Rambling old person storytime, consider yourself warned:
My wife is from Hungary, and grew up while it was still communist so there’s many TV shows she’s never seen.
When we were first together I introduced her to Star Trek, which she’d never heard of, and we got into the routine of watching one or two episodes of TNG every week.
Fast-forward 9 years and we’d watched every Trek we wanted to, and were at a loose end on how to continue. My first thought was Babylon 5, but after Trek that first season appeared rough as anything, and it became more of a time-filler than actual enjoyment.
A little while ago we hit the third season, and my goodness, it’s still rough, but the whole thing came together into something properly enjoyable!
Me and my wife just hit our 10 year anniversary, and we’re both happily Trekkies together :-)
I’ve probably watched all of B5 about 10 times or more. Going through another cycle right now. Just watched the first episode of season 2 today, having finished season 1 yesterday, so this is very fresh. I think if I was going to introduce a friend to it, I’d say to skip season 1 entirely.
There’s a lot of stuff that feels like filler in season 1, even though I think quite a few of those episodes are actually trying to introduce lore in a sneaky way. Like, the Soul Hunter episode feels a lot like hot garbage, but it does put some important lore in your head. Similar with the episode that they find some ancient organic alien technology. Plus, I think everybody will instantly like Sheridan in a way that never happened with Sinclair.
I’ve grown to like season 1, but it took several watches before it stopped bothering me.
You just have to keep people tied up for the first 3 or 4 episodes. After that, they still won’t like the show, but will be invested into so many questions that the first 5 seasons will barely answer any amount of them.
I ended up “buying” it off of Amazon digital. Before I had “purchased” it, it had been variously bouncing around free or ad-supported streaming services like Prime and Tubi. I stopped paying attention to that stuff after I “bought” it, though.
(All that stuff in quotes because you don’t really own it, but I’m at least using whatever I paid for.)
And that’s how all my friends got introduced to Babylon 5.
Rambling old person storytime, consider yourself warned:
My wife is from Hungary, and grew up while it was still communist so there’s many TV shows she’s never seen.
When we were first together I introduced her to Star Trek, which she’d never heard of, and we got into the routine of watching one or two episodes of TNG every week.
Fast-forward 9 years and we’d watched every Trek we wanted to, and were at a loose end on how to continue. My first thought was Babylon 5, but after Trek that first season appeared rough as anything, and it became more of a time-filler than actual enjoyment.
A little while ago we hit the third season, and my goodness, it’s still rough, but the whole thing came together into something properly enjoyable!
Me and my wife just hit our 10 year anniversary, and we’re both happily Trekkies together :-)
I’ve probably watched all of B5 about 10 times or more. Going through another cycle right now. Just watched the first episode of season 2 today, having finished season 1 yesterday, so this is very fresh. I think if I was going to introduce a friend to it, I’d say to skip season 1 entirely.
There’s a lot of stuff that feels like filler in season 1, even though I think quite a few of those episodes are actually trying to introduce lore in a sneaky way. Like, the Soul Hunter episode feels a lot like hot garbage, but it does put some important lore in your head. Similar with the episode that they find some ancient organic alien technology. Plus, I think everybody will instantly like Sheridan in a way that never happened with Sinclair.
I’ve grown to like season 1, but it took several watches before it stopped bothering me.
You just have to keep people tied up for the first 3 or 4 episodes. After that, they still won’t like the show, but will be invested into so many questions that the first 5 seasons will barely answer any amount of them.
Do you have a source where to watch it? Star Trek is often available on streaming but I’ve not found B5 yet (in Germany).
Hum… Not from .world, I can’t.
(Or seriously, in Brazil you can’t legally watch it either.)
We need a GoG for videos…
I ended up “buying” it off of Amazon digital. Before I had “purchased” it, it had been variously bouncing around free or ad-supported streaming services like Prime and Tubi. I stopped paying attention to that stuff after I “bought” it, though.
(All that stuff in quotes because you don’t really own it, but I’m at least using whatever I paid for.)
Thank you! I agree with the quotes. Something like DRM free GoG would be great for videos… but I also don’t know any service like that.
Babylon 5, season 1, is largely skippable.
2 and 3 are very good. 4 is the single best season of sci-fi television ever done.
Ideally, you watch it all in order.
In a pinch? 2-3-4-1-5.