Text 7637, 197 rader
Skriven 2006-09-05 11:06:00 av Robert E Starr JR (8134.babylon5)
Ärende: Thirdspace: my review
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If H. P. Lovecraft had somehow been able to write a "Babylon 5"
episode... Well, it would have been much, much better than
"Thirdspace."


THE PLOT

After a successful strategic "mousetrap" by Ivanova leads to the
capture of a Raider party, she leads her squadron back to the station
through hyperspace... only to discover a massive, ancient artifact
floating dead in space. Launching a salvage operation, she hauls the
artifact through the gate, leaving Sheridan to investigate its origins.

Sheridan is thrilled as ever at the idea of discovering the unknown.
Unfortunately, he has only the most cursory idea of how to start
investigating it. There are no archaeologists on the station, and with
the station cut off from Earth, he can't exactly request one.

However, Interplanetary Expeditions (IPX) has treaties with many alien
worlds. As a result, IPX is not bound by President Clark's embargo.
Lead xeno-archaeologist Dr. Trent (Shari Belafonte) strikes a deal with
Sheridan. She will work with his people on the artifact, and share her
findings with him.

But the artifact hides a dark secret. Why are there Vorlon
hieroglyphics on the outside of it? Why does Vorlon-touched telepath
Lyta Alexander seem bent on destroying it? And why are instances of
random violence on the station rising drastically in the artifact's
wake?


THE GOOD

"Babylon 5" rarely has gone into the realm of outright horror. The
series has dealt with high concepts, allegories, comedy, mystery... but
rarely horror, and when it has attempted to do any kind of horror
story, it's generally been of the tiresome "man-in-rubber-suit"
variety. As a result, the attempt to craft a horror story in the mold
of H. P. Lovecraft while still staying true to the "Babylon 5" universe
is somewhat refreshing in itself.

As far as "Thirdspace" goes into that territory, it's moderately
effective. The designs of the alien city, the tall black column, the
creatures within the artifact, and even the artifact itself are all
quite creepy. There are also a handful of rather spine-chilling little
moments. The army of maintenance bots, moving in symmetry to the
artifact, is a CGI visual that's both breathtaking and, backed by
Christopher Franke's always-excellent score, more than a little
disquieting. The scenes with a possessed Lyta Alexander having a
"Shining" moment, and writing "There is Danger - Remember" over and
over again on the wall of her quarters, is also well-done, as is the
Vorlon-enhanced Lyta's conference with Sheridan near the climax.

The episode's best scary scene occurs just before the third act kicks
in. In a sequence more than a little evocative of Clive Barker's
"Hellraiser" (the good original, I mean - not the increasingly weak
sequels), Ivanova goes through an open door that has materialized in
her bedroom, only to find herself suddenly in full uniform at the edge
of an alien city. Vir, for whatever reason, stands beside her, awed by
the beauty of the city and urging her not to question what it is or
where it came from. Vir is led away by a pair of Centauri beauties.
Then, as Ivanova stands spellbound, just looking at the city and the
great black spire in the center, a snakelike tendril whips over to
Ivanova, hovers around the contours of her face... her cheek... her
left eye. Then its mouth opens as it shoots directly at her eye - and
Susan wakes, screaming, in her bed. Between the acting of Claudia
Christian and Stephen Furst, Franke's score, and the extremely
effective CGI visuals, it is the only full sequence where the episode
is actually as scary as it wants to be.

The story does fit quite well in the midst of the fourth season, with
the opening fight with the Raiders not only making a nice thematic
counterpoint to the device's "mousetrap," but also establishing
how desperate the station's supply situation is during Earth's
embargo. This supply situation comes up again, as Sheridan strikes a
deal involving supplies with Dr. Trent to allow her to study the
artifact. And of course, the entire plot of "Thirdspace" heavily echoes
Sheridan's own sentiment from the last episode. The Vorlons and the
Shadows may be gone, but they left plenty of messes behind for the
younger races to clean up.

Meanwhile, in the episode's best character scene, Zack chooses the
exact wrong moment to confront a menace scarier than Shadows or even
reporters... namely, attempting to let a woman you already interact
with casually know that you want a relationship with her. Jeff Conaway
plays Zack's stumbling nervousness perfectly. As he unburdens himself
to Lyta, telling her that he believes he could "care for (Lyta)," he
looks for all the world like a deer caught in the headlights of an
oncoming truck. Given his preoccupation with his own nervousness here,
it doesn't even seem a stretch that he fails to notice that Lyta is
utterly out of it and cannot actually hear a word he is saying. How
different the story of the series might have been had Zack made that
speech one day earlier or one week later. Then again, that was a
non-relationship that was always plagued by simple bad timing.


THE BAD

As noted above, I like "Thirdspace's" aspirations toward horror, as
far as they go. But this story really needed to go further. If
Straczynski & company wanted to do a full-on Babylon 5 horror movie,
then they should have pulled out the stops and really gone for it.
Thirdspace never really does. The movie dips a tentative, timid toe in
the black pool of horror, when what it really needed to do was just
dive in.

The pace is much too slow, for starters. I'm reminded a little of
"The Gathering" here. In that film, the central plot was that Sinclair
was accused of trying to kill Kosh. That was the main plot, and yet it
took more than half of the movie before Lyta scanned Kosh and accused
Sinclair. Similarly, it takes most of "Thirdspace" to get to the real
dilemma - the artifact opening and letting the creatures from the other
universe in. Imagine how much more tension might have been developed if
the artifact had opened earlier. Imagine if instead of creatures
getting out of the artifact, and being fought back by yet another
Starfury/Whitestar space barrage, if instead the Babylon 5 staff had
been lured inside. It might have been much more interesting to have
spent the bulk of the movie inside the artifact - inside Thirdspace -
rather than simply waiting for Thirdspace to come to us so that we
could shoot it.

Also reminiscent of "The Gathering" is the passivity of our heroes. The
bulk of the running time is devoted to characters talking about the
artifact, worrying about the artifact. The situation doesn't develop
into a crisis until late in the show's running time. As a result, the
characters are left seeming very passive. Sheridan doesn't do
anything except get annoyed at Dr. Trent until past the 60-minute mark.
Susan doesn't do anything except have a bad dream. Delenn...
doesn't really do anything at all. It goes back to what I was saying
in the last paragraph, about the script being too slow-paced and
playing it too safe. The characters don't act on the situation; they
react. Because Sheridan waits for what's inside the artifact to come
out, Sheridan does nothing for most of the movie. As a result, Sheridan
and his staff are left feeling depressingly ineffectual.

I do like the idea of having the station residents possessed by the
artifact. Unfortunately, this is also a concept that is not exploited
to its full potential. Who gets possessed? A bunch of extras, Vir, and
Deuce, the Down Below criminal kingpin who surely should be simply
arrested on sight after the events of "Grail," way back in Season One.
In any event, we have a character who is not particularly threatening,
a character who is already a villain, and a bunch of extras being
possessed. Why should we care?

Imagine instead that some of the B5 command staff are possessed. Think
how much more jeopardy there would be, how much higher the stakes would
grow, if Dr. Franklin were possessed (the healer attempting to kill
people), or Zack, or Susan, or Delenn, or even Sheridan! If Sheridan
gets possessed, then it would set up a situation where the man usually
looked to as a problem solver becomes the problem, and it's left to
the supporting characters to save the day and, at the same time, get
him back safely. Similarly, Delenn would have the added emotional
burden of having the man she loves possessed by the enemy. If Delenn
were possessed, then Sheridan would have that burden - having to stop
her, but not willing to risk harming her. As it is, NONE of the command
staff are affected by the artifact. An unusually selective artifact,
that. It identifies the people most likely to be a threat to it, and
then leaves them alone to nuke it.

For that matter, why wasn't Susan affected? She saw the city, too -
as Deuce notes in the scene in Security. Everyone else who saw the city
was possessed. Why not Susan? It's a question that the script not
only never answers... it never asks, and it seems to not want us to
ask. The only answer I can come up with is that Susan is not possessed
because it would have been inconvenient to the climax if she had been.

Finally, John Sheridan does save the day at the end, using... wait for
it... a tactical nuke. The single most amusing part of the DVD was
Bruce Boxleitner in the intro to the film dubbing himself, "John
'Nukem' Sheridan," and indeed this is the third time that we have
seen Sheridan break out the nukes in response to a hopeless situation.
The same solution three times is, in this case, one time too many. It
feels very much as if we saw the extent of John Sheridan's ingenuity
way back in the Black Star incident. It also feels wrong for the story,
somehow. You don't close a doorway to heaven and hell by blowing it
up, do you? It takes the mythic horror concept and reduces it to a big
CGI bang.


So, in the end, "Thirdspace" falls far flatter than any of the single
one-hour episodes of Babylon 5 have done in quite some time. A few
creepy moments and one great character scene make it a watchable
time-filler. But it's frustrating, because I get the sense that if
the script had just been willing to go further - to really go past the
"safe" level it seems content to inhabit - that this could have been
really, really good.


My Final Rating: 4/10.
                                                                             
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