Today we've got Chris from Modern Conservative (dot) Com with us to talk about the absolute best Science Fiction series of the 1990s, Babylon 5, among other things. Chris, thank you for being with us today!

CHRIS: Thanks so much for having me. Gosh, I've never been interviewed by a robot before. What a wonderful time to be alive!

REPUBLIBOT 3.0:

Now, Chris: rather than the normal geekish blather we throw around here, you actually have a personal connection to the show, right? You were actually *In* a couple episodes?

CHRIS:

I believe in God. This is a somewhat unpopular stance in a geek like myself. Secular humanism is generally the order of the day in SF, but, of course, if I was content to follow the herd, I wouldn’t be head writer for this site, would I? Suffice to say, however, that given the obvious rationalist bent of the genre as a whole, religion was kind of a taboo for most of its history.

Ok, let's start the new year off right, shall we? As regular readers of this site will recall, I've long bemoaned the fact that there are no Babylon 5 Fan Films. I can't quite understand why, since it's such a ripe territory to mine, and there's no end of dangling threads from the various failed spinoffs. Alas, none. Well, actually, there *is* one partial exception, and that is the deservedly famous "Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning," a high quality feature-length comedy fan film released in 2005.

We haven’t engaged in any irresponsible, groundless speculation about Babylon 5 in a while - really since before I interviewed Joe Straczynski ( http://www.republibot.com/content/interview-joe-straczynski ), and since my POP 3 server (Whatever that is) won’t let me check my Email, this seems a fine time to start. Added to which, I’m feeling much less sick than I have over the last 10 days, but still not well enough to do anything useful, so, here we go:

My question is: “What Was Legend of the Rangers” all about? What would have happened if it had gone to series?

Today we're speaking with Joe Straczynski, the creator, producer, and main writer of "Babylon 5," and "Jeremiah." Mister Straszynski has created and/or produced a half-dozen TV series, he's been a radio host, he's a comics writer, he's a novelist, he's written the best damn book on Screenwriting you'll ever read, he's been nominated for a BAFTA, and won two Hugos, a Saturn, a Bradbury, an Eisner, an Inkpot, and he's the only person I've ever spoken with who has an asteroid named after him. Mister Straczynski, thank you very much for being with us today. It's a huge honor.

STRACZYNSKI:

Yesterday we discussed the “Original Plan” for B5, which differed pretty wildly from what we saw. It’s not fair to judge an original concept we didn’t see based on the heavily altered version we did see, though it is fair to say that the original seemed like much less of a crowd pleaser.

Despite it’s slow start, low budget, faltering ending, and low ratings, Babylon 5 was unquestionably the best Science Fiction series of the 1990s. While many other shows may have had individually better episodes, B5’s average was consistently higher than any other show it competed with.