DVD
Babylon 5
The Movie Collection
Thirdspace / The River of Souls / A Call to Arms

Starring: Bruce Boxleitner, Jerry Doyle and Tracy Scoggins
Warner Home Video
RRP: £34.99
Z1 39947
Certificate: 12
Available 28 February 2005


Captain Sheridan and Commander Ivanova discover an ancient spatial gateway that could threaten life as we know it; Captain Lochley and Michael Garibaldi meet an archaeologist who has stolen an alien relic that the sinister Soul Hunters want back; and Sheridan and Garibaldi must defend the Earth when the Drakh, former allies of the Shadows, launch a genocidal attack against the planet...

You might expect a product with a title like The Movie Collection to comprise a complete set, but the previous TV movies The Gathering and In the Beginning are not present here. Fair enough, those two have previously been released in Region 2 as individual products, but they will now look rather odd on the shelf, in their cheap-looking Warner-style cardboard covers, alongside this box set, which contains conventional plastic DVD cases. This box set contains the latter three telemovies, Thirdspace, The River of Souls and A Call to Arms.

Set between the wars of the fourth season, Thirdspace is arguably the strongest of the movies, boasting a powerful alien menace that dates back to the days when the mysterious Vorlons governed the galaxy. Cue lots of strange behaviour from telepath Lyta Alexander (Patricia Tallman), as she experiences Vorlon race memories, and plenty of excellent special effects.

The production team seem keen to emulate the awe-inspiring qualities of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in their realisation of the gateway and its interior. The visualisation of one particular scene is especially reminiscent of TMP, as a spacesuited Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner) enters the device, just as Spock entered V'Ger. Composer Christopher Franke also takes a leaf out of Star Trek's book, imitating the musical style of Jerry Goldsmith.

All in all, Thirdspace is a spectacular production, though more could have been made of the final countdown.

By contrast, The River of Souls is the weakest of the bunch. Though it reintroduces the fascinating Soul Hunters from Season One, Martin Sheen's "alien" performance as their spokesman doesn't really come off, and the pace of the piece is rather slow. However, fans of Lovejoy may appreciate Ian McShane's appearance as an authority on alien antiques!

Something that both Thirdspace and The River of Souls have got against them is the fact that they lack one of the weekly series' most engaging aspects: the ongoing intrigue of the show's unfolding plot arcs. However, the final movie, A Call to Arms, does possess this elusive quality. Set several years after the main Babylon 5 series, it deals with a legacy of the Shadow War and puts pieces into place for the (ill-fated as it turned out) successor show, Crusade. It introduces the spaceship Excalibur and the characters of Technomage Galen (Peter Woodward) and thief Dureena Nafeel (Carrie Dobro).

The production values, acting and plotting are all very good, though Christopher Franke's music is sorely missed. Here the compositional chores are handled by Evan H. Chen, who would go on to score Crusade.

What all three of these movies lack are ambassadors. The alien ambassadors, particularly Peter Jurasik's Londo Mollari and Andreas Katsulas' G'Kar, are among my favourite B5 characters, but the only ones we get to meet here are Londo's assistant Vir (Stephen Furst) and Delenn (Mira Furlan), and they only appear in Thirdspace. This means that the product packaging is very misleading, since it depicts Londo and G'Kar on the outer pack and other irrelevant characters on the discs themselves!

The main features are complemented by a handful of featurettes and an audio commentary for each movie. Director Jesus Treviño and cast members Bruce Boxleitner, Jeff Conway, Stephen Furst and Pat Tallman provide the commentary for Thirdspace; writer/creator J. Michael Straczynski, director Janet Greek and actor Tracy Scoggins discuss The River of Souls; while the final commentary comes courtesy of Straczynski and director Michael Vejar.

This box set does not represent Babylon 5 at its best. However, even substandard B5 is better than the best moments of many sci-fi shows I could mention.

Richard McGinlay

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