[emi_100]

Searching on my old Freespace 2 stuff I find this jewel.
I made this years ago. I edit the soundtracks of the Babylon 5 spin-off, Crusade, to match on TBP.

You are freely to test it. And maybe it can be put on the new Zathras as alternative music.


DOWNLOAD


All credits for the original music of Crusade goes for Evan H. Chen, the author.

[The E]

 

IMHO, the music was the worst thing about Crusade. Nowhere near comparable to what Chistopher Franke had done for B5, and not at all appropriate for the show.

[emi_100]

IMHO, the music was the worst thing about Crusade. Nowhere near comparable to what Chistopher Franke had done for B5, and not at all appropriate for the show.

Totally agree!
It's only for enhanced the Crusade's atmosphere on game

[The E]

You say that like it's a good thing.

[Vidmaster]

agreeing with E

[CaptJosh]

See, I can't agree that Crusade's music was bad. It was different. It was supposed to be. New show, new cast, new music. Maybe they needed to work on how to fit it into the show more, but the music in and of itself was not bad.

[The E]

Maybe, but it was still jarring compared to the sweeping epicness of Franke's work.

For my tastes, it was just too radical a departure. The music of B5 helped define that universe, suddenly replacing it with an inferior equivalent didn't help. It's hard to find comparisons, but imagine ST:DS9 had used modern Jazz as its soundtrack theme. Even if it had been good, it would have been regarded as pretty jarring.

Of course, given that Crusade never had a chance to establish itself, they never really had a chance to prove that Chen was the right composer for the job (and given how terrible some of the music choices were, I highly doubt this). I mean, the opening theme alone was a pretty terrible misstep.

[Dragon]

Since it's made by Emi_100 and IPA didn't do anything on it, nobody says it has to be used for TBP. Somebody else might find that useful and fitting into a different mod.
It doesn't seem to be as well known as B5 music, so people shouldn't immediately think "Babylon 5" when hearing it.

[CaptJosh]

Maybe, but it was still jarring compared to the sweeping epicness of Franke's work.

For my tastes, it was just too radical a departure. The music of B5 helped define that universe, suddenly replacing it with an inferior equivalent didn't help. It's hard to find comparisons, but imagine ST:DS9 had used modern Jazz as its soundtrack theme. Even if it had been good, it would have been regarded as pretty jarring.

Of course, given that Crusade never had a chance to establish itself, they never really had a chance to prove that Chen was the right composer for the job (and given how terrible some of the music choices were, I highly doubt this). I mean, the opening theme alone was a pretty terrible misstep.

Didn't this same composer also do the music for A Call to Arms? It seemed to fit there. Are we sure the music was put in the places as intended by the composer? I mean, they didn't even get the airing order correct for what little of Crusade there was. (e. g. One episode talking about a nanoviral shield, and the next one talking about how they just made this great breakthrough based on some tech they picked up from another world that the Drakh had seeded with this plague, and this breakthrough is a nanoviral shield that they can now use to go to contaminated worlds or worlds suspected to be contaminated.)

Maybe Chen didn't get things right. OTOH, Crusade's limited run was rushed to production. Maybe they just took the music they already had from him and just put it anywhere when editing this stuff together.

[-Norbert-]

I'd like to say Chens music is bad, but for the most part it isn't even music. It's just an assortment of percussion instruments and weird sounds. Sometimes those sounds totally clash with the soundeffect of the scene and sometimes they are so alike you can't even tell if that noise you just heard was part of the "music" or a soundeffect.
I'm not saying that you can't make music with drums alone - Bear McCreary pulled that off nicely for the re-envisioned BSG - but Chen didn't.

I can't really say if it got better in Crusade, since I havn't watched that for a while and I don't remember anything about the "music" in the series (which is bad I guess, if you can't remember anything at all about the soundtrack, just because you havn't heard it in two or so years....), but ACTA I watched only recently, so I can comment on that.
I wouldn't like Chens work on ACTA even if all of B5 would have been completely without any music at all, but in comparison with Frankes outstanding work it's even worse.

If only there would be a financer who dares to give JMS a free reign over the project and let him start the whole Crusade thing again from scratch. No stupid uniform mixup, no boring "let's explain everything" first episode, no bad CGI, no mixed up episode airing and you probably guessed it.... Chris Franke music, or if you really want something percussion heavy, but still good sounding to put it apart from B5, Bear McCreary.

[emi_100]

If only there would be a financer who dares to give JMS a free reign over the project and let him start the whole Crusade thing again from scratch. No stupid uniform mixup, no boring "let's explain everything" first episode, no bad CGI, no mixed up episode airing and you probably guessed it.... Chris Franke music, or if you really want something percussion heavy, but still good sounding to put it apart from B5, Bear McCreary.

I doubt it.. I hope one day this happens.. Dreaming it's free. Crusade didn't have the chance to show his potencial. IMHO the plot of the show wasn't as good and solid compare to B5, but we can never know how good could it be

[The E]

I think the outline JMS had for Crusade was solid, the problem was that the show was severely screwed by the network.

[-Norbert-]

Look at the first few episodes of B5. Those didn't have that great a plot either. Crusade just didn't get a chance to get to the good parts, on top of the producer (or whoever it was) screwing it further up with all the bull**** (like the uniforms, demanding the first episode, ect. ect...).

[emi_100]

Yes but B5 had and was a mayor challenge on season 1, it have to introduce you on his amazing universe. Ships, characters, races, plot, all the universe.
OTOH on crusade we already have the universe, the season 1 have to introduce the characters and the plot.
If you see the firsts episodes you thought that the crew of the Excalibur will search for the cure for the Drakh virus all the 5 years.. IMHO that wasn't a interesting idea.
Five years and the human race will die, generally the series last five years.. so you thought and feel that they will find the cure on the last minute and save the day. Nothing fancy, all very predictable. At least that was what i felt.

And there was another thing. The Drakh plague was never mention before on B5 (in episode such "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars", or "Sleeping in Light", in which they mention fact from the future, like teleph war, but there was no thing such a Drakh virus)
So you thought the it was a "last minute invention".

The music was another wrong choice. -Norbert- said it all already.

The poor quality of the CGI.

All the conflicts with TNT (uniforms, order of the episodes, etc)

The characters wasn't very charm and charismatic, and the performace of the actors were really poor, except of course of Gary Cole (Captain Gideon) Tracy Scoggins (Captain Lochley) Peter Woodward (Galen) who were outstanding.
The main ships design hasn't the rotaion section, I know, it was ISA, they already have the tech, but i always thought that was a bad idea. Maybe it could work on a different design. Tim Earl work on the Excalibur, don't get me wrong his work is just amazing.. but he did not reflect that on the Excalibur.
That's why, that are my reason of why Crusade didn't work, it was a sum of errors. Everytime I thought about it I felt the same, It's really a shame. May have been a great show, a great spin-off. But it didn't have the magic of B5, at least of this 13 episodes.

It have good thing like Shadow hybrid and "what happend with the Cerberus?" plot. Teleph war flashbacks were good one too. And the connection with the EA government and the Drakh virus appeared to be good plot too (the Pro Zeta corporation was a dark secret, really good one).
And JMS said the the crew will find the cure on the plague on season 2.. and they somehow find some very dark secret on the EA government and became on traitors to EA..
I said again. The show didn't have the chance to show his potential. It's shame.

[CaptJosh]

Yes it WAS mentioned. You have to watch A Call to Arms. It was a B5 TV Movie and it was based on the Drakh deciding to go on a rampage with a Shadow death cloud because their masters were destroyed and their attempt to infiltrate Minbari space had been thwarted. However, the death cloud wasn't their only weapon.

[-Norbert-]

ACTA is pretty much part of Crusade, as far as plot arc goes.
But what he meant was, that apart from ACTA and Crusade itself, the virus was never mentioned anywhere. And considering we had two episodes that showed the future ("deconstruction of falling stars" and "sleeping in the light") that's a bit odd, if it was always part of the timeline in JMS' head.
That it wasn't mentioned in the lost tales is most likely due to them being rather short, but in the HORROR (aka Legend of the Rangers) it wasn't mentioned either as far as I remember (and I really wish I didn't remember B5:LotR at all, but I do ).

[CaptJosh]

Legend of the Rangers focused on the Anlashok, and barely mentioned Earth at all, IIRC, so it may simply have not come up. I don't know if it was part of the original timeline. Maybe JMS felt the need to create something for the Excalibur to do other than be a Babylon 5 version of the USS Enterprise.

[Nergal]

Legend of the Rangers is actually set two years before Crusade, in 2265. That, of course, creates more problems, since no one seems to remember the supposedly-really-dangerous  "Hand".

[CaptJosh]

Yeah, I don't get that. The Shadows and Vorlons were supposed to be the big bads. The last of the First Ones. Who the hell are "The Hand"? If all the First Ones finally left after the Shadow war, where did The Hand come from?

[-Norbert-]

We had a nice discussion about that, before TBP moved to the HLP (was it on Firstones or VWBB? It's been so long I can't remember....).

Since they are supposed to serve some even bigger, badder masters, maybe they once were servants of another race of the first ones that was wiped out (or that the other FO thought was wiped out).
Or maybe they were servants of the Thirdspace aliens, who got left behind when the Vorlons closed the gate after it's first activation and the 2nd activation (in the film Thirdspace) was too short for them to be called in by their masters.