B5 spinoff series Crusade not too shabby

[sidious618]

I enjoyed it and I thought it could have become better. I thought Gary Cole was a good choice for lead and Galen was an interesting character.

 

[Mr. B]

I think the show had a lot of potential had it been given another two seasons and a little more money.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

I bought the Crusade DVD collection and was really starting to enjoy it, it had some interesting characters and it could have really taken off, pity the canned it before it had time to really take bite.

 

[DS9Continuing]

I never cared at all for Trace, largely because he seemed "shoehorned" into the cast and story. At least he was aprt of the catalyst for one of my favorite lines from the series, in this episode no less:
Dureena: "Gods, I'm drownign in an ocean of testosterone."
Max: "Don't worry, you're equipped with floataton devices."

huzzah! I forgot about that line!

As for Trace, he is exactly what he appears to be - a character shoehorned in against JMS's will. I suspect he's as boring as he is because JMS, either consciously or not, deliberately sabotaged him in a fit of pique and spite against TNT.

 

[Jan]

As for Trace, he is exactly what he appears to be - a character shoehorned in against JMS's will. I suspect he's as boring as he is because JMS, either consciously or not, deliberately sabotaged him in a fit of pique and spite against TNT.

Do we actually know that Trace was forced on JMS? I don't recall his saying that. We know that Keffer in B5 was what PTEN wanted instead of a pilot character that JMS did want, but I only recall TNT wanting Trace introduced by name earlier in an episode.

It seems a little odd that two networks would both want a pilot character added.

BTW, for those who've never seen them, the B5 music videos that JMS commissioned to take to conventions are online now. The Scripts Team has a page where you can access all of them at: http://www.Babylon5scripts.com/videos

Jan

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

It seems a little odd that two networks would both want a pilot character added.

Not so much of a stretch as suits are always looking to turn anything remotely science fiction into Star Wars with the rouge Han Solo-type, hotshot pilot.

 

[JoeD80]

I think a lot of the show's following comes from the mystique of the might-have-beens, not the what-actually-was.

No. I like it for what it is. What's there is great. I love the show as it stands. It's got nothing to do with what I think might have been. Bear in mind I also jumped on the B5 train in 2005, so I didn't go through all this stuff about it being on-the-air, is it canceled, etc., so I knew I was only getting 13 episodes with Crusade.

One problem is that it appears to have been so underbudgeted that there are episodes where the director doesn't even seem to have gotten enough coverage for the show to be competently assembled.

What episodes are these?

One the one hand, JMS was clearly recycling ideas and dialogue and the standalone episodes weren't that good.

What ideas and dialogue were being recycled? The show took place in the B5 universe so naturally, some of the things that occur in the B5 universe are going to occur in Crusade. I don't know what dialogue this refers to though?

that it's alive and malicious, and that Gideon would become the Box or be absorbed into it or something like that.

Gideon was going to die at the end of the first season and then be revived but merged with the box in an "unfortunate way" (that's what jms said in Joe Nazzaro's interview book)

I don't lament that it didn't last as long as Babylon 5, but I do lament that it wasn't at least given enough episodes to wrap up the story.

Except that enough episodes to wrap up the story would have been just as long as Babylon 5:

Not as such, though Crusade is a 5 year story.

The fifth season of B5 was shot on a 6-day schedule, instead of the typical 7 days...

That's not so very surprising either.

Why's that? The scripts were the same length.

 

[Tulin]

I heard Galen was going to become a mage.

Quoting myself here.

I meant Captain Gideon.

It was very late when I posted the initial comment.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I'll never know what an Apocalypse Box is!

AFAIK, it is a device that has something special inside it:

Spoiler: Box

a piece of a Vorlon

 

[AJBryant]

There were still some really touching stories -- like the one with the stellar graveyard. I still tear-up when I watch it.

Galen had the best lines. "She knew the 16 words to make a man fall hopelessly in love, but she only needed one. 'Hello'."

 

[Harvey]

Except that enough episodes to wrap up the story would have been just as long as Babylon 5.

According to the original plan, sure. But needed to close out the virus story-line and drop the needed hints about the technomages and the Apocalypse Box? Doable within the end of a second season, and probably less, if the boring standalones were cast aside.

 

[broberfett]

I would have watched it, but they cancelled it before it was even on tv. So they just showed a few episodes out of order and then it was done without even waiting for ratings. The Strazinski guy and the suits couldn't get along.

 

[Jan]

I would have watched it, but they cancelled it before it was even on tv. So they just showed a few episodes out of order and then it was done without even waiting for ratings.

TNT did show all of the episodes. They showed them in the order that they'd mandated (which I believe is the same order the DVD has them) with the black uniform episodes (which were filmed after a hiatus where the uniforms were changed and additional sets built) being shown before the grey (original) uniform episodes. That caused the production folks to do some dialogue replacement to try to keep the change as minimally noticeable as possible.

The Strazinski guy and the suits couldn't get along.

Which was deliberately orchestrated by TNT. For an example of some of the creative notes, here's an actual memo regarding some of them and some more samples are [url=http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17090]here, which include:

"We'd like to have one of the characters include a sexual explorer, so when they make contact with a new race, his or her job is to go and have sex with them."

"We want to see more fist-fights on the bridge."

"We'd like to see an episode worked around a wrestler, since wrestling is hot
right now."

A year or so afterward, JMS met somebody who'd worked for TNT who told him that the idea was to make it impossible to make the show so that TNT could get out of their contract.

Jan

 

[Starfleet Engineer]

So, this thing about the episodes being shown out of order, black uniforms, gray uniforms. Is this gonna cause me to and not understand what's going on?

 

[RandyS]

I think the show had a lot of potential

I did too, but it didn't live up to it.

The biggest problem for me was making this show part of the Babylon 5 universe. B5 was a special, once in a lifetime experience. If Crusdae had been an independent creation, it might have worked. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.

 

[JoeD80]

Except that enough episodes to wrap up the story would have been just as long as Babylon 5.

According to the original plan, sure. But needed to close out the virus story-line and drop the needed hints about the technomages and the Apocalypse Box? Doable within the end of a second season

Getting the virus story out of the way in season two was already part of the 5-year plan. The main arc wasn't going to be about that according to jms. If Crusade had gone two seasons and then been canceled, there likely would be other questions we'd have no answers too!

 

[Jan]

So, this thing about the episodes being shown out of order, black uniforms, gray uniforms. Is this gonna cause me to and not understand what's going on?

No, you won't have any trouble that way. There are just some inconsitancies such as two characters who seem to meet for the first time twice and a discovery that's made after it's been used already. As an earlier poster mentioned, there's no way of ordering the episodes to avoid any of the issues so just be prepared for them.

Jan

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

The biggest problem for me was making this show part of the Babylon 5 universe. B5 was a special, once in a lifetime experience. If Crusdae had been an independent creation, it might have worked. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.

I'm not sure that Crusade would've been better segregated from Babylon 5 since so much of the series was so dependent on the mythos of the parent series. Although, TNT could not make up there minds of how much they wanted B5 present in Crusade.

In fact, the original title of the series was The Babylon Project: Crusade. That got shortened to Crusade. I'm sure Jan could speak with more authority on the subject as well as JMS's original desire to make a spin-off that featured the previous B5 cast and be about the building of the Intersteller Alliance. TNT, iirc, wanted something that had an all-new cast.

 

[Mr Light]

Many lines of dialogue were lifted wholesale from previous characters and episodes in B5. I recall Galen being particularly guilty in this. I've noticed the same thing happen in JMS' Spider-Man comics which I've just read for the first time.

 

[Mr Light]

^^
Yeah, I remember when it was first announced it was going to star the Rangers (who ended up getting a cameo role) and Zathras was going to be a regular (!!!) but he never appeared.

From the spoilers I've read on where it was gonna go, it certainly sounded like a promising series. And I thought the music and CGI was great; well, sometimes the CGI was dodgy.