Today we launch a new set of stories, "The Enterprise in Babylon", which we hope will interest our readers enough to make them want to write and submit chapters of their own.

Whilst we were still in the planning phase for the site one of us came up with an idea for a set of stories. It wasn't original (certainly it's been done before) but it captured our imagination and certainly inspired a lot of discussion.

I'm going to be brutally honest here ... I love "Babylon 5". Don't get me wrong I like "Star Trek" too ... I must admit I like "Voyager" (with Jeri Ryan in, who wouldn't?) and, though I haven't seen it yet, series 6 of "Deep Space 9" looks promising. However, where I tend to merely catch episodes of "Star Trek" I will not miss a single episode of "Babylon 5". Of course, I have long been aware of the enmity between the hard-liners of both "Star Trek" and "Babylon 5" camps ... I guess it is interesting, even amusing, on occasion. The sad fact is that it is, ultimately, a pathetic debate with no real value and in which there can be no victor.

So it was with some amusement that one of our team came up with the idea (and wrote the beginnings) of a story that would have EAS Babylon 5 trash the USS Enterprise. But the more we talked about it the more we realised it simply wouldn't work. For one thing, like it or not, USS Enterprise wouldn't necessarily get trashed by EAS Babylon 5, not even supported by a couple of White Star's or Minbari Sharlin's, quite the reverse I would think. Oh arguably one of the planet killers might but it would have a tough time locking on to, never mind catching, her first. We began to seriously discuss the possibilities of such a series of stories, fed by submissions, one that would concern the exploits of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E in the "Babylon 5" universe.

At first the project seemed to present no particular problems. Obviously we had to protect the story from the evangelists of both camps, that was easy enough ... a simple set of rules and guidelines to protect certain characters & ships and to outline the way the stories should be handled would cover that. But then we started looking for things we didn't know, initially in the "Star Trek" universe (apparently the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E has Falcon Class Attack Shuttles, but does anyone know their names?). Then we realised just how much weaponry she had and how incredible some of the power ratings were ... AND she had shields! I'm sorry if this irritates some readers, I'm a die-hard B5'er myself, but from a purely observational point of view, "Babylon 5" technology doesn't even come close!

With the antagonism existing between hard-line "Trekkies" and "B5'ers" we knew we would get criticised so the task became to protect ourselves from it, or rather to give ourselves the necessary ammunition with which to realistically defend the scenario we've been developing. We began to research the disparate technologies of "Star Trek" and "Babylon 5" ... a mammoth task in itself but quite rewarding in its own way.

As I understand it JMS considers "Babylon 5" to be about ethics ... I'd agree but a significant amount of it's interest, to me, is simply because it's science fiction. He has kept the available technical data to a minimum because a glut of that kind of information opens the door to pointless criticism ... it is, after all, only a story and that kind of effect only detracts from the story as a whole.

To a degree Paramount (the makers of "Star Trek"?) have fallen into the trap that JMS has tried, as it turns out unsuccessfully (and quite possibly through no fault of his own), to avoid. Technologies have been invented and explained but by the very act of explaining them you must invent more technologies to support them, then technologies get invented to support them and so on. The further you continue along that route the closer you get to "technobabble", the criticism so often levelled at "Star Trek". Nevertheless, whilst they've had a long time to do it but it, it is a credit to the makers of "Star Trek" that they've managed to pull the whole lot together in a way that ... well ... works!

Do you realise just how many "Babylon 5" sites there are out there? Believe me, there are a lot more "Star Trek" ones and two things became rapidly apparent to us:

• The better "Star Trek" sites seem to be highly consistent in terms of the data available ... it may be complete fantasy but, in its own way, it hang's together.
• "Babylon 5" sites are based on very little "hard" information ... by "hard" information I mean information directly from the "Babylon 5" TV series and films (so called "canon" information). Much of it appears to be based on other people's work or guesswork. Moreover a significant number of them seem appear to be guesswork based on the guesswork of others. The most significant flaws seem to be in terms of power ratings and ship mass ... by next week we will hope to have published a discussion of the available "Babylon 5" power and mass data to support our findings.
• People who maintain such sites (both "Trek" and "B5") are apparently sad individuals with nothing better to do. In many cases they also seem to believe they are "experts" though quite how they can consider themselves "expert" in anything technical when, oftentimes, spell seems a challenge is a complete mystery to me.

We bought two CD packages (both of which will be reviewed on this site shortly):

• "The Official Guide To J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5" - Very little technical information though useful on the political and character side. Politics and character-studies are better covered by Internet sites such as "The Lurker's Guide".
• "The Star Trek Encyclopaedia (A Reference Guide To The Future)" - Lots of data but little organisation.

In conclusion we have this to say:

We have taken a lot of time and effort to make this scenario work and to protect it from those who would like to trash one side or the other. The aim of the scenario is to create a framework for a set of stories that are interesting, exciting & amusing and would like to stress it's about the cultural differences more than the technical ... considering the data available and the disparate nature of the technologies involved we feel we've done a reasonable job.

It's probably a waste of time (evangelists rarely listen) but the points we like to push forward are these:

• If you have constructive criticism we'd like to hear it ... we are prepared to modify the scenario if the points raised make sense to us.
• If you want to write a story for the scenario we want to know about that too ... there's a submissions procedure (again to protect the story line).
• If you don't like what we've done then don't read it
• If you're not happy with the technical stuff then please tell us ... if it makes sense we will consider modifications.
• Please be aware we are not over-interested in "B5/ST is better than ..." style arguments and, at this point in time, we are reasonably happy with what we've come up with!