I actually thought B5 was one of the best SciFi on TV at the time. The story arc was such that the first season first episode impacted last season last episode. Very tight interwoven story. Of course we find out years later that JMS had to “loosen things” to accommodate Michael O’Hare’s medical problems. Think how much better the story arc might have been if that hadn’t happened. It blew away its ST:NG competition. You want Clintoneseque moralizing & reasoning go no further the those ST:NG shows. Some of the storylines in B5 made me think JMS was familiar with Thucydides’ “Peloponnesian War” .
I loved B5 at the time, too. The special effects put Star Trek to shame, especially the notion that an ‘alien’ could be more than a human with forehead ridges. And having JMS semi-available to fans during the course of the series was amazing. I’ve only ever seen that done with Mad Men and B5.
Star Trek: NG is my favorite of the ST family, though, and holds up better in repeated viewings. B5 doesn’t show up much, if at all, on cable/streaming, which is a shame. NG seems like it’s always running somewhere, currently on BBC America.
If Catherine Sakai had gone to Zahadum and returned later instead of Melissa Gilbert, it would have had a much more powerful impact on the audience, since we knew the character, would have seen their wedding, etc.
And if O'Hare had stayed, the show would have neatly closed the loop with Sinclair and Valen, instead of that idea being an incidental cool thing to do with a character who had left the show earlier.