B5 spinoff series Crusade not too shabby

[Guy Gardener]

As I recall it was for the series. I'll check when I get home from work.

Jan

ETA: It was definitely for the series. Also, in addition to Tracy Scoggins, JMS suggested Michael York for consideration for the new Captain.

Wow, York is just horrible. I mean when he was young and pretty it was one thing, but Gilmore Girls and Sea Quest DSV... But Having a ham like Arthur just perched on the edge of this guys reason as everyone mentions "Hey? Didn't you start the earth Minibari war?" ...Which would deliciously make him alpha to Sinclair's omega... So he's "sleepwalking" as Arthur and...

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Emphasis mine
ETA: It was definitely for the series. Also, in addition to Tracy Scoggins, JMS suggested Michael York for consideration for the new Captain.

JMS really wanted to put Michael York in charge didn't he? First as John Strider (Sheridan) in the second season of Babylon 5. Then in Crusade. I think he's an interesting choice and wonder occasionally how he'd have been had he been chosen instead of Bruce Boxleitner. A little less cowboy, I'd imagine. More Arthurian I bet.

As for Scoggins, I wouldn't have minded her as Captain of the Excalibur. I liked her more than Claudia Christian. Moreover, Lochley had a bit more bite to her as a commanding officer -- former drug addict and alcoholic, on the other side of the Earth Civil War and went toe-to-toe with Garabaldi.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

When he dropped hints in his famed "holographic storytelling" way on the original series, it was a fairly new way of working, and caught many viewers off guard.

What is "holographic storytelling"?

Basically, it's like this:

Spoiler: B5

Most of the original B5 is a holodeck recreation, made by the Rangers some time after the fact.

 

[RAMA]

What I heard from people here was that this series wasn't worth the time. I've watched the first couple of episodes and must say that I like the cast and the stories aren't too bad. The only problem is Captain Gideon doesn't have the look and his hair is horribly 1978. Otherwise, he acts and sounds like a captain. Daniel Dae Kim seems like a great first officer and the doctor, archeologist/linguist, the alien woman from Call to Arms, and Galen are all pretty interesting.

Another interesting thing is this series seems to take something from Doctor Who and old scifi of the 60s in it's incidental music and, so far, the aliens seems somewhat cartoonish with big heads and big eyes. Also it has some pretty bad CGI effects with that gold dragon and some of the landscapes, which seems usual for something B5 related. (Insert comment about it being state of the art at the time here.)

Also, I'm liking that the series seems to be an attempt at merging space opera scifi with some fantasy.

What's your opinion?

Very amateurish series, production and story-wise.

RAMA

 

[Plain Simple]

When he dropped hints in his famed "holographic storytelling" way on the original series, it was a fairly new way of working, and caught many viewers off guard.

What is "holographic storytelling"?

Basically, it's like this:

Spoiler: B5

Most of the original B5 is a holodeck recreation, made by the Rangers some time after the fact.

Please refresh my memory. I can't remember this ever being stated/said/shown in any of the on screen B5 material? It's entirely possible that I forgot or is it in the books? Or perhaps it is the Word of God (no B5 spoilers under the link). Was the storytelling based on that idea although it was never made explicit?

 

[ATimson]

Please refresh my memory. I can't remember this ever being stated/said/shown in any of the on screen B5 material?

The general idea (that

Spoiler

B5 was a recreation

) comes from the very end of "Sleeping in Light". Some of the details may have been fudged by the other poster in order to make a joke, though. :thumbsup:

 

[Jan]

What is "holographic storytelling"?

To give this a more serious answer, here's what JMS said about it in Volume 1 of the script books:

Structurally, the idea of a five-year arc was nearly unheard of in television at that time. We were creating a new kind of storytelling, which a fan aptly nicknamed “holographic storytelling.” If you imagine the episodes as panes of glass on which each story is etched, they look one way if you examine them straight on, one at a time...but if you line them up and look through them as a group, suddenly a much larger story emerges.

That's one of the reasons why so many of us like watching the show multiple times. At first the viewer doesn't see that the larger story is being built up a little more in each episode.

And yes, B5 is a history. That's why all of the opening sequences were in the past tense.

Jan

 

[Plain Simple]

^The history part is quite clear (imo), just wondering about the 'holographic'. Thanks for the explanation!

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The general idea (that

Spoiler

B5 was a recreation

) comes from the very end of "Sleeping in Light".

And from the narration we often hear.

 

[Kolrad]

Let me rephrase the question? What specific dialogue? I am curious to exact quotes, because I don't recall any. Maybe a phrase or two that jms likes to use a lot ("after a fashion" comes to mind) but *whole lines of dialogue lifted wholesale?* Which ones? I just don't have the greatest memory when it comes to dialogue.

It's been quite a while since I watched Crusade, but I remember someone re-using Kosh's "And so it begins" line from B5's "Chrysalis."

I'm sure there are also instances of different characters using expressions that are very similar to those used by other JMS characters, since this happened on Babylon 5 (Probably the most cringe-inducing example is in the season 2 opener when Sheridan remarks that the last time he saw a Minbari cruiser, "I sent it straight to hell," and not three minutes later, Ivanova says that since Sinclair left the station, "Everything has gone straight to hell.")

 

[David cgc]

Good point. No one on that show ever went to hell on the scenic route, or had to go to the bathroom on the way. That's more of a verbal tick, though. And it could be explained as a popular phrase of the era. Count how many times you hear "at the end of the day," for instance. That one's become a lot more popular recently. I hear it two, three times some days.

 

[DarKush]

Like many of you I also liked Crusade. It had potential and I wished that it could've gotten a full run. If not that, I would love to see the story play out in comics or novels.

I thought the cast was pretty good. Cole made an excellent captain. Didn't care for some of the shoddy FX, but I loved both versions of the uniforms-the dark ones the best though.

I too didn't mind the network forced pilot. I actually liked it better than JMS's intended pilot, for the most part.

 

[Jan]

Small nitpick: Crusade never had a pilot episode. Pilots are episodes made for the sake of selling a show which is why some TV movies get called a 'backdoor' pilot, because they're not commissioned as such but end up selling a show. Crusade was commissioned without one.

Jan

 

[DWF]

I don't think it's much of a stretch to call A Call To Arms something of a pilot for Crusade, it does set up the premise of the series.

 

[Neroon]

I don't think it's much of a stretch to call A Call To Arms something of a pilot for Crusade, it does set up the premise of the series.

Although I see you point - and it does make sense - the thing is that jms himself specifically explains it the way Jan describes. But then again, there's no harm in viewing "A Call To Arms" as a pilot of sorts.

 

[Jan]

Although I see you point - and it does make sense - the thing is that jms himself specifically explains it the way Jan describes. But then again, there's no harm in viewing "A Call To Arms" as a pilot of sorts.

Most people think of 'pilot' episodes as those which set up the universe and characters and as such, "A Call to Arms" does fulfill some of those functions even though the characters that will be in Crusade are limited to Galen, Dureena and Lochley.

Jan

 

[JoeD80]

Plus jms said:

No, A Call to Arms isn't a Crusade pilot, it's a B5 movie that
somewhat sets the stage for the new show, but is not a part of it.

 

[Pilot Ace]

It's been quite a while since I watched Crusade, but I remember someone re-using Kosh's "And so it begins" line from B5's "Chrysalis."

I'm relatively sure that was Galen.

But, I think that line had a very meta aspect to it, a strong nod toward everything that had come before and to signal another beginning to a new story that had just begun.

It'd also be a hint toward the Technomage's origin as revealed in the trilogy of books.

 

[chrisspringob]

Let me rephrase the question? What specific dialogue? I am curious to exact quotes, because I don't recall any. Maybe a phrase or two that jms likes to use a lot ("after a fashion" comes to mind) but *whole lines of dialogue lifted wholesale?* Which ones? I just don't have the greatest memory when it comes to dialogue.

It's been quite a while since I watched Crusade, but I remember someone re-using Kosh's "And so it begins" line from B5's "Chrysalis."

I think you might be mixing up repeated lines. "And so it begins" is repeated *within* Babylon 5 (spoken by Delenn in "Parliament of Dreams" and then by Kosh in "Chrysalis", if memory serves). I don't think it's used again in Crusade.

However, "Expect me when you see me" is both used by G'Kar in "Chrysalis" and by Galen in two different instances in Crusade (I think "War Zone" and "Racing the Night".) The line was first used by Gandalf in Lord of the Rings.

 

[Jan]

However, "Expect me when you see me" is both used by G'Kar in "Chrysalis" and by Galen in two different instances in Crusade (I think "War Zone" and "Racing the Night".) The line was first used by Gandalf in Lord of the Rings.

Hardly, though that may have been the first instance you were aware of it. "Expect me when you see me" was something my mother grew up hearing and saying in the 1920's, long before "Lord of the Rings" was written. I don't have any reason to think it was new then.

Jan