Babylon 1 through 5...

[Warped9]

Silly question perhaps, but does anyone know if there were any images or at least conceptual drawings of the Babylon stations?

Of course we know what B5 and B4 look like, but was there anything to give us a clue as to what B1, B2 and B3 might have looked like? Or perhaps they were essentially throwaway references.

Begs the thought, though, how did they manage to persevere and convince others to fund and construct successive stations when they kept losing them.

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

Babylon 1 was briefly seen at the end of the movie "In the Beginning". Its colour was red. Don't have any pictures though.

 

[Hound of UIster]

B1 - Red
B4 - Green
B5 - Blue

B2 - Orange?
B3 - Yellow?

 

[Aeon]

I suspect that at first Earth Alliance didn't need any money for the project, but that changed after Babylon 4. After all that was the most expensive station of the lot. Essentially they put all their eggs in one basket and that basket disappeared. Babylon 5 was the last attempt of the project and it was pretty much build from scraps.

 

[spinnerlys]

http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Babylon_1#Babylon_1

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

B1 - Red
B4 - Green
B5 - Blue

B2 - Orange?
B3 - Yellow?

I do remember reading that all five Babylon stations were given successive colors in order (of the rainbow). So you're right about B2 and B3, they would have been orange and yellow if we had ever seen them.

Although a huge yellow space station would probably look a bit silly.

And I don't think there was enough of B1 to see before it blew up. Only enough to tell that it was red.

 

[David cgc]

Someone did a good-looking conjectural Babylon 3 model many, many years ago. I can't remember who, though, or where it was posted. Well, excepting one forum that had it's archives wiped by a virus slightly less many years ago.

 

[Trajet]

From what I can recall from Babylon 1's fleeting appearance in "In The Beginning", the front section of the station, which is basically the only part we see, was very similar, if not practically identical to Babylon 5, except that where Babylon 5 was a bluey-purple colour, Babylon 1 was red.

This makes sense on two levels. Firstly, I doubt the production would've had the money to design and build a computer model of a new space station for such a short appearance, and two, it would make sense for the Earth Alliance to go back to a smaller, simpler and cheaper design after the disappearance of Babylon 4.

Perhaps Babylon's 1, 2 and 3 all followed roughly the same basic design as Babylon 5, with only Babylon 4 being different?

 

[Warped9]

Babylon 1 was briefly seen at the end of the movie "In the Beginning". Its colour was red. Don't have any pictures though.

Curious that no one has ever posted any screencaps of B1. Hmm, another on my lists of things to do.

 

[Reverend]

Babylon 1 was briefly seen at the end of the movie "In the Beginning". Its colour was red. Don't have any pictures though.

Curious that no one has ever posted any screencaps of B1. Hmm, another on my lists of things to do.

I keep meaning to upload a DVD grab or two of B1 to the wiki, but part of the problem with how it was show is that you don't actually see it all at once. Just a quick tracking shot before it goes boom.
I think JMS posted than B1, 2 and 3 were essentially the same design as B4, but they never got anywhere near completion, hence B4 being at least partly made up of left over material from the first three.
Having said that, what little we see of the original Babylon Station looks as though the forward end of the carousel is spherical like B5's rather than the cylindrical one on B4.
A frame by frame examination makes it look as if the mesh they used in that shot was actually a kludge of B5 & B4 parts, with the scales and proportions messed with. Of course it's very difficult to extrapolate what it'd look like finished just from that, which I presume was half the point of it being obscured so.

 

[Warped9]

It would make some sense that B1 through 4 could be essentially similar. Still, with each new redesign you have a chance to correct things you felt hadn't been done right previously.

Is there any reference to a time period? It would take quite some time to design, contract, allocate funds and build such a construct, but five in a row? And all of this within the ten years since the Earth-Minbari war? Or maybe the earliest stations were in progress earlier and B4 and B5 came after the war and their significance changed because of it.

 

[Yoda]

The we built it 5 times till it stuck because humans don't give up crap always struck me as a bit of a stretch.

Real humans would've had it half-built, already well over budget, and then canceled it after someone else won an election.

 

[Reverend]

Oh I don't know, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is still standing, Venice is still inhabited and I could probably name a few cities standing today that have already been destroyed on at least one previous occasion. Humans can be pretty stubborn when they want to be.

Also, as I said, 1-3 didn't get very far along so the amount of time to build each of them to a given point could be as little as 12 months per station. When you factor in the likelihood that a great many components were pre-fabricated elsewhere prior to construction, that by the time one is destroyed, you start the next one with a ready supply of prefabs that'd been made but not delivered yet, so by the time B4 was built, a lot of it would have been more assembly than construction.

Of course when that disappeared in a flash, they had to go back to square one, which is why B5 was the last (they couldn't afford a 6th) and what they did build was much more modest, rushed and somewhat half arsed than what the original Babylon Station was intended to be. That's probably why Brown Sector was such a shit hole when it was probably intended to be another commercial center like Red Sector, why there are so many open "downbelow" areas throughout the station, why the B5/peace logo in C'n'C looked so naff, how the sub-standard docking system was put in by the lowest bidder and how they managed to loose an entire level of Grey Sector.
Seriously, the heat exchangers were probably held on by duct tape by that point.

 

[Candlelight]

It would make some sense that B1 through 4 could be essentially similar. Still, with each new redesign you have a chance to correct things you felt hadn't ben done right previously.

Is there any reference to a time period? It would take quite some time to design, contract, allocate funds and build such a construct, but five in a row? And all of this within the ten years since the Earth-Minbari war? Or maybe the earliest stations were in progress earlier and B4 and B5 came after the war and their significance changed because of it.

Parts of the first three Babylon stations, either salvaged from what wasn't destroyed or was about to be added when they were blown apart, were included in Babylon 4. An emblem of Babylon 3 is apparently visible in War Without End but I've yet to see it on screen.

Babylon 5 was the only one that was built from scratch.

 

[Warped9]

An emblem of Babylon 3 is apparently visible in War Without End but I've yet to see it on screen.

Really? I've never noticed that either.

 

[Candlelight]

Forgive the quality...

 

[Reverend]

An emblem of Babylon 3 is apparently visible in War Without End but I've yet to see it on screen.

Really? I've never noticed that either.

I think that's one of those old fan myths. It probably stems from the B1,2 & 3 logos showing up in the old B5 mag, as did a number of other graphics that were developed but either never used or never seen clearly.
It's amazing what gets repeated as fact without a shred of evidence to support it.

 

[Warped9]

Forgive the quality...

Thanks for the images. You're right, though, that we really don't get a good look at it.

 

[Candlelight]

One thing that interests me is this shot:

It looks like B1 was gonna have two reactors.

 

[Candlelight]

An emblem of Babylon 3 is apparently visible in War Without End but I've yet to see it on screen.

Really? I've never noticed that either.

I think that's one of those old fan myths. It probably stems from the B1,2 & 3 logos showing up in the old B5 mag, as did a number of other graphics that were developed but either never used or never seen clearly.
It's amazing what gets repeated as fact without a shred of evidence to support it.

Hence my word 'apparently' thrown in there.