Babylon 5: The Coolest Ships

Category: Babylon 5
Last article published: 16 November 2014
This is the 139th post under this label

Though visually, the ships in Babylon 5 looked like they came out of a video game, they made up for it in sheer variety, making alien ships LOOK alien, and injecting a lot more color than seemed possible in the big space opera franchises' design aesthetic. Today we look at what I think are the five coolest ship designs featured on the show, using the Babylon 5 RPG's Ships of the Galaxy sourcebook as a reference guide. Not gonna lie, you won't find any Earth ships in here. The cruisers look like blocky Rob Liefeld-drawn guns and the fighters (Starfuries et al.) are much too derivative of X-Wings. So what DID make the list?

Sharlin Warcruiser (Minbari). The Minbari don't just have coral on their heads, their ships also seem to be made out of it, or at least, some kind of shellfish. The graceful, conch-like, building-sized Sharlin class is elegant and graceful, but of course, packs a devastating punch. Bonus points for being just a Transformer-step away from full mecha, what with the "legs" and "head" that are part of its profile. Someone should do some crazy fanfic about Minbari mech fighting giant Shadow kaiju.

Vorlon Destroyer. The Vorlons also have an underwater theme (maybe that's why Earth's Starfuries kind of feel like shark cages to me), but instead of shellfish, their inspiration is cephalopods. Looking at their fleet, I think I'm most drawn to the 6-tentacled Destroyer (a hexapus?). I like the color better, certainly. None of that sickly yellow. But it just looks more vicious, with its kind of insectoid head crowned with deadly "tentacles" that create an electromagnetic arc to discharge powerful energy blasts.

White Star (Alliance). This is essentially the hero ship, commanded by Sheridan through the back half of the series and while I agree with some that it looks like a bird carcass, it's the ship we know best, that we see in the most action, and so it's cool as hell. In a universe of giant cruisers and tiny fighters, it's somewhere in the middle, but has enough maneuverability and firepower to deal with much bigger ships than itself. But one reason I like it is that it's a crossbreed of Minbari and Vorlon technology, which represents changing politics in the universe, one of the things that made Babylon 5 so engrossing.

G'Quan Heavy Cruiser (Narn). I love Narn ships. They're so tribal. Not afraid to paint their hulls with alien glyphs, these tigers of the spaceways are among the sleekest and most overtly aerodynamic of B5's designs, and consequently, I respond well to them even when my brain tells me spaceships don't need to be aerodynamic. The Regime's other ships look good too - it's just a great color scheme - but the G'Quan feels like the purest of their battleships.

Shadow Cruiser. Benefiting from appearing prominently in the show's opening sequence, there's something Lovecraftian and mysterious about these bio-ships, just dark shapes flying over shining planets, blotting out the light. They're monsters more than ships, and perhaps the most distinctive and immediately recognizable of B5's flotilla. No stargates for these space-sea urchins, they just pop out of hyperspace out of nowhere and strike. The show sold them as bogeymen and you were always afraid when they showed up. And so, the coolest of the cool.

What about you? Are you perhaps a fan of the bulbous Space Liner, the Centauri Vorchan class, or Crusade's Excalibur? Let us know in the comments!