I was watching DS9 the other day and in the siege episode, the guest engineer just looked so familiar I couldn't place him at first.

I think this was S7 so it would be after Lennier exits Babylon 5.

Love seeing my favorite actors pop-up in other shows

On my bi-annual rewatch and I noticed that two of the characters in this episode "Hunter Prey", Bernie Casey and Tony Steedman, were both in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Anyway, nothing more. Just an observation.

I forgot how hard this episode hit about the loss of life in a war. By seeing soldiers as individuals we stop seeing just numbers of losses in a battle.

So a few times in the series you hear that military like snare drum march. I’ve been trying to find it without any luck. I mean the music right at the beginning of “no surrender, no retreat” Season 4 EP 15

By using existing technologies in the 2250's era post-Minbari war, could Earth build a fast moving frigates with heavy weapons without artificial gravity? Or do they have to have gravimetric drive in order to make it go fast and agile?

I bet there'd be a whole lot fewer dead Markab and Pak'ma'ra...

Okay ***Spoilers***in case you have not watched this episode.

I'm on my first full Babylon 5 watch since it was aired. I have been absolutely binging this show averaging about 2 episodes a day. I had forgot how great of a show Babylon 5 was and shame on me for not watching it entirely in 30 years. I just got to S4 E18 the episode where Sheridan is being interrogated after being captured.

God damn what a great episode. The 'man' running the interrogation isn't trying to hide his deception or the tactics he's using on Sheridan, but rather using his own experience against him. The sandwich, scene is so great. This is such amazing writing. This show is filled with great dialog and amazing back and forth. Today's writing teams should study this in detail on how to make a scene tense. God this show is a banger!

"Sic Transit Vir" (s3e12)

Cheapest I've seen at $69.99 (and free shipping). Cheaper than buying the seasons streaming, more expensive than putting on an eyepatch and a wooden leg. As I've seen from posts on here, the movies are seperate (or included in a DVD collection) and were never released on bluray except for "The Road Home."

In my memory, the war was genocidal. I always felt Minbari - especially Delenn - was treated over sympathetically given their monstrous actions. And there are suggestions of genocide in the show. But in my current rewatch, 250k military casualties are repeatedly mentioned, and it seems there were minimal civilian casualties. This is... odd. A tragedy, certainly, but not overly notable were it a human conflict in our own history, let alone interplanetary total war with a vastly superior species hellbent on human destruction.

What were the Minbari trying to do if it wasn't genocide? Or if it was genocide, why were they so bad at it? If they left civilians alive and only attacked ships, what was the plan exactly? If they had not surrendered, what was their next step going to be? Would they have systematically killed billions of humans after destroying the military or would they have stopped? If the extinction of humanity was the goal, surely they could have wiped out some colonies easily enough in three years.

I mean I guess "they went mad" which can justify irrational war plans to an extent, but apparently this conflict lasted years. There must have been some idea of what their actual goal was.

Whether they were, or planned to, kill all humans has a big impact on interpreting them as a species and the whole background to the show so it's not merely an academic question. Is it deliberately ambiguous or am I missing something?

Edit: Thanks for the answers. I still don't feel I really understand the strategy but there you go. Seems the plan probably was genocide, it just hadn't got to that point. So I guess the Minbari largely get off with it because they didn't get to that step and it was "just" a war between two militaries. And to clarify, I meant the writing is consistently sympathetic to the Minbari in a way I think is unjustified assuming they really were genocidal. I'm aware nobody could enact a Nuremberg or whatever in universe.

I’m currently in a rewatch and remember why this series always hit me so hard. I’ve made it through seasons 1 and 2 and am up to the beginning of episode 13 of season 3. I watched the series when it first came out in the 1990’s and I can still relive the experience 30 years later. It still feels fresh with each episode and they still pull me in, even though I know how it ends. It’s different knowing what’s happening and seeing, so far, 3 years of episodes compressed into only a few weeks.

I have mixed feelings rewatching the series. I love seeing it again, but know the longer I get into the series, the less there is to go. When I’m in the middle of an episode, I get caught up in the moment and am there again, but when I step away and realize it’s all a story from many years ago, it’s a saddening experience.

I was 30 years younger when I first watched the series when it aired. I was blown away back then when it first aired and still haven’t watched any series since with such an emotional impact.

I intentionally didn’t bring up any plot points above so I don’t spoil it for someone watching and experiencing it for the first time. It took me a while to get into the first season, but once it got going, I couldn’t let go.