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.
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.
