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What was the episode that got you hooked ?

Chrysallis on it's initial airing on Austrian TV. I was bored and started watching in the middle. After it was finished, I was allready calling people I knew to be SciFi geeks and asking them if they had taped the first season of Babylon 5. I became a freak within less than half an hour.
 
Not sure. I started watching after the middle of the series, and felt pretty sad about missing episodes due to bad weather (lousy location, stupid self-made antenna) already by the end of the fourth season.

Missed most of the fifth season, saw half of Crusade. Yet I remembered one thing: this show warranted watching. Remembered one curious Minbari ambassador, various other interesting characters. Noticed a high degree of believability and realism, bright and interesting stories.

Before I stumbled onto the Lurker's Guide, I never knew I was watching only part of a much bigger story. When I saw it again, two years later, I rather quickly fell in love with this story. But I still haven't seen the first season, and part of the second. I always keep missing them. Hopefully DVD disks will help.

That was during my last school year, 1998.
 
It wasn't any one episode for me, either. My mom started watching it from the beginning, and I remember coming in the living room from time to time with disgust. I was a die-hard trekkie, convinced this was a feeble rip-off of Star Trek. Somehow, I started to not mind watching it with her from time to time, and then I watched a few episodes of the fifth seasons on my own. When TNT decided to air the entire series a couple summers ago, I figured I could tape it and watch, having nothing else to do and knowing I would like it. I had come in too late though, and missed the entire first season. I watched it every day from then on, though, and Sci Fi's second run, I taped the first season. I don't know at what point that summer I became absolutely hooked, though. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif
 
I now remember the one scene that clinched it for me. I don't remember the episode, but it was first season. Sinclair and a party of Starfury's were out scouting a wreck I think, and it was the first time I actually saw ships in space behaving like they should! With attitude jets, drift and everything. I remember my jaw hitting the floor and I practically jumped out of my chair. "They paid attention to physics!" The other thing was the fact that the station had to use a rotating section for gravity instead of the vague 'artificial gravity' that Trek used. I am still inspired by their attention to detail where it counts.
 
I feel like one of those scifi First Ones that you mentioned because I am 34. /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif
 
There really wasn't one single episode that got me hooked. The first episode I ever saw was the first episode of the second season when it originally aired and didn't really watch it again until it was on TNT, and that's when I really started watching it. I remember seeing In the Beginning when it originally aired too, and that's when I really started watching it and getting into it.
 
</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
Kin_of_zathras, why not fork out a little dosh and get to choose your avatar.

[/quote]
Trust me, I'd love to, but the exchange rate is R10.50 = $1
Besides I'm more of a lurker than a poster, I've been visiting this site regularly for 18 months now and I only have 1 star...

And I want a avatar of ZAthras from Lines of Communication? He was the nuttier of the 2. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif
 
</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
I had a great Zathras pic; that closeup of him in the Great Machine. It's the avatar to beat all others.

[/quote]
How about clicking on the link and mailing it to me? /forums/images/icons/cool.gif
 
Saly enough, I've lost my copy. I got it through an act of kindness though. If you go the the B5 Spoiler Junkies Page, episode pix section, there is an email address. I wrote and asked if they could pull me a snappy pic. They did. It's worth a try.
 
A friend of mine asked me to copy all of the B5 episodes at high speed onto VHS for him about two years ago, so I did. I thought I'd go ahead and run the first eight eps onto a tape for myself to see what the heck he found so great about the show.

I sat down to watch from "The Gathering" and by the time I got to "Parliament of Dreams", I was hooked! /forums/images/icons/grin.gif
 
I remember my brother hiring out the pilot from the video store when I was about fourteen, all I could think about the pilot was I that it was extremely boring, and the music was horrible.

Some years later I saw an episode on tv, Z'ha'dum, and I didn't even see all of it, the only part I saw was when the Shadows were coming towards Sheriden and then the whitestar comes down and crashes in the building. Then the epidsode ended, I was like what's going on, I NEED to know. From then on I was hooked.
 
Speaking as another of the First Ones, I was watching Trek before most of the people on this list were born, but
that didn't put me off Babylon 5. First and foremost I'm a scifi fan, and I give all the new shows a chance. I watched
The Gathering back in l992 and although not impressed with it, I decided to give the series a chance when it came
on, basically I was hooked from the beginning, although I didn't like every episode. There was always something,
a scene, a phrase, that was different, that stuck in my mind after the show was over. When Farscape ends I am
going to watch Babylon 5 again from tapes or DVDs.
 
My friends hooked me in. Can't remember what episode I saw first, but they showed me "Comes the Inquisitor." That did the trick for me.
 
In Australia, I first saw 2 episodes from S1 during the initial run (Born of the Purple and Infections), and was not impressed. I then started hearing how good the series actually was from various US sci-fi magazines.

But it wasn't until I saw a "new" episode at a convention that I stood up an d took notice. It was 'Dust To Dust', and even though I had no idea what was going on, the acting, story and design took me in. And it was at the point where Kosh says to G'Kar that "Some must be sacrificed, so that all may be saved" that I became hooked.

I then waited for S2 to commence on free-to-air TV, and have not looked back since. By the time Geometry of Shadows aired, I was telling all my friends (who were into TNG at the time) to watch, that this was something extraordinary. It took a while, but they all came around in the end.
 
Well myself i was /forums/images/icons/blush.gif a trek fan I caught I think 2 eps of s1 I cant remember what they were about but I remember thinking I dont understand a damn thing going on.I guess I caught a few arc eps that dont make sense till you know whats going on.I caught some more eps in s2@3 and started to get into it just before severed dreams. I missed that episode and was really peed off when my freind told me how good it was, but by s3I was a hardcore fan I still to this day remember watching Z'ha'dum and beating my fists aganst the TV going Noooo....what happened next.Unfortunenatly the station down in australia didnt show s4 for atleast 6 months later since then i went back and watched almost all of it on tape still missing some of s1,but I never really liked Sinclair as much as Sheridan anyhow.
me thinks Jeff O'Hare took notes from star treks famous wooden bill? I guess the reason I didnt see B5 as what it was at the beginning was becouse I was so use to Treks one ep can always stand alone idealism, in that I have to say DS9 was one of there best works Except the last 3 eps
but it still was no B5.

Never speak with your mouth full.
Never speak with your brain empty.
Karanthas.Reflections of conversations with Morons.
 
I would have to say "The Gathering". I'd heard that there was a new SF show coming, and I wanted to give it a shot, being a Trekkie from way back. (No, "Trekkie" is *not* insulting or demeaning!) Anyway, it debuted--as I remember--within weeks of DS9. As I saw it, they were pretty much the same show: there's a station in the middle of nowhere, people show up and things happen.

But Star Trek always was, and will likely continue to be, episodic in nature. Yes, Enterprise is trying to thread the season together, but it's very slow going.

However, B5 was always meant to be "a novel for television". A show with a definite beginning, middle, and--good ratings or bad--an ending. Five years long in the watching.

When I heard this, that the show would continue to weave a "story", with actual character development, I was floored, and hooked. In the UK, writing *matters*; plot and characters grow and evolve through their experiences. In the US, it's "forget last week; how do we wow them this week?" Comedy, drama, SF, doesn't matter. Ratings are everything. Hence the lack of originality being spewed across the airwaves every Autumn. Bless Dame Bona Fortuna JMS got to tell his story. The "wasteland" has an oasis, and the name of the place is Babylon 5. (Sorry, I coudn't resist. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif )

So I watched the pilot, and I liked what I saw. A murder mystery, involving people who had lives *before* this incident! They weren't...teleported...to this place, with no backstory to give the audience. Sinclair was a war hero; Dr Gaines had experience with xenobiology; Garibaldi knew his schtick, and you didn't mess with him. Notice that Lyta's tour was to introduce *the station*, not the crew.

Looking back, the writing's a bit much. Would (will?) people really speak those words in that manner? It seems a little over-the-top, if that's the phrase I'm looking for. But it was *new*, different. The approach was completely unlike anything Paramount had going for Trek. My friend taped the premier (on the pre-UPN PTEN!), and I taped every episode, in order, first time out. As well as the movies and Crusade, of course. /forums/images/icons/grin.gif And when I've the gelt, I have every intention of buying the seasonal DVDs.

As to S5's seeming lack of continuity: I hadn't heard that JMS's notes were *stolen*, and that he'd cobbled together the last season. But here's what I had heard: S4 was very nearly the last one. Ratings tanked. So the crew filmed SiL to be the last episode of *S4*, and the series, which is why it looks like it belongs more to S4 than S5. However, TNT and the fans saved the show (does it matter how S5 got airtime?) at the last minute, and so SiL was shelved for a year, to be the series' end, which is where it belongs.

Just a few tired thoughts from a tired old man. Hope I haven't bored y'all to tears!

LordRemy
 
I think it was the one where the Markham(?) race was wiped out on B5, even though Dr. Franklin found a cure. He shows up with his tray of injections just a minute too late to save anyone. I remember thinking, "Wow! this is NOT Star Trek!" /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif
 
My mom watched that episode with me and told me that was a stupid show. She hates when people die, let alone a whole race, in a movie or show.
 
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