This first installment of what many hope will be a series of new Babylon 5 stories has two segments. A third was originally planned, but was cut for budgetary and logistical reasons during the preproduction process. As a result, Voices in the Dark clocks in at a little over an hour, plus a number of short featurettes included as extras. I’d like to start this review on a positive note, so I’m going to discuss the second segment first. (Spoilers below, and feel free to check out the plot synopsis in the LogBook entry.)

“Would you go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby?” is not a new question, but classic moral questions can still spark good drama. Straczynski confronts Sheridan with that question, but also asks a follow-up: Can you be creative enough to find another solution? I can’t say I was in great suspense waiting to see what Sheridan would decide, but I did enjoy watching him go through the process. A lot of credit has to go to Bruce Boxleitner here, who steps right back into the older President Sheridan and conveys his crankiness at being part of other people’s agendas and his determination to save lives wherever possible.

Peter Woodward plays Galen with a certain aggression that doesn’t feel out of character but perhaps a little amplified. At the same time he and Boxleitner play off each other very well, suggesting a prior relationship that may or may not extend past their adventure in A Call to Arms. The character of Prince Vintari gets a decent introduction here, but he definitely has possibilities for future stories – there are hints of rivalry with Vir that have potential for sure.

As for the first segment: frankly, I thought it was terrible. Straczynski often offers up solid chunks of exposition that hit the ground with a thud, and there are many of them here. Lochley’s initial conversation with the priest barely feels like a conversation at all, but like an exchange of monologues meant to set up the plot’s central conflict.

To begin with, the central premise is that Christianity has become less relevant to humanity since space exploration began. This seems to contradict the world Straczynski established in the original series, where Sinclair was trained by Jesuits, Ivanova was an occasionally-practicing Jew, an order of monks set up shop on the station, and a Protestant minister was giving Sheridan romantic and spiritual advice. Not to mention the fact that the Minbari, the Drazi, the Narn, and many other starfaring races retained a belief in supernatural or spiritual beings. But OK, this is the angle Straczynski wants to take now, let’s see where he goes with it.

But where he goes also makes little sense. Publicizing the presence of the demon would supposedly provide proof of God’s existence and drive people back to the Church. Now, there might be an interesting moral dilemma here if the priest thought that the possession was a hoax – would a lie be worth telling if the lie brought people closer to the divine truth that he believes in? But we are apparently meant to believe that this actually is a demon of the biblical variety. This raises the theological questions of whether an omnipotent God needs to provide his own existence, whether such proof would damage the possibility of faith, why God seems to be so obtuse when he does deliver signs, and why said signs often seem to involve innocent people suffering. It also raises the dramatic question of what kind of hard choice the priest is really dealing with, since giving people an honest reason to return to the Church would seem to be a positive situation, assuming that word of the possession really would make a difference.

And that’s another spot where I had trouble suspending my disbelief. Put aside the question of why it would take Earthbound demons a hundred years or more to get themselves on board a spacegoing body. In the Babylon 5 universe we have seen energy beings that can appear as angels, parasites that can take over people's nervous systems, bejeweled aliens trapping consciousness in snow globes, telepaths projecting illusions into people’s minds, and plagues from outer space. Why would a nonbeliever suddenly accept the Christian God as an explanation for any of the phenomena associated with Burke rather than look for an alternate, “scientific” explanation?

And even once you get past the actual premise, the execution doesn’t go very well. Both of these stories are character pieces with little physical conflict; the drama is internal as Lochley and Sheridan try to figure out what’s going on. Sheridan has Galen to serve as a foil – they both want the same thing, but seem to be on opposing paths to that common destination. And there is a very real deadline for him to make a choice, which adds tension. Lochley and the priest have no real cause for conflict, and when Lochley solves the problem, she has to deliver another chunk of exposition to explain her conclusion. It’s just very clunky.

I don’t know how much the focus on internal conflict was driven by the budget for this production. There are some very nice virtual sets and the CG for spaceships, the B5 station, and jump points all look great. It certainly doesn’t feel cheap at all, but I’ll be interested in seeing if future stories might have a larger element of physical action and movement. Straczynski mentions Sin City while discussing the greenscreen/virtual sets in one of his production diaries, and certainly that movie wasn’t an introspective play-like character drama.

Speaking of the extra features, they’re nice but not tremendously deep. There’s very basic behind-the-scenes stuff, including a visit to the effects house. Boxleitner, Scoggins and Woodward talk about what it’s like to be back on B5. I may well be reading too much into this, but Woodward and Straczynski both made comments that seemed to suggest that a) B5 and Crusade are two separate yet related entities and b) The Lost Tales is definitively a B5 project. What this says about the future use of the series to wrap up the Crusade storyline – well, knowing, I would say. Do not know, so cannot say. Straczynski plays the self-deprecating smart aleck role that he has assumed in some of the script book introductions, and there is a running joke about sock puppets. But there is not much detailed discussion of how Straczynski developed these particular stories, and some of the interview footage I have seen on the Web has meatier comments. The tributes to Richard Biggs and Andreas Katsulas, of course, were welcome, especially if you ever wanted to know what G’Kar would look like as a babysitter.

I’m curious as to whether the mandate for these Lost Tales will remain smaller stories that focus on one or two characters at a time. Down the road, direct-to-DVD might be a format for Straczynski to utilize some of the extended plotting that he made a hallmark of the original series or fill in some key gaps in the storyline. We still haven’t seen the Telepath War, after all. But those are concerns for another time. Despite my reservations about this disc, I hope that there are more tales to be found.

Reviewed by Dave Thomer
theLogBook.com assistant editor