Babylon 5 : A Call to Arms

1999

Review

[A Call to Arms]

It is about five years after the end of the TV series -- there has been peace in the galaxy, with just a bit of telepath trouble -- but now something is stirring. A grizzled Sheridan is having strange dreams -- the usual sort of irritatingly obscure prophecies -- which lead him to appropriate two new super-powerful warships: the Victory and the Excalibur , and rush off to save the Earth again.

This is the linking story between Babylon 5 and the promised new five year arc of Crusade . [However, we know Crusade ran to only 13 episodes before cancellation.] As such, it is not a self-contained story like the other B5 films -- there's some harking back to the old series for newcomers, but its main job is setting up the new series. Taken as arc glue, it manages its job reasonably well, with a moderate amount of info-dumping set-up, and a bunch of new design of spaceships busily blowing each other to smithereens.

Rating: 4

[ unmissable | great stuff | worth watching | mind candy | waste of time | unfinishable ]

reviewed 30 August 1999