Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I know next to nothing about BABYLON 5. Never watched even an episode of it. Just wasn't my thing at the time it came on. I do know the show had many loyal fans, and that there's a great interest in all things JMS. With that in mind, here's the first review I know of for the upcoming BABYLON 5: LEGEND OF THE RANGERS film. Hope it's of some use for you fans. Curious how this stacks up to expectations in the same way I'm curious to see how fans react when ENTERPRISE airs. Somewhere tonight, Robogeek weeps bitter tears of joy.
Anyhow, Just saw the Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers Rough cut. It was without effects shots and no Music or sound effects.
However after some apprehension about the series, I was actually impressed. We all know about "Crusade" and it's eventual downfall. I thnk it was the theme music that brought that show down.. Anyhow, "Rangers" starts off on Minbar. David Martel is a Rangers captain that recieved criticizsm about "escaping a battle" when his ship was crippled. He goes back and is repremanded and G'Kar makes his apperance and saves the day.
The captain is somewhat demoted and given a piece of crap 20 year old Haunted space ship. This ship dissappeared of a couple weeks and suddenly came back..sans crew. He hooks up with his new crew made up of friends and new people. This inicludes a ass-kicking Narn female who is the engineer, a Cocky asian navigator, and a female human Weapons expert from mars who jumps down a tube and floats in space while punching and kicking laser shots to the enemy. (No I'm not kidding!) I found the characters in the film to be very fleshed out and believable, the cheesyness factor was kept at a minnimum. (except the punching and kicking zero-g martial arts weapons officer).
So they go off on a mission escorting "Alliance Ambassadors" to a secret location. Captain Martel's enemy from the Rangers School "they just don't like each other" is piloting the huge new ship called "The Valen" that is carrying the ambassadors.
Of course something goes wrong and ships looking strikengly like shadow ships attack and the Valen launches it's escape pods for Captain Martel's piece of crap ship to pick up. More space fighting ensues resulting in the Valen ramming one of the ships and being destroyed and MArtel's piece of crap ship getting away.
G'Kar and the other ambassadors are rescued and come aboard and more chaos ensues. Martel's 1st officer is injured but he's Mimbari and can see dead people on the ship (the previous crew that got killed I guess). There are some humerous scenes here and there when the ambassadors interact with each other.
Anyhow the ambassadors wre meant so see and Archeological Dig that found a city deep within the planet. Here, there is an ominous structure. G'Kar explains this to Martel. This "pyramid" is a gateway to another "dimention" where the new race called "The Hand" resides. It is said by one of the characters later (I'm not giving everything away) that this race was banished billions of years ago as is so powerfull that they make the Shadows look like "insects".
Anyhow, more evil Alien ships come back and Martel saves the say by destroying them in a cleaver manner that is quite entertaining. (I'm not giving that away either).
So there ya have it B5: Legend of the Rangers... is actually pretty good. Good characters upon which to build a series. The catpain is very much like Kirk and the scenes defiinately reminded me of the feeling the original Star Trek had on me. Hopefully it will have a good intro and soundtrack nd of course some effects such as rendered ships would help too.
After being dissapointed with Crusade this new series looks very promising.
Reflux Out.
