The Good: Interesting concepts, DVD bonus features, Moments of special effects
The Bad: Lack of characters/character development, Thumbnail plots, Obvious matte shots
The Basics: Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski returns to the universe he created to flesh it out a little, but misses the spice and originality of his original venture.
The more I have experienced as I have progressed through this life, the more I have begun to believe the old adage "more is not necessarily better." It seems like, largely, whenever a series I love is added onto years after the prior installments, its return is always an inferior, limited and fundamentally different production from whatever originally brought me to the work in the first place. As one who fell in love with Babylon 5 (reviewed here!), I was the target audience for the straight-to-DVD work Babylon 5 The Lost Tales - "Voices In The Dark." Sadly, this one-disc addition to the Babylon 5 universe did not come close to satisfying even die hard fans like me.
For those looking for a bottom line right up front, it is fairly easy to provide: the "average" rating I give this disc is more the result of considering the DVD bonus features and the toss of a coin than the program alone. "Average" for the primary program would be generous. Such generosity comes not from a lowering of standards on my part, but rather the fact that "Voices In The Dark" suffers mightily from a multiple personality disorder; one story is terrible and lame, the other is better but underdeveloped and obvious.
Colonel Elizabeth Lochley, commander of Babylon 5, finds herself in the awkward position of having to requisition a priest when a man comes to the station, apparently possessed by a demon. As the priest works to confirm the nature of the demon possessing the man, Lochley wrestles with her faith and the implications of demonic possessions in spacebound humans. As the priest prepares to perform and exorcism, Lochley reasons out how and why the creature has appeared on Babylon 5 and what it would mean to let such hellspawn roam among the stars!
Meanwhile, Interstellar Alliance president John Sheridan makes a trip to Babylon 5 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the creation of the Interstellar Alliance. En route to the station, he is plagued by a reporter and after looking back on his life, he goes to sleep, where he is visited by Galen, the technomage. Galen shows Sheridan a wasteland, revealing that it is Earth's future in approximately thirty years. The cause, he notes, is a single Centauri, the man third in line to ascend to Emperor within the Centauri Republic and Galen warns Sheridan that unless the Centauri is dealt with, he will mount an attack on Earth that will destroy it in order to help the Centauri reclaim their "rightful" place in the galaxy. Upon meeting with the Centauri, Sheridan and Galen set into motion a plan to kill him and make it look like an accident in order to prevent the dark future from coming into being.
The first story, "Voices In the Dark" is a fairly lackluster tale. While viewers of Babylon 5 might enjoy seeing Lochley again (and I did!), the story is not one of the most impressive or compelling. The gimmick and reasoning behind the possession and the implications of it are terribly unsurprising (indeed, anyone who has seen the film Dogma is likely to figure it all out before Lochley and the priest do) and the idea was clearly one that was never strong enough to flesh out an entire episode. The result is a vignette that is more blase than at all incredible or interesting.
What truly makes this first "episode" suffer is the lack of characters. When Babylon 5 was at its peak, it was a complex narrative packed with characters who each had their own motivations and ideas and directions. In "Voices In The Dark," the story is just Lochley's and while Lochley is certainly an interesting and compelling character to focus on as the subject of her own film, this is not the story to attempt that with. The result is that Babylon 5 feels much like it is shown in the movie: a corridor or two and perhaps one giant bay.
There is no sense of scope or crew to this incarnation of Babylon 5. In other words, when the series departed from the space station at the climax of the fifth season, it was commanded by Lochley and she had assembled a new staff. They were given a dramatic exit shot and a theme that implied that they would be a new crew, give the place a new start until the station was decommissioned or destroyed. In The Lost Tales - "Voices In The Dark" the station is Lochley and we are not privy to her relying upon that command staff. This is disappointing even in the lack of references to known crew; the possessed man is locked up aboard the station and security chief Zack Allen is never even mentioned! There are more references to the prior (familiar) main crew in the Sheridan storyline than there are in the Lochley episode.
Ultimately, the first half feels like a weak attempt to remind viewers that they once loved Babylon 5 and milk them for a few extra bucks without recreating the depth or breadth of the universe that attracted viewers to it in the first place.
The second half - referenced on the Menu page as "Over Here" and "Over There" - is better executed, but still conceptually too weak to hold its own as a full episode within the Babylon 5 universe. While Sheridan and Lochley have an exchange, the stories do not actually come together and their dialogue is more of a chance to reference the beloved (and absent) characters fans would likely like to know about. So, this too is a fairly solitary story with Sheridan working on his own to solve a problem.
Of course, he is not entirely on his own. Sheridan is accompanied by Galen, the technomage introduced in the Babylon 5 movie A Call To Arms. In fact, viewers will have a sense of deja vu much the way Sheridan has one when Galen comes to him through his vulnerable sleeping state. Galen reveals to Sheridan a devastated Earth and pinpoints a cause and posits how to prevent it. It is a lot of exposition and it sets up a practical and compelling obstacle for Sheridan to deal with.
The real problem here is that the viewer has seen this, too. In fact, it was the subject of A Call To Arms and the whole "Earth is going to be destroyed" concept was the whole point of the spin-off Galen appeared in, Crusade. Sheridan is not even given the chance to roll his eyes, reference the Drakh plague from Crusade and mutter something like "Didn't we just go through this?!" After all, it might have been a decade since Crusade flopped, but in the Babylon 5 universe, the Drakh plague was a huge thing that was never resolved on-screen. A little note that "yeah, the series was canceled, but you (Galen) and the crew that were out trying to save Earth sure came through for us!" would have been appropriate.
No such luck, though. Again, the sweeping sense of Babylon 5 history is cut down to a thumbnail for the purpose of selling DVDs. And for those of us into the minutiae, what kind of guy is Galen who would keep imposing upon Sheridan with giant, crushing decisions that might alter the fate of the galaxy and billions of lives without ever saying, "Hey, you've done a lot for us, you ought to know that urn Londo gave you to give to your son has a Keeper in it and you might want to kill that before it takes him over." For all his cool parlor tricks, Galen is kind of a jerk for not helping Sheridan save his son before his son becomes possessed by a parasitic organism that wants to use him as a pawn.
Outside that, Sheridan's conflict is a decent and compelling one. He must weight the life of one man against that of the billions of people on Earth that will be killed when that man ascends to a position of power. The problem here is that while Londo is referenced and intuitive and perceptive viewers of the television series will put together that Cartagia's son - the Centauri in question - is playing into the overall plan of keeping the Centauri weak and dependent upon the Drakh so they might have a new homeworld and become the power in the galaxy the Shadows promised them they would be, this is never put into any form of explicit or clever fashion. Moreover, the final solution is never rephrased in a way that might allow the Centauri to actually overcome and overthrow their silent Drakh overlords.
The result is an "episode" that is short, underdeveloped and tied together poorly. The special effects range from new and improved beautiful jumpgates and ship designs (the Valen-class cruisers are very cool) to poor bluescreen shots and a terrible matte shot of Lochley where she is inserted into a digital background with such shadowing one wonders how the producers let it be included in the movie.
The acting is fine: Bruce Boxleitner, Tracy Scoggins and Peter Woodward effortlessly fall back into the roles of Sheridan, Lochley and Galen in ways that are instantly recognizable and fun to watch. More than those roles, the candid conversations on the DVD bonus features are worth the viewing. On those segments, Babylon 5 series creator J. Michael Straczynski, Boxleitner, and Scoggins discuss returning to the Babylon 5 universe and the deaths of Andreas Katsulas and Richard Biggs. It is unfortunate that for those tributes only from the actors working on The Lost Tales were included.
Still, the DVD bonus features are good. But they are not enough to solve the problems in the primary programming, leaving viewers ultimately underwhelmed. Even fans of the franchise will be able to pass on this one. After years of waiting to see it, I am already clearing the space on my shelf where The Lost Tales occupied to fill with something else. As a fan, that saddens me.
4.5/10
For other television episode reviews, please check out my movie review index page for a complete list of television and film reviews I have written!
© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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