^Well, just to play Devil's advocate, you can see a similarity in the relationship between G'Kar and Londo, and the relationship between Kira and Dukat.
Honestly? No, I can't. There are some
conceptual similarities (antagonistic relationship, one is from the oppressor race, the other from the oppressed), but those don't amount to a case for one being based on the other. And besides those very broad elements, I see NOTHING in the two relationships that is remotely similar.
And for the record. I don't give a damn if one stole from the other or not. Since I love both DS9 and Babylon 5, I got two excellent sci-fi series in my DVD collection to enjoy. For me at least, the situation was a winner.
Don't get me wrong; I love both shows, myself. They have their flaws, but they are still two of my favorite TV series' ever.
I just get irritated by the suggestion that has popped up so many times over the years that anything beyond
perhaps the basic idea of setting the series on a station was "borrowed."
That said, I think the similarities are a bit much to just dismiss as entirely coincidental, and I can understand why JMS would be a bit upset by that.
Oh, come on. You've got TNG and TOS and you're sitting around trying to think of another idea for a space-based show that's not on a ship. 'A space station' would be the first thing that anyone on earth would say in this situation, and that's about the only similarity between the shows.
Here is a short list:
Click me
I looked over that list. A
lot of them are dodgy, at best.
#3: Saying that "both were near a portal to a distant place" is BS. The wormhole and the jumpgate are not even remotely similar in terms of the role they play on the show, their origins, etc.
#9: Clearly a coincidence. Sykes didn't play NEARLY the role in B5 that Yates did in DS9.
#13: Comparing the Shadows to the Founders is loltastic. The only thing they even have in common at all is "villain race."
#19: The relationship between Earth and the Minbari -
or between B5 and the Minbari later in the show - is NOTHING like the relationship between the UFP and the Klingons. Not to mention that the Klingons and Minbari themselves have almost nothing in common, beyond "warrior race" (and even then, the Minbari only sort of qualify as that).
#20: Massive cheap shot. Worf (and the nature of his character) came from TNG.
etc etc.
A lot of the items on that list (and certainly all of the ones I specified above) fall into the category of "This is
technically a similarity in basic concept or idea, but only if you squint really hard." It's like saying that every sci-fi story with "a large, oppressive, totalitarian regime" as the main foe is ripping off Star Wars. A lot of it, also, traces back to common tropes or concepts in sci-fi in general; many items crop up in scores of sci-fi stories. They only stick out here
because of the contention that DS9 stole elements from B5.
Also, in the article below the list, there's this:
Some Trek fans contend that since the Ivanova character, a hot-headed female, didn't appear until the first season of B5, one year after the DS9 premiere, that DS9 had the lead there; however, in the original Babylon 5 pitch material there is one Laurel Chang (later Takashima in the pilot), a "no-nonsense, but with a sly sense of humor" second-in-command.
Apparently this is supposed to suggest that even though Ivanova didn't come in till later, Kira is still a B5 ripoff because of this earlier description of the B5 XO. Except Kira does not have "a sly sense of humor" and had pretty much nothing in common with Takashima.
Everything on the entire web page is pretty weak.
I acknowledge (as I did in my previous post) that it's reasonable to think that after Paramount rejected B5, someone who was aware of the concept went "But that did give me an idea:
Star Trek on a space station!" But beyond that, I see nothing substantive.
