• I liked it. I think it suffered from the tight budget (WB clearly wanted to be sure of breaking even with even modest DVD sales, and nearly everything had to be created from scratch), but it was a good start-up vehicle. It's easy to forget how much of an experiment this disc is. Nobody has ever done a direct-to-disc spin-off or sequel to a TV series, much less one that has been out of production for nearly a decade, and not even available in reruns for about five years.


• The biggest problem I saw was that, with the Garibaldi segment dropped, the remaining two stories had to be stretched a bit to make it "feel" more like a movie (at 75 minutes), instead of remaining at 30 minutes each, and leaving the disc feeling like one episode that cost $15.


• There's also the fact that the Garibaldi segment was supposed to tie into the other two thematically, as well as overlapping in time (it would have explained why he was a "question-mark" for the anniversary celebration), so we don't really know what the "whole" was supposed to look like. The other problem the budget caused was the lack of background extras in the corridors and the wide-shots, even computer-generated ones. The bits of the station we saw seemed oddly empty.


• That said, I enjoyed both stories. The Lochley segment was too talky, and given the nature of the story, there wasn't much JMS could do to "pad" it, besides pile on more philosophical and theological dialogue. Unlike some people, I don't think the story establishes that the guy was "really" possessed, or that a demonic entity was "really" imprisoned on Earth. It could all still be alien hocus-pocus. That the guy spoke in those terms, and the priest and Lochley accepted the event that way, only tells us what they may have believed.


• Anyway, I'll bet Tracy had fun with it. I seem to recall reading somewhere that she's Catholic, so she should have been on familiar ground. The HD cameras were not especially kind to her, but she's still a striking woman. (OTOH, I saw Michelle Pfeiffer on Letterman in HD a few months ago, and she still looks incredible, little lines around the eyes and all. She must have a painting of herself in her attic that looks like hell.)


• The second segment was better in every way, even to Boxleitner having aged better. I liked the new Centauri character, I liked Sheridan's moral dilemma and the fact that he really wrestled with it, and I liked the fact that Galen probably didn't much care which solution ended the threat, as long as one of them did. By the end of the second story, I felt very much that I was back in the B5 universe.

Koohii posted:

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JMS stopped production of all B5 novels in the works so that he could devote all his time to Lost Stories, then supervise the novels to make sure they could be cannon (i.e. fitting in with his views of the B5verse).

The Book of G'Quan was originally going to be a one-off novel. Then he wanted to make it a trilogy, then he quashed it.

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Koohii posted:

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And from what I've heard of Lost Stories, it was for nothing.

The first 4 seasons of B5 are great. season 5 is tolerable, but disjointed--there's no overall arc or flavor to it, and it seems like it was slapped together on short notice (because it was). As for the rest... JMS had one idea. He used it up making seasons 1-4. This is why s5 is so incoherent. Then he went back to the well again for River of Souls, which stunk. He went back to the well again for Third Space, which had no real place in the B5 universe. Then he went back to the well again, and appears to have watched Starblazers in the meantime, and coopted that story (even a major speach in the beginning is almost identical) for Crusade. Unfortunately, he seems to have been a 1-trick pony, and doesn't seem to realize it.

Oh well.
We still have the original series.
And I greatly prefer the un-mucked up version of The Gathering to the 'remastered' one, but then again, that's just the way I am.

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The2ndQuest posted:

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Obviously, though, Crusade was killed before it could dump the TNT virus plotline and have the chance to really show what it was about; subsequently Legend of the Rangers was an attempt to pick up those threads as well as harken back to the original higher concepts of empire building that Crusade was meant to aspire to, though LOTR's rushed and underbudgeted nature combined with a sad cosmic moment of bad scheduling led to less than spectacular results, unfortunately.

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NJOfan215 posted:

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I think Vitari's character could have some cool things to do in the future, and i do think there is some nice tention there in regaurds to his ultimate fate. I also think he could play a role in what ever is goinjg to happen with david and the keeper.

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The2ndQuest posted:

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LOTR wasn't as bad as some people say- but it was obviously designed a s apilot, so a lot of it's potential was never fully realized (including dumping the VR gun turret they were forced to throw together at the last moment). It certainly had some fun characters, and the whole "same trick twice" twist was quite good. If The Hand had been revealed to be related to the Thirdspace aliens, it would have tied things together nicely, though. It did suffer from an overuse of the Ranger motto, however.

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1. JMS was suddenly stricken with senility, didn't remember the continuity of his own series, and screwed up massively.


2. There is more here than meets the eye, and facts that we haven't yet been given.