Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers: To Live and Die in Starlight

Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers is the second ill-fated attempt to launch a spin-off to the critically acclaimed space saga Babylon 5. However, not only does this telemovie, intended to launch the series, fall short of the precedent set by the epic Babylon 5, it comes off looking worse than Crusade, the original attempt at a B5 spin-off, widely criticised by fans for the network's handling of the show's artistic and storytelling side. Here, it seems that the makers of Legend of the Rangers have managed to screw up all on their own, and the result is a movie that is lacklustre at best and dreadfully appalling at worst.

Legend of the Rangers is set some time after the conclusion of Babylon 5. It deals with a group of Rangers: scouts and warriors drawn from the ranks of member worlds of the broad-reaching Interstellar Alliance. Originally an institution exclusively handled by the Minbari race, it has also been accepting humans (occurring in the Babylon 5 series) and more recently others. The main character is David Martel, a young Ranger struck from ship captain candidacy and facing disciplinary action for breaking one of the Ranger's guiding rules: never break from combat. The fact that he fled only because his ship no longer had weapons capabilities, his captain was dead and he had no chance of winning does not phase his Minbari disciplinarians. He is demoted and a rival Minbari Ranger assumes the post he was to take aboard the newly commissioned Valen, the most advanced ship in the Ranger arsenal. Backed up by his crew and Citizen G'Kar (an oddly un-engaging Andreas Katsulas), he is given command of an old, supposedly haunted patrol boat and sent off as an escort to the Valen on a secret security mission transporting diplomats to a conference.

And that's when things go crazily wrong. The Valen is destroyed by a mysterious new alien race, the diplomats are forced aboard the tiny patrol ship and Martel and his crew have to fight the aliens, find a traitor in their midst and deal with the troubled ghosts of the last crew. Martel solves many of these problems quite simply: all the solutions involve sticking heaps of explosives inside an escape pod and blowing the enemy up when they go to retrieve it. This happens twice in the course of the movie. So much for superior alien intelligence.

Nothing comes off quite right in Legend of the Rangers. The best elements seem mediocre and the worst are laughable. The acting is average, with only Martel and his Minbari 2IC Dulann coming off as likeable characters. The rest come across as narrow stereotypes: quiet Minbari healer, stupid Drazi loader, feisty Narn engineer and, who could forget, the aggressive red-headed weapons officer. In fact, its her role that creates one of the stupidest sequences in the whole movie: her in the 'weapons pod' which suspends her in a holographic representation of her surroundings in which she randomly spins in mid air firing the ships guns by punching and kicking the air causing plasma bursts to erupt from her clenched fists. This is only made more ridiculous by remembering that Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski always prided himself on having realistic technology. Is this the worst idea in a highly billed sci-fi show to date? In short: if it isn't, I deeply fear anything worse than it.

The enemies, an ancient alien order known as `The Hand' don't come off at all either. We are told they are billions of years old, and only their servants show themselves in this movie. Despite their superiority though, their technologically superior ships (which tear the Valen to pieces in seconds) have a really hard time taking out a damaged patrol vessel and its escape pod slinging captain. Their leader, glimpsed in transmissions is hardly menacing: he simply wears a horned hood and speaks in a vaguely legalistic sense. On the whole, these aliens feel like a mix of the Shadows and the Thirdspace aliens from Babylon 5, both of which relied on the exact same premise of ancient evil. The difference: the originals were better.

Even the presence of the charismatic Andreas Katsulas cant save this movie, and for the most part, he looks like he doesn't want to try. No explanation is offered for G'Kar's presence, and he feels like he's only there to bridge the original series and the spin-off and make them feel like a cohesive whole.

In the end, only the visual effects stand out as above-average, and even then we feel uneasy with them. Depictions of Minbar in this movie differ wildly from any place on the planet ever seen before, and while the space scenes are impressive, they're not above anything seen in the B5 telemovies or Crusade.

In the end, Legend of the Rangers comes off as a barely credible mess that lacks the intelligence and characterisation of its predecessor. Its not that character motives are unclear, its that they're too clear, each person so wrapped up in a traditional stereotype they are unlikely to break it. Those B5 fans still looking for a successor after the demise of Crusade will have to keep looking: they wont find it here.

I read what D-J-Phillips wrote and I have to agree with him This pilot is not that bad, and actually let me dare say that David Martail has a huge potential to be the next John Sheridan, he even shines more confidence than Mathew Gorden in Crusade, B5 needs more fans to support any new production that comes, the legend of the rangers can be a good pilot for something better, this new aliens (the hand) need not to be another shadow, may be the story will twist and they end up to be bluffing, or that new race has found those old ships and is using them to frighten everyone else.

I always said that if B5 is to be revived then new story lines have to be developed and they need not be around the B5 universe itself, give the station a rest, and explore new options.

It is as londo said "a very big universe" and lots can be discovered and done

No, this wasn't as good as the classic Babylon 5 episodes, especially of Seasons 3 and 4, but that isn't the point. It was in the middle of the B5 saga and yet the beginning of its own tale. Add to that, every new main character was had to have a back story from before the start of this movie's plot so the creator, JMS, did a wonderful job of creating an exposition for a long term series - a better series than most of what has ended up on Sci Fi. B5 fans and sci fi fans in general should give it another look. Yes, there are many things I would have changed - some close shots of White Star ships, a brighter looking Mimbar, the weapons officer not tumbling like an angry cat, and no more than half of the "We live for the one..." quotes. But it's better ever time I catch it in reruns and this certainly deserved a better fate.

I admit it. I am a Babylon 5 junkie. No, better stated... Babylon 5, the series, is a spiritual journey for me, one which largely outlines my own belief structure quite succinctly. This does not make me a Babylon 5 fan(as in fanatic) however. I do not attend conventions. I do not collect memorabilia. I do not keep a cherish autographed picture of Bruce Boxleitner in my closet. No, the show is enough for me.

So now I have to ask myself. What was J. Michael Straczinski thinking when he wrote Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers? I eagerly anticipated this premiere, largely because I felt if left to his own devices (which was clearly not the case on Crusade), he might create something that measured up to the genius of the series. Not so. In fact, the premiere of LotR (not to be confused with LotR of the big screen!) was a tragedy. Hackneyed, confused, and sometimes laughably bad, this will not earn him more fans.

There are a few bright spots. An early scene between Martel and Dulann hints of Straczinski's ability to humanize his relationships. And Andreas Katsulas is always a pleasure to watch; his imposing presence as G'Kar always made Babylon 5 a joy and his presence in this film is much the same.

Tragically, we see too little of both of these things in LotR. Instead we are treated to some truly bad acting in the form of Myriam Sirois as Ranger Cantrell. This character is as superfluous as she is poorly conceived. As weapons officer, she has little more to do than to make laughably ludicrous punching and kicking motions in the virtually reality weapons chamber. This outlines a big problem in and of itself; the need to include gratuitous special effects, even if there is no logical reason for their existence. The virtually reality weapons are the perfect example of this. They make no sense, they look absolutely ridiculous, and they appear *far* too often.

Contrast this to the original series, whose special effects were notoriously "fake" looking, quite obviously conceived on a limited CGI budget. But that was part of the charm of the show; our attention could be drawn temporarily to the eye candy of the effects while our concentration remained squarely on the relationships.

If the show actually goes to series after this premiere, I will give it a shot. After all, if I had based my opinion of Babylon 5 solely on the basis of the premiere (Babylon 5: The Gathering), I'm not sure I would have watched the show either. But Mr. Straczinski, really. I know you can do better than this.

For someone who can come up with the concept of B5, and write most of the episodes, JMS sure can't write a movie to save his life. At a time when the B5 franchise needed a masterpiece, JMS gave us bad rip-offs of his own work. Take "Thirdspace," add some ancient shadow-like enemy and throw in a dash of young James T. Kirk and you basically got this pilot. I'm not sure why JMS threw out such tripe like "The Hand" when he knew that every B5 fan in america would call him out on it, but he did it anyway. All of the reviews, except for those that live only to praise JMS, have said that this "pilot" "telemovie" or what have you, sucks. They are right. Due to the ignorant mismanagement on the part of the Sci-Fi channel, it aired opposite an NFL playoff game. Due to hackneyed writing, however, it virtually sealed the deal of no series.