Babylon 5: The River of Souls |
USA • 1998 • 94m •
   • Directed by: Janet Greek. • Starring: Jerry Doyle, Tracy Scoggins, Jeff Conaway, Richard Biggs, Ian McShane, Martin Sheen, Jeff Doucette, Wayne Alexander, Bob Amaral, Beege Barkette, Joel Brooks, Josh Coxx, T.J. Hoban. • Music by: Christopher Franke.     Captain Lochley now has solid proof that Garibaldi is a disaster magnet: when he comes to the station to meet with one of his new company's subordinates, she's being sued by the owner of an illegal virtual reality "holo-brothel" and besieged by Soul Hunters looking for one of their soul vessels, this one containing the souls of the long-lost Ralga alien species.
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Review:
What this particular "episode" of Babylon 5 has got going for it, and this is something that has been part of Babylon 5 for a long time, is that we have a very dark and mysterious story intertwined with high comedic elements, and they work together here as well as they did during the series in general. This is just a point that I diffidently need to remind the other so-called Babylon 5 fans here, that comedy plus dark elements were part of the structure of the series from the very beginning, including "The Gathering". So I really don't understand why they are complaining about the mixture HERE, where the production of Babylon 5 had more room to explore these facets in an "elongated" episode.
And of course, after a disturbing "grave robbing" seen that involved McShane, we get into the comedy elements before we realize something else is not quite right: there is a "holobrothel" on Babylon 5, however, these are not at all like the holosuites owned by Quark on Deep Space Nine, which I am pretty sure that this is a reference and homage to in the first place- because of the fact that this holobrothel appears to be put together by scotch tape and paper clips, whereas in Deep Space nine they used cutlery and a metal ladle as conductive elements (see deep space nine episode "our man Bashir".)
So we have this almost high comedy routine between Lockley and the crooked brothel owner "Jacob Mayhew" played by Joel Brooks, and even a triangle of sorts at that when you add in the antics of ambulance chasing lawyer "James Riley" played by Stuart Pankin, which is traditional comedy of the variety that we used to have in the 1930s pre-code films, and don't forget the involvement of Zack (Grease's Jeff Conway, rip).
With this circus in place, in steps Dr. Robert Bryson (McShane), Who was being paid by Garibaldi's former boss to look for eternal life, and you think he is going to add more comedy into this farce but instead he has something that used to belong to a race that we have only seen twice before: the Soul Hunters.
Enter Martin Sheen as the Soul Hunter.
The only soul Hunter we had ever met previously was the one who was after Delenn- in the very second episode of the Babylon 5 series played by William Morgan Sheppard, an actor eccentric enough to portray that particular soul hunters instability.
And it is surprising to find out that the soul hunter portrayed by Martin Sheen is not at all unstable. In fact he is a "young" soul hunter, he is very idealistic about the work that he does and he defends what the soul hunters do to Lockley in a very reasonable manner, although she has good arguments as to why souls should not be trapped and kept in dark whisper galleries.
Many of the things that we previously knew about soul hunters were actually shown in this episode, including the violation of one of their sanctuaries for souls.
So on one hand we have this farce including a holographic brothel and it's faulty wiring and the owners scummy lawyer, and then we have this quite marvelous tale of the soul hunters and the fact that they may have made a certain prideful mistake.
Just remember "the mind sees what it needs to see"- Dr. Franklin appears briefly not as himself but as one of those mental apparitions that Lockley needed to see.
What I liked mostly about this particular Babylon 5 "movie" is that it happens after the events of the television series and so there are no appearances by President Sheridan or Delenn, or Gkar and Londo, this is just life on Babylon 5 after the events of the series, life goes on, even though we know that there are Drakk milling about the galaxy waiting to pounce on Earth with one of the shadow Planet killers- which happens in another one of these made for TV by Turner Babylon 5 movies.
Although I have explained some of the interactions of this episode, I have not gone into detail about those, so no, I am not going to check spoilers.
Review by XweAponX from the Internet Movie Database.
Movie Database