Babylon 5: A Call to Arms (1999)

Director: Michael Vejar

Cast: Bruce Boxleitner, Jerry Doyle, Jeff Conaway, Tracy Scoggins

Have I Seen it Before: I’ll do you one better, I even watched the few episodes of Crusade that aired before TNT made good on their Babylon 5 buyers remorse...

Although, to date, I’m pretty sure I never watched the ones that didn’t air. And that doesn’t begin to cover the fact that the epic story set up by this never gets resolved in any real way.

Did I Like It: And that may be the problem with the movie as I watch now. When it first aired, it was a thrilling new adventure that launched into what we could hope to be a new grand story that would capture our imaginations for another five years.

Only, it didn’t go anywhere. Kind of like The X-Files*.

Watching it now, the big-bold finish—with Earth being soaked in an alien disease with a hard timer of five years before every man, woman, and child on the planet would succumb—rings hollow. It’s understandable that there is no hint as to the resolution of this epic story in the latest story in the chronology, the series finale “Sleeping in Light”** didn’t refer back to it, but when Straczynski returned to the universe in Babylon 5: The Lost Tales (2008), I don’t recall even a throwaway line to the effect of “Hey, they sure did cure that huge plague, didn’t they?”

Maybe I just like to see stories where large, overwhelming health crises are eventually resolved. That’s what twenty years will do to you.

Even with its inherent flaws, I can’t entirely dismiss it, even if I am still stuck with the inability to recommend the film, and would instead point readers to the series***. The special effects have been updated, slightly, and that’s a little bit of a memory. The new effect of the jump gate—completely unchanged for the entire five-year run of the series—is a revelation. Objectively, it too has not aged exceptionally well, but anything new in this arena from a Babylon 5 story is like a drink in the desert. The story contained herein—divorcing itself from any larger implications—is still a lively adventure story, though. And the fact that the adventure story can rise above its flaws at all certainly puts it above the other TV-films produced in the franchise.

*Yes, I said it. And, no, I’m not taking it back. 

**Filmed at the end of the fourth season in 1997, and not aired until 1998, several months before this movie.

***Tellingly, all of the series, but none of the movies (aside from Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993)) are currently available to stream on HBOMax.

Babylon 5: The River of Souls (1998)

Director: Janet Greek

Cast: Jerry Doyle, Tracy Scoggins, Jeff Conaway, Martin Sheen

Have I Seen it Before: Yeah...

Did I Like It: I’ve actually tried to watch it a couple of times since it aired over twenty years ago, and I’ve never been able to really get into it, and if it failed with Martin Sheen portraying one of its central characters, then it probably would have to be the weakest of the Babylon 5 TV Movies, right? 

I’ve written before that the strength of the series has always been its ambitious over-arching storyline, and the movies they produced towards the end of the series largely eschewed that framework, aside for perhaps Babylon 5: In The Beginning (1998). This is even more removed from the main storyline, taking place some time after the fifth season concluded, and has a tendency to get weighed down by the need that the first season—before the show really became something special—had of doing stand-alone stories. Thus, we are largely left with the special effects that have infamously not aged well, even with the series best episodes.

The series also had a certain smugness (often well-earned) that it was rising above the trappings of science fiction television at the time, only to have J. Michael Straczynski try to give us what basically amounted to a holodeck episode this time out.

And yet, I couldn’t help but kind of, sort of enjoy the film this time out. Martin Sheen is Martin Sheen, and that’s usually more than enough to allow me to paper over deep flaws (see either Spawn (1997) or the fifth season of The West Wing). The ideas in the film are enough to chew on and it actually improves one of the weaker episodes for the wobbly first season of the series.

Isn’t that enough? I’m inclined to say yes. I mean, how much can we expect from a made-for-cable sci-fi movie from the 1990s?

Babylon 5: Thirdspace (1998)

Director: Jesús Salvador Trevino

Cast: Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Jeff Conaway, Patricia Tallman

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. My memory of it is that it was my least favorite of the four TV movies aired by TNT during the last year of the television series.

Did I Like It: Ultimately, I do think that my memory of not thinking much of it holds up under the scrutiny of time and experience.

The TV budget—and the Babylon 5 special effects, which have clearly not aged well—can’t sell the horror. The artifact which tries its damndest to bring a touch of the Lovecraftian to The Last Best Hope For Peace looks more intricate and lovingly created than the swirling CGI sprites that normally passed for the ships and creatures on this show, but I can’t move on from the feeling that it looks like a cut scene from a video game, and not a cut scene from a modern video game, mind you. One from the 1990s. How did we ever think this show was ahead of its time, special effects-wise? The mind boggles.

The story is this weird blip, this huge epic moment that takes place in the middle of the most epic season of the show’s larger storyline. There is no lead-up to it within the context of the show, and it is never mentioned again. It’s especially strange, when one considers that Sheridan (Boxleitner) is dealing with Interplanetary Expeditions (IPX), the organization his wife worked for, and there’s only a perfunctory reference to that fact. It should weigh on him heavily, especially because that history caused him to die and come back from the dead less than a year ago. Wouldn’t that have more of an effect on him?Ultimately, it feels like an episode from the show’s first season, before ti had found its purpose or stride as a novel told over several years.