well, even if none of them reached the raw audience numbers of a mega-blockbuster cultural phenomenon like Game of Thrones. (Not to mention others with even fewer viewers, but still high craftsmanship in the vein of modern prestige- Oz, Deadwood, and Rome). You are talking quantity of viewers when this article is talking about quality, or at least quantity of qualities. You're also responding facilely to an article's title without actually engaging in its substance.
    - throwaway81523 4y ago
      Breaking Bad has a shout-out to B5 at some point. One of Jesse Pinkman's friends(?) became obsessed with B5 and Jesse mentioned that. Idr the exact context.
      - andrekandre 4y ago
        this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuMMYVu6vdE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuMMYVu6vdE
        throwaway81523 4y ago
        Yes I think that was the scene. Breaking Bad looked pretty good but I wasn't a regular viewer and don't remember it accurately.
      - Apocryphon 4y ago
        Very intertextual https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEhWjI0OFlM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEhWjI0OFlM
- jrootabega 4y ago
  It's been suggested that DS9 was derived from when JMS pitched B5 to Paramount.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    The craziest (unverified) rumor is that this might have been caused by WB and Paramount's abandoned plan to launch a joint network: > A commenter named Steven Hopstaken left the following comment in the io9 article: > I was working at Warner Bros. in the publicity department when Warner Bros. and Paramount were preparing to launch a joint [emphasis mine] network. Warner Bros. already decided to buy Babylon 5 for their adhoc PTEN network (a group of independent stations that agreed to show Warner Bros. shows in prime time.) > Paramount and Warner Bros. both agreed that Deepspace 9 would be the show that would launch the new network and there wouldn’t be room for two “space” shows on the network. I was told they purposely took what they liked from the B5 script and put it in the DS9 script. In fact, there was talk of leaving the B5 script in tact and just setting it the Star Trek universe. I had to keep rewriting press release drafts while they were trying to make the final decision. https://www.tor.com/2013/02/26/is-this-the-smoking-gun-proving-deep-space-nine-ripped-off-babylon-5/ https://www.tor.com/2013/02/26/is-this-the-smoking-gun-provi... While both shows were conceived independently, elements might have made their way from B5 to DS9 due to the studio suits.
  - squarefoot 4y ago
    I like to think that Babylon 5 was one of the best things that could happen to Star Trek.
    - throwanem 4y ago
      And even at that, it took a solid quarter century to sink in. "The Next Generation," indeed - that said, while I've forgotten the specifics, I do clearly recall having to pause the 2009 Trek reboot film on first viewing to laugh about a couple of fairly transparent B5 in-jokes, which suggests to me that it's not an accident people from that same orbit went on to make Trek that inherits a lot of what made Babylon 5 great.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  I'm going to have to side with the X-Files in terms of influence, considering that its corps of writers, directors and producers has thrown off numerous TV shows including Breaking Bad that many critics rank among the best shows of all time.
  - zhengyi13 4y ago
    I think you're right that they did develop multi-episode character and story arcs and mythology, but I feel like it was done organically - not quite so meticulously planned up front, and so it kinda devolved into incoherence in the end.
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      True. Another example from the 90s would be Homicide: Life on the Street. It was "influential" in that David Simon himself went on to make The Wire and other famous shows. It had an overarching story in the murder of Adena Watson. And it imported a bunch of famous film actors to television as later "prestige" series would do.
rbanffy 4y ago
The article mentions many reasons, but these two stand out: - One of the first, if not the first series where a single author wrote most episodes (and the ones JMS didn't were penned by legends such as Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman and DC Fontana). - A five-season story arc, with episodes you should watch in order.
- scarface74 4y ago
  The 5th season was really pretty bad though. I know they had to rush things for fear of there not being a 5th season.
  - lelandbatey 4y ago
    Yeah, it basically was 5 seasons compressed into 3 seasons. The 5th season didn't even happen on the same network as the first few, IIRC.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Yep, the first four seasons were on a little network called PTEN that had four shows. The fifth was on TNT
    - AprilArcus 4y ago
      It's not terribly unusual for a show to get dropped by a network and picked up by another; some other heavily serialized genre shows that have changed networks include Buffy (started on the WB and moved to UPN), Stargate (started on Showtime and moved to Sci-Fi) and The Expanse (started on Sci-Fi and moved to Prime Video)
  - RegularOpossum 4y ago
    I understand it to be that they weren't sure there was going to be a 5th so the forced two major plot lines into Season 4 which was popular enough they got Season 5 with the problem of most of the big arcs already wrapped up.

Apocryphon 4y ago

Why don't you just read the article? Its thesis is that Babylon 5 pioneered many of the trends that led to the present golden age of TV- a multi-season serialized storyline, auteur showrunner, numerous morally ambiguous POV characters who develop over time. The article argues that B5 was a predecessor to Game of Thrones even before The Sopranos/The West Wing/The Wire kicked off prestige television (or Battlestar Galactica or Lost did the same for sci-fi TV). Granted, in the '90s you also have Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine which also shared in many of these trends, but TFA is still worth reading.

crop_rotation 4y ago
I did read the article. But none of it makes it the most "influential" TV show, unless influence was very very narrowly defined. Hence I ask by what metric. It certainly wasn't influential in other aspects compared to the two shows I mention.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Pioneering stylistic trends is influential. Certainly people talk about The Sopranos, The West Wing, The Wire, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad as incredibly influential as well, even if none of them reached the raw audience numbers of a mega-blockbuster cultural phenomenon like Game of Thrones. (Not to mention others with even fewer viewers, but still high craftsmanship in the vein of modern prestige- Oz, Deadwood, and Rome). You are talking quantity of viewers when this article is talking about quality, or at least quantity of qualities. You're also responding facilely to an article's title without actually engaging in its substance.
  - throwaway81523 4y ago
    Breaking Bad has a shout-out to B5 at some point. One of Jesse Pinkman's friends(?) became obsessed with B5 and Jesse mentioned that. Idr the exact context.
    - andrekandre 4y ago
      this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuMMYVu6vdE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuMMYVu6vdE
      - throwaway81523 4y ago
        Yes I think that was the scene. Breaking Bad looked pretty good but I wasn't a regular viewer and don't remember it accurately.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      Very intertextual https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEhWjI0OFlM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEhWjI0OFlM
jrootabega 4y ago
It's been suggested that DS9 was derived from when JMS pitched B5 to Paramount.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  The craziest (unverified) rumor is that this might have been caused by WB and Paramount's abandoned plan to launch a joint network: > A commenter named Steven Hopstaken left the following comment in the io9 article: > I was working at Warner Bros. in the publicity department when Warner Bros. and Paramount were preparing to launch a joint [emphasis mine] network. Warner Bros. already decided to buy Babylon 5 for their adhoc PTEN network (a group of independent stations that agreed to show Warner Bros. shows in prime time.) > Paramount and Warner Bros. both agreed that Deepspace 9 would be the show that would launch the new network and there wouldn’t be room for two “space” shows on the network. I was told they purposely took what they liked from the B5 script and put it in the DS9 script. In fact, there was talk of leaving the B5 script in tact and just setting it the Star Trek universe. I had to keep rewriting press release drafts while they were trying to make the final decision. https://www.tor.com/2013/02/26/is-this-the-smoking-gun-proving-deep-space-nine-ripped-off-babylon-5/ https://www.tor.com/2013/02/26/is-this-the-smoking-gun-provi... While both shows were conceived independently, elements might have made their way from B5 to DS9 due to the studio suits.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  I like to think that Babylon 5 was one of the best things that could happen to Star Trek.
  - throwanem 4y ago
    And even at that, it took a solid quarter century to sink in. "The Next Generation," indeed - that said, while I've forgotten the specifics, I do clearly recall having to pause the 2009 Trek reboot film on first viewing to laugh about a couple of fairly transparent B5 in-jokes, which suggests to me that it's not an accident people from that same orbit went on to make Trek that inherits a lot of what made Babylon 5 great.
jeffbee 4y ago
I'm going to have to side with the X-Files in terms of influence, considering that its corps of writers, directors and producers has thrown off numerous TV shows including Breaking Bad that many critics rank among the best shows of all time.
- zhengyi13 4y ago
  I think you're right that they did develop multi-episode character and story arcs and mythology, but I feel like it was done organically - not quite so meticulously planned up front, and so it kinda devolved into incoherence in the end.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    True. Another example from the 90s would be Homicide: Life on the Street. It was "influential" in that David Simon himself went on to make The Wire and other famous shows. It had an overarching story in the murder of Adena Watson. And it imported a bunch of famous film actors to television as later "prestige" series would do.

rbanffy 4y ago

The article mentions many reasons, but these two stand out: - One of the first, if not the first series where a single author wrote most episodes (and the ones JMS didn't were penned by legends such as Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman and DC Fontana). - A five-season story arc, with episodes you should watch in order.

scarface74 4y ago
The 5th season was really pretty bad though. I know they had to rush things for fear of there not being a 5th season.
- lelandbatey 4y ago
  Yeah, it basically was 5 seasons compressed into 3 seasons. The 5th season didn't even happen on the same network as the first few, IIRC.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Yep, the first four seasons were on a little network called PTEN that had four shows. The fifth was on TNT
  - AprilArcus 4y ago
    It's not terribly unusual for a show to get dropped by a network and picked up by another; some other heavily serialized genre shows that have changed networks include Buffy (started on the WB and moved to UPN), Stargate (started on Showtime and moved to Sci-Fi) and The Expanse (started on Sci-Fi and moved to Prime Video)
- RegularOpossum 4y ago
  I understand it to be that they weren't sure there was going to be a 5th so the forced two major plot lines into Season 4 which was popular enough they got Season 5 with the problem of most of the big arcs already wrapped up.