That second scene involves G'Kar and Vir, not G'Kar and Londo.

You might want to be careful with the episode "Confessions and Lamentations."

It deals with a deadly plague that rapidly infects a species of aliens.

Really?


B5Erik's Avater

Who would've guessed?

Figured this is the most recent thread to post this in. So just finished the Cowboy Bebop anime, after hearing about it for so long, and enjoyed it more than I expected to, not being a huge anime guy. People here said to give it a shot and they were right.

This is another show I've heard about for years and am now curious about going back to watch. I've heard it's great but also extremely dated/low budget? I can handle low budget special effects, I think. I like Doctor Who but thought those early effects (of the new/2005 series) were a bit of an adjustment.

I enjoy Star Trek (movies mainly) but never really watched the shows religiously. Enjoyed BSG. I've heard Babylon 5 is pretty much one serialized story, which I prefer to a mission of the week (I'm one of the few who prefer the X-Files mythology episodes to the monster of the week). Started watching Star Trek Discovery because of this too.

Anyways, it's all on HBO Max it looks like so...worth the time?

I just did a re-watch and it's definitely worth the time. The first season is a little shaky but trust me, it all makes sense as the show moves forward (except TKO, you really can skip that episode). I wouldn't compare the special effects to Doctor Who but they are dated compared to what we have today.

The HBO versions have been remastered but I did experience a few instances were the audio and video were out of sync.

Yeah, don't give up while watching the first season. It can be tempting, some of it is bad, but it's important info for the later seasons, which are awesome.

Also, look up an official watch order. I'm not sure how it shows up on HBO Max, but there is a pilot "movie" that you can watch before the first episode, and there's another movie I believe after the fourth season.

It looks better than it did on the compromised DVDS but the lack of clarity on long shots makes it pretty obvious that it's upscaled SD.

TKO's main plot is fairly awful, but I still love it for the b-plot. You never see a main Jewish character on television sit shiva for a deceased relative. I had lost my grandfather a couple weeks before that ep aired in the 90s and it was a pretty emotional thing.

The pilot movie is important because it’s revisited in an episode later in the series.

HBO has The Gathering as the first "episode." That's actually the only one of the feature-length films they have which is interesting.

You can find the preferred episode order at the Lurker's Guide along with comments JMS posted at the time the episodes originally aired. Don't read them until after you've watched the episode in question because there are major spoilers. Despite what the list says, I would not watch In The Beginning until after S4 if you've never seen the series before.

The proper watching order is:

Movie: The Gathering
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
Movie: In the Beginning
1st 2 disks of Season 4
Movie: Thirdspace
Remainder of Season 4
Season 5 (all but the last episode)
Movie: River of Souls
Movie: Call to Arms
Season 5 (final episode)

I watched the show for the first time last year on HBO Max, and I'd say it was worth the time.

The show is an interesting mix of serialized storytelling with standalone storylines. It's not as heavily serialized as Battlestar Galactica, and there's plenty of plots in a particular episode that don't extend beyond that episode, but almost all the episodes have something that informs that larger story arc and develop the characters. This isn't a show where basically everything resets at the end of an episode, things carry over, but each episode does typically work as a story in and of itself.

The effects are a bit dated, more so than Doctor Who in 2005, and really reliant on early CGI over anything practical, so a lot of stuff seems a bit too smooth. I adjusted to it pretty quickly though and accepted it, as the story being told holds up even without the greatest effects. The show was remastered in HD for HBO Max, so most of the live action looks really good, with the exception of the pilot movie The Gathering, which all film elements were lost, so it's entirely an SD upconversion, so the show sadly starts off with the worst it's going to look. After that it looks better. The CGI was upconverted, and looks good on its own, but the shots that combine CGI and live action are also upconverted SD video, so they look worse than the film transferred live action that surrounds it. So this isn't the best looking show ever, but it's more than watchable.

The writing on the show also improves over time, especially between the pilot movie and the show proper, but the early episodes really have a feel of early 90s TV writing. Men act a bit more macho, the acting and blocking of scenes is a bit more stagey, etc.

In terms of viewing order, watching only what's on HBO Max, in the order it's presented there, is fine to have a full appreciation of the show. The Gathering, being the TV movie that acted as the pilot for the show, is the only "essential" TV movie, and it's the first episode on HBO Max. I tracked down the other TV Movies after finishing the show on HBO Max, and while they're nice, they're not essential to following the main story arcs of the show. I view them a bit like the Cowboy Bebop movie, in that even though some take place "during" the show, they can be viewed afterwards instead of pausing viewing of the show to watch them in their "proper" place within the show.

Appreciate all the responses! Pretty much 100% recommended. Gonna try to start it in the next few weeks after I finish up some other shows.

Thanks!

I'd say, of the movies, you can probably skip Thirdspace and River of Souls (they're more like standalone movies), but Call to Arms is a lead-in to Crusade (if you want to continue in the B5 universe). The aforementioned movies however, are a continuation of that B5 universe if you you're seriously hooked by then.

IMHO, In the Beginning is necessary for providing background to the ongoing storyline, just as The Gathering provides the introduction.

Every episode of B5 has something that adds to at least one of the overall story arcs (sometimes multiple things adding to multiple story arcs).

Now, not every episode is great (TKO has a bad rap, unfairly, and Grey 17 Is Missing gets a bad rap, fairly), but even the standalone episodes are enjoyable.

I do find the criticism of the effects to be a little funny. At the time (mid 90's) no one was doing on TV what B5 was doing with CGI effects. It looked great for a TV show - at the time. As with anything else, CGI grew, got cheaper, and the effects of B5 look dated. Still, when I watch it what I see was really well done. When you look at the Starfuries, for example, the way they move is correct from a physics standpoint for how a fighter like that would move given the engine configuration. NASA actually asked if they could take that design and run with it! (And of course no one on the show was going to say, "No.")

That's the big thing with the space battles on B5 that I love - the physics they acknowledged in the motion of the ships. You could do slicker, more detailed CGI now, but the motion itself could not be improved on because they got it right.

Every episode adds something, but some of the TV movies aren't "essential" to the overall show.

I actually felt that In the Beginning suffered a bit from an issue common with prequels that show events before the series proper, in that it throws together some characters that seem baffling, largely because they want to include all the characters and have them interact before they met on the show proper. Also, it's largely providing extra detail on story points we already know, having them acted out instead of recalled in dialogue as they had been in the show proper. It wasn't a bad movie, but I don't recall a single detail in it that wasn't already given in the show in some way, that affects the overall arc.

Thirdspace and River of Souls are basically standalone extended episodes. They're well made, but can be skipped or watched after the show proper without affecting the overall story arc.

I forgot A Call to Arms is essentially the backdoor pilot for the TV show Crusade. I didn't continue on to Crusade, as I know that show was cancelled before the storyline was finished, the reviews aren't as praising, and most importantly, it's not on any subscription streaming service.

Likewise, The Legend of the Rangers: To Live and Die in Starlight is a pilot for a new show that never was, so it's even less essential, since it focuses on a mostly new cast to establish a new storyline that ultimately never went anywhere.

I also tracked down Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, which isn't technically a TV movie but an anthology show, but as it ultimately consisted of only two 36 minute episodes, shown back-to-back, it feels a lot like a TV movie. The two stories are well done, and it must've been thrilling for fans to see more Babylon 5 a decade after the original show ended, but since the stories are set after the timeline in the show, they're not really essential to the show.

Actually, as someone who was around when it first aired, the VFX were underwhelming, even then, and very clearly at "syndicated TV" level. Even when comparing to other shows airing around the same time, like Star Trek TNG and DS9, due to their reliance on models, at least initially for DS9, they looked better than B5. I'm not saying definitely that the VFX were the reason I didn't watch the show regularly back then (I caught an episode or so of season 1), since there were other issues (such as syndication affecting when episodes aired), but they certainly didn't wow me.

I didn't watch the show back then because I thought the VFX looked like a bad video game and way worse than TNG or DS9. I started a few times but never could make it last. I'm actually thinking about giving it one last chance, since a lot of people are praising the story telling of the show and in my teens looks were more important to me.

I started watching MASH for the first time and I don't regret it.

Adding to what I said previously - the VFX totally wowed me because the ships had a range of motion that wasn't possible with models. The ships moved correctly according to the laws of physics. That wasn't always the case with Star Trek (TNG/DS9). They could do, and did, a lot more with the effects than anything else had ever been done on TV.

And, I keep reading the, "Bad video game graphics," criticism. Simply not true. In that era (1993-1998) video games didn't have graphics that matched B5, let alone surpassed them. Yes, in the 5 or 6 years afterwards high end video games did have better graphics, but that's because they had much greater technology available to them. B5 was doing a lot of what they did before anyone else did it. They had to invent a lot of that stuff.

So, for those reasons, and the fact that in SD the effects looked just fine, I was pretty darned impressed with them. They helped tell the story, and gave a sense of realism in the way that the ships moved and could maneuver.

I didn't really notice the difference, even on this rewatch. You're arguing about something really subtle to most people, while the visual difference in the smooth CGI vs detailed models was immediately apparent within 2 seconds of seeing a shot. And was it that those movements couldn't be done with models, or did they just simply not bother. After all, when you're talking about shows with artificial gravity, warp speed, hyperspace gates, wormholes, etc., the "laws of physics" are already out the window.

For the timeframe, especially at its premiere, the graphics were better than what a PC or console could generate in real-time. However, there were also CGI prerendered scenes being used in some games. Something like the Wing Commander III (1994) cinematics.

Aside from Babylon 5 having better resolution than what could be crammed onto a CD-ROM, the effects aren't too far off.

Or maybe the "video game graphics" is about aesthetic. The B5 graphics just look a little too smooth, too slick, it comes off as unreal. It's not that the graphics were on par with the video games, but reminded people of that type of graphics, despite being higher quality. It's like how The Last Starfighter had the best CGI of the time for the space fight scenes, but don't look as realistic as Star Wars from 7 years prior:

But ultimately it's about suspension of disbelief. Casablanca is still a great film despite the dodgy plane effect in its first few minutes, and B5 is a great show despite the effects not being the best when it came out, and looking even more dated now.

My wife and I are actually watching the show again for about the 3rd or 4th time since we've been married, we're just finishing up S2, getting ready to start S3, then In the Beginning. Normally, we watch movies on my days off but we're already hooked and watching B5 straight through. Yes, the graphics are sub par with what's being done today, but we don't care. The story has grabbed us and we're in it, once again, till the end. We'll probably even watch Thirdspace and River of Souls where they appear in the timeline, even though they don't have much to do with the story, it's half the fun of watching B5. In my opinion, B5 is one of the best Scifi series ever made, and that opinion hasn't changed since the last time we watched it.