Babylon Five (Download, Review)

“The Babylon project was our last, best hope for peace.”
With these words, writer and TV producer J. Michael Straczynski swept science fiction fans off on a grand, five year adventure, encompassing a galaxy teeming with wondrous worlds and fascinating alien species.
But getting his epic masterpiece to the small screen wasn’t an easy ride for Straczynski. He began writing Babylon Five in 1987, but the pilot movie didn’t debut until 1993.
In the Gathering Part 1 and 2 we learned that Babylon 5 was the fifth space station to be built after Babylon 1, 2 and 3 had been Sabotaged and Babylon 4 simply disappeared. Babylon Five was under the command of Jeffery Sinclair, a survivor of the war between Earth and the Minbari, an ancient mystical race that now have an ambassador called Delenn on Babylon Five.

Other ambassadors represent the Centauri, a flamboyant but fading empire; The Narn, once servile to the Centauri and bent on revenge against their former masters; and the mysterious powerful Vorlons, a race that keeps its borders closed.
It is the Vorlon ambassador that kicks off the intrigue in The Gathering. The ambassador narrowly escapes an assignation attempt and Commander Jeffery Sinclair comes under suspicion.
Later Jeffery Sinclair proves an important factor in the story arc, but after the first season his place is taken by Commander John Sheridan, played by highly respected actor Bruce Boxleitner.
What made Babylon Five the best sci fi series ever? It wasn’t just the setting of a teeming space station filled with humans and aliens, although that in itself proved a winner – just think of Deep Space Nine, Star Trek’s version of the same premise. Where Babylon Five stood out was in the way the story was told, and in the characters Straczynski created.
The Babylon Five story arc was not a collection of unrelated episodes as many previous series were – it was more like a novel, with each episode a chapter pushing the story forward. Straczynski fought hard to keep the integrity of his vision, battling TV executives to keep the series on air without giving into demands for changes. In spite of winning three Emmy awards, and numerous Science Fiction awards, the show was almost cancelled but made a comeback, and to the great relief of fans the five year story arc was completed.
The real strength of Babylon Five was in the characters. The human characters were real and recognisable people, while many of the aliens were indeed alien to our perceptions. The relationships between the characters appealed to viewers’ emotions – as the love between Commander John Sheridan and Minbari Ambassador Delenn developed, the fine acting of Bruce Boxleitner and Mira Furman kept us glued to the screen.
For fans, it was both a sad and a happy moment when the last episode was aired – we felt we were losing our friends, but we were glad the series had made it to the end, in spite of many problems.
Babylon Five did more than provide riveting entertainment for five years. It changed the way writers and producers looked at Science Fiction. Because of Babylon Five, they realised viewers can accept long story arcs and deeper involvement with the characters.
But Babylon Five was the first, and is still the best.

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