Episode Info
The Spinoff To Babylon 5 - CRUSADE

RATING: *** out of ****

CAST:
Gary Cole
Captain Matthew Gideon

Daniel Dae-Kim
Lt. John Matheson


This is an episode that I can't quite get a firm tack on. It certainly does have its moments, and the concept is quite good, but there are things that just don't feel right to me. Still, for X-Files fans, this is a great episode as it pokes fun at the show and its mythology.

First of all, the concept is great, what if we were the aliens? The "evidence" Durkani gives to Gideon supporting the theory that humans have visited their world is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. Still, the concept may be good, but the execution in this case just didn't seem to match up.

There were some small things that bugged me - for instance, why did Durkani have a British accent? I know B5 has a long and good history of having British actors, but if you're going to spoof the X-Files, why not have an alien who sounds like David Duchovny? Not only that, but the dialog didn't sound "in character". Lyssa could have been a much stronger character, a bit more like Scully. If you're going to spoof something, you should at least be able to sound convincing. Perhaps JMS didn't want to overstep his bounds by going too close to another work, but it just seems to me that if they had studied the original a bit closer it would have come out better.

However, this episode does have its moments, as all the Crusade episodes do. The part with Gideon and the bullet car tubes is a nice touch as well as a nice character moment. Still, this episode could have been more than it was.