[MCSmarties]

😆 @ Pyro978: Right you are!
I guess I should explain why I am being so anal about this whole business.

See, I don’t like the B5 DVD box set. All episodes are shown in the order in which they were aired, which is the wrong chronogical order for many of them.

So what I have decided to do is rip all these DVDs to XViD, redo the menus, put all episodes in the chronological order (see the Lurker’s Guide) and burn them on a total of only SEVEN DVDs (one per season + bonus DVD).

I am also including all the made for TV movies chronologically. Most of them are easy, except for ItB!

Another reason why I like so much putting it during season III is that it spreads the movies out more evenly across the seasons,
allowing me to use a decent bitrate for the episode encoding:

Season I: The Gathering
Season III: In The Beginning
Season IV: Thirdspace
Season V: River of Souls
Crusade: Legend of the Rangers, A Call to Arms (but only 13 episodes)

[MCSmarties]

Thanks for the reply fluffy bunny. I assume the episode you are referring to is 4×09 (Atonement).

I have decided to check things a bit more closely and watched WWE1, WWE2, ItB and 4×09 again in sequence,
looking for spoilers and inconsistencies.
I found the following (highlight dark area to read, spoiler warning!)

WWE1 / WWE2:
I still think ItB fits exactly between these two episodes.
The absolutely ideal place would be to “insert” it after 7 min 50 seconds of WWE2. Why?

This is right after Delenn joins John in the prison cell and tells him about David.
The footage Londo watches at the end of ItB is exactly the same as in WWE2, e.g. John is *surprised* at being in the cell. This fits the time loop!

Londo looks in fact somewhat inebriated in ItB. I interpret this in that he is already weakening the influence of his keeper,
allowing him to tell the story (maybe for the joy of meeting children once more before his impending death?).
At the end of ItB he asks for a lot more alcohol – preparing to meet Delenn + Sheridan, set up their escape and commit suicide at the hands of G’Kar.
Note that ItB does NOT mention the keeper, leaving this a surprise.

4×09 “Atonement”:
After watching it again, I still think it should really be watched after ItB. Why?

Yes, ItB does “spoil” the fact that Delenn cast the deciding vote for the war.
But we have to accept one of these spoilers anyway!

For my part, I much prefer to watch ItB first as there are still new things to be discovered in 4×09, eg. that Delenn is a child of Valen! Watching ItB *after* watching 4×09 is much more boring, there is not any new information (specially since the fate of Sinclair was already revealed in WWE2 as well).
In fact, 4×09 comes as a neat surprise: the viewer thinks he knows what the Dreaming means – until Delenn realizes a very important part has been left out of ItB!

Finally, the Soul Hunters are absent from ItB. True, JMS has said that it was unfortunatem, due to time constraints, but one can interpret it now as Londo not knowing everything about what happened (he doesn’t know about the Minbari wall of bodies mentioned back in 1×02 “Soul Hunter”) whereas the Dreaming shows Delenn everything that happened.

In summary, I think that 4×09 spoils ItB much more than the other way around.

However, I don’t remember if there are any other episodes in Season IV that are affected by ItB. I don’t think so but I could be wrong…
For now, I still stick to my guns but am open for further discussion.

The only downside I find is that watching WWE1, ItB and WWE2 in sequence is rather tough… there’s a LOT of covered ground!

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