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.

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!

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.

I thought A Call To Arms was a great Babylon 5 movie. The plot was great and the acting good. I can not look past the horrible music though that offsets the rest of the movie in every way.

...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.