TVSquad

While perusing around SlashControl tonight, I nearly stopped breathing when I came across Babylon 5. Not just a few episodes or even one or two seasons. All five seasons, 99 episodes total.

My sci-fi-loving mom taped the entire series on VHS, and I have the first few seasons on DVD. But what a thrill to find it on SlashControl. If you're not familiar with J. Michael Straczynski's groundbreaking show, it takes place in the year 2258, ten years after an Earth-Minbari War. Commander Jeffrey Sinclair (Michael O'Hare) takes command of a giant five-mile-long cylindrical space station, orbiting a planet in neutral space.

During our Buffy the Vampire Slayer Retro Squad week, I put out a call for an episode of Buffy a newbie could watch to get a feel for the show. And you guys came through in a big way. Most insisted it was a show that needed to be watched from the beginning, but at the same time warned that there was some cheese-factor in those early episodes. Your votes pushed me to "Hush," which I found to be incredibly enjoyable and a perfect introduction to the cleverness and tone of the show. Even better, it made me that much more eager to go back and watch the entire run of the show.

In the comments to that piece Doug Nelson asked if someone could do something similar for Babylon 5. That got me thinking about other serialized shows of this nature like The X-Files, The West Wing and to an extent Doctor Who and Quantum Leap. We're a community of TV-lovers here, so we should help each other out. Thus, the TVS Starter Kits. And for Doug Nelson, it starts with Babylon 5.