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Just an FYI as I was surprised to see it on a mainstream service that actually had device support. The only time I've seen it for years available was for a bit on some funky PC and cellphone only streaming a while back that turned out to be owned by Verizon. I'm curious to see if the actual product holds up to my nostalgia as I literally haven't watched the original five seasons outside of an occasional short youtube clip here and there since Y2K. To my knowledge, it's never been "remastered" unlike Star Trek so the effects shown that were ground breaking for their time will likely be unchanged from their original 4:3 aspect ratio standard definition glory.

I need this confirmed. This would be a huge Father's Day gift for my dad.

Nice, no the graphics don't hold up unfortunately and the only reasonable quality episodes are the last of the TV films... whose name escapes me currently. Still well worth the watch if you haven't seen it recently though (if you happen to watch series 1 episode 4 then please forget it ever happened).

 Kanluwen wrote:
I need this confirmed. This would be a huge Father's Day gift for my dad.

$0.00 Watch with a Prime membership (at least in the US where I'm at)

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_n_1?fst=as%3Aoff&rh=n%3A2864549011%2Ck%3Ababylon+5&keywords=babylon+5&ie=UTF8&qid=1529285391&rnid=2941120011


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 ingtaer wrote:
Nice, no the graphics don't hold up unfortunately and the only reasonable quality episodes are the last of the TV films... whose name escapes me currently. Still well worth the watch if you haven't seen it recently though (if you happen to watch series 1 episode 4 then please forget it ever happened).

I was never a fan of the movies... for some reason, the magic was gone with them as it was for me with the Stargate SG-1 direct to DVD films.

In the Beginning is great, A Call to Arms is okay and the rest are awful, but at least they are not as bad as the Ranger series. Crusade, the other spinoff series is worth the watch if you haven't seen it.


There was some talk a while back about digitally enhancing everything and that morphed into talk of just rebooting the series and then I lost interest, might have a look later and see if I can find the sources for that.

In the Beginning was pretty good. The Londo and G'Kar drama still holds up. I find the effects have aged over the decades from "cheap" to "bad" to "outdated, but so what" to "kinda charming".


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Please let me know if the show is back to the original ratio. The DVD's were changed to widescreen, and since the effects were rendered for 3:4 they had to chop off about a third of visual area of every space combat.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
In the Beginning was pretty good. The Londo and G'Kar drama still holds up. I find the effects have aged over the decades from "cheap" to "bad" to "outdated, but so what" to "kinda charming".


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Please let me know if the show is back to the original ratio. The DVD's were changed to widescreen, and since the effects were rendered for 3:4 they had to chop off about a third of visual area of every space combat.

Watching now.. It's zoomed/cropped. When you go to native display, it's still 16:9 in shape and all the other options just fill the screen.

The "live action" bits were filmed in widescreen, but the CGI was originally done in 4:3 with the expectation that they'd eventually be re-done in widescreen, at a better quality. But then the original files were lost or corrupted, apparently, so we're stuck with the CGI sequences being smaller than the rest of it.

It's an interesting rewatch for me after so many years. In the first episode, I actually find the acting subpar and almost amateurish (especially the overdone Ivonova curtness, the Garibaldi sarcasm, and the Veer foppish preening). The special effects definitely have not aged well unlike the contemporary (admittedly with a bigger budget) DS9. After years of watching modern video game critiques and analysis (especially on the excellent youtube Digital Foundry channel), the shimmering during motion and obvious ratcheting on edges due to a complete lack of anti-aliasing distracts me. Then there is the overdone single guitar chord that plays every time they show the station....

yet I still like it. The actor who plays Jeffrey Sinclair is definitely a highlight as are Ambassadors Delenn and Molari in the first couple of episodes. I loved G'kars portrayal in the past but I'm not counting my chics before they're hatched and he hasn't been given much to work with so far in the first couple of episodes.

I find the show doesn't really click until season 2, although season 1 has a lot of moments that gain emotional significance on rematch due to what later events they portend.


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 AndrewGPaul wrote:
The "live action" bits were filmed in widescreen, but the CGI was originally done in 4:3 with the expectation that they'd eventually be re-done in widescreen, at a better quality. But then the original files were lost or corrupted, apparently, so we're stuck with the CGI sequences being smaller than the rest of it.

They made the wrong call. The live action was fine in its original broadcast ratio. Cutting out significant chunks of the fleet battles is a crime against nerdom.

It was only the wrong call if they knew ahead of time that they'd not be able to re-render the effects shots.

Also, I don't think doing the effects in 16:9 was an option - they were too expensive and time consuming to render them in a way that meant a third of the image would the thrown away when broadcast, while doing the actual filming in widescreen wasn't much more expensive than filming in standard format.

Anyway, the storytelling comes through despite the dodgy effects, occasionally stilted dialogue and the variable acting.

Ohh that's nice - I have it on DVD but good to be able to watch it (and screen grab) this way.

I hadn't realized just how many actors from B5 have died compared with contemporaries like DS9 or the even earlier TNG for example. Sinclair, Veer, G'Kar, Garibaldi, Franklin, Allan... all those characters' actors have passed away.

It's the Draque plague.

FYI, Babylon 5 has been on go90 for free for ages now.

Still have to pay for it in the U.K.

No fair!

 trexmeyer wrote:
FYI, Babylon 5 has been on go90 for free for ages now.

You might want to recheck that. That was the obscure streaming site with little to no native device support i was referring to in the OP.

Nice news!

I can alternate between that and Andromeda for some palet cleansing cheese.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Nice news!

I can alternate between that and Andromeda for some palet cleansing cheese.

Is Andromeda any good? I was recommended it back in the day but the person who recommended it said I should watch Farscape first and that I didn't enjoy.

I have just watched the majority of B5 off Sky, as they showed series 1 to 5 and the movies (at the right place in the timeline). I missed most of series 1 (no biggie) and S5 after the Penn and Teller ep, so was going to rent that one.
The Rangers movie was dire, and it almost stopped me rewatching B5 at all.

But now, no need to rest it, and can catch up.
IF it is on UK Prime.

 ingtaer wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Nice news!

I can alternate between that and Andromeda for some palet cleansing cheese.

Is Andromeda any good? I was recommended it back in the day but the person who recommended it said I should watch Farscape first and that I didn't enjoy.

I watched the first few episodes back in the day, then rewatched them a few months ago and they... showed promise. I liked that the ship was more about 'realish' technology (barring the FTL/slipstream) like nanotech and drones. No force fields, no teleporters.

It's also hard to miss the parallels with Firefly's cast. Idealistic military man, pragmatic gun dude, flaky engineer, pragmatic woman 2nd in command, priest... Not a completely one to one but it struck me.

But I hear the show runner left after the first season, Hercules took over and things went really off a cliff.

At the risk of having to hand in my nerd card...

I've never seen this not even an episode! But I've got Prime, so I'll give it a shot now

 ingtaer wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Nice news!

I can alternate between that and Andromeda for some palet cleansing cheese.

Is Andromeda any good? I was recommended it back in the day but the person who recommended it said I should watch Farscape first and that I didn't enjoy.

It's been appearing on Horror Channel on freeview in the UK so I've been catching up with Andromeda. The CGI weaker and certainly more dated than Startrek. However for all that the characters are well acted and actually have some powerful punch to them which brings it together well.

There's also an neat mix of fantasy-sci-fi built into it. Akin to what you'd expect in the early Startrek films. So alongside the science side its also got, no magic, but beings and science so far outlandish that they are akin. It creates a sense of mystery and wonder at the universe that I think many sci-fi series often miss.

The first couple of seasons of Andromeda were ... OK. About what you'd expect for Hercules in space. Later on, when they retooled it in seasn 3, the original writers left and it became a vehicle for Kevin Sorbo's ego, it went downhill.

What came first, by the way? Andromeda or FFG's Twilight Imperium board game?

 RiTides wrote:
At the risk of having to hand in my nerd card...

I've never seen this not even an episode! But I've got Prime, so I'll give it a shot now

I would suggest finding a suggested episode list for season one and skipping the episodes that are...not worthy of suggestion. Season 2 to 4 are solidly watchable. Season 5 you can probably skip up until the last 5 episodes.

 RiTides wrote:
At the risk of having to hand in my nerd card...

I've never seen this not even an episode! But I've got Prime, so I'll give it a shot now

Are you referring to B5 or Andromeda? There's a bit of a split in the discussion. If the former, I'd recommend *not* taking the quality of the first episode as indicative of the whole series. The show is a bit of a slow burner as I'm seeing now rewatching it for the first time in 20 years and plot points that I remembered being constant throughout take some time to develop. One thing of note is that the series was planned out in outline form for every episode of the original 5 seasons ahead of time. I remember visiting a web site where the creator had short outlines of episodes several seasons ahead posted. There really are easter eggs (before they were a media staple) even in the first episode that relate to one of the last now that I'm rewatching. If you don't catch them, you don't miss something key most of the time though so no worries; it's more of a rewatching benefit once your done. Also, as stated above, the budget was significantly less than Star Trek at the time (roughly 1/4 from what I've read over the last day or two) so keep that in mind. Think of it as a prototype 90's space version of Lost that was derailed by the sudden cancellation in season 4 that had to be wrapped up very quickly... and which was then renewed after the fact and sent them scrambling yet again to try and refit the original planned 5th season back in with the rushed 4th season series ending that wasn't.

The only minor problem with skipping episodes is that you might end up missing hints related to the larger meta-plot. A lot of Season 1's episodes are sub-par, but it lays the foundations regarding issues that begin to emerge in season 2.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
It was only the wrong call if they knew ahead of time that they'd not be able to re-render the effects shots.

Also, I don't think doing the effects in 16:9 was an option - they were too expensive and time consuming to render them in a way that meant a third of the image would the thrown away when broadcast, while doing the actual filming in widescreen wasn't much more expensive than filming in standard format.

Anyway, the storytelling comes through despite the dodgy effects, occasionally stilted dialogue and the variable acting.

I’d read that they were prepared to do the CGI in widescreen, but the studio weren’t willing to fork out for a reference monitor for the graphics company (widescreen monitors were stupid expensive at the time). Such a shame as if the whole lot had been done in 16:9 it would have been close to HD quality

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Nice news!

I can alternate between that and Andromeda for some palet cleansing cheese.

Man, do you chase sushi with draino instead of the pickled ginger lol


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Cyrixiinus wrote:
The only minor problem with skipping episodes is that you might end up missing hints related to the larger meta-plot. A lot of Season 1's episodes are sub-par, but it lays the foundations regarding issues that begin to emerge in season 2.

The Ironheart episode I would consider a bad episode, for an example of this, but you'd miss the introduction of Bester and Psicore if you skip it.

 warboss wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
At the risk of having to hand in my nerd card...

I've never seen this not even an episode! But I've got Prime, so I'll give it a shot now

Are you referring to B5 or Andromeda? There's a bit of a split in the discussion. If the former, I'd recommend *not* taking the quality of the first episode as indicative of the whole series. The show is a bit of a slow burner as I'm seeing now rewatching it for the first time in 20 years and plot points that I remembered being constant throughout take some time to develop. One thing of note is that the series was planned out in outline form for every episode of the original 5 seasons ahead of time. I remember visiting a web site where the creator had short outlines of episodes several seasons ahead posted. There really are easter eggs (before they were a media staple) even in the first episode that relate to one of the last now that I'm rewatching. If you don't catch them, you don't miss something key most of the time though so no worries; it's more of a rewatching benefit once your done. Also, as stated above, the budget was significantly less than Star Trek at the time (roughly 1/4 from what I've read over the last day or two) so keep that in mind. Think of it as a prototype 90's space version of Lost that was derailed by the sudden cancellation in season 4 that had to be wrapped up very quickly... and which was then renewed after the fact and sent them scrambling yet again to try and refit the original planned 5th season back in with the rushed 4th season series ending that wasn't.

Well, I have to say this post does not inspire a ton of condfidence in me

Maybe we should have a "Scifi Series Recommendations" resources thread, given the spinoff Andromeda discussion above? I have discovered several that I think are just awesome recently (Travelers and Colony, both on Netflix) but kind of want to dodge the bad ones such as Farscape, as was also mentioned above. Another amazing gem is Children of Men (stand-alone movie). So yeah... maybe something like this could be suited to a general recommendations thread? It could encompass books, shows or movies, I think.