How did spoilers effect you?

[Kloreep]

Warning: Spoilers, of course.











What spoilers did you encounter before and during seeing Babylon 5? (Either on spoiler sites during the show, or from wherever if you didn't watch it during first run like me.) What theories, right or wrong, did you piece together on this information?

I remember one main thing I expected that was proved wrong as I watched the show. One of the things I knew going in, from listening to friends who got in to it before I did, was that Garibaldi would betray the station crew somehow. I didn't know how, but I also knew/was sure of the fact that the station was destroyed in the end. (I can't recall how I knew the second bit, but I did.) I connected these two bits and decided he would probably end up causing or aiding the station's destruction. (After seeing Babylon Squared, I thought it might happen sometime around the flashforward showing fighting on the station.)

On balance, I don't think this harmed things for me. It was always clear something was up with him from the beginning of S4, so since I had the target wrong, I didn't really have any solid spoiler information.

One solid spoiler I did have, however, came from glancing through some Babylon 5 magazines a friend gave me. I shouldn't have, as I was still waiting for the last season to come out on DVD, but I couldn't resist peaking at some of them before seeing the rest of the show. I read some things about Lennier that basically said he would fall out with, possibly betray, Sheridan and De'lenn. I thought I might have gotten things wrong as the show wound down, but at the end, he did it, and I knew it was coming because of what I'd read.

[cornholio1980]

What spoilers did you encounter before and during seeing Babylon 5?

None at all.

And I'm very grateful that I was clever enough to stay away from spoilers while I watched the show for the first time (during its first airing in Germany).

[Jan]

What spoilers did you encounter before and during seeing Babylon 5? (Either on spoiler sites during the show, or from wherever if you didn't watch it during first run like me.) What theories, right or wrong, did you piece together on this information?

Oh, I loved spoilers! I started out on the B5 bbs on AOL when JMS used to hang out there and read all the discussions. Went to the Lurker's Guide and devoured every new entry. Checked out a few spoiler sites but generally their info was *way* off.

Know what? It didn't ruin a thing for me because of the way the story went. As an example, we were shown in the first season both how Londo and G'Kar would die and what the eventual fate of the Station was. Knowing what would happen was nowhere near as important as knowing why and what happened leading up to that thing.

Spoilers back then as the show was happening for the first time, though, were different from what one might run across now that the story's over and many people know the whats and the whys and the howfors.

I can't think of many conclusions I came to. One was that at some point I thought that Byron would be shown to be Bester's son instead of his protege. That's the only one I really recall.

Jan

[SpooRancher]

I was a member of a group that each Sunday would chat about all the sci-fi shows out there. And, yes, B5 was a huge part of it. Could you call that "spoilers"? Maybe, maybe not. Some of the people talked as if they had some "inside news", and often were way off base. Some of our theories panned out, some didn't. But we had a ball chatting. It definitely enhanced our experience.

[Jan]

But we had a ball chatting. It definitely enhanced our experience.

I agree that interacting with the other fans at the time was always a major enhancement of the experience. I didn't get online until about the end of the third season or beginning of the fourth and catching up on everything said before was a lot of fun.

Jan

[Satai Delenn]

I didn' t see the show until after it had went off the air and when I did the first episode I saw was The Long Twillight Struggle .I generally tried to stay out of threads that would potentially spoil me on what was going to happen next .

[Michael Malloy]

I was really fortunate in having a friend get me started watching B5 without spoiling anything. When B5 was first aired in Columbus it was shown very, very, late at night after sports events. I'm talking about later than 12:30! Working full time I couldn't stay up that late and because the stupid sports events never ended on any schedule the start of B5 was un-predictable.

Eventually I was able to watch the show on a regular basis, but it was from season two forward. I didn't know what the heck was going on with Psi Corps or those black space spiders that destroyed anything they saw.

I guess in B5 I count myself lucky.

One of the better Star Trek Next Gen movies was plastered all over the internet before the film was released. I knew the whole story before I saw it. That feast tasted like straw because it was spoiled.

[alex_t]

I wasn't connected to the Internet until the end of Season 3 (in Russia it was in 1997). When I got connected I've seen a couple of news about future Babylon 5 - mainly that there will be season 5, and Claudia Christian will not appear there, but nothing else. So I saw almost all series without any spoilers (except TV films, that I saw in 2005 for the first time - And loved them BTW ).

[Spoo Junky]

I tried to watch B5 on a consistent basis but the time slot kept moving around. The few episodes I did manage to see were towards the end of the third season so by then it was clear what the shadow war was about.

When the show was on five days a week in syndication, I was finally able to watch the whole thing. The first time I watched the show from start to finish, I can still remember feeling a kind of dread that something big was happening. Even though I knew what the outcome was, it still didn't take away from the show as a whole. Now I just wish I could watch it again for the first time and feel that sense of awe. sigh!

[SpooRancher]

I tried to watch B5 on a consistent basis but the time slot kept moving around.

Now I just wish I could watch it again for the first time and feel that sense of awe. sigh!

I had the same problem. I watched the pilot (The Gathering) when it first aired, but was not able to catch season 1 until TNT reran them due to schedule jumping. I caught up with it on Season 2, but still had the problem with the time slot jumping around on the local station. Finally, when it moved to TNT, I was able to watch the first 4 seasons relatively regularly, but the prime time 5th season jumped around like frogs in a hot skillet. Pre-empted for a stroking dog show? What was that all about?

Suffice it to say that when the DVD's came out, I FINALLY was able to sit down and watch the story unfold the way it was meant to. And I began to love it more than I ever had before. I really did not get a feel for jms' dramatic storytelling until I was finally able to watch it regularly, which just never happened with the networks, both PTEN and TNT.

All in all, B5 was probably the most sabotaged series in history since the original Star Trek and it's schedule hopping at the hands of NBC.

So, did I ever really get to watch B5 spoiler free? I guess you could say no.

[grumbler]

I was lucky enough to have a video-junkie friend who taped all the episodes so i could watch them consistently. I lurked a bit in some of the discussion groups but didn't have any of the subscription services where JMS was posting, and I learned quickly that a lot of the "spoilers" people were posting were, at best, distoritions of what JMS was saying, and so they didn't much affect me because I didn't believe them!

And yeah, I would love to be able to go back to the day before I saw "Signs and Portents" just to get that jaw-dropping "We aren't in Kansas anymore, Toto" feeling I had when we saw our first Shadow ship rip apart the raider ship. Like a lot of the fans, I was pretty confident up to that point that I had figured out what the show was about, and then I was as Straczynski-ized as the rest of them. It was one of my favorite TV moments.

[Kloreep]

Interestingly, I don't remember having that reaction to "Signs and Portents."

"And the Sky Full of Stars" was the first episode that convinced me there was something to Babylon 5 like I had been told. After that, I upped my expectations enough that I wasn't really fazed by anything until "Babylon Squared" and "Chrysalis" at the end of the season.

[Redrake]

Parts of "Signs and Portents" were also included in the preview movie for the game "Babylon 5". At that point the series were not yet broadcasted here, but I've saw them already at Pro 7 (in german), not all of them (only series 1-3).

[modernmajorgeneral]

Believe it or not, I was able to enjoy B5 100% spoiler free. B5 began its run just as I was starting college, too busy to follow a new series. As the DVDs launched, I viewed the series in what I believe to be its ideal format. The DVDs made it very easy to follow the contunuity and plot twists. Hats off to the original core of fans who had to put up with the interstices between seasons, production halts, and network changes.

[Jan]

Hats off to the original core of fans who had to put up with the interstices between seasons, production halts, and network changes.

Don't forget the uncertainty between seasons waiting to find out if there'd *be* a next season.

And it was uphill both ways in blinding snowstorms...

Jan