im in the babylon5 camp myself, mainly because of the differences between it and many of the other scifi shows i loved when i was younger.
now, dont get me wrong. i love star trek (well nearly all of it, enterprise is the only one i didnt like much from the very beginning tbh) and nearly all the scifi shows. but there was just some things about B5 that dinged all my bells.
while nearly every episode could be watched alone, barring the 2 parters, it had a coherent storyline i enjoyed.
like Kyrian said, the humans being the underdogs was a nice change. with trek, (apart from the cardassian war and similar) everything is just too nice. no one swears. there is no real poverty. no one is hungry, no one is dirty (except the archeologists, and thats cause they dig in the dirt lol) and no one is homeless. if you are human, you have everything you might need almost at your fingertips.
it wasnt till i started watching B5 that i noticed this. hell, even the animosity between the races is so toned down it reminded me of kids in the playground, hurling the 'my dad is better that your dad' insults at eachother.
constrast that to B5.
the narn and the centari realy hate eachother. with actual passion. you can see it in their eyes. if you left them in a dark ally, someone would die. you can also see the denial and the confused haughtyness of the minbari warrior caste when they look at earth force. they know *something* went down, something that must have been big, but the religeous caste wont say anything. and its driving them nuts lol.
then there is brown sector. whooee, now that is somewhere you would never see outside of bajor and the occupation in trek. people dirty and poor, who are behind bars or in camps? people homeless sleeping rough?
and yet its true.
even if we become much more advanced as a people, and we get out to the stars, i still think we will have poor and poverty. and homelessness. because it costs to travel. unlike trek where you can seemingly grab any passing federation ship to get you from a to b, our reality is much more likely to be pay as you go lol.
and i liked that. i liked the fact that londo and g'kar hated eachother's guts at first. i liked the manuvering because it was so petty and small at the start. then it gets bigger, we see the gameboard and we can *see* where things are going. we have many different little plots all comming together to force the characters into aliances and to working together. the slow realisation of reality for G'kar and his enlightenment. the slow decline of londo and everything he does, trying to get out of the hole he digs for himself. and the little jokes they throw in. the armchair philosophy.
and you have to love the vorlons.
they are the scifi version of 'a wizard did it' XD if anything is not as it should be, 'a vorlon did it' lol
(second would probably be a tie between Dr Who'verse and Firefly'verse since i cant realy decide...i think i will just mash em together with the pitch black verse and call it a day. *wink*)
now, dont get me wrong. i love star trek (well nearly all of it, enterprise is the only one i didnt like much from the very beginning tbh) and nearly all the scifi shows. but there was just some things about B5 that dinged all my bells.
while nearly every episode could be watched alone, barring the 2 parters, it had a coherent storyline i enjoyed.
like Kyrian said, the humans being the underdogs was a nice change. with trek, (apart from the cardassian war and similar) everything is just too nice. no one swears. there is no real poverty. no one is hungry, no one is dirty (except the archeologists, and thats cause they dig in the dirt lol) and no one is homeless. if you are human, you have everything you might need almost at your fingertips.
it wasnt till i started watching B5 that i noticed this. hell, even the animosity between the races is so toned down it reminded me of kids in the playground, hurling the 'my dad is better that your dad' insults at eachother.
constrast that to B5.
the narn and the centari realy hate eachother. with actual passion. you can see it in their eyes. if you left them in a dark ally, someone would die. you can also see the denial and the confused haughtyness of the minbari warrior caste when they look at earth force. they know *something* went down, something that must have been big, but the religeous caste wont say anything. and its driving them nuts lol.
then there is brown sector. whooee, now that is somewhere you would never see outside of bajor and the occupation in trek. people dirty and poor, who are behind bars or in camps? people homeless sleeping rough?
and yet its true.
even if we become much more advanced as a people, and we get out to the stars, i still think we will have poor and poverty. and homelessness. because it costs to travel. unlike trek where you can seemingly grab any passing federation ship to get you from a to b, our reality is much more likely to be pay as you go lol.
and i liked that. i liked the fact that londo and g'kar hated eachother's guts at first. i liked the manuvering because it was so petty and small at the start. then it gets bigger, we see the gameboard and we can *see* where things are going. we have many different little plots all comming together to force the characters into aliances and to working together. the slow realisation of reality for G'kar and his enlightenment. the slow decline of londo and everything he does, trying to get out of the hole he digs for himself. and the little jokes they throw in. the armchair philosophy.
and you have to love the vorlons.
they are the scifi version of 'a wizard did it' XD if anything is not as it should be, 'a vorlon did it' lol
(second would probably be a tie between Dr Who'verse and Firefly'verse since i cant realy decide...i think i will just mash em together with the pitch black verse and call it a day. *wink*)