Crusade

[stargate2008]

I dont know if this has been asked 1000 times but is there any chance of Crusades ever starting up again? I just got the dvds for christmas from my family and I watched all the shows on the dvds. I find myself wondering if the cure was ever found. Was the Drakh destoryed? And so much more.

[Jan]

Hi Stargate, welcome.

Basically, if Crusade hasn't been restarted by now, it's vanishingly unlikely it ever will be. We DO know that a cure was found, though, because of Sleeping in Light. Dr. Franklin was there and he'd been under the Earth quarantine. Some parts of what happened to the Drakh are covered in the Centauri Prime trilogy of novels (you can do a search for info-they come up regularly). But as for the details of the Crusade story, no we don't have those.

Jan

[KoshN]

I dont know if this has been asked 1000 times but is there any chance of Crusades ever starting up again?

Crusade starting back up on TV? Probably not.

Some of the key plot points being resolved in Babylon 5: The Lost Tales? ~Maybe~.

I just got the dvds for christmas from my family and I watched all the shows on the dvds.

Good for you!

I find myself wondering if the cure was ever found.

Well, we know a cure was found because we see Dr. Franklin on Mars in Babylon 5's finale, Sleeping in Light. He was on Earth when the Drakh released the plague into Earth's atmosphere. We just don't know how the cure was found.

For instance, early on in Babylon 5, we saw Londo's prophetic dream about he and G'Kar strangling each other. However, based upon only what we saw in the beginning of the show, who could have guessed why they did it, and why it was necessary? The joy is in the journey of getting from Point A to Point B, and having a full understanding of everything when you finally get to Point B.

Reading the three Del Rey trilogies further enriches the story of both Babylon 5 and Crusade.

Was the Drakh destoryed? And so much more.

Read Legions of Fire, the Centauri trilogy. It overlaps the Crusade timeline. Also read The Passing of the Techno-mages to have a better understanding of Galen, the rest of the mages, why they left in The Geometry of Shadows, and Galen's first encounter with then Ensign Gideon. Overall, very good stuff. Not perfect, but very good.

[Joseph DeMartino]

Well, we know a cure was found because we see Dr. Franklin on Mars in Babylon 5's finale, Sleeping in Light

A full season before "SiL" we saw that Earth was still perfectly habitable in the 2362 segment from "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars." None of the academics mentioned "letting most of humanity get wiped out and Earth reduced to a howling, unihabitable wilderness" in their catalog of Sheridan's sins, and they're just the type who would bring something like that up, given half a chance. So the logical inference is that it didn't happen. I thought it was obvious from very early on that the show was not going to be about finding the cure, because we would know going in that a cure had, in fact, been found.

"JMS has hinted elsewhere that the cure might be found before the end of the series. He's also said the show we think we're watching will turn out not to be the show we're actually watching. Put these two together, and I wonder greatly if, had the next few years played out, he might have gradually uncovered some other, greater theme or conflict that would overshadow the plague, and take over the plot for the last year or so."

If not sooner....

Regards,

Joe

[JohnFourtyTwo]

I think it was in the documentary or commentary for A Call to Arms that JMS mentioned that he planned for the cure to the Draak plague to be discovered sometime in Crusade's second season and the series would move on from there.

[Ranger1]

Can someone please invent a device that can wipe out my memories of Crusade.

[JohnFourtyTwo]

Can someone please invent a device that can wipe out my memories of Crusade.

Tequila or any other liquor has done wonders for me in the past.

[Kevin]

I think it was in the documentary or commentary for A Call to Arms that JMS mentioned that he planned for the cure to the Draak plague to be discovered sometime in Crusade's second season and the series would move on from there.

I listened to that commentary this morning, actually, and yeah he mentions, repeatedly, that a cure would have been found about a year and a half into the series, and that it was something he wanted to get done with quickly so that he could really get into the story he had in mind.

Actually, I always found it interesting that in that same commentary he mentioned that he didn't even want to have a plague, but that others felt that the series needed a hook and he complied. In some ways, I kind of wish he had been allowed his original desire; the unproduced scripts, which really start to get into the heart of the show, are just so much more interesting and engaging then the rest of the series.

[JohnFourtyTwo]

Actually, I always found it interesting that in that same commentary he mentioned that he didn't even want to have a plague, but that others felt that the series needed a hook and he complied. In some ways, I kind of wish he had been allowed his original desire; the unproduced scripts, which really start to get into the heart of the show, are just so much more interesting and engaging then the rest of the series.

I think the plague was one of the needless tinkerings of the networks JMS mentioned elswhere.

I wish he could've done what he wanted to do with it also.

[Shabaz]

I know the plague only ever was intended as an initial hook, but I never heard that this was forced on him by the studios. Anyway, here is a longer answer he gave in an IGN interview on finding a cure and where the show would've gone:

PLUME: Where would Crusade have gone? What was your grand plan for it? It was rumored that, about halfway through, they would have found the cure...

JMS: Or sooner...

PLUME: ... and then the problem would have been getting it back. Is that accurate?

JMS: Not per se. Yeah, they would have found the cure around year two. Have you read the script for "End of the Line" yet on bookface.com?

PLUME: No.

JMS: "End of the Line" is one of two scripts that act as bookends. That one was the season finale, and the other one ("To the Ends of the Earth") would upped the ante midway through the season. We discover that there's a much broader problem even than the plague û it had to do with Earth using Shadow technology in ways they shouldn't be doing, and who was responsible for the destruction of captain Gideon's ship. Suffice it to say that û through a series of incidents û the Excalibur crew would have been considered traitors and have to basically be on the run. Further, the cure that Earth would have believed to be the right one would not in fact work as they think it would have worked. Our guys would find out about this, and no one would have believed them. As things unravel, it's a larger conspiracy, so basically û after the second year û the show you think Crusade is would be a whole different show, with much more depth to it, more political, more controversial in some ways, and would deal with the impact of technology on society, would cast our characters as renegades and loners without port, and turn the whole series upside-down. The whole plague thing was really just a way to get the thing going and give them something to do in the beginning while we establish the characters before we pull the plug and change the whole nature of the show into something I think would probably have been revolutionary... but we never got that far. You can see the hints of it in those two scripts that are up on bookface.com.

PLUME: Are you disappointed that you never got to tell the story?

JMS: Who wouldn't be?

Crusade starting back up on TV? Probably not.

Some of the key plot points being resolved in Babylon 5: The Lost Tales? ~Maybe~.

I wrote a longer reply to a similar question a few weeks ago. I'll copy paste, since it might be of interest:

To your question to the chances of a Crusade continuation in TLT; if you would want to see the 5 year arc story as it would've played out had the show not been cancelled, then the answer is that we're almost certainly not going to see that.

Are we going to see certain story elements that would have been touched upon? Yes, there is actually a pretty decent chance for that. Apart from the plague, the biggest event in the background of Crusade as we saw it was probably the teep war. And JMS has stated that he does want to get to that, at the SDCC panel TLT was announced at:

Q: My question is, there is still a great big gaping hole in the Babylon 5 story. Will we ever see anything of the Telepath War?

JMS: As IÆm laying out these DVDs IÆm thinking ôWe can do this story with Sheridan, this story with so-and-so, this storyàooh, Lytaàthe Telepath War. So IÆm starting to play with that for down the road. HereÆs the deal, if these first DVDs sell well, if the broadcast get good ratings, these will be an ongoing thing. We will keep putting out æThe Lost TalesÆ and broadening that out until weÆve got ten thousand of them, whatever it is. If you want to get to the Telepath Wars, get the first ones. Eventually we do plan to get to that, yeah. Or I plan to get to that anyway.

The other big thing that Crusade would've touched upon is the subject of left over shadow tech. The plague is of course an example of this, but from interviews and online postings, JMS has made it clear that left over shadow tech would have ended up playing a much wider role in the story, in particular tech left over at the EA. One character that has a particularly strong tie with this subject in his personal back story is Galen, a character we're going to see in Voices in the Dark. Some of the cryptic story descriptions you can find here have been speculated by fans as potentially concerning this subject, but there is no way to tell if this is so from what JMS has said so far.

Will we see any events that would've happened during Crusade's run? Yes, sort of. The first TLT instalment is set 10 years after the founding of the ISA, or roughly 9 years after B5's final season set in 2262. This places it roughly at the fifth season of Crusade, had it not been cancelled. Are the events in Voices in the Dark big enough that they would've been mentioned in Crusade, or relevant enough to the story Crusade would've been telling that it would've been part of that show? No way to tell, really. But there is some overlap there timeframe wise.

If the question is, will we see any Crusade characters, then there the answer is a definite yes. While Galen appeared in ActA, technically a B5 movie, he was very much a Crusade character, and like I said, he will appear in the first TLT installment.

[Joseph DeMartino]

All indications are that the IA date the founding from Sheridan's inauguration in early 2262, not from the signing of the initial treaties in the wake of the Earth Civil War in 2261.

So the TV movie is pretty much going to have to say something about the Crusade story, since the Drakh attacked in late December 2261, during the run-up to the IA's fifth anniversary. And that means that the last living thing on Earth would be quietly dropping dead just before or even during "Voices in the Dark" if somebody hasn't done something about it in the meantime. I doubt the timing is an accident.

Regards,

Joe

[Garibaldi's Hair]

So the TV movie is pretty much going to have to say something about the Crusade story, since the Drakh attacked in late December 2261, ...

Surely you mean 2266 don't you?

[I love Lyta]

It's only logical that Crusade would also feature a plotline about more adaptations of left-over shadow tech used by earth. I'd say it's pretty damn sure the ship in the techno-mage trilogy and the advanced destroyer group we saw in Between the Darkness and the Light were just the tip of the iceberg.

[TurkishZath]

This seems as good a thread as any to ask: as someone who missed the unproduced scripts on Bookface, has it been announced as to whether or not they will be included in the script books stuff? I don't have money to buy all of them, but I'd damn sure get that one.

[JohnFourtyTwo]

I know the plague only ever was intended as an initial hook, but I never heard that this was forced on him by the studios.

I read somewhere else, can't remember where, that it was pretty much Ted Turner and Company were trying to turn Crusade into Baywatch in Space was the main reason the show was cancelled.