Could Crusade Be Done With A New Cast???

I started another thread about seeing the rest of Crusade. Given the difficulty of reassembling all members of the old cast, would it be possible to recast all or most of the roles and complete the Crusade story with a different crew?

Of course, I could tolerate nearly any cast as long as Gary Cole was the leading man.

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First of all, the "difficulty" of reassembling the original cast is greatly exaggerated. The simple fact is that most members of the Screen Actors Guild spend most of their time "between jobs." Unless tied down to another series most are - or could become - available. (When offerred the part of Zack Allen - a recurring, not a regular, character at that point - Jeff Conaway turned down other work just because he watched B5 and wanted to be in the show. )

However - if there were a problem getting all or most of the regulars back when/if Sci-Fi asked Warner Bros. to put the show back into production, they'd certainly have the option of recasting - even starting over from scratch.

They only produced 13 of a proposed 110 episodes, and several of them were sub-par, the result of JMS's fatigue, TNT's interference, or a combination of both. All the episodes have since aired twice in the U.S., and several times in other countries. Because they were produced on a very low budget (for U.S. SF shows in any case - there are sitcoms that cost more per half hour than Crusade did per hour) Warner Bros. has probably already turned a profit on the existing episodes.

Which means they could afford to drop them, pretend they never happened, and maybe pickup a few extra bucks selling them on DVD as "the lost episodes." And Sci-Fi wouldn't care one way or another, having no financial stake in the show.

So they would certainly have the option of reshooting (and probably rewriting) most of the existing scripts (I suspect "War Zone" would be dropped entirely) and starting over. As long as Peter Woodward and Carrie Dobro return you have no continuity problem, since they are the only major characters who also appear in A Call to Arms. (Lochley could be written out of the series if need be.) Even if one or both of those actors wasn't available, the roles could be recast. One is a bald guy with a British accent who runs around in a monk's robe, the other a heavily made-up alien. You could slip too new actors into the parts and hardly miss a beat.

(Which is in no way to denigrate either Woodward or Dobro, both of whom I thought were terrific in the parts. But the fact is I had never heard of either until I saw ACtA, so who can say that there aren't two other actors I've never heard of who could step into the roles and impress me just as much?)

Or they could keep the first 13 and JMS could write a script where Excalibur is found adrift in space, the entire crew missing, and only a cryptic log entry as a clue to their fate. EarthGov puts a new crew aboard and they add finding their predecessors to the original mission of finding the cure.

So I'd say that Sci-Fi has lots of options with Crusade regardless of what happens with the cast.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net

In my opinion, the only cast changes i wouldn't want to see, and would piss me off more than anything, would be for Woodward and cole not to come back. I think i could live without the rest of the original cast. Didn't you post something awhile back joe about which actors said that they would drop what they were doing and come back if crusade got revived??? I think i've seen something to that effect on here, just can't remember what was said or who said it.

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*said in vorlon accent* "We are all confused"

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Joseph DeMartino:
Because they were produced on a very low budget (for U.S. SF shows in any case - there are sitcoms that cost more per half hour than Crusade did per hour)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Two episodes of Friends could fund a season of Crusade. That said, these sitcoms do kinda have a lot better ratings. <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Warner Bros. has probably already turned a profit on the existing episodes.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>The profits for the inital runs go to the TV stations who air the show, and the money from international sales miniscule in comparison. Any show that doesn't have enough episodes to syndicate (50+) won't ever make a profit for the studios, which is why you had MGM funding the third season of The New Twilight Zone, a show with an equally low (if not lower) budget. <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Which means they could afford to drop them, pretend they never happened<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>In WB's books, Crusade would have allready been written off as a loss.

If Crusade ever goes back into production there will have been a two or three year break between the original and the new. There wasn't enough in the original 13 episodes to really affect a future production and I don't think I would care whether they got the original cast or replaced them with a new cast. There is only one thing I would like to see and that's more of an interaction with the original cast of B5. I always felt Sheridan should have been in the opening episode to hand the Excalibur over to Gideon and make some connection with A Call to Arms.

However, if they wanted to carry on with the original cast JMS could discard the episodes with the bellboy outfits and just save the episodes he's happy with.

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Bear in mind that the "bellboy" outfit episodes (Racing the Night, The Needs of Earth, Each Night I Dream of Home, Visitors from Down the Street and The Memory of War) are generally considered the best ones. The black uniforms, and the black uniform eps, were the TNT screwed eps.


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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>The profits for the inital runs go to the TV stations who air the show, and the money from international sales miniscule in comparison. Any show that doesn't have enough episodes to syndicate (50+) won't ever make a profit for the studios<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This depends entirely on how a given show is financed. Networks (or syndicators) make a deal with a studio to provide a show, and pay a licensing fee per episode to run it. This fee may be more, less or exactly the same as what the show costs the studio to produce the show. The local stations, in turn, pay a fee to the network and or syndicator to buy the show. Both the network and its affiliated stations sell advertising time during the show, which is where they make their money. Syndicators may also sell "national" advertising during their shows, or may have a revenue-sharing arrangement with the local stations, or they simply collect the fees as their sole income.

Cable exclusive deals are similar to syndication deals, from what little I understand about them.

Shows where the network/syndication fee is less than the studio's cost are said to be deficit financed. The studio loses money on each episode until it collects enough episodes to profitably syndicate them. (Syndicated shows are usually aired "stripped", five days a week in the same timeslot. There have to be enough episodes in the can so that the shows don't "cycle around" too often, which erodes ratings. 50 episodes would mean cycling every 10 weeks, which I believe is still considered too short a run. AFAIK 100 episodes is still considered the minimum for syndication.)

Once such shows earn out their deficits, they become pure profit for the studio.

One of the requirements laid down at the fledgling PTEN "network" was that all of the shows be produced at par - that is, they had to break even or turn a profit on their first airing. That's the main reason that B5 had a budget between one half and one third that of the contemporary Trek shows. Paramount was deficit-financing Trek. Warner Bros. refused to do so with B5. AFAIK this policy carried over to Crusade. It was either budgeted at the network license fee or exceeded it by such a small amount as to be negligible. Warner Bros. essentially broke even on the show the first time it ran on TNT. It had certainly shown a profit by the time Sci-Fi ran it.

Foreign sales are hardly neligible, either. That's why they were a major negotiating point in both the SAG and WGA talks earlier this year. Depending on how much demand there is for a particular American show, the overseas rights can go for a pretty penny. Even if the licensing fees paid by a given station in a given country are not high, multiply that by 50 or 100 countries (especially larger ones where the show can be sold to multiple stations) and it adds up pretty quickly.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net

The trick with defining Profit on a show in Hollwood terms is the fact that Hollywood reserves most of its creativity for its Accounting practices. If an idiot MBA takes 2 minutes to write a note to a producer about a script, Hollywood charges the show for a month of his time. (this is an exaggeration, but not much of one).

They also charge the same month to any Other show he writes a note to.

Once the accountants get through, no show Ever makes a profit. On paper.


BTW, Babylon 5 did even Better than most other shows as far as earning back its cost. The studios build in a "fudge factor" for episodes that go over budget. As Trek always does. Babylon 5 broke the mold. The show was consistently Under Budget, week after week. I believe JMS once posted that only about two episodes per season went over budget. The rest were Under by so much that the cost of the entire series was WAY under estimates.




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Yes, I like cats too.
Shall we exchange Recipes?

](My job in life, BTW, is to keep Joe busy)

Joe: One of the reasons I still harbor a lingering TNT hatred is not that they dropped Crusade. It is that they kept hanging on to the rights so that no one else could possibly buy it.

Isn’t that part of this horrible little picture, too?


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"Why not? Only 1 Human captain has ever survived battle with the Minbari fleet. He is behind me, you are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else."

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Teekas Dragon:
In my opinion, the only cast changes i wouldn't want to see, and would piss me off more than anything, would be for Woodward and cole not to come back. I think i could live without the rest of the original cast. Didn't you post something awhile back joe about which actors said that they would drop what they were doing and come back if crusade got revived??? I think i've seen something to that effect on here, just can't remember what was said or who said it.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I can't remember, either, but I'll back you up on this. I remember seeing it written too. Not that this means it is reality, but I definitely remember reading that, too.

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"Why not? Only 1 Human captain has ever survived battle with the Minbari fleet. He is behind me, you are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else."

As far as I know ALL the cast members want to come back. That's one of Babylonian Productions greatest assets. It is a Fun place to work. The cast members all say the same thing at Cons. Most other shows, both Trek and Mundane, tend to feature a lot of "infighting" behind the scenes. B5 people were too busy having a good time to bother with the petty sh!t. I think it had something to do with feeling like they were doing a GOOD Job.




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Yes, I like cats too.
Shall we exchange Recipes?

Ya... the only problems I would have with a new cast is if Peter Woodward ang Gary Cole didn't return.

If it was redone, I'd rather see new characters, rather than new faces on old characters. To me, that was one thing that just killed the "believability" aspect of a show right there.

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"Expect me, when you see me."

I'm taking this one a person at a time.

Captain Gideon -- Yes. Bring him back, do whatever it takes, get him back here where he belongs. I liked him too much to see him wasted in some (ack, gag) sitcom. Besides, after seeing him in American Gothic, it was nice to see him playing the good guy for a change.

Galen -- Oh yeah. Gotta have him back, because no one else can get the part right, IMO. Besides, he's Edward Woodward's son, and I was a fan of The Equalizer back in the 80's. He's too good to be replaced by someone else.

Dureena Nafeel -- Yeah, why not? I liked her, I thought she did a good job. She played Dureena to be sassy, confident, and very good at what she does. She's also the only actress who can play someone with yellow eyes and make it look good.

Max Eilerson -- I know he was supposed to be sleazy and selfish and conniving, but he just came off as annoying to me. Don't really care one way or another.

Dr. Chambers -- Same here. I'm sorry, but I just didn't connect with her, either. Maybe because she just didn't have enough time, but I could go either way.

Lt. Matheson -- I once read Garrett Wang (Ensign Kim on ST:Voyager) say that he wanted to play an Asian character who wasn't the typical Asian stereotype. Well, he ALMOST pulled it off; he became another bland, lifeless face in the crowd on that show. The actor who played Matheson, however, managed to do that in just thirteen episodes. GOTTA get him back.

Captain Lochley -- Heh. I think I've made my feelings pretty clear here.

So there you have it. Four Yesses, two
Maybes and one Over My Dead Body.

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hypatia:

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Joe: One of the reasons I still harbor a lingering TNT hatred is not that they dropped Crusade. It is that they kept hanging on to the rights so that no one else could possibly buy it.

Isn’t that part of this horrible little picture, too?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I answered this question in the other thread you posted it to, here:

www.b5lr.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/000068.html

I liked Max. He, Galen, Dureena and Gideon were probably my favorites. I think Sarah Chambers suffered from "SF Doctor Syndrome." They don't get enough screen time because they're always stuck in MedLab or Sickbay or whatever they're calling it on a given show. Stephen Franklin wasn't much of a character either until we got to see him off duty or doing other things a little more. He was great in the Mars arc with Marcus, for instance, but we didn't get nearly enough of that. Mostly he was in MedLab delivering pages of exposition. I think Chambers could have been as good a character as Franklin given more time.

Dureena had yellow eyes? How did you even notice this? Who the hell was looking at her eyes?

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net

The actor who plauyed Gideon (I swear, one day I'm gonna learn these people's names) had his best performance ever as the manager in "Office Space."

"Yeah, if you could just come in on Saturday, yeah, that would be great."

I can't watch Crusade without giggling.

Galen- I will never get tired of grandiose English type actors. Olivier, Stewart, McKellan, Guiness, I love 'em all. Every show should have one, and they should by cryptic and powerful.

Joe, I was gonna say the same thing you did about sci-fi doctors.
Why does every sci-fi show feel the need to throw in an "ER" aspect of the show? Isn't it possible to not make the doctor a major character?
The only sci-fi doctor I ever really liked was from the original Trek.

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"You do not make history. You can only hope to survive it."

*Maybe* there is a slight chance B5 could have gotten away with the doctor not being a major character, but Star Trek couldn't. In Star Trek, people get transformed, devolved, shrunken, altered, disguised, uglified, injured, or gene scrambled too often. You gotta have a doctor there to fix 'em up--by the end of the episode.

Think about it... ST:TNG didn't have a major character as chief engineer in their first season. In fact, it seems like they went through several, because I seem to remember the name being different every week. Apparently, that wasn't working out, and so Geordi LaForge was promoted to full Lieutenant and made chief engineer for season two and--for all his hard work no doubt--was already promoted to Lieutenant Commander by the third season.

In fact, Babylon 5 didn't have a major character from every department the way Star Trek shows do. B5 didn't really focus on technical problems so the engineers were just a bunch of no-name civilians. There also isn't a science officer or a counselor or chief of operations (at least not in the main cast). But a port of call with 250,000 beings is going to desparately need provisions for security and medicine. So, B5's senior staff--and some of the main characters--only consisted of command, security, and medical dept's.

Plus, some of the best shows are cop or doctor shows, and Picket Fences was effective in exploring moral, legal, religious, social, political, and family issues by having the main characters by a town sheriff and his wife, the town doctor.

You just gotta have doc, man.

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Not many fishes left in the sea. Not many fishes, just Londo and me.

I liked Gary Cole as Gideon. When he made that remark about interfering with the natural adavancement of an under-developed species in "Visitors from Down the Street", I died laughing. However, I thought I read somewhere that he had been slightly displeased with Crusade because it was different from what he thought it would be. I would like him back, but you never know.

I loved Max and Matheson.

Max's whole speech about not being expendable marked him as one of my favorites.

Matheson was great. I thought that Daniel Dae Kim played his part to perfection. He had an almost sly brand on humor. He appeared to be really dedicated and loyal.

Dureena and Chambers. I really could not make up my mind. I thought they were good, but I would have liked to see more.

I liked Galen, but occasionally, I thought he enunciated a little too much. The no surviving enemies crack is a classic, in my book.



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When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in a confederacy against him.
-Jonathan Swift

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>However, I thought I read somewhere that he had been slightly displeased with Crusade because it was different from what he thought it would be.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I heard this too, but later I found the exact quote where he talked about the show (which I can't seem to find at the moment ) and it gives an entirely different impression.

Cole said that the production was unlike anything else he'd done before, too chaotic. The uniform changes, shooting a completely different "first episode" and the constant, the bewildering notes from the network were something he'd never had to deal with on any other series.

(For what it's worth, JMS has said almost exactly the same thing. And we all know he'd come back to the show in a hearbeat. )

In other words, Cole was unhappy with what TNT did to the show - not the show itself. My impression that is that he would be happy to consider a return to the series provided they were dealing with rational people at the network level.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net

I suppose I'm in the minority (what a surprise) about Matheson (I hope I'm matching the character name with the character correctly, I'm thinking of the Asian liuetenant telepath guy). I found him completely forgettable. I know, there wasn't time to do anything with him. I'm not saying he would've stayed that way, just that I wouldn't be too upset if he was replaced if Crusade came back. I could go either way.

Also, I never said any particular show shouldn't have had a major doctor character. I just was questioning the comon practice of automatically putting in a doctor the same way you put in a commanding officer. Maybe you could have him be a recurring or supporting character.

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"You do not make history. You can only hope to survive it."

I think the problem was, obviously, that they were only around for 13 eps. If you based a judgement on say, Londo or G'kar on their first 13 eps, I doubt you would predict where they ended up.

I think Max would probably have changed as time went on. He would have realised what was at stake etc. and become less self involved - we saw the first step (and maybe more- i haven't seen the show in over a year now) in that ep, where he deleted some records because it would have endangered people - was it Dureena's race?

The thing about the Dr, was that this was a show about finding the cure to a Virus, so you needed her. Personally i think they needed another Dr in there, as i always felt as tho there was just her, searching for a cure. Considering this ship was pretty much the only hope Earth had of finding a cure, you'd have thought there would have been a whole team on board.

Matheson was another character who suffered from being under-developed in the time they had. In the unproduced scripts, we begin to see tthe depth of his frienship with the captain.

Personally, i would hate to see the show lose Gary Cole, Peter Woodward or Carrie Dobro. All of them just seemed to play their part t perfection, and they bounced off eachother wonderfully.



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We are starstuff. We are the universe made manifest...