Why Babylon 5 is awesome

[Trollheart]

One of the things I love(d) about B5 - and I was into it from the beginning: as Londo says in the movie, I was there. Got the Babylon 5 movie and loved it, then wished wished wished there was a series. Then there was! Man oh man was it so much better than the movie! - is that it was, to my knowledge, one of the first SF shows (maybe THE first) to give us a darker side of things. Yes, DS9 tried it and really ran with it later, but that was after JMS had shown the way. In the Star Trek (sorry, but it has to be compared, doesn't it?) universe pretty much everything worked out. With the exception of maybe Lower Decks in STNG everyone survived (witness Worf when he broke his back, yet somehow his "redundant Klingon physiology, which we had heard NOTHING about before that episode, is used to save him) but Babylon 5 showed how different it aimed to be with the season one episode "Believers." I was gobsmacked. Wonderful ending, so sad and yet so real.

After that, I remember thinking this would never happen on Star Trek, and I loved the show even more. And this after the amazing "Deathwalker"! The writing on that show was just so far ahead of its time, and perhaps showed other shows, especially SF ones, that audiences could deal with a non-happy ending. I really feel B5 paved the way for more "serious" shows like Battlestar Galactica and Colony and others.

 

[Dave Vicks]

Babylon 5 was a great TV show. Never watched Crusade.I also liked Star TrekS9.

 

[Rodders]

Crusade was worth watching. It had some nonsense moments, but I liked the crew and the stories were half decent. I Thought it had legs.

 

[Glaysher]

Crusade was worth watching. It had some nonsense moments, but I liked the crew and the stories were half decent. I Thought it had legs.

I believe even if it had only gone on a couple of episodes more we would have got a Bester episode with Garibaldi cameoing at the end hunting for him. It's a shame we didn't get to see that.

 

[KGeo777]

I saw the pilot show when it premiered and didn't like it, I assumed it to be a DS9 wannabe which was funny given what I read about its production history and the ties between them.

Then later on, I heard good things about it and they were running the 4 seasons daily so I started watching and was hooked.
I think it worked better as a serial plot line than any of the Star Treks. I like shows that are stand alone but I was more interested in Babylon 5 than Voyager--I stopped watching it. It also ended pretty good, compared with so many other shows where the final episode felt like a rushed after thought.
Can't say I have a desire to watch it again but it had good characters and some surprises--the "B-Squared" storyline was neat and also the one where the spy was revealed--that was some shocker!

I wish they did the David-parasite story though.
I had Crusade taped but didn't watch it.
I remember JMS said he had plans for a Babylon 5 movie but wanted to wait until the Star Wars prequels came out.