Revisiting Babylon 5

Like Star Trek the Original Series I had watched a lot of Babylon 5 in reruns (on TNT and maybe Sci-Fi) but I'd never gotten the chance to actually watch the whole thing from start-to-finish.  To my knowledge it wasn't on Netflix or Hulu or even some other ones on my Roku to stream.  I heard last year or so it was on some weird service called GO90 that also had some Transformers shorts, but I never got around to looking for it.  Then it went under, I guess so then finally Babylon 5 was on Amazon Prime so in July I finally watched all 5 seasons in order.

Probably the thing that always worked against Babylon 5 is Star Trek Deep Space Nine came out around the same time--maybe about a year earlier--and they had a similar premise focusing on a space station.  And the stories wound up largely going the same way with an epic war.

There were of course some differences.  The universe of Babylon 5 is a lot grittier than the Star Trek universe.  Everyone still uses money.  There are homeless on the station in the "down below."  Characters have problems like alcoholism and drug addiction; they aren't the squeaky clean Federation officers.  The humans at least don't have artificial gravity and no one really has shields.  Instead of "warp drive" they use "jump gates" to traverse hyperspace from one point to another.  Part of this difference I would suggest is the involvement of Harlan Ellison as a "conceptual consultant;" Ellison was not a big fan of Gene Roddenberry and thus I'm sure he wanted the Babylon 5 universe as non-Trek as possible.  In that sense it is probably a lot more familiar to our 21st Century notions than DS9's 24th Century with the Federation where everyone gets along in peace and harmony.

Unlike DS9, which starts with the station being taken over by the Federation and Bajorans from the Cardassians, Babylon 5 just kind of throws you right into it.  The station has already been operating under Commander Jeffrey Sinclair.  As the somewhat overbearing intro explains, the Babylon Project was an attempt by humans to create a nexus point for all the known races of the galaxy for trade and political negotiation.  There were 4 other stations but 3 were sabotaged and the fourth mysteriously disappeared--which is the subject of three episodes, one in the first season and two in the third season.

The Earth Alliance (Earth and its colonies, no alien races) operate the station but there are representatives from other worlds.  The main races are the Minbari, who are sort of like Vulcans in that they're more dispassionate and philosophical only they have weird bone things wrapping around their heads that look like an HR Geiger sculpture; the Centauri are very human-like but the males have their hair standing up in fan shapes while the women are bald and in one episode its suggested they have sort of tentacles hidden inside that are sex appendages; the Narn are brown and spotted and more reptilian and like the Bajorans were occupied by the Cardiassians, the Narn were occupied by the Centauri before repelling them; and the Vorlon are a mysterious race that go around in "encounter suits" to contain their living energy.

Most of the first season is just a grab bag of episodes with different problems facing the station like an alien couple that refuses treatment for their child and a strike by the dock workers.  There's some set up for the future with mention of the Shadows and the episode about Babylon 4's disappearance.  That season more than any other has episodes from a variety of writers like original Trek writer DC Fontana, Trek novelist Peter David, and Beast Wars writer/story editor Lawrence DiTillio--who was also the story editor for the first two seasons of B5.  Really after that first season most of the episodes are credited to series creator J Michael Straczynski.

The first season especially was one I don't think I'd watched as much of in reruns.  I always thought the departure of Sinclair was handled a little more smoothly, but it wasn't.  Season 2 starts with an announcement that Sinclair has been abruptly transferred to Minbar as an ambassador.  At the end of the first season he proposed to his girlfriend but she was never seen or heard from again--maybe she joined Richie Cunningham's brother and that middle child from Family Matters in the TV Character Witness Relocation Program.

Anyway, season 2 introduces Captain John Sheridan as the new commander of the station.  He was played by Bruce Boxleitner, who you might remember from the 80s series Scarecrow and Mrs. King.  (He was the Scarecrow, obviously.)  That season starts to ramp things up as the Centauri ally themselves with the Shadows and take over the Narn homeworld.  There's a brutal scene where Centauri ambassador Londo has Narn ambassador G'Kar banished from the council meeting because he's no longer an ambassador since his planet surrendered.  Up to that point the two ambassadors had been sorta frenemies so that was really a turning point.

Season 3 slowly builds up the war against the Shadows.  At the same time as the Centauri with their Shadow allies are running roughshod across the galaxy, the Shadows are also making a play for Earth.  The Earth president is killed in an explosion that's ruled an accident, but eventually information is uncovered that the ship he was on was sabotaged so that the vice-president could take over.  When the evidence is leaked and an investigation begins, the president declares martial law and basically sets himself up as Dictator for Life.  As the new president turns the main TV network into a propaganda network that even Fox "News" would think goes too far; creates a government agency to dispense "alternative facts;" and sets up a secret police force, it's not too hard to see how our own shady president might act should the Mueller investigation get too hot for him.

During the third season Captain Sheridan declares Babylon 5 to be an independent state and with help from the Minbari manage to fight off Earth forces to keep it free.  It then becomes the focal point for gathering resistance to the Shadows.

At the end of the season Sheridan is lured to the Shadow homeworld of Za-ha-Dum (Za-ha-doom) by the wife he thought died on an expedition to the planet.  (She was played by Bruce Boxleitner's real wife--at least at the time--Melissa Gilbert.  It's funny that in the episode they actually reshot a message she had sent to him before leaving on the trip.  In a second season episode where the message was first shown there was a different actress--probably someone they got on the cheap--but the third season episode they replaced her with Melissa Gilbert; kind of a George Lucas deal there.)  Sheridan turns down their offer and instead crashes a ship loaded with nuclear bombs into the planet, obliterating the Shadow base.  As the ship comes down Sheridan presumably jumps to his death.

The fourth season begins with the search for Sheridan.  While no one from the station can find him, he's brought home by an ancient alien named Lorien who was living on the planet.  Then the war goes into full swing, though it ends after about 6 episodes in a fairly anti-climactic way.  Basically the Shadows and Vorlons and other "First Ones," or the oldest races around, decide to pack up their shit and leave the galaxy when they're brought together by the oldest of the old, Lorien.

Then the season turns its focus on liberating Earth from the evil president.  Sheridan begins gathering Earth Alliance forces willing to turn on the president along with the Rangers, a group of humans and Minbari trained to fight the Shadows.  Meanwhile undercover agents work on helping to free Mars from Earth control.

The season ends with Earth being freed and Sheridan forming a new Interstellar Alliance--basically a Federation.  Sheridan is elected the president of the new Alliance, which for the immediate future is based on Babylon 5.

It seems watching the end of that season that they weren't really sure they were going to have a fifth season.  Everything is pretty much wrapped up.  The last episode of that season sort of echoes that old song "2525" that went "In the year 2525, if Man is still alive..." and then each verse would be a different year like 3535, 5555, and so on.  Only in this case it goes from 2262 to 2362 to 2762 to 3262 to a million years in the future where basically humans have evolved into Vorlons.

Maybe that's why the fifth season just seems so slow and dull.  With Sheridan as the Alliance president, a new commanding officer of the station is brought on.  But after the epic Shadow War and human civil war, going back to more minor crises like with "rogue telepaths" and a dust-up with the Centauri was just kind of disappointing.  By the end of the season the only one left on the station from the first season is Vir the assistant Centauri ambassador--now full ambassador.  There were more goodbyes in the last half-dozen episodes than Return of the King.

The final episode is sort of an epilogue set 20 years in the future, when Sheridan is set to die.  That's not really a spoiler as in the 4th season it was established that after he was brought back from the dead on the Shadows homeworld he would only live 20 years.  So he says goodbye to all his old friends and then goes to Babylon 5, which like him is also being shut down.  Finally he's taken "home" by the First Ones.  The station is blown up in a scene that's heart-wrenching after you've watched the rest of the series.

While you can nitpick about the effects and stuff not being that great--even by 90s standards--it was still a great show for the most part.  It's kind of ironic that with Enterprise and Discovery Star Trek has been trying to become grittier, becoming more like Babylon 5.

There was a follow-up series called Crusade made for TNT but it only lasted 13 episodes.  The premise of that was the Shadow allies the Drahk unleash a disease on Earth that will kill the planet in 5 years.  A human ship called the Excalibur is sent to look for a cure.  It was an interesting show but didn't really have time to gel the way the other series did.  Interestingly the premise is pretty much the same one ABC used later for The Last Ship, only that involved a US military ship on the high seas, not in space.

Something else interesting is there are actually a lot of Star Trek-Babylon 5 connections.  Besides writers Harlan Ellison and DC Fontana involved, I mentioned Trek novelist Peter David wrote an episode.  Original Chekov actor Walter Koenig was a frequent guest star as the evil telepath Bester.  David Warner, who was in Star Trek V/VI and the Next Generation episode where Picard is tortured by the Cardassians, guest starred as a guy searching for the Holy Grail.  Worf's father guest stars as a rabbi in a first season episode.  Some episodes were directed by Mike Vejar, who also worked on the Trek shows of the time, and Leonard Nimoy's son Adam.  Even Gene Roddenberry's wife Majel Barrett appears in one episode as a Centauri noblewoman.

Some more pop culture connections:  Neil Gaiman wrote a fifth season episode where one alien race has a "Day of the Dead" and crew on part of the station are visited by ghosts.  In that same episode magic/comedy duo Penn & Teller play a comedy duo called Rebo & Zooty.  The guy who played Basil in the Austin Powers movies plays a guy who thinks he's King Arthur, which was weird because he was also in the adaptation of Shatner's TekLab that features a lot of Arthurian legend stuff.  The cast of B5 included Bill Mumy, who was in the original Twilight Zone as the kid who wishes people into the cornfield (and another episode or two), and Steven Furst, who was the fat nerd in Animal House, directed by John Landis, who directed part of the Twilight Zone movie that I think Bill Mumy appeared in.  In one of the episodes leading up to the climactic battle with the Shadows, a then-mostly-unknown Bryan Cranston played the captain of a Rangers ship that sacrificed itself to lure the Shadows into a trap.  Since Babylon 5 ended, J Michael Straczynski has had runs on iconic comic books like Spider-Man and Superman.

While Star Trek shows pretty much have the same credits every season with slight variances, Babylon 5 had a new credits sequence every season with a different theme song.  I actually liked the 3rd season theme best.

This I think is a compilation of the different seasons:

I'm sure there are plenty of nerd debates about which is better:  Babylon 5 or Deep Space Nine.  But really, can't we like them both?  They are both really good shows.  Now if you've seen both shows, here are some questions to answer:

• Who's your captain:  Sisko or Sheridan?
• Who's your tough-as-nails second:  Kira or Ivanova?
• Which is your ship:  The Defiant or the White Stars?
• Which is your smaller ship:  Runabout or Starfury?
• Who's your security chief:  Odo or Garibaldi?
• Who's your alien hottie:  Dax or Delenn?
• Who's your doctor:  Bashir or Franklin?
• Who's your blue collar hero:  Chief O'Brien or Zack Allan?
• Who's your alien comic relief:  Quark or Vir?
• Who's your know-it-all aliens:  Wormhole aliens or Vorlons?

You can answer in the comments or just answer to yourself.  Or more likely say you haven't seen one or both shows.

Here, I'll go first and answer:

1. Sisko
2. Ivanova
3. Defiant
4. Starfury
5. Garibaldi
6. Dax
7. Franklin
8. O'Brien
9. Quark
10. Vorlons

That's not so hard, is it?

(Finally, here's a little joke for you:  if you think about it, "Minbari" is an anagram of "Minibar."  So I bet J Michael Straczynski was in a hotel when he was working on the script.  What would be a good name for these aliens?...[look around hotel room] minibar!  No, wait, Minbari!  Eureka!)

Told you it was a little joke.