The craziest (unverified) rumor is that this might have been caused by WB and Paramount's abandoned plan to launch a joint network:
> A commenter named Steven Hopstaken left the following comment in the io9 article:
> I was working at Warner Bros. in the publicity department when Warner Bros. and Paramount were preparing to launch a joint [emphasis mine] network. Warner Bros. already decided to buy Babylon 5 for their adhoc PTEN network (a group of independent stations that agreed to show Warner Bros. shows in prime time.)
> Paramount and Warner Bros. both agreed that Deepspace 9 would be the show that would launch the new network and there wouldn’t be room for two “space” shows on the network. I was told they purposely took what they liked from the B5 script and put it in the DS9 script. In fact, there was talk of leaving the B5 script in tact and just setting it the Star Trek universe. I had to keep rewriting press release drafts while they were trying to make the final decision.
And even at that, it took a solid quarter century to sink in. "The Next Generation," indeed - that said, while I've forgotten the specifics, I do clearly recall having to pause the 2009 Trek reboot film on first viewing to laugh about a couple of fairly transparent B5 in-jokes, which suggests to me that it's not an accident people from that same orbit went on to make Trek that inherits a lot of what made Babylon 5 great.
