It's been a few years since the last foray into the B5 universe (Sci-Fi's The Legend of the Rangers film that was a ratings disaster since it was against a major sporting event), and it feels good to have even just a couple more stories. The straight-to-DVD Lost Tales makes use of modern updates in computer graphics technology and looks gorgeous in 480p. The stories even manage to feel like classic Babylon 5 tales, if unfortunately a bit more sparsely populated.
The first tale involving Colonel Lockley manages to resonate with quite a few major B5 episodes prior (and some of the telefilms). It's simple and quiet and a decent opener. I felt it lacked a bit in subtlety and didn't seem much more than a "one-off episode", but as such it worked.
The second involving Sheridan and a young Centauri prince on the other hand made up for some of the depth that I thought the first tale lacked. It mentioned the passing of two of the series' brighter stars (Richard Biggs and Andreas Katsulas), and the great tragedy of Londo Mollari. It celebrated the rise of the Interstellar Alliance and the foretold death of Sheridan. It had a great scene with Teryl Rothery (the Stargate compound's greatest doctor). It even had Galen doing his psuedo-mystical thing.
There was a quick passing reference to Sheridan's son David that had me curious if there was a very deep connection there. (There are rumors in Babylon 5 that David goes on to some sort of trouble...)
Hopefully the proposed follow up film on Garibaldi will be just as good.
I'm still hoping for a little closure to Crusade, though. Not on the Drakh plague (it's having a solution was pretty much a given, since B5 had scenes of Earth set after the Drakh plague), which was always obviously a red herring from the real quest. I'm still wondering about the larger issues (hints have been leaked in the remaining season 1 scripts that have been made available)...