The cult sci-fi series “Babylon 5″ has returned with an all-new, animated movie.
True confession: I am part of the “Babylon 5″ universe. A very small part, but I was … ahem … a space zombie on the “B5″ spinoff “Crusade.”
It was simultaneously one of the coolest and most embarrassing things I’ve ever done in 33-plus years of writing about TV.
After a two-hour pilot that aired in early 1993, “Babylon 5″ ran for four seasons in syndication (1994-97) and one season on TNT (1997-98) — a total of 110 hourlong episodes. Plus half a dozen more two-hour TV movies; the last aired 16 years ago.
And then there was the short-lived (13 episodes in 1999) spinoff series “Crusade,” about the starship Excalibur, which was on a mission to find a cure for a plague that had been unleashed on Earth.
(Warner Bros.) The short-lived "Babylon 5" spinoff "Crusade" was released on DVD.
On a bright, sunny morning in January 1999, my TV critic pal, Rob Owen, and I drove to the set of “Crusade” — at a former hot tub water pump factory in the San Fernando Valley — where we were outfitted in Earthforce/Interstellar Alliance uniforms as we prepared to work with our co-stars, Gary Cole, Daniel Dae Kim and Tracy Scoggins. We tried not to geek out about the whole thing, but we were not entirely successful.
Rob and I appear in two scenes in an episode titled “Appearances and Other Deceits,” in which a malevolent force invades the Excalibur, turns half the crew into zombies and tries to take over the rest of the ship.
First scene: Head zombie Mr. Welles (John Vickery) confronts Captain Matthew Gideon (Cole) through the window in a sealed door. Rob and I are among the zombie crew who stand in support of Welles. (One take was ruined when Vickery bumped into me, and I grimaced and rolled my eyes.)
The difficulty was that they took my glasses because, apparently, nobody is short-sighted in the year 2267. (They’ve cured blindness, it would seem, but they haven’t cured baldness.) Rob had to lead me around, and I couldn’t really stare at Cole in the window (as directed) because I couldn’t see that far.
(Warner Bros.) John Sheridan (voiced by Bruce Boxleitner), Elizabeth Lochley (Tracy Scoggins) and Zathras (Paul Guyet) in "Babylon 5: The Road Home."
Second scene • Capt. Gideon tries to freeze out the possessed crew by turning off the heat in their part of the ship. Rob and I (and the other crew members) are directed to act cold and mouth things like, “Boy, it’s cold!” Before the first take, we were told to “Do it big!” Before the second take, we were told to “Bring it down.”
I’m not sure which take ended up in the episode, but I look ridiculous. Being an extra was fun and nerve-wracking, and reinforced the fact that I have zero interest in being an actor.
But, anyway, I’m part of the “Babylon 5″ universe. And, while I was not a fan of the pilot movie, I eventually grew to love and become obsessed with the series.
So it’s entirely possible that my expectations for the new, animated movie “Babylon 5: The Road Home” were too high. Because I found the film (now out on DVD, Blu-ray and digital) pretty underwhelming.
No spoilers, but the story takes place shortly after John Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner) left the Babylon 5 space station and began serving as president of the new Interstellar Alliance. He becomes “unstuck in time” — a phrase that will be familiar to fans of the series — and bounces around, time to time, place to place, encountering familiar faces.
With the exception of an alternate timeline that’s sort of interesting, there isn’t much we haven’t seen before. It’s a gift to the fans.
And pretty much only the fans. If you didn’t watch the series, you are not going to understand what’s happening. And you’re not going to care.
The animation isn’t bad, although the spaceships look more realistic than the people. And there are excellent reasons to make this an animated project — it takes place largely during the events in the series, and the surviving actors have obviously aged in the past 30 years.
(Warner Bros.) The animated movie "Babylon 5: The Road Home") has been released on DVD, Blu-ray and digital.
Although returning stars Bruce Boxleitner (Capt. John Sheridan), Claudia Christian (Susan Ivanova), Peter Jurasik (Londo Mollari), Billy Mumy (Lennier), Tracy Scoggins (Elizabeth Lochley) and Patricia Tallman (Lyta Alexander) sound the same.
And a lot of the actors did not survive. Among those who have passed away are Mira Furlan (Delenn), Jerry Doyle (Michael Garibaldi), Michael O’Hare (Jeffrey Sinclair), Richard Biggs (Dr. Stephen Franklin), Andreas Katsulas (G’Kar), Stephen Furst (Vir) and Tim Choate (Zathras). In “The Road Home,” new voice actors have replaced them.
“The Road Home” will feel very familiar to fans, right down to the humor — which leans into outer space dad jokes.
And … and let me preface this by saying I greatly admire creator/writer/executive J. Michael Straczynski (who wrote this script) a lot … but the ending of the movie is sappy and sort of silly.
But the end of the movie might not be the end of “Babylon 5.” The live-action reboot that was in the works at The CW seems stuck, what with that network’s change in ownership. But in the commentary included on the Blu-ray release, Straczynski hints at an animated reboot that would take place in an alternate universe Sheridan travels to in the movie — an alternate universe where the pivotal event in the original series, the Shadow War, never took place.
“It reboots the ‘Babylon 5′ universe,” Straczynski says. “And we may or may not have the Shadow War. And everyone is there, in the beginning, as it were, and the slate is clean. We can do whatever we want.”
Anything but have animated TV critics as background extras …
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