Director: Janet Greek
Cast: Jerry Doyle, Tracy Scoggins, Jeff Conaway, Martin Sheen
Have I Seen it Before: Yeah...
Did I Like It: I’ve actually tried to watch it a couple of times since it aired over twenty years ago, and I’ve never been able to really get into it, and if it failed with Martin Sheen portraying one of its central characters, then it probably would have to be the weakest of the Babylon 5 TV Movies, right?
I’ve written before that the strength of the series has always been its ambitious over-arching storyline, and the movies they produced towards the end of the series largely eschewed that framework, aside for perhaps Babylon 5: In The Beginning (1998). This is even more removed from the main storyline, taking place some time after the fifth season concluded, and has a tendency to get weighed down by the need that the first season—before the show really became something special—had of doing stand-alone stories. Thus, we are largely left with the special effects that have infamously not aged well, even with the series best episodes.
The series also had a certain smugness (often well-earned) that it was rising above the trappings of science fiction television at the time, only to have J. Michael Straczynski try to give us what basically amounted to a holodeck episode this time out.
And yet, I couldn’t help but kind of, sort of enjoy the film this time out. Martin Sheen is Martin Sheen, and that’s usually more than enough to allow me to paper over deep flaws (see either Spawn (1997) or the fifth season of The West Wing). The ideas in the film are enough to chew on and it actually improves one of the weaker episodes for the wobbly first season of the series.
Isn’t that enough? I’m inclined to say yes. I mean, how much can we expect from a made-for-cable sci-fi movie from the 1990s?