The 1990s are coming back around once again and one of the pieces from there that really needed a good modern update is the Babylon 5 property. It looks like the show must have had some good numbers during its recent addition to the HBO Max streaming service, as it never had strong streaming availability prior to that, as The CW and Warner Bros. Television are now developing a reboot for it with J. Michael Straczynski involved.
It’s being described as a “from-the-ground-up reboot” where you know he’s got over twenty years of hindsight and experience in how to make it work better, smoother, and to introduce new things so that it’s not just a shinier version of the original. The original ran for five seasons, totalling 110 episodes, though the fifth season was a last-minute renewal that saw it already losing actors and finishing the fourth season believing it would be the end – and pushing through the endgame storylines quickly to wrap it up for fans.
The original series was a rarity for its time, especially in being a syndicated series, as it was telling a serialized story across networks that really didn’t want that and weren’t set up for it – and audiences that were not used to it in general. The 90s saw this change slowly happening, such as with works like Twin Peaks and eventually Star Trek: Deep Space Nine also moving more in line with this design.
Plot Concept: the reboot revolves around John Sheridan, an Earthforce officer with a mysterious background, who is assigned to Babylon 5, a five-mile-long space station in neutral space, a port of call for travelers, smugglers, corporate explorers, and alien diplomats at a time of uneasy peace and the constant threat of war. His arrival triggers a destiny beyond anything he could have imagined, as an exploratory Earth company accidentally triggers a conflict with a civilization a million years ahead of us, putting Sheridan and the rest of the B5 crew in the line of fire as the last, best hope for the survival of the human race.
