Hang in there for the first season, until Mr Morden turns up, then hang on again until the season finale.  Then, be prepared for a bit of treading water at the beginning of season 2, as Sheridan is introduced.  Then, it rages on through Season 4, with a couple of bumps in the road.  Season 5 is another that requires patience, for about the first third to a half.

I still don't believe that JMS got June Lockhart to due a guest appearance and didn't have Lenier in any scenes with her character.  They could have at least had Mumy play a security guard, out of make-up, to be an escort.  Still, I always imagined her talking to Lenier and saying that he reminded her of her son.

DS9 started out being episodic and fairly standard Trek plots, though in a static location. Most of the characters didn't grab me, at the start, nor the early stories. I missed the pilot of B5, until the last 5 minutes, when first broadcast; but, a commercial for the debut Season 1 episode looked great and I was there; but, I almost quit, early on, until the debut of Mr Morder and the Shadows. I wavered again, later (TKO and the young telepath episodes, but stayed for the end of it, which had me thoroughly hooked.

I liked Sinclair. I'm a formal naval officer and Sinclair was very much a ship's captain type of leader, which made him perfect for B5 command, though his personality didn't really fit a fighter pilot, based on my experiences. They tended to be more aggressive, with more Type A personalities. When Sheridan was introduced, he felt more like a fighter jock, yet he was the ship driver. I always felt they got the two backgrounds reversed.

Delenn's transformation was originally intended to be more startling. the pilot presented the Minbari as androgynous and Delenn would transform into an obvious female form; but, the androgynous look was one of the things that didn't work well, in the pilot, that led to a retooling, for the series. I thought it worked better, in series, since they refined the look of the make-up, and an androgynous race didn't make biological sense, unless they were asexual.

Season 4 has some pacing issues; but, I really like that one, overall, with just a couple of hiccups. Season 5 got hamstrung from the start. At first, it looked like they were not going to be renewed; so, they shot the final episode, to slot in. Then, they got the last minute renewal and they had truncated the Earth war (by about 2 episodes) to accommodate the final episode. So, they pulled it and did that future look season finale. Then, Season 5 didn't have the Earth war to lead off the season and had to kind of reset the pieces, before they could go into the planned Season 5 arc, with the telepaths and the Drahk. I do think the telepath war hit the floor like a turd, though the Drahk part was good; the whole lead up to the series finale, in fact.

JMS set out to upend expectations, by making you believe characters were one thing, then subverting that by making them more complex, having them make choices and then show the consequences of those choices. That was a rare thing for episodic tv. Londo is a sad clown because his world and empire have lost status and are in decline. this leads him to make his ill-conceived bargain with Morden, which sets him on a dark path. He attempts to pull back from the abyss at several points; but, his selfish goals always undo him, until the end. meanwhile, G'Kar is a fiery revolutionary, from an oppressed people, acting somewhat like abused children who have grown up to mistrust and hate. It takes an actual threat to his people to stop his power plays and face the reality that he needs to build alliances to save his people. then, he has a spiritual awakening that shows him his world is a pawn in a greater conflict and to save it, he must work towards the greater goal, with the others. Both characters were villain and sympathetic hero, depending on where they were in the arc or even the particular events of an episode. G'Kar got to be a bit of a hero when he saves Catherine Sakai, in Season 1, after several plots against Sinclair, Londo and the station, in general.

To me, the big difference between B5 and Trek was that B5 was conceived as a novel for television, with beginning, middle and end, while Trek was an anthology vehicle, to tell different stories, in an allegorical fashion. I also liked the fact that B5 demonstrated that advanced technology and exploration and expansion in space didn't solve the problems of the human condition; they just complicated them. prejudices came into space, poverty still existed, hunger for power and fear are still potent forces. However, it also demonstrated that people advance, socially; but it is a slow process. B5 was about striving for a better tomorrow, while trek was often about the contrast of the utopian Federation and the metaphorical civilizations encountered.

I've only ever watched the first two seasons of Babylon 5, but I think it's far superior to DS9 - for many of the reasons codystarbuck enumerated above. I liked that it had an overarching narrative running through the whole thing, and that even the need to replace the Sheridan character after the first season (due to Michael O'Hare's personal/health issues) didn't really muck anything up too seriously. The whole concept of big power politics playing out at the station was really well done.

DS9, on the other hand, really seemed to flail around for a good three seasons before they finally decided the only way to make a space station show interesting was to have the Federation go to war. I watched it all the way through, and there's a lot I like about it overall, but I'm often puzzled when I see people praising it as the best iteration of Star Trek. I found it pretty good overall, but seriously flawed, and - not counting Enterprise, which I pretty much hated - it's the Trek show that I least like to rewatch.

Guess I'm going against the grain here. DS9 is my favourite Trek series. It's not a perfect series — I have low tolerance for Klingons/Ferengi — but by embracing ongoing story and character arcs, I feel it did a better job realizing its potential than its predecessors had.

See, here's the thing about DS9; JMS pitched Babylon 5 to Paramount, who passed on it. It took him a while to sell it to Warner Bros for the pilot and series. By the time the pilot was ready, Paramount was launching DS9, about a space station, in neutral territory, after a bloody war, with a veteran commander, a security chief, a doctor and some belligerent aliens. Now, B5 was not a terribly original concept, as it borrowed from Casablanca, the Lensman Saga, WW2 history, The Demolished Man, the foundation Trilogy and other sci-fi. DS9 was covering similar ground. However, the timing of its release was always suspicious and JMS' pitch meeting took place before DS( was developed. Because of the similarities with other things and the various influences, no lawsuits were ever lodged (lest others come to claim their piece of the pie); but, it was a sticking point in the early B5 vs Trek fandom wars. One thing that is generally noted is that DS9 didn't adopt a story arc format until B5 was established successfully and DS9's ratings weren't at the levels they hoped.

Personally, I always felt that Paramount was looking to develop another Trek series, but weren't really coming together with a new concept, until JMS' pitch suggested they move away from a spaceship and g to a space station. Other than the setting, the two series were vastly different, though it is ironic that the ratings prompted them to give DS9 a ship and send them off the station more. Granted, B5 spent a lot of time in space, away from the ship, especially after they introduced the White Star. So, both sides were borrowing from each other, while also mining what had come before, in sci-fi and cinema.

I do think JMS novel (as in structure, not "unique") approach led to far better writing in the episodes, as they had a place to go, rather than an end of the episode reset. Even with story arcs, you don't have the same level of story evolution, as it progresses. DS9 did have the advantage, though, of a better distribution system and studio marketing. The early Warner Television Distribution was haphazard and left to its own devices, as was the series, itself. JMS had to go make book and comic book deals on his own, rather than Warner taking advantage of its other divisions. JMS described Warner as a series of fiefdoms, often competing against each other, which ios part of why DC's properties were so diverse in approach. They were optioned by independent production companies, with Warner maintaining the film distribution, while Marvel had optioned whatever they could, to whomever they could, until launching the MCU with the characters that weren't under option elsewhere. Dc's approach seemed sounder, until Marvel demonstrated they could do a shared universe of film franchise, in one super-franchise, leading to the scrambling from warner, with the DC properties. Paramount also gave DS9 way bigger budgets than B5 had, though I think that was to B5's advantage, as they thought outside traditional tv sci-fi, in terms of sets, costuming and pioneering the use of digital filmmaking techniques. B5 used a lot of theatrical costuming people, who were used to working on a tight budget and were very creative. The costumes always seemed more lush and had wider color tones (though they definitely favored muted tones) and fabrics. They did a lot of modular set building, which allowed them greater flexibility to repurpose existing sets and not have to build new, while using the computers to flesh out the environments. Paramount lagged a big on the digital revolution, with Next Gen and DS9, but took greater advantage of it, in Voyager.

When it comes to Trek, I find I prefer the work of the real architects of the original, Gene Coon and people like DC Fontana and David Gerrold, for which Gene Rodenberry took credit. Next Gen didn't really work for me, until Roddenberry was less of an influence, in later seasons, but still had too great a tendency to depend on techno-babble to save the day and a lot of political correctness that felt limiting. DS9 didn't seem to be as hamstrung by that, but I just never really warmed to it, especially since B5 was really capturing my imagination and appreciation. I liked its dirtier and more realistic approach to man's progress, in 300 years, compared to the Trek world. I found B5 more relatable, especially after my experiences in the military, during the first Gulf War period. It felt truer, to my experiences, and wove in more culture, like commerce, entertainment, religion, and even sports. The Trek tv shows always seemed to avoid that, except in an allegorical fashion. The movies did more in that realm, likely due to better budgets, comparatively.

CW?   Ugh.    I'll try not to pre-judge, and I get from a marketing standpoint why they'd do a reboot and not just a new story, but Ugh.