The CGI was done on a shoestring budget, originally on Amigas and eventually on Dec Alphas. They were using Lightwave3D, which at the time was on the edge of affordable to students or indie producers. So it was neat seeing a tv show doing something you could do yourself on your home PC with enough patience and determination.
It's a remarkable achievement but yes, it does look rather dated sadly.
My main annoyance with B5 is how the alien designs echo human historic stereotypes. A lot of sci fi falls in this trap.
The Minbari are meditative asians. The Centari are a decaying franco-romanesque empire. The Narn are primitive and violent with dark skin and exaggerated facial features. The humans are plucky American go getters. The Vorlons are the only real original alien design, but were deliberately made a blank canvas of mystery.
Mind you in no way do I think it was malicious, just a lazy writing crutch others have used. Star Trek TNG had some pretty glaring examples of the same thing in early seasons. Star Wars patterns the Jedi after Samurai.
Even if there's a universe/plot justification for why all the alien species are humanoid variations too, I think it's a lot more interesting if the writers can come up with unique histories and cultures for the aliens.
> My main annoyance with B5 is how the alien designs echo human historic stereotypes. A lot of sci fi falls in this trap.
1) The problem with TV is that you have to cough up an episode every single week on the fly. And JMS wrote a huge number of the episodes for Seasons 3 and 4 (I think all of them, but I can't find a citation).
2) Babylon 5 was specifically engineered to be TV budget friendly and was about $650K per episode. That puts significant limits on what you can do. Contrast to say Farscape at $1M or TNG at $1.5M per episode.
>1) The problem with TV is that you have to cough up an episode every single week on the fly. And JMS wrote a huge number of the episodes for Seasons 3 and 4 (I think all of them, but I can't find a citation).
IIRC, JMS says so in one of the DVD extras for Season 3 or 4 (one of the JMS commentary tracks).
To be more specific, it was done on Video Toaster. Since the Video Toaster effectively guts the Amiga's video system and substitutes it with its own its hard to even call it an Amiga anymore.
And yeah, it has numerous examples of very lazy writing: Minbari (Space Asians), Centauri (Space French), Narn (Space Palestinians) ... but the Vorlons as original? Really? They're the Space Zen Masters, spitting out zen fortune cookies to drive the plot forward.
> I think it's a lot more interesting if the writers can come up with unique histories and cultures for the aliens.
Not everyone can be Tolkien and write 5,000 years of history and a linguistic family tree, so I tend to cut writers some slack even if their fictive cultures are boring stereotypes, as long as they can create characters that aren't. For the most part I think JMS succeeded at that.
It's a remarkable achievement but yes, it does look rather dated sadly.
My main annoyance with B5 is how the alien designs echo human historic stereotypes. A lot of sci fi falls in this trap.
The Minbari are meditative asians. The Centari are a decaying franco-romanesque empire. The Narn are primitive and violent with dark skin and exaggerated facial features. The humans are plucky American go getters. The Vorlons are the only real original alien design, but were deliberately made a blank canvas of mystery.
Mind you in no way do I think it was malicious, just a lazy writing crutch others have used. Star Trek TNG had some pretty glaring examples of the same thing in early seasons. Star Wars patterns the Jedi after Samurai.
Even if there's a universe/plot justification for why all the alien species are humanoid variations too, I think it's a lot more interesting if the writers can come up with unique histories and cultures for the aliens.