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New Babylon 5
Sep. 18th, 2023 02:15 pmSo new B5 came out! And I missed it because it was a low-key release! But now I have it! SPOILERS!
OK so it's a bit of a shame this comes out at a time when interest in B5 is pretty low. Wait a few more years until the 80s nostalgia morphs naturally into 90s nostalgia. Because it's pretty good, probably the best addition to the B5 world post the original series. Certainly it's a lot better than the two-episode straight-to-dvd effort from over a decade ago that was the last piece of original B5.
The choice to go animated was pretty obvious given the ages of the cast and the need to recast a big chunk of roles. But animation can be of variable quality. Thankfully this appears to have much more budget than the 60s Doctor Who stuff. Characters move naturally, backgrounds are detailed and varied, camera moves are fluid and interesting. Inevitably the voice work is a bit more of a mixed bag. Londo sounds perfect, Lockley and Ivanova are almost there but not quite, Sheridan is good in his older version but not quite boyish enough in his younger version. Of the recasts, Delenn is spot on both in terms of voice and in that curious mixture of stateliness and coquettishness that Mira Furlan brought to the role. Equally faultless are Zathras, Zathras and Zathras. G'Kar doesn't sound much like Andreas, but does strike the right sonorous note in the bigger speeches. Sinclair neither looks nor sounds much like Michael O'Hare, which I suppose much of the fandom might be quite relieved about. It's a bit of a shame that Ivanova and Lockley aren't paired up, since that would be a first for the franchise, but the Sinclair / Lockley pairing has some potential.
Storywise... well, I wasn't too optimistic. The trailer made it look like Slaughterhouse 5 but with all the philosophical stuff removed. And in truth it is a little disjointed and bitty, and might have been better split into half-hour episodes so that each setting could get its own story with a beginning, middle and end. Sheridan is fairly passive most of the time and that saps the story of a little momentum; you don't really feel like it's all adding up to anything until quite late.
That said, though, it held my interest throughout and didn't feel overly long or meandering. Each chunk is only as long as it needs to be to get the point across and the varying tone helps to stop it getting monotonous. One slight missed opportunity is that the scene on "the rim" would probably have fitted Galen more than G'Kar. I'm not sure whether Peter Woodward didn't want to return or whether JMS just didn't think of him but it feels very much like a Galen / Sheridan scene from A Call to Arms and whatever that episode of the DVD thing with the Centauri Prince Regent was called. It would also have been nice to get Robin Atkin-Downes in, not necessarily for Byron (although the idea of a charismatic cult leader who manipulates vulnerable people is, you know, kinda topical) but because he's a premiere voice artist now and is in just about every video game you play. Overall I'd say that the desire to put together a potted history of B5 in 90 minutes, showing not just bits from the entire series but possible "what ifs" as well, is probably the sound thing to do after so much time, and allows every viewer to be on the same page without masses of info-dumping.
So yes. Worth a watch, and I hope it leads to more. It probably won't, because this is B5 fandom and we can't have nice things. But if this does turn out to be the last original contribution to the franchise, it's a worthier way to end than Crusade, Legend of the Rangers or the DVD one.
OK so it's a bit of a shame this comes out at a time when interest in B5 is pretty low. Wait a few more years until the 80s nostalgia morphs naturally into 90s nostalgia. Because it's pretty good, probably the best addition to the B5 world post the original series. Certainly it's a lot better than the two-episode straight-to-dvd effort from over a decade ago that was the last piece of original B5.
The choice to go animated was pretty obvious given the ages of the cast and the need to recast a big chunk of roles. But animation can be of variable quality. Thankfully this appears to have much more budget than the 60s Doctor Who stuff. Characters move naturally, backgrounds are detailed and varied, camera moves are fluid and interesting. Inevitably the voice work is a bit more of a mixed bag. Londo sounds perfect, Lockley and Ivanova are almost there but not quite, Sheridan is good in his older version but not quite boyish enough in his younger version. Of the recasts, Delenn is spot on both in terms of voice and in that curious mixture of stateliness and coquettishness that Mira Furlan brought to the role. Equally faultless are Zathras, Zathras and Zathras. G'Kar doesn't sound much like Andreas, but does strike the right sonorous note in the bigger speeches. Sinclair neither looks nor sounds much like Michael O'Hare, which I suppose much of the fandom might be quite relieved about. It's a bit of a shame that Ivanova and Lockley aren't paired up, since that would be a first for the franchise, but the Sinclair / Lockley pairing has some potential.
Storywise... well, I wasn't too optimistic. The trailer made it look like Slaughterhouse 5 but with all the philosophical stuff removed. And in truth it is a little disjointed and bitty, and might have been better split into half-hour episodes so that each setting could get its own story with a beginning, middle and end. Sheridan is fairly passive most of the time and that saps the story of a little momentum; you don't really feel like it's all adding up to anything until quite late.
That said, though, it held my interest throughout and didn't feel overly long or meandering. Each chunk is only as long as it needs to be to get the point across and the varying tone helps to stop it getting monotonous. One slight missed opportunity is that the scene on "the rim" would probably have fitted Galen more than G'Kar. I'm not sure whether Peter Woodward didn't want to return or whether JMS just didn't think of him but it feels very much like a Galen / Sheridan scene from A Call to Arms and whatever that episode of the DVD thing with the Centauri Prince Regent was called. It would also have been nice to get Robin Atkin-Downes in, not necessarily for Byron (although the idea of a charismatic cult leader who manipulates vulnerable people is, you know, kinda topical) but because he's a premiere voice artist now and is in just about every video game you play. Overall I'd say that the desire to put together a potted history of B5 in 90 minutes, showing not just bits from the entire series but possible "what ifs" as well, is probably the sound thing to do after so much time, and allows every viewer to be on the same page without masses of info-dumping.
So yes. Worth a watch, and I hope it leads to more. It probably won't, because this is B5 fandom and we can't have nice things. But if this does turn out to be the last original contribution to the franchise, it's a worthier way to end than Crusade, Legend of the Rangers or the DVD one.
