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What is it?

Picture of JMS The "Babylon 5 Reference" aims to provide a complete reference to the names, places and terminology of the Babylon 5 universe. It includes data taken from not only the series itself, but also from the series of Babylon 5 novels, comics and numerous postings to on-line services by the Executive Producer of Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski (pictured) dating back to the early 1990's. As such it contains spoilers for all of the above, so if you are sensitive to such things be very, very careful with the contents of this file - there are no spoiler warnings of any kind once you start browsing through the data!

Unfortunately the Babylon 5 universe is not totally consistent; there are minor inconsistencies in the series itself and out right errors between the different media, for example John Sheridan's father is referred to as "David" in the television series and as "Jacob" in one of the novels. I feel that these inconsistencies should be included in the reference, if only for clarification, and redirected to the "series canon" equivalent in accordance with the following list of priorities:

  1. JMS explicitly correcting errata within the series
  2. The Babylon 5 series itself
  3. JMS's non-series writings and interviews including on-line posts
  4. Non-JMS books and comics
  5. Other sources such as MicroMachines, Trading Cards etc.

How did it come about?

The "Babylon 5 Reference" was initially created, albeit in a much simpler form, as a practical experiment in learning about the Microsoft Windows help engine. I had an upcoming project that required the production of an online reference guide from a series of static documents and spent some spare time learning the ins and outs of the now defunct "ForeHelp" help development system. Since the genuine data was not yet available I resorted to an early copy of the Babylon 5 Encyclopedia for a suitable source of material, some shadows of which still remain in the file, particularly the section on Babylon 5 itself. As ForeHelp is very easy to use, and I began seeing more of those hidden links as a result of creating the file, and things basically grew from there; as I rewatched old episodes I made notes, crosschecking them against the Lurker's Guide, and added the results into the steadily growing file. The "Babylon 5 Reference" was essentially up to date by the middle of season three in the UK, however rumors that my ISP would be providing free Web space prompted a change in my original plan of simply uploading it to the Lurker's Guide. Instead I decided to do what you are now viewing - give it a page of its own, along with some other Babylon 5 related information.

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