"It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the Earth/ Minbari war. The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last, best hope for peace.
"This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon Five."
-- First Season opening narration from Babylon 5
Forget the Star Trek spinoff series, all the Star Trek films, and every other space-SF series that has hit the airwaves since the original Star Trek was made. They're pikers, amateurs, also-rans. Babylon 5 is the true spiritual successor to the original Trek, the finest space-based science fiction to hit the small screen in at least the last thirty years.
Babylon 5 is a gigantic "O'Neill cylinder" type space station that orbits a planet light-years from nowhere, deep in neutral territory. It's a cross between what the United Nations was supposed to be and Casablanca, in space. Babylon 5 tells the story of this place, a grand sweeping epic that spans five years and three wars, and entangles countless people from many different species in a far-reaching web of events that changes the course of history for the entire galaxy.