'Babylon 5' Episodes Start Appearing (Free) on YouTube (cordcuttersnews.com) 75
Cord Cutters News reports:
In a move that has delighted fans of classic science fiction, Warner Bros. Discovery has begun uploading full episodes of the iconic series Babylon 5 to YouTube, providing free access to the show just as it departs from the ad-supported streaming platform Tubi... Viewers noticed notifications on Tubi indicating that all five seasons would no longer be available after February 10, 2026, effectively removing one of the most accessible free streaming options for the space opera. With this shift, Warner Bros. Discovery appears to be steering the property toward its own digital ecosystem, leveraging YouTube's vast audience to reintroduce the show to both longtime enthusiasts and a new generation.
The uploads started with the pilot episode, "The Gathering," which serves as the entry point to the series' intricate universe. This was followed by subsequent episodes such as "Midnight on the Firing Line" and "Soul Hunter," released in sequence to build narrative momentum. [Though episodes 2 and 3 are mis-labeled as #3 and #4...] The strategy involves posting one episode each week, allowing audiences to experience the story at a paced rhythm that mirrors the original broadcast schedule...
For Warner Bros. Discovery, this initiative could signal plans to expand the franchise's visibility, especially amid ongoing interest in reboots and spin-offs that have been rumored in recent years.
Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski answered questions from Slashdot's readers in 2014.
Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger offers this summary of the show "for those not in the know... In the mid-23rd century, the Earth Alliance space station Babylon Five, located in neutral territory, is a major focal point for political intrigue, racial tensions, and a major war as Earth descends into fascism and cuts off relations with its allies."
The uploads started with the pilot episode, "The Gathering," which serves as the entry point to the series' intricate universe. This was followed by subsequent episodes such as "Midnight on the Firing Line" and "Soul Hunter," released in sequence to build narrative momentum. [Though episodes 2 and 3 are mis-labeled as #3 and #4...] The strategy involves posting one episode each week, allowing audiences to experience the story at a paced rhythm that mirrors the original broadcast schedule...
For Warner Bros. Discovery, this initiative could signal plans to expand the franchise's visibility, especially amid ongoing interest in reboots and spin-offs that have been rumored in recent years.
Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski answered questions from Slashdot's readers in 2014.
Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger offers this summary of the show "for those not in the know... In the mid-23rd century, the Earth Alliance space station Babylon Five, located in neutral territory, is a major focal point for political intrigue, racial tensions, and a major war as Earth descends into fascism and cuts off relations with its allies."
Wow, that sounds familiar (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Wow, that sounds familiar (Score:2)
Iirc it almost ended in a scorched earth, with the president intentionally targeting the earth with all of its defensive weapons...
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SPOILER ALERT (although it was 28 years ago):
The President's suicide note on the desk said "THE ASCENSION OF THE ORDINARY MAN" repeated, line after line, with the letters circled to say, "SCORCHED EARTH."
Does anyone doubt for a second that Trump would nuke the country if he was promised godhood by an advanced alien race?
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Greenland would've been it, because doing so would fracture NATO. Section 5 has only been used once in NATO's entire history (i.e., come to the defence of a NATO ally) - by the USA, on 9/11.
That would be a minor war, but it may be te war that starts a precursor to WWIII because Russia would probably take advantage of a distracted Europe to cause some chaos along their borders, China sees the
Re: Wow, that sounds familiar (Score:3, Informative)
"Any action you take in support of illegal orders makes you an accomplice."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPvuMrq6KBA
Re: Wow, that sounds familiar (Score:2)
Re: Wow, that sounds familiar (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish people who served in WW 2 were still around. They could verify first hand what is happening.
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Some are. I know one... he is too weak for his rifle or he would have shot Trump already; he told me this. Also, what did we fight for that the Nazi already came around to win so quickly?
The U.S. elected the son of a NAZI TWICE. The rotten fruit didn't fall far from the tree.
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Especially this epic line...
"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote." - Kosh
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"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote." - Kosh
Best quote ever.
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"The future is not what it used to be."
-- Ambassador G'Kar
Re: Wow, that sounds familiar (Score:1)
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Just replace Earth with USA. 'Earth descends into fascism and cuts off relations with its allies'
Given what is happening in the US I have been wondering for a while now, did JMS really see this coming 30 years ago or is this just a case of life imitating art. There are a lot of parables between Presidents Trump and Clark.
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Trump is neither the first authoritarian "leader", nor the last. It is faster to name the differences between authoritarian regimes than the similarities.
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Lost Media (Score:5, Informative)
So your options are tracking down an old DVD copy and putting up with the soft desaturated transfer, or watching it on Blu-Ray or streaming, poorly upscaled and artificially stretched to a widescreen aspect ratio. The live shots are passable, but the CGI shots now look terrible.
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I got the DVDs thinking they'd be better quality. I was disappointed that my PAL VHS copies were the best quality until the latest transfer Amazon streamed.
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Yes, very grainy video and the CGI resolution sucked. And back in 2002 what I paid for the DVDs was a lot of money for me.
Re:Lost Media (Score:5, Insightful)
The DVD version was the 16:9 transfer.
The original was shot on Super35 film, with framing for 4:3 and 16:9, but the CGI was only rendered for 4:3 (and 480i), since even that was pushing the technology available in the day. The belief was that eventually the CGI could be re-rendered at 16:9 (and potentially higher resolution), but then Warner Brothers lost the files and the composite scene source elements. So for the 16:9 transfer, live-action only scenes were re-framed (as originally intended so look okay), but pure-CGI and composite live+CGI scenes were cropped and zoomed to fill the screen, looking blurry at best (and in some composite scenes, very badly framed).
Also, WB didn't take good care of the original film, so some was scratched and dirty, leaving some scenes (especially early in season 1) looking snowy.
With some renewed B5 interest, there was a Blu-Ray release a couple of years ago. It's the 4:3 original, with cleanup of the quality. It's much better than the DVD release. What I see on Youtube appears to be the Blu-Ray edition, with 4:3 content at 1080p, except for the pilot "The Gathering", which is the TNT "special edition" (in addition to getting the 16:9 treatment, it also has a few story edits, which is why that's generally the "preferred" edition even with quality issues).
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I wonder if the fans could do better. There have been some efforts with Star Trek Deep Space Nine and Voyager, based on capturing the Laserdisc releases with special hardware that does the demodulating and video processing in software, and then upscaling a little. The results are far better than any commercial release of those two.
There are probably some people out there willing to recreate the CG bits from scratch too.
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I think there have been some fan efforts. It would be a lot of work but possible to replace the full-CGI scenes. The problem is the live-action+CGI composite scenes - the original film elements apparently no longer exist, so you can't really fix those.
Re:Lost Media (Score:5, Interesting)
No. The new transfer done by HBO (and also released on Blu-Ray) two years ago is good quality - the film has been rescanned. The CGI sequences that were pre-rendered in NTSC (480p, 30 fps) have been upscaled. The film transfers are probably intentionally soft to make it clash less with the upscaled CGI sequences.
Note that the Gathering (Pilot) and other TV movies (Thirdspace, In The Beginning, Call to Arms, etc) as well as the sequel series Crusade have *not* been updated.
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its in 4:3 on "the Roku channel" (for now at least) the quality there is pretty good but i watched it few years ago
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It was a while back, but wasn't it HBO who remastered Babylon 5? The episodes I did see from that effort were indeed an improvement over the originals (when watched on a modern screen).
Re:Lost Media (Score:4, Informative)
AFAIK, the aspect ratio of Babylon 5 is complicated.
The live action parts were shot at 16:9 with the plans to later release a widescreen version. However, some of the CGI parts (or was it the parts where CGI and live action was combined) were done in 4:3, since it would be possible to re-do them later in widescreen. They lost the files needed for the CGI, so it was not possible to re-do it though.
A 4:3 version crops some of the live action image (not a big deal since it was filmed with the intent of showing it in 4:3 first), a 16:9 version stretches or crops the CGI parts.
Live action parts were shot on film, so it is possible to have a HD version, but the CGI parts were likely done on video.
Probably the "best" version would be one that shits the aspect ration to 16:9 on live action and 4:3 on CGI. I don't know if it would be annoying to watch though.
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One of the big problems is that the live action was filmed at 24fps but the CGI was created at 30fps. This makes it very hard to merge the two without one or the other stuttering. It didn't look so bad on TV when everyone (in NTSC countries) was used to films being shown with 3:2 pull-down but the Blu-ray version instead badly converts the original CGI to 24fps.
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MP4 and MKV are containers not codecs.
Best Scifi from that Era (Score:5, Insightful)
So many TV series are just a "milk it for as much as we can" with no clearly defined path in the story
There was a clear link to past and future episode so it had flow, just like a Novel does.
And so many TV series just start getting a following and they get cancelled.
The Expanse is also another excellent series
But Babylon 5 remains a firm favourite of mine,
Re:Best Scifi from that Era (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, specifically the evolution of G'Kar and Londo, their journey affected everyone around them. The chemistry they had was something else. And most of all, neither could be seen as strictly good or evil, they were both patriots, misguided at times and both had to learn painful lessons on their way to redemption.
"Some must be sacrificed, if all are to be saved" was one hell of a piece of writing.
And the other absolutely chilling thing was the confrontation of Kosh by Sheridan. The idea that as powerful as the Vorlons and Shadows were, they were still subject to the same issues the younger races were, including fear, prejudice and myopic, was one hell of a presentation.
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Kosh or Ulkesh?
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I am assuming Kosh (though they are ALL Kosh ;)). Sheridan confronts Kosh to intervene against the Shadows and at first Kosh refuses until Sheridan eventually goads him into helping.
As Kosh is being killed by the Shadows in retaliation, he comes to John in a dream (appearing as John's father) and explains that he was reluctant largely because he was afraid. He knew that helping John in that instance was effectively a death sentence - and he wouldn't be around to help John later when he'd need it. EG "I w
Re: Best Scifi from that Era (Score:2)
Kosh knew what was to come. Valen told him.
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Yeah, specifically the evolution of G'Kar and Londo, their journey affected everyone around them. The chemistry they had was something else. And most of all, neither could be seen as strictly good or evil, they were both patriots, misguided at times and both had to learn painful lessons on their way to redemption.
With B5, it was really the side characters that made the show, far more than the main characters.
Londo and G'Kar both played brilliantly, Same with Garibaldi and Ivonova. Even the comic relief characters like Lennier and Vir, I always felt Londo's line of "Never let yourself become a joke to them Vir" (something along those lines) was a bit of fourth wall breaking showing that Vir Coto had stopped being mere comic relief.
The acting was terrible, but not really beyond the standard of 90s scifi.
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Fantastic (Score:2)
B5 is a great series! (Score:2)
Re: B5 is a great series! (Score:3)
Where's Midnight on the Firing Line ? (Score:3)
I've already watched Soul Hunters on youtube, introducing my daughter to B5. We'll watch The Gathering after season 1, simply because it's important for the story - but a bit crap compared to the series itself.
The Gathering is there, s01e01 (Midnight on the Firing Line) is missing, s01e02 and s01e03 are there (although they're calling The Gathering episode 1, instead of episode 0, on youtube, for some reason, and all the other ones is shifted by one too).
Hope they ensure that Midnight on the Firing Line re-appears.
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My favorite work of fiction, full stop. (Score:4, Insightful)
Babylon 5 is my favorite work of fiction. I've watched it many times throughout my life, and it has taken on different meanings for different seasons of my life. It is a remarkable show.
If you haven't ever watched it, give it a try. The first season takes a little while to get going, but the overall story is just incredible. It was a lot of firsts: the first television show to use CGI. The first US show to be filmed for 16x9, knowing that DVD and HD were coming (although that didn't quite work out, as noted in other comments). The first American show to write the larger, five-year story arc entirely in advance.
My favorite shows have three elements: a story with a beginning, middle, and end; interesting characters that grow and change over the course of the story; and they have to stick the landing. Many shows like Game of Thrones and Lost were fun rides but never quite sealed the deal.
Babylon 5 does the best job at these I've ever seen. The Shield, The Expanse, The Wire, Six Feet Under, and Buffy are other personal favorites. If you like those, give it a shot!
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the first television show to use CGI.
It wasn't. Captain Power and The Soldiers of the Future from the 1980s got it beat by more than half a decade:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Never mind the quality of the CGI. Both series had rather crude and primitive CGI, IMO.
That said, Babylon 5 was easily my #2 favorite scifi TV show of all time. As for #1...well, nothing can possibly ever hope to beat the original 24 episodes of Battlestar Galactica, especially when you first saw them as a kid.
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IIRC, Star Trek TNG also had CGI with live action shot on film, same as B5 did.
Finally, a show all about me. (Score:5, Funny)
It took decades.
Re: Finally, a show all about me. (Score:3)
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At the dawn of the third age of mankind?
Some of the best television writing ever (Score:1)
Prime (Score:2)
I purchased all 5 seasons, and the movies from Amazon Prime Video a while back.
Remember the Markab (Score:3)
Season 2, Episode 18 sure hits different now, doesn't it?
Glad to hear it (Score:2)
I do wish it was available in higher quality, but that's just how it is.
SciFi channel (Score:3)
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Harlan Ellison was a creative consultant. And he did write classic science fiction.
I can't re-watch it (Score:2)
Both writing and acting are mix of brilliant and cringe-inducing. The world is complex yet it has these major components that are ridiculously simplistic. The CGI was good enough at the time, but it's unwatchable by today's standards, and somehow aged CGI is far, far more difficult to tolerate than primitive model work.
I enjoyed it on its original run, I tried to re-watch it once and couldn't, so I'm just going to keep the memories.
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Some episodes, not all (Score:2)
Babylon 5 Season 1 Episode 2 doesn't seem to be there (Midnight on the Firing Line). Technically it's episode 1 if you don't include the pilot.
Currently I can see 3 episodes:
Babylon 5 | Full Episode | The Gathering: Season 1, Episode 1 (the pilot)
Not there - Midnight on the Firing Line
Babylon 5 | Full Episode | Soul Hunter: Season 1, Episode 3
Babylon 5 | Full Episode | Born To The Purple: Season 1, Episode 4
https://www.youtube.com/@CZBey... [youtube.com]
So it will take 110 weeks to show it all (Score:2)
Since I found Serenity (Score:4, Funny)
Take me where I cannot YouTube
I don't care, I'm still free
Can't take SciFi DVDs from me.
Is old YouTube the new FAST? (Score:2)
If you just want to put your old(er) digital media up for streaming with ads, you can figure out advertising in every market yourself or let YouTube do it for you.
videos are gone now (Score:2)
knew it was too good to last
And... it's gone. (Score:1)