Thread "Crusade" in forum "Random Nonsense"

Posted at 12:03PM, Mar. 23, 2011

Crusade.

Rarely has a show suffered as harshly from executive meddling as Crusade.
Apparantly the powers that be were desperate to shoe horn in more sex and violence
…especially more sex!
I have heard stories that they were actually asking for a character who was a sex tourist, who was trying to have sex with as many different alien species as possible.
That might sound ridiculous, but since one episode does feature Pakamara/human porn (no really! But we don't get to see it, thank God!) You can see the inflience of these ideas leaking
through.

Part way through the series, the characters got new uniforms, kind of a retooling.
But then the network wanted a new opening filmed with the new uniforms.
This means the crew switch back and forth between uniforms from one episode to the next.

No, seriously, these things really happened!

So we are talking about another great sci fi cut down by the powers that be before its time (like Fire Fly…….hallowed be thy name.)

In a word….no.

Crusade was shit.

Airing the episodes out of order does not change the fact that the episodes were shitty.

The show didn't so much hit the ground running as immediately fall flat on its face.

The premise itself is a stupid one.
Aliens spray humanity with a plague that will kill everyone in about 2 years (I think it was two years,
the point is they knew how long it would take). How did they know how long it would take? They just did.
Despite the fact they knew how long it would take (despite having never seen it before), it actually turns
out later it is not really a plague but tiny nanotech robots.
Aside from making no real sense, this is an incredibly weak premise for a show.
It means that every episode will follow the crew looking for a cure and innevitably failing.
After a couple of episodes where they dont get it, we are going to know that failure is the only option and
all excitement will crumble…which is exactly what happened.

The shows cast of characters were the most uninteresting, boring and lame bunch of assholes I've seen since Star Trek Voyager.
Hell, as much as it hurts me to say it, these guys were even more boring than the ones on Voyager! (Never thought I would say that!)
Captain Gideon was a fairly stereotypical star ship captain, played by Gary Cole (a great actor who is always worth the asking price, but always seems to land parts in really crappy shows.)
He was the best character.
The second most important character was Galen (free writing tip- never give the two most important characters really similar names that start with the same letter.)
Galen is a wizard…well okay he is a technomage, same difference.
Technomages use technology to replicate magic.
WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS MEAN?
They turn on the lights and go "Ooooh! My magical powers must have done that!"
Seriously? Everyone knows that it is technology, so who are they kidding, doing a load of mumbo jumbo, and pointless magic words for what is just advanced tech? For whose benefit is this?
Galen was trying to be mysterious and cryptic, but unfortunately he was in every episode save about one.
His screen time was second only to the captain.
Every time the captain ran into anything, no matter how trivial, Galen would always pop up to give his thoughts.
It got to the point that I honestly expected the captain to sit on the toilet and hear a voice from the next cubicle saying "Toilet paper, captain?"
The captain owned a magic box called the apocalypse box that glowed yellow, looked really cheap and said cryptic things.
No really.

The rest of the cast were…actually I only vaguely remember any of these scrubs.
There was an alien thief woman who was the last of her kind. I hate that gimic! It means we get to learn absolutely zero
about the persons culture, there is no potential to expand on them or explore them. There is just the one
lame character (and believe me, she was lame.)
There was a psychic guy. Apparantly between series there were wars with psi-core that have been resolved, the evil psi-core broken up and a similar but much nicer organisation put in its place. All of this happens off camera.
So we've replaced a cool and incredibly powerful organisation of bad guys, with a boring and lame non-hostile organisation.
Honestly, I'm not making this up, people were paid to write this!

There was also some explorer guy, and probably someone else that I honestly cant remember.

The other big problem the show ran into was that rather then exploring the rich and diverse cast of cultures and species of the B5 universe, our heroes were studying dead civilisations for clues.
They would most often go to planets that had no life or at best an alien of the week.
This was as painfully boring as it sounds.
In fact it was worse!
It was so fucking boring it was almost unreal.
Nothing freaking happened!
Half the time is was Galen with some new stupid technomage shit he needed help with (killing the mystery of his character even further) no of which was important to the plot or even vaguely interesting.

But even in a cesspit of shit, eventually you will come across the biggest, smelliest turd of them all.
And in this crappy series, there was one episode that was so bad that when I read about it again, it was like a post traumatic stress flash back.
BAM!
I was back there! Watching that episode again!
The episode was called "Visitors from down the street."
The plot was that there is an alien planet where everyone dresses like people from 20th century earth.
On this planet there is a team of government agents, a man and a woman, who are investigating a government cover up relating to aliens visiting their world.
In case you haven't guessed yet the entire episode is a very contrived X-Files piss take.
Except humans were the aliens…oooh shocking twist!
This goes down to details like the woman alien having red tentacles on her head (like Scully's red hair) and the bad alien smoking cigarettes at the end.
This would be the equivalent of Captain Picard beaming down to a planet and finding it was basically a light hearted remake of Charlie's Angels!
Hell, lets bring this closer to home. The caste of Harkovast run into a house where there is a fat, orange Darsai who eats lasagne all the time and hates Mondays!
Imagine how jarring, painfully embarrassing, unfunny and out of place that would be.
The fantastical universe you have been following is suddenly rendered a moronic farce for the sake of a really weak attempt at topical humour.

The show was cancelled before it production run had even finished and J Michael Straczynski worked unsuccessfully to get his name taken off the credits.
This was the anti firefly.

Posted at 6:03PM, Mar. 24, 2011

Crusade. Don't bother watching it. Ever.

Posted at 12:04PM, Apr. 20, 2011

I tried, I really did, I owned the vhs boxset and everything but I never made it through the series.

Posted at 8:04AM, Apr. 21, 2011

I really want to meet someone who liked Crusade, just so they can try (and fail) to explain the nonsense to me.

Though if they will defend that one x-files episode…I cant be held responsible for my actions! I can only be pushed so far!

Posted at 11:04AM, Apr. 27, 2011

Good Luck.

Wait… which X files episode? Nevermind, I never watched X-files.

Posted at 5:04AM, Apr. 29, 2011

Visitors from Down The Street.
The absolute nadir of the entire B5 franchise.
Watch it and abandon all hope.

Posted at 1:04PM, Apr. 29, 2011

Oh yeah, not an actual X-files episode. That one in Crusade… yeah, no. You'd have to pay me a large amount of money to watch it. Then you'd have to pay me damages for the rest of my life.

Posted at 5:04PM, Apr. 29, 2011

I have to apologise.
Though I was being sarcastic when I said, I did accidentally instruct you to watch that episode.
And for that I am very sorry.
No one should have to suffer that shit.