Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20028 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-10-24
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Formats: Subtitled, PAL
• Original language: English, French
• Number of discs: 41
• Running time: 101 minutes

Synopsis
In 1994 STAR TREK had to take a backseat to this science-fiction series, created by Michael Straczynski. The Babylon 5 space station has become an interplanetary peaceful negotiation centre in the 23rd Century. Humans and aliens attempt to settle differences in a reasonable fashion here under the stewardship of President John J. Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner). This comprehensive boxed set contains every exciting episode from the show. Plus the series 'Crusade' and six feature films.

Customer Reviews

Best SciFi of all time
Everything concerning B5 has been said here somewhere. However, for me it is without doubt the best SciFi series of all time despite some other excellent competition. Series 1 starts off really well but by the time you get to the end of Series 5 you're in another league altogether and have undergone the most amazing set of experiences. The plot and the twists get unbelievably clever and it is fantastic to see how certain key events years beforehand had a critical role to play in the present episode. Do not attempt to start B5 anywhere other than the beginning and make sure you watch every episode in sequence as there are very few in which there is not some event that plays a role later. J Michael Straczynski must be congratulated on a fabulous vision.

Ambitious and infuriating... usually at the same time.
Babylon 5, the greatest sci-fi show (as many reviewers on here would have you believe) ever?

Nope, that title's claimed by Kirk era Startrek and Farscape, with Firefly hot on their heels. What's infuriating about Babylon 5 is that it COULD have been the best ever but proved equally as adept at plumbing the depths as scaling the heights. Every outstanding episode could be guaranteed to be followed by an absolute clunker ('Get the hell off my spaceship!') with flashes of inspiration that any Star Trek series would have killed for being immediately swamped by a character's clunkily written story arc. A classic example of this is an episode where Babylon 5 is embroiled in an enormous life or death battle in space... but instead we spend most of the episode following the drug addled doctor as he pulls himself up from the depths of despair. Literally. Just in case any viewer is too stupid to realise what's going on - despite the fact that one of the characters spells out exactly what is happening to the Dr. in no uncertain terms - he spends the entire episode climbing up an enormous ladder not just metaphorically but actually. Yes, the writers gave him an enormous ladder to climb all the way up to the command centre while he works out his issues. And my god does he take his time climbing it! Shakespeare it ain't.

It's clunky exposition like that that makes B5 so infuriating to watch. A series that created the Shadows - a terrifying, unstoppable alien race that are everything the Borg should have been but weren't - is just as capable of churning out filler episodes that would have embarrassed Andromeda.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

And don't even get me started on the truly dire (and hastily cancelled) spin-off, Crusade, which is also included here...

Brilliant series, brilliant value
I purchased this boxset a few weeks ago and completely immersed myself in the B5 universe, I'd forgotten how good it was and now watching all 5 seasons & associated TV movies one after another you can appreciate the fact that it is in fact one long story over 5 years, which really makes this stand head and shoulders above the rest.

However, you have to take the rough with the smooth. The brilliant B5 main series and some of the movies (Gathering, In The Beginning, Thirdpace) are counterpointed by some real stinkers (Call To Arms, Crusade, Legend of the Rangers). I tried to watch everything in the boxset but I couldn't get into Crusade (just like when it was on telly) - the acting is clunky, the soul has gone from the story, the music is awful, the battle sequences send me to sleep and the special effects seem worse than when B5 first came on air.

I've made it a point to give this five stars for what I enjoyed in the boxset and just forget about all hours of rubbish in there that I feel is wasted opportunity to tell more of the story from the B5 universe.