Babylon 5 is among my favourite television shows, mostly because it’s one of the first (and I think one of the best) examples of a ‘novel for television’: a single story told over five seasons – almost unheard of at the time but now a staple of modern television, although rarely as well-executed in my opinion.
From Season Two onward the seasons are increasingly tightly plotted, with each episode following directly from what’s come before. This isn’t however so much the case with Season One – for production reasons episodes were made out of sequence and the story hadn’t yet got to the point where the showrunner (J. Michael Straczynski, a.k.a. jms) found himself having to write every episode. As a result there’s less of an obvious through-line tying the first season together and in the original broadcast/DVD episode order there are a few little continuity problems.
Over the years there have been a number of fan-constructed alternative viewing orders, looking at continuity references within the episodes that point to a different ordering, and referring to online comments from jms about the original broadcast order during the show’s run. Unfortunately (for me) these clues only add up to a partial picture – if you start from a completely blank slate and try to construct a viewing order based on just these explicit continuity clues it only gets you about halfway to a complete ordering – you can make an argument for most episodes going just about anywhere…
As far as I can tell, other fan re-orderings solve this problem by defaulting back to the original broadcast order in the absence of any other evidence. However for me this is a bit unsatisfying – the whole point of the exercise is the original broadcast order may not be the best ordering, so I prefer not to be dependent on it… I don’t want to put an episode into a particular position unless I actively have a positive reason to do so. With a default position to always fall back on, there’s a risk of missing references between episodes.
So for a long time I was stumped – I watched, and re-watched, and re-watched again – looking for references I might have missed… but instead I stumbled into a slightly different approach. As well as the explicit continuity references in the episodes, I started noticing the way the tone of characters’ interactions changed from episode to episode. And as well as the plot developments, I started thinking about what story the show is trying to tell about each character over the course of the season. Once I started looking at the episodes from this slightly more “right-brain” perspective I found there were a whole new set of ‘clues’ which could build on top of the explicit continuity references to get to a much more complete picture – and this ordering is the result.
Comparing this ordering to some of the others out there has made me think about a pithy adjective to describe it (e.g. “Intended” Order, “Chronological” Order, etc.) and the best I’ve been able to come up with is “Character Arc Order”.
“This is a wonderfully thought-out ordering … it helps the season run in a more gradual, but now consistent, exponential curve.”
“In the past I was mostly ambivalent about Season One […]. Your revised order makes Season One much more engaging and also helps gel a number of character arcs. Great stuff.”
“Season One now feels more tightly-plotted, very similar to the arc/one-off story balance of Season Two, instead of the slightly jumbled order as-broadcast. It’s wonderful.”
“Better than the original, especially the character arcs … Certainly the best watchorder to date!”
Praise for the reordering from some viewers who have tried it out
One way I’ve come to think about it is to imagine a video editor being delivered 22 scenes in a random order and being asked to put them together into a complete film. Just as entire subplots can sometimes be “discovered” during the edit of a film, by assembling the episodes in this order I’ve found small character development arcs which may not even have been intended when filming. All of which I think adds up to an ordering which, as well as setting up and paying off plot developments in the most rewarding way, also gives the most satisfying arc of character development to as many characters as possible.
As this approach often involves interpreting the subtext of a given scene it’s open to the criticism of being subjective, but I invite you to follow along with my reasoning – for me once some of these character moments have been pointed out, it’s hard to imagine how I ever saw them any other way. But even if you disagree it may at least confirm for you what factors you prefer to prioritise when viewing the show – who knows, you might even develop your own ordering (as if we needed more!)
So what started out as quite a dry and analytical exercise actually turned out for me to be a interesting way to dig into the characters, themes and structure of Season One and find new ways of looking at a season which often doesn’t get as much attention as the rest. You can see the final result on the sidebar – as I said I invite you to follow my workings of how I got there: the story starts here – or if you want to go straight to the final result then here I just discuss the specific differences between this ordering and the generally fan-favoured “Master List”.
As you would expect spoilers abound for the entire series.
“Sometimes the universe requires a change of perspective...” 