Babylon 5: Season 5 (1998)

The Wheel of Fire (1998)

22 episodes, approx 44 mins each.

"No one here is exactly what he appears. Nothing's the same anymore. [...] I see a great hand, reaching out of the stars. Who are you? [...] Do you have anything worth living for? I think of my beautiful city in flames. Like giants in the playground."

Season 5 is the Ensign Red Shirt of the Babylon 5 universe. Almost everything went wrong, and there are a number of reasons why that was.

The most obvious reasons are studio dithering (see Season 4 post for info of that) and the writing having to be rushed to meet production dates.

Lochley (Tracy Scoggins) taking over as Station head and trying hard not to be perceived as the obvious replacement that she was didn't help. It's not Scoggins' fault she had to fit the powerful female template that JMS fell back on in times of need.

The usually reliable Garibaldi turned into a twat, and the inclusion of his stupid new girlfriend into story-lines was painful viewing.

Then there's Zack being head of security and wanting to be John Wayne in every scene.

And, the most hateful thing of all, Byron the touchy-feely, poncy, emo git and his group of irritating hippy commune teeps got far too much screen time. Every scene he's in turns my blood to fire. Robin Atkin Downes is maybe a great guy in real life, I'm not suggesting otherwise, but the Byron character is as pleasing as a bowl of cold spoo in your underwear.

Even the intro was directionless this time; with no obvious story arc to reference it had to use sound-bites from the previous seasons. Weak.

On the flip side, the episode at Psi-Corps was interesting, I'd have liked that to have been developed more. (The idea was later used for a trilogy of tie-in novels that I haven't read.)

I've no right to feel cheated, but as a devoted fan I do feel supremely and royally wedgied. I believe JMS could've did a much better job if the suits hadn't stifled him. It's a shame that a large portion of the last season is a black spot on an otherwise excellent series.

For the final time, the notable episodes are: Day of the Dead (Ep 8), an episode written by Neil Gaiman that's mildy entertaining in a very un-B5 way; Movements of Fire and Shadow + The Fall of Centauri Prime (Eps 17-18); and Sleeping in Light, the original Season 4 finale, gets its airing at last. Yay. It's bittersweet and full of emotion. On my first series binge I had to watch parts of it twice because I had tears threatening to engulf my eyes the first time.