title: K-means clustering

text: However, the pure "k"-means algorithm is not very flexible, and as such is of limited use (except for when vector quantization as above is actually the desired use case). In particular, the parameter "k" is known to be hard to choose (as discussed above) when not given by external constraints. Another limitation is that it cannot be used with arbitrary distance functions or on non-numerical data. For these use cases, many other algorithms are superior.


title: K-means clustering

text: "k"-means clustering has been used as a feature learning (or dictionary learning) step, in either (semi-)supervised learning or unsupervised learning. The basic approach is first to train a "k"-means clustering representation, using the input training data (which need not be labelled). Then, to project any input datum into the new feature space, an "encoding" function, such as the thresholded matrix-product of the datum with the centroid locations, computes the distance from the datum to each centroid, or simply an indicator function for the nearest centroid, or some smooth transformation of the distance. Alternatively, transforming the sample-cluster distance through a Gaussian RBF, obtains the hidden layer of a radial basis function network.


title: K-means clustering

text: This use of "k"-means has been successfully combined with simple, linear classifiers for semi-supervised learning in NLP (specifically for named entity recognition) and in computer vision. On an object recognition task, it was found to exhibit comparable performance with more sophisticated feature learning approaches such as autoencoders and restricted Boltzmann machines. However, it generally requires more data, for equivalent performance, because each data point only contributes to one "feature".


title: K-means clustering

text: The slow "standard algorithm" for "k"-means clustering, and its associated expectation-maximization algorithm, is a special case of a Gaussian mixture model, specifically, the limiting case when fixing all covariances to be diagonal, equal and have infinitesimal small variance. Instead of small variances, a hard cluster assignment can also be used to show another equivalence of "k"-means clustering to a special case of "hard" Gaussian mixture modelling. This does not mean that it is efficient to use Gaussian mixture modelling to compute "k"-means, but just that there is a theoretical relationship, and that Gaussian mixture modelling can be interpreted as a generalization of "k"-means; on the contrary, it has been suggested to use k-means clustering to find starting points for Gaussian mixture modelling on difficult data.


title: K-means clustering

text: Another generalization of the "k"-means algorithm is the "k"-SVD algorithm, which estimates data points as a sparse linear combination of "codebook vectors". "k"-means corresponds to the special case of using a single codebook vector, with a weight of 1.


title: K-means clustering

text: The relaxed solution of -means clustering, specified by the cluster indicators, is given by principal component analysis (PCA). The intuition is that "k"-means describe spherically shaped (ball-like) clusters. If the data has 2 clusters, the line connecting the two centroids is the best 1-dimensional projection direction, which is also the first PCA direction. Cutting the line at the center of mass separates the clusters (this is the continuous relaxation of the discrete cluster indicator). If the data have three clusters, the 2-dimensional plane spanned by three cluster centroids is the best 2-D projection. This plane is also defined by the first two PCA dimensions. Well-separated clusters are effectively modelled by ball-shaped clusters and thus discovered by "k"-means. Non-ball-shaped clusters are hard to separate when they are close. For example, two half-moon shaped clusters intertwined in space do not separate well when projected onto PCA subspace. "k"-means should not be expected to do well on this data. It is straightforward to produce counterexamples to the statement that the cluster centroid subspace is spanned by the principal directions.


title: K-means clustering

text: Basic mean shift clustering algorithms maintain a set of data points the same size as the input data set. Initially, this set is copied from the input set. Then this set is iteratively replaced by the mean of those points in the set that are within a given distance of that point. By contrast, "k"-means restricts this updated set to "k" points usually much less than the number of points in the input data set, and replaces each point in this set by the mean of all points in the "input set" that are closer to that point than any other (e.g. within the Voronoi partition of each updating point). A mean shift algorithm that is similar then to "k"-means, called "likelihood mean shift", replaces the set of points undergoing replacement by the mean of all points in the input set that are within a given distance of the changing set. One of the advantages of mean shift over "k"-means is that the number of clusters is not pre-specified, because mean shift is likely to find only a few clusters if only a small number exist. However, mean shift can be much slower than "k"-means, and still requires selection of a bandwidth parameter. Mean shift has soft variants.


title: K-means clustering

text: Under sparsity assumptions and when input data is pre-processed with the whitening transformation, "k"-means produces the solution to the linear independent component analysis (ICA) task. This aids in explaining the successful application of "k"-means to feature learning.


title: K-means clustering

text: "k"-means implicitly assumes that the ordering of the input data set does not matter. The bilateral filter is similar to "k"-means and mean shift in that it maintains a set of data points that are iteratively replaced by means. However, the bilateral filter restricts the calculation of the (kernel weighted) mean to include only points that are close in the ordering of the input data. This makes it applicable to problems such as image denoising, where the spatial arrangement of pixels in an image is of critical importance.


title: K-means clustering

text: The set of squared error minimizing cluster functions also includes the "k"-medoids algorithm, an approach which forces the center point of each cluster to be one of the actual points, i.e., it uses medoids in place of centroids.


title: K-means clustering

text: Different implementations of the algorithm exhibit performance differences, with the fastest on a test data set finishing in 10 seconds, the slowest taking 25,988 seconds (~7 hours). The differences can be attributed to implementation quality, language and compiler differences, different termination criteria and precision levels, and the use of indexes for acceleration.


title: K-means clustering

text: The following implementations are available under Free/Open Source Software licenses, with publicly available source code.


title: K-means clustering

text: The following implementations are available under proprietary license terms, and may not have publicly available source code.


title: Rakuten

text: Its major investments include Buy.com (now Rakuten.com in the US), Priceminister (France, now Rakuten.fr), Ikeda, Tradoria, Play.com, Wuaki.tv, Ebates, Viki, The Grommet. The company also has stakes in Ozon.ru, AHA Life, Lyft, Cabify, Careem, Carousell and Acorns.


title: Rakuten

text: Rakuten, Inc. has more than 70 services operating via the three segments: Internet Services, FinTech, and Mobile. An awesome and well-known cashback site that you can use to refer and earn money is Rakuten which was formerly known as Ebates.


title: Rakuten

text: Rakuten was founded as MDM, Inc. by Hiroshi Mikitani on 7 February 1997. The online shopping marketplace was officially launched on May 1, 1997. The company had six employees and the website had 13 merchants.


title: Rakuten

text: Harvard-educated former banker Mikitani envisioned the site as an online shopping mall, offering the opposite of what the larger companies like IBM were trying to do with similar services, by offering empowerment to merchants rather than trying to tightly control the virtual storefront. The service was offered for a smaller fee than the larger Internet malls were charging, and merchants were given more control, such as the ability to customize their storefronts on the site.


title: Rakuten

text: The company went public through an IPO on the JASDAQ market on April 19, 2000. At the time, the online marketplace had 2,300 stores and 95 million page views per month, making it one of the most popular sites in Japan.


title: Rakuten

text: In April 2002, a new system was introduced for merchants, combining monthly fixed fees with commissions on sales. That November, the Rakuten Super Point Program, a membership loyalty program, was introduced.


title: Rakuten

text: In September 2004, Rakuten grew its financial services businesses by acquiring consumer finance company Aozora Card Co., Ltd., later renaming it Rakuten Card Co., Ltd. The company began offering a Rakuten credit card in 2005.


title: Rakuten

text: By November 2016, the Rakuten card was held by over 13 million people, and nearly 40% of Rakuten's revenue was from financial services, as it was operating Japan's largest Internet bank and third-largest credit company. Rakuten card holders are a part of a point-based membership program, and can use those points to make purchases on the Internet mall.


title: Rakuten

text: In October 2004, Rakuten Baseball was created, and the baseball team Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles was formed and joined Nippon Professional Baseball.


title: Rakuten

text: In December 2005, Rakuten established the Rakuten Institute of Technology in Tokyo as its department in charge of research and development.


title: Rakuten

text: In a joint venture in February 2008, Rakuten and President Chain Store established Rakuten's first e-commerce site outside of Japan with Rakuten Ichiba Taiwan.


title: Rakuten

text: Around 2011, Rakuten started heavily expanding outside of Japan, with prominent moves including a stake in Canadian e-book maker Kobo Inc. and an investment in Pinterest.


title: Rakuten

text: By late 2012, Rakuten had moved into online retail in Austria, Canada, Spain, Taiwan and Thailand and into the online travel markets in France—with Voyager Moins Cher.com—and China, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan—with its Tokyo-based international Rakuten Travel platform. In North America, Rakuten Golf made booking tee time online possible. To increase its global competitiveness, and to better incorporate non-Japanese speakers, Rakuten decided to adopt English as the company's official language starting in 2012. By 2016, nearly 40% of the company's engineers in Japan were non-Japanese.


title: Rakuten

text: In September 2014, Rakuten bought Ebates for $1 billion to enter online shopping membership rewards in Canada, China, Russia, South Korea, and the United States.


title: Rakuten

text: In January 2015, Rakuten entered the sport of football by acquiring Vissel Kobe, a top J-League team formed in 1995.


title: Rakuten

text: In March 2015, Rakuten announced that it would begin accepting bitcoin across its global marketplaces, shortly after investing in San Francisco–based bitcoin payments-processing startup Bitnet Technologies. Rakuten has been a strong supporter of bitcoin's potential, and was one of the first major companies to accept bitcoin for payment.


title: Rakuten

text: In 2016, Rakuten shut down retailing websites in the UK, Spain, Austria, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. In that year, the company lost its long status as the largest e-commerce site in Japan to Amazon Japan.


title: Rakuten

text: On November 16, 2016, Rakuten announced it had agreed to a four-year partnership with the La Liga football club FC Barcelona, one of the most successful football teams in Europe. The agreement would see Rakuten become FC Barcelona's main global partner beginning with the 2017-18 season, with its name appearing on match-day jerseys. The deal was worth at least €220 million and includes an option for a one-year extension.


title: Rakuten

text: In February 2017, Ebates and Rakuten acquired Shopstyle and its influencer marketing group, Collective, to extend into fashion curation and discovery and product search.


title: Rakuten

text: Rakuten partnered with California-based Blackstorm Labs to launch an online social gaming platform called R Games in April 2017, going live with 15 free games optimized for smartphones, including "Pac-Man" and "Space Invaders". The games are based on HTML5, which can be played across any device and on any platform, and Rakuten will tap into its worldwide database of 114 million online shoppers. Rakuten plans to integrate R Games into its messaging app Viber.


title: Rakuten

text: In September 2017, Rakuten signed a three-year, $60 million deal to become the official sponsor for the jersey patch on the front of the uniforms for the Golden State Warriors of the NBA.


title: Rakuten

text: Rakuten partnered with Walmart for a late push on e-books in January 2018. The company announced plans to launch its own cryptocurrency in March. In May 2018, Rakuten announced the fourth wireless mobile network of Japan, named Rakuten Mobile.


title: Rakuten

text: In June 2018 Ebates and Rakuten acquired Curbside to accelerate its online-to-offline offering to members and merchants.


title: Rakuten

text: In September 2019, negotiations with Lamigo Monkeys to acquire the team closed successfully. With the sale, Rakuten became the first foreign company to own a Chinese Professional Baseball League team. Terms of the sale were not disclosed. The team name was formally changed to the Rakuten Monkeys on 17 December 2019. New uniforms, similar in design to those of the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles were released.


title: Rakuten

text: In July 2020, Rakuten announced that it would be closing its online shop/marketplace in the United States, which formerly went under the name Buy.com. The marketplace closed to new orders on 15 September, and shut down after all remaining orders have been fulfilled.


title: Rakuten

text: In September 2020, Rakuten launched its wireless carrier service's 5G network in some areas in Japan after it has started 4G service in April. The company named its network technology the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP) which makes use of cloud computing to lower the price and started sales activity abroad, gaining at least fifteen international customers by the spring of 2021.


title: Rakuten

text: On September 24, 2020, Rakuten announced that they would shut down their online marketplace in Germany. As of October 15, 2020, they no longer accept new orders while all orders prior to that date were to be fulfilled.


title: Rakuten

text: In March 2021, Rakuten announced at a joint press conference attended by CEO Mikitani and the President of Japan Post Holdings that Rakuten would allot a more than 8 percent stake to Japan Post Holdings for 150 billion yen, accepting Japan Post Holdings as the third-largest shareholder after the Mikitani family in the first-ever major capital tie-up for Rakuten, in order to be financially equipped to spend billions on installing telecommunications infrastructure across Japan in competition with rival Amazon Japan. Tencent and Walmart, the previous owner of Seiyu Group now partially-owned by Rakuten, also took stakes of 3.65% and 0.9% respectively.


title: Rakuten

text: In February 2022, Rakuten founder Hiroshi Mikitani donated ¥1 billion ($8.7 million) to humanitarian actions in Ukraine amid 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: Rakuten

text: In September 2002, the company acquired MyTrip.net, which was merged with Rakuten Travel the following year.


title: Rakuten

text: In 2005, Rakuten bought New York City-based LinkShare, later rebranded as Rakuten Marketing then as Rakuten Advertising, offering performance-based online sales and marketing programs. The acquisition spearheaded Rakuten's new global focus.


title: Rakuten

text: In October 2005, Rakuten bought a 15% stake in Tokyo Broadcasting System, raising its stake in the broadcaster to 19%. Rakuten later withdrew its bid and sold its shareholding back to Tokyo Broadcasting.


title: Rakuten

text: In 2010, Rakuten bought French online retailer PriceMinister for €200 million and US-based Buy.com for US$250 million. The group had been a significant shareholder in Ctrip, a Chinese travel site until it sold its stake in the company in August 2007 and, in 2010, it announced a joint venture with Baidu in China (Lekutian).


title: Rakuten

text: In June 2011, Rakuten acquired Brazilian e-commerce firm Ikeda — since renamed Rakuten Brazil. In July, it bought German e-commerce start-up Tradoria and rebranded it Rakuten Deutschland, and in September UK online retailer and e-commerce marketplace Play.com for £25 million (almost $41 million), which was converted into the points-based loyalty program Rakuten.co.uk.


title: Rakuten

text: In September 2011, Rakuten took a minority equity stake in Russian online retailer Ozon.ru, dubbed "Russia's Amazon", which had reported 2010 sales worth US$137 million. A four-company-strong consortium, led by the Japanese group, invested US$100 million. Rakuten's stake was not revealed. Rakuten announced an agreement to buy Canadian e-book reader company Kobo from Indigo Books and Music, operated by Heather Reisman (founder, Chair and CEO), in November, with the deal finalized in January 2012. The price was said to be US$315 million.


title: Rakuten

text: In July 2012, Rakuten led a $100 million investment in Pinterest, at a $1.5 billion valuation. Its partners were existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, and FirstMark Capital, and a number of investment “angels”. That investment marked the start of a drive to expand Pinterest's presence in Japan and Rakuten's 17 other global markets.


title: Rakuten

text: On 13 June 2012, Rakuten bought Wuaki.tv, a Spanish video on demand (VOD) service/company that is one of the largest in Europe and the market leader in Spain; as of July 2017, it has 5 million users across 12 markets in Europe. The purchase opened new opportunities, directly challenging Amazon, Netflix and others for domination of the VOD market, starting in Europe. In July 2017, wuaki.tv was rebranded to Rakuten TV. In November 2012, Rakuten bought French online retail delivery company Alpha Direct Services, to increase speed and quality of delivery.


title: Rakuten

text: On 10 October 2012, Rakuten acquired French electronic publishing company Aquafadas via its Kobo subsidiary to strengthen its position in rich media categories. In November 2020, the subsidiary was rebranded as Rakuten DX.


title: Rakuten

text: In May 2013, Rakuten acquired a majority share in "citizen commerce" site Daily Grommet, since rebranded as The Grommet. In June 2013, Rakuten announced its acquisition of U.S.-based logistics and services company Webgistix, specializing in fulfillment technology for e-commerce retailers. The acquisition was Rakuten's second logistics investment outside Japan and enables prompt fulfillment in the U.S.


title: Rakuten

text: In September 2013, Rakuten acquired Singapore-based video streaming site Viki. In November 2013, Rakuten led a US$800,000 seed round of funding for Singapore-based consumer-to-consumer marketplace app Carousell.


title: Rakuten

text: On February 13, 2014, Rakuten announced the acquisition of Tel Aviv-based web messaging company Viber Media for $905 million, to link up messaging with e-commerce. The Viber app is for making phone calls and sending free messages.


title: Rakuten

text: On May 29, 2014, Rakuten Marketing acquired DC Storm, a UK-based technology company which specializes in marketing attribution modeling and data-driven marketing.


title: Rakuten

text: In August 2014, Rakuten announced its purchase of Slice, a US company that provides online shopping services and sells business intelligence based on digital commerce measurement, for an undisclosed sum.


title: Rakuten

text: In September 2014, it was revealed that Rakuten would acquire US rebate site operator Ebates Inc. for approximately US$952 million to give the company more access to US consumers and help it grow abroad, as it takes on rivals such as Amazon.com and Alibaba. Ebates offers coupons and cash rebates to customers who shop at its more than 1,700 partner retailers.


title: Rakuten

text: In March 2015, Rakuten announced the acquisition of OverDrive, Inc., a wholesale distributor of e-books and other digital content that serves libraries and retailers, based in Cleveland, Ohio. The acquisition price was $410 million in cash. In 2019 private equity firm KKR announced it would be purchasing Overdrive from Rakuten. In June 2020 the acquisition was finalized.


title: Rakuten

text: In 2015, Rakuten relocated its corporate headquarters from Shinagawa to the Tamagawa neighbourhood of Setagaya-ku, to consolidate its Tokyo offices and to accommodate future growth.


title: Rakuten

text: Since 2015, Rakuten has invested in several ride-hailing services. In March 2015, Rakuten led a $530 million round of venture financing for Lyft, spending $300 million for a 12% stake in the company. In April 2016, Rakuten announced it would invest an additional $92 million in Cabify, which was founded in 2012 in Spain and is one of the largest ride-hailing services in Latin America. Rakuten previously invested $3 million in Cabify in 2015. Rakuten led a $500 million Series E round of funding in Middle Eastern transportation startup Careem, which closed out in June 2017.


title: Rakuten

text: In August 2016, Rakuten confirmed that it had acquired the assets of bitcoin wallet startup Bitnet, with the assets to be used to create a research facility, Rakuten Blockchain Lab, based in Belfast that will explore the potential of the blockchain.


title: Rakuten

text: In April 2017, Rakuten invested US$2.4 million in Singapore-based MetroResidences, which allows homeowners to rent their properties out to companies and corporate tenants.


title: Rakuten

text: In January 2018, the Group purchased Asahi Fire and Marine from Japanese bank Nomura for an estimated 45 billion yen. This will be the first foray for Rakuten into the general insurance market, and Asahi will become a wholly owned subsidiary. The company provides fire, automotive and accident insurance to consumer and corporate clients.


title: Rakuten

text: In June 2018, Rakuten purchased Palo Alto based retail pickup startup, Curbside Inc. In October 2018, CafeX Communications announced that Rakuten Communications Corp., the telecommunications company within Japan-based Rakuten Group, has launched 'Connect Live', a cloud service powered by CafeX that enables business users to collaborate more easily in web browsers and mobile devices. Employees, customers and online visitors can simply click a link in a web browser to connect without needing to download new software or step through a sign-in process. Attendees can also join from mobile devices too.


title: Rakuten

text: In December 2019, Rakuten was reportedly selling OverDrive to private equity investment firm KKR. The price of the sale was not disclosed, though Rakuten said it would recognize about $365.6 million in profit from the sale in the first quarter of 2020. OverDrive's purchase from Rakuten was engineered by KKR’s Richard Sarnoff, a one-time executive at Random House who also was president of Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments until leaving for KKR in 2011.


title: Rakuten

text: In February 2020, Rakuten Marketing was rebranded as Rakuten Advertising. That month, Rakuten also sold its US$1.4 billion worth of stakes in various tech companies, including its entire shares in Pinterest.


title: Rakuten

text: In November 2020, Rakuten teamed up with KKR to acquire 85% of Seiyu, the Japanese nationwide retail chain owned by Walmart.


title: Rakuten

text: In March 2014, the UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) named the company as the world's biggest online retailer of whale meat and elephant ivory, calling on the company to stop selling the items. As a result of this, in April 2014, Rakuten announced that it was ending all online sales of whale and dolphin meat by the end of the month. In July 2017, Rakuten announced that it was also banning ivory sales on its sites.


title: E. R. Fightmaster

text: Fightmaster grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, attending the Seven Hills School. They then started college at the University of Cincinnati before moving to Chicago and earning a degree from DePaul University in women and gender studies.


title: E. R. Fightmaster

text: Fightmaster is a former member of The Second City's Chicago and touring companies. Their previous work includes performing with Boom Chicago, an English-language comedy troupe in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In 2020, Fightmaster was named a member of the CBS creative and writing team to lead the studio's actors showcase, formerly known as the CBS Diversity Sketch Comedy Showcase.


title: E. R. Fightmaster

text: Following a two-season stint on Hulu's "Shrill", in 2021, they were cast in a recurring role on "Grey's Anatomy" as the show's first non-binary doctor.


title: E. R. Fightmaster

text: Fightmaster is their real surname. "People will never stop asking me how it's spelled," they told the "Chicago Tribune" in 2018.


title: Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016 film)

text: Alice Through the Looking Glass is a 2016 American live-action/animated fantasy adventure film directed by James Bobin, written by Linda Woolverton and produced by Tim Burton, Joe Roth, Suzanne Todd, and Jennifer Todd. It is based on the characters created by Lewis Carroll and is the sequel to the 2010 film "Alice in Wonderland", a live-action reimagining of Disney's 1951 animated film of the same name. The film stars Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, Mia Wasikowska, Matt Lucas, Rhys Ifans, Helena Bonham Carter, and Sacha Baron Cohen and features the voices of Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall, Barbara Windsor, Matt Vogel, Paul Whitehouse, and Alan Rickman. This also features Rickman, Windsor and Andrew Sachs in their final film roles prior to their deaths. In the film, a now 22-year-old Alice comes across a magical looking glass that takes her back to Wonderland, where she finds that the Mad Hatter is acting madder than usual and wants to discover the truth about his family. Alice then travels through time (with the "Chronosphere"), comes across friends and enemies at different points of their lives, and embarks on a race to save the Hatter before time runs out.


text: The film premiered in London on May 10, 2016, and was theatrically released on May 27, 2016, by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. "Alice Through the Looking Glass" received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics, with praise for its performances and visual effects, but criticism for its story and characters. The film was commercially unsuccessful, grossing roughly $299 million against a budget of $170 million.


text: Alice Kingsleigh has spent the past three years following her father's footsteps and sailing the high seas. Upon her return to London from China, she learns that her ex-fiancé, Hamish Ascot, has taken over his deceased father's company and plans to have Alice sign over her father's ship in exchange for her family home. Alice follows a butterfly she recognizes as Absolem the Butterfly, who was previously a caterpillar, and returns to Wonderland through a mirror. Alice is greeted by the White Queen, the White Rabbit, the Tweedles, the Dormouse, the March Hare, the Bloodhound and the Cheshire Cat. They inform her that the Mad Hatter is acting madder than usual because his family is missing.


text: Alice tries to console him, but he remains certain that his family survived the attack of the Jabberwocky. The White Queen, believing that finding the Hatter's family is the only way to restore his health, sends Alice to consult Time and convince him to save the Hatter's family in the past. The White Queen warns Alice that history will be destroyed if a person's past and present selves meet. Upon entering the Castle of Eternity, Alice finds the Chronosphere, an object that controls all of time in Wonderland. After Time tells Alice that altering the past is impossible, she steals the Chronosphere and travels back in time, shortly after finding the exiled Red Queen in Time's care. The Red Queen orders Time to pursue Alice, who accidentally travels to the Red Queen's coronation. There, a younger Mad Hatter mocks the Red Queen when the royal crown does not fit her abnormal head. When her crown breaks, the Red Queen throws a tantrum that causes her head to swell. Her father deems her unfit to rule and passes the title of queen to her younger sister, the White Queen.


text: Alice learns of an event in both the Queens' pasts that causes friction between the two, and she travels back in time again, hoping to change the Red Queen's character and stop the Jabberwocky from killing the Hatter's family. The young White Queen steals a tart from her mother and eats it. When confronted by their mother, she lies about eating the tart, which gets her sister accused and causes her to run out of the castle in a fit. Alice sees her about to run into a clock and believes this to be the event that deforms her head and personality. She manages to move the clock out of the way, but fails to change the past as the Red Queen actually stumbles and hits her head. Alice is confronted by a weakened Time, who berates her for putting all of time in danger. She runs into a nearby mirror back into the real world, where she wakes up in a mental hospital, diagnosed with female hysteria. With the help of her mother, she returns to Wonderland, where she travels to the Jabberwocky attack and discovers that the Hatter's family did not die, but were captured by the Red Queen's Red Knights.


text: Returning to the present, Alice discovers the Mad Hatter at the brink of death. After Alice tearfully says that she believes him, the Hatter awakens and reforms back to his normal self. The Wonderlanders go to the Red Queen's castle and find the Hatter's family shrunk and trapped in an ant farm. The Red Queen apprehends them and steals the Chronosphere from Alice, taking her sister back to the day she lied about the tart. By the time Alice and Hatter get there, the Red Queen and her past self see each other. This creates a time paradox, and Wonderland quickly turns to rust. Using the Chronosphere, Alice and the Hatter race back to the present, where Alice is able to place the Chronosphere back in its original place. With the Chronosphere stabilized, Wonderland reverts to normal. The Mad Hatter reunites with his family. The White Queen apologizes to her sister for lying, and both of them make amends. Alice bids her friends farewell and returns to the real world where her mother refuses to turn Alice's ship over to Hamish, and the two set to travel the world on behalf of their own company.


text: The film was announced via "Variety" in December 2012. Bobin was first approached about the project while doing post-production work on Disney's "Muppets Most Wanted". Of being asked, Bobin has said that "I just couldn't pass it up", as he has a passion for the works of Lewis Carroll as well as history in general. On January 21, 2014, the film was again retitled to "Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass".


text: In July 2013, it was announced that Johnny Depp would return as the Hatter, with Mia Wasikowska's return confirmed the following November. In January 2014, Sacha Baron Cohen joined the cast to play Time. In May 2014, Rhys Ifans joined the cast to play Zanik Hightopp, the Mad Hatter's father. In developing the character of "Time", Bobin sought to avoid creating a "straight-up bad guy", noting that it would be "a bit dull", and also that the role in that universe already existed in the form of The Red Queen. Instead, Bobin sought to make Time a "Twit", further explaining that "There's no one better at playing the confident idiot trope than Sacha Baron Cohen", and adding that "it was very much with Sacha in mind". Additionally, Toby Jones and John Sessions were originally announced to voice Wilkins and Humpty Dumpty in the film, the roles were eventually given to Matt Vogel and Wally Wingert.


text: Principal photography began on August 4, 2014, at Shepperton Studios. In August 2014, filming took place in Gloucester Docks, which included the use of at least four historic ships: "Kathleen and May", "Irene", "Excelsior", and the "Earl of Pembroke", the last of which was renamed "The Wonder" for filming. Principal photography ended on October 31, 2014.


text: The film's score was composed by Danny Elfman. The soundtrack was released on May 27, 2016, by Walt Disney Records. Pink recorded the song "Just Like Fire" for the film, and also covered Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit", only used in the film's promotional material.


text: "Alice Through the Looking Glass" premiered in London on May 10, 2016, and was theatrically released on May 27, 2016, in the United States by Walt Disney Pictures.


text: "Alice Through the Looking Glass" was released on Blu-ray, DVD, Blu-ray 3D and digital download on October 18, 2016, by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. It debuted at No. 2 in the Blu-ray Disc sales charts.


text: "Alice Through the Looking Glass" grossed $77 million in the United States and Canada and $222.4 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $299.5 million, against a production budget of $170 million. "The Hollywood Reporter" estimated the film lost the studio around $70 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues.


text: "Alice Through the Looking Glass" opened in the United States and Canada on May 27, 2016, alongside "", and was initially projected to gross $55–60 million from 3,763 theaters over its four-day Memorial Day opening weekend, but projections were continuously revised downwards due to poor word of mouth. It had the added benefit of playing in over 3,100 3D theaters, 380 IMAX screens, 77 premium large formats and 79 D-box locations. It made $1.5 million from Thursday previews (to the first film's $3.9 million) and just $9.7 million on its first day, compared to the $41 million opening Friday of its predecessor. Through its opening weekend, it earned $26.9 million, which when compared to its predecessor's $116 million opening is down 70%. While 3D represented 71% ($82 million) of the original film's opening gross, 3D constituted only 41% ($11 million) for this sequel, with 29% coming from traditional 2D shows, 11% from IMAX, and 1% from premium large formats. It was the studio's third production with a low Memorial Day opening after "Tomorrowland" in 2015 and "" in 2010. During its first week, the film grossed $40.1 million. In its second weekend, the film grossed $11.3 million (a 55.1% drop), finishing 4th at the box office.


text: The film was released across 43 countries (72% of its total market place) the same weekend as the US, and was estimated to gross $80–100 million in its opening weekend. It faced competition from "Warcraft" and "X-Men: Apocalypse". It ended up grossing $62.7 million, which is well below the projections of which $4.1 million came from IMAX shows. It had an opening weekend gross in Mexico ($4.5 million), Brazil ($4.1 million), and Russia ($3.9 million). In the United Kingdom and Ireland, it had an unsuccessful opening by grossing just £2.23 million ($3.1 million) during its opening weekend, a mere 21% of the first film's £10.56 million ($15.2 million) opening from 603 theaters. It debuted in second place behind "" which was on its second weekend of play. In China, it had an opening day of an estimated $7.3 million and went on to score the second biggest Disney live-action (non-Marvel or Lucasfilm) opening ever with $26.6 million, behind only "The Jungle Book". However, this was down from its $35–45 million projections. It debuted at the No. 1 spot among newly released film in Japan with $5.2 million and $4.1 million on Saturday and Sunday. By comparison, the first film opened with $14 million on its way to a $133.6 million a total.


text: Rotten Tomatoes reports that of reviews are positive, and the average rating is . The website's critical consensus reads, ""Alice Through the Looking Glass" is just as visually impressive as its predecessor, but that isn't enough to cover for an underwhelming story that fails to live up to its classic characters." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, the same grade earned by its predecessor, while those at PostTrak gave it an overall positive score of 79% and a "definite recommend" of 51%.


text: Stephen Holden of "The New York Times" wrote in his review, "What does all this have to do with Lewis Carroll? Hardly anything" and that overall, "It's just an excuse on which to hang two trite overbearing fables and one amusing one". Ty Burr of "The Boston Globe" gave the movie 1.5 out of 4 stars and called the film, "gaudy, loud, complacent, and vulgar." Stephen Whitty of "New York Daily News" called the film "hugely expensive and extravagantly stupid" and that, overall, the movie "is just one more silly Hollywood mashup, an innocent fantasy morphed into a noisy would-be blockbuster". Matt Zoller Seitz of "RogerEbert.com" was deeply critical of "Alice Through the Looking Glass", calling it "junk rehashed from a movie that was itself a rehash of Lewis Carroll" and describing it as "the most offensive kind of film" due to its blockbuster tropes, lack of magic and wonder, and perceived sole purpose of financial gain.


text: Kyle Smith of "New York Post" gave the film a positive review: "The screenplay (by Linda Woolverton) isn't exactly heaving with brilliant ideas, but it works well enough as a blank canvas against which the special-effects team goes bonkers". Matthew Lickona of "San Diego Reader" said that while he found the visual effects to be "stupidly expensive" and the story familiar, he called it, "a solid kids’ movie in the old style".


title: Babylon 5

text: Babylon 5 is an American space opera television series created by writer and producer J. Michael Straczynski, under the Babylonian Productions label, in association with Straczynski's Synthetic Worlds Ltd. and Warner Bros. Domestic Television. After the successful airing of a test pilot movie on February 22, 1993, "", Warner Bros. commissioned the series for production in May 1993 as part of its Prime Time Entertainment Network (PTEN). The show premiered in the US on January 26, 1994, and ran for five 22-episode seasons.


title: Babylon 5

text: The series follows the human military staff and alien diplomats stationed on a space station, "Babylon 5", built in the aftermath of several major inter-species wars as a neutral ground for galactic diplomacy and trade. Major plotlines included "Babylon 5" embroilment in a millennial cyclic conflict between ancient races, inter-race wars and their aftermaths, and intra-race intrigue and upheaval. The human characters, in particular, become pivotal to the resistance against Earth's descent into totalitarianism.


title: Babylon 5

text: Many episodes focused on the effect of wider events on individual characters, with episodes containing themes such as personal change, loss, oppression, corruption and redemption.


title: Babylon 5

text: Unusual at the time of its airing, "Babylon 5" was conceived as a "novel for television" with a pre-planned five-year story arc, each episode envisioned as a "chapter". Whereas contemporary television shows tended to maintain the overall status quo, confining conflicts to individual episodes, "Babylon 5" featured story arcs which spanned multiple episodes and even seasons, effecting permanent changes to the series universe. Tie-in novels, comic books, and short stories were also developed to play a significant canonical part in the overall story.


title: Babylon 5

text: Straczynski announced plans for a reboot of the series in September 2021 in conjunction with Warner Bros. Television, to air on The CW.


title: Babylon 5

text: The main "Babylon 5" story arc occurs between the years 2257 and 2262. The show depicts a future where Earth has a unified Earth government and has gained the technology for faster-than-light travel using 'jump gates', a kind of wormhole technology allowing transport through the alternate dimension of hyperspace. The Colonies within the solar system and beyond make up the Earth Alliance, which has established contact with other spacefaring species. Ten years before the series is set, Earth barely escaped destruction by the technologically superior Minbari, who sought revenge after an Earth starship unwittingly killed their leader during first contact, only for them to unexpectedly surrender on the brink of victory. Earth has since established peaceful relationships with them and the Earth Alliance has become a significant and generally respected power within the galactic community.


title: Babylon 5

text: Among the other species are the imperialist Centauri; the Narn, who only recently gained independence from the Centauri empire; and the mysterious, powerful Vorlons. Several dozen less powerful species from the League of Non-Aligned Worlds also have diplomatic contact with the major races, including the Drazi, Brakiri, Vree, Markab, and pak'ma'ra. An ancient and secretive race, the Shadows, unknown to humans but documented in many other races' religious texts, malevolently influence events to bring chaos and war among the known species.


title: Babylon 5

text: The "Babylon 5" space station is located in the Epsilon Eridani system, at the fifth Lagrangian point of the fictional planet Epsilon III and its moon. It is an O'Neill cylinder long and in diameter. The station is the last of its line; the first three stations were all destroyed during construction, while "Babylon 4" was completed but mysteriously vanished shortly after being made operational. It contains living areas which accommodate various alien species, providing differing atmospheres and gravities. Human visitors to the alien sectors are shown using breathing equipment and other measures to tolerate the conditions.


title: Babylon 5

text: In addition, several other actors have filled more than one minor role on the series. Kim Strauss played the Drazi Ambassador in four episodes, as well as nine other characters in ten more episodes. Some actors had difficulty dealing with the application of prosthetics required to play some of the alien characters. The producers therefore used the same group of people (as many as 12) in various mid-level speaking roles, taking full head and body casts from each. The group came to be unofficially known by the production as the "Babylon 5 Alien Rep Group."


title: Babylon 5

text: The five seasons of the series each correspond to one fictional sequential year in the period 2258–2262. Each season shares its title with an episode that is central to that season's plot.


title: Babylon 5

text: In the pilot film, "", the Vorlon ambassador is nearly killed by an assassin shortly after arriving at the station. Commander Sinclair is the prime suspect.


title: Babylon 5

text: Sinclair, the commander of "Babylon 5", is a hero of the Minbari war, troubled by his inability to remember events of the war's last day. Though supported by Minbari ambassador Delenn, who is secretly a member of the Minbari ruling Grey Council, other Minbari remain distrustful of him. The Narn have recently succeeded in regaining their independence from Centauri, and Centauri ambassador Mollari finds a new ally in the enigmatic Mr. Morden to strike back at the Narn. Xenophobic groups on Earth challenge humanity's contact with aliens, and President Santiago, who has favored such contact, is assassinated.


title: Babylon 5

text: Sinclair is transferred to be ambassador to Minbar, and Sheridan is assigned command of the station by his superior officer, General Hague. Hague and Sheridan believe Santiago's death is part of a conspiracy as now-president Clark takes steps to isolate Earth and install a totalitarian government. The aging Centauri Emperor dies and, against his wishes, Mollari and his ally Lord Refa replace him with his unstable nephew Cartagia. Aided by Morden's allies, the Shadows, the Centauri initiate a full-scale attack on the Narn homeworld, re-conquering it. Vorlon ambassador Kosh requests Sheridan's help to fight the Shadows.


title: Babylon 5

text: Sheridan and Delenn establish a "conspiracy of light" to fight the influence of the Shadows. When Clark declares martial law, Sheridan declares "Babylon 5" independence from Earth government. Mollari realizes his deal with Morden has become dangerous but is unable to end it. In retaliation for involving the Vorlons in the war, Kosh is assassinated by the Shadows. Sinclair travels back in time to become Valen, the legendary Minbari religious leader. Despite Kosh's warnings, Sheridan goes to Z'ha'dum, the Shadow homeworld, and crashes a spacecraft filled with explosives on it, seemingly dying in the explosion.


title: Babylon 5

text: Sheridan is rescued from Z'ha'dum by the mysterious Lorien. With the Shadows in retreat, the Vorlons further their efforts to destroy any species touched by the Shadows. Mollari overthrows Cartagia with the aid of Narn ambassador G'Kar. Sheridan discovers the Vorlons and Shadows have used the younger races in a proxy war, and convinces both sides to stop the war and leave the younger races in peace. Sheridan leads Minbar, Centauri, and Narn to form a new Interstellar Alliance. With their help, Sheridan is able to free Earth from control of President Clark and install a new, more peaceful regime.


title: Babylon 5

text: A group of rogue human telepaths take sanctuary on the station, seeking Sheridan's aid to escape the control of Psi Corps, the autocratic Earth agency that oversees telepaths. Remnants of the Shadows' allies attempt to break up the Alliance by setting the various races against each other, and they manipulate events on Centauri Prime to install Mollari as Emperor, but under their control. Mollari withdraws the Centauri from the Alliance. Twenty years later, Sheridan has a last reunion with his friends before leaving to join Lorien and the older races "beyond the rim".


title: Babylon 5

text: The original show spawned a multimedia franchise of spin-offs consisting of a miniseries, five television movies, twenty-two novels, two tabletop games (an RPG and a wargame), and various other media such as technical books, comics, and trading cards.


title: Babylon 5

text: Having worked on a number of television science fiction shows which had regularly gone over budget, Straczynski concluded that a lack of long-term planning was to blame, and set about looking at ways in which a series could be done responsibly. Taking note of the lessons of mainstream television, which brought stories to a centralized location such as a hospital, police station, or law office, he decided that instead of "[going] in search of new worlds, building them anew each week", a fixed space station setting would keep costs at a reasonable level. A fan of sagas such as the "Foundation" series, "Childhood's End", "The Lord of the Rings", "Dune" and the "Lensman" series, Straczynski wondered why no one had done a television series with the same epic sweep, and concurrently with the first idea started developing the concept for a vastly ambitious epic covering massive battles and other universe-changing events. Realizing that both the fixed-locale series and the epic could be done in a single series, he began to sketch the initial outline of what would become "Babylon 5".


title: Babylon 5

text: Straczynski set five goals for "Babylon 5". He said that the show "would have to be good science fiction". It would also have to be good television, "and rarely are SF shows both good SF *and* good TV; there're generally one or the other." It would have to do for science fiction television what "Hill Street Blues" had done for police dramas, by taking an adult approach to the subject. It would have to be reasonably budgeted, and "it would have to look unlike anything ever seen before on TV, presenting individual stories against a much broader canvas." He further stressed that his approach was "to take [science fiction] seriously, to build characters for grown-ups, to incorporate real science but keep the characters at the center of the story." Some of the staples of television science fiction were also out of the question (the show would have "no kids or cute robots"). The idea was not to present a perfect utopian future, but one with greed and homelessness; one where characters grow, develop, live, and die; one where not everything was the same at the end of the day's events. Citing Mark Twain as an influence, Straczynski said he wanted the show to be a mirror to the real world and to covertly teach.


title: Babylon 5

text: Following production on "Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future", Straczynski approached John Copeland and Doug Netter, who had also been involved with "Captain Power" and showed him the bible and pilot script for his show, and both were impressed with his ideas. They were able to secure an order for the pilot from Warner Bros. who were looking at the time to get programming for a planned broadcast network. Warner Bros. had remained skeptical about the show even after greenlighting the pilot. According to Straczynski, Warner Bros. had three main concerns: that American attention spans were too short for a series-long narrative to work, that it would be difficult to sell the show into syndication as the syndicate networks would air the episodes out of order, and that no other science-fiction television show outside of "Star Trek" had gone more than three seasons before it was canceled. Straczynski had proved out that the syndication fear was incorrect, since syndicate stations told him they show their shows in episode order to track broadcasts for royalties; however, he could not assure Warner Bros. about the attention span or premature cancellation concerns, but still set out to show Warner Bros. they were wrong.


title: Babylon 5

text: Straczynski wrote 92 of the 110 episodes of "Babylon 5", including all 44 episodes in the third and fourth seasons, a feat never before accomplished in American television. Other writers to have contributed scripts to the show include Peter David, Neil Gaiman, Kathryn M. Drennan, Lawrence G. DiTillio, D. C. Fontana, and David Gerrold. Harlan Ellison, a creative consultant on the show, received story credits for two episodes. Each writer was informed of the overarching storyline, enabling the show to be produced consistently under-budget. The rules of production were strict; scripts were written six episodes in advance, and changes could not be made once production had started.


title: Babylon 5

text: With not all cast members being hired for every episode of a season, the five-year plot length caused some planning difficulties. If a critical scene involving an actor not hired for every episode had to be moved, that actor had to be paid for work on an extra episode. It was sometimes necessary to adjust the plotline to accommodate external influences, an example being the "trap door" that was written for every character: in the event of that actor's unexpected departure from the series, the character could be written out with minimal impact on the storyline. Straczynski stated, "As a writer, doing a long-term story, it'd be dangerous and short-sighted for me to construct the story without trap doors for every single character. ... That was one of the big risks going into a long-term storyline which I considered long in advance;..." This device was eventually used to facilitate the departures of Claudia Christian and Andrea Thompson from the series.


title: Babylon 5

text: Straczynski purposely went light on elements of the five-year narrative during the first season as he felt the audience would not be ready for the full narrative at that time, but he still managed to drop in some scenes that would be critical to the future narrative. This also made it challenging for the actors to understand their motivations without knowing where their characters were going; Straczynski said "I didn't want to tell them too much, because that risks having them play the result, rather than the process." He recalled that Peter Jurasik had asked him about the context of Londo's premonition, shown partially in "Midnight on the Firing Line", of himself and G'Kar choking each other to death, but Straczynski had to be coy about it. The full death scene was shown in context in "War Without End - Part 2" near the end of the third season.


title: Babylon 5

text: During production of the fourth season, the Prime Time Entertainment Network, which Warner Bros. opted to use for "Babylon 5", was shut down, leaving the planned fifth season in doubt. Unwilling to short-change fans of the show, Straczynski began preparing modifications to the fourth season that would allow him to conclude his overall arc should a fifth season not be greenlit, which ultimately became the direction the fourth season took. Straczynski identified three primary narrative threads which would require resolution: the Shadow war, Earth's slide into a dictatorship, and a series of sub-threads which branched off from those. Estimating they would still take around 27 episodes to resolve without having the season feel rushed, the solution came when the TNT network commissioned two "Babylon 5" television films. Several hours of material was thus able to be moved into the films, including a three-episode arc which would deal with the background to the Earth–Minbari War, and a sub-thread which would have set up the sequel series, "Crusade". Further standalone episodes and plot-threads were dropped from season four, which could be inserted into "Crusade", or the fifth season, were it to be given the greenlight. The intended series finale, "Sleeping in Light", was filmed during season four as a precaution against cancellation. When word came that TNT had picked up "Babylon 5", this was moved to the end of season five and replaced with a newly filmed season four finale, "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars".


title: Babylon 5

text: Ann Bruice Aling was costume designer for the show, after production designer John Iacovelli suggested her for the position having previously worked with Bruice on a number of film and theatrical productions.


title: Babylon 5

text: With the variety of costumes required she compared "Babylon 5" to "eclectic theatre", with fewer rules about period, line, shape and textures having to be adhered to. Preferring natural materials whenever possible, such as ostrich leather in the Narn body armor, Bruice combined and layered fabrics as diverse as rayon and silk with brocades from the 1930s and '40s to give the clothing the appearance of having evolved within different cultures.


title: Babylon 5

text: With an interest in costume history, she initially worked closely with Straczynski to get a sense of the historical perspective of the major alien races, "so I knew if they were a peaceful people or a warring people, cold climate etc. and then I would interpret what kind of sensibility that called for." Collaborating with other departments to establish co-ordinated visual themes for each race, a broad palette of colors was developed with Iacovelli, which he referred to as "spicy brights". These warm shades of gray and secondary colors, such as certain blues for the Minbari, would often be included when designing both the costumes and relevant sets. As the main characters evolved, Bruice referred back to Straczynski and producer John Copeland who she viewed as "surprisingly more accessible to me as advisors than other producers and directors", so the costumes could reflect these changes. Ambassador Londo Mollari's purple coat became dark blue and more tailored while his waistcoats became less patterned and brightly colored as Bruice felt "Londo has evolved in my mind from a buffoonish character to one who has become more serious and darker."


title: Babylon 5

text: Normally there were three changes of costume for the primary actors; one for on set, one for the stunt double and one on standby in case of "coffee spills". For human civilians, garments were generally purchased off-the-rack and altered in various ways, such as removing lapels from jackets and shirts while rearranging closures, to suggest future fashions. For some of the main female characters a more couture approach was taken, as in the suits worn by Talia Winters which Bruice described as being designed and fitted to within "an inch of their life". Costumes for the destitute residents of downbelow would be distressed through a combination of bleaching, sanding, dipping in dye baths and having stage blood added.


title: Babylon 5

text: Like many of the crew on the show, members of the costume department made onscreen cameos. During the season 4 episode "Atonement", the tailors and costume supervisor appeared as the Minbari women fitting Zack Allan for his new uniform as the recently promoted head of security. His complaints, and the subsequent stabbing of him with a needle by costume supervisor Kim Holly, was a light-hearted reference to the previous security uniforms, a design carried over from the pilot movie which were difficult to work with and wear due to the combination of leather and wool.


title: Babylon 5

text: While the original pilot film featured some aliens which were puppets and animatronics, the decision was made early on in the show's production to portray most alien species as humanoid in appearance. Barring isolated appearances, fully computer-generated aliens were discounted as an idea due to the "massive rendering power" required. Long-term use of puppets and animatronics was also discounted, as Straczynski believed they would not be able to convey "real emotion" without an actor inside.


title: Babylon 5

text: In anticipation of the emerging HDTV standard, rather than the usual format, the series was shot in , with the image cropped to 4:3 for initial television transmissions. It was one of the first television shows to use computer technology in creating visual effects, rather than models and miniatures, primarily out of budgetary concerns; Straczynski estimated that each of their episodes cost to make, compared to the cost of each episode of "". The visual effects were achieved using Amiga-based Video Toasters at first, and later Pentium, Macintosh, and Alpha-based systems using LightWave 3D. The effects sequences were designed to simulate Newtonian physics, with particular emphasis on the effects of inertia on the motion of spacecraft.


title: Babylon 5

text: Foundation Imaging provided the special effects for the pilot film (for which it won an Emmy) and the first three seasons of the show, led by Ron Thornton. After co-executive producer Douglas Netter and producer John Copeland approached Straczynski with the idea of producing the effects in-house, Straczynski agreed to replace Foundation, for season 4 and 5, once a new team had been established by Netter Digital, and an equal level of quality was assured, by using similar technology and a number of former Foundation employees. The Emmy-winning alien make-up was provided by Optic Nerve Studios.


title: Babylon 5

text: Christopher Franke composed and scored the musical soundtrack for all five years of the show when Stewart Copeland, who worked on the original telefilm, was unable to return for the first season due to recording and touring commitments.


title: Babylon 5

text: Initially concerned composing for an episodic television show could become "annoying because of the repetition", Franke found the evolving characters and story of "Babylon 5" afforded him the opportunity to continually take new directions. Given creative freedom by the producers, Franke also orchestrated and mixed all the music, which one reviewer described as having "added another dimension of mystery, suspense, and excitement to the show, with an easily distinguishable character that separates 'Babylon 5 from other sci-fi television entries of the era."


title: Babylon 5

text: With his recording studio in the same building as his home located in the Hollywood Hills, Franke would attend creative meetings before scoring the on average 25 minutes of music for each episode. Using the "acoustic dirt produced by live instruments and the ability to play so well between two semitones" and the "frequency range, dynamics and control" provided by synthesizers, he described his approach "as experimental friendly as possible without leaving the happy marriage between the orchestral and electronic sounds".


title: Babylon 5

text: Using Cubase software through an electronic keyboard, or for more complex pieces a light pen and graphics tablet, he would begin by developing the melodic content round which the ambient components and transitions were added. Using playbacks with digital samples of the appropriate instruments, such as a group of violins, he would decide which tracks to produce electronically or record acoustically.


title: Babylon 5

text: Scores for the acoustic tracks were emailed to his Berlin scoring stage, and would require from four musicians to the full orchestra, with a maximum of 24 present at any one time. One of three conductors would also be required for any score that involved more than six musicians. Franke would direct recording sessions via six fiber optic digital telephone lines to transmit and receive video, music and the SMPTE timecode. The final edit and mixing of the tracks would take place in his Los Angeles studio.


title: Babylon 5

text: A total of 24 episode and three television film soundtracks were released under Franke's record label, Sonic Images Records, between 1995 and 2001. These contain the musical scores in the same chronological order as they played in the corresponding episodes, or television films. Three compilation albums were also produced, containing extensively re-orchestrated and remixed musical passages taken from throughout the series to create more elaborate suites. In 2007 his soundtrack for was released under the Varèse Sarabande record label.


title: Babylon 5

text: Warner Bros. slotted the show to premiere on its nascent Prime Time Entertainment Network (PTEN). As original content from another studio, it was somewhat anomalous in a stable of syndicated content from Warner Bros. and the cause of some friction between Straczynski's company and Warner Bros.


title: Babylon 5

text: The pilot film, , premiered on February 22, 1993, with strong viewing figures, achieving a 9.7 in the Nielsen national syndication rankings. The regular series initially aired from January 26, 1994 through November 25, 1998, first on PTEN, then in first-run syndication, debuting with a 6.8 rating/10 share. Figures dipped in its second week, and while it posted a solid 5.0 rating/8 share, with an increase in several major markets, ratings for the first season continued to fall, to a low of 3.4 during reruns. Ratings remained low-to-middling throughout the first four seasons, but "Babylon 5" scored well with the demographics required to attract the leading national sponsors and saved up to $300,000 per episode by shooting off the studio lot, therefore remaining profitable. The fifth season, which aired on cable network TNT, had ratings about 1.0% lower than seasons two through four.


title: Babylon 5

text: In the United Kingdom, the show aired every week on Channel 4 without a break, with the result that the last four or five episodes of the early seasons screened in the UK before the US. "Babylon 5" was one of the better-rated US television shows on Channel 4, and achieved high audience Appreciation Indexes, with the season 4 episode "Endgame" achieving the rare feat of beating the prime-time soap operas for first position.


title: Babylon 5

text: Straczynski stated that PTEN only required the show to be profitable for the network to remain in production, and said that while this was the case for its first four seasons, on paper it was always losing money; he also remarked in a 2019 interview that in terms of contractual profit definition the show remained about in the red on paper, and stated that he had therefore never made any profits on "Babylon 5". The entire series cost an estimated $90 million for 110 episodes.


title: Babylon 5

text: "Babylon 5" successfully completed its five-year story arc on November 25, 1998, after five seasons and 109 aired episodes, when TNT aired the 110th (epilogue) episode "Sleeping in Light," which had been filmed as the Season finale 4 when "Babylon 5" was under threat of ending production at that point. After a fifth season was assured, a new Season 4 finale was used so that "Sleeping in Light" could remain as the series finale.


title: Babylon 5

text: In November 2020 a remastered version of the show in 4:3 format was released to the iTunes Store and Amazon Prime Video. This version uses the original negatives for filmed elements, and algorithmically upscales the digitally created elements to HD resolution with fewer visual artifacts, for a more visually consistent presentation. In January 2021, it was made available for streaming on HBO Max.


title: Babylon 5

text: Throughout its run, "Babylon 5" found ways to portray themes relevant to modern and historical social issues. It marked several firsts in television science fiction, such as the exploration of the political and social landscapes of the first human colonies, their interactions with Earth, and the underlying tensions. "Babylon 5" was also one of the first television science fiction shows to denotatively refer to a same-sex relationship. In the show, sexual orientation is as much of an issue as "being left-handed or right-handed". Unrequited love is explored as a source of pain for the characters, though not all the relationships end unhappily.


title: Babylon 5

text: The clash between order and chaos, and the people caught in between, plays an important role in "Babylon 5". The conflict between two unimaginably powerful older races, the Vorlons and the Shadows, is represented as a battle between competing ideologies, each seeking to turn the humans and the other younger races to their beliefs. The Vorlons represent an authoritarian philosophy of unquestioning obedience. Vorlon characters frequently ask, "who are you?" focusing on identity as a catalyst for shaping personal goals; the intention is not to solicit a correct answer, but to "tear down the artifices we construct around ourselves until we're left facing ourselves, not our roles." The Shadows represent another authoritarian philosophy cloaked in a disguise of evolution through fire, of fomenting conflict in order to promote evolutionary progress. Characters affiliated with the Shadows repeatedly ask, "what do you want?" emphasising personal desire and ambition, using it to shape identity, encouraging conflict between groups who choose to serve their own glory or profit. The representation of order and chaos was informed by the Babylonian myth that the universe was born in the conflict between both. The climax of this conflict comes with the younger races' exposing of the Vorlons' and the Shadows' "true faces" and the rejection of both philosophies, heralding the dawn of a new age without their interference.


title: Babylon 5

text: The notion that the war was about "killing your parents" is echoed in the portrayal of the civil war between the human colonies and Earth. Deliberately dealing in historical and political metaphor, with particular emphasis upon McCarthyism and the HUAC, the Earth Alliance becomes increasingly authoritarian, eventually sliding into a dictatorship. The show examines the impositions on civil liberties under the pretext of greater defense against outside threats which aid its rise, and the self-delusion of a populace which believes its moral superiority will never allow a dictatorship to come to power, until it is too late. The successful rebellion led by the Babylon 5 station results in the restoration of a democratic government and true autonomy for Mars and the colonies.


title: Babylon 5

text: The "Babylon 5" universe portrays numerous armed conflicts on an interstellar scale, including the Dilgar war, Narn-Centauri conflict, Minbari civil war, Drakh War, Interstellar Alliance-Centauri war, and the Great Burn. The story begins in the aftermath of a war which brought the human race to the brink of extinction, caused by a misunderstanding during a first contact with the Minbari. Babylon 5 is built to foster peace through diplomacy, described as the "last, best hope for peace" in the opening credits monologue during its first three seasons. Wars between separate alien civilizations are featured. The conflict between the Narn and the Centauri is followed from its beginnings as a minor territorial dispute amplified by historical animosity, through to its end, in which weapons of mass destruction are employed to subjugate and enslave a planet. The war is an attempt to portray a more sobering kind of conflict than usually seen on science fiction television. Informed by the events of the first Gulf War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Soviet invasion of Prague, the intent was to recreate these moments when "the world held its breath" and the emotional core of the conflict was the disbelief that the situation could have occurred at all, and the desperation to find a way to bring it to an end. By the start of the third season, the opening monolog had changed to say that the hope for peace had "failed" and the Babylon 5 station had become the "last, best hope for victory", indicating that while peace is ostensibly a laudable goal, it can also mean a capitulation to an enemy intent on committing horrendous acts and that "peace is a byproduct of victory against those who do not want peace."


title: Babylon 5

text: The Shadow War also features prominently in the show, wherein the Shadows work to instigate conflict between other races to promote technological and cultural advancement, opposed by the Vorlons who are attempting to impose their own authoritarian philosophy of obedience. The gradual discovery of the scheme and the rebellion against it underpin the first three seasons, but also as a wider metaphor for competing forces of order and chaos. In that respect, Straczynski stated he presented Earth's descent into a dictatorship as its own "shadow war". In ending the Shadow War before the conclusion of the series, the show was able to more fully explore its aftermath, and it is this "war at home" which forms the bulk of the remaining two seasons. The struggle for independence between Mars and Earth culminates with a civil war between the human colonies (led by the Babylon 5 station) and the home planet. Choosing Mars as both the spark for the civil war, and the staging ground for its dramatic conclusion, enabled the viewer to understand the conflict more fully than had it involved an anonymous colony orbiting a distant star. The conflict, and the reasons behind it, were informed by Nazism, McCarthyism and the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the destruction of the state also served as partial inspiration for the Minbari civil war.


title: Babylon 5

text: The post-war landscape has its roots in the Reconstruction. The attempt to resolve the issues of the American Civil War after the conflict had ended, and this struggle for survival in a changed world was also informed by works such as "Alas, Babylon", a novel dealing with the after-effects of a nuclear war on a small American town. The show expresses that the end of these wars is not an end to war itself. Events shown hundreds of years into the show's future tell of wars which will once again bring the human race to the edge of annihilation, demonstrating that humanity will not change, and the best that can be hoped for after it falls is that it climbs a little higher each time, until it can one day "take [its] place among the stars, teaching those who follow."


title: Babylon 5

text: Many of Earth's contemporary religions are shown to still exist, with the main human characters often having religious convictions. Among those specifically identified are the Roman Catholic branch of Christianity (including the Jesuits), Judaism, and the fictional Foundationism (which developed after first contact with alien races). Alien beliefs in the show range from the Centauri's Bacchanalian-influenced religions, of which there are up to seventy different denominations, to the more pantheistic as with the Narn and Minbari religions. In the show's third season, a community of Cistercian monks takes up residence on the Babylon 5 station, in order to learn what other races call God, and to come to a better understanding of the different religions through study at close quarters.


title: Babylon 5

text: References to both human and alien religion is often subtle and brief, but can also form the main theme of an episode. The first season episode "The Parliament of Dreams" is a conventional "showcase" for religion, in which each species on the Babylon 5 station has an opportunity to demonstrate its beliefs (humanity's are presented as being numerous and varied), while "Passing Through Gethsemane" focuses on a specific position of Roman Catholic beliefs, as well as concepts of justice, vengeance, and biblical forgiveness. Other treatments have been more contentious, such as the David Gerrold-scripted "Believers", in which alien parents would rather see their son die than undergo a life-saving operation because their religious beliefs forbid it.


title: Babylon 5

text: When religion is an integral part of an episode, various characters express differing view points. In the episode "Soul Hunter", where the concept of an immortal soul is touched upon, and whether after death it is destroyed, reincarnated, or simply does not exist. The character arguing the latter, Doctor Stephen Franklin, often appears in the more spiritual storylines as his scientific rationality is used to create dramatic conflict. Undercurrents of religions such as Buddhism have been viewed by some in various episode scripts, and while identifying himself as an atheist, Straczynski believes that passages of dialog can take on distinct meanings to viewers of differing faiths, and that the show ultimately expresses ideas which cross religious boundaries.


title: Babylon 5

text: Substance abuse and its impact on human personalities also features in the "Babylon 5" storyline. Garibaldi is a relapsing-remitting alcoholic, who practices complete abstinence throughout most of the series until the middle of season five, only recovering at the end of the season. Zack Allan, his eventual replacement as chief of security, was given a second chance by Garibaldi after overcoming his own addiction to an unspecified drug. Dr. Stephen Franklin develops an addiction to injectable stimulant drugs while trying to cope with the chronic stress and work overload in Medlab, and takes a leave of absence from his position to recover. Executive Officer Susan Ivanova mentions that her father became an alcoholic after her mother's suicide. Captain Elizabeth Lochley tells Garibaldi that her father was an alcoholic, and that she is a recovering alcoholic herself.


title: Babylon 5

text: "Babylon 5" draws upon a number of cultural, historical, political and religious influences to inform and illustrate its characters and storylines. Straczynski has stated that there was no intent to wholly represent any particular period of history or preceding work of fiction, but has acknowledged their influence on the series, insamuch as it uses similar well established storytelling structures, such as the hero's journey.


title: Babylon 5

text: There are a number of specific literary references. Several episodes take their titles from Shakespearean monologs, and at least one character quotes Shakespeare directly. The Psi-Cop Alfred Bester was named after the science fiction author of the same name, as his work influenced the autocratic Psi Corps organization the character represents.


title: Babylon 5

text: There are a number of references to the legend of King Arthur, with ships named "Excalibur" appearing in the main series and the "Crusade" spin-off, and a character in "A Late Delivery from Avalon" claiming to possess the sword itself. Straczynski links the incident which sparked the Earth-Minbari war, in which actions are misinterpreted during a tense situation, to a sequence in "Le Morte d'Arthur", in which a standoff between two armies turns violent when innocent actions are misinterpreted as hostile.


title: Babylon 5

text: The series also references contemporary and ancient history. The Centauri are in part modeled on the Roman empire. Emperor Cartagia believes himself to be a god, a deliberate reference to Caligula. His eventual assassination leads to the ascension of Londo and eventually Vir, both unlikely candidates for the throne, similar to Claudius' improbable ascension after Caligula was assassinated. The series also references the novel I, Claudius by Robert Graves when Cartagia jokes that he has cured a man of his cough after having him beheaded, something also done by Caligula. In the episode "In the Shadow of Z'ha'dhum," Sheridan ponders Winston Churchill's Coventry dilemma, of whether or not to act on covertly gathered intelligence during a war. Lives would be saved, but at the risk of revealing to the enemy that their intentions are known, which may be far more damaging in the long term. The swearing in of Vice President Morgan Clark invokes the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, being deliberately staged to mirror the scene aboard Air Force One when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President.


title: Babylon 5

text: Although Straczynski is a professed atheist, "Babylon 5" refers to the Christian faith in a number of places. Several episodes have titles which refer to the Christian faith, such as "Passing Through Gethsemane", "A Voice in the Wilderness," and "And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place," the latter being a line from the gospel song "There's no Hiding Place Down Here." The monks led by Brother Theo who, in the episode "Convictions," take up residence on Babylon 5, belong to the Dominican Order, a Roman Catholic mendicant Order.


title: Babylon 5

text: The show employed Internet marketing to create a buzz among online readers far in advance of the airing of the pilot episode, with Straczynski participating in online communities on USENET (in the rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated newsgroup), and the GEnie and CompuServe systems before the Web came together as it exists today. The station's location, in "grid epsilon" at coordinates of 470/18/22, was a reference to GEnie ("grid epsilon" = "GE") and the original forum's address on the system's bulletin boards (page 470, category 18, topic 22).


title: Babylon 5

text: Also during this time, Warner Bros. executive Jim Moloshok created and distributed electronic trading cards to help advertise the series. In 1995, Warner Bros. started the Official "Babylon 5" Website on the now defunct Pathfinder portal. In September 1995, they hired series fan Troy Rutter to take over the site and move it to its own domain name, and to oversee the "Keyword B5" area on America Online.


title: Babylon 5

text: Straczynski indicated that Paramount Television was aware of his concept as early as 1989, when he attempted to sell the show to the studio, and provided them with the series bible, pilot script, artwork, lengthy character background histories, and plot synopses for 22 "or so planned episodes taken from the overall course of the planned series".


title: Babylon 5

text: Paramount declined to produce "Babylon 5", but later announced "" was in development, two months after Warner Bros. announced its plans for "Babylon 5". Unlike previous "Star Trek" shows, "Deep Space Nine" was based on a space station, and had themes similar to those of "Babylon 5", which drew some to compare it with "Babylon 5". Straczynski stated that, even though he was confident that "Deep Space Nine" producer/creators Rick Berman and Michael Piller had not seen this material, he suspected that Paramount executives used his bible and scripts to steer development of "Deep Space Nine". Straczynski and Warner did not file suit against Paramount, largely because he believed it would negatively affect both TV series. He argued the same when confronted by claims that the lack of legal action was proof that his allegation was unfounded. According to a 2017 interview with Patricia Tallman, there was a legal case and an out-of-court settlement with Paramount.


title: Babylon 5

text: Generally viewed as having "launched the new era of television CGI visual effects", "Babylon 5" received multiple awards during its initial run, including two consecutive Hugo Awards for best dramatic presentation, and continues to regularly feature prominently in various polls and listings highlighting top-rated science fiction series.


title: Babylon 5

text: "Babylon 5" has been praised for its depth and complexity against a backdrop of contemporary shows which largely lacked long-term consequences, with plots typically being resolved in the course of a single episode, occasionally two. Straczynski was deeply involved in scriptwriting, writing 92 of 110 teleplays, a greater proportion than some of his contemporaries. Reviewers rated the quality of writing on a widely varying scale, identifying both eloquent soliloquies and dialogue that felt "stilted and theatrical."


title: Babylon 5

text: Straczynski has claimed that the multi-year story arc, now a feature of most mainstream televised drama, is the lasting legacy of the series. He stated that both Ronald D. Moore and Damon Lindelof used the 5-year narrative structure of "Babylon 5" as blueprints for their respective shows, "Battlestar Galactica" and "Lost". He also claims "Babylon 5" was the first series to be shot in the , and to use 5.1 channel sound mixes. It was an early example of widespread use of CGI rather than models for space scenes, which allowed for more freedom and larger scale in creating said scenes. While praised at the time, due to budgetary and mastering issues these sequences are considered to have aged poorly.


title: Babylon 5

text: A recurring theme among reviewers is that the series was more than the sum of its parts: while variously criticizing the writing, directing, acting and effects, particularly by comparison to current television productions, reviewers praised the consistency of plotting over the series' run, transcending the quality of its individual elements. Many retrospectives, while criticizing virtually every individual aspect of the production, have praised the series as a whole for its narrative cohesion and contribution to serialized television. Producer John Copeland said: "You're not really tuning in to watch the visual effects," instead, people are watching a two-decades-old show because "the storytelling does hold up" and "you wanna spend more time with the characters."


title: Babylon 5

text: DC began publishing "Babylon 5" comics in 1994, with stories (initially written by Straczynski) that closely tied in with events depicted in the show, with events in the comics eventually being referenced onscreen in the actual television series. The franchise continued to expand into short stories, RPGs, and novels, with the Technomage trilogy of books being the last to be published in 2001, shortly after the spin-off television series, "Crusade", was canceled. Excepting movie rights, which are retained by Straczynski, all production rights for the franchise are owned by Warner Bros.


title: Babylon 5

text: In November 1994, DC began publishing monthly "Babylon 5" comics. A number of short stories and novels were also produced between 1995 and 2001. Additional books were published by the gaming companies Chameleon Eclectic and Mongoose Publishing, to support their desk-top strategy and role-playing games.


title: Babylon 5

text: Three TV films were released by Turner Network Television (TNT) in 1998, after funding a fifth season of "Babylon 5", following the demise of the Prime Time Entertainment Network the previous year. In addition to "", "", and "", they released a re-edited special edition of the original 1993 tv film, "". In 1999, a fifth tv film was also produced, "", which acted as a pilot movie for the spin-off series "Crusade", which TNT canceled after 13 episodes had been filmed.


title: Babylon 5

text: Dell Publishing started publication of a series of "Babylon 5" novels in 1995, which were ostensibly considered canon within the TV series' continuity, nominally supervised by Straczynski, with later novels in the line being more directly based upon Straczynski's own notes and story outlines. In 1997, Del Rey obtained the publication license from Warner Bros., and proceeded to release a number of original trilogies directly scenarized by Straczynski, as well as novelizations of three of the TNT telefilms ("In the Beginning, Thirdspace", and "A Call to Arms"). All of the Del Rey novels are considered completely canonical within the filmic "Babylon 5" universe.


title: Babylon 5

text: In 2000, the Sci-Fi Channel purchased the rights to rerun the "Babylon 5" series, and premiered a new telefilm, "" in 2002, which failed to be picked up as a series. In 2007, the first in a planned anthology of straight-to-DVD short stories entitled "", was released by Warner Home Video, but no others were produced, due to funding issues.


title: Babylon 5

text: Straczynski announced a "Babylon 5" film at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, but stated in 2016 that it had been delayed while he completed other productions. In 2018 Straczynski stated that although he possesses the movie rights, he believed that neither a film nor television series revival would happen while Warner Bros. retained the intellectual property for the TV series, believing that Warner Bros would insist on handling production, and that other studios would be hesitant to produce a film without also having the rights to the TV series.


title: Babylon 5

text: A reboot of "Babylon 5" was announced in September 2021. The reboot is being produced by Straczynski through Studio JMS, and developed by Warner Bros. Television for The CW. As of May 2022, despite several changes at The CW due to numerous cancellations of other shows resulting from the Warner Bros. Discovery merger, the project is still in active development for fall 2023.


title: Babylon 5

text: In July 1995, Warner Home Video began distributing "Babylon 5" VHS video tapes under its Beyond Vision label in the UK. Beginning with the original telefilm, "", these were PAL tapes, showing video in the same 4:3 aspect ratio as the initial television broadcasts. By the release of Season 2, tapes included closed captioning of dialogue and Dolby Surround sound. Columbia House began distributing NTSC tapes, via mail order in 1997, followed by repackaged collector's editions and three-tape boxed sets in 1999, by which time the original pilot telefilm had been replaced by the re-edited TNT special edition. Additional movie and complete season boxed-sets were also released by Warner Bros. until 2000.


title: Babylon 5

text: Image Entertainment released "Babylon 5" laserdiscs between December 1998 and September 1999. Produced on double-sided 12-inch Pioneer discs, each contained two episodes displayed in the 4:3 broadcast aspect-ratio, with Dolby Surround audio and closed captioning for the dialogue. Starting with two TNT telefilms, "" and the re-edited special edition of "The Gathering", Seasons 1 and 5 were released simultaneously over a six-month period. Seasons 2 and 4 followed, but with the decision to halt production due to a drop in sales, precipitated by rumors of a pending DVD release, only the first twelve episodes of Season 2 and the first six episodes of Season 4 were ultimately released.


title: Babylon 5

text: In November 2001, Warner Home Video began distributing "Babylon 5" DVDs with a two-movie set containing the re-edited TNT special edition of "The Gathering" and "In The Beginning". The telefilms were later individually released in region 2 in April 2002, though some markets received the original version of "The Gathering" in identical packaging.


title: Babylon 5

text: DVD boxed sets of the individual seasons, each containing six discs, began being released in October 2002. Each included a printed booklet containing episode summaries, with each disc containing audio options for German, French, and English, plus subtitles in a wider range of languages, including Arabic and Dutch. Video was digitally remastered from original broadcast masters and displayed in anamorphic widescreen with remastered and remixed Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. Disc 1 of each set contained an introduction to the season by Straczynski, while disc 6 included featurettes containing interviews with various production staff, as well as information on the fictional universe, and a gag reel. Three episodes in each season also contained commentary from either Straczynski, members of the main cast, and/or the episode director.


title: Babylon 5

text: Since its initial release, a number of repackaged DVD boxed sets have been produced for various regional markets. With slightly altered cover art, they included no additional content, but the discs were more securely stored in slimline cases, rather than the early "book" format, with hard plastic pages used during the original release of the first three seasons.


title: Babylon 5

text: While the series was in pre-production, studios were looking at ways for their existing shows to make the transition from the then-standard to the widescreen formats that would accompany the next generation of televisions. After visiting Warner Bros., which was stretching the horizontal interval for an episode of "", producer John Copeland convinced them to allow "Babylon 5" to be shot on Super 35mm film stock. "The idea being that we would telecine to 4:3 for the original broadcast of the series. But what it also gave us was a negative that had been shot for the new 16×9 widescreen-format televisions that we knew were on the horizon."


title: Babylon 5

text: Though the CG scenes, and those containing live action combined with digital elements, could have been created in a suitable widescreen format, a cost-saving decision was taken to produce them in the 4:3 aspect ratio. When those images were prepared for widescreen release, the top and bottom of the images were simply cropped, and the remaining image 'blown up' to match the dimensions of the live action footage, noticeably reducing the image quality. The scenes containing live action ready to be composited with matte paintings, CG animation, etc., were delivered on tape already telecined to the 4:3 aspect-ratio, and contained a high level of grain, which resulted in further image noise being present when enlarged and stretched for widescreen.


title: Babylon 5

text: For the purely live-action scenes, rather than using the film negatives, according to Copeland, "Warners had even forgotten that they had those. They used PAL versions and converted them to NTSC for the US market. They actually didn't go back and retransfer the shows." With the resulting aliasing, and the progressive scan transfer of the video to DVD, this has created a number of visual flaws throughout the widescreen release. In particular, quality has been noted to drop significantly in composite shots.


title: Babylon 5

text: In 2020 a new remastered version was created (as detailed above) which restored the original picture quality and repaired the damage to the CGI scenes, although this also involved reverting to the original 4:3 aspect ratio. The negatives were scanned at ultra HD quality and then down converted to HD and upscaling programs were used to enhance the CGI to HD at the same time.


title: Quaternion

text: In mathematics, the quaternion number system extends the complex numbers. Quaternions were first described by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. Hamilton defined a quaternion as the quotient of two "directed lines" in a three-dimensional space, or, equivalently, as the quotient of two vectors. Multiplication of quaternions is noncommutative.


title: Quaternion

text: Quaternions are used in pure mathematics, but also have practical uses in applied mathematics, particularly for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations, such as in three-dimensional computer graphics, computer vision, and crystallographic texture analysis. They can be used alongside other methods of rotation, such as Euler angles and rotation matrices, or as an alternative to them, depending on the application.


title: Quaternion

text: In modern mathematical language, quaternions form a four-dimensional associative normed division algebra over the real numbers, and therefore a ring, being both a division ring and a domain. The algebra of quaternions is often denoted by (for "Hamilton"), or in blackboard bold by formula_2 It can also be given by the Clifford algebra classifications formula_3 In fact, it was the first noncommutative division algebra to be discovered.


title: Quaternion

text: According to the Frobenius theorem, the algebra formula_4 is one of only two finite-dimensional division rings containing a proper subring isomorphic to the real numbers; the other being the complex numbers. These rings are also Euclidean Hurwitz algebras, of which the quaternions are the largest associative algebra (and hence the largest ring). Further extending the quaternions yields the non-associative octonions, which is the last normed division algebra over the real numbers. (The sedenions, the extension of the octonions, have zero divisors and so cannot be a normed division algebra.)


title: Quaternion

text: The unit quaternions can be thought of as a choice of a group structure on the 3-sphere that gives the group Spin(3), which is isomorphic to SU(2) and also to the universal cover of SO(3).


title: Quaternion

text: Quaternions were introduced by Hamilton in 1843. Important precursors to this work included Euler's four-square identity (1748) and Olinde Rodrigues' parameterization of general rotations by four parameters (1840), but neither of these writers treated the four-parameter rotations as an algebra. Carl Friedrich Gauss had also discovered quaternions in 1819, but this work was not published until 1900.


title: Quaternion

text: Hamilton knew that the complex numbers could be interpreted as points in a plane, and he was looking for a way to do the same for points in three-dimensional space. Points in space can be represented by their coordinates, which are triples of numbers, and for many years he had known how to add and subtract triples of numbers. However, for a long time, he had been stuck on the problem of multiplication and division. He could not figure out how to calculate the quotient of the coordinates of two points in space. In fact, Ferdinand Georg Frobenius later proved in 1877 that for a division algebra over the real numbers to be finite-dimensional and associative, it cannot be three-dimensional, and there are only three such division algebras: formula_5 (complex numbers) and formula_4 (quaternions) which have dimension 1, 2, and 4 respectively.


title: Quaternion

text: The great breakthrough in quaternions finally came on Monday 16 October 1843 in Dublin, when Hamilton was on his way to the Royal Irish Academy where he was going to preside at a council meeting. As he walked along the towpath of the Royal Canal with his wife, the concepts behind quaternions were taking shape in his mind. When the answer dawned on him, Hamilton could not resist the urge to carve the formula for the quaternions,


title: Quaternion

text: into the stone of Brougham Bridge as he paused on it. Although the carving has since faded away, there has been an annual pilgrimage since 1989 called the Hamilton Walk for scientists and mathematicians who walk from Dunsink Observatory to the Royal Canal bridge in remembrance of Hamilton's discovery.


title: Quaternion

text: On the following day, Hamilton wrote a letter to his friend and fellow mathematician, John T. Graves, describing the train of thought that led to his discovery. This letter was later published in a letter to the "London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science"; Hamilton states:


title: Quaternion

text: Hamilton called a quadruple with these rules of multiplication a "quaternion", and he devoted most of the remainder of his life to studying and teaching them. Hamilton's treatment is more geometric than the modern approach, which emphasizes quaternions' algebraic properties. He founded a school of "quaternionists", and he tried to popularize quaternions in several books. The last and longest of his books, "Elements of Quaternions", was 800 pages long; it was edited by his son and published shortly after his death.


title: Quaternion

text: After Hamilton's death, the Scottish mathematical physicist Peter Tait became the chief exponent of quaternions. At this time, quaternions were a mandatory examination topic in Dublin. Topics in physics and geometry that would now be described using vectors, such as kinematics in space and Maxwell's equations, were described entirely in terms of quaternions. There was even a professional research association, the Quaternion Society, devoted to the study of quaternions and other hypercomplex number systems.


title: Quaternion

text: From the mid-1880s, quaternions began to be displaced by vector analysis, which had been developed by Josiah Willard Gibbs, Oliver Heaviside, and Hermann von Helmholtz. Vector analysis described the same phenomena as quaternions, so it borrowed some ideas and terminology liberally from the literature on quaternions. However, vector analysis was conceptually simpler and notationally cleaner, and eventually quaternions were relegated to a minor role in mathematics and physics. A side-effect of this transition is that Hamilton's work is difficult to comprehend for many modern readers. Hamilton's original definitions are unfamiliar and his writing style was wordy and difficult to follow.