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Babylon 5: The Complete First Season:
Signs and Portents. check out website: www.babylon5.com
It shouldn’t take me to tell you that ‘Babylon 5’ is an SF political drama set a couple centuries hence when Man is out amongst the stars and finds themselves not as high up in the power table as, say, the Minbari, Centauri and Narn, let alone some of the non-aligned worlds and none are in the Vorlons’ league. If anything, the humans or Earthers act as the arbiters for peaceful settlement between worlds rather than war, providing home politics don’t prejudice the way.
In many respects, this opening season is an introduction to this reality before things really start to fall apart and is a classic of its kind. It was the first SF TV series with CGI effects and with alien races that weren’t one or two-dimensional and had facets that people are still exploring today. Writer and co-producer, Joe Straczynski does voice-over for two episodes, ‘Signs And Portents’ and ‘Chrysalis’, allowing insight into what he was thinking at the time and how the series was put together. I’d never considered that Mr. Morden actor Ed Wasser had been selected for his Rod Serling-lookalike qualities... The main other extras cover looking around the station, character, alien and weapon stats and a 12 minute piece from producers and actors alike. As this was my first comparison between what I’d seen and re-watched many times from British Channel 4’s showing, I only really spotted a significant missed scene from ‘Believers’. There might have been moments from elsewhere but that was the only really obvious one. ‘Babylon 5’ hasn’t lost any of its magic over the years. Like all SF series set in the future, there is a certain timeless quality about it that will make it last and that can’t be a bad thing. GF Willmetts
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OTHER REVIEWS - May 2004
Non Fiction Mythology: The DC Comics Art Of Alex Ross Futures: 50 Years In Space The Challenge Of The Stars by David A. Hardy and Patrick Moore Lyra’s Oxford by Philip Pullman Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon: Second Edition by Brian Roseberry DVDs Babylon 5: The Complete First Season: Signs and Portents Fantasy Midnight Tides by Steven Erikson The Siege Of Mithila by Ashok K. Banker Broken Crescent by S. Andrew Swann The Magician’s Guild by Trudi Canavan The Destroyer Goddess by Laura Resnick The Weavers Of Saramyr by Chris Wooding The Iron Grail by Robert Holdstock Faerie Tales edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davies Darknesses by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. Slipstream Changing Of Faces by Tim Lebbon Karloff’s Circus by Steve Aylett The Well Of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde Science Fiction The Golden Globe by John Varley Market Forces by Richard Morgan It Came From Outer Space screenplay by Ray Bradbury A Gift Of Dragons by Anne McCaffrey Different Kinds Of Darkness by David Langford Felaheen The Third Arabesk by Jon Courtenay Grimwood Absolution Gap by Adrian Reynolds The Line Of Polity by Neal Asher The Affinity Trap by Martin Sketchley Natural History by Justina Robson Horror Living Dead In Dallas by Charlaine Harris Magazines
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All
right. So B5 Season One’s been out nearly a year now. This prudent
editor tends to be patient and also tests the market for the right
price, not to mentioning finally making the decision that DVD boxsets
take up a lot less space than videoed TV recordings.
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