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Crusade: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
- Thread starter dreamer
- Start date
Jade Jaguar
Regular
dreamer
Member
So I watched the entire thing and it wasn't as bad as I remembered, but it wasn't exactly very good either. Just barely on the level of your standard weekend morning SF. Guess JMS used his shots over B5.
+ Brian Thompson not playing a baddie
- The episodes lacked stuffing. One-shot (poor) stories don't fit B5 universe in my books
- JMS's technomages were boring stereotypical wizards
- Dureena seemed anything but an agile thief - she was more like a narn brawler
- In the end, Gideon lacked edges. JMS's captains are all the same
- The CGI felt cheap even with B5 standards
- The music only made me think of Xena/Hercules or such foolish material
- Eilerson's character might've been interesting if he'd shown actual character and not just make wise-ass remarks - also the actor fell into the stack of "almost but not quite" on having on-screen charisma
- The doctor was just a... big-boned goof
Even with what resistance and sabotage the series got, I just can't see how this could've been anything that any studio actually would pick up. I mean, the whole concept: boldly going there where everyone have went for almost certainly because of a similar reason. JMS should've known better. There was no story to be told here and it would've been just to indulge him on his creations.
+ Brian Thompson not playing a baddie
- The episodes lacked stuffing. One-shot (poor) stories don't fit B5 universe in my books
- JMS's technomages were boring stereotypical wizards
- Dureena seemed anything but an agile thief - she was more like a narn brawler
- In the end, Gideon lacked edges. JMS's captains are all the same
- The CGI felt cheap even with B5 standards
- The music only made me think of Xena/Hercules or such foolish material
- Eilerson's character might've been interesting if he'd shown actual character and not just make wise-ass remarks - also the actor fell into the stack of "almost but not quite" on having on-screen charisma
- The doctor was just a... big-boned goof
Even with what resistance and sabotage the series got, I just can't see how this could've been anything that any studio actually would pick up. I mean, the whole concept: boldly going there where everyone have went for almost certainly because of a similar reason. JMS should've known better. There was no story to be told here and it would've been just to indulge him on his creations.
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KoshN
Super Moderator
After watching 13 episodes, I enjoyed watching most of the main characters (usually not Lochley, and almost always not Dr. Chambers.)
Not sure what you mean by that.
Agreed! Nice to see him not in his usual "thug" role. His scenes with the old, dying man weren't bad, his scenes with Capt. Gideon and Tim (Eric Ware) were quite good, but his scenes with Dureena came off as cornball in a few places (e.g. when talking about "Emma."). I was glad to see somebody give Brian the opportunity to play outside of his stereotypical thug role.
TNT wanted a less complicated show, more of an action-adventure show than B5, something that I guess their core audience could more easily follow, more episodic, and easier to step into, with less arc. That's not B5, but that's what the people paying the bills wanted. If the show had been made by JMS for The Sci-Fi Channel, it probably would have been more to your liking. However, it was made for the westerns, wrestling, sports (We pre-empt anything for basketball, tennis, etc.) and "Law & Order" franchise network, which doesn't "get" sci-fi. TNT and their audience are not sci-fi friendly, but that was the only place Babylon 5 had to go at the time, between Seasons 4 & 5 when PTEN disappeared.
Well then, I guess you haven't read:
Title: The Passing of the Techno-Mages - Book I - Casting Shadows
Author: Cavelos, Jeanne
Timeframe: 11/2258-12/31/2258
Isbn1: 0-345-42721-1
Copyright1: March 2001
Publisher1: DelRey
Title: The Passing of the Techno-Mages - Book II - Summoning Light
Author: Cavelos, Jeanne
Timeframe: 1/2259-2/2259
Isbn1: 0-345-42722-X
Copyright1: July 2001
Publisher1: DelRey
Title: The Passing of the Techno-Mages - Book III - Invoking Darkness
Author: Cavelos, Jeanne
Timeframe: 8/2260-2261
Isbn1: 0-345-43833-7
Copyright1: December 2001
Publisher1: DelRey
or
Title: Legions of Fire - Book I - The Long Night of Centauri Prime
Author: David, Peter
Timeframe: ~10/2262-12/2266. Dates corrected to line up with A Call to Arms and Crusade.
Isbn1: 0-345-42718-1
Copyright1: December 1999
Publisher1: DelRey
Title: Legions of Fire - Book II - Armies of Light and Dark
Author: David, Peter
Timeframe: 12/14/2266-04/18/2272. Dates corrected to line up with A Call to Arms and Crusade.
Isbn1: 0-345-42719-X
Copyright1: May 2000
Publisher1: DelRey
Title: Legions of Fire - Book III - Out of the Darkness
Author: David, Peter
Timeframe: 05/14/2273-01/21/2277. Dates corrected to line up with A Call to Arms and Crusade.
Isbn1: 0-345-42720-3
Copyright1: November 2000
Publisher1: DelRey
or the unfilmed scripts:
To the Ends of the Earth
and
End of the Line
...because then, you wouldn't have said that. CRUSADE only got THIRTEEN episodes, only SIX of which featured Technomages. Prior to this, Technomages were shown in only one B5 episode (The Geometry of Shadows) and one B5 TV movie (A Call to Arms). How much are you going to know about them in that amount of screentime? More and more about them was going to be revealed over the course of the FIVE YEARS (110 episodes) of CRUSADE, which it never got, thanks to TNT.
If you want to know what Technomages were really about, read the stuff I listed above. Trust me, you're way off the mark.True, not agile in A CALL TO ARMS (Remember her cutting the purse strings. The victim must have been completely numb on that side.), and more of a brawler in CRUSADE. She needed refined (by Dobro and JMS). They describe her and she describes herself as a proficient thief, but she looks like a klutz most of the time when she's being a thief.
Here, I think you're all wet. Gideon was fine, as-is, and he would have changed and revealed more over time. Gideon, Sinclair, Sheridan and Lochley were certainly different in lots of ways.
Some of it did and some of it didn't. It was UNEVEN, and that made the bad stuff (e.g. the hyperspace shots showing the Morati ships in The Needs of Earth, the flashback shots in Patterns of the Soul, etc.) look even worse, as do your eyes which are now used to 2008 CGI.
I made no such connections. To me, the music (well, 99% of it) sounded alien and mysterious and/or thoughtful. Some of it was generic mainstream stuff (mainly, the horns), but most of it wasn't.
Eilerson has onscreen charisma, and he changed even over the course of the 10 episodes in which he appeared.
Big boned, yes.
Goof? Eh. <shrug>
Bad actor and not convincing as a doctor, yeah.
Miscast? HELL YEAH!!!
You're judging this upon what you saw in 13 episodes, only 12 of which were ever planned by JMS to exist, and that's assuming that "Appearances and Other Deceits" was ever planned before TNT required the midseason costume switcheroo. If you read what I listed above, you'd have more of an idea where the story was going.
How much of B5 was revealed in the first 12 episodes? Did you know everything about the Shadows.Vorlons, Narns, Humans, Minbari, Centauri, Drazi, Pakmara, Streib, Drakh, telepaths, technomages, etc. in those 12 episodes? No? The race to find the cure to the plague was only the way to start the CRUSADE story and it was dictated by TNT and Warner Brothers (See A CALL TO ARMS commentary.) The cure would have been found in the middle of Season 2, at which time the story would have morphed into a different one, that of Shadow tech left behind, who was using it, Earthforce black projects, conspiricies, the Technomage connection to shadowtech, what the Technomages were truly all about, their origins, etc, etc.
CRUSADE got cut off just as it was starting to sketch out our characters. If you want to know more about where CRUSADE was really going, read what I listed and JMS' comments on JMSNews.com.
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dreamer
Member
B5 was doing something new and so I don't think you can actually compare it's first season to Crusade. From a producer's point of view it must've been heck of a lot appealing to have a static set than envision new worlds for each episode - which I suppose was the formula for every other SF show.
And no, I haven't read the books on technomages - any B5 books, actually. That don't change what I see in the shows, though, since you shouldn't have to learn to appreciate notes before you can enjoy music. I'm sure that with proper time and work the technomages are interesting bunch but I was just so disapointed at them and their routine. They're just classic wizards... in space! C'mon. They were almost to psicops - technomages had their riddles and the psicops had their own unnatural act going on, so in that light too the technomages sort of felt pointless to me.
I like the actor and Gideon is good name for a captain - sticks out but isn't downright weird. Beyond that I think his character had exactly same portion of seriousness which changed into jokes at the very exact same point as Sinclair's and Sheridan's behavior did, but I suppose that it's just JMS's way to flesh out starship captains who are both dutiful and relaxed. Lochley? I think her personality was pummeled in the name of having a CO, but not in ways that'd get in the way of the story. When she first came on board she was rather strict about how B5's reports were incomplete and all, but with few episodes all that fervour was gone and she could've been replaced by any previous captain - which was impossible because their story arcs had shipped them elsewhere. She was reduced into a "I told you so" character. A bystander.
Who was that pilot guy they took with them from Eilerson's dig-site? It was plain awful how it was just dropped on a later episode that he apparently was to become a priest regardless of his rowdy routine. And didn't they take Eilerson with them because he had expertise even if Gideon clearly stated in a latter episode that they asked IE for a specialist and how they send Eilerson for them? Contradictions.
I guess it's mostly a matter of taste if you like or appreciate the show. It's a mess in my opinion and I've told people that they're better off not watching it after finishing B5 since it most certainly don't do B5 any favors. But that's just my opinion.
And no, I haven't read the books on technomages - any B5 books, actually. That don't change what I see in the shows, though, since you shouldn't have to learn to appreciate notes before you can enjoy music. I'm sure that with proper time and work the technomages are interesting bunch but I was just so disapointed at them and their routine. They're just classic wizards... in space! C'mon. They were almost to psicops - technomages had their riddles and the psicops had their own unnatural act going on, so in that light too the technomages sort of felt pointless to me.
I like the actor and Gideon is good name for a captain - sticks out but isn't downright weird. Beyond that I think his character had exactly same portion of seriousness which changed into jokes at the very exact same point as Sinclair's and Sheridan's behavior did, but I suppose that it's just JMS's way to flesh out starship captains who are both dutiful and relaxed. Lochley? I think her personality was pummeled in the name of having a CO, but not in ways that'd get in the way of the story. When she first came on board she was rather strict about how B5's reports were incomplete and all, but with few episodes all that fervour was gone and she could've been replaced by any previous captain - which was impossible because their story arcs had shipped them elsewhere. She was reduced into a "I told you so" character. A bystander.
Who was that pilot guy they took with them from Eilerson's dig-site? It was plain awful how it was just dropped on a later episode that he apparently was to become a priest regardless of his rowdy routine. And didn't they take Eilerson with them because he had expertise even if Gideon clearly stated in a latter episode that they asked IE for a specialist and how they send Eilerson for them? Contradictions.
I guess it's mostly a matter of taste if you like or appreciate the show. It's a mess in my opinion and I've told people that they're better off not watching it after finishing B5 since it most certainly don't do B5 any favors. But that's just my opinion.
B5_Obsessed
Regular
Well, those are good points. The pilot, Chase or Trace or whatever, was another character mandated by TNT, who wanted an adventurous "Flyboy", much as WB had mandated the Keffer character years earlier.
And yes, the Eillerson situation was a total contradiction, and just because "War Zone" was a TNT mandated episode, doesn't mean JMS should contradict what he had already written.
I too wanted to like Crusade, but for all its good intentions, it was executed somewhat poorly.
And yes, the Eillerson situation was a total contradiction, and just because "War Zone" was a TNT mandated episode, doesn't mean JMS should contradict what he had already written.
I too wanted to like Crusade, but for all its good intentions, it was executed somewhat poorly.
Eclipse
Member
Re: Crusader: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
JMS gave Gideon the best "pet" any kid could ever have... an apocalypse box !
Do you know the difference between TNT and an apocalypse box?
TNT lies more
JMS gave Gideon the best "pet" any kid could ever have... an apocalypse box !
Do you know the difference between TNT and an apocalypse box?
TNT lies more
dreamer
Member
[rhetorical] Why'd I bother? [/rhetorical]
I know why I bothered, for everybody else.
There we go; if you don't get answers you like, they're not answers at all are they
KoshN
Super Moderator
Wrong. I tried to show you the path to enlightenment, but you don't want the knowledge..<shrug> Your loss.
You said:
So, take Harry Dresden,and put him in space and you have a technomage? Technomages use technology to simulate the effects of magic. Harry Dresden (of the books) is a classic wizard and doesn't get along with technology, at all. He drives around in an old VW Beetle and has an old rotary-pulse dial phone, and even that amount of tech is upset by his magic, without him even trying.
CRUSADE got cut off before it could reveal the information I led you to in the books and unfilmed scripts. That's one of the places the show would have gone IF it hadn't been cancelled after 13 episodes. You're saying that the technomages are just classic wizards in space. I'm showing you where the info is that will prove you wrong. However, you would rather hold onto those wrong conclusions by ignoring all information to the contrary. As I said above, your loss.
GaribaldisHair
Regular
I agree with one point you made. In some ways it is a mess, but the blame for that doesn't lie at the door of JMS and the rest of the crew who made it.
If memory serves, Trace (the pilot) was added in following a note from TNT that they would like some sort of cocky pilot character, in much the same way as Keffer was added to S2 of B5, and that explains why he isn't in the "grey uniform episodes", which were shot before TNT started getting silly. The episode you refer to (Ruling From The Tomb) made clear that he was training to be a priest long before he became "rowdy".
The continuity errors around Eilerson's addition to the crew (along with other continuity errors) were created by TNT's insistence that the first episode should show the characters coming together in the traditional way. The originally intended first episode (Racing The Night) showed the crew already together and already working to find the cure. The line about IPX assigning Eilerson comes from one of those first episodes (grey uniforms) before TNT asked for changes.
The problem is that there is no correct order to watch Crusade in order to avoid continuity errors completely because of the meddling of the network. However, I challenge anyone to watch the grey unirorm episodes by themselves and point any out and also to not at least acknowledge that here was a show with great potential, even if it isn't to their taste.
And your stuff about the technomages I just can't agree with. We even get to see Galen's tech implanted in his body in one episode!
Given that, as you say, it is a matter of taste, perhaps you should let them know what you think of it, but let them make up their own mind as to the value of watching it!
dreamer
Member
You're right. I suppose that I'm inclined to say that because getting people to watch B5 nowadays is a task itself; you have to say things like "yeah, it looks like shit, but it's the innards that count" (eww!)
With Crusade you have to lecture them ten times more so that they'd learn to appreciate it like they apparently should... hell, I appreciate it. It just don't make the show any better. It doesn't stand up to other similar series and liking it because of B5 is even more sillier - Terminator 2 didn't make T3 any better, just only possible, which I guess boils down to what you should and shouldn't do.
But from now on I'll give them the Crusade box if they ask what it is
KoshN
Super Moderator
Actually, we get to see some of the grey, crude, lego-like implants (the tech) that are already on/in Galen's back, when Dr. Chambers patches him up a bit near the end of THE MEMORY OF WAR. By this time, Galen has been a full mage for 8 years. We never see the tech being inplanted in a mage in any CRUSADE episode.
I vastly prefer Jeanne Cavelos' description of how the technomages receive their full mage level implants (CASTING SHADOWS, pgs 124 thru 128), and the inward appearance of "the tech" (golden strands, seen when a mage is flayed) and outward appearance (skin discoloration/mottling near the tech) in THE PASSING OF THE TECHNO-MAGES trilogy of novels. Cavelos' description is far more elegant that what we saw in that one brief glimpse in that one CRUSADE episode.
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dreamer
Member
Are the technomages keeping from having full cybernetic augmentations? If so, why is that?
My initial thoughts about technomages were that they'd be a bit on the loony side, like their augmentations wouldn't always work as intended and they'd get jolts or these devices just plain pushed them further and further. I sort of liked the idea of them behaving as if they'd be mad or high, prophets or seers, and in that context I could've digested their riddles and vagueries with appropriate performances quote happily.
The staff was interesting! Somehow I forgot to mention about it even when it behaved as a focal in the story of Galens and Dureenas relationship and it was clearly something that I actually liked a lot. The staff was a definite improvement over the typical staff of your standard wizard that which almost always is vaguely magical somehow. Hell, it's intriguing to no end - like a lightsaber!
I've been running a Star Wars role-playing game campaign few years now about becoming a Jedi and a big part of it was to construct your own lightsaber. I created rules for building a personal lightsabers each with their own strengths and weaknesses, customizability and maintenance requirements and so on. I think something similar could work out great with technomages' staffs. Gotta check into this.
My initial thoughts about technomages were that they'd be a bit on the loony side, like their augmentations wouldn't always work as intended and they'd get jolts or these devices just plain pushed them further and further. I sort of liked the idea of them behaving as if they'd be mad or high, prophets or seers, and in that context I could've digested their riddles and vagueries with appropriate performances quote happily.
The staff was interesting! Somehow I forgot to mention about it even when it behaved as a focal in the story of Galens and Dureenas relationship and it was clearly something that I actually liked a lot. The staff was a definite improvement over the typical staff of your standard wizard that which almost always is vaguely magical somehow. Hell, it's intriguing to no end - like a lightsaber!
I've been running a Star Wars role-playing game campaign few years now about becoming a Jedi and a big part of it was to construct your own lightsaber. I created rules for building a personal lightsabers each with their own strengths and weaknesses, customizability and maintenance requirements and so on. I think something similar could work out great with technomages' staffs. Gotta check into this.
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GaribaldisHair
Regular
Actually, that's exactly what I meant ... in the sense that we get to see some of the tech that is implanted in his body ... I just didn't put it very clearly.
GaribaldisHair
Regular
But again, that's a matter of taste. I disagree with that, I think it does stand up. Granted it stands up better once you know why certain parts of it turned out the way they did (TNT) and factor that in, but overall I still thought the show stood up by itself even without the crutch of being a B5 spin-off.
The shame for me is that we will never really know what season one would have really looked like if TNT had just left the crew alone to get on with it. I am certain we would have seen something very good indeed.
vacantlook
Super Moderator
KoshN
Super Moderator
Re: Crusade: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS !!!!!
....is based upon incomplete information.
Spoiler for SPOILERS FOR The Passing of the Technomages novels and CRUSADE:
....is based upon incomplete information.
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KoshN
Super Moderator
I thought that maybe you were confusing what you read in CASTING SHADOWS (p. 124-128) with a CRUSADE episode. Maybe you visualize it like a movie in your head as you read (like I do), and thought you "saw" it in a CRUSADE episode.
dreamer
Member
Well, their tech does drive them further and further toward chaos.
Did that wink indicate that you're saying more than you do?
I take it that they worked with/for the shadows, then. Certainly puts an interesting twist on them and it's actually quite apparent now that you think about it. The vorlons had their telepaths and the shadows had their technomages. It's not only apparent, it's crystal clear (and super green).
Man oh man, it would've been millionbillion times more interesting if the plague that hit the earth on Crusade would've been unleashed by the technomages... wait a minute, they did discover a nanovirus on a planed made by a technomage. Well, that's that then
What with all the rebooting of Batman, Hulk and other franchises, they should friggin' reboot this and do it properly - with Brian Thompson as a regular on the Excalibur (which is a lame name). Even if they'd be up to it we aready have the new BSG and its spin-off coming. Don't know if there'd be a regular audience for another "pro" SF show unless it'd be something entirely different from BSG.
I suppose I'll have to start working on this myself and perhaps have it up and running as the next big campaign for our role-playing games group.
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