Babylon 5 First-Timer's Guide
Monday, August 17th, 2020 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arielaIf you like scifi, are interested in the evolution of TV storytelling, or just like good TV and aren't put off by dated production values, you absolutely should watch Babylon 5.
I won't go into a ton of detail about why, since that ground has been covered masterfully by Rowan Kaiser at the AV Club. Read her review of Babylon 5's pilot, The Gathering--which you absolutely should not watch unless you're a fan or morbidly curious, because it is terrible, and even for fans it's more of a morbid curiosity piece than something enjoyable--for an excellent discussion of B5's place in TV history.
I'll quote a bit of it here:
Unfortunately, one of the very things that makes B5 great also makes it hard to skip most of the first season. While B5 isn't a fully serialized show like Game of Thrones--where if you miss an episode, you won't have any idea what's going on in the next one because almost every scene is tied to other scenes in other episodes--its ambition to be a "novel for TV" does mean that even standalone episodes tend to slip in important bits of information or foreshadowing. And some of the worst episodes contain some of the best character moments.
That makes it hard to do with B5 what a friend did for me with ST:TNG, which is provide newcomers with a handful of episodes from the first season to watch and simply skip the rest.
So I've decided on a hybrid approach. I'll provide a handful of episodes to watch in full, and edited highlight reels of the important bits of the rest, to save you from most of the excruciatingly bad first-season stuff and get you into the second season (where things really get good) as painlessly as possible.
Kaiser also does a bit of analysis that I haven't seen elsewhere that I think is really helpful in understanding B5 from a structural perspective (at the cost of some sort of abstract/high-level spoilers):
Essential episodes (accompanied by highlight reels):
-Midnight on the Firing Line
-By Any Means Necessary
-Signs and Portents
-A Voice in the Wilderness
-Babylon Squared
-Chrysalis
If you decide you don't want to do the highlight reels (why are you here, then?), are okay with watching a few whole episodes that have sections that are vital to the plot but have some pretty clunky inessential scenes, and are okay with missing out on some minor plot points and character moments, you'll want to add these:
-Mind War
-And the Sky Full of Stars
For spoiler-free analysis (assuming you don't read ahead to episodes you haven't watched yet), behind-the-scenes tidbits, and cogent summaries, I highly recommend the old Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5.
Episode summaries and highlight reels:
I won't go into a ton of detail about why, since that ground has been covered masterfully by Rowan Kaiser at the AV Club. Read her review of Babylon 5's pilot, The Gathering--which you absolutely should not watch unless you're a fan or morbidly curious, because it is terrible, and even for fans it's more of a morbid curiosity piece than something enjoyable--for an excellent discussion of B5's place in TV history.
I'll quote a bit of it here:
Babylon 5 starts slow. It’s closer to Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: The Next Generation, where the pilot and first season demonstrate potentially innovative television shows struggling to find their voice and form. B5’s pilot is probably the worst of these, but it does get better (and probably faster than TNG).
Like those shows, and several others (especially The X-Files and Deep Space Nine), Babylon 5 fits within a group of 1990s speculative fiction shows known for experimenting with narrative complexity. B5’s main claim to fame within that group: It was designed to tell a five-year story with a strong single author. The “five-year plan” has gained a bad rap in recent years thanks to shows that had extensive plans but failed to account for anything like character growth, like FlashForward, but Babylon 5 actually pulled its plan off...
Those experimental narrative forms were all transitional, existing partway between the near-100 percent serialization of a Game Of Thrones or The Wire and the dominant procedural form of the past...
It’s a political show, where the characters are often at odds with one another. On Star Trek, a series regular like G’Kar would never be involved in a plot to implicate another series regular. We’re more used to this now, but at the time? Babylon 5 was set up as something different and more complex from the beginning, though at first, it had a bit more ambition than sense. What’s great about the series is that eventually sense caught up and the ambition never went away.
I say this with love, as this is a TV series that shaped me, and that I still return to frequently: a lot of Season 1 is excruciatingly bad. Almost unwatchably bad, unless you're already a fan. Like those shows, and several others (especially The X-Files and Deep Space Nine), Babylon 5 fits within a group of 1990s speculative fiction shows known for experimenting with narrative complexity. B5’s main claim to fame within that group: It was designed to tell a five-year story with a strong single author. The “five-year plan” has gained a bad rap in recent years thanks to shows that had extensive plans but failed to account for anything like character growth, like FlashForward, but Babylon 5 actually pulled its plan off...
Those experimental narrative forms were all transitional, existing partway between the near-100 percent serialization of a Game Of Thrones or The Wire and the dominant procedural form of the past...
It’s a political show, where the characters are often at odds with one another. On Star Trek, a series regular like G’Kar would never be involved in a plot to implicate another series regular. We’re more used to this now, but at the time? Babylon 5 was set up as something different and more complex from the beginning, though at first, it had a bit more ambition than sense. What’s great about the series is that eventually sense caught up and the ambition never went away.
Unfortunately, one of the very things that makes B5 great also makes it hard to skip most of the first season. While B5 isn't a fully serialized show like Game of Thrones--where if you miss an episode, you won't have any idea what's going on in the next one because almost every scene is tied to other scenes in other episodes--its ambition to be a "novel for TV" does mean that even standalone episodes tend to slip in important bits of information or foreshadowing. And some of the worst episodes contain some of the best character moments.
That makes it hard to do with B5 what a friend did for me with ST:TNG, which is provide newcomers with a handful of episodes from the first season to watch and simply skip the rest.
So I've decided on a hybrid approach. I'll provide a handful of episodes to watch in full, and edited highlight reels of the important bits of the rest, to save you from most of the excruciatingly bad first-season stuff and get you into the second season (where things really get good) as painlessly as possible.
Kaiser also does a bit of analysis that I haven't seen elsewhere that I think is really helpful in understanding B5 from a structural perspective (at the cost of some sort of abstract/high-level spoilers):
Babylon 5 is often considered to be one story told across multiple seasons—the show’s marketing as a “televised novel” encourages that concept—but it’s not so. Babylon 5 is really several dozen intersecting plots, which range in length from half a season to a little longer than a season. The stories go roughly like this:
- The mystery of the Battle Of The Line (the first season to the start of the second)
- Rising Human nativist sentiment/general feeling of Earth being bad (the first season, changing after Santiago dies)
- Narn-Centauri tensions (from the start of the series until “The Coming Of Shadows”)
- Return of an ancient evil (the first third of season two)
- Gathering of evidence against the conspiracy on Earth (early season two to early season three)
- The Narn-Centauri War (latter two-thirds of season two)
- Zack and the Nightwatch (mid-season two to early season three)
- Narn Resistance (end of season two to ?)
This isn’t entirely comprehensive: the telepath issues, for example, exist throughout the series. But it is a good way to understand how Babylon 5 gets its big events so right when other shows don’t always connect. In the case of “Severed Dreams,” there are four different stories which have been with the show for months.
Essential episodes (accompanied by highlight reels):
-Midnight on the Firing Line
-By Any Means Necessary
-Signs and Portents
-A Voice in the Wilderness
-Babylon Squared
-Chrysalis
If you decide you don't want to do the highlight reels (why are you here, then?), are okay with watching a few whole episodes that have sections that are vital to the plot but have some pretty clunky inessential scenes, and are okay with missing out on some minor plot points and character moments, you'll want to add these:
-Mind War
-And the Sky Full of Stars
For spoiler-free analysis (assuming you don't read ahead to episodes you haven't watched yet), behind-the-scenes tidbits, and cogent summaries, I highly recommend the old Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5.
Episode summaries and highlight reels:
- Midnight on the Firing Line - Watch in full
- Soul Hunter - Watch excerpts
- Born to the Purple - Watch excerpts
- Infection - Watch excerpts
- The Parliament of Dreams - Watch excerpts
- Mind War - Watch excerpts
- The War Prayer - Watch excerpts
- And the Sky Full of Stars - Watch excerpts
- Deathwalker - Skip
- Believers - Skip
- Survivors - Skip
- By Any Means Necessary - Watch in full
- Signs and Portents - Watch in full
- TKO - Watch excerpts
- Grail - Skip
- Eyes - Watch excerpts
- Legacies - Skip
- A Voice in the Wilderness (Part 1) - Watch in full
- A Voice in the Wilderness (Part 2) - Watch in full
- Babylon Squared - Watch in full
- The Quality of Mercy - Watch excerpts
- Chrysalis - Watch in full
