The Babylon 5 Blog

While this trilogy was written about 10 years ago, just after the end of the series, it’s surprising to note how little my impressions have changed over the years. Back then, I was hungry for more story in the “Babylon 5” universe, and the story of Centauri Prime was a definite draw. And I was familiar with the ability of writer Peter David, who had written for the series before and had shown a unique ability to meld tragedy and comedy without overdoing either.

There are certainly those moments in this story. Moments that hinge on the kind of gallows humor that Londo Mollari’s personal fate demands. But there were also many points in each book, particularly the final volume, in which the constant attempts to lighten the mood or portray confident or witty banter came across as grating. It also didn’t fit very well with the “Babylon 5” universe. Far more time was spent on the banter and setting up punchlines than, say, a solid character arc for Vir Cotto as a resistance leader or the Alliance politics leading into the end of the Centauri crisis.

Just as inexplicable was the array of silly names and historical analogies that littered the trilogy. I groaned the first time I read the words “Tower of Power”, and it wasn’t any more palatable this time around. The name Castig Lione was distracting, because it was clearly an attempt to be clever for clever’s own sake. And the Prime Candidates might as well have been called the Nazi Youth.

The best novel is the first volume, focusing on the days just after the end of the fifth season of “Babylon 5” and the rise of the Drakh and Durla, the puppet that eventually forces Londo into the role of figurehead. For the most part, the events in this novel are fairly believable. The second novel begins to introduce some of the more questionable plot points and lapses in logic, and third novel makes it impossible to take the Drakh seriously. The Drakh have more than enough information to recognize that Vir is the leader of the Legions of Fire, years before the decisive moment arrives in 2278, but they do nothing (because, of course, the plot demands such).

Another problem is the treatment of David Sheridan’s role in the climax of the story. David is never given much of a personality, and his issues as the famous son of the most powerful couple in the galaxy are mentioned mostly in passing. His eventual role in the Drakh plan doesn’t make much sense. The idea, it seems, was to use the Centauri to ravage the Alliance, with Sheridan and Delenn victims of the plot. The inevitable backlash on the Centauri would weaken everyone to the point where David would stand as a figure to unite the remnants. Thus, using David as their puppet, the Drakh would be in control.

At least, that’s what I believe the Drakh design amounted to; it was never adequately explained in the trilogy. Nor were the Drakh particularly fleshed out as the villains of the piece. Instead, they remained aloof and ominous, perfectly mysterious, so that every action they took (however odd and seemingly contradictory) would seem reasonable within the context of their evil ways. At no point does the reader have the impression that the Drakh see themselves as truly justified based on any consistent rationale or philosophy (unlike the Shadows or even the Vorlons).

It’s hard to determine how much of this is the fault of Peter David. The story was, after all, based on an outline by JMS, the mastermind of the “Babylon 5” universe. The outline would have needed to pull together all the known scenes and information about the events on Centauri Prime, and it’s hard to imagine that the author had much latitude. But a great deal of the trilogy fits the typical Peter David mold, and many of the choices of prominent characters seemed to be the author’s preference.

But when characters like G’Kar seem to come and go in the story without a logical basis, only given a general blanket motivation towards the end, it hurts the overall story. Sheridan and Delenn go where the story needs them to go. Coincidence and convenience are as critical to plot progression as established motivation. Characters like Lyndisty, who should factor into the story given Vir’s rising prominence, are not even mentioned!

The end result is a story that tells a much-desired story, but leaves the reader just as eager for a much better telling of it.

This is the first book in the Psi Corps trilogy, and one of the first B5 books to be written based on an outline by JMS.  I still have my first-edition paperback copy of the book, and it was definitely interesting to go back for a re-read after so many years.

The first thing that struck me was how it definitely feels like it was written from an outline from JMS.  And I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way.  The story is essentially the story of Kevin Vacit, the man who would set the Psi Corps on its course through history while also setting up a resistance to keep it in check.  It’s the story of where Vacit came from, how he fooled the world into believing that a mundane was leading the effort to control those dangerous telepaths, and how he begat Alfred Bester.  Along the way, Kevin Vacit manages to learn, and keep very quiet, the truth about the origins of human telepaths.

In terms of shedding light on the hyper-detailed history of the “Babylon 5” universe, the book does its job.  It introduces, among other things, the interesting notion that the telepath underground was a necessary counterweight to the Psi Corps.  Unfortunately, the story is occasionally too scattered for its own good.  It often feels like the author was under a deadline for the first book, and just did whatever he could to get the job done as quickly as possible.  As such, some portions of the book are barely more than a slightly fleshed-out bullet point.  Where the story could use much more depth and consideration, the author jumps to the next bullet point.

The end result is a book that sounds a lot better in theory than in reality.  Fans of the series will definitely enjoy the book the first time around, as revelations abound throughout.  But the book doesn’t hold up well the second time around.

Rating: 7/10

This was the final novel to be published under the original book contract, and it is by far the shining jewel of the collection.  In a very real sense, this book presages the kind of tight continuity that marks the trilogies that followed.  The story of what happened to Sinclair between his arrival on Minbar and his eventual return to Babylon 5 in “War Without End”, this is a gift to any dedicated Babylon 5 and Jeffrey Sinclair fan.

The author spends a great deal of time reconciling some apparent contradictions within the series proper: specifically, the political changes in Minbari society and the rise of the Rangers, a force consisting of Humans and Minbari.  Why would a Grey Council, dominated by an isolationist warrior caste, agree to fund and foster a group of warrior-priests with a Human leader?  This book makes the case fairly well, and explores Sinclair’s personal development in the process.

Two other topics are explored along the way: the personal history of Marcus Cole and the fate of Catherine Sakai.  It’s always been odd to imagine that Marcus could undergo such strenuous training, substantial enough to make him an effective fighter and teach him so much else, when it had to happen in less than a year!  It’s still a stretch of the imagination, but this novel does make a bit more sense of the notion.

Seasoned “Babylon 5” fans know that Catherine Sakai was originally meant to fulfill the role that Anna Sheridan ultimately held, had Sinclair remained the central character of the series.  This book adjusts the overall story to give Catherine’s later absence a reasonable explanation, and even alludes to her ultimate fate.

The author was given the daunting task of repairing some of the damage done when the original plans for the series were altered after the first season by network intervention and the realities of syndicated television.  The only complaint one might have is that the novel simply isn’t long enough or detailed enough.  The reader is left wanting more.  Is there any better compliment that can be made?

Rating: 10/10

Following the poor reception of the first six “Babylon 5” novels, the publisher worked with JMS to commission three additional novels based on outlines supplied by the Great Maker himself.  The first of the new novels, “The Shadow Within”, finally delivered a solid B5 novel and gave fans hope that all three new novels would meet or exceed expectations.

That did not happen.

This particular book is easily the worst of the B5 novels, and it’s hard to imagine why the final product was so shoddy in comparison.  The author had a fairly good outline, as evidence by the fact that the book’s 60+ chapters might as well be the outline.  Allow me to repeat that fact: the book, weighing in at just over 200 pages, has more than 60 chapters.  It took me about two hours to read it from cover to cover, and that’s because I kept putting it down in disgust.

I’ve said it before: I can’t stand books where the chapters are only a couple pages long.  It betrays the writer’s inability to think beyond the bullet points of an outline, and it completely disrupts the flow of characterization and nuanced plot progression.  In this case, one can see how the author had absolutely no feel for the characters themselves, outside of the information supplied in the outline.  The dialogue is all wrong, the motivations don’t mesh, and items that should have been fleshed out are minimalized.  It’s the kind of book that fans slap on the table when the quality of fan fiction vs. professional work is debated.

The story often tries to fall back on light comedy, as if that would overcome the weaknesses in the rest of the writing.  The end result is amplification of the offense: during that moment in the series’ timeline, everything was deadly serious and heavily serialized.  Not only would the characters have no time for the antics on display (particularly the officers on Babylon 5), but none of them would set aside the concerns of war for “playing James Bond”.

I have the feeling that JMS outlined the Centauri Prime story, because it fits the timeline relatively well.  If the novel had focused entirely on Londo and Vir’s struggle to stop a Narn rescue squad from liberating G’Kar, it might have worked.  I could even accept Lyndisty as a clever “complication” for Vir, approached with more care.  Every other element, on the other hand, betrays continuity and undermines what was established early in the fourth season.

The bottom line is that JMS himself would have preferred a rewrite, but once he saw the final product, it was too late to make adjustments.  I think it’s safe to say that he was being kind, because canceling the book altogether and sending out a postcard of apology to the entire fandom may have been a better use of the print stock.

Rating: 2/10

While all of the volumes of this series have been educational and revelatory to say the least, it was always clear that this would be the motherlode.  The additional scripts, series treatment, and season 1 series bible were all very interesting and worth the time, but the real gem in this final volume is a 9 page summary of the original intentions for the “Babylon 5” saga.

The summary is not, despite rumors to the contrary, the very first summary scribbled out by JMS in 1987 when he conceived of the series after a fall in his bathroom.  Nor is it the 200 page series outline that JMS references in the season 1 bible.  Instead, it is a relatively short and broad summary that he wrote between the pilot film and the first season, before all the changes made for the first season were finalized.  JMS presented this summary to Michael O’Hare to give him a better idea of where the series would go.

The first thing that struck me, when reading the summary, is that the first season makes a lot more sense when seen from the perspective of the original version of the story.  Looking back on the first season after the conclusion of the series, certain scenes don’t add up (particularly, the scene where a Grey Council member reminds Delenn that Sinclair must be killed if he suspects the truth).  This summary explains exactly where the series was supposed to go with those ideas, and it’s clear that JMS was still thinking along those lines right up until “Chrysalis”.

I’ve always believed that Sheridan’s arc was essentially the same as what Sinclair’s original arc, but that’s not quite the case.  A lot of the broad aspects are the same, but there are a number of abrupt left turns.  The main revelation is that Sinclair was not meant to be Valen, and the fate of Babylon 4 was originally quite different (more on that in a moment).  Sinclair was supposed to be with Delenn, as the first season suggests, and David would have been their son.

In terms of the Minbari, the Centauri, and the Narn, most of their arcs were exactly the same.  The vague direction for Earth and the PsiCorps is also very similar, but the summary practically ignores much of the detail that made that part of the story so fascinating in the final version.  The Vorlons are also very similar to the final product.  The Shadows, however, are far less defined in their motivations, almost to a disappointing degree.  I personally found the motivations eventually assigned to them in the series to be far more logical.

The main difference, and the one that was the most stunning, was the original intention for “Babylon 5” itself.  The end of “Babylon 5” was exactly what was foretold in “Signs and Portents” and “Babylon Squared”, and JMS goes into detail as to who escapes B5 upon its destruction.  But that was only half the overall story in the original conception!  The rest of the story (basically the material seen in the final two seasons of the final series) would have been covered in a second five-year series entitled “Babylon Prime”, where the time-displaced Babylon 4 would have been used as the base of operations in the fight against the Shadows.

This, for me, is hard to reconcile.  From the very beginning, JMS always said that “Babylon 5” was meant to be a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end.  Yet this summary does not bear that out; it was, instead, a 10-year cycle split in two halves.  Much of what happens in the fourth and fifth seasons of the final series is, in essence, an abridged version of the original saga.  And I’m not really sure what to think of that.

Within the context of this much larger canvas, the internal conflicts of the Humans, Minbari, Centauri, and Narn would have stretched over a few seasons.  In particular, the Minbari civil war would have been far more substantial.  The Vorlons and Shadows would not have exited stage left so abruptly; instead, like the rest of the conflicts, they would have endured until the end of “Babylon Prime”.  Those who felt the conflicts felt artificially shortened should feel validated.

It does, however, bring up an interesting possible explanation for the issues that arose with WB, JMS, and Michael O’Hare just after production of the first season.  I believe that WB was originally on board with the idea of the original saga, right down to the double-series idea, until the ratings for the first season were analyzed and the PTEN issues began.  At that point, it would have been clear that the series was going to struggle and changes would have to be made.

I think, also, that JMS had to be aware that the series would have to end definitively in five years, and that would mean substantial alterations to get the major plot points (especially the ones from the second proposed series) crammed into the shorter span.  That would have meant a lot of changes from this summary we’ve now seen, and I can’t imagine that Michael O’Hare would have liked those changes.

So I believe that JMS is completely honest when he says that all three parties came to a mutually satisfactory and non-confrontational agreement.  The writing was on the wall, the grand saga would have to be compressed and revised, and that was that.  Michael O’Hare wasn’t going to get the story he was originally sold the part with, he politely declined to come back, JMS needed to replace Sinclair, WB agreed because it could boost the ratings and return on investment to have a “name” actor.  The rest, as they say, is history.

This doesn’t necessarily undermine my love for the series.  If anything, it explains why JMS had to write the last three seasons himself; only he could find a way to take eight years of story and compress it into three (never mind that he really had to do it in two, with elements removed, when the fourth season appeared to be the last).  But some illusions have been broken, and I don’t think I’ll be able to look at the series quite the same way again.  If anything, I’m more impressed than ever that the story was even told in the first place.