Shark Bytes

End of Season 4. Killing Marcus and sendind Ivanova away killed the cute part, plus finishing the rebellion and solving everything interesting that needed to be solved in season 4 made season 5 pretty boring.

And Byron... p-l-e-a-s-e! I hate that guy.

Don't believe those saying this show jumped the shark in Season 5, that's completely wrong.

This show jumped the shark a few episodes into Season 4 when the Shadow and Vorlon Wars were ended in one episode by Sheridan yelling at them to go away, and then they reply, telling him they don't want to go away because they will be lonely if they do. Then Lorien assures them they won't be lonely if they go away. Therefore the Shadows and Vorlons agree to completely cease existing simply in order to gratify Sheridan's dopey will. This was completely absurd and ruined the entire series. The Shadows, Vorlons, and this series as a whole became a laughingstock due to that very premature, very pathetic "ending" of the Shadow and Vorlon Wars.

B5 fans often praise B5 for not using lame technobabble solutions like is done on bad Trek shows such as TNG and Voyager. Yet with this hackneyed "end" to the Shadow and Vorlon Wars, B5 has committed the ultimate atrocity in this regard.

This show should have ended before Season 4 even started so as to not completely ruin the Shadow and Vorlon Wars in that incredibly crappy way. Then the series could have been remembered fondly instead of being remembered for wrecking itself with these extremely bad Shadow and Vorlon decisions, presumably done by JMS.

If you want to see an infinitely more satisfying epic space war in a great story-driven, character-driven sci-fi series, then go for the Dominion War in DS9. It is far longer, far more developed, and will leave you with a great feeling at the end of it all. Instead of the cheated, disappointed, shark-jumping feelings you will get with the atrocious handling of B5's Shadow and Vorlon Wars.

Most of the few great characters on B5 also jumped the shark along with the rest of the series after the "end" of the Shadow and Vorlon Wars. Yet with DS9, none of the characters ever jumped the shark except for Dukat --- but that is only one character, and therefore still a much better track record than B5 in regards to this point.

DS9 also has a much larger number of amazing characters (to the tune of dozens!) than B5 including a very impressive range of secondary recurring characters. B5 only has Londo, G'kar, Vir, Garabaldi, Dr. Franklin and Lennier as great characters. All the other characters on B5 are either mediocre, or just plain suck and are boring to the point of being unwatchable. ie: Delenn after she becomes lovesick for Sheridan and says "In the name of Valen" at least 5 times every episode, apparentely because JMS couldn't think of any worthwhile lines for her to say instead of repeating "In the name of Valen" ad infinitum. Of course during the 25% of her screentime *not* spent repeating "In the name of Valen", Delenn spends that screentime making out with Sheridan on-screen. Clearly the B5 characters had no gas left in them at the end of the Shadow and Vorlon Wars, as demonstrated in this example by Delenn.

For those saying that B5 despite all it's many problems, blows Trek out of the water: that is true if you are *only* counting TNG, Voyager, and Enterprise which are all crap Trek shows that B5 does indeed blow out of the water.

However, DS9 is a masterpiece of a Trek show which completely blows B5 out of the water, and unlike B5, DS9 never jumped the shark. I know a lot of B5 fans have sour grapes about DS9 due to JMS having falsely accused the DS9 makers of copying B5. But you are missing out on a better show than B5 if you let sour grapes based on false accusations hold you back from giving it a try. No way DS9 copied any darn thing from B5, because if so DS9 would have jumped the shark with it's War and characters just like B5 did. But it didn't.

The show never really jumped but stumbled toward the jump with the whole Byron subplot. Euuuck!

This show has never jumped. In fact I consider it a milestone in sci-fi programming with its elegantly created fictional universe and its quality in character/story writing. Story and characters hold together just fine but meanwhile developing also. There was few over the top technologies ( no beaming up , shields THANK GOD ) and fewer special anormalies ( that was why time travel plot was so elegant and good ) but more focus on characters and mainstory itself.

The SHADOWS! The VORLONS! Oooooooooooooooh...ZahaDOOOOOOMMMM!!!
Veddy SCAIRY boys and girls! The only thing I remember about this stupid new age show was the war between the the Snake People and the Fake Russians. But some of you seem to think it was 'profound'. Yeah, sure, whatever...

Looking forward to the NEW instalment coming in the fall I believe it is. I just loved the show all the way through and thought Galen was terrific.

Shadow war over. Galactic Government established. End it at that.

That stupid 1 million years retrospective I pretend never happened.

Great show, much more interesting and variable than the competition of the time, but lets face it-it's just a TV show! If the Pain/healing machine and the Great Machine were used (like they should have), wars of the time would be VERY SHORT!!! But that would not make for good storytelling!

B5 was the best thing to EVER air on TV! it set a entirly new standard for TV Sci-Fi!

What other show, prior to this, has ever had such a fluid, changing and progressing plot?

Name me one show where any one of these happened, from pilot to end...

The Comic relief became the Epic villan
(Lando)

The second comic relief became a great leader.
(Vir)

The Epic villan became a Holy-Man
(G'kar)

The stalwart commander became a Mythical figure from the past.
(Sinclair)

The hard bitten security guy became , A drunk, a traitor, and then turned around and saved the day, to get his greatest dream fullfilled.
(Garabaldi)

Much less All of them!

And everyone of these was a Logical progression of actions and consequences..

By the time B5 came around I was getting really sick of Sci-Fi shows (Star Trek is a great example... pick any flavor you want.. they all did it, untill they learned better from JMS) that had all this wierd/traumatizing/Stupid stuff happen to the main characters, and one hour later they were all back EXACTLY as they were at the beginig, and ready to rinse and repeat next week...

Now, thanks, almost entierly to THIS ONE SERIES! we have sci-fi where characters change and grow through out the show...

JMS RULES!

Definitely jumped after season four when everything was wound up nicely and then suddenly the show got picked up by Turner. Bab5 would have been much better if the near cancellation had never happened, and the storylines of the last couple episodes of the fourth season had been expanded on during the fifth. The show peaked in the 3rd season, and jumped with the arrival of Byron. Too bad.

I hate JMS with a fiery vengance. HE RUINED SPIDER-MAN!

So, I saw this show always SUCKED! Let's face facts: it was now Star Trek or TNG!

I know a lot of people didn't like Sinclair, and a lot of us did.. The show jumped when the front office made JMS fire Mike O'Hare.. It screwed up the whole five year arc.. JMS did well in his rewrite, but he could not maintain it so all the promise of Signs and Portents and Babylon Squared became changed forever... The Shadow War did end more with a whimper than a bang, and a lot of the Earth intrigue sort of was left dangaling.. They never used the great machine to best advantage, and they way that Babylon 5 went down was silly, what they did to Garabaldi's character was criminal.. See "The Babylon 5 that never was, Garabaldi was suppose to question everything about Sinclair after Zha ha doom, which made sense, and then the line when the Shadows invade Babylon 5 to Sinclair in Babylon Squared makes sense, that he is sorry he questioned Sinclair and he goes down defending B5 while the others escape to B4 thanks to the Great Machine.. Also why Sinclair would go.. His girlfriend MS Saki disappeared doing her job... More sense than the Sheridan version.. Plus there was real chemistry between Sinclair and Delenn setting things up for a future romance.. This stuff was also hinted at in the mags during sesson one..

Ivanova leaving just sealed the deal completely, along with the death of Clark.. Season five was just going thought the motions..

There are many reasons why Babylon 5 jumped the shark, however it was Season 5 that sealed the deal. From the begining of the series (and throughout) you notice that there were a lot of storyline inconsistencies and that JMS (creator/writer) was having problems dealing with PTEN/Warner Bros. Many of these creative differences led to the series looking and feeling very amature in design. Thankfully JMS is a great writer and pulled the series through making it a cult classic. The series jumped the shark at the very end of season 4 with the departure of Susan Ivanova (Claudia Christian) and of the Shadows and Vorlons.

Does every enemy have to be an ancient enemy?

For me the show began to jump when they got rid of Sinclair.. Check out the website "The Babylon 5 That Never Was.." The show would have been even better if JMS could have finished out what he had planned.. Though I think it still was very good though season three.. Four it began to spring for the shark, and then when Ivanova left and all the crap of season five.. Well, a great show then just sucked...