Movies: Which is the best Babylon 5 movie; and why does it best represent the spirit and legacy of the series?

Contestants can choose from titles like “In the Beginning,” “Thirdspace,” “The River of Souls,” “A Call to Arms,” or “The Legend of the Rangers.”

"War Without End, Part 1" (s3e16)

I could never understand what Sinclair was trying to warn Garibaldi about at the end of "War Without End Pt 2". Then today it hits me like a tonne of bricks; getting shot in the back, the president being assassinated, etc. It kind of had to fail for things to work out properly, but still, I can't believe it took me that long to figure it out. I was always thrown off by the scene where Sinclair sees Garibaldi in the future putting up some kind of last stand on B4 ("this is what I was born for!"). I always thought that's what he was referring to.

Definitely a highlight of Season 1 for me. I always felt like they had a way better connection than Garibaldi/Sheridan (though it obviously helped that they had known each other longer). They had such great on-screen chemistry, in both the humorous and deeper scenes they shared together, even if they weren’t the best of mates in real life.

The Centauri wrote the book on war among the younger races and their doctrines are the standard all others measure by. Based around the heavy Primus, medium Vorchan and Sentri fighter. Their favoured combined arms tactic was to advance Primus groups forward while Vorchan packs roamed around the flanks looking for vulnerabilities. Foes would be presented the choice of facing the sledgehammer of Primus groups or confronting the threat from behind, both seriously bad options. The Centauri however had limited fighter support and tended to use their fighters defensively as escorts instead of exploring the superb speed and agility of the Sentri. Their doctrine was sound but their obsession with aristocratic battleship engagements was outmoded. The Narn by comparison were well armed and heavily armoured, but slow and lacking in manoeuvrability. Their fighters were tough but cumbersome and they had no medium cruiser of note. Their tactics involved forcing decisive engagements, trusting in armour and firepower to punch through rather than controlling the battlespace. Fighters sought to engage at range and keep hostiles far away from their capital ships. The Narn had a reputation for bravery but this is because they had to win battles quickly or lose a prolonged engagement. Earthforce had similar issues, the Omega was tough but slow, and the Hyperion had speed but lacked rear and flank armour. They fixed foes with Omega formations then sent Hyperions out to exploit openings. Where Earthforce excelled was its advanced fighter tactics, the starfury was not only excellent but was used aggressively and treated as a major strike component of the fleet. Foes would find themselves not facing one or two threat vectors but dozens at once. The Mimbari were an altogether different story. The Sharlin’s speed and firepower let them dictate terms of engagement and deconstruct enemies at ranges no others could march. The Nial fighter was lethal and was used aggressively, dismantling opposing fighter groups and crippling larger ships in the first moments of any engagement. Technological superiority made the Mimbari unmatched among Younger races and only the most desperate of tactics allowed even for phyrric victories against them.

I was watching DS9 the other day and in the siege episode, the guest engineer just looked so familiar I couldn't place him at first.

I think this was S7 so it would be after Lennier exits Babylon 5.

Love seeing my favorite actors pop-up in other shows

On my bi-annual rewatch and I noticed that two of the characters in this episode "Hunter Prey", Bernie Casey and Tony Steedman, were both in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Anyway, nothing more. Just an observation.

I forgot how hard this episode hit about the loss of life in a war. By seeing soldiers as individuals we stop seeing just numbers of losses in a battle.

So a few times in the series you hear that military like snare drum march. I’ve been trying to find it without any luck. I mean the music right at the beginning of “no surrender, no retreat” Season 4 EP 15

Delenn asks Kosh "What do you want?" How does she get away with this? And why does Kosh's replacement (I presume) get away with not answering their name???

By using existing technologies in the 2250's era post-Minbari war, could Earth build a fast moving frigates with heavy weapons without artificial gravity? Or do they have to have gravimetric drive in order to make it go fast and agile?

I bet there'd be a whole lot fewer dead Markab and Pak'ma'ra...

Okay ***Spoilers***in case you have not watched this episode.

I'm on my first full Babylon 5 watch since it was aired. I have been absolutely binging this show averaging about 2 episodes a day. I had forgot how great of a show Babylon 5 was and shame on me for not watching it entirely in 30 years. I just got to S4 E18 the episode where Sheridan is being interrogated after being captured.

God damn what a great episode. The 'man' running the interrogation isn't trying to hide his deception or the tactics he's using on Sheridan, but rather using his own experience against him. The sandwich, scene is so great. This is such amazing writing. This show is filled with great dialog and amazing back and forth. Today's writing teams should study this in detail on how to make a scene tense. God this show is a banger!

"tomorrow is sunday,and I'm going out for a drive"

I remember waiting for this episode to come out and watching http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/guide/110.html it was quite a thing.

"Sic Transit Vir" (s3e12)

Is that I want more! Not really sure which time period. I always wanted to know what Gkar and Lyta actually found. and it would have been interesting to see how the great war on earth played out.

Cheapest I've seen at $69.99 (and free shipping). Cheaper than buying the seasons streaming, more expensive than putting on an eyepatch and a wooden leg. As I've seen from posts on here, the movies are seperate (or included in a DVD collection) and were never released on bluray except for "The Road Home."

In my memory, the war was genocidal. I always felt Minbari - especially Delenn - was treated over sympathetically given their monstrous actions. And there are suggestions of genocide in the show. But in my current rewatch, 250k military casualties are repeatedly mentioned, and it seems there were minimal civilian casualties. This is... odd. A tragedy, certainly, but not overly notable were it a human conflict in our own history, let alone interplanetary total war with a vastly superior species hellbent on human destruction.

What were the Minbari trying to do if it wasn't genocide? Or if it was genocide, why were they so bad at it? If they left civilians alive and only attacked ships, what was the plan exactly? If they had not surrendered, what was their next step going to be? Would they have systematically killed billions of humans after destroying the military or would they have stopped? If the extinction of humanity was the goal, surely they could have wiped out some colonies easily enough in three years.

I mean I guess "they went mad" which can justify irrational war plans to an extent, but apparently this conflict lasted years. There must have been some idea of what their actual goal was.

Whether they were, or planned to, kill all humans has a big impact on interpreting them as a species and the whole background to the show so it's not merely an academic question. Is it deliberately ambiguous or am I missing something?

Edit: Thanks for the answers. I still don't feel I really understand the strategy but there you go. Seems the plan probably was genocide, it just hadn't got to that point. So I guess the Minbari largely get off with it because they didn't get to that step and it was "just" a war between two militaries. And to clarify, I meant the writing is consistently sympathetic to the Minbari in a way I think is unjustified assuming they really were genocidal. I'm aware nobody could enact a Nuremberg or whatever in universe.