Sometimes, a friend and/or lover's reccommendation can save you from hours of bad media. Sometimes, that same reccommendation can also bar you from good times and interesting tales that come only at the cost of about 13.5 hours of your time. What I mean to say is, I never saw season one of Babylon 5, and had it on good authority that it was baaaaad. Not just bad, but baaaaaaad, the kind of bad that isn't even so bad it's good.
However, I also happened to have Babylon 5 season one on DVD, given to me by the trusted friend who assured its baaaaadness, along with seasons two and three - he just decided he didn't want them anymore, and stuck to it. Thanks, Scott! I immediately fell on season two, as that was all I'd ever seen of B5 back in the day when it was airing as new episodes, and was excited to both reacquaint myself and continue the story, as I'd never been able to watch anything pertaining to the Shadow War. Then Scott and husband Corey got me season four for my birthday so that I could finish the story arc, and it was so fine and engaging and, really, the height of space opera, that I was content to let season one grow dusty on the shelf.
Then Corey was bored last week, and put some on while I was at work, and said, "you know, this isn't nearly as bad as I remember."
And you know what? It really isn't that bad. It tends towards far more melodrama than we contemporary audiences like in our space opera (irony!), but it is not bad. I would even go so far as to say it's good. The pilot, for being only one episode whereas many are two-parters, is significantly stronger than the average sci-fi pilot.
As for the rest of the season, well, I'll talk about that in a separate post. My point is, if you've watched seasons two onward of B5 but shied away from season one, I think you should reconsider.
The real question is, if you haven't watched any B5, as is the case with my brother-in-law and his wife, should you watch season one first? I don't know. We've started them on season two. I personally am really enjoying season one, having seen the rest of the story first (it's all one big arc through to the end of season 4).
Well...whatever. Either way, it's good space opera that I would say becomes great space opera in season three, and it's pretty good sci-fi the whole way along, and it's not written by committee, which is usually good for the show, and the writer in question one famously answered a fan's question by saying that either bullets or ships on his show "travel at the speed of plot", so you know you're in for something reasonably self-aware. Plus, the overall foreshadowing and linking up of stories is brilliant.
Babylon 5: Give It a Whirl.
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