homepage Forums SimHQ Community Outer Space & Science Fiction Babylon 5.... YES it does get good!

Just saw these:

Full Comparison Of Babylon 5’s New 2023 Versions Of The Show’s 90s CGI Ships

The First Babylon 5 Movie Trailer Is Here

Hey, cool, thanks! I had not heard of that. I'm not that into animation, but I may have to pick this up on disc.

Babylon 5 being remastered for Blu-Ray:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/ne...9835898551443cb56124923e908038&ei=61

That's great news indeed. I'll be buying it.

I think it may be time to revisit.....

Started a re-watch of B5 this week. I can appreciate season 1 bit better now (on 3rd viewing) but man some of the acting and much dialog is just bad. The only consistently good performances are from Peter Jurasik as Londo Mollari and Andreas Katsula as G'Kar, and those two are great. O'Hare as Sinclair is stiff, stilted. Jerry Doyle is okay but so much of his dialogue sounds like it was written for a high school play. Claudia Christian as Susan Ivanova is pretty good, it helps that her Russian character is supposed to be a bit stiff and formal.

And I will never like the Minbari head "bone", it's like the "alien designers" looked at TNG Klingons and thought "how can we design a more outrageous, unbelievable alien head than that.

But I am enjoying it, looking forward to season two.





I just watched episode 8 where Sinclair is kidnapped and made to hallucinate / remember his time being abducted by the Minbari. It is quite ironic that he is in those scenes portraying something akin to what was actually happening to him with his deteriorating mental condition. Pretty sad.

To this day I’m so glad that I stuck it out with Babylon 5 the first time I watched it because season 1 is full of cheese and bad acting. The show improved though in season 2 and then dramatically improved with season 3.

Season 1 episode 16, "Eyes"

I don't think I recognized Jeffery Combs in this episode the first 2 times I watched. This time it was his voice more than the face that caught my attention. Awesome as always.

Finished B5 round 3 tonight.

What a great series. But also the most "uneven" series ever... it can go from a great scene to just cringeworthy bad dialogue / plot hole in a matter of minutes, even in the good seasons. I think much of that is owed to JMS writing practically the entire series, he was just too rushed to polish everything as much as was needed at times.


Londo / G'Kar still the greatest pair of antagonists in SciFi. The twists and turns of that relationship are great. Did I miss the actual reason G'Kar killed Londo? Londo asked him to, right?

Sheridan was such an improvement over Sinclair

Captain Barbie Doll was such a disaster compared to Ivanova

Byron.... man that entire story could have been done in one, two episodes tops. First half of season 5 was a snooze fest because of him/his followers.

Still pissed at what they did to Lennier... he would NEVER have done that!

Still wanted more on Londos later years, and what became of G'Kar and Lyta

Did David Sheridan get the "gift"? And did he hand a "bonehead" of any sort... enquiring minds want to know!

Did Sheridan die... or become a "First One"?


I still haven't watched any of the other movies etc other that "The Gathering"

Great post and I agree with all of your observations on the series. For the B5 movies, I strongly recommend you watch "In the Beginning" next. Since you have finished the entire series this won't have any spoilers for you.

I concur with PM’s suggestion that “In the Beginning” is worth a watch as it does somewhat address the questions I had about Londo/G’Kaaaarrr and the gift and David Sheridan.

Currently I’m on my third watching of the entire series. The first time I watched it was when it was first broadcast on a long gone cable-tv station which if I remember correctly called itself “5”. Fittingly. Back then, I didn’t pay full attention to many of the episodes of season 1 and 2 because some of the episodes are slow and “setting up” things for a later pay-off.

Second watching I watched it on a CRT tv and this time I had the “Complete Universe” DVD box-set; all episodes and movies + Crusade.

Watching it now, I have a projector which beams the images up on my wall, screensize some 3 x 2 m and the sound via bluetooth to my stereo. It is most impressive stuff allthough it is clearly obvious that the visual fx are dated and at times cause the resolution of the scenes to be really dreadful and sub par.

It is quite unusual for me that any tv-show can survive rewatching but in spite of the faults of the show, the at times clunky dialogue and the occasional cringy scene or episode so far I’m well entertained. And it is part of the charm that the pace is at times slow and that we learn a lot about the people and the settings in their universe. Issues are examined, debated and illustrated with a detail that would be beyond the attention span of today’s tv audience.

Everyone has their favourites and Boxleitner as Sheridan is a clear favourite over Michael O’Hare. I beg to indulge in my appreciation of O’Hare’s performance as Sinclair. On my second and now third rewatch, I still think he is vastly underappreciated.

McGonigle, get a screen for your projector. My oldest has a projector and a screen made a big difference in picture quality over a wall.

Will try that F4. I have a silverscreen from the old days when we bored the family with slides from the most recent holiday!

It’s such a sad story behind why Michael O’Hare left the series but it all ended up working well for the series since Boxleitner was brought in.

Boxleitner was just so much better than O'Hare.

He’s definitely the better actor but he also wasn’t struggling with schizophrenia.

I really liked O'Hare, he had an amiable quality about him that felt genuine. I don't think he could have lead the coalition through the ensuing wars in season 3 and 4, however. Boxleitner really shined by that point. Of course he did, however, as he was the Scarecrow in "Scarecrow and Mrs. King." He already had honed his acting chops.