A Niner Watches Babylon 5 (NO spoilers, please)

You see that's precisely my problem.

Say what one will about chucking the Vorlons and Shadows out the window before the fourth season was half-done, but it was ballsy. No more eldritch enemies, we're done with that!

...but switching the name-plates around is an utter cop out. Don't write the Shadows off the show once and for all unless you're well and truly finished with them, JMS.

The addition of further eldritch forces also diminishes the seeming importance of the story. There were the Vorlons and the Shadows but also all these other jerks too; and live in fear that eventually you'll uncover - the Darkness! The Nightmare! The Dusky CORNER! Shadows were just one of ancient innumerable jerk species if one keeps going down that road, and thus, perhaps not the big cosmic threat they're laid out to be...

Spoiler: Unhand me!

The Hand as a bogus conspiracy would have been a welcome twist; though even if so their presentation in Legend is laughably over the top. Hm.

 

Well to be fair, it is logical and everything that happens after the First Ones leave is a direct consequence of their actions up until that point. Telepaths and Drakh being the two big ones in the immediate aftermath. They couldn't just erase all traces of everything they've ever done; every mistake, every scrap of derelict technology, every planet they ever inhabited. These guys were space fairing civilisations for millions, if not billions of years, that's a hell of a lot of time for all sorts of weird and dangerous crap to occur. Then there's the fact that the Vorlons and the Shadows weren't the only First Ones and there's no telling what one of the others might have left behind.

Spoiler: Underhandedness

Except those guys weren't The Hand, they were servants of The Hand. The Hand were still locked away in the phantom zone with General Zod. There was a thread about a traitor within the Rangers that got the last crew of the Liandra killed, but we never saw anything near enough of it have the slightest clue where that was going or if it was even linked to The Hand plot (unless I'm forgetting something.)
It's all rather academic of course since it takes place in 2265 and we know there was no mass invasion by a race of exiled First Ones that wiped out or subjugated all life. Whatever went down it's probably fair to say the cre of the Liandra put a stop to it.

 

I love the elevator scene because it gives me three solid minutes to stare at Lyta.

I mentioned it to Pat as a favorite scene of mine, and she says she thought Jeff was awesome in it.

 

There's a difference between the malingering remnants of their impact - like all the post-Shadow stuff in the fourth and fifth seasons of B5 - and brand spanking new villain races, we got in Thirdspace.

Spoiler: Handlebars

Well yes, but given the alternatives - another hackneyed ancient evil - a third, no less, and again waaaay bigger and meaner then the Shadows - or just some baloney nonsense spouted to get people scared I find the latter more dramatically satisfying. Of course most of Rangers felt like warmed oveer B5, but that's a later argument.

 

Well I think you need something to prove that the younger races aren't automatically top dogs just because the First Ones left. It sort of kills the drama if they're automatically the most powerful thing around. Ad for Thirdspace, it was only one race and it's supposed to be a one-off. Hell, I'd be more inclined to classify them as a force of (un)nature than a race in the conventional sense. They're Old Ones, or Outer Gods or whatever the proper Lovecraftian term is. The First Ones and even Lorien were at least relatable; races that survived long enough to become very advanced. These things were something else entierly.

 

Trust me, you don't want to know some of the fantasies I've entertained.

Actually, I don't think I was clear. There are characters I'm fond of and to which I have a connection. It's just that none of them were in Sleeping in Light. Londo, G'Kar, Lennier, Lyta, and Marcus (all the characters I've connected with) were absent. That made the show extremely boring for me.

We had Sheridan and Delenn (two characters I only barely have a connection with) (Hell, Sinclair left more of an impression on me than Sheridan, and he was only there for one season). Garibaldi, Franklin, and Vir (three characters I'm indifferent about). And Ivanova (a character I have absolutely no connection to and simply don't care about).

 

Actually, when I was watching the scene I wondered if this was the case because of how long it dragged on for. I just had a feeling that this was a situation where the movie came up a couple of minutes short and they needed to fill time, so they wrote this scene and made it far longer than it needed to be. It's interesting to learn that was the case.

But I kind of already knew how he felt about her. Well, I extrapolated from the pizza scene in season 4 that he was developing a romantic interest in her. I didn't need him to spell it out for 3 minutes.

And you don't want to know about some of the things I've actually done!




The River of Souls (***)

I've said it before but I think it is important to say it again after watching this movie: Babylon 5 has some of the ropiest guest actors on TV. In fact, one of the actors in this movie, Ramón Estévez, was so bad that he decided not to use his real name, he used the fictional name of Martin Sheen instead. And don't even get me started on Ian McShane with his fake gravelly voice. Neither of these men appears capable of an Emmy-winning performance, the best they could ever hope for is a Golden Globe.

I have a confession to make: I'm a Wingnut. That is to say that I am a big fan of The West Wing and not something you attach to a bolt. In fact, after DS9 I would probably place The West Wing as my second favourite show. I am not only a fan of President Josiah Bartlet, I love him and hope that one day we can clone him and install that clone as President of Earth. When I hear Martin Sheen's voice I don't think "that's Martin Sheen's voice" I think "Yessir, Mr President!" However, when I think of Soul Hunters I think of that boring, droning voice from the second episode that makes me want to tear my left kidney out. Combining Martin Sheen and a Soul Hunter is very difficult to me; I want to hate the character, but then I hear him talk and think "Soul Hunter For President!" I really don't know how to feel any more.

I have another confession to make: I've never watched Deadwood, but I've heard that it was great. I did watch the first few episodes of Kings before it was cancelled and I enjoyed it largely because of Ian McShane as Kind Silas. In this movie he takes a character that's not much on the page and he makes him interesting, someone that I want to see more of. He and Martin Sheen made me enjoy characters that I otherwise wouldn't, and that helped me enjoy parts of the movie that I could have despised.

The story isn't so bad, it's about how Soul Hunters are dicks that abducted a whole race of advanced beings because they're stupid. Anything that makes the Soul Hunters look bad is fine by me. The overall concept of the plot is fine but it can be a bit slow and oddly paced. For example, Ian McShane's character is the central character during the first half, then he drops off the face of the... station and his screentime is replaced by Martin Sheen. They never even get to meet.

To help pad things out, there's a b-story about a holo-brothel. I have a question: Why are holo-brothels banned on the station? They're not real women, it's just a very advanced version of a flesh-light, so long as they thoroughly clean the suits after use, what's the harm? I can understand the complaints against using the images of real women without their consent, that should be illegal, but surely there's some women out there willing to licence their image for such purposes (not to mention the ability to create an entirely fictional image of a person). The whole concept is dismissed as if I'm supposed to think it's wrong, and the store owner's only defence against using real women's images is that it's covered by free speech, which is laughably awful. Compared to DS9's comical take on this issue (Meridian), River of Souls just doesn't work for me.

Scott Bakula: 77

 

"The River of Souls" better than "Thirdspace?" Blasphemy. Even Martin Sheen can't save that one. It's probably the low-point of the series for me, in the very least the low-point of post-season one B5.

 

The OP needs to realize that outside of In The Beginning, the rest of these movies were horrible.

The novels are far better in my humble opinion and they are canon.

 

In my mind everything with Soul Hunters, TechnoMages and Minbari religion has disappeared from Babylon 5. Apparently I've lost all objectivity! But, it makes for a much better program. Thirdspace passes the time modestly well. River of Souls should have been dammed, as well as damned, before flowing out of our television screens.

 

Thirdspace is definitely the better movie. Look, I found the dream stuff kind of cool and creepy, alright, and the effects for the ancient race were nice. River of Souls was a constant awkward pause.

And it's also true that In the Beginning is the only Babylon 5 movie really worth a damn... though I'm going to go head and say I did like The Lost Tales overall.

One of the many smart moves taken in In the Beginning is to simply skip the Soul Hunters entirely. If you'd remembered they were to have tried to save Dukhat, so they probably attacked the Minbari fleet shortly after the Prometheus (or hell, maybe the original idea was during I dunno). But aside from their addition adding an entirely extraneous detail to In the Beginning's plot... they just really suck as an idea so I'm glad they're not in the movie. The more Soul Hunters get explained, the less I understand, most often; it's a rather half-assed attempt at a mystical question branded as a species. Or an order. Or a something.

Seriously I want to know what the non-Soul Hunting Soul Hunters get up to, or are they all strangled before they get to be patio salesmen?

I'm currently watching Deadwood, so my immediate reaction to this was: Wait; Ian McShane was on Babylon 5? I don't remember that at all. This is some sort of Scott Bakula joke right? Quick google search later and I'd wish I'd forgotten.

Concluded the second season today. I'd heartily concur with that. It's got Caprica's Amanda Grayson too, only in a role which is generally better focused and written.

I have no idea. I remember there being some sort of fan theory that this was JMS's slam of DS9's holosuites; but the whole thing came off as annoyingly trite.

 

The holo-brothel plot was originally part of a planned second season episode that Joe said he had put on hold because Star Trek had gone over similar material. When TNT wanted more movies, he decided to finally use the story.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of him reliving that embarrassing scene in his head every time he speaks to her about Byron being a long haired fruit.

The novelization for ITB did actually those events in full, complete with Soul Hunters. There really wasn't very much to it, it picks up right after Delenn screams in favour of mass genocide and has someone tell her they've been boarded already. The hunters show up and the Minbari link arms around Dukhat's corpse and Delenn tells them so bugger off...which they do.
Obviously in the film it'd make absolutely no sense in terms of the narrative and since it's all a story being told by Londo and not a verbatim historical account it's perfectly fine to just skip that bit. I think if you watch carefully though, you can just see the Soul Hunter ships as they did just reuse the footage from 'Atonement' for that scene.

An excellent question, especially since the station is supposed to have an actual brothel lurking around somewhere. Perhaps the technology is considered unsafe? That or the Prostitutes Guild pressured B5 to have it banned because of the potential loss in revenue.

 

The latter is more likely. If prostitutes were to uninioze they'd be more politically powerful than the teamsters (if all the prostitutes went on strike then all the politicians would have to have sex with their wives).

 

Lol, no wonder politicians all agree to keep it illegal.

 

Eh, if I had listened to everyone else's opinion I wouldn't have enjoyed season 5 as much as I did. I don't agree with everybody, nor should I.

The thing that killed Thirdspace for me was that I pretty much knew how the story was going to play out from the opening monologue by Sheridan. They'd find something, a portal to another dimension would open up, some evil aliens would try to break into our universe, they'd fail and life would go back to normal. I didn't guess the involvement of the Vorlons or anything like that, but the structure of the movie was obvious and I felt it took too long to get to the point. With River of Souls, I had no idea how it was going to play out until the end of the movie. I wasn't sitting there waiting for everything to resolve itself, the story could have gone a number of ways.

Plus, Martin Sheen.


A Call to Arms (***)

Some might say that I'm committing sacrilege by saying this, but I got a bit of a Wrath of Khan vibe from this movie. There's the former captain going on an inspection of a spaceship, a new crew that are inexperienced with the ship, a returning enemy from the series, a doomsday weapon, they win by losing... I don't know, it felt a bit Wrath of Khan-esque to me. It's not necessarily a good or bad thing, it was just in the back of my mind.

Sheridan starts receiving messages from an annoying technomage warning about the impending destruction of Earth. Damn technomages, why can't they stay hidden? And what's the deal with all the English people in the future? Did England go out and try to conquor the world again? Because half the population of Earth has some sort of English accent. I'm not sure which is more worrying, the abundance of the English in the B5 universe or the fact that the English culture superseded the French in the Star Trek universe.

Anyway, Sheridan goes to B5 where he meets a thief, and Captain Anderson shows up with his ship. Anderson realises the importance of stopping the evil aliens but knows that Sheridan's ship can't leave without proper authorisation, so he provides two options: 1) break into the security office and release the ship, or 2) break into Ambassador Udina's office and try to release the ship from there. I was feeling like a bit of a bastard that day so I told him to break into the security office. He released the Normandy, but in doing so he was shot, although not fatally.

Wait, wrong Captain Anderson.

Captain Anderson has a wife and daughter, which made it plainly obvious that he was a goner.

The movie was okay while containing some things that annoyed me, particularly Galen. The pacing was better than the last two, this one actually felt like a movie rather than an extended episode. The ending was a bit rushed and full of exposition setting up Crusade, and that lessens the impact of the movie. It feels like a torch-passing exercise, but the guy they're passing the torch to hasn't arrived yet.

Then there's the music. It's not bad per se, but it stands out like a sore thumb. I've done a little reading to see what happened to Christopher Franke and it seems this was an intentional move by JMS to have a different sound for Crusade. I'm not sure why he felt that was needed, but fair enough, perhaps this new style will grow on me as I watch Crusade. I know that I used to hate the music on BSG when it started, but by the end of the first season I had grown in love with it, so perhaps that will happen again. (Then again, I'm still not a fan of the music from the BSG miniseries, and part of the reason why I loved BSG's soundtrack is that Bear McCreary took over and slowly infused the score with his own voice.)

Scott Bakula: 81

 

There was much ...er...discussion about how much or how little connection to B5 there would be in Crusade. JMS has stated that it was his choice but he admitted in a podcast late last year that in hindsight the move to Evan Chen was a mistake. I really love the opening sequence for Crusade, though.

Jan

 

You know that never occurred to me, but you're right there are some superficial parallels there - though I'm sure they're quite unintentional.

That's the plan!

Funny you should say that as I got a pretty strong B5 vibe while playing Mass Effect...

Uh-oh.

Even after all these years, I'm still not sure what to make of the soundtrack. In Crusade itself there are certainly episodes and scenes where it works quite well and the main theme is quite good IMO...still it tends to fall apart in the action scenes. With BSG Bear quickly figured out that the best way to go in that regard was to get as many really big drums beating as loud and as fast as they can possibly go. With Chen, he seems to try the same thing but using wind-chimes instead of drums and in those action scenes it just doesn't support the imagery the way a good soundtrack should.

 

I'm not too fond of "A Call to Arms". Actually, to be fair, what I'm not too fond of is the set-up for "Crusade". I could really do without the Drakh plague. It just bugs me, first of all because I'm not too fond of this sort of situation. "The fate of the Earth!" never really works for me as a driving concern. If they wanted to do something interesting, have it be a colony that gets virus-bombed. Like Mars; that's an interesting set up. We know the Earth Alliance will do whatever it takes to save Earth...but would it do the same for Mars? Would it instead be "Oh no. Mars is gonna die. Tragic, our deepest sympathies. All true EA citizens please contribute to the "We're gonna miss Mars *snicker* memorial". Would Mars citizens truly believe Earth is doing all it can to help? Will Proxima and Orion put pressure on Earth, etc? That would be considerably more intriguing. Secondly, the plague irritates me because this potentially undoes all the (presumed) progress made by the Alliance in getting Humans to see that aliens are not something to be feared and hated. Home Guard is going to have a field day with this. And I know that that's how it works when your universe isn't all fluffy optimism and aims for a harder realism, but it still seems to damage what I view as the emotional core of the Bab-5 story. Did Earth really need another great trauma after the Minbari War and Civil War?

However, the film itself isn't too bad. I like Dureena (and continue to like her in "Crusade"), and it's generally entertaining enough. That said (while I'm moaning ), I was always a little confused about the Drakh. I can only conclude (and I think the spin-off RPGs and so on confirm this) that there are different clans of Drakh with different agendas. Otherwise, their attack makes little sense to me. Aren't they supposed to be keeping themselves secret, operating behind the curtains on Centauri Prime, out of the way...quietly setting up a plan that will kick into action years later (David's keeper, etc)? Why then make themselves such a target by trying to destroy- blatantly- a prominant Alliance member world? Now everyone's going to be hunting for the Drakh, for any sign of them. It reduces them from clever, subtle chessmasters to "WE BLOW YOU UP GOOD!!" berserkers...at least that's how I see it. As said, I have to conclude these Drakh have a different agenda to the Drakh who are quietly reconfiguring the Centauri into their anti-Alliance puppets. While we're on the subject- why Earth? The whole "Humans defeated the Shadows" idea gets weaker every time. I know personal revenge on Sheridan likely plays a part (possibly revenge on humans for similiar reasons to Morden's threat to the Centauri?), but Earth was neither a player in the Shadow War nor is it the most important Alliance world. If you're going to destroy a planet, destroy Minbar, surely? Unless they thought it too powerful, too great a risk. Even then, Earth may be quite prominant, but it wasn't even actually a founding member of the Alliance. The others had to convince it to join (Delenn bribed them with shiny new gravity generators). Hell, why not go after Brakir, or Zhabar, or Vreetan? They all did far more to get rid of the Shadows, even if a human led the charge.

So, "A Call to Arms" seems flawed to me. It sort of reduces a lot of the subtle elements of Bab-5 to "evil aliens try to destroy Earth, because Earth is where we live and thus is important". Standard sci-fi, really. Again, though, I should stress I actually quite enjoy it.

As for the other films, "In the Beginning" is brilliant. Babylon Five at its best, and an essential part of the story, in my opinion. It's the only film I consider a must-see. I actually slot it in between "Objects at Rest" and "Sleeping in Light" when I run through the series (because of Londo's framing story, which chronologically puts it here). Nothing gets you more tearful than watching "In the Beginning" and "Sleeping in Light" back-to-back...

"River of Souls" is good, I think. Not essential or amazing, but a decent outing in the Bab-5 universe. Some people hate it, but I never had a problem with it.

"Thirdspace" is my least favourite. It has its good moments- I actually liked both Zack's elevator scene and the Vorlon's final hurrah (which I thought nicely restored a bit of self-criticism and humility to them, considering they were in full-blown insane facist knight templar mode last we saw them)- but overall it doesn't work for me. A lot of what TheGodBen and Kegg, in particular, have already articulated very well goes for me too.

PS: The "Hand" puns are making me smile.

 

Spoiler: The Centauri Prime Trilogy

The second book of the Centauri Prime trilogy begins with a sort of prequel to ACtA where we see the Drakh locate the planet-killer (having used a Centauri mining operation as front to excavate a point-to-point jumpgate that lead to the Shadow facility where the death clouds were built) and test it out. At one point, the characters learn that the planet killer was aimed at Earth, to get back at Sheridan, and after that, the plague would be dropped on Minbar to punish Delenn. No idea why, since the planet killer clearly wasn't single-use (unless it only had enough missiles for two firings before a reload), but that was the explanation.