# New to Babylon 5: View Order **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 22, 2006, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-to-babylon-5-view-order/385273 "2006-12-22T21:46:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2006, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-to-babylon-5-view-order/385273/21 "2006-12-23T00:31:36Z")
[QUOTE=SenorBeef] No, he was thinking of The Deconstruction of Falling Stars, which is the final episode of season 4 - written and filmed in a hurry when it looked like there would be no season 5. It’s.. interesting. [/QUOTE] Nope. He says “filmed before Season 5, but shown as the series finale.” That means “Sleeping In Light.” ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2006, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-to-babylon-5-view-order/385273/22 "2006-12-23T00:39:36Z")
[QUOTE=silenus] Nope. He says “filmed before Season 5, but shown as the series finale.” That means “Sleeping In Light.” [/QUOTE] Hmmm…think I actually meant “Deconstruction of Falling Stars”, but may have been mistaken as to when it aired. It was the one that retold the arc story, sorta, from different perspectives in the future. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2006, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-to-babylon-5-view-order/385273/23 "2006-12-23T00:47:30Z")
That’s “DoFS.” It was filmed as the first episode of Season 5, then shown as the final episode of Season 4 when they got picked up for the last season. It was an interesting little episode. I especially liked the nod to **Canticle For Leibowitz**. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2006, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-to-babylon-5-view-order/385273/24 "2006-12-23T01:19:31Z")
[QUOTE=SenorBeef] Was The Gathering the pilot? I can’t remember. Anyway, obviously no spoilers if it was. The other movies - terrible. Thirdspace especially, which is like an experiment to see how stupid and anti-Babylon-5-esque you can get in the Babylon 5 universe. [/QUOTE] The Gathering is basically the special edition of the pilot. Lots of editing, getting rid of scenes that didn’t work, putting in scenes that got cut, some audio overlays for a couple of the storytelling bits, and re doing the scene cuts to make it work with TNT’s episode breaks rather than the evidentaly weird breaks they had on the network the pilot premiered on. As for the other movies, eh, watch them and then judge them. I love Thirdspace, it’s my favorite of the movies after In The Beginning, even if various parts of it don’t quite work, such as one minor villian showing up again after I’m pretty sure he was locked away in season 1. It doesn’t fit into the series story arc very well, but it’s a fun little standalone sci-fi flick. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Just\_Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2006, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-to-babylon-5-view-order/385273/25 "2006-12-23T02:13:28Z")
No one has mentioned this so far in the thread and since you’re new to Babylon 5 I have to bring this up. Babylon 5 is pretty unique among science fiction programming because of it’s incredibly strong central vision and that is due to the hard work of one man, it’s producer J. Michael Straczynski (aka JMS). You’ve already returned the last few disks of season two but if you looked back at your recent episodes you might have noticed that starting with In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum there was only one writer, JMS. He wrote every single episode of season three, a feat pretty much unprecedented in American television. He went on to write all of season four as well. It was half way through season five when someone else finally wrote an episode (obscure fantasy author Neil Gaiman who I’m sure no nerd has ever heard of). Movies may be run by directory but television is run in join force by writing staff and producers. Babylon 5 is one of a handful of times where I’d say a television series has an auteur. I don’t expect to see anything else like it for a long, long time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-to-babylon-5-view-order/385273.md?page=1)