I have a soft spot for Rangers, from the Dunedain of Middengeard, to my first pickup truck (a Ford Ranger), to the U.S. army’s legendary 75th light infantry regiment, to the Anla’Shok of Babylon 5. So it should probably come as no surprise that when it came to the Babylon 5 movie, The Legend of the Rangers: to Live and Die in Starlight, I was willing to cut the movie a bit more slack than most B5 fans. Still, I’m covinced I’m justified in doing so, despite my obvious bias.
We are Rangers.
We walk in the dark places no others will enter.
We stand on the bridge, and no one may pass.
We live for the One, we die for the One.
—— Oath of the Anla’Shok
All TV shows have their lousy episodes, and in B5 lore the three worst episodes are Infection, Grey 17 is Missing, and the stand alone movie Legend of the Rangers; yet, when someone described Legend as being worse than Infection, I just had to say something:
Serious problems but . . . Worse than Infection? That’s saying quite a bit. I have to agree this film has some serious problems, for example, the Kung Fu weapons sequence is literally embarrassing, even if you watch it alone. Yet even the idea of a gunner immersed in a VR system (sans the kicking and screaming) was interesting — with some work it could have been interesting. Moreover, the chemistry between the crew was much better than that in the original pilot, especially between the captain and his second in command.
Rather than chronicle the flaws in this movie — and they are legion — I will just say this: the critics of this film are correct in every detail. I cannot find a single particular where you would be wrong (right down to the quality of the video); however, if you step back and see the totality of this pilot (and what it could have become, warts and all) it becomes more enjoyable. The story is predictable, but that was exactly the the technique used by JMS in the original B5: to give the audience a predictable story, with stereotypical characters, and then slowly have them begin to behave and evolve in ways you never would have expected.
There are even a few moments which, far from being embarrassing, bring it all back (the last scene where G’Kar says his famous line about B5, and they show the Babylon station, actually got an emotional reaction from me and the people I was watching the show with.
Deeply flawed, but as G’Kar would say, not without hope.
Why is this important? I suppose it isn’t. On the other hand, I have a friend who is a graduate student of English literature, who honestly believes that, when it comes to science fiction, constitutional rights should be probably be suspended. She HATES SciFi, despises it, has contempt for the people who love it. Well, most of us — she will make a few exceptions.
One day I invited her to a B5 party, but didn’t tell her it was a B5 party. We passed out popcorn and merlot and excitedly plopped our bottoms on the carpet as the opening scenes of the B5 pilot began to unfold. I could almost feel her groan . . . but she stuck it out.
Later, after the guests left, she kind of sidled up to me and asked, “Do you have any more of those Babylon 5 shows?”
To make a long story short, that woman was a machine. She went through my entire collection of B5 DVDs like a starving wolf through fresh meat. Five years worth of a TV series were virtually consumed by this woman, sometimes as much as seven episodes at a time. All six movies were attended to as if they were religious canon. The spinoff Crusade was hungrily appreciated, and the Lost Tales were savored as if by an addict. She even got jealous of Delenn at one point.
Yeah, she liked it.
One day, long after we finished watching the last episode of the series, I got my hands on Legend of the Rangers, and we watched it together. After it was over she said, “I can’t believe I forgot what an incredibly good show that was. Do you still have those DVDs? I’d really like to watch it all again someday.”
I don’t know if B5 is important, but I had the same reaction to it as I did to Lord of the Rings – if either world was real I would go there like a shot. I would pay good money, a lot of it, just to be a lurker on the B5 station. Does that make it good literature? No, of course not, but B5 is a compelling story, portrayed in an equally compelling setting. I have a sneaking suspicion that the B5 Universe — including Legend of the Rangers – will someday be much, much more than just a cult classic.
—————–
“There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.” — The Book of G’Quan