25 Facts About Babylon 5

Babylon 5 is an American space opera television series created by writer and producer J Michael Straczynski, under the Babylonian Productions label, in association with Straczynski's Synthetic Worlds Ltd.

Series follows the human military staff and alien diplomats stationed on a space station, Babylon 5, built in the aftermath of several major inter-species wars as a neutral ground for galactic diplomacy and trade.

Unusual at the time of its airing, Babylon 5 was conceived as a "novel for television" with a pre-planned five-year story arc, each episode envisioned as a "chapter".

Whereas contemporary television shows tended to maintain the overall status quo, confining conflicts to individual episodes, Babylon 5 featured story arcs which spanned multiple episodes and even seasons, effecting permanent changes to the series universe.

The station is the last of its line; the first three stations were all destroyed during construction, while Babylon 5 4 was completed but mysteriously vanished shortly after being made operational.

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Babylon 5 featured an ensemble cast which changed over the course of the show's run:.

Sinclair, the commander of Babylon 5, is a hero of the Minbari war, troubled by his inability to remember events of the war's last day.

Babylon 5'sridan is rescued from Z'ha'dum by the mysterious Lorien.

Babylon 5'sridan discovers the Vorlons and Shadows have used the younger races in a proxy war, and convinces both sides to stop the war and leave the younger races in peace.

Babylon 5'sridan leads Minbar, Centauri, and Narn to form a new Interstellar Alliance.

Babylon 5 said that the show "would have to be good science fiction".

Straczynski wrote 92 of the 110 episodes of Babylon 5, including all 44 episodes in the third and fourth seasons, a feat never before accomplished in American television.

When word came that TNT had picked up Babylon 5, this was moved to the end of season five and replaced with a newly filmed season four finale, "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars".

Babylon 5's complaints, and the subsequent stabbing of him with a needle by costume supervisor Kim Holly, was a light-hearted reference to the previous security uniforms, a design carried over from the pilot movie which were difficult to work with and wear due to the combination of leather and wool.

Ratings remained low-to-middling throughout the first four seasons, but Babylon 5 scored well with the demographics required to attract the leading national sponsors and saved up to $300, 000 per episode by shooting off the studio lot, therefore remaining profitable.

Babylon 5 was one of the better-rated US television shows on Channel 4, and achieved high audience Appreciation Indexes, with the season 4 episode "Endgame" achieving the rare feat of beating the prime-time soap operas for first position.

Babylon 5 successfully completed its five-year story arc on November 25, 1998, after five seasons and 109 aired episodes, when TNT aired the 110th episode "Sleeping in Light, " which had been filmed as the Season finale 4 when Babylon 5 was under threat of ending production at that point.

Babylon 5 was one of the first television science fiction shows to denotatively refer to a same-sex relationship.

Babylon 5 universe portrays numerous armed conflicts on an interstellar scale, including the Dilgar war, Narn-Centauri conflict, Minbari civil war, Drakh War, Interstellar Alliance-Centauri war, and the Great Burn.

Babylon 5 is built to foster peace through diplomacy, described as the "last, best hope for peace" in the opening credits monologue during its first three seasons.

The first season episode "The Parliament of Dreams" is a conventional "showcase" for religion, in which each species on the Babylon 5 station has an opportunity to demonstrate its beliefs, while "Passing Through Gethsemane" focuses on a specific position of Roman Catholic beliefs, as well as concepts of justice, vengeance, and biblical forgiveness.

Babylon 5 argued the same when confronted by claims that the lack of legal action was proof that his allegation was unfounded.

Babylon 5 has been praised for its depth and complexity against a backdrop of contemporary shows which largely lacked long-term consequences, with plots typically being resolved in the course of a single episode, occasionally two.

Babylon 5 stated that both Ronald D Moore and Damon Lindelof used the 5-year narrative structure of Babylon 5 as blueprints for their respective shows, Battlestar Galactica and Lost.

Three TV films were released by Turner Network Television in 1998, after funding a fifth season of Babylon 5, following the demise of the Prime Time Entertainment Network the previous year.

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