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

[mosinging1986.livejournal.com]

Hello, everyone.

I was pointed this way by hobsonphile. I am a newbie to B5 and began watching for the very first time on October 16 of this past year. (And I am already up to episode 4.6!)

There were a few fans on my flist and since we shared other fandoms like 'X-Files' and 'Battlestar Galactica', I was always hearing that I was missing out by not watching this show. Since I hate being left out of anything, I finally Netflixed the first episode and was pretty much hooked from that moment on. I'm not sure if there was one episode that really made me fall head over heels, but I'll have to look back. (I've had to take a zillion notes because I'm going through it so quickly and it can be complicated!)

I think it was a bit of a slow burn as far as emotional attachment. But the story itself intrigued from the start. And while it did take a bit of time for me to get BSG out of my head while watching this, the similarities are mostly superficial. It seems I love both shows, but in very different ways.

What I don't understand is why I never heard of the show when it was actually on! I like to think of myself as fairly knowledgeable about pop culture, so even when I don't watch something I've at least heard of it and know the basic premise. But how this show was kept from me all these years is a mystery!

I guess it's better this way. How maddenng would it have been to come across an old rerun and get hooked BEFORE the DVDs came along?

[ruuger]

How maddenng would it have been to come across an old rerun and get hooked BEFORE the DVDs came along?

There is a name for this in B5 fandom: 'EPDN', which refers to the feeling at the end of the episode when the words "Executive Producer Douglas Netter" appear on the screen and you realised that it'd be a whole week before you'd know what happens next.

(And can you imagine having to wait a whole summer between the end of season 3 and the beginning of season 4?)

[hendrikboom.livejournal.com]

That whole week of waiting was an essential part of the show. It gave you time to speculate, and, sometimes, to put details together and gain a better understanding of what was going on.

I got hooked on it during season 2 of its original broadcast. I don't regret the weeks between episodes. I do regret the months of reruns between episodes, though during season 2 they filled me in on stuff I hadn't seen.