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Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

648 points by walterbell 8mo ago

RupertSalt 8mo ago
The hosting channel is called "Clipzone: Beyond Infinity" https://youtube.com/@czbeyondinfinity?si=Vhn1LH1TjJzxNyLZ https://youtube.com/@czbeyondinfinity?si=Vhn1LH1TjJzxNyLZ "The Gathering" was uploaded on January 22. Currently available are episodes 1, 3, and 4, (Thursdays), and assorted five-minute clips. I could not find them bundled in a playlist here. The episodes are in broadcast order. "Midnight on the Firing Line", a missing episode, is listed as Episode 1 in Wikipedia, because "The Gathering" was a pilot. Steve Grimm's "Lurker's Guide" is still online since 33 years, and updated with 2023's releases: http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html
- account42 8mo ago
  > "The Gathering" was uploaded on January 22 The 16:9 cropped and upscaled version (of the TNT cut) unfortunately, with the same excessive noise reduction and sharpening that previous releases of that version had. Baffling why they keep using this version when even the old DVD release has better quality.
  - RupertSalt 8mo ago
    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/ https://b5remasterissues.wordpress.com/the-good/
    - account42 8mo ago
      Only the live action shots were recorded with a wide aspect ratio, and perhaps not even that for the pilot. The CGI was rendered in 4:3 and the final cuts including transitions and VFX where composited in 4:3. The remaster combines cropped 4:3 but high resolution scans of the original live action footage with (sometimes badly) upscaled versions of CGI and VFX'd shots -- except for the pilot which is fully upscaled and cropped from the original 4:3 broadcast masters with zero high resolution live action footage. I don't know if the pilot footage was actually shot widescreen but if it was then you don't get any of it in the "widescreen" pilot included in the remastered versions.
      - Apocryphon 8mo ago
        So just what is the optimal way to watch this show
        WorldMaker 8mo ago
        There sadly isn't one. The 4:3 Blu-Ray remasters are about as good as it gets in visual quality, but there's a "cinematic" feel lost from the 16:9 DVDs, but the quality difference is noticeable and unfavorable. It's a bit of a dealer's choice at this point if you want "best available quality" or "best available widescreen." Babylon 5 was filmed at a weird moment where they were prescient about HD TV and the coming widescreen home television boom and planned for/shot for 16:9 releases, but also had to shoot and composite first and foremost for 4:3 to meet TVs where they were. They had even had plans to preserve the special FX masters to make it easier to recomposite the show. WB's Archives team lost those files at some point. (The general story is WB Archives sent a copy of the masters to Vivendi [Sierra, proto-Activision Blizzard] for the eventually cancelled videogame and discovered they sent the original copy by accident only after Vivendi claimed to have wiped their copy out of respect for the contract terms when the game was cancelled.)
        sinnickal 8mo ago
        14⋮9 was used for a while to ease the transition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14%3A9_aspect_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14%3A9_aspect_ratio
    - jeffwask 8mo ago
      DS9 and Voy have the same issue. For DS9, Season 1 was shot wide screen compatible then they switched to 16:9 but none of the effects are widescreen ready.
  - RupertSalt 8mo ago
    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.
- Sharlin 8mo ago
  It’s awesome that Lurker’s Guide is still there.
  - yrro 8mo ago
    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!
- varenc 8mo ago
  Is the poster, "ClipZone: Beyond Infinity" associated with Warner Brothers? It's not obvious to me it is, but it does seem to only post Warner Brothers content. Seems like it is an official WB channel that's been incognito until now.
- romperstomper 8mo ago
  I wish they published it in a more organized manner.. At the moment all published episodes are mixed with other content of their channel.
jefc1111 8mo ago
If you decide to watch Babylon 5 for the first time, I suggest giving it a chance to get under your skin. There is quite a lot to get in the way of that such as mediocre acting, cringey humour, low budget fx (all particularly prominent in season 1). But the pay off in seasons 3 and 4 is huge if you take the time to let affection grow for the characters. Babylon 5 was my first 'favourite series' that 'changed my life' etc etc so I guess I am biased!
- whynotmaybe 8mo ago
  No, you're not biased, it's simply the best! It's getting old but nostalgia kicks in as soon as I see a Vorlon ship
- account42 8mo ago
  Is that disclaimer really needed? As someone who watched the series the first time last year, the acting and humor seem fine for TV honestly. The CGI dated of course but not offensive either. If anything I found the later seasons more disappointing than 1 and 2 as smaller scale stories are replaced with moving the big plot forward, which still feels rushed somehow.
  - jefc1111 8mo ago
    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!
    - sidpatil 8mo ago
      > smaller scale stories are replaced with moving the big plot forward This is pretty common in TV shows, from what I've noticed. It takes a few seasons for a show to find its footing.
t312227 8mo ago
hello, as always: imho. (!) ah ... babylon 5 :)) this was one of the best scifi shows back in the mid 1990ties. it introduced a lot things which we take for granted today ... together with startrek "deep space nine" which roughly aired during the same time: * telling a "story arch" over multiple seasons * 2 parallel story-lines within episodes * causally show people doing "every-day" life things, like going to the toilet - you may laugh, but 30+ years ago, for example in various startrek spinoffs - tng, ds9, voyager - nobody went to the toilet ... ever!! don't get me wrong, i'm a big fan of startrek too ;)) * despite their budget decent CGI for the time if i remember it correctly: they used a software called "lightroom", which ran on the amiga hardware-platform at first, for later seasons they moved to PC hardware... just if you wonder about the quality of the CGI ... this was some 680x0 computer running at something like 16 or 32 MHz (!) with a few MB (!) of memory. not a scifi "blockbuster" utilizing multimillion us$ SGI clusters like ILM productions of the era did! absolutely recommended: "the lurker's guide to babylon 5" * http://midwinter.com/lurk/lurker.html http://midwinter.com/lurk/lurker.html just my 0.02€
- pjmlp 8mo ago
  You are missing one important detail, an Amiga alongside NewTek's Video Toaster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster
  - t312227 8mo ago
    you are right, i left this detail out ... but it went somewhat together with the amiga & the lightwave-software :))
  - bilegeek 8mo ago
    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_making_of_Babylo.php https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue166/68_The_makin...
    - sillywalk 8mo ago
kouteiheika 8mo ago
I would give my left kidney for either a continuation or a reboot of Babylon 5 under the helm of J. Michael Straczynski with full creative freedom. Or hell, even an entirely different show. In my opinion he's one of the few people in the industry who actually knows how to skillfully write a coherent TV show. And by that I mean: he actually pre-planned the story (spanning multiple seasons!) of B5 right from the beginning, instead of completely making it up on the fly like so many other shows. Subtle things which might seem inconsequential, appearing in the very first season, can foreshadow events happening seasons later. This makes it, at least for me, much more coherent and enjoyable to watch, and I wish more writers/showrunners would adopt this approach (instead of the usual writers' room + only plan until the end of the season approach which is so common today).
- krapp 8mo ago
  >I would give my left kidney for either a continuation or a reboot of Babylon 5 under the helm of J. Michael Straczynski with full creative freedom. I don't know. I loved Babylon 5 but I also found it kind of corny. And then Crusade was just a D&D campaign in space. The ship was even called the Excalibur FFS. I feel like "full creative freedom" would ruin it the way it did with George Lucas and Star Wars. >and I wish more writers/showrunners would adopt this approach (instead of the usual writers' room + only plan until the end of the season approach which is so common today. What else can you do when you don't know if you're getting renewed? You can't push the conclusions to your storylines forward into seasons you might never even have to resolve them.
- WorldMaker 8mo ago
  The CW picked up a Babylon 5 reboot "recently", but it seems like it got trapped in development hell and caught in the cross-fires of the ugly WB-CBS divorce of The CW and the ugly merger of WB and Discovery and what is shaping up to be an ugly divorce of WB and Discovery.
  - JLO64 8mo ago
    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.
PepperdineG 8mo ago
“Sooner or later everyone comes to Babylon 5."
- DonHopkins 8mo ago
  No one ever listens to Zathras. "Quite mad," they say. It is good that Zathras does not mind. Has even grown to like it. Oh, yes.
  - rhdunn 8mo ago
    Cannot say. Saying, I would know. Do not know, so cannot say.
  - sgt 8mo ago
    Which Zathras? Zathras.... or Zathras?
- henrikschroder 8mo ago
  Boom. Sooner or later. BOOM!
stuxnet79 8mo ago
It's great that they are releasing these episodes on YouTube. But what a lot of OG fans would love even more is a proper remaster of some of the classics. Unfortunately the lukewarm response to the TNG remaster proved to media companies that such undertakings are not worth the effort. But I wonder if the advent of AI tools has made remasters more economical. I do know there is an ongoing effort by fans to remaster VOY and DS9 with the help of AI but not sure of the quality or cost.
- ChoGGi 8mo ago
  There's an AI upscale of ds9 in torrent land. Looks pretty good other than certain scenes.
  - sgt 8mo ago
    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.
mindslight 8mo ago
Why would I want to mess with using a web browser for video in my living room, probably getting hassled over its (lack of) digital restrictions management lockdown, signing into a Google account with all of the surveillance pwnage that implies, ads (including ads for senile political ragebait) plastered all over my experience, while becoming dependent on a UI that can change at any time, likely to demand money? Youtube is a step back in experience, something to be suffered when the thing you want to watch is only available there (ie network effects). Meanwhile, Babylon 5 has been free ~forever on torrents.
- serf 8mo ago
  okay, then be happy there will be some new injected life into the fandom or re-read the release as "B5 now available for download via YT-DLP for free!"
  - mindslight 8mo ago
    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).
    - pwg 8mo ago
      > But no, in my experience yt-dlp no longer just works unless you make your identity legible You need to upgrade your yt-dlp then. The newest versions still work without any session cookies or other such nonsense.
- pwg 8mo ago
  > Why would I want to mess with using a web browser for video in my living room No need for all that. Just use yt-dlp (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) to download them as video files, and then just play the video files as you would any other video file. Just tested yt-dlp on s1e1 to verify it worked, and it worked perfectly to download the video.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
tomkarho 8mo ago
Those who come to this magnificent piece of Sci-Fi for the first time, a word of advice: Pay attention. There are things set in motion in season 1 that are resolved multiple seasons later and there's a lot of foreshadowing (pun very much intended) both subtle and overt. Oh and, enjoy the ride. It's a good one.
- tracker1 8mo ago
  I just found the acting in the first season really, "soap opera" like. I'm not sure how to describe it better. It's still one of my all time favorite shows. I wish they'd do a corrected bluray release with even a bit more effort... when they did the upscaling for HD release on HBO Max, they messed up a couple episodes. Maybe AI upscale to 4k, with training data for newer ship models, actor photos, etc then reducing back to 1080p for a final BluRay set. Probably enough people that would do this as a passion project if the studio would let them.
  - RupertSalt 8mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera
  - conception 8mo ago
    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.
    - fao_ 8mo ago
      > 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. Unfortunately incorrect! JMS had the entire plot and "bible" written out start to finish before the show was produced, and the show was approved based on that bible. It had all the room it planned for and needed at the start. There were even built-in "escape hatches" planned for if actors had to drop out (which happened to Michael O'Hare, unfortunately)
duxup 8mo ago
Babylon 5 can drift into being a little corny but the characters and overall story arc grow and grow into something great. Growing up Babylon 5 and Deep Space 9 were syndicated one after another in the middle of the night. It was a wonderful tradition staying up all night to watch both.
- neom 8mo ago
  I was just thinking about that, I think where I live in the UK it was after dinner but also back to back, seem to recall DS9 was first? Either way I found that period of TV annoying as DS9 is objectively the worst old trek, and Babylon 5 is a little more than a little corny, personally can't stand Babylon 5.
  - Sharlin 8mo ago
    Objectively? Many consider it the best of the three 90s Treks. And TOS is really too remote for a meaningful comparison with the three.
empressplay 8mo ago
I'm glad B5 is still getting a new audience. This article sounds very AI generated though.
pupppet 8mo ago
For those who have watched both Babylon 5 and Star Trek TNG- which did you like better?
- shadowalker97 8mo ago
  They were, for me at least, too different to compare like that. TNG was the hopeful future - something an idealist would like to imagine society could achieve. Babylon 5 was the realistic future - where fascism and racism are issues still prevalent in society, but largely left unaddressed. If you ask me to pick between them I'd have to go with Babylon 5 but only because of the writing. There were so many times that JMS foreshadowed events literal years in the future on the show and it was such a huge payoff as a fan. Star Trek just wasn't structured as a show in a way that can compete with that level of world building that was all interwoven in the same kind of way.
- c048 8mo ago
  Babylon 5. When people asked me what I preferred, "Star Wars or Star Trek?", I've always responded with "Babylon 5".
  - Dove 8mo ago
    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.
- marginalia_nu 8mo ago
  It's a hard comparison. They are both very good, in wildly different ways. B5 is much more character driven and more of a slow burn that sets up a big payoff in the later seasons that has permanent world-changing impact. It was really ahead of its time, closer to something like Game of Thrones than anything else at the time. TNG feels more static, even the "big events" don't really change the world all that much in the next episode, except Tasha Yar being written out of the show in season 1 causing Worf's head to shrink in season 2 or something I guess. It's a mystery-of-the-week show, you know what you're gonna get and you know it's good. No complaints, but also nothing mind blowing.
hunglee2 8mo ago
Amazing series, which somehow survived a forced change of lead actor, and got even better. The story was only marred by rushed ending to the story arc for Season 4, and then a nothingburger of a Season 5. Still, up there with BattleStar Galactica and The Expanse as the greatest TV sci-fi series of all time.
INTPenis 8mo ago
B5 was the first sci-fi show that felt real to me, Star Trek never felt gritty.
nubinetwork 8mo ago
Put up sg1 instead, and I'll think about it.
tetrisgm 8mo ago
What wonderful news. Babylon 5 remains one of the finest crafted sci-fi tales ever told. Hopefully this encourages more people to discover it!
alex-moon 8mo ago
So I came to Babylon 5 late in life, when my partner's mother revealed she had the entire box set on DVD. My partner had recently introduced me to The Expanse, which, like many, I consider the greatest sci fi TV show of all time - she described B5 to me thus: "Babylon 5 walked so the Expanse could run." Suffice to say, my expectations were sky high. No other TV show has so greatly exceeded my expectations.
- chasil 8mo ago
  In Babylon 5, you actually meet and converse with the aliens. In the Expanse, you do not.
  - elsonrodriguez 8mo ago
    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.
edu 8mo ago
P
styluss 8mo ago
Mild Spoilers. I will always have a special place for Babylon 5. One time I was watching it with my father who lived under a dictatorship, watched a scene with Mr Morden and Lando, immediately said "this kind of talk is meant to put people against other people". He didn't care much for the extraterrestrial part of the show but was very interested in portrayal of authoritarianism.
dizzy9 8mo ago
Excellent news. Babylon 5 is underappreciated, but it has mainly good episodes and several amazing ones.[0] However, if I can be cynical for a moment: The article title is misleading. Only a few episodes have been uploaded so far. At the current rate of one episode per week, it will take until March 2028 to conclude all five seasons. That's assuming they post every episode, and allow the episodes to remain up in the long term. For some reason, the first episode of season 1, Midnight on the Firing Line, is missing from the YouTube upload, which is a pretty critical omission. YouTube is also a minefield of spoilers in the video recommendations. I can't recommend the YouTube uploads to newcomers right now. The Blu-ray collection appears to be available for about $100. [0]: https://seriesgraph.com/show/3137-babylon-5 https://seriesgraph.com/show/3137-babylon-5
- nephihaha 8mo ago
  It's let down by its effects which even appeared ropey at the time. However, some good storylines.
  - alienbaby 8mo ago
    If I remember right, the graphics in early episodes were rendered on commodore amigas
  - Telemakhos 8mo ago
    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.
    - moron4hire 8mo ago
FrustratedMonky 8mo ago
Everyone should re-watch. I was very surprised how many subjects were covered that had bearing to todays world. The US in particular, if you take the US as the earth government in the show. A proxy president, manipulated by the shadows. Come one. And all the psy ops? Very much a lot of the same issues come up in the surveillance state. And manipulating the press. This show really covered a lot of things happening today. If only we had a Sheridan today to fight for our rights.
moomin 8mo ago
Doesn’t seem to be free in the UK
insin 8mo ago
Putting this here for everyone whose head it also immediately popped into upon reading the title: "Derek... Babylon 5's a big pile of shit" "Get out!" "Yaaaaaaay!"
- naruhodo 8mo ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpb1OXvNNMc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpb1OXvNNMc Glad I'm not the only one who immediately thought of this.
macintux 8mo ago
Notable for this audience but perhaps not widely known: JMS engaged with Usenet to promote and discuss the show; if I remember correctly, the B5 newsgroup was active even before the pilot aired. Obviously there was no social media at the time, and I would bet that was the first time a U.S. TV show’s creator was communicating directly with fans via the Internet. (Update: more that I reflect on it, I think he was engaging with the community even while shopping the show around, but that was before my participation.)
- indymike 8mo ago
  B5 on Usenet was everything right with the internet.
threethirtytwo 8mo ago
I tried watching this (I grew up with it remembering it's on TV) and while it's watchable, it's not that enjoyable in modern times because it hasn't aged very well at all in terms of the FX so it's hard to get immersed. I know if I stick with it, it will probably get good (doctor who was like this for me) but it's a huge slog. I feel Star Trek TNG lucked out with all the choices they made. The designs and effects generally hold up.
- mixmastamyk 8mo ago
  TNG looked like crap compared to modern standards, and why they spent a lot of money to restore and fix it. Was expensive/unprofitable enough that no other shows got the treatment. There were comparisons on youtube.
  - threethirtytwo 8mo ago
    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.
    - mixmastamyk 8mo ago
      You can still see the CRTs behind LCARS, but I have to admit it is pretty cool in general. They had a bigger budget. But for space scenes, IMO the later episodes of B5 were amazing and beautiful. They just need a modern render and to turn down the saturation. TNG era ships and camera framing were much more boring, partly due to the smaller story.
      - threethirtytwo 8mo ago
        I'm gonna give it a shot. And by give it a shot I mean watch all 5 seasons lol. But I still think TNG just looks better. I get that the space scenes were less epic and the scenes are less dynamic. That restriction enabled effects that were more grounded in fidelity so it holds up with the CG of today. I do know they used CRTs in TNG but not often. Most of the LCARS stuff was just literally backlit plastic panels. Because of that it's much less jarring whereas babylon 5 I think the CRT screens were used everywhere.
Findecanor 8mo ago
Weird anecdote: Patricia Tallman, who played telepath Lyta Alexander through most of the series was simultaneously Gates McFadden's stunt double on TNG and in the TNG-era movies.
ExoticPearTree 8mo ago
Babylon 5 is one of my favorite sci-fi series. I couldn’t wait for the week to pass to see another episode. It was too ahead of its time and like many series from that period, the lack of computer power for special effects was showing.
godber 8mo ago
Let me know when they offer to pay me to watch it.
stego-tech 8mo ago
Several friends are just starting B5 for the first time as it appears on streaming services. My own housemates introduced it to me during Regime 1.0 on their DVD box set of the series. Needless to say we’re all side-eyeing each other as said friends all share the same feedback: “This is pretty good, but it feels kind of cheesy too, like Star Trek TNG, but also weirdly…prescient?” And we just kind of nod, because we know what vibes they’re picking up on, and boy oh boy are they in for a surprise at just how prescient it is. Incidentally, we have the DVD and the BD box sets, and the BD is such a step up that it’s worth the purchase to own it forever. Go give JMS your money.
ndsipa_pomu 8mo ago
If you're new to Babylon 5, pay attention to the Londo and G-Kar characters. They are presented as semi-comedic characters at the start, but have the most incredible character arcs.
throwaway613746 8mo ago
[dead]
ck2 8mo ago
Vaguely remember it was one of the first shows filmed in 16x9 even before HDTV existed
dghughes 8mo ago
Believe it or not I've never seen it. I'm a big sci-fi fan but it was never on any station in my region of Canada years ago. Plus over the years it seemed to be really hard to find in any form whether torrents, DVDs, or anywhere really.
- mixmastamyk 8mo ago
  Have to give it a chance. FX lighting is too bright until the second season, and story builds slowly.
HardwareLust 8mo ago
What do they mean by a "special edition" of Babylon 5?
AnotherGoodName 8mo ago
It's so weird how many good shows are not on any of the platforms. So much of what the platforms create is utter crap. Yet there's amazing shows only available on DVD. Recently bought and watched the Hornblower series. Amazing. Star Trek like atmosphere, exploration of new worlds etc (the show has less violence and a lot more good intentions than reality which i prefer in my times of relaxation), on a ship during the Napoleonic wars. Amazing. All the episodes of the miniseries are ~8 on imdb, deservedly so. Yet you wouldn't know this excellent series existed based on what the platforms show. Sharpe's another good one. I'm guessing there's bias against non-US made content but as someone not from the UK or the US wow what a blindspot!
riedel 8mo ago
And the best thing thing for HN nostalgia: CG was created using Lightwave on the Amiga as discussed here [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19285052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19285052
jovial_cavalier 8mo ago
The BBC has also been posting classic Doctor Who episodes for free. https://www.youtube.com/@ClassicDoctorWho https://www.youtube.com/@ClassicDoctorWho
Chris_Newton 8mo ago
B5 is still one of my favourite TV shows of all time. The common criticisms are largely true: it does start slow with some weak episodes in season 1, some of the acting is a bit wooden, the CGI hasn’t aged well, season 5 is slightly anti-climactic because they largely wrapped up the main plot arc in season 4 in case the final season didn’t happen. On the other hand, it had an epic storyline that spanned not just episodes but multiple seasons in a way that no-one had really tried in sci-fi before. That storyline made sense and weaves in and out of the individual episodes because it was planned out in advance. The world-building and development of different cultures and how they relate is generally strong. Against that over-arching backdrop, it also had a lot of good individual episodes. They had genuine character development. They explored social and moral issues as well as any show of that period. They varied from diplomatic and political settings to the adventure of deep space exploration to almost pure action episodes. They varied in scale too, from relatable stories about a single individual, to stories about a whole planet or culture, right up to the fate of the known universe. Much of the acting criticism is directed at the main leader characters, but I’ve always thought this is slightly unfair, because the script often relies on those characters to carry the plot and provide much of the exposition and those tend to be the more formulaic parts. The same show also features some of the best acting and main character arcs in TV sci-fi, with the relationship between Londo Mollari (played by Peter Jurasik) and G'Kar (Andreas Katsulas) being one of the great double acts. There were many good moments from the rest of the ensemble cast too, from the doctor wrestling with his conscience to a certain wave. And then there were some great supporting/recurring roles, from the light relief of Zathras (and Zathras, Zathras, Zathras, Zathras and Zathras, of course) to the much more serious Bester (arguably Walter Koenig’s finest work). If you haven’t watched B5 and you’re a fan of epic space sci-fi, I highly recommend it even with its flaws. The first season is a slow burner (although it also has a lot of subtle set-up that you won’t appreciate until much later) but it picks up. If you’re the type of viewer who can’t stand filler episodes, there used to be some relatively spoiler-free guides to which early episodes you really need to watch and which you can skip, so you could look for one of those. Don’t watch In The Beginning first, though; it’s a prequel TV movie that has lots of spoilers about the main story that you’re not supposed to know yet when you watch the early series.
Dove 8mo ago
We quote Babylon 5 on an approximately daily basis in this house. Definitely my favorite sci fi series. Well, that and Firefly. B5 won not one, but two Hugos, which were highly deserved. Whenever I get the itch to watch the whole thing again but I don't want to spend the time, I watch this (which is so thick with spoilers that you shouldn't watch it unless you've seen the series so many times that the Vorlons make sense now). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHpMAubwfQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHpMAubwfQg
- reactordev 8mo ago
  Star Trek, Star Wars shaped me, Babylon 5 opened my heart. It took me a few episodes to get through the awful CGI of the first season but the writing and characters were superb. It’s DS9 but way more political. Went to places Star Trek wouldn’t touch. Sheridan was one hell of a guy. Then I was introduced to Big Balls Bill Adama…
- mixmastamyk 8mo ago
  Hmm, the Vorlons were mysterious for most of the series but I thought it was clear by the end they simply craved order. ;-)
  - account42 8mo ago
    I think they were perhaps the aspect that suffered the most from the originally planned S4 and S5 being condensed into one season.
pinkmuffinere 8mo ago
link to Season 1, Episode 1 on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y235YEQstLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y235YEQstLo
- nobody9999 8mo ago
  That's the pilot (The Gathering), not S01E01. S01E01 is "Midnight on the Firing Line"[0] [0] https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8h1hey https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8h1hey
bgfjhgghhhg 8mo ago
Just torrent it… it’s a Pedomerican show anyway..
asdfss674564 8mo ago
Only the first 2 episodes? Where are others?
barbs 8mo ago
Looks like they've all been set to private
- dizzy9 8mo ago
  Yes, all the episodes have now been set to private, and The Gathering was re-uploaded. Not quite "Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube" as reported. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaIZc2icdTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaIZc2icdTU The full series appears to actually be free to watch on Roku Channel. https://therokuchannel.roku.com/details/382d11be2c7e519b8105d835d3ab6b68/babylon-5/season-1993 https://therokuchannel.roku.com/details/382d11be2c7e519b8105...

648 points by walterbell 8mo ago

The hosting channel is called "Clipzone: Beyond Infinity" https://youtube.com/@czbeyondinfinity?si=Vhn1LH1TjJzxNyLZ https://youtube.com/@czbeyondinfinity?si=Vhn1LH1TjJzxNyLZ "The Gathering" was uploaded on January 22. Currently available are episodes 1, 3, and 4, (Thursdays), and assorted five-minute clips. I could not find them bundled in a playlist here. The episodes are in broadcast order. "Midnight on the Firing Line", a missing episode, is listed as Episode 1 in Wikipedia, because "The Gathering" was a pilot. Steve Grimm's "Lurker's Guide" is still online since 33 years, and updated with 2023's releases: http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html

account42 8mo ago
> "The Gathering" was uploaded on January 22 The 16:9 cropped and upscaled version (of the TNT cut) unfortunately, with the same excessive noise reduction and sharpening that previous releases of that version had. Baffling why they keep using this version when even the old DVD release has better quality.
- RupertSalt 8mo ago
  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/ https://b5remasterissues.wordpress.com/the-good/
  - account42 8mo ago
    Only the live action shots were recorded with a wide aspect ratio, and perhaps not even that for the pilot. The CGI was rendered in 4:3 and the final cuts including transitions and VFX where composited in 4:3. The remaster combines cropped 4:3 but high resolution scans of the original live action footage with (sometimes badly) upscaled versions of CGI and VFX'd shots -- except for the pilot which is fully upscaled and cropped from the original 4:3 broadcast masters with zero high resolution live action footage. I don't know if the pilot footage was actually shot widescreen but if it was then you don't get any of it in the "widescreen" pilot included in the remastered versions.
    - Apocryphon 8mo ago
      So just what is the optimal way to watch this show
      - WorldMaker 8mo ago
        There sadly isn't one. The 4:3 Blu-Ray remasters are about as good as it gets in visual quality, but there's a "cinematic" feel lost from the 16:9 DVDs, but the quality difference is noticeable and unfavorable. It's a bit of a dealer's choice at this point if you want "best available quality" or "best available widescreen." Babylon 5 was filmed at a weird moment where they were prescient about HD TV and the coming widescreen home television boom and planned for/shot for 16:9 releases, but also had to shoot and composite first and foremost for 4:3 to meet TVs where they were. They had even had plans to preserve the special FX masters to make it easier to recomposite the show. WB's Archives team lost those files at some point. (The general story is WB Archives sent a copy of the masters to Vivendi [Sierra, proto-Activision Blizzard] for the eventually cancelled videogame and discovered they sent the original copy by accident only after Vivendi claimed to have wiped their copy out of respect for the contract terms when the game was cancelled.)
        sinnickal 8mo ago
        14⋮9 was used for a while to ease the transition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14%3A9_aspect_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14%3A9_aspect_ratio
  - jeffwask 8mo ago
    DS9 and Voy have the same issue. For DS9, Season 1 was shot wide screen compatible then they switched to 16:9 but none of the effects are widescreen ready.
- RupertSalt 8mo ago
  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.
Sharlin 8mo ago
It’s awesome that Lurker’s Guide is still there.
- yrro 8mo ago
  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!
varenc 8mo ago
Is the poster, "ClipZone: Beyond Infinity" associated with Warner Brothers? It's not obvious to me it is, but it does seem to only post Warner Brothers content. Seems like it is an official WB channel that's been incognito until now.
romperstomper 8mo ago
I wish they published it in a more organized manner.. At the moment all published episodes are mixed with other content of their channel.

jefc1111 8mo ago

If you decide to watch Babylon 5 for the first time, I suggest giving it a chance to get under your skin. There is quite a lot to get in the way of that such as mediocre acting, cringey humour, low budget fx (all particularly prominent in season 1). But the pay off in seasons 3 and 4 is huge if you take the time to let affection grow for the characters. Babylon 5 was my first 'favourite series' that 'changed my life' etc etc so I guess I am biased!

whynotmaybe 8mo ago
No, you're not biased, it's simply the best! It's getting old but nostalgia kicks in as soon as I see a Vorlon ship
account42 8mo ago
Is that disclaimer really needed? As someone who watched the series the first time last year, the acting and humor seem fine for TV honestly. The CGI dated of course but not offensive either. If anything I found the later seasons more disappointing than 1 and 2 as smaller scale stories are replaced with moving the big plot forward, which still feels rushed somehow.
- jefc1111 8mo ago
  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!
  - sidpatil 8mo ago
    > smaller scale stories are replaced with moving the big plot forward This is pretty common in TV shows, from what I've noticed. It takes a few seasons for a show to find its footing.

t312227 8mo ago

hello, as always: imho. (!) ah ... babylon 5 :)) this was one of the best scifi shows back in the mid 1990ties. it introduced a lot things which we take for granted today ... together with startrek "deep space nine" which roughly aired during the same time: * telling a "story arch" over multiple seasons * 2 parallel story-lines within episodes * causally show people doing "every-day" life things, like going to the toilet - you may laugh, but 30+ years ago, for example in various startrek spinoffs - tng, ds9, voyager - nobody went to the toilet ... ever!! don't get me wrong, i'm a big fan of startrek too ;)) * despite their budget decent CGI for the time if i remember it correctly: they used a software called "lightroom", which ran on the amiga hardware-platform at first, for later seasons they moved to PC hardware... just if you wonder about the quality of the CGI ... this was some 680x0 computer running at something like 16 or 32 MHz (!) with a few MB (!) of memory. not a scifi "blockbuster" utilizing multimillion us$ SGI clusters like ILM productions of the era did! absolutely recommended: "the lurker's guide to babylon 5" * http://midwinter.com/lurk/lurker.html http://midwinter.com/lurk/lurker.html just my 0.02€

pjmlp 8mo ago
You are missing one important detail, an Amiga alongside NewTek's Video Toaster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster
- t312227 8mo ago
  you are right, i left this detail out ... but it went somewhat together with the amiga & the lightwave-software :))
- bilegeek 8mo ago
  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_making_of_Babylo.php https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue166/68_The_makin...
  - sillywalk 8mo ago

kouteiheika 8mo ago

I would give my left kidney for either a continuation or a reboot of Babylon 5 under the helm of J. Michael Straczynski with full creative freedom. Or hell, even an entirely different show. In my opinion he's one of the few people in the industry who actually knows how to skillfully write a coherent TV show. And by that I mean: he actually pre-planned the story (spanning multiple seasons!) of B5 right from the beginning, instead of completely making it up on the fly like so many other shows. Subtle things which might seem inconsequential, appearing in the very first season, can foreshadow events happening seasons later. This makes it, at least for me, much more coherent and enjoyable to watch, and I wish more writers/showrunners would adopt this approach (instead of the usual writers' room + only plan until the end of the season approach which is so common today).

krapp 8mo ago
>I would give my left kidney for either a continuation or a reboot of Babylon 5 under the helm of J. Michael Straczynski with full creative freedom. I don't know. I loved Babylon 5 but I also found it kind of corny. And then Crusade was just a D&D campaign in space. The ship was even called the Excalibur FFS. I feel like "full creative freedom" would ruin it the way it did with George Lucas and Star Wars. >and I wish more writers/showrunners would adopt this approach (instead of the usual writers' room + only plan until the end of the season approach which is so common today. What else can you do when you don't know if you're getting renewed? You can't push the conclusions to your storylines forward into seasons you might never even have to resolve them.
WorldMaker 8mo ago
The CW picked up a Babylon 5 reboot "recently", but it seems like it got trapped in development hell and caught in the cross-fires of the ugly WB-CBS divorce of The CW and the ugly merger of WB and Discovery and what is shaping up to be an ugly divorce of WB and Discovery.
- JLO64 8mo ago
  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.

PepperdineG 8mo ago

“Sooner or later everyone comes to Babylon 5."

DonHopkins 8mo ago
No one ever listens to Zathras. "Quite mad," they say. It is good that Zathras does not mind. Has even grown to like it. Oh, yes.
- rhdunn 8mo ago
  Cannot say. Saying, I would know. Do not know, so cannot say.
- sgt 8mo ago
  Which Zathras? Zathras.... or Zathras?
henrikschroder 8mo ago
Boom. Sooner or later. BOOM!

stuxnet79 8mo ago

It's great that they are releasing these episodes on YouTube. But what a lot of OG fans would love even more is a proper remaster of some of the classics. Unfortunately the lukewarm response to the TNG remaster proved to media companies that such undertakings are not worth the effort. But I wonder if the advent of AI tools has made remasters more economical. I do know there is an ongoing effort by fans to remaster VOY and DS9 with the help of AI but not sure of the quality or cost.

ChoGGi 8mo ago
There's an AI upscale of ds9 in torrent land. Looks pretty good other than certain scenes.
- sgt 8mo ago
  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.

mindslight 8mo ago

Why would I want to mess with using a web browser for video in my living room, probably getting hassled over its (lack of) digital restrictions management lockdown, signing into a Google account with all of the surveillance pwnage that implies, ads (including ads for senile political ragebait) plastered all over my experience, while becoming dependent on a UI that can change at any time, likely to demand money? Youtube is a step back in experience, something to be suffered when the thing you want to watch is only available there (ie network effects). Meanwhile, Babylon 5 has been free ~forever on torrents.

serf 8mo ago
okay, then be happy there will be some new injected life into the fandom or re-read the release as "B5 now available for download via YT-DLP for free!"
- mindslight 8mo ago
  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).
  - pwg 8mo ago
    > But no, in my experience yt-dlp no longer just works unless you make your identity legible You need to upgrade your yt-dlp then. The newest versions still work without any session cookies or other such nonsense.
pwg 8mo ago
> Why would I want to mess with using a web browser for video in my living room No need for all that. Just use yt-dlp (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) to download them as video files, and then just play the video files as you would any other video file. Just tested yt-dlp on s1e1 to verify it worked, and it worked perfectly to download the video.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

tomkarho 8mo ago

Those who come to this magnificent piece of Sci-Fi for the first time, a word of advice: Pay attention. There are things set in motion in season 1 that are resolved multiple seasons later and there's a lot of foreshadowing (pun very much intended) both subtle and overt. Oh and, enjoy the ride. It's a good one.

tracker1 8mo ago
I just found the acting in the first season really, "soap opera" like. I'm not sure how to describe it better. It's still one of my all time favorite shows. I wish they'd do a corrected bluray release with even a bit more effort... when they did the upscaling for HD release on HBO Max, they messed up a couple episodes. Maybe AI upscale to 4k, with training data for newer ship models, actor photos, etc then reducing back to 1080p for a final BluRay set. Probably enough people that would do this as a passion project if the studio would let them.
- RupertSalt 8mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera
- conception 8mo ago
  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.
  - fao_ 8mo ago
    > 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. Unfortunately incorrect! JMS had the entire plot and "bible" written out start to finish before the show was produced, and the show was approved based on that bible. It had all the room it planned for and needed at the start. There were even built-in "escape hatches" planned for if actors had to drop out (which happened to Michael O'Hare, unfortunately)

duxup 8mo ago

Babylon 5 can drift into being a little corny but the characters and overall story arc grow and grow into something great. Growing up Babylon 5 and Deep Space 9 were syndicated one after another in the middle of the night. It was a wonderful tradition staying up all night to watch both.

neom 8mo ago
I was just thinking about that, I think where I live in the UK it was after dinner but also back to back, seem to recall DS9 was first? Either way I found that period of TV annoying as DS9 is objectively the worst old trek, and Babylon 5 is a little more than a little corny, personally can't stand Babylon 5.
- Sharlin 8mo ago
  Objectively? Many consider it the best of the three 90s Treks. And TOS is really too remote for a meaningful comparison with the three.

empressplay 8mo ago

I'm glad B5 is still getting a new audience. This article sounds very AI generated though.

pupppet 8mo ago

For those who have watched both Babylon 5 and Star Trek TNG- which did you like better?

shadowalker97 8mo ago
They were, for me at least, too different to compare like that. TNG was the hopeful future - something an idealist would like to imagine society could achieve. Babylon 5 was the realistic future - where fascism and racism are issues still prevalent in society, but largely left unaddressed. If you ask me to pick between them I'd have to go with Babylon 5 but only because of the writing. There were so many times that JMS foreshadowed events literal years in the future on the show and it was such a huge payoff as a fan. Star Trek just wasn't structured as a show in a way that can compete with that level of world building that was all interwoven in the same kind of way.
c048 8mo ago
Babylon 5. When people asked me what I preferred, "Star Wars or Star Trek?", I've always responded with "Babylon 5".
- Dove 8mo ago
  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.
marginalia_nu 8mo ago
It's a hard comparison. They are both very good, in wildly different ways. B5 is much more character driven and more of a slow burn that sets up a big payoff in the later seasons that has permanent world-changing impact. It was really ahead of its time, closer to something like Game of Thrones than anything else at the time. TNG feels more static, even the "big events" don't really change the world all that much in the next episode, except Tasha Yar being written out of the show in season 1 causing Worf's head to shrink in season 2 or something I guess. It's a mystery-of-the-week show, you know what you're gonna get and you know it's good. No complaints, but also nothing mind blowing.

hunglee2 8mo ago

Amazing series, which somehow survived a forced change of lead actor, and got even better. The story was only marred by rushed ending to the story arc for Season 4, and then a nothingburger of a Season 5. Still, up there with BattleStar Galactica and The Expanse as the greatest TV sci-fi series of all time.

INTPenis 8mo ago

B5 was the first sci-fi show that felt real to me, Star Trek never felt gritty.

nubinetwork 8mo ago

Put up sg1 instead, and I'll think about it.

tetrisgm 8mo ago

What wonderful news. Babylon 5 remains one of the finest crafted sci-fi tales ever told. Hopefully this encourages more people to discover it!

alex-moon 8mo ago

So I came to Babylon 5 late in life, when my partner's mother revealed she had the entire box set on DVD. My partner had recently introduced me to The Expanse, which, like many, I consider the greatest sci fi TV show of all time - she described B5 to me thus: "Babylon 5 walked so the Expanse could run." Suffice to say, my expectations were sky high. No other TV show has so greatly exceeded my expectations.

chasil 8mo ago
In Babylon 5, you actually meet and converse with the aliens. In the Expanse, you do not.
- elsonrodriguez 8mo ago
  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.

edu 8mo ago

styluss 8mo ago

Mild Spoilers. I will always have a special place for Babylon 5. One time I was watching it with my father who lived under a dictatorship, watched a scene with Mr Morden and Lando, immediately said "this kind of talk is meant to put people against other people". He didn't care much for the extraterrestrial part of the show but was very interested in portrayal of authoritarianism.

dizzy9 8mo ago

Excellent news. Babylon 5 is underappreciated, but it has mainly good episodes and several amazing ones.[0] However, if I can be cynical for a moment: The article title is misleading. Only a few episodes have been uploaded so far. At the current rate of one episode per week, it will take until March 2028 to conclude all five seasons. That's assuming they post every episode, and allow the episodes to remain up in the long term. For some reason, the first episode of season 1, Midnight on the Firing Line, is missing from the YouTube upload, which is a pretty critical omission. YouTube is also a minefield of spoilers in the video recommendations. I can't recommend the YouTube uploads to newcomers right now. The Blu-ray collection appears to be available for about $100. [0]: https://seriesgraph.com/show/3137-babylon-5 https://seriesgraph.com/show/3137-babylon-5

nephihaha 8mo ago
It's let down by its effects which even appeared ropey at the time. However, some good storylines.
- alienbaby 8mo ago
  If I remember right, the graphics in early episodes were rendered on commodore amigas
- Telemakhos 8mo ago
  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.
  - moron4hire 8mo ago

FrustratedMonky 8mo ago

Everyone should re-watch. I was very surprised how many subjects were covered that had bearing to todays world. The US in particular, if you take the US as the earth government in the show. A proxy president, manipulated by the shadows. Come one. And all the psy ops? Very much a lot of the same issues come up in the surveillance state. And manipulating the press. This show really covered a lot of things happening today. If only we had a Sheridan today to fight for our rights.

moomin 8mo ago

Doesn’t seem to be free in the UK

insin 8mo ago

Putting this here for everyone whose head it also immediately popped into upon reading the title: "Derek... Babylon 5's a big pile of shit" "Get out!" "Yaaaaaaay!"

naruhodo 8mo ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpb1OXvNNMc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpb1OXvNNMc Glad I'm not the only one who immediately thought of this.

macintux 8mo ago

Notable for this audience but perhaps not widely known: JMS engaged with Usenet to promote and discuss the show; if I remember correctly, the B5 newsgroup was active even before the pilot aired. Obviously there was no social media at the time, and I would bet that was the first time a U.S. TV show’s creator was communicating directly with fans via the Internet. (Update: more that I reflect on it, I think he was engaging with the community even while shopping the show around, but that was before my participation.)

indymike 8mo ago
B5 on Usenet was everything right with the internet.

threethirtytwo 8mo ago

I tried watching this (I grew up with it remembering it's on TV) and while it's watchable, it's not that enjoyable in modern times because it hasn't aged very well at all in terms of the FX so it's hard to get immersed. I know if I stick with it, it will probably get good (doctor who was like this for me) but it's a huge slog. I feel Star Trek TNG lucked out with all the choices they made. The designs and effects generally hold up.

mixmastamyk 8mo ago
TNG looked like crap compared to modern standards, and why they spent a lot of money to restore and fix it. Was expensive/unprofitable enough that no other shows got the treatment. There were comparisons on youtube.
- threethirtytwo 8mo ago
  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.
  - mixmastamyk 8mo ago
    You can still see the CRTs behind LCARS, but I have to admit it is pretty cool in general. They had a bigger budget. But for space scenes, IMO the later episodes of B5 were amazing and beautiful. They just need a modern render and to turn down the saturation. TNG era ships and camera framing were much more boring, partly due to the smaller story.
    - threethirtytwo 8mo ago
      I'm gonna give it a shot. And by give it a shot I mean watch all 5 seasons lol. But I still think TNG just looks better. I get that the space scenes were less epic and the scenes are less dynamic. That restriction enabled effects that were more grounded in fidelity so it holds up with the CG of today. I do know they used CRTs in TNG but not often. Most of the LCARS stuff was just literally backlit plastic panels. Because of that it's much less jarring whereas babylon 5 I think the CRT screens were used everywhere.

Findecanor 8mo ago

Weird anecdote: Patricia Tallman, who played telepath Lyta Alexander through most of the series was simultaneously Gates McFadden's stunt double on TNG and in the TNG-era movies.

ExoticPearTree 8mo ago

Babylon 5 is one of my favorite sci-fi series. I couldn’t wait for the week to pass to see another episode. It was too ahead of its time and like many series from that period, the lack of computer power for special effects was showing.

godber 8mo ago

Let me know when they offer to pay me to watch it.

stego-tech 8mo ago

Several friends are just starting B5 for the first time as it appears on streaming services. My own housemates introduced it to me during Regime 1.0 on their DVD box set of the series. Needless to say we’re all side-eyeing each other as said friends all share the same feedback: “This is pretty good, but it feels kind of cheesy too, like Star Trek TNG, but also weirdly…prescient?” And we just kind of nod, because we know what vibes they’re picking up on, and boy oh boy are they in for a surprise at just how prescient it is. Incidentally, we have the DVD and the BD box sets, and the BD is such a step up that it’s worth the purchase to own it forever. Go give JMS your money.

ndsipa_pomu 8mo ago

If you're new to Babylon 5, pay attention to the Londo and G-Kar characters. They are presented as semi-comedic characters at the start, but have the most incredible character arcs.

throwaway613746 8mo ago

[dead]

ck2 8mo ago

Vaguely remember it was one of the first shows filmed in 16x9 even before HDTV existed

dghughes 8mo ago

Believe it or not I've never seen it. I'm a big sci-fi fan but it was never on any station in my region of Canada years ago. Plus over the years it seemed to be really hard to find in any form whether torrents, DVDs, or anywhere really.

mixmastamyk 8mo ago
Have to give it a chance. FX lighting is too bright until the second season, and story builds slowly.

HardwareLust 8mo ago

What do they mean by a "special edition" of Babylon 5?

AnotherGoodName 8mo ago

It's so weird how many good shows are not on any of the platforms. So much of what the platforms create is utter crap. Yet there's amazing shows only available on DVD. Recently bought and watched the Hornblower series. Amazing. Star Trek like atmosphere, exploration of new worlds etc (the show has less violence and a lot more good intentions than reality which i prefer in my times of relaxation), on a ship during the Napoleonic wars. Amazing. All the episodes of the miniseries are ~8 on imdb, deservedly so. Yet you wouldn't know this excellent series existed based on what the platforms show. Sharpe's another good one. I'm guessing there's bias against non-US made content but as someone not from the UK or the US wow what a blindspot!

riedel 8mo ago

And the best thing thing for HN nostalgia: CG was created using Lightwave on the Amiga as discussed here [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19285052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19285052

jovial_cavalier 8mo ago

The BBC has also been posting classic Doctor Who episodes for free. https://www.youtube.com/@ClassicDoctorWho https://www.youtube.com/@ClassicDoctorWho

Chris_Newton 8mo ago

B5 is still one of my favourite TV shows of all time. The common criticisms are largely true: it does start slow with some weak episodes in season 1, some of the acting is a bit wooden, the CGI hasn’t aged well, season 5 is slightly anti-climactic because they largely wrapped up the main plot arc in season 4 in case the final season didn’t happen. On the other hand, it had an epic storyline that spanned not just episodes but multiple seasons in a way that no-one had really tried in sci-fi before. That storyline made sense and weaves in and out of the individual episodes because it was planned out in advance. The world-building and development of different cultures and how they relate is generally strong. Against that over-arching backdrop, it also had a lot of good individual episodes. They had genuine character development. They explored social and moral issues as well as any show of that period. They varied from diplomatic and political settings to the adventure of deep space exploration to almost pure action episodes. They varied in scale too, from relatable stories about a single individual, to stories about a whole planet or culture, right up to the fate of the known universe. Much of the acting criticism is directed at the main leader characters, but I’ve always thought this is slightly unfair, because the script often relies on those characters to carry the plot and provide much of the exposition and those tend to be the more formulaic parts. The same show also features some of the best acting and main character arcs in TV sci-fi, with the relationship between Londo Mollari (played by Peter Jurasik) and G'Kar (Andreas Katsulas) being one of the great double acts. There were many good moments from the rest of the ensemble cast too, from the doctor wrestling with his conscience to a certain wave. And then there were some great supporting/recurring roles, from the light relief of Zathras (and Zathras, Zathras, Zathras, Zathras and Zathras, of course) to the much more serious Bester (arguably Walter Koenig’s finest work). If you haven’t watched B5 and you’re a fan of epic space sci-fi, I highly recommend it even with its flaws. The first season is a slow burner (although it also has a lot of subtle set-up that you won’t appreciate until much later) but it picks up. If you’re the type of viewer who can’t stand filler episodes, there used to be some relatively spoiler-free guides to which early episodes you really need to watch and which you can skip, so you could look for one of those. Don’t watch In The Beginning first, though; it’s a prequel TV movie that has lots of spoilers about the main story that you’re not supposed to know yet when you watch the early series.

Dove 8mo ago

We quote Babylon 5 on an approximately daily basis in this house. Definitely my favorite sci fi series. Well, that and Firefly. B5 won not one, but two Hugos, which were highly deserved. Whenever I get the itch to watch the whole thing again but I don't want to spend the time, I watch this (which is so thick with spoilers that you shouldn't watch it unless you've seen the series so many times that the Vorlons make sense now). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHpMAubwfQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHpMAubwfQg

reactordev 8mo ago
Star Trek, Star Wars shaped me, Babylon 5 opened my heart. It took me a few episodes to get through the awful CGI of the first season but the writing and characters were superb. It’s DS9 but way more political. Went to places Star Trek wouldn’t touch. Sheridan was one hell of a guy. Then I was introduced to Big Balls Bill Adama…
mixmastamyk 8mo ago
Hmm, the Vorlons were mysterious for most of the series but I thought it was clear by the end they simply craved order. ;-)
- account42 8mo ago
  I think they were perhaps the aspect that suffered the most from the originally planned S4 and S5 being condensed into one season.

pinkmuffinere 8mo ago

link to Season 1, Episode 1 on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y235YEQstLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y235YEQstLo

nobody9999 8mo ago
That's the pilot (The Gathering), not S01E01. S01E01 is "Midnight on the Firing Line"[0] [0] https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8h1hey https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8h1hey

bgfjhgghhhg 8mo ago

Just torrent it… it’s a Pedomerican show anyway..

asdfss674564 8mo ago

Only the first 2 episodes? Where are others?

barbs 8mo ago

Looks like they've all been set to private

dizzy9 8mo ago
Yes, all the episodes have now been set to private, and The Gathering was re-uploaded. Not quite "Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube" as reported. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaIZc2icdTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaIZc2icdTU The full series appears to actually be free to watch on Roku Channel. https://therokuchannel.roku.com/details/382d11be2c7e519b8105d835d3ab6b68/babylon-5/season-1993 https://therokuchannel.roku.com/details/382d11be2c7e519b8105...