[The author sets up his premise that science fiction is related to Westerns and, in a way, has replaced the genre. He then discusses ST and SW. Here's the B5 part only.]
1997 in Babylon 5 1978 in How the West Was Won
BABYLON 5: A MAN'S GOTTA DO... In many ways, Babylon 5 is the anti-Star Trek, conceived as an alternative vision of the spacefaring future. It was also billed as an example of The Real Thing as far as science fiction was concerned. Creator-producer JMS wrote sci-fi and horror fiction and produced the syndicated revival of the Twilight Zone. For the launch of the Babylon project he recruited veteran genre scriptwriters such as Harlan Ellison, David Gerrold, and D.C. Fontana, before the show's complex weave of story arcs forced (or challenged) him to write the show's entire fourth season.
And after the slow build B5 won the hearts of fans. Many recognize in its ancient-cosmic-forces-on-the-rise storyline the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien, or of ace pulpster E.E. "Doc" Smith. In the series' best in-joke, the evil psi-cop Bester takes his name from Alfred Bester, whose 1951 novel The Demolished Man is a classic of telepathic sleuthing.
The operating metaphor for B5 was Blade Runner noir rather than Western, and Straczynski invited prospective viewers to think Casablanca-in space. But the series draws deeply from some of the major themes of the Western as catalogued by J. Hoberman: "The cowboy movie was typically the vehicle America used to explain itself to itself. Who makes the law? What is the order? Where is the frontier? Which ones are the good guys? Why is it that a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do--and how does he do it?"
Sometimes the similarities to the Western are shallow: in the pilot episode Station Commander Jeffrey Sinclair (Michael O'Hare) must clear himself of the attempted murder of an alien Vorlon before the fleet arrives to mete out extra solar justice. But it's the role of the pivotal Sinclair and his successor, Captain John Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner), that carry an insider-versus-outsider tension reminiscent of the Western.
If early Western heroes were part of their community, then Sinclair and Sheridan--both instrumental in saving not just Earth but peace in the Galaxy--are variations on the them of "an outsider or principled loner face to face with outlaws or sadists, prodded into a final showdown." Sinclair begins as a brooding loner assigned to a distant outpost; Sheridan is a golden boy in Earth's space fleet, uncomfortable with his reassignment to a station. Sheridan only gradually becomes aware of conspiracies both cosmic and earthbound, which push him into the role of outsider. Among the things he's gotta do are track down the wife he thought long dead who turns out to be captive of the evil alien Shadows, lead an uprising against the fascistic EarthGov, marry an alien, suffer a brutal Orwellian interrogation, and even come back from the dead. Sinclair, on the other hand, goes all the way outside, becoming an alien Minbari, and a legendary hero to the race, to boot.
As the series enters its fifth and final season, Sheridan is no longer a regular guy. Richard Schickel's description of James Stewart's Western persona might describe Sheridan and to some extent Sinclair: "The vision retained of him...is of a man...riding off alone into the high country toward some confrontation--not only with the villain but with his driving obsessions".
Extreme distrust of authority is one of the most American of sensibilities used in B5. It occurs among both the right and the left, and both poles of opinion get their day. Earth may have a united government, but that's no guarantee of straight shooting. Sinclair and his crew are continually subjected to McCarthy-like inquiries about their loyalties in the first season. Sinclair, Garibaldi, Sheridan, and Franklin always buck the system when they have to, even after much rule-quoting as in Star Trek. So do the women of B5, a generally tougher breed of Space Girls than we usually see. Some of them even have positions of authority.
True to the message of classic Westerns, B5 also locates the true heart of darkness where it belongs. By the end of season four, the evil Shadows and angelic but amoral Vorlons are banished from human affairs, and Sheridan's parting words "Get the hell out of our Galaxy!" certainly encapsulate an American attitude toward property. Straczynski could have ended the series right there, but we have met the enemy and he is us. The real villains are human beings, and the story is just warming up. If the sci-fi screen boom continues, and the studios find it in themselves to offer us more Babylon's and less Independence Days, we could be in for a long strange ride.
Thanks, Diane!
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