Saturday, June 16, 2007

Babylon 5: Thirdspace

Just aw it today and loved it!

Check out my IMDB review (text below).

loved this movie - I have been so thirsty for more Babylon 5, that even the elevator scene didn't faze me.

The aspect I love most about this movie is "One mistake out of so many." I love it that the Vorlons.. almost the "angels" in Babylon 5 universe, are ultimately as screwy as we are. They have things they regret; they made enormous errors. A poignant example of this arrogance is trying to reach another dimension thinking they would be Gods there too.

This thought brings another question to mind: why are the dominant race of the "Third Dimension" so hooked on wanting to kill everybody else? Working on a common underlying theme of Babylon 5 - that no-one is all bad (or all good) - maybe they thought of themselves as Gods once too, just like the Vorlons. Maybe they brought up some other race out of the 'dark ages' only to be savaged and almost destroyed by them, so from that point on they took the view that they should protect themselves by killing everyone else. This thought occurred to me as I was wondering what their story was, when the Vorlon memory inside Lyta said they were "anti life".

The elevator scene certainly didn't really belong - mostly because AFAIK it didn't link into any other love interest between those two characters in the rest of the show.

I found the ending to be quite satisfying for the most part. Galactic devastation avoided by the narrowest of margins.. *phew* :) Of course, the stunning effects played their usual brilliant part.

Two aspects of the action at the end didn't make sense.

1. What happened to the ships that made it through when the device was destroyed? Surely there were plenty that had come through. Surely they wouldn't have simply been destroyed by the gate being destroyed.

2. The being that Sheridan encountered inside the Gate seemed like it was an ancient and malevolent intelligence. "Intelligence" being the operative word, why didn't it pay any attention to the BOMB Sheridan placed there?

If it was the same tentacled thing that inhabited Ivanova's dream, it seems to me that it is smart. It seemed prescient enough to know that Centauri females would be enough to seduce Vir and that Ivanova was rebellious enough that she should be killed. Maybe I am incorrectly interpreting the dream, but it seemed to indicate that there was a driving intelligence in the background, something that could read peoples *intentions*.

So why did it seem to ignore the bomb? Perhaps the bomb was so alien to the ..um.. alien, it didn't know what to make of it and wouldn't have been able to de-activate it anyway. But the movie only showed the alien trying to stop Sheridan leaving. I felt it should have showed some curiosity about what Sheridan left there; I refuse to believe the alien simply didn't see or understand what Sheridan was doing!

Overall, I really enjoyed this movie and would give it a solid 8 out 10. It filled my hunger for Babylon 5 (for now...).

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