Babylon 5/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alien Scrappy: The Drazi are the race on which the most problematic and borderline-racist alien customs are dumped, everything from overenthusiastic religious pilgrims to the whole fiasco with the green and purple sashes. The Minbari's warrior caste are a close second, especially due to their asinine habit of brandishing their ships' weapons during all first contact situations.
    • Frankly, the Drazi come across as a Planet of Hats whose "hat" is not so much a hat as a special helmet they have to wear in order to avoid hurting themselves...
    • The Minbari warrior caste considers brandishing their weapons during a proper honorable gesture of greeting between warriors. Showing all your weapons without trying to defend yourself could be seen as a gesture of trust and that you're not trying to set up a trap. Of course, it's very easy to get misinterpreted when they use their extremely powerful scanners on ships that screw up the scanned target's engines and use stealth sensors to keep them from scanning you.
      • Of course, the Minbari were very isolationist before, so it's possible that it was just some weird Warrior Caste tradition that generally was just used for one group of Minbari Warriors to say "Sup?" to another group of Minbari Warriors. Still, kind of a boneheaded thing for them to do when dealing with aliens.
  • Exclusively Evil: The Shadows
  • Always Lawful Good: Well, Always Lawful something when talking about the Vorlons.
  • Anvilicious: Boy, howdy. JMS wanted to make an Important Show full of Significant Messages, and he wanted to make sure you knew it. Almost every episode has a moral, usually delivered with a sledgehammer. He gets more graceful after the first season, but subtlety is never his priority. By and large, though, most of them are pretty good anvils.
  • Better on DVD, makes it easier to follow the arc-based story structure.
    • It also makes Season 5's telepath arc better, since you can move along faster.
  • Chewing the Scenery: While Londo Mollari is clearly supposed to be a Large Ham, in the first season there is also a lot of bad ACTING!!! by the principals, possibly as a result of trying to overcome the limiting effect of their facial applications. They get more subtle as time goes on.
  • Complete Monster: Lord Refa, Emperor Cartagia, President Clark Deathwalker and arguably the Shadows.
  • Crack Ship: Marcus/Neroon is ridiculously popular with the fandom.
  • Crazy Awesome: David Mckintyre AKA "King Arthur"
  • Creator's Pet: An awful lot of minor characters early in the 5th season seem to go on at length about how amazingly awesome Captain Lochley is, to the point of her getting a standing applause by a mess hall full of personnel after going on a tirade at Garibaldi.
  • Critical Research Failure: After being criticized for showing a rabbi singing and dancing along to the eponymous gospel song in the episode "And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place," JMS claimed he hadn't realized it was pretty much a New Testament-exclusive song. One wonders if he ever actually listened to it, since it's a song about sinners trying to avoid the wrath of God on Judgement Day, and name-checks Jesus repeatedly.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: Cartagia walking up to Londo & Co. in his pure white suit, except for his entirely blood-red hands, talking boredly about how his torturers--"excuse me, pain technicians, the used to be called torturers but ever since they got organized it's been pain technicians"—just couldn't manage to make G'Kar scream, and, well, he'd just had to do it himself... On its own, the scene would be horrifying, but between the way the scene is written Wortham Kimmer's utterly bored delivery as Cartagia you can't help but laugh.
    • Then he pours the bloody water he rinsed his hands in on some flowers in the garden, to help them grow.
  • Crossover Ship: Elizabeth Lochley (with Captain Gideon of Crusade)
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Quite a few over the show's run. Special mention goes to "And The Rock Cried Out No Hiding Place."
    • And the music playing at the end of the very last episode. If you're not fighting back tears as B5 goes up in flames, you have no soul.
    • The bar music in “The Face of the Enemy” playing when Sheridan is arrested thanks to a brainwashed Garibaldi.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Morden in the official spin-off novel The Shadow Within, which most fans consider non-continuity as a result
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Babylon 5 had four seasons. And no TV movies save for "The Gathering" (which is more properly a part of the first season) and "In The Beginning".
    • To explain, Seasons 2 - 4 are pretty much the height of canon. The first and last seasons can be jettisoned. The Films and Season 5 are mostly self contained, so they can be disregarded easily. Season 1 has a different lead, so the new commander works as a PoV coming in on season 2. Crusade and Call to Arms tend to get grouped because the latter is a Poorly-Disguised Pilot for the former.
    • Although a fair number of fans, particularly those who saw the show on DVD rather than first airing and so didn't feel the effects of Arc Fatigue in the first half of season five, consider that season just as good as the rest.
  • Foe Yay: Londo and G'Kar, lots of it.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Occurs with Hey, It's That Guy!, when one sees Malcolm's Dad as a Ranger and Dr. Kelso as an Earthforce Captain.
    • Also, with "You Can't Break Those Cuffs", the scene in which G'kar is chained up, and told that he can't break those chains. G'kar breaks the chains.
  • Ho Yay: Played with hilarious Lampshade Hanging during Marcus and Franklin's trip to Mars due to a Smithical Marriage in their stolen IDs.
    • Londo and G'Kar from late season 4 on. Lampshaded in a season 5 episode when two workers who encounter them for the first time comment on their relationship with: "How long have they been married?"
      • The irony is, they technically have been married, at least according to Minbari tradition, since the middle of Season One!
        • Except G'Kar didn't eat the red fruit, nor did he and Londo exchange long, meaningful glances- just the joke of them being at the ceremony. Delenn, on the other hand, might have some claim to the Valen estate.
        • Oh, she does. She's a distant descendent.

Londo: Mister Garibaldi, it can't be that bad!
Garibaldi: You try and kiss me and I'll break your arm.
Londo: We're not that close, Mister Garibaldi!

  • Large Ham: "My deeeaarr... Meeester Garibaldi!"
    • Cast commentary reveals that Londo's actor would get into character by strutting back and forth repeating that exact line.
    • There is no ham larger than DRAAL.
      • The younger version of DRAAL, at least. The older DRAAL (played by the same actor who portrayed Brother Theo) was much more subtle. Which is to say, he was still a Large Ham, just not to the epic levels he reached once he was in The Great Machine.
    • G'Kar was this in the first season, less so as the series went on.

G'Kar: "They've got us sitting next to the Vreeeee! Have you ever seen them eat? There's horror for you."

  • Les Yay: I mean, come on. Talia and Susan? Is it not that obvious? When they had their sleepover, the sexual tension could have been cut with a knife!
    • Word of God says they actually did have sex the night Talia stayed over at Ivanova's place. Later Ivanova says "I think I loved Talia."
  • Magnificent Bastard : Londo Mollari is either a Magnificent Bastard or a Tragic Hero, depending on the episode—sometimes both at once. He's vastly entertaining to watch, but once his machinations begin to spin out of control, everyone knows it, and even his few friends stop liking him.
    • Bester qualifies as well, managing to get the upper hand every time with even the protagonists impressed by his evasion of karmic justice. He slips into Smug Snake at times, though. Too many of the heroes think just shooting him is a reasonable option.
      • It should say something about Bester that even Doctor Franklin, a through-and-through pacifist, feels that Bester needs to be shot.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Emperor Cartagia manages to cross it in the same episode he's introduced. Sheridan comes perilously close to crossing it when he orders the use of human telepaths altered by the Shadows as weapons against Earthforce. Only the fact that he does it reluctantly and fully understands the implications of what he's doing prevents him from fully succumbing to the MEH.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • Drakh keepers. Guaranteed they'll make your skin crawl.
    • Garibali's subplot in "Grey 17 Is Missing" as well.
    • Do not think for a moment that the Shadows can't be scary.
  • Only the Author Can Save Them Now: How to face the Shadows and Vorlons?
  • Replacement Scrappy: Elizabeth Lochley - rather unavoidable as she was replacing the much-beloved Susan Ivanova.
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: Particularly if you've already seen other, subsequent, Myth Arc Space Opera shows such as Battlestar Galactica.
  • The Scrappy: Byron. Mention him on a board with a lot of B5 fans, and watch the flames pour in.
    • Replacement Scrappy: Captain Lochley. In-universe, Garibaldi doesn't particularly care for her either.
  • Special Effects Failure: The version of the Drakh that appears in one scene in Season 4 is never seen again, and for good reason: it looks like someone got ahold of Rick Moranis's Dark Helmet costume and spray-painted it to look like Skeletor. Even filming it through a deliberately blurred lens can't make it look like a living creature, and not a hunk of rubber or plastic.
    • Word of God eventually admitted that the blur effect was because they tried to get the actor to do weird alien movement and it just looked stupid.
  • Straw Man Has a Point: After Garibaldi is brainwashed, he develops an irrational hatred of Sheridan. While his accusation that Sheridan has started to buy into his own messianic hype is completely bogus, he has a point when he compares Babylon 5 to a military dictatorship.
    • Of course, for all intents and purposes, it was a military dictatorship, but one that tried to be benevolent while still keeping in mind its higher purpose.
    • A number of Strawman Political characters who visit the station browbeat Sheridan for not taking into account the political ramifications for Earth of his decisions. Considering that he is effectively Earth's ambassador on Babylon 5 in addition to being a military commander in a key region of space, he really should be considering the policies being pursued by his government and how his actions will impact them. Of course, he might be less inclined to do so once he finds out President Clark had his predecessor assassinated.
  • Tear Jerker: The memorial service for the pilots and soldiers who fell in the station's first engagement with Earth Force when they declared independence.
    • Also, in the finale: The demolition of Babylon 5, with producer Joe Straczynski cameoing as a technician turning off the lights before he leaves.
    • In fact, the entire episode "Sleeping in Light." All of it.

JMS: Pretty much everybody cried. I came home to a message on my machine from Mira, who was almost unable to speak, and another from Claudia who said she was honored and proud to be a part of this, and the script had made her cry. Bruce, Richard, big beefy guys on the crew...all said the same thing. And there I have to concur; I lost it several times as I was writing it, due to the content; there's one scene in particular... you'll know it when you see it... that put me away for an hour when I finished writing it.

    • Yeah.

Sheridan: Good night, my love... The brightest star in my sky.
Delenn: You were my sky...and my sun...and my moon.

    • You can hear JMS' voice breaking from emotion as he's doing the commentary track for Sleeping in Light, and he did the commentary track ten years after the episode was filmed.
    • Then there was the episode "Confessions and Lamentations". An entire freaking species.
  • Trapped by Mountain Lions: Several episodes have major, galaxy-wide ranging A-Plots with B-Plots, who while they might be of great consequence to a specific character, seem petty in comparison to the main plot. Most noticeable is Dr. Franklin's stim addiction problem and subsequent journey to find himself - while the Shadow War is raging.
  • Ugly Cute: The pak’ma’ra. Their dull, bovine eyes and tentacle faces make them rather appealing in an odd way.
  • The Woobie: Lennier, Vir
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