Re: Newbie just starting S3 - Non-Spoilers ONLY!
Why didn't this series fare better in the marketplace?
Well it isn't like it
flopped.
The show lasted the full planned five years, it got respectable, if not spectacular, ratings both in first-run syndication and on cable, and the TV movies got good-to-better-than-average for basic cable. The reruns got
very very good initial ratings, good enough to justify two attempts to launch sequels, although with repeated run cycles they fell off.
LIke the original
Trek,
B5 found a bigger audience
after its initial run, when it went into 5-day-a-week reruns. That's one of the reasons the DVDs did as well as they did. The show had been running in regular timeslots and with a frequency that was much more viewer-friendly and arc-friendly than the original PTEN pattern of airing once a week with blocks of new episodes alternating with reruns, and the bizarre practice of stopping new episodes in the summer, late in the season, and then returning with the end of the season, including what was written as a "cliff-hanger", immediately before the start of the new season. (So that "Points of Departure" aired the week after "Chrysalis", and "Matters of Honor" the week after "The Fall of Night", thus pretty much negating the whole
point of a cliff-hanger, which is to maintain audience interest over a long summer hiatus.)
There's a case to be made that you're experiencing the show for the first time in the best possible way. You may miss out the live discussion of each episode as it comes out, but you also miss the interminable waiting between blocks of new episodes and the annual agony of waiting to find out if the show would be renewed.
Regards,
Joe