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Posted on 04/21/2017 7:28:00 PM PDT by Ciaphas Cain
Older fans know Babylon 5, the game-changing 1994-1998 series, but younger fans may not have had a chance to watch it. Here’s your internet-sized window of opportunity. B5 has come to streaming service Go90.
According to showrunner J. Michael Straczynski’s Facebook page, “This is the first time B5 has been streamed online or available in the US for a very long time.” Go90 is offering all five seasons for free, without commercial breaks. I tested it myself, and it looks great.
For those who don’t know, B5 popularized the story arc in sci-fi television. (Robotech and other anime beat B5 to the game.) When it wasn’t showing us conflicts between human and aliens, humans and telepaths, aliens and aliens, it was hinting at, then revealing, a complex backstory. It took years to play out.
In fact, its serialized plot-arc-driven storylines may be a better fit for streaming media, rather than waiting each week for the next piece of the puzzle.
(Excerpt) Read more at blastr.com ...
The television movies, including the premiere episode "The Gathering" aren't available yet. Would be nice to have that one and "In The Beginning", the prequel movie about the Earth-Minbari War...
But even so, if you've never had the pleasure, you owe it to yourself to see Babylon 5 all the way through at least once in your lifetime.
This is arguably the finest television series of the Nineties. And perhaps the greatest science-fiction series ever. It blows anything and everything of Star Trek out of the sky. Meant to last only five seasons, Babylon 5 followed a story arc that had a beginning, a senses-shattering climax, and a final episode that made grown men and women break down and cry. For a show conceived by an atheist, it might be the most respectful treatment of religion of anything in the genre (a group of Catholic monks come to live on the station, and one well-regarded episode features a Baptist minister who holds an old-time gospel singing). This is a thinking-person's show, loaded with maturity and intellect, but also rife with humor (has Star Trek EVER gone into a restroom?). It requires patience, but it WILL pay off.
Babylon 5 is what broke the ground for all the good television that's followed (Twin Peaks did much the same). Had it not been for Babylon 5, there likely would not have been Lost, or the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, or The Walking Dead. Or perhaps even Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones.
And it goes without saying: Babylon 5 is what propelled the late Jerry Doyle onto the scene.
If there's a series worth binge watching, Babylon 5 is it. First season can be a bit slow but by the time you get to "The Coming of Shadows" in season two, you'll be hopelessly sucked in.
And wait'll you get a load of season three...
This may interest you.
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Think it’ll be on Netflix?
Also available on Amazon Prime.
“The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: Energy, Matter, and Enlightened self -interest.” G’kar.
Wasted ping.
Zathras is not interested.
Only Zathras is interested.
Zathras might also be interested, but he has no computer.
“I see a hand reaching out across the stars. I hear billions crying out your name.”
“My supporters?”
“Your victims...”
The Londo and G’Kar arc is probably the best and most satisfying arc I’ve seen in any sci-fi show.
Great show. Got a little screwy in the fourth season because they didn’t know if it would get renewed. But great show. The story arcs were fantastic and quite detailed.
I will give it a try. I remember being urged to watch Babylon V repeatedly by folks at my first job out of college, but I was never able to get into it. Maybe time will have made it more easy to get into.
“I’d like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next 10 generations that some favors come with too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes and wave. Like this.”
Thanks, I’ll be watching it. I have the Babylon 5 Movie set on DVD but not the full series. The movie set has the following:
Movie 1: The Gathering (the pilot show that launched the TV series)
Movie 2: In The Beginning (the prequel)
Movie 3: Thirdspace (discovery of a gateway technology)
Movie 4: The River of Souls (questions of eternity after death)
Movie 5: A Call to Arms (the torch is passed)
Hope they will show these
Babylon 5 and Firefly stand alone at the pinnacle of television science fiction. Nothing else comes close.
Among B5’s many interwoven storylines, one of the main ones was, of course, the political machinations, evil, and finally civil war which came about because of President Clark. As I watched the series through, yet again, I noticed how that arc was eerily similar in so many ways to the 0bama regime, yet was written almost 2 decades earlier.
Binge watching is the best option. When it first came out, I didn’t like it. But once I watched it without having to wait a week to see episodes and to see them in order, it was like a book I couldn’t put down. Set aside plenty of time before watching. One or two episodes at time aren’t enough.
That wig was out of control. In an interview that actor said hollywood wig makers always make the wig longer than needed because it can be cut down at the set, but never lengthened. So this crazy wig gets sent over and everybody laughs and he puts it on goes to the boss and says whaddya think. The boss says it looks great and no one knew if he was joking so they used it.
Movie 4: The River of Souls (questions of eternity after death)
The moment when Martin Sheen finds out the secret of it all I was hoping for someone to say to him “ gee, what a Clymer you must feel like now.” Or Nelson from “The Simpsons” to say “Ha!”
I was a fan of the show in the 1990s. The story arcs, production value, and acting were all jolly good. I never saw the prequel.
Thank you very much. I wanted to watch it again, but $30+ per season on Amazon Instant Video was too much.
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