J. Michael Straczynski is involved.
You may, or may not, remember the bitter battle between space stations that played out on network television in the 90’s. On the one hand, you had Babylon 5 by veteran writer J. Michael Straczynski, which he developed with Warner Bros. after his pitch for a space-station-based series for Paramount Television went nowhere. On the other hand, you had Star Trek: Deep Space 9, developed some time after he made that pitch. While fans love both series, it was hard not to draw parallels, especially early on.
Well, it seems Straczynski’s gearing up for another run at the concept, this time with the CW. Per Deadline, they’re working on a full, from the ground up reboot of the series. Which is actually necessary, as so damn much of the original cast is dead. From the Deadline article on the reboot:
Written by Straczynski, the reboot revolves around John Sheridan (played by Bruce Boxleitner in the original series), an Earthforce officer with a mysterious background, who is assigned to Babylon 5, a five-mile-long space station in neutral space, a port of call for travelers, smugglers, corporate explorers and alien diplomats at a time of uneasy peace and the constant threat of war. His arrival triggers a destiny beyond anything he could have imagined, as an exploratory Earth company accidentally triggers a conflict with a civilization a million years ahead of us, putting Sheridan and the rest of the B5 crew in the line of fire as the last, best hope for the survival of the human race.
And since Straczynski’s involved, I’m not particularly worried about things devolving into Riverdale-level antics.
As for whether or not Paramount are dumb enough to try and pull the same thing, only this time with the Alex Kurtzman Krew at the helm is anyone’s guess. I almost want to see them try (and fail, because there’s no way Straczynski’s not gonna steamroll ’em), because aside from cribbing from Mass Effect and a number of indie properties of variable science fiction hardness, the most original and smartest concept they’ve been able to come up with is detaching the nacelles (do read the comments). I imagine they’d plan out their space station in Rollercoaster Tycoon.
Source: Deadline
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