I can't let the finale of Battlestar Galactica go by without a nod here. This is the ne plus ultra of s-f television, the ripened fruit of the seed sown by Babylon 5. If BSG isn't true science fiction, I don't know what is. We ought to be damn proud that one of the best shows on television in any genre turned out to be one of our own.

For those of you wondering about some of the more obvious questions raised by or left in the finale, answers most of them.

I found the finale alternately joyful, frustrating, incomplete, surprising, satisfying, boring, and fulfilling. Just like life. No complaints.

Well, frag it, I guess I'll have to add BG to my Netflix queue. We try to keep one "short feature" in our stack so that we can watch something to unwind without committing to a movie. We finished Sopranos, we're almost done with the nth watch of B5, I think we'll rewatch Carnivale again, and then we'll tackle BG - in and around the new season of Mad Men.

I do prefer series to be complete so that I know I can watch the whole thing at whatever pace I like. Mad Men is the first thing to have sucked me in to real-time (okay, time-shifted) watching in almost two decades. We completed the first season on disc just in time to record the first of the second season, and now I am bouncing with impatience for the almost-dint-happen third season to roll. A very, very strange sensation for me.

Thanks for the recommendation. I've never been all that sure about BG. God knows one episode of Heroes was all I could ever stand in a lifetime - what wretched old-network crap.

There's a new series in pilot that's somewhere between Mystery Men and The Specials - I am looking forward to that.

Thanks for no spoilers - I expect to watch the BSG miniseries sometime in the next week or two, and away we goes...

I found a really interesting exchange on Amazon - under the BSG box sets, someone asked the question "Is B5 or BSG better?" Answers were very thoughtful for the most part and ran like 13:2 for B5 - and even one of the two BSG voters said it was probably because BSG was still fresh.

We just wrapped our nth rewatch of B5 Season 4, and again I am impressed with how much JMS got into that tight box - I think Seasons 3 and 4 are one of the best rides in the sf universe.

Facing the fifth season, I will probably skip several early episodes, consigning them, along with ep 1:2 ("Infection"), to the "never again" bin as unwatchable drivel. I just can't hear the longhairs sing that damned song one... more... time... (starts humming "Girl from Ipanema" as a countercharm). OTOH, it's a critical part of Lyta's arc... *sigh*...

I'm not willing to spend even as much time as *that* watching TV. I figure I can catch up on the good episodes of Heroes after the DVDs come out -- that worked well with Babylon 5 (I watched it a decade after listening to Joe Straczynski (sic) talk about the concept over on the old GENie SFRT) and Firefly.

It's funny because almost every show I have ever watched a great deal is a show that I did miss and either watched later in syndication or got on DVD. I almost never watch TV shows while they are on their original run. Movies and sports and syndicated shows are about all the broadcast TV I watch.* I have yet to catch all of "Firefly" but I think it would be right up there with B5 and, one that has not been mentioned, Andromeda if I did. I haven't seen the new BSG but I plan to.

*and the Cartoon Network. Have it on so that the parrots learn new phrases.

I've never watched any B5 or BSG before. I got Season 1 of BSG on DVD for Christmas and am about 3/4 through the Feature that takes up Disk 1. So far, I'm not sure I'm willing to devote the necessary hours to get through all 5 disks. I presume it gets better, but when? Not until Season 2 or later?

Eh, 'better' is in the eye of the beholder. It certainly gets more complicated. Whether it's your cup of tea, who knows? Jim doesn't like Heroes and I do. BSG is different, though; it demonstrates the old saw about all a writer has to do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein. Really gutsy writing.

I just read "All the Stars a Stage" by James Blish (an author to whom the "frakkin' awesome" label aptly applies, and who never received his just due).

Either I never read it or I read it so long ago that I forgot it completely (quite possible). However, when I got to the end, I was fairly gobsmacked. BSG final episode was this >< close to plagiarism IMHO.

We've got less time than usual for our short-stuff evening watching, so we're just now winding down to the last few B5 episodes. ("Pleased to meet you, Mr. Garibaldi." - *shiver*)

We were going to give Carnivale a rewatch next but I found the first season of BSG for $19 and bought it rather than do the Netflix crawl... so we'll probably be watching the miniseries pilot by late this week.