What are /r/babylon5's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

It is not. 480p DVD is the best available version. Amazon Prime has it streaming, but its a low-quality transfer with some strange cropping and color grading.

Were you aware there was actually a Babylon 5 cook book?

https://www.amazon.com/Dining-Babylon-Ultimate-Station-Cuisine/dp/0752211439

I found the Be Five Trying to Forget on amazon.

Edit: the picture on amazon is wrong but the product is correct. Ive never had a silver post before, thanks kind stranger for the the silver internets points.

Mike Okuda posted this on his wall shortly before his passing:

"Visual effects wizard Ron Thornton played a pivotal role in harnessing personal computer technology to bring amazing CG effects to mainstream productions. You probably know his groundbreaking work on 'Babylon 5', as well as on numerous 'Star Trek' productions including the Director's Edition of 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture'. Ron has been suffering from a very serious illness. He's home, in a coma, from which he is not expected to regain consciousness. Please keep my friend in your thoughts."

His IMDB page lists some amazing credentials, including Babylon 5, Spaceballs, and several Star Trek movies and TV shows. He won an Emmy for special visual effects in the Babylon 5 pilot The Gathering.

Here is an interview from 2013 about his visual effects work.

Doesn't appear to be on any streaming services. You can buy it by the episode on Vudu, but it's cheaper to just buy the DVDs, which look to only be $15 on Amazon right now...

Found it!

It's Chrysalis (4) from the first Babylon 5 soundtrack.

https://www.amazon.com/Babylon-Compilation-TV-Christopher-Franke/dp/B000002VUZ

It's track four. (The tracks are organized by names that come from the show's episodes, but they are not music limited to those episodes: Chrysalis, Mind War, Parliament of Dreams and The Geometry of Shadows.)

There is a trilogy of books covering the telepaths in Babylon 5. The first book covers the emergence of telepaths right around the time of Earth's first contact with alien life, and how they are dealt with before the invention of the Psi-Corps.

The second book shows the life of Bester growing up in the Psi-Corps and going out into the field as a Psi-cop.

The third book covers Bester's life post-Babylon 5.

If you haven't read these, try to find them, as they are a great addition to the series.

*Edit: Amazon link to the first book in the trilogy.

As mentioned, zlibrary is a good place to find exactly this sort of thing. Just be aware that especially for books printed before ebooks were a thing, there's a LOT of potential for character errors ("i" read as "j" or question marks turned into periods, etc), as it's rare for a human to come behind the scanning software and fix the occasional error. There's also a LOT of scanned ebooks with really shitty formatting. Nothing worse than opening an ebook to find that all the paragraphs run together or that chapter headings are embedded in paragraphs.

Despite this, a little due diligence will often pay off. Just make sure you use the preview function before downloading. And if you need to convert file type, use a quality program like calibre instead of using the built-in file converter.

Found it on UK Amazon! 'This title will be released on September 5, 2019'. Pre order hard cover for £20:00

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Becoming-Superman-Writers-Hollywood-Sociopaths/dp/0062857843/ref=sr_1_1_det?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1542201731&sr=1-1#productPromotions

The Vorlons would be pretty close to an Aboleth.

A levitating space Aboleth made of energy with telekinesis, heavy armor proficiency for the encounter suit. Proficiency in wisdom saving throws, and Being Cryptic.

STR-20 DEX-20 CON-20 INT-20 WIS-19 CHA-1

>With a reboot, we're getting a lot of positives. We're getting a new scifi program in an age where it's still ridiculously difficult to find good scifi to watch

I'm sorry, but I have to nitpick. I can think of close to literally 50 "sci-fi" shows currently running, right now, this year (https://trakt.tv/shows/trending?genres=science-fiction&page=1&status=continuing,in+production,pilot,returning+series). There has been no better time for sci-fi shows than now. It is by no means difficult.

Actually, I thought he looked more Drazi than Narn......

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=drazi&view=detailv2&&id=2AD1024ABA6A24DABEAEDC516D8B530744839110&selectedIndex=4&ccid=nsyVqa7N&simid=607999651654864638&thid=OIP.M9ecc95a9aecd0cd787dc1a50b3374c43o0&ajaxhist=0

Someone asked JMS this, oh 14 years ago.

Too bad he did not answer, but there is a nice summary of the Leda myth and some other speculation.

You can get it from Amazon.

US Canada

It's a bit pricey atm, have seen it down to 79.99 CAD.

UK Amazon. Hardcover – 5 Sep 2019. £22.00 Audio looks expensive at £56.45, but wishful thinking says it might come down in price.

According to Babylon 5 Wars, in the vault, I found the SCS for the Avioki.

The SCS indicates 2 fore mounted Graviton Pulsars (little point defense guns), 2 rear Graviton Pulsars and 4 fore mounted Graviton Beams.

Reading through that thread, there seems to be some confusion about how long Amigas were used (thanks in part to poor wording on Lurker's Guide). According to this interview with Thornton ( https://www.lightwave3d.com/news/article/interview-with-a-lightwave-legend/ ), Pilot and Season 1 was all Amigas, Season 2 was a mix of PC and Amiga, and Season 3 all PC.

It's not available in Canada, either. Why is why it's more important that I have it backed up.

I saw the series first run, and I bought the DVDs when they came out. I think the first "flippy" DVD back in 2001 was something like C$29, but I don't remember the exact price. I know that the seasonal boxed sets ran between C$80 at the low end to $129 at the high end; I think the most I ever paid for one was C$109 or so.

Going from memory, at the time, 30GB disks were still a few hundred dollars. But DVD media was about C$2 a disk (they're about C$0.40 today). So a backup of a five or six disk $100 DVD set was $10-$12.

Fortunately, most of my friends have tastes similar to mine, so at least a dozen of them had their own DVDs of B5, and Firefly, and etc. So if your disk got scratched, a buddy could easily make a dupe of that one for you. Once the had disk capacities increased and the prices dropped, it became economical enough for everyone to just rip everything.

I just checked, and a 4TB disk is C$89 as I write this. That's 4,096GB. Most of the B5 DVDs were 4GB, not 8GB, so that C$89 would back up 1,000 disks at a little under C$0.09, or 9 cents a disk, so around 55 cents to back up a season.

Especially in these days where not only are older series difficult to find, even those that are available are being remastered and "corrected" to fit modern sensibilities in many cases. The "Han shot first" scene in the first Star Wars movie, for example, isn't on any of the more recent editions. So people are backing up the originals not just because replacements may not be available, but because if they are, they may be different in ways the viewer may not want.

We saw the death of both Londo and G'Kar in World Without End in the third season.

If you want to see what happened between the series finale and that episode, it's covered in the Legions of Fire books, a.k.a. The Centauri Trilogy.

It's too long to summarize here, a very short synopsis (spoilers) is that >!Londo becomes emperor with a Drahk keeper, and spends decades manipulating the Drahk and helping set up Vir as much as he can without them suspecting, so that ultimately, Centauri Prime will be free of the Drahk and Shadow influence forever!<.

The concept of erasing someone’s personality is from The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester.

https://www.amazon.com/Demolished-Man-Alfred-Bester-ebook/dp/B09YQFRCLW/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3LLNXQMPGQ6S8&amp;keywords=the+demolished+man+by+alfred+bester&amp;qid=1661740389&amp;sprefix=The+demolished%2Caps%2C91&amp;sr=8-1

The character of Alfred Bester was an homage to the author.

Unfortunately I tried ExpressVPN and Netflix, Amazon and HBO Max all immediately detected I was on a VPN when using the Mediastreamer (to my TV). On the computer changing region works fine, but not using the DNS config on the TV itself.

I guess it's better than nothing though. If the idiots would just let me give them money, I'd happily buy the damn seasons.

I'm partial to the season 1 theme and music. Everything was still a mystery then. This is my most listened to soundtrack from the show:

&#x200B;

https://www.amazon.com/Babylon-Compilation-TV-Christopher-Franke/dp/B000002VUZ

If you're watching the series a fifth time, I'll assume you know about this already, but in case you don't, the Psi-Corps trilogy, based on a jms outline, details the creation of the corps from the beginning, long before Bester's birth, and concludes with his death.

Without spoiling it for those who've not read it, I'll say that it answers your question pretty conclusively.

They're $40 from Amazon. Depending on where you live, you can also try your local library. A couple of libraries have the B5 DVDs available for rent.

Other than that, the DVDs are about the only option up here.

Handbrake is a very popular (i.e the most), free, open-source, multi-platform &quot;ripping tool&quot;

Download here and give it go? It would be appreciated muchly (sorry to have just gotten back to you now, please don't take that as any sign of my lack of interest).

Thanks in advance! Even if you aren't able to make the rip. At the very least you lat the subreddit know that those supposedly lost commentaries are extant.

You might also want to consider reading some of the fanfiction that's out there. My favorite is The Dilgar War: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2594689/1/The_Dilgar_War

This is a long, yet well written, thoughtfully constructed novel which details the Dilgar War and the quick rise to power of Earth Force. It's an EXCELLENT prequel, in my opinion...and good enough (at least to me) to be published and considered canon (though it's not).

I haven't purchased a DVD in years, since everything is streaming now. But I have a huge collection of old DVDs, and I ripped them to MKV files, put them on my file server, and built a Kodi library that way.

I ripped the disks using DVD Decrypt, and then converted them to MKV files with MakeMKV. There are other tools like HandBrake, but I found that DVD Decrypt and MakeMKV worked best for me. They can be run from command line, so I wrote scripts to rip them, rename them, and move them to the file server.

By default, all you're going to rip are the episodes. For disks which have bonus features, I sometimes had to make an effort and decision whether or not to include those. But having the episodes all in MKV makes binge watching a lot easier.

You can use any Prime Video app - so on mobile too (the Firestick will get an IMDBTV standalone app at some point in the future).

So just go to any Prime Video app (or on a browser), and search for Babylon 5. You don't need Prime membership, just an Amazon (UK) account.

Welcome aboard.

First of all, where are you? In some countries, Babylon 5 is available on streaming. Even if you don't have access to it via streaming, you can get the moves in a DVD box set (Amazon link).

Even if you don't, no, the movies are not absolutely essential.

There were six movies. The first was The Gathering. It was the series pilot, and it introduced the characters, and the setting. Ideally you should see it before watching the series. As a standalone movie, it isn't fantastic, but it does set up a lot, and it's strongly recommend. But it's not absolutely necessary.

There were a total of six movies:

1. The Gathering: Series pilot
2. In the Beginning: Recap movie, for new viewers, made after end of season 4
3. Thirdspace: A standalone movie, not part of the larger story arc
4. The River of Souls: Another standalone movie, not part of the story arc
5. A Call to Arms: The pilot for the sequel series Crusade
6. The Legend of the Rangers (To Live and Die in Starlight): Pilot for a proposed sequel
7. The Lost Tales: Standalone sequel stories that occur after the series finale

If possible, see The Gathering before the series, but it's not like the series won't make sense without it. There was a year between the time the pilot movie aired and the series started, so a few of the actors in the movie don't appear in the series, so their characters were replaced anyway, and their first appearances are in the first few episodes of the series.

As for the other movies, they're nice to have, and if you plan to see the sequel series Crusade, then A Call To Arms is very important since it's the pilot for that series.

But no, none of the movies are integral to the story.

Outside of a few offhand references, there is nothing in the movies or followup series.

However, the book series Legion of Fire (aka. "The Centauri Trilogy"), which was written by Peter David, but based on jms' outline, deals with it extensively. The third book in that series essentially is the final resolution of G'Kar and Londo's stories. It documents Londo's story pretty much from the series finale all the way up to his death.

It explains how and why G'Kar was on Centauri Prime, why Londo chose that moment in War Without End to rebel against his keeper, and what happened afterward.

Highly recommended.

I didn't see anyone mention it. But I really enjoyed the Script books as they came out. Haven't gone back to them much since but it felt like a very Raw view of Babylon 5 from JMS. JMS writing about Richard Biggs death was just heart breaking.

The Crusade other voices book of script that were never made into the show is just sad for what could have been. https://www.amazon.com/Crusade-Other-Voices-Michael-Straczynski/dp/163077040X

Yep! https://smile.amazon.com/Shadow-Within-Babylon-Book/dp/0440223482/

It's quite good; gives a back story for Anna Sheridan and Morden. Also serves as a prequel to the Passing of the Techno-Mages trilogy (which is also excellent)

A friend lent me her blu ray player this morning: https://imgur.com/zgckL7Y I measured my tv's diagonal to be 46 inches. Apparently the player is a Samsung BD-P3600, I think it's this guy: https://www.amazon.ca/Samsung-BD-P3600-1080p-Blu-ray-Player/dp/B001TK3D4K Will this work, or maybe I should use my old ps3?

Been there, done that.

Nowadays, you can buy the entire series, including the movies, and Crusade, for Cdn$97, and people still complain that the set doesn't include Legend of the Rangers and Lost Tales...

They just reissued it in paperback.

The encyclopedia is pretty solid stuff, but the cost is worth it for access to the online version, which has stuff like HD and even 4K images and even short movies of the ships and planets.

Sure thing. They were released seperately too so don't panic about the price tag on this one. https://www.amazon.com/Psi-Corps-Trilogy-Babylon/dp/0739406566

Also worth finding the Fall of Centauri trilogy too. The JMS approved novels are very good (and cannon.)

My recommendation would be to grab the DVDs from Amazon. Getting the entire series (not including LOTR or Lost Tales) is less than $80 now, and I've seen it go on sale for less than $50 from time to time.

Babylon 5 Encyclopedia (Limited Signature Edition) is the perfect gift for a true fan. They are still available on Amazon. Not sure if they can be found anywhere else at this point. I got a my set back in May for my Birthday. It was a bit less costly (just under 200$) when mine was ordered by my wife.

I love it, it is the most comprehensive encyclopedia written from a Watsonian(Aka "in Universe") perspective. beautifully printed and bound. Definitely worth the cost for anyone who considers themselves a serious fan.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/163077006X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1

"Faith Manages" is the core book. https://www.amazon.com/Babylon-Faith-Manages-Roleplaying-Second/dp/1905471203

That said, I have a deep dislike of the d20 system. I got into the White Wolf d10 system back in the day and played everything with that. I would use whatever system you like.

Revell made a StarFury, when I bought it I had to special order it at the hobby shop. It was like 15 bucks back then...today amazon has them for 75+

http://www.amazon.com/Babylon-Starfury-Mk-revell-Pieces/dp/B00386VZJ8

Also MicroMachines

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000W2EBBU/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_2?pf_rd_p=1944687722&amp;pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&amp;pf_rd_t=201&amp;pf_rd_i=B00386VZJ8&amp;pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_r=0N982B84QVEQ7NDS4YAY

I can't say I know, but I am just assuming they are cheaper packaging than the original. I have all the originals and they are a normal box set. These seem to be more compact. If you would like to spend more there is always and option out there for you.

http://www.amazon.com/Babylon-5-Complete-Seasons-1-5/dp/B002DUJ9Q6/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1454002585&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=babylon+5

Yeah that amazon list is probably your best bet. Each individual season is usually between $14 and $20, so you might save a few dollars getting each season independently. For a dollar and change more, you can get the 5 seasons plus the movie. The Gathering is included in the movie collection, I'm unfamiliar with any special edition. It's not in the season 1 set though.

http://www.amazon.com/Crusade-Complete-Gary-Cole/dp/B00061QJSK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1423403515&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=crusade

Amazon: 12.99

Ebay: 12, free shipping http://www.ebay.com/itm/Crusade-The-Complete-Series-DVD-2004-4-Disc-Set-/231462329020?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&amp;hash=item35e43adabc