Babylon 5

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"The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. It failed."

– Commander Ivanova

Babylon 5 was a science fiction television franchise dating from the 1990's. The show was noteworthy for being one of the first television shows to make extensive use of rendered cgi battle sequences rather than motion control photography, as well as pioneering the novel-for-television format with season-spanning story arcs (as opposed to the episodic format common to most science fiction shows). Set on the eponymous Babylon 5 space station, the show depicts an interstellar great powers struggle in which humanity is only a contributing player among many others.

Where Star Trek is the embodiment of noblebright, and Star Wars goes for a swashbuckling hero-with-a-thousand-faces space opera, Babylon 5 aims to be a slice-of-life series about the command staff of a station caught in a war in space and makes it work.

Setting

Factions

• Babylon 5 - The protags. The station command staff and their allies. Initially part of earthforce but circumstances force them to secede later on.
• Earth Alliance - Surprisingly not the good guys. Got their ass handed to them in a war a decade ago. Built the Babylon stations to try to avoid a repeat incident. Over the course of the series the EA becomes isolationist as a dictator comes to power.
• Minbari - Bald humanoids with bony crowns. Kicked Earth's ass in a war but stopped themselves from committing exterminatus. Their ships resemble Eldar corsair ships. Usually noblebright monk types.
• Narn - Liberated slave lizard people. Drove out an occupation that ruined their world, and now they've got a chip on their shoulder about it.
• Centauri - Imperial Rome in space. Almost literally and unironically. Enslaved the Narn for a while, might do it again for the hell of it.
• Vorlons - Super-enigmatic energy beings. Really old. Lawful neutral. Likes telepaths and turning other races into pawns.
• Shadows - Invisible, maybe-energy spider beings. Really, REALLY old. Chaotic neutral. Likes fomenting war and turning other races into pawns.