As far as the movies go, "Into the Beginning" covers the history of the Earth-Minbari war the almost wiped out humanity. It is a key important arc segment, but works best watching it after you've finished the series. You will spoil quite a bit of the Season 1 Sinclair/Minbari mysteries.

"The Gathering" was the original pilot movie for B5 that introduced the world and the characters. The version you'll likely find the revised edition where jms redid the cutting so it didn't feel like it was 5 years long and was rescored by Christopher Franke when Stewart Copeland couldn't return for the series. Start with this one first if you can. There is some visual continuity that doesn't work between this and the series, but if you can't find it, Season 1's "Midnight on the Firing Line" does a pretty good job of "We're in a crisis, but we'll catch up as best we can."

"Thirdspace" and "River of Souls" have very little arc significance. Thirdspace takes place in Season 4 after the Shadow War but before Earth war, and River of Souls takes place after Season 5 but before the "Sleeping in Light" finale that I can't watch even after 25 years without bawling my eyes out. They aren't bad, but they aren't know as the greatest episodes.

"A Call To Arms" is pretty much the pilot for Crusade. It's my personal favorite and would make an excellent Babylon 5 "film" to work a franchise off of, but Crusade was executed by TNT for political reasons.

"Legend of the Rangers" was a pilot movie for Syfy after they finished running the widescreen Babylon 5 and had a huge ratings jump for their time slot. It takes place between Season 5 and A Call to Arms. It's OK, but the death blow was 9/11. The premier was on a Saturday after the playoffs were over, but the Super Bowl was still a week away. 9/11 pushed the playoffs over to it's premier. The first showing was a 1.7 or so on a brand new 2 hour pilot. The weird number that on the rerun 3 hours later, it pulled a 2.4. The audience was there, but not at the right time.

The Lost Tales was originally conceived to be a series of Babylon 5 short stories. For Volume 1, they had 3 written for Lochley, Garibaldi, and Sheridan, but dropped Garibaldi for budget reasons. It did well, WB wanted to do more, but they ignored jms when he said if we speed things up, we can have Vol 2 out before the 2009 writer's strike. It ended up lasting months, and jms decided at this point the success he was having with his career, it would be "go big or go home" mode for B5. I'd only watch Lost Tales if you were a fan and you want to see your old friends once again (and modern high quality 1080p CGI with far more detail than could be dreamed of in the 90's).

I do want to correct some of what Hound Dog said about Season 4. Babylon 5 was sold through syndication as apart of the Prime Time Entertainment Network (PTEN). The only other show out of that package you might consider successful was Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. PTEN did so horribly that it was going to die in 1997, or Season 4. It did get rejiggered a bit and if jms had his original plan, the season would have ended with "Intersections in Real Time" where Sheridan was being tortured by Earthgov. Towards the end, TNT was interested in doing some TV movies and at the last minute financed a final season with some more budget cuts (it's why some characters may only get 5-6 shows that season) that had the telepath plot stretch out a little more. It's OK now that we can binge watch and see it was about 5 episodes, but they ran they ran on TNT, it covered about 5 months of real world time before they turned their attention to Centauri Prime.

This might help, too:

Babylon 5 TV Seasons and Films 1993–2007

In order of series chronology:

2245–48 • In the Beginning (1st film)*
2256 • Babylon 5 station commissioned
2257 • The Gathering (Pilot)
2258 • Signs and Portents (Season 1)
2259 • The Coming of Shadows (Season 2)
2260 • Point of No Return (Season 3)
2261 • No Surrender, No Retreat (Season 4)**
2261 • Thirdspace (2nd film)***
2262 • The Wheel of Fire (Season 5)†
2263 • The River of Souls (3rd film)
2265 • The Legend of the Rangers (5th film)
2266 • A Call to Arms (4th film)
2267 • Crusade (spin-off series)
2271 • The Lost Tales: Voices in the Dark
2278 • In the Beginning (1st film)*
2281 • Babylon 5 station decommissioned
* The framing story is set in 2278.
** The final episode of the season includes scenes of future events up to 3262 and beyond.
*** The story is set between the two wars in season 4.
† The final episode of series is set in 2281.

One of the reviews on Amazon had this recommended sequence for watching the movies. I followed it and it seemed "right".

*THE GATHERING - Watch prior to starting Season 1 (episode 1)

*IN THE BEGINNING - Watch after season 3 and before season 4. I cannot stress enough that you do NOT want to watch this one too early as it contains a ton of spoilers.

*THIRD SPACE - Watch after episode 7 of season 4

*RIVER OF SOULS - Watch prior to watching the final episode of season 5

*CALL TO ARMS - Watch prior to the final episode of season 5 or even after season 5

My mistake! The one that is $104.99 not only comes with the Babylon 5 series and movies collection, it also comes with Crusade the complete series! The one with just Babylon 5 and the movies collection is around $85. I went ahead and ordered the one that includes Crusade. With the points I had left to use this month, it came out to about $80 so not bad at all. Considering that Best Buy has the Babylon series and movies (no Crusade) for $349.99, this was a bargain! Looking forward to watching it all!

Well frick, I just ordered a complete set too.
This place is tough on budgets.

Not sure if it was partially because of this thread, but they seemed to be selling rather quickly since I first started the thread (went from 18 available to 10) so I figured I might as well get it while the getting was good and at a pretty reasonable price for what comes in the set.

IMO, skip "The Gathering." It was a pilot, but they changed a LOT of stuff between this pilot and the 'real' show. For example:

Makeup is significantly different with the Narns and Minbari. It creaps me out.
Several characters change. There was another black doc that was replaced by Dr Franklin. There was a Japanese woman that (IIRC) was replaced by Ivanova. The actor who later played Mr Morden is a generic 'bridge officer.' I think G'kar was a flat-out bad guy.
The plot is lame and the ending is anti-climactic.

I wouldn't even consider it canon. . .

On page 1, somebody posted a video of Ivanova's "God sent me" speach. I actually don't like that scene. Claudia Christian did a great job of portraying her character, but she seemed to be channeling William Shatner in that scene. She was just WAY over the top.

I loved the Boom Tomorrow speach. It starts at 5:28 in this video:

Greetings!
I've been following this thread and mentioned it to my husband, who is also a big fan of B5 and he wished to add a neat story and pic regarding the series:

I used to work for the Associated Press and they had an assignment to cover Scott Adams (Dilbert creator) on the set of B5. Since the person in charge knew I was a B5 fan, he gave me the photo assignment. I got to spend a full morning on set and photographing the actors and JMS off set, then went to lunch where I sat next to Walter Koenig and spent a good half hour discussing Bester with him. The photo below is of director Tony Dow (of Leave it to Beaver fame) discussing a scene with Garibaldi and Lyta. Around 15 years later, I found out that Jerry Doyle was living and producing his radio show in Las Vegas, where I lived. I sent him an email asking if he would be so kind as to autograph a photo I took of him on the show if I were to mail it to him. I left my phone number on the email. A couple of days later, I received a call from Doyle inviting me over to his house. I spent a fun hour with him as we talked about the show and some of the other actors (comments are private!). He even mentioned the visit on his radio show later in the day. Obviously, he had fond memories of his time on B5.

Some people claim there's a B5 curse as a number of the cast have died early deaths.
Stephen Furst, (Vir Cotto)63
Robin Sachs. (Na'Tok, War leader)61
Andreas Katsulas (G’Kar) 59
Richard Biggs (Dr. Stephen Franklin)44
Michael O’Hare (Jeffrey Sinclair – Valen)60
Jeff Conaway (Zach) 60
Tim Choate (Zathras)49
Jerry Doyle (Michael Garibaldi) 60

quote:

Originally posted by zoom6zoom:
Some people claim there's a B5 curse as a number of the cast have died early deaths.
Stephen Furst, (Vir Cotto)63
Robin Sachs. (Na'Tok, War leader)61
Andreas Katsulas (G’Kar) 59
Richard Biggs (Dr. Stephen Franklin)44
Michael O’Hare (Jeffrey Sinclair – Valen)60
Jeff Conaway (Zach) 60
Tim Choate (Zathras)49
Jerry Doyle (Michael Garibaldi) 60

O'Hare had some kind of dementia. Conaway, from what I heard, was a giant douche, and wasn't he on LOTS of drugs?

I definitely second the opinion, a great sci fi series! We bought the entire series on dvd, as we loved watching it when it was on. I hated seeing it end. Lot of good examples to compare with today, politically. They could have had some great spin off shows, or movies, but somehow the one never got off the ground. Probably too many liberals.

Bonus Nerd Points if you get over 90% of the references:

quote:

Originally posted by Hound Dog:

quote:

Originally posted by zoom6zoom:
Some people claim there's a B5 curse as a number of the cast have died early deaths.
Stephen Furst, (Vir Cotto)63
Robin Sachs. (Na'Tok, War leader)61
Andreas Katsulas (G’Kar) 59
Richard Biggs (Dr. Stephen Franklin)44
Michael O’Hare (Jeffrey Sinclair – Valen)60
Jeff Conaway (Zach) 60
Tim Choate (Zathras)49
Jerry Doyle (Michael Garibaldi) 60

O'Hare had some kind of dementia. Conaway, from what I heard, was a giant douche, and wasn't he on LOTS of drugs?

O'Hare was a heart attack and suffered from paranoid delusions and other mental health issues.

Jeff Conaway was by all accounts a great guy on B5 and got completely off the drugs and booze. The problem was he had an undiagnosed brain tumor that was the cause of death. Instead of going to the doctor, he started self-medicating which led him to bad behavior in Celebrity Rehab. Not sure even if it was diagnosed it could be treated, but at least he could have had some grace in his death.

Andreas Katsulas was lung cancer. He had a tumor so big that it wasn't caught until it peaked around his sternum.

Stephen Furst was complications from diabetes.

Richard Biggs, Jerry Doyle, Robin Sachs were all natural causes.

Tim Choate was sadly killed in a motorcycle accident. His and Richard Biggs were the most surprising and saddest because they were completely without warning and had no signs of impending death.

Great series! I never regretted getting it on DVD.

Plus, Bryan Cranston made a brief appearance as a Ranger. Then he died.

Entil'Zha. In Valen's name!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: flesheatingvirus,

One of the great things about Babylon 5 being on go90 (at least if you're in the US) is the entire series is free to watch. With everything going on about redemption and forgiveness, I thought of this episode. It's one of the reason why this series is timeless. Something else to keep in mind watching this is that J. Michael Straczynski is a liberal atheist. Science Fiction in general is a bit of a hard love for me because almost all of the great writers hate anything and everything about religion.

The great thing about jms is that when it comes to a subject, he'll treat it with respect unless it is something quite vile. It also adds an air of mystery to his writing because you never quite know what direction he's going while if this was a Star Trek episode, you already know how it's going to end before it begins.

It's also a great standalone episode that you don't need to know anything to watch it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, even after 22 years (I feel so old...).

https://www.go90.com/videos/3zbL6OcEqJp

I agree Babylon 5 is best sci fi series ive ever seen

including the "newer " start wars trilogies

The entire series is now available as a package for $70. I’m tempted to get it.

Entire series with movies?

Where?

I can finally throw away my old VHS tapes (most taped off TNT). I keep meaning to buy a VCR to watch but I'd rather just buy new dvds.

https://www.amazon.com/Babylon...&smid=A17WR38DPVHCHY

It doesn't include Crusade or The Lost Tales. There's another set that does have Crusade, but not Lost Tales or Legend of the Rangers. If you want to shop used, everything changes.

YouTube appears to have episodes available for viewing too.
https://www.youtube.com/result...rch_category=0&page=

YouTube is pay or rent like Amazon Prime. Verizon go90 is free if you're in the US (regular data charges apply).