What is Babylon 5? |
Babylon 5 is a science fiction television series that is set on a space station in the mid 23rd Century. It is an on-going story, set across a five year span of time from 2257 to 2262. The long-term story, unlike many sci-fi programmes, has been mapped out for the full five-year 'story arc'. However, there is room within this for episode-to-episode or within-episode sub-plots.
`Babylon 5' is the name of the space station. It is 5 miles long and can hold a quarter of a million humans and aliens. It was constructed to help keep the peace among the Earth Alliance and four other alien races (the Narn, Centauri, Minbari and Vorlons), amongst whom Babylon 5 is centrally located. B5 was constructed by the EA. However, the Minbari and Centauri contributed money as the EA couldn't afford the full cost after the unfortunate loss of each of the preceeding 4 Babylon stations.. Each of the alliances has an official representative on the station, as does the 'League of Non-Aligned Worlds', a federation of smaller races. This by no means represents all the life in our galaxy, however.
The series traces events centred on this space station. The fifth and last season of the show is on hiatus in the UK. The fifth season is set in 2262 - each season spans one year in B5's timeline. The beginning of the fifth season marks a time of new peace and rebuilding in the galaxy. This follows the failure of B5's peacekeeping mission in previous seasons which lead to many wars - between the Narn and Centari; between the millenia-old Shadows and Vorlons, and the younger races; and civil wars on Earth and on Minbar. Out of all of this conflict, a new Interstellar Alliance has been born, forged by President Sheridan of Earth and Ambassador Delenn of Minbar.
Season 5 deals with the establishment of the new Alliance, of the on-going tensions between human telepaths and "normals", and of the aftermath of the Shadow War.
The season 3 cast
The series was created, is produced and is in very large part written by J. Michael Straczynski, often abbreviated to 'JMS' or Joe. The show is produced by Babylonian Productions for Warner Bros. in the US. In the US, B5 originally aired on the WB PTEN network of affiliated stations. However, by the end of the fourth season this network had collapsed leaving no money and no home for B5. Thankfully, the show was effectively rescued through the intervention of the cable network, TNT, who bought the rights to air the existing seasons, and commissioned not only the fifth season but associated TV movies and most recently a spin-off series, "Babylon 5: Crusade", which will premier in the New Year of 1999.
In the UK, B5 has premiered to date on Channel 4 - the SciFi channel on cable and satellite now have rights to all the re-runs, and recently the TV movies have been premiering on video. I hold a separate page with more information on UK airings.
Further background information on the series can be found in the UK Newsgroup's Frequently Asked Questions information.
For more specific episode summaries and the background to previous seasons, try one of the following sites:
Finally, I hold a page with a more extensive selection of links to B5 material on the Net.
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