Wow. JMS was very active on the message boards while the show was on the air (Delphi first, IIRC, then rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5), and of course the topic of the O'Hare->Boxleitner switch was a heated one. His explanations were always rather unsatisfying, and now it's clear why.
Babylon 5 was not great television. But it certainly should get credit for being pioneering television, both for its reliance on CGI vs. traditional FX, and its wholehearted devotion to a serialized story (and not merely an ever evolving "soap opera") over the traditional episodic format. And with a season-spanning canvas on which to tell stories, it had more than a few transcendent moments.
IMHO, and IMHO only, it was the best TV series ever made, for the reasons you cited. I have never seen character driven serialisation like it, before or since. Even though its 20 years old, and visually iffy by today's standards, people still come to it fresh and enjoy it as much as people did all those years ago.
OK, rationally, it has problems, but to call it not great is doing is a gross dis-service.
There's lots to enjoy about it, and certainly I was more or less obsessed with it from the first time the pilot aired as a "Movie of the Week", well before it finally started syndication. But the writing, acting and direction all average a B+ at best, and that's being generous. Maybe we have different definitions of "great television", but mine requires a fairly low incidence of cringe-inducing dialog and stilted acting.
Again, that's not to say there weren't some great performances and beautiful, memorable scenes. I could watch Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas (RIP) spar for hours.
I think the scope of it, really being one of the first truly serialized SF shows to succeed, more than makes up for its shortcomings in other areas. There's rarely been so cohesive of a whole series story as B5 on TV and that's laudable all on its own.
Battlestar Galactica was the only series to do what Babylon 5 did, but better, IMHO. Both of them were awesome, but I've rewatched all of BSG several times now.
B5 had a much more cohesive story. BSG was better in other respects (acting, SFX) but the story was mostly improvised from season to season and it's much less satisfying.
Most reviews I have heard agreed with you. I have heard nothing but praise for the show. But after watching the first 2 or 3 episodes several years ago the best word I can think of to describe it is "unwatchable."
As amazing as Season 4 was, I can only begin to imagine the levels of awesome it would've reached if they hadn't had to wrap up all the open storylines out of concern that they wouldn't get renewed for the fifth season.
If they'd gotten renewed in time, the Season 4 finale would have been Intersections in Real Time.
Yeah, for a new watcher, I'd really only recommend a handful of episodes from season 1 (And the Sky Full of Stars, Signs and Portents, A Voice in the Wilderness, Babylon Squared, Chrysalis). Then maybe about half of season 2, then all of seasons 3 and 4.
I swear there used to be a page on the Lurker's Guide[1] that had arc-plot-heavy episodes in bold or something, but I can't find it at the moment.
Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever endure an unenjoyable series for that long, at least until I run out of series that I enjoy from the first episode.
You're missing out a lot then. B5 is one of the best television series made, be it scifi or not. I would say just skip the first season completely and start from the second one, you're not gonna miss much.
I could see myself skipping the first season completely, but regardless of downvotes I will never endure an admittedly bad season just to get to the good stuff. That simply doesn't make any sense as long there are still other series out there that have tolerable first seasons.
The problem is that the first season is really good at setting up the universe an start the story. A lot of groundstones are layed there that you will definitely enjoy later on. Its just that some of the episodes feel like they were still trying to find their way of storytelling. And the production values suck, but hey - we still watch 1940s cinema today.
Also, it has some really outstanding episodes, e.g. the introduction of the agent of the enemy.
I would suggest skipping the first season, aside from the handful of episodes people named above, at least the first time you watch. Once you fall in love with the story, going back to some of the first season episodes is fun.
The pilot is particularly long and tedious, though. I often skip it even when I'm watching the entire rest of the show.
The first season is not good. Of course, the first season of ST:TNG is equally as bad. I had the good fortune to start watching at the beginning of season 2.
Not great television? It often ranks as one of the top ten sci fi series of all time. It's in my top three. Season 3 and 4 in particular are almost without peer.
It was innovative. It was epic. It had a huge effect on Sci-Fi television (which was largely Star Trek:TNG and nothing else at the time).
But it was cheesy and uneven. Yes, seasons 3 and 4 were some of the best sci-fi ever made (at the time, at least). But season 1 was mediocre at best and has aged pretty badly. Increased production values for new TV also makes a lot of Babylon 5 difficult to watch, now.
The Wikipedia article goes into this. They wanted to film widescreen but certain necessary equipment wasn't provided so they filmed in 4:3 but with the idea that you could crop it to 16:9 later. Also most of the SFX were done in 4:3 but could be cropped.
The widescreen conversion thing was executive short sightedness at it's finest!!! We offered to do ALL of Babylon 5 in widescreen mode if Warner Bros would buy us a reference monitor so we could check our output. (only $5000 at the time) Ken Parkes (the "Business affairs" guy) and Netter (penny wise, but pound foolish) said no! So we did everything so it could be CROPPED to be widescreen! Each blamed the other by the way. Doug Netter said, "Ken Parkes said no". Ken Parkes said, "Doug Netter said no". SHEESH!!! So for $75 an episode they could have had AWESOME near Hi-Def.
It's tragic that there's not enough interest in the property to re-do the CGI in higher res. They saved all of the assets so that they could be re-rendered later.
Warner Bros lawyers demanded all copies, and promptly lost them.
B5 was before my time...Stargate SG1/Atlantis were my favourite contemporary SciFi series by far (dont even mention Universe to me). However, when I went back on watched B5 I was blown away...the depth of character development and relations, the politics, blew me away. It was great television for me even though it looked like watching a well worn VCR tape on an old death-ray CRT TV.
Babylon 5 was not great television. But it certainly should get credit for being pioneering television, both for its reliance on CGI vs. traditional FX, and its wholehearted devotion to a serialized story (and not merely an ever evolving "soap opera") over the traditional episodic format. And with a season-spanning canvas on which to tell stories, it had more than a few transcendent moments.