The Greatest Babylon 5 Story Is Also One Of the Greatest Time-Travel Epics Ever

Listen. Captain John Sheridan has become unstuck in time. In 1996, during the weeks of May 13 and May 20, Babylon 5 delivered a time-travel epic unlike anything the show had attempted before. And in doing so, this two-part story, “War Without End,” created a closed-looped predestination paradox that fixed the nagging plot question from Season 1, and created all new questions that fans still debate to this day. And, as far as time-travel episodes go, “War Without End” stands among the best ever in sci-fi TV, arguably as good, if not better, than specific time-travel stories in other series and franchises. Am I saying “War Without End” is as good as 1990’s “Yesterday’s Enterprise” in Star Trek: The Next Generation? Yes, it’s on par. It’s also, structurally and in terms of stakes, way better than “Little Green Men” from Deep Space Nine and “Future’s End’ from Voyager, two Star Trek time travel stories that aired the same year.

With “War Without End,” Babylon 5 delivered an episode that neatly wrapped up its past, made its present tense even more explosive, and hinted at haunting mysteries for its future. And, all of this even managed to repair a strange incongruity that the show had experienced since Season 2.

Mild spoilers ahead.

Airing in the back-end of Season 3, “War Without End” truly represents the status quo of a specific Babylon 5 golden age. Sheridan and company are all wearing the slick black post- “Severed Dreams” uniforms, a reminder that the crew are independent from Earth, and thus, no longer have to be secretive about the cool work of fighting against the Shadows. To use non-linear analogies, many of the storylines connected to the fight against Earth are very much like Andor. But when the crew gets to fight the Shadows outright, it’s more like Lord of the Rings meets Doctor Who. Which, frankly, is a perfect way to describe why “War Without End” is so fantastic.

Briefly, the episode starts with two stated goals, one metatextual and one literal. Former Babylon 5 commander Jeffrey Sinclair (Michael O’Hare) returns to the station to team up with Captain Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner), Ivanova (Claudia Christian), Delenn (Mira Furlan), and Marcus (Jason Carter) to take the White Star back in time to steal the Babylon 4 from the year 2254, and then, take it further back in time to roughly 1,000 years prior to serve as a base of operations for Minbari during their first struggle against the Shadows. To make matters more complicated, Sinclair already visited Babylon 4 in Season 1, in the episode “Babylon Squared,” which teased that the space station was phasing in and out of time, for reasons unknown. That episode ended with a tease of an older Sinclair in a spacesuit with a scar, worrying that history was repeating itself.

So, on paper, “War Without End” tidies up all of these questions from Season 1, and also creates a much bigger, timey wimey backstory for the foundation of the Army of Light in the present in 2260. If you’ve not seen the episode, the biggest spoiler is the fate of Sinclair, which involves a massive paradox teased from the very first scene of the episode.

The metatextual nature of this episode is that, in real life, replacing Sinclair with Sheridan and sending Sinclair to become the head of the Rangers on Minbar was not exactly what series creator J. Michael Straczynski originally intended. Because O’Hare left the show for (at the time) undisclosed mental health reasons, Boxleitner replaced the character as Sheridan in Season 2. That said, if you watch Season 1, it seems clear that aspects of Sinclair’s character could have become Sheridan’s fate, and vice versa. In the 1998 behind-the-scenes Babylon 5 book Point of No Return, author Jane Killick muses that Straczynski “refuses to say, however, how he would have told the story without Sheridan.”

Straczynski’s reply at the time was: “All I can say is that had Sinclair stayed, a character like Sheridan, or Sheridan himself in a different venue, would have had to come to the story at this point.” The metatextual question here is simply the idea that Sinclair is headed to a fate that will mean he’s not around in the present tense (that’s a minor spoiler; the reason why is a HUGE spoiler). And so, had he remained the main character in Season 2, then by Season 3, the lead of the series would be gone.

But in our timeline, none of that was the case. By Season 3, the audience was very used to Sheridan as the lead hero of Babylon 5, and when he goes on a Vonnegut-like out-of-time journey, he glimpses events that won’t fully make sense until Season 5, and even then, there are a few mysteries that haven’t been entirely resolved. In 1998, a DC comics miniseries called In Valen’s Name chronicled the third part of the time travel saga that began with “Babylon Squared.” In short, in Season 1, we didn’t know why Babylon 4 was replaced by Babylon 5, in Season 3, we find out where and when Babylon 4 went, and with In Valen’s Name, we learn what happened when Babylon 4 returned to the present.

All of this might make “War Without End” sound complicated, but the irony is, although it is deep in the B5 canon weeds, this is one of the best episodes to watch if you’re curious about the show in general. The stakes are very high, the time travel paradoxes are incredible, and the characters, at this point, are never better. “War Without End” also sets up Babylon 5 Season 3 for its greatest finale in the entire run, the shocking “Z'Ha'Dum.” But, if there’s one and only one Babylon 5 story that one would have to select to explain the entire series to a newbie, it’s this one.

Babylon 5 is not streaming with a subscription anywhere as of this writing. You can purchase episodes on Prime Video, Apple TV, and elsewhere.