Lennier's Tears
Regular
Well. Unlike my experience with Thirdspace yesterday, The River of Souls actually IS as terrible as I remember it. Possibly even more terrible. I may have repressed some of this memory. I'm not here to harsh anyone's squee, but I also can't lie ... You can see me wax lyrical about the genius that is Babylon 5 in just about every single thread I've posted in on these boards, but The River of Souls is just really not my cup of tea. It honestly makes me wonder what the hell happened to my favorite show.
It's not because it's yet another evil archaeologist story, although that certainly doesn't help. Dr. Bryson, the "archaeologist" is a terrible, terrible person. And where the hell did he get his PhD? Even accepting that archaeology in the Babylon 5 universe is a for-profit business and not ever research for the sake of knowledge, his methods are some of the worst I've seen among fictional archaeologists. In fact, I don't see anything that remotely looks like archaeology in this whole movie. There's only some stuff that vaguely looks like mining, and like grave robbing.
The holo-brothel story is ... urgh. It'd be one thing if Babylon 5 always had had a holo-brothel and it was some established thing. But now they had to invent it just for the movie, and what do you know, of course there's a Captain Lochley model.
A lot of the stuff in this movie felt like a "wink wink nudge nudge" inside joke or something. What's with that weird lawyer story? It seems to be making fun of the late 20th century US legal system the creators of the show would have been familiar with. Inside the Babylon 5 world, it just doesn't make that much sense. So, all of Earth joined together in the Earth Alliance, and they decided that of all the systems in the world, the late 20th century/early 21st century legal system in the US was the best one? Seems HIGHLY unlikely.
On the plus side, I like seeing more of Corwin, even if he brings that ridiculous bat.
It's not because it's yet another evil archaeologist story, although that certainly doesn't help. Dr. Bryson, the "archaeologist" is a terrible, terrible person. And where the hell did he get his PhD? Even accepting that archaeology in the Babylon 5 universe is a for-profit business and not ever research for the sake of knowledge, his methods are some of the worst I've seen among fictional archaeologists. In fact, I don't see anything that remotely looks like archaeology in this whole movie. There's only some stuff that vaguely looks like mining, and like grave robbing.
The holo-brothel story is ... urgh. It'd be one thing if Babylon 5 always had had a holo-brothel and it was some established thing. But now they had to invent it just for the movie, and what do you know, of course there's a Captain Lochley model.
A lot of the stuff in this movie felt like a "wink wink nudge nudge" inside joke or something. What's with that weird lawyer story? It seems to be making fun of the late 20th century US legal system the creators of the show would have been familiar with. Inside the Babylon 5 world, it just doesn't make that much sense. So, all of Earth joined together in the Earth Alliance, and they decided that of all the systems in the world, the late 20th century/early 21st century legal system in the US was the best one? Seems HIGHLY unlikely.
On the plus side, I like seeing more of Corwin, even if he brings that ridiculous bat.
