Babylon 5 Your thoughts...

[ablethevoice]

I loved B5. One thing that many people didn't know was that B5 was a planned story from beginning to end. J. Michael Stracinzsky (sp?) had the entire storyline plotted, filming the series like a massive movie seen an hour per week. Compare this to Star Trek, where the creators laid out the locale` and basic "cans and can'ts" then threw the package to the writers who created episodes which were not necessarily connected to one another. I admit my indoctrination to B5 was a bit rocky, but after maybe 3 or 4 episodes I was completely hooked.

My biggest complaint with B5 isn't the show; it was the decision to move the final season to TNT. I was never able to watch the final season, mainly because TNT couldn't decide what time and day to run it and I ended up missing them all. Prior to that, B5 was always on at the same time and the same channel. TNT ran the final season in such a slapdash and haphazard way it was impossible to keep up.

Once I finish collecting the last few seasons of MASH, I think I'm going to start on B5.

Question:
What's everyone's favorite alien species from B5?
Mine is the Narn.

B5 Trivia: Although STTNG and B5 had similar budgets, B5 was always able to place a great many extras in many of their scenes because where a lot of TNG's budget went to models and the like for space shots - leaving not too much for placing extras in whatever scenes might be needed, B5's space shots and compositing were all done on a couple of Mac computers which left a great deal of $ for makeup FX and costuming of extras.