Every Space Fighter Gets This Wrong (Except Babylon 5)

Recap

The video puts Babylon 5 through the channel’s familiar tests for believable spaceships, stations, battles, and first contact—and argues that the low-budget series often gets the fundamentals right.

Starfuries and the “one free miracle” rule

The video opens with the Starfury fighter’s signature move: accelerating forward, turning around, and firing at a pursuer while still drifting onward. The narrator contrasts this deliberate maneuver with a later scene in which characters laugh at Daffy Duck doing something similar by accident.

The Starfury earns particular praise for its believable inertia, engine placement, and upright pilot position. Its thrust pushes the pilot into the seat in a direction the human body can better tolerate.

The video’s central accounting rule allows each story one “free miracle.” Babylon 5 needs alien jump-gate technology to travel between stars, but the series says the Centauri gave that technology to Earth. By the narrator’s strict accounting, humanity’s own miracle went toward something else: a faster-than-light phone line home. The joke is that the priority channel is, naturally, being used to discuss the station’s budget.

The station

Babylon 5 scores well as a working port for diplomats, traders, workers, and people with nowhere else to go—not just a pretty backdrop. Its rotating habitat produces gravity at a tolerable rate, and fighters launched from it get a free boost from the rotation.

The station even has labor disputes and rundown equipment, making it feel like a place where people actually work. Its plainspoken announcements, such as reminders to hold the handrails, earn approval for being “boring.”

The narrator’s punchline is that this practical rotating habitat is astonishingly cheaper to spin up than the enormous rotating planetoid discussed in a previous episode.

Battles and science checks

The battle tests are more mixed. Babylon 5 gets high marks for showing ships obey inertia and for battles in which enemies can attack from unexpected directions. Its stealth and long-range combat are less consistent: in most fights, the ships are close enough to see, though a Narn engagement provides a notable exception.

The series’ use of sound in space also gets a correction. The narrator accepts that sound can be an audience-facing effect rather than a mistake, and says both Babylon 5 and The Expanse should pass that test.

Several science checks become jokes:

• A character claims Mars gravity is “40% less” than Earth’s, though the actual difference is closer to 62%.
• Sheridan’s escape into Jupiter works dramatically, but the idea that the ship’s power-up ignites Jupiter’s hydrogen fails: there’s no free oxygen to support the fire. The narrator gives the line its due as a joke, though.

First contact and larger themes

The video calls Babylon 5’s first contact one of the most believable—and disastrous—it has covered. The Minbari open their gun ports as a customary sign of respect; humans read the gesture as a threat. Neither side can communicate, and the misunderstanding leads to a devastating war. No villain is needed: two cultures make reasonable assumptions that turn out to be incompatible.

The series’ larger themes and set pieces receive similarly enthusiastic treatment. The Vorlons and Shadows act as rival teachers, challenging younger civilizations with “Who are you?” and “What do you want?” Vir’s answer to Morden—wishing to watch him die and greet him with a smile—gets a special mention as a wonderfully delayed payoff. Ivanova’s “get out of our galaxy” line becomes the students’ defiant answer to both ancient powers.

The narrator also highlights the unnerving idea that some alien ships are alive, with creatures serving as their cores—and that telepaths can interfere with them.

Babylon 4 and memorable moments

Babylon 4 is framed as the show’s ultimate “lemon”: it disappears, reappears a thousand years in the past, and becomes central to the war against the Shadows. The long-hidden connection between Babylon 4, Sinclair, and the Minbari surrender is praised as patient storytelling.

The video also notes the compassionate way the series preserved Sinclair’s story after actor Michael O’Hare left the show, later revealing O’Hare’s serious mental-health struggle at his own request.

Other memorable moments include:

• A Markab plague that wipes out an entire species.
• G’Kar silently enduring 39 lashes before screaming on the last one to survive.
• Ivanova’s fiery declaration of who she is during Earth’s civil war.

Verdict

Despite a handful of misses, Babylon 5 uses only its one allowed human miracle, while The Expanse gets criticized for relying on several unaccounted-for conveniences.

The closing reflection returns to the show’s hope that reaching the stars gives humanity a future—and makes all the effort worthwhile.

Personalities featured

• Babylon 5 characters: John Sheridan, Susan Ivanova, Delenn, Jeffrey Sinclair, G’Kar, Londo Mollari, Vir, Garibaldi, Kosh, Morden, and Zathras.
• Real-world figures discussed: J. Michael Straczynski, Michael O’Hare, Ron Thornton, and Steve Berg.