Babylon 5: The Road Home

John Sheridan, the first President of the Interstellar Alliance, has relocated from Babylon 5 to Minbar, which will serve as the new base for the Alliance. A routine inspection of a new Minbari power plant inadvertently dislodges Sheridan in time, sending him through a series of alternate timelines where his life, and the fate of the galaxy, took a very different turn. Somehow, he has to find his way home.

The Road Home is the first animated film in the Babylon 5 franchise and the first new instalment of any kind since the release of DVD movie The Lost Tales in 2007. The animated medium allows the surviving actors to reprise their roles and also allows new actors to take over the roles of those actors who are sadly no longer with us (and, as oft-discussed, Babylon 5's attrition rate of actors has been extraordinarily high).

The main appeal of The Road Home is nostalgia: the animated film is so steeped in deep cut lore references to the original show that I'm not sure how much newcomers will get out of it, let alone the massive spoilers it contains for the events of the series. For a B5 veteran, it is tremendous fun to once again see Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Patricia Tallman, Tracy Scoggins, Bill Mumy and Peter Jurasik reprise their roles as Sheridan, Ivanova, Lyta, Lochley, Lennier and Londo respectively. Peter Jurasik in particular slips back into his role as if zero time has passed, and his vocal delivery is spot-on (apart from Tallman, the other actors do have some of the sound of the intervening three decades in their voices). The newcomers are mostly decent, with Paul Guyet outstanding in replicating both Michael O'Hare and Tim Choate's vocal performances as Commander Sinclair and Zathras. Andrew Morgado has the hardest job in replicating the unique vocal stylings of Andreas Katsulas and wisely doesn't even try, instead choosing a similar haughty tone and making it his own.

The character animation is very nice, with a good amount of expression captured from the original actors, although the space CGI is sadly disappointing and lacking in detail: the White Star ships look like unfinished pieces of clay and the Starfuries look like their mid-1990s Micro Machine models. It's genuinely disappointing to see the spacecraft looking so lacking compared to their original incarnations, despite some good design ideas (the Shadow warships now having moving protuberances, for example).

In terms of story and character, The Road Home is a mixed bag. Sheridan flipping between time streams is a nice reuse of story elements from the Season 3 two-parter War Without End, but this promising idea is wasted slightly in revisiting scenes and ideas from the original show that we already saw decades ago. Newcomers will be lost without context and OG fans will find this material redundant. As the movie wears on and we get into newer ideas and start seeing alternate timelines where things unfolded differently, things pick up. It's also nice to get to see things we never saw in the original show, like a Vorlon planet-killer in full action and a Minbari jump gate in operation. But whilst that kind of trivia satisfies, there are also a bevy of continuity errors elsewhere that grate.

As a Babylon 5 project, the film has a lot of wince-inducing dialogue and awful humour, which was a hallmark of the original show, and to be frank would be missed if it wasn't present at least to some degree. However, the original show balanced that out with some beautiful speeches and occasional gags that worked well. The latter are mostly missing from this movie. This movie also mistakes long-worn-out memes as humour, so we get a ton of Zathras focusing on his "comic elements" and completely missing the pathos and tragedy that made the character so compelling on his original appearance in the episode Babylon Squared. Tone is something the movie struggles with a lot: the film feels too light and funny for the massive, grave stakes of the story, and any notion of subtlety from the original series has been lost. In the original, the Shadows were master manipulators who rarely emerged from the darkness and worked through disposable intermediaries and minions. Here, they are recklessly suicidal drones who directly attack enemies in swarms, not caring how many die in the process.

The movie (**½) leaves a Babylon 5 fan feeling conflicted: it is undeniably fun to see these characters again, and it's particularly gratifying to see an actual sequel project involving almost the entire cast of the show, for the first time since the end of the original series (the various spin-off media and DVD movies since then have involved just a few characters, or newcomers). The animation is solid, the voice acting mostly excellent, and at 80-ish minutes the film does not outstay its welcome. But the story feels a little pointless, the humour is often painful and the "alternate universe" set up in the movie as a possible future setting for new material is (at least at this prototypical stage) uninspiring.

The film is available on DVD, Blu-Ray and digital platforms now.

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Babylon 5: Season 5 - The Wheel of Fire

So, Babylon 5 narrowly avoided cancellation by the skin of its teeth in 1997 and was rescued by cable network TNT, who had purchased the repeat rights to the entire series and also agreed to finance the spin-off, Crusade. Whilst this decision initially pleased fans, it did concern those who had noted that J. Michael Straczynski had ended a lot of storylines in Season 4 to give better closure to the show if it had been cancelled. What was there left to tell?

The year is now 2262. The Shadows and Vorlons have departed from the Galaxy, and the corrupt government of President Clarke on Earth has been pulled down. The other worlds have united under the banner of the Interstellar Alliance, but much work remains to be done to cement the worlds into a cohesive force. The new Alliance faces internal and external challenges as the now-masterless former servants of the Shadows hunger for vengeance.

Season 5 of Babylon 5 is its weakest and most problematic. The set-up for the season is good, but it has the feel of being the start of a whole new spin-off show, rather than the closing chapter of a story that's taken five years to tell. To suddenly go from stories of dramatic confrontation between former friends forced into being enemies, or stories of betrayal and consequences, to knockabout stand-alones about comedians visiting the station or a day in the life of two maintenance workers is rather jarring. The return of the stand-alone episodes after two years of very few stand-alones is unexpected and doesn't work very well, mainly as those stand-alones are merely repeating ground covered elsewhere, such as the Hyach/Hyach-do story which is a retread of the Centauri/Xon story covered much more briefly in Season 1. The season also suffers from the absence of several characters who left at the end of Season 4, most notably Claudia Christian as Commander Ivanova. Her replacement, Tracy Scoggins as Captain Lochley, gives it her all but comes off badly compared to her predecessor.

The dominant arc plot of the first half of Season 5 is also interminable. A colony of telepaths opposed to Psi Corps is established on the station, led by the supposedly charismatic Byron ('supposedly' because we are only ever told this about him, but never see it for ourselves). Their storyline pointlessly rams home points about the Psi Corps that were established much more effectively and succinctly in Season 1's Mind War or Season 2's A Race Through Dark Places. The Psi Corps are an amoral, cruel, bullying lot of racial supremacists. We get it. Move on. A rare high-point in this first batch of episodes is Day of the Dead, written by Sandman creator Neil Gaiman, which is emotionally raw and gives Tracy Scoggins her best showcase in the series. However, an ill-advised subplot featuring celebrity magicians Penn and Teller misfires.

Things pick up in the second half of the season, as the focus switches back to the Centauri. Centauri ships are secretly attacking trade vessels belonging to the other races, but Londo is being kept out of the loop. As the Alliance gathers evidence implicating the Centauri, Londo realises something is very badly wrong on Centauri Prime, the Narn realise they have an opportunity to repay the Centauri for what they did to their homeworld, and a severe lapse in Mr. Garibaldi's judgement results in thousands of civilian deaths. This is B5 as we know and love it, with characters making bad calls and others paying the price in blood, with dubious morality and pragmatism overcoming ideology along the way. It's a nicely-handled arc, culminating in the superb Fall of Centauri Prime, which saves the final season from being a total waste of time. Unfortunately, this episode is followed by a rather tediously long denouement in which characters spend a lot of time saying goodbye to one another as they are assigned to new posts and B5's importance dwindles as the Interstellar Alliance's HQ is transferred to Minbar.

The series finale, Sleeping in Light, is an elegant and well-written episode which gives the show a real sense of closure, and is a fitting conclusion to this epic, huge saga.

Season 5 of Babylon 5 (***) has many missteps that threaten to render the series unwatchable, but it recovers for a late-season burst of quality reminiscent of seasons 2 or 3 before reaching a satisfying conclusion. It is available on DVD in the UK and USA, and as part of the Complete Babylon 5 box set (UK, USA).

501: No Compromises (**)
502: The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari (***)
503: The Paragon of Animals (***)
504: A View from the Gallery (**)
505: Learning Curve (*)
506: Strange Relations (*)
507: Secrets of the Soul (*)
508: Day of the Dead (***)
509: In the Kingdom of the Blind (**)
510: A Tragedy of Telepaths (**)
511: Phoenix Rising (**)
512: The Ragged Edge (***)
513: The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father (***½)
514: Meditations on the Abyss (***½)
515: Darkness Ascending (***½)
516: And All My Dreams Torn Asunder (****½)
517: Movements of Fire and Shadow (****½)
518: The Fall of Centauri Prime (*****)
519: The Wheel of Fire (***)
520: Objects in Motion (**)
521: Objects at Rest (***)
522: Sleeping in Light (*****)

Babylon 5: Season 4 - No Surrender, No Retreat

When Warner Brothers renewed Babylon 5 for its fourth and supposedly penultimate season, they had a problem. B5 was one of a number of shows that had been commissioned as part of an attempt to create a new network out of a number of syndication stations, dubbed PTEN. PTEN collapsed during B5's third season, resulting in some legal and funding problems in getting the show to continue. Whilst its ratings remained decent (outperforming the rival Star Trek shows in some key markets), there was some discussion about if the show's modest success was worth the considerable effort and expense to keep it on the air. Producer J. Michael Straczynski was informed of this debate and decided to take drastic action. To protect the integrity of the series, he decided to collapse several long-running plot threads that had been planned to extend into Season 5 so they ended in Season 4 instead, and pull back on the foreshadowing for Season 5. This way, if Season 4 was the end, the show would have a decent amount of closure whilst simultaneously not making a fifth season an impossibility. Unfortunately, this meant that JMS would have to write all 22 scripts again himself, and also change the nature of how a B5 season works in terms of pacing.

Season 4 picks up a few days after thee events at the end of Season 3. Half the Galaxy is at war with the Shadows, but with the Shadow homeworld of Z'ha'dum apparently devastated in a nuclear strike and their ships regrouping, the alliance of worlds brought together by the B5 crew is collapsing as its members withdraw their ships to defend their homeworlds. Sheridan is feared dead amongst the ashes of the Shadow homeworld, Garibaldi is missing, Londo has been summoned to high office on Centauri Prime and the Vorlons seem to be preparing to go on the offensive, and not too concerned about collateral damage along the way.

This is B5 at its most serialised. Straight from the off, JMS rams the accelerator pedal right down and the Shadow War is concluded with almost indecent speed, whilst events on Earth and the Minbari homeworld are suddenly back brought into the limelight before the audience can pause for breath. It's certainly a different approach, and whilst the dropping of the irrelevant non-arc filler episodes is laudable, it can be argued that the relentless action comes at some of the expense of characterisation and worldbuilding we saw in earlier seasons. That said, the story itself is gripping, with Jerry Doyle in particular delivering standout work showing how far he's come since the first season, and every character gets their moment in the sun as the crew of B5 finally decisively strike back against the chaos of the last three years. Special mention must go to Worthram Krimmer as the Centauri Emperor Cartagia, one of the most memorable characters to appear in the show, whilst Walter Koenig does some sterling work later in the season.

One sad loss between seasons is the dropping of Foundation Imaging as the providers of CGI on the show. The replacement effects are adequate, but are nowhere near the quality of Foundation in terms of imaginative ship design or the use of real-world physics, which is a shame.

By the time Season 4 ends, the feeling is that the story is over. The Shadow and Earth Civil War storylines are resolved, if rather messily and not fully, and there is the distinct feeling that there isn't much more to say. As it happened, the show was rescued from cancellation by the TNT Network and a fifth season was commissioned, which proved to be a controversial decision among fans.

Season 4 of Babylon 5 (****) is fast-moving and provides generally impressive and decent resolutions to a lot of the show's long-running storylines. However, the series has to sacrifice some its pacing and more subtle elements in the rush to cram the story into as few episodes as possible, which leads to some problems. It is available in the UK and USA by itself, or as part of the Complete Babylon 5 box set (UK, USA).

401: The Hour of the Wolf (****)
402: Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi? (****)
403: The Summoning (****)
404: Falling Towards Apotheosis (****)
405: The Long Night (****)
406: Into the Fire (***)
407: Epiphanies (***½)
408: The Illusion of Truth (**)
409: Atonement (***½)
410: Racing Mars (***)
411: Lines of Communication (***)
412: Conflicts of Interest (***)
413: Rumours, Bargains and Lies (***)
414: Moments of Transition (****)
415: No Surrender, No Retreat (****½)
416: The Exercise of Vital Powers (***)
417: The Face of the Enemy (****)
418: Intersections in Real Time (****½)
419: Between the Darkness and the Light (****½)
420: Endgame (****)
421: Rising Star (***½)
422: The Deconstruction of Falling Stars (***)

Wertzone Classics: Babylon 5: Season 3 - Point of No Return

By the time Babylon 5's second season ended, Warner Brothers in the USA seemed to be pretty happy with how the series was going. Ratings were solid and for a budget about half that of Paramount's Star Trek shows, they were grabbing a lot of TV headlines and magazine features that used to automatically go to Trek. For J. Michael Straczynski, Season 3 proved to be a challenge. Have set up a lot of storylines and characters in the first two years, it was time to start delivering the pay-off. Unfortunately, due to the sheer number of major, epoch-shaking events that had to happen this season he found it difficult to assign scripts to other writers, and was left with no option but to script all 22 episodes himself. Since he was also a hands-on producer, this proved to be a massive challenge, but one he successfully pulled off.

Season 3 picks up the story in the year 2260. The Centauri Republic is now on the prowl, its borders expanding and conflict erupting with the smaller worlds who make up its neighbours. Whilst Londo frantically tries to distance himself from his increasingly dangerous and unreliable allies, the Shadows, others in the Centauri court do not prove so wise. Elsewhere, the Earth Alliance is becoming divided, riven by paranoia and distrust fostered by the new Ministry of Peace and its volunteer Nightwatch division of informants. With the Galaxy slipping towards darkness and war, an ancient Minbari organisation, the Rangers, has been refounded to help guide the races back to peaceful coexistence, and a powerful new warship is put at the disposal of Captain John Sheridan and the crew of the Babylon 5 station to help them achieve this goal.

Season 3 of B5 starts off surprisingly slowly, with a number of stand-alone episodes. Whilst these ease viewers coming off a long break between seasons back into the show, when watched sequentially after Season 2 they diffuse a lot of the pace and tension built up at the end of that season, and it's slow-going getting back on track. These early episodes are unfortunately mostly filler, particularly the disappointingly shallow Convictions. Exogenesis shows signs of the writer trying to pull of a second 'revisionist Star Trek episode' approach (after the previous year's Confessions and Lamentations) but not quite nailing it. However, events take an upswing in what fans informally dubbed 'The Trilogy': Messages from Earth, Point of No Return and the award-winning Severed Dreams. These three episodes act as a pivot around which the entire series swings, with the crew of B5 finally taking a public stand for what they believe is right, culminating in one of the biggest space battles ever seen on the small screen. When the dust clears, our heroes find themselves in a very different situation to where they were before.

The remainder of the season sees the problems on Earth dropping into the background in favour of the growing conflict with the Shadows. JMS finally addresses the question of what the Shadows want, and how they plan to achieve it. Episodes like Ship of Tears sees the network of alliances and animosities shifting as a former enemy is personally affronted by the Shadows and agrees to work with the B5 crew in revenge, whilst Interludes and Examinations is a masterful look at B5's key central themes of redemption, consequences and responsibility. Things break down somewhat in the War Without End two-parter, which attempts to resolve the mystery of Babylon 4 established in the first season's Babylon Squared. A lot of things had changed in the plan for the series since then (not least Sinclair's departure and his replacement with Sheridan), and JMS was forced to explain the events of the former episode with a different set of circumstances and characters to what he had planned two years earlier. It just about hangs together, as long as you don't think about it too much.

The last few episodes of the season ramp up the tension, with the deaths of several recurring characters, a massive alliance of races meeting the Shadows in a cataclysmic confrontation and a season finale that is pretty stunning, moving from an intense, revelation-packed character piece to the unleashing of the apocalypse.

Season 3 of Babylon 5 (****½) isn't quite as intense and powerful as the second, but the more action and incident-driven narrative works quite well, whilst 'The Trilogy' and the culminating arc of episodes at the end of the season stand right up there with the best SF TV has to offer. It is available in the UK and USA on DVD either by itself or as part of the Complete Babylon 5 set (UK, USA).

301: Matters of Honour (****)
302: Convictions (**)
303: A Day in the Strife (**½)
304: Passing Through Gethsemane (***)
305: Voices of Authority (***½)
306: Dust to Dust (***)
307: Exogenesis (***)
308: Messages from Earth (*****)
309: Point of No Return (****½)
310: Severed Dreams (*****)
311: Ceremonies of Light and Dark (***)
312: Sic Transit Vir (**)
313: A Late Delivery from Avalon (***)
314: Ship of Tears (****)
315: Interludes and Examinations (*****)
316: War Without End, Part 1 (***)
317: War Without End, Part 2 (***½)
318: Walkabout (****)
319: Grey 17 is Missing (**)
320: And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place (***)
321: Shadow Dancing (****)
322: Z'ha'dum (*****)

Wertzone Classics: Babylon 5: Season 2 - The Coming of Shadows

When Babylon 5 was renewed for a second season, it was clear some changes were needed. There was a great deal of positive acclaim for the story arc, the CGI and many of the characters and actors, but there were concerns about the stoic, haunted nature of lead actor, Michael O'Hare, and about his character leaping in a fighter to investigate every crisis that came along, which strained credulity. According to J. Michael Straczynski, this coincided with him struggling about giving Sinclair a connection to the mysterious alien 'Shadows', who would play a big role in the upcoming season at the same time that the mystery about the Minbari, a dominant storyline in Season 1 which featured Sinclair in a big way, would be fading into the background. Apparently amicable discussions were undertaken and O'Hare, who had been missing his old theatre life back in New York, agreed to depart but return for further episodes down the road when his character was needed.

Season 2 starts with the sudden reassignment of Commander Sinclair to the Minbari homeworld as ambassador. Captain John Sheridan is brought in to replace him, which proves controversial as the Minbari hold Sheridan in disfavour for his destruction of a Minbari warship during the war by 'cowardly' tactics (using nuclear mines and a fake distress call). At the same time the station is in something of a crisis: Earth Alliance President Luis Santiago is dead, security chief Garibaldi is in a coma having been gunned down whilst claiming someone wanted the President dead. Elsewhere, Narn Ambassador G'Kar is missing and Minbari Ambassador Delenn is in a cocoon of some kind. "Interesting place you have here," is Sheridan's assessment.

Season 2 charts the descent of the Galaxy from the pre-existing status quo towards fire, darkness and war. An ancient, exceptionally powerful and apparently long-forgotten alien race has returned to prowl the fringes of known space for their own ends. The Centauri are offered a chance to reclaim their place as the most powerful race in the Galaxy. Earth is riven by political corruption. The Vorlons are showing signs of ending their long isolation. Every story element that was set up in Season 1 is now put to use in the second season, with impressive and logical plot and character developments following. If Season 1 was setting up the guns, Season 2 is about watching them fire.

Compared to the variable first year, the second season is much better and more consistent. The arrival of Bruce Boxleitner as Captain Sheridan injects some much-needed life and energy into the command staff, and it's clear he has a much better rapport with most of the other actors. He also convinces much more as a military leader and tactician. JMS has a tendency to give him slightly cheesy speeches from time to time, but he mostly handles these well and does superbly with a dark, intense performance during In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum, a pivotal episode which spells out what the stakes are in the overall story arc.

There are many other key episodes, but other stand-outs include And Now For a Word (an episode told in the style of a news documentary about the station and its crew, revealing new information about the B5 universe) and Confessions and Lamentations (probably the best non-arc episode the series ever did), but the powerhouse episodes of the season have to be The Coming of Shadows and its sequel, The Long, Twilight Struggle. In the former, which won the 1996 Hugo Award, the Centauri Emperor pays a state visit to Babylon 5. Certain Centauri factions aligned with Londo attempt to use his visit to further their own agenda whilst G'Kar plots an assassination. However, the Emperor falls ill and devastating consequences for the entire B5 universe follow. Half a season later, in The Long, Twlight Struggle, the fall-out from the former episode reaches its horribly inevitable conclusion, culminating in the most powerful use of CGI in the entire series (Londo's face reflected in the windows of a Centauri battlecruiser as he realises what his modest political ambitions have led to) and an absolutely barnstorming performance from Andreas Katsulas as G'Kar as his world comes crashing down around him. The rest of the season could have been an anticlimax, but the season finale (The Fall of Night) sees events get even worse and leaves things hanging for the third season.

Season 2 of Babylon 5 (*****) takes the world and story painstakingly set up in the first year and really runs with it, backed by increasingly excellent performances from the central cast. It is available in the UK and USA on DVD either by itself or as part of the Complete Babylon 5 set (UK, USA).

201: Points of Departure (****)
202: Revelations (****½)
203: The Geometry of Shadows (****)
204: A Distant Star (***½)
205: The Long Dark (***)
206: Spider in the Web (***)
207: A Race Through Dark Places (****)
208: Soul Mates (***½)
209: The Coming of Shadows (*****)
210: GROPOS (***)
211: All Alone in the Night (****½)
212: Acts of Sacrifice (***)
213: Hunter, Prey (****½)
214: There All the Honour Lies (**½)
215: And Now For a Word (****½)
216: Knives (**½)
217: In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum (*****)
218: Confessions and Lamentations (*****)
219: Divided Loyalties (****)
220: The Long, Twilight Struggle (*****)
221: Comes the Inquisitor (***½)
222: The Fall of Night (*****)

Babylon 5: Season 1 - Signs and Portents

By 1991 Star Trek: The Next Generation was a smash-hit, the biggest and most successful space-based SF show in history pulling in over ten million viewers weekly. It was unsurprising that other studios would start looking for a piece of Paramount's space opera pie. Warner Brothers chose to go with a proposal by J. Michael Straczynski, a respected scriptwriter with a huge output and a solid background working in animation and on live-action shows such as Captain Power and Murder She Wrote. JMS, as he prefers to be known, had created an ambitious five-year plan. Unlike other series, Babylon 5 would have an unifying 'story arc' that would progress throughout the series. Characters would die, empires would fall and others would rise to replace them, but these epic events would be told through a relatively small number of characters located on a single space station.

The story opens in the year 2258. Babylon 5 is a five-mile-long space station constructed by the Earth Alliance. Located orbiting the third planet of the star Epsilon Eridani, the station is designed to fulfil a similar role to the UN, providing a forum for discussion and trade between more than two dozen races. The advisory council is made up of the 'big five' races: Earth, the Minbari Federation, the Centauri Republic, the Narn Regime and the Vorlon Empire. These races have some issues between them: Earth and the spiritual Minbari have recently fought a devastating war that nearly ended in the destruction of the human race, but the Minbari chose to spare them for reasons that remain unclear. The once-vast Centauri Republic has been forced to withdraw from a number of occupied worlds, including the Narn homeworld, and the Narn, a young, aggressive race, now hunger for revenge. The Vorlons, meanwhile, are exceptionally mysterious. They rarely attend council meetings and are clad in encounter suits which hide their true appearance. The races also have internal dissent: the Centauri are riven between the factions who favour peaceful coexistence with other races and those who want to return to the glory days, whilst tensions are rising between the Minbari religious and warrior castes.

Charting a path through the chaos are the crew of the Babylon 5 station, notably commanding officer Jeffrey Sinclair, first officer Susan Ivanova, security chief Michael Garibaldi, chief medical officer Stephen Franklin and registered telepath Talia Winters.

Season 1's role in the narrative is to introduce the races, concepts and underlying themes of the series. There is a huge amount going on, and it's impossible to deny that JMS has created a fantastically rich universe. In many ways it is the antithesis of Star Trek. Earth is riven by corruption and political dissent, and ranks only somewhere around the middle on the technological scale, centuries behind races like the Minbari, and they don't even have artificial gravity (B5 and the larger Earth warships have to spin to simulate gravity; most ships are weightless environments). There's also a concentration on the 'little man', with several episodes focusing on the homeless and working class of the station, and one even heavily featuring labour and union relations of the 23rd Century. However, there are also several major space battles and some very impressive early CGI, most of which still stands up well today (aside from the slight problem that the CGI shots were not rendered at full film quality, meaning they look a little fuzzy on DVD, but not enough to impair enjoyment of the show).

Season 1 mostly consists of stand-alone episodes, but each episode usually has something to add to the overall tapestry of the story, and the late-season episodes Eyes and Chrysalis do an excellent job of showing what role those apparently unrelated tales in the grander narrative. The quality of the episodes and performances also varies tremendously. A key problem is Michael O'Hare as Sinclair, whose performance is a little too stoic and stiff. When he is forced to come to life, he overacts somewhat badly. Notably his better performances come when he strikes the right note between the two, but these moments are rare throughout the first season. Elsewhere the cast is first-rate, particularly the late Andreas Katsulas as Narn Ambassador G'Kar and Peter Jurasik as Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari. Both have comic elements to them and the actors pull them off, but it is the dramatic tension between them as their races squabble for power that impresses the most. Jerry Doyle also makes an impression as Garibaldi. Not a trained actor (he was a stockbroker before taking on the role), he lacks confidence at the start of the season but improves throughout.

Of the episodes, the highlights are And the Sky Full of Stars, in which Sinclair starts uncovering why the Minbari gave up on the brink of their victory; Signs and Portents, in which Londo inadvertantly strikes a bargain with an enigmatic faction; Babylon Squared, a time travel story in which we get some clues as to what is going to happen several years down the line; and the magnificent Chrysalis, one of the best episodes of TV SF ever, which gives the viewer the feeling that the writer has gone completely insane, torn up the show's bible and now anything can happen. However, to balance this out are episodes which are simply dire, such as Infection, Mind War (despite a heroic performance by former Star Trek alumni Walter Koenig as Psi Cop Bester), TKO and Grail.

Season 1 of Babylon 5 (***½) successfully intrigues the viewer in this vivid and fascinating world. It is well worth a look, even if it fails to match the dizzying heights of the successive two seasons. It is available on DVD in the UK and USA either by itself or as part of the Complete Babylon 5 DVD set (UK, USA).

101: Midnight on the Firing Line (***)
102: Soul Hunter (****)
103: Born to the Purple (***)
104: Infection (*)
105: The Parliament of Dreams (****)
106: Mind War (*½)
107: The War Prayer (*)
108: And the Sky Full of Stars (****½)
109: Deathwalker (****)
110: Believers (***)
111: Survivors (***½)
112: By Any Means Necessary (***)
113: Signs and Portents (*****)
114: TKO (*½)
115: Grail (**)
116: Eyes (***)
117: Legacies (***)
118: A Voice in the Wilderness, Part 1 (***½)
119: A Voice in the Wilderness, Part 2 (***)
120: Babylon Squared (****½)
121: The Quality of Mercy (****)
122: Chrysalis (*****)