[jefc1111]

If you decide to watch Babylon 5 for the first time, I suggest giving it a chance to get under your skin. There is quite a lot to get in the way of that such as mediocre acting, cringey humour, low budget fx (all particularly prominent in season 1). But the pay off in seasons 3 and 4 is huge if you take the time to let affection grow for the characters. Babylon 5 was my first 'favourite series' that 'changed my life' etc etc so I guess I am biased!

[jeffwask]

I rewatched it last year during an old sci-fi binge, I had watched bits as a kid but never got it. I grew up on TNG and DS9 was my favorite, so I was probably biased.

It's probably now number 2 for me behind DS9. I watched it again a few month later to catch all the foreshadowing I missed the first time. You are spot on that season 1 is a slow burn that ramps up to the amazing seasons 3 and 4. Best part, it has a clean conclusion without any sequel bait nonsense.

Londo and Gkar are two of the best characters in Sci-Fi and their relationship is brilliant.

[jefc1111]

Yeah Londo and G'kar is a critical relationship to the overall effect. Also I find Garibaldi's arc compellingly tragic also...

Also I read JMS' autobiography [1] which added enlightening context

[1] J. Michael Straczynski, Becoming Superman: My Journey From Poverty to Hollywood

[stuxnet79]

As a DS9 fan myself I felt like B5 was the better show. DS9 had greater variance throughout its run, the standout episodes were phenomenal but also lots of weak episodes & filler. If there was tighter editorial control over the episodes & at least 30% of them got cut then it could be a contender.

[impossiblefork]

For me, the appeal of DS9 was that certain episodes In the Pale Moonlight etc. are a bit like a play, very self-contained even if they are in a certain setting. Babylon 5 is kind of the opposite, no plays, just parts of a long arc.

I think both have their appeal, but it's easier to timebox the enjoyment of a play. It's also easier to discuss, or think about.

[account42]

I think it also leads to more interesting stories if writers are constrained by having the characters end up mostly where they started rather than being able to cheaply generate interest with one spectacular world change after the other.

[zelphirkalt]

I watched all of TNG, Voyager and DS9. To me DS9 will always be behind the other ST series.

I felt like it was a bit too much of the social stuff, maybe because it plays mostly on a station instead of an exploration vessel, but I guess that is exactly what people like about it. The characters and their development and so on. I liked the Garak character for example, but disliked Zisko being some chosen one for the wormhole gods or something. I much prefer Data, or Picard or most of their crew, even if they don't develop as much.

Well, to each their own, they are all good series to watch.

[pimeys]

We recently watched all the 80's and 90's Star Trek for the first time. So it's really interesting to compare the series' from the modern perspective.

TNG is a classic, with the classic crew and after the first hiccups is some of the best scifi of all time. Absolutely great actors and amazing writing.

DS9 is the weird one. I do really enjoy the trajectory of many of its characters: Sisko, Odo, Bashir, Dax (one of my favorite characters in all ST), O'Brien, Quark, Kira, Worf, Dukat, Garak, Damar... The list of great characters in DS9 is the best part of this series. The last season was a definite letdown for me though, and I didn't like the ending at all.

Voyager was the surprising one. I expected a lesser series after reading the old discussion about the three Treks of the 90's. But wow. It's banger episodes right from the start, one of the most badass captains in all of Trek and in the fourth season arrives my favorite scifi character: Seven of Nine. There's a lot of great episodes here, and some filler. I didn't like how some characters never went anywhere. But there is more good here than mediocre. As a series I like it more than DS9, I just wished the other characters were up to the writing of Janeway, Seven and Doctor.

[Izkata]

Something I've said about Voyager for years*: It has some of the best and some of the worst Star Trek episodes. Very little consistency there.

I think that's probably why a lot of people don't like it, the bad outweighs the good for them.

* Before some recent entries at least. Yikes.

[jeffwask]

Voyager also suffers due to being formatted for syndication as opposed to DS9 or B5 which was formatted to support longer story arcs vs stan alone episodes. I think if Voyager could have utilized that format to have a more continuous story vs episode of the week format it would have been a classic. It wants to tell a story of a long difficult journey but struggles because most issue and conflicts just wrap up in an episode. Budget and casting constraints hurt as well because the ship felt too empty without more Obrien's running around and they should have had more loss and replacement across the ship.

[pimeys]

Oh yeah. We tried to watch Starfleet Academy but... why are they even calling it Star Trek.

Luckily Lower Decks was good, Picard had some good moments and there were a few good episodes in Strange New Worlds too, even though that series didn't really excite me anymore in its latest season.

Voyager's bad episodes are still better than most of the scifi I've watched in the recent years. They are cringe, but in a funny way.

[account42]

People just don't know how to appreciate great plots like having people travel faster than the rules of the fictional universe allow and then turn into lizards and mate.

And no, I'm not sorry for reminding anyone that this episode exists.

[le-mark]

You should try the stargate series next if you haven’t. They supplanted Star Trek in my pantheon. There are also some time travel series more recently that are also quite enjoyable; Travelers and Continuum.

[te7447]

Travelers definitely has a very distinct "seat-of-your-pants" form of plotting, though, that can seem inconsistent if you're used to something more consistently planned in advance like Babylon 5. Two big changes during S1 also made me bounce off it.

I won't claim my taste is universal: it's just something to be aware of.

[Izkata]

Stargate SG-1: Absolutely.

Stargate Atlantis: Maybe better than average. On rewatch it's tended to feel bland somehow. Began with SG-1 S8 and ran concurrently with some crossovers (Atlantis premiere happens immediately after SG-1 S8 premiere and contains minor spoilers for it).

Stargate Universe: Nope. Had potential it very much did not live up to. Set years after the first two ended.

Stargate Infinity (cartoon): No way. Additionally was made before SG-1 got very far and has many incorrect guesses about how it would have developed, set decades into the future.

[account42]

I'm with you there, it tends much more towards space fantasy than the other trek shows.

PS: Did you forget TOS in your lists or leave it out intentionally? IMO it focuses on doing one mostly self contained short story per episode even better than TNG.

[Arainach]

>it was a bit too much of the social stuff

Because clearly none of the other series focused on social stuff, except...

TOS, which featured an interracial cast (and kiss) in the 1960s, where nearly every episode was thinly-veiled commentary on communism, where they visited a literal Nazi planet, where they had a black woman as a bridge officer (in the 1960s)...

TNG, which went into deep moral arcs, looked into military tribunals, witch hunts, had entire movies about mindless bloodlust and environmentalism/colonianism, and so much more...

VOY which.....honestly, if you don't get the point by now I'm not going to spend more time listing examples.

Star Trek was BORN "woke" and has always been there, and anyone who claims otherwise was never really paying attention. Star Trek EXISTS because Gene Roddenberry put social commentary into his show "The Lieutenant" which was too controversial for the actual US Military so he had to make a new show set in the future to make all the same points but with less oversight from crusty generals.

[jghn]

I interpreted the GP as saying "social stuff" as in focusing on social interactions between the characters instead of having more action & adventure. "maybe because it plays mostly on a station instead of an exploration vessel" was what made me think this.

[jeffwask]

I probably agree but my emotional attachment to DS9 keeps it in front.

It's also crazy how relevant to modern times the plot of B5 is and how many parallels you see.

[jefc1111]

I hear this a lot about B5, and I get a _sense_ of it myself, but I'd love to know what people specifically mean. I.e. "X plot line is like Y thing" in real life right now.

[gostsamo]

From the beginning, B5 is like the UN with all the pettiness included. As a political storytelling, it was magnificent. The characters were also very high level.

DS9 has some wonderful episodes and fantastic characters, but the overall plot was weak. The world building was plot driven while in B5 it is vice versa and it made all the difference for me.

[toast0]

I've been watching B5 over the past year or so, and I came to the episode(s) where certain characters were pushing "you don't have to follow unlawful orders" about a week after Mark Kelly et al were pushing it.

[jeffwask]

It's fascism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imMGchI1EWY

[georgeecollins]

Exactly! Gene Roddenberry vision of the future is hopeful. I grew up on it and the idea that in the future people would rely on reason and express kindness. The government in B5 seemed hokey and anachronistic to me. At that time.

[nobody9999]

>I hear this a lot about B5, and I get a _sense_ of it myself,

The series creator and chief writer, J. Michael Straczynski was explicit about that: The Earth Government story arc is lifted straight from the fascist regimes of the 1930s and 1940s.

A significant amount of which we're seeing rebranded as MAGA in the US and other far-right movements elsewhere.

A good example would be the "anti-alien" frenzy in Babylon 5 as compared with the far-right's ridiculous tropes about the undocumented in the US.

There are a bunch more like Trump's obsession with personal loyalty and lack of any empathy is quite similar to Babylon 5's President Clarke.

As I mentioned, that story arc is based upon the fascist regimes of the '30s and '40s, they even have a "Neville Chamberlain"[0] analog[1] who loudly proclaims "Finally, we will at last know 'peace in our time'."

The biggest difference is that in the Babylon 5 universe, the fascist scum are much more competent than those IRL today.

There's lots more, and I'll echo the plaints of others here that Season 1 is uneven and appears meandering, but many of the plot points brought up in Season 1 end up paying off much later in the series.

I heartily recommend watching the series, not just for the parallels with some of our current circumstance, but because it's a good story with the entire five season story arc fleshed out from the beginning, with good character development and character driven story lines.

It was also the first live-action Sci-Fi series that made use of CGI for the space scenes, which was both very cool, but was also limited compared to today's SFX given that 30 second segments could take hours to render on the Unix workstations of the mid 1990s.

Is it perfect, no. But it's worth the effort to watch it IMNSHO.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Chamberlain

[1] https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Frederick_Lantze

[croes]

I think because B5 had already a story to tell from the beginning while DS9 was a setting at first.

I doubt that the changelings and the dominion where planned from the beginning.

[Izkata]

There's an interview somewhere indicating they didn't come up with the Dominion until the second season, explicitly saying they put the first reference to it in a Ferengi episode to mislead and surprise viewers.

[beloch]

DS9 and B5 came out at roughly the same time and shared a similar concept: The (mis)adventures of the crew of a bustling space station. The divergence from there is extreme.

DS9 very quickly brought in the Defiant so that its characters could escape the station and go on more traditional Star Trek adventures. The station was home base, but the crew got out a lot. It typically felt like the station was well under control, with only minor differences between it and a star-fleet vessel. (Toss Quark and Garak out an airlock and you'd pretty much have a standard starship.)

B5 did send its characters on excursions, but they were fewer and far between. The station was not a safe home base. It was a bigger and wilder place than DS9 ever was. It always felt like some crisis or another was ready to spiral out of control and the staff generally needed all hands on deck to deal with whatever was happening. DS9 had the occasional crowd scene, but B5 had bigger crowds (in record shattering amounts of alien makeup) every episode. DS9 felt like a sleepy frontier fort. B5 felt like a city.

Then there's the continuity. There just wasn't a lot of continuity in anything other than soap operas in the mid 90's. TNG occasionally had multi-part episodes and sometimes referenced earlier episodes, but it was always careful to explain things so you could jump in anywhere and not be lost. DS9 was initially episodic, but had some larger arcs in later seasons, perhaps as a response to what B5 was doing. B5 broke the mold. The first season seemed episodic at first glance, but each episode advanced the central story-line. You could jump into Season 1 at any point and be a little confused, but figure things out. That swiftly changed. Later seasons became completely continuous, and frequently relied on bits of story that happened in earlier seasons without any kind of hand-holding. This caused big problems that probably prevented B5 from being as well received as it should have been.

This is for the young whippersnappers out there who grew up with the internet, streaming, and home video: Today, if you decide to jump into a show, you can call up every episode on demand. If it's not on a streaming service, it's on DVD or VHS. Failing that, there's always piracy. When B5 came out, it was not a given that a TV series would be released on VHS or DVD. The internet was there, but it wasn't yet up to distributing video. There was no such thing as streaming. The era of Netflix mailing you physical discs was years in the future. If you wanted to watch a TV show, you had to tune in when it was broadcast. It was, essentially, live TV.

The kicker is that most broadcasters were utterly irresponsible in how they aired shows. Episodes would frequently be pre-empted or aired out of order. Broadcasters were used to purely episodic content. Who cared if people saw episode 5 before episode 2, or missed episode 3 until it got reran the following year? This royally fubar'd people's ability to follow B5. My personal memory of B5 when it first aired was fragmentary and frustrating. I'd watch an episode and really enjoy it, try to tune in next week only for it to be pre-empted by golf, and then be lost when an episode from much later in the season was aired the week after that. It wasn't until B5 came out on DVD (years later) that I was finally able to watch the show in order and finally appreciate how special it was.

Continuity between episodes is normal now. Everyone is used to shows that play out as one long narrative instead of hitting the reset button every week. B5 blazed the trail for them before TV distribution was really ready for continuity. There are a lot of warts to overlook. CG was in its infancy back then. DS9 was still using physical models in its first few seasons. B5 looks like it came out of somebody's Amiga because it literally came out of somebody's Amiga. There probably won't ever be a quality up-scaling of the special effects because a lot of the files from that Amiga were lost. The set design is clever, but stagy. The budget of B5 doesn't even add up to half a shoestring by modern standards for a show with 10 episodes a season, and B5 had 22 episodes a season! The story is so grand and detailed that it still feels rushed at times. (They thought the show would be cancelled at the end of S4, so they crammed most of S5's plot into S4. The result is fantastically dense and frenetic!)

In the end, DS9 was a fantastic show but felt a lot like the station featured in it. It was always well under control and its creators got everything they needed to deliver a compelling show. They knew how far to reach and chose their battles wisely. B5 feels like a wild and overreaching fever dream by comparison. It nearly span out of control, much like its titular station was always threatening to. If they decided to re-make B5 today, they'd probably simplify it immensely. It's story still seems too ambitious for a single TV series to tell. If you can get past the warts, B5 is still a unique and rewarding series to experience. Nothing quite like it has come along since.

[account42]

> Continuity between episodes is normal now. Everyone is used to shows that play out as one long narrative instead of hitting the reset button every week.

It actually feels more like most shows make things up along the way for each episode or at least each season, always trying to one up previous universe-shattering changes in order to give the audience their dopamine hit. While the continuity was well done in B5 it's been mostly a disaster for the industry afterwards.

[nephihaha]

There is good evidence that DS9 was (ahem) inspired by Babylon 5. However, Babylon 5 succeeds in its philosophical ambitions a lot of the time while DS9 turned into soap opera.

[jmclnx]

I heard the same back then, plus IIRC B5 did or tried to sue Paramount for copying their plot for DS9. I believe the series was offered to Paramount first but they said no.

There were a few news articles about that in various entertainment publications.

[uxcolumbo]

What's the evidence? Star Trek came out before B5 and in the ST universe there were several deep space stations. Do you mean they copied characters or story lines?

And how is DS9 a soap opera? I associate soap operas with sh!t acting and not really exploring deeper philosophical topics.

DS9 had amazing actors, character development and story lines. Take Garak for example, amazing character.

[georgeecollins]

Hollywood is a company town, even more then because there was way less international production. B5 was pitched to every studio long before the first episode of DS9. The executives deciding to greenlight DS9 would know about BS5 even if the showrunners didn’t. Lots of people worked on both shows.

That said, two people have the same idea all the time. B5 really pioneered the idea of a show with a multi season arc that was planned up front. In a time where shows more or less reset continuity after every episode. Shows like Lost pretended they knew where they were going but really made it up as they went along.

Deep Space Nine had a similar multi season arc, which is why I think the poster said soap opera.

[p_l]

DS9 literally used B5 bible information because Paramount had access to it after unsuccessful bid by JMS to make B5 there. Decision to make DS9 happened after JMS managed to get B5 signed up after Paramount's rejection.

That said, DS9 is its own thing, just with B5 "roots".

[thaumasiotes]

DS9 has its philosophical moments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feh_Y_Q_WpE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seid0z1nKjM

[potamic]

Can someone who is new to Star trek start with DS9 or need to watch earlier series for context?

[MindSpunk]

It's probably worth watching TNG before DS9. The contrast between TNG and DS9 with DS9's darker tone is an important part of the show. Probably the best episode in the whole series, "In The Pale Moonlight", is made all the better when you've seen what they're contrasting against.

[lloeki]

Probably you should really watch TNG first, lots of characters and lore that would be needed to fully appreciate a lot of things that would otherwise fall flat at best or be outright not understandable. I don't think they matter to understanding the main arc but then the main arc is only a small part of the show.

(Voyager is entirely optional but a much welcome addition that happens concurrently at later seasons; I would recommend it on its own anyway.)

For all these shows, let them grow on you, the first season of each can be a bit awkward but then things start to fall into place, both in terms of characters/lore/setting/story/world building as well as actors themselves getting the hang of characters.

And yes there are absolute duds of episodes, but don't let that make you miss the absolutely fantastic ones.

[usrusr]

Not knowing the established history of some characters can actually be nice I think. The difference between a blank slate with conveniently made up background and a background that has already been told, in quite some detail, that difference tends to be very noticeable. No matter how "complex" the background made up on the spot is.

When the background has been told elsewhere, it's a legitimate challenge to the unprepared viewer's mind. But when it's made up on the spot, it's an arbitrary riddle. I know some viewers love that kind of stuff (e.g. everybody who made it through Lost I guess?), but to me that just feels annoying. If you want me to apply myself to the riddle, make it part of the story (like in a whodunnit), or don't keep me guessing.

But when it's organically grown background complexity from another story, I'm perfectly fine with it. Patrick Stewart's Gurney Halleck: he just pops up later with atomics, the "how" is not part of the movie adaptation. And neither is speculating about it. It's just an obvious indication that yes, there's more happening in this universe than the part squeezed into anamorphic cinemascope.

That being said, yes, watching TNG after DS9 wouldn't work well at all. It's hard enough watching early episodes after late episodes, because even the "adventure of the week" episodes have been told very differently later, but the universe is too much the same to really disconnect.

[dotancohen]

Starfleet's relationship with the Cardassians was established in TNG, and I think that DS9 failed to reiterate that properly in the first season.

Then you have Obrian's history with the Cardassians - quite significant for his new assignment and without this context the character feels like a fake tough guy. The acting and directing was brilliant, because we could feel the restrain, but without understanding this it comes off cocky. It's like watching Travolta's character dance poorly in Pulp Fiction - if you didn't know who Travolta was, the scene comes off poorly acted. Or Robin Williams playing a gay man playing straight. Some background of the character is important to actually enjoy the acting mastery that we are witnessing.

[ngcazz]

Voyager spoils the TNG experience by rehashing so many stories - definitely watch TNG first.

[als0]

Yes, you can watch DS9 without having seen the other series. I hope you enjoy DS9 and also the other series should you continue.

There are occasional TNG references but they are not important to the plot.

[aspenmayer]

There are some characters from TNG who cross over into DS9, and one of the main characters in DS9 has a grudge against one of the characters in TNG due to events in TNG, whose effects offscreen relative to TNG are explored onscreen in DS9, for example. However, there are small flashbacks that act as explainers in DS9 for those who haven’t seen TNG, and the story focuses on the impact to DS9 characters and their motivations, so you might only have half of the story for those small details, but you’ll have the half that is relevant to the story that DS9 is trying to tell. You could easily watch the one or two TNG episodes involving Wolf 359 if you wanted to get the other side, though you could make do without, and come back to TNG after DS9 if you wanted afterward.

It’s hard for me to be entirely unbiased myself, as I watched the the original series (TOS) films without watching much of the OG series itself, and then watched TNG when it was airing, so I already had the context to watch DS9.

All of that is to say, I don’t think you necessarily need to watch TNG to appreciate DS9. The shows are mostly standalone and self contained. Also, I don’t think this is much of a spoiler, as the double episode premiere of DS9 pretty much includes all of what I’ve said above, in some form or fashion, with the exception of the introduction of some character crossovers of the TNG cast. I think it’s nice to know where those characters came from and what they went through prior to DS9, as the two shows were running concurrently, but neither show is written in such a way that you’ll feel lost if you don’t watch TNG first, though others may disagree.

[Arainach]

You can start with DS9 and understand what's going on with the characters. Like many series it takes a couple of seasons to figure out what's going on and who the characters are, but in the end the payoff is fantastic. It was the first series produced after the death (and overall creative control) of Gene Roddenberry, which allowed it to step away from a utopian vision and address real issues in a complicated ugly universe.

[readdit]

For me DS9 is the best Star Trek series. It's hard to admit since I adore TNG but overall DS9 is better. A few characters in TNG become main characters in DS9. You don't necessarily need the history but it may seem odd watching DS9 and then TNG. As some of these DS9 characters play a much smaller part in TNG.

[dotancohen]

DS9 was the better television series. But TNG was the better Star Trek.

TNG was far more thought provoking and one could ponder each episode - I'm still pondering some. Other than Sisko's decisions in the latter seasons, what years-to-ponder dilemmas were explored in DS9?

I actually felt that Sisko became a villian at some point, I wish that DS9 would have explored that.

[arunix]

TNG introduced various civilisations that drive much of the plot in DS9.

Season 1: Ferengi

Season 4: Trill, Cardassians

Season 5: Bajorans

Also, Chief O'Brien and his wife Keiko who were recurring minor characters in TNG have more important roles in DS9.

[Izkata]

Don't forget Worf also moved over when TNG ended.

[georgeecollins]

I went on this journey with my son during COVID.

Watch a handful of classic trek to get the idea. Balance of Terror, city on the Edge of Forever, maybe Mirror Mirror or Trouble with Tribbles. They will seem very cliched.

Start TNG in the third season and just focus on the best episodes, the ones that are 8s or 9s on IMDB. Be sure to see The Best of Both Worlds I and I, the original season finale climax.

Skip a lot of the first season of DS9. Low IMDb will tell you which ones. But watch almost all of the later seasons.

Then play Star Trek Attack Wing!

[y-c-o-m-b]

As someone that has seen all/most Trek in full (same with the B5 universe), I agree with this strategy, it's a great suggestion. They can always come back and watch the remaining ones later. I would reduce the IMDB rating threshold to about 7.7 though and they can apply that to season 2 and 3 of DS9 as well (don't skip s3x22 "Explorers" though, it's a good one despite lower rating).

[account42]

Depends. I think it's worth starting with The Original Series because the older trek as aged just as well as DS9 if not even better and that way you get the whole context that people who watched these shows at the time did.

But all the star trek series are self contained enough that you don't really need to have seen the previous ones.

[juped]

It's the best starting point in many ways!

[user568439]

You can but you'll miss important context.

TOS and TNG explain the Federation utopian universe, the ongoing conflicts and races, the moral dilemmas of the captains... I feel that starting with DS9 might get you miss the point a bit.

I would say to at least try to watch a curated selection of TNG episodes.

[pndy]

If you have the general idea about this universe you can just jump in and then watch other shows later. But mind that DS9 is a different kind of show when it comes to Star Trek. Personally, I find it much more appealing than the rest because of the core premise.

Babylon 5 explores some aspects deeply which were just glanced over in DS9 and that makes it an amazing show as well.

[duxup]

Vir's toast in one of the later episodes about Londo was a wonderful scene.

[account42]

Is that disclaimer really needed? As someone who watched the series the first time last year, the acting and humor seem fine for TV honestly. The CGI dated of course but not offensive either.

If anything I found the later seasons more disappointing than 1 and 2 as smaller scale stories are replaced with moving the big plot forward, which still feels rushed somehow.

[jefc1111]

The disclaimer is just based on my own opinion, so inevitably there will be people to whom it does not apply. Some of the acting in season 1 is great, I would just say there are some spots where it kinda briefly falls through the floor. It may be just because I have seen it several times so am spotting things that I wouldn't have first time round.

With season 4, I believe what happened is that towards the start of production JMS was told there would be no S5 after all, so he put all of S4 and S5 into S4 ... but then there was an S5 after all!

[WorldMaker]

Yeah, Season 4 is acknowledged for compressing a lot of the story that would have been Season 5 in the original plan. The series finale ("Sleeping in Light") was even shot as a part of Season 4 and delayed once Season 5 was picked up to keep it the series finale. The epilogue it tells spins out enough past the show that it mostly isn't that noticeable, but the big tell is a brief appearance of Ivanova rather than Lochley, which doesn't really break the episode because of the out-of-order storytelling of the whole episode and the glimpses of the crew are "timeless" flashbacks, but it is interesting.

[pwg]

IIRC, this was because there was significant uncertainty about whether the network exec's would cancel the show after season 4, so JMS reworked things so that 4 wouldn't end on an open-ended cliffhanger if that were to have happened.

In the end, season 5 was given the go-ahead, and so now season 4 seems rushed needlessly.

[WorldMaker]

The uncertainty is actually an interesting behind-the-scenes story that the mini-TV Channel hoping to grow up into a full TV Channel that B5 was distributed under was PTEN [0] and leading up to and during Season 4 of Babylon 5 PTEN split in a weird divorce to form the WB TV Network and the UPN Network. (It got its wish, it grew up into not one but two competing TV networks.) Season 5 was a last minute pick up/rescue by one of WB's cable networks, TNT. (TNT wanted more than just one season which led to the mess that was Crusade. As a Crusade fan, TNT was both the best and the worst of what could happen to B5.)

(History repeating itself, and Babylon 5 being cursed to ironic timing, the WB Network and UPN eventually remerged to become The CW. A Babylon 5 reboot project development was started at The CW this decade, just before WB Discovery decided to get out of the broadcast TV business and start a fresh divorce at The CW somewhat resembling the PTEN divorce.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Time_Entertainment_Netwo...

[sidpatil]

> smaller scale stories are replaced with moving the big plot forward

This is pretty common in TV shows, from what I've noticed. It takes a few seasons for a show to find its footing.

[WorldMaker]

I have a bunch of friends that either never made it completely through Season 1 or complained all through Season 1. Season 1 is rougher than normal. The problem though is that while it is easy to tell people "Skip Season 1 of TNG or DS9" (which is relatively common advice for both shows), Season 1 has so many moments of character building and foreshadowing that pay off in later seasons that even the "worst" episodes are hard to tell people to skip.

An example not quite off the top of my head is as early as Episode 2 "Soul Hunter". It's a goofy plot full of weird pseudo-scientific mysticism with a "special guest of the week" who basically never returns (excluding books and movies), so in most shows meets several definitions of skippable, but this episode also introduces Dr. Franklin, has several key Sinclair and Garibaldi moments, provides background lore for the Minbari and foreshadows certain Minbari things to come.

That's just the second episode of the season. (Truly a rough start for some.)

Another common example is "TKO". It's a silly boxing match episode, much of it doesn't do much for the series except set up some of Garibaldi's goofier side and maybe foreshadowing Garibaldi's flaws. But it's also the Ivanova confronts grief and her heritage episode, a key part of Ivanova's arc.

[MindSpunk]

It pains me how important TKO is for Ivanova's character because it's otherwise got to be one of, if not the worst episodes in the whole show's run.

[mnau]

Ratings agree with that assessment. TKO is the only episode rated "bad" of all seasons. https://seriesgraph.com/show/3137-babylon-5

[Sharlin]

When I re-watched B5 a few years ago, I wad surprised by the amount of humor and small pieces of situational comedy. It’s really missing from most 2000s TV dramas, everything became really serious after 9/11. If there’s humor in a 00s or even 10s "self-respecting" drama series, it’s usually dry, dark, and/or ironic.

[isjdjwjdhw]

Completely unnecessary, yes. Babylon 5 is a product of its time, as is everything, but it is as fine a production as any other sci-fi-on-a-budget show from the early-to-late 90s. It’s a phenomenally intricate and interesting little universe with great characters and stories. No need for a disparaging disclaimer such as that.

[zelphirkalt]

When I watched Farscape for the first time, I got a similar feeling. Costumes seemed weird, compared to Star Trek or Star Gate and some others. But I still watched and became a fan. Recently, I rewatched it and nothing seemed particularly weird or strange or low quality. I guess for Babylon 5 it will be a similar experience. Might watch that soon.

[g-b-r]

Low budget? I seem to remember it was lauded (but made on Amigas, if I'm not mistaken)

I sure loved it, at least on my crappy 21" tv

[Sharlin]

It was lauded for being made on Amigas. The Season 1 CGI really is rather rough compared to TNG, never mind DS9. But it improved considerably in S2.

Still, there are things like the starfield visible from C&C’s observation window never rotating because it was apparently too expensive to greenscreen it (presumably an actual physical rotating backdrop was also not feasible for whatever reason). On the other hand, I think B5 was the first TV series to use greenscreening to create large interior spaces like ship hangars.

[p_l]

TNG was using mainly practical effects early on, which had benefit of higher visual quality but meant not as much could be done within the budget.

Babylon 5 early and very enthusiastic use of CGI meant that the scope of what it could see was ridiculously bigger without reusing clips as much as some other places did.

[EFreethought]

One issue w/sci fi is that sci fi takes place in the future and/or has advanced technology then it is more likely to look dated than a typical sitcom where the sets are offices and living rooms.

[alehlopeh]

That’s not what “get under your skin” means.

[mortenjorck]

It has both positive and negative connotations depending on the context. For an example of the former, look at the lyrics to the Beatles’ Hey Jude. It’s been used that way since 1968!

[fsckboy]

yes, "get under your skin" can mean that, it can mean "can't stop thinking about" like the way somebody annoys you while it turns out you are falling in love

[eafkuor]

> But the pay off in seasons 3 and 4

Having to suffer through two mediocre seasons is a dealbreaker in 2026 to be honest.

[Sharlin]

Season 2 is good to great, not mediocre. It’s just that S3 and S4 are even better. Season 1 you can skip most of the fillers if you’re in a hurry. There’s a plenty of curated S1 episode lists on the internet that tell you which episodes you don’t want to miss. It’s much better this way than the usual "first season excellent, second season okay, the rest are crud and only exist to make money".

[rhdunn]

There are several stand-out episodes in season 1 and 2, as well as several stand-out scenes; plus the second half of season 2 is not mediocre. You also miss out on character and world-building that happens in those episodes that help contextualize a lot of the later seasons.

Plus, many reactors now have liked season 1 a lot better than when it initially aired.

[ndsipa_pomu]

"Suffering" would be putting it a bit strongly.

Unfortunately, there's some very important episodes that set up major plot arcs that you don't get to appreciate until later on, so maybe it's worth just watching the best episodes of season 1 if you're impatient. Season 2 is better than mediocre.

[account42]

Chasing instant gratification is not a healthy way to live.

[whynotmaybe]

No, you're not biased, it's simply the best!

It's getting old but nostalgia kicks in as soon as I see a Vorlon ship

[jfengel]

When I finally decided to watch B5 for the first time, season 1 was so bad that I literally turned it off and stared at the ceiling. (I was stuck in bed due to an injury.)

Eventually, somebody curated a couple of season 1 episodes and told me to skip ahead to season 2. By the time it got to season 4, I felt it had risen to the level of "ok".

I never found any of the characters compelling, despite some game performances. And I never found the plot all that interesting, either, though I can see why others might find it so.

[jefc1111]

This is what I was referring to in my original comment.

My suggestion is that had you endured S1 fully, you might have felt S4 had risen to a higher level than "ok". That's not to say I begrudge you skipping through S1 ... I'd probably have done the same if I'd come across it in recent years as opposed to however many years ago it was.

I'm not trying to change your mind really, but yeah - I think the value that you hear about in the characters and plot arise from the many small nuances which build up slowly over time.