Babylon 5 should’t have been cancelled at the end of season 4. It should have been allowed to finish on-schedule. I know they reinstated it, but the initial result was that Straczynski had to hack together a “finale” episode for the end of season 4 because he thought he wasn’t going to get the fifth season he needed to wrap it up properly, and when it was reinstated, season 5 wasn’t as cleanly produced, and felt rushed.
Agreed! B5 could have been the best 5 year run of all time had it been allowed to progress as originally envisioned. As it was, most of Season 5, while it had some good, even excellent moments, was sort of a “the great story is over - uh, now I gotta come up with more story...”
Still, even so, and despite a nonsensical explanation of the method of the station’s demolition, the real finale, “Sleeping In Light” is my favorite TV episode of all time. (”Severed Dreams” probably comes in 2nd, I suppose!)