Never seen B5 until yesterday. Started watching, only on episode 2 now. Still needs to grow on me.
Never? Really? Oh, then you missed something.
Just imagine, it was in 1993 when two shows with the same premise were established. One was a spin-off of one of the most successful SF franchise, the other one was completely new: Star Trek: DS9 and Babylon 5. Whereas DS9 had more money it lacked the dynamics of the first Star Trek shows due to the limitations of the setting (space station instead of space ship). Soon after its start the show was seen as a "talk show with aliens". They had some interesting stories nonetheless (and I've NEVER doubted their high qualities) but it was not until the introduction of the Defiant which gave the show its drive (3rd season). When Worf came aboard the show became perfect (4th season). The rest is history.
Babylon was different. Different in every way. It was clever right from the beginning and established several highly complex story arcs which required watching EVERY episode in order to keep up with the depicted events (during the 3rd season I missed one episode; it took me about 7 weeks to figure out what happened in that ep.). You have to see B5 as a novel with the single episodes as chapters. Watch it and you won't be disappointed. B5 was created by Joseph Michael Straczynski (JMS) who wrote all but one episode; the only episode he didn't wrote was the one he directed ;-) (the last one). His way of story-telling inspired me to write a complete virtual 2nd season of Battlestar Galactica.
Technically B5 was very interesting, too. It was the first TV series to be shot entirely in wide-screen. It showcast CGI effects, sets and extensions on a large scale. If you look closely you'll notice that they tried to establish Newtonian physics in a space show for (I believe) the very first time and showed coloured stars (all stars seen before used to be white). Many of the artists went on to make the New BSG later.
B5 was supposed to span five years and should end with the destruction of the station. However, after season 2 B5 was sailing in troubled waters because the lead production company got bankrupt and it was not sure if there was another season at all. Then, all of a sudden, a new TV channel came to the rescue and ordered the next season. After season 3 the TV channel faced a massive financial crisis, too, which endangered the future two seasons. Having in mind that at least one season could be produced JMS took the remaining scripts, cut out every redundancy and so put the stuff of two seasons into one in order to complete his saga. The result was an action-packed season with brilliant character development and nail-biting tension. Shortly before season 4 was finished the financial problems were solved, again a new TV channel came in and secured the final fifth season. Lucky JMS then called back the last four or so condensed scripts and reduced the pace a bit. So he was able to complete his saga as intended, however, compared to the first four seasons the last season turned out a bit slow (due to the lacking material which was left after season 4; there are good character moments, though).
The series was followed by several really good TV films and a spin-off (B5: Crusade).
Watch out for the time travel episodes involving the other Babylon station; the concept is brilliant; JMS delivered a totally logical conclusion to an episode two seasons later!
