LordManhammer

I never much liked Capt. Lochley, but I see now that's because she was too minor a character in the final season of the series. I may have enjoyed another season of her in charge of Babylon 5, without so many of the original characters around. I surprise myself here because I am usually so sentimental about actors leaving shows--and I got super sad about Mollari becoming alienated from his friends at the end--but this movie was satisfying in its simplicity. The series was also being dragged down by the maudlin romance between Sheridan and Delenn.

These moves are essentially long episodes, but I like that. The major downside here is that I thought they'd gotten rid of the animosity between Lochley and Garibaldi a few episodes into the final season, and I didn't like seeing it return.

I like to think I would cringe at this episode even if I'd watched it 20 years ago. Andromeda occasionally falls prey to formulaic sex jokes, and Season 3 is rife with them. Harper clownishly lays it on thick to good-locking alien women, while those alien women seduce Hunt. Annoying because hackneyed.

But this episode takes the cake on casting Hunt as the alpha dog, the macho man. The social relation between Hunt and alien woman could be an interesting plot point if handled well, but the writing feels like a 1960s-era Captain Kirk winking at the camera. Look, Sorbo is attractive but you gotta show not tell.

The saving grace of this episode (and season) is that Tyr shows his humorous side when he effectively handles his task on the ship while Hunt is...otherwise occupied.

I fully understand why this finale let down fans, especially those who watched the series in real time rather than binging it years later online. Yet I am okay with viewing this as the creators suggested, as a "coda" with the previous 2-parter as the true finale.

I am hugely sentimental, and this is why I appreciated the Next Generation callback. Typically I don't actually like guest appearances from a previous cast because they are cheap, and thus I despised the Troi/Reg episodes of Voyager.

But here, I can imagine the first Enterprise crew as having existed all along within the TNG episode "Pegasus," and existing forever to be called up and viewed when a crewmember of a future starship wants to watch the founding of Earth's space travel program in their holodeck. Otherwise, it's just too sad to me to think that all these characters are dead by the time TNG and the other spinoffs come around!