Crusade

I miss Babylon 5!



I* know many will disagee, but I miss Babylon 5 and was willing to accept almost anything. What can I say? I am devoted. I loved that show and the work of JMS.



Yes, TNT and the suits did incredible damage to JMS's vision for "Crusade," but I can not let that keep me from wanting more.



"Babylon 5 Legend of The Rangers" even more of a injured product. A look back at "Crusade" shows it had promise. A rerad of the unfilmed scripts shows what we missed.



How can the world be without Babylon 5. The Shadows have won!

I just bought Crusade and have watched the first 6 episodes. So far I liked it. Not as much as B-5 but it's good. I think they needed to spend more time on "The Rim" than hanging around Babylon 5. As for why the show was cancelled is anybody's guess. Whether it was ratings or the suits at Turner not really liking us "nerds." (Just like Paramount and Star Trek. The suits are embarrassed of sci fi fans but will gladly take our money.) Or maybe it was B-5 fatigue. I'll admit when Crusade was first aired I didn't watch it. I had B-5 fatigue. Now I wish they had made more especially when I watch SciFi Channel crap (more like avoid the SciFi Channel crap). Compared to that soap opera crap like Battlestar Galactica and Painkiller Models, Crusade is far superior.

It picked off where Babylon 5 finished with the world needing a cure to save earth. A group of people must search out through the universe to find it to save earth. This series had alot of thought put into it and what I thought was good. Apparently (this is what I heard) the series was canceled because the channel that the show was being shown on wanted the next series to have lots of violence, lots of adult scenes (watch torchwood and you will know what I mean) and the writer refused, I say good on the writer. Sadly the show won't continue and how they find the cure, we will never know...

What happened here? A great show, with a great writer, a great producer, great directing, and Turner. Opps maybe I answered the question.



This show was a great and long awaited follow-up to Babylon 5. Unfortunately the network nailed the show with poor placement, poor promotion, rearranged schedules, and meddling. It shows that the business people should stay out of creation.



As you review the episodes you will see the finger print of the network murder of Crusade. A change in uniforms. A change in episode order. Inserted fights, characters, and T & A. Only a network can ruin a good thing.



However, all said it is a show worth your time.

the main character, the captain 'disappeared' and his main source of advice a mysterious technomage who it seems just happens to have been the one who saved him, sounds way to much like the orginal B5 captain and d'lens relationship. it is unfortunate that this series didn't get past 13 episodes it was only just starting to come into its own as a series, i myself being a babylon 5 fan found this really enjoyable but no all b5 fans would like this show and i do not think scifi fans in general would enjoy. not to insult the creaters of this program but they should have thought about it more thoroughly before gettng a spin off pushed through on the back of one the most original scifi series their has been in the past decade

I'm not much of a sci-fi fan (though I tolerate the genre unlike reality and soaps) and I haven't even seen Babylon 5 but after seeing a few episodes of Crusade, I found the characters quite interesting and the show also had a fair bit of humour in it too, even the parts that were meant to be serious.



I also liked that the show wasn't always about finding the cure but also occasionally did episodes on character development or in one case a total X-Files parody and while the show didn't technically finish its objective, the finale still had great points about living life and was a satisfying conclusion.



Overall, this show is one of the few Science Fiction shows that I like but can't compare to the comedies that entertain me more.

A show with great potential

never released



The characters were good and had great interactions

Max elerson the egotistical archeologist everyone hates

Gideon the captain with more than a few secrets

The ex psi corp first officer



Some of the choices they have to make are very harsh

Letting a political prisoner go back to his people

to face certain death.



Whether or not to allow the death of every vistor to a planet

in return for a potential cure found from the experiments



Most of the good episodes you will notice contain the red /grey uniforms before the revamp



the second pilot with the mutiny and the tedious exposition

was piss poor with plot errors.



There are of course exceptions

Vistors from down the street is classic

The ep with stephen franklin is really bad

with laughable acting/dialogue



I hope JMS releases his notes on where the show should

have gone over its arc

i just wish i could see how it ends

It may not be as good as Babylon 5, but Crusade had a lot of potential as a series. For babylon 5 fans it was an extention of their beloved show, and many, like me, were unhappy about its sudden cancellation.



The show sported some great characters, of which Galen was my personal favourite, and a storyline that left room for a lot of interesting adventures.



sadly, the show was cancelled too soon, and the main goal of the show (to find a cure for a plague that was unleashed on Earth) was never resolved.



I would love to see them bring it back, though that seems highly unlikely after all this time.

I thought it was a good show and enjoyed watching it. I even bought the DVD\'s when they came out. I was disappointed at how the series ended. I also enjoyed Babylon 5 and was hoping The Crusade would continue on just as Babylon 5 did. I hope they will bring it back and finish the series.

The show is better than a lot of things on TV today, the writing is somewhat childish though, the back-story is good and the story arc is good as well, but the character development and plot lines for each episode are fairly simple, silly, and have holes. This may sound bad, but these flaws in Crusade are much better than their counterparts in most other television shows on today.

This show had tremendous potential right from the beginning. We see the journeys of excalibur as it searches for the cure to the Drakh plague that has infested all of Earth's citizens and placed the planet into quarantine.



TNT made a point of trying to interfere with J. Michael Stracynski's vision in every way possible, from trying to change characters into "sexual explorers" to airing episodes completely out of order, when the show was meant to be viewed in a serialized format.



It's too bad it died after only 13 episodes, but if you watch them in order you're in for a tremendous treat. You'll have to read Stracynski's notes online to find out where he was sending the show though. Apparently, the Drakh plague would have been cured very quickly, and Excalibur would become a fugitive ship from the government it sought to protect. Who knows what great things could have been done had JMS gone unmolested by greedy marketing executives?

After the succesful series Babylon 5 JMS gave us Crusade, a story about a ship and its crew in search for a cure againt a plague, a remnant of a war which was ultimately won.

But it was more than that, JMS had planned another 5 years of hints and plots, but Crusade didn't get the chance to tell its story.

Quite flawd in characterization and there wasn't anything new to see (planet of the week), but there was something brooding. This series was cancelled before we got to know it, which is a shame.

i wont tu se the 2 seson it wode be grait if thay started it a gen !!

and i love the plot and i lovd B5 and wos sadent wen it endet som i hop thay wil star op a gen sun and gev os mor B5 in the form of crusaid and oder sjos :-)

Where to begin. This was a TNT nightmare between the bad time slots and the playing of shows in wrong order it was just horible because this show was really good. Characters were great acting was good and the plot was always there. It was one of the first B5 anything to have mage as a main character and what a character he was.

A shame this show got cancelled so soon. Had it been allowed to run its intended 5-year story span as Babylon 5 was, it could have become another great show. Below is the recommended episode viewing order. This is an alternate order than the order in which the episodes originally aired.



Crusade

(This ordering, which JMS specified, ignores the uniform change in favor of maintaining continuity of storyline.)



1.09 Racing the Night

1.11 The Needs of Earth

1.10 The Memory of War

1.02 The Long Road

1.12 Visitors from Down the Street

1.03 The Well of Forever

1.13 Each Night I Dream of Home

1.05 Patterns of the Soul

1.04 The Path of Sorrows

1.06 Ruling from the Tomb

1.07 The Rules of the Game

1.01 War Zone

1.08 Appearances and Other Deceits

Crusade was a wonderful attempt to bring to life the Babylon 5 universe. Babylon really ended in Season 4 on UPN. A last minute pick-up by TNT got us Season 5 and "Crusade."



Unfortunately, J. Michael Straczynski's ideal world at UPN did not migrate to TNT. In B5's prior home, he had unprecedented autonomy. He wrote, produced, composed, ... a carefully crafted each aspect of his thought out science fiction arc. At TNT, he ran into the corporate suits with their spread sheets and requirements to reach select demographics. This lead to lower budgets and compromises in writing.



No longer were we spectators to a vast world of numerous characters and intricate alien culture. Sets were limited. "T&A" and violence were added for ratings. Discontinuity errors reflected corporate meddling. Ultimately tempers flared and no one was happy. As fans we got a less than optimal adventure, but what an adventure it was.



It was worth it just to have been privy to the life of a Technomage.



Too bad TNT killed the show before it aired. Too bad the revival campaign failed. Too bad ....

This show had it all.



Great cast, cool ship, perfect plot, and kick ass graphics. So what happend?



What happend was back choice of Network and Bad Time slot.



From what I gathered the series was ment to run a total of 3 season when the team finds the cure and brings it to Earth.



Sadly this never happend so we can only wonder as to what could have been.

Joe S. tried to follow up Babylon 5 (using a B5 movie \"Call to Arms\" as a bridge) with a new story -- the search by the crew of the Excaliber to save Earth from much death. This, then, would be more of a \"Star Trek\" (original) show -- boldly going here and there, with an overarching story -- find something or other to save Earth.



The cast was quite reasonable (including a \"technomage\", something brought up in B5 and then discarded), the stories interesting (my personal favorite is the \"X-Files\" parody episode -- \"Visitors from down the street\"), but they all had things to recommend them. It was Joe\'s great strength to give a good weekly story that fit into a longer, deeper story, after all. . .



But anyway, the show never seemed to get quite of the ground. The characters didn\'t seem to interact as believably as, well, B5\'s did. The story didn\'t seem quite so important as B5\'s did. That\'s the problem -- Joe S. was competing with himself (and, as it turns out, fighting with idiots inside TNT\'s programming group). Given some time, I think this show would have shaken itself out of the shadow of its elder brother (which didn\'t seem quite so great as it turned out to be in IT\'S first half-season, by the way) and become a very interesting show. Unfortunately, TNT, having sunk money into the original show (they paid for the fifth season, and various one-off movies), could not apparently bring themselves to wait for success of its offspring, and killed \'Crusade\'. Alas.

I am not actually a fan of babylon 5 so I can't compare show to that, but I'm a fan of Science Fiction in general and thought the show was quite good despite the low ratings and it being discontinued.



I remember getting excited to watch a new episode every week, but the show stopped unexpectedly I'd say about half way in the first season. How lame is that? (I wish producers would start making series they could actually finish properly, regardless of ratings... if nothing more, at least as a courtesy to the audience they already have.) In this case, ending the series so soon, actually made the whole more redundant.



The audience was just starting to familiarise themselves with the characters, the story was starting to make sense, and the overall feel of the show was better than most recent science fiction shows I've seen at the first season (include Andromeda, Enterprise, Farscape which I like watching). If any of these episodes were stopped on the first half of their first season, they would probably have less ratings than crusade right now.



The show is over but it had a lot of potential. The cast wasn't so bad, as I've read in other reviews... the captain was cool, kinda of a cross between Dilan Hunt on Andromeda and Archer on Enterprise. Their ship is awsome, looks better than Enterprise by far, aerodynamically and ergonomically (You try and live in a round room with no corners, I know you can fit a square within a circle but eventually you run out of corners without superimposing). The graphics in the show are well, alright now, but obviously at the time they were great!! And there seemed to be some nice episodes.



Oh, they don't have holographic rooms, in one of the episodes the poor captain decides to take a break and rests inside a ventilation duct (or a train passage) to get some strong winds as in a beach, as you don't get them in space in a starship. (Old Piccard (Patrick Stewart) would make it so in a hologram).





There should be a DVD out there, I would recommend if you like your Sci-fi with cutting edge ships exploring space, well cut uniforms and a captain with an attitude. Otherwise leave it, it's probably not for you, plus its an unfinished product what a shame...

This show was moderate, that's about all I can say about it. It was a spinoff of Babylon 5, trying to take a new direction.



This show is built from the Babylon 5 movie: "A Call to Arms" which tested fairly well, but was markedly better than that of Crusade which was filmed(only about half a season.) That doesn't say a lot, as that may have been the worst of the Bab 5 movies. Mind you, this show was on its way after a full Season towards being of merit. It was cancelled before it ever hit that point.



It took most of the first and only season for the cast to start working and fitting together well, the writing wasn't near as good as Babylon 5, which would later also take down Lgend of the Rangers, the 2nd attempt at a Babylon 5 spinoff. The cast, the crew of the Excalibur, a ship Babylon 5 fans will remember from the Babylon 5 movies, really never fit all that well together, but part of that was lackluster casting. No one really seemed comfortable, or for that matter fully suited, to their roles.



The graphics were living up to Babylon 5's high bar, but the plot was not. This show lacked in the plot department, but of course having a random half of the first season and no more to base it on, and filming and production cut short, whose to say this is how it would have been if allowed to finish.



For big fans of Babylon 5, I would recommend it, if only for the sake it was a Babylon 5 spinoff. Had it been allowed to finish the whole of the first seasn, and perhaps move on, this show had some potential to do well. But it certainly never got there, so it may be better to pass this one by.