EpDis: Crusade: The Needs Of Earth

Originally, I didn't like this one much because they didn't find anything of use in fighting the plague, nothing medical, that is, and the CGI of the alien ships IMHO needed work (looked unfinished). Now, I appreciate it as a character piece, and appreciate the performances of Gideon, Dureena and especially Matheson.

And it's always nice seeing Tony Amendola. I'd recognize his voice anywhere.

I liked this lesson because it tells you so much about Matheson.

in the Well of Forever, we learn that he had been misusing his powers in some minor way (although the psi cop type was obviously trumping up the charges).

In this episode we learn why he does it (and if you look back at some things... like his "coincidental" discussion with Galen in TPoS), you can see an example.

Basically Matheson sees his power as a gift that he genuinely tries to help people with. He will poke around in peoples minds sometimes... but only because he genuinely wants to help them.

From a personal bias, I also liked M\atheson's theological contemplation in his log towards the end.

I actually really liked this one! More so than any of the previous episodes I watched. It somehow felt more Babylon 5-ey to me, too. It’s a bit heavy-handed perhaps, near the end, when its message is carefully explained to us. There’s some other minor details I’m not entirely crazy about, like Gideon’s enthusiasm about breaking some laws to MAYBE possibly get some information. He couldn’t have known at that point that that would be the morally right thing to do. Also Gideon being rather casual about slavery. And why is Dr. Chambers analyzing the data on those crystals? It makes sense for her to be looking for medical data on there, but once she figures out it’s all culture, why is it still her job to “analyze” it? That’s not remotely in her job description, and curiously enough they have a person on the crew whose field of expertise DOES include alien culture. But, details. I can deal. I liked it a lot.

I really like the Matheson character, I wish we could have seen more of him. It’d be nice to see more about the new, post-telepath-war “rules for telepaths” and some more background on the character. I thought it was odd that he was describing his memories from Sunday school at the end. Does Psi Corps have that sort of thing? It seems more of a “mundane” thing to me (if I imagine it as a thing at all), but then, perhaps this was before he joined the Corps? I can’t remember if we learned when his telepathic abilities first manifested.

Eilerson’s greed and selfishness are as annoying as ever, but his voice and mannerisms are really starting to grow on me. Perhaps I could have learned to appreciate the character more if there had been more episodes.

I like this new background stuff on Dureena and the revelation that she was sold into slavery by her family.

I'm not sure Chambers was analyzing the crystals as much as experiencing them. As for Mattheson, we don't know how old he was when he ended up with the Corps. He might well have not been discovered until puberty, in which case there was plenty of time for him to go to Sunday school.

Jan

So much left to learn about that character. It's a shame.