That’s probably true, and he was prolific. There’s a site dedicated to his posts, in fact, covering what he wrote from 1991 to 2010.
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Can I pull this up via my Roku box?
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Try being a fan in Austria…
Forget about “when it first aired”, of course we had to wait for the dub, and then wait for that to be picked up by our state-funded broadcaster. Well, some German station had it earlier, but I was a teenager in Austria whose parents did not pay for a satellite dish or for cable TV.
But they did show the first two seasons… Monday through Friday, 3:40pm. Except when the tennis match that they covered before that was shorter or longer than expected. I basically had to watch tennis, which I couldn’t care less about, every day from 3:10 to 4pm because there was just NO WAY to find out when my favorite show would start or whether it would be canceled for the day.
And after season two, nothing. And by the time we installed a satellite dish, it was off the air on the German channels, as well.
Luckily, all this frustration led to me buying the DVD boxes when they came out, so I don’t need to be annoyed by US-only streaming sites now.
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The situation in Canada wasn’t as terrible as that, but I did pay for VHS dubs of season 5 in order to watch it, as I had no other means here.
Region locks keeping fans from what they love sucks, and I thank you from taking time away from the Great Machine to share your thoughts with us. 
Oh, you must have me confused with a distant relative 
.
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There are definitely good episodes in season 5, but the way the telepaths are handled blows (and it was such a promising story arc) and Lochly is irritating…
In my failing hunt for a Kodi plugin, I stumbled on this Roku one which claims to support go90:
Xumo for Roku
Not having a Roku, I can’t verify it, but there you go.
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Luckily I had a clear shot at Buffalo with an antenna.
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Thanks! I’ll give it a look.
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If you’re going in cold, yes the writing is awkward at first, but it’s not ST:TNG First Season levels of bad (except in the pilot, wow that was bad), and it becomes compelling pretty quick.
I recently introduced my sweetheart to Babylon 5, and past the first episodes she was quickly hooked. We’ve been binging through the DVDs for a couple of months now. We’re reaching the final third of season 4. I hope she won’t be too disappointed by season 5, even though I warned her of the issue.
[quote=“GagHalfrunt, post:9, topic:100300”]
J. Michael Straczynski was, IIRC, the first showrunner[/quote]period. He had to come up with much of what the job involves, and didn’t always succeed at the first attempts. I’m thinking, in particular, about the management of the other writers.
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I listened to the commentary for one episode, and I was a little surprised by how much the actors mocked the Space Opera aspects of the show, with the references to the distant past, the prophecies of terrible futures, the ancient ones, and etc. I can certainly understand how it might get a bit old as an actor, reading the lines all day long on a busy shooting schedule, but was it really that bad?
I think the use of grand currents of history and prophesy generally indicates a writer imposing himself on the work. I mean, why do they need to tell us where things are going when by definition we know they know where things are going. Some of Babylon 5 certainly falls in this category (particularly the episode with Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, or much of what Kosh says).
But there is one important exception - the certainty of the events of Londo’s death. Because the show is essentially the Tragedy of Londo Mollari, and how the fact of his death is given different contexts as event take place is important in his story.
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Swedish Meatballs
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I’m a Little Teapot
Then he finally gave up and practically wrote the whole thing himself. He wrote 92 out of 110 episodes and he wrote most of the best ones.
Can we watch Joe90 on Go90?
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I think that’s got to be near universal though? I mean, I have convention footage and just about everything written about b5 in this place somewhere, and with a very small exception, almost everyone praised the story and the work JMS did. But, they loved having fun on-set, and joked around constantly.
Long hours and an uncertain future (and no real control over the story or even the option to improv most lines) would be, I’d imagine, boring as hell without levity.
The “space opera parts” make the show, and are pretty much the first time one persons vision was produced the way it was. “Lost” was the first show to do that for most people I’d wager, but for Sci-Fi fans, it was B5.
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If you omitted “Sleeping In Light” (the series finale) because of skipping S5 - you made a truly MASSIVE error. IMO, it’s one of the most moving episodes of television ever made, based on the affection built up for the characters over the run of the series.
And I disagree with you strongly about Crusade - yes, it had major production issues and was cancelled abruptly because one part of TNT didn’t know what the other part was doing, apparently - but there was truly massive promise visible in the chemistry between the characters - Galen and Dureena, in particular. And the episode where Peter Woodward gets to play opposite his legendary father Edward Woodward - just wow.
Galen: “Have you ever wondered why there are so many dead worlds out there? Let me tell you why. It’s because despite the best advice of people who know what they are talking about, other people insist on doing the most massively stupid things.”
Galen: “There is always hope. Only because that is the one thing that no one has figured out how to kill yet.”
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Geek tip: Think of B5 as a sandwich with the best of meats inside with playdough for bread. Start with Sheridan and end when the war does.
