10 Ways Babylon 5 & Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Are Basically The Same Show
Two classic Sci-Fi series with a few things in common.
There is an incredible amount of great science fiction on TV, so much so that some of it inevitably has similarities. Normally, those similarities are accidental, generated by telling a story in a genre with many hard and fast tropes. Other times, it seems like science fiction series are the same because one is a copy of the other.
That's kind of what happened with Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Another installment in the long running Star Trek franchise, DS9 hit airwaves in 1993 and ran for seven seasons. It focused on the crew of a space station which was made up of Bajorans and the Federation. Babylon 5, on the other hand, was an original series that debuted in 1995 but only ran for five seasons. Also on a space station, it was set after a devastating war.
While there are some stark differences between the two series, their similarities run deeper than just the settings. Despite never filing a lawsuit, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski has indicated in the past that he met with Paramount, the company behind DS9, in the late 1980s to discuss the concept with them. The materials he brought may have been used by executives to build the next Star Trek series.
If any of that is true, it would explain why the two series have so many similar touchstones.
10. Earth Run Stations
At the core of both series are the space stations the stories take place on. That's why each show is named after its respective station. Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 are the locations for the shows, the driving forces for their narratives. But their biggest similarity is not the venue so much as it is who operates them.
In both cases, it is human run organizations that operate the stations. On Babylon 5, Earth Alliance was responsible for the construction and management of their station. On Deep Space Nine, Cardassians built the station and the Bajorans own it, for all intents and purposes, but it is operated by the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet. There are other races in the Federation, but the driving force is depicted as humanity.
While each station is filled with species from across the galaxy, having these stations under the control of the human run organizations definitely sets the tone. It puts humanity in the driver's seat on Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5, for better or worse.