Babylon 5 – The Lost Tales

August 7, 2007

Rated: NR Runtime: 75 min Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Back in the day when Babylon 5 first hit the airwaves, I immediately became hooked on the show. It broke so much new ground in science fiction that it *had* to be watched. B5 single-handedly managed to force the monolithic Star Trek franchise Deep Space Nine to change and adopt a more serialized story with an evolving arc that left characters changed and, perhaps, even dead.

Babylon 5 - The Lost Tales “So what!” you say? This was *HUGE*! Practically every episode of Star Trek prior to B5 ended with the “Big Red Reset Button” that made everything go back to the way it was at the beginning of the episode. And B5 came along and changed the ENTIRE game! It was the first…and practically every sci-fi series since then that is worth watching has emulated that format.

But the original is and always will be the best. I know I’m far from alone in that opinion…and perhaps it’s people like me that are responsible for the existence of things like Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, a truly hollow echo of the Babylon 5 that used to be. Like old boxing champs that can’t seem to ever leave the ring and continue to fight until they can barely make it out of the first round, we collectively pine away for the Glory Days….and B5 creator J. Michael “Don” Kingzynski is more than happy to put a li’l “sumpin sumpin” together for us.

This time we get two distinct, chronological stories…almost exactly as you might expect two sequential episodes from the original series to be. In the first, a worker on the station seemingly becomes possessed by a demon…and all hell breaks loose, so to speak. Well, ok, not really. What takes place then is actually a very well balanced theological discussion with lots of interesting points that get you into a groove. And then it just kind of ends when Lochley suddenly figures out the whole thing. Not an awful episode, but it’s woefully short of the great ones.

Next up was a story that was just ridiculously transparent…and it was quite stinky in all other areas, too. For both stories, it’s painfully obvious that there was little or no budget to work with. And to make matters worse, except for Lochley, Sheriden and Galen, none of the original characters were present. No Delenn, no Vir, no Londo, no….anybody! The production values were also pretty low, but thats more a funding problem rather than effort or talent.

All in all, it was a pretty poor showing. This one is for truly HARDCORE B5 fans ONLY!

Popularity: 21% [?]

Posted by Alex | Filed Under 2 Stars, Bruce Boxleitner, DVD, Drama, NR, Peter Woodward, SciFi, Tracy Scoggins