Warner Bros. is releasing the classic 1990s science-fiction series Babylon 5 for free, episode by episode, on YouTube, prompting an Engadget writer to argue the show deserves far more attention than it typically gets. Made on a comparatively tiny budget, the series is praised for pioneering the "novel-for-television" storytelling model, in which early instalments quietly set up a much larger, satisfying overarching narrative, an approach later adopted by shows like Lost and Game of Thrones.

Created by J. Michael Straczynski, Babylon 5 ran from 1993 for five seasons and 110 episodes, plus a pilot and several TV movies, on the PTEN network. The article highlights the show's strong character development, its pioneering but now dated use of CGI, and its prescient political themes involving an increasingly authoritarian Earth government, while also speculating that the free YouTube release may partly serve as a tax write-off for Warner Bros.