Meathead

I went to watch something on my Apple TV box last night and saw the remastered B5 was the top TV title... Said to myself it must be on sale again this week (can't tell as I already own it)... figured $29.99 again. But $19.99 is a fraking steal!

... and then proceeded to watch a couple episodes.

lwhy?

It's back up to $49.99 now. It was either a one day sale or a price error.

davidh777

I recently got it on Vudu for $37.50 in a recent two-for-$15 sale. Of course I had already bought it there in SD, but oh well.

Shannon Nutt

I picked it up on iTunes for the $19.99 price. Then I realized they have a bunch of TV movies as well. Anyone know the correct release dates of those films (i.e., the order in which I should watch them) and if they all aired AFTER the series ended?

lisadoris

Here's the viewing order list of the episodes and the films: Lurker's Guide: Master Episode List

Meathead

Lurker's Guide was my homepage for years.

lisadoris

I still have it bookmarked and return to it every time I do a B5/Crusade re-watch.

Josh-da-man

On your first viewing, I would recommend that you just watch "The Gathering" (the pilot movie) and then seasons one through five. Then worry about the movies. There's definitely a through-line there, and dropping the movies into either the release order or the chronological order breaks the rhythm. On your second run-through, go ahead and watch everything in chronological order (as listed below) or release order.

Placement of the movies is sort of tricky. The best one, In the Beginning, is a prequel to the series that was first aired between seasons 4 and 5 after TNT picked it up for its fifth and final season. This can be watched first, but it will give away a few of the mysteries early and is best saved for later.

The next movie, Thirdspace, is arguably the second best of the TNT movies, and was aired on that channel toward the end of season five after the episode "Movements of Fire and Shadow," but it actually takes place during the fourth season. And the placement there is odd, too, since the only place it really fits is between two scenes of the episode "Atonement." Thirdspace has absolutely nothing to do with episode "Atonement" itself, but the continuity is so tight with characters coming and going, uniform changes, and shifting relationships/status quos, that this is the best place it will fit.

The third TNT movie, River of Souls, was aired near the end of season five -- right after the episode "Wheel of Fire" -- and it takes place between the penultimate episode and the series finale. (There is a significant time jump between the final two episodes of Babylon 5, with the final episode acting as an epilogue to the series.)

The fourth TNT movie, A Call to Arms, also takes place between the final two episodes of Babylon 5, and after River of Souls. This movie is a set-up for the ill-fated sequel series Crusade, which only ran for a half of a season and was sabotaged by TNT. It aired not long after the series finale.

Later, The Sci-Fi Channel aired another original movie, The Legend of the Rangers, that was to act as a pilot film for a series that never happened. Chronologically, this takes place a one year before A Call to Arms, but still before the Babylon 5 series finale. This one isn't well regarded by most fans of the show, so if you don't see it you're not missing much.

And finally, there was a DVD original called The Lost Tales, which presents two short stories that take place about nine years after the penultimate Babylon 5 episode. The stories presented here suffered from low budgets and limited cast. Between the two stories, they only have two cast members from the regular series and one from Crusade and look they were filmed in a broom closet.

In-universe, the chronology looks like this:

TNT Movie #1: In the Beginning (2245-2248; the bulk of the story is a flashback being told by one on the characters in a framing sequence set in 2278)
Pilot Movie: The Gathering (2257)
Babylon 5: Season One (2258)
Babylon 5: Season Two (2259)
Babylon 5: Season Three(2260)
Babylon 5: Season Four (2261)
TNT Movie #2: Thirdspace (2261, some time around the episode "Atonement")
Babylon 5: Season Five (2262) Episodes 1 - 21 ("Objects at Rest")
TNT Movie #3: River of Souls (2263)
SciFi Movie: The Legend of the Rangers (2265)
TNT Movie #4: A Call to Arms (2266)
Crusade: Season One (2267)
DVD Original Movie: The Lost Tales (2271)
Babylon 5: Season Five (2281) Episode 22 ("Sleeping in Light")

Hope this doesn't scare you away.

morriscroy

On second and subsequent viewings, in practice I usually watched the "In The Beginning" movie first and then straight through seasons 2 to 4.

I found seasons 1 and 5 were kinda tedious to watch through, along with other movies.

morriscroy

For Crusade, I found the most "viewable" episode order for me in terms of pacing, is the "continuity order" sequence as described in a blog post:

https://greysector.wordpress.com/201...watch-through/
https://greysector.wordpress.com/cat...tinuity-order/

https://greysector.wordpress.com/201...er-conclusion/


00. A Call to Arms
01. War Zone
02. The Long Road
03. The Path of Sorrows
04. Ruling from the Tomb
05. Appearances and Other Deceits
06. Racing the Night
07. The Needs of Earth
08. The Memory of War
09. Visitors from Down the Street
10. Each Night I Dream of Home
11. Patterns of the Soul
12. The Well of Forever
13. The Rules of the Game

Josh Z

This sounds almost as complicated as trying to figure out the best viewing order for The Clone Wars.

davidh777

I remember the movies from the DVD days. Those aren’t on Vudu, but I’ve been meaning to watch the series for so long, I figure I’ll do that then worry about those later.

lwhy?

I'm just going to watch the series from the beginning and not worry about the movies.

Josh-da-man

It's nowhere near that bad.

There's a straight narrative through-line if you watch the two-hour pilot movie and then all five seasons in the given order. (When watching the series on Tubi, the pilot movie "The Gathering" is listed as the twenty-third episode of season one for some reason when it should be watched first.)

Where it gets complicated is squeezing all of the special event movies and sequel series into the timeline.

And the aborted sequel series, Crusade, is a whole other matter where TNT did everything they could to ratfuck it. There are several different viewing orders for it, but since the series doesn't have any kind of resolution it doesn't really matter. And even then, it's skippable and should only be watched by hardcore fans. It was supposed to be another five year story arc, but TNT canceled it midway into the first season before the first episode even aired because they had buyer's remorse over picking up the fifth season of Babylon 5 and greenlighting a sequel series.

BobO'Link

Exactly. The movies are fun little tidbits but not at all necessary and sometimes a bit of a slog to get through. I watched Crusade once and don't feel the need to watch it again. It's quite disposable though generally interesting in a "fill in the universe" kind of way. For me, that's what the movies were as well with them mostly having a "fan service" vibe. With the series, once you make it through S1 (which for me is a bit weak but sets up things for later) it really starts to pick up.

morriscroy

I actually watched Crusade before ever seeing the B5 series proper. It was an $10 impulse buy at costco around 2011. (Likely Warner was liquidating its remaining inventory of Crusade dvd sets at places like Costco).

At the time, it felt like watching a forgotten short-lived sci-fi show that was mostly standalone episodes. (Similar to the kind of cheesy sydicated sci-fi shows which were around during the 1990s on independent tv stations or basic cable channels). Prior to that time circa 2011, the only non-StarTrek sci-fi shows I watched a lot was stuff like Stargate, the revived Outer Limits, Total Recall 2070, Earth: Final Conflict, etc ...

I do have some vague recollections of seeing the B5 pilot movie, when it was first broadcast as a saturday or sunday "evening movie". I didn't remember much at all (not even the title), until I watched it again on dvd and it jogged my memory.

Shannon Nutt

Thanks for all the viewing tips guys - my plan was to watch everything according to how it was originally released, as opposed to chronological order. I just wasn't sure if ALL the movies (aside from the pilot movie) were released AFTER the series ended or if there were movies that were released between seasons.

kenbuzz

^bump

Nearing release date, and Amazon's prices have dropped a couple of times. Here's the current price info, sorted from least- to most-expensive including shipping (but excluding tax).

$93+0 Amazon
$93+0 Deep Discount
$96+0 WalMart
$99+0 Bullmoose
$100+0 Gruv ($80+0 w/20% discount code available for first-time signup)
$108+8 Movies Unlimited
$109+11 ImportCDs
$115+9 CCVideo
$123+9 Oldies.com
$131+6 Hub City Vinyl
$130+10 Best Buy
$141+3 CD Universe
$155+5 FYE ($124+5 w/20% discount code available for first-time signup)
MSRP = 99.99

+x = Shipping
Prices shown do not include tax and are rounded to the nearest buck.

$93 Amazon/DDD are the least expensive right now without use of a discount
$80 Gruv is least expensive if you have not used the 20% sign-up bonus.

PhantomStranger

I'll snag Babylon 5 if it ever hits below $60.

B5Erik

I just watched the first Episode - Midnight On The Firing Line - and it looks much better than the DVD version. The picture is sharper, the colors bolder (but not oversaturated), and the general look is cleaner.

And, of course, that's one of the better episodes of the first season.

So far, I'm really happy with what we got.

dvd-4-life

Is the pilot movie the only special feature?

IDrinkMolson

FWIW, I'm currently watching this on iTunes, never watched the show before. Bought the complete series for $19.99 back in August. I'm up to the beginning of S3. Digitally, S1 looked good to me and I thought S2 looked even better than S1. S3 might even be better looking then S2.

kenbuzz

Pretty much. There's a trailer for The Road Home, which was released earlier this year, but that's it.

Warner has put out a bare bones set. Hell, even the packaging is a mess.... a 24-disc clamshell thing that either releases all of the DVDs to turn into floaters and get all scratched up on the data side, or that refuses to release any of the discs without breaking off a pin or (worse) snapping a DVD in half. I immediately chucked the packaging and rehomed all the discs in DiscSox, scanned the insert artwork and printed/scaled several copies to use as cover art, and printed an episode list to stick inside the first DiscSox so I can quickly find a specific one if I'm not binging the entire series.

For those who care, the 22 episodes from each season are distributed as: Disc 1: 1-5, Disc 2: 6-11, Disc 3: 12-17, Disc 4: 18-22

Watched a random S1 episode: Believers. Fantastic stuff, and even the early series GFX between the Starfuries and Raiders was just about as good as I've ever seen them.

kenbuzz

Not to overly-complicate this any, but JMS has his own recommended viewing order for Crusade which I always refer to and follow when a rewatch happens:
https://www.b5tv.com/threads/jms-viewing-order.11675/

Using your numbers from above:

00. A Call to Arms
06. Racing the Night
07. The Needs of Earth
08. The Memory of War
02. The Long Road
09. Visitors from Down the Street
12. The Well of Forever
10. Each Night I Dream of Home
11. Patterns of the Soul
03. The Path of Sorrows
04. Ruling from the Tomb
13. The Rules of the Game
01. War Zone
05. Appearances and Other Deceits

Josh-da-man

That's too bad. They could have least ported over the special features from the DVD sets.

It's also unfortunate that they couldn't (or just didn't) include the movie In the Beginning, which is the only Babylon 5-related project outside of The Gathering and the five season arc, that would come close to being required viewing.

And this was probably a pipe dream, but including the original version of The Gathering would have made a great bit of bonus content. I'd love to be able to watch it again, but I haven't even been able to track it down using, shall we say, unsavory means. Wish I would have kept my VHS recording of it from 1993.





Yeah, I absolutely loathe those massive cases. They are just horribly inconvenient and cumbersome, and it seems like everyone is using them for complete tv sets now instead of giving each season its own 6-8 disc case.