For being made in the mid 90’s, the special effects have held up pretty well. They had to recycle a lot of shots for budgetary reasons. But overall, not too bad for when it was made.
That was the idea, the actor playing Londo even said once he tried to mimic eatern and central Europe's accent to make them relatable to Austro-Hungary
An interesting angle of the ideological conflict is that, for the Shadows, the proxy wars are integral to the ideology. The Shadows view the "competition" and conflict as inherently constructive. Those that survive the periodic wars are stronger for it, and those who don't survive free up resources for the survivors and for new civilizations. The Shadows don't want total victory. The Vorlons are the contrast of course. A centrally planned and controlled order. Younger civilizations literally conditioned to see the Vorlons as angelic beings. Nah, no cold war parallels there ;)
Nice. I've never seen such a short but concise contextualization of B5's "real world" story arc before. Already subscribed after watching your "Troopers, Trek, and Empire" video, glad I did.
B5, for me, was a huge leap in the evolution sci-fi shows. I saw stuff in that show that more than once i thought ‘Star Trek would never do that!’ I realized i was seeing something so much more….mature, something that treated me like an adult. Funny how you compare the Earth Alliance to the Federation, as I saw the EA just before the Minbari War as arrogant and headstrong. The captain who thought he could pull a fast one on the Minbari fleet before shooting it up reminded me of a ‘proto-Kirk’, except without any of the luck.
That was due to the Dilgar war, the newly interstellar EA intervene in a relatively minor conflict helping the League of Non Aligned worlds defeat the Dilgar. This gave the humans a false sense of ability to take on Alien threats, with virtually no knowledge of Mimbari the Captain of the task force assumes they can take on any threat. Unfortunately to compound matters that captain is overly trigger happy, someone like Sinclair or Sheridan would have been far more cautious in a similar situation. That being said the Commander of the Mimbari ship is foolish to approach a fleet of ships from a young Alien race with his gun ports open assuming they would understand the gesture of respect as per Warrior Cast tradition. Dukat is too late to reverse that mistake, I wonder if the gun ports had been closed the whole confrontation could have been avoided.
@@bosshog8844 Every RUclips video has asshats commenting, telling other people how to use their time and speech, please stop, we get that you are a narcissistic tool and think we are all here to serve you, we get it. We don't care.
or maybe it just showed how nothing really changes we just continue to repeat past mistakes. As radicalisation lead to the 1st & 2nd war though the radicals of nationalism for the 1st mirroring the whole of the late 90s & early 2000s balkin wars & war on terror we may just be repeating the 2nd ideological radicalisation based on resisting changes by becoming fascists. Kinda a morbid thing how easily a place can become radicalised with the right conditions.
The Centari are still a Grate Power, the 2nd place among the Younger Races but they are slipping, they make comparatively minor Advancements but, but their past Imperial Glory is slipping away and "Lesser" younger races are starting to catch up.
On paper they're the second-tier power, but in practice they're lesser still (such as when they decide to do nothing in response to Narn aggression in season 1).
@@TheOneWhoMightBe many if not most of the "League of Unaligned Worlds" and Clients of the Minbari and Centauri are actually Older than Humans in their activity on the Interstellar stage.
Mass Effect, according to the writers of the first game at least, was partly inspired by B5. For sci-fis and motifs harkening back to cold war or earlier eras of real life conflicts, Farscape also wasn't a bad take, if not a bit simpler.
It’s a common misconception one unfortunately aided by terminologically illiterate Hollywood blowhards, pseudo-intellectual media pundits, and ignorant artistic types misrepresenting and misusing terms and concepts they don’t really understand.
Nope. "Third World" originally meant those nations that were unaligned with either NATO or the Soviet Union. It just turned out that they tended to be poorer (in part as a result of lacking such alliances).
I love all the varios Sci-Fi series. B-5 was one of the best in my opinion. incluing the MOvies after the series ended. I own the complete series on DVD as well as most of the other series like Star Wars ans Star Trek. all of the Star Trek series....
Babylon 5 is one of my favourite shows, and one of the parallels I notice is between the Vorlons/Shadows and the Arisians/Eddorians of 'Doc' Smith's Lensman series.
Something worth noting is that the Earth Alliance had already fought and won an interstellar war before they fought the Minbari, their action throughout that war had gained them respect in the galactic community.
Nicely done. However, the idea that the Centauri are like the British needs to be corrected. I can understand why some see it this way but the manner, dress and behaviour of the Centauri seems to me to be based on the Austro-Hungarians and the politics those of that empire clinging on into the twentieth century.
@@feralhistorian with all due respect - nonsense, austro hungarian is grand budapest hotel, centauri (centurian, i mean come on, its on the nose!) are roman empire with all their gods etc... all other european provinces (france, england, germans...) are just cos playing rome but post jesus
The studio responsible for DS9 had the Babylon show bible for quite a while before they returned it to Stravinsky and told him they were not doing the show, or so the story goes. Then they produced DS9 that had a ton of the same elements as B5. Coincidence? Nope.
Honestly wouldn’t reboot the series from the ground up as warnerbros proposed I would just let Stresansky finish up where he left off maybe a bit updated as so much of the cast has tragically passed but maybe pick up from where Crusade was as it was dealing with the proxy war thing as you described.
Great video and breakdown. However, I have to quarrel with the description of the Earth Alliance as "third world." While Earth is a relatively new power, and some of it's tech does seem somewhat antiquated compared to other races, the influence of Earth is broad and deep. And much like the UN, the B5 security council is constituted with five major powers including a representative from Earth. But the descriptions of the other four major races were right on.
The definition of "third world" as FH uses is refers to a proxy power (you, me, and the third player who will act on behalf of one of us), making every major power in the setting a Third World power when compared to the Shadows and Vorlons. At least a Third World power has a chance of surviving a major war; most of the member species of the Non-Aligned Worlds have neither the technology nor the industry to stand up to the Earth Alliance, let alone the Centauri or Minbari. It's funny in a way that the Non-Aligned Worlds would flex their collective muscles to end a multi-millenial Cold War and then go on to create the most enduring Alliance in the setting's history.
I mean if I get what your dropping it's because you have a blind spot as well. Corporate control is the biggest problem, states are stooges for corps. When parties claim to want to cut costs they always gut the government while giving corps even more power. Why does our government do the opposite of what we want so often? Lobbyists
Babylon 5 is what Star Trek: Enterprise should have been from the beginning. Enterprise was starting to get there by season 4 but it was too late by then.
Earth by the 2150s was a shithole. Barely getting out of fallout-style post apocalypse, it was basically a vulcan puppet state until the unsanctioned construction of the NX-01 allowed earth to assert a degree of autonomy and even then they only managed this by leveraging their bonds with the andorians against their vulcan overlords. The main reason for it even becoming the capital of the UFP was precisely because earth wasnt a major power. If it had been for example Vulcan or Andoria becoming the capital, nobody wouldve joined that type of hegemony. The reason for Earth becoming capital was the same reason as why Brussels is the capital of the EU. Its a somewhat neutral ground.
I love both B5 and Enterprise. Loved B5 for all the reasons in the video and more. And loved Enterprise for its boldness in depicting the Vulcans negatively, creating situations where humans and vulcans had to manage their bigotry towards each other. Plus I'm a Xindi Arc superfan.
Why didn't the Vorlons destroy Earth? They were about to destroy Centauri until they got rid of all the Shadow influence. Earth hadn't removed all the shadow influence.
The peak I usually shoot these on looks down on the interstate about a mile line-of-sight. The sound can really carry up there. I'm going to make an effort to get out to more remote (and taller) spots for these as the channel grows.
You didn't know? DS9 IS B5. They ripped JMS off. Seriously. The Centauri? The Cardassians. The Narn? The Bajorans. JMS was brought in to pitch a Trek series. It was meant to be a co-op but it fell apart... JMS made B5 and CBS-Paramount... who are thieving scum... they took his pitch and moved forward with it, making modifications to avoid suit. B5 was brilliant because it was written in advance...
The Vorlons were right and The Interstelar alliance become with The Rangers The new Vorlons but less incline to Order and Thats Why have so many Wars The Sheridan responde Was to create a new earth alliance but without The human race as a major player Thats Why after seen The mistake he gives tecnology to create Excalibur but its too late and never ending Wars its The result to The galaxy True os diversity and coiperation dont mean a single governent but a competition and political trajes base with a single undestanding of morality that All agree to became The intergalactic ethics but this take time and tolerance to indivituality that its not easy
@@methos1999Well, it's a bit more than that given they were cirrhosis (unlike Fast & the Furious), and the B5 Bible was provided to Paramount before either show was made as B5 was shopped around.
![Jack Harlow - Hello Miss Johnson [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q86_nlRoIGw/mqdefault.jpg)
The character development in Ge’kar and Molari is one of the best parts of the show.
Yup. Best actors chewing scenes like GOATS munching on an entire countryside.
One of my favorite shows. Thanks for covering it.
Well isn't this nice. I started following you yesterday and first video you release after that is about my favorite Scifi!
Tell me you've never seen Yes, Minister without telling me you've never seen Yes, Minister "a tv show about ambassadors arguing would be a bit dull" 😂
That is a show about ministers snarking at each other. Important difference!
For being made in the mid 90’s, the special effects have held up pretty well. They had to recycle a lot of shots for budgetary reasons. But overall, not too bad for when it was made.
The Cenrari reminde me of the Autro-Hungarian Empire, more than anything else.
That was the idea, the actor playing Londo even said once he tried to mimic eatern and central Europe's accent to make them relatable to Austro-Hungary
This my new favorite fictional political show
An interesting angle of the ideological conflict is that, for the Shadows, the proxy wars are integral to the ideology. The Shadows view the "competition" and conflict as inherently constructive. Those that survive the periodic wars are stronger for it, and those who don't survive free up resources for the survivors and for new civilizations. The Shadows don't want total victory.
The Vorlons are the contrast of course. A centrally planned and controlled order. Younger civilizations literally conditioned to see the Vorlons as angelic beings.
Nah, no cold war parallels there ;)
Nice. I've never seen such a short but concise contextualization of B5's "real world" story arc before.
Already subscribed after watching your "Troopers, Trek, and Empire" video, glad I did.
B5, for me, was a huge leap in the evolution sci-fi shows. I saw stuff in that show that more than once i thought ‘Star Trek would never do that!’
I realized i was seeing something so much more….mature, something that treated me like an adult.
Funny how you compare the Earth Alliance to the Federation, as I saw the EA just before the Minbari War as arrogant and headstrong. The captain who thought he could pull a fast one on the Minbari fleet before shooting it up reminded me of a ‘proto-Kirk’, except without any of the luck.
That was due to the Dilgar war, the newly interstellar EA intervene in a relatively minor conflict helping the League of Non Aligned worlds defeat the Dilgar. This gave the humans a false sense of ability to take on Alien threats, with virtually no knowledge of Mimbari the Captain of the task force assumes they can take on any threat. Unfortunately to compound matters that captain is overly trigger happy, someone like Sinclair or Sheridan would have been far more cautious in a similar situation. That being said the Commander of the Mimbari ship is foolish to approach a fleet of ships from a young Alien race with his gun ports open assuming they would understand the gesture of respect as per Warrior Cast tradition. Dukat is too late to reverse that mistake, I wonder if the gun ports had been closed the whole confrontation could have been avoided.
It doesn't just elude our policy makers, most people aren't interested in history.
The real tragedy is that half the cast of Babylon 5 is dead. 😢
If only they were immortal.
every youtube video about B5 has this exact comment at the top.
Please stop. We get it. People have died.
Sat what??? Who??
Remember the fallen and honour their contribution by keeping their memory alive.@@bosshog8844
@@bosshog8844 Every RUclips video has asshats commenting, telling other people how to use their time and speech, please stop, we get that you are a narcissistic tool and think we are all here to serve you, we get it. We don't care.
There are a lot of valuable lessons to be learned with Babylon 5. B5 may have accurately predicted our future.
or maybe it just showed how nothing really changes we just continue to repeat past mistakes. As radicalisation lead to the 1st & 2nd war though the radicals of nationalism for the 1st mirroring the whole of the late 90s & early 2000s balkin wars & war on terror we may just be repeating the 2nd ideological radicalisation based on resisting changes by becoming fascists. Kinda a morbid thing how easily a place can become radicalised with the right conditions.
The Centari are still a Grate Power, the 2nd place among the Younger Races but they are slipping, they make comparatively minor Advancements but, but their past Imperial Glory is slipping away and "Lesser" younger races are starting to catch up.
On paper they're the second-tier power, but in practice they're lesser still (such as when they decide to do nothing in response to Narn aggression in season 1).
Yes, of the younger races it's basically minbari, big gap, centauri, decent gap, earth and narn, then drazi, and finally everybody else.
@@TheOneWhoMightBe many if not most of the "League of Unaligned Worlds" and Clients of the Minbari and Centauri are actually Older than Humans in their activity on the Interstellar stage.
You commentary is excellent. I've never pondered the post-Cold War era connection to Babylon 5 until now. Thank you for making these videos!
Please never stop making amazing content like this, you are a light in the darkness dude.
Mass Effect, according to the writers of the first game at least, was partly inspired by B5. For sci-fis and motifs harkening back to cold war or earlier eras of real life conflicts, Farscape also wasn't a bad take, if not a bit simpler.
Yeah the citadel is basically B5 station.
And all this time I've thought "third world" pertained to economics.
It’s a common misconception one unfortunately aided by terminologically illiterate Hollywood blowhards, pseudo-intellectual media pundits, and ignorant artistic types misrepresenting and misusing terms and concepts they don’t really understand.
Nope. "Third World" originally meant those nations that were unaligned with either NATO or the Soviet Union. It just turned out that they tended to be poorer (in part as a result of lacking such alliances).
In a way, it does. Capitalism vs Communism.
I love all the varios Sci-Fi series. B-5 was one of the best in my opinion. incluing the MOvies after the series ended. I own the complete series on DVD as well as most of the other series like Star Wars ans Star Trek. all of the Star Trek series....
"What do you want?"
More Babylon 5 videos by Feral Historian.
I'm from Earth Gov and i'm here to help you...
Babylon 5 is one of my favourite shows, and one of the parallels I notice is between the Vorlons/Shadows and the Arisians/Eddorians of 'Doc' Smith's Lensman series.
Searching about proxy wars and we meet again. Best hiker Feral historian professor ever. Congrats on the 10k
Something worth noting is that the Earth Alliance had already fought and won an interstellar war before they fought the Minbari, their action throughout that war had gained them respect in the galactic community.
Nicely done. However, the idea that the Centauri are like the British needs to be corrected. I can understand why some see it this way but the manner, dress and behaviour of the Centauri seems to me to be based on the Austro-Hungarians and the politics those of that empire clinging on into the twentieth century.
Yes, Austria-Hungary is a better comparison.
@@feralhistorian with all due respect - nonsense, austro hungarian is grand budapest hotel, centauri (centurian, i mean come on, its on the nose!) are roman empire with all their gods etc... all other european provinces (france, england, germans...) are just cos playing rome but post jesus
@@rusalkin I always thought that they had a mix of Renaissance-era French and Italian to them.
@@randlebrowne2048 true... guess it's europe in general, what remained of the roman empire, seeking the good old days
I refuse to go back and re watch Babylon 5 because I enjoyed it so much first time round
2000s Bioware built its post-KOTOR company off the backs of a setting greatly inspired by Babylon 5 (Mass Effect) and The Witcher (Dragon Age).
The Ascension of the Ordinary Man
I like the way you explained third world to be honest. Interesting context.
The studio responsible for DS9 had the Babylon show bible for quite a while before they returned it to Stravinsky and told him they were not doing the show, or so the story goes. Then they produced DS9 that had a ton of the same elements as B5. Coincidence? Nope.
Very interesting spin on the show. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, but, yeah, it fits.
Honestly wouldn’t reboot the series from the ground up as warnerbros proposed I would just let Stresansky finish up where he left off maybe a bit updated as so much of the cast has tragically passed but maybe pick up from where Crusade was as it was dealing with the proxy war thing as you described.
I would argue the similarities between Mass Effect and B5 have more to do with the phrase "Ripped-off."
I love the area your recording in
Great video and breakdown. However, I have to quarrel with the description of the Earth Alliance as "third world." While Earth is a relatively new power, and some of it's tech does seem somewhat antiquated compared to other races, the influence of Earth is broad and deep. And much like the UN, the B5 security council is constituted with five major powers including a representative from Earth. But the descriptions of the other four major races were right on.
The definition of "third world" as FH uses is refers to a proxy power (you, me, and the third player who will act on behalf of one of us), making every major power in the setting a Third World power when compared to the Shadows and Vorlons. At least a Third World power has a chance of surviving a major war; most of the member species of the Non-Aligned Worlds have neither the technology nor the industry to stand up to the Earth Alliance, let alone the Centauri or Minbari. It's funny in a way that the Non-Aligned Worlds would flex their collective muscles to end a multi-millenial Cold War and then go on to create the most enduring Alliance in the setting's history.
Who are you? What do you want?
Too bad those guys that I watched B5 with 30 years ago and pontificated greatly, are now those that whole heartedly back a deepening state control.
State propaganda/social pressure is a helluva drug.
Now here we are.
I mean if I get what your dropping it's because you have a blind spot as well. Corporate control is the biggest problem, states are stooges for corps. When parties claim to want to cut costs they always gut the government while giving corps even more power. Why does our government do the opposite of what we want so often? Lobbyists
What, for real?! Shocking to me. I learned to fear creeping authoritarianism via B5. Sad that your friends forgot the lesson.
Babylon 5 is what Star Trek: Enterprise should have been from the beginning. Enterprise was starting to get there by season 4 but it was too late by then.
Earth by the 2150s was a shithole. Barely getting out of fallout-style post apocalypse, it was basically a vulcan puppet state until the unsanctioned construction of the NX-01 allowed earth to assert a degree of autonomy and even then they only managed this by leveraging their bonds with the andorians against their vulcan overlords. The main reason for it even becoming the capital of the UFP was precisely because earth wasnt a major power. If it had been for example Vulcan or Andoria becoming the capital, nobody wouldve joined that type of hegemony. The reason for Earth becoming capital was the same reason as why Brussels is the capital of the EU. Its a somewhat neutral ground.
I love both B5 and Enterprise. Loved B5 for all the reasons in the video and more. And loved Enterprise for its boldness in depicting the Vulcans negatively, creating situations where humans and vulcans had to manage their bigotry towards each other. Plus I'm a Xindi Arc superfan.
5:33 hmmm....sounds like something like this happend last week to a very powerful country.
Why didn't the Vorlons destroy Earth? They were about to destroy Centauri until they got rid of all the Shadow influence. Earth hadn't removed all the shadow influence.
Earth was on the list. Centauri prime was simply on the way.
President Clark was about to do that anyway, but the orders were not executed on time, we didn´t need help from the Vorlons to destroy ourselves 😟
Same reason Centauri Prime was spared, the Vorlon fleet was called away before the job of destroying every planet was complete.
Cool jacket
Cool coat!
What do you want?
There are rumors that DS9 was a rip-off Babylon 5 as the writer of thr latter pitched his script to the producers of both shows.
Seems like your doing this next to a highway?
The peak I usually shoot these on looks down on the interstate about a mile line-of-sight. The sound can really carry up there. I'm going to make an effort to get out to more remote (and taller) spots for these as the channel grows.
Alien does not mean extraterrestrial.
How is 2025 gonna end? In fire!
You didn't know?
DS9 IS B5. They ripped JMS off. Seriously.
The Centauri? The Cardassians.
The Narn? The Bajorans.
JMS was brought in to pitch a Trek series. It was meant to be a co-op but it fell apart... JMS made B5 and CBS-Paramount... who are thieving scum...
they took his pitch and moved forward with it, making modifications to avoid suit.
B5 was brilliant because it was written in advance...
The Vorlons were right and The Interstelar alliance become with The Rangers The new Vorlons but less incline to Order and Thats Why have so many Wars
The Sheridan responde Was to create a new earth alliance but without The human race as a major player Thats Why after seen The mistake he gives tecnology to create Excalibur but its too late and never ending Wars its The result to The galaxy
True os diversity and coiperation dont mean a single governent but a competition and political trajes base with a single undestanding of morality that All agree to became The intergalactic ethics but this take time and tolerance to indivituality that its not easy
Algorithm comment
Ds9 is a Ripoff of B5!!! 😠
Not at all. Not even a little.
Paramount settled out of court before they Lost the lawsuit!
Only superficially. It’s like saying fast and the furious ripped off Smokey and the bandit because they both have car chases.
Allegedly and in broad strokes probably.
@@methos1999Well, it's a bit more than that given they were cirrhosis (unlike Fast & the Furious), and the B5 Bible was provided to Paramount before either show was made as B5 was shopped around.