Babylon 5: What's your favorite episode?

[Pariah]

Why limit the fun to the Star Trek universe? Tell us which episode of Babylon 5 you like best, and why.

[death tribble]

Season 4 Into the Fire

 

Sometimes it is not only what happens , it is where you are. I was at a convention in Britain and they screened this in the student union bar of Loughborough University. This episode is the culmination of the Vorlon-Shadow War. Mollari gets rid of the Shadows on the Centauri homeworld and then deals with Mr Morden. Vir also gets to do something that harks back to a conversation on Babylon 5. And you get the battle between the Vorlons and the Shadows.

You had people cheering at this episode which is not something you get at home. So this one for me is special.

[tkdguy]

Hard to pick just one, as Babylon 5 is one of my top 3 favorite TV shows of all time. Offhand, some of the ones that stand out are these ones:

* Dr. Franklin operates on a child despite the race's religious restrictions on surgery.

* Captain Sheridan has been captured and wages a battle of wills against an Earth Force interrogator.

*A Warrior Caste Minbari wants to take control of the Rangers, and Marcus stands against him.

 

My favorite scene of all time is G'Kar trying to explain his views when someone asks him about Truth and God. G'Kar's speech was one of the best in the series, and his listeners' inability to understand him (along with Franklin's "oh well" shrug) was both funny and sad. 

 

[Lord Liaden]

7 minutes ago, tkdguy said:

Hard to pick just one, as Babylon 5 is one of my top 3 favorite TV shows of all time. Offhand, some of the ones that stand out are these ones:

* Dr. Franklin operates on a child despite the race's religious restrictions on surgery.

 

Which has my favorite line of the series from Kosh: "The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."

[Cancer]

* Cancer, declaring that the Grognard Card overrides some of the imperatives of the Geek Card, confesses he has never, ever watched Babylon 5. *

[Thia Halmades]

Hey.

 

Professor Grognard.

 

You heard of “streaming services?”

 

(this post meant in purely good humor and honest jest, as I have the highest respect for Cancer, something I believe he is aware).

[Pariah]

People express their inner geek in different ways. Babylon 5 is one of the things that resonated with me. Also Star Trek in its various incarnations, Stargate SG-1  and Atlantis, Farscape, the original Battlestar Galactica, and Space: Above and Beyond, among others.

 

But there are other sci-fi series that never really grabbed my attention. The reimagined Battlestar Galactica, for example, or Stargate Universe, or Lost. Or that long-running series with that plain-looking woman with whom Death Tribble seems so singularly enamored.

 

Just a matter of taste.

[tkdguy]

I never got into a lot of sci-fi shows like Stargate Universe, Lost, or Space: Above and Beyond. I haven't watched a single episode of Agents of Shield or Game of Thrones. I didn't like the reimagined Battlestar Galactica at first, but I ended up enjoying it more than the original.

 

But I like Babylon 5 even more than Star Trek. If I had to pick three shows as my all-time favorites, B5 would be up there with Highlander and Doctor Who. Star Trek and Blake's 7 would tie at 4th place. 

[Sundog]

For me, it's a toss up between Into the Fire, which both resolves the Shadow War storyline and both humanizes and explains the Vorlons and Shadows, and the second last episode, Objects at Rest, which completes the stories of Babylon 5. The universe goes on, there are more events, not everything has been resolved, but the reasons for all these people to be HERE are no more. The conflict is resolved, the tale is told. (Sleeping in Light, the last episode, is marvelous, but it's an epilogue.)

[archer]

I don't remember the name of the episode (I think Season 3 episode 20?) but there was one where a travelling evangelist came to the station for revival services. I thought it was handled so well with aliens showing up for services, obviously having no idea what was going on, and trying to sing along and clap to the spirituals.

 

 

I thought it was also a good episode from the point of view that many sci-fi shows seem to assume that religion will disappear when space travel comes along. I think it's much more likely that people will take some form of the religions with them (for good or bad).

 

 

Jerry Pournelle's Co-Dominium series of books showed a future where humanity tries to use a version of the Catholic religion to hold together an interstellar empire (with a real emperor)...with Islam and non-official Christian sects trying to exist along the fringes where they aren't really accepted as being much of anything other than seditious by their very existence.

 

The reimagined Battlestar Galactica hinted at a system where religion helped hold together their civilization but they never really explored the issue.

[Tjack]

   It has to be my first one, Babylon Squared. 
   I was flipping channels by hand standing in front of my 16 inch black & white set when I hit a scene of a firefight and a guy with what looked like an M-60 telling his friend “Get outta here!” “This is my stand!” This is the fight I was born for.   I WAS HOOKED. 
    Babylon 5 became my show, and Michael Garibaldi was my guy.  Every week I was glued to that tiny dimly lit screen.  No cool spaceships to be seen, no flashy special effects. It was the dialog, the characters that held me. I had been watching for about a year when I saw the show at a friends house and realized that Garabaldi’s uniform was a different color!  
     That show kept me sane during a very hard time in my life. Bad job, worse apartment, I had broken up with someone I cared for.  But for one hour watching that show and for about an hour after I was happy.
     Things got better but I always loved that show.  I had a chance to meet Bill Mumy years later at a convention and tried to thank him and tell him to never think what he did for a living was small or unimportant. I probably wasn’t making much sense, but I think he understood.  He was a truly nice guy.

[unclevlad]

Season 1 had its rough spots, but hey, most series take a while to really hit stride.  Season 2 was a little rocky cuz of the Sinclair-Sheridan hand-off.  And I can't say I've ever been a big Boxleitner fan.  But...overall...seasons 2-4 is IMO the best, most interesting sci fi ever on TV;  this despite the fact that, in particular, the 2nd half of season 4 was force-advanced far too quickly.  (It was to be season 5.)  But it was still very good on its own, if it felt like it was rushing the storyline forward *at the time.*  Had it run through the full 5 year story arc....man, it would've been a total classic.

 

Favorite episodes...hard to limit.  I'll pick 2. 

 

--Deathwalker, for the seriously chilling ending...both Jha'dur's "you will become us" and Kosh's "you are not ready for immortality."

--Comes the Inquisitor.  The raw existential exploration of motivation and self is chilling.

 

 

[Greywind]

7 hours ago, archer said:

I don't remember the name of the episode..

 

 

And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place

And the death of Lord Refa.

[Bazza]

11 hours ago, Cancer said:

* Cancer, declaring that the Grognard Card overrides some of the imperatives of the Geek Card, confesses he has never, ever watched Babylon 5. *

 

Ditto. 

[Tjack]

12 hours ago, Cancer said:

* Cancer, declaring that the Grognard Card overrides some of the imperatives of the Geek Card, confesses he has never, ever watched Babylon 5. *

    There’s a line in a Spider Robinson novel where one character is told that another character has never read the novels of John D. McDonald.  He says something like “You lucky bastard, to have all of that in front of you.”

     That pretty much sums it up for me.

[death tribble]

11 hours ago, Pariah said:

But there are other sci-fi series that never really grabbed my attention. The reimagined Battlestar Galactica, for example, or Stargate Universe, or Lost. Or that long-running series with that plain-looking woman with whom Death Tribble seems so singularly enamored.

 

[Pariah]

That's fair.

[Bazza]

No it is not. 

[Greywind]

It is until you watch it all.

[Hermit]

I found Bab 5 a bit of a sandwich , the first and last seasons were pretty bland, the middle stuff much better. But it would hardly be the only show like that. And like Archer, I DID appreciate they didn't treat religion as if it was going to go away as soon as we got flying car tech and up like some Sci-Fi does. Favorite episodes tended to involve Londo ... what an amazing character, struggling to grasp redemption for his people and himself, and again and again falling short or even throwing that redemption away for ambition. DT has already mentioned Into the Fire and one of Londo's finest moments.

 

Naturally I like Vir too. Who, in some ways, because Londo's redemption... the good man Londo never quite managed to be, but I think, wanted to.

 

Even if he was a "moon faced assassin of joy"

[Greywind]

First season was set-up.

 

From season 3 on, I think it was, they were constantly wondering if they were going to be renewed and/or have the funds. My understanding Sheridan's imprisonment was supposed to run a bit longer. Sleeping in the Light was the closer for s4, as they didn't know if there would be a s5. The telepaths were pretty much all filler due to having to cut down on Sheridan not being imprisoned.

 

Sleeping in the Light is the only s5 ep that included CC due to it being shot for s4.

 

War Without End would have also been for s5 except for O'Hare. JMS wanted to get it done.

[death tribble]

7 hours ago, Bazza said:

No it is not. 

This fight is between Pariah and I. get your own fight.

[Spence]

Excellent series, I bought all the dvds when they came out. 

 

It did begin to go downhill in the later seasons.  I am still surprised at 10 seasons.  It's been a while since I watched them.  Time to revisit.

[Ternaugh]

16 minutes ago, Spence said:

Excellent series, I bought all the dvds when they came out. 

 

It did begin to go downhill in the later seasons.  I am still surprised at 10 seasons.  It's been a while since I watched them.  Time to revisit.

 

I'm assuming that this post was supposed to be in the Stargate: SG1 thread, and not the B5 thread (which only had 5 seasons).

[Ragitsu]

20 hours ago, tkdguy said:

 Game of Thrones.

 

I watched the first episode and never returned. I do not understand the appeal of watching despicable protagonists.

 

  

4 minutes ago, Ternaugh said:

 

I'm assuming that this post was supposed to be in the Stargate: SG1 thread, and not the B5 thread (which only had 5 seasons).

 

Maybe he's from an alternative reality where Babylon 5 was doubly popular?