Babylon 5/Recap/Film/02 Thirdspace

John, whenever something comes into our proximity that has to do with the unknown, your eyes light up like two tiny suns. And do you know what words these two tiny lights spell out? Mine! Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine!

—Delenn

This movie contains examples of:

• Artifact of Doom
• Bigger Bads: The Thirdspace insectoids. The Vorlons are terrified of them, which is about all you need to know.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Eventually happens to most of the station.
  • Not even the Vorlons were immune. The thing was taken by those that had been taken over by the aliens.
• Break the Haughty: The Vorlons
• Continuity Snarl: This film simply does not fit anywhere in the show, continuity-wise, which is unusual for a Myth Arc show like Babylon 5. Various issues include the presence and absence of particular characters, Zack Allen's wearing of the new uniform, and the destruction of an entire fighter squadron just not lining up at all in the relatively narrow space of episodes in the fourth season that the film is supposed to fit into, between the Shadow War and the Earth Alliance Civil War.
  • The best-known B5 fan site, the Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5, places it during the episode Atonement. And even that is problematic - Vir states that Londo is back on Centauri Prime, but he doesn't seem to have left the station since The Illusion of Truth.
• Deadpan Snarker: Commander Ivanova.
• Deflector Shields: The Artifact, when activated, is protected by a nigh-impervious shield. Ditto for the ships that begin to exit from it.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: Thirdspace.
• Fling a Light Into the Future: This is apparently part of Lyta's function should the younger races encounter anything the Vorlons accidentally left behind.
• Immune to Bullets: The scout ships used by the Thirdspace Aliens are impervious to the weapons mounted on Starfuries, thanks to their Deflector Shields.
• Jews Love to Argue: The Rosen brothers. They've been at it for ten years.
• Love Confession: When Zack encounters Lyta alone in a turbolift he takes the opportunity to tell her he likes her. She, however, is in a Vorlon-induced trance brought about by the presence of the Artifact, and doesn't seem aware of what's going on. Zack takes this to mean she's not interested.
• Madness Mantra: Lyta keeps repeating, "There is danger, remember."
  • Also crosses with Room Full of Crazy when she writes it all over the walls of her quarters.
• More Teeth Than the Osmond Family: The Thirdspace bugs.
• Nuclear Option: Captain Sheridan's plan, no less.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Vorlons never thought about what might come out when they opened the gate.
  • And of course, our heroes found it and brought it home with them.
• Pride: The Vorlons, speaking through Lyta, admit this as the cause. They began to believe those who thought they were gods.
• Reality Warper: The artifact begins affecting minds and draining power as soon as it enters Babylon 5 space, and that's before it's even turned on.
• Recycled in Space: Heavily inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, according to the producers.
• Sealed Evil in a Can
• Space Pirates: The Raiders, who appear in the film's intro in a dogfight with Commander Ivanova and Delta Squadron.
• Starfish Alien: The Thirdspace aliens look like...a beanbag chair on a bunch of tentacles.
  • They were intentionally designed by the producers to be as alien as possible, so that the viewer would take one look at them, and decide that they looked fundamentally wrong somehow.
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The Thirdspace aliens are even older than the Vorlons were.
• You Have Got to Be Kidding Me!:
  • Sheridan expresses this of his own plan, once he sets out to navigate his way through a massive, ongoing fleet battle to sneak aboard the Artifact and plant a nuke, in a dinky spacesuit.
  • Where most characters would have suffered a Heroic BSOD, or at least an Oh Crap moment, Ivanova merely expresses one of these when she realizes that an entire fleet of massive Thirdspace alien warships is about to come out of the artifact. She seems less worried and more exasperated that the universe has found a new way to torment her.