Is Battlestar Galactica the new Babylon 5?

I recently picked up the DVDs of the “re-imagined” Battlestar Galactica show, and very good it is to. Compared with the original series, the new show is gritty and filled with complex and flawed characters. The cast are uniformly excellent, though the actor who plays Gaius Baltar, James Callis, often comes very close to stealing the show. Unlike a lot of television sci-fi, the conventional distinctions between the good guys and the bad guys are ignored. The antagonists, the Cyclons, for example, are monotheists who believe that what they are doing is God’s work.

Of course the biggest difference between Battlestar Galactica and many other series is the use of story arcs, that is, storylines that run through many episodes. Which brings me to Babylon 5, perhaps the first television show to be filmed as an episodic presentation of story with a novel-like structure.

Most other sci-fi shows of the time, like Star Trek: The Next Generation, had the story-equivalent of a reset button. At the end of every hour, the reset button was hit, and pretty much everything was returned to the way it was in time for next week’s episode. While this allowed the broadcasters to transmit episodes in any order they wanted, and for producers to turn out as many episodes as they could sell, it also made it difficult to believe in the drama of any given situation. You knew the Enterprise and its crew weren’t in any real danger, and the only characters likely to be killed or lost would be minor ones you’d never seen before (referred to by sci-fi aficionados as “redshirts” on account of the infamous uniform these characters often seemed to wear). As a result, this was little character development apart from the odd change in rank or facial hair. Picard in season one was much the same person as Picard in season six.

Babylon 5 was different. Almost from the beginning it was made clear that the fates of some of the characters was very grim indeed, and that the station itself would eventually be destroyed. The art was in making the question not what would happen to the characters, but why those things would happen, and how. Over the five seasons of the show, the characters would develop and change. And because the show was based on a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, big over-arching themes could be played out.

Think big

There were two major plotlines that drove the show forward. The first concerned human society. The Vice President of the Earth Alliance has his boss assassinated and takes control of Earth and its colonies, in cahoots with various other factions within human society. The coup and its subsequent regime draw their inspiration from both actual history and science fiction. Allusions to George Orwell’s terrifying novel 1984 abound, and the show explores the ways that governments can use language to control and limit the way people think. (Just think how calling something the “War on Terror” forces you to respond in a certain way without leaving space for ambiguity or discussion.) For anyone used to Star Trek, Buck Rogers, or any of the other shows where humanity and Earth were the good guys, Babylon 5 flipped the usual ideas of “goodies” and “baddies” on their heads.

The other big theme was literally galactic in its scale, and drew its inspiration from ancient Babylonian mythology. Rather than pitching good against evil, the tide of history flowed between order and chaos. Two alien races of almost unimaginable age and power were meant to shepherd the younger races, like humanity, to maturity. Instead, they ended up using the younger races as pawns in a game of ideological chess.

Oh, the humanity!

While the big stories are certainly fascinating, for most viewers it was the human-scale stories that made the show compulsive viewing. Perhaps most surprisingly, the most human of all these stories involved to aliens, a Narn called G’Kar and a Centuari nobleman, Londo Mollari. In lots of ways these characters were archetypes. G’Kar was of common birth, saw his father killed by the Centauri who occupied his world, went on to become a rebel leader and eventually gained political power once the Centauri were driven off. Deeply religious from the start of the show, the events cause him to examine his beliefs and desires, and through great personal sacrifice he becomes a figure of great compassion and wisdom. More than once the show casts him in a Christ-like light, all the more remarkably given that he starts off the show as being something a comic-book villan.

Londo is the complete opposite in most ways. Born into a rich and noble family he has the misfortune to live through the decline of the Centauri Empire, and his greatest desire is to turn the clock back, to return his people to power. Painted as a likeable if slightly buffoonish character initially, over time he becomes very different. Londo’s tale is really about getting power without having to work for it. Eventually rising to become emperor, he finds that in gaining power he has lost everything else.

For both Londo and G’Kar the show is about making choices. Londo consistently makes the wrong choices, and ends up paying the price. G’Kar realises that his own thirst for revenge isn’t enough to save his people, and makes the right choices instead. The two characters eventually end up becoming friends, developing real affection for one another, because in many ways they are alike, patriots, who want the best for their people. How their lives change over the show is simply one of the best things about it, and frankly, I’m hard pressed to think of any other television show that has such deep and gripping character development as seen with G’Kar and Londo. The actors, Andreas Katsulas and Peter Jurassik, by the way, play their roles to perfection, with much pathos and pain.

Back to the Battlestar

In one or two places, crossover points between the show are obvious. Both feature scenes where a new president is sworn in in a situation staged to look exactly like that of Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1963 aboard Air Force One. Both shows use prophecy or flash-forwards to inform the viewer of what is going to happen, shifting the story away from events and more towards methods and motives. In both shows, a deep time axis lends depth to the narrative, putting the chracters into a historical context as well as the here-and-now.

It’s perhaps a little early to tell if Battlestar Galactica will have the same depth of character development; after all, it took 5 years before the full stories of Londo and G’Kar were made clear. But so far the signs are good, and the writers of Battlestar Galactica have certainly crafted some very compelling and engaging chracters. People certainly do die or suffer great losses, and we’re seeing people make choices and then deal with the consequences.

In the meantime, if you like sci-fi, but you’ve still not seen Babylon 5, then scoot along to the iTunes Music Store and buy an episode or two from Season 1 (“Signs and Portents” would perhaps be my recommendation).