Crusade - Series Recap

Crusade was pretty much doomed from the get go.  Straczynski had a good premise, but very few stories, even “A Call to Arms,” are that stellar.  The fact that early on TNT realized that folks that were watching Babylon 5 were not watching any of their other programming, and the fact that folks watching their regular programming weren’t watching Babylon 5….made the studios interest in the property wain considerably.  It didn’t fit their brand, and thats a legitimate concern for a channel.  Babylon 5 and Crusade would’ve fit in just fine at the Sci-Fi Channel, but not at TNT.  So they began to meddle, and some of what they demanded of Straczynski, which he opposed but did anyway, was to demand a clearer opening episode.  This was actually a decent idea, because Straczysnki’s opener feels like you’ve jumped into the middle of something with no premise and it feels wrong.

The problem was that they did this and also demanded that they start the show off with the newer costumes that they just paid for…which made no sense continuity-wise, and it complicated things. They mixed all the episodes up, then revised it, than JMS told everybody the nonsense order he preferred, and then there is a chronological order…it is just confusing.  I watched this in the chronological order, and I honestly don’t think there is a good viewing order to this series.  I think the ideas were scrambled, things were missing, it feels like everybody rushed in.  Straczysnki wasn’t yet ready to move on from his B5 universe, and TNT wanted to get a little more bang out of this potentially big sci-fi property…but then both parties weren’t ready.  I don’t think Straczynski really planned this show out as well as he had Babylon 5, and TNT changed gears and realized that the property they thought they could get more out of wasn’t actually a good fit for them…then the meddling didn’t help either party. 

Like I said, it was doomed.  The characters rarely come to life, they aren’t well written. Like Babylon 5 before it, Straczysnki started with plot and the characters are all just conduits to get his plot out.  The difference was the characters began to shine through at the start of Season 2, and this show is just beginning and it feels like a bunch of people I don’t know rarely getting moments to shine as they are drowning in plot.  I am of the mind that the best way to do things is to start with a hint of plot or a premise (like saving the Earth from a plague), then give us several character episodes to build up who we are following…then jump in to plot craziness.  I tend to be more invested in a plot heavy show if I am invested in the characters.

Straczynski is a good writer, he proved that with Babylon 5, but he decided to milk the property, and he just needed to face that the story he wanted to tell got told (hell, it got told by the end of the fourth season, the fifth season and the subsequent movies is when things began to get dragged out), and Crusade is kind of chore because of it.

NEXT TIME: The Failed Pilot