Worth watching Babylon 5?

[ReadyAndWilling]

i'm a huge trek fan. i've seen all of VOY/ENT, a good portion of TNG and all of S7 of DS9 and a few eps from earlier in the show.

i've heard DS9 was a stolen, or at least, a carbon copy version of B5. i really disliked watching the crew dynamics at quark's; in fact i'll almost always fast forward through these scenes and any scene to do with the prophets/pahwraiths. i loved the scenes with the JemHadar, and especially the ones focused on them like 6x02 'rocks and shoals'. but really enjoyed the battles between the starships, and the same goes for every scene featuring the dominion.

TNG was great because of the awesome characters like data and picard and all of the exploring they did as a crew.

i'm just not sure if i'd like B5 if there's too much talking and not enough exploring/fighting. i also love anything to do with the robots and real science fiction.

DS9 seemed to have a really weak beginning and a really strong end because of the war and introduction of the dominion. what season is considered the best/worst by fans here?

should i check it out?

 

[RoJoHen]

i'm just not sure if i'd like B5 if there's too much talking and not enough exploring/fighting.

should i check it out?

Based on this sentence, no.

 

[Admiral Shran]

YMMV, but I personally found Babylon 5 to be an entertaining, but mostly, disappointing show.

The overall story is unbelievably good. However, you're going to have to deal with a lot of bad in order to enjoy it.

If you're looking for good characters, I'll say that there are a few in B5, but I did not care for most of them. Some are very well fleshed out and three dimensional while others are wooden and boring.

If your looking for good special effects, I have to say - look elsewhere. B5 was released in the 90s and uses only computer animation for special effects (in fact, any scene set in space is CGI). And we're talking about really early CGI here, it REALLY takes some getting used to.

If you're looking for high concept science fiction, B5 won't be your cup of tea. It has some elements of it, but not much. It's mostly about war, politics, corruption and intrigue.

If you disliked the character dynamics of DS9, you will probably hate B5. That's just about all the show focuses on - even going so far as to focus on dynamics between recurring characters.

In the end, I say check it out, as I did find it ultimately worthwhile.

 

[RoJoHen]

And before you ask, no, none of the characters are robots.

 

[Reverend]

Based on what you said, no, if you're after robots and ker'slosions and suffer from a short attention span, I don't think B5 is the show for you. Go watch Andromeda instead.

 

[ReadyAndWilling]

YMMV, but I personally found Babylon 5 to be an entertaining, but mostly, disappointing show.

The overall story is unbelievably good. However, you're going to have to deal with a lot of bad in order to enjoy it.

If you're looking for good characters, I'll say that there are a few in B5, but I did not care for most of them. Some are very well fleshed out and three dimensional while others are wooden and boring.

If your looking for good special effects, I have to say - look elsewhere. B5 was released in the 90s and uses only computer animation for special effects (in fact, any scene set in space is CGI). And we're talking about really early CGI here, it REALLY takes some getting used to.

If you're looking for high concept science fiction, B5 won't be your cup of tea. It has some elements of it, but not much. It's mostly about war, politics, corruption and intrigue.

If you disliked the character dynamics of DS9, you will probably hate B5. That's just about all the show focuses on - even going so far as to focus on dynamics between recurring characters.

In the end, I say check it out, as I did find it ultimately worthwhile.

yah, i'm 10 minutes into the first episode and the CGI is really hard to watch.

ds9 was made around the same time so why is the CGI so much worse?

 

[chrisspringob]

yah, i'm 10 minutes into the first episode and the CGI is really hard to watch.

ds9 was made around the same time so why is the CGI so much worse?

Because DS9 didn't start using CGI until later seasons. In the beginning, they were using models.

 

[Angel4576]

Plus DS9's budget was probably ten times what B5's was.

I was a huge Star Trek fan when I started watching B5, and still am, but B5 just blew me away.

I'd agree with the others, based on what you've said you like in a series then it's possibly not for you. Of course having said this B5's combat sequences in later seasons were much better than DS9's IMO.

 

[Starkers]

Funnily enough I've currently begun the process of buying/watching all the DVDs again and am about a third of the way through Season 2 (Watched GROPOS last night). Now I did watch B5 first time around and loved it, used to have most of it on VHS many moons ago, but I hadn't really seen much of it in ages and...well I wondered if it would live up to my memories.

Pretty much it does, some episodes don't seem quite as strong as I remember, but others are even better than I remember. The show has flaws, but none of them are that bad really, and often they work to the show's advantage.

CGi- Personally I don't think the cgi looks that bad given the budget and time they were made (and as a Blakes 7 fan I'm exceptionally forgiving) but they gave B5 the ability to show us things and paint on a canvas that no other show could do at the time unless it had a Trek like budget.

Acting- Yes its variable, but none of the main cast are that weak, and even those who aren't great actors work within their roles. Jerry Doyle's is pretty far from being a good actor, but he's perfect as Garibaldi, in fact its hard to imagine anyone else in that role. Same with Claudia and Ivanova. Furlan is very good, and of course the show has real stand outs in Katsulas and Jurasik, for me Londo and G'Kar are up there amongst the greatest sci-fi characters ever. Oh and one surprise this time round is how much I'm like Franklin, Biggs was a good actor

Story/writing/dialogue- the story really is faultless, but the writing and dialogue vary, and you really do get to hear the word hell a lot! sometimes dialogue comes across quite cheesy, sometimes this is down to the actors, sometimes down to the word on the page, but one thing it never is is stilted, pretty much everyone buys into their roles and sells the universe as best they can, and that's why Babylon 5 works I think, they took it seriously, but not too seriously...

There is a lot of fighting in it, but yeah the characters do spend a lot of time talking to each other, which I see as a good thing as I love character development and political intrigue, but you might not like.

One final point, back in the day I thought the whole Trek stole B5 and made DS9 notion was sour grapes, but watching the first season especially again it's interesting how many really obvious parrallels I saw. Luckily I think both shows took divergent paths and I love em both.

 

[Tulin]

i also love anything to do with the robots and real science fiction.

I have a feeling B5 is not for you.

To quote JMS some time back in 1993,

"No cut kids or robots.......ever!"

And the couple of times they DO have a cute kid - it dies.


No - I'd leave B5 alone and spare us all the inevitable "TEH EFFEXS SUXORZ!!!!!!!!" rant that follows a Gen Y viewing of the show.

 

[Mr Light]

Babylon 5 is my favorite show of all time! I've probably watched it twenty times over now. It actually does have a lot of action; pretty much every act break is an act of violence It also has the sweetest space battles on television. The CGI *is* dodgy in the first season, but it quickly improves, and by the second season it is great looking and still holds up well today. The characters are great and varied.

That said, the first season has a lot of bad in it, and the final season is a huge disappointment. But the middle chapters are the best of television. So if you decide to try it, you really gotta stick through it at first. The pilot is pretty bad, and there's a lot of stinkers in the first season; but most sci-fi shows have horrible opening seasons.

 

[Neroon]

It's my take that every sci-fi show is worth trying out once. Heck, I even tried watching "Lexx" and "Cleopatra 2525".

The epic story is what drives the show, a statement that can be filed under "thanks, Capt Obvious". But I think it's those aforementioned characterizations which keep you coming back. The CGI may be what sold the series in its inception, but it's the characters which stick in your memory. It's eminently rewatchable for those who end up enjoying the show. I'm in the midst of my own umpteenth run through it.

However, given your original parameters, I wonder if Babylon 5 will be your cup of jala. I recommend you try it for the first season to season and a half, then take a pulse.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

There be lots of 'splosions at pivotal plot points, but there's a hell of a lot of talking. So yeah, what everyone else said.

 

[C_Miller]

I am extremely conflicted when it comes to B5. I am half way through the second season and while I'm hooked, I'm not exactly finding it an enjoyable TV experience either. From what I can tell, it suffers from JMS writing almost every episode of the series, which is extremely impressive in its own right, but he's not the best at dialog and character interaction. That said, there's something about the show that keeps me watching and I feel like when it's all said and done, I'm going to look back on the show positively, kind of like my Dad with Lost. When we were sitting down and watching, he didn't care for it, but once he saw the finale and saw the whole thing, he enjoyed it as a whole. I think that's what it's going to be like for me and B5.

Judging from your description, I don't think you're going to like it. There is absolutely no hard science fiction from what I can tell, although to be fair, Star Trek rarely did hard science fiction either. No show that's geared towards the public (like every show on TV) is going to feature hard science, because it interests so few people. But B5 goes even lighter than ST's version of science. No technobabble at all, it's more of a show about characters, politics and culture just set in space rather than elsewhere. Also, there are no robots, which is good for me, since I think robots are a lesser form of science fiction. A talented writer only has two real directions to go with them, so you can imagine what an untalented writer can do.

That said, if you don't like Deep Space Nine, I highly doubt you will like this. at all. This really takes a lot of the DS9 elements with the exploration of culture and cranks them up to eleven. There is a lot of talking. A fair amount of action as well, but a lot of talking (although, you like TNG, which to me I felt was all talking). It however, doesn't have the large mass of 3-dimensional characters, which DS9 did. The characters more exist to move the story, rather in the case of DS9, the story happens to these characters that are built for more than that.

And to those who say DS9 is a rip off of B5, while there are a lot of similarities between the two shows, I think JMS is just as guilty of borrowing a lot of elements from Star Trek in general. Again, how could he not? Star Trek is pretty much the pinnacle of space based science fiction. I'd be willing to postulate that B5 owes its existence to Star Trek, so I think it's silly for JMS to be so mad at DS9.

 

[Bishop76]

No - I'd leave B5 alone and spare us all the inevitable "TEH EFFEXS SUXORZ!!!!!!!!" rant that follows a Gen Y viewing of the show.

Damn, beat me to it.

That said, it's considerably better than pretty much every iteration of Trek aside from TOS and makes DS9 look like a kid's show by comparison, in my opinion.

 

[C_Miller]

I think we can all agree, even those who aren't fans of the show, that B5 played an important role in the Golden Age of Science Fiction that was the 1990s along with The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, The X-Files, Stargate, Buffy, Quantum Leap, The Outer Limits, among others.

 

[Kosh Naranek]

[FONT=Calibri]Don’t get bogged down in the whole B5/DS9 controversy. There are parallels but the two shows followed divergent paths.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri]Babylon 5 is my favorite Sci-Fi show. (I also love Deep Space Nine and Farscape.) [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri]Granted B5 had its flaws, but the story and certain golden characters kept me coming back for more.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri]I had to know what path Londo chose. I needed to know about G’kar. [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri]Yes the CGI looks very dated now, but they were working with cutting edge technology when the show began. [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri]B5 is not about eye candy. It is about flawed but beautiful characters embroiled in an epic struggle.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri]There are times that the dialogue is clunky and scenes do fall flat, but there are also moments that stunned me, made me cry and had me on the edge of my seat. [/FONT]

 

[Tulin]

[FONT=Calibri]Don’t get bogged down in the whole B5/DS9 controversy. There are parallels but the two shows followed divergent paths.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri]Babylon 5 is my favorite Sci-Fi show. (I also love Deep Space Nine and Farscape.) [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri]Granted B5 had its flaws, but the story and certain golden characters kept me coming back for more.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri]I had to know what path Londo chose. I needed to know about G’kar. [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri]Yes the CGI looks very dated now, but they were working with cutting edge technology when the show began. [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri]B5 is not about eye candy. It is about flawed but beautiful characters embroiled in an epic struggle.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri]There are times that the dialogue is clunky and scenes do fall flat, but there are also moments that stunned me, made me cry and had me on the edge of my seat. [/FONT]

As the kids would say today,

Epic, EPIC FAIL!!!

 

[Neroon]

Heh... all of those coding tags around the text of your post, makes for an interesting visual analogy to the sounds surrounding Kosh's voice from his translator.

 

[JarodRussell]

B5's very low production value was one of the things that put me off. The visual effects didn't even look good to me back then.