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Crusade mk 2
If anyone wants to read me ranting extensively about the Crusade episode "Visitors From Down the Street" you can read it at Tumblr here. (Or Tumblr logged-in link.) Feel free to disagree in comments, I'm fine with that but GOD I hated this episode so much.
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Man, I apparently blacked that episode out of my mind and don't feel bad about it at all.
(I had not realized you had moved on to Crusade. Max! Galen!)
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Just in the last couple of days! See previous post for details, though I've moved on a few episodes since I wrote it. My initial favorites were Galen and Dureena, but Max and Sarah are quickly gaining on them. (Max in particular I can tell has absolutely EVERY sign that I would have fallen for him in an overwhelmingly obsessive way after about another half season of watching him care about people while plausibly-denying it. Galen and Dureena also have that and got a bit of a faster slow burn on it, which worked well with the show's truncated timeline.)
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I totally missed your previous post! I shall go back and leave opinions.
(Max in particular I can tell has absolutely EVERY sign that I would have fallen for him in an overwhelmingly obsessive way after about another half season of watching him care about people while plausibly-denying it. Galen and Dureena also have that and got a bit of a faster slow burn on it, which worked well with the show's truncated timeline.)
I appallingly loved Max even with no time to do it in. I believe it's "Appearances and Other Deceits" when he stays awake through the night to translate something vital and has obviously been eating the twenty-third century equivalent of crunchy things and protein bars round the clock and he was instantly recognizable. The show cut off before Matheson could get his major establishing episode, but I still like his concept—the same complex of ideas that produced Harriman Gray—and for years I was fine that Lost existed because it meant that Daniel Dae Kim was employed.
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Hahaha yes. I also just find myself really loving watching him do the things he's good at. There's a particular kind of like ... physical/intellectual competence that I really love watching, and he has definitely got it.
It also makes me think about how, while the original show definitely had high-level competence with various characters as well - in particular I like that Sheridan is that rare example of a character who is supposed to be tactically smart that we actually see being tactically smart - it really didn't have a focus on this kind of various-divisions-of-the-sciences competence in the way that so much other scifi does. It just wasn't about that at all. (tbh, Stargate was also airing by this point, and I wonder if that was part of the inspiration for having a linguist/archaeologist in the main cast.)
And since we had already heard about the exploration vessels, with Catherine Sakai as well as Anna Sheridan, it's fun to see that in action!
and for years I was fine that Lost existed because it meant that Daniel Dae Kim was employed.
Lost is where I originally know him from!
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He deciphers alien languages and he can dance! And he has one of those default sarcastic voices, which makes it interesting any time he says something straight.
- it really didn't have a focus on this kind of various-divisions-of-the-sciences competence in the way that so much other scifi does. It just wasn't about that at all. (tbh, Stargate was also airing by this point, and I wonder if that was part of the inspiration for having a linguist/archaeologist in the main cast.)
Interesting! I felt at the time that Crusade had a much more conventional sf cast than Babylon 5, although I did not think to connect it to other shows on the air. (I had seen the movie when it came out, but would not see any of TV Stargate until 2015 and then more meaningfully 2021.) It did have a mage and a thief and was thus not immune from D&D comparisons despite the fact that nobody in my family including me actually RPG'd.
And since we had already heard about the exploration vessels, with Catherine Sakai as well as Anna Sheridan, it's fun to see that in action!
Agreed! And the fact that as I recall Max works for a kind of Weyland–Yutani-ish corporation which is not something we saw a lot of on Babylon 5 where the governing structures were military or diplomatic. It's a slightly different tilt of the same universe.
Lost is where I originally know him from!
It was on my radar as the show that employed Daniel Dae Kim and Michael Emerson! And Mira Furlan on a guest basis, which was almost enough to make me try it.
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Yesssss. I love that it's so hard to get a read on when he's being serious or heartfelt, even though at times he clearly is. I mourn for the show not getting the time for the characters to go from a bunch of relative strangers cautiously working together, to the closely bonded team that they were certainly headed for! Once again, you can see the bones of it.
I felt at the time that Crusade had a much more conventional sf cast than Babylon 5, although I did not think to connect it to other shows on the air.
Oh yeah, I agree that it does! It feels much more like a "typical" SF show, where B5 and its cast were really something unique by its nature.
One thing I was thinking about with B5 is that it's almost like two shows blended together, the one about the crew who are basically a typical group of upstanding spacefaring TV-SF do-gooders - not that I don't like them, obviously I do! -- and then the ambassadorial group, who are all much more like literary characters in nature: flawed, growing in startling and unexpected ways, driven by compelling motivations that have nothing to do with B5's mission and everything to do with their personal histories and goals. No one on the B5 core crew (except maybe Sinclair) starts off with a personal goal to speak of, aside from just doing their jobs well and trying to make the station a success. All the ambassadors have at least one.
It did have a mage and a thief and was thus not immune from D&D comparisons despite the fact that nobody in my family including me actually RPG'd.
I do play RPGs and did not even think of that!
(I am willing to accept and enjoy JMS's fondness for mashing up epic fantasy with sci-fi, but I do struggle a bit with the worldbuilding plausibility of the Ye Olde English stylings of the technomages. Marcus can be explained on a meta level as the results of a kid growing up on a space station with very little to do except read old books from Earth, but what's Galen's excuse?)
And the fact that as I recall Max works for a kind of Weyland–Yutani-ish corporation which is not something we saw a lot of on Babylon 5 where the governing structures were military or diplomatic. It's a slightly different tilt of the same universe.
Yes! It's something different from what we've seen before. I like it. In general, it's just really neat to see a different side of the B5 universe, since we spent most of our time on B5 and rarely saw other planets or space stations much.
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. . . claims he's being heroic only for the sake of the cat . . .
I mourn for the show not getting the time for the characters to go from a bunch of relative strangers cautiously working together, to the closely bonded team that they were certainly headed for! Once again, you can see the bones of it.
Yes! And I liked them as a group even when the dynamics were rudimentary. Watching this show on a weekly basis knowing it had been pre-cancelled was maddening. And the Sci-Fi Channel never did pick it up.
One thing I was thinking about with B5 is that it's almost like two shows blended together, the one about the crew who are basically a typical group of upstanding spacefaring TV-SF do-gooders - not that I don't like them, obviously I do! -- and then the ambassadorial group, who are all much more like literary characters in nature: flawed, growing in startling and unexpected ways, driven by compelling motivations that have nothing to do with B5's mission and everything to do with their personal histories and goals.
I like the idea of it having started on some level as two stories braided together, each of which becomes more complicated from contact with the other. It would match the show's ability to exist in multiple reigsters at once. How much information do you have about the genesis of Babylon 5 as opposed to just its earliest versions?
(I am willing to accept and enjoy JMS's fondness for mashing up epic fantasy with sci-fi, but I do struggle a bit with the worldbuilding plausibility of the Ye Olde English stylings of the technomages. Marcus can be explained on a meta level as the results of a kid growing up on a space station with very little to do except read old books from Earth, but what's Galen's excuse?)
(I am aware there's an entire trilogy about them, but the only real explanation I have for the technomages is Rule of Cool. That said, I was thrilled when Edward Woodward showed up on Crusade.)
In general, it's just really neat to see a different side of the B5 universe, since we spent most of our time on B5 and rarely saw other planets or space stations much.
I can't remember at this distance if Crusade deals much with the fact that most of the known universe actually has no idea about the more numinous events of Babylon 5, but I really like the fact that your average person does not know that the President of the Interstellar Alliance personally kicked the Elder Races out of the galaxy.
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TNT really buried it. It's hard not to be wistful for the Sci-Fi Channel having had it from the get-go, because they were developing a lot of similar stuff around that time, and I could've easily seen it having at least a solid season or two. (I don't know if you're familiar with the Sandman comics, but one of the things I remember from those is that one character has a library with all the books that were never written. The Sci-Fi Channel version of this is in the DVD wing ...)
How much information do you have about the genesis of Babylon 5 as opposed to just its earliest versions?
I know that JMS essentially wrapped the space station storyline around the epic SF saga that he wanted to tell, in order to make it logistically manageable. And I guess thinking about it from that perspective, you can see a sort of heart-story which is about empires rising and falling over time, and then there's the space station setting which feels more conventionally SF-nal.
... Up to a point, anyway. One thing that I think definitely got lost with Deep Space 9 showing up derivatively around the same time was that no one had ever done a space station show before, at least I don't think so. It feels like one of those sci-fi staples now, and in SFF books it would have been - I am quite sure there were space station books around from the earliest golden age days - but I'm pretty sure the idea of setting a TV series on a space station originated with JMS trying to find a way to keep a sweeping arc story from being impossible to film on a TV budget.
I am aware there's an entire trilogy about them, but the only real explanation I have for the technomages is Rule of Cool. That said, I was thrilled when Edward Woodward showed up on Crusade.)
TIL I learned that Peter Woodward is Edward Woodward's son! I had no idea. (Edward Woodward is mainly associated in my head with the 1980s crime show The Equalizer because my mom used to watch it.)
The technomages are definitely Rule of Cool, but the thing that I find unforgiveably irritating about them in general is that we never see alien technomages, when it is in fact supposed to be an alien order. I can get over the D&D trappings because, well, Rule of Cool, and on a meta level it's not that unbelievable that Earth got some of its own wizard stereotypes from visiting aliens. But I am thoroughly annoyed that it was apparently a bridge too far to at least put an alien headpiece on ONE of the people in Galen's extensively tragic backstory!
I can't remember at this distance if Crusade deals much with the fact that most of the known universe actually has no idea about the more numinous events of Babylon 5, but I really like the fact that your average person does not know that the President of the Interstellar Alliance personally kicked the Elder Races out of the galaxy.
It doesn't really deal with it at all (maybe more in the Gideon-Lochley scenes, which I mostly skipped), but I agree that they don't know about most of it. In fact, in spite of Gideon having seen his ship destroyed by a Shadow ship, I'm not sure if he knows what it was - that is, even apart from the specific details, I don't know if the Shadow War itself is widespread knowledge on Earth at this point. IIRC, Earth was busy with its own problems and wasn't directly involved in the war against the Shadows.
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I am pretty sure that all the original programming I ever watched on TNT was created by JMS. I was not their ideal viewer. (See: the story about the time we were briefly a Nielsen family. All we logged were TNT, AMC, and Channel 2. My parents always joked-not-joked that they had come back and taken our box away because we were throwing off the statistics.)
It's hard not to be wistful for the Sci-Fi Channel having had it from the get-go, because they were developing a lot of similar stuff around that time, and I could've easily seen it having at least a solid season or two.
That would have been interesting. Would they have had comparable budget at the time? I was aware of them, but watched absolutely none of their shows. I did sign the petition for them to pick up Crusade, but.
(I don't know if you're familiar with the Sandman comics, but one of the things I remember from those is that one character has a library with all the books that were never written. The Sci-Fi Channel version of this is in the DVD wing ...)
That is the phenomenon I refer to as the hell of a good video store next door. I would walk out of there with armfuls.
(I did read Sandman. I liked Lucien, too.)
It feels like one of those sci-fi staples now, and in SFF books it would have been - I am quite sure there were space station books around from the earliest golden age days - but I'm pretty sure the idea of setting a TV series on a space station originated with JMS trying to find a way to keep a sweeping arc story from being impossible to film on a TV budget.
I can't think of an earlier show that wasn't ship-set or planetside. James White's Sector General (1957–99) would be the closest model in print that I know about. Doing the two modes together as a kind of soft-serve sci-fi twist sounds like one of the workarounds of necessity that made Babylon 5 so much more deeper and distinctive than any of its original conceptions.
TIL I learned that Peter Woodward is Edward Woodward's son! I had no idea. (Edward Woodward is mainly associated in my head with the 1980s crime show The Equalizer because my mom used to watch it.)
So did my mother! My father loves Breaker Morant (1980). I always think of Edward Woodward in The Wicker Man (1973), but I would undoubtedly have seen him first as Alwyn in Crusade. Peter Woodward I have only seen as Galen.
The technomages are definitely Rule of Cool, but the thing that I find unforgiveably irritating about them in general is that we never see alien technomages, when it is in fact supposed to be an alien order.
I could have sworn we did see some alien technomages, but I gather I just mentally supplied them on the grounds it made no damn sense not to.
In fact, in spite of Gideon having seen his ship destroyed by a Shadow ship, I'm not sure if he knows what it was - that is, even apart from the specific details, I don't know if the Shadow War itself is widespread knowledge on Earth at this point.
That's my sense also and I really like it. It's not secret history in the standard sense, it's just something most people have no cause to know.
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He's very unsurprisingly Sholio catnip; I think I just happened to get to the good Galen and Dureena episodes first, but now I'm watching the good Max episodes and mourning all over again that there's so little of this show!
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Yes! And it's not even that his insufferability is justified because he's that smart after all. He's that smart and also much less insufferable than his first impression.
He's very unsurprisingly Sholio catnip; I think I just happened to get to the good Galen and Dureena episodes first, but now I'm watching the good Max episodes and mourning all over again that there's so little of this show!
I look forward to however you vid him.
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I thought the Scully character having red hair tentacles was a nice touch, though.
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The gently waving tentacles were one of the few things about the episode that I really liked. It was a very neat alien design, and it's too bad they're so far off the beaten track of the B5 galaxy map that they aren't going to show up again in crowd scenes or whatnot.
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I mean. Because it's actually hard to do that with any complexity or sensible depth without opening entire cans of worms about the whole concepts that, lord love him, he's not actually equipped to deal with within his SFnal-construct because B5 aliens are intrinsically about talking about abstract philosophical concepts in human stuff rather than engaging with the pragmatics (ie: what does this all mean when boots are on the ground).
Trek wasn't always GOOD at dealing with the pragmatics, but. XD