Crusade – The Long Road

As something of a treat, I thought this hugely enjoyable episode of the Babylon 5 spin-off Crusade might brighten up yet another dull and dreary November evening.

So, here we have The Long Road, featuring father and son (in real life) Edward and Peter Woodward – the latter in his permanent role in the series of Galen – playing a pair of one-time Technomages who know each other very well.

There are the customary serious messages in among the fun and the occasional golden dragon, but overall it's a comparatively light-hearted episode. Note in particular how the long-experienced Edward handles the material: he has a master's touch, and it shows very clearly here, though only if one actively studies the performance. Not for the first viewing, which should be fun, but a repeat viewing should make it almost jump out at anyone who watches for such things...

Babylon 5 Re-run

Successful fan-pressure has resulted in the entire Babylon 5 series being run, from the beginning, on Watch TV, starting on 4 November 2013 at its new regular slot of 5 pm.

This year, the fireworks come to Britain a day early!

There are five seasons of 22 episodes each (i.e. 110 in total), plus six movie-length specials. I expect these to include The Gathering (the programme's pilot, hopefully the re-worked version which is much better), In The Beginning, Thirdspace, and A Call To Arms (the Crusade pilot), but I can only guess what the other two are to be. One could be the Legend of the Rangers pilot, and the other perhaps The Lost Tales – but I do not (yet) know.

We shall just have to watch and see....

One Moment Of Perfect Beauty

This clip from the second season episode of Babylon 5 'There All The Honor Lies' is very special, and shows how even Kosh the Vorlon has aspects that we never realised before.

The Gregorian Chant is Introitus – Puer natus nobis est, which I gather is the Gregorians' Christmas canticle, and here is in fact sung by the monks of Santo Domingo de Silos, a monastery in Spain, rather than (as one – flawed – theory has it) that it was the Pak'Ma'Ra...

The Babylon 5 Mantra

This is where we learn that Ivanova is God ("only kidding!") in the Babylon 5 first season episode (part one of the two-parter) A Voice In The Wilderness...

Londo Plays his Strongest Card

Masterful handling of the material (as always) by Peter Jurasik makes this Babylon 5 scene even stronger than it might otherwise have been.

Watch and hear how he handles Lord Refa, who by now (third season) is in league with Mr Morden and his 'associates', after Londo had told Morden that they had "danced their last little dance".Mr Morden simply looked elsewhere within the Centauri hierarchy...

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Londo Mollari and the Boom Today

Lt-Cdr Susan Ivanova has been known to say, on Babylon 5, "No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow!"

Well, for Centauri Emperor (as he is by this time) Londo Mollari, dealing here with Mr Morden and his invisible 'associate', today's the day. This is from the sixth episode of the fourth season, Into The Fire, and is a significant moment regarding the Shadows, many of whose ships were by then based on the Centauri home-world after the sacking of their own home, Z'Ha'Dum.

There was a lot of excellent work from Peter Jurasik, playing Londo, during the first six episodes of that season, and here is one example of that...

Kosh Reveals Himself – Sort Of

This memorable excerpt from the Babylon 5 season 2 closing episode, The Fall of Night, in where the Vorlon known as Kosh is put in a position where he (is he a 'he'? Who knows) has to reveal himself in a very public manner.

For some reason we don't at this point in the story know, he appears to each race differently, as a famous figure from that race – apparently a religious icon of some kind. The point the series' atheist author was trying to make was that the Vorlons had been manipulating the younger races via religion, no doubt suggesting that such faith systems were all manufactured by aliens.

Notably, Londo didn't see anything of the revealed Kosh – but that, we learn, is because he was by then in league with the Vorlons' opposites in their ideological conlict, the ones usually known as the Shadows. Apparently that either renders Vorlons in that 'form' invisible to yje likes of Londo (and perhaps to all Centauri, by extension) or Kosh somehow blocked Londo from being able to see him. I don't recall that aspect ever being explained...

G'Kar the Unforgettable

This five-minute compilation of G'Kar secenes from Babylon 5 has been produced as a tribute to the late, great (and award-winning) actor Andreas Katsulas. The silly boy killed himself with tobacco drugs, resulting in lung cancer and death, but not before he had completed his hugely significant work in the five series of B5 – and single-handedly (okay, with some good scripting, but only Andreas could have delivered it in the necessary way) lifted the pilot of the (very poor) B5 spin-off Legend of the Rangers from dire to tolerable.

.This is a good selection, even though one needs to be careful of the dialogue as some is obviously (and deliberately) anti-Biblical in its composition; but the essence of G'Kar is all there. Do be warned that, although the sound level is unaccountably low for the most part, it suddenly wells up after the dialogue is complete. Be ready...

Severed Dreams – The Space Battle

This is the way to do it, and this is just an excerpt from the award-winning Severed Dreams episode that came exactly half-way through the Babylon 5 110-episode epic.

It warrants re-showing at any time, but perhaps especially now, nearly twenty years on, when despite some very good efforts no-one else has yet equalled this on a whole range of fronts such as drama, personal involvement, realism and much more...

Get Outta Here (On Yer Bike)

One of the Babylon 5 side stories was Mr Garibaldi's home-built Kawasaki 'Ninja' motorbike. Okay, this was a glaringly obvious example of product placement, but it was handled with skill and humour, and was distributed in small sections throughout the first season episode Eyes.

Here is a compilation of those scenes, with Mr Lennier 'assisting' the Security Chief in his endeavours There is an almost predictable 'green' slant in the completion scene; but it does give an excuse for the following zoom up one of B5's corridors...

Waiting for the Lift

These two – Londo and G'Kar – are on opposite sides in more ways than one in this short Babylon 5 scene, but they are more alike than either of them realises or could ever admit if they did realise.

Although this is a funny scene, it also symbolises (via the fellow in the middle here) how, later in the story arc, the humans would end up caught in the middle of the conflict between these two races, despite initially trying to keep out of it. As is so often the case in B5, there are two (sometimes more) aspects to a scene or apparent B-storyline, and this can apply even in what are considered to be the non-arc 'filler' episodes...

Ba-Bear-lon

Captain Sheridan was not amused by the 'Ba-Bear-lon' toy when he realised whom it was intended to represent. Where it ended up was not exactly expected...

Shut Up, G'Kar!

Here is another humorous short Londo/G'Kar extract from Babylon 5, this time from the much-maligned season 5, when G'Kar becomes Londo's bodyguard despite the millennia of hatred between their two species and worlds...

Carrying Your Shelter

This is another of those 'two men in a room' scenes in which Babylon 5 specialised, and which were so profound. G'Kar is brilliant in this 3-minute clip at sussing out Londo and why he is as he is, and the late Andreas Katsulas shows once again why he won 'best actor' awards back then when he was still with us, perfectly matched with the equally excellent (but less fully recognised) talent of Peter Jusasik...

Beneath Vir's Placid Exterior...

...lies a passionate Centauri, as this Drazi trader finds out. Vir was sometimes an easily underestimated character, but there was a lot more to him that might have been imagined by many, of which this was an early example. I was always pleased that I took his name as my Internet Relay Chat (IRC) 'nick'[name] when I was semi-regularly on that facility, some years ago...

Why Zathras talks to dirt (and walls, and ceiling...)

Whar can I possibly add by way of explanation to this Babylon 5 classic scene?

A Call To Arms

This is the generally excellent A Call To Arms, the pilot for the Babylon 5 spin-off series Crusade. The only really significant fault was the music: I always understood the desire for a change of style from the original series, but Evan Chen was definitely the wrong choice, and it just doesm't work.

Apart from that, this is a very good 90-minute (i.e. movie-length) pilot episode and features especially enjoyable performances from Jerry Doyle and Tony Todd...

Londo and Garibaldi

I have said before that Babylon 5 often had its best in the two-men-in-a-room scenario. It didn't have to be a closed, private room and could actually be a lift, or as here, a bar. On the occasion it was Delenn with G'Kar, in season 3, it didn't even have to be two men specifically, although it usually was.

This is such a scene, and has the masterful Peter Jurasik as Londo with Mr Garibaldi – whom I featured in my last clip, but this is several years earlier than that. It is just so much fun, and starts with the line and action that I sometimes use at social dining events when someone sitting next to me has a glass of water. For anyone who thought I might have made it up, here is the original...

How To Run A Company

At least, it's Mr Garibaldi's method – and it occurs to me that we might have a better corporate climate and better success overall, along with smoother running, if at least some of our notable employers were to adopt a similar approach.

Here, in just eighty seconds, "the Big G" outlines his approach when he takes over Edgars Industries, in an excerpt from season 5 of Babylon 5...

Babylon 5 – The Lost Tales

When this came out, some six years ago, it received very mixed reactions. I have just been through it, and found both stories to have been handled very well indeed. I am impressed with this!

Okay, so the first story makes that cardinal error of equating space with heaven – heaven isn't in this universe! – and there are a few other matters that are mere quibbles, but even with the minimal cast (everyone else was away, conveniently) it still worked well.

Both stories are good (if one suspends disbelief about the space=heaven line and how God would actually set things up in preparation for mankind's venture into deep space) but the second is better. Both, but again the latter in particular, are good reminders of the sheer quality of Tracy Scoggins, whose background in the profession might lead one to an erroneous and foregone conclusion.

The lady really is much better than her earlier performing antics tend to suggest, indicating that humanity can rise above its animalistic roots and become something much better. That in itself is a valuable lesson to learn – and it isn't something I say very often. I'd be honoured to meet Tracy Scoggins nowadays, whereas there was a time when (if I had known about her at that time) I'd have found a way to avoid doing so.

It's also great to see Teryl Rothery in this. I have missed her since her character was killed off in Stargate SG-1 a few years ago.

So, these two Lost Tales turn out to be a lot better than some have judged during these past few years, or so I consider them to be. Am I wrong? Possibly, but others will have to judge. Reserve a quiet hour to go through this: I think you'll come out the other end feeling that it was a worthwhile exercise...