Susan Ivanova

Template:Babylon5 character Susan Ivanova is a fictional character in the universe of the science fiction television series Babylon 5, played by Claudia Christian. She holds the rank of Lieutenant Commander during the first season; she is promoted to the rank of Commander in the second season. From the first through the fourth seasons of the series Commander Ivanova was the first officer (XO) of the Babylon 5 space station. After the fourth season of the series, she was promoted to Captain and given command of a new class of Earth Alliance warship, the "Warlock-Class". She accepted the promotion because of the tragic events that happened on Babylon 5 at the very end of the Earth Alliance Civil War, in which she played a major role. During the fifth and final season of Babylon 5 she appears only once, in the series' final episode.

Character description

Overview

Like many of the show's characters, Susan Ivanova seemed locked in a tragic cycle. The particular millstone around Ivanova's neck was love—not only romantic love, but familial as well. Deep down, she believes that "all love is unrequited", perhaps believing that she is undeserving of true happiness. However, in spite of her troubled relationships with her mother, father, brother, and others, she is also fiercely loyal and caring about those to whom she is close. Given her troubled background, she also possesses a surprisingly good sense of humor, which often comes out at odd moments. She has a fierce temper and this often leads other crew members to give her a wide berth whenever she is angry; she also possesses a strong sense of integrity and honesty. As a military leader she is brave to the point of recklessness, has the ability to think and act quickly in a crisis, and she can be creative and ingenious in coming up with ways to solve any situation she finds herself in.

Early life and career

Susan Ivanova's mother, Sophie, is established to have committed suicide when Susan was a child, 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 regularly. The powerful depressant effect of these drugs gradually drained her energy and eventually led her to commit suicide. Susan Ivanova eventually reveals that she is a latent telepath herself and lives in fear of discovery by the Psi Corps. She harbors a lasting grudge against the Psi Corps throughout the show, and blames them for the death of her mother. Her beloved brother, Ganya, died during the Earth-Minbari War, a piece of backstory set ten years before the show. He was a fighter pilot aboard the Earth Alliance warship Lexington and was killed in the battle with the Black Star, the Minbari's flagship. Due to her telepathic abilities, she was able to sense her brother's death despite the vast distance between them. She also didn't have a good relationship with her father, who became irritable and emotionally distant from Susan after her mother's death. In a first-season episode her father dies on Earth; she reconciles with him and forgives him before his death.

Over the course of the series Ivanova had two major romantic interests. The first, with telepath Talia Winters, was largely implied, though after Talia's betrayal and departure from Babylon 5, Ivanova did admit to possibly loving her. In the first season her relationship with Winters got off to a rocky start, and her inherent distrust of anyone in Psi Corps led Ivanova to behave rudely towards Talia. However, they eventually became friends, and possibly lovers by the time of Talia's departure from the series. Ivanova is clearly hurt by the revelation that Talia was actually a "sleeper" Psi Corps agent who had been sent to spy on the command staff of Babylon 5. The second relationship, with Marcus Cole, also began in a rocky manner, as Ivanova regarded Marcus as reckless and annoying and often told him so. However, they eventually became uneasy friends, and when he sacrificed his life to save hers at the end of the fourth season, Ivanova was devastated. She tells Dr. Franklin, B5's medical chief and a close friend, that "all love is unrequited", and wishes that she had returned his love and affection instead of being so sarcastic with him. The death of Marcus leads her to leave Babylon 5 and become the captain of a new class of Earth Alliance warship.

Interestingly, Babylon 5 creator Joe Straczynski often spoke of Ivanova's supposedly "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 openly religious, and rarely discusses religion with anyone, Ivanova is established as ethnically Jewish when she sits Shiva after her father's death. Her uncle on Earth, a devout Jew, visits her after her father's death and she comes to accept her Jewish faith, if only in private. She does appear to have a belief in God, and she occasionally "talks" to God (in a rather joking manner) under her breath in a few episodes of the series. However, she keeps her religious beliefs largely to herself.

Ivanova is promoted several times during the series. She starts as a lieutenant commander, and is promoted to full commander in the second season. At the end of the fourth season, she is made Captain. In "Sleeping in Light" (the series finale, set 18 years after the events of the fifth season), it is revealed that she is a General. She retires from EarthForce in this episode and becomes "Ranger One", the head of the Rangers.

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 emphasized being her relationship with Marcus Cole, a ranger assigned to Babylon 5 in 2260. While he fell in love with her early on, she did not begin a romantic relationship with him, possible because of pain from her previous failed relationships.

Their story had a tragic ending in the year 2261, when she 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; it was felt that Babylon 5's medical facilities could keep her comfortable until she died. 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 energy 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 realize 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 lesbian 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."

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."

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, "I think I loved Talia."

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

Neither the Babylon 5 movies released after the end of the series nor the spin-off series "Crusade" refer to Ivanova. However, Straczynski wrote a short story set far in the future of the series called "Space, Time, & the Incurable Romantic" which was published in Amazing Stories #602. This story features Marcus Cole being revived after a long time in stasis. The world that created the device Cole used to heal Ivanova (and kill himself in the process) has been discovered, and enough additional information has been found to revive him. While Ivanova herself does not appear, Cole manages to steal some of her genetic material and an imprint of her thought patterns and memories. 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.

Trivia

• 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.

• While "Ivanova" is an authentic Russian name, the pronunciation used in the series (with the accent on the second syllable) is not; it should be pronounced with the accent on the third syllable.

• Short phrases and words in Russian which Ivanova utters throughout the series reveal a very strong American accent. In the dubbed German version the same words are said without any notable accent.

See also

• List of women warriors in folklore, literature, and popular culture

External links

• The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5: The definitive B5 reference and episode guide
• Babylon 5 Encyclopedia (fansite)
• Susan Ivanova Character Profile (fansite)