I didn’t really think that Season 5 was that bad, to be honest. Especially the latter half of it.
I’ve been told that Season 5 is much much better on DVD. Individually weak episodes but strong story arc. But yes, they picked up their A game for the last part of the season.
I watched S5 only on DVD, and the telepaths were still fully annoying. And they kind of dominate the season.
I met “Dr. Franklin” at a con in Oklahoma City. He was fun to talk to, and seemed to really enjoy being amongst the fans, unlike some others. When I asked him to autograph a picture of himself(It was a gift for my sister) I told him she was a pharmacist. He wrote “Give Me Drugs!!!” on the picture!
He also told the audience that he’d played a doctor both in the soaps and on B5, and that he though sci-fi fans had a better grip on reality. He said soap fans couldn’t seperate their feelings between the actor and the character they played.
But I found I can’t look down on soap fans when, in the fourth season, I found myself hollering at the TV when Garibaldi was deciding whether or not to take that drink. I mean, my God, he’s a fictional character and I was so worried about him, where’s my sanity?
The latter half all of the telepaths except for Lyta just…go away. And Lyta’s story is kind of heart-rending, too, when you remember what she was and what she became.
The way I understand cause of the problems with S5, is that because when JMS didn’t know if there was going to be a fifth season, he took about half the material originally intended for S5 and crammed it into S4 in order to tie up most of the loose ends.
When he got a fifth season he was left with three episodes worth of material(the telepath arc) for the first half of S5.
I can imagine that the telepath plotline would have been far more effective if it had been just one more complication happening alongside the Shadow war and the conflict with earth instead of a main event on its own. Byron would still be an annoying putz, though.
I know. I tried really really hard to like Byron. He had many valid points, and he made Lyta happy, which was important. He stood up for his people and was brave and strong, but I could never get past his annoying putz-ness.
Sigh.
I was pretty upset when Garibaldi picked up that bottle, too. 
They do foreshadow it pretty well in S1.
[spoiler]Ivanova: Sooner or later, BOOM!
Okay, that’s not foreshadowing, that’s just her Russian pessimism.
[/spoiler]
The bit that got me about Byron was how he said to Sheridan (was it Sheridan at that point?) that he and the telepaths were happy to work for their keep to remain on B5. Sheridan starts suggesting things they can do and Byron angrily reacts saying they were not interested in political machinations or the coarse workings of machinery or something like that. Left me wondering what exactly they thought “earn their keep” would consist of, basket weaving? Giving poetry recitals?
You could check out Aanamika’s thread about Babylon 5. She started watching it last December, and there’s lots of good discussion in it plus links to previous threads with advice on episodes to watch.
Dunno, presumably they had other skills too, like Brother Theo’s monks did. Of course, I don’t recall if they gave any indication of that.
Yet another example, of which there were many in that arc, of the characters being stupid because that’s what the plot needed.
I’ve always considered Londo a “Noble Villain”. To a certain extent the end of his story can be seen as a quest for redemption. Think it’s debatable whether he actually manages to redeem himself. He had much to atone for…but I give him credit for a sincere attempt.
So it’s okay to commit acts of great evil as long as you didn’t want to?
I don’t think anyone, including Londo, would say it was “okay”. At some point Londo says that he considers himself “damned” for what he’s done (and is willing to die for it); his struggle from then on is to keep anyone else from going down with him. That is a redemption of sorts, although he really only achieves anything like it at the very end.
It’s been argued that there is one definite moment where Londo finally did something that could be seen as noble rather than self-serving or self-preserving:
Demanding that Vir kill him in order to purge Centauri Prime of the last bit of Shadow influence.
Mind you, he still had the next 20 years to pay off all that karma…
Heh, it’s amazing how a Hitchcock Zoom can communicate that even an expressionless alien encased in an armored spacesuit is going “Oh crap.”
It wasn’t so simple, and I’m surprised you’d say such a thing. The great thing about B5 is that it isn’t mind-bogglingly, puppy-raping evil. Very few people, at any rate. Everyone had nuance, and for a long, long time, Londo thought he was doing the right thing - for his people. He was no different than many, many humans who seek power, and when he got it, like many people, discovered it wasn’t what it was cut out to be.
And I don’t know, I think he got a pretty cruel fate in the end.
I was, admittedly, being a bit flip (as I’m sure you could tell).
I think Londo was portrayed very well, and the exchange of roles that he and G’Kar ended up doing was very powerful. I think where my sympathy for Londo fell short was how he seemed quite comfortable inflicting terrible acts on other species for the good of his own. If it helped the Republic get stronger he didn’t seem to care who was hurt in the process. Even when he realised that he was being used, he didn’t seem to accept that what the Centauri had done was unjust. He always seemed to think the end justified the means, even when it ultimately brought his people to their knees. If Londo, and the Republic, had been able to accept gracefully that their star had set and left it at that then not only would their own world have avoided being bombed into nothing, but so would the Narn’s, and think of all the lives that would have been spared in the wars they prosecuted with the shadows.
I suppose what I’m saying is that whilst I accept Londo is a noble villain, he IS still a villain, and what he chose to do cannot be simply excused or forgotten.