War Without End : le devoir de mémoire dans Babylon 5 (PTEN>TNT, 1993-1998)

• Main Author: Florent Favard
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Groupe de Recherche Identités et Cultures 2016-11-01
• Series: TV Series
• Subjects: science fiction; history; cycle; memory; narration
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/tvseries/1855

This paper deals with the representation of war and conflicts in American science fiction tv series Babylon 5 (1993-1998, PTEN>TNT). Following a narratological frame, we first explore the dense net of conflicts structuring the fictional world and the series long term and non-linear plot, along with the systematic comparisons to real world conflicts, in the chronological order of the story. We then study the way the series treats subjects such as History, the need to remember the past, or even historiography, through its use of large-scale medias evoking the live coverage of the Gulf War; its denunciation of propaganda; the importance of historical testimonies for the plot; or the treatment of the hero figure summoned by the epic dimension of the text, and then criticized in a reflexive way. It is then possible to test the limits of the series social and political comment, and to underline the cyclic property of History in the fictional world.