Babylon 5 Reviews B

Years ago I did what you might call “reviews” of Star Trek episodes. I mostly just briefly noted what progressive politics were involved and sometimes used that as an excuse to talk about similar situations in reality.

Last year I finally watched all five seasons of Babylon 5, another sci-fi show, one I had thought of watching once in a while stretching back a couple decades. It isn’t as political or as progressive as ST but there’s some good stuff there- in fact, on one issue, a progressive take on the working-class and/or labor movement, B5 is better than ST. Because there is so little progressive material, I’m going to do one post for every four episodes reviewed, and only mention the episodes that have some progressive political stuff. I might ignore some of the more minor and/or less unique stuff about conflict resolution because from what I remember, it’s very common in this series. Also, although less so than is the case with Star Trek, multiculturalism is a big part of Babylon Five and I will also only be commenting on that when it is more significant than usual. Lastly, there are issues raised about telepaths- I’m going to completely ignore stuff about telepaths when reviewing these episodes.

I’ll be publishing one of these each time I get about 4 reviews done.


**Season 1 Episode 8 “And The Sky Full of Stars** See this for a plot summary

This episode briefly touches on the use of biological weapons, disapprovingly. A xenobiologist (B5's chief Doctor, Dr. Franklin) says that he refused to turn his notes over to the government because they would be used for developing such weapons for use against an alien race.


**Season 1 Episode 9 “DeathWalker”** See this for a plot summary.

This episode is about what we would call crimes against humanity. A leader of a planet roughly comparable to Nazi Germany is arrested on Babylon 5 and Sinclair reluctantly tries to send her to Earth, where the government has made her an offer for a serum she created that gives people immortality. However her primary victims, the League of Non-Aligned Worlds, learn of this, stop Sinclair, and get him to make an effort to have her tried for her crimes. When that doesn’t work, he arranges a compromise where she would do the medical work for Earth and as soon as Earth is fully educated about the serum, she would be put on trial.

Sinclair does the right thing when he is (physically and politically) blocked by the League from carrying out his orders. On the other hand, at one point he says that “she can make the deaths she caused have meaning” (among other crimes, living sentient beings were experimented on, something that contributed to the development of her serum). This sounds wrong- almost like he’s saying “maybe what she did wasn’t that bad after all.” I believe that, even IF it’s acceptable for medicine to benefit from such experimentation, that should be done without the cooperation of the criminals responsible, who should be in prison for the rest of their lives.

There are two other problems with this episode.

1. The Minbari vote against trying “DeathWalker”, ostensibly because they were not a party to the conflict she was responsible for (the real reason is that a part of their military caste sheltered her after the war). If that were really their reason, that doesn’t make any sense. If anything, neutral 3rd-party worlds/nations should be more involved with that sort of thing (so it's less likely to be seen as justice of the victor).
2. At one point “Deathwalker” says that humans will carry out atrocities as bad as hers. Nothing is said about the atrocities carried out by humans (in reality), in, for example, Native North America. I’m not sure how many peoples opinions about such matters are CHANGED by seeing them mentioned like that in a TV show or movie, but it can’t hurt.


**Season 1 Episode 10 “Believers”** See this for a plot summary.

This is about respecting different religious beliefs when those beliefs are in serious conflict with your ethics. I lean towards sticking to my ethics in at least some of the scenarios where this would come up- for example, how women are treated, including how they’re treated in many Muslim societies and communities. It’s especially about religious and ethical beliefs in connection to medicine and in the context of a relatively neutral space station dedicated to multiculturalism and dialogue between alien races as part of conflict resolution. In that specific context I believe that Sinclair was right to side with the child’s parents.

In a slightly different way, religious acceptance independent of medicine is also a theme. At one point Sinclair says “if any religion is right, then maybe they all have to be right.” I’m not sure exactly how this works when we include polytheistic religions, but I believe that Christians, Muslims, and Jewish people pray to the same God, and I would be happy to say something similar about those three plus polytheistic religions if I can figure out how to phrase it. Obviously there are still differences even if we agree that Jews, Muslims and Christians pray to the same God, but unless it’s done constructively, I don’t believe in focusing a lot on the differences between those religions. (UPDATE 4/2/17 I am not sure where Buddhism fits in this, but I believe that Buddhism deserves as much respect as the others) (I'm  not going to cover every single religion out there, but my thoughts are more or less the same about respecting all of them)


**Season 1 Episode 12 “By Any Means Necessary” See this for a plot summary.

This is a special episode. Not only is it about labor unions, it might go further than Star Trek’s Deep Space 9 episode “Bar Association” did.

A space dock worker is killed in an accident after a long period (months or years) of the dock hands being very understaffed, over-worked, forced to break safety rules in order to work faster, and dependent on old and failing equipment (although not central to the events that take place, they are also very under-paid). It’s revealed by the fairly sympathetic command staff of B5 that the lowest-bidder contractor responsible for some of the work building the station used inferior micro-chips which contributed to the death. Sinclair has requested a bigger budget to spend more money on the dock work force and equipment, but the most recent budget didn’t do anything new to help the docks. And Sinclair says that the government that employs the dock workers treats them poorly because their contracts don’t allow them to strike.

The Earth government sends a union-busting hatchet man who stresses the claim that if the workers were more efficient they would be fine with the equipment and manpower they have. When the situation escalates to an official (and illegal) strike by the workers, he invokes the “Rush Act” which empowers the authorities to use “any means necessary” to end the strike. Initially there is a fight between the security forces and the strikers but the the former are withdrawn and Sinclair ends the strike by, using the authority given to him by the “Rush Act,” re-allocating part of B5’s military budget to hire more dock workers and get new equipment.

Overall I think this might be more pro-labor than ST’s “Bar Association.” In the latter Sisko puts some pressure on the employer (Quark), but on the other hand, after conceding the union’s demands, Quark makes the union disband. In this B5 episode, the command staff are fairly sympathetic and the union remains at the end, but only two out of three union demands are conceded.