How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

Hey all,

I'm considering checking out B5 via the season sets on Amazon UK (cheap!) to get more sci-fi since there isn't much good around these days and was wondering if any SF fans might have any suggestions on how much, or even if, I'd enjoy it based on my other tastes.

Star Trek TOS: Enjoyed it somewhat
Star Trek TOS movies: Greatly Enjoyed
Star Trek TNG: Greatly Enjoyed
Star Trek DS9: LOVED IT! (Fav show of all time along side M*A*S*H)
Star Trek Voy: Enjoyed Somewhat
Enterprise: Enjoyed
Stargate SG-1: Seasons 1-5 (Showtime Years) Greatly Enjoyed, Seasons 6-10 (Sci-Fi Channel) Enjoyed Somewhat
Stargate Atlantis: Enjoyed somewhat
Firefly: Haven't seen it yet (I know it doesn't matter for my request but I figured considering the strong fan base it'd be mentioned anyways)

Thanks for any suggestions!

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

I've started season 1 of B5 a couple times and had to abandon ship for various reasons. I hear it starts slowly but gets amazing. I also understand that thematically it'd be similar to your fave, DS9 (which I really enjoyed), and era-wise I think it gets compared to Farscape (which I haven't watched).

I think it's definitely worth a try if you're a fan of sci-fi and DS9. Maybe try one season via free options to test before buying?

Might be of interest:

bsg, b5, farscape, or x-files (which to watch first?)

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

There is no vulgarity and it's all about the children of the various races. You'll love it.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

I greatly enjoyed TNG (prefer TOS though) and thought B5 was far superior. I went through the 5 seasons in a few weeks 3 or 4 years ago.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

It's a wonderful series and way better than DS9 in my opinion. Just be aware that it didn't have even half the budget of the various ST incarnations (just guessing) so there are rough makeup designs, especially the first season, and the special effects are of the time and not the greatest but pretty great for what they had to work with. The writing and story arcs are very good.
Def. recommend watching it.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

If you like Star Trek, you'll probably like Babylon 5. It's superficially similar in that it takes place some three centuries in the future, has a military structure, and a similar aesthetic.

Unless you're a hardcore Trekkie and are turned off by other science fiction shows, you'll probably like it.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

Walter Koenig is fantastic in Babylon 5. Babylon 5 is worth sticking with through the (usually painful) first season as it becomes the best scifi series I can think of.

Plus, it has Zathras in it!

Zathras: "Zathras is used to being beast of burden to other people's needs. Very sad life... Probably have very sad death... but at least there is symmetry."

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

You will love B5, the shows have some similarities.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

I watched several episodes of season one on some website and effects(I knew they'd suck beforehand though) sucked and the acting was just incredibly horrible IMO. The story seems like it would get really good though. I plan to give it a chance at some point.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

Sure ... sounds like B5 should be right up your alley! Like others have mentioned, be prepared for spotty effects and acting and a general slow start to the series. But once you get into the meat of the giant story arc, television sf (or maybe even sf period) doesn't get much better.

I think a casting change in season 2 helped my enjoyment as well.
And I agree 100% with the above poster about Walter Koenig. His performance is a revelation if you think all he can do is play Chekov.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

I've always told people that if you liked DS9, you would love Babylon 5

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

agreed

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

Thanks for all the comments everyone (except arminius - really?).

Sounds like the consensus is season one was a bit of a dog. Think it'd be a problem for me to skip to ordering the S2 set and going from there story wise?

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

No, I hear you need to stick with it for the whole story arc

(I mean, yes, it'd be a problem to skip it.)

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

Yes, you don't want to skip season 1. Honestly, I don't think it was that bad. It just paled in comparison with what followed.

"The Gathering" may be skippable though. While it sets up some things (the general setting and races, Sinclair's "missing" time), there's no information that wasn't repeated later. The producers did quite a bit of re-tooling from this to the actual start of the series.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

Thanks for the FYI. I'll at least wait until I view thru season two before forming a judgement on the series.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

Definitely a problem.

I agree -- "The Gathering" isn't a necessity. I didn't watch that until later.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

Thanks for the link. I just read through it and it bumped BSG off my interest list thanks to this post:

It's getting so I pretty much want to wait til any series has ended before I invest my time in checking it out in case the Jesus crowd starts to infect it with their agenda.

Lord hemp me if one of the chicks on 2 Broke Girls finds religion during the run of the series.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

I mentioned that I've started B5 twice, and both times I've started with The Gathering. I'm definitely skipping it next time!

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

You still need to see season 1 to learn the characters and their back stories.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

At least 1 season one episode is critical to the overall storyline.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

Just don't watch the last season, then. For me, it wrapped up nicely at the end of 4 (probably why i haven't gotten around to actually finishing 5).

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

As vocal as I am about that sort of stuff politically, I don't really mind it in entertainment if it is done well. I had no issues with the Lost or Quantum Leap final episodes for example. The imagery, the story-telling, and the mystical nature of religion are pretty captivating when done correctly.

Babylon 5 does a wonderful job blending the concept of religion and science and never talks down to either camp. They spend some time with the idea that advanced technology may appear as supernatural, as well as exploring the common themes that most religions share in several moving philosophical character debates.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

I wouldn't say that iss a reason to not watch BSG
the religion stuff wasn't that bad to put up with

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

I loved BSG but agree it was hit or miss toward the end. What I usually tell people who are interested is that they can watch the miniseries and see if they like it enough to go on. It hooked me.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

I'm rewatching B5 now, so I thought I'd pull up an old thread to see what people said...

I find it interesting that you love Babylon 5 because based on what I remember from you from the political forum and your views, it shouldn't be your cup of tea.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

I've been rewatching it too :) Just finished the 1st disc of Season 2. This is my first rewatch of the series (first viewing was years ago ... not the original airing, but when Sci-Fi Channel was doing that widescreen remastered thing).

I started with "The Gathering". It's as rough around the edges as I remembered. Everything looks really cheap (even compared to what the regular series looked like). The actors playing the doctor and the B5 second in command are awful. Delenn just seems really weird ... in appearance, sound, and action. I forgot about that scene where she I'm glad the show never had her do things like that again (at least that I remember). And getting into Season 1, there wasn't any information from the pilot that wasn't repeated or shown in a flashback.

Season 1 isn't as awful as some fans make it seem (it just seems bad to the greatness that will follow). Taken on its own, it seemed about as good as a "Star Trek: Voyager" season ... a handful of really good/great eps, mostly ok and watchable eps, with a couple of cringe-worthy bad ones to round things out.

The show really picks up momentum in late Season 1 (when the big multi-season story threads are introduced). And Season 2 is helped (for me at least) with the major casting change that I talked about in my earlier post in this thread. It wasn't a casting change, but Claudia Christian noticeably got better as the series went along. The "making of" doc commented how Christian tried incorporating more of her own personality into Ivonova as the season went on. And I think that helped. At the start, Ivonova's character was pretty much: Russian, serious, and angry. But she gradually was fleshed out into a rounded individual.

Watching the DVDs, there's one thing that I noticed that's annoying. On the 1st disc, there's an introductory special feature (a short featurette). DO NOT watch these if you haven't seen the show before. They drop MAJOR spoilers that will ruin things for a 1st time viewer. For example, for the Season 2 intro

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

Interesting bit of trivia here about Delenn:

And, regarding G'Kar:

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

That's one of the great things about B5. The 5-year plan wasn't just for the story. Characters had their own arcs, developing and growing over time (some for the better, some for the worse).

Completely agree that

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

With your interests I would say you would love B5.
Try Farscape too.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

On the subject of the fifth season...B5 was cancelled in the middle of the fourth. Straczynski (the creator and main writer of the series) had a five-year story arc planned. There were at least three separate main plots running, and they all were planned to come to fruition at different points in the fifth season. With only a dozen episodes left he had to wrap them all up. So he accelerated everything (it's really noticeable when the story goes into overdrive). By the last three episodes of the fourth season it was insane how fast he was tying up loose ends. He totally abandoned one of the plots, the one that hadn't developed as far.

Then .... it was picked up unexpectedly for a fifth season, by a different network (TBS? I don't recall). Since he had wrapped up most of the plots the fifth season was exclusively about the one he'd abandoned (the Telepath Problem). So it has a very different character from the other seasons, and it does have a much more spiritual leaning. But the whole series has that spiritual/mystical dimension. The whole Dark vs Light thing. The fifth season isn't that much more over the top on it.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

I've never watched the 5th season. For me, Babylon 5 is a 4 season long show -- as well as the finale of season 5 (which was shot at the end of s4 if I'm correct).

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

This is the most recent Babylon 5 topic I could find. Unfortunately sad news from JMS on Facebook:

I regret that I must convey the sad news that Michael O'Hare passed away today. He suffered a heart attack on Sunday and was in a coma until his passing this afternoon. This is a terrible loss for all B5 fans and everyone involved with the show wishes to convey their condolences to the O'Hare family. He was an amazing man.

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

Oh man... RIP

Way too many from the cast have already passed beyond the rim...

Re: How much would I enjoy Babylon 5 based on these tastes?
 

I could never get into the show. It just seemed really cheap to me. I didn't care about any of the characters the way I did for the people on DS9 or Next Generation and, yes, Voyager.