Today, it’s hard to remember that TV in the 1990s was in an incredible science fiction renaissance. By 1996, there were two popular Star Trek series airing — Voyager and Deep Space Nine — not to mention the final season of seaQuest, the golden era of The X-Files, Space: Above and Beyond, and the spaceflight series The Cape. But, arguably, the sci-fi TV series that rivaled Star Trek in 1996, at least in terms of a burgeoning fandom, was Babylon 5. Like Deep Space Nine, the story of B5 took place on a space station and also dealt with massive space wars and massive interconnected serialized arcs. While the idea that DS9 ripped off B5 is mostly water-under-the-bridge today, at the time, there was some tension between the fandoms.
And so, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski teamed up with an ally within the Star Trek camp, Majel Barrett, the widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Often called “the First Lady of Star Trek,” Barrett guest-starred on a pivotal episode of Babylon 5, which has a kind of peace-keeping mission between the two fandoms. During the week of February 26, 1996, in the episode “Point of No Return,” Barrett appeared as the character Lady Morella, and in doing so, made sci-fi history.
