Babylon 5: L'appel aux armes

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.

This is a pretty good movie. Not the best but very good. The music on the other hand is abysmal. On top of that, they opt for no sound during dramatic moments *except* for the music.

This is also the same type of music used in the B5 spin-off "Crusade". Now I'm not going to lay the blame for Crusade's failure solely on the music but it was definitely a contributing factor in my opinion. It just gives it a chintzy kinda feel. They could and should have done better for both this movie and the show.

Good pilot movie for the following Crusade series but the script left bothersome questions that only heightened my resentment as a viewer against Sheridan's new Alliance which by all rights, Earth should have revolted against. Here, five years after the events of the Bab 5 series, Sheridan is still President as is the Russian lady of Earth. Are there no elections for these presidencies? Not only that, Sheridan is secretly building two massive warships based on Volrlon tech without permission from anyone. Where's the legislature? Is Sheridan an unelected dictator? It's questions like these that have always turned me against Sheriden in the end and forced me to side with Earth.

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.

...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.