I am trying to find out what networks B5 aired on in the States. I thought it was cancelled at the end of season 4, but picked up for season 5 by another network. Who were these networks?
Thanks!
B5 was not originally aired on any network. It was a syndicated show, which meant it was sold to individual stations in each market (leading to different air times; we had to watch the 4th season at 2:00 a.m. Saturday morning. Thank God for VCRs!).
It was produced by Warner Brothers, but not as part of the WB network.
After the fourth season, a cable network bought it up and ran the final year. I think it may have been SciFi, but I’m not sure.
Also, are there any books that explain how Garibaldi gets his revenge on Bester? It’s one of the big gaps in the show that they don’t show us or tell us how he did it(or IF he does it).
Yes, there is a three book series about Bester and some sort of PsiWar.
Do we know what happens to Bester? Can anyone tell me?
TNT had it for the 5th season and, IIRC, made a couple of TV-movies.
The first 4 seasons, the show was in syndication. The final season, it was on TNT.
Do we know what happens to Bester? Can anyone tell me?
Read Final Reckoning: The Fate of Bester. I’d tell you the end, but it has been a while ssince I read it, and I wouldn’t want to get it wrong. But it is worth the read. 
I recently finished season 5 (on DVD – I don’t have cable)
There are a few gaps in teh story.
I’d would have liked Molaris phopheses explained for example.
Brian
Really? Me, I’d like your abysmal typing to improve. Luckily, some of us at least can get what we want. Londo’s prophecies explained:
Lonod wishes to know how he can avoid the fate he has seen for himself: dying old and bitter as he and G’Kar throttle each other. He’s missed two opportunities to avoid this - which are obviously when he first accepted Morden’s help and when he enlisted Shadow aid to destroy the Narn fleet - and he has three more left to go.
- “Save the eye that does not see”.
Two possible interpetations.
1a) It refers to the Eye, the jewelled pendant that is the symbol of the Centauri Emperor - and by extension, the Republic. As the Republic is later destroyed by the remnants of Shadow forces, the only way to get around it is not to have the Republic allied with the Shadows. Londo missed his opportunity to prevent this when he chose to stay on Babylon 5 instead of returning to entauri Prime to take the throne; the result was Cartagia’s ascension to the Imperial throne, and Cartagia chose to ally directly with the Shadows.
1b) It refers to G’Kar’s eye, which the Narn says did not see. Londo could only have prevented the blinding of G’Kar by killing Cartagia sooner. I can’t recall for certain, but I think the blinding took place before Cartagia turned over the island of Selene to the Shadows; if it did, then not granting the Shadows a foothold on Centauri Prime would have given their servants no reason to use the planet as a base. Whether it did or no, though, I consider this to be the least likely option.
- “You must not kill the one who is already dead.”
Again, two possibilities, but I think only one of them can actually be applied. The obvious assumption is that the prophecy refers to Sheridan, who died at Z’Ha’Dum, but this falls down because Londo didn’t kill Sheridan and still died as he had foreseen.
That leaves the only possibility as Morden, who had supposedly died on the Icarus and had quite possibly died for real when Sheridan nuked Z’Ha’Dum. “Flesh does as it’s told”, he says, and his rapid healing would seem to suggest that the Shadows can tell dead flesh to get up and walk if they have to. How would not killing Morden have averted Londo’s fate? Simple: with the Shadows gone Morden would be without power, but would still be a visible symbol of the Shadows. He could be coerced to speak on their behalf and order the servants away from Centauri Prime.
- “At the last, you must give yourself over to your worst fear in the sure knowledge that it will destroy you.”
What is Londo’s worst fear? The answer is, the fall of the Republic. He released Sheridan because Sheridan was the last hope for his people’s salvation. He could have averted his fate only by destroying that hope, so instead he chose to embrace the fate he had wished to avoid because not accepting his destiny was far worse.
Sorted?
B5 was syndicated through something called “Prime Time Entertainment Network.” I have no idea what that was, but I remember seeing their logo on every episode of Babylon 5. In its fifth year, it was picked up by TNT. The spin-off (which was impressive but didn’t last due to creative differences b/w Straczynski, the show’s creator, and TNT) and all but one of the TV movies came from TNT also.
After that, Sci Fi channel picked it up for reruns, and made its own TV movie as well (presumably to make a new spin-off from).
I think some things were left open-ended for a few reasons (aside from the behind-the-scenes acceleration of the story when Straczynski was uncertain that it would have a fifth season).
B5 was also meant to expand beyond the show’s five years, and would sometimes allude to plots that occurred in the books or comics (most notably, Garibaldi’s description of his time on Mars, which was from a comic, in Season 3’s “Messages from Earth”). So some things were left to the novels on purpose.
The PTEN was a bunch of independant station owners getting together and trying to build up a fifth network. At the time it started the WB and UPN didn’t exist and so they created a few shows to try to build the brand. The only two that lasted more than one year were Kung Fu: The Legend Continues and B5. After that first year something worse happened in that the WB and UPN were forming and so the independant stations that were showing a lot of syndicated stuff were starting to evaporate. B5 managed to hold on by its fingernails for three more seasons but at the end of all that the syndication package just couldn’t work any more. That’s when TNT stepped in.
Pedant: Time Trax also ran for more than one year. Which, for those of us who remember, means they scored a 100% hitrate with the three shows used in their Kawasaki Ninja competition - people tuned in to get the answers to the questions, and didn’t tune out again.