Babylon 5

Babylon 5 is an epic American science fiction television series created, produced, and largely written by J. Michael Straczynski. The show centers around the Babylon 5 space station, a focal point for politics, diplomacy, and wars. more...

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The series is noted for its heavy reliance on pre-planned story arcs over its five-year run, sometimes described as a "novel for television".

The pilot movie, The Gathering, aired on February 22, 1993, and the regular series initially aired from January 26, 1994 through November 25, 1998, first in syndication on the short-lived Prime Time Entertainment Network, then on cable network TNT. Because the show was aired every week in the United Kingdom on Channel 4 without a break, the last four or five episodes of the early seasons were shown in the UK before the U.S.

The series won several awards, including two Hugos for Best Dramatic Presentation.

Production

Concept

J. Michael Straczynski was determined to produce a science fiction series for adults in which, for once, things would be done properly: consistent technology, "no kids or cute robots". He started out with ideas for two different shows, one a vastly ambitious epic covering massive battles and other universe-changing events and the other set in a single space station, before realizing both could be done in a single series. It was not a utopian future — there is greed and homelessness. It was not a place where everything was the same at the end of the day — main characters grow, develop, live, and die. Straczynski wanted the show to be a mirror to the real world and to covertly teach (an idea mentioned by Mark Twain).

Unlike most television shows, this series was conceived as a novel, with a defined beginning, middle, and end. In addition, even tie-in novels, comic books, and short stories play a significant part of the overall story. The show uses an arc-driven storytelling style now prevalent in science fiction and in mainstream drama. In the DVD feature The Making of Babylon 5, Walter Koenig said "It's an exciting uniquely different series that could forever change the way you look at science fiction television" and referred to "groundbreaking special effects and new breathtaking achievements in makeup, sets and costumes."

Straczynski anticipated the rise of digital television, shooting the series in 16:9 format rather than the normal 4:3 - a full six years before ER and many other dramas began doing the same thing. Babylon 5 also revolutionized the use of computer technology (using Amiga-based Video Toasters at first, and later Pentium and DEC Alpha-based systems) in creating visual effects at a time when using models and miniatures was the norm. It was also the first sci-fi series to respect Newtonian physics in its space battle sequences, with particular emphasis placed on the effects of inertia. More recent series such as Joss Whedon's Firefly and the Sci-Fi Channel version of Battlestar Galactica have also made similar efforts to simulate realistic physics.

Read more at Wikipedia.org