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I have to thank Graham for pushing to watch B5. I'd never seen it before, and some parts of it were quite enjoyable. Granted, we did watch some of it 'machete style', where he picked the important/best episodes. I was mostly interested in it, when it was pointed out that the same writer from 'Sense8' had created B5.

I have recently begun watching for the first time as well, and am enjoying it. I've been watching straight through, however, and am only midway into S2 and none of the films save the pilot. Some of the early themes and mechanisms seem a little stale, but good fun for all that.

B5 had a fairly rocky season 1, but as it went on the arc stuff really began to kick in and IMO, it just got better and better. At least until the last season, which was somewhat weaker due to behind the scenes factors.

I was always curious that Sheldon in Big Bang Theory hates B5 and calls it "failed science fiction", when to my mind it's one of the landmark sci fi series. Nowadays most sci fi series uses ongoing stories. B5 didn't invent that concept, but it certainly did a lot to show that it could work as well as or better than the episodic format common in sci fi up to that point. In that respect it's been hugely influential.

It also was the first sci fi series to go all-CGI for the effects. Whilst one can argue that the results were inferior to good quality model work, it allowed B5 to do things that would otherwise be impossible. And notably, whilst the Trek shows of the time made noise about how CGI was inferior to models, Trek would almost completely give up on model work in favour of CGI within a few years. In fact Voyager poached Foundation imaging, a company that was largely built on the work they did for B5.

In fact, just across the first two seasons one can see the evolution of the CGI.

I don't mind the CGI. Someone had to take that first step. Look at Transformers: Beast Wars, for example.

But yeah, the show's friggin' awesome.

Here is a speech about the Earth-Minbari War, by Londo Mollari:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeNBJ5o-b7s

I absolutely love Babylon 5, I have every single film/series from the Babylon 5 universe.

Largely agree with the comments above. S1 is fairly weak which I think is due, in no small part, to a fairly unremarkable lead. S2 and S3 really pick the pace up with peaking mid way through S4 I would suggest. The episodic format is not only a foundation for which later sci fi was built but the multiple tangential plot lines coming together at various points during the show is a joy to watch. It makes little things you saw all the way through previous series make sense. In fact, continuity is something B5 does better than almost any other sci-fi I can think of.

You can see a marked improvement in the Special Effects up till a peak point in S3/S4. Given the infancy of the tech I can get round it fairly easy. The only thing I can think of that is an issue is how enormously dated it looks; DS9 and VOY don't look MASSIVELY out of date today but B5 really does unfortunately.

I wish that some fan out there would redo the CGI scenes as a fanedit.

It's definitely a great series that was made on the same budget the original Star Trek was made on $600,000 an episode which adjusted for inflation is dirt cheap.