Strength of character

What is it about some characters that inspires us? What about characters makes us fall in love with them? Think about some of the more iconic characters of film and television, and there's one thing you tend to see, one commonly recurring feature among some of the worlds favored characters, and that is that they're all just generally good people.

This is something that seems particularly common in science-fiction, whereupon typically regular and ordinary people are thrust into extraordinary circumstances and are then challenged, by other characters around them and by the stress of the situation they are in. It is these challenging moments that make or break a character, and make us love or loathe them. Of course, there's more to it than that, all of the small moments in a show or movie, the quirks and quips and the subtle, little actions that the actor just throws in all go towards helping us fall in love (or in hate) with someone, but by and large the big, defining moments are make or break time.

Since this topic is about character, I want to talk now about one of my favorite shows ever to grace the airwaves, Babylon 5. It began airing right about the same time as one of my other favorite shows, Deep Space Nine. Both shows are about a space station and revolve around the crews and life on a space station in deep space, far away from colonized worlds, but in the end both shows were radically different. Deep Space Nine focused much more heavily on the characters and was in many respects a Star Trek show like The Next Generation, just somewhat more grounded and stable (at least for the first few season). Babylon 5 had a very distinctly organized plot planned out from its inception, and also had a focus on politics and morality (as well as war and peace, sacrifice, and its fair share of other topics)

What does this have to do with character? The fact that the people on the station were (for the most part) just such good people. It seemed that no matter what, when called upon, they would always do the right thing without even giving it a second thought. It's that trait which makes the characters so admirable. It seems that we find ourselves in an increasingly immoral world, with fewer and fewer upstanding and ethical people; solid, upstanding characters resonate with us, tell us that there is still good out there and remind us good people still exist, and it's something we can take comfort in.