Grey 17 is Missing

[FaxModem1]

This episode wastes a perfectly good premise. What if instead of a Jonestown style cult living in Grey 17, we had the equivalent of a hippie commune, or homeless village hiding there. They siphon a little bit if water, and hook up a few UV lamps, grow their own food, etc, and there's a separate independent society living inside the separate independent community of Babylon 5

B5's command staff has to deal with the fact that they are the government out here, and whether they like it or not, they are responsible for those living on Babylon 5, even the homeless lurkers that they don't seem to give two shits about.

Do they force integration? Do they exile them on flights back to Earth? What do they do? This could even tie into Dr. Franklin's walkabout as he is asked to join them.

What do you think?

[CharlesPhipps]

There actually is an enormous homeless community on Babylon Five. They come up a few times and are called "Lurkers."

https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Lurker

Notably, Sinclair and Sheridan have the attitude of, "Well, sucks to be them." Apparently, there's no social safety net in the 23rd century.

It's an element that's either aged badly or is distressingly true.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

*Spoilers* for those who may not have seen the whole run.


One thing I really noticed in a recent rewatch was just how many things the B5 commanders missed the boat on. Sheridan stands out since he's the brightest star of the bunch.

When a decision was forced on Sheridan, it wasn't often that he made the "wrong" call, at least not as far as JMS is concerned. On the other hand, there are a whole bunch of things that he could have, and possibly should have, seen coming. How he let the telepath situation fester might be the most obvious example. Alienating Lyta. Giving Garibaldi too much leash when he was clearly struggling. Delenn and others making decisions that Sheridan should have a part in.

I don't get the impression that JMS blamed Sheridan or Sinclair for the state of the downbelow or the station's underclass, but it does seem to be something that escaped their attention. Exploring whether such an underprivileged class must exist on B5, or what could possibly be done about them, could be an interesting question.

[FaxModem1]

There actually is an enormous homeless community on Babylon Five. They come up a few times and are called "Lurkers."

https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Lurker

Notably, Sinclair and Sheridan have the attitude of, "Well, sucks to be them." Apparently, there's no social safety net in the 23rd century.

It's an element that's either aged badly or is distressingly true.

Yeah, but before Severed Dreams, they were pretty much following the rules of Earthgov. After that, they had free rein to do what they wanted in dealing with the Lurkers in Down Below.

And I find the idea of the station having to deal with a Sheridanville an interesting concept, as the best the Lurkers were dealt with storywise was, 'Homelessness exists in the future, and our heroes couldn't care less about it'.

[CharlesPhipps]

Sheridan Re-Election Slogan: Listen, they can't freeze to death unless the station's hull is breached. That's better than many people on Earth get! So you could say they have a very big home.

https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Acts_of_Sacrifice

Actually, the Lurkers actually impressed a Ayn Rand-esque race (The Lumati) so much that they signed up with Earth as an alliance.

Ivanova was like, "this is horrible, awful, evil, and I know you must..."

Alien Andrew Ryan, "This is beautiful. It's like you don't give any shits about the fact you're in space and can't spare room for a shelter or public housing. We need to do this underwater and with splicers. Also have sex right now."

The last bit was in the show too.

[G-Man]

What exactly is it that people expected Sheridan and Sinclair to do about the homeless problem? Babylon 5 was not exactly well-funded, and it did not get any better after they declared independence from Earth. Homelessness hasn't even been solved on Earth, although Clark's government says otherwise (see "Voices of Authority").

[CharlesPhipps]

*Spoilers* for those who may not have seen the whole run.

One thing I really noticed in a recent rewatch was just how many things the B5 commanders missed the boat on. Sheridan stands out since he's the brightest star of the bunch.

When a decision was forced on Sheridan, it wasn't often that he made the "wrong" call, at least not as far as JMS is concerned. On the other hand, there are a whole bunch of things that he could have, and possibly should have, seen coming. How he let the telepath situation fester might be the most obvious example. Alienating Lyta. Giving Garibaldi too much leash when he was clearly struggling. Delenn and others making decisions that Sheridan should have a part in.

I don't get the impression that JMS blamed Sheridan or Sinclair for the state of the downbelow or the station's underclass, but it does seem to be something that escaped their attention. Exploring whether such an underprivileged class must exist on B5, or what could possibly be done about them, could be an interesting question.

The telepath situation always felt like they never quite were able to nail down what they were trying to say about the whole thing and who was right or wrong in that. Which wouldn't normally be an issue but Babylon Five was a very right/wrong kind of show. The message seemed to be, "Some persecuted minorities just can't see past their own issues and get themselves screwed over when they alienate even sympathetic ears."

What exactly is it that people expected Sheridan and Sinclair to do about the homeless problem? Babylon 5 was not exactly well-funded, and it did not get any better after they declared independence from Earth. Homelessness hasn't even been solved on Earth, although Clark's government says otherwise (see "Voices of Authority").

It's more looking back at the assumption of the show that the future is just the nineties of America writ-large, that homelessness is something that the government just tolerates for its citizens. It's a cultural issue that reflects the values of the time. Because while a Star Trek utopia doesn't have to be depicted, it makes a very specific statement about what sort of world our heroes live in that they can build a 5 mile space station and yet still have people without basic living standards met.

[RobbyB1982]

Well, they ARE a space station with actual limited space and resources. They barely have the capability to feed and house everyone that works there, and that is visiting *officially*. They constantly made a point of being underpaid and understaffed.

They can't even handle the people that are SUPPOSED to be there. Someone growing one coffee bean plant in the corner of hydroponics can offset the whole place. The workers that kept the place from blowing up were overworked and underpaid and had to go on strike until Sinclair allocated a military budget into infrastructure. And then later even the captain of the station and the first officer were getting squeezed to pay more rent. Then later still when they broke away from earth they got even more strained still, and had problems with things like getting mail and had to get the alien races to help with security.

I'm sure both captains would have done the humanitarian thing.... if they had anywhere near the resources to do so. But when they can't even afford the captain's quarters, what are they supposed to do?

[CharlesPhipps]

I think that is making the problem fit around the expectation rather than the problem being the problem.

But that's just me.

[Nessus]

The telepath thing annoyed me, particularly in season 5. I felt like they never actually explained why it was such a bad idea to let the telepaths have their own colony. That was the fulcrum issue of that conflict in S5, but they never addressed it, much less debated it like they should. They just assumed it was a given for some reason, and that turned what should have been a cool speculative debate of the sort Trek was fond of into a vapid "no, u!" argument.

The homelessness thing always seemed weird to me because even if it is a five mile can city, it's still a space station, with all the physical bookkeeping and bottlenecks that entails. Their census shouldn't be nearly messy enough for a homeless population to exist. Even with it being a bustling port and all, the number of people that can go completely unaccounted for should max out in the low double digits at most. It's not even a social safety net thing, it's just the inherent nature of a closed and completely artificial environment. As such this element always felt like flagrant "space is an ocean" type bad writing, and I tended to zone out for those episodes as a result.