This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Return to Babylon 5 as the epic interstellar saga continues with The Road Home. Travel across the galaxy with John Sheridan as he unexpectedly finds himself transported through multiple timelines and alternate realities in a quest to find his way back home. Along the way he reunites with some familiar faces, while discovering cosmic new revelations about the history, purpose, and meaning of the Universe.
For thoughts on Babylon 5: The Road Home, please check out our discussion on The Video Attic:
Video Quality
Babylon 5: The Road Home comes to 4K UHD Blu-Ray with a 2160p transfer that is impressive with a unique visual style that has been played with only a little bit in the DC Animation line of originals. This disc provides some pleasing improvements over the Blu-Ray in areas including more range within the colors and the elimination of almost all digital artifacts and anomalies. This feature leans into an animation style shifting more three-dimensional and overtly digital. This disc delivers terrific line detail and more distinct shading, which gives these characters proper definition within the settings. This presentation wields a strong hand over the gradients of the artwork in a way that avoids any signs of banding.
The implementation of HDR yields some fetching enhancements to the array of colors on display from the most vibrant times and locations to some of the more visually subdued spaces that Sheridan ends up in. This film handles the shift between these different environments effortlessly with formidable saturation. The disc provides immensely strong black levels for a joyous viewing experience free of black crush, along with firmer highlights that never veer into blooming. The Blu-Ray cannot touch the level of accuracy delivered by the 4K UHD Blu-Ray. Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has offered up a mighty disc for this one.
Audio Quality
This release features a DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track that handles the journey quite well. The pleasing score is balanced well with the competing sounds, allowing exchanges to come through clearly. The track engages all of the channels with some lively panning effects and sounds of explosions that transport you to the action. There is a solid amount of activity in the low-end which will give your subwoofer a bit of a workout. The quieter moments fare even better in terms of clarity and complexity. There are no obvious sync issues or other anomalies present to ruin the experience. Warner Bros. has delivered a track that should please most fans. There are optional English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles provided.
Special Features
- Audio Commentary: Creator/writer/executive producer J. Michael Straczynski, actor Bruce Boxleitner and supervising producer Rick Morales provide a decent commentary track in which they discuss how the film came about, honoring the legacy of the cast members who are no longer with us, enhancing the world for animation, grounding the story in an emotional place, how this fits into the series and more. There are some moments when the participants are silently watching the film, but Morales tries to keep things moving.
- Babylon 5 Forever An 18-minute featurette in which the cast and creative team discusses continuing this story in animated form, how Straczynski’s history with animation was a benefit to the team, bringing the original remaining cast members back to voice their characters, the responsibility felt by those stepping into certain roles, the joys of returning to this world and much more that makes for a good featurette.
Final Thoughts
Babylon 5: The Road Home is a slight but fun adventure that is a lot more welcoming to established fans of the franchise than newcomers. There is a lot of joy in having these characters in your life once again for what amounts to an extended version of a normal episode executed in a different medium. The series is very careful to not sully the legacy of the classic series while finding ways to set up a potential continuation if this release does well enough. This narrative will not blow you away, but it does its fan service quite well. Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has released a 4K UHD Blu-Ray featuring a fantastic A/V presentation and a few worthy special features. Newcomers may want to sample the classic series before starting here, but longtime fans should find this to be a good investment. Recommended
Babylon 5: The Road Home is currently available on 4K UHD Blu-Ray, Blu-Ray and Digital.
Note: Images presented in this review are not reflective of the image quality of the 4K UHD Blu-Ray.
Disclaimer: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has supplied a copy of this disc free of charge for review purposes. All opinions in this review are the honest reactions of the author.
Dillon is most comfortable sitting around in a theatre all day watching both big budget and independent movies.