Susan Ivanova

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Babylon 5 character
Image:B5 ivanova.jpg
Susan Ivanova
Affiliated with	Babylon 5, Earth Alliance
Race	Human
Home planet	Earth
First appearance	Babylon 5: In the Beginning (chronological) Midnight on the Firing Line (airdate)
Last appearance	Sleeping in Light
Portrayed by	Claudia Christian

Susan Ivanova, played by Claudia Christian, is a fictional character in the universe of the science-fiction television series Babylon 5.

Contents 1 Personality 2 Tragedy and loss 3 Relationships 3.1 Talia Winters 4 Red herring 5 Departure from Babylon 5 6 After the Series 7 References 8 External links

Personality

For many viewers, Babylon 5 was exemplified by the character of Commander Susan Ivanova, second in command of the Babylon 5 station. Ivanova, portrayed by Claudia Christian, avoided many of the clichés endemic to women in modern sci-fi television. She was tough, assertive and self-confident, while being cynical and playfully witty.

Much of her appeal came from her quick-witted dialogue, which often lightened tensions in the serious, dramatic scenes that were the hallmark of the series. Marcus Cole, who contributed his own light-hearted banter in Seasons 3 and 4, served as both an important foil and a romantic interest for the character.

Tragedy and loss

Like many of the characters, Susan Ivanova seemed locked in a tragic cycle. The particular millstone around Ivanova's neck was love—not only romantic love, but familial. Deep down, she believes that "all love is unrequited", perhaps believing that she is undeserving of true happiness.

Ivanova's mother, Sophie, is established to have committed suicide when she was young, which Ivanova blames on the Psi Corps. Sophie was a telepath who refused to join the Psi Corps and, as a result, was forced to take telepathy-inhibiting drugs continually. The depressant effect of these drugs led to her suicide. Susan Ivanova eventually reveals that she is a telepath herself, although a very weak one, and lives in fear of discovery by the Psi Corps. She harbors a lasting grudge against the Corps throughout the show. Her brother, Ganya, died during the Earth-Minbari War, a piece of backstory set ten years before the show. Her father dies in a first-season episode: they are reconciled on his deathbed.

Over the course of the series Ivanova had two major romantic interests. The first, Talia Winters, was largely implied, though after Talia's betrayal and departure from Babylon 5, Ivanova did admit to loving her ^[1] . The second, Marcus Cole, ended with his sacrificing of his own life to save her, precipitating her departure from Babylon 5.

Interestingly, Babylon 5 creator Joe Straczynski often spoke of Ivanova's "Russian" temperament and character. His comments, as well as Ivanova's own quips, hint that her world view may have been shaped by the difficult history of the Russian people. In the future Earth shown on Babylon 5, the Russian people have united in a consortium and are clearly an important power on Earth. Yet, if Ivanova is any example, they remember vividly more difficult times under czars and communism. Although she is not especially religious, Ivanova is established as ethnically Jewish when she sits Shiva after her father's death. Russian Jews may have particularly vivid memories of difficult times.

Relationships

Over the course of her life that is dramatized in 'Babylon 5' Ivanova was involved in a series of relationships, all of which ended badly, the most emphasised being her relationship with Marcus Cole, a ranger assigned to Babylon 5 in 2260. While he fell in love with her early on, she refused to carry any relationship with him, possible because of pain from her previous failed relationships.

Their story had a tragic ending in the year 2261, when Susan was gravely injured in an epic battle to liberate earth from the dictatorship of President Clark, and was sent back to Babylon 5 when her condition was found to be too grave for her to recover from. When word of this reached Marcus, he searched for a way to save her, until he found Dr. Stephen Franklin's notes on The Alien Healing/Execution Device, a device that took life from one individual and gave it to another.

Armed with the knowledge that it was stored for safekeeping on Babylon 5, he returned and used it to save Ivanova's life, thereby sacrificing his own.

Only then did Ivanova realise the depth of Marcus' love for her, and mourning her loss, she requested that his body be preserved in cryogenic suspension, in the hopes that he could someday be revived.

Talia Winters

While never explicitly stated in the show, many fans believe that there was a relationship between Talia Winters and Ivanova. One scene that gave rise to this belief was a badly edited scene that led many to believe that a kiss between the two was edited out.

In response to this, J. Michael Straczynski stated, "No, nothing was cut; we had a matching problem at one point in the edit, where Andrea reached with her left hand in one angle, and didn't reach out with the other, and we had to come around for the shot on Ivanova, so it looked a tick off. But nothing was cut."^[2]

However, in the same discussion, Straczynski also mentions that, "I didn't show a kiss because, in my experience, it's easier on all around if one steps into the shallow end of the pool first, and walks into the deep end rather than diving in and splashing everybody in the process."^[2]

It should also be noted that Susan referred to Talia during a Minbari rebirth ceremony in the third season of Babylon 5. She told Delenn, the person who organised the ceremony, that she thought that she loved Talia Winters.

Red herring

In the time between the pilot of Babylon 5 and the first season, it became known that the previous second-commander of the station, Laurel Takashima, was intended to be a traitor. When Ivanova was created to replace Takashima in season 1, Straczynski used the fans' knowledge of this plotline as misdirection, as the true traitor plot was moved to the characters of Talia Winters and to Michael Garibaldi's second in command.

Departure from Babylon 5

Amidst the confusion over whether the show would get picked up for a fifth season, Claudia Christian declined to renew her contract, and did not appear in the fifth season. She was still able to appear in the final episode, as that episode was originally filmed as the finale of the fourth season and was moved forward. Ivanova did not appear in the episode that was created to serve as a new finale for season four.

This departure necessitated substantial changes to the fifth season of Babylon 5. A planned episode title, "The Very Long Night of Susan Ivanova," was reused as "The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari," though the episodes did not share a plot. Furthermore, a planned romantic relationship between Ivanova and the telepath Byron that would have continued her pattern of tragic relationships was changed to be a romance between Lyta Alexander and Byron, which in turn precipitated the events of the Telepath War. A new character, Elizabeth Lochley, was created to take Ivanova's narrative role as commander of the station.

After the Series

Although neither the Babylon 5 movies released after the end of the series nor the spin-off series "Crusade" references Ivanova, Straczynski wrote a short story set far in the future of the series called "Space, Time, and the Incurable Romantic" which features Marcus Cole being revived after a long time in stasis, when more information is available on the culture that created the device Cole used to heal Ivanova (and kill himself in the process). While Ivanova herself does not appear, Cole manages to steal some of her genetic material and an imprint of her thought patterns. He uses this to create a clone that believes she is Ivanova. He deliberately traps himself and the clone on a remote planet so that he can live out his days with her.

References

Wikipedia information about Susan Ivanova This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Susan Ivanova". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.