Babylon 5
Babylon 5 had the misfortune of going toe-to-toe with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I say "misfortune" because to insinuate that Paramount in any way ripped off J. Michael Straczynski 's concept which they had earlier passed on, only to air their DS9 pilot just weeks before Babylon 5's debut, is to bring up a flame war that needs no further vocalization. Only the Paramount Executives know the truth of the matter, and it's unlikely we'll ever know for sure.
At any rate, this...coincidence in timing...had the unfortunate side effect of directly syphoning a lot of attention away from this rather complex show about a diplomatic station and its crew. It's a shame, really, because Babylon 5 boasted characters of great depth and storylines of political intrigue that had never really been explored through the lens of science fiction in a serialized TV format.
I say "serialized" because although much of the first season is purely episodic fare, with the usual "monster/technology/alien of the week" scenario, the second season onwards followed a very linear storyline that made it necessary to have watched the show in order. This might sound like a flaw, but consider more recent equivalents like the reimagined Battlestar Galactica or Lost, which became so entrenched in the one-episode-after-another formula that they needed recap shows devoted to them. Compared to the labyrinthine plotlines of those shows, Babylon 5 was easy to pick and care about.
But I digress. The purpose of simplifying races into uniform cultures is evident; Straczynski's vision is to portray the problems of humanity on a galactic scale. There are still the same demands for territory, the same military grandstanding and balance of power, the same racial tensions. And it works really, really well.
The first season, as I mentioned, was a little less focussed simply because it was more about the "problem of the week" than about developing the characters and the storyline. However, when the first season finale introduced many of the crucial problems that would plague the station and the crew for the rest of the series, you could tell it was going to go places. Also key was the replacement of Michael O'Hare as Jeffrey Sinclair with Bruce Boxleitner as John Sheridan. Boxleitner brought a hearty everyman quality to the centre of the show. It gave the audience something to grab onto, so that they could more easily understand the problems of the alien races through the lenses of an ordinary man.
What really sold this show for me, though - beyond the epic storyline of an ancient evil - was the character development. I really felt this was the show that demonstrated how science fiction characters didn't need to be "stock". With a show like Star Trek: The Next Generation, the characters, although varied and generally likeable, never really felt like they evolved for me. Picard in season one is much the same as Picard at the end of the series, a straightforward, by the book captain who is calculated and efficient but not without warmth.
In this show, these characters are put throught the ringer. They suffer torture, psychic mind-wipes, personal and brutal losses in and out of war, and many of them even end up betraying their respective governments in pursuit of a greater good. The decisions they make are not done without thought, on random impulse or on the directives of the needs of the storyline. In Babylon 5, the characters make the story. And really, isn't that how all storytelling should be?
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