January Meme: Babylon 5 alikes?

cahn asked m what other canons remind me of Babylon 5.

Wellll, B5 is pretty much sui generis, but its traces are in a few shows. There's the ill fated spin-off Crusade, of course, which unfortunately didn't get even a season, and was broadcast out of order, but I like it a lot. (Not true for most of the various B5 spin-off attempts in tv movie form.) I can't think of a better advertisement than Holy Grail, andraste's fabulous vid about it (which btw isn't spoiilery for B5, cahn) , so I'll just point anyone curious about Crusade there.

Then there's of course the other space station show, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Regardless of origin, both shows are pretty much their own thing, Lennier showing up in s6 of DS9 and the on screen "we're not some deep space franchise!" snark in s2 of B5 not withstanding. However, you can't tell me that the Prophets belatedly gaining the Pagh Wraiths as their arch nemesis wasn't directly inspired by the Vorlons and the Shadows. In which case: I like the B5 solution to that conflict better.

Lost was after B5 the next long term story/stories show I watched, and despite Damon Lindelof & Co. hailing from the Abrams school of writers (read: planned first season, thereafter improvisations which sometimes work and sometimes don't) , I thought they succeeded more than they failed, and I have still a great deal of fondness for Lost, which followed lots of interesting characters through the years, offered complicated relationships, some batshit (in the best sense) mythology, and could pull of B5's trick of letting characters not be stuck in the cliché roles they seem to fulfill when we first meet them. When Damon Lindelof two years ago produced the faszinating Watchmen tv series, which was one perfect season, was planned as one and did not want a sequel, my fannish fondness of old revived.

Lastly, there's the rebooted Battlestar Galactica. ST veteran Ron Moore and his fellow scribes did make the mistake of advertising that they had a long term space opera arc planned out a la JMS when they plainly did not and winged it instead, which caused considerable fannish ire, but as with Lost, I liked more of the improvised results than I disliked, and so I still have much fondness for BSG as well. And hey, I've written not one but two BSG/B5 crossovers for the Mlultiverse ficathon.

The other days