"'Babylon' Ends; Now, the 'Crusade'"

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"Babylon" Ends; Now, the "Grusade"TNT-Babylon 5: A Call to ArmsSunday, January 3rd, 8 to 10 p.m. E.T; repeats at I0 p.m. and at midnight (earlyMonday), and Monday, Januaryr I lth at midnight (early Tuesday)

By Frank Lovece

Like an old-fashioned diva enamored of applause, the sci-fi series Babylon -l marks onemore farewell performance. Yet its latest ind last telefilm, Babylon Sil Catt to Arms,proves less a requiem than an overture-a set-up for the themes and grace notes to beorchestrated in the June 1999 spin-off series, The Babylon Project: Crusade.

With this seemingly final finale, an appreciation seems eamed. Babylon'5-which beganin s5mdication iri 1994 and was picked up by TNT for a final season after its year-fourcancellation-was, after all, conceived of as a single, novelistic, five-year story arc by itscreator, J. Michael Straczlmski, who wrote virtually every episode. And unlike thesupposed cohesive back-story solidifying The X-Files, -85's was real: The amount ofpinpoint detail and of foreshadowed history and personages weaving through five yearsof dense intemal consistency is remarkable and in all likelihood unprecedented inAmerican television.

"[]t's gotten a bit refined over time," Straczynski (right) has written.While unplanned changes occurred, the story, he maintained, was "likeseeing a mountain from a great distance, then closing in until you canmake out the details." Never one to stint on back-patting, Straczynski'salso bragged that "I'll have written 3,000 pages all in one universe,primarily telling one story. That's the equivalent of six or seven full-size novels...."

And even that feat is only about form; Babylon 5 had content likeSaJurn's got rings. Unlike most future-set series, it never depended on someone reroutingthe ion field to the flux capacitor in order to bypass the whatchamacallit. BJ was aboutthe machinations of politics and how they get twisted in ways good and bad by personalrelationships and private agendas. Whereas Star Trekprojects an optimistic future inwhich human greed, poverty and hunger have been vanquished, and humans touch thebetter angels of our nature,,B5 predicts the same old human pettiness and pieties at playsince the original Bab$on was-built freshening them, in good sci-fi fashion, through asetting far removed from the everyday we take for granted.

The series was set on a five-and-a-half-mile-long space station, Babylon-!, founded in2257 by Earth's ruling body, Earthgov. Part U.N., part Casablanca, it was initially run byCaptain Jeffrey Sinclair (Michael O'Hare), who was succeeded by Captain John Sheridan(Bruce Boxleitner) two years later (at the start of season two). By 2262 (start of seasonfive), there had been'both a civil war on Earth, and a war between Earth and its alliesagainst an ancient, non-corporeal conqueror race called The Shadows. Sheridan hadbecome head of the new Interstellar Alliance; one of his two ex-wives, Capt. Elizabeth

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Lochley (Tracy Scoggins), coincidentally succeeded him as 85 cornmander. :

So is this final B5 telefilm the finale? That depends on your definitions of "finale,""epilogue" and "sequel." The next-to-last episode, "Objects at Rest" (TNT, Jan. 18, 199S)concluded the story proper, dispersing several major characters and finalizing their arcs.The next, and last, episode, "Sleeping in Light" (TNT, Nov. 25, 199S) takes place notquite 20 years later, in228I, and chronicles the final gathering of Sheridan's old friendsand colleagues near the diy of his prophesied death. And an earlier episode, the fourth-season finale "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" (TNT, Oct.27,1997), takes placeeven later, looking back on events from 100, 500, a thousand and one million ye-rs later.

Further confounding the chronology, four TV rnovies, set in very disparate times, all randuring and around the fifth season. In the Beginning (Jan. 4,1998) flashed back to theEarth-Minbariiffar, the pre-series conflict that led to the creation of space stationBabylon 5; Thirdsiace (iuly 19, 1998) flashed back to the middle of ieason four; TheRiver of Souls (Nov. 23 , 1998) took place mrd-2263, shortly after the events of the fifthseason; and the new A Call to Arms (Jan. 6, 1999) takes place five years afterward.

InA Call to Arms, starring series regufars Boxleitner, Scoggins, JerryrDoyle (left, as'corporate mogul Michael Garibaldi) and Jeff Conaway(as Security Chief 7,ack Allan), Sheridan and Garibaldi are overseeingthe covert construction of two Super-powered Alliance battleships. Yetbefore the vessels are fully ready, Sheridan, master thief Dureena Nafal(Canie Dobro) and Capt. Leonard Anderson (Candyman's Tony Todd)of the Earthgov destroyer Charon each receives a dream-message froma sorcerer-like "techno-mage," Galen (Peter Woodward), prophesyingthe destruction of Earth. The unlikely trio hrjack the Alliance super-

ships (christened the Excalibur and the Victory) and uncover a massive invasion by thewar-vanquished Shadows' ally race, the Drakh-who possess the last known Shadowdoomsday weapon, the Death Cloud.

"Last known" are the key words here. The fast-moving telefilm, whileironically not hugely suspenseful, noneJheless climaxes with anunexpected last-second development that sets up the premise ofCrusadez The quest for a way to undo the gradual yet apocalypticeffects of the Drakh's final action. Dobro (right) and Woodwardcontinue onto Crusade, as does supporting player Marjean Holden(Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Vampires), a tanned Sandra Bullocklookalike who switches from an unnamed navigator here tobiogeneticist Dr. Sarah Chambers in the series. Gary Cole, Daniel Dae

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Kim, David A. Brooks and Scoggins also star in the new show, built.around the exploitsof the Excalibur,

Dramatically satisfying and emotionally cbmplex, the final Babylon 5 telefilm sends oneseries off with a bang, and sees anolher off, in fine military tradition, with a wing and aprayer.