1998: BABYLON FIVE VHS SLEEVE SIGNED BY THE CAST

From 1998: the sleeve for the UK VHS release of the teleflick BABYLON FIVE: IN THE BEGINNING, signed by several members of the cast and crew.

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure who signed this. One of the signatures is clearly Mira Furlan but I'm really not sure about the other. I am pretty sure that the signing took place at London's Forbidden Planet (during the New Oxford Street era) to promote the release of the tape. JMS and the B5 crew were popping up in the UK all the time and I seem to recall going to several different signings over several years.

The TV Movie was the first of four produced by US cable outfit TNT (another part of the Warner empire) which rescued the show from oblivion at the end of season four. B5 had started as a one hour syndicated drama in the grand tradition of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. But WB TV had found slots on local stations harder and harder to come by as the amount of programming increased and upstart networks the WB and UPN signed-up local affiliates.

TNT stepped in with a deal to bankroll (on a reduced budget) a final season (completing the much discussed five year plan), four TV films and rerun the existing four seasons. There initial enthusiasm dulled considerably when it came to the troubled spin-off CRUSADE (which suffered the indignity of being cancelled before a single episode had aired).

Of the four movies, IN THE BEGINNING is the best of the bunch.