Introductions before we start

[ruuger]

Sunday is here and it's time to get this thing on the road. The response to b5_revisited has been amazing with over 100 people watching the community already! Thank you to all the people who have pimped the community.

While we wait for the discussion posts to go up (or you wait and I make the posts), how about some introductions first.

I'll go first: I started watching B5 in 1997 when it began showing on Finnish tv. I'd never heard of the show before, but was a 17-year-old who loved scifi, and in those days we were lucky to get any scifi on tv so the fact that it had aliens in it was enough for me.

I can't actually remember what I thought about the first episode, but I do remember the moment when I became a fan of the show, which was when I saw "And the Sky Full of Stars". The episode that sealed the deal for me, though, was - and all you old fans are going to laugh at me now - "GROPOS" in season 2. And by season 4 I had already started my own B5 fansite, 190 Bester Place (which is still up even if I haven't remembered to update it for about three years and celebrates its 10 birthday next month).

In fandom I used to lurk at the Finnish B5 fans' group on Usenet, but was at my most active on the About.com Babylon 5 fans forum and the fabulous JumpNow forums. The last few years my fannish activity has been mostly on LJ, and has included running universe_today and babylon5_love and couple of ficathons.

I can also often be found hanging around in the Buffyverse and X-Files corners of Internet.

How about you? Are you an old fan from the first age of usenet, or a newbie watching the show for the first time? How did you first heard about the show? Where do you hang out, what are your other fandoms?

And remember, no spoilers! Because one of the best parts of Babylon 5 fandom is, after all, watching the reactions of the unspoiled newbies when they reach that episode where that character does that thing and it is revealed that the thing is actually a thing. You know that thing I mean ;)

Comments

[antennapedia.livejournal.com]

Hiya! I started watching at the very end of season 2, when a friend insisted that he could not possibly miss the broadcast of the season ender. During the hiatus I borrowed a shopping bag full of VHS tapes of the first two seasons and mainlined them. By "Signs and Portents" I was hooked, and at "Babylon Squared" I was a maniac. And then I lost interest in the middle of S5 and wandered off, coming back only to watch the very final episode.

I've rewatched the first 3 seasons when they came out on DVD, but haven't thought about the series since. Looking forward to this rewatch, with conversation!

These days I'm really only active in the Buffyverse fandoms.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Someone I worked with who had lived in the US gave me a tape of "The Gathering" and I was intrigued, but doubted I'd see any more. However a couple of years later, the series was shown here--buried in a Saturday afternoon slot where most people never found it. We recorded it and discussed it enthusiastically every week, then I found the Hyperion site, and a discussion group that JMS read and sometimes joined in with. Even though I was watching after the series had all been shown, people were still discussing the whole series (you just had to pick your thread) and it was great fun. After all, no one else here knew about it. :-P

B5 is one of my favourite series.

[settiai]

I was just a little kid when the series first started airing ("The Gathering" aired just before my sixth birthday), but I watched it from the beginning. My mom had already been raising me on the various Star Trek series and the original Battlestar Galactica (with a spattering of Doctor Who when the local PBS happened to air an episode here and there), so when B5 started she sat me down to watch it with her. And I was immediately hooked.

All we had was antenna back then, so we could only watch the show sporadically. I don't remember what channel it came on at first (FOX 17, maybe?), but it was one that we only got at certain times of the year so we missed huge chunks of it. It wasn't until the show moved to TNT and they began airing the earlier episodes that both of us were able to watch it from beginning-to-end for the first time.

I've never really been in the fandom. I became involved in online fandom around the time Crusade aired, so I tiptoed around some of the forums and archives a bit at that time, but I was still in a "this is a pre-fandom show" mindset so I even stopped lurking. I bought the DVDs a few years ago and marathoned them (converting my college roommates to the series in the process), and I realized just how much I'd forgotten about the show. That at least got me reading B5 fanfiction, so I'm slowly but surely tiptoeing into the fandom. Better late than never, right?

As for my other fandoms... *lol* Doctor Who is my major obsession right now (classic series, new series, books, audios, spin-offs - basically everything), but I'm literally active in dozens of different ones. Multifannish, that's me.

[karihan.livejournal.com]

My then SO and I saw the pilot when it first aired, but for some reason it just didn't grab us at the time. So we missed out on most of the first season. And then we started watching ST: Voyager.

No disrespect to any Voyager fans intended, but after the first few eps, we turned to each other and said, "Maybe we should give Babylon 5 another try." At which point we dove back in with the first ep of season 2, eventually got caught up and loved it unreservedly. ^_^

The SO is long gone, but the B5 love is as strong as ever.

[lazulidragon.livejournal.com]

Um, hello! I was maybe five or six when B5 fist started airing, and if I saw any of it back then, I don't remember. It was my dad's favorite show of all time, though. Unfortunately for him, when it switched networks it went to a channel we didn't get, so he missed the last couple of seasons.

Fast forward a number of years, when Mom bought DVDs of the first three seasons for Dad for Christmas. I will admit that I wasn't entirely hooked then (what little TV I watched was still cartoons, I think), but I enjoyed it a lot, and I remember liking Marcus especially.

It wasn't until about a year and a half ago that I really sat down to watch it seriously, and got seriously obsessed (dragging my brother down with me, of course, like a good big sister). You can blame Lost for that, I guess, since I belive it was some stupid Lost fanvid...thing that reminded me of B5. I marathoned it straight through winter break, started snuffling around for fandom, and fell madly in love with all things Centauri and Narn (especially Londo, G'Kar, and Vir, the love of my life. Ah, how tastes change!) Over spring break my mom bought the last two seasons for me to watch after I got my wisdom teeth out. I just got done watching them again with my dad about a week ago.

As for fandom, I haven't done much more than lurk silently around the B5 parts of LJ. I actually don't watch much TV at all, though I enjoyed Firefly several years after the fact. My main fandoms are all video games, which is to say, Fire Emblem. Recently I've been eyeing comics fandom, as well.

And I just want to say, I am so glad I'm not the only young 'un around!

[unlovablehands.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty much a newbie. I'd started watching some of season 1 of Babylon 5 earlier this year, but ended up getting distracted by other things, and not even getting all the way through. I was told I absolutely had to get into B5 by my friends who know that I love everything with telepaths in it, and B5 has telepaths, so I would obviously like it. (Among other things B5 offers, but my friends know me and my requirements when people are trying to get me to watch their favorite shows.)

My other fandoms are: Criminal Minds (which does not have telepaths), and Heroes, DC Comics, Shadow Unit and Twilight which do.

So I'll probably be hanging around the unspoiled threads until I can't handle the suspense anymore and have to spoil myself.

[latte-vanilla.livejournal.com]

I've been a Sci-Fi geek since always. B5 I watched the on first run on Finnish TV also. I loved the show from the first episode, and I still consider it among three best shows ever. [The other two being Twin Peaks and X-Files Seasons 1-4.]

We didn't even have internet back then, so I wasn't part of any fannish online activity until around 2001 and then I was more interested in The LoTR films.

I'm not really a part of B5 fandom these days either. I'm not interested in reading B5 fanfic, and I wouldn't even try writing it. That's why I thought this community was an awesome idea, a place and a reason to talk about the show and the characters.

I mostly hang around in Supernatural and Leverage fandoms.

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

I missed the original airing of "the Gathering" but I believe I started watching the show from the first handful of episodes on the PTEN network when it first was broadcast, at the behest of a good friend.

I don't remember when I started lurking and then posting on USENET, but I've been a "regular" on rastb5m for many years, only not posting as regularly now over there because of RL. My name there is the same here, or "Wendy of NJ"

[hendrikboom.livejournal.com]

I can't remember -- who was it that ruled all the jellybeans in the world except the black ones because they contained bug blood?

[krisserci5.livejournal.com]

I watched it from day one and saw the possibilities and was excited that a complex sci/fi show was once again on air! I watched the original Star Trek as it originally aired so I had high expectations and was more than pleased. (now you all know I am as hold as the hills and twice as dusty *g*)

I wasn't on a list of any kind back then, but I haunted the Lurker's Guide faithfully.

The best outside B5 moment was at the Burbank Convention Center where, BB, AK and PJ were the only actors at a small con and talked together about their characters. (No actor con since has matched the magic of that one)

I discovered real fandom later and am now in The Professionals fandom currently. I watch and follow most all s/f shows no matter where they air. B5 stands beside Star Trek and Star Wars as the best S/F for me.

[algeh]

I've been a fan of B5 since the original airings, more or less. My dad and I watched the pilot together, but he told me that it was a movie that they then based a TV show off of, so I figured that the show wouldn't be nearly as good as the movie and didn't make a point of watching it. (I think it conflicted with one of the many Fox 90210-type dramas on around that time, which I watched because I wanted my shows to have ongoing plot and I didn't know that such things could be found in non teen drama form at the time.)

However, during 3rd season I was in a high school math class that was basically all the smart kids taking advanced algebra and only getting the teacher's time for half a period so he could also teach pre-calculus during that period in the other half of the room. We were supposed to spend the other half of the period working on our homework together, but everyone near me was talking about B5 instead. One kid even had a giant binder with every page of the Lurker's Guide in it, and they'd spend that half of the period talking about various wild theories on what would happen next. I decided to start watching regularly again, and never looked back. I taped the end of 3rd season and all of 4th season off of the air (I still have those tapes somewhere, probably) and then had my dad tape the whole thing from the start when it came out on cable for 5th season. I dragged my mother and at least two boyfriends through the series using those tapes, and picked up the DVDs as soon as they came out.

Since I don't really watch television anymore, I tend to stay away from fandom since there are always random spoilers for other things I haven't seen yet and that gets old quickly. Other shows that I like and have seen all of, however, include Avatar and Firefly. Back when I watched television I was really into Gargoyles (which I still enjoyed when I picked up the DVDs) and Sliders (which I now find pretty painfully bad).

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

Hi! Your friendly absent co-mod here :)

I started watching probably in '97 or '98--sometime around the first run of Season 4. I was introduced to the show by whitestar2, who showed me the old Pathfinder boards, where I hung out writing for the crazy free-for-all Neverending Babylon 5 Story until they shut us down. I moved over to TheScifiVine back when that was active, and then meandered to LiveJournal after some other interests.

I keep all my fic on aris_writing; I don't really chill in too many fandoms, though I write for House and Doctor Who.

I'm so excited about this comm! It's great to see all of you here!

[imhilien.livejournal.com]

I saw a copy of 'The Gathering' at my local sci-fi club when it first came out... I wasn't really that interested, but when the episodes started screening in a silly weekend afternoon timeslot, I decided to give them a go.

Wow. By the time season 3 started, I was a hardcore fan and decided that JMS could easily run rings around George Lucas. I remember watching the SW prequels and mourning how much better they would have been if JMS had been writing them. Ah well. Anyway, I can be found these days in the Harry Potter fandom.

[shapinglight]

Another old-timer who watched from the very beginning here. I was hooked from the moment I realised that each episode led into the next, as opposed to the (then) Star Trek norm of the events of one episode having seemingly been forgotten by the time the next rolled around.

Joined up story-telling in sci-fi - it was a revelation.

[flarn-chef.livejournal.com]

Another 'older race' here.
Watched the show from the beginning, which stole my heart and soul away from the Trek universe..... which had taken me away from American TV westerns. Seemed like an unnatural... natural progression... the shoot 'em up old west to cowboys in space.

I've since swayed back into my first fandom... which wasn't called fandom, back in the mid last century. BUT I don't think anything will ever capture my very being the way B5 has. DS9 came the closest, but it never reached the epic addicted proportions of Babylon 5.

[ki10fuzzball.livejournal.com]

There was a time that any new sci-fi show that was on would be watched - at least at first - by me. I started watching B5 when it first aired on Channel 4 in the UK (so I would have been um, 13ish - I can't remember when we first got itearly teens anyway). I was hooked from the beginning (but drifted away in series 5 mainly because of the completely unreasonable changes in times that it was shown at). I liked it at the beginning - was completely obsesses between series 3 and 4 and even dipped in and out of crusade.

I liked the Trek stuff; Quantum Leap; X-Files; the repeats of the old British sci-fi (inc Doctor Who), Buffy (but not Angel); more recently the new Doctor Who, Torchwood, Andromeda, Heroes and so many others I've lost count.
Not really so much in fandoms but I do still like my sci-fi shows - along with the complete Universe of Babylon 5, I have the Farscape box set and all the La Femme Nikita series.

[becky-monster.livejournal.com]

Yet another oldie here...

I first found out about B5 from the lovely people I had met in my first year of Uni at the local Sci-Fi soc. They were all saying that Babylon 5 was the dogs' proverbials! They seemed like people of taste, so I followed their recommendation.

The first episode I caught was #102 and I was *floored*. Even though at the end, I did think 'Naaahh... they're never going to follow through and tell us what it all means!'

Ahahahahaha! More fool me!

I caught bits of season one (first year) and two on Channel 4 (second year), partly because it was on at 6pm during the week (I was working part time during my second year) and I kept missing it because of my shift pattern.
Thankfully I shared a house with another geek, so we could gang up on the others and watch it;)
This did lead to screams of "ZOMG! THINGEE IS THINGEE!" from time to time.

Then in my final year, Channel 4 saw sense (?) and showed it at 6pm on a Sunday - no work to interfere. The then boyfriend offered to 'lend' me his tapes of Season one, I took him up on this generous offer.
Within about five minutes of 'Midnight on the Firing Line' my geeky housemate leaned over and said "you are going to ask for the rest of them aren't you?"

"Oh yes!" was the feverent reply. The season opener for Season 3 was shown on that Sunday and I fell hopelessly in love with two of the things I saw in that episode. To say more will be spoilerific.

Babylon 5 will always be one of my top shows ever. Yes, I love Doctor Who and have seen at least two seasons of Battlestar Galactica (I'll watch the final two when it all wraps up) but B5 was there first.

My 'current' favourite TV show is NCIS which seems to have had at least two cast members crop up and of course, has a B5 guest star (from season 1) as a regular cast member.

The episode just gone featured another guest star from Season 1 just sitting in a room with the aforementioned regular - just talking... The flashbacks to Babylon 5 were incredibly trippy!

So, I have very happy memories (bar one but let's not talk about that yet!) of this show and am looking forward to re-watching it!

[dqbunny.livejournal.com]

One of the people on my friends list keeps trying to convert me to Battlestar Galactica by telling me it has the potential to blow B5 out of the water. I really have no desire to see it after that!

[tebasile7.livejournal.com]

Since I already posted in the comments I think I should introduce myself here too.

I came to B5 through recommendations by people I knew from Star Wars fan meetings.
I first watched the autum 1997 week days afternoon repeats on Pro7 in Germany (it was good channel back then *mourns*) while I was in university and actually left some lectures early because I was not sure if I had programmed the VCR.....

Through other fans ( I actually was a member in a fan club with meetings and a magazine ,I think there still is one of my translations of English articles still on the Net somewhere) I managed to get season 4 as soon as the end of season 3 had redefined the term "cliffhanger".
I didn`t really mind that the picture was beyond blurry through format conversion and numerous copying.

And season 5 I saw nearly in real time which means meeting every couple of weeks and watching tapes wherethere was as much involuntary movement on the pictuire as voluntary but loving the show and the experience of watching it with other fans.

I really miss that, I know very few people that share fannish interests in RL these days.

I think B5 is still my all time favourite show and fandom....

I was very sad when it went away especially as I could not follow many of my friends back then into other fandoms as they did not grip me this way.

I hope to keep up with the watching as my life currently can be very hectic.

And I HAVE to get B5 icons...I only have Season 4 who just now, as it was what made me delurk at least a little bit and get a LJ........

[lynnsmith.livejournal.com]

Hi,

I remember watching the pilot and not being very impressed. When I was in college a few years later, they were showing it either right before or after DS9, which I'd been a fan of, and eventually I got hooked around the middle of the second season.

While I was more of a lurker, B5 led me to Buffy since a bunch of B5 fans were talking about how good it was.

[widsidh.livejournal.com]

I used to be a trekker (well to an extent still am) and in the mid 1990s, a friend told me I'd like this "new" show and urged me to try. I didn't have television then and after a long delay had a false start trying it out on an episode that really shouldn't be watched out of context (And now For A Word), but eventually gave it another chance and this time got hooked at once. That was early on in season 3 (Passing Through Gethsemane).

I watched season 3 as the it came out wher I was living then, followed by (in parallel!) friends' recordings of seasons 1 and 2 and season 4 and 5 as they came out in Britain. An interesting viewing experience, but it means that I've never seen the whole thing in quite the right order...

(and yes, I was already an adult then, so by now I definitely qualify as an *old* fan...)

I have been interested ever since and even contributed to the Lurkers Guide at some point (under my own name, so I won't say what), but never really got into Crusade. In the early 2000s I acquired a full run of VHS recordings cheaply, but so far have not got round to rewatching the lot in order. So I'm looking forward to this!

Oh yes, and without home internet, I'm always late :-)

[marphilly.livejournal.com]

I started watching it in the middle of it's first run, I believe. I have other favorite scifi shows, although B5 has taken top place, but this is the only fandom I'm active in right now.

[madrona.livejournal.com]

I saw the pilot quite early on and wasn't impressed...it wasn't shiny like Star Trek: TNG. Then, my mother started watching it regularly when TNT started having afternoon reruns, and I'd come home from school and watch, too. They were rerunning season two or three, and I got hooked...the show had come so far!

I've been lurking in the internet sense around the edges of the fandom ever since. I was in high school at the time.

[drabbit.livejournal.com]

I don't quite recall how B5 first came to me - it would have been mid 1990's, as a young teenager, as I was watching Season 3-4 period around 96/97. I think I got occasional episodes of the first season but they didn't strike me as amazing, then somewhere along the line I caught a couple in a row.

I do remember seeing the last couple of episodes of Season 1 and that I was hopelessly lost from then. Around 1994/95, I was in a gaming club and started playing the CCG as well and loved it. In 1996, at 16, I found a university gaming club, and my Sunday pattern for two years became playing B5 CCG for about 11 hours, then walking home to get in about 0100 Monday morning, sit down with a warmed up dinner and watch the next episode. At Uni, around 98/99, I found the WarnerBros forums and pottered around there under the username Mee.

I wouldn't say I was a huge fan by normal definitions - seems to me to be in a fan community you have to know the actor name for the third guy on the left - however I love the show and the characters.

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

I was watching B5 for quite a bit back in 97-98, due to the influence of the guy I was crushing on at the time. I was a young teacher, as was he, and he would invite me over to his place for frequent B5 or X-files watching.

It ended badly, of course, but I enjoyed the show a great deal, and I'm interested in joining up to watch it from the beginning and fill in the gaps. So, hi!

I'm mostly a fandom lurker, but things I've been passionate about include Buffy, Firefly, Doctor Who, Veronica Mars, Quantum Leap and Kids in the Hall (the only thing I got fan newsletters for, back in the day.)

[dqbunny.livejournal.com]

When I was in the ninth grade (early 1995), one of my friends at school kept talking about Babylon 5. She'd gotten me hooked on other series at the time and she talked so much about B5 that I agreed to give the series a shot.

I was so confused! The first episode that I managed to see was right smack in the middle of season 3 and that's really not a good place to get your first exposure to the series. My friend, being a saint, spent the next week getting me up to speed on the plot. It's through her that I became a fan.

Even though being involved in anime changed my life, Babylon 5 changed how I view and approach writing. It had such a huge influence on me at such a vulnerable point in my life, and how I view fantasy and fiction writing today - even interacting with other people - is shaped by the world that JMS created. The best piece of writing advice I've ever gotten was from him: "Always have the ending planned before you write the beginning." I've noticed that my strongest pieces is where that lesson has held true.

[swashbuckler332.livejournal.com]

Hello, I just joined the community and so I am introducing myself.

I knew about Babylon 5 from its premiere, but I never watched the show. In fact, I rarely watched any show because I hated commercials, it is only with the recent blitz of TV on DVD that I have actually been able to enjoy episodic television.

My friend suitboyskin recommended the series to me because he knows I have a taste for the fantastic and like to read hard science-fiction, and while there is sound in space (pet peeve of mine), I really appreciated how seriously the science element of the science fiction was taken. I also was really jazzed to see the well-developed politics and such an interesting backstory. The more I got to know the characters, the more involved I became in their fates.

When I watched the series a second time, I found it even more rewarding knowing the shape of the series (and the enigmatic Kosh makes a hell of a lot more sense if you know what he's talking about).

I'm also an avid film music nut, and so I enjoyed hearing Christopher Franke's scores develop over the course of the series. Coincidentally, I am just now putting the finishing touches on my own Babylon 5 mix.