The opening narration for Season three.  Commander Susan Ivanova "The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. It failed. But in the year of the Shadow war, it became something greater: our last, best hope for victory. The year is 2260. The place - Babylon 5".

It is the second year of Sheridan's command of Babylon 5 and it will be a year of great change and sacrifice. After the destructive end to the Narn Centauri War, the Centauri began to annexe several nearby worlds and eyed several others. Ambassador Mollari, made efforts to dissolve the secret alliance between his people and the Shadows, but the Shadows would not let go so easily. The Shadows would make alliance with Lord Refa in place of Londo and using this alliance the Shadows would get the Centauri to secure a planet that had recently been annexed in Drazi space. The planet was a secret training base for the Rangers. When the Rangers realised that there base was under threat, they sent one Ranger (Marcus Cole) to Babylon 5 to seek help. When Marcus reached Babylon 5 he enlisted Sheridan’s aid, which was freely given. As a result Delenn and Marcus gave Sheridan a new ship - the first of its kind - the White Star. The White Star is a combination of Minbari and Vorlon technology, very fast for its size, and able to open its own jump points into hyperspace. Using the new ship, Sheridan is able to break the blockade and allow the Rangers to escape and in the process fights his first battle with a Shadow vessel. Meanwhile, back on Earth, President Clark, who came to power upon the death of his predecessor, has created a new arm of the government, the Ministry of Peace. Ostensibly a group dedicated to the spreading of peaceful thought, one branch of the Ministry has more sinister overtones to it - the Nightwatch. The Nightwatch, a type of thought police is used to root out "traitors" to the Earth Alliance. In truth the only crime committed by those arrested by Nightwatch was disagreeing with President Clark. Ironically Clark was a greater traitor than any arrested by Nightwatch. Clark had, along with elements of the Psi Corps and the Shadows, conspired to assassinate President Luis Santiago. The Psi Corps is one of the most powerful and pervasive organisations in the Earth Alliance, with an agenda all their own. The Psi Corps also has had dealings with the Shadows. In 2253 an excavation in Syria Planum on Mars dug up a Shadow battlecruiser three hundred feet beneath the surface. The Corps had some involvement in the recovery of the ship with a definite link to the Shadows. Psi Corps had also been experimenting with artificial "sleeper" personalities who would spy for the Corps. Such a spy was introduced to Babylon 5 in the form of the commercial telepath Talia Winters. In 2259 another Shadow battlecruiser was discovered in the Solar system, this time to Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Sheridan took the White Star to Ganymede, a moon of the planet Jupiter, and managed to destroy the Shadow ship. After this event, President Clark, using the fear of alien invasion, declared marshal law throughout the Earth alliance. Using the Nightwatch and certain loyal members of the military, Clark seized personal control of the entire Earth Alliance. He disbanded the Senate and became a dictator in defiance of the Earth Gov constitution. When the Mars colony refused to obey the martial law order, Clark ordered the bombing of Mars. With this action the Earth colonies on Orion VII and Proxima III declared independence. Babylon 5 soon followed suit. After a battle with Earth Force ships loyal to Clark, and with the help of three Minbari cruisers and the White Star, Babylon 5 had won its independence. With the break from earth and the realisation that Earth had been allied with the Shadows for some time, Sheridan and the crew of Babylon 5 knew that the time had come to make a stand. A War Council was formed. Its purpose is to coordinate the coming war with the Shadows. Babylon 5 now became the headquarters of the Army of Light. For months the Shadows had been fomenting chaos. The intervention in the Narn-Centauri war, the aiding of elements in the Earth government, and the entangling of alliances among the League of Non-Aligned Worlds all contributed to the disunity of the races of the galaxy. This disunity served the Shadows' cause when they finally began attacking openly. The Brakiri had the dubious honour of being the first race to be openly attacked by the Shadows. The first obstacle to overcome in the defeat of the Shadows was the chaos in the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. The League was greatly demoralised by the Shadow attacks and believed the situation to be hopeless. They would only follow Sheridan if he could show them that the Shadows were not invincible - he had to give them one victory. Sheridan saught help from the Vorlon Ambassador, Kosh. Reluctantly Kosh agreed to help but made it clear that there would be a price for this help, and gave Sheridan a warning. The Vorlons entered the next battle and gave Sheridan the victory he needed, but Kosh paid the price. Now that the races were united, it was time to strike a decisive blow. It was determined that telepaths could be used to disrupt the Shadow vessels' organic technology. Then Sheridan and Delenn discovered a pattern to the Shadow attacks. The stage was set for the first major engagement between the Army of Light and the Shadows. The Army of Light won, but at great cost. The Shadows then took another approach by sending Anna Sheridan to Babylon 5, Captain Sheridan's wife. Anna had long been thought dead, she was on an exploration vessel which disappeared at Z'Ha'Dum. When Anna arrived on Babylon 5 she convinced Sheridan to return with her to Z'Ha'Dum to hear the Shadows side of the story. Once they arrived the Shadows told Sheridan that they and the Vorlons were the last remaining First Ones. They had stayed behind to care for the younger races. The two races had different styles, however. The Vorlons believed in an ordered path of evolution. The Shadows believed in evolution through Strife. Sheridan was given an ultimatum: stop the drive to unite the races of the galaxy or Babylon 5 would be destroyed. Realising that the Shadows had led him into a trap, Sheridan pulled a hidden PPG and attempted to fight his way out. In the confusion that followed he was able to signal the White Star which crashed onto Z’Ha’Dum, detonating two high powered nuclear devices just after Sheridan jumped into a great pit, causing the Shadows great damage. The fate of Captain Sheridan was unknown.

Final note of Season three. Citizen G'Kar "It was the end of the Earth year 2260, and the war had paused suddenly and unexpectedly. All around us, it was as if the universe were holding its breath - waiting. All life can be broken down into moments of transition or moments of revelation. This had the feeling of both. G'Quon wrote: "There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities - it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender." The future is all around us waiting in moments of transition to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We only know that it is always born in pain".

|SEASON 1||SEASON 2||SEASON 4||SEASON 5||ENVOY|
|TOP||HOME||MAIN NAV|