Another comparison somebody made about B5 recently was to Bradbury's
Martian Chronicles books; independent, but they add up at the end.

To follow up on your (Dianne's) other point...yes, from time to time,
as we push ourselves to the limit, we're going to crash and burn. That's
part of the risk if you really want to try and do something different. We
push the envelope...and sometimes get a papercut. I had, for instance,
MUCH more in mind for the EFX in the final confrontation in "The Long
Dark." But we were, alas, about this > < much ahead of the technology to
pull off what I wanted.

The pattern is, write an episode that goes a little further than the
last time. See if you can do it. Find which aspects of that worked, and
push it *again*. If we can do a stationary base and mine field with one
batch of ships in "Midnight," can we do a larger base and *two* competing
groups of ships (three if you count the shadows and centauri) in "Coming
of Shadows")?

As Paul Bryant says at Foundation, we try to ride the bleeding edge
of storytelling and technology. Or to quote an old SAS pin I own, "Who
Dares, Wins."

jms