Babylon 5 – The Road Home
Sep. 8th, 2023 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsI said there might be some inserts into my catchup posts this month. Enjoy a very rambly review that kind of makes me want to switch gears and review B5 instead of my intended next project.
Babylon 5 – The Road Home
I…don’t know what to make of that. Guess I’ll see if I find any answers in doing a review.
To start with I guess my main take, I think I’m ultimately going to treat this as fanfic, at least in the final analysis. It would not be at all fair to judge it as canon; as canon it would mostly suck. Or maybe we’re starting out in an alternate universe from the one that the show was set in and this is a similar but not quite the same Sheridan and co even in the ‘prime’ timeline of this story.
Because basically right from the start there are things that trip up my canon deviation sensor. The first major one was when the turned around to do the salute as Sheridan was leaving and we different people standing in for Zack and Corwin, and no sign of Hobbs. I know who is in that C&C shot, and they did not accurately recreate it for this. There were snags in the big goodbye scene too, but the early glitches reached critical mass when they didn’t bother to just draw the legacy canon shot.
Since I started out assuming this was meant to be canon-ish I was also amused to think how this story just kind of cut around all the stuff that happened with Lennier on the trip to Minbar. And I still do think that’s all supposed to have happened, as Lennier does disappear from the ‘present day’ storyline at the point he would in canon.
And the glitches kept coming in the buildup to things going off the rails. Why is Sheridan acting like he hadn’t already been President of the ISA for a year when they leave B5? The ISA has to be more than a dozen worlds right, even with the Centauri pulling out? Why do they refer to Delenn as Satai? Delenn should be pregnant at that point in things, or there’s been enough of a gap for David to be born.
Sure, after that I can blame most of the discontinuity on the multiverse hopping. Except for Sheridan forgetting what year he took command of B5 when he’s talking with his dad; Sheridan took command of B5 in 2259, not ’58, unless that’s another sign of this not ever having been the show’s timeline. Plus everything being a little wonky around when Sheridan would have died, but even main canon struggled to keep everything straight with that timeline; that actually the end of Shadow War, the formation of the Alliance, moving to Minbar, and David’s birth were strung across multiple years instead of like one and a half (plus trying to figure out what the Centauri Prime flash-forward is 17 years into the future of; given how old David should be. And the book canon makes a worse mess trying to paper over the onscreen confusion, since sometimes Minbari years are longer than human ones and sometimes are shorter to try and make David old enough. Never doubt how much trivial B5 knowledge is stored in my brain). By the time the tachyon generator goes online, we’re already more than two years into Sheridan’s 20, so telling leaper-John that it was 18 years later should mean he knows that that time’s Sheridan would be dead. (My issues with the fact that the crew and definitely Delenn would not have just accepted Sheridan’s death clock are a matter for some other time.)
And the treatment of that is very weird. Even ignoring that the dates are wrong, this story never sets up Sheridan’s death clock; kind of like it doesn’t say anything about why Lennier goes missing from the plot after they leave B5. These are things that a person who either doesn’t know the main show or only kind of remembers it doesn’t need to have explained necessarily, and I get that. But then that one scene makes Sheridan’s death clock relevant, as if Sheridan would have known future-him would be dead if it was 23 years in the future rather than 18. Which is a problem for me, because 18 years in the future should mean he just recently died.
As soon as Franklin told Sheridan to focus on what he’d been thinking about when the time shifts started, the ending became pretty obvious. And then it was even more obviously spelled out in the scene with his dad. Of course what he needed to think about to make it home was Delenn. And I kind of think this is more evidence that this isn’t canon Sheridan, because canon Sheridan isn’t so dumb. He knows Delenn is his home, she’s his reason for living; which of course he knows because of the events that set up the death clock.
(I think there’s a lesser continuity issue that David Sr wasn’t a farmer when John was young, as he was still a diplomat into John’s 20s, but I’m more forgiving of that one. It could have been a family farm and the family lived there -it is noticeably a different house in the further flashbacks- but Pa worked as a diplomat.)
The scene with Pa Sheridan (trying to avoid David confusion; even though we still don’t meet young David in all this time hopping) has a bit of an odd tone to it. It would probably be a more fitting tone if Pa was dead in the main part of the timeline; but then I’d say it was too underplayed Sheridan getting to see his dad again.
(Also, Rance Howard didn’t get to be in the absent friends in memory still bright list. He was in almost as many episodes as Zathrus.)
I also kind of already thought it might be Delenn that was chasing him through time. Because of course she would.
The flashback to the Icarus was about the time I had to stop trying to make this be even near canon. I was willing to let it slide in the ISN report that said the Icarus explicitly woke up the Shadows (and that Earth had ever been in the middle of that war); I could make myself think that somehow that had become the accepted version of events whether or not it was true. But what really got me in that flashback isn’t that continuity snarl (or the fact that John can breathe on Z’ha’dum at all); the problem is Sheridan himself. I’m sorry, but if Sheridan found himself back in that moment, his thought isn’t just to practical stopping the awakening of the Shadows, he’s just to be thinking of Anna. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be Anna that he’s talking to on the comm, but I think both he and she would have had some different reactions if it had been. And I could let her side slide and go with the alternate universe explanation or just say she didn’t have time to realize it was him, but John would still be very aware if he’d had a chance to talk to Anna like that.
I’m perfectly okay with just glossing over Sheridan and Lockley’s past as irrelevant to the present storyline (as it’s pretty much irrelevant to them and should probably just be ignored anyway), but Anna is another matter. Part of me wishes JMS had just gone full fanfic and given us a proper scene between John and Anna, but I have to admit I don’t know what I would have done with it either. It’s probably a bad idea to add more trauma to the situation by making him watch her die; but I’m also not sure how you have a scene where he gets to say a final goodbye where he isn’t trying to change the past. Plus, the movie seems to think it’s being coy about Delenn being the answer to get him home, and anything with Anna would make it that much more obvious what John needs.
Also no Morden, and it’s so obvious that he should have had a cameo that I don’t think it can be a lazy oversight that he isn’t there. Now I think it would have been a nifty easter egg if in one of the other realities, we’d seen Wasser’s character from The Gathering in the background of C&C. Except that they couldn’t even get Corwin in there (much less Tech Techington) so I guess it would have been pretty unlikely to get something even smaller in there.
Besides, I also couldn’t help thinking that Lorien could have been useful in Sheridan’s showing up on Z’ha’dum. But I suppose that brings up again whether the death clock is even in play in this version of the characters.
And then we get to possibly the most frustrating part for me. At least the Icarus section was short, but the Shadow attack on B5 is not. Visual note that I’m not sure how I feel about how the Shadow ships look in this art style, they do look a bit more on the bio side of biotech, but in a way I’m not sure works (they look more disgustingly spidery). I also just found the animation a bit distracting in that section in general; it’s the most action (especially space action) heavy of the sections, and it’s just odd. Somehow the fact that these sorts of scenes were always animated means that seeing them in this animation messes with my head. It’s sort of an uncanny valley effect, in a medium that in most places isn’t all that subject to the uncanny valley because it’s clearly animated, but because the show’s space combat scenes were also animated, the valley came to the animation style.
And who was that starfury pilot supposed to be? We kept coming back to him like he’s someone we should recognize, but I didn’t, and the credits only call him starfury pilot. I can’t imagine it’s supposed to be Keffer (I don’t think JMS actually considers him to be part of the B5 family to where he ever would have planned to have him come back for this); it would have been a fine place to have AU Corwin though. Or have the furies piloted by Rangers and have Marcus out there (although Jason Carter was also not here, notable how few lines Marcus has because of it; to the point where I think they could have just used archive audio from War Without End for the few lines they needed).
(On reflection, you know who it should have been? Dodger. GROPOs are not pilots, but it’s an alternate universe. Sheridan wouldn’t have any reason to notice her over any other pilot, but it would make some sense why the audience could remember and care about her.)
I was still only partly accepting that we weren’t in near-canon timelines so it annoyed me that Sinclair didn’t know Sheridan. They met during the Mars Riots; and remembered it years later. But that thought sparked another thought in me; aside from Steven’s classroom, we hadn’t seen any Minbari in Sheridan’s jumping around. Which again highlights the weird dichotomy in this story, that Sheridan should need only the barest reminder to go ‘oh right, Delenn (who may or may not be pregnant with our son).’ And because that answer was so obvious to me, this is about where I started better really frustrated with Sheridan for not seeing it.
But the Minbari’s absence raises the question for me if at least that reality was very different from the main timeline (which may or may not be the show timeline). Since it is a near relation to the alternate reality set up in War Without End (but clearly not the same one), what if in that reality the Minbari had been wiped out -or at least severely beaten back- a thousand years ago? After all, even if we say that Sinclair hadn’t met Sheridan, he should know *of* Sheridan Starkiller surely (none of the AUs seem to go back to the Earth-Minbari War, do they? I guess it would become a lot to explain to the hypothetical newbies watching this; a category I guess Draal falls into too).
And the fact that I found that bit of pondering more interesting than what was happening in that section of the story should probably say something. It would have been far more interesting if it actually had been the possible future set up in B^2/WWE, because there would have been value in Sheridan seeing what might have been if they had failed in their B4 mission. As is, Sheridan mostly just rattles around like a spare part in this version of events; when he should probably have been asking where Delenn was in this reality (and no I’m not letting it go). Plot-wise, we can’t even say this is a case of Sheridan Plan A (blow shit up), because we know people would have thought to do that without him.
The bit with the computer’s AI was just dumb. You can’t have both an aware AI and Sheridan getting away with generic command codes (could have done something with it being Garibaldi’s password and in any universe it’s peekaboo). Plus, the Lyta and G’Kar appearance doesn’t make any sense; why wouldn’t they have been on an evacuation shuttle? Why would they come down to the fusion reactors in the middle of an invasion? Why are they hanging out in this universe? And then I don’t understand how the explosion takes out all the Shadow ships but isn’t a concern for the escaping shuttles? It’s a weird part of the overall story.
I understand why it’s here, since it makes sense to revisit (or at least reference) the only AU that actually existed before this point in canon. I was excited by it in the promo because it was such a logical place to take a story like this with time travel and alternate realities in the B5 universe. But it kind of ends up being the most boring part.
Also, why don’t we get Bester anywhere in this story? Needs more Bester. And Morden. And Marcus. And Corwin. I’d take Talia too. And Kosh. And I still want to see David.
I am not sure Sheridan should jump to the conclusion that the next jump takes him back to his home universe. Sure, it looks enough like it (although…not, I know what B5’s quarters look like and it’s not that), but he doesn’t understand how any of this is working, he could be in a universe where Clark won and Lockley ended up on B5 that way (again, so much material that isn’t being used in this…episode). Or they could still be married in this reality for all he knows.
However, I will say that this cements my view that Sheridan is the most demi-sexual person ever. The s4 scene with him and Ivanova works better as a scene, but doing it again does kind of make it more funny (third time if you count Musante). In this case, Lockley is even his ex-wife (or at least she is in the main canon universe) and he still can’t be bothered to notice that she’s less than fully dressed.
Though again, in a meta sense, it’s again to keep Sheridan from thinking about how obviously he should be trying to get back to Delenn. He probably should have tried to call while he thought he was in the correct timeline.
I don’t like how annoyed Sheridan is by Zathrus in this story. He really didn’t have that much problem with Zathrus in WWE, in fact he should probably like him for what happened there. This is taking more from the s4 appearance of new Zathrus (not like I can do pronunciation in text), and that was Ivanova who found the idea of many Zathri to be too much to handle. Of course, I really don’t like the meta jokes about Lost in Space, especially if they’re not even going to put Lennier in those scenes.
The whole section is trying to be funny and mostly failing. I’ll just ignore the apparently murder-happy robots as irrelevant, and I don’t have any idea what to do with Lockley’s line about particles not committing; said, again, with her ex-husband, but nobody reacts like it’s pointed at him. I suspect that’s the kind of thing that could have been saved in live action, because the actors know the characters’ history (or at least would have 20 years ago) and so could have done something subtle to hint at their past, but it’s not there in the animation.
I think maybe I just wish Sheridan’s memory had been a little more foggy of events leading up to him being unstuck in time. I still don’t think it would excuse why he doesn’t latch on to Delenn every time he thinks about how to get home, but at least it would be a little less obvious that she was also his anchor to the point in time he needed to get to. But people (sometimes himself) keep practically spelling it out for him, and he doesn’t get it. This is why I have to say this isn’t canon-Sheridan, he’s not this thick.
I wish I liked the scene with Londo and Ivanova. It’s maybe the only time we get a longer scene with all living actors, but it’s kind of coasting on that fact. I don’t know anything about this universe, so I don’t know anything about the versions of the characters we’re watching here; especially since how sparce the scene is makes the whole thing not feel all that real. This doesn’t end up feeling like a ‘for want of a nail’ universe, it’s kind of more like if the Dreaming showed you worst nightmares instead of memories.
This section is, I’m sorry to say, pretty badly written. It’s too much exposition for the others to think this is their Sheridan; but Sheridan doesn’t actually learn anything for this to be relevant to his jumping around timelines. This setting just exists, without any meaning in the story. There really isn’t even any dramatic irony that there might have been in the Drakh had been the ones attacking Earth (be it Crusade irony -could have also referenced Crusade in this multiverse- or Londo’s fate irony, take your pick) but we’re not exploring anything about the Shadows, Vorlons, Londo, Susan, or anything by saying that sure the Vorlons would have eventually gotten around to destroying Earth.
The scene at ‘the Rim’ is…better than the last few. I’m again distracted by how thick Sheridan is when the universe itself starts telling him what he needs to focus on to get home, and the fact that the show is (admittedly not for the first time) conflating the rim of known space, the galactic rim, the end of the universe, the line between existence and non-existence, and the line between life and death. But apart from those things, that part is easily the most Babylon 5 out of all the sections of this plot. It’s a black void stage play with two people (one of whom is Sheridan) talking about philosophy and metaphysics, life, the universe, and everything; that’s what Babylon 5 is.
And it’s where the need to get new actors really hurts a lot. It hurts scenes with Delenn too, as I don’t think the voice actress knew how to do a Yugoslavian accent and so went for vaguely French (possibly because on Lost they claimed Mira Furlan’s character was French when she was still clearly speaking with her Yugoslavian accent -I happened to recently watch some Youtube people talking about Lost so I can at least sort of comment on that; it’s just weird when they play clips of the character talking and then call her French, because I know that voice and know it’s not French). But the scene at the Rim is not written for someone doing a G’Kar impression, even though it technically is the universe itself doing a G’Kar impression. It’s not even a bad impression, but it is someone who isn’t practiced at delivering JMS philosophy speeches having to play an avatar of the Babylon 5 universe while trying to match or at least evoke Andreas Katsulas’ performance. The fact that it almost works probably deserves some kind of recognition, because it could have gone very badly trying to pull this off.
Part of me wants to say it was wrong for JMS to even write this scene knowing it wouldn’t be Andreas performing it. And I’m not sure if it’s better or worse that that kind of seems like the point; like it’s G’Kar who speaks in that scene because of how much JMS wants it to be Andreas that’s able to give one more speech like this, even more so with the gravitas of being able to speak for the dead as part of the universe. It just doesn’t work in universe the way it does out of universe. We all wish it could be Andreas there (which I’m sure JMS feels much more than the fans do), but *G’Kar* is alive at this point in canon; I’m sure Sheridan misses him even though he only left a few weeks (maybe months) ago, but he hasn’t gone and become part of the universe at this point. Lyta is with him and going to be back for the Telepath War in a couple years, so they haven’t gone that far beyond the Rim at this point.
But I’m also not sure who else it could have been for Sheridan to bounce off of at this point. What’s Wayne Alexander doing these days? I not suggesting he would be playing Lorien (probably not anyway), but it’s always Wayne Alexander. The most logical character choices would probably be Sinclair and/or Delenn, and that would likely have gone much worse (especially since it couldn’t be Delenn and keep the story going). I’m not sure it should have been Pa Sheridan, that was Kosh’s MO to appear as people’s fathers, but I’m not sure it would have worked here. And going for rotating appearances is the Shadows, which we wouldn’t be going for either. It’s trying to evoke wisdom which kind of rules out appearing as Londo or even Ivanova. I’d like to say there’s a way to make it David but only with a lot of rewriting could that have worked. It maybe could have been Marcus, as a dead friend Sheridan might meet at the Rim of reality, it even could have fit Marcus when the moral is about love, but a lot of the rest would have been strange coming from a Marcus shaped avatar (even if it was actually Marcus’ voice).
Honestly, this scene probably needs more textual (and meta and philosophical) analysis than I’m giving it, or able to give it after one watch where I was mostly distracted judging the voice acting. And still yelling about Sheridan missing the blindingly obvious; the camera even draws quite a bit of attention to his wedding ring coming and going from that scene.
The last section is…fine. Most of my problems there are either continuations of or build on things that were bothering me already. Sheridan being double thick in not understanding that he’s moving around alternate universe and not seeing what everyone’s been trying to tell him about getting home. Also not reacting to Lennier as ‘the last time I saw you, you were trying to kill me…because of Delenn.’ It continues the idea that the Icarus is the reason the Shadows woke up when they were already creeping around in the decade the Icarus went there. Lyta only references Sheridan having met another version of her, rather than uncovering anything about the prime version of herself that would probably be more prominent in Sheridan’s mind and of more interest to Lyta.
Also our Sheridan doesn’t seem all that interested in this AU, neither in the sense of asking questions nor trying to warn them about certain things they might end up facing. Which would be one thing if he seemed so focused on getting home that he didn’t want to get distracted trying to explain things to this universe, but he doesn’t seem all that rushed or frantic.
In the closing part, after prime-Sheridan leaves, the directing cheats pretty blatantly with who Sheridan is talking to. He’s clearly looking up or at least in line with whoever he’s talking to, but then it spins and we see Delenn, who is Delenn-sized so his eye-line would have been all wrong. That said, I think it was a good choice to play the relationship between that Sheridan and Delenn as fairly ambiguous; I’d say it evokes their early dynamic, and so may or may not develop into the same relationship they have in canon depending on how events progress in that universe. I’m not sure whether I should read the universes as really that different, or assume Delenn is being a lying liar who lies (Minbari edition) when saying she doesn’t know anything about the Shadows.
But I’m also not sure how that Sheridan doesn’t seem to have any idea that Sheridan-prime and Delenn were a thing. Even if no one else saw her, I’m pretty sure Sheridan-prime mentioned her by name at some point as he was trying to reach out to her (although Zathrus did weirdly only say ‘her’ instead of Delenn), and even if he didn’t Lyta would have picked it up.
The whole closing scene is…unnecessary but pleasant; and if that description seems odd, it’s because I feel oddly about it. I don’t hate, or even necessarily dislike what it seems to be doing, of showing a world where so much possibility and potential is ahead of them and we’re free to imagine everyone still together in a better world. But even though I see that that’s there, it’s not what I see. I end up seeing characters for who the worst is still ahead of them, all the pain and grief and suffering of the wars to come, and them not having been given a way to do any better than world we know. I assume Delenn is probably lying about not knowing about the Shadows; I assume Sinclair’s fate is still set because the world falls apart without the time loop; I assume that the Shadows are just moving slower in this timeline and therefore will be stronger when the war does come; I assume Londo is already making deals with Morden (he seems to be in his dark coat instead of his bright one) but the camera here just hasn’t seen it yet. So I end up seeing this as the calm before the storm rather than an unspoiled paradise.
The other factor is that, while as a viewer the thought of how many of the actors are dead gives us a want to imagine that they’re all still out there in a world where they’re together; most of the characters actually didn’t get that bad an ending. The scene works better in the cases of characters who don’t get a great end; and this story doesn’t earn that contrast with Lyta and Lennier and maybe Sinclair and even more maybe Londo. Because this story doesn’t bring up Lyta and Lennier’s fates in the prime timeline (or…anyone but Sheridan and Delenn, whose future is shown to be a happy one -even if it doesn’t bring up David).
Still, I don’t mind a good fanfic playground I suppose. The fandom will probably get some good use out of it.
Okay, coming to the end of the recappy portion of the review, I think I’m going to put a break in the post. I do *intend* to talk about the piece as a whole as well as my thoughts on things like the voice cast and performance, as well as the frame of mind this puts me in towards the still discussed potential reboot. But we all know how well I stick to my intended wrap-ups. So, to just re-summarize my overall take…it’s a frustrating story. It’s not bad, but it’s very flawed and I don’t think I liked it exactly. I might well like it better on rewatch than I did on this first go through, but that’s a story for another time.
Not next time, but maybe someday.
Babylon 5 – The Road Home
I…don’t know what to make of that. Guess I’ll see if I find any answers in doing a review.
To start with I guess my main take, I think I’m ultimately going to treat this as fanfic, at least in the final analysis. It would not be at all fair to judge it as canon; as canon it would mostly suck. Or maybe we’re starting out in an alternate universe from the one that the show was set in and this is a similar but not quite the same Sheridan and co even in the ‘prime’ timeline of this story.
Because basically right from the start there are things that trip up my canon deviation sensor. The first major one was when the turned around to do the salute as Sheridan was leaving and we different people standing in for Zack and Corwin, and no sign of Hobbs. I know who is in that C&C shot, and they did not accurately recreate it for this. There were snags in the big goodbye scene too, but the early glitches reached critical mass when they didn’t bother to just draw the legacy canon shot.
Since I started out assuming this was meant to be canon-ish I was also amused to think how this story just kind of cut around all the stuff that happened with Lennier on the trip to Minbar. And I still do think that’s all supposed to have happened, as Lennier does disappear from the ‘present day’ storyline at the point he would in canon.
And the glitches kept coming in the buildup to things going off the rails. Why is Sheridan acting like he hadn’t already been President of the ISA for a year when they leave B5? The ISA has to be more than a dozen worlds right, even with the Centauri pulling out? Why do they refer to Delenn as Satai? Delenn should be pregnant at that point in things, or there’s been enough of a gap for David to be born.
Sure, after that I can blame most of the discontinuity on the multiverse hopping. Except for Sheridan forgetting what year he took command of B5 when he’s talking with his dad; Sheridan took command of B5 in 2259, not ’58, unless that’s another sign of this not ever having been the show’s timeline. Plus everything being a little wonky around when Sheridan would have died, but even main canon struggled to keep everything straight with that timeline; that actually the end of Shadow War, the formation of the Alliance, moving to Minbar, and David’s birth were strung across multiple years instead of like one and a half (plus trying to figure out what the Centauri Prime flash-forward is 17 years into the future of; given how old David should be. And the book canon makes a worse mess trying to paper over the onscreen confusion, since sometimes Minbari years are longer than human ones and sometimes are shorter to try and make David old enough. Never doubt how much trivial B5 knowledge is stored in my brain). By the time the tachyon generator goes online, we’re already more than two years into Sheridan’s 20, so telling leaper-John that it was 18 years later should mean he knows that that time’s Sheridan would be dead. (My issues with the fact that the crew and definitely Delenn would not have just accepted Sheridan’s death clock are a matter for some other time.)
And the treatment of that is very weird. Even ignoring that the dates are wrong, this story never sets up Sheridan’s death clock; kind of like it doesn’t say anything about why Lennier goes missing from the plot after they leave B5. These are things that a person who either doesn’t know the main show or only kind of remembers it doesn’t need to have explained necessarily, and I get that. But then that one scene makes Sheridan’s death clock relevant, as if Sheridan would have known future-him would be dead if it was 23 years in the future rather than 18. Which is a problem for me, because 18 years in the future should mean he just recently died.
As soon as Franklin told Sheridan to focus on what he’d been thinking about when the time shifts started, the ending became pretty obvious. And then it was even more obviously spelled out in the scene with his dad. Of course what he needed to think about to make it home was Delenn. And I kind of think this is more evidence that this isn’t canon Sheridan, because canon Sheridan isn’t so dumb. He knows Delenn is his home, she’s his reason for living; which of course he knows because of the events that set up the death clock.
(I think there’s a lesser continuity issue that David Sr wasn’t a farmer when John was young, as he was still a diplomat into John’s 20s, but I’m more forgiving of that one. It could have been a family farm and the family lived there -it is noticeably a different house in the further flashbacks- but Pa worked as a diplomat.)
The scene with Pa Sheridan (trying to avoid David confusion; even though we still don’t meet young David in all this time hopping) has a bit of an odd tone to it. It would probably be a more fitting tone if Pa was dead in the main part of the timeline; but then I’d say it was too underplayed Sheridan getting to see his dad again.
(Also, Rance Howard didn’t get to be in the absent friends in memory still bright list. He was in almost as many episodes as Zathrus.)
I also kind of already thought it might be Delenn that was chasing him through time. Because of course she would.
The flashback to the Icarus was about the time I had to stop trying to make this be even near canon. I was willing to let it slide in the ISN report that said the Icarus explicitly woke up the Shadows (and that Earth had ever been in the middle of that war); I could make myself think that somehow that had become the accepted version of events whether or not it was true. But what really got me in that flashback isn’t that continuity snarl (or the fact that John can breathe on Z’ha’dum at all); the problem is Sheridan himself. I’m sorry, but if Sheridan found himself back in that moment, his thought isn’t just to practical stopping the awakening of the Shadows, he’s just to be thinking of Anna. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be Anna that he’s talking to on the comm, but I think both he and she would have had some different reactions if it had been. And I could let her side slide and go with the alternate universe explanation or just say she didn’t have time to realize it was him, but John would still be very aware if he’d had a chance to talk to Anna like that.
I’m perfectly okay with just glossing over Sheridan and Lockley’s past as irrelevant to the present storyline (as it’s pretty much irrelevant to them and should probably just be ignored anyway), but Anna is another matter. Part of me wishes JMS had just gone full fanfic and given us a proper scene between John and Anna, but I have to admit I don’t know what I would have done with it either. It’s probably a bad idea to add more trauma to the situation by making him watch her die; but I’m also not sure how you have a scene where he gets to say a final goodbye where he isn’t trying to change the past. Plus, the movie seems to think it’s being coy about Delenn being the answer to get him home, and anything with Anna would make it that much more obvious what John needs.
Also no Morden, and it’s so obvious that he should have had a cameo that I don’t think it can be a lazy oversight that he isn’t there. Now I think it would have been a nifty easter egg if in one of the other realities, we’d seen Wasser’s character from The Gathering in the background of C&C. Except that they couldn’t even get Corwin in there (much less Tech Techington) so I guess it would have been pretty unlikely to get something even smaller in there.
Besides, I also couldn’t help thinking that Lorien could have been useful in Sheridan’s showing up on Z’ha’dum. But I suppose that brings up again whether the death clock is even in play in this version of the characters.
And then we get to possibly the most frustrating part for me. At least the Icarus section was short, but the Shadow attack on B5 is not. Visual note that I’m not sure how I feel about how the Shadow ships look in this art style, they do look a bit more on the bio side of biotech, but in a way I’m not sure works (they look more disgustingly spidery). I also just found the animation a bit distracting in that section in general; it’s the most action (especially space action) heavy of the sections, and it’s just odd. Somehow the fact that these sorts of scenes were always animated means that seeing them in this animation messes with my head. It’s sort of an uncanny valley effect, in a medium that in most places isn’t all that subject to the uncanny valley because it’s clearly animated, but because the show’s space combat scenes were also animated, the valley came to the animation style.
And who was that starfury pilot supposed to be? We kept coming back to him like he’s someone we should recognize, but I didn’t, and the credits only call him starfury pilot. I can’t imagine it’s supposed to be Keffer (I don’t think JMS actually considers him to be part of the B5 family to where he ever would have planned to have him come back for this); it would have been a fine place to have AU Corwin though. Or have the furies piloted by Rangers and have Marcus out there (although Jason Carter was also not here, notable how few lines Marcus has because of it; to the point where I think they could have just used archive audio from War Without End for the few lines they needed).
(On reflection, you know who it should have been? Dodger. GROPOs are not pilots, but it’s an alternate universe. Sheridan wouldn’t have any reason to notice her over any other pilot, but it would make some sense why the audience could remember and care about her.)
I was still only partly accepting that we weren’t in near-canon timelines so it annoyed me that Sinclair didn’t know Sheridan. They met during the Mars Riots; and remembered it years later. But that thought sparked another thought in me; aside from Steven’s classroom, we hadn’t seen any Minbari in Sheridan’s jumping around. Which again highlights the weird dichotomy in this story, that Sheridan should need only the barest reminder to go ‘oh right, Delenn (who may or may not be pregnant with our son).’ And because that answer was so obvious to me, this is about where I started better really frustrated with Sheridan for not seeing it.
But the Minbari’s absence raises the question for me if at least that reality was very different from the main timeline (which may or may not be the show timeline). Since it is a near relation to the alternate reality set up in War Without End (but clearly not the same one), what if in that reality the Minbari had been wiped out -or at least severely beaten back- a thousand years ago? After all, even if we say that Sinclair hadn’t met Sheridan, he should know *of* Sheridan Starkiller surely (none of the AUs seem to go back to the Earth-Minbari War, do they? I guess it would become a lot to explain to the hypothetical newbies watching this; a category I guess Draal falls into too).
And the fact that I found that bit of pondering more interesting than what was happening in that section of the story should probably say something. It would have been far more interesting if it actually had been the possible future set up in B^2/WWE, because there would have been value in Sheridan seeing what might have been if they had failed in their B4 mission. As is, Sheridan mostly just rattles around like a spare part in this version of events; when he should probably have been asking where Delenn was in this reality (and no I’m not letting it go). Plot-wise, we can’t even say this is a case of Sheridan Plan A (blow shit up), because we know people would have thought to do that without him.
The bit with the computer’s AI was just dumb. You can’t have both an aware AI and Sheridan getting away with generic command codes (could have done something with it being Garibaldi’s password and in any universe it’s peekaboo). Plus, the Lyta and G’Kar appearance doesn’t make any sense; why wouldn’t they have been on an evacuation shuttle? Why would they come down to the fusion reactors in the middle of an invasion? Why are they hanging out in this universe? And then I don’t understand how the explosion takes out all the Shadow ships but isn’t a concern for the escaping shuttles? It’s a weird part of the overall story.
I understand why it’s here, since it makes sense to revisit (or at least reference) the only AU that actually existed before this point in canon. I was excited by it in the promo because it was such a logical place to take a story like this with time travel and alternate realities in the B5 universe. But it kind of ends up being the most boring part.
Also, why don’t we get Bester anywhere in this story? Needs more Bester. And Morden. And Marcus. And Corwin. I’d take Talia too. And Kosh. And I still want to see David.
I am not sure Sheridan should jump to the conclusion that the next jump takes him back to his home universe. Sure, it looks enough like it (although…not, I know what B5’s quarters look like and it’s not that), but he doesn’t understand how any of this is working, he could be in a universe where Clark won and Lockley ended up on B5 that way (again, so much material that isn’t being used in this…episode). Or they could still be married in this reality for all he knows.
However, I will say that this cements my view that Sheridan is the most demi-sexual person ever. The s4 scene with him and Ivanova works better as a scene, but doing it again does kind of make it more funny (third time if you count Musante). In this case, Lockley is even his ex-wife (or at least she is in the main canon universe) and he still can’t be bothered to notice that she’s less than fully dressed.
Though again, in a meta sense, it’s again to keep Sheridan from thinking about how obviously he should be trying to get back to Delenn. He probably should have tried to call while he thought he was in the correct timeline.
I don’t like how annoyed Sheridan is by Zathrus in this story. He really didn’t have that much problem with Zathrus in WWE, in fact he should probably like him for what happened there. This is taking more from the s4 appearance of new Zathrus (not like I can do pronunciation in text), and that was Ivanova who found the idea of many Zathri to be too much to handle. Of course, I really don’t like the meta jokes about Lost in Space, especially if they’re not even going to put Lennier in those scenes.
The whole section is trying to be funny and mostly failing. I’ll just ignore the apparently murder-happy robots as irrelevant, and I don’t have any idea what to do with Lockley’s line about particles not committing; said, again, with her ex-husband, but nobody reacts like it’s pointed at him. I suspect that’s the kind of thing that could have been saved in live action, because the actors know the characters’ history (or at least would have 20 years ago) and so could have done something subtle to hint at their past, but it’s not there in the animation.
I think maybe I just wish Sheridan’s memory had been a little more foggy of events leading up to him being unstuck in time. I still don’t think it would excuse why he doesn’t latch on to Delenn every time he thinks about how to get home, but at least it would be a little less obvious that she was also his anchor to the point in time he needed to get to. But people (sometimes himself) keep practically spelling it out for him, and he doesn’t get it. This is why I have to say this isn’t canon-Sheridan, he’s not this thick.
I wish I liked the scene with Londo and Ivanova. It’s maybe the only time we get a longer scene with all living actors, but it’s kind of coasting on that fact. I don’t know anything about this universe, so I don’t know anything about the versions of the characters we’re watching here; especially since how sparce the scene is makes the whole thing not feel all that real. This doesn’t end up feeling like a ‘for want of a nail’ universe, it’s kind of more like if the Dreaming showed you worst nightmares instead of memories.
This section is, I’m sorry to say, pretty badly written. It’s too much exposition for the others to think this is their Sheridan; but Sheridan doesn’t actually learn anything for this to be relevant to his jumping around timelines. This setting just exists, without any meaning in the story. There really isn’t even any dramatic irony that there might have been in the Drakh had been the ones attacking Earth (be it Crusade irony -could have also referenced Crusade in this multiverse- or Londo’s fate irony, take your pick) but we’re not exploring anything about the Shadows, Vorlons, Londo, Susan, or anything by saying that sure the Vorlons would have eventually gotten around to destroying Earth.
The scene at ‘the Rim’ is…better than the last few. I’m again distracted by how thick Sheridan is when the universe itself starts telling him what he needs to focus on to get home, and the fact that the show is (admittedly not for the first time) conflating the rim of known space, the galactic rim, the end of the universe, the line between existence and non-existence, and the line between life and death. But apart from those things, that part is easily the most Babylon 5 out of all the sections of this plot. It’s a black void stage play with two people (one of whom is Sheridan) talking about philosophy and metaphysics, life, the universe, and everything; that’s what Babylon 5 is.
And it’s where the need to get new actors really hurts a lot. It hurts scenes with Delenn too, as I don’t think the voice actress knew how to do a Yugoslavian accent and so went for vaguely French (possibly because on Lost they claimed Mira Furlan’s character was French when she was still clearly speaking with her Yugoslavian accent -I happened to recently watch some Youtube people talking about Lost so I can at least sort of comment on that; it’s just weird when they play clips of the character talking and then call her French, because I know that voice and know it’s not French). But the scene at the Rim is not written for someone doing a G’Kar impression, even though it technically is the universe itself doing a G’Kar impression. It’s not even a bad impression, but it is someone who isn’t practiced at delivering JMS philosophy speeches having to play an avatar of the Babylon 5 universe while trying to match or at least evoke Andreas Katsulas’ performance. The fact that it almost works probably deserves some kind of recognition, because it could have gone very badly trying to pull this off.
Part of me wants to say it was wrong for JMS to even write this scene knowing it wouldn’t be Andreas performing it. And I’m not sure if it’s better or worse that that kind of seems like the point; like it’s G’Kar who speaks in that scene because of how much JMS wants it to be Andreas that’s able to give one more speech like this, even more so with the gravitas of being able to speak for the dead as part of the universe. It just doesn’t work in universe the way it does out of universe. We all wish it could be Andreas there (which I’m sure JMS feels much more than the fans do), but *G’Kar* is alive at this point in canon; I’m sure Sheridan misses him even though he only left a few weeks (maybe months) ago, but he hasn’t gone and become part of the universe at this point. Lyta is with him and going to be back for the Telepath War in a couple years, so they haven’t gone that far beyond the Rim at this point.
But I’m also not sure who else it could have been for Sheridan to bounce off of at this point. What’s Wayne Alexander doing these days? I not suggesting he would be playing Lorien (probably not anyway), but it’s always Wayne Alexander. The most logical character choices would probably be Sinclair and/or Delenn, and that would likely have gone much worse (especially since it couldn’t be Delenn and keep the story going). I’m not sure it should have been Pa Sheridan, that was Kosh’s MO to appear as people’s fathers, but I’m not sure it would have worked here. And going for rotating appearances is the Shadows, which we wouldn’t be going for either. It’s trying to evoke wisdom which kind of rules out appearing as Londo or even Ivanova. I’d like to say there’s a way to make it David but only with a lot of rewriting could that have worked. It maybe could have been Marcus, as a dead friend Sheridan might meet at the Rim of reality, it even could have fit Marcus when the moral is about love, but a lot of the rest would have been strange coming from a Marcus shaped avatar (even if it was actually Marcus’ voice).
Honestly, this scene probably needs more textual (and meta and philosophical) analysis than I’m giving it, or able to give it after one watch where I was mostly distracted judging the voice acting. And still yelling about Sheridan missing the blindingly obvious; the camera even draws quite a bit of attention to his wedding ring coming and going from that scene.
The last section is…fine. Most of my problems there are either continuations of or build on things that were bothering me already. Sheridan being double thick in not understanding that he’s moving around alternate universe and not seeing what everyone’s been trying to tell him about getting home. Also not reacting to Lennier as ‘the last time I saw you, you were trying to kill me…because of Delenn.’ It continues the idea that the Icarus is the reason the Shadows woke up when they were already creeping around in the decade the Icarus went there. Lyta only references Sheridan having met another version of her, rather than uncovering anything about the prime version of herself that would probably be more prominent in Sheridan’s mind and of more interest to Lyta.
Also our Sheridan doesn’t seem all that interested in this AU, neither in the sense of asking questions nor trying to warn them about certain things they might end up facing. Which would be one thing if he seemed so focused on getting home that he didn’t want to get distracted trying to explain things to this universe, but he doesn’t seem all that rushed or frantic.
In the closing part, after prime-Sheridan leaves, the directing cheats pretty blatantly with who Sheridan is talking to. He’s clearly looking up or at least in line with whoever he’s talking to, but then it spins and we see Delenn, who is Delenn-sized so his eye-line would have been all wrong. That said, I think it was a good choice to play the relationship between that Sheridan and Delenn as fairly ambiguous; I’d say it evokes their early dynamic, and so may or may not develop into the same relationship they have in canon depending on how events progress in that universe. I’m not sure whether I should read the universes as really that different, or assume Delenn is being a lying liar who lies (Minbari edition) when saying she doesn’t know anything about the Shadows.
But I’m also not sure how that Sheridan doesn’t seem to have any idea that Sheridan-prime and Delenn were a thing. Even if no one else saw her, I’m pretty sure Sheridan-prime mentioned her by name at some point as he was trying to reach out to her (although Zathrus did weirdly only say ‘her’ instead of Delenn), and even if he didn’t Lyta would have picked it up.
The whole closing scene is…unnecessary but pleasant; and if that description seems odd, it’s because I feel oddly about it. I don’t hate, or even necessarily dislike what it seems to be doing, of showing a world where so much possibility and potential is ahead of them and we’re free to imagine everyone still together in a better world. But even though I see that that’s there, it’s not what I see. I end up seeing characters for who the worst is still ahead of them, all the pain and grief and suffering of the wars to come, and them not having been given a way to do any better than world we know. I assume Delenn is probably lying about not knowing about the Shadows; I assume Sinclair’s fate is still set because the world falls apart without the time loop; I assume that the Shadows are just moving slower in this timeline and therefore will be stronger when the war does come; I assume Londo is already making deals with Morden (he seems to be in his dark coat instead of his bright one) but the camera here just hasn’t seen it yet. So I end up seeing this as the calm before the storm rather than an unspoiled paradise.
The other factor is that, while as a viewer the thought of how many of the actors are dead gives us a want to imagine that they’re all still out there in a world where they’re together; most of the characters actually didn’t get that bad an ending. The scene works better in the cases of characters who don’t get a great end; and this story doesn’t earn that contrast with Lyta and Lennier and maybe Sinclair and even more maybe Londo. Because this story doesn’t bring up Lyta and Lennier’s fates in the prime timeline (or…anyone but Sheridan and Delenn, whose future is shown to be a happy one -even if it doesn’t bring up David).
Still, I don’t mind a good fanfic playground I suppose. The fandom will probably get some good use out of it.
Okay, coming to the end of the recappy portion of the review, I think I’m going to put a break in the post. I do *intend* to talk about the piece as a whole as well as my thoughts on things like the voice cast and performance, as well as the frame of mind this puts me in towards the still discussed potential reboot. But we all know how well I stick to my intended wrap-ups. So, to just re-summarize my overall take…it’s a frustrating story. It’s not bad, but it’s very flawed and I don’t think I liked it exactly. I might well like it better on rewatch than I did on this first go through, but that’s a story for another time.
Not next time, but maybe someday.
