From TvTropes:
- Babylon 5 has slowly seemed less and less innovative as the traits it pioneered or popularized spread among sci-fi shows:
- It was the first major sci-fi show, not counting anime, to have major long-term story arcs planned in advance. Babylon 5 was written from a full outline for all five seasons, nearly unheard of at the time.
- It was the first sci-fi series (and one of the first, if not the first, series of any genre) to be filmed in widescreen.
- It gave the Darker and Edgier future and Used Future, in contradiction to Star Trek's utopia, a heavy boost of popularity (though it was nowhere near first with these).
- It intentionally avoided (former trope) "Cute Kids And Robots." In fact, the term was coined in reference to B5 in order to describe what J. Michael Straczynski was declaring war on within TV sci-fi.
- It pioneered the use of CGI effects, especially for anything involving spaceships. To put it in perspective: the producers of Deep Space Nine scoffed at B5's CGI and proudly announced that they would continue to use models; when Voyager launched, it not only used CGI, but used the same production house as B5 to make it.
Furthermore, both Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica end their first seasons with an assassination attempt that upends the power structure and puts a regular in a coma. Just sayin'.
Now when pointing out the differences between the shows, it's easy to just jump in and go, "oh, B5 was planned out from the start, so it never forced any absurd plot twists on the audience, like Hot Dog abruptly becoming a father," or "BSG doesn't have anyone over-acting from behind a rubber mask." No, I'm going to talk about something different.
Pacing.
Given the above-mentioned similarities between B5's "Chrysalis" and BSG's "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II" (hereafter shortened as "Gleaming"), I thought I'd start with those two episodes and then move out to a comparison of the pacing in the two shows overall.
"Gleaming" ends with Adama being shot, whereas the presidential assassination takes place roughly two-thirds of the way through "Chrysalis." The writers on BSG were going for shock value, whereas JMS was more interested in how the assassination would affect the characters. When we cut back to CIC at the beginning of Season 2, everybody's still frantic because Adama just got shot. You're there, in the moment. In contrast, President Santiago did the big firework 10.5 light-years away. Santiago is not a character on the show. His death is not personal for you, the audience member; you might feel shocked that the Heroes didn't Save The Day, but you're probably empathizing more with the characters on the show. Santiago's like President Adar back in BSG's miniseries. He's like President Kennedy. (A note for young people: President Kennedy's assassination was your parents' 9/11. And while we're on that subject, Roslin's inauguration in the BSG miniseries is not a reference to Clark's inauguration in "Chrysalis." They're both references to LBJ's inauguration in Real Life.)
But go beyond that. The B-plot to "Chrysalis" is Londo Mollari's deal with the devil and the first seeds of next season's Narn-Centauri war. There's a grim sense of inevitability to these proceedings as Mr. Morden snares Londo in his web. In contrast, the B-plot to "Gleaming" (or at least one of them; I'll get to Starbuck's arc later) is Gaius Baltar having the first Opera House Vision. We can make some educated guesses about what "the face of the shape of things to come" is or represents; we know that Caprica-Sharon is pregnant, for example, but we have no idea what Baltar's role will be. Basically what I'm trying to say is that Battlestar was going more for shock value, excitement and mystery, whereas B5 was more about an inexorable slide into darkness.
Now for the overall pacing. Okay, that's not entirely accurate; I'm only halfway through B5's second season. But that's okay because BSG was at its best during its first season-and-a-half, so we'll just work with what we've got. Now, it's true that both shows were great at hiding their Chekhov's Guns. For example, in Battlestar Galactica's "Act of Contrition," the main point of the card game scene is to show that Starbuck is completely caught up in her memories of Zack to function. But that's also the conversation where Boomer learns that Baltar has a Cylon-detector (and then Boomer visits Baltar in a later episode, Head-Six convinces Baltar to lie about the results of his tests... and if you know who the final Cylon is, you know where this is going). Then in "You Can't Go Home Again," Starbuck gets her hands on a Cylon Raider than then sits on Galactica's hangar deck until the end of the season. And then both Boomer's angst about maybe being a Cylon and the Cylon Raider pay really important roles in the season finale. But this starts to not happen from Season 2 on. Yes, there was that mandala in Starbuck's apartment, but that almost feels like something the writers came back to after the fact. The Season 2 finale awkwardly disposed of both the Pegasus copy of Six as well as Baltar's nuke. The two focal episodes of Season 3 were "Unfinished Business," the episode that filled in the "missing year" gap and explained why everyone was suddenly acting differently, and "Maelstrom," which tied off the mandala/Eye of Jupiter thing in an extraordinarily awkward way. Most of the rest of that season (barring the first four and last three episodes) was pointless filler.
Babylon 5 had some pretty awful filler in its first season... except that "Soul Hunter" introduces just how important the Mimbari consider their souls to be (this is, er, incredibly significant later on),"Infection" is the episode that first mentions the war a thousand years ago, the B-plot in "Deathwalker" would have had ramifications down the line if not for one of the show's many cast changes, etc. It's more interesting to spot the threads developing on B5 because they're woven into the backstory. We're not examining the characters' behavior and going "Hmm, is Billy a Cylon?" We're thinking, "okay, Morden came back from the rim, Anna Sheridan died out on the rim, G'Kar was looking for Z'Ha'Dum on the rim, that cryo-freeze ship was reprogrammed to head to Z'Ha'Dum... gee willikers, I think something might be happening out on the rim at Z'Ha'Dum!" (And wouldn't-c'ha-know-it, there's an episode later in Season 2 called "In the Shadow of Z'Ha'Dum"... three guesses what that's about.)
BSG basically operated on short bursts of things happening frantically, separated by long intervals of things not happening. (For a truly excruciating example, watch Season 4.0 the way viewers originally saw it, in weekly installments; "Have we found Earth yet?" "No." "Do we know who the final Cylon is yet?" "Not unless it really is Starbuck." "Do we know what the deal is with Starbuck yet?" "No." "Do we know what the deal is with the Final Four yet?" "No") In contrast, B5's plot was pretty much always unfolding, slowly, steadily, methodically.
So... knowing the destination makes the journey more enjoyable?
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