2023/08/02

Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, was the last live-action “movie” to came out in 2007, 9 years after Babylon 5 ended. When this was announced, I was really excited because it was meant to be a series of DVD releases, each DVD would contain short stories with different characters from the main cast. For the 2^nd DVD, I believe, a story was planned with Garibaldi. But unfortunately this never happened! After the first DVD no other one has ever been released! I read somewhere, or perhaps it was in an interview with JMS on the extras of the DVD, that JMS had a budget of 2M, for the 2^nd DVD release he wanted a bit more because he wanted to deliver quality and with a 2M budget, this was not possible. He didn’t get it and so JMS decided not to make any more Babylon 5: Th Lost Tales DVD’s, which is understandable if you ask me. Shame also that this never got a Blu-ray release!

As said, The Lost Tales is divided in two stories, the 1^st one, “Over Here” 33+ minutes, 2^nd one, Over There, is 36+ minutes. In the first one we see only one regular character, Captain Elizabeth Lochley (Tracy Scoggins), another familiar face is Alan Scarfe (7 Days), who plays the priest. I thought it was a disappointing episode, the priest basically has been invited to Babylon 5 to do an exorcism. There is a man in custody which possibly has been possessed by demonic entity. It a 3 character piece really, and it is slow going, and because this type of story is not of interest to me. It was good to see Lochley again, and the CGI is just breathtaking, the outside view of the station to me, was the best of the first episode. When the episode opens, you do get the chills when you see the station hangin’ in space accompanied by some great chores of Christopher Franke who was back for this installment. So yeah, I was much looking forward to the release of this DVD and I remember being so disappointed with the first episode!

“Over There” is a different story, in so many ways! Now, two regular characters from the series, John Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner) & Captain Elizabeth Lochley, one regular character from Crusade, Galen (Peter Woodward) and of course also starred on the Babylon 5 movie “A Call to Arms”, a backdoor pilot to Crusade. This story is more what I was hoping for. Obviously I wanted to see more familiar faces but then I have to bring up the budget again, which was only 2M. John Sheridan has always been one of my favorite characters on Babylon 5 so that was a plus, the story continues, in a way, from the series, Sheridan refers to characters which have gone beyond the rim, at that point G’Kar (Andreas Katsulas) and Dr. Stephen Franklin (Richard Biggs).

The Centairi storyline continues, from the 4^th and the 5^th season. So all these points makes the episode already much more interesting to begin with. President Sheridan comes to Babylon 5 for the 10^th anniversary of the interstellar alliance, during his journey, he has an interview which he doesn’t really want to do, the reporter is also a known actress in the SCI-FI world, Teryl Rothery (Dr. Janet Fraiser, Stargate SG-1). Some fun and nasty remarks from the president to the reporter. This obviously goes back to his bad track record when it comes to reporters. In his sleep, which is not a dream, he gets contacted by Galen, shows him the destruction of New York and tells him how to prevent this.

Prince Regent Dius Vintari (Keegan MacIntosh) comes to visit from Centauri, who is 3^rd in line for the throne and apparently, in 30 years he will want to bring back the glory days of the Centauri republic and therefore needs to destroy earth. Galen tells Sheridan to kill him. Sheridan considers it, even almost does it but remembers Galen saying: there are WAYS to prevent it, plural. He decides to invite the prince to live with him and Delenn on Minbar, trying to get a different outcome. He also suspects Galen was hoping for this outcome, although he won’t admit it of course.

Final Word:

So the “Over There” episode makes the DVD worthwhile to be honest, as with the first episode, the station looks breathtaking, wonderful CGI and also the soundtrack makes the 2^nd episode a great experience. Feelings of nostalgia come over me when I watch this episode. It would have been great to get new Babylon 5 stories this way every half year or something, such a shame it did not happen, the Babylon 5 universe has so many more new stories to tell, it will forever be one of my all-time favorite TV shows. Hopefully, besides the new animated movie, there will be a new live-action TV series on the horizon. About the announced reboot on the CW, I am not optimistic about its chances to actually become a TV series, however, hope I am being wrong!