Babylon 5 - The Complete Television Series (5-Pack) | 
 enlarge | Director: J. Michael Straczynski
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $300.98
Buy New: $132.48
You Save: $168.50 (56%)
New (36) Used (8) from $128.89
Rating:  85 reviews
Sales Rank: 4307
Format: Box Set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd-video, Widescreen, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 30
Running Time: 4818 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 7.8 x 5.5
MPN: WARD34815D
ISBN: 0790793938
UPC: 085393481520
EAN: 9780790793931
ASIN: B0001M3MXY
Theatrical Release Date: January 26, 1994
Release Date: April 13, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW AND FACTORY SEALED- - -A REALLY GREAT DEAL ! !
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Product Description
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 03/14/2006
Amazon.com
The epic sci-fi series Babylon 5 was a unique experiment in the history of television. It was effectively a novel for television in five seasons, consisting of 110 episodes with a clear beginning, middle, and end. The first season introduces the main characters, headed this year by Commander Jeffery Sinclair (Michael O'Hare) and Security Chief Michael Garibaldi (Jerry Doyle), and familiarizes the audience with the unique environment of a five-mile-long space station in the year 2257. The first episode, "Midnight on the Firing Line," plays at a breathless pace, introducing Commander Susan Ivanova (Claudia Christian) and establishing the conflict between the Narn and Centauri races as represented by their ambassadors, G'Kar (Andreas Katsulas) and Londo Mollari (Peter Jurasik). B5 hits warp speed with a run of exceptional episodes building to the season finale. The two-part "Voice in the Wilderness" has Mars breaking into open revolt against Earth and the discovery of a "Great Machine" on the dead world Epsilon 3. Referencing 1950s sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet, the story leads to the superb time-travel-based "Babylon Squared." Season finale "Chrysalis" proves more than just the usual television cliffhanger, placing Minbari ambassador Delenn in conflict with her ruling Grey Council and forcing on her a decision that laid the groundwork for Babylon 5's eventually becoming a great love story. Delenn's future love interest, Captain John Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner) arrived on Babylon 5 in the first episode of season 2, "Points of Departure." The show marked the handing over of command of B5 to Sheridan from Commander Jeffery Sinclair, actor Michael O'Hare becoming a victim of studio politicians who wanted a bigger star in the leading role. "Revelations" explains that Sheridan's wife, Anna, died during an archaeological survey of the world Z'ha'dum, the name being just one of many references to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (the bridge at Khazad-Dum). "The Coming of Shadows" proved to be Babylon 5's finest hour to date, and in "In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum," Sheridan learns that Morden was on the ship on which Anna died. Three exceptional shows conclude the season. The Narn-Centauri war escalates in "The Long, Twilight Struggle," Sheridan faces a most unusual ordeal in "Comes the Inquisitor," and in "The Fall of Night" all hope of peace is shattered as a nerve-racking assassination attempt reveals a startling secret about Ambassador Kosh. "Matters of Honor" launched Babylon 5's third season with the introduction of the White Star, a spacecraft added to enable more of the action to take place away from the station. Also introduced was Marcus Cole (Jason Carter)--in another nod to The Lord of the Rings, a Ranger not so far removed from Tolkien's Strider. A third of the way through the season "Messages from Earth," "Point of No Return," and "Severed Dreams" prove pivotal, changing the nature of the story in a way previously unimaginable on network TV. Earth slides into dictatorship, the fascistic Nightwatch takes control of off-world security, and Sheridan take decisive action by declaring Babylon 5 independent. "Interludes and Examinations" presented the death of a major supporting character, while the two-part "War Without End" reached apocalyptic dimensions in a complex tale resolving the destiny of Sinclair and the fate of Babylon 4, resolving a 1,000-year-old paradox and presenting a vision of a very dark future for Sheridan and Delenn. All this was trumped by the monumental "Z'ha'dum." In the preceding "Shadow Dancing" Anna Sheridan (Melissa Gilbert, Bruce Boxleitner's real-life wife) returned from the dead, no longer entirely human. In the mythologically resonant climax Anna invited Sheridan back to the Shadow homeworld with no hope of survival. Just as in The Lord of the Rings Gandalf fell into the abyss at Khazad-Dum, so Sheridan took a comparable leap into the unknown on an alien world. Season 4 began on a high point with the Centauri Prime in the grip of the insane Emperor Cartagia (Wortham Krimmer) and a run of six shows leading to the climax of the war against the Shadows in "Into the Fire." If this colossal narrative was resolved a little too easily and the ultimate aim of the Shadows turned out to be a tad disappointing, it still proved to be the most powerful slice of space opera to ever grace the small screen. In the aftermath the sheer scale dropped back a little but the pace never slowed as the rest of the season played out in one relentless cycle of conspiracy, betrayal and conflict, Babylon 5 siding with the rebel Mars colony against the totalitarian Earth. On an unstoppable wave fuelled by roller-coaster plot twists and spectacular action shows from "No Surrender, No Retreat"--when Sheridan avows to overthrow EarthGov--to "Rising Star"--when the aim is realized--Babylon 5 achieved a consistent excellence rare in television. The final season found Claudia Christian departed and Ivanova replaced by Captain Elizabeth Lochley (Tracy Scoggins), who in a soap-opera twist turned out to be Sheridan's first wife. Sheridan was promoted to President of the Interstellar Alliance and the action moved to a group of telepaths seeking sanctuary from the PSI-Corp on B5. Meanwhile the aftermath of the Shadow War was explored, and as usual the season picked up toward the end, with a string of fine political episodes. The final episode, "Sleeping in Light," was directed by J. Michael Straczynski and made an epilogue to the series. Set 20 years later, after all the sound and fury this quiet, elegiac tale is the apotheosis of the love story that proved the balance to the tragedy of the preceding darkness. A personal story resolved against a background of the epic, at once transcendent, deeply human, and profoundly optimistic, "Sleeping in Light" is as moving as any hour in the history of television drama and a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to one of the greatest series ever made. --Gary S. Dalkin
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| Customer Reviews: Read 80 more reviews...
 This is a review for someone who hasn't seen the series December 31, 2008
Ehkzu (Palo Alto, CA United States)
Babylon 5--known as B5 to its fans--is an iconic science-fiction series, and a strong antidote to the often sappy, idealistic universe of the Star Trek shows, as well as Star Wars.
Strengths:
1. Very satisfying if you have an engineer streak in your DNA--for example, human spaceships have gravity because they have centrifuge sections, and they're rectangular because, duh, they're in space.
2. Equally satisfying if you follow international politics and know how murky right/wrong turn out to be in the real world. One of the actors came from the former Yugoslavia, and her friends would ask her why all the plots were (to them) based on Balkan politics.
3. A five year plot arc really uses the many individual episodes to tell a complex, compelling, overall story, sometimes with characters you thought were good or evil turning out to be otherwise or somewhere in between.
4. A scientific and anthropological perspective portraying us humans as interstellar newcomers who only got there with borrowed technology, and by no means the top dogs.
5. Individual characters you can relate to in all their noble and not so noble traits.
Weaknesses:
1. screenwriting that falls short of brilliance. Workmanlike, serviceable, nothing annoyingly flowery--but you aren't going to see its scripts examined in English departments like Buffy the Vampire Slayers scripts are.
2. special effects that fall far short of what is achievable today. Not funky as Red Dwarf or laughable like the original Dr. Who, but nothing like, for example, "WALL-E." Again, they're workmanlike, they aren't annoying, but they won't thrill you either.
3. Acting like the screenwriting--serviceable but not sublime. One of the main characters is a poor man's Bruce Willis--that's fun. And two of the aliens are played with great gusto (G'Kar and Londo Molari). A secondary character--a commercial telepath--was also a stunt double on Star Trek. But by far the biggest shortcoming came from the show's creator firing Claudia Christian and replacing her in the last year with a new character who lacked Christian's flair.
If you come at it with the right expectations you'll be happy you got this series. There's still nothing like it on TV or in the movies.
Glad I Got The Series! December 15, 2008
J. Brow (Seattle, WA USA)
Finally! I've gotten the entire series (minus the movies and the spinoffs). I enjoyed watching them all over again. At some point I had missed many of the final episodes so it was a pleasure to get completely caught up.
From my understanding J. Michael charted out the main plot lines for ONLY the first four seasons. The network(s) approached him for another season, causing him to improvise and create a 5th season, when his entire concept was wrapped around four seasons' worth of episodes. This explains some of the "unevenness" of the 5th season. Nevertheless I was happy to skim through season 5.
We have the advantage of time to step back a bit and look at how influential Babylon 5 was to Science Fiction screenwriting. Up until B5 showed up other shows just wrote from episode to episode with little regard for longer, more involved plots that spanned multiple episodes, entire seasons, even multiple seasons! The rich writing of the series is what stands out when experiencing the series. The writing of the shows was so compelling that even the Star Trek franchise had to take notice and alter their writing.
It goes almost without saying that the Battlestar Galactica writers were directly influenced by this new approach to a Science Fiction TV series.
After reading some of the other reviews the one thing that strikes me is how picky the criticisms are in B5's "perceived" flaws. Take the Trek series and see how many flaws are there! More than B5, obviously.
I waited a long time before plunking down the money for the entire series, glad I did, and you can bet I'll be watching them again and again.
 sorely disappointed October 19, 2008
David R. Lovelass (Seattle, Wa. , USA)
I have to say I am VERY! dissappointed in my Babylon 5 collection series. Can anyone tell me how to return this item to Amazon to get my money back? I have only been able to stand trying to watch year one and part of year 2 and all I get is problems. From lack of sound to frozen action to a horrible buzzing that occurs after only a few minutes. Over and over again I try to clean the DVD disc or go on to the next scene and at times stop the whole DVD and reboot to try and go on with the show. But disc after disc shows me nothing but problems. It's not my DVD player, I have no problems playing ANY other DVD I have. I have yet to enjoy a single show from start to finish without a problem cropping up.
 480i Babylon 5 The Complete Television Series September 27, 2008
Charles J. Wilhelm (rockville, maryland United States)
It is nice to have all of the episodes in chronological order and no commericial interuptions.
The image resolution changes depending on the scene. Long shots tend to be a bit blurry. Medium to close ups appear to be sharp enough. It's a pity this series was not shot in later years or that Warner Bros chose not to do a high resolution (Blu-Ray or HD) version
 Babylon 5 TV series on DVD August 29, 2008
Margaret A. Zahrowski (del rio, texas)
We have followed Babylon 5 from start to finish, and with few exceptions, this recorded series is very complete. Although we would have preferred not to have credits shown at the begninng and end of each episode, at least the disruptive series of boring commercials were deleted. Audio and visual quality of this reproduction was exceptional, and a great price for the entire series.
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