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"[T]he show suggests that the natural result of Capitalism’s decay is a re-emergence of Fascism, and... a familiar pattern of increasing technocratic censorship paired with a loss of political efficacy on the part of normal people...." tor.com/2019/06/13/bab…
Babylon 5 was often crass/clumsy, but it GOT fascism and white supremacy at a gut level:
"The wheel does not turn: the Centauri’s Imperial desire to see themselves as martyrs now under the boot of their victims is the poison tooth at the heart of the show’s many conflicts."
"The wheel does not turn: the Centauri’s Imperial desire to see themselves as martyrs now under the boot of their victims is the poison tooth at the heart of the show’s many conflicts."
And okay, look, I want to say up front that I *LOVE* DS9. B5 was my first love, out of the two, but I'm watching DS9 now and love it just as much. So this comparison is about how they're different, not which is better.
I agree with the author that DS9 is both more astute and more mature in its treatment of colonial war crimes as story drivers. However:
THIS: "This specificity of framing is in sharp contrast to Star Trek, which presents a vibrant playground in which to pose infinite number of philosophical moral quandaries but has shockingly little to say about the political architecture of that playground."
Re: Star Trek's shying away from specifics about how its society works: "I can interact with its ideas about capitalism and extremism and religion and western interventionism without getting lost in the weeds of polite innuendo post-Cold War Star Trek often malingered in."
On worldbuilding: "It’s this patient see-saw between present-day material conflicts and universe-shattering metaphysical overtones that allow the show’s various foreshadowing elements to pile up almost unnoticed, so... the first major shake up... feels like a genuine gut-punch."
And this: "In the 1990s, heroes didn’t fail to the extreme degree that Babylon 5’s protagonists do in that first season finale."
As someone who grew up in the 90s, seeing the heroes fail that hard was both devastating and exhilarating.
As someone who grew up in the 90s, seeing the heroes fail that hard was both devastating and exhilarating.
And for all the celebration of the slower, richer storytelling HBO and other prestige TV have been developing over the past decade, this rings true to me. 
"Babylon 5 does a little bit of everything: mostly okay, sometimes horribly, and occasionally with an earnest beauty that is almost transcendent."
YES. The show was an often-clumsy, cobbled-together patchwork, like life.
YES. The show was an often-clumsy, cobbled-together patchwork, like life.
Watching B5 is, for me, like reading the fiction I wrote during college: brimming over with big ideas, embarrassingly earnest, ignorant of a lot of nuance but with the right things as stars to steer by.
I read that stuff now and am SO glad it never got published. But at the same time, it's *vibrant* in a way I often struggle to recapture, and there are little moments that are better than anything I write today.
As for what it meant for TV storytelling, here's the bit I think is key.
Anyway, it's probably time to do a rewatch. :-)
