Commander Susan Ivanova
SPECIES: Human
HOMEWORLD: St.Petersburg,Earth
DATE OF BIRTH: 30-08-2230
ORGANISATION: Army of Light
STATUS: 1st Officer B5, Second in Command
ALLEGIANCE: Light
ACTRESS: Claudia Christian

A unorthodox jew who was born to Andrei and Sofie in St. Petersburg, Russian Consortium, Earth and largely educated abroad lest Psi Corps, held in low family regard for their treatment of Sofie, discover that she was a latent telepath, although probably not a very strong one - her own belief is a sub-P1 rating, accounting for Susan's hated of the Psi Corps. This is a fact she has hidden for most of her life, the few skills that she has is the ability to block and detect a scan, as was noticed by Harriman Gray and later on by Lyta Alexander whose presence caused her secret to be revealed to the Babylon 5 command staff. At thirteen she became fascinated by the works of Kasholev, a radical neo-communist, of whom Andrei did not approve, sulking until her father agreed to take her to one of his readings, where in the following question and answer session she asked her idol a question she had worked on for weeks, only to be told that she was a "bourgeois little twit, barely out of diapers". At this point her father stood up an explained to Susan's mortification that she was neither bourgeois, not a twit and had been out of diapers for many years, while his writing had yet to rise above the contents of diapers, and then pointed out that, were he not a man of peace, he would have horsewhipped him through the streets of St. Petersburg, as his own father should have many years before. Susan felt a little better about things when he explained that "it was a good question, Little Soul", his pet name for her.

After the suicide of her mother and her brother Ganya's death in the Earth-Minbari War a year later, in whose memory she only wears one earring, Susan joined Earth Force against her father's wishes in 2247, getting involved with Malcolm Biggs while in OTC, but breaking off the affair after graduation and assignment to Io in 2250, something that she considered a big career move. Here she worked with John Sheridan for the first time, giving him a taste of her dislike for Psi Corps by throwing a telepath out of a third story window into an "ample" pool, working her way through the ranks purely on merit, without any connections or patrons. She has maintained an exemplary record, and logged over 100 hours of flight experience, occasionally yearning to take a Starfury into action, which she has done on numerous occasions. Her big chance came in 2258, when as a Lt. Commander, serial number Z48M27 Epsilon, she was appointed to replace Laurel Takashima as second in command of Babylon 5 and was subsequently promoted to Commander in early 2259 after a recommendation by John Sheridan, and also started her on a diplomatic career.

The first diplomatic task she was assigned was to find a peaceful solution to the Drazi battle of supremacy between randomly chosen Purple and Green factions, and while her attempts at diplomacy left her with a broken foot the eventual solution was a chance event leading to leadership of one of two factions, when she inadvertently put on the leadership sash of one team. From their the solution was easy, simply ordering her team to dye their sashes to the color of the other. Her second assignment, convincing the Lumati to join the Babylon Project, had an equally non-diplomatic ending, as having successfully convinced the Lumati delegate, Correlilmurzon, to sign on after his misinterpretation of the purpose of DownBelow she was aghast to discover that Lumati seal agreements through sexual intercourse, placing her in a moral dilemma. Her salvation came in the form of Dr. Franklin who pointed out that their knowledge of human sexual practices was probably minimal she performed an manic dance for Correlilmurzon, which was sufficient to complete the deal, but received a note from the Lumati that read "Next time, my way!".

Malcolm Biggs reentered her life shortly after her arrival on Babylon 5, with an offer of rekindling their romance which she was prepared to accept, however when he was revealed to be a member of the Homeguard planning to assassinate the four primary alien ambassadors on Babylon 5 she quickly turned to Jeffrey Sinclair to help bring him to justice, saying that she had met aliens more human than he was. Suffering from the emotional stress of this she entered into an unlikely relationship with the station's resident member of Psi Corps, Talia Winters, only to be stung again when she was revealed to be a sleeper spy for Bureau 13 who had been using her to gather information on the command staff of Babylon 5. Susan is dedicated to her career, citing being too tied up with work commitments to attend her father's funeral and then to sit shiva for him, until convinced otherwise by Rabbi Koslov and given a forced leave by John Sheridan, an experience that she called upon to convince Stephen Franklin to make amends with his own father while he was visiting Babylon 5 prior to leading the assault on Akdor and before it was too late. She does not however want to take shortcuts; when she was offered a shortcut to her dream of commanding her own starship by the Nightwatch representative Welles in return for providing information she refused immediately.

When off duty, Susan Ivanova usually winds down in the Casino, but also spent a lot of time in docking bay 13 watching the patterns on the surface of Kosh Naranek's transport change while it was there, something that she found very relaxing. She exercises vigorously to keep her figure once a day, although Dr. Franklin's opinion is that she should eat more as she has slight iron and calcium deficiencies. Although she is considered by many of the crew to be a pessimist and viewed with fear for her sharp putdowns she is renown for her humorous one-liners, she has problems getting up when it is dark outside, which, as she says, is a big problem on a space station. Her password to the Babylon 5 computer system is "Griffin".