Babylon 5: A Call to Arms

I've been watching Babylon 5 since it started years ago, and think its one of the best shows in American history. As for A call to the arms, it did the show justice in the sense that unlike some of the other TV movies done over the past years, it was a lot of fun, had a good plot, and a good script. I highly recommend this to anyone out there.

I had great expectations for this movie. And I wasn't disappointed, not at all... except for the atrocious soundtrack. Maybe if I wasn't a big fan of Babylon 5, it wouldn't bother me, but when I was used to the great music through the five series, and then I heard *this*, I mean, what's this for? A good soundtrack can promote a movie greatly, or diminish its feel. Anyway, this was the only bad thing about it. Sheridan was ace, same for the new ships! Good storyline, solid action, nice introduction to the Crusade series. I liked how the script tied all this to the Drakh, and that their nasty involvement is explored further. The new characters were great!

All B5 fans must watch it!

A Call to Arms is by far the best of the B5 movies. They had a great story, excellent effects and okay music. A Call to Arms acts like something as a send off to the old characters from B5. The movie also had a spine tingling ending that set the pace for Crusade, the B5 spin off TNT cancelled for no good reason. Thumbs way up on this one.

...within the "modern-day" B5 context (which excludes In the Beginning, a prequel of sorts). Call to Arms leads neatly into the coming Crusade series, we're introduced to some of the important characters of that series (particularly the enigmatic Galen), we meet at least one other character who is played up but ultimately martyred, and unlike its two predecessors, Call to Arms gives us a menace directly out of the B5 "mythos." Boxleitner and Doyle take center stage for the final time. The pieces are in place - now we can look forward to the series itself.

Nicely plotted, and working a good transition from B5 to the ill-fated Crusade spin-off not just in narrative but in mood - there's a general shift from politics towards mysticism (also adumbrated in Thirdspace, where the dream sequences were rather more powerful, even if they ultimately had nowhere much to go). This change of mood is underlined by Evan Chen's controversial scoring; personally I like his work for Crusade, but found his dry run here deeply mediocre.

It's a measure of how Bruce Boxleitner's stature as Sheridan has grown over four seasons of B5 that he effortlessly and charismatically takes centre-stage here. Jerry Doyle's Garibaldi is equally assured but doesn't in the end have that much to do. Of the newcomers, Carrie Dobro is probably the only one who can match up to the old timers, though Tony Todd is his usual professional self. Opinion is divided about Galen. Specifically it's divided between me and other sensible people who think Peter Woodward should have been drowned at birth, and people who aren't as sensible as me. To be fair, he's not as dreadful here as in the early episodes of Crusade. Be thankful for small mercies.