All Alone in the Night: When Babylon 5 Invented 21st Century Fandom

[davekill]

Nice article, nice to see B5 remembered.

Fan chatter about TV shows like Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, and Mad Men often revolves around the various spoiler-filled turns in long-game plot arcs. But the word "spoiler"—at least in the way we use it in relation to television—is relatively new. Though it's possible fans of a bygone era of soap operas were afraid of other fans ruining the outcome of the previous day's episode, the vehemence of these protests were probably not as serious as they are now. Notably, fans of 20th century soap operas didn't have the internet.

But way back at the end of the last century, one of the first sci-fi fandoms did have the internet, complete with online spoilers! That fandom was centered around Babylon 5, and though we don't talk much about Babylon 5 now, the narrative structure of the show, in tandem with internet discussion, essentially created the model for TV fandom today.

The rest of the story here...  http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/10/all-alone-in-the-night-when-babylon-5-invented-21st-century-fandom

- and this post on JMS facebook page made me chuckle

Originally Posted by Fans of J. Michael Straczynski
I had a meeting not that long ago with a network bigwig, and talked about a project I wanted to do that had a five year arc. Apparently not knowing my background, he sighed and said, "we have writers come in here all the time talking about wanting to do a five year arc for us, we've hired some of them, and it never seems to work out, they don't seem to know how to really pull it off. What makes you think you can do it?"

I sat back in my chair, folded my hands and said, "Because I INVENTED the mother-&^%$*."

[ChrisMC]

Man, that's great. I miss that show so much....time to pull out my DVDs and do a watchthrough, I've been meaning to for a while now.

[Feathers]

I've only got them on tape! I watched The Gathering a couple of weeks ago but haven't got back into the series yet.

[WillEagle]

I'm getting "The Gathering" from netflix soon. I wanted to watch that before I got back into the series. I really enjoyed this show.

[davekill]

There are two versions of The Gathering.

The original pilot that aired in 1993 and had a rock'n soundtrack by Stewart Copeland.

The second version of The Gathering was re-edited to give it a faster pace and 14 extra minutes of content that was cut from the original including a prophetic line spoken by Kosh when he first meets Sinclair.
They also replaced Copeland's music  with a score by Christopher Franke.

I liked Stewart Copeland's better since B5 was pretty rough when it was brand-new, it seemed to fit better.

Hulu and iTunes have the first version.

[Feathers]

...and I have the second version.

[ChrisMC]

I like the Copeland music, but in my opinion it does seem to tie it to the early 90's. Guess I'm just a huge fan of Christopher Franke.

[WillEagle]

Can any of you tell me if I should watch "In the Beginning" before I watch "The Gathering" because I never got it from Netflix yet, I kept changing my list around. And do any of you know when the others movies should be watched. I have the 5 seasons but never got the movie set.

[ChrisMC]

No, watch the Gathering first. I fond In The Beginning better after knowing more.

[WillEagle]

Thanks, Chris, I'll do that.