Babylon 5

This article is about the TV series. For the media franchise, see Babylon 5 (franchise).

Babylon 5
Genre
Created byJ. Michael Straczynski
Starring
Composers
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons5
No. of episodes110 (+ 6 TV films) (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers
Cinematography
  • John C. Flinn III
    • (102 episodes, 1994–1998)
  • Fred V. Murphy
    • (8 episodes, 1995–1998)
Running time43-44 minutes[1]
Production companies
Original release
Network
ReleaseFebruary 22, 1993 (1993-02-22) –
November 25, 1998 (1998-11-25)
Related
Infobox instructions (only shown in preview)

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. and Warner Bros. Domestic Television. After the successful airing of a test pilot movie on February 22, 1993, Babylon 5: The Gathering, Warner Bros. commissioned the series for production in May 1993 as part of its Prime Time Entertainment Network (PTEN).[2] The show premiered in the US on January 26, 1994, and ran for five 22-episode seasons.

The 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. Major plotlines included intra-race intrigue and upheaval, inter-race wars and their aftermaths, and embroilment in a millennial cyclic conflict between ancient races. The human characters, in particular, become pivotal to the resistance against Earth's descent into totalitarianism.

Many episodes focused on the effect of wider events on individual characters. Episodes contained themes such as personal change, loss, oppression, corruption, and redemption.

Unusual for American broadcast television 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".[3] Whereas contemporaneous 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.[4][5] Tie-in novels, comic books, and short stories were also developed to play a significant canonical part in the overall story.[6]

Straczynski announced plans for a reboot of the series in September 2021 in conjunction with Warner Bros. Television. An animated feature-length, direct-to-video film, Babylon 5: The Road Home, was released in August 2023.

  1. ^ "Rewind @ www.dvdcompare.net - Babylon 5: Season 1 (TV) (Blu-ray) (1993)".
  2. ^ Lieberman, Cynthia (May 27, 1993). "PRIME TIME ENTERTAINMENT NETWORK ANNOUNCES EXPANSION PLANS AND PROGRAMMING SLATE FOR JANUARY 1994 - Free Online Library". PR Newswire. Archived from the original on September 3, 2015. Retrieved February 24, 2019.
  3. ^ Straczynski, J. Michael (January 22, 1993). "JMSNews You say, "New characters and sets..." jmsnews.com. Archived from the original on August 28, 2019. Retrieved February 24, 2019. One final note: B5 has always been conceived as, fundamentally, a five year story, a novel for television, which makes it very different as well.
  4. ^ Britt, Ryan (May 17, 2018). "The Most Important Sci-Fi Show of the '90s Hits Amazon Prime in June". Inverse. Archived from the original on January 16, 2021. Retrieved February 16, 2019. in the Nineties it was still exceedingly rare for a TV show to have episodes directly lead into each other. Two-part episodes were a big deal, and season long story arcs (with the obvious exception of daytime soap operas) were unheard of. But, Babylon 5 changed all that.
  5. ^ Shankel, Jason (January 18, 2012). "Everything You Need To Know About Babylon 5". io9. Archived from the original on February 2, 2021. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  6. ^ Straczynski, J. Michael (April 26, 1996). "JMSNews Re: ATTN: JMS Books and TV Plot". jmsnews.com. Archived from the original on July 22, 2020. Retrieved February 24, 2019. My theory is that *in general* the novels and comics tend to be canon, but the details may not always be, mainly because it's virtually impossible to ride herd on every single line of all this the way I do the show. It physically can't be done. But where possible, we keep it as close to cointinuity [sic] as possible.