Babylon 5: Thirdspace - Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the middle third of the Babylon 5 movie Thirdspace. If you want to go back to PART ONE then click that text and you'll go straight there.

There'll be SPOILERS here for the first half of season four, but I'll try not to give away anything about what happens next. Sure the movie aired near the end of season five, but some people might decide to watch the films where they fit chronologically, and I don't want to ruin one damn thing for first time viewers.

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Previously, on Babylon 5: Thirdspace:

It's halfway through season 4 and Ivanova's found a giant T sitting in hyperspace. She decided to bring it back to the station, and IPX came along soon after to work out a deal that lets them investigate it. Lyta has been going a bit crazy though; sleepwalking, sleep writing, and hijacking maintbots in order to destroy the thing. Soon other people on the station are going a bit weird as well, experiencing disturbing dreams and walking around the Zocalo like zombies. And they haven't even figured out how to turn the thing on yet!

And now, the continuation:

ACT FOUR

The next act begins with some log entry narration from Dr Trent. Hey, that's not how this works, only the protagonists get to make log entries!

Trent mentions that the Centauri that gave Earth jumpgate technology 100 years ago, changing our place in the galaxy, and she's got a theory that this could be something more powerful than a jumpgate! Though they won't be testing any theories while it has a dead battery.

Meanwhile Zack's dealing with his own reports, of outbreaks of random violence and screaming all over the station. 

Zack's not going to jump to conclusions and assume it's the artefact causing this, it might be "full moons all lined up, beaming bozo rays", but he wants his security officers to write up what people are saying to see if there's anything they can learn from it. Because Zack is surprisingly good at his job.

The episode brings is over to Red Sector next, and... hey it's that guy who was in Blade Runner and Deadwood!

Wait, wasn't he in Babylon 5 already. Hang on, is this Deuce? The crime boss from Grail? Holy shit, of all the one-off season one characters they could've brought back, they went with this guy? They should've brought back N'Grath, the giant preying mantis.

The others with him are confused about what he's staring at as they clearly aren't seeing anything, but we can see that it's some kind of 90s CGI.

Ivanova's seeing it too, because she got up in the middle of the night and walked through a portal. She never has any luck sleeping.

Damn, I just realised that those are supposed to be buildings. Man, B5 always does this: they've apparently taken a model built and textured for a long shot and then stuck the camera right up close without increasing the geometry or texture resolution of the section nearest the camera. That's how you end up with painted-on windows sliding off the top of the walls.

It turns out that Vir's there as well and he's brought some friends, including a surprising cameo by Alien 3-era Sigourney Weaver, or more likely her clone.

There's no sexy Centauri women here for Ivanova, though she does catch the interest of a creepy CGI tentacle that sneaks up on her from behind. Then she wakes up screaming.

Meanwhile one of the IPX guys is being harassed by Deuce and Minbari Alan Rickman, along with a gang of zombie strangers. They're crowding around his table and interrupting his work because they want him to work faster. And once Deuce has delivered this message they all walk off.

Personally, I don't think this would motivate me to work faster on getting the creepy artefact working. I think this would get me hitching a ride to somewhere else on one of those supply ships.

IPX has been on the station for five days now so it's time for Sheridan to check on Trent's progress. Turns out they've found out nothing so far. She's utterly clueless about what the artefact could be. Honest.

Xenoarcheology isn't really Sheridan's area of expertise, but he tells Trent that he picked up enough from his wife to know that she's hiding something. Though it's a report on the Vorlon text covering the artefact that really grabs his attention. Trent's clearly been holding out on him and he's not happy about it. In fact she's got 48 hours to come up with some results or he's pulling he plug! 

This kind of makes him sound like one of those authority figures in a sci-fi horror movie that makes unreasonable demands of the protagonist and pushes them to take a dumb risk that'll get the story going, but really he just wants Trent to show him the findings that he knows she already has.

Wow, the footage got really grainy all of a sudden.

Zack and Ivanova are down in security dealing with Deuce, in his third and final scene in the movie. He's here because security caught him trying to escape out of an airlock to get closer to the artefact. He explains that it's been calling to him. Those who hear the call belong to them, the others won't survive.

Deuce knows that Ivanova's been to 'the city' but when Zack asks what he means she doesn't say a word about her dream. She doesn't even go to speak to Vir afterwards to see what he knows! Or Lyta! I get that this is supposed to be a standalone movie and they don't want to drag in continuity, but Ivanova is a latent telepath and she has to be thinking about how the other telepath on board reacted to the artefact earlier.

In fact it's blatantly obvious to all of them that the artefact is messing with people's minds at this point but they're not doing anything about it. Just tow it someplace else already!

Back in the IPX lair, Dr Trent is making her pitch to her friend Bill on why they should just plug in a battery and turn the artefact back on. Even though they know by the battle damage that whoever shut off the power the first time had to do shoot a lot of internal relays to do it. Bill's the person who got surrounded by Deuce's zombies earlier by the way. Plus he's also Admiral Nakamura from Star Trek: The Next Generation. He showed up more times than any other admiral aside from Admiral Nechayev! Apparently!

I've noticed that they're being careful now to not point the camera at the window with the green screen behind it. I suppose they only had so much cash in the CGI budget and they needed to save some of it for the space battle at the end.

We learn here that the jumpgate tech the Centauri sold to Earth wasn't invented by them. In fact no one knows who first invented the jumpgates, as the technology they have now came from alien races reverse engineering ancient gates discovered in their own star systems. Wow, they are shamelessly ripping off Mass Effect's backstory here... 9 years before the game came out.

Trent finally shares her theory, that the device that's more powerful than jumpgates is actually a more powerful jumpgate! Instead of taking them to hyperspace it'll take them an even faster dimension: a third space. How it was possible for her to know all this from a few scans is never really explained, but it's possible she's been been listening to the voices in her head.

She's been too busy to come up with a cool name for it like ultraspace or ludicrousspace or fluidic space though so she's just going with 'thirdspace' for now. At least she didn't call it Trentspace, so she's a step above Kosinski from that Star Trek: TNG episode I just watched.

Anyway, people are going to want this thirdspace tech as it'll let them move cargo faster and get a tactical advantage in combat, so if Bill and Trent can reverse engineer it they'll be making a significant amount of money.

Meanwhile Ivanova runs in to Vir by pure chance and he just happens to mention seeing her in a dream. So that was actually was actual Vir she saw in her dream of the CGI city and he actually did go off with a couple of imaginary Centauri women! Meanwhile Ivanova got eaten by a monster, apparently.

It's at this point that Ivanova finally calls Sheridan and tells him something's up.

Unfortunately she's too late to stop Dr Trent from getting B5's engineers to plug a giant battery into the artefact to give it a jump start.

The thing sends out a blast of energy and everyone towing the battery dies screaming. So that kind of sucks. It's good timing though, as this happens exactly two-thirds of the way through the movie, kicking the story up a gear for the final third.

ACT FIVE

Plugging the artefact in has made it all light up, but it has not improved their situation.

There's a power drain on the station so they can't get the Cobra Bay doors open to launch Starfuries and people are brawling in the corridors. 

Sheridan issues an order to redirect power to life support, transport tubes and rotational systems. They need air to breath, the station's way too big to get around on foot, and they don't have the budget to show what would happen if it stopped spinning.

Then he has a chat with Zack on his link and it turns out that the guy is really good at holding a conversation and kicking people at the same time. There's a crowd trying to get into Cobra Bay 2 to stop the fighters from launching, but security's on top of it. It's a real brawl but they understand that they're fighting people under telepathic control and they can't use their guns on them... until they have to.

What the heroes need right now is more information, so Ivanova's going to speak to Dr Trent while Sheridan goes to see Lyta.

There's also utter chaos in the IPX cargo conveyor belt room that Ivanova was shouting in earlier, as people are getting shoved a bit. Plus a box falls off before this woman can catch it.

It's kind of a weird shot to cut in between all the scenes of absolute mayhem going on elsewhere. I mean Zack's going full Captain Kirk right now, with his jacket torn and everything.

The station's been put on lockdown at this point, but I doubt anyone's been waiting for the order to run for shelter in their quarters from the maniacs rioting in the hallways. In fact G'Kar, Londo and Garibaldi have been hiding all movie!

The Starfuries finally launch, but there's not much they can do when the T has a shield around it.

Trent and Bill notice them launching and decide that they've got to do something... and then there's a gunshot off screen. We don't know which of them got shot and there's been no clues in the story so far as they both had the same agenda and were working together!

Meanwhile Delenn has finally returned, and Lyta's back too! Her eyes are glowing white like a Vorlon and she's ready to give them all the exposition they need. Incidentally she's been living in a room covered in the words "There is Danger, Remember" for five days now and hasn't spoken about it to anyone.

Anyway, she tells them a story about that is embedded in the memory of each generation of Vorlons. They decided one day to basically open a door to heaven so that they could become gods, much like how the Centauri Emperor Cartagia tried to blow up Centauri Prime so that he could become a god. In the end it had much the same effect: lots of powerful ancient aliens they couldn't hope to defeat came over and they were bloody lucky to survive it.

I've gotta say though, when the gate's activated and transformed it's not the worst looking bit of alien design we've seen on the series. It definitely looks a lot better than the Vorlon planet killers that showed up early on in season 4.

The thirdspace aliens on the other side of the portal are yet another race of ancient unknowable aliens with advanced technology, but this time there's an new twist: all they want to do is exterminate everyone who isn't them. EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE.

It turns out that the Vorlons had the sense to destroy the gate after shutting it down, but the thirdspace aliens had gotten to it first, modifying it to send out a telepathic signal. That's why it was affecting people on B5 before the portal was even opened. The signal mind-controlled some of the Vorlons into hiding the gate in hyperspace, because I guess mind-controlling them to fix it wasn't an option at the time. And there it has sat for a million years, waiting for some idiot to plug it back in.

I was going to say that the graininess and the writing all over the walls made this shot look like it came from one of the Silent Hill games. But then Lyta started shooting energy rays out of her eyes and mouth and now it just looks kind of goofy. How much telepathic information can be received via the mouth anyway?

What she's doing here is uploading the knowledge Sheridan needs to take down the thirdspace gate permanently. Telling him with words isn't an option, as then we'd hear it too. Writers only let viewers in on the plan when it's doomed to go wrong.

All we know is that whatever he's doing, he's got to do it alone...

... while Lyta stays behind to do another stunt fall without a mat. She is really good at this; you can tell that she's a professional.

Meanwhile the thirdspace gate has activated and thirdspace alien ships are starting to come through. Turns out they fire fireballs that annihilate Starfuries in a couple of hits, though that's not all that impressive as anything can take down a Starfury in a couple of hits.

Ivanova has reached Dr Trent by this point and now we know that Bill is the one that got shot off screen. Poor Bill.

She calls Sheridan on her link and when it cuts to his side of the conversation we get a bit of ingenious direction by Jesús Treviño. The corridor wasn't quite long enough for Sheridan to get all of his dialogue out before reaching the end.

So the director put two extras dragging a prisoner in his way, so that he'd have to take the time to walk around them. This gave him the extra seconds he needed to finish his conversation with Ivanova!

Trent explains to Ivanova that Bill came at her and she had to shoot him to defend herself, though we're shown that wound actually is on his back. I don't know what I'd do if I'd just realised I was in a room with a mind-controlled killer, but what Ivanova does is turn her back to Trent with her gun still holstered. Then she tells her that her story doesn't add up.

You'd think this would be the point where Trent would just pull a gun and shoot Ivanova... and she does!

But Ivanova was apparently counting on that, as she's ready to spin around and kick the gun out of her hand! Man, we haven't had a proper Ivanova brawl in ages. Shame it's kind of poorly shot; she knocks Trent down with a final spinning kick but I had to go through it frame by frame to even see her leg.

So that's Dr Trent sorted out then! Now all Ivanova has to worry about is the apocalyptic threat outside and the news that Babylon 5 has just two more hours before it loses power entirely.

There's a beautiful shot for you! It's nice that this film's giving the Starfuries the spotlight again for a change. Well, it did for a while anyway. They've just called in the White Stars, so the much bigger guns are on their way.

Though speaking of bigger guns...

... there's some actual thirdspace capital ships on their way as well. This things are so far beyond us in technology that they're going to absolutely wreck anything we can throw at them, and I doubt telepaths are going to work on them either. Interesting design though. They look really different to any other ship we've seen in the series. 

Fortunately thirdspace is apparently really slow to travel through, as they're taking forever to reach the portal on their side. That'll give me a chance to take a break and finish this off tomorrow.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART THREE

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NEXT TIME

Next time on Sci-Fi Adventures it's the epic conclusion of Thirdspace. Then I can get back to writing about the final five episodes of Babylon 5.

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