Babylon 4 - Behind The Scenes

Behind The Scenes

According to a rough outline for the series, apparently written between production of the pilot movie and first season, the original plans for the fate of Babylon 4 were quite different. At this point, the fundamental layout of the timeline was different, with many events written into Babylon 5 originally being planned for a sequel series named Babylon Prime. In this version, Babylon 4 would be taken into the future - specifically the year 2263, where it would function as the new base of operations against the Shadows following the destruction of Babylon 5; Babylon Prime would be Babylon 4's new name.

Unlike the Babylon 5 that was ultimately produced, the original plan was for the story arcs of the Shadow War, the Earth Alliance falling into dictatorship and the conflict between the Minbari religious & warrior castes to not be resolved by the end of the series: the series finale would show the station Babylon 5 being destroyed by the Minbari warrior caste and the sequel series would feature the same characters on Babylon Prime as renegades - the station's engines would also have been used to effectively make Babylon Prime a starship.

The outline would ultimately be revised to make Babylon 5 more ambitious and epic in scope, incorporating most features of "Babylon Prime" into its own five-year story. With the fate of Babylon 5 being revised, the fate of Babylon 4 was accordingly altered and it was rewritten to be taken into the past, not the future.

The discovery of Zathras by the crew of B4 was also changed between "Babylon Squared" and "War Without End". During filming of "War Without End", an attempt was made to film the scene as described in "Babylon Squared", with Zathras appearing in a flash of light in the middle of a meeting and being captured. However, both the director and Straczynski felt that the scene was awkward and unnecessarily long, and so it was decided that Zathras would be captured in a cargo bay, and careful editing of the footage of "Babylon Squared" was made to avoid the inconsistent explanation of Zathras' capture.