[Itse]

I remember watching this series with a bunch of friends from start to finish when it was fairly new, and while I wouldn't call myself a fan by any stretch, the storytelling of the series has in retrospect been quite influential in much of the writing I've done ever since. (Mostly various RPG and larp stuff.)

B5 was the first genuine sci-fi epic outside of books, with grand themes explored from top to bottom with long-form storytelling, complex characters and a large universe that was genuinely changing and evolving, as the various interconnected stories progressed over a long period of time.

Pre-B5, most TV worlds were relatively static. Long-term character development might pop up here or there, there were recurring storylines and the occasional even that shook something up a little, but at this time the idea that you should watch earlier episodes to understand what was going on in a series was not really a thing.

(Sure you had soaps that had developing plotlines, but of course mostly everything just went round and round, and later on the plotlines would actively rely on the audiences ignoring any possible long-term implications of previous events.)

As a simple example, years after B5, Firefly episodes were shown out of order by the network because the people in power, and most TV audiences to be honest, didn't actually think it mattered.

At the time B5's storytelling was really quite unique, and while it wasn't a massive commercial success, I would argue that it's an overlooked milestone in television history and has probably had a lot more influence on what TV is now than it gets credit for.

After B5 ended you have Buffy the Vampire slayer pushing the envelope on what can be done with character arcs and themes in network television storytelling and Sopranos breaking ground in "prestige television" in numerous ways, but both still take place in worlds that are, for the most part, relatively small and unchanging from episode to episode.

It wasn't really until Battlestar Galactica a few years later that you had another series that genuinely started doing what B5 had done, changing the status quo of the storyworld in massive ways during the run of the series, and in ways that are IMO obviously very heavily influenced by B5.

Despite it's limited budget, B5 creates a big world with massive events that affect everything, things you can't come back from or ignore in anything that happens since, and that just wasn't a thing that was done.