TV Just before Christmas, between lockdowns, I was lucky enough to visit a charity shop or two including the Barnardos on Smithdown Road. Imagine my amazement on finding, all alone on the shelf, the complete Babylon 5 DVD boxed set for just £25. Knowing full well that a new lockdown was imminent, I decided that this was to be my new bingeing project, at least a few months worth. I duly bought and almost broke my back carrying it home, this heavy beast with the equivalent of seven seasons of television inside.
Then, between Christmas and New Year I began watching it. The pilot episode is notoriously patchy, as so often pilot episodes are, although I've been a fan of Tamlyn Tomita, who plays deputy command on the station, since The Joy Luck Club which she made the same year. But there was enough for me, despite her recasting, to want to settle in and see the rest of the series, for which I've always had fond memories since its original Channel 4 broadcast.
Then during episode one, I began to see a problem I'd already had wind of but wasn't quite prepared for - how ugly it actually looks. Like much mid-90s TV, Babylon 5 was originally broadcast in the 4:3 aspect ratio, but like FRIENDS and other WB shows at the time, had its live action sequences shot on film in 16:9 in an attempt to keep them future proof, which definitely worked on FRIENDS, whose HD transfers are gorgeous.
Sadly, to save money, the CGI sequence were created in 4:3 which was fine at the time since the TV audience wouldn't know different, but ran counter to the point of shooting the rest of it on the assumption that future generation might want to have a more cinematic experience. When it came time to release the series on DVD, the studio was keen to release it in widescreen but oh god, the CGI, the CGI.
As this old Engadget post explains, the decision was made to remaster the 16:9 footage and then to zoom and crop the CGI sequences to fit the frame even during live action sequences. Which means whenever there's any CGI on screen, the image noticeably loses what already weak definition it has and the composition becomes distractingly cramped.
The effect is to pull the viewer out of the story every time a computer generated shot occurs, either in the space sequences which are often rendered incoherent or the live action scenes when on occasion there'll be a cut to some mad close-up in the middle of a sequence breaking up the rhythm of the piece. Even worse are the moment when there's a crossfade from a CGI sequence to a fully live action and the latter remains zoomed in.
On a couple of episodes, the CGI sequences haven't even been cropped. They've simply been stretched to fill the 16:9 space even in those transitions making the whole thing almost unwatchable. Quite why they didn't bother on those occasions isn't clear, although its true that they tend to be episodes which less CGI than others so they could simply have decided to use their meagre budget elsewhere.
This decade old page takes a much more detailed look at just how awful these transfers look also pointing out how a decent upscaling result could have been achieved and also that the NTSC and PAL (Region One and Region Two) transfers also differ in numerous subtle ways in terms of framing. The author becomes increasingly both cross and resigned to the horrors across the length of the article.
The upshot of all this is I'm finding it incredibly difficult to watch Babylon 5 in this form. The first season is reputationally a bit of a slog, but there's plenty in there to enjoy but every time there's a CGI shot I'm pulled out of the story. Plus the colour timing is incredibly drab even though my TV is collaborated to make Technicolor pop.
Perhaps I'll just watch FRIENDS again.
Then, between Christmas and New Year I began watching it. The pilot episode is notoriously patchy, as so often pilot episodes are, although I've been a fan of Tamlyn Tomita, who plays deputy command on the station, since The Joy Luck Club which she made the same year. But there was enough for me, despite her recasting, to want to settle in and see the rest of the series, for which I've always had fond memories since its original Channel 4 broadcast.
Then during episode one, I began to see a problem I'd already had wind of but wasn't quite prepared for - how ugly it actually looks. Like much mid-90s TV, Babylon 5 was originally broadcast in the 4:3 aspect ratio, but like FRIENDS and other WB shows at the time, had its live action sequences shot on film in 16:9 in an attempt to keep them future proof, which definitely worked on FRIENDS, whose HD transfers are gorgeous.
Sadly, to save money, the CGI sequence were created in 4:3 which was fine at the time since the TV audience wouldn't know different, but ran counter to the point of shooting the rest of it on the assumption that future generation might want to have a more cinematic experience. When it came time to release the series on DVD, the studio was keen to release it in widescreen but oh god, the CGI, the CGI.
As this old Engadget post explains, the decision was made to remaster the 16:9 footage and then to zoom and crop the CGI sequences to fit the frame even during live action sequences. Which means whenever there's any CGI on screen, the image noticeably loses what already weak definition it has and the composition becomes distractingly cramped.
The effect is to pull the viewer out of the story every time a computer generated shot occurs, either in the space sequences which are often rendered incoherent or the live action scenes when on occasion there'll be a cut to some mad close-up in the middle of a sequence breaking up the rhythm of the piece. Even worse are the moment when there's a crossfade from a CGI sequence to a fully live action and the latter remains zoomed in.
On a couple of episodes, the CGI sequences haven't even been cropped. They've simply been stretched to fill the 16:9 space even in those transitions making the whole thing almost unwatchable. Quite why they didn't bother on those occasions isn't clear, although its true that they tend to be episodes which less CGI than others so they could simply have decided to use their meagre budget elsewhere.
This decade old page takes a much more detailed look at just how awful these transfers look also pointing out how a decent upscaling result could have been achieved and also that the NTSC and PAL (Region One and Region Two) transfers also differ in numerous subtle ways in terms of framing. The author becomes increasingly both cross and resigned to the horrors across the length of the article.
The upshot of all this is I'm finding it incredibly difficult to watch Babylon 5 in this form. The first season is reputationally a bit of a slog, but there's plenty in there to enjoy but every time there's a CGI shot I'm pulled out of the story. Plus the colour timing is incredibly drab even though my TV is collaborated to make Technicolor pop.
As the Engadget article explains, there are craftspeople willing and able to set about creating commercial HD masters of the series, and that there might even be excellent 4:3 transfers which could be spruced up for release ala Star Trek. There are some "remastered" SD versions doing the rounds on streaming services, which do look better but apparently have new problems like missing scenes.
It's incredibly frustrating to think that the WB is willing to spaff millions towards a mediocre director to create a bloated version of a superhero film failure in order to placate a group of 4Chan refugees, but can't find the resources to create dynamite restorations of one of the seminal science fiction shows of the 90s. Doctor Who fans have been incredibly lucky.
Now I'm left wondering if I can carry on watching Babylon 5 in this compromised form. Perhaps in the past when watching films in the correct aspect ratio was a dream and I frankly didn't even know what the term meant I would have been more forgiving and wouldn't have noticed. But it's difficult to forget all of that when you've become habitually laser focused on such things.
No comments:
Post a Comment