TV: Babylon 5, The Gathering

Moving on from Stephen Cannell's arc-based television series, let's examine another show from a few years later, one also heavily invested in an arc structure.  This is J. Michael Straczynski's (or as he prefers, JMS) science fiction epic, Babylon 5.

In the early 90s, Star Trek's Next Generation era series were the dominant flavor of TV SF.  They were more or less inescapable for certain population demographics;  though it's never been an ambition of mine, I've seen pretty much every episode of TNG, and most of DS9.  And not all of them were gems.


Expertly hyped to its target audience on the SF convention circuit and nascent Internet in the years leading up to its launch, Babylon 5 promised a hard (or at least, harder) SF approach for Television.  JMS vowed to deliver a novel for television, one five years long with a beginning, middle, end, and not as a launching point for innumerable franchises.  It would be a complicated, smart, dark show (exhibit A: his Captain Power episodes) free from the compromised tv-friendly values which often hamstrung Trek.  "No kids or cute robots," he promised.  Further, a planned story would be fiscally responsible, enabling better planning for recurring actors and set construction.  Also beneficial was the drastic reduction in the cost of computer-assisted post production made possible the use of passably good CGI on a much wider scale than earlier shows.

Of course, no series survives contact with its audience.  Even accounting for the assiduous planning involved in creating the overall arc of the series, changes were forced.  Actors came and went, their roles in the overall story shifted, reduced, or eliminated.   Further,  in a shrinking syndication market, B5 always seemed about a hair from cancellation.  While this fact always threatened the completion of story, and kept the core of the fanbase interested, financial considerations dramatically altered the series' plot, compressing season four when cancellation seemed certain, leaving the series with a year-long denouement (to put it kindly) when TNT rescued the final season.

Still, its influence on TV SF since then is unmistakable.  Series today are indeed darker, complicated, and smarter than before.  Serial elements are always present, even if not to the same degree.

While they could hardly be further apart in tone, both Firefly and the reboot of Battlestar Galactica benefited from the trail blazed by B5.

So now, let's begin our look at this five-year novel for TV, now with a bit more than five years' distance.

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Pilot: The Gathering

A true pilot episode, the success of The Gathering greenlit the first season of the series.  Upon starting its final season, following TNT's series pickup, JMS was allowed the chance to revisit The Gathering and make some improvements for its shortcomings.  It's this version of the pilot that I'm covering here, as it's the one available commercially.  I probably still have the original version on a VHS tape, but no longer have the ability to view it.

Babylon 5 takes place at the start of the year 2257 on a 5-mile long space station positioned in neutral territory between the major interstellar powers.  The station is parked at a LaGrange point above Epsilon 3, an uninhabited world.   Four of the aforementioned major powers have permanent ambassadorial delegates onboard; the arrival of the fifth drives the "A" plot of the pilot.   The regular cast consists of these alien ambassadors (later joined by their designated lackeys) and the human crew that controls the station.  The first characters formally introduced are the humans.

Laurel Takashima (Tamlyn Tomita) is B5's second in command.   She is the first of three from the cast who would be replaced following the pilot.  SF shows are notoriously harsh for actors to find their characters; this is especially difficult in early episodes, when world-establishing exposition is loaded onto almost every conversation.  In addition to having very little character development in the pilot -- her most memorable personal touch was her unlawful growing of coffee, a quirk later assigned to her replacement -- Tomita's wooden delivery suggests she was wisely cutting bait to leave prior to series launch.  Jeffrey Sinclair (the late Michael O'Hare) is the station's commander, a former fighter pilot carrying some baggage from the recent Minbari war.   Michael Garibaldi (Jerry Doyle) is B5's head of security,  a ne'er-do-well who has been riding Sinclair's coattails for several years.  Newly arrived is Lyta Alexander (Patricia Tallman), licensed commercial telepath from Earth.  As she arrives, a minor hostage situation occurs, giving Jeff time to Play By His Own Rules in defusing the situation.  

With humans out of the way, we now meet Narn ambassador G'Kar (the late Andreas Katsulas, reliable character actor and TNG veteran) who in the very early part of the series is painted as the obvious angry villain on the station.   With some reason; his people have only in recent history overthrown the Centauri who had enslaved their home world.  Here he barges right up to Command and Control to complain about one of his planet's ships being refused docking privileges.  His blustering outrage is matched by Takashima's lifeless responses; and as both of them are saddled with Pilot Episode Exposition that both characters certainly already know, it's a scene that carries equal embarrassment for all.  Not to be outdone,  more bad exposition is to be had just thereafter; Lyta herself asks a spectacularly dumb question for someone who's now come to live  on the station:  "Why is it called Babylon 5?"  Turning to the camera, Sinclair explains that B1, B2, and B3 were sabotaged and destroyed.  B4 vanished mysteriously.   It's a chunk of exposition that's written just to prompt a scene-closing beat; Lyta looks as if she could not possibly have cared about Babylons 1, 2, 3, or 4, and her commitment to 5 seems a little light.  "Swell," she replies.

Having bored Lyta, Sinclair checks in on another of our alien ambassadors, Delenn of the Minbari (Mira Furlan).  The Minbari are one of the oldest and most advanced races in the B5 universe, and as JMS is fond of allusions to Tolkien, they would be the elves. Earth badly lost a war to the Minbari ca. 2247, and one of the foundation mysteries of the series is why the Minbari surrendered on the brink of wiping out the human race.   Delenn herself is shown in her original makeup; originally, the Minbari were going to be of indeterminate sex, changing back and forth during the series.   The makeup here gives a more masculine look than that of the series proper, when it was decided that Delenn would simply be female.  Delenn is also the only major character to be introduced without a numbing parcel of exposition; instead she demonstrates personality traits -- in other words, the scene is solid.   Her demeanor toward Sinclair is aloof, but somehow amused; she knows something he doesn't...

Ambassador Kosh, a Vorlon, is the fourth alien ambassador, due to arrive in 2 days.  His race is very old -- much older than the Minbari --  and very secretive; as of 2257, no human has ever seen a Vorlon, and virtually nothing is known about them.  In keeping with their reputation, Kosh's ship arrives two days ahead of schedule, catching everyone off-guard.

And finally we meet the last of the main cast, Centauri Republic ambassador Londo Mollari (Peter Jurasik; not pronounced like the park).  The Centauri superficially resemble humans, and they were the first alien species encountered by Earth.   Garibaldi, the lesser of Londo's two foils on the station (G'kar being the greater), has come to ensure the Centauri Republic is present to greet the ahead-of-schedule Vorlon.   Londo really draws the worst intro scene: not only does he have that hair, that 50s-TV Eastern Europe accent, but also a bit of exposition involving the faded glory of the Centauri Republic that's made even worse by establishing in the dialogue that he's told this exact story several times, thereby clearing the high bar set by the silver-winning Takashima-G'Kar exposition contest. While the Centauri Republic is most obviously thought of as an analogue to the late 20th century British Empire (with the obvious Roman overlay), in its venal decadence I always thought of them more as a 21st century America.


In the landing bay, Ambassador Kosh has arrived.  He is then poisoned and left, perhaps dying, for our human crew to discover.  Whisked off to the medical bay, his condition is stabilized, somewhat counter to the wishes of the Vorlon government, who would rather Kosh die than have any of the famed Vorlon secrecy deflated.

As rumors sweep the station, G'Kar uses the opportunity to pitch an alliance, and more exposition, to Delenn.  This scene is difficult to square with facts we learn later in the series; G'Kar seems ignorant about the relative ages of the various races in the universe, and here the Minbari Grey council is spoken of as a secret society; when it is in fact the ruling body of the Minbari Government.   But these are all quibbles compared to how the scene ends: Delenn picks a ring out from a locker in her quarters and uses its power to Force-choke G'Kar into submission.   It's kind of amazing the ring even made it into the final script; magic devices are horribly inconvenient to write drama around. This ring, and the several others present, all presumably of equal, interesting powers,  are never seen again.

Laurel and Dr. Kyle enlist Lyta to telepathically probe Kosh in an effort to find out who poisoned him.  And it turns out to be... Commander Sinclair! Uh. Oh.  Shortly, he's on trial for his life with the B5 advisory council (the major ambassadors) to serve as a grand jury.  Following some wrangling, G'Kar proposes extraditing Sinclair to the Vorlon homeworld for trial.  Another scene at odds with everyone's later character: what exactly is G'Kar's motivation for this?  It comes across as simply being villainous-for-the-sake-of-villainy,  which at best is lazy misdirection for later development.

All of this stress has taken its toll on our stoic commander Sinclair, who in frustration is prompted for a long, barely-awake history monologue about The Line, the final battle of the Minbari war, wherein he was rendered unconscious for the 24 hours during which the Minbari surrendered.  In this version of the Gathering, there's audio cuts from the battle to layer in some pathos, but O'Hare's phoned-in delivery is nearly unsalvageable.

As Kosh's condition has improved, the assassin is forced to make another run at him.  Appearing now as Lyta, he wanders around the medlab and starts shutting off life support machinery, but Dr. Kyle forces a withdrawal.  And, by happy coincidence, runs into the real Lyta on his way out, conveniently confirming for the audience (and Sinclair, who even more conveniently happens by just a second later!)  that there is in fact an impersonator aboard.

Star Trek in particular was and is horrible with inconsistencies in its technologies.  Devices that solved a problem one week could easily solve many more at other times, but were invariably forgotten about in order to preserve some sense of drama.  Here, the assassin escapes the commander of the station by lurching into an elevator.  Previously in this episode, Sinclair's elevator was stopped en route, so we have established that the station's elevators are centrally controlled and monitored.   Does Sinclair contact anyone to have this particular elevator stopped, or even tracked?  Of course not.

Instead, having deduced the assassin is using a high-powered bit of tech camouflage, they haul out another Trek cliche: rapid reconfiguration of the station's sensors to find the assassin.   To increase tension, a Vorlon cruiser sent to ferry Sinclair away has also arrived the moment after our intrepid commander and his chief of security go hunting.  Why bring a security team? They'd just be more extras to pay.  Garibaldi is quickly wounded and taken out of the fight,  allowing Sinclair to go one-on-one with the  assassin, who is revealed to be a Minbari.  From the bone crest, he appears to be religious caste which is at odds with the later explanation of his motives. I suspect that's just the pilot budget not designing caste-distinct prosthetics for one scene.  The Minbari throws off a parting taunt about there being a hole in Sinclair's mind, and then sets off a suicide bomb.

Hey, you're religious caste!

And it's another visit to the Trek-cliche playhouse as the station is rocked by the shaky-camera explosion and extras stagger around the set, shouting out damage reports too expensive to televise.  The station is briefly knocked off its axis by the explosion; yet from the visuals of the station, you can't tell either way.  Takashima shouts some technobabble about the stabilizers, starboard and aft, and a few seconds later we see another nondescript shot of the station now back to normal.

When all's well, we shift to the wrap-up portion of our pilot.  Below, Sinclair and Garibaldi trade quips (illustrating early that dialogue is rarely a forte of B5, and humor, virtually never).  Delenn provides apologies and life history of the assassin.  Doctor Kyle is now religiously awed by having seen a Vorlon (though he hasn't demonstrated this in the previous hour).  While his lines are clumsy, the reasons for them are, in fact, good foreshadowing of future Vorlon developments.

Beep. Beep.

Finally, Sinclair lures G'Kar to his quarters with an invitation of a drink.  He then confronts G'Kar with the full details of the plot (though never what the Narns were gaining by Vorlon hostility) and reveals he's just dosed him with a nanotech location tracker that can be used in the event of future shady dealings that may threaten the station.  The threat works, as G'Kar rarely antagonizes the Earth Alliance in the series.

Oh, but there really is no transmitter.  It's a joke, ha ha.  If only O'Hare could deliver with something approximating comic timing.

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Pilots for SF shows are just lousy with clumsy exposition and characters who aren't quite fully cooked.   Neither of these problems are helped by casting two pieces of wood in major roles (O'Hare and Tomita), or that the other human characters are unknowns on a moderately big break.  The aliens' actors all show glimmers of their solid work in the series, even though Delenn has to fight through the gender confusion and G'Kar gets stuck playing the one-note heavy.

Factoring that the plot had no effect on the series arc and that three of the principal human characters are written out afterward, The Gathering is more of a curiosity for B5 completists than a necessary part of the story.

Then: B+
Now: C