Oi!
Now that my professional obligations are discharged...
It had its moments. The cast was superb, the concept of the five-year pre-planned story arc was novel in terms of weekly SF shows, the graphics were ahead of their time and the writing sparkled in places. Sure, it had its low moments, but everything does. What it could really have used was a bigger budget and some actual support and promotion from the network.
That said...
If my first exposure to B5 had been The Gathering, I probably never would have gotten into it. The series really got off to a bad start, but it recovered magnificently, peaking in Season 3 and maintaining that momentum into Season 4. Season 5, however, had nowhere to go but down. Large stretches of it are unwatchable, especially that interminable telepath arc. IT managed to go out with a bang, though.
I recently watched Legend of the Rangers, and I remember thinking "I liked this a lot better when it was called Journey to Babel/Thirdspace/the Shadow War." At lot of plot elements are recycled from earlier episodes, something I was critical of on Voyager and Enterprise. Could it be that JMS is finally starting to repeat himself?
Addressing the actual topic of the thread...B5 raised the bar, just like the original Star Trek did. Where before TV SF had to move beyond bad writing, bad special effects and alien-monster-of-the-week, it now has to move beyond hot alien babes, spectacular explosions and a rubber-forehead-of-the-week.
And that's the best you're gonna get at 11:30 PM.