User reviews

...within the "modern-day" B5 context (which excludes In the Beginning, a prequel of sorts). Call to Arms leads neatly into the coming Crusade series, we're introduced to some of the important characters of that series (particularly the enigmatic Galen), we meet at least one other character who is played up but ultimately martyred, and unlike its two predecessors, Call to Arms gives us a menace directly out of the B5 "mythos." Boxleitner and Doyle take center stage for the final time. The pieces are in place - now we can look forward to the series itself.

I'd like to see Straczynski remaster this one and have Christopher Frankie redo the music. The music now just seems bland and gives the movie a very dull atmosphere.

I've been watching Babylon 5 since it started years ago, and think its one of the best shows in American history. As for A call to the arms, it did the show justice in the sense that unlike some of the other TV movies done over the past years, it was a lot of fun, had a good plot, and a good script. I highly recommend this to anyone out there.

I had great expectations for this movie. And I wasn't disappointed, not at all... except for the atrocious soundtrack. Maybe if I wasn't a big fan of Babylon 5, it wouldn't bother me, but when I was used to the great music through the five series, and then I heard *this*, I mean, what's this for? A good soundtrack can promote a movie greatly, or diminish its feel. Anyway, this was the only bad thing about it. Sheridan was ace, same for the new ships! Good storyline, solid action, nice introduction to the Crusade series. I liked how the script tied all this to the Drakh, and that their nasty involvement is explored further. The new characters were great!

All B5 fans must watch it!

Of all the movies "A call to Arms" is my favourite, "In the beginning" makes a wonderful prequel but generally only the very big fans of the show will really appreciate all the parts of the film. "A call to Arms" manages not only to please big fans of the show by featuring a very big event in the B5 universe, but also make a stunning stand-alone movie that anyone could enjoy.

I thought Dobro and Woodward were absolutely excellent as Dureen and Galen, characters I am certainly looking forward to seeing more of in JMS's crusade.

The music is...well, pretty bad on first listening. But eventually you'll get used to it and it does give the film a unique and different feeling to the rest of the B5 series. This is definetly the movie to watch if you want to watch one of the films to get into the series.

This is actually my favorite Babylon 5 story, this final TNT movie, and the show that came after it, "Crusade".

This is also the first Babylon 5 property that did not utilize the standard tangerine dream/Christopher Franke Soundtrack.

Instead, they used an unknown composer, Evan H Chen.

And I will admit that when I initially saw this movie I didn't like that they had changed composers. But it is only after repeated viewings and also repeated viewings of the Crusade series that I have accepted this change. The soundtrack for this movie and for the subsequent "Crusade" series was over the top, and pure techno. And as such, totally appropriate for both this movie and the series. It grows on you, eventually you cannot envision this movie and the Crusade show with any other kind of music. We don't even know where Evan H Chen came from, or where he went. These were the only properties he ever worked on.

Both this movie and the Crusade show utilize something that was only referred to once in the entire series, the Technomages. And they were also mentioned one other time in the very last Babylon 5 movie ever made, the Lost tales, "voices in the dark"

In fact they make a main character out of a technomage.

And the more that I have watched this movie the more I realize that the character of Galen played by Edward Woodward's son Peter, is actually the center of this film and the following series.

Even though he does not have a whole lot of screen time, but this only strengthens the mysteriousness of the character, who comes and goes as he wishes- he was absent in more than one of the series episodes and he is absent in maybe 2/3 of this film. But his presence, ever lingers. Because we know that he is always watching.

One of the images that I love that comes out of this film is a tiny camera mounted onto a tiny space craft.

Which is really the only exposition about Technomage gadgetry that we ever get to see. Clouding the character in mystery like this was the best thing to do, considering his nature.

The second half of this equation was Carrie Dobro as Dureena Nafeel, who provides a very rough but still sexy image of a thief, who can get out of any chains and can break into any locked room. Even in this film, her character is drawn toward the character of Galen, and they create an even closer bond in the regular series.

One thing that this movie does not really go into is the massive size of the Excalibur class ships, that was explored in the 13 episodes that we were granted for the show.

This was just one of those projects that Turner deposited a bunch of money into and then just kind of forgot about it. There actually was quite a large following for this show and this film at the time, but it just appears that the TNT network was finished with Babylon 5.

We only ever got one more Babylon 5 movie which was the voices in the dark/lost tales thing from 2008. Which I suppose was the 10 year anniversary, I wish there had been more Babylon 5 even in that form.

But so many from this show have gone beyond the Rim: Zack, G'Kar, Dr. Franklin. Vir. And even Garabaldi... they all went beyond the Rim, and they are all with Lorien now. And Garibaldi didn't like Lorien that much.

RIP.

I'm glad that I can come back to this movie and the show that was created after it. Even in the 13 episodes that we were given there is a kind of resolution in the very last episode, the one with Dr. Franklin. They finally revealed what the alien virus actually was which gave hope that it could have been eventually beaten, like Coronavirus was. And it also proved that the 13 episodes of Crusade were tied together more than they appeared. It explains how appropriate it was to have a technomage in this film and Crusade, and why that was such an important and unique plot point, the entire story revolves around it.

I thought A Call To Arms was a great Babylon 5 movie. The plot was great and the acting good. I can not look past the horrible music though that offsets the rest of the movie in every way.

I loved this movie. No conditions, no comments or concerns. I just loved it. This film wrapped up some loose ends nicely - set a time frame for the Telepath War, provided a nice culmination of Sheridan's "destroyer-scale White Star" idea from Season 5, showed the return of the technomages, presented a "clean and sober" Garibaldi years after "River of Souls," etc., etc., etc.

The underlying problem of JMS's Babylon 5 universe is that the characters was always more interesting than the universe they lived in. Narns were fun, but they were never as cool as Klingons. You only cared about Narns because G'Kar was such a great character.

Thus we have "A Call to Arms", an excuse to get a few of the regular B5 Characters to set up what was going to become "Crusade". Which might have been a great series in its own right, had TNT not blown it. (Like putting Season 5 episodes of B-5 up against new episodes of Star Trek Voyager).

Overall plot line. Galen manipulates Sheridan into realizing the Drahk threat against Earth. He teams up with an Earthforce captain and a thief from a dead race. They take two prototype ships to confront the Drahk and the leftover Shadow Planet Killer.

Bruce Boxleitner and Jerry Doyle do some good work here. But all they are doing is setting the table for a meal we never got to fully enjoy. TNT took away the meal somewhere around the soup or salad portion.

God Save us From Basic Cable.

It's five years of the Interstellar Alliance and peace reigns. President John Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner) and Mr. Garibaldi (Jerry Doyle) are testing out the new secretly built White Stars while incorporating some Vorlon tech. Garibaldi is now one of Mars' richest industralist. Sheridan is hounded by visions of impending doom. Alien thief Dureena Nafeel (Carrie Dobro) arrives on Babylon 5 and EarthForce Captain Leonard Anderson (Tony Todd) diverts his ship there, both with similar visions. The Drakh are rising.

The story is pretty good although I would hope that somebody outside the three would believe Sheridan. Apparently, Anderson's crew believes him. After everything they've been through, Garibaldi should be backing up Sheridan more. A dream is not the strangest thing in their world. It's a little disappointing to have that kind of writing. The action could be better sequenced, but there is lots of it. All of this is to set up the premise for the next series. It's solid.

I'm a huge Zack Allan fan and was disappointed that he only got one scene in the movie. This was also my favourite scene where he confiscates a character's weapons and directs her to Down Below. Unfortunately unlike Thirdspace & River of Souls, most of the action took place off station. I didn't care much for Garibaldi after the first three seasons and think Sheridan is okay but no Sinclair. I like Lochley but she only had limited screen time. If you like Crusade or space battles you should enjoy it. Personally I can only give it 1/10.

Nicely plotted, and working a good transition from B5 to the ill-fated Crusade spin-off not just in narrative but in mood - there's a general shift from politics towards mysticism (also adumbrated in Thirdspace, where the dream sequences were rather more powerful, even if they ultimately had nowhere much to go). This change of mood is underlined by Evan Chen's controversial scoring; personally I like his work for Crusade, but found his dry run here deeply mediocre.

It's a measure of how Bruce Boxleitner's stature as Sheridan has grown over four seasons of B5 that he effortlessly and charismatically takes centre-stage here. Jerry Doyle's Garibaldi is equally assured but doesn't in the end have that much to do. Of the newcomers, Carrie Dobro is probably the only one who can match up to the old timers, though Tony Todd is his usual professional self. Opinion is divided about Galen. Specifically it's divided between me and other sensible people who think Peter Woodward should have been drowned at birth, and people who aren't as sensible as me. To be fair, he's not as dreadful here as in the early episodes of Crusade. Be thankful for small mercies.

This made for TV movie was actually made to set the stage for a Babylon 5 spin off series, CRUSADE. In this movie, a huge showdown with the evil minions of the Shadows (the Drakh) is about to occur with the Earth. However, no one is aware of this and the only clues to the impending holocaust are weird dreams and visions that are experienced by Sheridan and two others who he has never met. One is the captain of an Earthforce ship, the other is an annoying and difficult to like alien named Dureena. Dureena is a thief "with an attitude" (quite the cliché) and I never warmed to her character in this movie or on the nine episodes she was in on the show CRUSADE. In addition to these characters, Galen (a reappearing character on CRUSADE) also makes his first appearance. Unlike Dureena, his character did improve over time--so the idiots producing CRUSADE decided to take him off the show. In fact, after this excellent movie with an excellent premise, it seemed like TNT (who produced the series) did everything they could do to kill it, such as moving the show about, alienating the head writer and not bothering to publicize it. It's a shame--in seeing this movie, you have a good idea of what COULD have been had the series continued receiving network support.

Overall, this movie is quite watchable and exciting, but many of the familiar characters (Delenn, Londo, Vir, others) are absent. Plus I don't know if I am being too picky, but during the big battle with the Drakh, things seemed to really drag and take forever--this part could have been tightened up a bit and would have resulted in a higher score.

Well this rates as one of my favorite B5 movies second only to In the Beginning. The movie does a fine job of setting up for the Crusade series. The scenes of Earth being attacked by the Drakh, and the Omega class destroyers along with the 2 ISA destroyer prototypes defending it is staggering. A must see if you are a B5 fan. Omega class destroyer fans will like this one.

This movie was the best out of all, as my personal opinion told me.

I loved it...

You know, I'm a big fan of Babylon 5, especially the huge fan of John Sheridan...

Whoo...

I just love his charismatic figure when he appeared on the screen.

When I just see the charisma of President Sheridan, I think I want the time to be stopped forever...

On the Scifi channel, they showed the whole series of B5 movies, and the episode 'A Call to Arms' was on it.

The side characters were making the movie greater than it already was!

Garibaldi, Galen, Lochley, and the others...

I believe they were good too...

"The best episode out of all episodes..."

That's what I'd like to call this particular episode!

It'll draw your attention right from the moment once you put your eyes onto the screen...

And you know what?

It won't let you go until you finish watching the movie...

I highly recommend this movie to the ones who didn't see this yet, and I agree with the ones who commented about this movie that this movie WAS, and still IS the great movie I've ever seen in my whole life!!

Sheridan and Garibaldi are in top form, the new ships are fabulous-looking, but--best of all--the new characters of Galen, the technomage, and Dureena, the "thief," show great potential as main characters for the coming Crusade saga. A must for B5 fans, and of interest to sci-fi fans in general if only for the special effects. Unfortunately, the only thing missing was Delenn, who would have been too much competition for Lockley and Dureena.

Good pilot movie for the following Crusade series but the script left bothersome questions that only heightened my resentment as a viewer against Sheridan's new Alliance which by all rights, Earth should have revolted against. Here, five years after the events of the Bab 5 series, Sheridan is still President as is the Russian lady of Earth. Are there no elections for these presidencies? Not only that, Sheridan is secretly building two massive warships based on Volrlon tech without permission from anyone. Where's the legislature? Is Sheridan an unelected dictator? It's questions like these that have always turned me against Sheriden in the end and forced me to side with Earth.

This is a pretty good movie. Not the best but very good. The music on the other hand is abysmal. On top of that, they opt for no sound during dramatic moments *except* for the music.

This is also the same type of music used in the B5 spin-off "Crusade". Now I'm not going to lay the blame for Crusade's failure solely on the music but it was definitely a contributing factor in my opinion. It just gives it a chintzy kinda feel. They could and should have done better for both this movie and the show.

A Call to Arms is by far the best of the B5 movies. They had a great story, excellent effects and okay music. A Call to Arms acts like something as a send off to the old characters from B5. The movie also had a spine tingling ending that set the pace for Crusade, the B5 spin off TNT cancelled for no good reason. Thumbs way up on this one.

"A Call to Arms" is a pretty good movie. Sorry that sounds kind of blah, but it's true. Entertaining, but not epic. Guess I kinda got spoiled on "In the Beginning", a vastly more thought-provoking and involving movie than this. But, I have to agree with a previous reviewer...the music was abysmal. This "The Fifth Element"-esque dribble almost literally caused pain to my ears. The music should complement and enhance the program, not distract from it, as this did. I sincerely hope the upcoming series pays attention to what works: a classical piece of some kind...something kind of dark and gloomy, since, after-all, the premise of the series is the death of mankind, with an uplifting fanfare for victories achieved by the crew. Then again, Hanson vocals would have been better than what was chosen. Change the music, and I'll watch as a devoted fan.

Ok, lets make this clear before there are any nasty words being thrown my way. I LOVE babylon 5 ok? But i felt disappointed with this movie :(

The reason why i felt disapointed with this movie is because i think that you have to be *really* into Babylon 5 if u r to enjoy this movie! I admit, it had some class bits and the "White star Destroyers" were brilliant! But like alot of you have mentioned, the music drove me to destraction and also i felt that it "took to long" getting to the point!

Sheridan was at his finest in this movie but i REALLY missed Delenn! I loved that girl! Galen and Durenna were also great actors, altho i still miss whats her name (I KNOW I'VE SPELT THEIR NAMES WRONG!!) Ivonnva, that girl had class! Not to mention a very sharp tongue! The story line, settings and design of this movie was first rate, but towards the end i was just thinking "Blow up the stupid planet and lemme go!" How poor was that?

I'm not taking the mick outta this movie, i loved it! And it is alot more better than "River of Souls" but it doesn't appeal to me in a way such as "Thirdspace" did or even "In the beginning" did, i dunno, may be sometime in the near future i'll love it just as much but for now, i'll watch it bit by bit by bit...

I thought A Call To Arms was a superbly entertaining hour-and-a-half of television. Much, much better than Thirdspace, and far better paced and structured than the very good but very *flawed* In The Beginning.

The much-criticised music was, in my opinion, excellent. It was perfectly in sync with the more cutting-edge, 'funkier' tone set by the visuals and script, both of which were noticeably different to B5's.

Evan Chen certainly brings a new sound to the B5 universe, and gives ACtA and Crusade a whole new musical flavour. At times it was too intrusive, but that was partly down to JMS' tendency to always have the music too loud on the soundtrack. The casio-keyboard instrument was a bit irritating for a few seconds of the entire film...

Generally, however, the music moved the film along wonderfully, giving it a very kinetic feel. This music has far more potential already than another classical score. As good as the Williams-Horner-Arnold scores are, do we really want *another* imitation?

The B5/Crusade crew have tried something new. And it worked; not everywhere, but it worked. And it'll get better. And better.