Babylon 5: River of Souls (1998)

Babylon 5: River of Souls (1998)

Directed by: Janet Greek

Starring: Jerry Doyle, Tracy Scoggins, Jeff Conaway

You know, I really like Babylon 5. I think it’s one of the better written TV shows ever made. The caveat being that that’s only covering the first four seasons. The fifth season and the TV movies that TNT made that take place after the fifth season, well… they’re all pretty much shit.

An archaeologist finds a ball with a billion souls in it, and decides to bring it to Babylon 5 and go crazy. Of course. As seen in a first season episode of the show, the balls full of souls belong to a race called Soul Takers, and one of them (Martin Sheen) comes to the station to try and get it back. Also, there’s an extended subplot about a guy who runs a “holographic brothel”.

This movie’s dumb and the only good character from the show that’s in it is Garibaldi, but what really makes River of Souls stand out as truly terrible is Martin Sheen’s laughably awful performance. You see him in this movie and you start to wonder if he actually used to be in real movies, or if it’s just that he’s in so many bad movies that it starts to seem like he was a real actor. His performance in River of Souls make his performance in Spawn look like he was Lawrence Olivier. It’s really, really, REALLY bad. “Phoning it in” doesn’t even begin to cover it, it’s just… I have no more words. It’s so bad.