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Showing posts from December, 2016

BABYLON 5 REVISITED WITH J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI + MIRA FURLAN (MF GALAXY 100)

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LISTEN/DOWNLOAD SF can attempt to predict the future, but since Jonathan Swift invented SF with Gulliver’s Travels, an adult political satire that I’d call the original Star Trek, SF has delivered its most enduring and provocative works by analysing the ethical content of the present. But Star Trek became so dominant on US TV through reruns and then resurrection as Star Trek: The Next Generation that it became a force stifling creativity. The boldest, most innovative, and most influential counter to Star Trek dominance was Babylon 5,  the 1993 to 1998 series that introduced the longform story arc with a  predetermined beginning, middle, and end to US television. Set in the  twenty-third century, the story was of the fifth and final Babylon  station, a galactic UN created to end the cataclysmic wars and  colonisations in which the cerebral and spiritual Minbari had nearly  annihilated Humans, the humanoid Centauri whose empire was in advanced  decline, and the reptilian an