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Who destroyed Babylon Stations 1-3 and why?


According to the Babylon 5 wiki



Babylons 1 through 3 were all destroyed during their construction by acts of sabotage.



Who were the saboteurs and what was their agenda?



The most specific information I could find on the sabotage of Babylons 1-3 states:



Babylon 1, originally known simply as the Babylon Station, was the first space station built by the Earth Alliance under the aegis of the Babylon Project. During construction, Babylon 1's infrastructure collapsed and exploded as a result of sabotage.


The second attempted station in the Babylon Project, Babylon 2 was also sabotaged and destroyed, exploding during construction.


Like the previous two stations, Babylon 3 was also sabotaged and destroyed, exploding during construction.



Unfortunately, this gives no indication of what group, or even what species was responsible for sabotaging the stations, or what motivation they had for doing so.


We have these additional lines in the episode Grail from Thomas Jordan, aka Jinxo, who worked on the construction of all 5 Babylon stations:



I worked a few months, took some leave and the station's infrastructure collapsed. Sabotaged. They never found out who. I remember. So I went to work on the second one. The firm still owned my contract. I took leave a second time and that station was sabotaged. And then when B3 blew up, well, that's when I got the name Jinxo.




This doesn't give us much information about who was responsible, however, it does suggest that at least to Jinxo's knowledge the culprits of the sabotage of Babylon 1 were never found. This makes it look less likely that there is a canon answer to this...



Answer



According to JMS it was taken out by "forces opposed to the very notion of the Babylon Project" not by the Shadows:





  • Why didn't the Shadows destroy B5 before it went online?


    B5 wasn't destroyed because it wasn't the one that would be taken back. Yes, the prior stations would've looked more like B4 but they were sabotaged very early in the construction process. You'll learn why he didn't want Garibaldi along next ep. (src)





  • The B1-B3 sabotages had nothing at all to do with the B4 situation; it was just done by forces opposed to the very notion of the Babylon Project. (src)




  • The first 3 Babylon stations never got much past the very earliest stages of construction, just some hull elements, that sort of thing, nothing that could be recognized. Other forces took them out, mainly for political reasons. (src)




  • B4 survived the prior shadow war, but in very bad shape; didn't last much longer after that.





  • Did the Minbari agree to help fund B5 because they knew about B4?


    No, because if you remember, even Delenn didn't know where B4 came from until she came to B5, well after completion.





gbjbaanb's answer to What kept the Shadows from attacking Babylon 5? quoted one of these points, which lead me to finding the rest


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