Yes, I know I am about a decade late to watch this, but after watching Star Trek (the latest motion movie), I have the urge to see what I have missed up. I’ve just finished Voyager, so I thought of Babylon 5 next and tracked down the DVD.
By the third season, I was wondering if I have jumped the shark. Because there seems to be sooo many parallels to LOTR in the shows.
Delenn is akin to Arwen, the Minibari are akin to the Elves, an ancient race. Then she becomes half-human/half-Minbari (or half-elven) and fall for John (Aragorn).
Then we have the Rangers formed to fight the Shadows, who watched on the fringes of the world. Marcus gives off vibes like Aragorn (heck, he even look like the Aragorn of the later LOTR movies).
Kosh is Gandalf, whose ways are mysterious and sacrifice himself (and he sort of pops up later, not resurrected, though).
Granted, there isn’t a single Dark Lord, or a One Ring, or that B5 takes influences purely from LOTR. I also find that some of it parallels the Cthulhu Mythos. Got to say this is one interesting series to watch.
The thing is, Tolkien was working with huge archetypes, and so, in a smaller way, was Straczynski. Later in Season Three, you’ll see the episode* A Late Delivery From Avalon*, you’ll see explicit parallels drawn to the Arthurian legend as well. That’s what can happen when you’re working with big, archetypal stories. The fact is, looking at the overall plot; there really aren’t very many similarities to LotR specifically. B5 is not LotR with spaceships, not even remotely.
This is one of JMS’s pet peeves (to judge by his comments collected here Lurker's Guide: Episode List ). JMS was inspired by many things and, in the course of 5 seasons, accidentally copied a few, but he’s really telling his own story. The best parallel is with Babylonian/western pagan creation myths, and that’s rather the whole point (Babylon 5). Hence his comment that the show is about “killing your parents,” the younger gods supplanting order and chaos.
Even if he is borrowing (consciously or subconsciously) from Tolkien, is that a bad thing? All artists draw inspiration from other artists, and if you’re going to borrow, you might as well borrow from the best. Scientists aren’t ashamed about standing on the shoulders of giants; why should artists be?
"The interesting thing for me in this and related conversations is
that I frequently notice messages indicating that “jms is doing the whole
Kennedy thing,” or it’s the Lord of the Rings, or it’s Dune, or it’s
tracking the Bible, or it’s following Yeats…or it echoes Shakespeare,
as in this case.
In a way, they’re all right, and in a way, they’re all wrong. Right
in the sense that in trying to create myth, or a story using traditional
epic structure, you can see echoes not only between B5 and other such
stories, but also between those other epics. The mistake is in thinking
(and this isn’t directed at you, just sorta woolgathering) that it is in
fact a parallel to any one of them. That leads you into the error of the
blind men each touching a part of an elephant; if you think the trunk IS
the elephant, you’ve erred, and all conclusions that follow are thus
skewed incorrectly."
Actually, I don’t find it a bad thing. I quite enjoy it because of the “hey, that is familiar!” moment. And sometimes the greatest stories share the same ideas. Which is why I feel that the series is great. Star Trek, by comparison, can be sometimes too ‘sterile’ for my taste.
There were only two similarities I could not ignore: Z’ha’dum/Khazad-dûm (Tolkien), and the Rangers/monks in “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars” (resemblance to monks in “A Canticle for Liebowitz”).
Well, I can’t speak to Z’ha’dum, but he named his Rangers after the Texas Rangers, and “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars” was a last minute script written by JMS when they found out very late in the season that they would be renewed for Season 5. Originally, that slot was going to be “Sleeping in Light,” what was ultimately the last episode of the Season 5 and the show as a whole.
But JMS showed a pretty consistent interest in Jesuits and monks throughout the entire show. It’s not surprising that he would end up showing monks as the keepers of the True Lore in the Dark Times - too good an idea to be dissuaded by the obvious similarity to Liebowitz.