There are a lot of houses. Don’t worry, your time will come - he stopped by my place about a year, year-and-a-half ago so I know he’s still trying to make amends.
Yea, I made it through most of season 4 before giving up, so I’ll join the your dissent. There are some good bits to the show (mainly the two alien characters), but the bad far outweighed the good, IMHO.
I stand by my opinion.
“Grey 17 is Missing” was one low point in a show that I was generally enjoying. There was some element of exploring of the characters, even if the mechanism was bizarre and didn’t really fit, to me.
B5 left me wanting more, even though the main arc was done. Even after the Byron arc.
Three episodes of Crusade burned me out for anything B5 related.
I liked it, but I agree with JMS that in order to make more, they had to be given enough money to re-build more of the B5 set. The company refused and wanted to continue to CGI it. He declined.
I hate you. Heh, just kidding. To each their own.
If I recall what JMS has said elsewhere correctly, what essentially happened with Crusade was that TPTB at the studio promised him he could run the show his way, because he’d already proven it could be done with B5.
They then proceeded to interfere in every little detail of plot and characterization; they didn’t understand the story or the concept, and they spent all their time trying to turn the show they’d bought into something they did understand, to its great detriment.
JMS said that, in retrospect, maybe trying to do another 5-year series like B5 having just wrapped B5 was a mistake. The man was exhausted. He’d written, I think, 112 of the 124 (numbers? something like that) B5 scripts, plus producing the show, plus having to fight every year to get it renewed.[sup]1[/sup]
Re the Liandra’s weapons systems, somewhere in an old email program I have a message from someone who said that the system isn’t that far-out of a concept, and that the US military at the time was actually looking at developing virtual reality control systems that could be considered early forerunners of what the Liandra was using. I had his permission to post it here, but never got a response from the mods when I asked if I could repost it. It was a thoughtful, well-written bit, and if anyone’s actually interested I am willing to dig it up and send it to them. And if a mod wanders by and sees this post, I’m still willing to repost it if I have their permission. 
[sup]1[/sup] Caveat: I am massively paraphrasing and interpreting here. These conclusions are my own, based on what I recall of interviews and news stories and are highly subjective because I was mightily ticked off at the studio PTB and some of that lingers. JMS may not agree with these conclusions.
No that show is so depressing. I never understood why people like it so–wait. Babylon Five? That was just Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in an alternate universe. I always get that and Battlestar Galactica mixed up…
d&r
I thought Crusade could have been good. I’d have kept watching to find out. The Technomage was interesting, at least. I thought they were humans, and not a separate species. From what I remember, they never used magic or cast spells, unless it was a deliberate techno trick for the sufficiently gullible. The mages themselves didn’t really think of themselves as magic or anything.
It did seem like the studio execs were all over the show, making it a bland and safe planet of the week show, with half the budget.
Yea on Crusade the techno-mages are clearly a “species” even if they were originally human, they have ships that are FAR beyond anything Earth Alliance has, Galen talks about how old he is, they are basically jedi and aside from Galen and a few others they have all left known space on their superior ships.
When did they ever say the Technomages were human? Londo makes a reference to the Centauri having dealings with the Technomages in times past, and I got the impression that they had been wandering around space far longer than humans had.
I kept watching it too for that reason. Also I love Gary Cole and I like to look at Galen. Too bad it never made it.
The Technomages aren’t a race or species. You become a Technomage, you aren’t born one. And apparently, the biotech attached to them is (or at least started out as) Shadow technology. :eek:
Galen and Eilerson were HOT.
So, given what happened to the last hot-shot top gun fighter pilot that turned up in the B5 setting, it’s probably for the best that Crusade got cancelled as soon as it did, from the POV of Trace Miller, the show’s hot-shot top gun shuttle pilot.