tek's rating: ½

Babylon 5: The Lost Tales (not rated)
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This was intended to be the first installment of a direct-to-DVD anthology series, based on the TV series Babylon 5; the installment's title is actually "Voices in the Dark." However, it now looks like no further installments will be produced, unfortunately. It was released in 2007, almost a decade after the original series ended. The story is set in the year 2271, which, like the DVD itself, is nearly ten years after the end of the setting of the series. There were, after the series ended, any number of follow-up stories I would like to have seen, and this... isn't any of them. (The one I probably most wanted to see would be virtually impossible, anyway, given the death of Andreas Katsulas, who played G'Kar on the show. There is a brief line of dialog within the movie that pays tribute to G'Kar and another character, Dr. Stephen Franklin, whose actor, Richard Biggs, had also died. There are longer tributes to both actors in the DVD's bonus features.)

The DVD actually contains two separate stories, one featuring Elizabeth Lochley, the present commander of space station Babylon 5 (who was a captain when last we saw her, but who is now a colonel); the second story features Interstellar Alliance president John Sheridan (who was, of course, commander of Babylon 5 before Lochley). The two stories happen at roughly the same time, and the second has a brief communication between Sheridan and Lochley which references the first story. And in the first story, Lochley welcomes a priest on board, who has come from Earth at her request. She introduces him to a crewman who had recently returned from a vacation on Earth, and sometime after returning to work at B5... seems to have been possessed. So Lochley wants the priest to perform an exorcism. This... seemed a bit unusual, for a Babylon 5 story, but then again, it's not like they never dealt with spiritual matters before (albeit usually alien spirituality), so whatever. Um... the demon who is possessing this guy tells them some story about how he came to be out in space, and presents the priest with a moral dilemma. I don't want to say how it ends, but I guess it was sort of neat.

The second story also involves a moral dilemma. But before we get to that, President Sheridan is interviewed by an ISN reporter. That scene basically allows him to wax nostalgic a bit, and provide some info about familiar characters we don't get to see, here. It also provides a bit of humor. But as for the main part of the story, Sheridan is going to B5 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Interstellar Alliance. And he's going to be transporting a Centauri prince named Vintari, who is third in line of succession for the throne. But Galen the technomage appears to Sheridan, and shows him a future thirty years hence, in which the Centauri Republic (which will then be under the rule of Vintari) would launch a devastating attack on Earth. Galen suggests that this dire future could be prevented if Sheridan kills Prince Vintari now, long before he ascends to the throne. (Naturally, Galen has arranged matters so that the prince's death would look like an accident, if Sheridan goes along with his plan.) But as always... technomages are enigmatic. Not that it really matters: the choice remains one that Sheridan has to make. I won't say what he ultimately decides to do, but I thought the story had a fitting resolution.

Anyway... neither story was as good as the original series, and while they might potentially hold some value as independent stories for the uninitiated, I think they're best enjoyed by fans of Babylon 5 who just want to revisit a familiar universe and characters. I don't think I would exactly say I was disappointed with the stories, even if I do wish they'd been better. They were somewhat interesting, slightly amusing, and it's always nice to catch up with "old friends." So I'd still love to see more of the B5 universe in the future....