BABYLON 5: A Thirtieth Anniversary Retrospective

Introduction

It was the year 1987 and writer/producer J. Michael Straczynski came up with a concept for a television story that had not been tried before. The use of a centralized location to keep costs down with a sweeping epic story. With a story inspired by the likes of Dune, The Lord Of The Rings, and Asimov’s Foundation series, the story would span a five-year period of the life and death of a space station named Babylon 5.

Pitching and Suing 

Straczynski pitched the show to Paramount Television sometime in 1989. He gave them the series bible, pilot script, artwork, and lengthy character background histories. They had this content for about a year before declining. Paramount then announced Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, two months after Warner Brothers announced Babylon 5.

Babylon 5 cast member Patricia Tallman (Lyta Alexander) would later state that Straczynski sued Paramount over the issue, which was subsequently settled out of court. Tallman discusses the lawsuit filed against Paramount in the below clip.

Premise

Babylon 5, set between 2257 and 2262, shows how Earth had become a unified government called the “Earth Alliance.” The EA had colonies scattered within the solar system and beyond due to the use of ‘Jumpgates’ which allowed interstellar traveling.

Ten years before the series began, Earth was almost destroyed due to a war mistakenly started with the “Minbari” race, during a first-contact encounter. To avoid another incident, a space station was created in a neutral space. A place where all major races could meet, and through diplomatic contact form alliances. Thus began “The Babylon Project.”

The station in the series is five miles long and accommodates approximately 250,000 residents. Parts of the station provide various atmospheres and gravity for alien species. Along with humans, Babylon 5 is occupied by Minbari, Centauri, Narn, Vorlon, and other species from the League of Non-Aligned Worlds.

From the very beginning, we are told that there is an ancient alien race that means to destroy the galaxy and that the other races need to align to stop them. During this time, we will see the internal struggles of the various races including our own to come together and stand against the race known as “The Shadows.”

The Cast

The series had a large cast, and most of the actors remained for the entire five-year run. One notable cast change, however, was the star of season one. Michael O’Hare, who played Commander Jeffrey Sinclair, was written out of the series after the end of the first season.

Various statements were soon issued, referring to “new characters,” or a “concern about typecasting,” as well as wanting to “take the show in some new directions” or “this is a mutual, amicable, and friendly separation.”

Although O’Hare would return for a few episodes as a “special guest star” he would never return to the series as a regular again. The real reason for his departure would not be revealed until after O’Hare’s death in 2012. The full story was given at the Phoenix Comicon in 2013.

During the filming of the first season of Babylon 5, O’Hare began to suffer from delusions and hallucinations. Straczynski offered to suspend production so O’Hare could get professional help. O’Hare declined, feeling an interruption would put everyone that worked on the show at risk. O’Hare would finish the season and leave so he could seek treatment.

Straczynski had promised to keep his O’Hare’s condition quiet, so as to not jeopardize any future work for O’Hare, post-Babylon 5. Straczynski would keep this information secret “to my grave.” O’Hare rebutted, stating, “Keep the secret to my grave.”

Themes

Many themes are covered throughout the series. Addiction to drugs or alcohol was explored by some of the main characters. In particular, Jerry Doyle’s character “Michael Garibaldi.” His battle with the bottle during the series has been rumored to reflect Straczynski’s concern about Doyle’s drinking. Alcohol was attributed to Doyle’s death at age 60 in 2016.

Religious themes also touched on many aspects of the show, and it was able to show how they varied among the alien races. All types of religions were given respect and treated fairly, even if some actions may have been questioned by the characters.

With regards to his use of religion in Babylon 5, Straczynski, in an interview originally published in TV ZONE back in 2003, would reflect as follows:

“If you do a search for Babylon 5 and theology, or Babylon 5 and Buddhism, or religion, or Christianity, you’ll find the most fascinating stuff…and the most fascinating thing of all, for me at least, is that so often these sites from different or even competing religions use the *same quotes* and each gets something different, and something the same, out of them.”

Another ongoing theme throughout Babylon 5 was the demonstration of order vs. chaos. The entire Shadow War was implicitly about this. The Vorlon race wanted to maintain order at all costs. Whereas, The Shadows wanted chaos, not caring at all about the swath of death it created in its path. All other races in the series were caught in the middle of this conflict. What started out so black and white at the beginning of Babylon 5, soon became quite grey before the end of the Shadow War.

Authoritarianism vs. free will was also shown throughout the series, culminating in a brutal civil war on Earth that was led by Captain Sheridan from the Babylon 5 station. The Minbari also experienced their own costly civil war between the Religious Caste and the Warrior Caste.

Although briefly touched upon in season one, sexual orientation did not play a large role in the series. The reason? Straczynski would later state in 1994:

“Let me put this as simply as I can…in the year 2258, nobody *cares* about your sexual orientation. It doesn’t come up. No one makes an issue out of it. There are no discussions, no proclamations, no inquiries, no “how will they react?” It’s like being left-handed or right-handed; no one really cares one way or another.”

Backstories and Spinoffs

The Shadow War is the primary arc of the entire series. Because the production crew had been told that the show was to end after season four, this major storyline was wrapped up. Once it was announced that they were going to actually get another season, some of the other backstories from previous seasons were revisited to wrap up loose ends.

Due to this, many consider the fifth season of Babylon 5 to be the weakest of the entire run. Several of the aforementioned backstories could not compare to the epic Shadow War arc. As good as the show was, had they been able to complete the five-year run as planned, it would have been a better show.

Of the one-hundred-ten Babylon 5 episodes, Straczynski wrote ninety-two of them. Other notable writers on the series included Peter David, Neil Gaiman, D. C. Fontana, David Gerrold, and Harlan Ellison, who was also a “Conceptual Consultant” on the series.

Straczynski attempted three Babylon 5 spin-off series: Crusade (1999), Babylon 5: The Legend Of The Rangers (2002), and Babylon 5: The Lost Tales (2007). TNT canceled Crusade after thirteen episodes, and Babylon 5: The Legend of The Rangers was not picked up into a series by the Sci-Fi Network. One Babylon 5: The Lost Tales direct-to-video anthology was released, but to date, no others.

The Future

Warner Brothers have no plans to revisit the world of Babylon 5. When asked about the possibility of a reboot or revival of the series with another company, in 2018, Straczynski noted on Twitter:

“Warners controls the TV and all the other rights but not the movie rights, I have those, but without access to the TV rights it’s been very difficult to get anyone at another studio to want to commit anything; they want all of the rights under one roof…They literally told my agent “We have no plans, and no intentions, of letting anything else be done in terms of television with Babylon 5…They won’t sell. Because if it were to do well elsewhere, it would embarrass them. And studios don’t let out IP. So they’re like a monkey with its fist around a nut in a jar, it can’t pull it out and it won’t let go.“

Despite the fact that there are no plans for any new Babylon 5 content, the original series has finally been properly remastered. According to Warner Brothers:

“The film sequences were scanned in 4K and then “finished,” or downscaled, back to HD, with a dirt and scratch clean-up, as well as color correction. The show’s CGI and composite sequences, meanwhile, have been digitally upscaled to HD with only some minor tweaks where absolutely necessary.”

Although the remastering process took about six years to complete and was a “labor of love”, the VFX did not get overhauled. Also, despite the show being filmed in a 16:9 format for HDTV, the restoration will go back to the 4:3 format as it was originally broadcast.

The issue was the visual effects. They were created in a 4:3 format and would have to be completely re-created for a 16:9 release. Warner Brothers will not be doing that anytime soon. If you have the old DVD release, the live-action content is shown in widescreen but they had to upscale all of the CGI to match. The result is a very blurry mess. In the end, it’s a compromise, you will get an improved picture, but at the cost of it being in the old 4:3 format.

Babylon 5 Remastered is currently available on Amazon Prime, Apple iTunes, and HBO Max.

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