VHS : Babylon 5 - A Call To Arms [1999]

Rating: - And so it begins
Babylon 5 is one of my all time favourite science fiction series and although this first season is not the best the series has to offer, it is still nothing less than enthralling and entertaining. This first season sees all the pieces moved into place for what is to follow and although there are some bumps along the way the show remains a cut above many other first Sci-fi first seasons. Season one is probably one of the more episodic of all the Babylon 5 seasons but despite this the arc plot that stretches throughout all five seasons is present and the writing that has done into the entire plot is far superior than that of many other series.

The show is also quite mature in its dealing with storylines, with themes that include war, peace, political intrigue, philosophy and science vs. faith, among others. The acting throughout the series is competent if not spectacular and if anything lets the show down it is its rather lacklustre special effects. Babylon 5 also seems to attract many guest stars and this first season is no exception with appearances by, among others, David Warner, and Walter Koenig. As I have already stated, Babylon 5 is one of the best science fiction shows that I have ever seen and I couldn't recommend it highly enough.

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Rating: - Measured Start to a Classic Sci-Fi TV Story
Babylon 5 is highly entertaining and totally 'believable' TV sci-fi. It contains epic stories of political intrigue and personal drama, all wrapped up in a fun sci-fi setting. It really is classic stuff, and this first series is where it all started - the stories that develop later are hardly even hinted here, everything is innocent and straightforward.

Most of this first series is taken up by lulling the viewer into a false sense of security, by sticking to fairly 'ordinary' storylines, along with the occasional hint of strangeness in the form of unexplained weird events, and odd time-glitches.

All credit to the creators that they take the whole of this first series to setup some rock-solid foundations for the characters and the general background. This makes it all the more traumatic and devastating when the whole scenario is turned completely upside down in the later series, as everything gradually descends into chaos!

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Rating: - He was right, nothing was the same anymore...
For my money Babylon 5 was one of the single most influential and revolutionary sci-fi series to come out of America in the 90s. It began life resembling a formulaic, low budget alien-threat-of-the-week Star Trek clone, but after a series of dramatic plot shifts and upheavals it quickly morphed into a galaxy-spanning epic filled with emotion and human drama that regularly delivered movie-quality thrills and surprises. Moreover it transpired that it had all been planned this way from day one - Joe Michael Straczinsky, the series creator and executive producer, had sketched out the whole 5 year story arc at the beginning, and from the third series onwards he pretty much took over sole writing duties to ensure that it all unfolded as he had envisaged. Those who had seen the show's potential and stuck with it from the beginning were rewarded in spades. The trouble is that this being Season 1, while it definitely hints at things to come, you do kind of have to take it on trust a little. Stick with it long enough and it will blow you away.

B5 tells the story of the last of the Babylon stations - a gigantic diplomatic freeport sited in neutral space between five equally poised and mutually antagonistic alien empires. Season 1 contrasts quite strongly with later seasons, and is best viewed as a kind of extended prologue. The sets are dark, cavernous and moodily lit, leading to an impressive sense of scale. The music is haunting and discordant. The season almost never ventures the station itself, instead relying on a format whereby something nasty from outside arrives on B5 each week to stir up trouble among the indigenous populations and cultures. Episodes have multiple plotlines which do not necessarily intersect, which gives a great sense that the characters are going about their own individual lives even when the spotlight is not on them. The characters themselves are flawed, complex, and most are guarding dark secrets that will only be revealed in the fullness of time. It all ends with what I consider one of the best multi-thread cliffhangers of all time.

At the same time Season 1 has some kinks that would later be ironed out - the dialogue is believable and very human, and the show has a wonderful, irreverent sense of humour, and yet occasionally it stumbles in these areas. The cast was reasonably strong to begin with, but they improved by leaps and bounds over subsequent years as their characters changed and developed. The colourful effects (all created using a software package called Lightwave) are executed with a consistency and artistry that goes some way towards making up for the fact that by today's standards they look exceedingly primitive (though they would eventually deliver sweeping and dazzling space battles on a scale that has never since been matched).

In retrospect it's easy to forget just how revolutionary B5 was in its day - it was the first the first non Star Trek space-based sci-fi show to complete its run without suffering cancellation (in itself a minor miracle). In an era when serialised programming was almost unheard of in America it linked episodes together to form a continuous, epic narrative (nowadays this practice has become virtually ubiquitous). Each and every episode featured an individually composed electronic / orchestral score by Christopher Franke. The series pioneered the use of exclusively computer generated effects, and was filmed entirely in widescreen long before widescreen televisions really took off.

Overall is a great DVD package, with some nice interviews and featurettes and full commentaries on two episodes. The main thing to bear in mind, though, is that B5 was a show that virtually defined itself in terms perpetual change - the best advice is to just sit back and enjoy this series and this universe for what it is. And although there are undeniably some outstanding moments to be found in Season 1, the best really is yet to come.

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Rating: - The start of something special.
Babylon 5 is a television rarity - a five-year show that was always intended to last five years, and written from the start as if it was going to. It's often described as a novel for television, as in many ways its structure and scope more resemble the classics of written science fiction than episodic television.

The show poses a more realistic future than much sci-fi TV: while some of the alien races have their advanced technologies, humanity's future achievements are rooted in the laws of physics and space travel as we know or imagine it today. There is little black and white morality - all the characters are sketched in shades of grey, and there are no easy solutions or guaranteed happy endings.

In hindsight, season one is admittedly shaky in comparison the later years - but that's an extremely high standard to be compared to, and skipping it to start watching from season two or later is rather like flipping to chapter fifteen of a novel because you've heard that's where the good part starts. Don't do it. The amount of foreshadowing and careful setup in this series is phenomenal, and it's not something you can appreciate from reading a brief plot summary. Episodes like "Signs and Portents" and "Babylon Squared" introduce important plot elements that pay off literally years later, and everywhere there are throwaway lines and actions that mean so much more after seeing the whole series.

Season one episodes, when they're bad, can be dull and clunky, but when they're good, they're amazing; as it goes on, the first season's high points more than cancel out its lows. Original leading man Michael O'Hare gets a rather unfair rap for being 'wooden': Sinclair is an unusual character for a male television lead - quite calm and restrained, almost spiritual in some ways - and I personally never had a problem with O'Hare's performance. The friendship between Sinclair and security chief Garibaldi brings a lot of humanity to the show, as does Claudia Christian's performance as cynical Russian second-in-command Ivanova.

The heavyweight acting comes from Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas, as the ambassadors of two perpetually warring alien peoples. Their characters here are quite different from the ones we eventually come to know, and yet the evolution to that point is so perfectly organic that seeing them change and grow over the years is one of the show's greatest strengths. Look out also for Walter Koenig's first appearance as the Machiavellian telepath Bester, a wonderful character that nobody who watched him on Star Trek would ever suspect he had in him.

I won't pretend the first season has no flaws, but I still give it five stars, because it has more than enough merits to balance them out, and it sets up so much of what goes on to become one of the best science fiction shows of all time. Highly recommended.

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Rating: - I DON'T GET IT
I do enjoy entertaining TV series such as Buffy, Angel and even Stargate. But the key word is entertaining. I am reading other people's reviews which rave about this show and talk about how much better it's going to get before the end of the season, and permit me to voice my skepticism. It would have to undergo a complete metamorphosis for it to become anywhere near good. There are no charismatic characters, no good actors, no good-looking people; the plot is tremendously bad, the monsters of the week re-hashed from every single sci-fi series since the beginning of time, the attempts at humour are childish, the art direction is worse than Star Trek's in 1965. I already fell for another baaaaad series (Firefly) and the only way I am getting my money's worth from this one is to use it as a sleep aid -- in that way it doesn't disappoint.

Save your money and go for better TV, there is plenty of that!