What did you guys think of Bablyon 5?

[Randoman01]

I have never watched it but as of late I have been interested in seeing the show. I have heard a lot of good things about it and wondered if I should watch the series. I enjoyed Star Trek, Star Wars, stargate, and many other sci fi classics. But I was wondering what was your opinion on Babylon 5?

[Deleted]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105946/reviews

Never heard of it but it seems I have something to watch for a while

[enragedgorilla]

Was a great series.
i liked the fact that NONE of the different races (space beings) got along.
The conflicts were awesome and the different "main" characters were pretty well done and fleshed out.
Highly recommend it if you are remotely a fan of sci fi

[Elim Garak]

I'm rewatching it right now

Highly recommended sci-fi show

[poser765]

I got bored about 8 episodes in!

Like most of these sci-fi shows, B5 was pretty rough in the first season. The pilot TV movie was good but then the actual season one was pretty bad and cheaply done in places. It got MUCH better over the run of the show.

B5 is one of the more real universes I remember seeing on TV. It was gritty, harsh, and flawed. Just like reality. It also had a ton of cohesion. Going back and re-watching them I can easily see that the writers had a destination in the story, and not just winging it in order to string the show along. Even in the first few episodes you see references and foreshadowing things that would happen much later in the show.

Watch it OP.

[drwelfare]

Great show, when they tried to continue it with things like Crusade it became lacking.

Once it got past Season 1 it really got good.

[obdigore]

Great show, when they tried to continue it with things like Crusade it became lacking.

Once it got past Season 1 it really got good.

Pretty much hit the nail on the head right here. The first season was... ok. After that I believe they changed lead writers and some of the cast and it got much better.

Absolutely one of the cornerstones of the Televised Sci-Fi world.

[aviger]

Season 1 is hard to watch, but i guarantee you if you stick it out to get all the back-story's in your head the rest of it is some of the best STORY driven sci-fi even.
No stupid zombie nonsense or fluff just for effects.

[Deleted]

Season 1 really put me off - it seems like pretty standard episodic sci-fi with a wooden lead. But once I got past that, it became my favorite sci-fi series. I love the 5 year story arc, where characters change and things have a consequence. An epic story with some great dialogue and amazing character acting (Londo and G'Kar!).

[Arrowstormen]

Babylon 5 is absolutely fantastic, best show ever in my opinion. Some people don't like season 1, but even that I think was absolutely great. the main sell of Babylon 5 is the legendary writing that is almost always present, and the standard week-to-week plots of season 1 were for the most part very interesting with real philosophical dilemmas, and it let you bathe in the world, characters and writing.

[Gsara]

One of my favorite shows, I watch the entire series at least once a year. G'kar is probably my favorite character even though I like them all.

[Elim Garak]

Just a quick note: Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) was in Babylon 5. I won't say which episode - so you'll have to watch them all - or cheat.

[cFortyfive]

Good show. Didn't age well but the story is still nice.

[Moogie423]

I do agree with most of the responses in regards to season 1 being a bit lackluster, but I see the entire first season as just a stage setting for the following 4 seasons. It was one of the most serious attempts at a real sci-fi universes that didn't try to use humor to get through a tough situation. You can draw a lot of parallels between Babylon 5 and the real world. Of course, you also can't ignore Walter Koenig having a recurring role in the series as well, of which he did great at (He was Chekov in Star Trek The Original Series).

The larger story arcs throughout the series blew me away, especially once you get into season 4 and 5, when all the hints that were dropped since season 1 start to come into play. Also, the integration of all the Babylon 5 movies to flesh out certain aspects of the store was great as well. To anyone interested in watching it, you can not skip the movies. That said, it can be daunting trying to figure out when to watch which movie, as the movies aren't always chronologically in order related to their release date. Luckily, there is an easy to read chart that shows you which episodes to watch before each movie, so that you can have the entire Babylon 5 story in chronological order.

http://scifi.stackexchange.com/quest...-be-watched-in

As for the spin-off series, Crusade... the overall story of it was good, however, the execution, acting, and writing for it was just shameful. Highly recommend avoiding it.

[Elim Garak]

Season one may seem boring but it gets way better near the end of the season and then it just keeps rolling and rolling.

The whole series are made like a good book:
1. Exposition - season 1
2. Rising action - Season 2
3. Climax - Season 3
4. Falling action - Season 4
5. Resolution - Season 5

[Deleted]

The whole series are made like a good book...

Yeah, I agree. There's just something about the series, the way it was made with a beginning, middle and end, that's unusual for TV series. More often, shows are either episodic (most Trek except DS9) or seem to make it up as they go along. Lost being the most salient example - started off as a wonderful mystery, then you learnt the writers had no idea what was coming next and needless to say, could not resolve it satisfactorily.

Elim, you mentioned Breaking Bad in this thread. That's another show like Babylon 5 that just felt complete and resolved. It developed the characters - Walt at least - along an interesting, if dark, journey and reached its denouement. It was wonderful, but it ended with finality and left one sad but satisfied.

Probably the closest rival to B5 for me as a sci-fi show was Battlestar Galactica, but while that was jaw dropping in many respects and was a fantastic character driven show, it did suffer a bit from the Lost the plot syndrome.

[Deleted]

Could not stay interested enough to keep watching it. I maybe watched 5 or 6 episodes.

[Shinzai]

I really liked Babylon 5 myself. When the Shadow War gets going, it's absolutely fantastic. I'd recommend it to anyone who was a fan of Deep Space 9 or its ilk. As others have mentioned, it /is/ rough in some places, doesn't flow perfectly and the visuals are quite dated now. At the time it was absolutely astounding though. I remember me and my uncle discussing it on BBS boards on the internet, until IRC became more popular.

[Dhrizzle]

I used to think it was our last, best hope for peace.
Then I realised it was our last, best hope for victory.

[elmoe420]

Really bad special effects even for its time and fairly poor acting all around particularly in the first season. Great story though in my opinion. I really enjoyed the fact that there was a larger story arc that encompassed the entire series rather than it being completely episodic (still lots of filler though).

If you like B5 I would also recommend checking out Deep Space 9 if you haven't already. Similar in that it has a good overall story arc tying the series together and it had a much higher budget.