Could you appraise the science in Babylon 5 the science fiction series?

Apart from being one of the best science fiction programs ever written for TV, I have some random thoughts about the 'science' content. First of all, as a scientist I find the 'science' irrelevant to enjoying the program. Mike Straczynski paints a wonderful, exotic story with find characterizations, and an epical story line with many fantastic and awe inspiring diversions and mysteries woven in. There is nothing I have seen about Terran technology that isn't technically plausible. Brute force still works for propulsion using, presumably, nuclear engines. They get artificial gravity the only way we know how to do it, by rotating parts of the ship. The only weapons they show are PPGs and various 'beam' weapons, which look harmless in terms of their compliance with known science. As for the aliens, their space ships seem to use antigravity fields of some kind ( Minbari, Centauri etc) which is highly suspect physics, but it conveys the idea that alien technology is well in advance of ours. Their beam weapons also don't seem to be a problem. The Centauri's don't seem to have much in the way of magical tricks up their sheaves. But the Minbari, during the first year, had 'magic rings' that could enable the wearer to exert great force at a distance, but without burning up the wearer. Delen's rings were only shown once in the series opener, and never used again in the rest of the series.So, among the 'younger' races, the technology seems to be unremarkable, just packaged in more and more sophisticated ways beyond the conventional 'laser' and 'particle' beam devices we have today. It's when we get to the older races that true magic begins to take over.

The Vorlon's organic technology....jump gates....3-d image projectors used by the Epsilon-3 machine seem to be intriguing, but major stretches of known physical science. But, hey, the older races are a million years ahead of us, so i am more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I sure hope that the universe is this 'rich' in clever new things we can attempt to do. It looks like we have run out of all the easy stuff already.

By the way, did you ever stop to think just how expensive the spaceships are to manufacture? How much do you think an 'Agamemnon', a 'White Star', or a 'Minbari Destroyer' costs to build? If you answer $100 billion, you are probably off by a factor of 10! That puts the cost of building just one of these ships equal to a significant fraction ofthe Gross National Product of our planet in one year!!!

There is far less objectionable science in Babylon 5 than in Star Trec, which goes to show you that the quality of the story line does count for something and that science/technology are only means to an end. You don't need people exchanging Engineering Jargon to make a point. All you need is some mysterious coloration ( jumpgates) and understated references ( people using things but not mentioning how they work). One of my favorite Season 5 episodes was when Babylon 5 was under attack and the two janitors were in a hall pushing some device along the floor and saying 'Do you know what this thing is supposed to do?' and the other one said 'No, they just told me to move it back and forth like this...'