seanessay.com
As noted in my January 2021 post Death of Buffy, while the BBC, as shown on Canada’s CBC, made episodes designed to air in order, Hollywood television was still producing “stand alone” episodes. Just like during the radio days of Dragnet and Gun smoke. A cop show would have a murder of the week, a horror show would have a monster of the week, a western would have a villein of the week. Even after colour TV there was no change: Episodes of Star Trek and Fantasy Island and Hawaii 5-0 could be shuffled and shown in any order. What changed?
Hollywood Executives did not suddenly discover the BBC. Rather, an enthusiastic man with credibility in Hollywood, a man who had written lots of episodes of Murder She Wrote, proposed what he called a “five year novel.” This would mean, J. Michael Straczyinski (JMS) explained, that, unlike Gun Smoke, (which aired for decades) the show would have to end, even if it still had good ratings. With episodes shown in order. The climax would involve nothing less than a galactic war of survival… unless .…
The story opens with Earth having, a decade ago, practically lost a war: With enemy fleets having fought past Earth’s colonies to enter the home solar system (think of Patton’s army having crossed the Rhine) Earth was saved only by a last-minute peace treaty. No glory. A veteran is put in charge of a space station that was to be a diplomatic crossroads: “the last of the Babylon stations, the “last best hope for peace.”” Instead of sci-fi action, with the captain fighting and having his shirt ripped, it was to be a political-mystery-thriller.
Why the alien fleet didn’t blast the Earth, and the strange fate of the previous four Babylon stations, is part of the mystery, to be revealed during the series.
The suits agreed to fund the show. They lost their nerve, briefly, so things had to be rushed in season four, but then they agreed to renew the show for it’s fifth and final season. JMS had produced a masterpiece. …And Hollywood had learned that you could, with profit, broadcast shows in a planned order.
And no, “masterpiece” is not too strong a word. You may recall a Tolstoy classic where one character grows while another declines. The characters cross in an X. Well, a lady wrote on the web (link) with scores of comments:
“I know more about the lives of Babylon 5’s senior staff than I know about any Starfleet Officer. They’re all a mess of workaholism, addictions, failed relationships, PTSD, broken paternal bonds—except for shining paragon of All-American Gee Whiz’ism, John Sheridan, who is broken down piece by piece during a war that reveals him to be a ruthless, “means justify the ends”-style General. He grows a beard while being tortured by his own government and never shaves it off. No one’s arc is static. No character ends where they begin.”
That writer, Jennifer Geisbrecht, puts the show in modern context:
“It still feels fresh today, maybe even fresher than it did in the 1990s simply because very few people are making shows like this anymore. Modern serialized television asks you to be a voyeur to the chaos, to consume it as fast as possible, or to consume it as a communal project. You and your friends waiting for the next big bombshell and treating everything between like treading water. A show paced like Babylon 5 asks you to come live in those in-between moments. It wants you to watch the chaos from inside the world and to stick with it during the long silences.”
I’m still chuckling at how when my buddy Blair wanted to praise a new show called Firefly, he said it was as good as B-5. I said, “No!” He said, “Really!” (So now I have two series I can recommend)
The word “placeholder” in my title is because I won’t review the show myself; Sorry, I just didn’t want to miss putting out a scheduled post.
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Sean Crawford
On a prairie brightened by art and space
October
2021
Blog Notes: I need to start keeping an index. As mentioned, my Death of Buffy piece is January 2021. My Death of Anya piece, with three or four Youtube musical links, is also January 2021.
For my buddy Blair’s terrific review of Firefly, see my Firefly Was a Masterpiece July 2021
I won’t link to my own blog posts: You aren’t that lazy; I’m not that desperate for SEO. (Search Engine Optimization—to get hits)
Postscript: I can’t resist plucking out a third Jennifer Geisbrecht paragraph as a send off:
“…My favourite scenes in the show are the little things: Ivanova’s illegal coffee-plant, Londo and Vir singing Centauri opera together in the station’s hallways, Marcus regailing a beleaguered Doctor Franklin with his nerdy headcanons about which characters in Le Morte d’Arthur he thinks the B5 crew are most like, Delenn and Sheridan telling each other quiet, ordinary anecdotes about their very different childhoods…”
