Babylon 5 vs. Firefly...the life and times
POSTED BY: SchoolboysWink
UPDATED: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 14:37
VIEWED: 11228
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This could probably fit in the "Firefly Episodes" section, to, but here it is.
I recently started rewatching Babylon 5 season three, and I was struck by the huge differences between my two favorite shows. For one thing, B5's dialogue, while epic and cool, is stodgy by comparison to Firefly. I still love B5, but the vocal exchanges are more like listening to sci-fi Shakespeare than anything people would actually say to each other. The fact that I never even noticed it until after seeing Firefly points to a failing in the sci-fi genre in general that it took Joss Whedon to show me (and I doubt I'm alone) was even there.
More importantly, though, I was thinking about how the shows reflect the times in which they were produced.
Babylon 5 was a product of the 1990s. We were on the cusp of a new millenium, the economy was good, the Cold War was over. It seemed that humanity could overcome any threat. It seemed like maybe we had a hope of getting the hang of living with one another, so it was worth dreaming about other species and how we might interact with them. It was a time to dream of great heroes and epic deeds, of dark evils and noble, if costly, victories. JMS was always careful to show us the aftermath of the battles, the blood and tears, but even while he showed war's repugnance with one hand, he glorified the brave and noble sacrifices with the other.
Firefly is a show for a different time. The new millenium dawned, and it wasn't what the brochures said it would be. To borrow from the Simpsons "It's pretty much the same as the old millenium, except everybody is afraid all the time, and the stock market is much lower." It is no longer so easy to dream of a united Earth, we see our own daily struggles much more vividly now, with buildings falling and people dying faster than we care to try to keep up with. And much of the time, it feels like if you can get to the end of the day and still be flying, than that's all you can ask for. And it better be enough. Enter our Big Damn Heroes, a new kind of hero, a hero who's struggles are just to keep going and "look after me and mine." And the fighting is shown to be neither repugnant, nor glorious, but simply a grim necessity if you want to survive.
Those are my ramblings. Hoping somebody can come along and add to it, something I missed, or such like.
"When you can't do somethin' smart, do somethin' right!" -Jayne Cobb quotes Shepherd Book
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Babylon 5 was the best of the lot, and Season 3 was the best of the show's run. Yes, the dialogue seems stale compared to Firefly, but what else does not? All the sci-fi shows with military atmospheres always sound kind of the same, but at least a great show like Babylon 5 can hold it's head high and proud in comparison to some of the god-awful dialogue that's scatterred out there...like the Star Wars Prequels for example. I can watch Firefly over & over, ridiculously again & again, and the reason I guess is 'cause the dialogue is uniquely clever, and inspiring, and hysterical.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SchoolboysWink:
This could probably fit in the "Firefly Episodes" section, to, but here it is.
I recently started rewatching Babylon 5 season three, and I was struck by the huge differences between my two favorite shows. For one thing, B5's dialogue, while epic and cool, is stodgy by comparison to Firefly. I still love B5, but the vocal exchanges are more like listening to sci-fi Shakespeare than anything people would actually say to each other. The fact that I never even noticed it until after seeing Firefly points to a failing in the sci-fi genre in general that it took Joss Whedon to show me (and I doubt I'm alone) was even there.
More importantly, though, I was thinking about how the shows reflect the times in which they were produced.
Babylon 5 was a product of the 1990s. We were on the cusp of a new millenium, the economy was good, the Cold War was over. It seemed that humanity could overcome any threat. It seemed like maybe we had a hope of getting the hang of living with one another, so it was worth dreaming about other species and how we might interact with them. It was a time to dream of great heroes and epic deeds, of dark evils and noble, if costly, victories. JMS was always careful to show us the aftermath of the battles, the blood and tears, but even while he showed war's repugnance with one hand, he glorified the brave and noble sacrifices with the other.
Firefly is a show for a different time. The new millenium dawned, and it wasn't what the brochures said it would be. To borrow from the Simpsons "It's pretty much the same as the old millenium, except everybody is afraid all the time, and the stock market is much lower." It is no longer so easy to dream of a united Earth, we see our own daily struggles much more vividly now, with buildings falling and people dying faster than we care to try to keep up with. And much of the time, it feels like if you can get to the end of the day and still be flying, than that's all you can ask for. And it better be enough. Enter our Big Damn Heroes, a new kind of hero, a hero who's struggles are just to keep going and "look after me and mine." And the fighting is shown to be neither repugnant, nor glorious, but simply a grim necessity if you want to survive.
Those are my ramblings. Hoping somebody can come along and add to it, something I missed, or such like.
"When you can't do somethin' smart, do somethin' right!" -Jayne Cobb quotes Shepherd Book
I have thought the difference in language to be intentional. In B5 you have alien races with cultural and communication barriers, if one is not very precise in language it could change the meaning very easy... with Firefly, some cultural difference exist but the background is more common, everyone is more or less in the same place.
My thoughts anyway
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Yeah, I've noticed the same thing in real life, with many of my classmates who don't speak English as a first language. The Firefly 'verse is pretty well-mxed, but consider that B5 doesn't have universal translators or protocol droids. Everyone speaking English is doing so the hard way. Not much room for embellishment, beyond Delenn's hanging out way too much around Garibaldi.
"Absa-fraggin'-lutely, dammit!"
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We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.
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Well, as sci-fi fans we all, I think, have a tendency to justify the way things look or sound with in-story details, but in the case of B5's dialogue I think that argument gives a bit too much credit. (May JMS forgive me.) Two main reasons I think so:
1) Much of the dialogue in B5 is supposed to be in other languages, but is shown in English because none of us speak Centauri, for example. When there are only Narns on the screen, we have to assume that they are supposed to be speaking Narn, otherwise it just doesn't make sense. Therefore, if cultural barriers were supposed to be a factor in the dialogue, I would expect a single-race conversation to be written in a much different style than a mixed-race conversation, and they are not. (Yes, Minbari, Narns, etc. all talk differently from one another, but when a Narn is talking to a Minbari, his dialogue isn't different than when he's talking to another Narn, for example... I hope that all makes sense.) At least not in any way that I have noticed in the half-dozen times I've seen each episode.
2) Timing. It isn't just WHAT is said, it is HOW it is said. And this isn't just writing, it takes direction and acting into play, too. In B5, the timing of the dialogue is set for drama instead of realism. I've worked with many people who speak English as a second language (and in a couple of cases only barely), and even they will talk over your last couple of words or interrupt what you are saying, which you see very little of in B5.
Don't take me wrong, I love B5, and I even love the dialogue. Some of the speeches and exchanges are breathtaking. And I do think it was done intentionally, to help paint the epic, heroic universe I described in my post. I don't think, though, that it was calculated to showcase the technical difficulties of inter-species communication. Well...except for the Vorlon.
"The avalanche has started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."
"When you can't do somethin' smart, do somethin' right!" -Jayne Cobb quotes Shepherd Book
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Someone elsewhere once suggested (jokingly) that Kosh actually was speaking clearly and plainly, and it was just his malfunctioning auto-translator that was turning out unwittingly profound gibberish.
All that time, he was wandering around, ignorantly proud as Ivanova "speaking" Minbari. 
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We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SchoolboysWink:
For one thing, B5's dialogue, while epic and cool, is stodgy by comparison to Firefly. I still love B5, but the vocal exchanges are more like listening to sci-fi Shakespeare than anything people would actually say to each other.
B5 was structured as a classical tragedy - from the plot elements (Londo == Macbeth anyone?) to the big, portentious monologues and the (sometimes painful) "comic relief" moments, so the style of dialogue was pretty appropriate. If you look at the sci-fi channel version of Dune they took the same approach (even down to having the Baron break into rhyming couplets occasionally).
I think it had got to the stage where TV space opera was always done in this way - probably because of the dominance of Star Trek (the original was straight-down-the-line Shakespere-in-space, and casting a Shakesperian actor as captain in TNG didn't help).
Other genres (e.g. cop and hospital shows) had already gone for the fly-on-the-wall realism style and, even in its day, I think B5 looked a bit dated alongside them.
I think it was the new Battlestar Galactica that really broke the mould there by (at least superficially) going for "realism". Firefly is pretty stylised - it just uses wild west/caper movie templates instead of classical ones (I suppose that, equally, BSG uses WWII naval movie templates).
Quote:
More importantly, though, I was thinking about how the shows reflect the times in which they were produced.
Babylon 5 was a product of the 1990s.
Sorry - have to disagree there - parts of the B5 story - especially the rise of fascism on Earth using the "alien threat" as a bogeyman - are horribly appropriate for the post-9/11 twenty first century.
The rest of B5 is hardly utopian: the mistakes of the 20th century are repeated (with unsubtle allegories) the main story is about how superpowers use emerging nations as proxies to fight their ideological battles without risking their own necks. The series ends with a war with the telepaths looming - and a glimpse into the future that shows earth sliding into fascism and destruction again before finally reaching "enlightenment".
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Quote:
Originally posted by ImNotHere:
I think it had got to the stage where TV space opera was always done in this way - probably because of the dominance of Star Trek (the original was straight-down-the-line Shakespere-in-space, and casting a Shakesperian actor as captain in TNG didn't help).
Good point.
Quote:
Sorry - have to disagree there - parts of the B5 story - especially the rise of fascism on Earth using the "alien threat" as a bogeyman - are horribly appropriate for the post-9/11 twenty first century.
The rest of B5 is hardly utopian: the mistakes of the 20th century are repeated (with unsubtle allegories) the main story is about how superpowers use emerging nations as proxies to fight their ideological battles without risking their own necks. The series ends with a war with the telepaths looming - and a glimpse into the future that shows earth sliding into fascism and destruction again before finally reaching "enlightenment".
Think you're misapprehending my logic a bit here, NotHere. I'm not saying there aren't parallels in plot that reflect the modern day. (And if you really want to see parallels to B5, look no further than Lord of the Rings and David Eddings Belgariad.) Big literary types with lots of letters after their names will tell you that there are only something like a dozen archetypal stories in the history of literature. Tales of control, betrayal, deceit, and politics have been around a lot longer than sci-fi, and if you scaled history back 50 years and looked at B5 in that light, you'd see parallels going on in what the governments were doing in those days as well. Part of the genius of the show is its timelessness in how it presents humanity's flaws.
What makes this a product of the '90s is the tone of the show and the way the characters respond to those plots that you were mentioning. They characters don't just try to survive events, they behave heroically. We find lines like "All power to engines, give me ramming speed!" and "We live for the one, we die for the one!" These are characters who are seeing a big picture, an epic picture, and are willing to sacrifice themselves for it. It is a huge scope that says that human beings are capable of this noble spirit to give up all they have for others, and in so doing TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. (Contrast this to Jaynestown "They're probably putting that statue back up right now." For another ex., in B5, they might indeed abandon a town to Reavers, but only if doing so allowed them to carry out a daring and heroic plan that would ultimately destroy all of Reaver-kind.) The very fact that humanity eventually achieves "enlightenment" you mentioned at all points to the overall optimism of the show. It says, there are going to be struggles along the way, but we ARE going to get there. That sense of hopeful purpose is what I think has been lost in this millenium. (Also, I believe at that last bit you are referring to The Deconstruction of Falling Stars, the last episode of Season 4. I love the episode, but I don't put too much stock in it; it was an episode JMS never knew he was going to have to write. The show was getting cancelled, and Sleeping in Light was supposed to air in DFS's place. When they found out TNT was picking up the show, they needed a final episode for their Season 4 schedule, and that was what he came up with. Brilliant, but given how little time there was to produce it, I take it with a grain of salt.)
Now, again, I hope I haven't made anybody feel defensive about B5. It is an absolule gem of sci-fi and a credit to the very notion of mass-media entertainment. I didn't intend for my remarks to be taken as a criticism of the show, I just was fascinated on the re-watch how the feel and tone of the two shows were influenced by the decades in which they were made and wanted to comment on it. If anything, the current state of affairs leads me to believe that we need the noble, selfless example of B5 now more than ever.
"When you can't do somethin' smart, do somethin'
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Quote:
Originally posted by SchoolboysWink:
(Also, I believe at that last bit you are referring to The Deconstruction of Falling Stars, the last episode of Season 4. I love the episode, but I don't put too much stock in it; it was an episode JMS never knew he was going to have to write.
Well, JMS had reputedly sketched out the "history" of his universe for 1000 years either side of the series - so some of it would have been "part of the plan".
Anyway, although I agree B5 seems "heroic" and "optimistic" if you compare it with Firefly, I think you are underrating how far it had moved from the "star trek" utopian model and introduced moral ambiguity into the mix.
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I have been thinking about this thread and your comments have been fun to read.
B5 was my favorite show when our kids were little. I liked the epic versus episode approach to the series. I have come up with a few comparisons of Babylon5 and Firefly which I think nicely sum up some of the reasons these two series are so memorable.
1. The music.
For Babylon5, the theme of season 5, Severed Dreams, and Voices of Authority have great music. I find myself humming the tunes over and over.
For Firefly, I could watch Mal close doors all night while listening to the wonderful soundtrack of Out of Gas. Other favorites - Jaynestown (what's not to like about that ballad?) and The Message.
2. The guest stars.
For Babylon5, oh my goodness, the list is truly amazing (but then again they had 5 seasons!) but a few stand-outs must include Walter Koenig as the enigmatic psi corps leader and Ian Ogilvy (who is married to Bruce Boxleitner's ex-wife,....small world) as the only truly decent high-ranking Centauri, and yes, Melissa Gilbert. I thought she was creepy scary on Z'ha'dum.
For Firefly, YoSaffBridge is the tops but Niska and Badger are so memorable. I even like the postal clerk guy and the bad cop in The Message. Those guest stars are simply ideal. Great job with casting!
3. Unresolved stories
My favorite Star Trek episode is Balance of Terror. It has a very open ending with Kirk walking down a corridor, grim, sad and angry. It is a great episode which does not have neatly sewn up seams. Similarly, Babylon5 had many episodes that did not have pretty endings. Remember the moving shot of Londo looking out the window (so that you see his reflection) while the spiders destroy the Narn base? Many of Garibaldi's best moments lack of resolution.
On Firefly, humorously, Our Mrs. Reynolds ends totally unresolved. Jaynestown has a somber ending, and fittingly, Objects in Space has a very open ending.
Well, I have "babylon"ed enough tonight!
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