I still think that B5 was a fantastic show. And by fantastic I actually mean bang-on.

Spooky. Like visiting a graveyard almost.

The top one actually reminds me of the last episode -- the empty station. Quiet. At peace after all the conflict.

OK, becoming... too... nostalgic...

You know, of all the thing in B5, the sets hold up the worst...they looked pretty cheesy in the new DVD movie too...

@PVIII:

I remeber being blown away by B5 when it first ran.

Came for the CG, stayed for the story.

Of course the CG looks shoddy now, the sets look dirt-cheap, and the sound is terrible (all those footstesp!)

@PVIII: that's because there are no sets in the recent movies. The entire thing is shot in front of a green screen, literally.

What I never could get over is that on a space station a mile long with hundreds of buildings, all we ever got to see was "green level" or "brown level" or the command center. It's like there was only one inhabited building on the whole damn station.

The new DVD movie had sets ??!! I hardly noticed.

I kid because I love, B5.

Well... I love about 4/5 of you, anyway.

@PVIII: No, I'd say the CGI holds up a lot worse than the sets do...

Oh, and the writing. ;)

@TheAlmanac: Agreed on the writing. The stories were interesting and the long story arcs were cool, but did they have to be delivered to us as if we're all on a third grade comprehension level?

By comparison, BSG never dumbs itself down for its viewers. You need to pay attention and keep up.

@TheAlmanac: Really? I actually think the CGI holds up ok (at least on my season 3 + DVD). The absolute WORST though is Crusade. It's almost hard to watch, and I retried a few weeks ago. The music is also just so, so bad, it almost makes my ears bleed - and it had a pretty good cast...really wasted potential.

@EBone: Babylon 5 was the first to develop the big assed arc of later shows like BSG. It was a transition between Star Trek TNG with it's self-contained episodes where, once the ep is over, we're right back where we started, and the more flowing story arcs of BSG, Firefly, and so many others. But, you couldn't just go "cold turkey" as it were, you had to transition into that. Studios wouldn't have bought it otherwise. Not then, anyway.

Besides, it's not that bad about doing that. You still gotta keep up.

@Marcus:
Exactly.

One of the best 'bloopers' I've ever seen at a convention: One of the B5 actors bumping into a set. "Sir! I seem to have moved the wall! Sir!"

(Cast cracks up laughing)

This kinda reminds me of Syd Mead designs. I remember beaming with pride upon hearing some of the B5 visual effects (first season, apparently) were done with Lightwave and Video Toaster on Amigas. Ah, my misplaced platform pride.

@EBone: Not only that, but I'm always thrown out of the story by the sense that JMS think he's so brilliant and so funny in his writing: "Look at this clever line/scene/reveal I just wrote!" Meanwhile, I thought none of those things.

@PVIII: Even at the time, I thought the CGI on B5 was poor, all super-huge polygons and Hubble photos for background. Crusade was a marginal improvement in that department, and (to be fair to that show) they were being deliberately experimental with its music...

@Marcus: I honestly didn't see B5's writing as a case of, "Oh, television's just not ready for arc-based writing, we have to ease them into it," but rather JMS constantly earmarking his plot machinations, as if to hammer us over the head with how much better he was (supposed to be) than other teleplay writers of the time.

@TheAlmanac:
If B5 was so awful then why did such a "wonderful" series full of "talented" writers like DS9 suddenly start copying large elements of B5's plot?

@ManchuCandidate: I have to back you up on this one. Televised SciFi, and even a lot of SciFi-esque TV drama didn't embrase the super-long story arc until shows like B5 did it. It wasn't the ONLY show that did it, sure, but it was one of the first that started to embrace the whole "if you haven't seen season 2, season 4 might confuse you a bit."

Thank goodness for DVD releases!

I really have to pick up B5 on DVD.
I was given Crusade on DVD, which was interesting in it's own way.

It's surprising to see how long the set looks in the second photo since on screen it looked incredibly small and cramped, as though you were looking at the corner of a room. Compare it to the sweep of the corridor in 2001, or even the split level sets on DS9, B5 sets felt claustrophobic. I welcomed the few times they ventured into other parts of the station - Sheridan's baseball practice or the cable car ride through the centre of B5 - it felt like a weight had been lifted to see that stuff, even if it was a really crap ass matte painting.

Is that Conway passed out in the right corner? Or just a shadow?

@ManchuCandidate: I don't buy into the conspiracy theory (only voiced by B5 fans, it seems) that DS9 "suddenly" "copied" B5, in plot or anything else. Two series centred around a space station in the future were always going to have some similarities, but where these two series were concerned, anything that's been pointed out in such arguments in the past has struck me as superficial.

Besides, they premiered around the same time, and DS9 was well into its second season when B5 started airing regular episodes...

...and even if I did buy into your premise, I would just say that I enjoyed the ripoff more than the source. ;) DS9 certainly comes off as more original.

@TheAlmanac:
As it was, B5 was pitched to Paramount in 1987, a few years before (as noted in the compuserve archives of your most loathed writer JMS.) It has be argued (I don't think so) that DS9 was really a ripoff of B5.

The whole DS9 Dominion War plot didn't show up will into what would be the 3rd season of B5 (which was well into the Shadow War.) Compare the original airdates. DS9 was drifting along like a regular Trek series till that point with stand alone eps.

And if B5 was a copy (it wasn't), it was one of the few times that a copy was better than the "original." ;->

B5 didn't invent any particular idea, except perhaps for the 'novel for television' idea, which is not the same as extended arcs. B5's biggest innovation was that it actually had the series plotted out (with necessary variations) from start to finish BEFORE the show was in full production.

Shows like DS9 and BSG make up their plots in broad ideas and modify it as they go....Ron Moore, for example, made it clear that the four sleepers revealed at the end of season 3 weren't known by the writers until that time. There's nothing wrong with that...but one of B5's strengths was that things in Season One had payoffs in later years that were well established from the beginning.

B5's CGI is now as dated as ST:TOS's was by the time of TNG. Doing large-scale CGI at that time was expensive, slow and costly.

While DS9 and B5 had similar plot lines periodically, the two shows were otherwise very dissimilar. I fell away from DS9 during the later seasons, but that was more due to scheduling in those days. I still consider the episode with the Cardassian Mengele-esque war criminal to be one of the most memorable things I've seen on television. My biggest complaint with DS9 is that it sometimes failed to capitalize on them as well as it could.

In the end, we got two really good SF shows on TV. And that doesn't suck.

@ManchuCandidate: I'm aware of the facts used by B5 fans to back up this theory, but I still don't think it's true...

...and don't worry, there are writers I loathe a lot more than JMS. ;) What's weird is that I like just about everything he's worked on except for B5--most of the children's series I liked in the 1980's were ones he worked on, for instance (like Captain Power, which had a shout-out to B5 in 1987 :)).

I think B5 and DS9 developed independently, and (clearly) some are more fond of one than another. I just don't feel the need to claim that B5 ripped off DS9 directly, and B5 fans just sound defensive when they claim the reverse.

@WizarDru: That's one of my main problems with B5: It's a novel for television. JMS was so married to his planned plotline that when Real Life happened (e.g. when a castmember left), he just substituted some other character(s) to fulfill the originally conceived plot role. That made me not care about any decisions the characters made, since they were just pawns in that Master Plan and couldn't make unexpected choices (I mean, even less so than any other fictional character--and please don't try to use "The Long Night" as a counterexample). No RDM-style organic writing decisions here. :/

Oh, the memories... *sniff*

After watching the last few episodes of Battlestar Galactica, I have to say I miss B5 all the more. Babylon 5 walked a fine line between Star Trek's "in the future nobody is ever sad" and the too-dark-for-its-own-good BSG. Yeah, some of the acting was terrible, but I don't feel the need for a shower afterwards.

On the other hand, Babylon 5: Crusade was both terrible and a blatant rip-off of "Star Blazers."