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Babylon 5: The Complete First Season: Signs and Portents
01/05/2004 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: (DVD: Warner Brothers Z1 22855. 22 x 42 minute episodes plus extras. Price: Varies, so look around for the best deal.) stars: Michael O'Hare, Jerry Doyle, Claudia Christian, Mira Furlan, Peter Jurasik and Andrea Katsulas and many others. check out website: www.babylon5.com
All right. So B5 Season One's been out nearly a year now. This prudent editor tends to be patient and also tests the market for the right price, not to mentioning finally making the decision that DVD boxsets take up a lot less space than videoed TV recordings.
It should not take me to tell you that Babylon 5? is an SF political drama set a couple centuries hence when Man is out amongst the stars and finds themselves not as high up in the power table as, say, the Minbari, Centauri and Narn, let alone some of the non-aligned worlds and none are in the Vorlons?league. If anything, the humans or Earthers act as the arbiters for peaceful settlement between worlds rather than war, providing home politics don't prejudice the way.
In many respects, this opening season is an introduction to this reality before things really start to fall apart and is a classic of its kind. It was the first SF TV series with CGI effects and with alien races that weren't one or two-dimensional and had facets that people are still exploring today.
Writer and co-producer, Joe Straczynski does voice-over for two episodes, Signs And Portents and Chrysalis allowing insight into what he was thinking at the time and how the series was put together. I have never considered that Mr. Morden actor Ed Wasser had been selected for his Rod Serling-lookalike qualities...
The main other extras cover looking around the station, character, alien and weapon stats and a 12 minute piece from producers and actors alike.
As this was my first comparison between what I have seen and re-watched many times from British Channel 4's showing, I only really spotted a significant missed scene from Believers? There might have been moments from elsewhere but that was the only really obvious one.
Babylon 5 has not lost any of its magic over the years. Like all SF series set in the future, there is a certain timeless quality about it that will make it last and that can't be a bad thing.
GF Willmetts
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