30 Day TV Meme: Day 4 (...even for people like us)
Posting this from my iPad, so I'm going to forego fancy-pants formatting.
Day 4: Your favorite show ever
I thought about this one for a while, and kept coming back to the same show: Babylon 5.
"The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. A self-contained world five miles long, located in neutral territory. A place of commerce and diplomacy for a quarter of a million humans and aliens. A shining beacon in space, all alone in the night."
Here is a show where characters live and die, learn and grow and make mistakes - sometimes horrible, horrible mistakes - where no one is exactly who they appear to be.
It's about standing together instead of dying alone.
"The universe speaks in many languages, but only one voice. The language is not Narn or Human or Centauri or Gaim or Minbari. It speaks in the language of hope. It speaks in the language of trust. It speaks in the language of strength and the language of compassion. It is the language of the heart and the language of the soul. But always it is the same voice. It is the voice of our ancestors speaking through us and the voice of our inheritors waiting to be born. The small, still voice that says: 'We are one. No matter the blood, no matter the skin, no matter the world, no matter the star... We are one. No matter the pain, no matter the darkness, no matter the loss, no matter the fear. .. We are one.' Here, gathered together in common cause, we begin to realize this singular truth and this singular rule: that we must be kind to one another. Because each voice enriches us and ennobles us and each voice lost diminishes us. We are the voice of the universe, the soul of creation, the fire that will light our way to a better future. We are one."
It's an engaging narrative, a novel that unfolds over five years and on television, with all the complications and headaches that come with actors and studios and ratings.
At its heart, though, it's a show that's exceptionally optimistic, and is steeped in a theme of hope. No matter how bleak things are, or how far gone we feel (sound familiar?), there is hope.
"Babylon 5 was the last of the Babylon stations. There would never be another. It changed the future... and it changed us. It taught us that we have to create the future... or others will do it for us. It showed us that we have care for one another, because if we don't, who will? And that true strength sometimes comes from the most unlikely places. Mostly, though, I think it gave us hope... that there can always be new beginnings... even for people like us."
