BABYLON 5: THE RIVER OF SOULS (1998)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, sociological*

RIVER OF SOULS was one of two films shown after BABYLON 5 ended, so it reflects an assortment of changes that had taken place in the series proper. Most of the familiar faces of the show were gone, though Michael Garibaldi (Jerry Doyle), no longer a series regular by the fifth season, finds an excuse to return to the space station to help initiate the new plot. Claudia Christian's Ivanovna departed the series, but she was replaced by Captain Elizabeth Lockley (Tracy Scoggins), who has control of the station in the absence of John Sheridan. But hey-- we still have Zack Allan, as played by Jeff Conaway!

Again writer-director J. Michael Straczynski creates trouble by having an arcane artifact brought aboard the Bab 5 station, but this time the history of the artifact is more philosophically challenging. Archaeologist Bryson (Ian MacShane) unearths a mysterious globe and takes it to the station to meet with his investor, who is none other than the entrepreneur Garibaldi. Bryson has sold Garibaldi a bill of goods about using the globe to further human life-spans, but the scientist has actually been suborned by the beings within the globe, a billion souls from an extinct race. The souls are beginning to escape their confinement and start to cause trouble, though it takes some time before Lockley knows the nature of the threat. A subplot involving a "holobrothel" adds some welcome humor to the story.

In the movie's latter half the plot ramps up when a new visitor arrives: a member of the despised race known as Soulhunters. This unnamed, bald-pated alien (Martin Sheen) seeks the globe because his people are the ones who imprisoned the billion souls in it, in the belief that they were preserving them from utter extinction. Even before the nature of the souls' quandary is revealed, Lockley and her aides have some interesting debates with Sheen-Hunter about the nature of death and the release from life. (Even Jeff Conaway doesn't spoil things.)

Scoggins carries the lion's share of the story and acquits herself well. Sheen has certainly embodied better characters, but he's fun to watch anyway. For a space-filler, RIVER OF SOULS isn't at all bad.