In Which I Spend Approximately As Long Rambling on About the First Season of Babylon 5 As It Took to Make It.

Well, I said before that once I'd finished watching through the first set of Babylon 5 discs that I'd post my thoughts on the season as a whole. Having finally made my way through the DVDs now, though, I find that I have so many things to say about the show, and about the experience of actually getting to watch it over from the beginning after my sporadic viewing of it the first time, that it's hard to know where to even begin. I think maybe I'll divide my thoughts up into categories. Let's start with...

The writing: In my opinion any TV show ultimately stands or falls on the strength of the writing, so this seems like a good topic to start with. And I am very impressed with the quality of the writing on B5. Sure, OK, there are a couple of stand-alone episodes in the first season that, while entirely watchable, do kind of leave me at the end going, "OK, and the point of that was...?" But almost every show, I think, has one or two of those, and they stand out in B5 only because the general quality of the writing is so very high. The dialog in particular is terrific and the episodes' individual plots are often extremely good. But more than that, of course, we're also seeing the slow unfolding of an epic story, and that story is fascinating. It's also a story with a lot of emotional and thematic resonances in among the action and intrigue. It may not be too much of an exaggeration to say that it's the Shakespeare of science fiction TV.

The characters: Over the course of 22 episodes, I've come to really like these people. From what I saw of the show the first time around, I'd probably say that G'Kar was originally my favorite character. And I still very much enjoy G'Kar and his sarcastic wit, but I've gown so fond of the ensemble as a whole that I don't know if I could pick a favorite character just at the moment. Interestingly, from what little I saw of Sinclair the first time around, I had him mentally pegged as something like "that unlikeable, boring guy who was on before Sheridan." Well, all I can do now is to shake my head and admit that I didn't really know him then, because I've come to appreciate Sinclair as a clever and likeable person who handles difficult situations with wisdom, humility, strength of character, and (considering the people he has to deal with) a surprising amount of tact. Sure, he comes across as a little stiff at first, but I never should have judged him so harshly because of that.

As for the other characters, let's see...

Ivanova: I've come to quite like Ivanova, too. There's something about her sardonic sense of humor that's oddly endearing. I love that little smile she gets when things start going wrong. The one that seems to say, "Yeah, things may be going to hell in a handbasket, but at least I can always find amusement in the fact that, see, I was right to be pessimistic!" As she would put it, a very Russian attitude.

Garibaldi: Another great character, and a likeable guy. Sure, he's a little messed up, and his sense of humor's a bit weird, but he's definitely the kind of man you'd like to have at your back, all the way.

Franklin: A nice person, a decent guy, and a good doctor, but I get the feeling there are some slightly darker undercurrents there, a sense of arrogance that's potentially dangerous. Beyond that, it's hard to say, as he hasn't really gotten all that much development yet, compared to some of the other characters.

Londo: Oh, well, how can you not like Londo? He gets so many of the best lines! He's hysterically funny, in fact, and yet at the same time he's also deeply sympathetic, mildly pathetic, and, at times, slightly scary. Now that's depth.

Delenn: Oddly, I seem to remember her as being more likeable than I'm finding her at this point. There's something about her that's slightly off-putting, and I find it difficult to put my finger on exactly what. I keep wanting to say that she comes across as superior or supercilious, even though the things she says and does actually convey rather the opposite attitude. Maybe it's just that she feels very distant and mystical and alien.

Kosh: Oh, well, who the hell understands Kosh, anyway?

As for the more minor characters... I find that I don't feel very much about Talia one way or the other. Lennier started out very dull, but is finally beginning to become interesting by the end of the season. (I loved watching his reactions to being dragged to the nightclub by Londo!) Vir is just a cute little teddy bear of a guy. And Na'Toth is quite appealingly cynical. OK, who have I left out?

The acting: I have to say, I was not terribly impressed with the quality of the acting at the beginning. It seemed very stilted and stagy, somehow, particularly Michael O'Hare's. I don't know what most of these actors' backgrounds are, but I'm wondering if the problem might have been that many of them hadn't really done science fiction before and weren't completely sure how to play it? Because the only one who seemed entirely comfortable right from the first episode was Star Trek: The Next Generation veteran Andreas Katsulas. (And then there's original Star Trek veteran Walter Koenig, who in his single but memorable appearance in season one hits exactly the right notes from the very first second he's on the screen. That man has so transcended Chekov.) In any case, by about halfway through the season that stiffness is very nearly gone and everybody seems to have settled quite comfortably into their characters. Thank goodness.

The special FX: One thing I do remember from my original exposure to the show is how utterly blown away I was by the FX. After all, nothing remotely like it had been done on television before. It's a bit odd to look back on that now, given how standard the CGI stuff has become. All the gosh-wow awe of it is gone, and there are more than a few shots where I find myself thinking that, hmm, this looks more than a little computer-fake. But on the whole it still holds up very well, and some of the ship designs are just very, very cool.

Some general thoughts: I really wish I knew where my head was at when this show first came on the air, because I could just kick myself for not watching it from the beginning in the first place. I keep thinking how cool it would have been to see this story unfolding without already knowing so much of what was going to happen. There are a lot of mysteries in the first season that it would have been fun to speculate about. On the other hand, it's probably a considerable testament to how good the show's writing is that being so terribly spoiled about future plot developments doesn't entirely rob it of interest, or even of feelings of suspense. Sure, I know a lot of what's going to happen, but I'm still terribly interested in seeing the details of how we're going to get there. Enough so that I'm already eager to pick up the second season so that I can see what's going to happen next.

Oddly enough, though, the very admiration I feel for the show's commitment to its long-term story arc also leaves me feeling somewhat sad. Whether I was watching it or not, I was always very keenly aware that the success of Babylon 5 was what paved the way for the quality SF shows that followed it. It proved that a continuity-heavy show with a multi-year arc and a universe and characters that change significantly over time could work. Without it, I'm sure that we would never have gotten the Dominion War arc in the later seasons of Deep Space 9, we would never have gotten a show like Farscape, possibly (even if it is fantasy/horror rather than science fiction) we would never have gotten Buffy. It set a new standard in genre television, and that change was a very welcome one, indeed. And what makes me sad is the realization that that change may well have been only temporary, and that the pendulum appears to be swinging back the other way again, back towards simpler, more episodic stories. As the cancellation of Farscape, the failure of Firefly, and the dumbing-down of Andromeda all sadly attest.

I don't want to end on that downer note, though. It occurs to me that I've left out lots of other highly positive things I could say about B5. After all, I've neglected to praise the show's attention to world-building detail, or its surprisingly realistic (for television) handling of science and technology, or its wonderful sense of humor. But I've already gone on so long that probably nobody's even reading this any more, anyway.

Must go and order season two.