SCIFI.COM | Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers

Posted 04.Jan.02

RangerWear: The Costumes of Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers

By Melissa J. Perenson

They live for The One. They die for The One. And at the moment, The One is in Crystine Booth's hands just steps away from the Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers soundstages in Vancouver. There, in Booth's busy enclave, the movie's costume designer is preparing G'Kar's costume for use.

"It is the costume. It is the only costume," she explains — and it's indeed the real deal, the original piece of wardrobe Andreas Katsulas wore throughout the original Babylon 5 series. The prospect of making any changes to it "was a very touchy subject," Booth says, "because that costume was in the Warner Bros. Museum in Los Angeles. In order for us to get it up here, we had to promise to not clean or alter it; we could literally do nothing to the costume, and it had to be in a locked room at all times except for when it's on the actor." Because it's considered a piece of television history, the costume itself is highly insured.

And taking care of TV history is just one part of the job for Booth, who's designed costumes for such telefilms and miniseries as P.T. Barnum (1999) and Dean Koontz's Black River (2001), as well as for the Lynn Redgrave-Lolita Davidovich movie Touched (1999). She was nominated for a Genie — the Canadian equivalent of the Oscar — for her costume-design work on the children's fantasy film Once in a Blue Moon (1995).

Warrior-Monk Ideal
The look of the Rangers' outfits, evoking the ideal of the warrior-monk, developed out of conversations between Booth and B5 creator and telefilm writer-executive producer J. Michael Straczynski. His attention to detail "surprised me," she says. "I'd send out some sketches, and he'd say, 'This is pretty close,' or 'Take it this way,' or 'Let's take it away from that.' So we did lots of e-mails and faxing of sketches because he wasn't up here in Vancouver all the time. We made some mock-ups finally, and he saw those and said, 'Great! Let's just take this step of adding the leather at the end.' This gave it more of a warrior look, and less that of a monk. And," she recalls with a laugh, "it couldn't be too tight — as he said, 'The actors have to be able to eat their lunch.'"

As well, Booth says, the costume design "had to look good on both men and women, and so I worked with components. That's why I feel the vests really work, because you can tailor a vest to flatter" an actor's physique.

The Silk Trade
The material used is silk — indirectly a request from Straczynski and fellow executive producer Doug Netter, who wanted a certain texture, says Booth. The flow of the fabrics can be credited to the copious use of raw-silk materials. "This fabulous raw silk is just beautiful," enthuses Booth. "I just bought every inch of it available in Vancouver. Getting enough of the fabric was a real issue, because pretty soon there were more extras and doubles" in the cast than originally called for.

The choice of dye colors was also something Straczynski contributed to. "One day, we went through the process of what colors should who be," remembers Booth. " And it was really interesting, because Joe basically called out the colors based on how he saw the actors' characters — which is something I really like, but as a costume designer, I want to know what the actor feels comfortable in, what's his or her eye color, what looks good on their skin tone. Amazingly, it all worked; all the colors worked on the cast."

Day of the Diplomat
One of the biggest days on the shoot was what Booth refers to as "diplomat day", when a scene featuring numerous and varied diplomats from different races was being shot. "A lot of the actors were in prosthetics and full-costume. That was busy. We had to come up with a way of dressing a lot of different kinds of aliens on a tight budget and tight time. I'd have loved to get a lot more elaborate, but we just didn't have the money or time." The solution? "Joe suggested we come up with sort of a Babylon 5 robe for these diplomats at the convention. We made them in different fabrics and contrasts to denote the different races. It turned out to be a lot of fun, and we have about 20 of these aliens walking around in these fabulous, swishy [robes]."

There was one other original costume element that used again, in addition to G'Kar's costume: The Ranger pin was specially flown in from Los Angeles. "Joe was vehement that it be the same as before," Booth says — perhaps echoing the creator's desire for something beyond just than pin.