Crusades....that bad or just me?

[Phenix]

I've been trying to watch Crusades and I'm to the point where I might just force myself to finish it and see if it gets better. I've been watching in JMS' preferred order but I've yet to find any storyline. I think I've also figured out why TNT decided to put it out in a different order. It just doesn't make much sense.

Its not good enough to watch in the original order. I'm 5 painful eps in. I at least like Galen. He is amusing and the Dureen character does have some nice cleavage but Gideon is a disaster. I loved how he got holier than thou when they discovered the other civilization that faced the Shadow plague. The man is career military and he has the nerve to say we'd never kill those people. I always find scenes like that to be nauseating. You know, us humans are such kind and gentle souls. We'd never kill anyone.

O and what is up with the low body count in the Drakh battle over Earth? 6,000 dead with 250 Destroyers destroyed... It didn't look like anyone was abandoning ship during Call To Arms. Even so that just leaves 24 dead Humans per destroyed Destroyer... So silly.

OK, end of the rant.

[P-90_177]

crusade isn't exactly a good series. it's why it got pulled. I love the victory class destroyer and to be honest i like gideon and galen but the rest of the cast i just don't get on with.

I just have it on my hardrive for completeness.

As for the death toll.......i never really considered it but that really doesn't make sense. interesting that.

[Anubis69]

Hmm. It has it's moments. I watched it in the DVD order (and i've only got the last episode to go) but it's the generic sci-fi actions bits that annoy me most. Gideon's flying motorbike thing, perpetual pathetic fist fights, alien of the week among others... But it does have some good episodes and some great character moments ("Well of Forever" and "Path of Sorrows" immediately spring to mind). It's a shame Galen isn't in it more though. Galen always makes an episode better.

Plus, it's awesome seeing things tie in with the technomage trilogy.

[deathskull]

well i liked crusade personaly

it worked in any orde
the first and the last are the best eps plus the dead civilsisation ep was funny

[Xicer]

Well I think one of the reasons it wasn't that great was because it didn't really get to prove itself, I mean this was a show that was supposed to run for 5 years just like Babylon 5 so a lot of the first season would have been buildup.

That and the fact that TNT started screwing around with the production five episodes in which created a number of problems for the show.

[P-90_177]

i think one of it's problems was that it lost alot of the things that made B5 great. Most of the characters weren't as well written (apart from Galen and Gideon) and they got rid of most aliens. Instead it became of a planet of the week, almost like the next generation. I'm sure that it could have been much much beter but the first season just wasn't good enough to capture peoples imaginations and i'm not surprised.

[Phantom Limb]

it was cancelled before it even aired! it didnt get a chance.
i to heard that TNT were screwing around with the show but apparently they were giving JMS increasingly ridiculous notes in order to get him to call it quits because if TNT pulled it they would lose out on a lot of money.

so, TNT=scum

just a personal opinion i'd like to share there, the series itself, weeeell it was ok i seem to remember some reasonably decent eps and funny moments but i have no idea what peter woodward was on, his performance was.....unique, ham with plenty of cheese on top and then some more ham, laying it on thick.

but then the lost tales cured those ills i think, maybe in the future if all goes to plan we'll get a further tale from the crusade story in a lost tales DVD.

[Kick-Kinsey]

TNT were clueless, the spin-off crusade was supposed to start with he movie A Call To Arms (1999). TNT like Fox have no idea about showing a series in order, they forgot get people to broadcast "A Call to Arms", episode "War Zone" was ok but they had to rush it by explaining the whole Drakh/Infection plotline in the first three seconds of the episode. I think it would have got much better over time as characters from the original series like the one played by the late Richard Biggs were introduced. TNT made sure the whole thing was a complete mess and by the time unlucky episode 13 came along the series was canceled.

[Phenix]

TNT were clueless, the spin-off crusade was supposed to start with he movie A Call To Arms (1999). TNT like Fox have no idea about showing a series in order, they forgot get people to broadcast "A Call to Arms", episode "War Zone" was ok but they had to rush it by explaining the whole Drakh/Infection plotline in the first three seconds of the episode. I think it would have got much better over time as characters from the original series like the one played by the late Richard Biggs were introduced. TNT made sure the whole thing was a complete mess and by the time unlucky episode 13 came along the series was canceled.

I've read about TNT messing with Crusades because the show did not increase its viewers. The B5 people would watch Crusades then change the channel and TNT viewers would turn off Crusades and find something else on TV. There was no crossover. Part of the reason might just be TNT messing around with the story or it could also just be that JMS was not at his best.

Some of the eps he wrote were horrible. Well not horrible just totally and completely over the top and that is not what I expected from the B5 universe. O and it was turning into something similar to Star Trek NG. I'm not sure if that would be inevitable.

O and I watched the Mars episode the other night. In JMS order of viewing Lockley and Gideon had already met so the introductions were funny to watch.

[nx01a]

The

Spoiler:

X-Files

ripoff episode. I was alternating between laughing my head off and feeling sad.
After reading the plans JMS had for the rest of the season, especially the season finale, I feel cheated. Some of the episodes were good but the MUSIC, MY GOSH, THE MUSIC!!!! This electronic distortion theme that crawls my skin, And I actually LIKED the original Andromeda theme.

I wasn't that big on the characters, either. Galen was a Kosh-wannabe, right down to his first line, "And so it begins." Mirroring, sure, but still blatantly obvious mirroring. The thief woman I enjoyed. I didn't care for Gideon and less for his B5 captain bed buddy, so they deserved each other. I found the Apocalypse Box more of an interesting character than Gideon. The telepath XO... asian guy named John Matheson? That threw me a bit, but he's far too tightly wound with all the rules and his guilt and... If he went psycho from the strain, I'd have applauded. The doctor... not worth my time. Max Eilerson was the best character there: a little mix of everything but a good man at his core.

The cgi was worse than B5's, despite being more 'recent'. Complex story and jaw-dropping graphics: that's what makes a good sci-fi show for me. Crusade, despite the great things we would have seen in the 2nd half of s1, really wasn't up to scratch for me. Compare it to the first 13 episodes of Babylon 5! No comparison.

JMS and B5 join the ranks of Chris Carter and the X-Files as having wonderful original shows, but not being able to hold a spinoff.

[kmiller1610]

I liked some of the minor characters. I didn't care for the Captain, a little too much Kirk for my taste. The episode with the actor who played Bretek in Stargate was good.

JMS wanted to get away from a huge arc (listen to his commentary in the last B5 movie), but the sponsors pushed it on him, so he went with the "5 years to save earth" idea, but he really didn't like it.

That say to me that he hadn't really conceptualized the whole thing very well. Overall, B5 has a strong structure because JMS built it on Lord of the Rings and had a huge ambition for what he wanted to do. He didn't want to do that again.

Note that the Asian is the same guy from Lost. He had to learn Korean to play the Lost part.

[maneth]

Daniel Dae Kim is half-Korean, and he did speak some of the language with his grandparents as a kid. However, he wasn't fluent enough, so he needed some lessons in the language to play in Lost. Some of those lessons were supposedly given by his co-star Yunjin Kim, who is a *huge* star in Korea, where she started her career, in spite of being raised in the US.

A bit of trivia, Kim is the commonest Korean family name, carried by approximately one fifth (!) of the population.

[nx01a]

Harry Kim, indeed.
The most common Asian last name in sci-fi seems to be Sato.

[maneth]

Nope, John Matheson was played by Daniel Dae Kim.

Ensign Harry Kim was on Star Trek: Voyager, played by Garrett Wang.

[nx01a]

It was a reference to Kim being a popular name. I suppose it might be a good thing to have an asian character without a stereotypical asian name.