The Babylon 5 Blog

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.