And that's how all my friends got introduced to Babylon 5.
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2025
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Rambling old person storytime, consider yourself warned:
My wife is from Hungary, and grew up while it was still communist so there's many TV shows she's never seen.
When we were first together I introduced her to Star Trek, which she'd never heard of, and we got into the routine of watching one or two episodes of TNG every week.
Fast-forward 9 years and we'd watched every Trek we wanted to, and were at a loose end on how to continue. My first thought was Babylon 5, but after Trek that first season appeared rough as anything, and it became more of a time-filler than actual enjoyment.
A little while ago we hit the third season, and my goodness, it's still rough, but the whole thing came together into something properly enjoyable!
Me and my wife just hit our 10 year anniversary, and we're both happily Trekkies together :-)
I've probably watched all of B5 about 10 times or more. Going through another cycle right now. Just watched the first episode of season 2 today, having finished season 1 yesterday, so this is very fresh. I think if I was going to introduce a friend to it, I'd say to skip season 1 entirely.
There's a lot of stuff that feels like filler in season 1, even though I think quite a few of those episodes are actually trying to introduce lore in a sneaky way. Like, the Soul Hunter episode feels a lot like hot garbage, but it does put some important lore in your head. Similar with the episode that they find some ancient organic alien technology. Plus, I think everybody will instantly like Sheridan in a way that never happened with Sinclair.
I've grown to like season 1, but it took several watches before it stopped bothering me.
Do you have a source where to watch it? Star Trek is often available on streaming but I've not found B5 yet (in Germany).
I ended up "buying" it off of Amazon digital. Before I had "purchased" it, it had been variously bouncing around free or ad-supported streaming services like Prime and Tubi. I stopped paying attention to that stuff after I "bought" it, though.
(All that stuff in quotes because you don't really own it, but I'm at least using whatever I paid for.)
Thank you! I agree with the quotes. Something like DRM free GoG would be great for videos... but I also don't know any service like that.
Hum... Not from .world, I can't.
(Or seriously, in Brazil you can't legally watch it either.)
We need a GoG for videos...
You just have to keep people tied up for the first 3 or 4 episodes. After that, they still won't like the show, but will be invested into so many questions that the first 5 seasons will barely answer any amount of them.
Babylon 5, season 1, is largely skippable.
2 and 3 are very good. 4 is the single best season of sci-fi television ever done.
Ideally, you watch it all in order.
In a pinch? 2-3-4-1-5.
Deep Space Nine fits the bill with this one.
TNG, Voyager as well
TNG season one is rough to be honest.
I tried rewatching it recently and…yeah I just can’t. It’s so bad.
And Voyager doesn't get good til S3.
Which is the one with an alien barkeeper in it that has cinnamon rolls for ears?
Honestly, DARK is fantastic from the very start, although Season 3 will fuck you up.
I really liked season 1. Season 2 as well I think (it's been a while), but season 3 was just too confusing and I really didn't care for it
It all came together in the end. I remember getting to S3E4 and my brain was fried so I just let it wash over me. Then E7 and E8 explained everything and were perhaps the best 2 hours of TV I've ever watched. A re-watch of the entire show made everything so much better too!
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here here! one of the best ones around, epic. If only they had let them finish 1899...
DARK was truly a perfect show. If it had been 5 minutes longer, it would have been 5 minutes wasted.
It is so good, I only regret watching it dubbed (though the English dubbing was OK) just because my spouse hates subtitles.
Still such a great show to lead you down so many rabbit holes that require some serious flow charting to keep track of it all. 10/10
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Shows that fit this bill for me:
Schitt's Creek Breaking Bad
Schitt's Creek in particular, from S02 onwards they really locked in to what we ended up loving about the Roses, which was there in S01 but not so clear. As a result, S02 on is damn near perfect.
Parks and Rec is a big one. Season 1 is fine, but it's no indication of what the show becomes.
When rewatching you're essentially waiting for Brendanawicz to Brandenaquitz so the show can start getting good.
Same with Bojack Horseman.
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God so accurate on Schitt's. A friend recommended that show and when me and the wife got past epi 1 we were like 'wow this is hot garbage'. Yeah no, just setting up and showing you how horrible they were initially which I think makes their transformations that much more impactful later in the show.
Today people are obsessed with starting at season 1 and watching all the show. But, not all shows require that type of viewing. I grew up in the times of syndication and cable TV. You didn't get to watch the show from the start. You just hop up on whatever was on the air that day. It's perfectly fine to skip shitty seasons and episodes and only watching the bangers. There are very few series that actually have perfect records where every single episode is worth watching. I don't understand people who endure 45 minutes of awful TV to experience 3 seconds of a dialogue that will somehow become relevant 4 seasons later.
Back then, the way to watch shows was to randomly catch an episode whenever they were aired, because most of them didn't focus on a 36 episode incomprehensible knot of twists and surprises. They were self contained with a quiet background story arc that you could pick back at any time.
Yeah I'm in agreement here as well. As someone going in blind though you tend to pass judgement based on what you first see. In the age of streaming most people are going to start on S01E01. I definitely get your point.
I mean seriously, how have you not had chance to watch SG1 yet?
Everyone should watch sg1 at least 3 times in their lives!
Indeed.
Used to watch Stargate as a kid on TV, but how I can't imagine myself rewatching it, episodes are all copy paste of the same, gets more interesting with Valla and the Ori, but until there it's not something I want to rewatch.
I miss episodic "monster of the week" series like it. Now most shows are serialized where you have to pay attention to the stretched out story arcs and deal with filler episodes.
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Weird that both other comments at the time right now associate it with sci-fi series about space stations.
DS9 infamously took much of its story from what would become Babylon 5.
I can't say, I didn't watch more than a few unrelated episodes of both series and at the time they were running here in Germany they basically turned into a single entity in my mind "the dark and dirty space station show".
A year or two ago I tried watching DS9 from the beginning after forcing myself to watch Star Trek TNG but stopped before the first season ended.
I would try the same with Babylon 5 but it seems not available on streaming.
You will read goodnoght punpun and it will be horrible and you will like it! /s
This is Battlestar Galactica for me. You must make people suffer through a few dry episodes to get to the Goood
Except that Battlestar Galactica started good and got steadily worse. Season 1 was the show's peak, the first half of season 2 was okay, but after that it went down the toilet.
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I loved it from episode 1! It lost me at the final season though
I loved it all
Who was your favourite character? I loved Starbuck and not just cos she was ridiculously attractive.
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Every sci fi show thankfully firefly and cowboy Bebop are the outliers
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