Re: Proper Babylon 5 Viewing Order?
Okay, here's the deal. Most of what you need to worry about is that the episodes on the DVDs were put on in airdate order, not production order, so there are a couple of tiny continuity issues that crop of (people using devices two episodes before they're shown getting them, referring to things that happened three episodes ago as "yesterday," that sort of thing). Check against
this list for when you need to watch episodes in an order different than that of the DVD. This is probably the one thing everyone will agree on.
Now, the parts people won't agree on is what to do with the movies and Crusade. It is my opinion that you
can watch the prequel movie, "In the Beginning," whenever you damn well please. If I'm trying to convince someone to try the show, I usually start with it because it's a bit less slow and moody than the pilot and first season, so it gives you a taste of what the show is going to become that isn't immediately apparent from starting with the stuff that was made first. Since you're committed, though, I don't think that'll be necessary, so you may as well wait. The general opinion is to watch it between seasons 4 and 5, which is when it originally aired.
The movie "Thirdspace" is set in the middle of the fourth season (it's in the correct spot in the list I linked to). I'd just watch it where it goes chronologically but, again, some people insist it should go between season 4 and 5, where it originally aired. It's the Babylon 5 equivalent of those endless debates on when you should play "Razor" if you're showing someone Battlestar Galactica for the first time.
River of Souls goes between the second to last and last episodes of the series. Well, technically, because the last episode is a bit of a retrospective or coda, just about all the spinoffs go between the second to last and last episodes, as well. However, I'd watch Babylon 5 as a unit, finishing with the final episode, and then moving on to the spinoffs, rather than saving the finale to be the very last thing you see (which makes chronological sense).
Crusade begins with the movie "A Call to Arms" as a sort of pilot to it, and then moves into the series proper. Because of a lot of entertaining production issues, it is logically impossible to watch the episodes of Crusade in any order without there being some kind of continuity error. The list I linked to above has one that preserves continuity between characters and events, while ignoring a production redesign (primarily, new uniforms) that happened midway through the show. The only addendum I have to that is to simply not watch the episode "Warzone." At all. Because it sucks. It's probably the single most terrible thing to come out of the Babylon 5 franchise, and I'm taking that novel where Ivanova shaved her head into account.
Finally, Legends of the Rangers and The Lost Tales are both orphaned exercises in nostalgia that never went anywhere. They're kind of fun (Lost Tales is far and away the better of the two, in my opinion), but can safely be watched last.
