TV Movie  1993
 Babylon 5: The Gathering      Back      Home
Jeffrey Sinclair: There's a 24 hour period in my life that I can't account for; it happened during the war with your people. You wouldn't be holding anything out on me, would you old friend?
Delenn: Commander, I would never tell you anything that was not in your best interest.
Jeffrey Sinclair: Sooner or later everyone comes to Babylon 5.
[Recalling the Battle of the Line]
Jeffrey Sinclair: The sky was full of stars, and every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
Laurel Takashima: This is Lieutenant Commander Laurel Takashima. Our docking bays stand ready to receive you. Babylon 5 is open for business.
Delenn: By the way, there is something I've been wondering. Why Babylon 5? If the prior four stations were lost or destroyed, why build another?
Sinclair: Plain, old human stubbornness, I guess. When something we value is destroyed, we rebuild it. If it's destroyed again, we rebuild it again. And again, and again, and again - until it stays. That, as our poet Tennyson once said, is the goal: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
Garibaldi: I wonder if they'll ever find that transmitter you slipped in G'kar's drink.
Sinclair: No they won't. Because there is none. If I had put one in, sooner or later, they would have found it. This way, they'll keep looking.
Garibaldi: Are you aware of the tests they'll perform and the things they'll do to him?
Sinclair: Yes. Come on.
Garibaldi: There are some days I love this job.
Assassin: [to Sinclair] There is a hole in your mind.
Jeffrey Sinclair: A poem- A story in meter or rhyme.
Delenn: Ahh, there once was a man from Nantucket...
Jeffrey Sinclair: [chuckles] You've been talking to Garibaldi again, haven't you?
Delenn: Yes. How did you know?
Londo Mollari: There was a time when this whole quadrant belonged to us! What are we now? Twelve worlds and a thousand monuments to past glories. Living off memories and stories, and selling trinkets. My god, man! We've become a tourist attraction. "See the great Centauri Republic - open 9 to 5 - Earth time."
Delenn: I look forward to meeting a Vorlon. I've heard much about them that is strange.
Jeffrey Sinclair: Such as?
Delenn: Do you not have files on the Vorlons?
Jeffrey Sinclair: Absolutely, very large files. There's nothing in them, of course.
Londo Mollari: I suppose there'll be a war now, hmm? All that running around and shooting at one another. You would have thought sooner or later it'd go out of fashion.
[opening narration]
Ambassador Londo Mollari: I was there at the dawn of the third age of mankind. It began in the Earth year 2257, with the last of the Babylon stations located deep in neutral space. It was a port of call for refugees, smugglers, businessmen, diplomats, and travelers from a hundred worlds. It could be a dangerous place, but we accepted the risk because Babylon 5 was our last, best hope for peace. Under the leadership of its final commander, Babylon 5 was a dream given form. A dream of a galaxy without war, where species could live side-by-side in mutual respect. A dream that was endangered as never before by one man on a mission of destruction. Babylon 5 was the last of the Babylon stations. This is its story.
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In the early spring of 1993, a year before the series was launched, the two-hour movie and series pilot Babylon 5: The Gathering appeared. This proto-Babylon staked out the initial territory for the series (some of which would change by the first episode), introducing primary characters and sketching out the alliances and rifts in interplanetary diplomacy. Some of the primary characters bowed out after their initial appearances (Tamlyn Tomita's Lt. Commander Laurel Takashima and Johnny Seka's Dr. Benjamin Kyle never returned; Patricia Tallman's telepath Lyta Alexander made periodic revisits beginning in the second season, eventually rejoining the cast permanently). Set on the first anniversary of the Babylon 5 (none of the first four stations survived even a month), the central story involves the attempted assassination of the newly arrived Vorlon, the mysterious Ambassador Kosh, at the hands of (perhaps) Commander Jeffrey Sinclair (Michael O'Hare). Security Chief Michael Garibaldi (Jerry Doyle, a smart-aleck tough guy in the Bruce Willis vein) investigates and uncovers a web of conspirators, a portent of things to come. When TNT picked up the series for the fifth season Straczynski reedited the pilot, weaving back in a dropped subplot while cutting the rest of the film more tightly, tweaking special effects, and commissioning a new score from Christopher Franke. This is the cut released on video, a stronger, more engaging film, but still a broad first stab at characters that would redefine themselves through the course of the show's run. --Sean Axmaker