I'm a first run, old school Babylon 5 fan, watched every episode in its initial run, sweated out the imminent cancellation jitters at the end of every season (and believe me: Babylon 5 very easily could have been cancelled at the end of each and every season. The fact that it survived is a near-miracle. Faith endures!)....

... and do you know what? I *still* go bug**** over every episode now that I rewatch them on DVD.

Best television science fiction show ever -- better than AUTOMAN!!!

BTW: The Coming of Shadows is brilliant, no doubt, but as others have said the best is yet to come. In my mind, the biggest whammy to my fragile TV-watching mind was the ending to World Without End: Part II.

I *still* get chills thinking about it.

Amen ... faith manages

das

I can't wait for the summer, when I'll get some free time to revisit B5 via the 2 season sets I have on my DVD shelves.

One could easily stop watching at the end of the 4th, just as one could easily stop watching TV altogether. Had the series ended there, I think we would have been happy (unlike Farscape), so the 5th season was a bonus.

I’m gonna put myself on the line and say that “A View from the Gallery” is one of my faves.

I agree about the series finale. [Hands das a box of tissues, slightly used.]

About ending the show at the fourth season...

It was actually looking pretty dire for the series by the end of the fourth season, as Babylon 5's syndicator, PTEN, was dissolving.

It very much looked like the series would end with the fourth season.

So JMS finished up the running fourth season plotline as efficiently as he could, and even shot the finale episode, "Sleeping in Light."

Then, on an appearance on the Tom Snyder show, Harlan Ellison announced that Babylon 5 would be coming back for a fifth and final season. I was watching this and was very pleased.

With the fifth season a go, "Sleeping in Light" was shelved until the end of the fifth season, and a new season four finale, "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" was filmed as part of the new fifth season, but shown in fourth season syndication.

JMS has said that had he known Babylon 5 would be back for a fifth season, he would've ended season four with the episode "Intersections in Real Time."

Now, those who have seen the full series, will know that the fourth season wrapped up two major storylines: , and the fifth season had two running plotlines:

Analysis, spoilery in a vague way:

"...'The Prince of Tides' was neither about princes nor tides. Discuss!"

Sorry, couldn't help it, I have a CD of that concert.

On topic - I wanna buy seasons 1&2 on DVD but right now, money's kinda tight. Reading all these discussions about how great it is doesn't help my curiosity either...

More than any other show in recent TV memory, Babylon 5 definitely has a beginning, middle and end. Yes, some questions are left unanswered, but as a whole the series finale "Sleeping in Light" is probably among the best hours of TV ever broadcast, and if you've invested any emotion in the show at all, will absolutely, positively tear you apart emotionally.

As das says, it almost gets me veklempt just thinking about it.

Although there were some episodes of B5 that had more "wow" factors after "The Coming of Shadows," I dunno, for me it's just the perfect example of a perfect B5 episode. The music, the writing, the acting...just perfect.

The scene between Londo and G'Kar, when G'Kar toasts the health of Emperor Turhan, and Londo knows what is coming -- wow, that clip should be shown to every acting student as an example of what it means to be at the top of your craft.

And, since it just popped into my head, for my money the best acting that Andreas Katsulas does in all five years as G'Kar comes up a few episodes later, in "Acts of Sacrifice," after he walks out of a meeting with Sheridan and Ivanova. The amount of emotion and pain he manages to get across, the mixture of laughter at the absurdity of his situation and grief at the hopelessness of it -- well, to deliver all of that while under two inches of latex makeup....well, Andreas rocks.

I was really surprised the "first" time I saw Andreas Katsulas w/o his G'Kar make-up. I recognized the actor, and never realized that it was him.

Peter and Andreas were both great in their roles, and they had great chemistry as well.

For those who don't know or haven't seen Andreas, he was the one-armed man from Harrison Ford's The Fugitive movie.

Peter and Andreas are without a doubt the two best actors within their roles in B5. (imho of course)

Not only that he also played a Romulan commander named Tomalak in the ST:TNG series finale All Good Things.

All I have to say...

Maybe not....



Gotta love

Ah- I finally get to catch the show from the very beginning. When I started watching it 1st run, it was already 2+yrs in. Then I started watching reruns and it got bumped to cable which I didn't have at the time. Now it's on Sci-Fi, which is my worst analog cable channel.

If you thought Coming of the Shadows was good, I just watched In the Shadow of Z'Ha'Dum. Bone chilling.

The actor who plays Mr. Morden does an excellent job of portraying an externally calm, cool, collected guy with something terribly nasty going on just beneath the surface.

OK.. I am gonna wait. The COming of Shadows is on Tomorrow on Sci-Fi so I am Tivoing today, tomorrow and the day after to see if it grabs me. I know it is out of sequence but if I like the shows, I'll stop watching until I get the DVD's

I just found out I may be going on an extended (2 year) trip to the UK so I will be buying a LOT of TV box sets before I go!

The funny part is, having met Ed Wasser on several occasions, he's one of the nicest, most genuinely friendly people I've ever met. It's very difficult to see him as the character sometimes, especially when Morden has some of his darkest moments.