This is the weirdest episode so far. Aldous Gajic is a human who wanders around space looking for the Holy Grail and he winds up on Babylon 5 for some reason, but I can’t remember why because the idiocy of his mission eclipses any other purpose he might have. He’s searching for the Holy Grail. [...]

“TK Doh!” would be more accurate. Susan Ivanova gets weepy with Rabbi Koslov, who’s come to the station to admonish her for being a bad Jew, and Garibaldi catches up with his old friend Walker Smith, who is the Barry Bonds of boxing in the 23rd century (yes, I know Bonds plays baseball – I’m [...]

Woohoo! Mr. Morden finally shows up on Babylon 5 bringing his pompadour and crabby associates with him. Morden visits the ambassadors, asking a simple enough question: what do you want? “A slice of chocolate swirl cheesecake,” isn’t the answer he’s looking for. That’s what my answer would have been because I always want cheesecake. Mmmmm. [...]

Did we ever see a labor dispute in Star Trek? In that future, we humans had managed to leave our petty squabbles behind so we could live in a peaceful galaxy where everyone looks good in stretchy polyester jumpsuits with no pockets. Had there been a labor dispute on Star Trek, no doubt it would [...]

Garibaldi gets framed for a terrorist act and walks around looking serious while wearing 23rd century casual menswear, which looks a lot like casual menswear from 1994. This episode is mostly back story for him, which can be summarized much faster than in 42 minutes: Garibaldi was a drunk and still struggles with it. No [...]

Welcome to another edition of the Babylon 5 Theater of Ethics. Let’s meet the cast! The sick alien kid will be played by. . . a sick alien kid with a pitiful cough. The religious parents will be played by M’ola and Tharg of the planet Thalatine. The arrogant doctor who laughs in the face [...]

Ambassador Kosh is a jerk and I think he has Asperger’s Syndrome. He doesn’t answer the question you’ve asked – he answers some wacko interpretation of your question, and even then, it could be days later – and he walks away before your discussion is finished. That whole Vorlon attitude of “Oh, we’re so old [...]

Oh, God, there are sixteen more episodes in season one. I made it through “Infection” and I’d like for the viewing to painless from here, but that is not in the cards. “And the Sky Full of Stars” is a Sinclair-centric episode that allows him to stretch and add to his melodramatic skills. Now his [...]

You know what Babylon 5 has been missing so far? Racism. And hate crimes involving the stabbing and branding of alien poets. Humans are, of course, the responsible, hateful party. “The War Prayer” brings the first appearance of the Homeguard, a kind of Minutemen of the future, trying to guard Earth’s borders from the so-called [...]

Jason Ironheart (get it? His heart is iron. It means he’s strong!) is on the run from Black Omega, also known as the Psi Cops, and their top guy, Bester (get it? He’s Psi Corps at its best. He’ll best you in a fight! Yeah!), played by Walter Koenig, who is trying his hardest to [...]

Babylon 5 hosts a week long religious festival, G’Kar gets his comeuppance and Sinclair gets all soap opera-y with an ex-girlfriend. He’s about as emotional as a rock and she’s not much better, so they’re perfectly suited for each other. Luckily, most of the screentime goes to G’Kar and his new aide, Na’Toth (his previous [...]

A biomechanical droid attempts to ethnically cleanse the station. Sinclair takes it out with a variety of racial slurs to make it kill itself. There’s a sinister archaeologist guy who delivers his lines like he’s the bastard son of William Shatner and Michael York. This episode was so bad it made me embarrassed to love [...]

Londo Mollari romances Adirda, a Centauri stripper who turns out to be a slave/ spy for an ugly alien guy determined to bring down the Centauri empire for nothing more than profit. Heroism addict that he is, Commander Sinclair steps in to save the empire, Londo’s position and the girl, while still managing to be [...]

A crippled ship is on a collision course with Babylon 5 and the only chap man enough to stop it is Commander Sinclair! Ta da! If Sinclair is the guy in charge, why is he the one who takes a Starfury out to snag the Soul Hunter’s ship? Don’t they have Redshirts around for that [...]

Woohoo! Susan Ivanova has arrived on Babylon 5! I’ve always loved her character for several reasons. In “Midnight on the Firing Line” its because she’s absolutely in control of the station, does it well and feels no need to be nice about it. Ivanova is curt, direct and professional, but never bitchy or nice. That [...]

Brace yourself. Watching the pilot movie “The Gathering” was. . . well, the only thing that got me through it was knowing where Babylon 5 would eventually go and knowing which characters didn’t make it past the pilot. Seriously, if the original doctor or first officer showed up in the series, I would never have [...]

There are a lot of genre shows that I love, but I totally geek out over Babylon 5 in a way that I didn’t know was possible. I first heard about Babylon 5 in an early issue of Science Fiction Age Magazine, around 1992 when the pilot was still in production. It was a short [...]