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 In its five years on television, Babylon 5 has won two Emmy awards, four Emmy nominations, and back-to-back HUGOs. Newsweek has called the series "some of the most intelligent science fiction on television."
Babylon 5 started as a brief flash of inspiration from the mind of veteran screenwriter J.M. Straczynski during a morning shower in 1986. After a year of assembling notes and outlines, the project began to take form. In March of 1989, Chris-Craft Television, a consortium of television stations, adopted the project. It wasn't until late that year when Warner Bros., who would provide the bulk of the financial backing for the project, became involved. In November of 1991, Babylon 5 was announced as one of three flagship projects for Warners' Prime Time Entertainment Network. The show's first episode, a feature length pilot, was produced in the next summer. After several edits, the feature length pilot first aired to the American public on February 22, 1993. Babylon 5 beat out the other pilots in its time slot, and three months later, Warner Bros. ordered episodes for the 1993-94 season.
Babylon 5 was the first television program to make regular and extensive use of digital tools. For shots outside the Babylon 5 station, the benefits of computer generated effects are obvious. Unlike conventional models, a virtually unlimited number of ships can be included in each scene. The conventional star-flecked black backdrop of space is replaced by a brilliant pallette of planets, gas clouds, and nebulae. Despite the futuristic look of the show's spacecraft, Babylon 5 is the first science fiction series in which all of the technologies -- other than its unique jumpgates -- are based on real science. Crusade, a science fiction series set in the Babylon 5 universe, premiered in the summer of 1999. The series follows the crew of The Excalibur, an Alliance ship on a mission to find the cure to a deadly biogenetic plague. According to Straczynski, the series is "more of an action and adventure-oriented show and less politically oriented." Babylon 5 is a production of Babylonian Productions, Inc. and is distributed by Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution. The program aires daily on the Turner Network Broadcasting system (TNT) in the United States.
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| ©1998-1999 Sierra Studios, a division of Sierra On-Line, Inc. Babylon 5™ is a trademark of Warner Bros. | ||||||||||||||
Babylon 5 is the first American television series presented as an epic saga - with a distinct beginning, middle, and end. Unlike standard television programs whose conflicts and resolutions are engineered to occur in single episode segments, Babylon 5's plot lines often span several episodes, seasons, or in some cases, the entire length of the series.