I watched the first 15 minutes of "In the Beginning" back in May, and finally watched the rest last night. I enjoyed it, despite not being that interested in the 10-years-earlier part of the timeline (or the Minbari, for the most part). Annoyingly, the audio/video was a little out of sync for most of it, and I'm not sure why.

( Spoilers for a 25-year-old TV movie )

Okay, I found someone on Reddit who went through all the script books and typed up a summary of ALL the different Babylon 5 plans/plot/changes, and ... I can't believe I'm saying this, but if this is accurate, it sounds like the almost-cancellation/having to compress most of the plot into season 4 actually may have been an improvement over the original.

(It also sounds like JMS was constantly changing major details / long-term plans on the fly throughout all the seasons, which makes the cohesion of the final version even more impressive, even without taking into account all of the network meddling and cast changes! One reason why I've been going down a rabbit hole on this is because I really do think this is one of the most impressive creative feats I've ever seen pulled off, I want to understand it from a creative perspective myself, and the more I find out about it, the more impressed I am.)

( Link and details under the cut )

Curious what the original B5 plan was before all the cast changes/brushes with cancellation, I went hunting for it and I found an absolutely fascinating rundown of the original 10 (not 5)-year synopsis from a message board, summarized from JMS's script books.

Because this is on a message board from 2008, I'm going to copy it below the cut to avoid having it vanish due to link decay. I found it here:

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/synopsis-of-jmss-synopsis-of-the-original-arc-for-b5-spoilers.53739/

( Original 10-year synopsis and my comments )

Thoughts?

Randomly rewatching bits and pieces of the series.

( Spoilers for early season four )

I'm reading the article on spoo on the Babylon 5 wiki and absolutely dying.

( Cut for mildly gross food talk and fictional animal harm, I guess? )

Update: See more about spoo in the comments, provided by lyr. AMAZING.

I have a folder on my hard drive in the vids folder labeled "to watch later," where I put fanvids I've downloaded for canons I haven't watched yet, but plan to.

The oldest one in the folder was a Babylon 5 vid from **2005**. It's entirely possible I created this folder just for that vid, and I've brought it with me through at least five or six different computer changes.

Astonishingly and against all probability, I looked it up on Youtube and it's still online. So not only can I finally watch a vid I downloaded 20 years ago to watch on some future date when I had seen the source canon, but you can too. (And it's good.)

I am done! Well, except for all the movies, the tie-ins, the animated movie, etc ... but at this point I'm no longer avoiding spoilers and consider myself done with the main run of canon.

( Spoilers through the finale )

I will be going back to answer recent comments, but first, one more stray B5 thought with spoilers through 5x18.

( Tying up a loose end )

Watch Babylon 5, she said. It will be fun, she said.

( Babylon 5 episodes 5x17-18 )