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Five Thoughts on Babylon 5‘s “Believers”

By | July 25th, 2018
Posted in Television | % Comments

Difficult choices are made, orders are disobeyed, and the Doctor is almost out. Welcome my friends. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5.

Spoilers ahead.

1. Why Should I Watch This?

A couple months ago, right before Babylon 5 dropped on Amazon Prime, SYFYWire ran this article, a guide to the show for those unfamiliar with it and the best way to watch only the good stuff. While many, including me, have asserted that this season is…clunky at times and contains plenty of episodes that aren’t up to snuff and can eat up plenty of time, especially for watchers of prestige TV, I still believe that many, if not all of these episodes, deserve watching. Why? Partly because even the worst B5 episode is better than a lot of current, network TV and partly because shows are about more than just their plot.

If you’re following along with me, you’re either already a fan wondering what some guy on the internet in 2018 has to say about a 25-year-old sci-fi gem or you’re new to the show, discovering it along with me. Either way, you’ve seen or are seeing every episode, making my statements a bit moot. Regardless, it feels worth saying.

Were you to follow the above list – which, for what it’s worth, is a fantastic list for those who want to know why people love the show and why it was ahead of its time in terms of plotting, without having to sit through a lot of episodes that might turn off someone new – you lose a lot of what makes B5 so special in its entirety. You lose the moments, the small details in character arcs, the world building that pays off in the long run. Beautiful scenes nested in episodes that sometimes aren’t the most engaging.

It’s a time commitment but unlike with other shows, where the more hours you spend with the characters, the more they stay the same, here, your hours are spent deepening your relationship to these characters, to the point where they become familiar while still changing. It’s no small feat, to craft a host of characters this well-formed nor to create situations where they don’t feel static, but Babylon 5 manages to do just that.

This episode is no exception. It is Dr. Franklin’s first failure on the show and it broaches a difficult question, one that’s made infinitely more complicated by the sci-fi setting.

2. The Great Egg

One aspect of Babylon 5 that can get lost in the praise is the care to which Straczynski and the rest of the writing team put into the aliens and into the Earth culture of the 23rd century. One off alien species, like the ones in this episode, are given just as much thought as the larger, recurring ones such as the Narn or the Minbari. The mythos of that culture is that of an egg and all their terminology is suffused in that, just as European culture tends to be heavily Christian in its construction, from its values to its figures of speech to its conception of concepts.

For the alien family, the body is merely a shell to be animated by the spirit within. It is nourished by this spirit and without it, the body is nothing more than a hollow vessel, being pupped from without or being filled with something different. I noticed this only near the end and it made a lot of their speech patterns and turns of phrase make more sense. It made them feel more real and, by extension, made the choices more difficult and more tragic.

3. Stir Craze

Moving onto a lighter topic, the B-plot this week concerns Ivanova going out and battling space pirates! Well, space raiders but space pirates sound cooler. Considering the A-plot, it’s a fairly light plot tonally and narratively. Ivanova is stir crazy, a ship is in peril, she goes out to save it, does some space fighting against orders and against a force that certainly outnumbers her, and returns with a smile on her face. It’s…honestly not that engaging but only because it feels like a distraction from the A-plot.

Continued below

Despite being a thematic parallel to Franklin’s plot, that of the results of disobeying orders and acting like a lone wolf who knows what’s best for everyone around them, it’s not very compelling. That said, it’s always nice to have more Ivanova, especially when she gets to snark. The scene in the command deck, where she discusses her riveting plans of going to and fro and, GASP, maybe going fro and to, was a nice bit of comedy. The rest was kind of generic space-battle stuff we’ve seen a million times before. Nothing bad but nothing fantastic either.

4. The Power of Belief

Another theme this week is belief and what it means to have it. Franklin believes in the power of medicine but also in the power of hope. The alien family believes in the powers of the Egg and in a spirit that dwells within their people. Belief compels them both to act for their ideals and for what they believe to be best for the child. Who is right and who is wrong depends on your own values. On your own beliefs. Yet belief is powerful. It is hard to discount, and it is impossible to ignore.

5. No Easy Answers

Last week, when I first saw the title to this episode, I dreaded these five thoughts. I knew what was coming and I knew how difficult it would be to talk about the main crux of the episode. The reason? Well, in fiction, the protagonist of a story tends to act as a stand-in for an audeince. They are our proxy, usually in morals, or at least in code. Because of this, the assumption made by placing Dr. Franklin as the centerpiece of this episode is that we share his skepticism, his frustration, and his worldview on what life is. Yet, by episode’s end, we’re asked not to share in Dr. Franklin’s horror at the death of the child at the hands of his parents. Instead, we are asked to question our own belief system and the ways in which people put theirs over someone else’s.

The episode doesn’t pass judgement on the parents or on Franklin exclusively, pointing out the problems with both. For Franklin, it’s his arrogance in believing that he knows best, knows all, no matter what. That life is defined “as a pulse,” as the physical, and nothing more. For the family, it is their utter unwillingness to bend to save their child’s life and their pride. To consider that maybe the spirit is not lost when the physical is breached. That maybe a pulse is better than losing a child.

I struggle with this episode because of the many ways in which it can be read and the many ways in which these arguments are used in real life. It is different here, as this is a world of science fiction, but maybe not as much as we’d like to think. It is easy to create false equivalences and make sweeping statements when talking about belief and the legitimacy of beliefs. It’s easy to villainize those who have a system that contradiction your own. It’s harder to see those beliefs and say they are valid. It’s even harder to know when something is truly villainous and when it’s merely based on a different set of definitions. And it’s even harder to admit when one is wrong. How does one know? It’s not an easy question and it doesn’t contain an easy answer. The episode refuses to settle it definitively and so will I.

That about does it for now. Join me again next week for a Garabaldi centric episode featuring explosions, conspiracy, and plenty of mystery on the station that wraps humans and aliens in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal . . . all alone in the night. This is Elias. Signing out.

Best Line of the Night:

Sinclair: “What makes us human is that we care. And because we care we don’t stop trying.”

Franklin: “No, what makes us human is that we have so many ways to hurt.”


//TAGS | 2018 Summer TV Binge | Babylon 5

Elias Rosner

Elias is a lover of stories who, when he isn't writing reviews for Mulitversity, is hiding in the stacks of his library. Co-host of Make Mine Multiversity, a Marvel podcast, after winning the no-prize from the former hosts, co-editor of The Webcomics Weekly, and writer of the Worthy column, he can be found on Twitter (for mostly comics stuff) here and has finally updated his profile photo again.

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