Re: \'Scare Tactics\' Gets (additional) 9-Episode Or
Do they have the rerun rights for Now and Again, Earth 2, Earth Final Conflict ... etc., and the spinoffs of each of those shows? What? No? Those shows don't have spinoffs? Well, that's what's so special about Crusade. It builds upon all that's gone before in B5, and could transition the B5 fanbase, not just me.
Oh, so the fact that B5 has a failed spin-off means that sci-fi should be tripping over themselves to restart the series? Exactly how many years has Crusade been dead anyway, like 4 years or more?
Crusade was last aired in first run 3.8 years ago. It had been has been off the air for 1.5 years, when Sci-Fi announced they'd gotten the Crusade rerun rights. That was when they should have re-started Crusade, 2.3 years ago.
Crusade would have been in no better position than a spin-off or continuation of, say, Quantum Leap... which, to this day, still has a very active fan base.
??? Did the Quantum Leap fanbase want to see a spinoff, or just to see Sam get home? If they're fans of Scott, they're probably watching Enterprise. His being on Enterprise would probably have taken a lot of the wind out of the sails of a Quantum Leap spinoff.
I would argue that they would have been better off doing a spin-off that than Crusade.
Bull! I completely disagree. Quantum Leap had 97 episodes, and I'm so tired of it. What do we have to see, Sam jump in and out of every person on the planet? How long till it gets old for you? Not only that, it's been out of production for 10 years. Crusade's only been out of production since spring of 1999, or four years. Bakula is on Enterprise, and it's renewed. Gary Cole's "Family Affair" is cancelled.
Just because you wanted them to pick up Crusade doesn't mean it would have been a good decision.
True, not just because I wanted them to pick it up.
Because it would have made sense. However, that's an anathema to The Sci-Fi Channel, kind of like holy water to a vampire.
Given the kind of ratings that Rangers got, they were probably better off not doing it.
That line of reasoning is
completely ridiculous. TLaDiS ratings
do not translate to Crusade ratings. You
cannot say that because TLaDiS was bad, that a continuation of Crusade, fixing the mistakes in the existing episodes, removing the looping, and filming the unfilmed episodes and perhaps a couple more to make a complete first season, would have resulted in a worse product, or worse ratings than TLaDiS got.
There was a lot of existing Crusade to work with. All they had to do was to fix a few things. It would have taken relatively little work to
complete a first season (compared to doing a first season completely from scratch).
Now, I know you're going to say that it doesn't transition a lot of the B5 fanbase because a lot of people didn't like Crusade. Well, we know why that's the case. It was screwed with.
Why do I care if it was screwed with or not? All I care about is whether the show is good or not. I'll leave the "why it wasn't good" to other people.
If you could fix a few things and make a few episodes and come up with a complete first season and a good show, you'd be crazy
not to do so. The Japanese were famous for this. They see a failed product or invention, and see that with a couple of tweaks it could work. They make the tweaks, building on someone else's work, and BINGO, they have a hit product. We know what was wrong with Crusade, and so does JMS. It's been discussed ad infinitum. We have three unfilmed scripts, at least two of which the fans LOVE. How many more hints do the people at Sci-Fi need? They see all this and then they go with the Rangers pilot??? Duh!!!
BTW, doesn't a network pretty much screw around with every show it airs?
B5 received almost no notes after Season 1. JMS has indicated that he's never seen notes like quantity or quality he got from TNT.
They pay for the damn thing so why shouldn't they screw around with it if they want to?
Because they're extremely likely to f*ck it up. Just because it's "possible" for a five year old to own a car, it's not necessarily smart to allow them to drive it.
Well, this would be Sci-Fi's opportunity to take the pieces of what's gone before and make a good show with all the pieces and no gaps. They don't have to reinvent the entire wheel. All they've got to do is patch the tire. If they re-started Crusade, they could make things right, and rejuvenate the entire B5 fanbase[1] and turn things around, but they won't because they have no vision. Hell, Crusade could be an anchor for their Friday night when SG-1 is gone, but no.
They could do the same thing with Quantum Leap and a half dozen other shows... some of them better shows than Crusade.
If I ever see another episode of Quantum Leap, it'll be too soon. It was done
to death. Bakula is on Enterprise. Bakula/Sam
IS Quantum Leap. How much of Quantum Leap did not involve Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell? Take away those two and there is no show. Crusade has the entire, established B5 universe to draw upon.
Which series has a greater fanbase, B5/Crusade or the ones you mentioned?
I didn't ask that. I asked about Crusade vs. all those other shows, not B5.
Crusade is inextricably linked to B5. It benefits from all the stuff of the B5 universe that can be used in it.
But if you want to talk about the B5/spinoff fanbase then look at the numbers that Rangers got.
Rangers sucked. It was a mistake. JMS didn't want to do it. He wanted to continue Crusade. Sci-Fi wanted a new show. It's because of
Sci-Fi that we got the Rangers pilot
instead of a finished Crusade.
I'll put those numbers up against most of those others. Or we can put up the numbers of Crusade against those others... either way, I think I win.
You conveniently ignore the fact that TNT's meddling resulted in the numbers that Crusade got. A complete first season of Crusade, with the worst TNT bits excised, would undoubtedly get better numbers,
IF Sci-Fi promoted it at all (which is a BIG "IF"), provided viewers aren't completely jaded about the channel by now.
Which series should they have re-started two years ago, before Firefly was even written?
Dr. Who, Quantum Leap, Battlestar Gallatica, Now and Again... take your pick.
Dr. Who - How many seasons has that thing already been on? 26? 158 eps in 700 parts, 3 specials, 2 features, 1 revival. Haven't you had enough?
Quantum Leap - As I've said before, it's been done to death.
Battlestar Gallatica - Oh, please! Hurl! There went my cookies.
Next, people will be calling for a re-start or re-imagining of Black Scorpion.
Now and Again - an obscure show. It's main actor is now on Without a Trace. More people have probably seen Brimstone than Now and Again.
I can't help it that Sci-Fi's asleep at the switch. I can't help it that they can't recognize what JMS is good at. I can't help it that they can't recognize an opportunity even when it smacks 'em right between the eyes. I mean, these people could take a sure thing and screw it up.
Look, they gave JMS a chance and he screwed it up with Rangers.
Look, Sci-Fi screwed up by insisting on a new show. I swear, you could take these people from Sci-Fi to the edge of a cliff, show them two possibilities, walking across a perfectly good bridge that spans the mile wide 10,000 foot drop, and the empty space of the 10,000 foot drop. They'd step off into empty space and then would be
surprised that they fell.
Maybe if he had made something worth a damn then the entire B5 universe would have been revitalized... obviously he must have thought this himself or he wouldn't have sent out that idiotic letter asking fans not to pass around old Crusade scripts that had been floating around on the net for god knows how long.
He wouldn't want his stuff being freely passed around, anyway, just as a matter of principle. Regarding Rangers, he should have passed on the project completely.
Maybe he thought a Rangers series might lead to a Crusade restart or maybe he thought he could add some of the Crusade plot into a Rangers series...
We
know this was the case. There is no "maybe" about it. It was going to be a backdoor way of resolving Crusade.
either way we'll never know because Rangers sucked.
I completely agree that Rangers sucked. I hope we'll someday get to see the Crusade story told in some form, but I doubt it.
And we only got Rangers because Sci-Fi, tapping their seemingly infinite reserves of stupidity, vetoed a re-start of Crusade.
Most people never saw Now and Again, and some probably confuse it with Once and Again, which was on around the same time, just because the titles are so close.
You're probably right, but I'm betting that most people have heard of Quantum Leap or Battlestar Gallatica, so why should they sink money into Crusade instead of those other two?
Quantum Leap has been done to death.
Battlestar Gallactica sucked. It was stereotypical, cheesey skiffy.
Joe Millionaire has popularity, too. What's that prove, that a lot of people out there like shite.
Maybe, or it could mean bigger ratings, which leads to more money, which is why networks exist in the first place.
Maybe, but people get tired of it, especially since everybody is piling on the bandwagon with their version of it now. Just look at:
Futon Critic Summer 2003 Grid
I am so turned off by Reality Shows right now, that I actively avoid all of them. They're like shit; they're everywhere.