The Battlestar Glactica – Babylon 5 Connection
By Lisa Fary
Alert Raygunner Hoobajoobah has pointed out that there are glaring similarities between our beloved BSG S4 and our formerly beloved Babylon 5 S5. Ten years ago, B5’s final season took a horrendous downturn as the newly formed Interstellar Alliance struggled to survive in an atmosphere of political intrigue which was just not interesting and the galaxy’s telepaths acted all secretive and fought amongst themselves (hmmmm. . . . sounds like the same problem as the Star Wars prequels. . . ). Currently, BSG’s final season has taken a downturn as their remaining air time is squandered on religious awakenings and true love.
Let’s explore. . .
Baltar and Byron
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Baltar, leader of a rogue religious movement, has a culty love nest in an out of the way part of Galactica where he holds mass and gets all kinds of tang. There appears to be little privacy, so inhibited nyphettes need not come around.
Byron, leader of a rogue psi movement, has a culty love nest in B5’s brown sector where he has steamy relations with Lyta Alexander. There is little mental privacy (they’re all telepaths), and Lyta mentally broadcasts everything during said relations.
It should be noted that Baltar and Byron both have exceedingly greasy hair.
The Cylons and The Psis
The Cylons have wound up in a civil war and the rebel leader, Natalie, is killed by another Cylon.
The B5 Psis have wound up in a civil war and the rebel leader, Byron, is killed by another psi.
The Presidents
Former starship commander Lee Adama reluctantly becomes the president. Lee doesn’t want to be a leader, but a lawyer wielding a dead cat made him do it.
Former space station commander John Sheridan reluctantly becomes the president. He doesn’t want to be a leader, but the Minbari finally decided he was OK. That’s not as dramatic as a dead cat wielding lawyer, but Sheridan had had quite enough drama in his life at that point.
The Books and Subsequent Cults
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While incarcerated on Galactica in S3, Baltar wrote a book of revelations (My Triumphs, My Mistakes) that took the spiritually flexible by storm and generated a cult around him.
While incarcerated on B5 in S3, G’Kar began writing a book of revelations (The Book of G’Kar) which was published in S5. The book took the Narn by storm and a cult formed around him.
However, where Baltar will happily lead his flock and tell them what to believe, G’Kar was frustrated and horrified by his own cult and left public life to explore the galaxy. It should also be noted that Baltar is surrounded by hot babes and G’Kar was surrounded by other Narns. Narns aren’t sexy.
It’s a stretch to say that the themes and ideas presented in BSG S4 were lifted from B5 S5, but the similarities are undeniable. If we push back further into both series, there are even more. For instance, BSG’s Saul Tigh and B5’s Michael Garibaldi are very much alike in their boozing, their overall self-destructive natures, and owing their careers to one guy who still believed in them.
However, despite the crappy majority of the final season, B5 did manage to pull it together for a slam bang finish that makes me tear up a bit just thinking about it. I can still hope that BSG, which I loved for so long, can do the same.
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Lisa Fary is a graduate of the English program at Florida State University and holds an advanced degree in Special Education. Her early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl.
I choose to ignore the first and last season of Babylon 5. Seasons 2-4 were the heart of the series and they should have quit while they were ahead. You bring up some interesting points though. The creators of BSG seem to have cobbled together their show from many sources. Maybe that’s why, when its at it’s best, its such a well developed show.
Of course the only quibble I have is that Garibaldi was sexy whereas Tigh is so not;)
Wow! I’m honored! I also like being called a “Raygunner.” So thank you for that.
I hadn’t thought about both Baltar and G’Kar writing their own scriptures, good point. I’d mention that in addition to there not being any mental privacy amongst Byron’s rogue teeps, there wasn’t any physical privacy either – when he and Lyta did it, they did it right in the open w/ everyone else in the cult watching. (‘Course given that they’re teeps, since they couldn’t have mental privacy they idea of closing a door or pulling a curtain might be redundant). That’s another tie w/ Baltar’s cult, where it’s strongly implied they’re just doing it in front of the kids and all.
Another similarity is the whole “Attrition” theme: Once B5 secceded from Earth, their fighters and supplies were irreplaceable, and while they didn’t nail that one down nearly as much as they do on BG (Nor could they – there were 5x as many people living on B5 as are in the entire Rag Tag Fleet), it was a plot element. Even after they got the White Stars, they only had a limited number and kept loosing ‘em to the point where Sheridan said, “You know, we’re running out of these things…” in one Ep.
@ Nancy: I’ll grant you that the first season was rather slow, but I still think it’s better than (most of) Season 5. I mean, granted it’s really just a prolog to the main sequence of the story, but it was a brand new universe, and we needed to know how it worked and held together before we could get to all the fun of blowing it apart around everyone’s ears.
Ok, I’ve got some other similarities here:
1) The “Roslin is a Cylon—-PSYCH!” thing was a lot like the “Garibaldi is the spy—-PSYCH!” thing from Babylon 5.
Resurrection is a plot point in both shows.
2) All the chicks in B5 were strong, assertive women who made their own decisions, were in charge of their own lives, and didn’t need a man to tell them what to do. Some of them even flew fighters. Then, as the show went along, the female characters kind of deteriorated into Delenn getting kidnapped and needing to be rescued once a month, and Ivonova’s inability to find a man causing her to come unglued and roll around screaming on the floor, and Lyta being a doormat, and so on, kinda’ like most of the female characters from BG seem to be kind of in an extended-meltdown mode for the last year or so.
3) Speaking of Chicks, most of the women in B5 were known to be, or strongly suspected to be Bisexual in much the same way that *most* of the females in the new Galactica are Bi. Likewise, in both of the shows, all the male characters are straight. This would seem to suggest that the double standard of female sexual deviance is alive and well in both universes, yet another thing they have in common.
4) B5 was the first show ever to have logically-designed space fighters that obeyed (more or less) the laws of physics. While retaining the basic design of the Vipers from 1978, the way they move, turn, bank, etc, has been changed so that they, too, obey the laws of physics (More or less.)
5) Both shows used fighters in a very prominent fashion!
6) In B5, some ships had artificial gravity, others didn’t, and had to rely on rotating sections to simulate it. Likewise, in BG, the “Space Park” ship clearly rotates for gravity.
7) Both shows feature a diplomatic space station way out in the middle of nowhere in neutral space where enemies can come together and negotiate their way away from another space war. (Armistice Station, in the pilot, though I’m 90% sure that the station was intended as a delibarate Babylon 5 gag, so it probably doesn’t count here.)
That’s all I can think of right now, I’m sure there’s more…
@ Nancy: Garibaldi also had a deep seated love of Duck Dodgers, which was awesome! I bought the whole series on DVD last summer – there were some season one episodes I had to fast forward to, and after Morden made his first appearance in “Signs and Portents”, I had to skip ahead to season two.
@ Hoobajoobah: I’ve always thought that the prominence of bisexual females both on B5 and BSG was a bone thrown to male viewers as an added incentive to tune in (i.e., tune into BSG S4 and you just might see Tricia Helfer kissing HERSELF!). It’s a lazy attempt at making a female interesting. Ivanova had some problems, but she managed to keep it together much better than Starbuck. There was the Marcus-meltdown, but that was genuinely sad. Delenn’s need to be rescued was contrasted with acts of significant badassery (i.e., taking control of the Rangers, dissolving the Grey Council, handling Lennear’s awkward spout of “I love you”).
@ Alphagirl – Definitely I’m overstating stuff for comedy purposes. If I was gonna’ make a serious comparison between B5 and BG, the only real points of similarity would be the Byron Cult/Baltar Cult, the rather abrupt and slightly uncomfortable transition from military life to political life by Sheridan/Apollo, the heavy reliance on fighters, and the general lack of passion and meandering narative in the first half of the final season (At least I hope it’s confined to the first season.)
As to bisexual chicks, you’re totally right, it’s just the writers…ahem…throwing the maile viewers a bone, which is why I inititially said >>>This would seem to suggest that the double standard of female sexual deviance is alive and well in both universes, yet another thing they have in common<<< was a double standard in the first place.
Ha! Thought of another one!
In B5, Captain Sheridan jumps to a certain death on Z’ha’dum. En rout, he’s found by Lorien, who looks like a humanoid alien w/ freaky-long fingers, but is actually some kind of energy thing. It becomes apparent that Sheridan is in a vision in the moments before his death, or as Lorien says, “Between tick and tock.” He teaches Sheridan to embrace his mortality, surrender himself to death, and then after missing one episode he comes back to life and saves not only the human race but countless other species as well.
Likewise, Starbuck goes into a suicidal dive on that Jovian planet, and en rout has a vision of someone who looks like Leoben, but by his own admission isn’t really leoben. It’s all a vision in the moments before her death. He councels her to embrace her mortality and surrender herself to her death, which she does. Later on, after missing two episodes she comes back to life and saves not only humanity, but the rebel cylons as well.
Ta-dah!
Lorien turned out to not be a vision, though. Although, just what the hell one of the First Ones was doing in a cave on Z’ha’dum is anyone’s guess. At least Sheridan managed to avoid rolling around the floor screaming, “YOU’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY!” I’m still not sure what to make of Starbuck’s “death” and return. She’s obviously not a Cylon, but she obviously died and came back with a shiny new Viper.
Well, Lorien was *the* First One, essentially Ouranos if you want to get all mythological abou tit, but they did make it clear that what he actually was was *not* was Sheridan was seeing. We got glimpses of it when Sheridan was asleep – a vast wall of energy holding Sheridan in it’s Tendrils and speaking to him in Lorien’s voice. So by Lorien’s own admission, all that stuff in the cave was more-or-less a vision for Sheridan’s benefit. Lorien’s humanoid appearance wasn’t what he really looked like either, but was a guise he adopted for the benefit of “His children.”
Likewise, the whole “You’re not Leoben” “I never said I was” thing is also an image that whomever/whatever that was adopted for Starbuck’s benefit.
Forgive me for changing the subject, I know I already talk way the hell too much, but I’ve got another idea for a thread, completely unrelated to B5 or BG or really anything, if you’re interested:
Is UFOlogy a form of Creationism?
I mean, we all know that it’s a total con-job from Erik von Danikin, of course, but although he claims his whole theory is scientificly arived at, and demonstrable from a close reading of history, he *also* claims that he’s had psychic powers since around 1957, and can “Step out of time” to see all of the future and the past, which is how he arrived at this. Clearly: not scientific, whcih makes him a self-styled “Prophet.” (Though he never uses that term)
Now, Christian and Muslim and Hindu creationists all claim that Evolution doesn’t work, at least as it regards Homo Sapiens as we’re simply too different from the other primates. Fair enough, we are damn odd, though it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. UFOlogists like Von Danikin, Otto Binder, and Max Flindt (And probably even some others who aren’t German) all maintain the exact same thing, but where as Christians say “God did it,” these classical first-wave Ancient Astronaut enthusiasts all claim “Aliens did it,” essentially using the same argument and substituting an SF trope for a supernatural trope.
We can take it a step further with Whitley Streiber, who was pretty clearly trying to start his own UFO-based religion in the 90s. (Thomas Disch says as much about Streiber in one of his books).
Whadya’ think? Worth a thread? I apologize for bringing it up here like this, but I wasn’t sure how to go about doing it otherwise.
Don’t you know you’re threatening the equilibrium of the internet by changing the subject?????? We could all tip over and fall in!!!!
I think you’re on to something with this, though.
Sorry. I’m subject to random left turns and bouts of serious plot erosion. Some say my mouth threatens to blot out the sun.
Glad you like the idea, though.