Crusade 1-01: War Zone

Episode:

1

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

Janet Greek

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Air Date:

09-Jun-1999

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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.

Babylon 5: The River of Souls - Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still making my way through the 1998 Babylon 5 TV movie, The River of Souls. This is part 2 of 2, so if you want to go back to part 1, click HERE.

There are actually six Babylon 5 movies, kind of:

• The Gathering (1993) - The original pilot movie.
• In the Beginning (1998) - A prequel about the Earth-Minbari War.
  
• Thirdspace (1998) - Lovecraftian weirdness during season 4.
  
• The River of Souls (1998) - You are here.
  
• A Call to Arms (1999) - A lead-in to the Crusade spin-off.
  
• The Legend of the Rangers (2002) - The pilot for a spin-off that never made it to a series.
  

So even though I'm in the final stretch now there's plenty left for me to write about. In another timeline I'd be going straight into writing about the Babylon 5 reboot series afterwards, but that's seeming less than likely at this point. Still, at least I can write about a couple of episodes of Crusade. Yay.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be writing about this whole movie and mentioning things that happened during the series. I'll not spoil a thing about Crusade or Legend of the Rangers however.

Babylon 5: The River of Souls - Part 1

Written By:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Directed By:

Janet Greek

|

Release Date:

1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the third of the Babylon 5 TV movies made for the TNT network: The River of Souls. I keep wanting to call it River of Souls but there's definitely a 'the' at the start.

The first two TNT movies, Thirdspace and In the Beginning, were filmed before season 5, in May-June 1997, but this was filmed after the series had wrapped, between 1st-21st April 1998. It's a film about the Soul Hunters, from one of B5's least-loved early episodes, so I wonder how many people showed up for work on that first day wondering if it was an amazingly elaborate April Fool's prank. The series was over, writer J. Michael Straczynski could've told a story about anything, but he decided give the Soul Hunters another shot!

At least the film's got a good director: Janet Greek. She had directed stories like Signs and Portents, Chrysalis, The Coming of Shadows and The Fall of Night. Plus it features some real stars in the cast, including The West Wing's Martin Sheen and Deadwood's Ian McShane. No seriously.

Chronologically the movie should come about halfway into a season 6 that doesn't exist, but it actually aired with three episodes of season 5 left to go. They moved it up a couple of weeks so that the finale wasn't overshadowed by it (or vice versa), messing up the order. I'm watching it after Objects in Motion and Objects at Rest however, so there may be SPOILERS here for the two episodes... in addition to all the stories that came before them. I'll not be saying a word about anything that comes after though, so this is first-time viewer safe.

Babylon 5 5-19: The Wheel of Fire

Episode:

107

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

Janet Greek

|

Air Date:

04-Nov-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5, episode 19: The Wheel of Fire! I'm getting really close to the end of the series now so I'm almost out of pictures of an episode title over a shot of the station. This is one of the better ones though I reckon, the lighting on it looks great.

Each of Babylon 5's seasons was named after one of the most important episodes that year, and this is the one that season 5 took its title from. That puts it in the company of Signs and Portents, The Coming of Shadows, Point of No Return and No Surrender, No Retreat, so if it doesn't immediately make it onto my top 10 list it's going to be a massive let down.

Here's some trivia for you: 60% of these monumental season title episodes were directed by the same director, Janet Greek, and she came back for this one. I've read that showrunner J. Michael Straczynski considered her and Mike Vejar to be his two favourite directors on the show and I can see why. This was her final episode, but she did return for the movie River of Souls and two episodes of the spin-off series Crusade.

I'm going to be recapping and reviewing the episode one scene at a time, so there will be massive SPOILERS here, for this and earlier stories. I'll not be spoiling anything that happens next however, so if you're watching the series for the first time this will all be safe to read.

Babylon 5 5-15: Darkness Ascending

Episode:

103

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Janet Greek

|

Air Date:

03-Jun-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 15: Darkness Ascending. A bit of a miserable title for this one. Also most of the time the series puts its episode titles over an establishing shot of the station, but twice this season they've put it over one of the characters instead and both times it's been Garibaldi. So there's some immensely pointless trivia for you.

The episode was directed by Janet Greek, which is a name that showed up a lot in seasons one and two, especially at the start of the most important episodes, but then disappeared entirely for seasons three and four. This is her third episode this season though and she'll be back for two more stories before it's all over.

Warning: I'll be recapping, screencapping, reacting to and commenting on this entire episode, so there will be SPOILERS below. There may also be spoilers for earlier episodes too. There will not be spoilers for later ones.

Babylon 5 5-04: A View from the Gallery

Episode:

92

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

Janet Greek

|

Air Date:

11-Feb-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 4, A View from the Gallery.

It's another Janet Greek episode, who's directed half the episodes so far this season after skipping the last few years entirely. She's got her name on some of the series' best stories so that's a good sign... though I remember not liking this one for whatever reason. This is also the first episode since Knives back in season 2 to have someone else's name in the writing credits: legendary author Harlan Ellison.

Ellison had been a credited as a conceptual consultant for Babylon 5's whole run, plus he also played the roles of a Psi Cop (in Face of the Enemy) and Sparky the Computer (in Ceremonies of Light and Dark). This makes him one of Garibaldi's greatest enemies. He was known for being a bit antagonistic in general, famously getting into a feud with Gene Roddenberry over the script for The City on the Edge of Tomorrow and suing James Cameron for The Terminator. But this trivia is all pretty much irrelevant as he apparently only gave writer jms the basic concept for the episode and didn't really do anything else on it. Though one of the main characters may have a bit of a resemblance...

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be screencapping, recapping and reviewing all of A View from the Gallery, and the episode builds on events from earlier stories, so a mountain of spoilers awaits you here. I won't spoil anything that comes after it though.

Babylon 5 5-01: No Compromises

Episode:

89

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Director:

Janet Greek

|

Air Date:

21-Jan-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the first episode of Babylon 5's awkward final season: No Compromises.

I've mentioned already that the series lost its network and was rescued by TNT at the last minute, but things didn't entirely work out for the best. For one thing the budget stayed the same while the cast and crew got contractual raises, so were working with less money this season (and it was already a low budget series). They had to switch to six shooting days instead of seven to make up the difference. Plus they lost Claudia Christian and no one seems entirely sure who's to blame for that. She apparently wanted to come back, but she felt like they were rushing her into signing a contract that might prevent her from filming movies, and maybe didn't realise that production really was that pressed for time. All I know for certain is that this season will have far below the recommended amount of Ivanova.

This is the first episode of 1998, by the way, which wasn't a bad time for live-action sci-fi. Deep Space Nine was in its final years, Voyager was halfway through, and Stargate SG-1 was just getting started. It was a year of asteroid movies, with Armageddon and Deep Impact both hitting cinemas, and it was also a year of sci-fi TV shows getting movies. There was Lost in Space, Star Trek: Insurrection, The X-Files: Fight the Future... oh plus Babylon 5 got its own TV movie, In the Beginning, which aired a couple of weeks before this episode. I just wrote about that film actually, if you're trying to keep track of what order these reviews go in (and what stories I may end up spoiling).

Right, I'm going to get on with recapping, screencapping and sharing my thoughts on this episode, which means there'll be EXTREME SPOILERS for this and earlier episodes. Continue with caution.

Babylon 5 2-22: The Fall of Night

Episode:

44

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Air Date:

01-Nov-1995

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, this is it, I've reached the epic season finale of Babylon 5 season two! Well I'm just assuming it's epic to be honest, I haven't seen it in ages. But if it's half as good as season one's finale, Chrysalis... then I'll be only two-thirds satisfied with it, so ideally it'll be a little better than that.

In the last few episodes we've gone from a Long, Twilight Struggle to The Fall of Night, so things seem to have been getting darker. It made me wonder if this theme had been running through other titles this year, so I looked through an episode list and found Geometry of Shadows and The Long Dark near the start, and All Alone in the Night sitting there in middle. So no, I can't say I saw any journey into darkness in the titles.

I didn't see Janet Greek's name in the 'directed by' column all that much either, but I guess she'd earned a rest after Signs and Portents, Chrysalis, Points of Departure and The Coming of Shadows. Actually she was apparently suffering from pneumonia, but she came back just in time for the end of the season, before vanishing again for the next two years. Anyway she's a good director and that makes me think this will be good.

If you've just gotten hold of some second hand DVDs and you're watching the series for the very first time you might be thinking about listening to the commentary by showrunner jms and maybe even checking out some of those special features. I wouldn't recommend it though, because there's SPOILERS in there for later seasons. You're safe reading this review though, provided you've watched the episode and all the ones leading up to it, as I won't say a thing about where it's all going. Nothing that Ivanova doesn't spoil herself anyway.

Babylon 5 2-09: The Coming of Shadows

Episode:

31

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Air Date:

01-Feb-1994

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the Hugo Award winning Babylon 5 episode The Coming of Shadows. It won the award for 'Best Dramatic Presentation' in 1994, back when individual TV episodes had to fight it out in the same category as blockbuster movies. So this didn't just take down beloved Deep Space Nine episode The Visitor, but also 12 Monkeys, Apollo 13 and Toy Story! Damn, that's a lot of movies and series with a number in their title. Also a lot of Tom Hanks.

Just to put that win in context, previous winners include: Jurassic Park, Terminator 2, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Aliens, Back to the Future, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Blade Runner, A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Trek's The City on the Edge of Forever. So I'm expecting this to be at least as good as all of those.

Man, I love listing things; it saves me from having to actually think about the words that I'm writing. Anyway, this episode was written by J. Michael Straczynski and directed by Janet Greek, who'd already given us stories like Points of Departure, Signs and Portents and Chrysalis by this point, just to pick a few names from the very top of my episode rankings. So it'd be fair to say they'd assembled B5's A-Team for this one. Well, except for Dwight Schultz; he'll not be participating as a guest star this time (or ever again).

I'm going to be recapping the whole episode with screencaps and writing my thoughts underneath, so there'll be maximum SPOILERS past this point. I'm sure I'll end up spoiling things from earlier episodes too, but I'll not say a thing about what happens after (though I can't promise the episode itself won't reveal a few things about what's to come).

Babylon 5 2-01: Points of Departure

Episode:

23

|

Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

|

Air Date:

02-Nov-1994

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I've decided that Sci-Fi Adventures needs more variety, so this year I'm planning to feature more TV series and cover less episodes of them. I can't watch entire 26 episode seasons of multiple series and fit them all into 12 months, there aren't enough hours and I write too slowly.

But I can watch 22 episodes of one series, so right now I'm committing myself to giving you reviews of Babylon 5 season two in its entirety, starting with Points of Departure!

I usually mention here that I'll be writing SPOILERS for this episode and earlier ones, but I should also point out that the DVD box art, the DVD menu, the DVD episode list and the region 1 DVD opening credits all spoil Delenn's condition after the events of the season one finale (I'm being as vague as I can here). So if you haven't see the series yet, you should probably wear a blindfold while purchasing, handling and watching season two DVDs, at least for the first couple of episodes.

Oh and stay way clear of the commentary tracks until you've seen the entire series, all five seasons of it.