The show poses a more realistic future than much sci-fi TV: while some of the alien races have their advanced technologies, humanity's future achievements are rooted in the laws of physics and space travel as we know or imagine it today. There is little black and white morality - all the characters are sketched in shades of grey, and there are no easy solutions or guaranteed happy endings.

In hindsight, season one is admittedly shaky in comparison the later years - but that's an extremely high standard to be compared to, and skipping it to start watching from season two or later is rather like flipping to chapter fifteen of a novel because you've heard that's where the good part starts. Don't do it. The amount of foreshadowing and careful setup in this series is phenomenal, and it's not something you can appreciate from reading a brief plot summary. Episodes like "Signs and Portents" and "Babylon Squared" introduce important plot elements that pay off literally years later, and everywhere there are throwaway lines and actions that mean so much more after seeing the whole series.

Season one episodes, when they're bad, can be dull and clunky, but when they're good, they're amazing; as it goes on, the first season's high points more than cancel out its lows. Original leading man Michael O'Hare gets a rather unfair rap for being 'wooden': Sinclair is an unusual character for a male television lead - quite calm and restrained, almost spiritual in some ways - and I personally never had a problem with O'Hare's performance. The friendship between Sinclair and security chief Garibaldi brings a lot of humanity to the show, as does Claudia Christian's performance as cynical Russian second-in-command Ivanova.

The heavyweight acting comes from Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas, as the ambassadors of two perpetually warring alien peoples. Their characters here are quite different from the ones we eventually come to know, and yet the evolution to that point is so perfectly organic that seeing them change and grow over the years is one of the show's greatest strengths. Look out also for Walter Koenig's first appearance as the Machiavellian telepath Bester, a wonderful character that nobody who watched him on Star Trek would ever suspect he had in him.

I won't pretend the first season has no flaws, but I still give it five stars, because it has more than enough merits to balance them out, and it sets up so much of what goes on to become one of the best science fiction shows of all time. Highly recommended.

I DON'T GET IT
Review date: 2005-09-04 Rating: 2 out of 10

I do enjoy entertaining TV series such as Buffy, Angel and even Stargate. But the key word is entertaining. I am reading other people's reviews which rave about this show and talk about how much better it's going to get before the end of the season, and permit me to voice my skepticism. It would have to undergo a complete metamorphosis for it to become anywhere near good. There are no charismatic characters, no good actors, no good-looking people; the plot is tremendously bad, the monsters of the week re-hashed from every single sci-fi series since the beginning of time, the attempts at humour are childish, the art direction is worse than Star Trek's in 1965. I already fell for another baaaaad series (Firefly) and the only way I am getting my money's worth from this one is to use it as a sleep aid -- in that way it doesn't disappoint.

Save your money and go for better TV, there is plenty of that!

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