SciFi Month 2016: Babylon 5 Quotes Season #3

Science Fiction on the small screen offers a wide variety of interesting shows, but still it seems to lack the depth and complexity we can find in books – and it stands to reason, since the TV format must adhere to rules that don’t apply to the written word. Yet there is a show that transcends these rules because it was conceived as a five-part novel in the mind of its creator, and like a novel it doesn’t only deliver action and adventure, but also great characterization with visible growth, and a gripping narrative arc.

The show I’m talking about is Babylon 5: despite its “age” (it ran from 1994 to 1998) it still feels fresh and actual because it’s not about impressive CGI or technological marvels, but it deals instead with people, with their reactions to extraordinary circumstances, with the choices that those circumstances force on them and the consequences of their actions.  I’ve often thought that it could work just as well as a theatrical production, because its strength is in the story, the thought-provoking issues it deals with and the intense dialogues spoken by the characters.

Here are some of my favorite quotes – divided by season: I hope that they will rekindle fond memories in those who watched and loved this show, and inspire the curiosity of those who have missed this complex, thoughtful and very passionate story until now.

I’ve taken the opportunity provided by my incarceration to meditate, to think. […] In here, Mr Garibaldi, you can not hide from yourself. Everything out there has only one purpose, to distract us from ourselves, from what is truly important. There are no distractions in here. We can learn much from silence.

(G’Kar – Messages from Earth)

“I believe that I have been touched. That I am meant for something greater. A greater darkness or a greater good, I can no longer say. All I have ever wanted is to serve our people. I need to see what is before me. If I should escape it, or embrace it. If there is any longer a choice.”

“There is always choice. We say there is no choice only to comfort ourselves with the decision we have already made. If you understand that, there’s hope. If not ..”

(Londo and Lady Morella – Point of No Return)

Three years. For three years I warned you this day was coming. But you would not listen. Pride, you said, presumption. And now the Shadows are on the move. The Centauri and the younger worlds are at war, the Narns have fallen. Even the Humans are fighting one another. The pride was yours, the presumption was yours. For a thousand years we have been awaiting for fulfillment of prophecy, and when it finally happens, you scorn it, you reject it. Because you no longer believe it yourselves. ‘We stand between the candle and the star, between the darkness and the light.‘ You say the words, but your hearts are empty, your ears closed to the truth. You stand for nothing but your own petty interests. ‘The problems of others are not our concern.‘ I do not blame you for standing silent in your shame. You, who knew what was coming, but refused to take up the burden of this war. If the warrior caste will not fight, then the rest of us will.

(Delenn – Severed Dreams)

Every day, here and at home, we are warned about the enemy. But who is the enemy? Is it the alien? Well, we are all alien to one another. Is it the one who believes differently than we do? No, not at all, my friends. The enemy is fear. The enemy is ignorance. The enemy is the one who tells you that you must hate that which is different. Because, in the end, that hate will turn on you. And that same hate will destroy you.

(Reverend Dexter – And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place)

All around us, it was as if the universe were holding its breath, waiting. All of life can be broken down into moments of transition or moments… of revelation. This had the feeling of both. G’Quan wrote: ‘There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain’.

(G’Kar – Z’ha’dum)