Started watching #Babylon5 again after talking about it earlier, going to start a new thread.

Here's the last one https://twitter.com/Madeley/status/1064882988603899906?s=19

I'll start with @straczynski explaining Brexit, Trumpism and everything bloody else, twenty five years before it all happened.

Also, absolutely incredible how the entire show hinges on these two minutes. The few sentences that mark Londo Mollari's path changing from that of a drunkard and has-been who still at least has his soul, to one leading to a glorious but tragic future that utterly damns him.

The other one I watched today, By Any Means Necessary, probably encapsulates why I fell so hard for the show initially, because it's Socialism in Space- or at least the American brand of FDR-era social democracy.

That would definitely be my Media Studies thesis, Babylon 5 through a socialist lens. I mean, it's not really a socialist show- it's far more Rooseveltian than anything, particularly as it boils down to, more or less, Space Allies vs Future Nazis.

The episode is about how poor working conditions lead to a docker's strike, that an authoritarian government tries to break up by force. Imagine how incredible it was to watch, in the 90s as a kid who grew up during the miner's strike, a US science fiction show that relatable.

I mean just look at this. I could barely imagine a US show doing this story back then. Could you see it happening now?

The CGI looks simplistic now, but at the time it was a complete revelation. Nothing more exhilarating than a new space battle almost every week, compared to the same four model shots of the Enterprise over and over again on TNG.

And then episodes that weren't about epic battles, just labour negotiations with the working class dockers that kept the station running. Easy to criticise B5 for episodes that seemed like local council meetings, but really ballsy to address "normal" lives in this kind of show.

Kathryn M Drennan, who wrote the episode, also perfectly predicting 2020.

Well.

I won't spoil the ace ending, in case you start watching it, but it does include this cracking bit of wisdom.

That's the other thing B5 was great for, just quiet moments of philosophy in the middle of the galactic shenanigans.