1996: THE 5 TIMES BABYLON FIVE UK FAN CLUB FANZINE ISSUE 11

From the Autumn of 1996: the 11th issue of THE 5 TIMES, the fanzine published by the UK BABYLON FIVE FAN CLUB.

Apologies for skipping a few issues.  I'm not quite sure how that happened but it probably means I have a few issues buried in a box somewhere waiting to be rediscovered at some point in the future.

1996: BABYLON FIVE: THE FIVE TIMES ISSUE 9

From the summer of 1996: the 9th issue of THE FIVE TIMES, published by THE BABYLON FIVE UK FAN CLUB.

1996: BABYLON FIVE'S THE FIVE TIMES FANZINE ISSUE 8

From the spring of 1996: the 8th issue of the UK BABYLON FIVE FAN CLUB magazine THE FIVE TIMES, with a really nice CGI render of the station as the cover.  

I think that shows the level of co-operation (albeing falling short of an official endorsement) the club enjoyed with the production.  Partly because the cast and crew always seemed to be here in the UK for conventions and signings.

1996: THE 5 TIMES ISSUE 7 (THE UK BABYLON FIVE FAN CLUB)

From New Year 1996: the 7th issue of the fanzine THE 5 TIMES, published by THE BABYLON FIVE UK FAN CLUB.

THE FIVE TIMES ISSUE 6 (THE UK BABYLON FIVE FAN CLUB)

From Summer 1995: the sixth issue of THE 5 TIMES, the newsletter of the unofficial BABYLON FIVE FAN CLUB.

From memory, I think the "missing" fifth issue was a 'bonus' issue which included a few pages of original content and a newly drawn (and rather nice) cover and binding for the first season episode guide published across the first four newsletters. 

The impressive-for-a-fanzine number of original interviews in the newsletter can partly be attributed to the club's semi-official status and the frequency of appearances by assorted cast members in the UK. In retrospect, has there ever been another US genre show with a cast and crew quite so accessible to British fans and fandom? 

1995: THE 5 TIMES ISSUE 4 (THE UK BABYLON FIVE FAN CLUB)

From Spring 1995: the fourth issue of British fanzine THE 5 TIMES, published by the BABYLON FIVE UK FAN CLUB.

Copies of the b&w newsletter were only (as far as I know) available to members of the club.

1994: THE 5 TIMES ISSUE 3 (BABYLON FIVE UK FAN CLUB)

From Christmas 1994: the third issue of THE 5 TIMES, newsletter of the BABYLON FIVE UK FAN CLUB.

1994: THE 5 TIMES ISSUE 2 (BABYLON FIVE UK FAN CLUB)

From Autumn 1994: the second issue of the fanzine/ newsletter THE 5 TIMES, published by the UK BABYLON FIVE FAN CLUB, reports on the cast changes between the show's first two seasons.

1994: THE FIVE TIMES ISSUE 1 (THE UK BABYLON FIVE FAN CLUB)

From the summer of 1994: the first issue of THE FIVE TIMES, published by THE UK BABYLON FIVE FAN CLUB.

This A4 black & white first issue mainly covered the show's feature length pilot... which turned out to be pretty different to the show that followed.

From this (relatively crude) DTP start, the club and the newsletter progressed onto bigger and better things over the course of the next few years. I'm not sure they ever had the official backing of the studio (as that probably would have required a license and cash transactions) but it did have the support of the cast, crew and US fan club. Which made it all-but-official as far as I was concerned.

1995: BABYLON FIVE: AN AUDIENCE WITH THE COMMANDER VHS SLEEVE SIGNED BY MICHAEL O'HARE

From 1995: The VHS cover for the fan-produced tape AN AUDIENCE WITH THE COMMANDER, signed by its late star MICHAEL O'HARE.

The Movie Palace was a coffee shop/ geek shop/ venue space located just off Tottenham Court Road in Central London. I attended several events there in the mid-nineties, including the launch event for this tape.

The interview tape was shot sometime earlier (I'm not sure if the original location was The Movie Palace or a convention) but the tape was launched with a signing by O'Hare and a screening in TMP's upstairs screening room.

The video itself is standard bloke-on-stage stuff and probably shot on VHS to begin with. By the time it had been edited and duplicated, the production standards weren't looking great. I've long since dumped the tape but I did dub it onto DVD first.

I found O'Hare himself to be polite and friendly but somehow detatched. Much like his performance on the show to be honest. It was no great surprise that Warner Brothers opted to replace him with a more established (and bankable) TV star like Bruce Boxleiter. Although it has subsequently transpired there was more to his replacement than just Hollywood business.

He died in September 2012 after suffering a heart attack at the age of sixty.

1994: BABYLON FIVE BOOK 1: VOICES BY JOHN VORNHOLT (DELL/ BOXTREE)

From 1994: the first of the Dell BABYLON FIVE paperbacks.

This was pretty disappointing when it was released. Mostly because we'd been reassured that merchandise associated with the show would be of a higher standard and spin-off fiction would be better integrated into the much discussed story arc.

What we got was a book which seemed to have only the most tenuous grasp of the show's appeal, characters and overall format. Apparently this was because Dell were something of a reluctant licencee and wanted the first three paperbacks completed and released during the show's first season... just in case there was no Year Two and no discernable TV afterlfe.

So the books had to be written early in the first season production cycle with only the pilot movie (fairly atypical of the series that followed), early scripts for the weekly series and completed episodes as they rolled off the production conveyor belt.

The B5 production office were also apparently ill-prepared to be dealing with licensed products and there wasn't a system or staff in place to offer advice or give feedback on the submitted manuscripts.

Things did - without doubt - get better later.

This is the UK edition, published as a Channel Four book, by Boxtree.

1993: BABYLON FIVE VHS RENTAL RELEASE

From 1993: the first UK VHS release for BABYLON FIVE.

This is the sleeve for the original rental release of the feature-length pilot episode (aka The Gathering) which was released before the series arrived.

That's because there was a gap between PTEN (Prime Time Entertainment Network - the fancy name for the package of first-run syndicated teleflicks and series Warner Brothers sold to local stations) making and airing the movie and the series proper being given the green light.

I picked this up from the Oxford Circus branch of HMV (they occasionally carried tapes intended for the rental market) and was initially not that impressed. I could see the potential byt the cast seemed a little - ahem - underwhelming in their abilities and some if the creative decisions seemed a little ill-judged (like the Command Centre that seemed to be lit like a night club). But I could see the potential.

Many of those problems were fixed when the series itself launched. And it continued to improve across seasons 1-4 before loosing it in the fifth and final year.

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.

1999: BABYLON FIVE VHS BOX SETS ADVERT (HMV)

From September 1998: a highly cost and space effective way of getting hold of the whole series of BABYLON FIVE (to date): the VHS box sets.

It might not sound it now (when you can almost certainly pick up all five years on DVD for less than one shelf-devouring set shown here) but that's probably actually a pretty good deal considering the going rate for a single VHS tape, with two episodes on, was normally £10.99 and found sneak higher depending on the release and the retailer. 

Me? I was just tapping them off the telly. 

1999: CULT TIMES SPECIAL #11: CRUSADE (VISUAL IMAGINATION)

From 1999 (and the random scans file): Visual Imagination's CULT TIMES (basically the TV TIMES for Geek TV with full SCI-FI CHANNEL - from when it was good - listings as well as details of genre TV shows scattered across the multi-channel schedules) SPECIAL.

Like most of the other VI mags (although curiously not SHIVERS), CT also spun off quarterly themed specials alongside the core mag. This was was largely devoted to the ill-fated launch of the successor show to BABYLON FIVE: CRUSADE.

That show went horribly wrong and has the distinction of being cancelled months BEFORE its premiere.

1997: BABYLON FIVE SECURITY MANUAL (BOXTREE/ CHANNEL FOUR BOOKS)

From 1997: the British edition of the BABYLON FIVE SECURITY MANUAL, published by Boxtree Books.

As the title and blurb suggests, this was an in-world guide to security on the eponymous and much troubled space station. 

As with all such books, the extent of the appeal depends entirely on your willingness to suspend disbelief and immerse yourself in the imaginary. For the most part, I'm much more interested in the behind-the-scenes factual stuff (B5 was, thankfully, blessed with a number of fine accounts of the making of the show) rather than this type of book. But, nevertheless, it's good fun and well illustrated.   

1998: BABYLON FIVE MAGAZINE VOLUME 2, ISSUE 1

From July 1998: Another first issue for Titan's BABYLON FIVE MAGAZINE.

Now distributed globally, the relaunch (all but identical to the previous nine issues) reflected the cast changes to the fifth season (now bankrolled by TNT in the States) by spotlighting B-movie star (and occasional Scream Queen) Tracy Scoggins, an actress that split her time fairly evenly between straight-to-tape movies and TV shows. Her finest hour (DANTE'S COVE not withstanding) was surely the Aerobics Snuff Movie episode of TJ HOOKER. 

Volume 2 ran for 24 issues (the last boasting an extended page count to mop up the last of the outstanding business) and charted the end of the TV show, the TNT-backed TV movies (which ran from Quite Good to Quite Bad) and the CRUSADE space wreck that saw the production team fall out with the cable station so badly that the show was retooled and then cancelled before a single episode ever aired. 

With no new screen product of note on the horizon (several B5 relaunches stalled after pilots were shot) and sales flagging, Titan declined to renew the license. 

1997: BABYLON FIVE MAGAZINE VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1

From August 1997: the first issue of the first volume of the ongoing BABYLON FIVE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE, published by Titan.

Although this was the first of the ongoing run of UK originated magazines, there had already been an American one-shot which Tiutan picked up for the UK and published with a new (and not very creative) cover. I've posted the one-shot in the past.

Titan must have been impressed with the sales figures as they then launched this: a British magazine with all-new content, initially edited (as was many a media tie-in) by John Freeman. 

The show itself had just wrapped its penultimate season in '97 and although perennially marginal in terms of future survival (partly because of structural changes in the broadcast industry, reducing demand and timeslots for first-run drama not offered by the networks or the next generation of quasi-networks), it did look like its fortunes were on the upswing thanks to a deal with Warner-owned cable outfit TNT to air the fifth season, spin-offs movies and a second TV series (the doomed-before-it-aired CRUSADE). So Titan must have felt confident that there was some longevity in the format. 

Freeman looked back to his past on DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE and STAR TREK for his formula: the bulk of each issue was new editorial, supplemented by a comic strip licensed from DC in the States. The US issues had only limited distribution in the UK several years earlier so these were a good fit for the bulk of the readership. 

The reprints were possible because Titan only officially had the license to publish the magazine in the UK with little or no international distribution. The deal went global the following year and rather than retain the existing numbering, Volume 1 was cancelled... And immediately replaced by the all-but-identical (save for the comic strips) Volume 2. The first volume ran for nine issues. 

2000: CINEFANTASTIQUE MAGAZINE BABYLON FIVE SPECIAL

From 2000 (and therefore, technically, outside the Star Age): CINEFANTASTIQUE magazine's epic retrospective (including full, annotated, episode guide) on BABYLON FIVE.

This hefty whopper covered years 2-5 of the main series (the pilot and season one had already snagged coverage in issues covered in previous posts), the spin-off TNT TV movies (a mixed bag of the good and the bordering-on-bad) and a look ahead to the ill-fated CRUSADE (a show with the distinction of being cancelled before a single episode had even been shown to the public).

This wasn't quite the end-of-the-line for the franchise.  It also spawned a much-derided (although I actually liked it... so go figure) TV movie, LEGEND OF THE RANGERS, in 2002 and 2007's disappointingly low-budget direct-to-disc THE LOST TALES.  Both were intended to kick-start new aspects of the show's epic story arc but both floundered at the first hurdle and the franchise has been dormant ever since.  

It's surprising, given that the 1990s have come of age and that publishers are always looking for established brands to exploit, that no-one has seriously looked at doing a new comic strip version.  It seems a natural for a publisher like IDW.  Maybe the Warner Brothers connection automatically locks-out a third-party publisher (DC dabbled with a short-lived run, reprinted in the first incarnation of Titan's magazine over here, when the show was on the air but obviously struggled to find an audience).

This is Volume 31, issue 12. 

1994: THE MAKING OF BABYLON FIVE SEASON ONE in CINEFANTASTIQUE

From April 1994: CINEFANTASTIQUE (Volume 25, Number 2) devotes its typically in depth coverage to the making of BABYLON FIVE's flawed-but-very-promising first season.

I really miss this sort of one-stop-shop devil-in-the-detail coverage that CFQ and, to a lesser extent (they lack the behind-the-scenes access) SPECTRUM used to do back at the tail end of the Star Age.