Oh come on don't tell me you didn't at least enjoy the tests done by JAXA? The traitor one was really interesting.
Five hours is more than enough. Five hours is enough time for the writers to take a genre, deconstruct it, salt the earth, collect all the pieces in one place and build a bonfire, dance around the flames thrice widdershins while invoking ancient and mysterious rites, take off and nuke the site from orbit (just to be sure)... and finally, on the site of the wreck, rebuild it all again more beautiful than it had ever been, in the process winning every award in the book and forever altering the future of the genre.
But then, maybe I've just been utterly spoiled by Puella Magi Madoka Magica (12 episodes, 300m). :b