BABYLON 5: THIRDSPACE (1998)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*

If a viewer was intrigued by mentions of a "war of shadows" in the BABLYON 5 pilot or the first telefilm, one won't get much out of the rest of the movies, for that conflict was played out only in the episodic series. THIRDSPACE debuted during the fifth and last season, but stayed independent of the series. Unfortunately, what one gets is just an overgrown "filler episode."

In fact, THIRDSPACE feels a bit like the famous Classic Trek episode, "The Naked Time." Everyone on Babylon 5 is spazzing out because of an outside influence, but it's not a contagion. An ancient artifact, potentially one that can harness a new method of hyperspace travel, is brought aboard the station. But before any discoveries can be made, the artifact begins broadcasting malign vibrations that turn residents into submissive thralls. 

Thanks to the station's resident telepath Lyta (Patricia Tallman), the heroes eventually learn that the artifact is a token of a hostile extra-dimensional race. The universe's oldest aliens, the mysterious Vorlons, are children next to the Thirdspace beings, and the Vorlons deemed the Thirdspacers as virtual gods. In a variation on the Tower of Babel stories, the Vorlons built one of the hyperspace gates, but suffered invasion by the evil aliens-- who are gearing up to invade once more.

As exciting as this potentially sounds, the movie is very talky. Commander Sheridan (Bruce Boxlietner) and his consort Delenn of the Minbari (Mira Furlann) have little to do, and so the burden of the story falls mostly on Lyta, Ivanova (Claudia Christian), and a regular from later seasons, Zack Allan (Jeff Conaway). Conaway is such a bad actor that he drags down every scene he's in, making the perfunctory script even more obvious. About the only time the movie perks up a bit is when a doctor investigating the artifact (Shari Belafonte) is enthralled by its influence and gets into a short fistfight with Ivanovna.