As a Sci-Fi fan I’ve been a huge fan of shows like Battlestar Galactica, The Expanse, Terminator: TSCC, Star Trek, etc. I keep hearing Babylon 5 is awesome.
I was too young at the time to watch the series when it was on. But then as an older teen/ young adult I decided to give it a try. Everything was so cringe it was hard to get through 3 episodes. IMO the whole vibe was “safe…” maybe even a bit corny–not the intense, exciting, politically-tense space opera that I was told it was.
So maybe the beginning episodes are just world-building? What do other people think?
It is much more like an old school daytime TV Soap Opera in acting style and overall production style than like other SF shows. This is really jarring. Acting very inconsistent. Crappy production values. Like, huge CRT screens being used everywhere? Really? At this same time, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine knew that hundreds of years in the future, nobody would use huge boxy CRT screens. They depicted thin tablets and terminals even though 1990s tech wasn’t able to do that yet. There are so many things like this that jarred me out of the story.
The development of a few characters was cool, but it was like suffering through a mountain of junk to get the good crumbs. The plot had a lot of “I can see it coming a mile away”.
Not worth it IMHO, if you already tried it and didn’t like it.
The best lines are mostly Carl Sagan quotes, which I appreciated, but that isn’t enough.
You’re supposed to see it coming from a mile away. And when it gets there, the character moments hit you with a depth of feeling you’re totally not ready for.
The boxy CRTs and all that, aside from being a byproduct of a lower budget, are supposed to make the setting feel closer to our reality. These aren’t people who have transcended their societal problems. But once they do, they’re not just the people from star trek. They’re something else entirely. The whole point of the show is that sometimes we’re horrible, and we can be so much more than we could possibly imagine. And the same people can be both those things at the same time. It comes down to your own definition of who you are, and what you want.
I am glad you like it, but the acting was most not good enough, and the writing generally not good enough to deliver. There are a couple of exceptions, but they do not outweigh the giant mountain of Meh that must be waded through.
And, no, the boxy CRTs took more money than the flat plastic slabs used in Star Trek shows from the Era (which they just pretended were flat screens and tablets most of the time). Trek only imposed graphics on those screens a minority of the time. Using CRT screens doesn’t make it relatable. These people have interstellar space ships and giant space stations. CRT screen are just a stupid choice that do not make the setting relatable. The times it becomes relatable are due to the exceptions, like the character development with Londo. Not because they inexplicably use this one type of actually ancient technology.