Saturday 10 April 2010

1910 Babylon 5 last season background

The Series, Babylon 5 came to an end yesterday(8.4.2010) with a double episode. This however is not the end of Babylon 5 on current TV because over the course of seven days, the FX channel is showing the seven subsequent films which they claim have not been shown on British TV before. Given the same claim is made for Friday episodes of the NCIS which I have seen previously, I suspect have are omitted a qualification, or two. At present I do not know if these films reveal what happened to some of the main characters during the final two decades of the life of Federation President Sheridan - Lennier, G’Kar, Molari, Lyta, Bester and new station chief Lochley are all absent at the final get together before he stops at his appointed hour and joins the First Ones who are able to commence second journeys of self aware experience.

Today I begin with a reminder to myself of the main features of what has happened during the first four seasons and on the main characters who have important roles during the last season, and hopefully in all or some of the films. I will then add my notes on the episodes and films over the course of coming week.

Apart from the first and last episodes, the rest of the final season covers the first couple of years after Sheridan becomes President of the newly formed interplanetary organisation which provides military security for the different nations and their races spread over their systems. This has come about because of the threat posed to all life in the known worlds from the conflicting philosophies and approaches of the ancient races, the Shadows and the Vorlons, and who have been persuaded to return to new homelands beyond the rim of the explored worlds. The penultimate episode sees Sheridan and Delenn move to the new headquarters of the interplanetary organisation to Minbar.

In the first episode there is a future’s look back on how Sheridan and Delenn are viewed on earth, 100 years, 500 years, 1000 years and 1 million years later. The last episode concentrates on the final days of Sheridan, some two decades after the move of the New Order headquarters from Babylon 5 to Minbar. It is possible that the missed episodes also went beyond the first couple of years and provides some answers to the number of unresolved what happened to questions with which I am left

The move of its main function to Minbar commenced its decline and with the effectiveness of the new order there had been decreasing need for the space station to act as a refugee camp, a military staging post, or as a colourful expensive centre with poor accommodation and an absence of natural earth foods, for rebels, and the displaced, rather like Las Vegas meets the restaurant at the end of the universe. In the last episode Babylon 5 has become a shell and is in the process of decommissioning, blowing up in spectacular fashion rather than becoming a hazard to future space travellers.

The major purpose of an Earth alliance inspired Babylon 5, was to prevent conflicts between nations leading to blood shedding and destruction on an inter planetary scale. The first Babylon station was constructed after the end of the war with the newly discovered race, the Minbari, started accidentally in which the human race nearly perished and were only saved because the man subsequently appointed to command Babylon 5 had been captured and unknowingly revealed something which led the Minbari to immediately stop hostilities. This in fact is the subject of the first film to be shown next Monday

The first three stations were not completed and the fourth disappeared just before commissioning and was to play a crucial part in the story subsequently and involving the re-appearance of the Babylon 5’s first commander, Sinclair, meeting his successor. Babylon 5 was established on the model of a United Nations with a permanent inner Council chaired by the station commander and involved the Minbari, the Narn’s and the Centauri who were the three other major planetary systems, together with the mysterious Vorlons who were many thousands of years older than the races represented by the other permanent inner council members. The inner council required the support of the other races and planetary systems whose ambassadors participated in general decision taking sessions. While the Earth, the Narn’s and the Centauri had broadly the same technological development, the Minbari were more advanced with the Vorlon having superior personal powers beyond human understanding.

During the first season there was growing indication of the re-emergence of another of the ancient races -, the Shadows, who held a philosophy about the rest of the universe in conflict with that of the Vorlons. The Vorlons believed in intervening organically at a pace which the newer races could cope with. The Shadows believed in the big bang and the Hegelian notion that out of conflict between extremes a new equilibrium is achieved, until there is further imbalance and further conflict will lead to development of the survivors however few. The last conflict between the intervention of the Shadows and the Vorlons took place over a thousand of years before Earth was able to explore its planetary system and beyond, making contact with other races (the good work of Star Trek)

During the first season and second seasons we came to know characters who play an ongoing role throughout the series. John Sheridan is appointed the commander when Sinclair moves to Minbari to prepare for what has been prophesised. We learn Sheridan fought in the war with the Minbari and became hated by the Minbar Warrior class because of military success against them. He is a widower, or so he believes, and develops a close relationship with the Minbar Ambassador Delenn who is assistant by Lennier, a young Minbar who unknown or unrecognised by her comes to worship everything she is and does. She understands she is part of the prophecy and undergoes a metamorphosis, developing human characteristics which enable her to have a physical relationship with Sheridan and they marry at the conclusion of season four. While Sheridan is a military man, she has been an important part of Minbari ruling Council representing the interests of the caste dedicated to the spirit and to peace and while Sinclair is action man she is more of a guider than adviser.

There are four individuals on Sheridan’s management of the station team who have ongoing and crucial roles. (Susan) Ivanova is second in command, initially as head of the station’s defence she becomes the stations trouble shooter and fixer, dealing with union problems, helping ambassadors to settle in, handling trade missions and potential new members of the General Council.

The station has its internal security services led by (Michael) Garibaldi a recovering alcoholic with an aggressive and rebellious past. He becomes assisted by Zack (Allan) who is to have an increasingly more important role over the final season. Michael is given an outreach role when Sheridan breaks away from the Earth Alliance when the new President creates a fascist state

The third individual is head of medical services, Dr Stephen Franklin, whose role was help with understanding the different make up of the races as a means of helping them to live together peacefully. He also has his personal problems, relationships with his father and with drugs because of the pressures of role and living alone and he also goes into the wilderness for time and the internal journey‘s and work of both men on the station providing opportunity top explore and reveal the lives of majority of inhabitants of the five mile in length and with 250000 inhabitants at any one time, about the size of Newcastle, the capital city of the North East of England.

(Unlike Battlestar Galactica and even Star Trek we rarely see children, and there is no reference to schools, libraries cinemas, dance halls, museums, art galleries, sporting events and the only recreation appears to be bars, gambling and restaurants, and with partners and sexual activity only referred to occasionally.

The fourth role is undertaken by two people - the station‘s telepath. Lyta (Alexander) is the replacement telepath and her role becomes crucial to the development of the fifth season and the survival and success of the new order. She is appointed by the earth Psi Corp of telepaths although other races, the Minbari for example have telepaths with the Vorlons more advanced of everyone akin to those of the 4400, and which the Psi Corps are experimenting in order to achieve their objection of power and control within the Earth alliance. The issue of the respective positions and powers of telepaths and other humans comes to the fore throughout the series. Ivanova is hostile to the Psi Corps because of what happened to her mother who when her powers were identified refused to join the Psi corps who then made her life hell.

Although not the head of the Corps (Alfred) Bester, appearing in 12 important episodes, is a kind of Witchfinder general, especially when it comes to Telepaths who attempt to leave the order, he tracks them down so they can be retrained or eliminated. His duties and his personal interests come into conflict when he finds that the love of his life, a renegade telepath he has partially retrained is one of the telepaths captured by the Shadows and converted into an organic machine to run some of their warcraft. With the help of Lyta, Sheridan uses some of the retrieved telepaths against the earth alliance immobilising the ships on which they have been placed sufficiently long enough to change the balance of the conflict. Bester’s woman is not one of them and he supports the work on Babylon 5 to try and free the telepaths from their Shadow shackles. Lyta in turn gain power through her association with the Vorlon Ambassador Kosh. For a time I speculated if the decision of Garibaldi to oppose Sheridan during season four had been an arrangement by the Commander for his friend to go underground and report intelligence. In fact Garibaldi had been worked on by Bester and although he had been freed from control, a block had been left which prevented Garibaldi from trying to kill Bester.

Because of her past experience, her warrior training and personality, deputy Ivanova resisted any ongoing heterosexual relationship, although as season four progressed she came close to admitting her growing feelings for Marcus (Cole), the head Ranger trained by the Minbari. There are several similarities between the personalities of Ivanova and Marcus, and between Delenn and Sheridan. Like Sheridan she is a warrior at heart, dislikes management and administration, but is also not afraid to take decisions, accept responsibility and face the consequences of actions. When she is mortally wounded at the end of season four, it is Marcus who gives up his life to in effect resurrect her. Marcus therefore plays no part in season five, not does Ivanova for the greater part as she decides to return to active services and is given a role akin to a Squadron leader or perhaps that of a fleet admiral in charge of the latest battleship.

Throughout there series there are two characters with strong feelings for and against each other and we the audience also develop strong feelings for and against them, in some respects stronger feelings than towards Sheridan and Delenn. When the series commenced it is G’Kar of the Centauri we dislike who appears underhand and ruthless, in his hatred of the Narn’s because of the way they colonised and humiliated his people for centuries before they were able to regain their freedom. (Londo) Molari, the Narn Ambassador, enjoys gambling and alcohol and women with several wives and the love of his life, his mistress, a dancer. However Molari wants to regain control of the Centauri and also wants personal power within his Empire, so he accepts the offer of help from the Shadows which leads to the destruction and subjugation of the Centauri whose leadership is eliminated with the exception of G’Kar, who then leads an underground insurrection.

Molari becomes increasingly guilty over what he has done and what happens within the leadership of his world. When he finds that the Shadows have a been given a base by the mad despotic President, prepared to sacrifice his people to become a God, he organises his assassination, with the final blow taken by his faithful assistant, Vir (Cotto). He then frees his people by blowing up the island where the Shadows have their forces. G’Kar is captured and torture and rendered blind in one eye but does a deal with Molari in which the freedom of his people is gained. By the end of season four G’Kar has become a thoughtful, sad individual, no longer interested in personal power but wanting to contribute to the future welfare of his people, returning to Babylon 5 as an Ambassador. Molari has also changed despite being told that he will become President, as also will Vir after the death of Molari. Londo also mourns the loss of his mistresses killed by treachery from home and the loss of his closest friend.

By the end of the fourth series the two major stories have run their course. First there was the conflict between the Vorlons, initially viewed as the good guys through the role of Ambassador Kosh, and who saves the life of Sheridan during an assassination, and the Shadows, portrayed as dark, destructive, sinister and openly human controlling, who have a secret presence on the station through a human looking individual (Morden) who is the first link with Molari. Modern is present when Sheridan is persuaded to visit what has become the Shadow home world, by his long since thought dead wife who appears to have survived intact and become a convert to the Shadow approach. She is destroyed when Sheridan refuses to agree to their approach and proves that his wife has become a Shadow controlled shell. Sheridan has been resurrected from the explosion by a God like figure who claims to be the First of the First ones. He is advised that his future lifespan is limited to two decades and then he will stop existing as a human. (I reminded of the fate of the surviving space explorer in 2010)

When Sheridan returns to the former home world of the defeated Shadows to try and find and make use of their technology and advances on what beings can do, it is Lyta who triggers the self destruction of the planet, so the information will not become available to Sheridan, and to the Psi corp. This action is to have profound consequences during the final season.

During the fourth season Sheridan and Delenn have progressed the role of Babylon 5 as a bridge between races and nations bur with great difficulty and setbacks, but there is unity when the Vorlons and the Shadows start destroying entire planets and all the people on them. They both have planet destroyers akin to that in the Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy, creating a space super highway which destroys earth and its people in their entirety.

After reaching a stalemate between the Vorlons and Shadows, and they are required by The First One to leave the area and find new homes beyond the rim, the alliance breaks down and Sheridan becomes preoccupied with defending the station from the despotic new president and working to over throw the man who has become a fusion of Hitler and Stalin operating a regime which is a fusion of Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, and Huxley’s Brave New World.

We learned that the head of state had only come to power with the help of the Psi Corps who had also be party to the recovery of a Shadow craft and a knowledge of their powers and technology. We also learned that Garibaldi has been commissioned in his work as a detective by the head of Mars based inter planetary corporation (William Edgars), who had also married the love of his life. This corporation with other earth based interplanetary corporations, also wanted an end to the Earth dictatorship but for different reasons. Their concern was the role and ambitions of the Psi corps who they recognised were after the subjugation of normals and the taking and advancing of their own powers, given the knowledge of how it had been developed by others. The Mars based enterprise had developed a drug which could kill telepaths if they are not provided with ongoing treatment. However the side effect of the treatment is to render them ineffective and controllable and to be used as work slaves for the corporations. They were hostile to what Sheridan was doing and planning not just because it was thought his timing was wrong, but they feared his plans to set up a new from of alliance which would have power over them rather than the other way round, thus confirming the established truth that the development of International Corporations with the movement of capital and production to friendly, accommodating and stable regimes whatever their composition was advocated, planned and implemented on earth during the last three decades of the twentieth century, and in the UK under Thatcher.

With the help of the combined forces of the Narn’s, the Centauri and the other nations and races who remained part of the Babylon 5 Council, President Clark was deposed, and the earth planet is saved, as the President turned the defence system upon earth before committing suicide. The new administration on earth while recognising that Sheridan and his team had saved them and the planet, in more ways than one, recognised that he was then a threat and insisted on his premature retirement. Sheridan accepted and produced his mastercard, his appointment as the President elect of the new Interplanetary government with Babylon 5 as its initial base.

This then is the baseline for the final season and subsequently broadcast films. Will the new Interplanetary organisation work and achieve its objectives? What part will the characters who have played such important roles in the previous seasons have in the brave new order?

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