Babylon 5 Remastered

[Ivanstone]

After six years of work HBO has a remastered version of Babylon 5 out.

Who’s watching it for the first time?

/sheepishlyraiseshand

[tangers58]

Unfortunately I just bought it all on amazon video like 3 months ago >.>

[Dread Pirate Phayde]

Babylon 5 is my favorite scifi series. It may not be as fancy as Star Trek, but it has one hell of an amazing story and characters.

I don't know that you'll find a better pair than Londo and G'Kar. I've had the DVD set for years, picked up a new one a few years ago, but I subbed to HBO Max just to give the series the support it deserves.

I never thought WB would remaster it, so it makes me happy for anyone new discovering this series.

[MrPaladinGuy]

I'm watching it for the first time, I remember 20+ years ago when my dad would watch this, but it was too slow for me at the time.

[Velshin]

Babylon 5 is my favorite scifi series. It may not be as fancy as Star Trek, but it has one hell of an amazing story and characters.

I don't know that you'll find a better pair than Londo and G'Kar. I've had the DVD set for years, picked up a new one a few years ago, but I subbed to HBO Max just to give the series the support it deserves.

I never thought WB would remaster it, so it makes me happy for anyone new discovering this series.

Babylon 5 and Stargate SG1 are my all time sci fi favorite tv series for sure!

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I was really happy to see this. One of the greatest sci-fi shows of all time that didn't receive the credit it deserved at the time. I really enjoyed the 90s style and attitude of the show (I probably haven't seen it in 20+ years). I had forgotten that part of it. Mostly because its one of the dopest sci-fi shows of all time.

[Corvus]

There is a remaster of it? Wow, that I've got to see. B5 is one of my favourite shows of all time.

The hard part in watching it is knowing that more than half of the main cast have died, all of them far too young. As in from there 40s to 60s. We lost another one just a couple of weeks back - Mira Furlan (Delenn), who at 65 was one of the oldest when she died.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I loved it as a kid, but damn did the CGI age horribly. Like many other scifi series back then they also became way too esotherical for my taste in the later seasons. :/

I am curious though how the remaster looks.

[SavoirFaire]

I remember getting to the episode with Walter Koenig in it and that being the last one for me, just couldn’t get into it. Will give it another shot when I resub to hbo.

[Biomega]

From the looks of it it's a cleanup, but it's NOT a remaster like the one they did with Star Trek TNG where they literally remade most of the CGI. It's just better picture quality (I assume sound as well couldn't find a comparison) which is absolutely appreciated but not a quantum leap in terms of improvement.

That being said, the CGI in B5 has its own aesthetic to it and I guess many fans will LIKE the fact that it was only sharpened and cleaned and not remade. It's part of the unique flavor of that show.

Probably not enough to make me sub to HBO, but it's great to have this in the world.

EDIT: Oh and, from what I can tell it's still in 4:3 so they didn't crop the format either.

[draynay]

EDIT: Oh and, from what I can tell it's still in 4:3 so they didn't crop the format either.

Good, its always better to preserve the original aspect ratio over squashing the image.

I never watched it, but will be interested in checking it out at some point in the near future.

[Milchshake]

Wishing that Warners would spend $70 million on a B5 reboot or Reshoots instead of whatever Zack Snyder is doing.

[Xeenith]

the good thing about B5 is that you can't really jump episodes, there are always ton of stuff happening all over the place and in different zones

[deepr]

Cool, there's a remaster?
I have just completed Babylon 5 for the first time.
I've watched it all, the entire series and the tv films (except for the spin-off series Crusade).
God damn it, that final episode is a tear jerker. Beautiful music as well.
Overall an immensely satisfying show. One of my favorites for sure.

I watched it in the order as recommended here by poster Scott Taylor (and I'd recommend that order as well):
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/ques...-be-watched-in

P.S. The films aren't particularly good, some are quite bad in fact. In The Beginning is by far the best one, as it ties in great with the series, if you watch it at the right moment. If someone is not planning to watch them all, I'd say only The Gathering and In The Beginning are essential to the main series.

[Hellobolis]

Good, its always better to preserve the original aspect ratio over squashing the image.

I never watched it, but will be interested in checking it out at some point in the near future.

not good. https://www.space.com/babylon-5-rema...itunes-hbo-max

"Tragically, the remaster retains a 4:3 aspect ratio — not 16:9 — even though the show was filmed for widescreen and released on DVD in widescreen. "

big oof. the one i have currently is widescreen.

some pictures here: looks like the filmed parts are true widescreen, but the CGI parts are cropped 4:3.
https://www.reddit.com/r/babylon5/co...versions_from/

[deepr]

The Lost Tales actually gives an idea what a proper remaster/remake could look like. The station looks a lot better there. Also the ships and the Minbari homeworld I think it was.

[Puri]

Personally I don't get why people always slam the CGI of Babylon 5. It still holds up quite fine, and if you compare it to the contemporary TNG (pretty much no space scenes) or DS9 (CGI only used in the later seasons, but even there they stick to the static and repeating patterns they had to apply earlier for their models) it's ten or twenty years ahead. It's dynamic, shots did not have to be reused. And since it was rather cheap to use they could pretty much show everything, while in Star Trek you often had to take their word for what's happening outside because their mixed CGI/model FX was so much more expensive.
Just for comparison: Babylon 5 battle vs DS9

What does look aged and ridiculously cheap (and it already did back in the 90s) are the sets, especially the TVs they used as monitors throughout the show, but generally the sets all rather look like theater sets than TV sets. Just compare the main B5 CNC in the videos above (used for the entire series) to some random bridge they show during the DS9 battle. There you can clearly see the available budget.

As for the remaster: It's only available as stream (for now), and they really remastered the CGI scenes in cropped 4:3 instead of 16:9, which is unfortunate.

(Just to add: The CGI used for backgrounds, especially the Minbari homeworld, and Mars in later seasons, yes, that looks terrible, I am talking only about the space scenes).

[s_bushido]

Personally I don't get why people always slam the CGI of Babylon 5. It still holds up quite fine, and if you compare it to the contemporary TNG (pretty much no space scenes) or DS9 (CGI only used in the later seasons, but even there they stick to the static and repeating patterns they had to apply earlier for their models) it's ten or twenty years ahead. It's dynamic, shots did not have to be reused. And since it was rather cheap to use they could pretty much show everything, while in Star Trek you often had to take their word for what's happening outside because their mixed CGI/model FX was so much more expensive.

People "slam" it because it's 90s era CGI that looks like 90s era CGI. There's nothing wrong with it, since they chose to keep everything CGI and didn't try to integrate it with realistic looking models or sets, and it holds up fine in that sense. But I don't think there's a world where the B5 stuff is even remotely "ten or twenty years ahead" of what they were doing in TNG and DS9... The styles were simply different.

I mean hell, the BSG remake was literally 10 years later, and even the VFX in that series shows its age:

[Ivanstone]

Personally I don't get why people always slam the CGI of Babylon 5. It still holds up quite fine, and if you compare it to the contemporary TNG (pretty much no space scenes) or DS9 (CGI only used in the later seasons, but even there they stick to the static and repeating patterns they had to apply earlier for their models) it's ten or twenty years ahead. It's dynamic, shots did not have to be reused. And since it was rather cheap to use they could pretty much show everything, while in Star Trek you often had to take their word for what's happening outside because their mixed CGI/model FX was so much more expensive.
Just for comparison: Babylon 5 battle vs DS9

What does look aged and ridiculously cheap (and it already did back in the 90s) are the sets, especially the TVs they used as monitors throughout the show, but generally the sets all rather look like theater sets than TV sets. Just compare the main B5 CNC in the videos above (used for the entire series) to some random bridge they show during the DS9 battle. There you can clearly see the available budget.

I generally don't gripe about FX. Its much less important than the story itself and B5's seem to be good enough to get the point across.

The one thing I noticed was the set design and the music. It feels like something from an earlier time and not necessarily in a good way. Both TNG and DS9 were had mostly better looking sets. Michael O'Hare also seemed like an old-fashioned leading man. Again this is less important than the story itself and O'Hare was pretty good as Sinclair. Its too bad he had to be replaced.

I'm about half way through Season 2. Boxleitner is a pretty good replacement so far.

[Glorious Leader]

- - - Updated - - -

Wishing that Warners would spend $70 million on a B5 reboot or Reshoots instead of whatever Zack Snyder is doing.

release the stracyznski cut