The Road Home

Having departed Babylon 5 to take up residence at the Interstellar Alliance’s new headquarters on Minbar, Sheridan is amused when one of his first official presidential duties amounts to cutting the ribbon on a new Minbari power facility. But when reality begins distorting around him, Sheridan is told that the power source used is tachyons – and due to his previous time travel experiences during the mission to save Babylon 4, he is once again susceptible to becoming unstuck in time. But he’s also unstuck in reality as well, as his multiple seemingly random slides across the multiverse lead him to experience alternate realities, many of them involving losing to the Shadows in the Shadow War. A visit to the Great Machine beneath Epsilon 3 reveals two disturbing truths: first, that there are many, many more where Zathras came from, and second, Sheridan’s visits to other realities threaten every timeline. And inexplicably, something – or someone – is pursuing him through time and space with what he assumes is hostile intent. His jumps do eventually bring him back to a Babylon 5 that isn’t at war or under imminent threat of destruction, and that’s where his pursuer finally catches up with him.

written by J. Michael Straczynski
directed by Matt Peters
music by Michael McCustion, Kristopher Carter and Lolita Ritmanis

Cast: Bruce Boxleitner (President John Sheridan), Claudia Christian (Commander Susan Ivanova), Peter Jurasik (Londo Mollari), Bill Mumy (Lennier), Tracy Scoggins (Captain Elizabeth Lochley), Patricia Tallman (Lyta Alexander), Paul Guyet (Zathras / Commander Jeffrey Sinclair), Anthony Hansen (Michael Garibaldi), Mara Junot (Reporter / Computer Voice), Phil LaMarr (Dr. Stephen Franklin), Piotr Michael (David Sheridan / Trudan / Marcus Cole), Andrew Morgado (G’Kar / Starfury Pilot), Rebecca Riedy (Delenn / young Sheridan)

Notes: First teased in late April 2023 with a steady stream of further announcements and information following over the next couple of months, The Road Home is the first Babylon 5 project since The Lost Tales (2007), featuring a largely new cast to replace the many members of the original live-action cast who have died since the end of the series’ original run. J. Michael Straczynski told social media followers that all of the surviving original cast members were asked if they had any objections to the recasting necessary to tell the story, and that if any of them had objected, the project would have been halted.

Though the opening scenes match up fairly well with Sheridan’s departure as depicted in Objects At Rest (1998), we then fast-forward to a time after Sheridan and Delenn’s arrival on Minbar, with no hint or mention of that episode’s shocking developments involving Lennier (it may also be significant that we do not see Lennier again in the original series timeline); perhaps Sheridan’s socklessness is what triggered Lennier. Sheridan’s earlier exposure to tachyons occurred when his damaged time stabilizer left him exposed in War Without End Part 1 (1996); Though scenes in the alternate timeline in which Babylon 5 is directly attacked by the Shadows recall an alternate-timeline Ivanova’s distress call in that episode, it’s not the same timeline (particularly since Sinclair is still in command).