Hi everybody. I recently started pondering something, and thought I'd bring it here for wider discussion. What might Babylon 5 have been like had the character of John Sheridan been present from the very beginning of the series?
Babylon 5 'what if' question
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Not very! Sinclar and Sheriden were effectively the same character just split into two. So Anna would originally have been Caroline (or later Catherine). Because the basic plot was set, JMS was only making superficial alterations to the overall story. I think they felt that Sinclar was a bit too zen and battle-weary so they wanted someone more dynamic so I suppose that is the main difference there would have been.
I would have liked to see his idea play out as originally intended without the alterations forced upon him by actors being unavailable etc.
I would have liked to see his idea play out as originally intended without the alterations forced upon him by actors being unavailable etc.
No "hole in your mind" storyline in Season 1.
So, instead of "The Sky Full of Stars", the events of the S2 episodes "Points of Departure" and "The All the Honor Lies" happen somewhere in Season 1.
Other than that, no major changes.
So, instead of "The Sky Full of Stars", the events of the S2 episodes "Points of Departure" and "The All the Honor Lies" happen somewhere in Season 1.
Other than that, no major changes.
While this is a popular conjecture, It's really not true. The reason why JMS decided to make the change was in large part because hanging both the Minbari connection *and* the Shadow connection on Sinclair would simply have stretched the realms of possibility. He's said repeatedly that Anna and Sakai couldn't have fulfilled the same functions.
That said, the end result would have probably been pretty close to the same. There's no way of knowing how the details might have been changed, though. Those who've seen the original Treatment for the series know how many threads were switched around between characters between the time the series was concieved and when it was filmed.
I've got one that I've always wondered, though. Originally, Kosh was supposed to have a mate with him on the station, Velana. How do you suppose his character and that of the mysterious Vorlons would have been different if he'd had something so common as a wife?
Jan
I haven't read the original treatment myself, but from several sources I get the feeling that the Shadows and the Vorlons were originally closer to fascism and communism rather than chaos and order and the whole situation with them was a lot less philosophical than it turned out to be.
I'm not sure if that analogy works, but I'm sure you get the point.
I'm not sure if that analogy works, but I'm sure you get the point.
Order vs. Chaos was there from the original conception of the show. From some of Joe's earliest notes:
jms said:
Except Sinclair's plot stayed with Sinclair - retrieving Babylon 4 to fight the Shadows; DNA getting mixed in the Minbari gene pool; becoming Valen. That wasn't transferred to Sheridan, and Sheridan didn't have the survivor's guilt that Sinclair was dealing with.
That clears things up nicely. I have always thought that that was the case, but the recent stuff I've read gave a different idea based on the original treatment. Although I still have to wonder how the war would have been resolved after the demise of the Vorlons and the Shadows taking over the galaxy? Perhaps gathering all the remaining First Ones together and kicking some serious butt?
- No "hole in your mind" mystery
- Sheridan would have dealt with some tensions between himself and those among the Minbari who are aganist his post on Babylon 5.
- The developing relationship between Sheridan and Delenn would gone on for five seasons instead of four.
- The friendship between Sheridan and Garibaldi would have been developed more.
- Anna would have still stayed dead because by that point in the series a year has passed since the Icarus incident.
- Sheridan would have probably gotten a different vision of the future in Babylon Squared.
Since posting this earlier, I've been doing some thinking of my own, and I really doubt that the Valen subplot would've been part of the series at all if Sheridan had been there from the beginning. There would probably still have been a way to explore the concept of soul reincarnation using Sheridan, but he wouldn't have had the 'personal connection' to the storyline the way Sinclair was designed to unless you significantly altered his (Sheridan's) backstory.
Another significant difference that I thought of vis a vis the 'Sheridan instead of Sinclair' question is that the reasoning behind Garibaldi's assignment to the station would have to be different unless you altered his backstory so that he had a personal connection to Sheridan that could be used to override or leverage out his past problems with alcohol.
Another significant difference that I thought of vis a vis the 'Sheridan instead of Sinclair' question is that the reasoning behind Garibaldi's assignment to the station would have to be different unless you altered his backstory so that he had a personal connection to Sheridan that could be used to override or leverage out his past problems with alcohol.
Yes, I am.
Can I help?
Maybe. I might want some help during the planning stages, so I'll keep in touch and keep you posted.
In the meantime, I thought of a couople of other things that would end up being different if you replaced Sinclair with Sheridan from the beginning:
1) The reasoning behind the Minbari surrendering (since it's explicitely tied in with Sinclair's backstory)
2) Delenn's motivations for coming to B5 in the first place, and her motivations for taking the actions she does in Chrysalis (since, again, both of those things are tied in to Sinclair's backstory)
Even if they had found a way to explore the Valen storyline, who's to say they would have? A lot of times the stories are developed as they need to be, and I don't doubt that this might have been a way to tie the stories together. So if there had been no Sinclair, maybe we just would have never found out who Valen really was!
Originally Valen was just Valen and the show was supposed to end with older Sinclair living in some distant, quiet and otherwise uninhabitated planet all alone and fishing. No time travelling involved. So if you take away Sinclair right away and introduce Sheridan, there wouldn't be any need to make really huge changes.
I kind of felt that Ulkesh kinda/sorta filled that role in a weird way. Perhaps not anything as comprehensible as a mate, but they did seam oddly joined at the...uh...tendrils.
I presume Velana was dropped precisely because it'd detract somewhat from the mystery of Kosh and the Vorlons in general if they were seen to be even remotely relatable.
The time travel was still there before plans for Valen since Babylon 4's disappearence was mentioned as early as the pilot. Pre-Valen it was going to be taken to the future after B5 was destroyed and every race was after Sinclair. Sheridan is a uniter of races, so this plot would have been altered a little more I think if you only had Sheridan.
Before anyone gets any ideas, I'd like to point out that JMS said "Naranek" was more of a title, and not a name, so Kosh Naranek and Ulkesh Naranek weren't necessarily related in any way.
Except in that they were both Kosh, that is.
I have this weird image of after Kosh exposed himself to save Sheridan he went back to the his quarters and Velana starts using Telekenesis to whack a rolling pin repeatedly across the top of his encounter suit while saying "no, no, no" in that very enigmatic vorlon way.
Yeah, you are right about that. What I was trying to say is that the usage of time travel would have been a little bit different in the original version. Sinclair wouldn't have taken Babylon 4 a thousand years into the past and become Valen. If JMS would have introduced Sheridan right away without any signs of Sinclair, there would have been no need to explain Valen's origins. That storyline didn't really exist at that point.
Then again... who knows? I guess that's part of the fun of asking questions like these.
That's interesting. But then what WAS Sakai's purpose? I was mildly annoyed that they put her in peril in a plot completely unrelated to Sinclair and started to build up a relationship with G'Kar but as soon as Sinclair exited stage left she vanished as if she no longer had a purpose? It looked to me that they had been sowing the seeds for the Anna Sheriden plot and just dumped Sakai when she could no longer fulfill that role. I would have preferred it if she had been given one final guest appearance to complete her personal arc even if her ultimate fate remained unknown.
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