2. The Legacies Of The Spin Off Series
1999s Crusade TV show seemed, initially, a great prospect - a new, arced story told in the Babylon 5 universe that flowed naturally from events in the main series. With the blessing of a pass the torch TV movie and a solid cast, it had great potential, but was ultimately foiled by tensions between the TV network and the shows producers leading to stories aired out of order and little to no support for the series. Straczynski tried again with the TV movie Legend of the Rangers for Sy-fy in 2002, which may have been an attempt at a pilot for a full series. Sadly the script was lacklustre and the joy of the original series was missing. Despite a supporting appearance by Andreas Katsulas as GKar, the TV movie failed to excite viewers and a series never emerged. And while the Straczynski-produced straight-to-DVD Lost Tales was well received by many fans, the apparent ongoing anthology format only ever had one release. Had Straczynski lost something of his original zeal when writing these spin-offs? They certainly dont have the intelligence or attention to detail of the original shows, which may be down to network interference as much as anything else. But given that the more recent iterations of the Babylon 5 universe were so disappointing, the movie will have to come out with all guns blazing to replace the memories of these stories.