| Episode: | 1 | | | Writer: | J. Michael Straczynski | | | Director: | Janet Greek | | | Air Date: | 09-Jun-1999 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching an episode of the short-lived Babylon 5 spin-off series Crusade! I thought it was called Babylon 5: Crusade, but nope it's just Crusade.
The series began airing about six months after the end of Babylon 5, in June 1999... which means if I'd just waited another couple of months I could've published this on the show's 25th anniversary. It's too late for that now, I already promised this would be my next review, but it shows how it helps to plan things in advance.
Crusade had actually been planned out while Babylon 5 was still airing and they'd kicked off the show's story arc in the movie A Call to Arms back in January. Everything was going great... until it wasn't. The TNT network's meddling made such a mess of the continuity that it's hard to figure out what order to watch the episodes in. It's not as simple as just putting the events in a sensible order as there's a change in uniforms partway through the series, so all the grey uniform episodes have to be in a block together.
War Zone seems a safe bet as a starting point, seeing as it's chronologically earliest and it's numbered episode one, but creator J. Michael Straczynski would disagree. He wasn't impressed by how it turned out and would've preferred that the series had started off with the 9th episode, Racing the Night. His thinking was that he'd already established the premise in the movie so there was no need for a lot of extra exposition.
Okay, I'm going to be going through the episode scene by scene, sharing my reactions and observations as I go, so there are going to be SPOILERS here. There'll also likely be a few spoilers for Babylon 5 and A Call to Arms, but I won't ruin any Crusade episodes but this one.
Those are the original grey uniforms, by the way. The TNT network really screwed the series over, but one good thing they did was help get the crew out of those bellhop costumes they'd been wearing for five episodes and put them in black jackets. This did mean pushing the first five episodes to the end of the run though, which didn't help!
Oh hang on, I've spotted something about the menu I can talk about: the spaceship's upside down!
The episode begins with clips from the movie A Call to Arms, showing off some of the effects shots, while a narrator explains that the Earth was attacked by the Drakh and everyone on the planet has been infected by a deadly plague.
The shots are in 4:3 ratio though, not 16:9 widescreen, because unlike B5, Crusade never got a widescreen release. Also it turns out that this is actually on a TV on an Earthforce vessel (played by a redress of the Babylon 5 corridor sets), and the crew is reacting badly to the news.
Some of the mutineers were born on Mars and they've decided to opt out of being dragged down into Earth's infected atmosphere. In fact, they're trying to seize the ship, so there's a full-blown mutiny going on right now.
Right in the middle of the brawl is Daniel Dae Kim of Angel, Lost, Hawaii 5-0 and Avatar: The Last Airbender fame, playing a high-ranking officer called Matheson (named after sci-fi and horror author Richard Matheson). Funny thing is, everyone's punching right now and no one's shooting, as for whatever reason neither the mutineers or security are carrying guns. It's not the greatest looking fight to be honest, but at least no one's dying.
Well okay not everyone's punching, as there's a maintenance team in the background just doing their job, and even the people in the fight don't seem to have their heart in it. It really comes across like the production crew didn't have the time to choreograph anything in advance, so they just made it up on the day.
This is our series lead, Gary Cole. He was corporate manager Bill Lumbergh in Office Space the same year, the sinister Sheriff Buck in American Gothic the year before, and he played Harvey Birdman in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law the year after. So the guy's got some range I guess! He wasn't creator jms' first choice though, as he wanted British thespian Michael York. The actor was apparently on board, but TNT vetoed him because Star Trek: The Next Generation already had a captain with an English accent.
Anyway the captain chooses to gamble his ship on his ability to beat the lead mutineer in a brawl and there's no subversion of expectations when it comes to the winner. It's an unwritten rule of sci-fi that you don't get to command a ship unless you can take on basically anyone in a straight fist fight, even if the other guy was secretly carrying a wrench.
The scene tells us a few things right away: the captain is a gambler, he's very good in a fight, he's smart enough to take down the leader first, and he's kind enough to tell his followers that if they get back to work he won't even put the mutiny on their record! But mostly it shows us that TNT wanted the series to start with a fist fight.
We never quite get to see the name on it though. It's just called 'Explorer ship' in the script.
Anyway that's the end of the teaser.
The title sequence features a standard series of clips from the series (and a few from Babylon 5 as well), displayed in widescreen, but its unique gimmick is that it also features the voice of a wizard asking the captain questions. Less of an opening monologue, more of an opening interview, though it serves the same purpose. I'm not keen on it to be honest, but I'll talk more about the questions later.
Captain Gideon's the first character to be credited, but next it's...
The most surprising thing about the credits though for me is that I don't hate the title music. I've been critical about composer Evan Chen's soundtrack in the past and I'm going to carry on being critical in the future, but his theme kind of suits the show.
ACT ONE
It turns out that some of the Drakh ships escaped and there are Earthforce vessels in pursuit. Gideon's kind of frustrated that their explorer ship couldn't be any help.
Gideon and Matheson discuss the mutiny, with Matheson a bit concerned about Gideon's choice to just let it slide. Mostly he's worried that the mutineer has connections on Mars and if he's not accused of mutiny then he could accuse Gideon of assault! Gideon's not stressing out about it though, as everyone's got more apocalyptic things to deal with. Just then he gets a call telling him they're to set a course for Mars because someone wants Gideon there immediately. Uh-oh.
This wasn't the original plan though. If you start watching the series in the original order, starting with Racing the Night, he just shows up like they're all already friends.
Galen only has the one line here, "And so it begins", which was once said by Kosh in Chrysalis; another episode written by jms and directed by Janet Greek. This episode isn't as good.
This is a weirdly old-school looking space battle with some obvious superimposed explosions, but at least a few of those explosions are coming from the Drakh ship. The Earth ship is ultimately destroyed, but the crew accepts their deaths very stoically, knowing that've forced the Drakh vessel down onto a planet so someone else can come and finish the job.
We learn that this archaeologist is called Eilerson and he's currently trying to find an underground city. So I guess tapping away at this wall with his hammer is part of the process. We also learn that he's very interested in finding objects of value to send back to their corporation, big surprise there. They're going to send a shuttle over to check on whatever crashed down and see if it can benefit them in any way.
The guy on the left is a military liaison called Ames and the guy on the right is Senator McQuate, and I'm mostly writing this down now so I can remember it later.
Babylon 5 often felt a bit cheap when it did scenes like this, but Crusade had a new director of photography to give it a different look, so the scene feels cheap in a slightly different way. The series had a tiny budget and they were doing what they could with what they had.
There are a few episodes of Babylon 5 where someone visits an ancient alien world and digs up a mysterious healing device, or a Great Machine, or an Ikarran war machine, or a soul orb etc., and Earth is hoping that the Excalibur crew can find the advanced technology they need if they just visit enough planets. McQuate has chosen Gideon to be the captain as he's the most daring Explorer ship captain in the fleet, and he's encountered more alien races than anyone else. Makes sense to me!
This is the ace pilot's chance to show off his skills and earn his place as one of the series' recurring characters.
The Drakh have some weird looking energy beams by the way. They've got a dark core and a white glow. I'm getting flashbacks to Half-Life 2.
ACT TWO
Trace is a cocky rogue with a leather jacket, so the others ultimately have no choice but to recognise his logic and follow his plan. While they're all getting to safety, he's going to take another shuttle up into orbit on a daring mission to call for help.
Hang on, this is the Excalibur's navigator from A Call to Arms! Marjean Holden is one of three actors returning from the movie, and the only one to be playing a different character. Poor Dr Chambers doesn't know what the hell anyone's talking about though, as she's just this minute walked in the door. She just wanted to get off Mars and return to Earth to be with her sister. But getting to be the one searching for a cure is even better.
I'm trying to figure out the time frame this is all happening over. I guess by this point the Excalibur has made it to Babylon 5 for the A Call to Arms epilogue and has been outfitted for the mission, though Chambers has only been waiting here a day and a half. Gideon starts to tell her what's happening, but they're interrupted by an escaped prisoner causing chaos in the corridor outside.
It's not great that B5 spent so much time hyping up a Telepath War it was never going to show but it's nice that we get to see its consequences at least. In B5, human telepaths had to join the Psi Corps and couldn't serve in the military, so seeing Matheson in an Earthforce uniform shows how much things have changed. It also shows he must be a bloody good officer.
I mean, Babylon 5 ended in 2262 and this takes place in 2267, so even if the Telepath War happened immediately after the end of Babylon 5 and the new rules were introduced that same year, that still means that Matheson went through all his training and got promoted to the role of first officer of a prestigious Explorer ship in just four years. Probably less, if he's been out on a mission with Gideon for a while.
But she's very clear about the fact that she's a fantastic thief and Senator McQuate confirms that keeping her locked away has been a problem. So Gideon wants her on the team! McQuate isn't keen on this as having a thief on board would diminish the prestige and importance of the mission, which is a remarkably stupid thing to say.
Gideon feels secure enough in his job at this point that he decides to take a gamble, saying that either Dureena's on the team or he quits. So McQuate tells him he's fired and brings in Captain Ivanova to lead the mission instead! No, he actually lets Gideon bring her along as well, but now I've got the idea of an Ivanova spin-off in my head and it's a tragedy we didn't get that.
This is a similar sequence to the reveal of the Enterprise in Star Trek 2009.
I would say that these two shots show off 10 years of evolution in CGI effects, but Crusade wasn't exactly an example of the best CGI money could buy in 1999. It doesn't look bad though.
Dureena mentions that she was travelling with someone else and he's bound to show up at some point, and Gideon just lets her walk off without elaborating on that. (Anyone who's seen the movie knows that she's talking about Galen the Technomage.)
The crew are still wearing their Explorer ship uniforms, which makes sense seeing as they're exploring. They do have a special Excalibur patch on their arms though, showing King Arthur's legendary sword wrapped in DNA. They sure got those fabricated in a hurry. What's interesting is that the entire crew seems to be Earthforce and there isn't a single Interstellar Alliance or Ranger uniform anywhere. In fact there's no mention of the Interstellar Alliance, despite the fact that this is their ship! As far as this episode's concerned, all we need to know is that this is the best ship ever built by humans and now they get to go have adventures in it.
Matheson thanks Gideon for getting him on board and Gideon responds with a nice bit of dialogue. He basically says that most problems are caused by ambiguity and there was nothing ambiguous here. Matheson's a great first officer and his friend, so he made sure he got the job.
The ship departs with the flashy new jump point effect and we see that a pointy black ship is sneakily following them. It's Dureena's friend Galen! Why is he being sneaky? Who even knows.
ACT THREE
Gideon also hears a mysterious voice calling him 'Matthew' and telling him he'll be around to help out. He doesn't identify himself, but it's Galen the sneaky Technomage being weird as usual.
Their two ships arrive at Ceti 4 and Gideon, Matheson and Chambers take a ride down to the flight deck.
Matheson is going to be in command of the ship while Gideon goes down to the planet to lead the mission personally, so I guess he's more of a Captain Kirk than a Captain Picard. He leaves his first officer with a job to do though: track down the origin of that weird call he just got.
Eilerson's already figured it out though, by presuming the worse. It's ironic, he's made the find of a lifetime and now he's going die before he can exploit the patents.
Some CGI shots in this episode look better than others and unfortunately this is one of the lesser ones. Mostly because all the people walking around are obviously CGI and not live action.
Eilerson's mood improves when he gets a call on his weird communication stick from Gideon, who'd like to know where he is so he can fly in and rescue them. I figured Eilerson would be a bit wary of convenient calls from people offering to help, but nope he trusts that Gideon is who he claims to be and not a Drakh, and lets him home in on his signal.
Fortunately Gideon's brought a whole fighter squadron for backup and they get to work taking out the approaching Drakh.
We learn that the guy important enough to have makeup instead of a mask is called Councillor Lashan, and there are three Drakh ships in hyperspace coming to save him. He must have a pretty powerful communicator as he's able to chat with the ships, and they have a bit of an 'evil voice' contest. Honestly, it's not helping me take this race seriously. Why did they think it'd be a good idea to take the dumbest looking alien from Babylon 5's fourth season and make them the main villains of the spin-off? I mean they look much better here without the weird post-processing effect, but they just don't have the movement to sell the mask.
Anyway act three ends with the 'enemy ship flying straight into the camera' shot, making it clear that the bad guys are officially on their way. Just one of these ships wrecked a formidable Omega-class destroyer and now there are three coming.
ACT FOUR
Gideon goes to the underground city to have a chat with Eilerson about the crashed Drakh ship, and the archaeologist lets slip that he intercepted and translated a message saying that enemy ships are on the way. This may have been a tactical error on his part, as now Gideon wants him to come to the ship with them as a translator... and if he decides he doesn't want to come he'll just strand him on the planet. That seems kind of harsh!
Also, have they even told these people that the Earth's been infected by an incredibly deadly plague yet? Maybe they don't know yet!
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| Farscape 1-01: Premiere |
There's a moment of comedy when Eilerson activates a food processor and gets goop all over his shoes, but there's no comedy music to ruin the mood, thankfully. Also when he walks away it reveals a Drakh standing behind him, ready to fire.
The Drakh are too evil to take cover, they'd rather stand out in the open and look menacing, and this turns out to be a mistake. If there's one thing sci-fi doctors have in common it's that they've got deadly aim with a pistol, and Dr Chambers takes out the one in front with a PPG blast.
Hang on, I've figured it out! This isn't a wall, we're looking at a Drakh's back! What Dureena's done here is leaned over and pulled the pin on one of the grenades they're carrying on their back. Serves them right for not using them themselves!
Matheson calls Gideon to let him know what's happening, and it turns out that Earthforce has moved past those link communicators that stick on the back of their hand and are using bracelets now instead. Fortunately Trace still exists in the episode somewhere and he tells him he'll give the captain a ride back up to the ship... right through the battle. Gideon quips that he has to keep the Excalibur from blowing up as if he loses a ship on the first week he's probably going to lose his pay.
Eilerson's not keen on Gideon just leaving them to do the mission without him, as the only speaking characters down there are a thief, a doctor and an archaeologist, but Gideon seems happy for Dureena to lead the mission in his absence. There's got to be someone important here for the Drakh to come in force like this so they just have to keep looking until they find them.
But Gideon makes the mistake of leaving the ship on his own without a security officer, and a Drakh creeps out to put an energy blast in his back.
Galen reminds Gideon that he'll be here when he needs him, and then fades back into the mist. In fact the mist starts getting thicker and Dureena realises that it's Galen helping them out.
It is better than A Call to Arms's soundtrack though I think.
It's funny, but I'm actually starting to miss the exposition right now. Let me go back to that dull beige room on Mars where people would drone on about things and I didn't have to hear the music.
The good news is that all but one of the Drakh ships get destroyed, the bad news is that the remaining ship is trying to ram them and their forward guns are all broken so they can't shoot them. Man, I hope they know how to repair this ship. They only got it this week and it's based on Minbari and Vorlon technology, so it's hundreds of years beyond what human engineers are used to.
If your ship's main gimmick is its super laser you've got to have a cool effect when it fires, and I think they've actually done pretty well with this. The energy beams converging at the front is very Death Star, nothing new there, but the camera move looks great.
Matheson gets an update on his headset telling him that Dureena's team has captured the Drakh captain and taken the ship! And the last shot of act four is the shuttles coming back victorious.
ACT FIVE
It turns out that Lashan is saying that he won't answer their questions, but Gideon doesn't really care. They'll just hand him over to someone back on plague-infected Earth and let them continue the interrogation there. Lashan makes a 'ugghhhhh' noise, falling right into Gideon's trap. Now they know that he can speak English. Not that Eilerson's been wasting his time here, as translating Drakh is going to be a big help in the future.
Lashan asks Gideon who he'll serve when his world is destroyed, and who he'll be. Which is a more interesting question if you know from Babylon 5 that the Drakh lost their world and their masters, and decided to be assholes afterwards.
Matheson does the standard Babylon 5 corridor character interception, running into exactly the person he wanted to see on this mile-and-a-quarter-long ship. Gideon tells him he wants Trace and Eilerson on the ship as main characters, because they've both got skills they could use.
There's a nice moment of realism here when the two of them have to pause their conversation and move over a bit because of people carrying something through. Then Matheson tells Gideon they've been investigating that mysterious message from Galen. They've tracked the source code to a location... wait, the source code? Why not just say 'the source'?
Gideon recognises the coordinates immediately and we get a flashback to nine years ago when he was alone in a spacesuit stranded in deep space...
Nine years ago would put this around the Babylon 5 episode The Geometry of Shadows in season 2, when the Technomages stopped at the station for a bit before going into hiding. Turns out that Gideon was in just the right place to get a view of their exodus. I guess we're supposed to assume that Galen was the one who rescued him.
Gideon tells Matheson to set a course for those coordinates. We know that Galen wasn't actually there when he sent the message, as he was lurking around right next to the Excalibur at the time, so he must have given the signal a fake origin to lure them somewhere.
It's a bit weird considering she hasn't really been the focus until now, but at least it gives them a chance to show off the updated living quarters set. The tiny window has a purple border now! Windows are a good way to indicate a spaceship's scale, and this works for interior sets as well. Big spaceships often have big windows, so this small porthole isn't really selling the size of the vessel.
Cut to a shuttle leaving the Excalibur to head down a planet.
I said I wanted to go back to the exposition and it seems I got my wish, as Gideon starts explaining what a Technomage is, and that Galen was the one who saved him after his ship was destroyed. Then Galen explains that he got kicked out of the Technomage club for having too much contact with the outside, so now he's on his own. Galen seems to be fond of Gideon and tells him that he'll help out if he asks.
Gideon's main job this episode is finding talented people and recruiting them, so he doesn't even hesitate to invite Galen onto the team. First though Galen asks him a series of questions, and Gideon answers them as if he's the one going for a job interview. In fact they're the questions from the opening titles, so I'll borrow some screencaps from there.
"Who are you?" was the Vorlons' question, and we learned from Comes the Inquisitor that it's not much fun being on the receiving end of it, at least when Jack the Ripper's the one asking. Gideon answers that he's "Matthew Gideon, Captain. Attached to the Earth Alliance starship, Excalibur."
It's a perfectly acceptable answer for new viewers who need to be brought up to speed, but Jack the Ripper would've given him an electric shock for sure. It doesn't exactly reveal the core of his being.
I don't think Morden would've offered him his associates' help, as they were more interested in spreading chaos, not ending it.
He tells Galen that he's going "Anywhere I have to."
The title sequence actually repeats these two questions just to make it that little bit more cheesy (the X-Files typewriter font doesn't help). It's nice that they experimented with a different format I guess, instead of going with something boring and traditional, but I think I would've preferred a normal monologue.
Anyway Galen's happy with Gideon's answers, so he's joining the show too! That means they've got a full D&D party of a wizard, a thief, a healer, a telepath, an archaeologist, a pilot, and a starship captain.
CONCLUSION
It's pretty lucky they got to make War Zone, as they wouldn't have much to put in the opening titles otherwise. The episode is like a collection of shots designed to sell the show, padded out with exposition to set up the plot.
War Zone is supposed to be the Crusade episode so bad that even writer jms doesn't like it, so I was mostly watching it out of curiosity. Crusade's not exactly well regarded as a series so the worst of it has to be a thing to see. So I was a little disappointed when the episode turned out to be alright. It's not great television and it just kind of gives up by the end when all their problems are resolved by a silent CGI light show. But the episode is watchable.
The story features a team of archaeologists, an ancient city and a crashed Drakh ship, but that's all secondary to its real purpose of getting the team together and shovelling exposition on us. I have to be honest though, I don't necessarily think it was a bad idea to give the series a definite first episode instead of beginning in medias res with Racing the Night. Sure A Call to Arms had already introduced the ship and the premise, but it had only introduced two of the characters and neither was the lead!
The star of this episode is unambiguously Captain Gideon and we get to see what kind of person he is as he gambles his position to get Dureena on the team, threatens to leave Eilerson behind to get him on the team, and respects Trace's skills enough to bring him on the team. Basically once the mutiny is sorted out all he does for the rest of the episode is recruit people. It's implied that he was giving all kinds of orders in the space battle, but it played out in silence so we don't get to experience that particular story playing out. It's just a flashy light show. And the battle on the planet is mostly Drakh getting hit from behind by Galen, who then disappears back into the mist. The title War Zone really promised more than the episode could pay off.
I'd definitely put the action scenes in my 'negatives' column, along with any other appearance by the Drakh really. Babylon 5 did a fantastic job with most of its alien creations, but I'm finding the Drakh impossible to take seriously. It doesn't help that they were getting very ambitious with the CGI here, relying on it a lot more than Babylon 5 typically did, without having a budget to support it. But the worst problem the episode has is its soundtrack. Music's subjective, but for me Evan Chen's soundtrack to A Call to Arms was a disaster and War Zone's music isn't that much better. I appreciate that jms wanted to do something different instead of treading the same musical ground as Star Trek, Star Wars and Stargate, but I never grew to like Chen's soundtracks in the way I did with Christopher Franke's Babylon 5 score. Or even tolerate them.
On the positive side, I like all the characters, or the actors at least, and I'd totally keep watching them have adventures. Sure there's not really a Londo or G'Kar in the group, but they're an interesting and varied cast and Gary Cole does a great job of making Gideon come across like a darker and edgier kind of captain despite the fact he continually does nice things for people.
RATING
I'm tempted to compare War Zone with Babylon 5's first episode, Midnight on the Firing Line... so I will. Midnight was a series of conversations that did a fair enough job of establishing the major players and the universe, while this focuses on setting up a few heroes and their quest. I'm sure six years of experience has helped them improve the production values a bit (they have ceilings now!) but it feels smaller than than the original show. It doesn't sell me on the series' potential in the same way.
In fact the episode's pretty bad in a lot of ways and not in a 'so bad it's good' kind of way. But not in a 'so bad it's unwatchable' kind of way either. I don't regret rewatching it and it hasn't put me off rewatching more of the series, so I guess it's done its job. But that soundtrack really puts an upper limit on how much I can enjoy an episode, so it gets...
5/10
NEXT TIME
You're welcome to share your own opinions on War Zone and Crusade in the comments though.
because Star Trek: The Next Generation already had a captain with an English accent.
ReplyDeleteAnd look at how poorly that worked out!
They were wise to avoid making the same mistake, it could have utterly ruined the series.
DeleteThis is our series lead, Gary Cole. He was...
ReplyDeleteAt this time I knew him mostly from American Gothic, which I'm sure Channel 4 was showing, and Midnight Caller on BBC1, in which he played a late night talk radio presenter who also solved crime.
its unique gimmick is that it also features the voice of a wizard asking the captain questions
ReplyDeleteOh, just like Ogre Battle!
Crusade did take some inspiration from fantasy and RPGs. And now I wish it had also taken some inspiration from the band Queen.
Delete