I wish they'd bring back Misfits of Science. That was quality television.

B5 jumped the shark at Zhadum but that was one hell of a climax.

Since everyone seems to be adding their favorite quotes, here's one of mine:

"No dictator, no invader can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power governments, and tyrants, and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free."

I watch my tapes of B5 more often than I watch anything else on TV, so I welcome an attempt to add to the story. I just rewatched one of my favorite episodes, "Endgame", when President Clark committed suicide, and tried to take the planet with him.

I liked Crusade, as much as any first season SF show. But I'll agree that "Legend of the Rangers" was horrendous. I can't believe JMS had anything to do with that one..

Oh, and "In the Beginning" does give away the biggest mystery of Season One, and another that's not revealed until Season Four.

nerds rejoice and make witty coments on msg boards all over the internet

I totally agree w/Legend of the rangers sucking. The whole do arobics while you shoot emeinies thing was sooo Star Trek. I had a chance to read two Crusade scripts that never got shot and They were very good. That show should have been given a chance. TNT sucks...Can't wait for more B5.

oops, my bad.
I was thinking of In the Beginning, when I said call to arms.
In the begingin was the good movie, call to arms was almost as bad as the ranger one.

Henchman : Read the Technomage books, you'll find some surprises. :)

shadowrift : Starlancer is good (BTW, if you like StarLancer, the producers of that (Chris and Erin Roberts) made awesome games called Wing Commander, total of like 9 or 10 different games, the arc\storyline ones being just plain awesome, Check out www.wcnews.com if you're interested)

dreadnought : The second ship was called the Victory

wh0mprat : You're not including Ivanova in that? Be ashamed And yes, Byron sucked beyond all belief

LondosHair : lol, Londo's great, and heya Hair

drake113 : God I love that, still moves me...must buy dvd's

MadSkillz : Legend of the Rangers movie - BAD KITTY! RUN! LOL

JohnBigBootay:
In The Beginning if you want the Minbari War stuff, very minimal spoilers, so go ahead and watch
The Gathering (movie, if you want, takes place before Season 1)
Seasons 1-3
Thirdspace (if you want, if not, save some brain cells, non-arc)
Seasons 4 and 5
River Of Souls (if you want, if not, save some brain cells, non-arc)
A Call To Arms(just watch, you'll like, takes place 4 years after season 5)
Crusade
Legend of the Rangers...only if you're desperate, or drunk

Books are as Follows (only read Trilogies, so I can't help you on the 9 Dell books, sorry)
Basically, the 3 can be read whenever, but best is after you've finished all the shows and movies, for no spoiling
Teep trilogy takes place before, before, and after B5, rather standalone, doesn't matter
Technomage is During season 2 to 3, with tieins to the show. Prolly want to read after ACTA or Crusade
Centauri Trilogy is Season 5 through Sleeping in Light basically, tie ins in a few places during the series/movies

*phew*

Have fun

Finally I will get some closure. I was expecting to know how Lyta defeated Psycore. I wanted to know about what happened with Lenier. I wanted to see Vir rid Centauri Prime of the Drakh. There were so many loose ends to tie up in the last season and the only one they saw fit to tie was where Xanthros told Sheriden, Ivanova, and Delenn that they were each "The One". We saw Ivanova taking Sheriden's place as the head of the Rangers thus fufilling what Xanthros said. That was it. I was left with a serious WTF?! hanging over my head after the last show. Maybe now we can find out what exactly happened during that time.


Also, anyone got a copy of the album that the cast put out? I want to hear it just once. I mean, Londo singing has got be good for a laugh or two.

PTK: Most of the numbered B5 books aren't very good, with most set during an unspecified part of Season 2. The exceptions are "To Dream in the City of Sorrows", which explains what Sinclair was up to in Season 2, and "The Shadow Within", which described Anna Sheridan's trip to Z'Ha'Dum in great detail.

Xevious : Psi Corps, Lennier, and Zathras (sorry, just had to)

/spelling nazi

And read Legions of Fire, the Centauri Trilogy, if you want to see how Vir kicked Drakh ass.

/uber freaking nerd

Alphax , thanks, I forgot the titles. The Shadow Within and To Dream in the City of Sorrows are being reprinted by Del Rey, everybody says they're good, so they should be worth the 5 bucks
Off to Media Play. :)

and sorry for the triple posting

Oh, and Vir did a good job with the Drakh. It was literally raining Drakh on Centauri Prime, or at least bits and pieces of them. :-)

OK, while we're on the topic of B5 books... Dammit, the Bester/Psi Corps trilogy kicked ass.

Hopefully JMS will be able to keep the studio execs from note-ing the series to death.

That is what killed Crusade. Notes from two different offices of Turner broadcasting wanting the show to go in two completely different directions. You cannot serve two masters. Neither would back down and it died a messy death.

Control Freaks should have their own level of Hell. Except it should be on earth and we should be able to send them there quickly.

Sweet shiat. I'm a HUGE Star Trek fan but even I'll admit Babylon 5 is better than Star Trek alot of the time.

PTK & SRFireside -

Thanks! I copied your comments, they'll come in hand.Now I can watch the whole thing without screwing it up.

Lennier: There's no alcohol in here, is there?
Ambassador Londo Mollari: Alcohol? No, of course not. Here, drink up.
Lennier: Because my people do not react well at all to alcohol. Even a small quantity causes psychotic impulses and violent, homicidal rages.
[Londo stops him from drinking]
Ambassador Londo Mollari: Ahh ahh ahh.....my mistake.

Indb.com is a tremendous memory aid.

There were so many loose ends to tie up in the last season and the only one they saw fit to tie was where Xanthros told Sheriden, Ivanova, and Delenn that they were each "The One". We saw Ivanova taking Sheriden's place as the head of the Rangers thus fufilling what Xanthros said. That was it. I was left with a serious WTF?! hanging over my head after the last show. Maybe now we can find out what exactly happened during that time.

I'm thinking that your "WTF" thoughts are because you got your Ones mixed up:

Sinclair was the One who Was.
Sheridan was the One who Is.
Delenn was the One who Will Be.

Delenn took over the reins for the Alliance after Sheridan took his Sunday drive, and Ivanova merely headed the Rangers at this point.

better this than a sharp stick in the eye.

watch a rerun of 1st season tng lately?

arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

-we were all so easily led back then.

Kinda late, but in other JMS news, his latest project, "Jeremiah" has probably been cancelled. Which is too bad. It looked promising, especially with the new "Mr. Smith" character.

as long as it does not suck like cursades. i will be happy.

And i so do wish they release the Babylon5 combat simulation game.

In the perfect universe, B5 is the Star Trek prequel, not little e...

Babel, known in Trek as the site of a peace conference in the original series, is Babylon 5. The founding of the Federation/Alliance occurs in the same time frame in both stories. The upright humanoid alien species are similiar or at least convertible. Etc Etc
%nerd

anyway, any real sci-fi on tv is better than none, i still slog through the occasion little-e to see if they've come up with anything - but good stuff is best of all.

And i so do wish they release the Babylon5 combat simulation game.

The last thing I heard on that was at the time Sierra pulled the plug (it was Sierra, right?), they were only at being 40-60% done. In an interview with someone with the project, they'd claimed that there wasn't enough in it at the cancellation point to give it any sort of stable playability, so even leaked code would be worthless. As to finishing the game, they said that everyone who was working on it had scattered to other projects and that just having new folks try to finish it would be harder and more expensive than it was worth.

HOWEVER... To my understanding, there was a lot of FMV footage shot for the game that is currently 'missing'. Probably a rights issue regarding that, and will probably stay buried and hidden until such time that a B5 revival happens. I'm guessing the retro-B5 craze will hit in 2015, given that it took TRON, Trek, and Star Wars nearly 20 years from their initial releases to become trendy and popular with the pop culture once more. We'll go into Hot Topics and see Londo T-Shirts emblazoned with the "In Purple, I'm stunning!"-line right next to Hello Kitty dolls in Ranger uniforms, ID4 notebooks, and Titanic lunchboxes.

I'd welcome the return of "something" created by JMS to the airwaves. I don't necessarily think it needs to be B5 - I think the story arc there is more or less done and I'd like to see something else as creative and compelling.

The defining moment of the series for me was in the second season, when the Centauri are attacking Narn, and there's a shot of Londo looking at the bombardment of the planet below with massive meteors... The acting for both Londo and G'Kar was supurb, although I think that Andreas Katsulas did some of his best work ever.

B5 just stole the idea from DS9...

PhamNuwen

Hee hee. If THAT ain't a troll, I don't know what is.

wdorr

Sadly, the B5 space sim is no more. I got to play an early build at DragonCon a few years ago. It was oh so sweet. Easily the best flight combat sim I've ever played, and a lot of it wasn't finished yet. I really mourn it's loss, because I've never been as excited about the release of a game before. And it's gone. shiat.

Damn shame about the B5 combat sim.
But at least I got a watch and a poster out of it.

What, people actually watched that show??

Uncle Bester
Me too! Forgot all about that. Got the mousepad too. (emailed credit card info the first day.)
Gotta find that stuff.

/SuperUberB5Nerd

I long for the days when B5 can return to my life. But in some non-crappy iteration. I'm not interested in just another halfassed spinoff. Something developed would be nice. Why not tell the story of valen or something? Seriously. B5 goes back & forth, I bet they could tie in throughout the original arc with that as well!

Lots of potential, but JMS should ponder it for a year or two before even getting started. He needs to design the story the same way he did with B5, and that means: with a passion.
Not some "I'm the best script writer, nyeanyea" attitude. I think he can be a pretty shat snob when it comes to that kinda stuff. All these series that he pops & then abandons...That's so lame.

http://www.jmsnews.com for any updates on what he's up to these days. The guy is certainly still alive!

I stopped watching television in the mid nineties. I didn't catch on with B5 until the second or third season. It still, is the last show I've ever watched religiously.

To everyone's credit, the first season is unbearably cheesy at times. I tried introducing a friend who's whole family is some "high brow" sci fi critic gang...They panned it right away. I certainly didn't feel like they'd given it at all a chance. What I think people do when they come to B5, is they don't want to invest anything in it. They're displeased before they get a chance to see the show deliver.
Even come second season, things start getting really neat. The CG, I personally think is awesome, and the design on all the ships is incredible.

Story and characters...Are what the show was all about. There was so much depth and detail to the relationships between all the characters and the forces that motivated them...It was amazing. So much intrigue.

Babylon 5 remains to this day, the most likely edition of what humanity's future is to be. Whether we find aliens or not, I really don't give a hell.
Babylon 5 really tries to step out of science fiction, and goes more into science reality. In doing that, it takes on many soap opera elements. It relies very little on jargon, and nearly anyone can relate to it.

Unfortunatley though, compared to the amount of time Star Trek has had to build momentum, Babylon 5 only claims a small few from the singleminded mass. Even before I knew B5 existed, Star Trek has always seemed weak to me. It was like the technical guide to a nonexistant world.

Babylon 5, inspires me to think about the future, because my mind has an easier time seeing B5's idea of the future than any other sci fi.

I could talk forever. But the biggest thing is that if you want to, or can ever give B5 a chance. Watch seasons 1 - 3, and then tell me it sucks.

Because I know you won't be able to.

and so it begins...............

If B5 AND Family Guy both come back on the air, it will be as if the angels (or vorlons sans encounter suits, whichever) came down to earth and spread their wings to caress me in their tender loving embrace!

/hopeful but doubtful