The comparison is apt.

At the time, I was reminded of a guest lecture I was at in college, where Don Bellisario talked about the final season of Quantum Leap, and how he "sold out" with the Lee Harvery Oswald, Marylin Monroe & Elvis episodes.  "For me, it was simple math: I can give the network 4 episodes they want, and then do 18 that I…

I think a lot of the things Delenn does are far less "average Minbari" and more "doing every ritual to its fullest and most exacting".  Given her new status as half-human, pursuing a relationship with Sheridan, and such, she feels a need to turn her Minbari-ness up to 11, checking every ritual box she can check in…

"JMS is far too petty about things, sometimes"

My well-worn VHS copy of Long Twilight Struggle was my blatant B5 recruitment tool.  I actually carried it around in my satchel and said, "Hey, you want to see a cool space battle?" to hook people.

For me, the iconic image is less Delenn's silent scream, and more her and Lennier's shattered, stumbling walk out of the room of corpses.  That's the part that just kills me.

Curse you and your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

"I, uh, had it done.  Clint Eastwood style.  You see Outlaw Yosey Vales?  What a flick!"

I would so watch a show where a big-colony neo-urbanite doctor lives out in some quaint, charming space station trading post out of the way from all the hustle and bustle, and all the locals are super charming and clever in their quirky local-space-station-ness.  

It's all so Jack Bauer can say, "You will tell me who the mother is or I swear to God I WILL KILL YOU." 

"Dude, where'd she get a bloody tail?  I want a bloody tail.  Man, loopy Ukrainian chicks have ALL the luck."

@avclub-0ae7484a9f3bbd2a21df420050c032ae:disqus True.  "The Gathering" to be excepted, B5 largely avoided the "random background aliens" or inserting a new thing in that suddenly changed everything.  Largely.  (I would argue one of the main problems with LOTR is "the Hand" comes off as such an insert.)

In the book, the Miri-world, being an actual alt-Earth from another timeline, is studied under quarantine. It's also interdimensionally unstable, and slides back to its own timeline, and that timeline (where the Vulcans remain Enterprise-era like since there was no Archer to bring Surak's Katra about, or to stop the…

@avclub-0ae7484a9f3bbd2a21df420050c032ae:disqus More what Babylon 5 did was minimize that sort of random-one-of planet-of-hats races, especially ones who could pass for human if they wore a hoodie. 

I remember getting into with someone on-line a while ago, where he was basically complaining about everything the Sci-Fi Channel was doing at the time, and one of his top complaints was, "Play Crusade in the right order!"  To which I had to ask, "OK, what the hell IS the 'right order'?"

Is that the one where some random Ranger gets sad because he got beat up?

You'd think it would be more knife-like then.

Or her romance leader: "When two Minbari have become close as we have become close…"

One of the Department of Temporal Investigation Trek Novels addresses both quite directly.  (Short version: Miri-Earth is actually Earth from parallel timeline that fell into regular one; Omega Glory planet is not a duplicate Earth at all, but rather the result of utter contamination from an Archer-era captain who was…

I totally can.  Just he'd sort of hover around and make sure you ate them and praised them for being amazing sandwiches.