Product Description
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Babylon 5: The Lost Tales (DVD) (MFV)
Ten years after he became President of the Interstellar Alliance,
John Sheridan returns to Babylon 5 for the IA’s anniversary
celebration. When a technomage shows him a glimpse of a future
Earth destroyed in a devastating Centauri assault and a demonic
entity makes itself known closer to home, the stakes are raised,
with billions of lives in the balance. In Voices in the Dark,
series creator J. Michael Straczynski reunites with stars Bruce
Boxleitner, Tracy Scoggins and Peter Woodward in two richly
imagined stories set after the events of the original series. In
one, a supernatural force penetrates Babylon 5 on a mission, and
its success or failure will devastate or redeem whole planets. In
the other, Sheridan must make a decision to take or save one
life...a decision that will result in either the salvation, or
the destruction, of Earth herself.
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It'd be hard for any Babylon 5 fan not to feel a surge
of emotion when President Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner) returns to
the space station that was the setting of one of the monumental
series in television history. The Lost Tales is a new
direct-to-DVD series in an anthology format, the first
installment of which, subtitled "Voices in the Dark," includes
two stories centering on the return of Sheridan. The first
involves Colonel Lochley (Tracy Scoggins) and a crewman (Bruce
Ramsay) who appears to be possessed by a demon, to the
bewilderment of the priest attempting an exorcism (Alan fe).
The second involves Sheridan himself, who upon returning to B5 is
asked to pick up a delegate from the Centauri, prince Regent
Vintari (Keegan MacIntosh), who's attending the 10th anniversary
celebration of the Interstellar Alliance in the place of old
Centauri friend Londo Molari. What Sheridan doesn't expect is a
psychic visit by techno-mage Galen (Peter Woodward) urging him to
kill the boy before he becomes a dictator.
It's a treat to see Sheridan, Lochley, and Galen return from the
original series (Woodward was also in the spin-off, Crusade), but
The Lost Tales focuses on character-driven stories, and as such
there's not a lot of action. The CGI effects are good, but sets
are very limited and there are hardly any other cast members.
(Sheridan even spends most of his time away from B5.)
Creator-writer J. Michael Straczynski has said that if The Lost
Tales succeeds, future stories might focus on Delenn or
Garbibaldi. While that would be welcome, it might be even better
to get a feature film (a la Serenity) that would presumably be on
more of the epic scale that Babylon 5 deserves. Bonus features
are 17 minutes of off-the-cuff interviews held on the set with
Boxleitner and Straczynski, Scoggins and the crew, and
Straczynski with Woodward; memorials to late cast members Andreas
Katsulas and Richard Biggs; and Straczynski's diaries and
fireside chats, in which he recounts the show's production and
answers fan questions. --David Horiuchi
DVD features
* Interviews with J. Michael Straczynski, Bruce Boxleitner, Tracy
Scoggins, and Peter Woodward
* Memorials: Andreas Katsulas and Richard Biggs
* The Straczynski Diaries: a multi-part series of vignettes as
filmed by J. Michael Straczynski as he documents every phase of
pre-production, production and post
* Fireside Chats: profiling the people of the B5 universe