Babylon 5: A Call to Arms - Part 1

Written By:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Directed By:

Mike Vejar

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Release Date:

1999

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the first part of my three-part review of the Babylon 5 TV movie A Call to Arms! Here's a fun fact for you straight away: this is one of only two Babylon 5 stories to share its name with a Deep Space Nine episode (the other being Chrysalis). 

A Call to Arms is the last of the four Babylon 5 TV movies made for TNT, as The Legend of the Rangers was actually made for the Sci Fi Channel. Legend of the Rangers features a new cast and new sets, and it goes off doing its own things. Call to Arms, on the other hand, is a proper Babylon 5 movie, featuring the station and the lead characters and everything. A Call to Arms and The Legend of the Rangers are similar in some ways though, as they were both designed to function as a pilot movie and both of their spin-offs got cancelled before a single episode had aired. At least Call to Arms' series, Crusade, was able to get 13 episodes filmed before being shut down.

Call to Arms also had the proper Babylon 5 production team behind it, with J. Michael Straczynski writing and Mike Vejar returning to direct. They didn't bring back composer Christopher Franke however, making this the first B5 story to be missing his music since the original pilot (and they eventually went back and rescored that to match the rest of the series). Instead, this features a soundtrack by Evan Chen, who'd continue to work on the Crusade series.

Alright, I'm going to go through the whole film scene by scene sharing my reactions and observations, so there will be huge SPOILERS here for the movie and perhaps the rest of Babylon 5. I won't spoil a thing about Crusade or Legend of the Rangers, however.

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The film begins with an ISN news broadcast, and the anchor explains that it's the fifth anniversary of the Interstellar Alliance. This means that there's been a four-year time jump since most of season 5, and this is the only glimpse we'll ever get of season 9. The movie takes place near the end of 2266, which is incidentally the same year that season one of Star Trek: The Original Series takes place.

We learn that President Sheridan's been laying low for the last week and no one's seen him. We also learn that Delenn's the ISA vice president (which is news to me at least) and that the telepath 'crisis' has ended by this point. Nothing much else has happened in the meantime though it seems. Here's another interesting fact for you: when this was first broadcast on television, if you pressed the red square absolutely nothing happened.

There's a burst of old-fashioned static and then we get the movie title. Kind of a weird choice for a teaser, but okay. What's even weirder is the bizarre atonal music that's just come on. It sounds like it's from... I dunno... one of those mid-90s live-action adventure games that came on 6 CDs. One of the bad ones.

Act one begins with a Minbari shuttle docking with a White Star and it's got President Sheridan on it. We've found him! And he's really changed his look. He's got short grey hair and a full beard now. What's more amazing though is that Garibaldi is here too. Jerry Doyle was left waiting until his very last appearance but he's finally gotten to visit the White Star sets!

The two old friends are having a bit of exposition over lunch, like in the olden days. Turns out that Garibaldi's overseeing the construction of "the new ships". These are the 'Destroyer-class White Star' prototypes that Sheridan decided to get built during Movements of Fire and Shadow. I remember that he was so keen on the idea that he sent his wife through a war zone to propose the idea to the Grey Council personally and nearly got her killed when he could've just waited a couple of days. It turns out that the project did go ahead, and they've spent the last four years getting the ships designed and built.

Sorry, I'm going to have to stop for a moment because something's bothering me about this screencap. I feel like like there's ghostly text superimposed on it, barely visible. Hang on I'm going to see if I can use some Photoshop magic to make it show up.

Wow, that's... unusual. Though I recall the editor accidentally leaving shot information on a frame in In the Beginning as well. I suppose it's hard to really complain when the other 161,999 frames of the movie are fine. Probably.

Anyway, these new ships have been built with reverse-engineered Minbari and Vorlon technology combined with human tech, which will in theory make them the most badass ships around. Personally, I would've assumed that the ships would've been even better if they'd left out the human tech. And the Minbari tech. But then I don't know anything about building spaceships.

There's a line here saying that when the other races find out about these badass secret ships they're going to go nuts, which says a lot about how the Interstellar Alliance operates. It has member races, but they haven't been informed about their own ships and they'll apparently have no kind of ownership of them either.

Hang on, what's happened to this White Star? It's like the VFX artists have turned on 'bump mapping' to give the ship's organic skin a more 3D surface. It does make the CGI appear a bit more advanced, but it's not a great look in my opinion. It just seems dehydrated.

The ship's heading to the secret construction location and Sheridan's pretty sure that no one's going to be able to follow them there. He's never seen anything that can keep up with a White Star at full burn.

Oh no, someone is keeping up with the White Star on full burn with a little camera drone and projecting the footage into a crystal ball! The movie's spent the last few minutes talking about how great Interstellar Alliance technology is and now it's making a point of showing that mysterious ball guy's tech is as good or better.

For a moment it looks like the White Star has escaped him by opening up a jump point and going into hyperspace, but then we see he's still following.

There's some clever directing work here as a door opens in the black void, replacing the footage of the White Star with the flipped image of someone standing behind the sphere, all in the same shot.

The man addresses the person holding the ball, calling him "Valen". No sorry, hang on, I played it back and he actually said "Galen". The Circle requires his presence apparently, as he's been asked to account for his activities in front of everyone involved. Galen gives a snarky response but he knows he's not going to win this and he's going to have to go off and find where the Circle are hanging out.

It shouldn't be too hard, as they've thoughtfully lit up an absurdly curvy path for him to walk.

Garibaldi's White Star arrives at the construction site with an upgraded jump point effect that I couldn't get a good screencap of, and we get our first glimpse of the prototype destroyers... which I also couldn't get a good screencap of. It seems like they're just teasing the ships at the moment instead of showing them off; there's no Star Trek: The Motion Picture flyby here.

There's no heroic theme either. The soundtrack's been a bit weird and creepy so far, which actually kind of suited the scene of Galen in the dark holding his ball, but now we're getting to see the hero ship for the first time and it's still weird and creepy. The composer made some really strange choices and I have to assume that producer jms was on board with them every step of the way. Star Trek also suffered from some unfortunate musical choices as the 90s went on, with the soundtracks deteriorating into bland sonic wallpaper, but at least they created an appropriate mood.

Sheridan and Garibaldi are given a tour of one of the ships by head of construction Samuel Drake, who's clearly had some issues with Garibaldi in the past by the way they don't shake hands.

The director has made a clever use of a limited set here, as the characters exit an airlock just a few metres from what we find out later is the bridge. But instead of going down the tiny hallway they step through a door into what we find out later is the conference room behind the bridge. This brings them to a second tiny hallway, which they continue down all the way to... the bridge.

It could've looked weird that they're travelling in a big U-shape to have enough time for their one-take walk and talk, but I think they pulled it off. In fact, if you don't know the bridge layout you're not even going to question it.

What does look weird is how tiny and claustrophobic the set is. Drake actually mentions in dialogue that the bridge is based on a submarine, with everything laid out in a line instead of a circle, but it doesn't really come across like that to me. It just looks like a tiny round bridge with all the doors at the back left open. Plus I don't really get why they wanted it to look so confined, as these prototype destroyers are supposed to be the White Stars' big brothers, and those ships are huge on the inside.

A White Star is apparently about 475.6 metres long, while this new ship is 2,990.31 metres (1.86 miles), so it's over six times longer. But just listing numbers doesn't really get across just how massive it actually is.

There you go, the destroyer is that gigantic shape in the top left. These new ships are also longer than all the Enterprises, either Battlestar Galactica, an Imperial-class star destroyer, and Deep Space 9 station! So this ship should not have a cramped interior.

A lot of other things bother me about this bridge as well, like how it seems like the helmsman and navigator sit right up against the window at the front as if they're in a cockpit flying an aeroplane. But the thing that's annoying me most is how the captain's chair is off-centre.

Forging Excalibur (Crusade special features)

In fact, the entire bridge is off-centre, and there doesn't seem to be any good reason for it, except to annoy me. It's like they decided that symmetry was a Star Trek trope they didn't want anything to do with. Well okay, the original Star Trek bridge had its sole turbolift door off-centre, so that wasn't symmetrical either, but that looked fine because the captain's chair was still on the centre line of the room.

I guess the production must have had limited studio space and needed to squeeze it all in. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if these are the only sets they had built for the two ships at this point. I don't think it's a spoiler to say they made more sets later on for Crusade, including a proper-sized corridor.

The bridge is 95% of the way to how it looks in the series though, which annoys Sheridan a bit, as it turns out that Drake has been so focused on getting all the fittings fitted that he hasn't gotten around to seeing if the prototype engines work.

Sheridan is told he has a call from Delenn and goes to take it in the conference room, which turns out to be as grey as anywhere else in the ship, perhaps even greyer.

Meanwhile, Garibaldi gets to take a turn yelling at Drake, reminding the guy that he told him to take the ship for a test drive before he got back, then ordering him to launch it right now. Even though there are spacemen doing stuff right outside the bridge window! Fortunately for the spacemen the ship doesn't actually move anywhere, cause it's broken, and there's a bit of comedy music to underline Garibaldi's exasperation. Except this isn't normal comedy music, this is weird comedy music.

Speaking of weirdness, Sheridan answers his call from Delenn, but what he gets is one of those 90s data blasts, like at the end of Sleeping in Light! There are a lot of images flashing by that we're not supposed to be able to see, but I figured I'd pause it and see what I got.

Equations... how cliché.

There's a bunch of other stuff in there too, like Shadow vessels and a close-up of an eye, plus there's a voice backmasked into the audio, saying something like "Humans... finally obliterated them... such things are not quickly forgotten... no I've told you all I can, and some." I can't see any pattern to it, there's no theme emerging, but I am starting to worry that Sheridan has just been brainwashed into assassinating the president. Oh hang on, he is the president, never mind then.

Garibaldi comes in and tells Sheridan he's been staring at that TV for 20 minutes now, which is a bit of a concern considering it feels like only seconds have passed. But Garibaldi's in 'reassure the boss that the awesome new destroyer will be fine' mode, so he just quips that if he wants to waste time watching gibberish for half an hour he'll show him some 20th-century TV. Wow, they're really hyping up Crusade here.

He tells Sheridan to get some rest while Drake works out "a few bugs", and then switches back to 'intimidate Drake mode', threatening to make the guy go outside and push. He also quips that things were much easier on Babylon 5, giving us a bit of a segue to that space station in the movie title.

Hey, we're on Babylon 5 now, watching a new character do that classic scene where they're stopped by security and have to keep handing over all the weapons they've got hidden on them. And they really do hand over all hand over all of it; all of the weapons in the universe. An impractical amount of weaponry.

We also get an appearance here by Security Chief Zack Allan, who helps save the scene from being a total cliché with his complete lack of surprise or concern about any of this. This is a guy who has worked security on Babylon 5 for almost ten years now, so he's twice as jaded as fans who've only been watching for five seasons. Incidentally, this is Zack's only scene in the movie and he's only shot from the waist up, so it's like the actor decided it wasn't worth putting pants on for such a brief appearance.

Afterwards, she asks him "Where do the lost people go? The forgotten, the cast-offs, the neglected," and the accent does not match the outfit. She sounds more like a trained actor than an alien rogue. Though now that I think about it, alien outsider characters often do sound like trained actors... Anyway, Zack tells her to go to DownBelow in Brown Sector. My understanding is that DownBelow runs the entire length of the station's outer ring, but the part that runs through Brown Sector is the worst bit. As far from civilisation as you can get on this station without jumping into the fusion reactor.

Back on the prototype destroyer (I couldn't see what name was on it, sorry), Sheridan's in his quarters dreaming about a CGI world on CGI fire.

ACT TWO

Act two begins with the camera flying across the fire pits and zooming up to Sheridan on a hill overlooking the devastation. Galen's there in the dream as well and he asks Sheridan if he can hear anything. I can hear the wind, but Sheridan claims he can't hear anything, which is the exact answer Galen was hoping for. He wanted to point out that there are no sounds of living beings anywhere on this world. He also specifically mentions that there's no music, which is actually true now that I think about it! I've been given a brief respite from the soundtrack.

Sheridan throws the Vorlon question at him, asking "Who are you?" and he replies that he's a friend. He also admits that he was the one who sent the garbled message earlier as it was necessary for the 'electron incantation'. Uh, okay.

There's a rumbling sound and they see a ship in the sky. This destruction was all just a test and the killers have returned to check their handiwork. Galen doesn't want to risk them picking up on his probe so he feels like they should go. First though, he tells Sheridan to "REMEMBER WHAT YOU HAVE SEEN" in the most booming Shakespearian voice he can pull off.

There's a bit of a breeze and Sheridan notices some text etched into the ground where Galen had been lurking. The guy could have chosen a more readable font; it looks like it says "Dalikon 7". Here's a question: is the writing a projection in Sheridan's mind like Galen was, or has it been etched into the ground in real life by Galen's probe. Either way, I'm thinking that Galen should've just said it out loud with actual words.

It's really unusual for the series to visit an alien landscape like this, by the way. Even on the rare occasions that someone visits an alien world, they're standing in buildings or on streets, not on the actual ground.

Aww, the ship's windows are so tiny! Also, this set seems kind of... basic. Fortunately, it gets a bit of an upgrade in the series itself. They paint the bit around the window purple.

Sheridan wakes up from his nightmare to discover that the ship is moving! Nice job Garibaldi. Then the next shot gives us another name to remember:

The movie still hasn't given me a good shot of the ship's exterior to screencap, but I can at least tell you that it's the Excalibur, the actual hero ship from Crusade!

White Stars rarely got names for whatever reason, but these ships definitely have them. Plus they're written in an unusally fancy font; Drake really has spent a lot of time "polishing the chrome". It would be fine if the ship worked, but it's soon revealed that they still haven't got the engines functioning. They're actually towing the ship out to a firing range.

Though Drake's standing there wearing a space suit and it's not clear why. Did he go outside to supervise the connection of the towing cables, or was Garibaldi really going to go through with his threat to make him go out and push? It's weird, by the way, that Garibaldi's spending infinitely more time sitting in captain's chairs now that he's a CEO than he did when he was in the military.

Back on Babylon 5, the mysterious knife collector has found herself surrounded by extras in a DownBelow bazaar. She's looking for something, a secret symbol, but a DownBelow thug spots her and starts following. The symbol leads her to another one, this time up on a ceiling, so she climbs up on some conveniently stacked crates to reach a vent covered in bullet holes.

That really is a lot of bullet holes... Garibaldi must have been through here at some point. She's lucky that the boxes she climbed up seem to be padded as all she finds up there is a kick to the head that sends her falling right back down again. Seems like the DownBelow thug who was following her somehow got up there first.

She wakes up on the same fiery planet that Sheridan was just a moment ago, mumbling that she can't be back here again.

In fact, Sheridan's there again as well, and he's being very cryptic. I don't know what I'd do if I saw the President of the Galaxy in my dream, but she immediately dives at him! He just turns insubstantial however and she falls through him.

Sheridan then turns into a Drakh (presumably played by Wayne Alexander again, like in the series), and the alien crushes the galaxy in his hand.

So the Drakh are the bad guys in this story then! Babylon 5's fifth season ended with them basically winning and taking over Centauri Prime without Sheridan even knowing they were there, so it's nice that this is setting up a confrontation.

Then Galen appears, so I guess the alien ship has gone now and it's safe for him to use his probe again. He tells Dureena Nafeel that this isn't actually her world, it has just ended up in much the same condition. He also tells her that she should choose her target carefully because she'll only get the one shot. Then she wakes up on B5 again.

Alright, so the knife collector has a name, Dureena, and Galen has contacted her as well, so she's starting to feel like a proper protagonist.

Oh cool, they've added a bit of colour to the lighting for a change.

Dureena wakes up to find herself handcuffed in a room full of people staring at her. It turns out that this is the Thieves Guild, and she was just talking to a wizard, so the movie's going very Dungeons & Dragons all of a sudden.

The leader is hanging out in the background like he's Jabba the Hutt and I'm getting the strong impression that he's supposed to be blind. He's got dark glasses on and has an assistant to whisper what's going on into his ear. We get to hear Dureena Nafeel's full name again and she shows them that she has the Thieves Guild mark! She claims that she got followed and caught deliberately as she figured it'd be the quickest way to find them. What, quicker than following the signs? Also, what are the signs even for if they beat people up who follow them?

That DownBelow thug's there too and he's not all impressed by her bragging, considering that they've got her in chains.

So she gently moves her arms a little bit and the manacles just fall right off. In fact, they just fall right apart like she's broken them. We've seen someone else do this trick in the series, but she had Vorlon-enhanced telekinetic powers.

I guess what we're supposed to take away from this is that Dureena Nafeel is so awesome that she can pick locks right in front of a room full of thieves without anyone noticing. Either that or she did it in her sleep. It's supposed to make her seem like a badass, but… nope, doesn't work. She also beats the crap out of the DownBelow thug and makes it look easy.

When the leader's assistant tells him what's going on he decides to calm the situation down and ask her to stop hitting people.

Then we finally get to learn what Dureena's really up to on Babylon 5: she just wanted to check in with the local Thieves Guild before she started stealing stuff. That's it. So the leader says they'll give her a place to stay in exchange for 10% of what she earns. He also tells her that the Thieves Guild isn't into violence as it could make the authorities notice them... so I guess she won't be needing those knives that Zack's holding onto after all.

Meanwhile, the Excalibur has reached the test fire location and poor put-upon Drake is encouraged to start the level 1 weapons demonstration.

I've never realised until now how much the front of the ship looks like a Goa'uld staff weapon from Stargate.

The ship blasts an asteroid apart with just a few seconds of sustained fire from its forward guns. Sheridan is not impressed however, as it's displaying only slightly more firepower than your average tiny little White Star. So this was all a big waste of time then I guess!

But Garibaldi's not finished with the tests yet, and tells Drake to go to level 2. Drake explains that the main guns are based on Vorlon designs, and the Vorlons have far better ships than they're capable of building, so if they fire them they'll drain nearly all their power reserves. Garibaldi interrupts him with a quick "duly noted" so they can get right back to blowing shit up.

Though just as they're about to fire, Sheridan realises that they're about to blow up the Earth! In fact, he tells everyone that the Earth's right there, to their utter confusion. It seems like Galen's messing with his head again to make a point, and undermining his credibility in the process. Now Garibaldi's starting to get a bit worried about him. Nice job you dumbass wizard.

Once the hallucination has cleared up Sheridan orders them to stop looking confused and to open fire at the asteroid!

Then we learn that the Excalibur's main weapon is like the Death Star super laser! Or like a Vorlon ship, I suppose. I don't know how much more powerful it is, but it gets the job done, blasting the asteroid apart instantly. It bothers me though for some reason that there are three wings, but at the point where the beams converge, the ship features four, uh, petals.

At least we finally get to see the thing in its entirety! It's a little bit White Star, a little bit Minbari cruiser, and a little bit Space Battleship Yamato I guess, with that Wave Motion Gun-style super weapon.

Unfortunately firing the gun has left the ship in darkness for a minute, and Drake points out that they have no ability to move or defend themselves while they recharge their energy reserves.

Sheridan replies "A lot can happen in a minute." He waits a moment and then repeats himself, saying "I said, a lot can happen in a minute!" as if it was obvious that the line was inviting a reply. Either that or he's read the script and he's annoyed that the other actor has missed their cue. The thing is though, a transition's happened and he didn't even notice. I didn't notice it either the first time, to be honest.

The shot starts with the camera focused on Drake as he stands in front of the consoles. But as he walks behind Sheridan's chair the focus switches to Sheridan, and everything in the background becomes blurred.

Sheridan says his line in close-up, then the focus switches back to the background to reveal that he's outside in the grass, sitting next to a bunch of wizards hanging out around a campfire! All in one unbroken take.

My theory is that everything we see behind Drake here is actually just a fake wall, and both actors were on the campfire set the whole time. They just moved the background out of the way while the camera was focused on Sheridan.

Damn, is this the first-ever appearance of actual grass on Babylon 5?

The wizards are doing that thing where they're all talking about Sheridan while also completely ignoring him. They're annoyed that Galen brought him here as they're not supposed to have any contact with the outside, but he uses their exact words against them, reminding them that they said that he'd have to explain himself in front of all involved, and Sheridan is involved too.

They question if 'this one' is the best that Galen could find, and I'm wondering who the hell could be better. I get that as wizards their standards are slightly higher than most people's, but really who could Galen have brought them that's more useful than the leader of the galaxy? Who also happens to be the person who ended the Shadow War, ended the Thirdspace crisis and restored freedom to Earth.

They allow Galen to go ahead with whatever scheme he's got planned, but warn him that if his signal's traced and they're all found and killed, he's going to be the first one who dies. Then they disappear in a flash of lightning which really shows the limitations of the tiny set.

So now Galen's the only one who's left at the fire and he's able to have a bit of a chat with Sheridan about what's going on. He asks Sheridan if he's figured out who they are yet, and he has! They're the Technomages who went into hiding during The Geometry of Shadows in season 2 to escape the Shadow War. The River of Souls brought back the Soul Hunters after a long absence and now A Call to Arms has brought these guys back too! Turns out that they like hiding though, so they're going to keep it up for another few decades.

The Technomage in Geometry of Shadows told Sheridan that he'd not see their kind again in his lifetime, but the part of Sheridan that believed in magic wasn't so sure about that and it turns out he was right. Though I guess Sheridan found a loophole by dying a few years back.

Sheridan asks Galen where they are, which is an incredibly dumb question to ask considering that the Technomages are obviously really paranoid about people finding out where this is!

A bolt of lightning strikes a standing stone behind him, slicing a bit off, to make that point clear.

The movie's putting in the work to define the Technomages as both more advanced than the Alliance but also too scared and vulnerable to use their technology. It also defines Galen as the one Technomage who gives enough of a damn to try to do something.

Galen draws a circle in the air with his palm which becomes a floating screen displaying an image of Z'ha'dum, former home of the Shadows... and of their servants. The picture in Galen's thought bubble then changes to show a Drakh. Actually to be precise it morphs into a Drakh, giving me a chance to share this frame where he's half Z'ha'dum, half Drakh.

The Technomages have been watching the Drakh and listening to rumours about them from other races, and they think that they're about to move. Sheridan asks why Galen chose him to share this information with, apparently forgetting for a moment that he's president of the galaxy. Galen tells him that it's because Sheridan's curious, which he is! I remember that time back in Knives when he went to DownBelow alone because he was told spooky things were happening and got an alien ghost in his head.

Then we get the lines that were backmasked into Galen's video message earlier. Galens ays that humans were the ones that organized the war against the Drakh's masters and obliterated them, so they'll be coming after Earth next. Okay, I think Galen's a little bit misinformed. The Shadows weren't obliterated, they left the galaxy along with the other First Ones, and Earth was basically allied with the Shadows during the war! All the humans that got involved were either Rangers or part of Babylon 5's staff.

Anyway, Galen can't tell him any more than that or else they'll get zapped by lighting or whatever, though he does warn him to keep this all a secret. It's basically the same situation they were in during the Shadow War: if the Drakh find out that Sheridan is onto them, they'll speed up the timetable and make their move before he's ready to stop them.

He won't be alone, however, as Galen's arranged for others to accompany him on his quest, illustrated by these CGI faces emerging out of a stone wall. Is this what the images of Mount Rushmore in Galen's data blast were hinting at? Alright Sheridan, you have 5 seconds to memorise them all!

Sheridan returns to reality to find himself back on the Excalibur's bridge listening to Drake talk about the ship's amazing plasteel crystalline alloy armour that can refract 80% of incoming damage. So it's not organic like the White Stars then? Sheridan suddenly interrupts him to say they have to go, and they have to go right now! Not in the Excalibur though, that doesn't even have working engines, they'll be taking the White Star.

Then Sheridan starts rambling about how it was above the faces, over them all. Garibaldi's now even more concerned, but we get to see what he's talking about...

... it's some kind of a space station.

I have to be honest, this image turned out a lot better than I expected it to, especially considering that the camera also turns as it tilts up. It's a nice picture to end this on. The film's only 30 minutes in, but I need a break after all that exposition so I'm going to have to call it a day.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO

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COMING SOON

Thanks for reading! Check back next time for more Babylon 5: A Call to Arms.

You don't have to wait to leave a comment though, if you've got anything you want to say about the first third of the movie you can type it right now.