The Star Destroyer (Star Wars)

Star Destroyers are iconic vessels of the fictional Star Wars universe. The Imperial Star Destroyer, which first appears at the beginning of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, is "the signature vessel of the Imperial fleet".
Star Destroyers appear in the original three Star Wars movies and in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. In addition to their movie appearances, Star Destroyers appear throughout the Star Wars Expanded Universe in books, comics, and games. Merchandising companies have released numerous Star Destroyer models and toys.

Imperial class
The first Star Destroyer to appear in Star Wars is of the Imperial class, and this type most frequently appears in the original trilogy. Although the ship appears in A New Hope (1977), the term "Star Destroyer" is not used in dialog until Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980).
In the original draft scripts of the movie that would become Star Wars, the term "Stardestroyer" refers to two-man fighters flown by what would become the Galactic Empire in later drafts. Industrial Light and Magic built a 91-centimeter shooting model of the ship for A New Hope; they built a 259-centimeter model, equipped with internal lighting to provide a better sense of scale, for The Empire Strikes Back.

Depiction
Imperial-class Star Destroyers are constructed by Kuat Drive Yards and hold a distinguished place in the Imperial Navy, symbolizing the Empire's military might with a peak number of more than 25,000 vessels. Like the Victory-and Venator-class ships that precede it, the Imperial Star Destroyer is most notable for its massive size and overwhelming firepower; a single Imperial-class ship is capable of overwhelming most starships or devastating a hostile planet, and its mere presence is often enough to deter rebellion. At 1,600 meters long, Imperial-class Star Destroyers are armed with turbolasers, ion cannons and tractor beam projectors. They carry 72 TIE fighters, numerous ground forces (including stormtroopers, AT-ATs, AT-STs and AT-PTs), a prefabricated base for rapid deployment to planetary surfaces and a variety of support and landing craft.
Following the climactic Battle of Endor, the Rebel Alliance captured several Imperial-class ships and added them to their own fleet. As the Rebel Alliance transitioned into the New Republic and gradually took large portions of the galaxy from the remnants of the Empire, it was able to procure more of the powerful ships as well as the vital shipyards and facilities with which to operate them. Although the New Republic eventually upgrades its starfleet with newer ship types, the Imperial-class Star Destroyer remains in service well into the New Jedi Order era and fights during the Yuuzhan Vong war.

Star Dreadnoughts
Similar in design to Imperial-class Star Destroyers, Star Dreadnoughts (called "Super Star Destroyers" or "Super-class Star Destroyers" in earlier Star Wars works) are much larger than their counterparts. A Star Dreadnought first appears in The Empire Strikes Back, and reappears in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. Star Dreadnoughts come in multiple varieties. In addition to appearing in two Star Wars movies, they appear in the Star Wars Expanded Universe's books and games. Kevin J. Anderson's novel Darksaber describes Star Dreadnoughts as being "worth twenty Imperial Star Destroyers". The Executor shooting model used in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi was 282 centimeters long.

Depiction
The Executor is Darth Vader's (David Prowse, James Earl Jones) flagship in The Empire Strikes Back and is the Imperial command ship at the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi. Admiral Ozzel (Michael Sheard) commands the Executor at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back, with command shifting to Admiral Piett (Kenneth Colley) later in the movie and persisting through Return of the Jedi. During the Battle of Endor, a crippled A-wing piloted by Arvel Crynyd (Hilton McRae) crashes into the ship's bridge; out of control, the Executor is drawn into the Death Star's gravity field and explodes.
Roleplaying material identifies the Executor as the first of the Executor class, while starwars.com identifies it as the first of the Super class. Wizards of the Coast explains that the "Super class" label was used to hide the ship's "true nature from the Imperial Senate"; this bureaucratic fiction became the source of the type's nickname. Originally described in A Guide to the Star Wars Universe in 1984 as being eight kilometers long, Executor-class ships more recently are described as being 19 kilometers long. Like Imperial Star Destroyers, the Star Dreadnought is manufactured at Kuat Drive Yards.
Another Star Dreadnought, the Lusankya, is described in Michael Stackpole's X-Wing novels as Ysanne Isard's private prison and, later, the primary Imperial support vessel during Isard's time on Thyferra. The ship is captured and used by the New Republic, eventually being destroyed in battle against the Yuuzhan Vong in Aaron Allston's Enemy Lines novels. The novel Darksaber features the Knight Hammer, a Star Dreadnought "plated with stealth armor", making it "virtually invisible to enemy forces".
The Eclipse is the reborn Emperor Palpatine's flagship in the Dark Empire comic series, and it also appears in the Forces of Corruption expansion for Star Wars: Empire at War. According to sourcebooks, the Eclipse is the most powerful Star Dreadnought ever constructed: its armor and shields allow it to ram New Republic Mon Calamari cruisers, and its thousands of armaments include a scaled down version of the Death Stars' superlaser cannon. The ship is destroyed when Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa Solo combine Force energies to cause Palpatine's Force Storms to go out of control and destroy the vessel. The Eclipse II serves as Palpatine's flagship until it is destroyed in Empire's End. A scaled down version of the Eclipse, the Sovereign-class, is featured in Expanded Universe material from the same time period.

Other types
Victory-class Star Destroyers appear as early as Brian Daley's 1979 book Han Solo's Revenge, and since then have appeared in Expanded Universe books and games. Designed by Rendili StarDrive in the Star Wars universe, the Victory-class is 900 meters long and features fewer weapons and cargo than an Imperial Star Destroyer.
Venator-class Star Destroyers, also known as "Republic attack cruisers", appear in Revenge of the Sith and in the Expanded Universe. The ship's design is meant to bridge the appearance of the Acclamator-class transports in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and the Imperial class in the original trilogy. While the ships first appear with a red and grey Republic color scheme, the Venator at the movie's end is gray and white; this lack of color signifies the Empire's rise to power. Star Destroyers used by the New Republic include the Republic-, Nebula-, and Defender-classes.
Other types of Star Destroyers exist. George Lucas calls the cigar-shaped Separatist cruisers visible at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith "Star Destroyers" in the movie's DVD commentary track. The Dark Nest trilogy by Troy Denning includes two types of Star Destroyers used by the Chiss Ascendancy and the Star Destroyer Admiral Ackbar used by the Galactic Alliance. The existence of the Tector class is established in the Revenge of the Sith Incredible Cross-Sections book. The Legacy comics introduce the Pellaeon-class Star Destroyers, named after Gilad Pellaeon.

Merchandise
In 2002, Lego released a 3,104-piece Imperial-class Star Destroyer building kit for their Ultimate Collectors' Series line. The model is almost a meter long, and includes a scale model of the Rebel Blockade Runner. In 2006, a smaller set was released, just over half a meter long and containing various minifigures.
The Star Dreadnought has also been merchandised. Kenner wanted to use a less ominous name than Executor for the toy playset of Darth Vader's meditation chamber. An advertisement agency's list of 153 alternatives included Starbase Malevolent, Black Coven, Haphaestus VII, and Cosmocurse; ultimately, the toy was labeled "Darth Vader's Star Destroyer". In 2006, Wizards of the Coast created an Executor miniature as part of its Star Wars Miniatures Starship Battles game. An electronic Super Star Destroyer toy released by Hasbro "is the rarest among Hasbro's Collector Fleet".

The U.S.S. Enterprise Ncc 1707-D (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) (or Enterprise-D, to distinguish it from prior starships with the same name) is a 24th century starship in the Star Trek fictional universe and the principal setting of the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series. The Enterprise-D is a Galaxy-class ship and the fifth Federation starship to carry the name.
The Enterprise-D also appears in the pilot episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ("Emissary"), the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise ("These Are the Voyages..."), and in the feature film Star Trek Generations, which was its last canon appearance.

Design
Andrew Probert, who assisted in updating the original Enterprise for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, designed the Enterprise-D. Originally tasked with designing the bridge, Probert had a "what if" sketch hanging on his wall that he had drawn after working on The Motion Picture. Story editor David Gerrold saw the sketch and brought it to creator Gene Roddenberry's attention, who approved the sketch as a starting point for the Enterprise-D's design.
An Industrial Light and Magic team supervised by Ease Owyeung built two filming miniatures (a six-foot model and a two-foot model) for "Encounter at Farpoint", the Star Trek: The Next Generation pilot, and these models were used throughout the first two seasons. For the third season, model-maker Greg Jein built a four-foot miniature, which had an added layer of surface plating detail. The six-foot model was used whenever a saucer separation sequence needed to be filmed,
ILM's John Knoll also built a CGI Electric Image model of the Enterprise-D for Generations. That model was transferred to LightWave and used to create various Galaxy-class starships in episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Timeless." Eden FX's Gabriel K?erner built a new CGI LightWave model for the Enterprise-D's appearance in Star Trek: Enterprise's series finale.
The proportions of the Galaxy class Enterprise-D were different from the original series Enterprise while retaining its familiar dual warp nacelles and saucer section appearance. The warp nacelles were made proportionally smaller than the saucer section based on the idea that warp engines would have become more efficient over time.

History
The Enterprise-D is first seen in "Encounter at Farpoint" under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Several episodes, as well as the ship's dedication plaque, establish that the Enterprise was built at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards around Mars. The Enterprise-D is the third Galaxy-class starship, after the prototype USS Galaxy (from which the Galaxy-class takes its name) and the USS Yamato. The dedication plaque gives its commissioning date as 40759.5, which was intended to represent October 4, 2363.
Throughout the course of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the ship's crew makes first contact with multiple species, including the Borg in "Q Who?" and the Q Continuum in "Encounter at Farpoint." The Enterprise-D is instrumental in the defeat of the Borg during their 2366 attempt to invade the Federation in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II."
In 2371, as depicted in Star Trek Generations, the Klingon Duras sisters render the Enterprise-D's shields useless. Although the Enterprise-D destroys the sisters' ship, damage to the warp drive coolant system prompts an emergency saucer separation. The warp core breaches moments after the saucer begins to move away, destroying the ship's stardrive section. The resulting shockwave impacts the saucer, disabling propulsion and other primary systems, sending it into Veridian III's atmosphere. Caught in the planet's gravity, the saucer section crash-lands on the surface, damaged beyond repair. It was replaced by the Enterprise-E, which was introduced in the film Star Trek: First Contact.
According to commentary on the Star Trek Generations DVD, one of the real world reasons for the Enterprise-D's destruction stems from a concept drawing of a saucer section crash, produced for the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual. TNG writers Ronald D. Moore, Jeri Taylor, and Brannon Braga saw the drawing and wanted to use a saucer crash as a sixth-season cliffhanger episode for the series, but were unable to do so because of a limited budget and resistance from producer Michael Piller.

Alternate future
In the alternate future featured in the TNG series finale "All Good Things...," the Enterprise-D is intact in 2395. In this alternate future, the ship is commanded by Admiral William Riker and has undergone major refits, including the addition of a third warp nacelle, new weapons, and a cloaking device. This future timeline arises from a temporal anomaly that Picard, with Q's help, manages to eliminate.

The Nostromo (Alien)

USCSS The Nostromo is a fictional starship, featured in the 1979 film Alien. The name is taken from the eponymous hero of the 1904 novel by Joseph Conrad.

Description
Commercial Towing Vessel Nostromo, an M-Class starfreighter property of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, is a tug, a towing vessel, hauling an enormous (some 1.5 miles in length) ore refinery and 20 million tons of raw ore, weighing many times the mass of the Nostromo. The ship itself is still substantial, over 60,000 metric tons and almost 245 metres (800 feet) long, including three decks, four holds, stores, engines, and lots of pipes and ducts; its escape ship is called Narcissus. The ship is fitted with a self-destruct system and separates itself from the ore refinery platform via an umbilical detachment system. The interior features a large 'space jockey' cockpit for all crew piloting functions, a medical bay, dining area, central computer room, engineering areas, a hypersleep chamber and a labyrinthine network of connecting corridors.
(Many moviegoers have often mistaken the four-towered refinery as being the Nostromo itself and the Nostromo, when it detached itself from the refinery, as the shuttle Narcissus.)
The crew consists of seven people from various fields. In the order credited, they include Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Engineering Technician Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt), Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm), and Chief Engineer Parker (Yaphet Kotto). There is also a tiger-striped orange tabby cat named Jones (often called "Jonesy" by the crew). The ship is equipped with a MU-TH-R 182 model 2.1 terabyte AI Mainframe (called "Mother" by the crew).
At the beginning of the first film, the ship is on a course returning to Earth from Thedus, using a form of FTL drive that requires the crew to spend most of the journey in "hypersleep" in order to conserve the ship's limited resources (food/water/air).
At the end of the film, Ellen Ripley destroys the Nostromo in an attempt to kill the xenomorph.

Design
The design of the Nostromo is credited to illustrators Ron Cobb and Chris Foss. Ultimately Chris Foss' highly organic visions of the spacecraft were discarded in favor of Cobb's NASA-like utilitarian renderings. Ridley Scott made his own design contributions as well, adding most of the cathedralesque "refinery" portion, which dominates the craft on screen. Much of the ship's architecture, particularly its interiors and the colossal spires of its refinery structure, are inspired by the cavernous yet simultaneously claustrophobic sensibilities of haunted houses and castles from Gothic Horror films such as Nosferatu.
Right (middle image): Cobb's blueprint elevations of a late Nostromo (then named "Leviathan"), notation reads:
Basic Lockheed CM 88B Bison transporter frame modified and fitted with a Yutani T7A NLS Stellar Drive. The original Saturn J3000 engines have been replaced by 2 Rolls Royce N66 Cyclone Thrust Tunnels with bi-polar vectoring for mid line life function. Each power plant developing 7,250,000 tons thrust (14,500,000,000 pounds) giving a high impulse total of 14,460,000 tons.
Some of this information has filtered into the official canon, as appears below. The canon itself issues from the Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual. The bottom of the Nostromo was built with pieces of Star Wars [[Tie-Fighter] model kits.

The Alien Ship (War Of The Worlds)

The War of the Worlds (1898), by H. G. Wells, is an early science fiction novel which describes an invasion of England by aliens from Mars. It is one of the earliest and best-known depictions of an alien invasion of Earth, and has influenced many others, as well as spawning several films, a radio drama and a television series based on the story. The 1938 radio broadcast caused public outcry against the episode, as many listeners believed that an actual Martian invasion was in progress.

A classic among classics. What can really be said about this unforgettable design? It's just plain creepy. It's alien to the extreme, perhaps more so than almost any other design that man has ever conceived for an imagined extra-terrestrial ship, it actually looks foreign, like nothing we would ever create ourselves. Slightly organic-looking, nothing about it represents the aesthetics we hold as appealing. It's ugly, almost awkward-looking, but like an unfamiliar insect, the reaction is from shock to awe and ultimately fear -- fear of the unknown and fear of what soon is known all too well.

Borg Cube (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

In the Star Trek fictional universe, various Borg starships are observed, all appearing as simple geometric solids with greebled exteriors and being very generalized and decentralized in design.

Borg cube
The archetypal Borg cube is a variety of immense, cubic starship that functions as part of the Borg Collective. It was first seen in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Q Who?" upon the Borg's first contact with the Federation Starfleet in 2365. The cube appears to be the principal spacefaring unit of the collective, by far the Borg craft most often seen on-screen and the type of vessel used in both the episode "The Best of Both Worlds" and the film Star Trek: First Contact. Cubes are popularly believed to number in the millions or greater; however identification numbers cited on-screen (e.g., 461, 630, and 1184) seem to indicate smaller numbers. These ships' low numbers may just be coincidence or may not be the ships' complete registries.
The design of a Borg cube is determined by the materials at hand and what is currently needed for a ship. The only unifying principles of design are a roughly cubical shape, a decentralized/generalized arrangement, a size of several thousand metres per edge, and a hosting of tens or hundreds of thousands of drones. Erin Hansen, the mother of the future Seven of Nine, one of the first humans to see one, was amazed that it was 29 cubic km in volume. This number sizes the length, width, and height dimension at over 3 km.
Common capabilities of cubes include high warp (transwarp) capabilities, self-regeneration and multiple redundant systems, rapid adaptability to almost every seen assault, and various beam (tractor beams and cutting beams) and missile weapons. Cubes have been known to carry sphere ships in cavities covered by large slide-away hatches in the outermost layers; however, it is unknown if this is common.
Two basic styles of cube have been seen. The first, seen in The Next Generation, had an outer layer composed of a thin, mostly perpendicular framework of greebles, allowing a yellowish glow to emanate from within. The second, seen in Star Trek: First Contact and Star Trek: Voyager, has a more solid-looking exterior with perpendicular and diagonal greebling, and less of a noticeable green inner light, possibly indicative of a new assimilated technology or a new tendency to employ more physical armor in protecting cubes, although no recognition is made in dialogue of the differences. (In actuality, the differences between the two types are due to enhanced detailing and use of computer-generated imagery between series.)
Borg cubes are as powerful as they are immense, with a single cube being capable of annihilating entire fleets of advanced (e.g., Federation Starfleet) ships, and are matched by few others (e.g., Species 8472).
In Star Trek: First Contact, the atmospheric pressure aboard a Borg ship is described as being two kilopascals above what would be normal on a Federation starship, relative humidity is an average 92%, and its internal temperature is 39.1C.
In the apocryphal game series Star Trek: Armada, the Borg cubes are equipped with a "holding beam" power. It basically is used to immobilize an enemy ship while sending Borg drones over to assimilate the ship's crew. The cube vessels seen in the game are much weaker and smaller than their TV counterparts to balance game mechanics.

Borg probe
First seen in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Dark Frontier", this small oblong-shaped Borg vessel was about half the size of an Intrepid-class Federation starship, having about the same amount of firepower, and capable of transwarp speeds.
In 2375, a Borg probe confronted the USS Voyager in an attempt to assimilate the ship and its crew. Voyager fought back, and at one point during the battle the probe was forced to remodulate its shields. During this vulnerable moment, Voyager beamed a photon torpedo aboard the probe which detonated near the power matrix, resulting in the probe's destruction.
The probe left behind eight kilotons of debris, from which Voyager salvaged a variety of equipment including two power nodes, 12 plasma conduits, and what appeared to be an auto-regeneration unit made of some kind of lightweight polytrinic alloy. Also found was a servo-armature from a medical repair drone, which included a laser scalpel, biomolecular scanner, and micro-suture all rolled into one instrument. A transwarp coil was recovered, but it had self-destructed beyond repair by fusing its field regulator (per Borg protocol when a vessel is critically damaged).
Also salvaged from the debris were a couple of data nodes which contained tactical information that Voyager used to locate a disabled Borg Sphere and plan a "heist" of a working transwarp coil.
The probe is referred to as the "Interceptor" in the Star Trek: Armada series of computer games.

Borg Queen's ship
The Borg Queen uses this ship to direct all Borg operations. This ship is contained within the Unicomplex, the Borg's base of operations. This type of vessel has only been seen in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Dark Frontier".
The weaponry of this ship includes both fore and aft torpedo launchers. Like the Borg cube it can travel at transwarp speeds, allowing it to outrun its enemies if needed.
One such ship was destroyed when the USS Voyager collapsed the transwarp conduit the ship was traveling in. It remains unknown if any more exist.
Within the Star Trek: Armada computer game series and various other games, this type of ship is referred to as the Borg Diamond.

Borg scout
The Borg scout ship is cuboid in shape but considerably smaller than its counterpart, the Borg cube. The Borg scout ship is only several metres in length, width and depth, and holds a crew of five. A Borg scout ship was found by the crew of the Enterprise-D on a moon in the Argolis cluster in the episode "I, Borg" (TNG).
In the game Star Trek: Armada, the Borg Scout is depicted as a very small and quick ship that is shaped like a cone. The shape changes considerably between the original Armada and Armada II.

Borg sphere
The sphere ship was first seen in the movie Star Trek: First Contact, where it was stored within a Borg cube ship under a large slide-away hatch and used as an escape vessel upon the destruction of the cube. This particular sphere was seen to be capable of time travel. It is unknown if other sphere ships are commonly carried aboard cubes or commonly possess time travel capabilities. It was later found in the Arctic in the episode "Regeneration" of ST:ENT. They are equipped with reactive armour. These vessels carry a complement of 10,000 borg drones. Borg spheres were also seen in several episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. During the episode "Unimatrix Zero, Part 2", a Borg Sphere is shown firing both phasers and disruptors.
In the Star Trek: Armada game series, they are depicted as light cruisers that have the ability to rapidly regenerate their shields for a short period of time, while in the Voyager episode "Dark Frontier" Seven of Nine refers to one as a scout ship.

Borg tactical cube
The Borg tactical cube ship is visually a variant of the standard Borg cube with the additions of extensive large, solid pieces of armor attached to the exterior. It was seen in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Unimatrix Zero, Part 1".
It is unknown as to what type of weapons this ship possesses, only that it can fire both phasers and torpedoes. The only tactical cube observed was destroyed via a self-destruct sequence initiated by the Borg Queen, in an attempt to kill Captain Janeway as she was still aboard, having released the nanoprobes virus.
The type is also featured in the Star Trek: Armada II video game, where the only difference between tactical and regular cubes was improved offensive and defensive capabilities. The tactical cube was also featured in Star Trek: Legacy, in which it is a more powerful and larger Borg Cube.

Rogue Borg ship
In the two-part TNG episode "Descent", a group of rogue Borg began attacking Federation outposts and colonies in several outlying sectors with a new type of vessel, informally known as the rogue Borg ship. This unusual design was asymmetric, totally unlike the previously encountered Borg cube. However, the vessel was still heavily armed and massively armored, and capable of great destructive power.
Only one ship of this type has been observed; the ship attacked the research outpost on Oniaka III, as well as the MS-1 colony, using previously-unknown transwarp conduits to appear suddenly over the target and launch a quick attack.
A schematic variant of this design was briefly seen in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Scorpion, Part 2", which recounted the brief alliance between the Voyager crew and the Borg in their fight against Species 8472. Referred to as a "multikinetic neutronic mine", the drone Seven of Nine proposed it to Captain Janeway as a high-yield weapon for delivering enhanced nanoprobes after having deemed Starfleet photon torpedo as insufficient.
This design is also seen in the game series Star Trek: Armada, which refers to it as an "Assimilator" class. Its function is to assimilate or destroy any alien ship or station it encounters. However, this is not canon.

The Alien Ships (Independence Day)

When Earth comes under attack from an advanced extraterrestrial species, the survivors must band together to repel the invaders.

On July 2, an alien mothership enters orbit around Earth, deploying several dozen smaller spacecraft to hover over many of the world's major cities. Satellite transmissions from the craft are discovered, by scientist David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum), to be a timer which he believes is a countdown to a coordinated attack by the aliens. Having made his way to the White House with his father, he warns President Thomas J. Whitmore ( Bill Pullman) of the impending attack. After three US Air Force helicopters are shot down by an alien spacecraft while attempting to establish communications in Welcome Wagon formation, the president orders the evacuation of affected cities. Before the countdown reaches zero, he flees the White House aboard Air Force One with his staff and Levinson. At zero point, the hovering City-Destroyers open fire upon their targets with advanced directed-energy weapons, incinerating entire cities and killing millions.

The United States counterattack is coordinated from El Toro and sees the alien spacecraft assaulted by Marine Corps fighter aircraft. The attacks are completely useless, as both the larger craft and individual Starfighters launched from within are protected by seemingly-impenetrable force fields. After leading his unit of fighter pilots, the Black Knights, in an attack against the aliens, Captain Steven Hiller (Will Smith) is involved in a dogfight with an alien fighter which sees both crash in the desert. Having parachuted to safety, Hiller subdues and captures the injured alien. As the El Toro airbase has since been destroyed, Hiller takes the alien in the direction of the nearby Area 51 base, where the president and his remaining staff have also landed. There, they discover a top secret facility housing a captured alien fighter and three alien bodies recovered from Roswell in 1947.

When lead scientist Dr. Brackish Okun (Spiner) examines the new alien specimen, it attempts escape and takes control of his mind. When questioned by President Whitmore, through a telepathic connection it reveals that its species travels from planet to planet, destroying all life and harvesting the planet's natural resources, before moving on to the next conquest. The alien attempts a psychic attack against Whitmore and is killed by military personnel. Whitmore orders a nuclear attack on the alien spacecraft which is hovering over a by-now-evacuated Houston, but as the craft is still protected by its force shield, the attack fails.

Levinson devises a plan to gain access to the interior of the alien mothership in space in order to introduce a computer virus and plant a nuclear device on board. This, it is hoped, will cause the shields of the Earth-based alien craft to fail long enough for the human resistance to eliminate them. Hiller volunteers to fly the captured alien fighter and Levinson accompanies him to upload the virus. With satellite communications knocked out, the Americans use morse code to coordinate an attack with the remaining air forces around the world, timed to occur when the invaders' shields are set to fail.

With the successful implantation of the virus, President Whitmore leads the US fighter jets against an alien spacecraft on approach to Area 51. The attack is initially unsuccessful and the fighters soon exhaust their supply of missiles, but do considerable damage. The underside of the alien craft opens up as its primary weapon of mass destruction is prepared to fire on the base. Russell Casse (Quaid) finds that he possesses the one remaining missile. The firing mechanism damaged, he pilots his jet into the opening in a kamikaze attack. The ensuing explosion causes a chain reaction which completely annihilates the city-destroyer. Human resistance forces around the world use the same weak point to destroy the remainder of the alien ships, while the nuclear device planted by Hiller and Levinson destroys the alien mothership, annihilating them entirely from existence. Hiller and Levinson escape unharmed, crash-landing their captured alien fighter in the desert close to Area 51. Alien city-destroyer ships crash near Sydney, Australia and Cairo, Egypt, among other places. The film ends as the main characters watch debris from the mothership enter the atmosphere like shooting stars.

The Battlestar (Battlestar Galactica)

The Battlestar Galactica is a space battleship in the original and re-imagined science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica.
The Twelve Colonies of Man in the original television series built a number of Battlestars during their thousand-year war with the Cylons, whose battleships are known as Basestars.

Battlestar Galactica (1978, 1980)
One of an undisclosed total number of Battlestars constructed by the Twelve Colonies of Man. Eight other Battlestars are specifically named in the series: (Acropolis, Atlantia, Columbia, Pacifica, Pegasus, Rycon, Solaria and Triton). The Galactica represents the Colonial planet Caprica, and is crewed mostly by Capricans. The Galactica was built 500 yahren before the close of the Thousand Yahren War (and the start of the television series). It is believed to be the only Battlestar to survive the Destruction of the Twelve Colonies, until the Battlestar Pegasus is found.
Of the other ships, it is known that the Atlantia, Acropolis, Pacifica and Triton are destroyed at the Battle of Cimtar in "Saga of a Star World". Battlestar Columbia is stated in the episode "Gun on Ice Planet Zero", but it is said to also have been destroyed at Cimtar by a Centurion. The Rycon is mentioned in passing in the episode "Take the Celestra" as the ship of Captain Kronus. The Pegasus is encountered in "The Living Legend".
The Galactica is commanded by Commander Adama. It has a complement of about 150 Vipers: a mixture of its own, some from the other Battlestars at the Peace Conference, and a large number of fighters from the Pegasus.
Novelizations based on the original series, various comic books, and other sources have named several other Battlestars, including Bellephon, Cerberus, Olympia, and Prometheus.

Battlestar Galactica (2003, 2004-)
One of the first twelve Battlestars built, the Galactica represents the Colonial planet Caprica. In the re-imagined series, there were about 120 Battlestars in service prior to the Cylon attack.
The Galactica entered service in the early years of the Cylon War, under the command of Commander Nash. During her service, the Galactica formed a part of Battlestar Group 75 (BSG 75), a Colonial force described by series creator Ronald D. Moore as a mixed-force of vessels somewhat similar to a US Navy carrier battle group.
Like any of her sister ships which may have survived the original Cylon War, the Galactica underwent refits and upgrades (for example, at the end of her career she was equipped with the latest Mark VII Viper space superiority fighter). However, her computer systems were neither networked nor integrated by any of her commanding officers, up to and including her current commander, William Adama.
Due to this lack of network integration at the time of the Cylon attack, the Galactica was immune to the infiltration program used by the Cylons to disable Colonial vessels and defense systems, using the Command Navigation Program (CNP), developed by Dr. Gaius Baltar and subverted by Cylon operative Number Six as a back door into such systems.
At the time of the Cylon Attack, Galactica was 50 years old and she was undergoing formal decommissioning from the Colonial fleet following her retirement as an operational vessel. She had been due to become a museum ship; a combined living museum commemorating the Cylon War and educational centre. Due to its age, the ship is unofficially known as "The Bucket" by the crews of both the Pegasus and Galactica. Another nickname used by the crew is "The Big G" (a possible reference to the U.S. Navy sailors' nickname for USS Enterprise, "The Big E").
Since the Cylon attack, in keeping with the concept of the original 1978 series, the Galactica has become both protector and provider to a small fleet of civilian vessels searching for the legendary planet Earth.
Galactica took heavy damage during its raid on New Caprica, and its hull is now clearly darker with burn marks and missile hits. The starboard hangar deck, which had been converted into a museum prior to Galactica's intended decommissioning, was used to house civilian refugees from New Caprica after the evacuation, and earned the nickname "Camp Oilslick". In "A Measure of Salvation", which followed "Torn", Major Lee Adama informs the Galactica that their Raptor is now on approach to the starboard landing deck, which indicates that the starboard flight pod is starting flight operations again.
In the episode "The Passage" the Galactica was once again used to house fleet passengers during the trip through the intense gas cloud, leaving the fleet vessels to be flown by skeleton crews with radiation medication. It is unclear as to whether the passengers have been returned to their vessels between "The Passage" and "The Eye of Jupiter".
In the episode "The Woman King", it was shown that 300 additional passengers were moved to the starboard hangar deck, and the area was given the name "Dogville" by the Galactica crew. Upon arriving, each passenger was checked for medical issues by civilian doctors and medical staff. Also now housed in the starboard hangar deck is a makeshift bar called "Joe's". It is located behind a storage area, and has a pool-like table, Pyramid arcade area, and a Mark II Viper hanging above the bar. It was first seen in the episode "Taking a Break from All Your Worries".
The Galactica has been seen taking hits from multiple nuclear weapons. Though the ship suffered damage, it was still operational. It is unclear exactly how well rated the Cylon nuclear weapons are versus the Galactica's armor.

The Tuck Pendleton Pod (Innerspace)

Innerspace is an Academy Award-winning 1987 science fiction comedy film directed by Joe Dante and produced by Steven Spielberg. The film was based on the classic 1966 sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage. It stars Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Martin Short, and Kevin McCarthy with music composed by Jerry Goldsmith.

Plot synopsis
Down on his luck Navy pilot Tuck Pendleton (Dennis Quaid) is selected as a guinea pig to participate in an experimental project which will place him in a submersible pod, to be shrunk to microscopic size and injected into the body of a rabbit. Immediately after being miniaturized, the experiment takes a bad turn when the lab is attacked. The experiment supervisor Ozzie Wexler escapes with miniaturized Pendleton. After sustaining a fatal gunshot wound, he injects Tuck and the pod into hypochondriac Safeway clerk Jack Putter (Martin Short).
After establishing contact with his new host, Tuck must figure out how to get out of Jack's "Innerspace" before he runs out of oxygen.
After making contact with the lab, Tuck and Jack are informed that there is another group of scientists and capitalists attempting to accomplish the same goal of miniaturization for use in their scheme to sell the technology for use in espionage. The raid on the lab was to steal a chip vital to the process. While at a restraunt with Tuck's girlfriend Jack is kidnapped by Mr. Igoe and carried over the shoulder to a meat truck.
Now that they have the chip, they miniaturize Mr. Igoe, and send him into the body of Jack, to extract a second chip required for re-enlargement.
Igoe's craft eventually finds Tuck's pod, but is disabled after Tuck jamms one of the pod's arms into a thrust port. Mr. Igoe abandons his craft using an ejection system, and attempts to crack the pod windows using a drill on his exosuit. Igoe is killed, however, when Jack's stomach ulcer acts up, digesting him.
With little time left to spare, Tuck's pod is removed from Jack and is enlarged.

The Alien Mothership (Close Encounters Of The Third Kind)

A mother ship is a vessel or aircraft that carries a smaller vessel or aircraft that operates independently from it. Examples include bombers converted to carry experimental aircraft to altitudes where they can conduct their research (such as the B-52 carrying the X-15), or ships that carry small submarines to an area of ocean to be explored (such as the Atlantis II carrying the Alvin). The mothership may also recover the smaller craft, or may go its own way after releasing it.
The term mother ship dates back to the nineteenth century whaling trade when small, fast ships were used to chase and kill whales. The dead meat from several boats was then brought back to the larger, slower ship for processing and storage until the return to land. This model enabled a far more efficient method of whaling. Though whaling is much lower-scale than in earlier days, the single large storage ship model is still used extensively by fishermen. Such ships are also known as factory ships.
In many languages the word "mother ship" refers to an aircraft carrier.
The mother ship concept was used in moon landings performed in the 1960s. Both the unsuccessful American 1962 Ranger landers and the successful Soviet 1966 Luna landers were unmanned spherical capsules ejected at the last moment from mother ships that had carried them to the Moon and crashed onto its surface. In the manned Apollo program, astronauts in the lunar module separated from the command module in lunar orbit, descended to the lunar surface, and returned to dock in a lunar orbit rendezvous with the command module once more for a ride home to Earth.

In science fiction
The term has achieved prominence in science fiction and in UFO lore, which extend the idea to apply to spaceships serving as the heart of a fleet. The concept of mothership (almost always spelled as a single word) clearly implies that the other ships in the fleet are dependent on the mothership for at least some services. Motherships are essentially the sci-fi equivalent to modern flagships. Typically, a mothership will take up station in an area and remain there for long periods, while smaller ships sortie to interesting destinations. Sometimes a mothership is large enough to operate alone, or is so huge that it contains a fleet in its body.
Roles played in a fleet by a mothership may include:
in-flight construction of new, smaller ships
supply and repair tender
troop transport
carrier (of fighters, shuttles, etc.)
supplementary propulsion (i.e., multi-ship warp field, hyperdrive, etc.)
weapon of mass destruction
Examples of motherships include:
The gigantic 3 mile wide mothership in the 1983 mini-series V co-ordinated an invasion of Earth
The Battlestar of Battlestar Galactica (and its 2003 remake), which is a mothership to colonial fighter craft, and the Cylon Basestar which is a starside, mobile fortress in the Cylon fleet.
The huge mothership in Close Encounters of the Third Kind carried smaller scout craft.
The moon-sized alien starship in Independence Day launched an invasion of Earth by deploying a fleet of surface-adapted destroyers.
The SDF-1 Macross super dimension fortress in The Super Dimension Fortress Macross could house and support an entire city inside its hull. It also carries several squadrons of variable fighters. The massive Zentradi mothership in the same series supported a battle fleet of 4.8 million capital ships, each equivalent in size to the SDF-1.
The Mon Calamari cruisers of the Rebel Alliance and the Imperial Star Destroyers are some of the many motherships in the Star Wars movies, carrying fighter craft and shuttles.
The immense colony ship in the game Homeworld supported a constantly growing fleet of fighters and capital ships and carried thousands of people in suspended animation.
The Goa'uld Ha'tak-class vessel in Stargate SG-1 is often referred to as a "mothership", as it carries a complement of Death Gliders; the Earth USAF Prometheus and Daedalus Class battlecruisers may also be considered to be "motherships" due to the fact that they carry a complement of F-302s, even though they are never referred to as such.
The Wraith Hive Ships in Stargate Atlantis can carry thousands of Wraith Darts and are about 13 times as large as the Earth Daedalus class battlecruisers. However, they lack intergalactic hyperdrive and shield capabilities.
The Scrin Mothership from Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars fires the Catalyst Cannon which creates a powerful chain reaction destroying everything caught in the blast.
The Protoss Mothership from StarCraft II, among other abilities employs the Planet Cracker, a sustained downward firing beam that annihilates everything beneath it.
One of the Aeon Illuminate experimental units in Supreme Commander, the Czar, although not referred to as a mothership is a flying battle fortress that boasts multiple weapons, a powerful downward-firing Quantum Beam and the ability to house, refuel and repair any fighter craft.
The Great Fox in Star Fox 64 and subsequent games serves as a mothership for the Star Fox team, housing spare fighters, tanks, and weapons.
Each race in the MMORPG Eve Online has a mothership class ship. This is the second largest ship class currently (2007) in the game after titans. Each mothership can launch and control a large number of drones and fighters and is so massive that it cannot dock in stations.

In music
Mothership is a new compilation album by Led Zeppelin that was released on November 13, 2007.
In the work of p-funk bands such as Parliament and Funkadelic, the mothership is the source of all funk. In mid-70s live shows a model UFO mothership was lowered from the roof of the auditorium to the stage at the climax of the song Mothership Connection.
Also the name of a song by the English trancecore band Enter Shikari.

On the Internet
Mothership is a gay dating and social networking website for men from the UK and Ireland. It can be found at www.mother-ship.com.

The Shadow Vessel (Babylon 5)

Babylon 5 is an epic American science fiction television series created, produced and largely written by J. Michael Straczynski. The show centers on the Babylon 5 space station; a focal point for politics, diplomacy, and conflict in the late 2250s and early 2260s. With its prominent use of pre-planned story arcs, the series was often described as a "novel for television."
The pilot movie premiered on February 22, 1993. The regular series aired from January 26, 1994 and ran for five full seasons, winning two Hugos for Best Dramatic Presentation and two Emmy awards - for makeup and visual effects. The show spawned six television movies and a spin-off series, Crusade, which aired in 1999 and ran for thirteen episodes. A straight-to-DVD movie about selected characters from the series was released on July 31, 2007.

Concept
Having worked on a number of television science fiction shows which had regularly gone over-budget, creator J. Michael Straczynski concluded that a lack of long-term planning was to blame, and set about looking at ways in which a series could be done responsibly. Taking note of the lessons of mainstream television, which brought stories to a centralised location such as a hospital, police station, or law office, he decided that instead of "[going] in search of new worlds, building them anew each week," a fixed space station setting would keep costs at a reasonable level. A fan of sagas such as the Foundation series, Childhood's End, The Lord of the Rings, and Dune, Straczynski wondered why no one had done a television series with the same epic sweep, and concurrently with the first idea started developing the concept for a vastly-ambitious epic covering massive battles and other universe-changing events. Realizing that both could be done in a single series, he began to sketch the initial outline of what would become Babylon 5.
Straczynski set five goals for Babylon 5. He said that the show "would have to be good science fiction" as well as good television ("rarely are SF shows both good SF and good TV; there're (sic) generally one or the other"); it would have to do for science fiction television what Hill Street Blues had done for police dramas, by taking an adult approach to the subject; it would have to be reasonably budgeted, and "it would have to look unlike anything ever seen before on TV, presenting individual stories against a much broader canvas." He further stressed that his approach was "to take SF seriously, to build characters for grown-ups (not a Wesley in the bunch), to incorporate real science but keep the characters at the center of the story." Some of the staples of television SF were also out of the question (the show would have "no kids or cute robots"). The idea was not to present a utopian future, but one with greed and homelessness; one where characters grow, develop, live, and die; one where not everything was the same at the end of the day's events. Citing Mark Twain as an influence, Straczynski said he wanted the show to be a mirror to the real world and to covertly teach.

Production

Format
The series consists of a five-year story arc taking place over five seasons of 22 episodes each. Unlike most television shows at the time, Babylon 5 was conceived as a "novel for television," with a defined beginning, middle, and end. Many of the tie-in novels, comic books, and short stories were also developed to play a significant canonical part in the overall story. Described as a "window on the future" by producer John Iacovelli, the story is set in the 23rd century on a large space station named "Babylon 5" - a five-mile-long, 2.5 million-ton rotating colony designed as a gathering place for the sentient species of the galaxy, in order to foster peace through diplomacy, trade, and cooperation. Instead acting as a center of political intrigue and conflict, the station becomes the linchpin of a massive interstellar conflict. This is reflected in the opening monologue of each episode, which includes the words "last, best hope for peace" in season one, changing to "last, best hope for victory" by season three.
The cost of the series totalled around $90 million for 110 episodes.

Writing
Babylon 5 was largely written by creator and showrunner J. Michael Straczynski, who scripted every episode in the third and fourth seasons; according to Straczynski, a feat never before accomplished in American television. Other writers to have contributed scripts to the show include Peter David, Neil Gaiman, Kathryn M. Drennan, Lawrence G. DiTillio, D.C. Fontana, and David Gerrold. Harlan Ellison, a creative consultant on the show, received story credits for two episodes. Each writer was informed of the over-arching storyline, enabling the show to be produced consistently under-budget. The rules of production were strict; scripts were written six episodes in advance, and changes could not be made once production had started.
Though conceived as a whole, it was necessary to adjust the plotline to accommodate external influences. Each of the characters in the series was written with a "trap door" into their background so that, in the event of an actor's unexpected departure from the series, the character could be written out with minimal impact on the storyline. In the words of Straczynski, "As a writer, doing a long-term story, it'd be dangerous and short-sighted for me to construct the story without trap doors for every single character. [...] That was one of the big risks going into a long-term storyline which I considered long in advance." The character of Talia Winters was to have undergone a transformation into a Psi-Corps agent, having been revealed as a "sleeper," whose true personality was buried subconsciously, and who acted as a spy, observing the events on the station and the actions of her command staff. When Thompson left the series, this revelation was used to drop the character from the series.
Ratings for Babylon 5 continued to rise during the show's third season, but going into the fourth season, the impending demise of network PTEN left a fifth year in doubt. Unable to get word one way or the other from parent company Warner Bros., and unwilling to short-change the story and the fans, Straczynski began preparing modifications to the fourth season in order to allow for both eventualities. Straczynski identified three primary plot-threads which would require resolution: the Shadow war, Earth's slide into a dictatorship, and a series of sub-threads which branched off from those. Estimating they would still take around 27 episodes to resolve without having the season feel rushed, the solution came when the TNT network commissioned two Babylon 5 made-for-television films. Several hours of material was thus able to be moved into the films, including a three-episode arc which would deal with the background to the Earth/Minbari war, and a sub-thread which would have set up the sequel series, Crusade. Further standalone episodes and plot-threads were dropped from season four, which could be inserted into Crusade, or the fifth season, were it to be given the greenlight. The intended series finale, "Sleeping in Light," was filmed during season four as a precaution against cancellation. When word came that TNT had picked up Babylon 5, this was moved to the end of season five and replaced with a newly-filmed season four finale.

Visuals
In anticipation of future HDTV broadcasts and Laserdisc releases, rather than the usual 4:3 format, the series was shot in 16:9, with the image cut down to 4:3 for initial television transmissions. At a time when using models and miniatures was still the norm, Babylon 5 was also one of the first television shows to use computer technology in creating visual effects, using Amiga-based Video Toasters at first, and later Pentium and DEC Alpha-based systems. It also attempted to respect Newtonian physics in its effects sequences, with particular emphasis on the effects of inertia.
Foundation Imaging provided the special effects for the pilot movie (for which it won an Emmy) and the first three seasons of the show. When a further deal was unable to be reached with Foundation, the effects for seasons four and five were provided in-house by Netter Digital, using similar technology and a number of former Foundation employees. The Emmy-winning alien make-up was provided by Optic Nerve Studios.

Music and scoring
The original pilot movie had music composed by Stewart Copeland of The Police. When the show was picked up as a weekly series, Copeland was unavailable, so Christopher Franke of Tangerine Dream was hired. Franke was the composer for all five seasons of Babylon 5, three of the television movies, and the Lost Tales DVD. When Straczynski obtained funds to create a new producer's cut of the pilot movie, the original Copeland score was replaced with a new score by Franke. Over thirty soundtrack CDs have been issued featuring Franke's Babylon 5 compositions, including The Best of Babylon 5, released in 2002.

The Babylon 5 station
The Babylon 5 space station is a modified version of an O'Neill Cylinder, revolving to provide artificial gravity. The center of the cylinder is a hollowed-out circular section, between a half and one-mile across, and includes fields, hydroponic gardens, and a transport tube which runs from one end of the station to the other. The station features a number of independent, interconnected sectors, each designed with a different look in order to give the show a non-claustrophobic feel. Living areas are designed to accommodate the various alien species featured in the show, with different atmospheres and alternate levels of gravity. Human visitors to the alien sectors are often shown using breathing equipment and taking other measures in order to tolerate these conditions. As the series begins, the station is still under construction, with only certain parts fully-completed. Depending upon the level and sector, sectors can be either in daylight or night. On the outermost levels, the viewports are in panels on the floor, providing a view into space beneath the characters' feet.
The station is situated in the Epsilon Eridani binary star system, located at the fifth Lagrangian point between the fictional planet Epsilon III and its moon. Within the show, the station's three predecessors (the original Babylon station, Babylon 2 and Babylon 3) were all sabotaged and destroyed before their completion. The fourth station, Babylon 4, vanished twenty-four hours after it became fully operational.

Civilizations
At the beginning of the series, five dominant civilizations are represented. The dominant species are the Humans, Minbari, Narn, Centauri, and the Vorlons. "The Shadows" and their various allies are malevolent species who appear later in the series. Several dozen less powerful races form the League of Non-Aligned Worlds, including the Drazi, Brakiri, Vree, Markab, and Pak'ma'ra.
While the original pilot movie featured some aliens which were puppets and animatronics, the decision was made early on in the show's production to portray most alien species as humanoid in appearance. Barring isolated appearances, fully computer-generated aliens were discounted as an idea due to the "massive rendering power" required. Long-term use of puppets and animatronics was also discounted due to the technological limitations in providing convincing interaction with the human actors ("if you want any real emotion from the character, you're going to have to have an actor inside.")

Languages
There are three primary languages used on the Babylon 5 station: English, as well as the fictional Centauri and Interlac. English is mentioned explicitly as the "human language of commerce," and is the baseline language of the station (written signs appearing in all three languages). Other human and alien languages do exist in the Babylon 5 universe, though hearing them spoken is uncommon; when aliens of the same species are speaking to one another, the words heard are English, though it is presumed they are speaking their native tongue. Only when in the presence of humans can the alien language be heard, to stress that the humans cannot understand what is being said. With the exception of the Minbari tongue, few other alien languages are actually heard aloud on a regular basis.
The Gaim, Pak'ma'ra and Vorlons do not speak directly in English; in the case of the Pak'ma'ra, either because they refuse to learn any language other than their own, or because they are incapable of making human sounds. The Gaim, Pak'ma'ra and the Vorlons instead make use of real-time translation devices.
The principal human characters speak with an American English accent, with the exception of Marcus Cole, who speaks with a distinct British accent. Susan Ivanova, born in Russia, speaks with an American accent, as her character was raised and schooled outside Russia. Her father speaks with a distinct Russian accent, as does her brother. Various other minor human characters speak English with recognizable regional accents. Ambassador Delenn and Londo Mollari, both alien characters, speak with distinct accents similar to Slavic. Londo's accent was developed independently by actor Peter Jurasik and was imitated by William Forward, who played Lord Refa. Straczynski has described Londo's accent as being that of the "old school" of the Centauri Imperial Court.

Use of the Internet
The show employed internet marketing to create a buzz among online readers far in advance of the airing of the pilot episode, with Straczynski participating in online communities on USENET (in the rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated newsgroup), and the GEnie and Compuserve systems before the Web came together as it exists today. Also during this time, Warner Bros. executive Jim Moloshok created and distributed electronic trading cards to help advertise the series. In 1995, Warner Bros. started the Official Babylon 5 Website on the now defunct Pathfinder portal. In September 1995, they hired a fan to take over the site and move it to its own domain name, and to oversee the Keyword B5 area on America Online.

Broadcast history
The pilot movie, The Gathering, premiered on February 22, 1993, and the regular series initially aired from January 26, 1994 through November 25, 1998, first on the short-lived Prime Time Entertainment Network, then on cable network TNT. The show aired every week in the United Kingdom on Channel 4 without a break; as a result the last four or five episodes of the early seasons were shown in the UK before the U.S.
The pilot movie debuted in the United States with strong viewing figures, achieving a 9.7 in the Nielsen national syndication rankings. The series proper debuted with a 6.8 rating/10 share. Figures dipped in its second week, and while it posted a solid 5.0 rating/8 share, with an increase in several major markets, ratings for the first season continued to fall, to a low of 3.4 during reruns. Ratings continued to remain low-to-middling throughout the first four seasons, but Babylon 5 scored well with the demographics required to attract the leading national sponsors and saved up to $300,000 per episode by shooting off the studio lot, therefore remaining profitable for the network. However, the fifth season, shown on cable network TNT, garnered "disappointing" ratings. In the United Kingdom, Babylon 5 was one of the better-rated U.S. television shows on Channel 4, and achieved high audience Appreciation Indexes, with season four's "Endgame" achieving the rare feat of beating the prime-time soap operas for first position.

Cast

Regular cast
Mary Kay Adams as Na'Toth (season two)
Richard Biggs as Dr Stephen Franklin
Bruce Boxleitner as John Sheridan (seasons two - five)
Julie Caitlin Brown as Na'Toth (season one)
Jason Carter as Marcus Cole (seasons three - four)
Claudia Christian as Susan Ivanova (seasons one - four)
Jeff Conaway as Zack Allan (recurring in season two, starring in seasons three - five)
Jerry Doyle as Michael Garibaldi
Mira Furlan as Delenn
Stephen Furst as Vir Cotto
Peter Jurasik as Londo Mollari
Andreas Katsulas as G'Kar
Michael O'Hare as Jeffrey Sinclair (season one, recurring in season three)
Bill Mumy as Lennier
Robert Rusler as Warren Keffer (season two)
Tracy Scoggins as Elizabeth Lochley (season five)
Patricia Tallman as Lyta Alexander (pilot, recurring in seasons two - three, starring in seasons four - five)
Andrea Thompson as Talia Winters (seasons one - two)

Recurring guests
Wayne Alexander as Lorien / Shiv'kala the Drakh / "Sebastian"
Ardwight Chamberlain (voice) as Kosh (seasons one - three)
Tim Choate as Zathras
Joshua Cox as David Corwin
Robin Atkin Downes as Byron
William Forward as Lord Antono Refa
Melissa Gilbert as Anna Sheridan
Walter Koenig as Alfred Bester
Wortham Krimmer as Emperor Cartagia
Damian London as Regent Virini
Marjorie Monaghan as Number One
Julia Nickson-Soul as Catherine Sakai
Marshall Teague as Ta'Lon
Louis Turenne as Brother Theo
John Vickery as Neroon / Mr. Welles
Ed Wasser as Morden
Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. as William Edgars
In addition, several other actors have filled more than one minor role on the series. Kim Strauss played the Drazi Ambassador in four episodes, as well as nine other characters in ten more episodes. Some actors had difficulty dealing with the application of prosthetics required to play some of the alien characters. The producers therefore used the same group of people (as many as twelve) in various mid-level speaking roles, taking full head and body casts from each. The group came to be unofficially known by the production as the "Babylon 5 Alien Rep Group."

Plot summary
The five seasons of the series each correspond to one fictional sequential year in the period 2258-2262. As the series starts, the Babylon 5 station is welcoming ambassadors from various races in the galaxy. Earth has just barely survived an accidental war with the powerful Minbari, who, despite their superior technology, mysteriously surrendered at the brink of the destruction of the human race (the Battle of the Line).

Season one - 2258
During 2258, Commander Jeffrey Sinclair is in charge of the station. Much of the story revolves around his gradual discovery that it was his capture by the Minbari at the Battle of the Line which ended the war against Earth. Upon capturing Sinclair, the Minbari came to believe that Valen, a great Minbari leader and hero of the last Minbari-Shadow war, had been reincarnated as the Commander. Concluding that others of their species had been, and were being, reborn as humans, and in obedience to the edict that Minbari do not kill one another, they stopped the war just when Earth's final defenses were on the verge of collapse.
Ambassador Delenn is gradually revealed to be a member of the mysterious and powerful Grey Council, the planetary legislature of the Minbari. Towards the end of 2258, she begins the transformation into a Minbari-human hybrid, ostensibly to build a bridge between the humans and Minbari. The year ends with the assassination of Earth Alliance President Santiago, and with the escalation of tensions between the Narn and Centauri, after a Narn outpost in Quadrant 37 is completely destroyed by an as-yet-unidentified third party.

Season two - 2259
At the beginning of 2259, Captain John Sheridan replaces Sinclair as the military governor of the station. He and the command staff learn that the death of President Santiago was actually an assassination masterminded by Vice President Clark (who then assumed the Presidency). A conflict develops between the Babylon 5 command staff and the Psi Corps, an increasingly autocratic organization to which all human telepaths must belong. Commander Ivanova, the second-in-command of the station, is secretly a latent telepath who has illicitly avoided registering with the Psi Corps.
The Shadows, an ancient and extremely powerful race who have recently emerged from hibernation, are revealed to be the cause of a variety of mysterious and disturbing events, including the attack on Quadrant 37 at the end of 2258. Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari unknowingly enlists their aid through his association with a mysterious Mr. Morden in the ongoing territorial squabbles against the Narn. After full-scale war breaks out, the Centauri eventually conquer Narn in a brutal attack involving mass drivers, outlawed weapons of mass destruction. A power struggle amongst the Centauri ensues after their emperor dies. Towards the end of the year, the Clark administration begins to show increasingly-totalitarian characteristics, clamping down on dissent and restricting freedom of speech. The Vorlons are revealed to be the basis of legends about angels on various worlds, including Earth, and are the ancient enemies of the Shadows.

Season three - 2260
A conspiracy develops between the Psi Corps and President Clark, whose government has discovered Shadow vessels buried in Earth's solar system, and is beginning to harness their advanced technology. The Clark administration continues to become increasingly xenophobic and totalitarian, and uses a military incident as an excuse to declare martial law. This triggers a war of independence on Mars, which had long had a strained political relationship with Earth. Babylon 5 also declares independence from Earth, along with several other outlying Earth Alliance colonies. In response, the Earth Alliance attempts to retake Babylon 5 by force, but with the aid of the Minbari, who have allied with the station against the growing Shadow threat, the attack is repelled.
Becoming concerned over the Shadows' growing influence amongst his people, Centauri ambassador Londo Mollari attempts to sever ties with them. Mr. Morden, the Shadows' human representative, tricks him into restoring the partnership by engineering the murder of Mollari's mistress. Open warfare breaks out between the Shadows and an alliance led by Babylon 5 and the Minbari. Genetic manipulation by the Vorlons is discovered to be the source of human telepathy, as it is later discovered that Shadow ships are vulnerable to telepathic attack. Displeased at the Vorlons' lack of direct action against the Shadows, Captain John Sheridan goads Vorlon ambassador Kosh Naranek into launching an attack against their mutual enemy. Kosh's deeds lead to his subsequent assassination by the Shadows.
Upon returning to the station, former commander Jeffrey Sinclair transforms into a Minbari and, using an alien artifact discovered on the nearby planet Epsilon III, travels back in time 1,000 years with the stolen Babylon 4 station, to use the station as a base of operations against the Shadows in the first Minbari-Shadow war. He is subsequently revealed to be the actual Valen of Minbari legend, rather than a reincarnation. Spurred by the reappearance of his assumed-dead wife (who now works for the Shadows), Sheridan is provoked into visiting Z'ha'dum, the Shadow homeworld, in an attempt by them to recruit him, but he instead destroys their largest city in a kamikaze nuclear attack, and is last seen jumping into a miles-deep pit to escape the explosion.

Season four - 2261
In 2261, the Vorlons join the Shadow War, but become a concern for the alliance when they begin destroying entire planets which they deem to have been "influenced" by the Shadows. Disturbed by this turn of events, Babylon 5 recruits several other powerful and ancient races (the First Ones) to their cause, against both the Shadows and the Vorlons. Captain John Sheridan returns to the station after escaping the destruction of Z'ha'dum, but at a price: barring illness or injury, he has only 20 years left to live.
Centauri Emperor Cartagia has forged a relationship with the Shadows. Londo Mollari engineers the assassination of Cartagia and repudiates his relationship with the Shadows, killing Morden and destroying the Shadow vessels based on the Centauri homeworld, thus saving his planet from destruction by the Vorlons. Aided by the other ancient races, and several younger ones, Babylon 5 lures both the Vorlons and the Shadows into an immense battle, during which the Vorlons and Shadows reveal that they have been left as guardians of the younger races, but due to philosophical differences, ended up using them as pawns in their endless wars throughout the ages. The younger races reject their continued interference, and the Vorlons and Shadows, along with the remaining First Ones, agree to depart the galaxy forever.
Minbar is gripped by a brief civil war. Free of the overriding military threat from the Shadows, an alliance led by Babylon 5 frees Earth from totalitarian rule by President Clark in a massive civil war. This culminates in the suicide of the president and the restoration of peaceful government. Mars is granted full independence, and John Sheridan agrees to step down as commander of Babylon 5, becoming president of the new Interstellar Alliance, and continuing his command of the Rangers, who are to act as a galactic equivalent of United Nations peacekeepers.
The events of 100, 500, 1000, and one million years into the future are revealed, depicting Babylon 5's lasting influence throughout history. Amongst the events shown are the political aftermath of the 2261 civil war, a subsequent nuclear war on Earth involving a new totalitarian government in the year AD 2762, the resulting fall of Earth into a pre-industrial society, the loss and restoration of humanity's knowledge of space travel, and the final evolution of mankind into energy beings similar to the First Ones, after which Earth's sun goes nova.

Season five - 2262
In 2262, Earthforce Captain Elizabeth Lochley is appointed to command Babylon 5. The station grows in its role as a sanctuary for rogue telepaths running from the Psi Corps, resulting in a violent conflict. G'Kar, former Narn ambassador to Babylon 5, becomes a spiritual leader after publishing a book he wrote while incarcerated during the Narn-Centauri War. The Drakh, former allies of the Shadows who remained in the galaxy, take control of Regent Virini on Centauri Prime, then incite a war between the Centauri and the Interstellar Alliance, in order to isolate the Centauri from the Alliance, and gain a malleable homeworld for themselves.
Centauri Prime is consequently decimated by Narn and Drazi warships, and Londo Mollari becomes emperor, accepting a Drakh keeper under threat of the complete nuclear destruction of the planet. Portions of the end of his reign are seen in various time-travel sequences throughout the series; one such sequence shows Mollari and former nemesis (and later friend) G'Kar dying at each other's throats in an act of mutual suicide. Vir Cotto, Mollari's loyal and more moral aide, succeeds him as emperor, free of Drakh influence. Sheridan and Delenn marry and move to Minbar, along with the headquarters of the Interstellar Alliance. Twenty years later, on the verge of death, Sheridan takes one final trip to the now-obsolete Babylon 5 station before its decommissioning. Sheridan apparently dies, but is claimed by the First Ones, who invite him to join them on a journey beyond the rim of the galaxy.
The Babylon 5 station is completely destroyed in a planned demolition.

Themes
Throughout its run, Babylon 5 found ways to portray themes relevant to modern and historical social issues. It marked several firsts in television science fiction, such as the exploration of the political and social landscapes of the first human colonies, their interactions with Earth, and the underlying tensions. Babylon 5 was also one of the first television science fiction shows to denotatively refer to a same-sex relationship; in the show, homosexuality is as much of an issue as "being left-handed or right-handed." Unrequited love is a explored as source of pain for the characters, though not all the relationships end unhappily.

Order vs chaos; authoritarianism vs free will
The clash between order and chaos, and the people caught in between, plays an important role in Babylon 5. The conflict between two unimaginably-powerful older races, the Vorlons and the Shadows, is represented as a battle between two competing ideologies, each seeking to turn the humans and the other younger races to their beliefs. The Vorlons represent an authoritarian philosophy: you will do what we tell you to, because we tell you to do it. The Vorlon question, "Who are you?" focuses on identity as a catalyst for shaping personal goals; the intention is not to solicit a "correct" answer, but to "tear down the artifices we construct around ourselves until we're left facing ourselves, not our roles." The Shadows represent a philosophy of evolution through fire, of sowing the seeds of conflict in order to engender progress. The question the Shadows ask is "What do you want?" In contrast to the Vorlons, they place personal desire and ambition first, using it to shape identity, encouraging conflict between groups who choose to serve their own glory or profit. The representation of order and chaos was informed by the Babylonian myth that the universe was born in the conflict between both. The climax of this conflict comes with the younger races' exposing of the Vorlons' and the Shadows' "true faces" and the rejection of both philosophies, heralding the dawn of a new age without their interference.
The notion that the war was about "killing your parents" is echoed in the portrayal of the civil war between the human colonies and Earth. Deliberately dealing in historical and political metaphor, with particular emphasis upon McCarthyism and HUAC, the Earth Alliance becomes increasingly-authoritarian, eventually sliding into a dictatorship. The show examines the impositions on civil liberties which aid its rise, and the self-delusion of a populace which believes its moral superiority will never allow a dictatorship to come to power, until it is too late. The successful rebellion led by the Babylon 5 station results in the restoration of a democratic government, and true autonomy for Mars and the colonies.

War and peace
The Babylon 5 universe deals with numerous armed conflicts which rage on an interstellar scale. The story begins in the aftermath of a war which brought the human race to the brink of extinction, caused by a misunderstanding during a first contact situation. The Babylon 5 station is subsequently built in order to foster peace through diplomacy, during its first two seasons described as the "last, best hope for peace" in the opening credits monologue. Wars between separate alien civilizations are featured; the conflict between the Narn and the Centauri is followed from its beginnings as a minor territorial dispute amplified by historical animosity, through to its end, in which weapons of mass destruction are employed to subjugate and enslave an entire planet. The war is an attempt to portray a more sobering kind of conflict than usually seen on science fiction television; informed by the events of the first Gulf War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Soviet invasion of Prague, the intent was to recreate these moments when "the world held its breath" and the emotional core of the conflict was the disbelief that the situation could have occurred at all, and the desperation to find a way to bring it to an end. By the start of the third season, the opening monologue has changed to say that the Babylon 5 station is the "last, best hope for victory," indicating that while peace is a laudable accomplishment, it can also mean a capitulation to an enemy intent on committing horrendous acts, and that "peace is a byproduct of victory against those who do not want peace."
The Shadow War also features prominently in the show, during which an advanced alien species attempts to sow the seeds of conflict in order to promote technological and cultural advancement. The gradual discovery of the scheme and the rebellion against it serve as the backdrop to the first three seasons, but also as a metaphor for the war within ourselves; the concurrent limiting of civil liberties and Earth's descent into a dictatorship are "shadow wars" of their own. In ending the Shadow War before the conclusion of the series, the show was able to more fully explore its aftermath, and it is this "war at home" which forms the bulk of the remaining two seasons. The struggle for independence between Mars and Earth culminates with a civil war between the human colonies (led by the Babylon 5 station) and the home planet. Choosing Mars as both the spark for the civil war, and the staging ground for its dramatic conclusion, enabled the viewer to understand the conflict more fully than had it involved an anonymous colony orbiting a distant star. The conflict, and the reasons behind it, were informed by Nazism, McCarthyism and the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the unraveling of the former Balkan country also served as partial inspiration for another civil war, which involved the alien Minbari.
The post-war landscape has its roots in the Reconstruction; the attempt to resolve the issues of the American Civil War after the conflict had ended, and this struggle for survival in a changed world was also informed by works such as Alas, Babylon, a novel dealing with the after-effects of a nuclear war on a small American town. The show expresses that the end of these wars is not an end to war itself. Events shown hundreds of years into the show's future tell of wars which will once again bring the human race to the edge of annihilation, demonstrating that mankind will not change, and the best that can be hoped for after it falls is that it climbs a little higher each time, until it can one day "take [its] place among the stars, teaching those who follow."

Religion
Acknowledging the continued existence of faith, even in a science fiction setting, many of Babylon 5's characters have profound spiritual or religious beliefs, reflecting that throughout history, religion has been present in one form or another and will remain so even in a far-future rich with technological advancement. Many of Earth's contemporary religions are shown to still be in existence, and the main human characters often have religious convictions, including Catholicism, Jesuit beliefs, Judaism and the fictional Foundationism, which was created specifically for the show. Earth's religions have also had to deal with the existence of extraterrestrial belief systems, resulting in a cross-pollination of ideas, and the factionization or destruction of some, while in the show's third season, a community of Dominican monks takes up residence on the Babylon 5 station, in order to learn what the other races throughout the universe call God, and to come to a better understanding of the different religions through study at close quarters. Alien beliefs in the show range from the Centauri's Bacchanalian-influenced religions, of which there are up to seventy different denominations, to the more pantheistic, as with the Narn and Minbari religions.
Depictions of religion on the show, human and alien, sometimes come subtly, or are the main theme of an episode; the first season episode "The Parliament of Dreams" is a conventional "showcase" for religion, in which each species on the Babylon 5 station has an opportunity to demonstrate its beliefs, and "Passing Through Gethsemane" focuses on a specific position of Catholic dogma, as well as concepts of justice, vengeance and biblical forgiveness. Other treatments have been more contentious, such as the David Gerrold-scripted "Believers", in which alien parents would rather see their son die than undergo a life-saving operation. By presenting the viewer with characters' spiritual beliefs, motivations are supplied for what might otherwise be construed as arbitrary behavior; these motivations are not necessarily based on truth, leading to misconceptions which in due course become important plot points. A typical question for Babylon 5 to present is a series of events which can initially be interpreted as having either a scientific or a spiritual explanation; while ultimately suggesting the former in most cases, occasionally the issue is left open. In others, where religious belief is an integral part of the storyline, the show attempts to balance all sides of the argument, as in "Soul Hunter", where the spiritual concept explored is that of the immortal soul, and whether after death it is destroyed, reincarnated or simply does not exist. The character arguing the latter, Doctor Stephen Franklin, is often put into the more spiritual storylines, as his scientific rationality presents a contrast with the unexplainable which creates dramatic conflict, and while the show's creator and main writer identifies as an atheist, undercurrents of religions as diverse as Buddhism have been noted as imbuing many of the characters' words. Passages, often the same ones, take on distinct meanings to viewers of differing faiths; the show ultimately expresses ideas which cross religious boundaries.

Dreams and visions
The subliminal and subconscious play a very significant role in the Babylon 5 franchise. Every single major character experiences, on at least one occasion, some altered state of consciousness in which he or she receives some sort of important mental message. This could either be one that further fleshes out the character for the benefit of the viewer, or one of transcendental and transpersonal nature that anticipates important further developments in the storyline. Some of these signs and portents resemble lucid dreams, but many are quite bizarre and "dreamlike," frequently in a spiritual context.

Addiction
Substance abuse and its impact on human personalities also plays a significant role in the Babylon 5 storyline. The station's security chief, Michael Garibaldi is a textbook relapsing-remitting alcoholic of the binge drinking type, who physically and socially recovers only at the end of season five. Dr. Stephen Franklin develops an (initially unrecognized) addiction to injectable stimulant drugs while trying to cope with the chronic stress and work overload in Medlab, and wanders off to the homeless and deprived in Brown Sector, where he suffers through a severe withdrawal syndrome. Executive Officer Susan Ivanova mentions that her father became an alcoholic after her mother had committed suicide after having been drugged by the authorities over a number of years. Among the aliens, Londo Mollari is at least a heavy abuser of alcohol, mostly in the form of the Centauri national drink, Brivari.
Numerous other references to substance abuse and drug dealing are scattered throughout the storyline, including "Dust," a white powder with a black-market presence comparable to cocaine. "Dust" turns out to be a "designer drug" developed by Psi Corps and placed into the black-market as an experiment to see if psychic abilities could be brought out in "mundanes" (non-psychics).

Original series

Episodes
Each season shared its name with an episode that was central to that season's plot.
Season one: Signs and Portents
Season two: The Coming of Shadows
Season three: Point of No Return
Season four: No Surrender, No Retreat
Season five: The Wheel of Fire

Made-for-TV films
The Gathering - the pilot movie (February 22, 1993)
In the Beginning - prequel (January 4, 1998)
Thirdspace - (July 19, 1998)
The River of Souls - (November 8, 1998)
A Call to Arms - precursor to the Crusade series (January 3, 1999)
To Live and Die in Starlight - pilot to the proposed Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers series (January 19, 2002)
The Gathering was the pilot, depicting the arrival of the major characters to the Babylon 5 station in 2257. The made-for-TV movie In the Beginning depicts the events of the Earth-Minbari War, as revealed in the first few seasons, in chronological order and in greater detail than the main series. The made-for-TV movies Thirdspace and The River of Souls are largely stand-alone episodes.
Babylon 5: A Call to Arms set-up the premise of the Crusade series, depicting the Drakh releasing a nanovirus plague on Earth, which will destroy all life on the planet within five years if it is not stopped. To that end, the destroyer Excalibur is sent out to look for a cure.

Spin-offs

Crusade
The spin-off series Crusade ran on TNT for thirteen episodes, having been set up by the TV-movie A Call to Arms. The production team received help from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to make sure that the series depicted science and technology accurately. However, creative differences between Straczynski and TNT caused problems; the network wanted more sex and violence, and forced Straczynski to begin the first episode with a fistfight. The sex-and-violence request was later withdrawn, and TNT allocated more money to Crusade, giving the actors better uniforms and new sets mid-season. However, due to the creative differences, TNT eventually decided to cancel the series after thirteen episodes had been produced, but before any of them were aired. At the time of the cancellation, only hints of major story arcs had yet come into play, though unproduced scripts published online by Straczynski - in addition to comments made by him online, at conventions, and on the Crusade DVD commentaries - reveal that they would have become prominent features of the series, had it continued.
It has subsequently been stated by J. Michael Straczynski that TNT got cold feet about the show when they discovered that their B5 viewers tuned into the channel solely to watch that show, and then tuned out at the end whilst their regular audience did the opposite, so it was not achieving their goal of growing their overall audience-share. At this point, they decided that they did not want to proceed with Crusade, but could not renege on the contract with Warner Brothers without severe financial penalties. They therefore set out to make life as uncomfortable for the production team as possible in the hope that they would pull the plug themselves, or simply refuse to play ball, allowing TNT to pull out, claiming breach of contract.

Legend of the Rangers
A made-for-TV movie titled To Live and Die in Starlight was produced by the Sci-Fi Channel. It was the proposed pilot episode of a new series titled Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers. Rescheduled after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the movie aired on January 19, 2002. However, it was scheduled against an NFL AFC Divisional Championship playoff game featuring the New England Patriots and the Oakland Raiders. The pilot's poor ratings contributed to the lessening of the network's interest in a series pick-up, but the final nail in its coffin was the dispute between Warner Bros. and Vivendi Universal (owners of the Sci-Fi Channel) over revenue-sharing for the potential weekly series.

The Memory of Shadows
In 2004 and early 2005, rumors widely circulated about a planned Babylon 5 movie for theatrical release. However, on February 25, 2005, a post from Straczynski announced that the project had fallen through, and was for all practical purposes dead. The proposed movie, titled The Memory of Shadows (TMOS), was written by Straczynski. Filming was to have begun in April, 2005 in the UK, with Steven Beck as the director.
Several sources have claimed that factions within Warner Bros. wanted to recast established Babylon 5 roles with younger and more well-known actors, causing a major controversy among fans. Straczynski has acknowledged the subject and has stated that the negotiations were problematic, but has said that he is unable to directly comment on the issue. It has been said, however, that Warner's stated principle at the time was only to do "blockbuster" movies featuring "star" names, and that the issue of re-casting the characters only arose as a result of those attempting to finance TMoS approaching WB, having been unable to raise the finance elsewhere.
Recently J. Michael Straczynski stated that WB had offered him the opportunity to make a B5 feature film, but he declined this in favour of the Babylon 5: The Lost Tales direct-to-DVD project.

The Lost Tales
A new project set in Babylon 5 universe was announced by Straczynski at San Diego Comic Con 2006. Babylon 5: The Lost Tales is a set of mini-stories featuring established characters from the series, released direct-to-DVD. Production of the first anthology of two stories, named collectively Voices in the Dark, commenced in November 2006 with Straczynski writing, producing, and directing. It was released July 31, 2007. In a Usenet post on September 5, 2007, Straczynski stated that Warner Bros. "are most pleased as sales have been several orders of magnitude beyond what they anticipated."

Novels, novelizations, short stories, and comic books
Unique to the Babylon 5 universe among virtually all other shared media universes is the sanctioned canonicity of many of its offshoot novels and comic book stories; nearly all of the Babylon 5 novels and novelizations to date having been based on outlines written directly by J. Michael Straczynski. The later Del Rey books are considered to be more canonical than some of the earlier Dell ones, and at least two major plotline revelations were made in the DC Comics series that were directly referenced in the TV series. In all, per Straczynski's own remarks, canonical elements exist in every single book or comic published to date, and his deeper involvement in the novel-publishing program from 1996 onward has ensured a greater level of canonicity within such works.
Additionally, Straczynski himself penned a number of short stories, published in Amazing Stories magazine, expanding on several key story-points from the television series, along with a number of other established authors, with all such tales considered as "real" as the TV show itself.
As of 2007, J. Michael Straczynski is still writing the manuscript for a Babylon 5 graphic novel, to be published on an as-yet-unknown date by Wildstorm Productions. The premise, characters, and plot have not been officially confirmed, but it has been reported that Straczynski originally planned to write a story that takes place before the season three two-parter "War Without End," featuring Sinclair and Sheridan, and involving Mars, Minbar, Babylon 5, and a conspiracy. It has also been reported that he has subsequently decided to tie in elements from the spinoffs Crusade and Legend of the Rangers into the book. The graphic novel will be 100 pages long. The artist has not yet been announced.
Mongoose Publishing, the publisher of recent Babylon 5 role-playing game (RPG) material, announced plans to release a line of Babylon 5 novels and graphic novels, beginning in summer 2006. J. Michael Straczynski made it clear that he was not involved with this project, and considered the works to be "fan-fiction." In spring of 2007, Mongoose announced that the project was cancelled.

DVD releases

Season releases
All five seasons have been released individually in the US and the UK. A complete 5-season set is also available in each of the two DVD regions, titled Babylon 5: The Complete Television Series for the U.S. and Canada, and Babylon 5: The Complete Universe for the UK. The UK version also includes all the films and the short-lived spin-off Crusade. As of 2007, all 5 television seasons and their individual episodes are also for sale at the iTunes Store.
According to director J. Michael Straczynski as of mid-2006 "The DVD sales have raised over 500 million in revenue." The financial success of the DVD box sets has led to a renewed interest in further Babylon 5 work .

Babylon 5 movie releases
The Babylon 5 TV movies were distributed differently in the U.S. and UK. Initially a DVD containing the two movies The Gathering and In the Beginning were released on both region 1 (North America) and region 2 (UK) DVD. Then, in the U.S., the first five movies which aired while Babylon 5 was still on the air were released in one boxset, with the TV movie Legend of the Rangers getting its own separate release on both region 1 and region 2 DVD. In the UK, a film boxset was released, but instead of containing the five movies like the U.S. version, it contained the three movies which hadn't been released yet (Thirdspace, River of Souls, and A Call to Arms). The Gathering was released as a low-priced promotional R1 DVD in 2004, intended as a 'trial' of the series proper; Warner Bros. issued several such DVDs but discontinued the line shortly thereafter due to lack of interest.

Mastering problems
The transfer of Babylon 5 to DVD created significant problems with regard to special-effects/CGI footage. Several factors complicated the process.
Although originally broadcast in the standard television aspect ratio of 4:3, all live-action footage was filmed on Super 35 mm film (with a ratio of 1.65:1). The idea was that, once widescreen televisions (with an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 1.78:1) became more popular, the episodes could be easily converted into a widescreen format.
CGI shots were rendered in the 4:3 ratio, but designed so that the top and bottom of each shot could be removed to create a widescreen image without ruining the image composition.
All of the purely live-action shots were stored as high-definition digital images.
However, CGI shots, and shots combining live-action with CGI, were stored in the much lower-definition NTSC digital format. (Again, the expectation was that it would be relatively cheap in the future to recreate the CGI in widescreen.)
Over the years, the original computer-generated models, etc., have been lost, making it necessary to use the old 4:3 CGI shots.
This has resulted in several consistent flaws throughout the Babylon 5 DVD release. In particular, quality drops significantly whenever a scene cuts from purely live-action to a shot combining live-action and CGI. This is particularly noticeable on the PAL DVDs, since CGI shots had to be converted from NTSC, as well as being blown up to fit a widescreen television. In addition, while the live-action film was originally widescreen, shots were composed for 4:3, resulting in a conspicuous tendency for actors to clump up in the middle of the screen.

Soundtrack releases
A total of 30 soundtrack albums have been released for Babylon 5. They are all composed by the series composer Christopher Franke and released under his own record label Sonic Images. There are 3 compilation albums: Babylon 5: Vol 1, Babylon 5: Vol 2, and Best of Babylon 5. In addition, there are 24 episodic soundtracks and 3 movie soundtracks.

Compilation soundtracks
These include music that appeared throughout the series, but have been extensively reorchestrated, rewritten, and remixed by Franke into lengthy movements. In some cases new themes are introduced, such as the season 5 intro theme, which is heard on the last track of Babylon 5: Vol 2 even though the soundtrack itself was released long before season 5.

Episodic and feature film soundtracks
The 27 episodic and feature film soundtracks include the exact unedited music from each corresponding episode or feature film, with no alterations, omissions, or additions.

Other releases
Seasons 1-2 and parts of season 3 of Babylon 5 have been released as advertisement-supported downloads through the In2TV download service. Additionally, every episode from seasons 1-5, as well as the pilot movie Babylon 5: The Gathering, are available for purchase on the Xbox Live Marketplace in the United States. All 92 television scripts (plus two television movie scripts) written by J. Michael Straczynski for the series are being published as a fifteen-volume series.

Games
In November 1997, Chameleon Eclectic Entertainment published the original The Babylon Project: The Roleplaying Game Based on Babylon 5. In 2003, Mongoose Publishing printed the Babylon 5 Roleplaying Game & Factbook.
The Babylon 5 Component Game system was also released in 1997 by 'Component Game Systems'. It was a political and military based game, which could take up to 5 hours to play. 'Component Game Systems' have since disappeared, and even their domain name (www.c-g-s.com) has been recycled by some unrelated group.
The Babylon 5 Wars wargame was first published by Agents of Gaming in 1998. The game was developed in close contact with the creators of the show, and most of the published material is considered canon. Agents of Gaming later published Babylon 5 Fleet Action, which focused on battles of a larger scale. In 2004, Babylon 5: A Call to Arms was released by Mongoose Publishing. The game is similar in many ways to Babylon 5 Wars but has a more streamlined rules set and games take a lot less time to complete.
Precedence Entertainment produced the Babylon 5 Collectible Card Game between 1997 and 2000. In its original form, the game allowed for 2-4 players with each one playing one of the ambassadors to the B5 council: Sinclair, Delenn, G'Kar or Londo. Later expansions increased the maximum number of players that could play at once and expanded the players' options. Players could represent the League of Non-Aligned Worlds or could play alternative ambassadors such as Bester for the Psi Corps or Lord Refa for the Centauri. The game was discontinued after Precedence lost the license from Warner Brothers in 2000.
There are no officially licensed Babylon 5 video games on the market, though in 1998 a video game based on Babylon 5, named Into the Fire, was being developed by Yosemite Entertainment, an internal division of Sierra Entertainment. Work on this game ended on September 21, 1999, when, as part of a corporate reorganization, Sierra cancelled it and laid off its development staff when the game was only a few months away from release. This game was to have cast the player as the pilot of a Starfury fighter craft, giving the player an opportunity to "move up through the ranks," and eventually take command of capital ships and even fleets. Christopher Franke composed and recorded new music for the game, and live action footage was filmed with the primary actors from the series.
The website FirstOnes.com continues to track Babylon 5 modifications for other games. FirstOnes.com hosts the site of the Space Dream Factory, an independent project to develop several standalone games. A collection of modifications for the Homeworld platform can be found at The Great Wars Mods website. These modifications try to capture the best battles from the series. Another independently-developed, freely-available modification is The Babylon Project, a total conversion of the computer game FreeSpace 2. The modification features several campaigns set during the Earth-Minbari War and the Raider Wars. Other games with Babylon 5 modifications include Independence War, Star Trek: Armada, Star Trek: Armada II, Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, Vega Strike and Nexus: The Jupiter Incident.