Entertainment
Babylon 5 Answered The Most Important Question Faced By Elon Musk
By Jonathan Klotz
| Updated
Movies are rarely filmed in chronological order, and television shows, especially during their first season, aren’t produced in the order they end up airing. Babylon 5 was carefully plotted from the very beginning by creator J. Michael Straczynski, but the fourth episode, “Infection,” was the first to be filmed.
Knowing that this was the first time Michael O’Hare was playing Jeffrey Sinclair adds more weight and meaning to his answer to a critical question. It’s the same question NASA administrators and space entrepreneurs like Elon Musk are currently grappling with. Is it worth the effort for humanity to remain in space when we have problems of our own back home?
Babylon 5 Addressed The Hard Questions About Humanity
Sinclair’s sit-down with the Interstellar News Network (ISN) reporter Mary Cramer comes at the end of the episode. Without missing a beat, Sinclair responds to the reporter’s question with a quote that helped to sum up the importance of Babylon 5, the station, and the series:
“No. We have to stay here. And there’s a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you’ll get ten different answers, but there’s one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won’t just take us. It’ll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes, and – all of this – all of this – was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars. “
It’s a powerful statement. Humanity’s destiny among the stars is a common sentiment in science fiction, but it’s rarely stated so plainly and openly that yes, one day Earth will cease to be. Prior to making the statement, Sinclair was confronted by Chief of Security Garibaldi (Jerry Doyle) over yet another incident where the station commander put his life directly in danger. According to the concerned Chief, shutting down a biological weapon was the third time, this year alone, that Sinclair put himself in harm’s way on purpose.
Instead of talking about how Sinclair is a commander who belongs on the front lines, or that’s what heroes are supposed to do, Garibaldi cuts right to the heart of the issue. Sinclair is still reeling from what he did during the war with the Minbari, and Garibaldi, who knows his old comrade, grills him about soldiers coming back from the war without a purpose, without anything to live for. All of a sudden, with that one observation, Sinclair’s actions from previous episodes are seen in a new light. From confronting the crime boss to find a Centauri dancer, to earlier in “Infected,” when he’s battling a bio-organic weapon in the pursuit of racial purity, was he putting himself in danger because he wanted to die in service to his position?
What Sets Babylon 5 Apart From Other Sci-Fi Series
As the very first Babylon 5 episode to be filmed, Michael O’Hare had to dig deep into what makes Sinclair tick from the beginning, before he filmed those other action scenes, even before he solved the assassination attempt on Ambassador Kosh. It was unintentional. “Infection” came first because it was the simplest of the initial season to film, but it helped ground the cast and give everyone a chance to dig into their characters. Even Ivanova (Claudia Christian) gets a great moment when she stops the reporter from pursuing Sinclair for an interview with the warning, “You’re too young to experience that much pain.”
The main plot of “Infection,” about an alien artifact that turns out to be a bio-weapon designed to kill all impure Ikarrans, is standard “case of the week” fare bolstered by the inclusion of David McCallum (Ducky from NCIS and thousands of other roles) as a former teacher to the station’s Medical Officer, Dr. Franklin (Richard Briggs). It’s not a bad episode, but it’s Sinclair coming out of his shell to express his honest opinion, thanks to the support of Garibaldi, that is the true highlight of the episode. It’s also an early look at how Babylon 5 would go on to set itself apart from other sci-fi of the 90s by not side-stepping the hard questions and respecting the viewer’s intelligence.