Babylon 5
For the eponymous fictional space station, see Babylon 5 (space station).
Babylon 5 is an American science fiction television series created, produced and largely written by J. The show centers on the Babylon 5 space station: a focal point for politics, diplomacy, and conflict during the years 2257-2262.
With its prominent use of pre-planned story arcs, the series was often described as a "novel for television."
The pilot film premiered on February 22, 1993. The regular series aired from January 26, 1994 and ran for five full seasons, winning two Hugos for Best Dramatic Presentation and two Emmy awards - for makeup and visual effects. The show spawned six television films and a spin-off series, Crusade, which aired in 1999 and ran for thirteen episodes.
On July 31, 2007, a DVD was released containing two short films about selected characters from the series.
Concept
Having worked on a number of television science fiction shows which had regularly gone over-budget, creator J. Michael Straczynski concluded that a lack of long-term planning was to blame, and set about looking at ways in which a series could be done responsibly.
Taking note of the lessons of mainstream television, which brought stories to a centralised location such as a hospital, police station, or law office, he decided that instead of " in search of new worlds, building them anew each week," a fixed space station setting would keep costs at a reasonable level. A fan of sagas such as the Foundation series, Childhood's End, The Lord of the Rings, and Dune, Straczynski wondered why no one had done a television series with the same epic sweep, and concurrently with the first idea started developing the concept for a vastly-ambitious epic covering massive battles and other universe-changing events.
Realizing that both could be done in a single series, he began to sketch the initial outline of what would become Babylon 5.
Straczynski set five goals for Babylon 5. He said that the show "would have to be good science fiction" as well as good television ("rarely are shows both good and good TV; generally one or the other"); it would have to do for science fiction television what Hill Street Blues had done for police dramas, by taking an adult approach to the subject; it would have to be reasonably budgeted, and "it would have to look unlike anything ever seen before on TV, presenting individual stories against a much broader canvas." He further stressed that his approach was "to take seriously, to build characters for grown-ups, to incorporate real science but keep the characters at the center of the story." Some of the staples of television science fiction were also out of the question (the show would have "no kids or cute robots").
The idea was not to present a perfect utopian future, but one with greed and homelessness; one where characters grow, develop, live, and die; one where not everything was the same at the end of the day's events. Citing Mark Twain as an influence, Straczynski said he wanted the show to be a mirror to the real world and to covertly teach.
Production
Format
Described as a "window on the future" by series production designer John Iacovelli, the story is set in the 23rd century on a large space station named "Babylon 5"—a five-mile-long, 2.5 million-ton rotating colony designed as a gathering place for the sentient species of the galaxy, in order to foster peace through diplomacy, trade, and cooperation.
Unlike most television shows at the time, Babylon 5 was conceived as a "novel for television", with a defined beginning, middle, and end; in essence, each episode would be a single "chapter" of this "novel". Many of the tie-in novels, comic books, and short stories were also developed to play a significant canonical part in the overall story.
The cost of the series totalled around $90 million for 110 episodes.
Writing
Creator and showrunner J.
He also scripted all 44 episodes in the third and fourth seasons; according to Straczynski, a feat never before accomplished in American television. Other writers to have contributed scripts to the show include Peter David, Neil Gaiman, Kathryn M. Harlan Ellison, a creative consultant on the show, received story credits for two episodes. Each writer was informed of the over-arching storyline, enabling the show to be produced consistently under-budget.
The rules of production were strict; scripts were written six episodes in advance, and changes could not be made once production had started.
Though conceived as a whole, it was necessary to adjust the plotline to accommodate external influences. That was one of the big risks going into a long-term storyline which I considered long in advance." The character of Talia Winters was to have undergone a transformation into a Psi-Corps secret agent, having been revealed as a "sleeper," whose true personality was buried subconsciously, and who acted as a spy, observing the events on the station and the actions of her command staff. When Winters's portrayer Andrea Thompson left the series, this revelation was used to drop the character from the series.
Ratings for Babylon 5 continued to rise during the show's third season, but going into the fourth season, the impending demise of network PTEN left a fifth year in doubt.
Unable to get word one way or the other from parent company Warner Bros., and unwilling to short-change the story and the fans, Straczynski began preparing modifications to the fourth season in order to allow for both eventualities. Straczynski identified three primary plot-threads which would require resolution: the Shadow war, Earth's slide into a dictatorship, and a series of sub-threads which branched off from those.
Estimating they would still take around 27 episodes to resolve without having the season feel rushed, the solution came when the TNT network commissioned two Babylon 5 made-for-television films. The station was described as "a combination of building the United Nations and Times Square on an intergalactic scale" by actor Bruce Boxleitner.
The Babylon 5 space station is a modified version of an O'Neill Cylinder, rotating to provide artificial gravity.
The center of the cylinder is a hollowed-out circular section, between a half and one-mile across, and includes fields, hydroponic gardens, and a transport tube which runs from one end of the station to the other. Backdrop: The League of Non-Aligned Worlds.
At the beginning of the series, five dominant civilizations are represented.
The dominant species are the Humans, Minbari, Narn, Centauri, and the Vorlons. "The Shadows" and their various allies are malevolent species who appear later in the series.
Several dozen less powerful races form the League of Non-Aligned Worlds appear, including the Drazi, Brakiri, Vree, Markab, and pak'ma'ra.
While the original pilot film featured some aliens which were puppets and animatronics, the decision was made early on in the show's production to portray most alien species as humanoid in appearance. Barring isolated appearances, fully computer-generated aliens were discounted as an idea due to the "massive rendering power" required.
Long-term use of puppets and animatronics was also discounted due to the technological limitations in providing convincing interaction with the human actors ("if you want any real emotion from the character, you're going to have to have an actor inside.")
Languages
There are three primary languages used on the Babylon 5 station: English, as well as the fictional Centauri and Interlac. English is mentioned explicitly as the "human language of commerce," and is the baseline language of the station (written signs appearing in all three languages). Other human and alien languages do exist in the Babylon 5 universe, though hearing them spoken is uncommon; when aliens of the same species are speaking to one another, the words heard are English, though it is presumed they are speaking their native tongue. Only when in the presence of humans can the alien language be heard, to stress that the humans cannot understand what is being said. With the exception of the Minbari tongue, few other alien languages are actually heard aloud on a regular basis.
The Gaim, pak'ma'ra, and Vorlons do not speak directly in English; in the case of the pak'ma'ra, either because they refuse to learn any language other than their own, or because they are incapable of making human sounds. Members of these races instead make use of real-time translation devices.
The principal human characters speak with an American English accent, with the exception of Marcus Cole, who speaks with a distinct British accent.
Susan Ivanova, born in Russia, speaks with an American accent, as her character was raised and schooled outside Russia. Her father speaks with a distinct Russian accent, as does her brother. Ambassadors Delenn and Londo Mollari, both alien characters, speak with distinct accents similar to Slavic.
Delenn speaks with actress Mira Furlan's normal Croatian accent; most other Minbari have native-speaker accents for English (e.g. The station's location, in "grid epsilon" at coordinates of 470/18/22, was a reference to GEnie ("grid epsilon" = "GE") and the original forum's address on the system's bulletin boards.
Figures dipped in its second week, and while it posted a solid 5.0 rating/8 share, with an increase in several major markets, ratings for the first season continued to fall, to a low of 3.4 during reruns, and then increasing again when new episodes were broadcast in July. Ratings continued to remain low-to-middling throughout the first four seasons, but Babylon 5 scored well with the demographics required to attract the leading national sponsors and saved up to $300,000 per episode by shooting off the studio lot, therefore remaining profitable for the network. The fifth season, shown on cable network TNT, garnered lower ratings.
The producers therefore used the same group of people (as many as twelve) in various mid-level speaking roles, taking full head and body casts from each. As the series starts, the Babylon 5 station is welcoming ambassadors from various races in the galaxy.
Concluding that others of their species had been, and were being, reborn as humans, and in obedience to the edict that Minbari do not kill one another, they stopped the war just as Earth's final defenses were on the verge of collapse.
It is gradually revealed that Ambassador Delenn is a member of the mysterious and powerful Grey Council, the ruling body of the Minbari. A conflict develops between the Babylon 5 command staff and the Psi Corps, an increasingly autocratic organization which oversees and controls the lives of human telepaths.
After full-scale war breaks out, the Centauri eventually conquer Narn in a brutal attack involving mass drivers, outlawed weapons of mass destruction. Towards the end of the year, the Clark administration begins to show increasingly totalitarian characteristics, clamping down on dissent and restricting freedom of speech.
In response, the Earth Alliance attempts to retake Babylon 5 by force, but with the aid of the Minbari, who have allied with the station against the growing Shadow threat, the attack is repelled.
Becoming concerned over the Shadows' growing influence amongst his people, Centauri ambassador Londo Mollari attempts to sever ties with them. Morden, the Shadows' human representative, tricks him into restoring the partnership by engineering the murder of Mollari's mistress.
Displeased at the Vorlons' lack of direct action against the Shadows, Captain John Sheridan browbeats Vorlon ambassador Kosh Naranek into launching an attack against their mutual enemy. Kosh's deeds lead to his subsequent assassination by the Shadows.
Upon returning to the station, former commander Jeffrey Sinclair enlists the aid of Captain Sheridan, Delenn, Ivanova and Marcus and convinces them to help him steal the Babylon 4 space station, intending to send it back in time 1,000 years to use it as a base of operations against the Shadows in the first Minbari-Shadow war.
Undergoing the same transformation as Delenn at the end of Season 1, Sinclair transforms into a Minbari and is subsequently revealed to be the actual Valen of Minbari legend, rather than a reincarnation. He is accompanied by a mysterious alien named Lorien who claims to be the oldest sentient being in the galaxy.
After Sherdian's return, Garibaldi returns in rather dubious circumstances and starts acting more paranoid and suspicious of other alien races than normal.
Centauri Emperor Cartagia forges a relationship with the Shadows.
Garibaldi helps to free Sheridan and return him to the campaign to free Earth. Mars is granted full independence, and Sheridan agrees to step down as commander of Babylon 5.
The Drakh, former allies of the Shadows who remained in the galaxy, take control of Regent Virini on Centauri Prime through a parasitic creature called a Keeper, then incite a war between the Centauri and the Interstellar Alliance, in order to isolate the Centauri from the Alliance, and gain a malleable homeworld for themselves.
Centauri Prime is consequently decimated by Narn and Drazi warships, and Londo Mollari becomes emperor, accepting a Drakh Keeper under threat of the complete nuclear destruction of the planet. Vir Cotto, Mollari's loyal and more moral aide, succeeds him as emperor, free of Drakh influence.
The made-for-TV films Thirdspace and The River of Souls are largely stand-alone episodes.
Babylon 5: A Call to Arms set-up the premise of the Crusade series, depicting the Drakh releasing a nanovirus plague on Earth, which will destroy all life on the planet within five years if it is not stopped. The production team received help from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to make sure that the series depicted science and technology accurately. However, creative differences between Straczynski and TNT caused problems; the network wanted more sex and violence, and forced Straczynski to begin the first episode with a fistfight.
"are most pleased as sales have been several orders of magnitude beyond what they anticipated."
On July 13, 2008, Straczynski revealed that he had no plans to continue The Lost Tales. In all, per Straczynski's own remarks, canonical elements exist in every single book or comic published to date, and his deeper involvement in the novel-publishing program from 1996 onward has ensured a greater level of canonicity within such works.
Additionally, Straczynski himself penned a number of short stories, published in Amazing Stories magazine, expanding on several key story-points from the television series, along with a number of other established authors, with all such tales considered as "real" as the TV show itself.
Mongoose Publishing, the publisher of recent Babylon 5 role-playing game (RPG) material, announced plans to release a line of Babylon 5 novels and graphic novels, beginning in summer 2006.
Michael Straczynski is still writing the manuscript for a Babylon 5 graphic novel, to be published on an as-yet-unknown date by Wildstorm Productions. It marked several firsts in television science fiction, such as the exploration of the political and social landscapes of the first human colonies, their interactions with Earth, and the underlying tensions. Babylon 5 was also one of the first television science fiction shows to denotatively refer to a same-sex relationship.
The climax of this conflict comes with the younger races' exposing of the Vorlons' and the Shadows' "true faces" and the rejection of both philosophies, heralding the dawn of a new age without their interference.
The notion that the war was about "killing your parents" is echoed in the portrayal of the civil war between the human colonies and Earth. Informed by the events of the first Gulf War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Soviet invasion of Prague, the intent was to recreate these moments when "the world held its breath" and the emotional core of the conflict was the disbelief that the situation could have occurred at all, and the desperation to find a way to bring it to an end. By the start of the third season, the opening monologue had changed to say that the Babylon 5 station is the "last, best hope for victory," indicating that while peace is a laudable accomplishment, it can also mean a capitulation to an enemy intent on committing horrendous acts, and that "peace is a byproduct of victory against those who do not want peace."
The Shadow War also features prominently in the show, during which an advanced alien species attempts to sow the seeds of conflict in order to promote technological and cultural advancement.
The gradual discovery of the scheme and the rebellion against it, serve as the backdrop to the first three seasons, but also as a metaphor for the war within ourselves. Events shown hundreds of years into the show's future tell of wars which will once again bring the human race to the edge of annihilation, demonstrating that mankind will not change, and the best that can be hoped for after it falls is that it climbs a little higher each time, until it can one day "take place among the stars, teaching those who follow."
Religion
Acknowledging the continued existence of faith, even in a science fiction setting, many of Babylon 5's characters have profound spiritual or religious beliefs, reflecting that throughout history, religion has been present in one form or another and will remain so even in a far-future rich with technological advancement. Many of Earth's contemporary religions are shown to still be in existence, and the main human characters often have religious convictions, including Roman Catholicism, Jesuit beliefs, Judaism and the fictional Foundationism, which was created specifically for the show. Earth's religions have also had to deal with the existence of extraterrestrial belief systems, resulting in a cross-pollination of ideas, and the factionization or destruction of some, while in the show's third season, a community of monks takes up residence on the Babylon 5 station, in order to learn what the other races throughout the universe call God, and to come to a better understanding of the different religions through study at close quarters. Alien beliefs in the show range from the Centauri's Bacchanalian-influenced religions, of which there are up to seventy different denominations, to the more pantheistic, as with the Narn and Minbari religions.
Depictions of religion on the show, human and alien, sometimes come subtly, or are the main theme of an episode; the first season episode "The Parliament of Dreams" is a conventional "showcase" for religion, in which each species on the Babylon 5 station has an opportunity to demonstrate its beliefs, and "Passing Through Gethsemane" focuses on a specific position of Roman Catholic dogma, as well as concepts of justice, vengeance and biblical forgiveness. Other treatments have been more contentious, such as the David Gerrold-scripted "Believers", in which alien parents would rather see their son die than undergo a life-saving operation because their religious beliefs forbid it. By presenting the viewer with characters' spiritual beliefs, motivations are supplied for what might otherwise be construed as arbitrary behavior; these motivations are not necessarily based on truth, leading to misconceptions which in due course become important plot points. A typical question for Babylon 5 to present is a series of events which can initially be interpreted as having either a scientific or a spiritual explanation; while ultimately suggesting the former in most cases, occasionally the issue is left open. In others, where religious belief is an integral part of the storyline, the show attempts to balance all sides of the argument, as in "Soul Hunter", where the spiritual concept explored is that of the immortal soul, and whether after death it is destroyed, reincarnated or simply does not exist.
Executive Officer Susan Ivanova mentions that her father became an alcoholic after her mother had committed suicide after having been drugged by the authorities over a number of years. Among the aliens, Londo Mollari is at least a heavy abuser of alcohol, mostly in the form of the Centauri national drink, Brevari (though in Centauri culture, sobriety, as opposed to drunkenness, is considered a vice).
Numerous other references to substance abuse and drug dealing are scattered throughout the storyline, including Dust, a white powder with a black-market presence comparable to cocaine.
Then, in the US, the first five films, which aired while Babylon 5 was still on the air, were released in one boxset, with the TV film Legend of the Rangers getting its own separate release on both region 1 and region 2 DVD. In the UK, a film boxset was released, but instead of containing the five films like the US version, it contained only the three films which had not been released in the UK yet (Thirdspace, River of Souls, and A Call to Arms).
These albums include 24 episode soundtracks, three film soundtracks, and three compilation albums: Babylon 5: Vol 1, Babylon 5: Vol 2, and Best of Babylon 5.
Compilation soundtracks
These include music that appeared throughout the series, but have been extensively reorchestrated, rewritten, and remixed by Franke into lengthy movements. All 5 Seasons, and 5 movies (In The Beginning, River of Souls, A Call To Arms, Legend of the Rangers) are all available through iTunes.
Michael Straczynski for the series are being published as a fifteen-volume series.
Games
In November 1997, Chameleon Eclectic Entertainment published the original The Babylon Project: The Roleplaying Game Based on Babylon 5. In 2003, Mongoose Publishing printed the Babylon 5 Roleplaying Game & Factbook.
The Babylon 5 Component Game system was also released in 1997 by 'Component Game Systems'. Agents of Gaming later published Babylon 5 Fleet Action, which focused on battles of a larger scale.