Babylon 5: A Call to Arms - Part 3

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the final third of the 5th Babylon 5 movie, A Call to Arms.

I'm getting really close to the end of the Babylon 5 franchise now, with only 13 episodes of Crusade, one more pilot movie and two Lost Tales left to go before it's all over. Oh, plus an animated movie that came out of nowhere recently. And there is always the threat of that reboot series actually getting made, along with more animated films. But after all that I'll be done.

I suppose it could be worse. I could be working my way through Doctor Who or Star Trek...

This is the third and final part of my A Call to Arms review, so if you want to go back to PART ONE or PART TWO click the appropriate text. This is going to include big SPOILERS for the movie and the rest of Babylon 5, but I'll not spoil anything about Crusade.

Babylon 5: A Call to Arms - Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the middle third of the Babylon 5 movie A Call to Arms, which is basically the pilot for the short-lived spin-off series Crusade. Or the prologue to it at least. It lays the groundwork.

The film aired on TNT right at the start of 1999, just 7 weeks after the previous movie, The River of Souls... which was arguably a bit too soon. Especially considering that it had only been a month since viewers had said an emotional goodbye to the characters in Sleeping in Light. It's like when half the Star Trek cast came back for the movie Star Trek: Generations right after wrapping their era up with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, except worse because those guys at least waited three years!

This is part two (of three) so if you want to go back to PART ONE, click that text. This will include big SPOILERS for the movie and the rest of Babylon 5, so be aware of that. I'll not spoil anything about Crusade, however.

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.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - Part 4

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've finally finished watching Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. And it only took me three weeks. This is the fourth and final part of this review, but if you want to check out PART ONE, PART TWO or PART THREE, you can click one of those links.

I'm really running low on trivia to pad out this intro text now. Uh, the title font looks mostly the same as the one used in Star Trek 1 and Star Trek 3, so they'd pretty much settled on a style by this point.

It also got brought back for the Deep Space Nine and Voyager logos, but they got bored with it after that. Which is a shame I reckon as it looks great. It's not an obviously sci-fi looking typeface but not quite fantasy either. The current TV series have gone back to the equally iconic Original Series logo, so maybe there's hope that the movie logo will also make a comeback someday.

Okay, please be aware that there will be lots of pictures underneath this writing and underneath each of those pictures will be even more writing. And that writing will be 90% SPOILERS. I'll not be spoiling any Trek that comes afterwards however. Well, unless stuff like logo fonts counts as a spoiler for you, in which case I've already given away too much.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - Part 3

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm still writing about Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. 

I keep thinking that I should apologise for writing so much about this film and dragging this on for so long. It wasn't the original plan, I'm not working towards a word count goal, it's just how it worked out. On the plus side you're basically getting a free book out of me here. A free book without an editor!

This is the third part of four, so if you want to go back to PART ONE or PART TWO click the text.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be spoiling everything that happens in the film and any Star Trek movie or episode that came before it is also fair game.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm continuing through the fourth of the original Star Trek movies, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. I like roman numerals, they make titles seem classier.

The Star Trek: The Next Generation movies also made it to film #4, but only just, and they didn't put any kind of numerals in its title. It's just called Star Trek: Nemesis. The Kelvin Timeline films don't use numbers either (they don't even use colons) so there's no danger of another Star Trek IV coming out any time soon. I mean seriously, it's been seven years since Star Trek Beyond and they still haven't made a fourth movie yet.

This is the second part of four, so if you want to go back to PART ONE click the text.

I'll be writing about the whole movie scene by scene, so there will be SPOILERS. Though I won't spoil anything from later Star Trek stories, even when there's something really obvious I should mention.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - Part 1

Writer:

Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Nicholas Meyer, Harve Bennett

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Director:

Leonard Nimoy

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Release Date:

1986

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the film I have to describe as 'The One With the Whales' for SEO purposes: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.  

It's weird to say that the fourth movie is the third in the trilogy, but that's how it kind of worked out, as this continues on from the events in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, two films I wrote about back in 2016. You might be wondering why I jumped ahead to Star Trek VI and never came back to this, especially considering it was the film's 30th anniversary at the time... well, it's never been a favourite of mine. It's all about whales instead of spaceships, and the music sounds like it's from a Christmas movie, and Spock's weird, and etc. Though to be fair I was really young when I formed my first impression.

Speaking of anniversaries, the film was released on Star Trek's 20th anniversary, though I don't think they made a big deal out of it. Not compared to when Star Trek 6 came out on its 25th anniversary. In fact in some countries the posters called it The Voyage Home: Star Trek IV, with the Star Trek part in tiny writing, to not put people off. (The franchise hadn't been doing so well outside of the US).

Alright, I'm going to split this review into four parts, because films are long, and I'm going to split the parts over three weeks, because they take ages to write about. Well they do when you write about every bloody scene at least. The way I see it, I'm only ever writing about this film once so I might as well say everything I want to say now. This means that there will be huge SPOILERS here, but only for Star Trek stories up to November 1986.

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.

Babylon 5: Thirdspace - Part 3

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm finally going to shut up talking about the Babylon 5 movie Thirdspace. I just have to write about what happens in the ending and then I'm done. Though if you want more words you can check out PART ONE and PART TWO and read how the story got to this point.

This review will contain SPOILERS for the movie and the first half of season 4, but I don't intend to give away any more than that, for the sake of people watching the series for the first time. There should always be people watching this series for the first time.

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.

Babylon 5: Thirdspace - Part 1

Written By:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Directed By:

Jesús Treviño

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Release Date:

1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the Babylon 5 TV movie Thirdspace. Not The Third Place, that's a PS3 advert directed by David Lynch where he plays a duck.

The series hit a bit of a snag during its fourth season as PTEN, the network airing B5 in the US, collapsed. Fortunately it found a new home with the TNT network for its final season and they even wanted them to produce some B5 movies! Thirdspace was the first of the these movies to be filmed, however it's technically the second film as it aired 7 months after In the Beginning (on July 19th 1998 if you're curious). That puts it three quarters of the way through season 5, which is why I'm writing about it after ep 5-17, Movements of Fire and Shadow, even though chronologically it fits somewhere in season 4. Ep 4-09, Atonement, seems the most suitable place for it to slot in, though it would have to take place between the first scene and the rest of the episode.

Like all the best movie DVDs, Thirdspace's disc comes with a commentary track and it's loaded with people. There's director Jesús Treviño, Bruce Boxleitner (Sheridan), Patricia Tallman (Lyta), Jeff Conaway (Zack), and Stephen Furst (Vir), and they're a good group of people to hang out with for 90 minutes. It also features SPOILER. Just one single spoiler, at least that's all I noticed

This recap/review, on the other hand, is going to be WALL TO WALL SPOILERS, for this movie and any relevant episodes leading up to it. But if you're watching through the series for the first time you'll be fine here, I'll not ruin anything that happens next.

Babylon 5: In the Beginning - Part 3

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I've reached the end of In the Beginning, the Babylon 5 prequel movie that takes place years after the series ends.

This is the last of three parts, but if you'd rather read PART ONE or PART TWO, you can click one of those convenient links. Or maybe even click both of them; you can never have too many tabs open.

Once again I'll be sharing screencaps and SPOILERS as I go through the story writing my opinions and observations, so I'd recommend watching the movie first. In fact I'd recommend watching the first four years of the series first, as there'll be big spoilers for those as well. Blame writer jms for that, it's not my fault!

Babylon 5: In the Beginning - Part 2

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm in the middle of In the Beginning, which is either the first, second or third of the Babylon 5 TV movies depending on who you ask. It was definitely filmed after The Gathering and Thirdspace, but it was the first movie to air on TNT to promote the launch of the fifth season.

This is the second part of a three part review, so you should probably start with PART ONE if you haven't read it already.

You should probably also watch the movie yourself, though make sure you watch four years of the TV show as well. Some would make the argument that the movie is actually a good place for new viewers for start watching the series, but I'm going to be dropping SPOILERS for seasons 1 to 4 and I don't want to ruin anything for anyone.

Babylon 5: In the Beginning - Part 1

Written By:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Directed By:

Mike Vejar

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Release Date:

1998

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Great news! Sci-Fi Adventures is back for another two months and I'm getting right back into Babylon 5. I've finally reached the fifth and final season... though before I carry on to the end I have to first go back to the beginning.

Babylon 5 had been on shaky ground for its whole run, renewal was never guaranteed, and in its fourth year that ground collapsed entirely due to their network getting cancelled. Fortunately cable network TNT stepped in to give its first four seasons a new home and asked for a couple of new B5 TV movies (In the Beginning and Thirdspace) to stir up some interest. So the show went from losing its final year, to getting bonus content that creator jms had never planned for. In fact TNT decided they'd do one better than that and paid for a complete fifth season!

This was around the same time that Star Wars was gearing up to be a movie franchise again, with the original trilogy getting a theatrically released Special Edition in 1997 and the upcoming prequel (The Phantom Menace) generating huge amounts of hype, so I'm not surprised TNT wanted a bit of that for themselves. They decided to kick off their B5 run with a movie double-bill: the new prequel, In the Beginning, followed by a special edition re-edit of the original pilot The Gathering. This led straight into a season 1 rerun and, a couple of weeks later, the brand new season 5 stories.

Man this would've been confusing for new viewers.

In the Beginning can function as a new introduction to the series, but it's got pretty massive SPOILERS for all the way up to the end of season 4 and jms is happy leaving it to viewers to decide for themselves where it should be watched. Either way, I definitely wouldn't recommend reading this review until after season 4.

Star Trek Into Darkness - Part 3

This is it, the last Sci-Fi Adventures until December, and the last part of my unintentionally epic review of Star Trek Into Darkness (no colon).

I feel like I should be bothered by that missing colon, but I can respect the choice they've made there. It separates this era from the numbered movies with the Original Series actors, and the colon movies with the Next Generation crew, so there's no confusion. Plus I like that they're owning the 'trek' part of the title more. This is going on a trek into darkness, the next movie takes a trek beyond. They're trekking. Seems like a bit of a backslide though to go dark after the last movie rejected the prevailing trend of Battlestar Galactica grittiness and turned things up so bright that you got lens flares in the face in every other shot.

This is part three of this review by the way, so if you're looking for an earlier part you can click one of these convenient links: PART 1, PART 2.

Here's the SPOILER WARNING: I will be spoiling Into Darkness, Star Trek: Discovery's first two seasons, and various bits from other episodes and movies. I will not be spoiling Star Trek Beyond.

Star Trek Into Darkness - Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still writing about Star Trek Into Darkness! If you missed the first part of my review you can find it -> HERE <- and there's still one more part to go after this. It's a long movie.

Speaking of second parts, this was the second of the Kelvin Timeline trilogy kicked off with Star Trek 2009. But it's the last movie by the Star Trek 2009 team, as director J.J. Abrams had to go off and do the Star Wars: The Force Awakens afterwards. Trek 09 writers Alex Kurtzman (current overlord of TV Trek) and Roberto Orci also returned, and were joined this time by Damon Lindelof, who had a bit of experience writing sci-fi himself as he'd just finished working on the movie Prometheus. Oh plus he'd been co-showrunner on Lost for six seasons (which is considerably longer than J.J. Abrams worked on the show).

Anyway, this review contains SPOILERS for Into Darkness, Star Trek: Discovery's first two seasons, and probably other episodes and movies too. It didn't seem right to spoil anything from Star Trek Beyond though, so I didn't.

Star Trek Into Darkness - Part 1

Written by:

Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof

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Directed by:

J.J. Abrams

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Release Date:

2013

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures... is going to be the last for a while I'm afraid. I'm taking another two month break, so the site will be going into cryosleep until December. But I figured I should give you something to read while you wait, so I've written about an entire movie this time! It's the second of the Kelvin Timeline films, Star Trek Into Darkness!

Though I ran into a slight problem with the first draft of my review, as it turns out that the movie shares the record for the longest runtime of all the Trek movies with The Motion Picture, and it's about people constantly running everywhere and doing things instead of staring at the viewscreen in awe. I ended up with twice as many words as my average movie review and three times as many as my average TV review! Though my recap is still slightly too short to qualify as a novel, so I can't joke about it being the unofficial novelisation.

I never like doing this, but I've decided to split the review into three parts and publish one part a day, for the sake of all humanity. That way each post is merely excessively long, not ridiculously long. But they are all going to include SPOILERS for the whole movie, and I'm considering basically anything in Star Trek besides Star Trek Beyond to be fair game this time as well. So there'll be a few Star Trek: Discovery spoilers from its first two seasons.

Star Trek: Nemesis

Written by:

John Logan

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Directed by:

Stuart Baird

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Release Date:

2002

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about more Star Trek! This time though I'm watching the last of the Next Generation movies and possibly the worst of them all: STAR TЯEK: NEMƎSIS! The reversed letters are there because the film's all about duplicates and mirror opposites. Also...

You know, from the video game Diablo. It's called Exocet if you're curious.

Anyway, there's a reason I'm writing about this particular film on this particular day and that's because it's Star Trek: The Next Generation's 30th anniversary! Yeah, it's not the ideal choice, I'd rather watch the pilot, Encounter at Farpoint, or maybe even something good, but this is what I got.

I'm also getting a bit of deja-vu here, as we already had a big Star Trek anniversary last September when the Original Series hit 50. Also, it was Voyager's 20th in 2015 and it'll be Deep Space Nine's 25th in 2018. You get a series with this many spin-offs and it's anniversaries all decade long. Oh, plus it's Star Trek: Discovery's 0th anniversary this year, seeing as it just aired 4 days ago. They could've held it back or moved it forward a few days to sync them up, but nope!

Nemesis itself came out in December 2002, which means that it had to struggle with being the first post-Galaxy Quest Trek movie. It's also the first Trek movie to have to deal with the Star Wars prequels raising the space opera VFX game, with Attack of the Clones having twice the budget to play with. It's hard to say that it was a lack of money on screen that killed Nemesis though, when it was Maid in Manhattan that beat it to the #1 spot in the US box office! The film opened badly and then fell to oblivion, with one of the worst second week drop-offs in the history of motion pictures.

Paramount had brought on a big name Hollywood scriptwriter for this one (Gladiator writer John Logan), and a legendary editor to direct (Stuart Baird), so they were convinced that the series must be suffering from 'franchise fatigue' and cancelled all plans for fifth Next Gen film. It was seven years before they'd dare releasing another Star Trek movie again, this time with J.J. Abrams at the helm and a budget. Worked out better that time.

Okay, there'll be SPOILERS and screencaps beyond this point, so continue at your own risk. I'm considering the whole Trek franchise up to 2002 to be fair game, but I'll not spoil a thing about what was released after it.

Star Trek: First Contact

Written by:

Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore

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Directed by:

Jonathan Frakes

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Release Date:

1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm going to go through the 8th Star Trek film: First Contact, aka The One with the Borg in it. Not to be confused with the episode First Contact, which doesn't have even the slightest bit of Borg in it. The movie was nearly called Star Trek: Resurrection, but Alien: Resurrection went and stole that title. Someone was apparently fond of the sound of it though, as the next Trek film was called Insurrection.

Here's another fact for you: First Contact just turned twenty today, as it was released in November 1996, during Trek's 30th anniversary. Deep Space Nine celebrated by compositing its crew into The Trouble with Tribbles, Voyager celebrated by putting Janeway into the 25th anniversary film The Undiscovered Country, and here Next Gen is celebrating by... sending the Enterprise back in time to meet a boring guest star from one of the most forgettable episodes of the Original Series. Seems like now would've been the time to have the epic crossover with Kirk's crew, but they tried that already and blew it.

1996 was when Star Trek began to reach its peak as a Marvel-style shared universe with Voyager reaching its third season, DS9 hitting season 5, and Next Gen shedding its TV sets to become a true movie series. It didn't shed its TV creators though, as writers Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore returned to provide the script. Also Riker actor Jonathan Frakes took the helm, beginning the Star Trek tradition of the ship's first officer getting to direct two of the movies.

Anyway my writing will contain SPOILERS for First Contact and the episodes and movies preceding it, including DS9 up to season 5 and a certain episode of the Original Series. I might even mention that this film led to the Borg showing up in Voyager, the uniform switch-over in DS9, and the premise of Enterprise, but other than that I'll keep quiet about what came after. This far, no further.