Babylon 5 is not like your local community, with as wide-ranging a
bunch of residents, including children. It's more like an airport, and you
don't generally see a lot of kids living at airports (unless you live in a
community much different from mine). There are two kinds of people in
general at B5...those who live and work at the station (security guards,
maintenance, dockworkers, other support staf) and people passing through
en route to other places, on stop-over. It's a place where you come to do
business deals, staying over for a day or two, and then leaving. You
wouldn't tend to bring your kids to something like that, and families
passing through go right from one ship to another, usually in a hurry to
make their flight.

And we've had plenty of older characters, so your sweepin
generalization is inaccurate, as are most sweeping generalizations. From
June Lockhart to Michael Ansara to Walter Koenig to Jane Carr to many
others, we've gone beyond the 35-49 age range you cite. We've also had
many ethnic groups, and featured them; in fact, virtually ALL of the
relationships (with I think one exception) have so far been from different
ethnic backgrounds (Sinclair and Sakai, Talia Winters and Jason Ironheart,
Dr. Franklin and Lockhart's daughter). We've used asian actors (doctors
in medlab, the scientist in "Voice," Taro Isogi in "Spider," Sakai),
hispanic actors (in "By Any Means," Dr. Maya Hernandez in "Believers,"
Wanda DeJesus coming up in "Hunter, Prey"), and a lot of african american
actors. We also populate all background shots with a wide mix of ethnic
backgrounds.

In short, we're already *doing* it. And we will continue to do more
of it. (Why doesn't Ivanova have a Russian accent? Because she was raised
overseas, and went to schools outside Russia, something we'll learn in a
few episodes.)

jms

My original reply somehow got bumped back; the panels on the uniforms
are always leather. Correct on the red piping and other changes; one of
the problems with last season's uniforms was that they kinda blurred on
camera, and the details went away. The piping helps the details to pop
a bit better on camera. The cuffs were changed because in the old version,
the leather cuffs caused the cuffs to gather, and never looked clean or
crisp, which a real uniform would. So we changed it. I've been told what
the rest of the uniforms are made of, but for the life of me can't recall
just now.

jms