So, here we go. Now, I have seen the odd episode or part of episode, but never really followed them, also my ex's mother was a big fan, so I have a vague idea of certain things that are to come. But otherwise I'm watching from unspoiled perspective (but don't worry about spoiling me).

I've now rented and watched the first four episodes. Huh. I have to say I'm not impressed by the plots, at all - but not too worried about that, as I know that the first series of Next Gen. had some real stinkers too. It's interesting seeing a future world where, unlike Trek, you don't really understand the way the world works. You know, I'm gathering they've got a form of warp or wormhole travel, but you don't know how Earth got there, how Earth is run (looks like world government, but presumably no formal Federation-style alliance), etc. It's weird seeing them still have things like television and modern (well, 80s) sounding pop music.

However, I do really like some of the characters. Ivanova is great - liking her from the first ep comment about chins being important in elections. Garibaldi is pretty typical and hugely reminiscent of Moonlighting-era Bruce Willis, but I like him. Londo is also a great character, he was the one most intriguing to me from any bits I saw previously. The doctor seems fine. The telepath squad and how it's set-up - raising people from childhood? - seems very interesting. T'Kar is nicely snidey.

The captain is awful. Where on earth did they get that actor, out of a 50s B-movie Western? His character also seems very generic and hopelessly out of keeping with the style of the rest of the actors. However, I know that he's only around for the first season, then Bruce Boxenleitner comes in and romances Delenn, so I guess I can stick him till then.

It's most strange to this Trek geek to see the similarities between B5 and DS9. I can see how the controversy started, though thus far (even restricting it to the earliest episodes of DS9), the Trek show had the edge - though, of course, it also had a long history behind it. I can't believe they've mentioned characters so far called Shakaar and Dukat!

The controversy is bi-directional. JMS pitched B5 to Paramount but they said no, then came out with Deep Space 9.

Shakaar would be G'Kar. And Dukhat... hm, I'm not sure which series used that name first!

I like Sinclair a lot as the season develops, but those who don't can be reassured that he goes away. ;-)

Doh on the names. That's what comes of watching with German subtitles (it's good practice for me). And yeah, I wouldn't like to say who ripped off whom, but it's interesting to think about the differences as well as similarities.

So, the next four episodes. Three of which featured old loves of main characters coming to the station and restarting their romances. That's unfortunate, eh?

I still think the plots and dialogue are pretty corny and the special effects are so cringingly bad I can hardly make out what they're meant to be (ST:TNG has dated slightly better in this respect). But there are about half a dozen really intriguing plotlines being set up, which I like, so I'm happy to keep going and hope it kicks up a gear soon.

I like the Commander's girlfriend (Not!Cassidy), but he is such a big plank of wood all that talk of 'passion' fell very flat. G'Kar reminds me so much of the bad guy in Galaxy Quest played by the guy who played Ethan Rayne. So camp. Ivanova is lovely and I think there's a little spark between her and Garibaldi, although it looks like they're setting up with Psi woman. It was cool to see Chekov - sorry, I can't call him anything else - in a non-Chekov role with a non-"Russian" accent (and super-realistic wig). Does the Kes-like 'evolved to a new plane of being' Psi guy ever recur?

I am interested in the whole Minbari/Sinclair the Emiss-er, the chosen one storyline. But I think it doesn't really do very well in conveying that the Minbari were powerful enough to have nearly defeated Earth in a bitter war just ten years before. They just don't seem like they are fighters at all, from the ones we've seen so far. I guess it was some sort of holy war?

The Minbari culture becomes much more clear in later seasons. Also, it's a caste thing. Keep watching and you'll meet some firebrands.

Also, G'Kar and Londo are one of the great relationships in fiction, in my opinion. Even if there is a little too much yo-yoing over the course of the show.

My DVDs came on Monday, but I have only had time to watch two episodes so far. When I watched B5, it was a number episodes from season three, but luckily I have forgotten the plots completely! I do remember being pretty confused as to what was going on having not watched from the beginning.

The first two episodes seemed pretty standard scifi fare to me (having watched more than my fair share of Star Trek and Farscape).

I love Ivanova already. It is always imperative for me in any series to have a female character I adore. It looks like Ivanova will fit the bill nicely. I liked her forthright attitude, her comment about chins, and the scene with Veronica-Lake-in-space-styled Talia Winters.

Sinclair. Meh. Not very charismatic, and reminds me more of someone's middle aged Dad rather than a heroic leader and fighter pilot.

I like the way that they started the series where the majority of characters seem to have known each other for some time (excluding Ivanova and Dr. Franklin). Just a touch of realism that isn't usually present in Star Trek pilot episodes, which normally seem to have the crew of regulars coming together as strangers.

The special effects look terrible on these DVDs. Such a shame, as they were so good at the time. Pan, the reason they look so blurry and horrendous is that the CG images were originally transferred to 4:3 video, not film. To transfer them onto DVD they have essentially zoomed on these old tapes to give the 16x9 image, and hence lost a lot of resolution. When B5 first aired, the visual FX kicked the snot out of TNG and the early episodes of DS9.

The pioneering use of CGI space shots in B5's weekly series eventually caused the Star Trek franchise to follow suit and start to use CGI models as well.

That's interesting. I don't usually even notice special effects, hardly, so I guess there had to be something wrong for them to register with me.

Veronica Lake in Space: hee! I like it.


Me too.

Yes, it's also interesting that they start in situ. The one thing I like about Captain Cardboard is the idea that he and Garibaldi are long-time friends.

I guess neither of you watched the pilot movie, The Gathering, before starting in on the series? Perhaps I misremember. It provides some background on the Minbari and the war, and some of my favorite Londo material, though the character introductions are a bit odd, since some recasting happened before the series proper began (though JMS retained some flexibility by not recasting the same character, but rather bringing in a new doctor, etc.) Now that the canonical version of the pilot movie is a re-edit rather than the originally broadcast one, we even see some material that got recycled from one character to another after it was originally cut from the pilot.

But yes, giving some of the characters pasts together gives the relationships a wonderful organic feel, I think.

I know I'm in the minority on this, but I liked Sinclair a lot (with a couple of "off" moments excepted) and thought he and Catherine were marvelously steamy together.



Setting who up? Or what up? ;-) I love to know how the early seeds of storylines strike new viewers.

Nope, didn't see that. That would have helped, I think.

I thought that maybe they were setting up that Garibaldi was attracted to uh, the blonde Psi woman. Maybe not.

I've now seen the next four episodes, so 12 so far. I didn't like these much, I must say I'm looking forward to getting to what I understand is the really good stuff. And yet again, a long-lost connection of a main character's appears (Garibaldi's friend's daughter etc). That's just lazy writing, the most obvious way to introduce depth to the leads.

Aw, did you like Believers, at least? (The dying alien kid episode.) That was my first strong "we're not watching Trek anymore" reaction, heh.

Anyway. Your very next episode is where a lot of the "good stuff" becomes evident. Then I have to ask you to ignore the A-plot of TKO, and the rest is pretty good. If Babylon Squared and the season finale don't leave you wanting to watch the rest of the series, then never mind, it was a good effort, etc. ;-)

You might still like to look up The Gathering. It gives some perspective on the Vorlons, too (though not a heck of a lot). Just don't watch In the Beginning, which is packaged with it. It's a "prequel movie", but it aired during 4th season, IIRC, and spoils some major stuff to that point.

How confusing! Well, I'll see if I can find The Gathering.

Nah, didn't really care for Believers I'm afraid. I thought the dialogue was a bit corny and while it's cool that the kid was killed (I mean, not! But cool that they went with a downbeat ending and didn't chicken out), it seemed to be done in a hokey sort of way.

Will press on!

Yeah, it probably is hokey. But that's because the doctor's a hokey guy. ;-)

I now have the movie box set! Just released this week. It includes the two movies I mentioned above, plus three more. If anyone new to the series wants my advice on the ordering of the movies with respect to the episodes, I'm always glad to chime in.

http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/ma...ter/eplist.html is basically right, except that I would never watch In The Beginning until after the 4th season episode Atonement (it originally aired as a lead-in to season 5, when the show moved to a different channel and a "story so far" was desired). It just gives away too many plot twists at once if you watch it too early.

Well, my plodding through season one continues with Signs And Portents, TKO, Grail and Eyes. I'm still not enjoying the show very much. My basic problem is with the writing, which I find very stiff (surprisingly, as I really like JMS' comics work). The episodes don't hold my attention very well and I'm often bored.

Signs And Portents should have been good. The idea of the creepy Shadow-man asking everyone what they wanted in a bid to find out who to manipulate is good, but the long, loooooong space battle was tedious in the extreme and ruined the episode for me. Especially since it doesn't really have anything to do with the ongoing plot, it's against a bunch of random raiders.

I liked David Warner's guest appearance in Grail and the jinxed construction worker, though the plot was heavy-handed. I wasn't wild about Ivanova's whole father/shiva/faith crisis (in TKO), but I did like her panic about being psi-scanned (in Eyes) and her relationship with Garibaldi. Elsewhere, the relationships between the main characters is poorly handled, I think; for instance, Sinclair's declaration in TKO that Ivanova isn't just his co-worker but a friend seemed to come out of nowhere. I haven't seen much evidence of anyone on the staff fraternising, other than him and Garibaldi and to a lesser extent Ivanova and Garibaldi. Most stories seem to focus on an individual character meeting someone from their past - two more, in TKO, in what's becoming the equivalent of the Star Trek holodeck malfunction story cliche.

Well, I'll keep ploughing on at least until the end of the season.

I guess it's not for everybody. Alas. If Signs and Portents didn't click for you, I actually don't hold out much hope that the rest will, though the season finale and the introduction of Bruce Boxleitner in season 2 certainly did do it for a lot of people. Hum.

TKO is generally agreed to be one of the three worst episodes (you've already seen another, Infection, and the third isn't until season 4), though most fans like the shiva plotline much better than the boxing.

Grail is good, isn't it? I like the character of Jinxo (forget his real name), though he did have some cheeseball material to deliver.

The Psi-Corps stuff is a really good part of Babylon 5, though it was introduced pretty gradually.

Interesting about Sinclair's line about Ivanova. I get a kind of double-vision about this, because Ivanova is in some ways a stand-in for Tamlyn Tomita's character from the pilot (Laurel Takashima), but of course, not really. In the pilot, we hear good reason for Takashima to consider Sinclair a friend, but you're right, we don't get a lot of development between these two actual characters. Part of it is that they're both fairly close about their emotions.

I see what you mean about the "someone from their past" stories, but I think they're a good way to establish Babylon 5 as a port, and to establish the characters as being part of a social web that extends beyond the station, an aspect that Trek mostly lacks. There is less of that in later seasons as the action picks up, though.

Well, I didn't like the boxing story at all, but it was easy to ignore. It so obviously wasn't going anywhere, whereas I paid more attention to the other as it was about a major character. And if I understand it right, Ivanova was only introduced in the first episode, the pilot woman was someone else entirely? So how can that have to do with whether he and Ivanova are friends?

Not to hark on about DS9, but it seems to me that they did a much smoother job of establishing the station as a port and of the characters having connections outside it. Of course, I have seen all of DS9 but only the start of B5.

I am determined though to give the show every chance. It so much seems like something I should like that I'm surprised not to. Then again, I don't care for Star Wars either.

The other character really *doesn't* have to do with Ivanova. Only it's clear from an outside-the-series perspective that he used the same character traits and background for the two of them, down to them both having illicit coffee plants in the hydroponics garden.

(What happened is the scene about the coffee wasn't in the original aired version of the pilot with Takashima--it was cut for time--so JMS obviously decided to recycle the material for Ivanova. Then he got a chance to do a re-edit of the pilot and put that scene back in, which is kind of unfortunate in that it lets the seams show.)

(Also, while Tamlyn Tomita is definitely a better overall actress than Claudia Christian, her performance was very stiff--CC was definitely more comfortable with the role. Or, perhaps, her own personality simply fit it.)

Well, now I've finished watching S1. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed the last six episodes - I felt like something finally clicked and came up a gear. There were some funny scenes (like Sinclair and Garibaldi tricking the tired Ivanova at breakfast etc), I got more of a sense of the characters and the proper story finally started with the Shadows, Babylon 4 (I particularly enjoyed that episode, Babylon Squared, although I didn't fully follow everything - did the people on it vanish again, where had they been?) and Londo's deal with the devil. Even Sinclair was more palatable to me.

I'm certainly going to order the next disc and depending on what I think of Bruce Boxleitner and the story, I'll decide whether to carry on. Until these last six episodes, I would probably have quit.

Oh good. :) I'd say you can judge Boxleitner from his early episodes. His plot-level actions change a lot over the series, but his personality is set early on.

I didn't realize charming moments like Ivanova at breakfast were so late in season 1. I know when the big storylines come, but not all the little cute things.

I'm not sure I understand the question regarding Babylon 4. Do you mean the people they were sending shuttles to evacuate?

Yes, but now I've watched the extras on that disc, I see that they did in fact get evacuated before it disappeared again. I was also confused about whether B4 or the earlier Babylons had been properly open, which has now been cleared up. In fact, I wish they'd put those computer file extras on an earlier disc, because they explained a lot of background I just wasn't getting.

You're zapping through them, Pan!

I have only watched the first four or five so far still. I've been temporarily distracted by my SG-1 DVD boxsets.

Heh! Typing that I just had this vision of all the B5 fans clutching their hearts in horror at me choosing to watch Stargate over B5. Heresy!

It's the beauty of Lovefilm.com. Well, I'd have to say that so far I massively prefer Stargate, overall, too. I know that show is not the least groundbreaking, but I think it's better entertainment.

I've finished working my way through Season 1 of Babylon 5 and thoroughly enjoyed it. Season 2 is in the process of *cough*downloading*cough* now.

The actor playing Sinclair was incredibly wooden but I didn't mind for some reason. Maybe it reminded me all those B Grade sci-fi movies from the fifties and sixties that I've seen. He would have fitted right into Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Outside of that I really enjoyed how the main story arc progressed over the series and I particularly like the way the major characters (apart from Captain Cardboard) developed. Looking forward to see how thing move on in S2.

I recently finished watching Season Two (yeah, it took me a while to get through them). While there were certainly good episodes (more than in Season One), I decided to leave the series at that, because I was only interested in maybe one in every four or so. I'd kinda like to know how it all ends, but I can't face carrying on when I'm not getting a lot out of it. It's a surprise, because I feel I should like it more and people who like other things I like really seem to rate it, but I just don't find it good enough. Sorry ...

That's *Commander* Cardboard, VP. ;-) And I was terribly fond of him, but for those who aren't, there's season 2 onward. There's only two times I felt he actually misdelivered a line, and one of them is in the pilot movie. I think he was actually doing a good performance of a character who isn't fully understood at that point in the series, which is a hard task for any actor.

Claudia, I think the fault was probably more in the writing than in the acting. They didn't give him nearly as much room move as they did most of the other characters. Like I said even though I found him wooden I still liked him.

Pandrea, surprisingly I've never been all that much of a sci-fi TV fan. Farscape was the first that ever really hooked me (which in some ways is surprising in itself given how hard Channel 9 made it for fans to follow the show) and I enjoy SG-1 though I don't really mind if I miss episodes. I've never been drawn to any of the Star Treks.

I know I'm probably the most enthusiastic about this of anyone here, but I'm so pleased Babylon 5 is back in production. Maybe this will lead to more genre direct-to-DVD releases of shows we miss.

The series ended in 1998, the last spinoff finished airing the following year, but the DVD sales for Babylon 5 (and probably the fact that they'd finally reached the end of all the Bab5-related stuff they had to release on DVD) have led to a new direct-to-DVD anthology series of short B5 episodes. They've finished principal photography on the first two, to be released next year. New Babylon 5!!!

http://babylon5scripts.com/TLT-JMS-Photos.html contains evidence from the set. ;-)