The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5

Ben and Star Trek

Note: this was originally written in the mid-nineties, when Babylon 5 was still hot stuff. Even though its sequel crashed and burned the legacy of the show lives on. It made on-going story lines fashionable, avoiding the dread Trek reset button at the end of each episode. It showed sf could have good effects on a reasonable budget. It allowed a sense of humour. Shows like Farscape could not exist without it. B5 deserves its place in history.

Cards on the table: I'll admit to being ever-so-slightly biased by the generally excellent Babylon 5, even though I started writing His Majesty's Starship in 1993, well before the show hit our screens. When it came, I was both amazed and irritated, because it kept coming up with ideas I had already had. B5's Jeffrey Sinclair bore an amazing resemblance to Michael Gilmore and as for Ivanova ... well, tell me, if you created a character who was (a) Russian-Jewish, (b) female and (c) a second in command, don't you think it's a reasonable guess that no one else would? But no ... Not only that, but the Babylon 5 station itself strongly resembled my original idea for UK-1. A few rewrites meant that these things were just about taken care of, where it's important to me: otherwise, well, I've got witnesses to say I got there first. So there.

And I'd far rather be accused of plagiarising B5 than, say, Battlestar Galactica. But I digress.

I didn't see the pilot episode of B5 until later: if I had, my initial perceptions might have been different. As it was, the first regular episode of B5 ("Midnight on the firing line") seemed to give us the scenario. Here is the station, a kind of UN in space; these are the good guys, these are the bad guys; every week the bad guys are going to try and pull a fast one on the good guys, and lose. Seen it, been there, done that, we all thought.

The second episode of B5 gave the rug under our feet a slight tweak, and well before the end of the first season the rug was well and truly gone. Sinclair's closing comment of the last episode, and his last line as regular cast member, was "Nothing's the same any more." And it wasn't. B5 was built to prevent another war: by the end of the second season, that was whistling in the wind.

B5 has no guaranteed happy endings. Characters die. More to the point, characters change ... but in a believable way. Every character in season five who was there in season one is still recogniseably the same ... but different, altered by life and experience.

Now, that is story telling.

Perhaps the best way to show the difference is to point out a few early events of B5 and compare them with what the equivalent would be in Star Trek, were it to happen at all.

Has happened in Babylon 5	Theoretical equivalent in Star Trek
President of the Earth Alliance assassinated; replaced by the fascist xenophobe who murdered him.	The Federation would have a fascist xenophobe who wasn't stopped and made to see the error of his ways? Nah. They'd send in Deanna and the First Battalion Combat Counsellors to irritate him into behaving properly.
Cute child dies because his parents won't let Dr Franklin perform the needed operation, due to religious beliefs. Franklin performs the operation anyway, so parents murder cute child (it's part of their religion, see ...)	Cuteness is a right protected by the Federation constitution. Beverley would have found a way.
The entire Markab race, carefully developed over one and a half series, dies of plague.	No. Even in the unlikely event of the race being one we'd already heard of, and not introduced at the start of the episode, Beverley would have synthesised the required miracle drug in the last five minutes of the show.
One of Commander Sinclair's pilots is killed in the line of duty. Sinclair writes a letter to the next of kin.	"Dear Mrs Expendable, I knew your son Ensign Expendable for a good 30 seconds before he beamed down to Squornshallous Zeta with Commander Riker and myself ..."
Talia Winters, one of the big names who appeared in the opening credits of the first two series, is revealed at the end of the second series to be a traitor.	One of the crew a traitor? Nah. Look at the film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, where there is a traitor on board ... and surprise surprise, it's the one new face. Voyager came close to this with Seska, but she was only a minor character.
Fighter pilot Warren Keffer, an opening credit character for the entire second series, is killed in the last episode.	"Will Ensign Expendable please report to the shuttle bay ...". Actually, that's not quite fair. When we're expected really to feel for the death of a character, they sometimes spend as much as a whole episode building up to it.
B5 declares its independence from the Earth Alliance.	The Enterprise declares its independence from the Federation ... I think not. (But, if only ...)
Off duty, the crew change into civvies.	The crew wear their uniform even in bed (in the original series anyway: the TNG crew have got the hang of pyjamas, but still wear uniform when in bed in sickbay, for some reason).
Every few years the Drazi race divides into two factions, Purple and Green, and fights to the death. The winning faction unites until next time.	A race exhibiting such self-destructive behaviour is allowed to get away with it without being hit over the head with the US Constitution until they see the error of their ways and join the Federation.
While staying completely within character, the Centauri go from being faded imperialist has-beens to rampant genocides; the Narns go from bellicose aggressors to tragic victims.	The Klingons suddenly reveal a talent for cunning and strategy; the Romulans dedicate themselves to navel-gazing and macrame.
Londo and G'Kar face certain death, trapped in a lift together: they could get out if they helped each other, but G'Kar would far rather just watch Londo die.	Two arch-enemies — say, a Klingon and a Romulan — are trapped in a lift facing certain death, and don't come to realise that deep down they are all in this together, all life is sacred, they should bury their differences and join the Federation, etc. They probably make a little speech about it.