Bingowings said:
Vaderisnothayden we will have to agree to disagree, I've seen the series bible for Crusade I know what direction they were going in and it was much more interesting than B5's first season and TNT screwed it up. The evidence is not only in dated documentation but also on screen.
B5's first season only really hints at where it is going to go at the end, up until then it's largely a series of not very connected episodic adventures. The worst episode is definately "Grey 17 Is Missing" but that a blip in a strong season of tightly knitted episodes, there are plenty of clunkers in Season One of which most of the episodes of Crusade stand well above despite the studio interference.
I'd much rather watch "The Path Of Sorrows" or "The Needs Of Earth" than "Infection" or "The War Prayer".
I would put B5's season 1 episodes well above Crusade's. The station in season 1 was a well-realized setting, well brought to life, interesting stuff. There were multiple interesting episodes. Crusade was just one weak episode after another.
As for Crusade having a planned interesting direction in the bible, such a direction would not make up for the faults. An interesting overall story would not fix the fact that the way they were bringing their story to the screen in each individual episode was screwed up and low-grade. There simply was no fire of inspiration in the way it was done. And an inspired overall story would not mean an inspired way of portraying that story, and that's what Crusade was lacking. The show lacked feeling or conviction and lacked some other important things too. Every individual episode had the feeling of something perfunctory and unenthusiastically made. The only good thing about Crusade was the cast. Other than that, it had nothing going for it.
Legend of the Rangers and the recent stuff (I forget what it was called) being awful was not an abberation. The spinoff quality has been universally bad since after the B5 show ended. I think every franchise eventually reaches a point when it is loses it. That happened to Star Wars and it happened to B5 after the main show ended. I don't think they should have tried to continue the franchise past the main show, just as I don't think the SE or PT should have been made. Creators should know when to end a story, but people like making money and many fans want their stories to go on for ever. Personally, I prefer a story to end when it's still good. Like Frank Herbert should have kept Dune to one book and not have gotten into worm rulers and endless fucking clones.