Welcome to Babylon 5
There are very few TV shows which send you on an emotional roller coaster beyond compare. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who (2005), Downton Abbey and The Sopranos are among them, but none of the shows currently out there can live up to them. It’s a paradox, actually – we know that all those characters and events are fictional, yet we still invest emotionally and our capability for empathy makes us feel with the characters. I have seen so many shows by now, I daresay I suffer from TV show fatigue – the lack of emotional turmoil as experienced during BtVS or DW. Of course that’s not universal either – the Fringe finale was a tearjerker as was Life on Mars. But would I watch those again? Probably not.
A brilliant TV show needs two basic ingredients:
- First of all emotions, mindfuck level! If you don’t cry, it’s not worth it.
- Then there should always be the immediate wish to re-watch, again and again. For the rest of your life. Seriously.
After I had been somewhat bored with most of the TV shows currently out there (don’t get me wrong – I very much enjoy them, but my expectations are always too high), I recently discovered something (thanks to my friend Simon) that can finally live up to all I’ve seen so far – and it probably even inspired it. The name of the place is Babylon 5, a space station built as an intergalactic peace project by Earth. It depicts the daily dealings of the people running the station – the command staff (who are humans), and the ambassadors of the other big space-faring worlds Minbar, Centauri and Narn.
As it should be, the first thing I watched was the pilot from 1993, “Babylon 5: The Gathering”. One thing that immediately became obvious was that I would need a lot of patience in order to find the greatness of this show. The pilot is pretty horrible, mostly acting-wise. I couldn’t help thinking that they spent way too much money on the special effects and far too little on good actors. Thankfully, most of the really terrible actors were replaced in the first season, which began airing a year later. However, I would have to endure an entire season of an unconvincing captain trying to tackle mostly unexciting “monster of the week” problems. Other characters even out the score; we get to know all of our upcoming protagonists, all of which will play important parts in the future seasons. (Even though you might not like them yet, you will absolutely cry for them by the time the story ends.)
The next three seasons are quite a ride – conflicts of light and dark unfold, and just when you thought it was all over, the show takes you through a tour de force through yet more conflicts in it’s fourth season. The fifth season tries to wrap up all storylines, though it still leaves you with some uncertainty (what’s with the brain slug?). Not until after I finished the entire show did I read that apparently it was unclear whether the show would be cancelled after the fourth season, which is why JMS (J. Michael Straczynski, the Great Maker, author of the show) pushed forward all of the storylines. It’s a bit like Serenity: lots and lots of story which was meant for several seasons squashed into a tiny movie. This is probably also why I experienced the fifth season as slightly weaker than the rest: apparently there is no real big story to tell anymore, even though we would have expected it from the S4 finale (what really happened with the telepaths?!). Also, it lacks a certain “Russian Jewish Bisexual” cynicism. But then the finale blows you off your feet again, emotionally.
The show is so rich in topics for philosophical rumination that I’m very surprised there is no book “Babylon 5 and Philosophy” from the critical series “popular culture and philosophy”. I could probably write essays about “Centauri hair” or the “surprisingly low-tech depiction of the future” alone. Though it’s thematically a brilliant show, it’s age is always obvious to a 2013 viewer. Twenty years ago CGI effects were completely new – and that’s what they look like throughout the series. Even more confusing are the bad quality scenes which were obviously shot in front of a green screen. Not to mention the complete lack of the internet, ebooks, smartphones and social media in the future. And why all those data crystals? Don’t they have wi-fi?
Aside from the technology, the whole look of the show is certainly very nineties – especially when it comes to furniture, wallpapers and carpets. Watching the show sometimes was like looking into my childhood, because we had very similar furniture and patterns in our house. Despite it’s idiosyncrasies, the show is absolutely worth it and a must-see for anyone who claims to be a sci-fi fan. Somehow it combines the familiar with the alien, making it a quaint but mind-boggling thing to watch. Some of the aliens make us humans look like the primitive apes we are, others who are apparently more primitive than us, just point out our own primitiveness again.
Well, this blog post has turned into a bit of ramble, while all I wanted to do was point out that I’ve finally found another TV show worth re-watching – even though I don’t seem to have all that much to say about it. Perhaps I’ll have to rewatch it a few times so I can watch the threads unravel. But the first watch, not knowing where the path will lead, is always special.
Strange. The number of people I know personally who have watched all of Babylon 5 has suddenly tripled. 🙂 It must be the most underrated show of all time.
I am not sure exactly what is to blame for this: The terrible first season and pilot, the fact that it competed for the then small SF/F viewership with the much sexier Star Treks (even DS9, which was in fact a blatant copy of B5), or that it is far too complex for the casual viewer to even figure out what’s going on.
But the complexity is what makes it so interesting. I have watched it 3 times now, and I still couldn’t even describe concisely what B5 is about. Between religion, politics, ethics, love, war, and a damn good story arc, there is so much to think about, and to talk about, that I do not know where to start.
It is absolutely mind-boggling, for example, that every time I wath Babylon 5, the story reminds me of some current development which JMS couldn’t possibly have foreseen back in ’95. Almost eerie.
And don’t get me started on the aliens. There is so much material in there about how we treat each other as humans, and JMS *shows* these points so clearly, that it has had a lasting effect on how I see the people around me.
And this is where I come around to the LGBT-in-tv-shows issue: I do not believe that you can identify a good show based on whether it has a gay couple in it or anything. But you can certainly identify the bad ones by their complete absence (though of course I am overgeneralizing).
And simply having a gay couple is nothing to get excited about; In fact, I’d say that when nobody gets excited about it, then it is a big deal. It shows that the writers/producers understand what equality is about. It means that they also understand about hate. This is a prerequisite for including this dynamic in their show in a meaningful way.
Buffy did this, and so did Lost Girl. But B5 does it on another level entirely, as the gay couple isn’t even commented upon, while another strongly heteronormative couple provokes hatred and violence because they belong to opposing factions in the war which shaped their generations.
387 words already? And so much more to say, Great Maker! I, too, am a rambler.
Tripled? Does that include you? 😉 It’s truly a brilliant show with excellent writing, but I understand that many people don’t really want to look a special effects that look like they were rendered in a kitchen render. Oh yes, and the patience… but actually it’s just the same as with Buffy – the first season(s) were really terrible, but it still somehow became a cult phenomenon.
Babylon 5 is definitely deserving of some sort of term paper or critical essay, once I’ve processed all that information the show contains… 😉
And the LGBT fact is true of course – not every LGBT show is great (The L Word for example was complete crap from the second season onwards), but shows that completely ignore the LGBT community tend to be the weaker ones.
Babylon 5 is something I will watch in a very near future. I’ve been thinking about it for quite some time since I’ve heard many good things about the show. Since I watched Battlestar Galactica I decided I needed to give Sci-Fi a proper chance so both Babylon 5 and Star Trek are on my “things to watch” list.