Yahoo!TV v,,ysiwyg:/127 lhttp:l l* .yahoo.com/y...fe ed=/tviscifVdatal&adFsffl23098 f Brnught to yqu by t: ::-l r r{ lffky does ryl' oS;' ; 3 #ffi K#"??S& nt ffi Yahoo! TV Goverage: Feature Story Yahool TV Home "Babylon" Ends; Now, the "Grusade" TNT-Babylon 5: A Call to Arms Sunday, January 3rd, 8 to 10 p.m. E.T; repeats at I0 p.m. and at midnight (early Monday), and Monday, Januaryr I lth at midnight (early Tuesday) By Frank Lovece Like an old-fashioned diva enamored of applause, the sci-fi series Babylon -l marks one more farewell performance. Yet its latest ind last telefilm, Babylon Sil Catt to Arms, proves less a requiem than an overture-a set-up for the themes and grace notes to be orchestrated in the June 1999 spin-off series, The Babylon Project: Crusade. With this seemingly final finale, an appreciation seems eamed. Babylon'5-which began in s5mdication iri 1994 and was picked up by TNT for a final season after its year-four cancellation-was, after all, conceived of as a single, novelistic, five-year story arc by its creator, J. Michael Straczlmski, who wrote virtually every episode. And unlike the supposed cohesive back-story solidifying The X-Files, -85's was real: The amount of pinpoint detail and of foreshadowed history and personages weaving through five years of dense intemal consistency is remarkable and in all likelihood unprecedented in American television. "[]t's gotten a bit refined over time," Straczynski (right) has written. While unplanned changes occurred, the story, he maintained, was "like seeing a mountain from a great distance, then closing in until you can make out the details." Never one to stint on back-patting, Straczynski's also bragged that "I'll have written 3,000 pages all in one universe, primarily telling one story. That's the equivalent of six or seven full- size novels...." And even that feat is only about form; Babylon 5 had content like SaJurn's got rings. Unlike most future-set series, it never depended on someone rerouting the ion field to the flux capacitor in order to bypass the whatchamacallit. BJ was about the machinations of politics and how they get twisted in ways good and bad by personal relationships and private agendas. Whereas Star Trekprojects an optimistic future in which human greed, poverty and hunger have been vanquished, and humans touch the better angels of our nature,,B5 predicts the same old human pettiness and pieties at play since the original Bab$on was-built freshening them, in good sci-fi fashion, through a setting far removed from the everyday we take for granted. The series was set on a five-and-a-half-mile-long space station, Babylon-!, founded in 2257 by Earth's ruling body, Earthgov. Part U.N., part Casablanca, it was initially run by Captain Jeffrey Sinclair (Michael O'Hare), who was succeeded by Captain John Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner) two years later (at the start of season two). By 2262 (start of season five), there had been'both a civil war on Earth, and a war between Earth and its allies against an ancient, non-corporeal conqueror race called The Shadows. Sheridan had become head of the new Interstellar Alliance; one of his two ex-wives, Capt. Elizabeth ldelp ffi#STTV I of2 l2l3ll98 12:40 PM