What is it? Never heard of it

Babylon 5 was fairly big in the 90s and has a fairly big cult following among science fiction fans since it’s the original science fiction TV novel, before Battlestar Galactica and Farscape. But, unfortunately, in this fandom climate, I guarantee you pessimists and gatekeepers will flood social media with campaigns of negativity and inauthenticity of the show (even if JMS himself makes it) until it’s cancelled halfway through season 2. It sucks, but those sorts infest, spoil, and/or destroy nearly every fandom these days.

Babylon 5, on the other hand, was a fantastic show which JMS created a bunch of branches for to wrap major storylines at any point in the case something happened to one of the cast members or early cancellation. The original show was intended for five seasons, but it got cancelled for the end of  the fourth, until fans campaigned to get it back for the fifth - by that point, the show had already put the final storyline and series finale into production. What happened was they created an epilogue season, it wasn’t the strongest, but it had some really great episodes toward the end to wrap up the character driven storylines. Even though you kind of already get a gleam of what happens at the end via season 4’s finale.

But one of the great things about Babylon 5 was its formula which was planned ahead of the launch of the show (years ahead). The first season featured a number of short stories where the birth of character plot threads occurred then toward the end the major setup for the main overarching container plots occur. For fans of Tolkien, they’ll recognize a lot of the storylines as a reimagining of The Silmarillion—with differences, as the characters lead to different attitudes and actions. Long ago, in fan forums (I’m talking back late 90s or so), the fans worked out the whole story relationship between the two, with the Vorlon’s as the Valar, and the Shadows being the forces of the shadow. (I won’t go further than that, because there would be some massive spoilers)

Anyway, apart from that, Babylon 5 features a better take on military than Deep Space 9 - which was a bit contrived about how guys like Sisko and other DS9 crew members were significantly more competent than the military forces of the Federation and Klingon Empire at managing the war in the later seasons: the military could do no right, and Sisko and crew could rarely do no wrong (except that one time, and he had to go to earth to find himself). Not saying DS9 is a bad show, I like it quite a bit (the promenade area of DS9 was one of the most compelling settings in any science fiction show, and there were fantastic characters, as well as some of Star Trek’s best episodes - Duet, for example). What I’m saying is that Babylon 5 had a far more believable war scenario than Deep Space 9. So, while Deep Space 9 excelled at showing the effects of war on the crew and civilians, Babylon 5 provided a much more exhilarating war story with far more believable characters in the role of war commanders. I think Deep Space 9 suffered from a bit of a 90ism of approaching character roles backwards (example: training miners to be astronauts instead of the much more reasonable option of training astronauts to be miners). Babylon 5 did the more realistic military people to be diplomats/politicians instead of diplomats and politicians to be military people (which is more like what DS9 did).

Speaking of Deep Space 9, the show likely based on Babylon 5 as JMS pitched it to Paramount when they were searching for ideas for a new show. There are quite a number of similarities between the two shows; Babylon 5 is a much larger scale universe with stakes that get much higher. Also, a greater involvement of our own solar system.

Anyway, I highly recommend Babylon 5, watch at least the first season, it picks up a lot in the second season as that’s when it kicks into full novel mode, but usually you’ll know if you like it or not at the end of the first season. It’s usually fairly cheap to buy as a bundle for the entire series, like 2-3 months of Netflix cheap.

For the record, though. I’d fucking love a Babylon 5 reboot. Although I hope something blows away this fandom climate of pessimism and gatekeeping or its not likely to be successful. 

This.

Along with Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark.

I just love Anthology horror shows.

Now they would need to (please oh please oh please) cut back on the romance hiccups for Yumi and Ulrich, but between updates to the setting changing X.A.N.A attacks and expanding what they did before where they couldn't before I'd be all for it. 

Alas I think the company that made it, Moonscoop, is not quite around anymore. Might be hard to get off the ground compared to a reboot of most TV series so key to major networks.  Not sure who owns it, but they have all the episodes on Youtube via an official channel.

Code Lyoko was a French animated series that was dubbed into English, surprisingly enough by the same who made it in France, that aired on the Miguzi Block on Cartoon Network in the 2000's. Miguzi was kind of the younger brother to Toonami, where Dragon Ball and Naruto reigned supreme, showing a mixture of similar shows and distinct ones. Several shows aired on it were also originally from France. Of them, I would argue that Code Lyoko was their Dragon Ball Z. The big hitting, hype program. 

Code Lyoko is about a group of school children at a French Boarding School who discovered a super computer in an abandoned factory. Inside the super computer is an entire virtual world where a being named Aelita lives, as well as the malevolent A.I X.A.N.A, who can use the supercomputer's power to attack the real world. X.A.N.A can take over machines, control and enhance inanimate objects, possess living creatures, and most disturbingly of all, learns from its mistakes. 

The show's about the cast getting Aelita out of the super computer and destroying X.A.N.A, with the benefit of the super computer's most powerful ability, the ability to rewind time after stopping X.A.N.A and repeating the time that X.A.N.A acted in to better things for themselves and others. 

The show's first season is episodic due to executive mandates in France, but after that it becomes rather serialized for the next three. Season 2 is generally seen as the best season, and Season 3 is considered the weakest season. The show got great reviews, but it eventually ran into the problem of a Executive at CN not liking it for some reason, so its last bit of Season 4 got yanked and shaken up on the block and the online video service for some reason. Still had a ending, though as said above with several lingering plot threads. The people who worked on it are still around and you can find them in some places. It's why Nino over in Miraculous Ladybug wears a shirt with the eye of X.A.N.A on it, for example. 

The show had two different continuity continuations, though I am not sure how much either had the original writers involved in them. The first swapped out the animation and CGI blend for live action and CGI, is called Code Lyoko Evolution. This got good ratings, but was never dubbed into English and was so expensive to do that it is why Moonscoop went kappot. The other were a series of 11 novels available in 11 languages officially, but not English. 

A new reboot or continuation, ideally back in animated form, and without the romantic drama I swear is obligatory in French series for some reason, would be nice.