My roomie’s never seen it, and his only exposure to Strazinski (sp?) has been from a few comics and old He-Man episodes. I’d like to show him why Babylon 5 was so good. Any suggestions on how/what order/?
Well, you could always try what my husband did to me.
Buy the first four seasons and sit him down to watch them all in order over the space of a few weeks.
I think my brain started to melt about halfway through season three. 
Start to finish?
Front to back ?
Start from the beginning. That way you see how the characters transform over time. Londo sure isn’t the same guy in season four that he is in season one(nor is Vir!)
That’s one of the best things about that show. Characters didn’t stay in the same mold as they began.
And BTW, my favorite season was three, but I liked them all. Just start at the beginning. “Believers” and " Parliament of Dreams" are great, and in the first season.
If you start with Season 1 and they get bored, skip ahead to the last six episodes or so of that season, when the story REALLY kicks in. It may help if you warn them about some dodgy SFX and acting in the early episodes, but promise that it gets much better later on.
Don’t give him any background, and let him watch “Passing Through Gethsemane.”
Then play him the good episodes from Season 1, all of Seasons 2-4, and selected parts of Season 5. After “Sleeping In Light” hand him the tissue and start all over again.
Man, that’s a tough question, because I’m doing that with my wife and I’m not sure I did the right thing. We started with the TV movie and the first season, of course, but…and I can’t put this delicately…it’s really not that good. It’s 23 episodes or so of potential. It’s so wooden. Look, I liked the show, but JMS just isn’t that solid of a writer. He’s an ideas guy, yeah, but his dialogue is hideous and the lead that first season, Sinclair, has the personality of mulch. Even Sheridan had some clunkers – I visibly cringed with his, “I collect secrets” speech. My God, it’s just bad writing…
I don’t have the time or inclination to go through them now, but I would start with a couple important episodes of season 1, then go into season 2. I would skip “In the Beginning” and probably “The Gathering.” But that’s just me. I can tell you though, if they’re not really into sci-fi and really willing to give up 20 hours to get to the good stuff, there won’t be much excitement about watching five seasons plus.
OMG
like the vorlons and the skectzies have wicked organic ships
the elves are all into rock gardens
Napoleon has the deal with lizard rebelion
and Bruce Willis plays the security officer
Matt, dude…drugs kill.
so do empty insults
must watch ‘the gathering,’ then do selected eps from the first season.
there are some good ones. then go to the second and third seasons and so forth, because they’re smokin’. definitely worth the time.
b5 is still my favorite scifi series of all time.
gasp! Heresy, man! You do know that JMS only wrote about half the first season, right? As distinct from the real meat of the series in seasons 3 and 4, where he’s writing all of it.
I’ll give you Sinclair, though. There are very many more interesting characters in B5 than that!
Anyway, I’d concur with skipping a number of season one episodes for anyone who wants to get to the good stuff quickly, but there’s actually quite a lot of episodes you really have to see, to properly understand what’s going on…
Midnight on the Firing Line - you can get away with skipping the preview, but not really the first ep.
Soul Hunter - a good ep in its own right, and has background info on Dukat and Minbari religious beliefs
Born to the Purple - entry of Adira
Mind War - entry of Bester. And how can you go wrong with a Bester ep?
And the Sky full of Stars - the “what happened to Sinclair at the Battle of the Line?” storyline
Signs and Portents - Morden!
A Voice in the Wilderness - Epsilon 3 and Draal
Babylon Squared - Setup for War Without End. And it’s good. And it’s got Zathras.
Chrysalis - the cliffhanger
I quite like silenus’ strategy thugh. That’s sneaky! A Late Delivery From Avalon would also be a good one to try for that strategy too - not quite as dark as Gethsemene perhaps?
“Zathras not of this time. You take, Zathras die. You leave, Zathras die. Either way, it is bad for Zathras.”
I watched the first four seasons of B5 from beginning to end. I admit, it was rough in the first season; there just wasn’t much chemistry and the show didn’t really click with me. The numerous assurances and teasers I was given helped me stick it out, though, and it was worth it once things began to kick into high gear. Not to mention sitting through a season of Sinclar made Sheridan that much more fun to watch. 
I’ve recommended it to people before, but I’ve told them they’ll require patience and want to give up on it early on because there’s so much suck in season 1. And there’s a lot of suck in later seasons too, although it gets a lot better.
It requires a certain mindset to appreciate. The dialog is very theatrical rather than realistic, and that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. The effects are outdated, but I actually still really appreciate the effects in season 1-3 because they actually tried to make plausible battles with realistic physics. The story and dialog can be pretty ham-handed at times. The acting often doesn’t help.
And it has to be appreciated that B5, in a lot of ways, pioneered the pre-written arc serialized drama type of show. We have a lot of that now, but at that time, it was very unique.
I suspect a lot of it hasn’t aged well, and there’s a lot of crap in season 1 (“infection”, “TKO”, others), and a lot of the stuff that made it pioneering (especially compared to contemporary sci fi shows like star trek) are more common today, and thus won’t be as impressive in and of themselves.
So, anyway, I would just watch everything in order. Start with “the gathering” (pilot) and work your way through. The only movie worth watching is “in the beginning” (that’s the Minbari war one, right?) and you shouldn’t watch that until mid-season 4 (after “atonement” I think) as it would otherwise have spoilers. “Thirdspace” seems to have result from an idea session that asked the question “what’s all the bad sci fi stuff have we avoided in B5 that we could cram all into one movie for the hell of it?!”
Expect suck early on, but if you have the time, I wouldn’t skip any episodes. Even the really bad ones advance the story in some way, and you might later appreciate the foreshadowing or extra information or whatever.
(my bold)
You promise??? I just finished S2 with Sheridan’s incident on the train, and sweet Jesus, that looked horrible. I’m still watching, of course.
Except TKO. The only connection with any other episode at all is the B story, where Ivanova’s dad dies (which is in turn referenced in the B story of one other episode). The A story, meanwhile, is stupid. You really wouldn’t miss anything by skipping that episode.
I think every other episode does touch on at least one of the three major story threads, though (the Earth-Mimbari war, the Vorlon-Shadow War, or the Narn-Centauri war, all of which are of course interrelated).
I just spent a couple of weeks rewatching them all, and in many ways it still holds up. I can live with the bad fx and the (sometimes) wooden acting. There are some clunkers in S.5, but I found the premise interesting: “So, we won. Now what?”, too many stories skip that awkard part.
I also have to keep reminding myself that Boxleitner is actually two years older than (the dude that played) Sinclair.
I really enjoy the interaction between Londo and G’Kar. It’s really their story.
What I had forgotten since last viewing, was the awfully strong 80’s vibe the first seasons had. *Faux * future clothes and hairstyles that seeed to come out of some yuppie bar on Rush St. in '89, makeup, some colloquilism (sp?). The later seasons didn’t have that so much, but if you plan to introduce a newbie, that’s one of the things I’d warn about.
Fx gets outdated, yet people still enjoy TOS, SW and read Heinlein stories about the futúre where everyone smokes and uses a sliderule. I still think B5 has an interesting story to tell and at times it’s quite profound. I just wonder why JMS never was able to repeat such great storytelling with another show.
I like the parrallel of the station’s function to the UN
My wife and I went back and tried to watch the DVDs and that was our experience exactly. Innovative story arcs can only make up for so much.
We made it a couple of episodes into Season 2 and then gave up. I know it’s supposed to get better, but from our point of view it was not worth it.