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Crusade
1999 · TV series · 43 min episodes · 1 season
Created by J. Michael Straczynski
DramaScience FictionFantasyActionAdventure
Crusade is an American spin-off TV show from J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5. Its plot is set in AD 2267, five years after the events of Babylon 5, and just after the movie A Call to Arms. The Drakh have released a nanovirus plague on Earth, which will destroy all life on Earth within five years if it is not stopped. To that end, the Victory class destroyer Excalibur has been sent out to look for anything that could help the search for a cure.
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7 comments on Hacker News
>I would give my left kidney for either a continuation or a reboot of Babylon 5 under the helm of J. Michael Straczynski with full creative freedom. Or hell, even an entirely different show.
There has been discussion about a reboot over the years, with JMS throwing some cold water[0] (at least for now) on the possibility in January 2026.
There's sort of a "continuation" with Babylon 5: The Road Home[1] from 2023.
There's also Crusade[2] which only ended up with a dozen or so episodes, although JMS had a multi-year story arc planned.
[0] https://www.ign.com/articles/j-michael-straczynski-is-being-upfront-with-fans-over-potential-babylon-5-revival-following-netflixs-warner-bros-acquisition
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5:_The_Road_Home
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade_%28TV_series%29
If you just started watching, I strongly recommend following the Lurker's Guide's viewing order, especially if you intend to watch the movies the Crusade spinoff:
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/master/eplist.html
A comparison of the Lurker's Guide's and others' viewing order:
https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Viewing_Order
Having watched B5 in real-time (with episodes out of order and random start times depending on when the local sports show finished), I was excited to see the spinoff Crusade and on at a reasonable time.
The deep dive into the world of technomages (with Peter Woodward as Galen) made this show a worthy continuation - and then it was cancelled.
Babylon 5 is also a useful oddball because so much of its plan versus reality was documented on USENET or in interviews as they happened. As they say "no plan survives contact with the enemy" and in this case the enemies of any 5 year TV plan are numerous, and included among other things network notes, network switches, cast contract negotiation problems, cast health problems, and more. JMS made it very clear he had to have a ton of contingencies in his five year plan and the show had to carry out a number of them.
It's also an oddball because even JMS hasn't been able to replicate it with nearly the same degree of success. B5 follow-up Crusade was pitched with a 3-5 year plan and barely survived a half season. (Supposedly B5: Legend of the Rangers was pitched as a 5 year plan including cleaning up Crusade plot-lines at least "sideways" and that barely got a pilot movie.) Sense8 was pitched to Netflix (appropriate to consider for this overall thread) as a 5 year plan and got 2 seasons and wrap-up movie (though seemingly had a lot fewer contingency problems than B5's early seasons in the 2 seasons and a movie that it did get).
If Firefly counts, Babylon 5's attempted successor Crusade counts more so. It supposedly had 5 years planned, and was also cruelly cancelled after a lot of network notes and drama including airing some episodes out-of-order/at weird times.
JMS at least didn't try to cram the remaining plot into a single film. Some of the plot is out there as unfilmed scripts and some made its way into book series, and most of it we may just never know at this point because WB doesn't care about Babylon 5.
I used to feel terrible about Crusade - I was a huge B5 fan when it came out. Then, I watched it (what there was of it) again recently... it really wasn't that good. I don't know that showing the episodes in the proper order would have saved it, although maybe it should have gotten a chance to find its footing either way.
Very funny, but I liked all 5 seasons. (But the movies were really awful.)
And don't forget Crusade! A sequel series that got cancelled after one season because Fox showed the episodes out of order, like Firefly.