his curious little "Guide" contains a melange of sights and sounds from the Babylon 5 universe, presented in a chaotic storm of multimedia.
There are five main sections to explore. Ships contains a selection of spacecraft from the show, each with some explanatory text and a movie showing it in action, or inaction, as the case may be. Governments is a similar list of 16 governments, each with text and a movie from the show that features a representative of that nation. The Directory is a catalog of the show's main characters, again with a movie clip showing them at their best or worst, and brief biographical material.
Ah-Puc's Weapons displays all kinds of pistols, rifles, swords and staves that have appeared in the show, but without any descriptions. Only a few have movie clips demonstrating their effectiveness; most have just a close-up view. Finally, Places To See is a directory of locations on the Babylon 5 station itself. Each has a big picture and a description. Bars, pubs and other drinking establishments predominate, and clicking on some of the drinks brings up a supplemental screen with a quote or sometimes a recipe.
In addition to the main sections, there is a screen which will play the station's different warning sirens (Fire, Decompression, Infestation, etc.), either individually or all at once (talk about bad news!). Another sound-oriented screen, the Babcom terminal, plays random dialog clips from the show.
This is official?
Frankly, this CD-ROM is an unfocused accumulation of digital babble. Oh, it's cleverly programmed, easy to navigate and full of eye candy, but obviously little careful thought went into planning the content. No amount of flashing lights, morphs or nifty wipes can hide this disc's emptiness. It's certainly not a guide to Babylon 5, neither the station nor the television program. After all, what makes the show so popular, so good? Is it spaceships? Perhaps somewhat. Guns? A little. Governments? Sort of. But most of all it's the stories that make it good, the events and people that drive the saga forward week after week. Yet this disc contains no history, no reference to the stories. It just has stuff.
And there are holes in the stuff. For instance, the Governments list omits the Vorlons, not to mention the Shadows. And the Ships section has no Shadow ships, even though they are clearly a fan favorite.
One thing the disc does have is plenty of movies. There are lots of short clips of the key characters, as well as enormous coverage of the ships in action, which is fun. But other than that, there's little to recommend this guide. It's surprising that J. Michael Straczynski, who has a reputation for demanding high standards of quality (witness the show), agreed to put his name on this. Anyone looking for in-depth Babylon 5 information would be better served going to one of the fan-operated Web sites such as the Lurker's Guide or Voltayre's Encyclopedia Xenobiologica. They lack video, but people who want to watch the show should just watch the show!
