Thirdspace

The Third Babylon 5 Movie

Reviewed by Lady Keela Shanri

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Well...where to start. First of all, though many B5 fans tend to express their extreme dislike for this movie by calling it "Turdspace", I did not think it was THAT bad. But then again, I rarely do agree with most fans. In my opinion, it had good parts and it had bad parts. Basically, to sum it up as quickly as possible, the good parts were that this movie seemed to use more of the real cast than most of the others, and to do a better job including aliens and giving minor characters something to do. There was some great character development (especially that really touching scene with Zack and Lyta in the elevator! Ack! Sniff! Poor guy!) and some funny lines. And the plotline tied in more with the B5 plotline. They mentioned things like Clark, the Psi Corps, the situation on Mars, the Vorlons, the Shadow War, what really happened to Lyta in Vorlon space, etc. In other words, it was good because it felt more CONNECTED to the main series of B5 than most of the movies. Most of them are far too seperate; this one used the plot, the characters, and the feel of the actual show very well. It feels more like it belongs. Now, I'm not really sure exactly WHEN this is taking place...the intro tells us that it's taking place BETWEEN Seasons 4 and 5 but it would almost HAVE to be taking earlier than that--because by the end of Season Four, Clark was NOT President any longer, B5 was NOT under an embargo, and Ivanova was NOT on the station! If you ask me they were a little too busy during Season Four to get around to doing all of this, but hey, picky picky picky...I still like the nice official, real, "canon" feel this movie has.
It did a good job with characters, basically. There was a lot of nice humour. I especially liked the funny scene with Ivanova and Franklin--sigh, it felt like the old days for a few minutes:
(Ivanova and Franklin are on a walkway above the cargo bay where the IPX people are making a complete and total mess of everything. Ivanova is going nuts because everybody keeps doing exactly what she tells them not to do and it's perfect chaos all around her.)
Franklin (makes a speech about how deadly efficient army ants are, and ends it with, "I wonder if they know they've got cousins so far out in space.")
Ivanova: Think they'd notice if I killed a few of them?
Franklin: Well, that depends...how many are we talking about here?
Ivanova: Oh...maybe....ten?
Franklin: Nah, they'd notice it.
Ivanova: Six?
Franklin: Go for it.
(Elizabeth Trent shows up and says something about how she wants to get this stuff done "before things get crazy." Ivanova's like, "BEFORE things get crazy? Well, what do you call this?!" Trent: "Science". And she walks away.)
Ivanova: (looking at Trent): Actually, I think ONE would probably do me...
Great stuff. Hee hee.
And as for Trent herself--yikes that woman was slimy! Strange-looking, too. I always wonder where sci-fi shows get all these bizzare-looking people--and she wasn't even playing an alien! Shari Belafonte did a pretty good acting job, though.
I felt sorry for her little assistant (played by Clyde Kusatsu, who also played Senator Hidoshi in B5's earlier seasons). He didn't deserve to die like that! He was an IPX guy with at least a shred of a conscience--pretty rare...
And while we're on the subject of minor characters, DEUCE is back! You remember him! He's the underground kingpin of Down Below, which he rules over with his brother Darryl and his other brother Darryl...whoops...wrong universe...Anyway, I always like it when they bring back or at least mention an interesting minor character again, so you at least know what happened to them.
Onto major characters now--it was nice seeing Ivanova again. Feels more like "real" B5 with her AND Sheridan WITHOUT his beard AND Franklin AND Delenn AND Vir AND Zack AND Lyta. The only person who could have improved this is Londo, but at least they had one Centauri there. Anyway, Claudia Christian also did a good job.
By far the acting kudos of this movie have to go to Patricia Tallman as Lyta Alexander, definitely. She was CREEPY when she started recieving the telepathic messages from the ship and started freaking out! I got to where my skin would literally start CRAWLING when she locked the camera in a direct stare--as only Lyta the creepy-huge-black-eyed teep can. That scene where she was staring straight ahead in the elevator looking deathly pale and partially grey while mumbling to herself over and over and over gave me the screamin' willies.
And also during that same scene, we had the part where Zack finally, FINALLY admitted his feelings to her! It was SO SAD!! I always thought that they would have made a good couple, and gods know Zack would be a MUCH better match for her than Byron (but then again, who wouldn't?) and here he finally says his true feelings and SHE DIDN'T EVEN HEAR HIM!! He says all these wonderfully romantic things about how it might be hard to make the relationship work and that he'd have to try really hard but "you're the kind of woman that makes a man WANT to try." Oh, geez!!! Sniff! And then he just keeps babbling on nervously, assuming that she's rejecting him because she keeps saying nothing, so eventually he works through the entire ASSUMED rejection that she never actually says and breaks off, apologizes for, and erases the entire would-be relationship in only 2 minutes flat! It was SO TOUCHING! Geez...and she has no idea he said any of those things...sniff...poor Zack! Kudos definitely go out to Jeff Conaway, too. Some fans think he's a bad actor, but I think he's just as good as the rest of them.
That's not to say that only the people-stuff was good in this movie--it also had some GREAT special effects. The thirdspace aliens themselves were CREEPY looking--as I said to my mom while watching this, "They make the Aliens" (as in from the movies of that name) "look CUTE!" GACK. Scary things. I especially like how they can just sorta form new tentacles or whatever in whichever location they need them at that moment. Rather handy. (Actually, I had a creature in a fantasy story I wrote about 8 years ago that could do that! Really!) I loved the weirdo special effects when the gate started opening, and I especially loved the creepy huge spiraling spiky organic-looking black city towering above the plain with lines of fire spreading out from the bottom. THAT was cool-looking. As my mom said (sorry for the family quotes, but hey) "THIS is the kind of thing I started reading science-fiction for. If you can't do this kind of thing, why are you even in the genre?" It was COOL. Definitely.
And the movie had some very good suspense. Which leads me to its bad point--it's really it's ONLY bad point, but it's a big one--it was DISAPPOINTING. After all that suspense, all that buildup, all the chaos that was erupting on the station just when the aliens were getting READY to come through and were beaming the messages into people's minds, after Lyta writing the words "There is danger. Remember! DANGER! REMEMBER!!" and muttering to herself under her breath over and over and over and over and over and over in her sleep on her quarter's walls, Trent shooting her assistant so she could have the device to herself, ALL that stuff, and...it never quite came to fruition. What happened was that Sheridan put a bomb on the inside of the thing, almost got eaten a time or two, then it blew up and everything was fine.
I suppose that makes sense, but I wanted to actually SEE this. I wanted Delenn to fly into Thirdspace itself in her White Star and find out WHAT THE HECK DOES THIRDSPACE LOOK LIKE?!! That bothered me; they find this gate that leads somewhere mysterious, and they spend so much time worrying about what might be coming out that they never go IN! Grrr....And I also wanted to see some Thirdspace aliens actually come ONTO the station themselves and cause REAL havoc. I imagined these creepy tentacled nasties slithering around, they sneak up behind a hapless drunk in DownBelow, you hear an agonised SHRIEK as every last miliwatt of energy is drained from his body, his corpse slumps to the deck lifeless, the creature slithers on, looking for its next prey...like that. I was REALLY expecting that. Yeah, I know it's not a good thing for what you expect to happen to happen but I STILL feel CHEATED! All that suspense and they never really followed up on it! Okay, so they would have had to make the movie longer and it was already pretty darn long, BUT...
All in all, it wasn't great but it wasn't horrible either, and it was definitely one of the more entertaining B5 movies. Just don't expect a big splashy ending going into it and you'll be fine.



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