"It fails as drama, science fiction and is hopelessly derivative."

[VampyreWraith]

neither is the last season. 2nd, 3rd and 4th are good through.

The first half of the last season is a bit meh, but the second half is pretty good(IMO).

[cosmichobo]

Ok, Ok - I'll give it another go... It wasn't THAT bad... just obviously similar to me watching and judging ST:TNG Justice as being the be-all and end-all of Star Trek...

[McAvoy]

Let's keep in mind that the production values between B5 and DS9 are different. JMS went out of his way to make the show as cheap as possible and in many cases the episodes were under budget. Which means not everything was made from scratch and it didn't have an excellent group of actors. Each scene was cut as fast as possible, so if an actor made a good enough performance they moved on. Even that means there were issues (one that I always remember is the one scene where Ivanova is trying to sleep on the Minbari beds and she slides backwards out of one and you can see a pair of hands catch her).

CGI was used because using actual filming models are expensive and limiting. The stuff that occurred in that show with CGI you wouldn't be able to do with filming models without spending too much money on it. I can understand why the scenes can put some people off.

[darth_timon]

The story and mythology of B5 was excellent. The Vorlons and Shadows provided a fascinating story. The CGI looks weak by today's standards but I found it watchable. I'd love to see the battle scenes remade though.

[McAvoy]

The story and mythology of B5 was excellent. The Vorlons and Shadows provided a fascinating story. The CGI looks weak by today's standards but I found it watchable. I'd love to see the battle scenes remade though.

Didn't they release a DVD awhile ago (original story) with the latest in CGI?

Honestly with the amount of people who tried their hand in recreating Star Trek TOS like Doomsday Device, there should be at least one person out there that did or can. Maybe just recreate one of the openings.

[maneth]

Yeah, they did. A DVD called The Lost Tales. The CGI was impressive enough but the story suffered because they had hired very few extras and the corridors of B5 were almost empty. JMS had lost most of the original "blueprints" and actually had to resort to fan made stuff to get the CGI done.

[Triple-F]

Fan models were apparently used while trying to work out the scale of things. But as far as being used in the actual production……

http://www.themadgoner.com/B5/B5Scro...m#Screen1_15_1

Fabio also made available other B5 stuff he'd built, since we were in pretty desperate need of assets without having access to the original models, and it's not exactly cool to download fan meshes and use them in your professional B5 show. I only ended up using a couple of his, but since those designs were from AOG and therefore sort of semi-canon (I'm not an expert on that sort of thing so don’t ask :-) it made the most sense. Eventually, maybe two thirds of the way through the project, I got a hold of the original B5 library and worked like crazy to salvage what I could to fill out the shots even more. That's the only reason you'll find any Omegas, Vree saucers, White Stars and such in the backgrounds.