Not much of a revelation, just an observation, but how much of sci-fi pushes the ideal that Humanity's path forward is unification?
Star Trek is a major one, and many would state it was a progressive show, and it earnestly was.
It also stated that in its ideal future, there's a Federation of like-minded extraterrestrials, and as a member species, Humanity lives in a united, post-scarcity society under a single government.
To that end, how many alien species in these stories are so inhuman, in that they have no differences, a world-wide government, a single language?
It's laughable how direct the propaganda was, and continues to be.
Straczynski gave Paramount the "show bible" and they ended up turning him down. Then they decided to come out with a show about a station on the border of federation space, with a powerful unknown race working behind the scenes as the main antagonist stoking hostilities between two races where one was once enslaved to the other, at roughly the same time as Babylon 5.
I know that two people can come up with the same idea at the same time from different starting points, but this is too close to simply be coincidence.