Um. . . not sure I agree with this. What age were you when you first watched it compared to now?
It was on in my 20s and I thought it was done for adults and done well. I watched it a few years ago thru half of season four in my mid 30s and it still seemed great!
No big deal and I’m not refuting what you say for yourself. I’m merely trying to get a sense of where you were when you saw it first.
vislor
Oh, yeah. The last 5 episodes of Season 2 are all “wham” episodes. Then Season 3 kicks it into high gear.
There’s a simple solution here: An Gadai posts on the SDMB, which means, like the rest of us, he’s obviously of above-average intelligence. Thus, B5 would seem aimed at him as a kid. 
It started airing in '94, when I was 12. There are still elements I like, even love, but plenty about it that seems silly to me nowadays.
Snarktastic, but seriously, it’s a kids show in lots of ways, is that not obvious? I don’t mean 8 year old but teen, like most sci-fi seems to be. Although it pioneered tv story arcs, too many of the episodes’ tribulations are neatly wrapped up in the 40-something minutes of the average episode.
Growing up sucks. I hope I never lose at least a touch of that teenaged wonder and idealism, although I’m afraid cynicism will eventually win. But I will note for the record that a majority of Humankind’s problems, trials, tribulations and challenges can be solved in 40 minutes or less.
It’s pretty much a TV thing that an episode’s plot is usually going to be tied up in 42 minutes or less, though as you yourself said, B5 was one of the first American shows to have serial plots, sometimes running for multiple seasons.
…no. Wrapping up an episode in 42 minutes does not a kids show make.
No, but there are plenty of other reasons to think of it as such.
…such as?
I’ve heard it sucks, but never heard anyone say it is a kiddie show.
It’s too slow moving and filled with non-stop talking for any teens. I teach teenagers and I can’t think of many that would ever like a show like B5, even when it was new.
It’s clearly aimed at adults.
It’s family-friendly in a way that, say, Battlestar Galactica or Firefly wasn’t. But I don’t by any means think that that restricts it only to children.
Actually, you’re correct and you explained more what I meant than I did :smack:. Because it was designed to also appeal to kids I think it suffers, in retrospect.
Honestly, what shows from the mid-nineties were? And how much TV SF was?
-Joe
I’m trying to figure out how it was aimed at kids.
The plotlines… no.
The characters? No.
The special effects? Well, some of them were kinda cheesy, but the makeup was usually reasonably good for a TV show, and more involved that the typical “alien of the week” makeup on Star Trek.
Some of the gimmicks? Technomages, Zathros, “Day of the Dead”? They were a bit silly or oddly executed or just lame, but the ideas weren’t merely for teens.
The fact that they weren’t yelling “frak” all the time?
Meh, it was on at 6pm here IIRC, just after kids programming ended, and the same time a lot of sci-fi used to air here. Anybody I knew who really liked it was the same age as me, ie a young teenager. I think Chronos hit on what I’m talking about, maybe an adult audience was considered, but so was the youth audience, it’s a family show, more or less. My criticism/observation applies to most sci-fi I’ve ever seen. I wish there was more that was aimed entirely at an adult audience. I don’t want swearing/fucking, but I think the plotlines, attention to detail in a lot of tv sci-fi, is kinda insulting to the audience.
FWIW, I’ve let my kids (ages 7 and 9 – well, I have a 4-year-old too but he could care less what’s on TV) watch Star Trek and Doctor Who, but I haven’t suggested B5 to them. I think a lot of the themes would just sail right over their heads at this age, and it’s a little too talky-talky for their liking as well. (Then again, though, so is ST:TNG and my 9-year-old seems to like it well enough, so… shrug.)
I totally did not get Babylon 5 when it first came out, and I was checks wiki 8. I got it mixed up with DS9all the time. Heck, forever I thought I knew of this secret Star Trek series that no one else knew about.
But TNG was easy to get, and, being a kid, you don’t notice that the bad episodes are quite that bad, which helped me keep my appreciation for Voyager and even Enterprise.
I just started watching it. The acting is pretty terrible, but it is getting a little better.
Every episode, there’s an energy surge detected that’s “off the scale”. At first I was impressed by all these bad ass energy surges everywhere, but now I’m pretty sure that they just installed an energy surge detector that doesn’t go very high. You’d think after the first seven or eight times they’d invest in a better one.
Can you be a little more specific to detail how your criticism applies to Babylon 5? Because I’m just not seeing a lack of attention to detail or the plots were insulting to the audience.