Since Babylon 5 completed its run on TNT in 1998, there have been several attempts to create a spin off series or a feature film, but all such attempts eventually failed. What exactly where these projects and why did they all fall short?
Babylon 5
First a little background. Babylon 5 was created by Joe Michael Straczynski in 1987. After spending close to five years pitching the series to various studios, Warner Brothers picked up the project and agreed to finance the production of a two hour TV movie, which would serve as a backdoor pilot for the series. The pilot film, titled The Gathering, aired on Prime Time Entertainment Network in February 1993 and after some lengthy deliberations PTEN commissioned the series. Babylon 5 aired, through first run syndication, on PTEN for its first four seasons before moving to cable network TNT for its fifth and final season.
Babylon 5 tells the story of the crew and alien races inhabiting a diplomatic space station, which is the focal point of two major wars during the series run; the shadow war and the earth civil war. The series starred Michael O’Hare, Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Jerry Doyle, Mira Furlan, Richard Biggs, Andrea Thompson, Bill Mumy, Stephen Furst, Peter Jurasik, Andreas Katsulas, Jeff Conaway, Jason Carter, Patricia Tallman and Tracy Scoggins. The series was produced by Babylonian Productions and Warner Bros. Television. J. Michael Straczynski and long time collaborator Doug Netter served as executive producers on the series.
Bringing Babylon 5 Back
Even before Babylon 5 went off of the air there were some preliminary discussions about a feature film and a potential spin off series. There has since been 3 feature film projects, three spin offs and one attempt at a reboot series that all failed in one way or another. While a lot of details are known about some of these projects details are scarce on a couple of them. For example the first feature film was reportedly about the telepath war which was briefly touched upon in Crusade and the initial pitch for a spin off series was about the crew of Rangers manning a White Star as they perform their duties as member of the Interstellar Alliance’s peace keeping force, but that concept was eventually re-tooled into what became Crusade in 1999. So not counting those two, what were the other 6 projects and why did they fail?
- Babylon 5: The Motion Picture – This was the second Babylon 5 feature film project to be created by J Michael Straczynski, the first being the aforementioned telepath war film which was written in 1996. The treatment for the project was completed in 1998, while the fifth season was still in production. The film was to be written by Straczynski and told the story of President John Sheridan and Delenn launching an investigation when a White Star, under the command of two Rangers is found adrift in space. The entire crew is found dead, one of the Rangers is severely injured, while the other is missing. Sheridan has to track down the missing Ranger if he is to have any hope of finding out what happened to the ship. The project never gained any traction with executives at Warner Brothers and was later abandoned.
- Crusade – The first spin off to reach production, the series was based on an earlier treatment for a series about the Rangers fulfilling their duties as a peacekeeping force for the Interstellar Alliance. The series picked up after the events of the TV movie A Call To Arms and told the story of Captain Matthew Gideon and the crew of the Excalibur looking for the cure to a bio-genetic nano virus which has poisoned the Earth’s atmosphere threatening the life of every sentient being on the planet. Despite the fact that TNT initially gave the project the green-light, the network decided halfway through production of what was to be a 22 episode first season that they didn’t want a science fiction series and they cancelled Crusade before a single episode had aired.
- Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers – Two years after wrapping production on the short lived Crusade, the Sci Fi channel commissioned this two hour TV movie which was to serve as a backdoor pilot for a potential series. This project went back to the roots of Crusade as Straczynski had originally envisioned it, telling the story of a ship manned by Rangers as they perform their duties as mandated by the Interstellar Alliance. While the overall title for the series was to be The Legend of the Rangers Straczynski has stated that the actual title of the move was to be To Live and Die in Starlight. Despite Sci Fi’s initial enthusiasm for the project, the fact that the movie aired in the same time slot as a major football game meant that ratings were not quite what they were hoping for and as such they opted not to pick up the project to series.
- Babylon 5: The Memory of Shadows – The third Babylon 5 feature film was written by Straczynski after a production company optioned the rights to Babylon 5 and commissioned a script. Very little is known about the plot other than it would have included the character of Galen from the spin off series Crusade. The film was to be filmed in England. The project fell apart when the production company who had optioned the film and Warner Brothers could not agree on funding for the project.
- Babylon 5: The Lost Tales – This was the latest project to have actually entered production. A direct-to-DVD anthology series, The Lost Tales starred Bruce Boxleitner, Tracy Scoggins and Peter Woodward. Only one DVD was produced which featured two parts of one continuous story. The first part featured recently promoted Colonel Lochley dealing with a demonic presence on Babylon 5 while preparing for the arrival of President Sheridan. While the second part featured Sheridan and Galen trying to deal with the Prince-Regent to the Centauri throne who will one day pose a significant threat to earth. Despite high sales above what Warner Brothers had expected, Straczynski walked away from the project when the negotiations for the second DVD did not include a budget increase.
- Babylon 5 Reboot –This was to be a complete reboot of the Babylon 5 series. Almost nothing is known about the project other than the fact that Straczynski was given a full 22 episode first season commitment, a budget of 2-3 million dollars per episode and full creative control. The series was to be part of a ‘new distribution service’ which never materialised and as such the project was abandoned.
