As I've said before, I'm a huge fan of "Babylon 5" - I consider it to be the third-best Sci-fi show of all time (behind only "Star Trek" and "Doctor Who"). So when it was announced that a new B5 Tv movie was coming, I was of course going to get it and watch it!
Unfortunately, B5 has a significant problem in that the core story (seasons 2-4 of the show) is absolutely solid, but everything around that is of wildly variable quality - "Crusade" had potential but never lived up to it, "Legend of the Rangers" didn't proceed beyond a pilot for fairly good reason, season 1 was very slow and season 5 stretched too little material into too many episodes, and of the T movies only "In the Beginning" was truly great. And any new B5 project has an even bigger problem that about half of the core cast have now passed away.
So a new TV movie was a somewhat dubious proposition. But it's B5, so of course I still watched it.
And it's good. At least, it's good if you've seen and enjoyed the show - it adds a bit more context to some parts of the story, it fills in some of the "darkest timeline" stuff we see in a couple of episodes, and it of course centres around some beloved characters. It's a fairly small moment, but my favourite point probably involved some corn fields, of all things.
But my main reaction to the movie was that it left me wanting to watch "Babylon 5" again, and I just don't have time for that.
My recommendation for this one has to be conditional: if you haven't seen "Babylon 5", don't bother with this. And if you didn't enjoy B5, you won't enjoy this. But if you did, and you feel like revisiting the Third Age of Mankind, this is a fun way to do that.
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