OK, Babylon 5 is not great, but if you are patient, the story line is worth it.

I started watching Babylon 5 in high school after a debate with a friend of mine on which one was better: Babylon 5 or Star Trek: The next generation. I thought that to make a better decision, I would have to watch Babylon 5. I did and I was hooked!

I recently watched all of Babylon 5 from season 1 to season 5, plus all the movies, and the sense I have of the series now, is different from the sense I had when I was in high school (10 years ago). This is a function of two things:

The first is that I started watching Babylon 5 during season 5 (which was good), and I really did not pay attention to the previous seasons that kinda sucked. I put up with them in order to get the back story.

The second was that I was in high school.


Babylon 5 as a concept is actually not bad. The story makes sense. The alien races are great and they really show they work as paradigms of the different natures of humanity. The main conflict is great. Where the series falls short is the absolutely horrible writing of J. Michael Straczynski (JMS).

JMS wrote ALL of the episodes and the subsequent movies, and his bad writing stigmatizes the whole Babylon 5 universe. His writing is just awful! There was also little thought on how the series was going to end.

Season 1 was a good setup for the conflict ahead (bad writing aside)

Seasons 2 thought 4 were good in terms of dealing with the conflict and giving us a climax for the end of that conflict (the shadow war)

Season 5...fell on its face! Really! What the heck happened? Season 5 stunk!

Then...there were the movies... I think you should check out IMDB and the different user ratings for the movies because those speak volumes, and I actually agree with most negative remarks.


Now should YOU watch Babylon 5? Well, if you don't mind cheesy, korny, and really bad dialog, you should. The sci-fi plot, or at least the underlying ideas are pretty good. The execution (and writing) is what sucks!

If you have little patience for bad writing...then perhaps you shouldn't :-)

At this point I think that The Next Generation is better than Babylon 5. If you want to see a space station sci-fi drama you should check out Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.