I got into a sci-fi craze. Specifically, the type of science fiction where humans have met other space faring races and are attempting to keep peace in the universe. Generally this involves a tentative council between a few “Superior” races, which the humans are counted as, and a bunch of lesser races under the council’s protection, and then some outlying races that reside in the terminus, or dark space, or over-all outside the majority of the galaxy. This can also include a fear of something great and mysterious, nearly God-like, beyond. I was watching Star Trek (The Next Generation, and Enterprise, with plans to watch Deep Space Nine), while also playing Mass Effect 1 and 2 (I am currently on the 3rd one). I also had a list of books I was, or still am, going to read that deal with these subjects as well when an awesome friend decided to loan me the Babylon 5 series.
Babylon 5 is a perfect example of this archetype of science fiction. Babylon 5 started in 1994, 1 year after Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and aired for 5 seasons, along with multiple movies and a few short live spin-offs. Babylon 5 is, as stated at the beginning of nearly every episode:
It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the Earth/Minbari war. The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last best hope for peace. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5.
Basically, Babylon 5 is the hub of commerce and diplomacy between all the races. Five races sit on a council, as well as a bunch of races in the “League of Non-Aligned Worlds.” The five races are pretty stereotypical. Humans are the youngest of the races, but they’ve shown to be both powerful as well as the most diplomatic; the Minbari, which I would compare to Vulcans from Star Trek or Asari from Mass Effect, in that the Minbari are incredibly intelligent and pragmatic, yet have a strong sense of faith; the Narn is an aggressive, and monstrous in appearance race, but not savages as they have a strong warrior honor code (Klingons or Krogans); the Centauri are an imperialistic and dominating society that dress like they are from the 18th century (Kardashians is the race most akin that comes to my mind easily from the Star Trek universe, and Turians from Mass Effect); and then the Vorlons, which are such a mysterious race that they constantly wear environmental suits (which just look sweet) so that no-one can see what they look like (Quarians from Mass Effect, albeit the godlike presence of the Q of Star Trek is a much better example).
Being Stereotypical isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It makes the races easily processable and allows you to get into the storylines quicker. A fantasy novel that uses elves, dwarves, and orcs is going to be much more easily accepted if it follows its High Fantasy predecessors like Tolkein’s Middle-Earth or Gary Gygax’s Greyhawk. If you start a fantasy novel where elves are these huge savages that live in mountains, dwarves or tree loving hippies who are great with magic, and the common orc is an articulate orator, your reader is going to have to jump over the hurdles of you challenging their pre-existing world, or they will outright reject you. Now if you have elves as the intelligent, but pragmatic tree loving race, orcs as the (possibly honorable) savages, and dwarves as imperialistic miners (there is no coincidence that the major races of High Fantasy have a lot akin to their science fiction counterparts, and even Warhammer 40k specifically designed their races as evolutions of their fantasy counterparts), the reader is going to feel right at home, and then you can start making changes. It’s really the small touches you gave your world that gives the world its unique flavor.
A good change is something that is expected but rarely shown. The Star Trek universe feels relatively peaceful when it comes to the major races, along with Mass Effect and many other shows and books much the same. There might be incursions, there might be even some wars, but over all everything is so removed it is of minor impact to the universe. The Babylon 5 universe is far from that. It is fraught with war, and during the series one of the major races nearly commits genocide on another of the major races. In fact, a good deal of the show is about the constant struggle to keeping the races even on speaking terms, let alone peaceful with each other.
Something great about the show is that it was almost entirely written by J. Michael Straczynski. Depending on where you read, he either wrote the majority of it all at once, or at the least had a clear idea of where things were going from the very beginning. The show is a serial drama, in that very few episodes are not part of the overlying storyline, and much like Battlestar Galactica, missing a single episode might mean you no longer understand what’s going on with the show. A serial drama, all written by one individual, means that there aren’t any random character or story line changes (or if there is, it was planned and you’ll see where the strings came from by the end). This one flowing storyline is what made this show a gem to me. In a sea of episodic sci-fi shows, this one stood out by following a single storyline.
It started out rough for me, though. The first set of episodes feel episodic, and almost unrelated. We’re introduced to a variety of characters, aliens, the creators concept of psychics, and these episodes seem to only be connected by the Babylon 5 space station. In a way, its a great introduction to the world, if you can bare it. Those episodes are not just random spatterings, but they all really set the stage for major future events. Once you get beyond the seemingly inconsequential episodes, you get into an interesting storyline of prophecy, puppets, war between races, internal strife of the races, all occurring while an attempt is made to save the universe from total annihilation.
From this point on, I’m going to start spoiling the show. And I’m going to start by spoiling the major plot line first. So if you have any interest in watching this shows five full seasons, stop reading now.
The show’s overarching storyline is a war between two ancient races, the Vorlons and the Shadows. The two races are, even visually depicted, as angels versus demons, and the two sides are vying for the galactic races to choose a side. One represents order, the other represents chaos or corruption. The Shadows have a great deal of influence corrupting both the human government as well as the Centauri race, while the Vorlons have a great deal more firepower, and have won over the Minbari, as well as the Babylon 5 station and their assets. The war between the Shadows and the Vorlons plays out as so many other angel wars have in both biblical and fantasy novels: the angels attempt to save the races from corruption, and when that fails they move to purge the universe to start clean. And as usual, those being purged all unite together, and gather epic weapons, in this case other ancient god-like races, and manage to beat back the two warring factions.
I skip over it as generic, because again, its the details that make it interesting. We get to watch the characters grow throughout the show. We understand the Narn and Centauri aggression, and we understand why Ambassador Mollari decides to take the shadows offer. We see why he can’t back out, even when his Centauri Empire is getting ready to destroy the Narn homeworld. G’kar, the Narn ambassador, after losing his homeworld, goes through his own change, including finding religion. It’s all these personal touches to the characters that make this story interesting.
I also liked that the show didn’t just climax with the large war, and end there, but that it went into the aftermath. The Vorlons and Shadows are dealt with, but they still had left corruption in two governments, and there were other races willing to try to take advantage of the whole situation. No war is simply just won without fall out, and the show gets into that. Unfortunately, it is all action after the climax, which makes it a little more boring, but the show does try to keep it up. A Civil War is never as interesting as the entire universe being threatened.
Yet the problem I had with the finale is it focussed on the psi-core. Its not how the story was told, although Garibaldi being brainwashed to randomly turn insane was kind of annoying, but something even more basic. I don’t really like Telepaths in my science fiction, or at least not when its a genetic mutation. Sometimes I’m willing to accept psychics if its a mechanical thing, or just an intra-race thing, but when its just walk into a room and know anything... that’s fantasy to me. Beyond that though, its a power that is incredibly powerful, and in a way lessens what other characters actually are capable of. The large majority of the ending dealt with these psi-core, and thus psychics. Now, the storyline itself was interesting. The telepaths were created as weapons against the Shadows by the Vorlons, and given to every race. But their power automatically makes them disliked by the majority of people. Now we have three factions, telepaths who want to fit in, telepaths who believe they are Homo Superiorus and want to take over the human race, and telepaths who just want all the telepaths of all races to be given a homeworld so they can live alone. This battle between them is definitely intriguing, and kept me interested in its own regard, but for the over-all plot I felt that there was enough in the world of science fiction that something else could have been used. At least they dumped the “Techno-mages,” which while I’ve read some awesome books about, those were Sci-Fantasy.
The show had a few made for TV movies, and spin offs as well. Two of the movies, Third Space (1998) and The River of Souls (1998) were movies that were completely disconnected from the plot line. If the show had been episodic, it is possible these movies could have been fun... but the only connection they had was the characters that were used. Third Space was referenced in the show, but unfortunately the movie itself countered some of the pre-existing knowledge of the universe (who the ancient and eldest races were). It also helped explain their version of space travel (hyper-space). The River of Souls expands the storyline of the “Soul Harvesters” and made them sound less like collecting souls, and more like collecting a person’s memories. It also included Martin Sheen’s worst performance as an actor, ever. The other movies were related to the show. The Gathering started off the entire show, and I wish I had watched it first as it would have helped ease me into the show as compared to the seemingly random first episodes. The rest of the TV Movies were much more interesting than the first two as they took directly from the main story, and just extended it. They weren’t necessary to enjoy the show though, unlike The Gathering. The Spin-offs were attempt to create an entirely new story arch. Unfortunately, it focussed a lot on the Technomages, which is much more beyond fantasy than even telepaths. The show had a good cast, a good introduction, and could have been fun, but it did not interest me. Seeing as it didn’t even have a full season, it appears it didn’t catch on to well at all.
Overall I really liked the show. It was awesome to watch a single continuous story be told, without a network or other writers getting in the way (*cough LOST cough*). The writer was great at developing characters, and had a good sense of the communities of races. While the show was very stereotypical in the over-arching story as well as the universe, it also really showed that its the journey that matters and not the destination. If you love these space-council shows that focus as much on the drama and politics as it does action, and you don’t mind a mid-budget 90s show, this should be on your “must watch” list. If you just really like science fiction, the show is 5 seasons long with multiple movies...it is a definite time investment, and as its not on Netflix or other streaming websites that I know of, it’ll be hard to acquire or a large financial investment . You’ll enjoy it, you’ll be glad you watched it, you’ll miss the characters when they are gone, but it isn’t a must watch sci-fi show like Battlestar Galactica. I’d even recommend it, and it if you live in my area, I’ll grab a bag of popcorn and watch some episodes alongside you... but you won’t be seeing me buy it, either. It also, unfortunately, didn’t have any nerdy quotes that I feel the need to randomly blurt out just to check to see who in the room is awesome,, such as Battlestar Galactica’s “So Say We All,” Star Trek’s “Make it So,” Mass Effect’s “I will destroy you!” (I’m determined to make that a thing), or Serenity’s “Shiny.” That’s not to say it doesn’t have some amazing quotes (For serious, “We are star stuff. We are the universe made manifest trying to figure itself out.” from Delenn, and more silly “Everyone around me dies, Mr. Morden, except those who most deserve it. “ from Mollari), but that not watching the show isn’t going to hurt your street-cred. Enjoyable, fun, intriguing, a growing experience, but not a necessary watch.
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