I resisted this series for as long as I could. I was a staunch Star Trek fan, and Babylon 5 was 'the other show'; but gradually it was infiltrating the group I socialised with at Pages. One by one we all fell under the charm of it's flawed characters, the strength of the intricate storylines and the fact that as a portrayal of the future of humanity it was probably closer to the truth than anything that had come before. In 250 years humans will still be fundamentally the same as we are today, we won't magically have solved all of our problems or made ourselves a better species. We'll just have a bigger sand box.

You couldn't dive in at the halfway stage, you had to start at the beginning. There was knowledge you had to pick up as you went along; innocuous facts, throwaway lines and subtle hints were cleverly weaved into the tapestry of the story and any one of them could be what blew the plot wide open or explained everything. Things weren't neatly tied up over the course of a 42 minute episode leaving the fans discussing exactly what it was that whoever it was had said would lead to wherever it led. If you know what I mean, and very often none of us did.

"I think I loved Talia." That one sentence was all it took; one sentence and I wanted more.

Let me explain. About nine months earlier I'd 'come out' as gay to my family, I think most of my friends already knew. And though Star Trek: The Next Generation had explained Beverly Crushers denial of her Trill lover in the body of a female as her inability to keep up with such drastic changes they were, to my mind, sweeping it under the carpet. Then Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had pushed it a little farther; two Trill's, whose symbionts had once been married, now found themselves in the bodies of two females. So it was the symbionts who were in love allowing them to once again quite neatly side step the issue of homosexuality. I was seventeen at the time, I gratefully took what I could and watched the episodes continuously.

But when Susan Ivanova confessed her secret, in a breathy whisper, there was no hiding the fact that this was a woman who was in love with another woman. I wanted to know who Talia was. I needed to know why her name made Susan so sad. Where had it started? How had it ended?

Beg. Steal. Borrow. I got the episodes and I watched the relationship unfold from the first moments of hostility, through a grudging respect, to a tentative friendship and finally the infamous scene of Talia turning over in bed and reaching out for an absent Susan. There was never a kiss, there was never an embrace, they barely ever touched each other; everything in this relationship was implied by the eyes. Whether they were checking each other out, staring each other down or letting their gazes drop to the others lips it was all there. This was the television tease at it's best; made all the better because the sexual relationship between the two was quite openly talked about by both Claudia Christian (Susan Ivanova) and Andrea Thompson (Talia Winters) and confirmed by series creator/producer j. michael straczynski.

The show lost more than Talia Winters when Andrea Thompson decided to leave the series. Talia was about to turn her back on the Psi Corps after learning the lengths they would go to and the depths they would sink to in order to make a better telepath. Given a gift by rogue telepath Jason Ironheart she had developed into a stable telekinetic, showed an ability to block more powerful telepaths from her thoughts, had attracted the interest of the Vorlons to be a major player in the Shadow War and was probably to be a key figure in the anticipated telepath war. Alas, the second season episode 'Divided Loyalties' revealed Talia to be a Psi Corps sleeper agent, implanted with an alternate personality who was gathering intelligence on the command staff of Babylon 5. When triggered by a telepathic code word the Talia we had grown to love was no more and in her place stood a cruel and callous doppleganger. It is interesting to note that despite the change in personality she still appeared to hold a strong, albeit quite predatory, attraction for Susan. With her cover blown Evil Talia was promptly dispatched back to Earth where she was either debriefed or dissected, the show was never really definitive about her fate.

Naturally the legions of Susan/Talia fans turned to the realms of fan fiction to rectify their loss, myself included... at least I tried to. I had big plans for an intense confrontation between Susan and Talia resulting in the shattering of the alternate personality but almost cost Talia her own mind. This was followed by a rogue faction of telepaths coming to the rescue, abducting Susan and stealing the data crystal with Talia's original personality imprinted upon it in a desperate bid to resurrect the Talia that represents their future. Then, finally, Talia's return to Babylon 5, her struggle to regain the trust of the command staff and prove herself to be the woman that Susan fell in love with. And yes, my Mary Sue character was the one who rescued Talia, abducted Susan and figured out how to get the contents of a data crystal back into the head of a telepath. (Her name was Quinn, she'd known Talia since she was a child, she'd been experimented on by Psi Corps, and apparently liked to eat green crayons when she was little... so Talia recalls.)

Most of those ideas never made it onto paper, they have stayed firmly locked away in my head. Instead I found another creative outlet to pay tribute to my first femslash pairing... music videos. On my first attempt I laid about 30 seconds of audio/video to tape and got bored with my lack of progress. In 2006 I revisted the series and remembered just how much I had loved Susan and Talia and found the inspiration I needed to make that elusive music video. Ten years after I first thought of the idea I finally finished it: 'When Love and Hate Collide'... it seemed appropriate.

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And here's a few of my favourites:

Music Videos
Total Eclipse of The Heart: www.youtube.com/watch
Five Years: www.youtube.com/watch
When Love And Hate Collide: www.youtube.com/watch

Susan/Talia Fan Fiction
Gia Cogli Angeli, Ivanova?: www.altfic.com/subtextfic/Babylon5/penumbra/angeli1.htm
Oblique: www.altfic.com/subtextfic/Babylon5/penumbra/oblique1.htm
Envoi: www.altfic.com/subtextfic/Babylon5/fewthistle/envoi.htm

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