Pah

Superstructures

Perhaps I was wrong to say Season 5 “lacks some quality”. How could I tell? Being eclectic literally means having no system to tell. I recognise that there are things in the world I think are bad and things that just aren’t my thing. When I think of the latter, I think of olives and whisky. Olives have a powerful taste that is alien to me; as my beloved Laphroaig is alien to others. They are both tastes that must be acquired, developed, learned. Once, I didn’t like Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but, rewatching it down the track from a different point of view, I found it most excellent. Perhaps, for Babylon 5 too, I got the wrong impression of the “thing that would leave an impression”.

Rewatching, now, what’s there? I noticed something that means this might be olives rather than Maccas fries.

The First Ones have gone, leaving an absence. Though no one may have recognised them as gods, now they are dead, the absence is bigger than themselves. The superstructures guiding the story and characters have gone. The Great War and the wars it spun off—all gone. The more obvious external references that helped shape the show—absent in this season. Even the characters’ career paths have been blown away. (The Telepath War is yet to start, and the series has often hinted that the scale of it might be too great to comprehend.) So the characters are left to create their own stories, be creative, will things into existence. But a blank page is a hard thing.

Without a great narrative, our heroes don’t know how to act. The story becomes one of repetition, regression, digression, devolution, cliche. It’s like watching a car crash—in slow motion—that we know the characters will walk away from. This last point is not a bad thing, it moderates expectations that could easily get out of hand: the tension of small failures and small accomplishments is too much for me—I just want everything to explode. And the season not only moderates expectations through its context-placing devices, but skewers the longing for catastrophe in A Tragedy of Telepaths (5.10):

Sheridan

I don’t get it, Michael. I truly don’t. I mean, after a while, you’d think this would get a little easier. But lately… it feels like it’s all falling apart. Everything is fraying at the edges. I mean, instead of everybody trying to hold things together, I feel like they’re all grabbing at threads and pulling in a hundred different directions.

Garibaldi

Do you really want an answer to that?

Sheridan

You got one?

Garibaldi

Yeah… Why is it that we always break up our history by the wars, not the years of peace? The Hundred Years War, the War of 1812, the first three World Wars, the Dilgar War, the War of the Shining Star, the Minbari War, the Shadow War… Why the war, but not the peace? Because it’s exciting. And because, on some level, people like to see something big fall apart and explode from the inside out. And right now, John, we’re that something.

There is a war, but—with the outcome known, the First Ones no longer supercharging the story, and the actions that make it inevitable all taking place in previous seasons—it’s a gruelling watch. The loss of superstructure is perhaps also why Sheridan makes no effort to solve the “telepath problem”. Why Babylon 5 lets the marauding alien race pass by without comment (A View From The Gallery, 5.4), something that would have been unthinkable in Season 1 or 2.

But there is a superstructure guiding everything. One that has always been there. Life. Normality. Where most stories deliver a message of peace amidst violence, or use peace as a setting into which violence explodes—Babylon 5 strives to tell the story of everyday life in the future. The story of peace, or at least as much peace as there ever is.

John

I mean, the only reason politics exists is to ensure that people have the freedom to laugh.

Delenn

And to love.

(Day of the Dead, 5.11)

This is ambitious and dramatically difficult material, much as Buffy Seasons 4 and 6 were: it’s establishing a status quo, a new normality composed only of the same small dramas that life has always had. It’s B5 Season 1 in reverse. The story of Babylon 5 is over, but not before making the place ready for those who will follow.

I grew out of my dislike to the resolution of the First Ones’ story, but I can’t find it in myself to like the legacy—the long tail—of that story. It asks too much. “Life goes on” isn’t enough. It just isn’t my thing. I am immoderate. But four seasons demand I develop my taste.