Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 27, 1993 TAG: 9302270334
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT WILLIAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
DETAILS BEDEVIL A PROMISING `BABYLON 5'
Great special effects do not make for great science fiction. Writing is what makes TV series cook.Writing is the single biggest problem haunting "Babylon 5," an otherwise promising, two-hour science fiction movie that bows next week in syndication (Monday at 8 p.m. on WJPR-Channel 21/27).
Here's the premise: In 2257, the edges of five great galactic empires converge in deep space, on the neutral ground of a space station that is part free port, part "Casablanca" and mostly weird.
These great civilizations don't like or trust one another even a little. Space stations Babylon 1 through 3 were sabotaged and destroyed. Babylon 4 "vanished without trace 24 hours after it became operational," a character intones.
No wonder its inhabitants seem so edgy!
What's fun and and exhilarating about "Babylon 5" is that it's trying very hard to convey a sense of colliding cultures, of day-to-day life at a literal and figurative crisis point in galactic history.
With that back story, viewers could feel as if they were attending the Potsdam Conference of deep space. First, however, they must get past clunky dialogue and some cartoon-style characters.
The rich storytelling possibilities in "Babylon 5" don't show up in the premiere. The movie is mostly breathless exposition about a five-mile-long microcosm that is filled with hostile, alien life forms. You know - Manhattan, only in outer space.
There are nice touches:
- The prosthetic makeup is superior. Lizard folk look, well, "lizardy" and believable.
- The effects are full-bodied and thoughtful: Starships leave warp space and decelerate into a "vortex grid" - just the kind of thing you'd want to catch you after traveling faster than the speed of light.
- A Japanese stone garden is described as a "pool for Zen skinny-dipping."
- "Good eating to you!" a reptilian ambassador offhandedly hails a human. Who's the meal, right? Science fiction grandmaster Robert Heinlein coined the phrase three decades ago, but who's quibbling?
- When a lizard-man propositions a genetic mix to a human, female telepath, he "doesn't get it" in a major way. "Would you prefer to be conscious or unconscious during the mating? I would prefer conscious but I don't know what your . . . pleasure threshhold is."
That's mainstream TV for the '90s, folks.
The problem with "Babylon 5" is the clinkers found among the diamonds.
- A sexy love interest throatily murmurs to her main squeeze that she's "picked up some Carnellian bedsheets - they're supposed to be completely frictionless." Imagine! A bed you can't get into!
- At least two of the alien races speak with Hungarian accents. Go figure.
- Babylon 5 can provide alien habitats for its visitors. But in the service of special effects, their rooms have transparent walls much like a zoo. Note to writers: Even the exhibitionist Vroom of Betelgeuse need privacy sometimes.
Perhaps the biggest danger facing "Babylon 5" is not its failures of imagination, but of its leading actors.
As the station's commander, Michael O'Hare brings a fine, deep whiskey-and-cigarettes voice to his role, but little else. He's clearly not comfortable with the material, even though his character holds a secret that can blow open the galaxy.
In point of fact, the alien characters are much more interesting than the humans.
Peter Jurasik, best known as the oily stool-pigeon Sid on "Hill Street Blues," is superb as the decadent ambassador of the waning Centauri Republic, Mira Furlan is cool and mysterious the enigmatic envoy of the despised Minbari Federation, and Andreas Katsulas, as lizardy ambassador G 'Kar of the Narn Regime, is the slimiest schemer since Dr. Smith of "Lost in Space."
"Babylon 5" comes to us from Lorimar, Warner Bros.' TV division, via something called PTEN, or Prime Time Entertainment Network. It is supposed to be a one-shot deal.
Lorimar, though, obviously wants critical approval and fan buzz to persuade them to make it a series, hoping for the syndication success that Paramount Studios has had with "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
Let's hope "Babylon 5" can break Paramount's monopoly on the future. It is a promising debut, and if it comes back as a one-hour series, it can come back better.
Patience, humanoid. Patience.