My Favourite TV: Babylon 5

I was off work ill for a week a little while ago with a nasty bug that’s ‘doing the rounds’ and was so sick that I couldn’t concentrate long enough to read much. As daytime TV is universally terrible and most movies would have demanded more attention than I could give them I turned to my trusty collection of TV box sets. What should draw my eye but the first 4 seasons of the SF series Babylon 5 (the less said about season 5 the better I think). So I ended up watching the complete season 1 box set and then started on edited highlights of season 2. By now I’m about half way through season 3 but have the excuse that I’m much better and other things are competing for my time.

Anyway, some of you may be thinking “What the heck is Babylon 5?” Basically it was a long running sci-fi series which aired between 1994-1998 for a total of 110 episodes also generating several spin-off movies and a spin-off series (or two). It revolved (no pun intended) around a large space-station – the Babylon 5 of the title – “in the middle of neutral territory” and took place “ten years after the Earth-Minbari war”. It’s a bit too complex to summarise in a few paragraphs but basically it contained lots of alien species, lots of fighting, some definitely larger than life characters and some very decent writing. The SFX were very special indeed for their time and budget and it was at times honestly gripping.

By far the best thing about this series where the characters involved. They were complex, often flawed beings who made mistakes and suffered to live with them. They fell in love, fought, died, and did all the things we would expect great heroes and villains to do. No one was irremediably bad or too good to be true. They all had depth and some of them – I’m thinking about G’Kar here played superbly by Andreas Katsulas – had a character that I just adored which isn’t bad for a reptile! Then there was the ever wonderful – unless you got on the wrong side of her – Susan Ivanova played by the beautiful and talented Claudia Christian and not forgetting the clown of the piece the deeply flawed and troubled Londo Mollari played to perfection by Peter Jurasik. This was a series written by someone who had a real feel for SF – unlike another series I could mention – which knew the themes and played with them. Of course sometimes what it produced was fairly naff but out of 110 episodes damned few fell into that category. Lastly was of course the Vorlon Kosh. I must admit that I didn’t like the idea of him/it coming out of its ‘encounter suit’ and being… well, I don’t want to give away any secrets to those who haven’t seen it. Suffice it to say that I would’ve preferred him/it to keep its clothes on. There are far too many (largely) secondary characters to mention most of whom I liked to some extent or another. The only character I never did get on with was Dr Stephen Franklin played by Richard Biggs. Despite what I said earlier he really was a little too good to be true.

If you haven’t seen this before and want to immerse yourself in a long running, intelligent and well executed TV space opera you could do a lot worse than this. It was for a time there reason to stay in, not answer the door and take the phone off the hook. Some of the best TV of the mid to late 90’s.