Babylon 5

[minoanmiss]

"Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari Fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else!"

I wish I had time to write about _BAbylon 5_, the best science fiction television show I have been fortunate to watch beginning to end. (I'm pretty sure _The Expanse_ would overtake it if I had a chance to watch the whole thing, but that is absolutely no insult to Babylon 5, which flew so The Expanse could fly even higher.) If I were going to write about Snowflake Challenge #6 ("describe a favorite canon") I would write about Babylon 5.

Comments

[sabotabby]

God it was good.

[princessofgeeks]

It really was and is a great show. I'm glad I finally watched it.

[kore]

I still love B5 so v much. It's still T's very favorite show.

[rmd]

That was an outstandingly badassed scene.

[cellio]

Fantastic show. So many strong characters, real character change, compelling story... I think I need to rewatch it again.

[marcelo]

"Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari Fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else!"

Still remember that phrase frame by frame, still love it.

And Ivanova's. God sent me... Jesus (pun not intended).

[minoanmiss]

Oh my wow yes.

[jadelennox]

I quote that scene all the time.

[gwydion]

Babylon 5 is still one of the best. :)

[lunabee34]

I never watched it. At some point I should rectify that.

[minoanmiss]

So good on so many levels. I especially love: the worldbuilding; the relative firmness of the scenice fiction[1]: the female characters (JMS truly knows that women are people); the plot, which has my favorite use of time travel ever; how the alien species don't feel like mere Rubber Forehead Aliens but actual different species. Oh I could go on.

[1]caveat: telepaths. And some other things. But compared to most TV SF Babylon 5 was a bagel compared to pudding in terms of hardness. A very delicious well crafted bagel.

[hitchhiker]

same!

[gingicat]

Babylon 5 and The Expanse are as different from each other as Star Trek and Star Wars. When I rewatched Babylon 5 last year it absolutely held up.

[lb_lee]

I am real bad at watching stuff by myself but the scifi library has the whole thing. (I know, I was the one putting little stickers saying how many discs were in each box.) If they ever start having weekly watches of that, maybe they’ll finally manage to pin my ass down for a recreational activity there!

[pensnest]

B5 was awesome. It had actual physics! I loved the way the Starfurys would drop out of the station. It had races of all kinds, religions, food and drink. The station commanders had a lot of problems to bear in mind. It had economics, and divisions, and unions, and it felt like a real place. And back then, it was such innovative storytelling! Putting a baffling episode in that was not resolved for, what, a year? Amazing. I mean, JMS had his writing tics, but still. The characters! The complexities! Londo and G'Kar. Even with the studio messing them so thoroughly about and the adjusting that was done when there might not have been a season 5, the story was amazing.

I wish there were a fabulous Blu-Ray version. I have one for Star Trek:TNG which makes even the first season look Better.

[xenacryst]

Hands down my favorite. Absofragginglutely. I love me some other good shows, but this one sticks in my heart and its quotes come out my mouth all the time. A good portion of the little ficlets Ive written feature it.

True story: it came out when I was in college, and after DS9. The pilot was mildly clunky, and I completely panned it, comparing it as a low budget ripoff of DS9. DS9 was good, as it turned out! But B5 was its own animal, and stands completely on its own. Later on, we managed to get VHS tapes of it that had been recorded in England sent over to us so we could watch it earlier than it aired here in the states.

[flamingsword]

Entil’Zha.

[elainegrey]

I drove around in the San Francisco Bay Area in a Jetta with B5 characters on it to advertise the 2002 pilot of The Legend of the Rangers. I was so mad it was scheduled to go up against the superbowl. SIGH. I recently found post cards for the show that i guess we were supposed to leave places? Would you like one?

[minoanmiss]

Oh I'd LOVE a postcard! Have given you my address?

[elainegrey]

You have not -- feel free to do so!

[elainegrey]

Nice solution received!

[ailbhe]

Rob and I watched it together in 1999/2000 and he has since rewatched it alone without including me, because he forgot I liked it/life was hard/he was watching it on his phone on trains, but now I'm having my first ever rewatch and it's glorious. We've just finished the episode where Ivanova says "Boom tomorrow. Always, boom tomorrow."