About the show:
From the show's second season opening:
"The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. A self-contained world five miles long,
located in neutral territory. A place of commerce and diplomacy for a quarter of a million humans
and aliens. A shining beacon in space, all alone in the night. It was the dawn of the Third Age
of Mankind... This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2259. The name
of the place is Babylon 5."
Personal:
The WriterGroupie, die-hard 'Niner' that she was, at first fell into the trap that
many in science fiction fandom did at the time, choosing to support only one of the two competing
syndicated arc-driven SF shows of the early 1990's. She chose
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine over Babylon 5. Although she was at LosCon the year that
creator J. Michael Straczinski (or JMS) brought some of his cast
including Peter Jurasik and Jerry Doyle along to the premiere showing of the pilot episode, the
WriterGroupie was underwhelmed. While she felt that the show had promise and particularly liked
the characters of Londo and Garibaldi, she thought much of the rest of the cast in the pilot was
boring or buffoonish and so, despite her friends who chose B5 over
DS9, the WriterGroupie stuck with her fellow Niners and kept to her own show, and didn't watch
the first season of B5 at all.
But the second season brought a new captain to Babylon 5,
actor Bruce Boxleitner whom the WriterGroupie had always enjoyed on Scarecrow and Mrs. King
and given her friends' glowing reports of the series, decided to tune into the second season of
B5 and began the fairly quick process of falling in love with the show herself. While she
has eventually caught much of the first season in reruns, the WriterGroupie believes that seasons
2-4 are the heart of the show, while seasons 1 and 5 are just for the completist fans. But those
science fiction fans who check out those middle seasons will have the fortune to be exposed to
one of the smartest, most literary-feeling science fiction series in the history of television.
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Credits:
Created by J. Michael Straczinski
Starring:
Bruce Boxleitner as Captain John Sheridan
Mira Furlan as Delenn
Claudia Christian as Susan Ivanova
Jerry Doyle as Michael Garibaldi
Richard Biggs as Dr. Stephen Franklin
Peter Jurasik as Londo Mollari
Andreas Katsulas as G'Kar
Stephen Furst as Vir Kotto
Bill Mumy as Lennier
Season 1:
Michael O'Hare as Commander Jeffrey Sinclair
Staff Writers:
J. Michael Straczinski
WriterGroupie's Favorite Episodes:
(well, a few of the many!)
"GROPOS"
"The Long, Twilight Struggle"
"Point of No Return"
"And the Rock Cried Out No Hiding Place"
"Intersections In Real Time"
Related Links:
Warner Brothers Official Babylon 5 Website
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