Babylon 5

Dale Franks is opining on the greatness that is the Babylon 5 television series after picking up the box set.

If you are looking for something unusual, compelling, exciting, and thought provoking, I heartily encourage you to log on to Netflix or Blockbuster and add Babylon 5 to your queue. Be advised, you really need to start with Season 1, and watch the episodes in order.

B5 is pretty great, especially the second, third, and fourth seasons. In the first season, the series just wasn't quite right yet. The plot and look of the series just hadn't quite come up to speed. The fifth season was something of an afterthought because they actually tied up the original five year arc in season four when they thought they were going to be canceled. But the heart of the series is very good.

I also enjoyed Crusade and most of the TV movies. Crusade suffered from bad network management from TNT. Legend of the Rangers on Sci-Fi was god-awful though.

Part of my distaste for BSG is that it really just isn't as good as B5. Not only do I dislike its brooding pretentiousness, but BSG often can't get simple continuity right. I might tolerate that in Star Trek, but if you want to be "the best show on TV" then don't have major episode plot points conflict each other.