Babylon 5

Babylon5. The mere mention of the word causes grown men like myself to go weak at the knees and utter four additional ones. Best. Sci-fi. Series. Ever. A while back, JMS or J. Michael Straczynski decided it would be a cool idea to have a single core science fiction storyline that spanned five years. Nothing quite like this had come before and nothing like it has come along since. Unlike the throw-away culture of series that came before it, the viewer got characters that evolved and changed with time and the experiences that befell them as well as crptic plotlines that would'nt be resolved for another two years. Alliances waxed and waned among political ...  Read the complete review

In the nineties, there was a covert war: the war between the people who watched Star Trek and those who favoured Babylon 5. As televised science fiction goes, Babylon 5 is regarded as ground breaking. Its story spans five seasons and is almost entirely written by Michael J. Straczynski with Harlan Ellison as conceptual consultant. The first season is definitely the hardest one to follow as it serves as a platform for the rest of the story to develop, introducing and giving the series a firm grounding for the future as Straczynski gradually and subtly introduces the first elements of his overall arc story. Some arc episodes are difficult to grasp at first and leave the ...  Read the complete review

In the late nineties (1994-1998) many hard-core science fiction fans had to make a choice Star Trek- Voyager or Babylon 5. I never had this problem, I watched both! WHAT IS IT ABOUT The year is 2258, ten years after the Earth-Minbari War. The last hope for a lasting peace to be established in the universe is Babylon 5 an orbiting space station set up to be the safe meeting place for representatives of all interstellar empires. The previous Babylon stations disappeared without trace and if Babylon 5 fails the universe is likely to descend in to war and conflict once again. Commander Jeffrey Sinclair has been chosen to head the operation. However there ...  Read the complete review

I used to HATE Babylon 5. I would purposely avoid it when it was on TV. I was an avid Star Trek fan you see, and Babylon 5's entire style and concept were contradictory to my taste in sci-fi. I liked the clean-cut scientific purity of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In comparison B5 looked dumb, cheap and weird. I didn't like the way the sets looked so cheap that it ruined the illusion of being on a space station. I didn't like how fake the computer-generated effects were. I didn't like the way it used cultural things like TV news reporting and Daffy Duck cartoons. I thought the acting was below par. I thought the aliens looked ridiculous. I thought ...  Read the complete review

Babylon 5 was probably the best sci fi ever, the long running story arc made it stand out against such competition as Star Trek with it's tidy ending to every episode. The series long main plot was quite spooky at times with the 2 surviving 'old' races trying to push their own interests onto the 'younger' races in their own way. The Shadows wanted to encourage conflicts between the races so that the strong could take their place at the lead. The Vorlons wanted to increase the spiritual side of the younger races. Eventually the Vorlon/Shadow conflict came to a head in some of the best sci fi ever seen, then as a twist the Vorlons ...  Read the complete review