Babylon 5: Season 5 - The Wheel of Fire Review

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'll be writing a bit about the fifth and final season of Babylon 5! And I suppose I should say something about the series overall as well. If I can remember enough of it.

I can't promise I'll say much here you haven't read a thousand times before on a thousand other websites, or heard on a thousand podcasts. Maybe you've even watched a thousand YouTube videos. But I do have one unique fact for you that no one anywhere has ever mentioned before: each season of Babylon 5 features slightly longer episode titles on average than the previous one, and by season five the titles are, on average, 42% longer than season one titles. I hope this extremely trivial trivia brings joy into your day.

But did longer episode titles mean better episodes? Was the miraculous fifth season renewal a good thing overall? Did Babylon 5 actually stick the landing? I'll tell you what I think and then you can tell me what you think in the comments afterwards.

There will be SPOILERS here for pretty much all of Babylon 5, aside from the spin-offs and Lost Tales. That's The Gathering all the way to Sleeping in Light.

Babylon 5 5-22: Sleeping in Light

Episode:

110

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Air Date:

25-Nov-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I did it, we're here, it's the last episode of Babylon 5, episode 110 of 110. I have finally reached Sleeping in Light! Though here it looks more like Sleeping in Bed. I suppose they do have that lamp on.

It had originally been filmed as an extremely final season 4 finale when their network was collapsing and the future looked bleak. But when the miracle happened and TNT gave them a fifth season, it provided them an opportunity to film an alternative end to season 4 and hold onto this for a while. That means that the episode finally aired 394 days later than planned! The actors and crew knew the story, people from the media got hold of the script, but it seems like no one ever said anything in all that time.

It's the first and only episode of the series to be directed by showrunner J. Michael Straczynski. In fact it was his first time directing anything. Personally if I was going to try my hand at being a director I wouldn't start with the finale to my epic sci-fi series. Endings are incredibly important to a story, they're one of the things that people remember most and it colours their opinion of the whole saga, so screwing up here would be very bad.

Okay you're if you're reading my final B5 review you probably already know the drill by now, but I write about entire episodes scene by scene, with a recap under screencaps, so there'll be HUGE SPOILERS. I'll not spoil anything that happens in the spin-offs, Lost Tales, or any other series however. So if you're hoping for me to compare it to Deep Space Nine's finale, that's not going to happen. I could compare it to a certain other Trek finale though, with its 20 year time jump.

Babylon 5: The River of Souls - Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still making my way through the 1998 Babylon 5 TV movie, The River of Souls. This is part 2 of 2, so if you want to go back to part 1, click HERE.

There are actually six Babylon 5 movies, kind of:

• The Gathering (1993) - The original pilot movie.
• In the Beginning (1998) - A prequel about the Earth-Minbari War.
  
• Thirdspace (1998) - Lovecraftian weirdness during season 4.
  
• The River of Souls (1998) - You are here.
  
• A Call to Arms (1999) - A lead-in to the Crusade spin-off.
  
• The Legend of the Rangers (2002) - The pilot for a spin-off that never made it to a series.
  

So even though I'm in the final stretch now there's plenty left for me to write about. In another timeline I'd be going straight into writing about the Babylon 5 reboot series afterwards, but that's seeming less than likely at this point. Still, at least I can write about a couple of episodes of Crusade. Yay.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be writing about this whole movie and mentioning things that happened during the series. I'll not spoil a thing about Crusade or Legend of the Rangers however.

Babylon 5: The River of Souls - Part 1

Written By:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Directed By:

Janet Greek

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Release Date:

1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the third of the Babylon 5 TV movies made for the TNT network: The River of Souls. I keep wanting to call it River of Souls but there's definitely a 'the' at the start.

The first two TNT movies, Thirdspace and In the Beginning, were filmed before season 5, in May-June 1997, but this was filmed after the series had wrapped, between 1st-21st April 1998. It's a film about the Soul Hunters, from one of B5's least-loved early episodes, so I wonder how many people showed up for work on that first day wondering if it was an amazingly elaborate April Fool's prank. The series was over, writer J. Michael Straczynski could've told a story about anything, but he decided give the Soul Hunters another shot!

At least the film's got a good director: Janet Greek. She had directed stories like Signs and Portents, Chrysalis, The Coming of Shadows and The Fall of Night. Plus it features some real stars in the cast, including The West Wing's Martin Sheen and Deadwood's Ian McShane. No seriously.

Chronologically the movie should come about halfway into a season 6 that doesn't exist, but it actually aired with three episodes of season 5 left to go. They moved it up a couple of weeks so that the finale wasn't overshadowed by it (or vice versa), messing up the order. I'm watching it after Objects in Motion and Objects at Rest however, so there may be SPOILERS here for the two episodes... in addition to all the stories that came before them. I'll not be saying a word about anything that comes after though, so this is first-time viewer safe.