Now This Is Truly Epic!

I have been noticing 'epic' space battles and montages of such battles from various series or movies, sometimes both. They all have something – I haven't yet spotted a poor one – but in reality it all started some twenty years ago, with Babylon 5.

Although the complex (and highly intelligent) story arc was the key ingredient to this five-year series, and some of its spin-offs (a couple weren't good enough and were starting to look like a cheap'n'easy franchise), it has to be said that the space battles, when they happened, were a vital and genuinely nail-biting core ingredient in the overall production.

Those who know the original series in particular will recognise so much of what happens in this ten-minute compilation: I can place the majority of the scenes straight away, though a few are from later straight-to-video work that I had never seen before, so I am stumped on those.

Here we have everything from Shadows and Vorlons, via White Stars and Centauri and Narn ships, down to lowly Vree saucers and the ultra-manouevrable Starfuries (a brilliant design), also taking in regular and 'advanced (i.e. with Shadow tech') Earth Force destroyers, the Babylon 5 station itself and a few others for the eagle-eyed to spot.

This is the original, folks: there was never anything quite like it before, and almost all that has followed has generally felt like just an imitation to those of us familiar with the B5 original. The technology might have advanced hugely in these past two decades, but that's not really what it's about: it's about storytelling...