Babylon 5: Money Grab

I wasn't an adamant Babylon 5 watcher initially. I watched it when it first came out, gave it a couple of episodes and then dropped it because I thought it was lacking in some quality. Over the next couple of years I noticed a lot of people raving about how good the show was. So I decided to give it another shot. This was around the start of season four I believe, and people were right, there had been a marked increase in the quality of the show with later seasons. I guess it just took a while for them to find their groove (and in my opinion, replacing the initial main character didn't hurt). I continued watching the made for TV movies that came out after the show ended and I even watched the spin-off show, none of which I thought were anywhere near as good as the original series. It's been a good while since there was any new material for the show, which I believe in some part is due to the original cast members dying in real life. So I was bit surprised when I heard about the release Babylon 5: The Lost Tales - Voices In The Dark, a straight to DVD movie suffering from title length envy.

Usually when something is straight to video, it's not very good. And as much as I liked the original Babylon 5 (eventually), this is no exception to that rule. The production quality is really really low. It's really less of a movie and more two short stories that clock in around 35 minutes apiece. The stories are almost completely separate and barely have any interaction with one another. And when I imply it's low budget, I mean it's really low budget. One short story has I believe three separate sets, none of which were populated (a cell, a corridor and a bedroom where you don't even see the bed). Here's a hint how you can tell it's really low budget, when they can't be bothered to build an entire set and simply have two chairs in a room with spotlights on the chairs and have blacked out everything else so you can't even see the walls, you know you're talking seriously low budget. We don't even get any good special effects. The few shots you get of the space station all feel recycled. And we don't even get to check in on all the old characters from the show (although they're all listed and shown in the credits, which is just odd), there are only two regulars from the original series that are back for these tales: Sheridan and Lochley (plus Galen, who I suppose could be argued is a regular from the spin-off series). All the other characters are mysteriously absent, or in the case of the ones that have passed away in real life as explained as being out exploring "beyond the outer rim". I mean check imdb, when the person listed 8th in the credits is simply "Guard", you can tell there aren't a lot of characters (and that was taking into account characters from both stories). The stories themselves are mildly interesting, but suffer from decompression in that both stories are really drawn out and could probably have been told in about ten minutes apiece with time editing. All told it almost felt like someone needed money and put this out for a quick cash infusion. If you absolutely loved the original series, you might want to watch this just for the sake of completeness. If you had anything less than absolute devotion to the show, you want to pass on this. I know if I had bought this, I would have felt gipped. As a Netflix rental, it just barely felt worth it.