Babylon 5 Reboot Movie in the Works

After years of rumors, speculations, and aborted attempts, it seems that a Babylon 5 film is finally in the works. Scheduled for production in 2016, none other than creator, showrunner, and head writer J. Michael Straczynski is at the helm of the project, a relief to all fans of the 1994-1998 series.

Not much is known about the project other than that the Great Maker himself will be penning it, and it will be a reboot of the Babylon 5 story. As such, since some of the actors have since passed away and the rest are twenty years older, a new cast would be introduced to portray the characters. However, this would not necessarily exclude the beloved veterans of the franchise. JMS has stated a desire to utilize the actors from the acclaimed '90s science fiction series in different roles. “I’d love to see Bruce [Boxleitner] as the president of the Earth Alliance,” he offered as an example. Whether he means President Santiago or President Clark is unclear, but my money would be on Clark for both screen time and intertextually ironic reasons.

As a die-hard Babylon 5 fan, someone who has watched the series from beginning to end about two-dozen times, quotes it regularly in his everyday life, and has set it in a place of honor in his heart with a devotion that can only be described as religious, I am of two minds about this project.

On the one hand, the fanboy in me is already screaming “More Babylon 5?!? Hot shit! Yes!” Especially if JMS is in charge of the project. We’re talking about a writer who singlehandedly flipped the script on how serialized, predetermined (if somewhat modified along the way), and finite storytelling could work in television and proved wrong all the naysayers who insisted that a writer is not the person you want in the driver’s seat. Babylon 5 was a landmark series with a singular vision and mission, which it accomplished… which begs the question…

Why?

Don’t get me wrong, I am always ready to take another spin around the B5 universe, but a reboot is just so completely counter to the mission statement of the series. From its inception, the entire point of Babylon 5 was to have a finite, predetermined arc, a saga that built, crescendoed, and ended properly rather than, in the words of Commander Susan Ivanova, “some deep space franchise.”

Now, allowances were made with the much (and in this writer’s opinion, unfairly) maligned spin-off Crusade, because hey, who doesn’t love the Rangers? This very same sentiment is what led to the well-meaning but ultimately abominable Legend of the Rangers TV movie that never made it to series. And, of course, there were the canon tie-in novels, a trilogy of trilogies that JMS outlined himself. And your mileage may vary on those books, but I’d say most of them were pretty good. And then, of course, we have 2007’s Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, a pair of direct-to-DVD vignettes that were certainly good and worth seeing, but also served as a wake-up call of sorts to the Great Maker.

JMS himself has said that he intended to back off from creating any more Babylon 5 material, that every new entry in the canon should enhance the impact of the series proper, not detract from it. Though there was a certain sadness in the admission of it, we all knew what he meant. Did a dozen largely unrelated ancillary properties only serve to dilute the presence of the main series? Well, kind of, yeah.

Also, with the deaths of Richard Biggs, Andreas Katsulas, Michael O’Hare, Jeff Conaway and other beloved cast members, both regular and recurring -- without whom JMS has said he could not write those characters -- would more Babylon 5 really be worth it? And most of us in the fandom offered up a resigned and bittersweet “no.” Best to leave the legacy intact, as it was.

And yet, there is some part of me that finds the prospect of a reboot at the very least intriguing and worthy of further discussion. Could a reboot work? Well, my kneejerk answer would be a no.

See, a tie-in movie is something Star Trek could accomplish. Trek is ultimately an anthology series without a whole lot of continuity, so conjuring up the essence of the series and pouring it into a 2-hour big screen adventure is a lot more feasible that adapting a plot as intricate as that of Babylon 5. Would this be a pentalogy of films, each corresponding to a particular season? Would this reboot actually attempt to cram the fallout of the Earth/Minbari war, the corruption of Earth Dome, the Centauri Narn conflict, the Shadow War, the Earth Alliance Civil War, the Drakh, and the whole Byron crisis all in one film? I mean, it’s preposterous. The only other option would be to omit massive chunks of the story or to just follow another story completely, in which case, again… why? Why would you make Babylon 5 anything other than Babylon 5?

There is another possibility. While JMS did have an outline for the arc of the series, he made no secret of the fact that certain aspects were changed along the way. Jeffrey Sinclair was originally supposed to be the protagonist for all five seasons, but Michael O’Hare resigned from the show in order to address his own mental health issues, and thus his love interest Catherine Sakai was also written out along with any stories she might have brought with her. Lyta Alexander was meant to be a main player from the beginning, but scheduling conflict kept actress Patricia Tallman from returning after the pilot until late in the second season. Ambassador Delenn was originally planned to be a male who would emerge from the chrysalis a female, but the digital voice modulation technology wasn’t as sophisticated as it is now, and so that story was abandoned and Delenn was simply female from the word go. And lest we forget the original plan for Laurel Takashima.

There are several other examples how the story was forced to take a few detours on its journey toward its goal, many of them for the better, but still. So, could it be possible that a reboot movie would attempt to tell the story of Babylon 5 as it was initially conceived. That would, to me, be the only truly legitimate reason to revisit this story, much the way the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic Origin depicted Joss Whedon’s original film script in lieu of the draft that made it to production. Could a Babylon 5 reboot be an awesome What If? story, the saga of Jeffrey Sinclair as it was first conceived in that now legendary shower so many years ago?

Or is it possible that JMS has another idea up his sleeve altogether and will surprise us all? It’s possible. If the man is seriously considering doing something that at first glance appears to fly in the face of all his intentions for his magnum opus, then there exists the very real possibility that he’s got a damn good reason. I certainly hope he does, but I suppose it’s just a matter of time before we’ll see whether or not faith manages.

Souce: TV Wise

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