Amph For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5 (The Road Home animated film)

Two other details: the Apocalypse Box is "idicative of something else" in regards to spirituality that cannot be explained by technology, and is one reason why Galen rejects the Apcoalypse Boxes.

Now this forget if it pops up in the one episode or not, but regarding the new telepath system established in the wake of the defeat of the Corps, it's mentioned that the Psi Corps could return if this doesn't work out- that some senators are waiting to just re-establish the corps but control it better this time.

 

It's possible the details changed between the time of the interview mentioning this and the time the script was written, but it seems the old Psi-Corps was disbanded and replaced by the Psionic Monitoring Commission. There were still rogue Psi-Corps elements left over like Bester's hidden fleet, etc, though.

 

Crusade: The Well of Forever established the Psionic Monitoring Commission and Bureau of Telepath Integration were established after the Psi-Corps was disbanded. They operated the watchmen who monitored people like Matheson, as well as tracked down war criminals like Bester.

The Psi-Corps remnant fleet is from the novels but would have appeared briefly in the unfilmed Crusade episode with Bester in it.

 

No- you just haven't rewatched it as often

I find Crusade to be a promising series that never had the chance to fulfill it's potential, but what is on screen (or written and unfilmed) was mostly quite good-to-excellent, save a few episodes. Just fun sci-fi, but headier than, say, Stargate, without the sterility of Trek.

I still think Crusade's 13 episodes were far better than B5's first 13 episodes (there's at least 5 excellent Crusade episodes*)- and Crusade had the disadvantage of never getting a chance to even film it's first major arc episode ("To the Ends of the Earth" being the equivalent to "Signs & Portents"), let alone several other major episodes (including a 3-parter that wasn't the finale).

But, IMO, it can come down to viewing order. The DVD/airing order is weak, and the sci-fi airing order isn't quite perfect either, but does create an excellent character arc for Max. I think the chronological order one also front loads the Galen episodes too, IIRC. Your welcome to use my tweaked order** if you feel like rewatching the series again.


As to the Psi-Corps stuff, Matheson mentions that info when informing Gideon about Mr. Jones' arrival/duty, though the war criminal stuff is from another episode/script.

Reading though this Behind The Scenes book has been interesting- even though it's basically just a collection of on-set interviews, there's a lot of details revealed about it's production, story and characters (nothing major so far, just insights), and it's tragic at times when certain comments are made without them having a clue as to what will eventually happen to the show.

One particular comment that stood out came form Daniel Dae Kim, since most involved pretty much assumed the show would go for 5 years, saying something to the effect that he was looking forward to the 5th season, because his son would be 7 years old by that time and be more aware of the show and that he was interested in seeing how he reacted to the show. Alas...


Hopefully the "What The Hell Happened?" script books will start coming out soon...


On an unrelated note, I stumbled across "Crusade Wars" on youtube which apparently involved Wayne Alexander and Ron Moore (unsure if it's THE Ron Moore, though). It's so-so, but the "Beyond the Rim" sequence later on is hilarious and I officially demand it be canon.


*IMO, The Well of Forever, The Path of Sorrows, Appearances and Other Deceits, Each Night I Dream of Home & Racing the Night are all great episodes, easily on par with the better B5 episodes (though not as good as the BEST B5 episodes).


**Here's the order, for reference in case you haven't com across it earlier in the thread:

1) Racing the Night - Disc 3
2) The Memory of War - Disc 3
3) The Needs of Earth - Disc 3
4) The Long Road - Disc 1
5) Visitors from Down the Street - Disc 3
6) The Well of Forever - Disc 1
7) Ruling from the Tomb - Disc 2
8) Patterns of the Soul - Disc 2
9) Each Night I Dream of Home - Disc 4
10) The Path of Sorrows - Disc 1
11) The Rules of the Game - Disc 2
12) Appearances and Other Deceits - Disc 2
13) (War Zone) - Disc 1

(this basically helps avoid having back-to-back Technomage episodes or back-to-back Lochley episodes- though you have to ignore the uniform changes and, later. the associated subplot in (the other otherwise good) A&OD; and probably just skip War Zone since it's outright awful)

 

I think JMS has said he's given up on any official continuation of Crusade by this point (though if I ever hit a major lottery jackpot, I promise I'll try throwing some money at him and WB to make a CGI animated continuation ). Legend of the Rangers was the last back-door attempt to resurrect that story (screwed over by football, SciFi's idiotic attempts to shift tone, and the middling/rushed quality of the film itself).

We know some things about how the show would go- moreso about the 1st season and then vaguer elements beyond that. Most of the former comes from the 3 unfilmed scripts that were released and vague details about a few others, and the latter comes from various sources such as the JMS commentary tracks that were on the 1st printing of the Crusade DVD set (before he had them removed in protest for WB editing comments about what TNT did).

The broader strokes seem to be that the plague cure would be found sometime mid-Season 2 and the show would shift into it's true focus (much like how B5 shifted from the initial Minbari War aftermath focus to the Shadow War), which is supposed to have been based on the Book of Job (thus the obvious reference at the end of the original first episode "Racing the Night"**).

Gideon and the crew would have discovered secret shadow-tech ops being run by Earthgov, which would have "blacklisted" the crew as a result.

I'd also assume the focus would shift towards the original concept of Crusade being about empire building (but TNT wanted an initial hook, so they introduced the plague plot).

Two bits from what was on the commentary track:

-Referring to some unwritten episodes (I'm guessing would have formed the "sword" story arc)- Dureena would have dissapeared for two episodes, then returned with no memory of what happened and a sword, and she would have begun a darker path than Galen's in acquiring some of the Technomage power she wants from him (led by a need for revenge), which would lead them into conflict.

-Regarding "End of the Line"'s ending with Gideon being shot: he would have actually died "for a time" but (again, "for a time"), but his consciousness would have been transferred into the Apocalypse Box (which is why it slowly sounds more and more like Gideon in the series), presumably until he was resurrected.

We'll obviously finally get to know more once the script books are published (the delay seems to be a result of the time it takes to get the clearance rights to the non-JMS scripts).



As to comparisons to Firefly, I think Crusade is the more tragic of the two. Both got screwed by their networks, but Firefly's problems were more typical (bad timeslot, episodes shown out of order trying to frontload action eps) and it DID get a decent amount of resolution via the theatrical film. Firefly was also much more anchored around the characters and their personalities than the overarching plot threads, IMO.

By contrast, Crusade was more plot-focused and lacks any kind of resolution. And while it's episodes were also shown out of order, it was done more out of possessive spite in a "We'll show "our" episodes first" type way, had a crappy new first episode slapped together at the last moment (keeping mind that if it wasn;t for that, we would have gotten the awesome "To the Ends of the Earth" filmed before production shut down- arg!), had networks intentionally try to alter the very soul of the show (more random shoot-outs, more sex and the infamous "have the Captain let a crew member get raped" type notes) before intentionally killing it and taking measures to assure another network couldn't pick the series up.

Fox screwed over Firefly out of unintentional incompetence- TNT intentionally screwed Crusade over, then stomped on it's ashes.


**Galen: In the end, it's all the story of Job, isn't it?
Gideon: Some days, it feels like our faith is being tested, same as his.
Galen: Where do you put your faith, Matthew? In science? Your luck? This ship?
Gideon: I haven't decided.
Galen: Well, then, if this is the story of Job, a great deal of people are being incon

 

More details on The Walls of Hell and the Sword trilogy:

-Supposedly, according to Larry DiTillio, JMS wasn't happy with the first draft of part 1 handed in by Rich Mueller and was having a re-write done on it (but this could very well merely be due to the removal of the Trace character by order of TNT).

-Matheson feels responsible for Dureena's capture in part 2. In part 1, they were on a planet together and got separated and she was taken.

-Gideon and Matheson turn to the Apocalypse Box for help in finding Dureena, after exhausting all other options (Matheson going "There's one thing we haven't tried.").

-This is supposedly the first time Gideon has asked the box for an actual favor. It tells him Dureena is unimportant, Gideon says she's important to him, so it asks him to bring Matheson. Once Matheson is there, it asks to be alone with him. After Gideon leaves, the entity in the box possess him, causing him great pain until he recovers, his eyes glowing like the box.

-So Matheson now has this enhanced awareness, but it won;t last long, and asks to be taken to the bridge alone (otherwise he'll be unable to stop himself from reading everyone's thoughts. After doing so is when he starts to link with the ship and see and experience things through the ship (feeling the rush of flight through space, etc), with only Gideon on the bridge.

-This element of the story was a variation on a pitch by DiTillio for an episode of The Next Generation titled "I, Enterprise" where Data would have become the Enterprise.

-Slowly the box entity takes more control of Matheson and he gets more of a megalomaniac thing going. He directs the ship to a strange part of hyperspace referred to as "dark space", which is some kind of Shadow leftover.

-Matheson then refuses to return control of the ship, Gideon tries to take him to the brig but Matheson's control of the ship allows him to seal of doors and corridors, use intruder protection systems against security forces,etc to prevent this.

-It's determined that the heightened brain activity will kill Matheson in an hour, so Gideon has less than an hour to try to stop him without killing him, otherwise he'll die.

-Gideon and Matheson then start experiencing flashes of their past. (presumably due to a combination of "dark space" and Matheson's abilities)

-Matheson has a mental trip back to see his father again, where we see his father's dislike for Matheson stemming from Matheson inadvertently hurting someone with his telepathic powers. The trip goes through a surreal version of those events with him, his father and mother.

-Gideon relives an incident where he was playing a gambling game with an alien woman to save a friend of his, and he cheats to win, wins, and frees his friend- but the woman is executed for not realizing he had cheated, and Gideon's guilt trip surrounding that.

-The basic theme was that "everything we do has consequences", so we'd see the consequences of various incidents in Gideon and Matheson's lives, and they'd work them out through a looping of those events over and over.

-If Peter Woodward was available (and, apparently, he had volunteered to do the episode even though he wasn't contracted for it- but his inclusion wasn't guaranteed at the point the script was being written), they would have taken something from Galen's past as well. (wonder if it'd have been something taken from the Technomage Trilogy novels like his flashback in The Path of Sorrows?)

 

About 20 US. Good deal, considering I paid 70-100 US when they first came out.

 

Crusade: What the Hell Happened? Vol 1 is out now. So far, I've only skimmed the intro (the bulk of the content to this volume are various series treatments and alternate versions of Racing the Night, along with associated concept/prodiction art for that episode- the city, skimmer, enemy ships, alien skulls, etc).

Some details revealed in this intro:

-The "telepath issue" would become essential to the 2nd season story arc, which was the primary reason behind including a character like Matheson as part of the crew.

-At initial meetings, when JMS suggested King Arthur elements as a comparable structure, the execs rejcted the idea, instead wanting a mission/something for the crew to find, so JMS suggested "like a grail?" to which they responded positively (only to realise what he did days later and become fairly angry at being tricked).

-This is also why the ship was called the Excalibur.

-The Excalibur's design, unintentionallyu like the original Enterprise's, results from the original design being turned upside down.

-Andreas, sans makeup, was JMS's first suggestion for Galen- but the studios didn't want to use him, and were only offering him first season rates (an offer they knew Andreas wouldn't accept, nor one JMS felt he should have anyways).

-This concept led to posisbly casting Mira and Jurasik out of makeup as well, and actors like Doyle IN makeup.

-Michael York expressed interest in playing Gideon, but was once again rejected by the execs (he was the original choice for Sheridan as well) for "being british" (not because Peter was also british [which, JMS says, if that had been the case, he would have dropped Peter quickly if it meant getting York] but rather because Patrick Stewart was british too, and they didn;'t want viewers thinking all starship captains were british ).

-Despite attempts by JMS to work in as many B5 characters as possible (which included Marcus(!), Mathras, Varenni [presumably whom the temple Neroon dies in is named after] and others), he was shot down by the execs. Tracey only managed to squeeze in because she happened to be sharing a box with a top TNT exec at a sporting event, who was impressed by her wit enough to have them include her in the show.

 

Ok, after reaidng the first couple treatments, the context for some of that information makes some things make more sense.

Being written partway through the production of the 4th season, certain things were still fluid about some characters and the conclusion of some events.

So, at this point, JMS hadn't decided to kill Marcus off yet, which is why he is present here (which would track with JMS's comments that he wouldn't have killed Marcus off if he knew Claudia wasn't going to return). Varenni's name was likely recycled from this treatment to name the temple actually used towards the end of Season 4 (or, one could argue the character here is named after the character whom the temple is named for, I suppose).

Also, the ISA hadn't been formed yet- so the series picks up with Sheridan in command of the White Star fleet and not acting as a politician/president. Early concept designs for the Excalibur also reveal that it hadn't been decided that the Minbari would be sharing their artificial-G tech (there's a really neat concept with the Exclaibur having a mini rotating cylinder section beneath it's bow, like a scaled down segment of B5).

Part of the early treatments resemble the series concepts later reused for Legend of the Rangers and were meant to be a substitute for a 5th season of B5 (since, at this point, it was seemingly certain there would be no fifth season).

In these versions, the Drahk fleet (not a planet killer) assaults Earth and devastates our cities (the treatment says "think ID4", and has numerous static radio transmissions mentioning Earthdome being destroyed, Moscow and Seattle being lost, etc), but underestimates our ferocity when our back is to the wall (the treatment compares it to the attack on Pearl Harbor) and, though Earth's fleet is mostly wiped out and Earth has essentially lost, we manage to force the Drahk ships to retreat from our system. A day or two later, they return and unleash the plague.

With Earthforce mostly gone (what ships remain are needed for local defense), they turn to the Ranger fleet for help in finding a cure.

These treatments share the produced Crusade's concept of seeking out leads to ancient world sthat might have a cure, but here they specifically cite that the goal is to locate the cities of the First Ones for the cure, and deal with the defenses and guardians left behind by them.

In these early treatments, it's not just one ship, but rather a group of 5 White Stars seeking the cure.

G'Kar would have been along, helping to save Earth since it was Earthers who helped save his world.

Mathras (named so to avoid the Zathrii naming complexity explainations) is brought along because, due to his experience with the Great Machine, he is most qualified to handle ancient technology that they might encounter or acquire. His primary function is as a mechanic here.

Varenni was among the Minbari clans that didn't want to surrender at the Battle of the Line, and sees the plague as an act of vindication against Earth, but is forced to help on the mission by Delenn's orders.

The character that would become Dureena is said to be the last of one of the oldest races- though her power would be reduced as the story was revised further, I can't help but speculate that this might be a connection to the sword and Ethreal ship she would have become involved with in the unproduced episodes.


There's also a ton of concept and production design sketches included. Most notably are several drawings of the Exclaibur's engine room (and it's 900 foot long power core), which was never used on the series for the episodes produced.

Exterior illustrations also highlight the location of an observation dome, also not used on the series.

I also can't help but find that some of the sketches, particularly for the map room area off of the bridge, resemble the layout of the Pegasus's bridge on the new BSG series.

 

Next section has two things of note: the first is a hilarious 8-page script for an internal industry promo featuring Zathras as he breaks the 4th wall to talk about Babylon 5's success and Crusade's premise in relation to that ("Zathras now trading card. Zathras life now complete." ).

The other is a list of synopses for 13 potential Crusade episodes (only one of which was actually produced, as Vistors Down the Street). I won't include the VFDTS one, but here are summaries of the other 12 (which show us what some potential one-shots could have been for the 2nd (or even 1st) season).


1) Exclaibur arrives at an alien world that no one has stepped foot on for over a million years, only to discover 6 recently dug graves- their own. They realize that they've jumped ahead 6 days, and have that amount of time to figure out how they died and how to stop it.

2) First contact is established with a race determined to destroy the Excalibur because they see the First Ones as gods and think the Excalibur's mission is sacriledge for defiling their cities. The aliens, though, are really hiding something and would rather Earth perish than their people find out who their gods really were, and how they died.

3) Dureena discovers evidence of survivors of her race, which conflicts with the shi's mission, so she repograms the ship to try and find them- only to lead them into a Drahk trap, where she must risk her life to save the crew.

4) A scientist back on Earth may have a clue to the plague. The crew returns to Earth (in protective suits) to investigate, giving them a chance to visit friends and family in the process. Meanwhile, some guy, who believes the government already has acure and is only giving it to important people, takes a member of the crew hostage, demanding a dose of that cure.

5) Zathras and the Captain are stranded 5 miles below the surface of an alien planet, with Zathras slowly driving the Captain nuts, until they stumble upon a piece of the cure. They then just have to survive long enough to tell people about it (and avoid killing each other in the process). To escape, they have to fight their way past a Guardian left behind by the First Ones.

6) An ancient ship is discovered, dead in space, puts the ultimate killing machine in Max's hands. But he doesn't know it is alive, aware, and may have plans for Max.

7) 3 White Stars have gone missing and the Excalibur goes to investigate. They discover a surviving, many-billions-of-years-old First One. Only he doesn't want to be bothered, he's pissed and a little bit insane- which is why he was left behind by the others, imprisoned millions of years ago. And the crew has just accidentally set him free.

8) The Drahk discover the next destination of the Excalibur and send in several dozen ships to take it out. A call for help is sent out to the White Star fleet, but it remains to be seen if they'll arrive in time. (A Fleet Junkie episode. )

9) The Excalibur wanders into the middle of two warring races that believe they are the only two intelligent forms of life in the universe. They're convinced the humans are a trick by the other side, and so both end up joining in an attack on the Excalibur.

10) Deep inside a First One city, a glass cube is found with an alien mind in it, which takes over the Doctor to flee the ship in oursuit of her mate- not realizing that over a hundred years have passed and the mate is long dead. When she does figure that out, she plans to join him in death, even if it means taking the octor with her.

11) A First One planet is breaking up- destroying itself from the inside. They encounter an alien there that believes he can siphon off the energies being released to become immortal. he's convinced the rew is there to steal his machine, so he sabotages their ship, forcing them to try and find a way off planet before it blows.

12) The, badly outgunned, Excalibur must defend a research station processing their findings for a cure from a Drahk attack squadron that has learned of it's location.



Another small note is that JMS had sugg

 

And, lastly, for the different versions of Racing the Night. (Besides the quality of the CGI Galen, which was apparently due to their rendering capabilities being maxed out by A Call to Arms and the planetary work for this episode) JMS was dissapointed the network made him file the egdes off the story.

They wanted Gideon to be more squarejaw heroic here and be the right man for the job, whereas JMS wanted him to be more of a coniver here and be the last person you'd give a ship to command. Likewise TNT wanted everyone to be likeable, so further edges were shaved off here and there.

The majoruty of the episode is primarily the same- the introduction before the title sequence is different, instead of the General being all for Gideon and them having to convince the league ambassadors aboard B5, we instead start with General Miller addressing Gideon one-on-one on Mars, emphasising that Gideon was not close to being his choice for this mission and that he only got the gig because of Sheridan and his cabinent's insistance (part of the deal for them lending the Excalibur to Earth Alliance).

There's also a slightly different intro to the Excalibur- originally the General would only show Gideon a hologram of the ship, and there'd be a big beauty shot of the real ship after they evace the planet with Galen later on.

The act break during the skiff/disk chase through the city is different- it originally ended ona cliffhanger with him being chased, then it'd pick up with the Galen rescue and the reveal of the xcalibur. As produced, the chase is continuous and the act break happens as they approach the Excalibur, which kinda kills that moment, IMO.

Max has an extended intro, but major changes come in the 4th act. Max's suppositions about the planet being a testing ground/mouse trap for potential enemies and allies by a race nowhere near there proves to be true (and this leads to the battle). After the Excalibur fires it's main weapon at the surface, instead of them discovering the cryo'd civilization, a giant, 2 mile-long probe emeges from beneath the surface.

From the probe, the alien then begins communication with Gideon atter downloading their language files, saying few manage to survive their tests, let alone destroy one of their bases. And, based on his scan of human history's willingness to sell out others for personal benefit, this race is willing to take the Excalibur on as allies. Though they lack the cure, they can offer their homeworld (whereever it is) as a new homeworld for mankind after Earth dies. "Our strength will be your strength.".

In exchange, we'd just have to keep sending others to these testing worlds, perhaps set up a few to operate on their behelf, as the others that have allied with this race have done.

During the conversation, Gideon begins to stall for time as Matheson quietly stands by on the firing controls for the main guns as they begin to recharge to 100%. Once they have, Gideon tells the alien to "Blow it out your butt", to which Matheson fires the main weapon and destroys the probe.

Galen: "Blow it out your butt"?

Gideon: I knew they were wtaching for any obvious sign they were going to attack. I wanted to be clear on the firing order... but I figured it would take them a couple seconds to parse that particular sentence,

Galen: So they were killed by your use of the language. (beat) Well, I suppose it's not the first time.

 

For those who missed out on the B5 Scripts Book series and don't feel like paying $1,000+ to get a set on ebay, they're now going to hold a Lottery at B5books.com for the chance to buy complete sets (from the left over stock of the original print run that was saved to replace damaged volumes) at their original price (so it's essentially $600 or so with shipping factored in).

Definitely worth the investment for what is the definitive making of the series.

Apparently, they'll also be offering the individual left-over copies that can't form a complete set in February as well.

Also as a heads-up, the supplemental B5: Artifacts From The Rim book will only be available until Jan 20th (with cover options to math both the black B5 volumes or the white Crusade series).

 

Obama's State of the Union Address: "We move forward, together- or not at all."
Delenn to the Grey Council: "We move now, together- or not at all."

Had to do a double take on that one, ha.

 

The strengths of the first season definitely are in the storytelling and writing more than the production values for that first season. Though even then you have some definite flops (Infection, TKO). However, I think there's still facets to enjoy in even some of the middling episodes like Eyes.

However, in general, Season 1 is really more enjoyable the second time you watch the series, when you can pick up all the setup and foreshadowing elements that were woven in so early on- some of them you just can't recognize without seeing the 4th or 5th seasons sometimes.

There are 9 core episodes (after the pilot) I usually whittle it donw to for new viewers I'm showing the show, with an additional 2 of noteworthy mention due to elements referenced later, even if the episode sthemselves aren't that great (but those elements can be acquired in episode recaps sometimes).

Midnight on the Firing Line
(Born to the Purple)
Parliament of Dreams
Mind War
And the Sky Full of Stars
Signs & Portents
A Voice in the Wilderness, parts 1 & 2
Babylon Squared
(The Quality of Mercy)
Chrysalis

So long as you've watched those, you'll have the major points going forward (even though there are still a few points you'll skip over that might get referenced later on).

 

From JMS's Facebook page:

"...got word that the B5 related stuff is still proceeding along, just can't say anything yet...

&

"Re: the B5 thing...I'm not being coy, it's just that over the years, it's like B5 has been the football, the fans (and I to a degree) have been Charlie Brown, and the studios/networks have dutifully executed their role as Lucy. Consequently, I'm not saying anyTHING to anyONE for any REASON until I know for a stone cold fact that there's ink on contracts and we're moving ahead on something of substance."