It’s a classic that deserves plenty more love.
I’ve always believed the sorts of broadcast TV shows that get dumped on YouTube aren’t worth your time. Giving the episodes away for free, supported by the pittances paid by the platform, is a sign the production company sees no more value in the series. It’s why I’m a little surprised Warner Bros. is putting Babylon 5 out, episode by episode, on YouTube. It may not be as well known or as well-loved as its ostensible (Star Trek) rivals, but it’s also absolutely brilliant. And while being released for free on YouTube is no guarantee of quality, let me speak in its defense. Take it from me, someone who once wrote an in-depth investigation into why the show’s 2002 DVD release was so bad: Babylon 5 is well worth your time, even more so now that it’s free.
Babylon 5 was a serialized science-fantasy series that started airing in 1993 on PTEN, one of the many ’90s attempts to build a new national TV network. It was created by TV veteran J. Michael Straczynski who already had an envious resume (She-Ra; The Real Ghostbusters; Murder, She Wrote) as a writer and producer. The budget was minuscule — less than half that of the equivalent Star Treks being made at the time. But what it had going for it was Straczynski’s idea of producing a self-contained novel for television. Casual viewers may have dismissed early episodes as landfill sci-fi TV, but in retrospect every episode lays the groundwork for the epic it would grow into. Over five years and 110 episodes (plus a pilot and five ignorable TV movies), it became something greater.
In fact, one of the easiest things to commend Babylon 5 is for perfecting the novel-for-TV model long before it became the standard. Hell, it perfected the format so wonderfully that it’s doubly ironic every show that followed it ignored its key lessons. If you miss the delights of poring over an episode, like Lost or Game of Thrones, for clues as to what’s to come, you’ll love this. Even better is that because Straczynski had a solid idea of where he was going (albeit with plenty of flexibility along the way) the ending is satisfying. (Weirdly, I started a fresh re-watch a month ago and remain delighted at how many seemingly throw-away lines of dialog pay off two or three years later.)
I did wonder if part of the reason it’s been released on YouTube is so Warner Bros. can write it off its tax books. Given the company’s accounting practices, that wouldn’t be much of a surprise, but it’s a good way to erase the show’s value as a sop to its potential new owners. After all, Babylon 5 is the story of an Earth with an increasingly fascist president surrounded by crony capitalists and who is secretly conspiring with its enemies while he uses the organs of the state to further his own petty ambitions. The show, both at the time and in retrospect, was dismissed by critics who said its use of McCarthyism as a key theme was backward-looking.
I’ve always admired how the show allowed its characters to grow and change in ways you still don’t see much of today. There are two in particular who are painted as a two-dimensional clown and pantomime villain, respectively. Over the course of five years, the villain will evolve into the most tragic of heroes, and the clown gets repeated lessons as to why you don’t sell your own soul. Yes, they’re two middle-aged character actors in rubber masks and silly wigs, but the story, and the acting, will make you forget all about that.
I’d imagine that, to Gen Alpha eyes, there are plenty of things that make Babylon 5 too cringe to deal with. Its pioneering use of CGI as the only way it could realize its world on its meager budget hasn’t aged massively well (again, explained here). The dialog can veer into the corny on a regular basis and the quality of the acting is up and down, although much of it is in the eye of the beholder. Original series lead Michael O’Hare’s mental health took a nosedive over the course of the first season. Given the character’s backstory, I find his portrayal of a man clearly holding himself together in a tough role to be extraordinary, while others have called him wooden.
But if you can get past all of that, I’d urge you all to give the series a go, and preach patience with the first few episodes, at the very least. “Infection” is regarded as the worst of the whole run (it isn’t), but it also lays out so many key themes that it’s unmissable. Each series has a few slow episodes to begin with, acting as a jumping-on point for any latecomers. After that point, when the show takes off its sci-fi-problem-of-the-week-mask and reveals to the world what it really is, it gets really, really good.
