Guest Post: Introducing New Ships on DS9 & B5

Introducing New Ships on DS9 & B5

by Jon Del Arroz

The similarities of Deep Space 9 and Babylon 5 have been talked about quite a bit, and usually in arguments to talk about how one is so much better than the other, but I find their similarities to be something which drew me and still draws me to both shows like no TV has done since.

There really hasn’t been much in terms of sweeping space opera on the air, with a few exceptions here and there, and in recent decades everything has gotten so dark and edgy it’s been hard to watch.

But both of these shows managed to maintain a gripping pace while keeping their souls.

Each also had watershed events where the dynamic of the series changed because of the addition of ships to the conflict.

The first seasons of both shows had a very “police procedure” feel to them as they dealt with trouble on their stationary stations. It was divergent from the usual exploration tropes of Star Trek (even though DS9 did have a few episodes where they did their exploratory missions on runabouts), and what that did was serve to make the shows feel a little slower than their predecessors had been.

Both shows also ironically in their third seasons introduced warships into their arsenals to change the dynamic of the shows forever. Babylon 5 introduced The White Star, a ship for them to use against the overwhelming alien forces manipulating the younger species, and Deep Space 9 brought in the Defiant.

The pacing of the shows changed so quickly into one of frantic wartime melodrama. This is where I and many others connected to these shows, giving them their enduring legacy today. It was amazing, the station base plus the warship on the frontlines creates a dynamic which allows a show to really flex different storytelling muscles, but also to pull back and do less expensive shows “on station” which require less special effects budget. The result was a masterpiece of two series.

It’s something I haven’t seen really replicated in fiction, though it’s something I’ve thought about doing in my Stars Entwined universe, as I introduced Palmer Station (named after sci-fi writer David R. Palmer) to be a warfront location. I never got around to giving my characters a starship, though. Perhaps next season…

The Right Geek's Birthday Stream!

This was a free-form stream with a couple of my YouTube bros. And yes, I'm pretty sure the tags below don't quite cover everything we discussed.

A Disturbing Trend

Tonight, I've been thinking about my hands-down most favorite scene from Babylon 5. I'm not going to go into specifics about that scene because B5 is the one canon I absolutely will not spoil -- even if it is decades later. Suffice it to say that the moment in question happens late in season five and involves one character forgiving another for the latter's substantial transgressions against the former. Folks who have seen B5: you know which scene I mean, yes?

(And by the way, if you didn't hear that last tag question in a particular accent, I question your commitment to B5 fandom.)

I've been reflecting on that one fantastic show of grace because, quite frankly, I don't know how many of today's so-called creatives are capable of pulling off something similar. The SJW mind virus, you see, utterly wipes out a writer's ability to tackle themes of redemption and absolution. Instead, feral vengeance is the order of the day. "If you've been wronged," sayeth the radicals, "any response - no matter how nakedly violent or otherwise immoral - is permitted."

Take Iron Man 2020, for example. In this poor excuse for an Iron Man event, an AI version of Tony Stark seems to sanction his AI foot soldiers' needless endangerment of human beings for the sake of his robot rebellion. (As of the second issue, at least. I haven't had a chance to read the third.) To be sure, I happen to agree that sapient artificial beings should be granted the same status as any man of flesh. Still, I believe it's the opposite of heroic to show such a casual disregard for individuals who happen to fall on the wrong side of the mechanical/biological divide.

The SJW's at Marvel, though, apparently see no problem with a construct of Tony - one who possesses the original man's memories, mind you - acting in this way. This is because in their minds, AI Tony is an avatar for the powerless -- and the powerless need not obey rules of combat nor show any mercy. It's a diabolical notion, in my view -- one that threatens to pull us back into the world of never-ending blood feuds. But if Iron Man 2020 and the recent X books are any indication, it's a notion that's reigning supreme at one of America's largest comic book publishers.

Is anyone else troubled by this development? Or is it just me? 

RIP, Stephen Furst: To Absent Friends...

Vir's moment in Sleeping in Light still destroys me every time -- thanks to Furst and his quiet yet heartfelt performance.

RIP, Stephen Furst: A Blast-from-the-Past Analysis of Vir's Character Arc on B5

I originally wrote this analysis of Vir as a character more than a decade ago.

Coming of Age: The Growth of Vir Cotto

Beginnings: Capable of a “Well-Deserved” Humility

In the second season episode There All the Honor Lies, Vir reveals that his family sent him to Babylon 5 to be rid of him, and that previous to his assignment as Londo Mollari’s attaché, he had held a number of positions that were ultimately personally isolating or disastrous. Vir is, at the start, a failure by noble Centauri standards, fundamentally lacking the ruthlessness and ambition required for advancement in the royal court. Held in contempt by his family and ignored by his countrymen, Vir is also, I believe, a deeply lonely figure desperately seeking some place where he can fit in.

It is true that when Vir first arrives on Babylon 5 a fat, meek, clumsy, stammering young man in a seemingly perpetual terror of Londo, he is not much to look at. Still, even as early as The War Prayer, we see that there may be something more to Vir than his outer childishness- that he’s not beyond quietly holding a subversive notion or two. In a later episode, he is pegged as a radical for his beliefs on romantic love in particular, but the term “radical” is, in my opinion, inaccurate. Vir is too mindful of authority to wear that label.

A Reformer, Not a Radical

No where is Vir’s lack of radicalism more clear than in the second season, when he is faced with the central moral dilemma of his arc. Presented with the choice of rebelling against Londo outright versus seeking a change from within, he chooses the later. At every opportunity, Vir strenuously dissents from Londo’s course of action against the Narn, pleading with his superior to make a different choice. Yet still, while on Babylon 5, he obeys.

Many may understandably find this early caution frustrating. I, however, see it as a correct decision given the circumstance. All through the second season, Vir is negotiating from a position of powerlessness. Frank rebellion would’ve resulted in Vir being turned out into the wilds of obscurity or worse, leaving him subsequently unable to influence future events.

To be sure, there is little evidence to show that Vir is consciously influenced by these political considerations. Hands down, Vir’s principle motivations for staying the course are personal and emotional. Extremely uncertain of his own talents and capabilities, he hangs back. But even more importantly, he loves Londo and cannot bring himself to leave him behind.

(Jump cut for length.)

RIP, Stephen Furst: My Old Vir Fanfiction

Over the weekend, I was deeply saddened to learn that Stephen Furst passed away Friday due to complications from his diabetes.

Now hopefully, everyone who's reading this knows who this guy is. The news has generally referred to him as one of the stars of Animal House, but I will always remember him as Vir Cotto on Babylon 5 (and also as Elliot Axelrod on St. Elsewhere).

As I've mentioned in at least one earlier post, I was (and am) mad for Vir -- and Furst was the perfect actor to bring that character to life. Seriously: Who else would've been able to hold his own opposite Peter freakin' Jurasik, who was nothing if not larger than life?

For the next week, I'm dedicating this blog to Furst's memory. I'm not exacty sure what I'm going to do for each post just yet -- but in the meantime, allow me to share a link to some of the B5 fanfiction I wrote a decade ago that focused on Vir, Londo's stammering conscience:

AO3: The Works of "Hobsonphile"

Guest Post: How B5 & JMS Changed My Life, by Declan Finn

I have sentiments similar to those expressed by Declan below -- although in my case, JMS's major impact was less on my writing style and more on my reading and viewing preferences. I am a bit older than Declan (apparently), but I was still an adolescent when B5 aired for the first time and consequently imprinted quite strongly on that particular style of science fiction. To this day, I still look for epic narratives in which the main characters seek to serve some cause above themselves. 

After talking once about Babylon 5, I feel this strong urge to discuss about the creator, J. Michael Straczynski, influenced me an my own work.  Odd, since he has always been an avowed atheist, and I have always been a Catholic.  JMS has also, in recent years, come out as a bit of a liberal, yet Babylon 5 helped shape my politics and my writing. He wrote military sci-fi in which people stood up to an Orwellian despot and were willing to die for what they believed.

When B5 first went on the air, I was 10. By the time it was over, I was 16 and reading everything JMS had posted on writing.  Then I started using JMS on writing to create B5 fan fiction. There were aspects of this rich, vivid world I wanted to explore, and the only place I could explore them was on paper. I pondered what religious orders there might have been, and I created the Holy Order of St. Patrick, a missionary order created by Father Patrick Itzak Patel … The members of the HOP were called “hoppies” by the public or “a real PIP” by members within the order.

I had come up with how the order had been founded, but that was generally background material. The HOP had been founded by a priest who had once been sent to the People's Republic of China and was captured, tortured, and escaped. He planned to come back and convert the people who had enslaved him, just like St. Patrick had when he had been kidnapped by the Celts.

The real work of the novels was my character Sean Patrick Ryan (He had originally been John Ryan, but I realized that the name belong to a Tom Clancy character). He was two meters tall and one wide, with an Irish cop gene, a high telepath rating, and a decided attitude problem.

And so many storylines grew out of small, offhand lines.  The enemy from the B5 pilot became a “Minbari mafia” and a whole book unto itself. Sean Ryan was introduced taking down a local B5 mobster named N'Grath – basically an evil preying mantis that was 7-feet tall. And we don't even discuss the terrorist takeover of Disneyplanet (written before the takeover of EuroDisney in Tom Clancy's novel Rainbow 6. How's that for timing?).

It turned into a four thousand page novel that I'm still trying to disentangle from Babylon 5.

After that, I was hooked on writing. Characters wouldn't leave me alone. I suddenly had voices in my head (being a writer: legal schizoprenia.)  And now the books that have been rewritten OUT of the Babylon 5 universe are even longer, with short episodes in the books now becoming books of their own.

That's not the odd part. The fallout is the odd part.

In my novel Codename: Winterborn, my coauthor and I have a strange dystopia variant in the city of San Francisco.  Basically, WW3 was a short affair, and missile shields in conservative states kept the Eastern half of the country alive, while some were killed by general fallout. San Francisco survived, but the general population of the planet thinks it's dead.

However, governments know that San Francisco is still there.  I thought, “Gee, wouldn't that include the Vatican? And wouldn't they send SOMEBODY over to San Francisco?”

And suddenly, I had priest who was an ex-cop with a missionary order, trained to act in hostile territory, covertly preaching with hostage negotiation skills, nonlethal hand-to-hand combat skills, and “how to covert the newly disarmed” skills.

It was the Holy Order of St. Patrick, and their leader was Father Patrick Itzak Patel – just called him “Fr. Jack.”

So, yeah, that happened.

When I first created It Was Only on Stun! (a murder mystery at a science fiction convention) I had to have a civilian on security.  I needed someone who was bat guano insane and didn't mind putting himself in harm's way.  I couldn't start the book until I named him. It didn't come together until he became Sean Aloysius Patricus Ryan.  And he became 5'6” tall and became his own person.

Even my magnum opus, the Pius Trilogy, a thriller series meant to dismantle Dan Brown and “Hitler's Pope” supporters, was influenced by JMS and B5.  How?  Well, it started with a dead academic researching Pope Pius XII. His assassin was then blown up, and landed on the car of the head of papal security – Giovanni Figlia. Giovanni had been escorting a Secret Service agent who was auditing Vatican security (written before Pope Francis declared his war on the Swiss Guard), and was coordinating with a visiting dignitary who was to set up the Pope's security in his country.

The three of them fall into the case, but something was missing.  My Pope Pius XIII was a man who had enemies, and wanted security to protect the people around him (Suicide Bomb + St. Peter's square = dead tourists).  That's why the Secret Service was there.

As the Secret Service agent is being shown around, Giovanni shows her another security consultant. Sean AP Ryan.

I would then apply almost everything JMS and B5 ever taught me into action.  I would kill off major characters. I had no problems making them suffer if it served the story – let's just say that when I torture one major player, it owed a lot to the B5 episodes Comes the Inquisitor, A Sky Full of Stars, and Intersections in Real time.  Even the ending was much like Babylon 5 – it ended in fire.

Not to mention a lot of my speeches sound like they were written by John Sheridan.

At the end of the day, almost my entire writing career has been echoes of the first spark lit by JMS.  I've written 15 books by now (maybe 20), but they all come back, in some way, to Babylon 5.  The themes of the show constantly run through my own writing: standing up against tyranny in any form, being willing to die for what you believe, being willing to put your main characters through Hell and back, and be sure to include consequences for every action.

Joe Straczynski gave me the gift of writing. It's a gift I can't repay.

Guest Post: The Baptism of Contemporary Science Fiction, by Declan Finn

Stephanie remarks: For many years, I've wanted to write an extended essay on the Catholic-friendly philosophical and spiritual undertones of Babylon 5, so when Declan sent this to me, I squealed like a little girl. One day, when I have more time, I will write an extended addendum; for now, please enjoy Declan's contribution!

While I have been both a cradle Catholic and a cradle geek, I can honestly say that the two rarely intersected for a good chunk of my life.  Most of the time, my thoughts on faith and science fiction consisted of wondering why the starship Enterprise was a naval vessel without a chaplain.

Then the year was 1993, and the name of the show was Babylon 5.

While never as big a hit as Star Trek, Babylon 5 – or simple B5, as fans call it – was one of the few science fiction shows that fought and won against the Star Trek franchise without being run over by the monolith.

But one thing that made it special was religion.

Originally, Babylon 5 had been easily dismissed as a Star Trek: Deep Space 9 ripoff, even though the creator, Joseph Michael Straczynski (best known as simply JMS) had pitched Babylon 5 to paramount the year before Deep Space 9. Even my family were a little wary of it at first. It was fun, but nothing particularly special.

Then came the episode By Any Means Necessary. A subplot revolved around an alien ambassador trying to obtain an artifact necessary for his religious ritual. The ritual involved burning a plant in the sunlight that touched a particular mountain on a particular day. Since they're in space, the ambassador had to acquire the plant, and lead the ceremony at the same time as his people back home. When the station Commander finds a way to get the required plant, it was too late, the time had past. Until science fiction and faith collided. As the commander says:

What you forgot to take into account, is that sunlight also travels through space....The sunlight that touched the …. mountain 10 of your years ago, will reach this station in 12 hours …. But it's still the same sunlight.

The ambassador agrees, and comments, “Commander, you're a far more spiritual man than I give you credit for.”

The commander answers, “There are a couple of Jesuit teachers I know who might disagree with you.”

Welcome to Babylon 5, with the first openly Catholic commander in science fiction. My family was hooked.

Later on, in Season 2, there were two strong episodes that hit home. The first was called Comes the Inquisitor. The plot was simple: our heroes are in a war with an ancient enemy that make Sauron in Lord of the Rings look nice, and an alien ally known as the Vorlons want to make certain that one of our heroes, named Delenn, is in it for the right reasons. What are the wrong reasons? To be a hero! To be adulated! To be the leader of a holy crusade!

The theme of the episode was actually summarized by the T.S. Eliot poem “Murder in the Cathedral.” If you don't know the context, “Murder in the Cathedral” was about the last days of Thomas Beckett, and his final temptation is actually a suggestion that Beckett should embrace the glory or martyrdom.

To which Eliot has Becket reply:

The last temptation is the greatest treason:

To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

A line from the actual episode is: “If you do the right thing for the wrong reasons, the work becomes corrupted, impure, and ultimately self-destructive.”

The antagonist for Comes the Inquisitor, named only “Sebastian” is only satisfied with Delenn when the Captain, Sheridan, comes charging in to the rescue, and is himself captured.  When Sebastian threatens to kill Delenn if she tries to save Sheridan, she dismisses his threat, saying that to save one life or a billion, it doesn't matter. If that doesn't have overtones of “He who saves one man saves the whole world,” I don't know what does.

Delenn going toe-to-toe with Sebastian really does look like it will end badly for her. However, Sebastian declares that they have passed his test.

How do you know the chosen ones? No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for his brother. Not for millions, not for glory, not for fame. For one person, in the dark...where no one will ever know...or see.

Yes. The punchline was John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Soon after, in the season two finale, The Fall of Night the Vorlons enter into the picture again.  For The Fall of Night, we see what they look like outside of their environmental suits – angels. They even look like different angels to different aliens.  It's revealed that Vorlons modified all aliens in order to make them see Vorlons as beings of light that correspond to their religions. The nice thing about this is that there are no implications that the Vorlons invented religion, but mimicked religions already in place.  It's a nice change of pace for science fiction, where the trend is to say that an advanced race created God.

The final bits that made Babylon 5 hit home with my faith came in season three.  A group of religious pilgrims arrive on the station. They're Dominicans. Yes, the Order of Preachers arrived on the station.

Okay, JMS insists they're Benedictines.. But their outfits are Dominican, which might be a costume error. Why are they on the station? Their leader, Brother Theo, explains:

To learn, and to teach. It says in the Bible that even the smallest sparrow does not fall, without God seeing it.  What then of all these other races from distant worlds? Would he abandon them … or reveal himself in some other way? God goes by many names. Perhaps some are alien sounding, different faces and histories, but all describing the same Creator We are here to learn all those names, in hopes of better understanding the one who is behind them....

When Theo says that he brought experts that are in much demand on earth, the station commander asks that, if they're in such demand, why are they on B5? “They also believe.”

Over time, Babylon 5 explored a lot of themes that, if not blatantly Catholic, were at least Judeo-Christian. There were themes of sin and redemption all over the place, though there were parts of it that were secular humanist in nature, and sometimes even straight up Judaic. Let's just say that several characters would have been helped had they simply had a confessor to go to.

Then there's Passing Through Gethsemane. In the world of B5, the death penalty has been largely replaced with “mindwiping,” and reprogramming a person to serve the community he harmed.

Enter an ethical dilemma where a serial killer has been mindwiped, and now serving in Br. Theo's group. When the families of his victims come for him, revealing who is was, he goes crazy, pondering how he can be forgiven when he doesn't even remember his sins. The answer to most of us is simple: in confession, we ask forgiveness for these and all our sins. But he was clearly going crazy at the time, so we'll forgive the character that slip.

By the end, one man kills the former murderer, and is himself mindwiped, and sent to join Br. Theo and company as “Brother Malcom.” When he tries to shake Sheridan's hand, Sheridan looks at him like a snake. Theo, however, explains:

You must forgive the captain, Malcolm. You interrupted his train of thought. I believe he was saying that forgiveness is a hard thing, but something every to be strived for....

At the end of the day, JMS describes himself as an atheist, that he was “born Catholic but it wore off.” Despite this, JMS may have written one of the most Catholic science fiction shows of this generation. He allowed religion into a genre that traditionally wouldn't touch faith with a ten-foot pole, or would blatantly reject it. It was nice to, at long last, find a piece of science fiction that would honestly practice the tolerance it preached, and would let this nerd carry his cross for the ride.