Babylon 5 rewatch again

Comet TV is broadcasting Babylon 5 and I’ve been dipping into it now and then because it’s SO GOOD and I just can’t look away. So this technically isn’t a real rewatch, but a sort-of rewatch.  And it’s another show where I just like hanging out with these people. Sheridan is so relentlessly cheerful, in contrast to nearly every other sci fi captain on television, and I’m appreciating that more and more.

This time around, I’m noticing the show’s spirituality and metaphysics, which I guess I’ve always noticed before but for some reason it’s standing out to me this time.  On the one hand it’s an easy way to plot (a. There is a prophecy. b. Is the prophecy fulfilled and how? c. Plot!)  But I think the show does enough with the subject in other ways — lots of individual spiritual journeys (Ivanova mourning her father, Stephen’s Walkabout), the presence of actual religious figures, showing religion incorporated into everyday life for both humans and aliens. And this overall idea that religion and spirituality should be something that helps people deal with life, and if it doesn’t — if it becomes dogmatic and prescriptive — then it fails.

And now I’m suddenly comparing/contrasting with The Last Kingdom. One of the things I love about that show is its depiction of early medieval Christianity and how completely wrapped up in politics it was, and then tangled up with Danish paganism, with Uhtred smack in the middle of everything.

Meaty stuff.