24 years ago, in 1994, a science fiction show aired that changed the way TV operated. Building upon and strengthening the idea of Star Trek’s five-year mission, this show proved that sci-fi TV could be something grander than an episodic adventure. The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5.
Yes, my friends. As the title and the overly dramatic opening didn’t make it clear, this summer I’m looking at one of TV’s greatest sci-fi shows that a surprising number of people haven’t heard of, Babylon 5. Airing over the course of five years and being described as a novel for television, Babylon 5 has been hard to see outside of syndication and DVD due to a myriad of reasons. In an age of streaming, HD and Blu-Ray, this can be a death sentence for a show (check out Vintage Geek Culture’s post on dead fandoms and its relation to why Babylon 5 has almost become one).
This show is too good to let it go quietly into that good night so here I am, attempting to keep its memory alive. And it seems that I’m not alone! Within days of picking this for my summer binge, Amazon announced that all 5 seasons will be coming to Prime in June! So for all those who haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to shell out for the DVD’s or online seasons, you’ll have a fresh, new place to see this sci-fi classic. (Yes, it was on Go90 for a year but Go90 is pretty bad and doesn’t have the same reach as other streaming platforms).
OK, enough prologue. Let’s talk this first episode. Spoilers ahead.
1. Hitting the Ground Running…Or Just Hitting the Ground
The series opens with a colony being destroyed and then an introduction to (most) of our principal cast: Security Chief Garabaldi, Commander Sinclair, Lieutenant and Best Girl Ivanova, Psi Corp Agent Winters, G’Kar and Londo. This is all within the first seven minutes, getting us acclimated to the cast and the world they live in. We briefly meet Delenn later but she plays a minor role in this introduction.
The benefit of this is that this allows us to learn character dynamics quickly and makes the location feel lived in. We’re entering into the world of the Babylon 5 station with characters who have been doing this for years instead of with a brand-new character to act as a stand in for the audience. Because of this, there is a bunch of exposition that is quite painfully shoved into those opening scenes.
The dialogue isn’t UNnatural but it is rushed. It needs to get as much information conveyed as quickly as possible, even if it feels incidental at the moment so it sacrifices naturality for speed. Additionally, its apparent the actors haven’t settled into their roles as of yet. Nothing atrocious, and it’s much better than season one Ollie from Arrow, but it can be distracting. In fact, much of the first half of this episode is hit or miss. Thankfully, by the mid-point, the rest of the show picks up the slack and paves over some of the rougher aspects of this debut.
2. CGI? In MY Sci-Fi? It’s more likely than you think
If you’re watching this in 2018, you might notice that the CGI is, well, dated. There isn’t a lot of it and on the whole, it’s integrated well into the show, as it is mostly relegated to the exterior ship shots and the space battles but the models certainly show their age. Additionally, during those space battles, the cutting between the characters in the ships and the ships themselves can be super jarring and they don’t feel like they are in the same place, despite the show trying to tell us otherwise.
I probably won’t bring this up as a point again but I felt it worth mentioning because, as with any sci-fi show, new or old, the effects are important. It’s not the end all be all but they play a major part. Besides the CGI, the make-up work and set design is stellar and go a long way to making the show, and its characters, feel that much more alive.
Continued below3. Londo and G’Kar
These two are the show stealers this first episode. From the get go, they are naturals. It’s as if these were the roles they were born to play. As I said before, the rest of the cast is still settling into their roles but these two, these two slide right in. Londo in particular gets some of the best lines of the episode. The relationship between these two characters is the driving force of this episode, with both of them representing two sides of a centuries long conflict of which there are no easy answers.
It would have been easy to place one side as righteous and the other as evil but the show chooses instead to complicate it. Londo is proud, too proud, and while in the episode his plight is sympathetic – having his cousin on the planet where the Narn, G’Kar’s people, attacked without warning – it is also true that the Centauris have committed atrocities towards the Narn. On that same token, the Narn are not blameless outside of the fight for Ragesh 3, the planet from the opening, them being behind some other trickery and selling weapons to anyone.
While this episode does paint G’Kar and his people as the “villains” and we are meant to side with Londo, the grey areas keep the situation complicated and open for change and expansion. This is the great strength of Babylon 5’s mode of storytelling. Because it knows where the story is going, seeds can be planted early and character motivations can be fleshed out ahead of time. Instead of this being a simple good and evil situation that gets more and more complex as the writers learn about their characters, we begin in that complexity, which makes for a compelling watch.
4. Politics Made Interesting
If there is one thing that is hard to pull off in sci-fi, it’s making the fictional politics interesting. Doubly so on a show that is centered around diplomacy. Usually a show takes its time before throwing us into the thick of it, allowing us to get acquainted with the characters and world first. Not so with Babylon 5. This entire episode is all about the interplanetary politics of this universe, the politics of the station as well as the politics of the Earth empire. You’d think something like this would be a snooze-fest.
The first time I saw this episode, I couldn’t find myself looking away. The instant it ended, I hit play on the next episode. I needed to know where they went from here. I almost did the same this time although I haven’t purchased episode 2 yet and I had to write this. Why was this? It’s heavy sci-fi politics about characters I barely know in a universe I have no prior acquaintance with. It all has to do with the writing.
I WISH this caliber of writing would find its way over to the CW shows I review. Despite some clunky early exposition, the writing was engrossing and successfully connected me with the characters without overloading on exposition. We got enough references to prior events and the acting/dialogue filled in for a lack of details. The characters knew what it meant and that was all that mattered. J. Michael Straczynski, who wrote a majority of the scripts for this show, shows his talent for long term planning and character work here. No plot thread feels unnecessary, with small payoffs that have the beginnings of something larger or large payoffs that are a necessity of the TV medium of the time.
5. Raiders of the Lost Narn
OK, I lied. There is one plot thread that, while it pays off, is kind of weak and that’s the raider plot thread. It’s there to establish more of the world outside of Babylon 5 as well as provide some confirmation to the characters that the Narn are up to no good but it’s bland and doesn’t add much to the episode otherwise. It serves its purpose but every time they cut back to the space battle, I felt myself itching to get back to the council meeting. Wow, that’s not something I thought I’d say with a sci-fi show.
Continued belowThere you have it folks! I’ll see you all again next week for the next chapter in this novel. Let me know what you think of the show. If you’ve seen it before, try to keep the later spoilers to a minimum. If you haven’t seen it before, what are your thoughts on the first episode? Am I tinted by nostalgia? I did watch this a year ago originally.
Best Gag of the Episode:
Garibaldi’s second favorite thing in the universe being the original “Duck Dodgers” cartoon. A true classic, even two centuries from now. If you’ve never seen it, go find it right now and then come back and I promise you you’ll be shouting along with the episode, “Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half century!”
