Well it’s a holiday weekend, and while some people use this time to sleep or see others, I like to spend my free time writing. So that’s just what I did this afternoon.
As most of you should know by now, I’m something of a sci-fi buff. I love sci-fi novels, movies and possibly most of all, sci-fi series television. Thanks to the wonders of DVD (and Netflix in one case) I recently watched through three of my favorite series of all-time straight through (over the course of many, many, many months — not all in one sitting!): The X-Files, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Babylon 5. So just for the heck of it, I present a head-to-head-to-head comparison of the three series. Not in total, mind you, but merely their last seasons. It’s pretty long, so read on for the whole thing.
The Players
The X-Files:
The longest running of the batch, The X-Files ran for a whopping nine seasons before being killed off by Fox. During this time it spawned two failed spin-off series (the reprehensible Millennium and The Lone Gunmen) and one feature film. The original storyline of Fox Mulder and his quest to find his sister came to an end with the unexpectedly touching episode “Closure” in season seven, wrapping up many of the lingering plot threads. Season eight saw Fox Mulder abducted, replaced by the skeptical John Doggett. In doing so, Scully shifted to the role Mulder previously occupied, presenting the more outlandish (and almost always ultimately correct) solution to every case. But with the brunt of the core storyline already resolved, a new plot arose, involving super-soldiers (a term that always conjured up images of Captain America for me). Scully found herself pregnant, potentially from donated sperm from Mulder, and at the start of season nine, she moves towards the background, allowing Monica Reyes, a character lightly introduced earlier in the series to take her place.
Babylon 5:
The story of the making of Babylon 5 is both wonderful and sad. Babylon 5 was conceived of as a five season storyline, meticulously plotted from day one. While cast changes caused some storylines to be moved around a bit, the foresight shown by series creator J. Michael Straczynski (JMS) resulted in a singular achievement for sci-fi series television. Not only that, but with only one episode as an exception, the third, fourth and fifth seasons were entirely scripted by JMS himself. Simply amazing. But all isn’t perfect in the Babylon 5 story. As season four was underway, questions arose as to whether or not the series was going to be renewed for a fifth season. So JMS struggled to make the series end in a satisfying way, ultimately making the second half of season four as exciting as sci-fi television ever gets. The problem of course, is that the series was renewed, and the show, which had previously been plotted out meticulously like a novel, suddenly had to improvise.
The resulting season can be divided into two halves: the first, was the storyline dealing with the telepath war, and specifically the telepath prophet Byron and his relationship with Lyta, whose telepathic abilities were greatly enhanced by the now departed Vorlons. The second half is much, much better than the first, and shows the fate of Centauri Prime, the rise of Londo Molari to the throne, and the Drakh’s growing influence over him. Unfortunately for viewers, neither storyline is resolved with any real satisfaction. For the Centauri storyline, you’ll have to read the Centauri trilogy of novels. As for the telepath war, this has never actually been written to the best of my knowledge (the Bester trilogy skips over the war entirely), and fans are left to piece together the hints dropped from other sources (including Crusade, the post-B5 series that only ran for one season).
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
Frequently misunderstood, Deep Space Nine is by far my favorite of the Star Trek series. While it was never quite as deeply plotted out as Babylon 5, it’s remarkable to watch the series from start to finish, as the first hints of the Dominion are dropped in the early seasons, only to explode into a full-on battle that would take four seasons to carry out. The previous season ended in tragedy, with the death of Jadzia Dax in the season finale. Interestingly enough, the worst possible tease is season six’s “Change of Heart” in which Dax almost dies, only to survive (presumably this was done before actress Terry Farrell decided not to return). Season seven of the series opens with the war fully underway, the wormhole closed by a Pa Wraith-posessed Dukat, and Sisko tormented and desperate for a way to contact the prophets (which he has long decided to call the wormhole aliens, having accepted his role as their emissary).
Round 1: New Characters
The X-Files:
While not technically a new character (she did, after all, appear in the previous season), Monica Reyes is more or less the new character of the season. She’s not a particularly interesting character, but she’s not bad all things considered. The problems with Reyes really start to come forward as she slides into the Fox Mulder role (as Scully has left to teach forensics at the FBI academy), as she seems to suggest outlandish things that even Mulder would have laughed at. Actually, that’s another problem with Reyes — Mulder was always sort of sarcastic about everything. Reyes seems to be too sincere when talking about the absurd, resulting in a sort of new-agey air to her that makes it hard to take her seriously. Reyes also “feels” things, although thankfully this is dropped fairly quickly. The few times she uses her extra-sensory abilities early in the season I groaned.
Babylon 5:
There are two new primary characters this season. At the end of season four, Captain Sheridan is named president of the newly formed Interstellar Alliance, and Ivanova has left to captain her own ship. So with this position open, Elizabeth Lochley is named to take Sheridan’s place. Lochley is an interesting addition to the cast, although she doesn’t really get a whole lot of time to develop. Had the show gone on for a sixth year, she probably would have really developed nicely. But regardless of that, she’s a fine choice. There are some interesting backstory things that are dealt with lightly, including her troubled youth and the fact that she fought against Babylon 5 during the previous year’s civil war. Again, she doesn’t get much time to develop, but she’s a solid addition.
The same can’t be said for the season’s other new character, Byron. Byron is like all of the worst parts of the previous seasons smushed together and amplified by ten or twenty times. Looking like Fabio’s pretentious cousin, the character is supposed to be this charismatic leader of the telepath resistance, but in fact he’s a pretentious pretty boy, who never comes across as anything more than a whiney, self-indulgent twit. I swear, I actually audibly cheered when he killed himself, thus becoming a martyr for his own cause. Let us all hope that in telepathic communication he’s less annoying, because I can’t imagine anyone following him the way he acts when he’s actually talking.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
The nice thing about having a character that’s a Trill, is that you can easily recast the role without having to come up with an outlandish explanation for why there’s a new actress playing the same part. And that’s more or less what happens in the seventh season opener. We’re introduced to Ensign Ezri Dax, newly joined with the Dax symbiote. Ezri’s young, and in fact was only joined with Dax because she happened to be the only available body. Because of this she was never trained properly on the joining process. Ezri becomes the focus for a large part of this season purely because she’s an interesting character and there’s a lot to do with her. Like Lochley in B5, she’s not given too much time to develop, but as the centerpiece for a few major episodes, she has a lot more time than Lochley ever did. Had there been an eighth season, she would have developed more, but at least she’s given a lot of screen time by herself.
Winner: Deep Space Nine
Round 2: The Lows
The X-Files:
The final season of The X-Files just isn’t very good at all, leading to a pretty low grade for the whole thing, but there’s one episode that sticks out as being particularly horrendous: “Demonicus”. As it’s just the third episode it shows what a poor start the season got off to, but good lord, this is just awful. The whole episode is a wanna-be Silence of the Lambs, but it’s aggravated by the ridiculous dialogue, which makes you feel sorry for the actors involved. The worst part of this episode is following a rather disgusting display of a convict vomiting orange liquid all over Doggett (a scene that just never ends…it’s really in poor taste), poor Agent Reyes actually suggests (with a straight face!) that this liquid is…ectoplasm. Yes, ectoplasm. Not even the obligatory Ghostbusters gag from Doggett is enough to make this scene bareable. And poor Scully even chimes in with her tentative support for Reyes’ theory. This isn’t the lowest point in the entire run of the series (that would be the painfully awful “How The Ghosts Stole Christmas” from season six), but it’s a close second. I felt dirty after sitting through it.
Babylon 5:
Deciding on the low point for the season is really difficult, as I can honestly say that every single scene Byron is on screen sucks. Every single one. He never becomes bareable. I’m going to go with “Secrets of the Soul” if only because I think Lyta dirties herself by sleeping with Byron. She’s better than that.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
This season is generally quite good, and while it’s not the series’ best (although I’m not sure of what that is…there are a lot of candidates) it’s never really bad at any point. So I’m going to choose “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” as the low point, because it’s a bit pointless. It’s basically an excuse to do a baseball episode, with the station going up against a team of Vulcans. The reasoning is a bit suspect, but it’s a fun enough episode, with no real problems. Just a bit pointless.
Loser : It’s a tossup between the first two, but I’m going with The X-Files here, just because that ectoplasm scene is so awful.
Round 3: The Highs
The X-Files
This whole season kind of sucks, so finding a high point is a bit difficult. I’m going with “Jump the Shark”, as it shows the Lone Gunmen going out on a high note, and also features the welcome return of Michael McKean’s character Morris Fletcher. Also I love the episode title. So appropriate. But even this episode is pretty bad compared to past episodes from even the previous year. It’s the best this season has to offer, but that ain’t saying a whole lot.
Babylon 5
This is a no-brainer…while Babylon 5’s last season isn’t quite up to the high standard set by the rest of the series, one episode can stand up there with the very best of ‘em. “Day of the Dead” is written by Neil Gaiman, and is nearly perfect in every way. It features the return of some of the series’ best minor characters, most notably Adira, whose relationship with Londo I think is the series’ only truly believable love story. But it also fills in some necessary back story for Lochley, and has a welcome cameo from Penn & Teller. It’s just a great episode, and after all that crap with Byron, is all the more welcome.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
This is actually quite difficult, as where the last season of The X-Files is consistently bad, the last season of DS9 is very good across the board. Still, I guess I have to pick one, so that would be “It’s Only a Paper Moon”, the episode in which Nog, back on the station after losing a leg in battle, comes to grips with his ordeal after retreating to live in the Holosuite. This is just a great episode from start to finish. The emotions are believable, and James Darren puts in another great performance as Vic Fontaine.
Winner: Babylon 5. “Day of the Dead” is truly one of the high points for the entire series, not just the season.
Round 5: The End
The X-Files:
The last episode of The X-Files is called “The Truth”, and by that title you would expect it to answer every last remaining question about the series. Unfortunately it doesn’t. It’s a double-length episode, but the overwhelming majority of the episode is waisted on a nonsensical courtroom drama. The show opens with Mulder (who has been gone for the whole season up to this point), sneaking into a military base. He’s discovered, and a chase ensues between him and Noal Roar, previously revealed to be one of the super-soldiers, who is “killed” in the confrontation (it’s in quotes, because as one of these super soldiers he can’t be killed by conventional means). Mulder is then tried for murder. But here’s where the episode goes awry: during the trial, for no logical reason, A.D. Skinner, representing Mulder, decides to base his defense around the entire history of the X-Files. Which of course makes no sense, and any courtroom, military or otherwise, would have laughed Skinner out of the courtroom for introducing such irrelevant evidence.
So there’s that bit of nonsense. The other problem comes when it’s over, because there are still far too many unresolved issues. The cigarette smoking man is dead yes, but the super-soldier program is still around (although Noal Roar does finally die for real), and ultimately, there’s really nothing resolved. Plus it ends with Mulder and Scully in a lover’s embrace, and I strongly feel that the two never should have gotten involved romantically. I don’t know if there ever will be a second X-Files movie made to resolve the storyline, but if there is, it’s going to be pretty bad watching Mr. and Mrs. Mulder fight side-by-side.
Babylon 5
As a side-effect of the whole almost-canceled-but-not-really thing that happened at the end of season four, “Sleeping in Light”, the last episode of the series, was actually shot the year before. It’s a fine episode, all things considered, but because it’s so removed from the most recent storyline(s), there’s far too much left unresolved, and “Objects at Rest”, the previous episode, feels like the real end of the series. That’s the one where everyone waves goodbye, and the series ends satisfactorily. This one just feels like an unnecessary extra ending. Plus it’s far too much toasting to John Sheridan for my taste. This is a series about a large group of people…devoting the last episode to one man feels disingenuous.
Deep Space Nine
Of the three, this is the only one where everything is actually resolved at the end. Oh sure, “What You Leave Behind” has some unanswered questions, most notably what happens to Sisko in the end, but the war actually ends in this final episode, we see the final fates of Dukat and Kai Winn, and it’s a great sendoff for the whole series. Very satisfying. It hurts that there will never be a season eight (or DS9 movie), but if this is the end, it’s great to go out like this.
Winner: No contest: Deep Space Nine all the way.
Overall Winner/Loser
It should be pretty obvious how this is going to go. DS9 is the only one of the lot that didn’t drop significantly in quality in its final season, it’s the only one without a lousy new character, and it’s the only one that ended with anything resembling satisfaction. As for the loser, that’s just as easy: The X-Files. Babylon 5’s final season isn’t great, and it’s not up to the standards of the earlier seasons, but the second half in particular is quite good. The X-Files’ last season is just plain dull from start to finish. Unless you absolutely must know how the storyline ends, I’d say skip it and move on to the first season again. It’s not worth the time it’ll take to sit through.
So there you have it, a pretty exhaustive look at three of my favorite sci-fi series. Regardless of the quality of their ending, all three are great shows, and have some really great moments throughout their entire runs. And all three are completely available on DVD now, which is just plain great. Personally I own all of B5 and DS9 (I rented the entire X-Files run through Netflix), and can’t wait to go back through ‘em all all over again.