Welcome to Show #79!

Tim is back, and Jeffrey is Kentucky, and Summer is always here. Jeffrey’s wrangled up some “Lost Tales” fan related interviews for us! Also stay tuned for more video content as part of the Lost Tales-apalooza month long (or longer) fest.

Interview 1: Adam Francis, production assistant during Season 2, joins us to tell us about how long his fan interest in Babylon 5 extends back, some of the running around he did during his tenure on the show, seeing and talking with the cast and crew he worked with after so much time, and more.

Fan Cast: The Three-Edged Sword Episode 10: “The Storm” (TS: 24:01-28:30) What you’re hearing here on The Babylon Podcast is just a small part of the story… the full audio drama can be heard at Voices of Babylon, so what are you waiting for? Go over and check them out!

Interview 2: Acclaimed conceptual artist Tim Earls rejoins us to give us some of the work he did for “The Lost Tales”, mostly storyboarding for all the scenes and visual effects. He also talks about some of the updates that went into set and ship design, and how some of his changes were incorporated into the finished product. Will we ever see the CG-intensive Garibaldi-focused story that Tim laid out?

Tim’s currently the set designer for the new fall show, “Pushing Daisies”, and is working on a still-secret new Serenity project for Quantum Mechanix

Deep Geeking: Tim and Summer conclude the geeking for the first episode, “Over Here”. We talk about the possible implications of Lochley’s theory and solution to the problem of what to do with Simon Burke… what could humanity do without the threat of devils and demons to haunt their dreams, and without a need for the Church amongst the stars? Will ancient evil be left behind when the cradle of humanity vanishes into dust when Sol goes nova? Will new battles be waged for the souls of all races, not just humanity, out beyond our galaxy?

And how do we know that all of this couldn’t have been investigated by a telepath? Lochley used to have a good relationship with Bester… did what happened during the Telepath War change her willingness to use a telepath first, or did her upbringing cause her to lean towards something in her comfort zone?

Babylon 5 Information Gathering: Can we and should we mount a Babylon 5 propaganda campaign, in order to get sales of The Lost Tales to the point where Warner really really wants to greelight more volumes of TLT? Let us know…

Also, if you know of a dead or abandoned B5 related website that may be in need of a new home, let Summer know!

Summer still needs to find the long versions of the B5 promos that ran on TNT prior to Season 5, the ones narrated by Keith David… anyone have any old VHS copies of S5 they taped from TNT? Specifically, the :30 spots, one featuring Ivanova and the other G’Kar… they were part of the series of ads TNT ran promoting the addition of B5 to their lineup.

Jerseys Are Go! (really… we’re still moving forward with these!) Interested? Let us know if you’d place a pre-order!

Your feedback does matter, and is welcome! You can call us at 206-338-2259, or email us and tell us what you think… and likely hear it played or read on the show. Please try to keep the voicemail comments as brief as possible.

Shameless related begging: There’s a box of Babylon 5 novels sitting here, books that were rescued from unknown fates at used bookstores in his area by Brad from the PodCulture podcast. The B5 library collection grows… if you have a request, send it in.

Promo: George Hrab’s Geologic Podcast
Promo: PodCulture
Link: Voices of Babylon

From Claudia’s newsletter (via Jim Carr):

Claudia Christian’s book, “My Life With Geeks & Freaks” is now available at Amazon.

If you don’t already have a copy, you can order from Amazon at this link

According to Claudia’s newsletter, “She is working on more writing projects that will be longer next time, and your reviews will only help work our marketing.”

Jim also notes: “The first two posted reviews at Amazon are from Dean Haglund (X-Files) and Denise Crosby (Star Trek: TNG)”

How long can a feed be? How much history should a podcast feed contain?

Is FeedBurner the only service that limits feeds to 512k, and if so, why? I have seen LibSyn hosted shows with over 200 shows in the feed, going all the way back to their first show. Yet FB tells me that my source feed for this show is too large, and that I need to cut it back.

I want to know why. How do I keep my current listeners happy, providing them with new content, while still maintaining a feed that contains all of the shows back to #1, because that’s something that listeners who are new to the show had requested, numerous times in the past: the ability to have ALL of the shows in the feed, so that iTunes would keep them all organized from beginning to end (because iTunes has STILL not given us a way to add manually downloaded podcasts to the show catalog it belongs to).

I am going to tweak FeedBurner to give it enough space to include the latest two shows. But be forewarned, it’s very likely that I will not be using FeedBurner as a feed for this show anymore.

If you want to avoid the confusion later, please resubscribe using http://www.babylonpodcast.com/category/shows/feed/ at your earliest convenience. This is the feed that iTunes should also be using for the one-click subscriptions, so those folks should be just fine.

If you manually subscribed using either http://feeds.feedburner.com/babylonpodcast or the old, defunct feed of http://www.babylonpodcast.com/shows/feed/, please update your podcatchers as soon as possible.

Welcome to Special Edition #3!

This is a video treat for you all… Jeffrey attended the West Hollywood Best Buy “The Lost Tales” release event, which featured Bruce Boxleitner, Tracy Scoggins and Peter Woodward promoting the release of the DVD on July 31, and signing DVDs and other keepsakes for fans.

In this first video, Jeffrey interviews the first people in line, including Adam Francis, a former production assistant during the second season, and Robert, who has a rare and collectible B5 item: an original logo design t-shirt that was given out at Comic-Con before production was completed on “The Gathering”.

It’s nice to see other true fans turning out with goodies such as this one!

Enjoy!

JMS is asking for help from all fans in a (geographic) position to do so. Without further preamble, here’s JMS:

Though in this case the historical entity being reclaimed is…well, me, basically. I’ll explain in a moment.

First, an apology and explanation for being absent for so long. The last few months have been probably the most hectic in terms of deadlines and work in the history of my career. The work has been great, but there’s just been a bucket of it and it’s all been due at once. I’ve turned in the latest draft of World War Z and it’s now going out to directors, I’m now on the third draft of the Silver Surfer movie which is also being fast-tracked, Changeling starts shooting in almost exactly two months, I’m hip deep in comics work and finishing the final touches to a TV project that we will be taking out to sell early September, and I’ve started the screenplay for They Marched Into Sunlight for Paul Greengrass and Tom Hanks company. All of this, in addition to a personal tragedy – the recent loss of my father in law – has put me way behind the eight ball of late. But I’m finally digging out from under…which brings me to this note.

Read more

I happened to find a handful of the videos that were the TNT promos for Babylon 5. These were probably already available elsewhere on the web, but if it’s new to you, then by all means, Enjoy!

“In The Beginning” promos
http://www.babylonpodcast.com/media/itb1.mov
http://www.babylonpodcast.com/media/itb2.mov
http://www.babylonpodcast.com/media/itb3.mov

B5 promos
http://www.babylonpodcast.com/media/babylon5a.mov
http://www.babylonpodcast.com/media/babylon5b.mov
http://www.babylonpodcast.com/media/babylon5c.mov
http://www.babylonpodcast.com/media/babylon5d.mov

Welcome to Show #78!

Tim is on vacation this week, so Summer, and Jeffrey welcome Jarsto as a last-minute fill in, and we all continue with “Lost Tales” celebration month, and remember… there will be spoilers contained in all of the August episodes, so be forwarned. If you want to avoid spoilers, then skip these next few shows until you’re all caught up!

Fan Geeking: Jarsto gives us a little insight into what’s gone into the making of “Three-Edged Sword”, and working with both Edmund and John on crafting the episodes and the overall arcs of the story.

What you’re hearing here on The Babylon Podcast is just a small part of the story… the full audio drama can be heard at Voices of Babylon, so what are you waiting for? Go over and check them out!

Fan Cast: The Three-Edged Sword Episode 9: “The Calm” (TS: 16:30-21:33)

Fan Geeking: Brad tells us how he joined the show, and the work that goes into editing the final product that you, the listeners, will receive over the feed. He also tells us how he’s used “The Lost Tales” to reel in his girlfriend Christina as a new fan of Babylon 5, and the appeal the series has for him, even after all this time.

Listener Feedback: We have voicemails! Bronzethumb in Australia gives a rundown on how he introduces potential new viewers to B5, and wonders about the correlations between B5 and Lord of the Rings; Gary from Jacksonville has a run of voicemails to close out the feedback segment.

Babylon 5 Information Gathering: Can we and should we mount a Babylon 5 propaganda campaign, in order to get sales of The Lost Tales to the point where Warner really really wants to greelight more volumes of TLT? Let us know…

Also, if you know of a dead or abandoned B5 related website that may be in need of a new home, let Summer know!

Summer would also like to find the long versions of the B5 promos that ran on TNT prior to Season 5, the ones narrated by Keith David… anyone have any old VHS copies of S5 they taped from TNT? Specifically, the :30 spots, one featuring Ivanova and the other G’Kar… they were part of the series of ads TNT ran promoting the addition of B5 to their lineup.

Jerseys Are Go! Interested? Let us know if you’d place a pre-order!

Your feedback does matter, and is welcome! You can call us at 206-338-2259, or email us and tell us what you think… and likely hear it played or read on the show. Please try to keep the voicemail comments as brief as possible.

Shameless related begging: There’s a box of Babylon 5 novels sitting here, books that were rescued from unknown fates at used bookstores in his area by Brad from the PodCulture podcast. The B5 library collection grows… if you have a request, send it in.

Promo: Mike’s Hotdish, part of the Next Generation of Radio
Link: Voices of Babylon

I love Brad Bowyer, really I do. In addition to being the driving force behind PodCulture, he’s also helped us out a great deal by editing this podcast, and Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas.

He and Christina sent some gifts here to the Draco Vista Studio for Joe when he was sick. He’s also sent me some pretty cool stuff over the past couple of years, including an Andreas Katsulas autographed photo, and buying me a copy of The Lost Tales that had the mini comic in it.

I’m certain all of the good karma he’s built up has led to today’s treasure find.

I love ya, Brad, but right now, I’m so envious… I never could find the standalone MicroMachines station, either. I wonder if one of the Atomic Comics around here has old toys just lying around.

Maggie Egan’s new website is up and running @ maggieegan.net, thanks to the magical ministrations of our web Wonder Woman, Summer. The site had been inactive since 2002. If any of you out there have old newsletters or other information to fill the gap between then and now, please email them to Summer.

Maggie’s not the only B5 actor with a presence on the web. Our own Jeffrey Willerth and Pat Tallman both have sites hosted by The Galactic Gateway.

The Official Bruce and Melissa Site is the site for our favorite captain turned president and his wife (both here and on B5). Claudia Christian can be found at claudiachristian.net. Bill Mumy’s site covers everything from his music to his 48 years(!) in show biz.

The website for Jerry Doyle’s radio show is here.

For Crusade and Lost Tales fans, Peter Woodward’s site is here. Carrie Dobro can be found here.

What you’ve all been waiting for… the 5 lucky people who’ve won a copy of “Babylon 5: The Lost Tales”, courtesy of Warner Bros Home Video and The Babylon Podcast:

Caitlin Stamper (KY)
Thomas Vincent (AZ)
Mark Earnshaw (AUS)
Mike Hall (KY)
Sean Reiser (NY)

Y’all enjoy, and many thanks to all who entered!