Babylon 5 - Crusade: The Complete Series [DVD]

Set shortly after the Babylon 5 movie, "A Call to Arms", Crusade follows the crew of the destroyer Excalibur, whose mission is to find a cure for the Drakh plague within 5 years. This premise was an excellent opportunity for another 5 year arc from J. Michael Straczynski. Unfortunately, production for the show was cancelled prior to the first episode being aired.This DVD set is a collection of all 13 episodes that were produced prior to cancellation. Through the course of these episodes, we get hints of bigger things to come. Knowing that this groundwork wouldn't be built upon further than the 13 episodes in the set is quite disappointing.Crusade is based around exploration; in a way, the polar opposite of Babylon 5, which was based in the station the vast majority of the time. We see many different worlds and landscapes in just 13 episodes. As with Babylon 5's first season, most of the episodes are one-shots designed to ease the audience into the scale of the arc and of course get new viewers along the way. The final episode, "Each Night I Dream Of Home", is probably the strongest arc episode.As always with Straczynski's work, characterization is fantastic. It would be easy to clone Babylon 5's characters, but all of the characters here have their own personality traits, strengths and weaknesses. Straczynski originally created the team with the conventions of tabletop RPGs in mind; having a synergistic team of different origins and backgrounds. A fighter (Captain Gideon), a thief (Dureena), a wizard (Galen the Technomage), etc.Captain Gideon seems fairly bland at first, but the more you see his personality in different contexts, the richer his character becomes. In an early episode, he cites President Sheridan as his personal hero, which conveys a sense of time and scale to Crusade's position in the Babylon 5 saga. He's actually a great lead and I'd be interested to see where 5 years would have taken him. Another favourite is Max Eilerson, the sarcastic, egotistical archaeologist. He's the typical guy you love to hate with a higher IQ. Galen is a mysterious Technomage who enjoys some character development over the episodes he's in, which could have been taken much further.Characters from the Babylon 5 universe reappear. Captain Lochley makes several appearances, and we see different sides to her than Babylon 5 ever showed us. Dr. Stephen Franklin appears in the final episode, the late Richard Biggs delivering as good a performance as ever. Minor characters such as the Brikiri Ambassador appear, too.Onto the DVD itself. The DVD is presented in full-frame. Picture and sound quality is as you'd expect it to be, nothing amazing, but in all likelihood equal to that of the original broadcast.Special features are sparse. A couple of episode commentaries are there, which are interesting as always and reveal aspects about the show's production and the planned future of the story arc. There's also a couple of short documentaries about the making of the show and another about designing the Excalibur.The packaging is fairly poor and disappointed me when I saw it. A card sleeve (typical of TV box sets) with nice cover art, but the spine lists the contents of each disc horizontally (ie. Disc One - Episodes 1-3 etc.). A nice, big Crusade logo would have looked a lot better. Also, each disc is in a slimline DVD case, all with the exact same front cover. The box itself is slightly bigger than most DVD sets generally are.If you're new to the Babylon 5 universe, I would strongly advise that you pick up Babylon 5: The Gathering and Babylon 5 Season One rather than Crusade and start working your way through what is probably the best science fiction series of all time. Once you've got past Season One's rough start, things pick up and soon you'll want to watch more episodes than you have time for. I worked my way through all 100+ episodes and all the movies within a couple of months. Then move on to Crusade (if anything, because it happens after the events of Babylon 5). If you absolutely must pick up Crusade first, be sure to watch Babylon 5: A Call To Arms prior to starting, as it lays a lot of the groundwork for Crusade.All in all, Crusade had a lot of potential and I would have loved to see where Straczynski would have taken it. Fans of Babylon 5 craving more, as I was, should definitely pick this up (along with some of the B5 novels). It's a good set of episodes, and while it's somewhat unsatisfying knowing that the doors opened in these 13 episodes won't be closed, if you can watch having accepted this, you've got 10 hours of entertainment on your hands.

...the axing of this series was the most criminal. Yes, I watched it on TV when it first came out, and no it just didn't seem to measure up to B5. Anyway I've bought the series just as a father/son bonding thing cos I did share B5 with him. I am a recovering alcoholic, going through horrid withdrawal just now and asking some very difficult and painful questions of myself. Being a modern, scientifically minded man I can get no comfort from standard religion. Tonight I was in the blackest of moods and my dear wife sat us down for our evening episode and we watched the one called 'Path of Sorrows'. It was like JMS (Series creator/writer) was talking directly to me, answering the very questions I had been failing to find positive answers to just an hour before. It was quite spooky, and I am in a much more comfortable place now as a result.The thing that always marked B5 out from everything else was, that as well as being an action and adventure series, it was crammed full with philosophical depth, wisdom and deep humanity. Offering very sophisticated answers to ancient and painful questions. I can think of no other TV show that remotely compares to it in this respect. Sure, Star Trek has the occasional platitude to offer on what it means to be 'truly human' but it offers simplistic answers to rather shallow questions. B5 however will give you back as much or as little depth as you are willing to ask from it.In this vital respect Crusade is every bit as good as B5 and the negative reviewers here can only be missing the point. Sure, if they want action go watch Battlestar Galactica which is top class Sci-Fi or (yawn) more Star Trek, son of Star Trek and all the rest. It was just such a shame that WB decided to pull it before the characters and the plot could really get settled in.While I'm at it I cannot recommend enough the Jeanne Cavelos spinoff book trilogy that gives the background to Galen and his lost love Isabella, and the nature and origin of the Techno-mage's powers. All the B5 spinoff books fill out the B5 universe a bit more, but this trilogy is way ahead the best. In particular, it takes you into the Shadows homeworld in a way that the effects budget od the TV stuff could never afford, whereupon the writing takes on the quality of the best horror of H.P. Lovecraft. If you've not read these books then you have no idea how truly awful the Shadows really are, and how amazing Galen really is.I note some reviewers are complaining about the DVD quality. Well first time round I watched it on scruffy old VHS. I'm now watching it off DVD on my lovely new Sony Bravia and some of the artwork is breathtakingly beautiful. It certainly looks better to me than the DVD rendering of B5, but then I've yet to watch it on the new telly. Still, long Winter nights are coming and Crusade will put us in the mood for another round of B5.

Was just getting going and done, such a shame so few episodes were made because it was good and I would love to have seen where they were going to go with the story.