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By
Lars Joreteg
Review:
Crusade episode 3 - "The Well of Forever"
"Just
a few pesky life-forms getting fresh with my ship?"
- Gideon
In
its third episode, Crusade returns to the familiar Babylon
5 storytelling roots, with interesting character conflicts.
The opening credits question "Who do you trust?" is
at the core of this very good episode.
A
few months into their quest, Galen proposes a mission
to find the mythical "well of forever", a legendary
place located very deep into hyperspace. This strange
place supposedly contains the answer to many questions,
but does Galen have an ulterior motive in taking the
Excalibur there?
Like
many Babylon 5 episodes, this episode has two parallel
plots. The major one is the search for the "well of
forever", and is executed quite well, in my opinion.
We learn more about the nature of Hyperspace, and how
ships navigate through it. But while finding the well
is what drives the story, what it reveals about our
characters is what makes interesting and worthwhile.
Also, along the way there is a bit of humor involving
hyperspace life forms, at least I found it amusing.
:-) The sub-plot of this episode deals with a telepath
from the "Bureau of telepath integration" (a replacement
of sorts for the Psi-Corps) that is checking up on Lt.
Matheson, to see if he as a telepath has been scanning
someone's mind, something strictly forbidden.
We
learn much more about Galen in this episode, and he
is played well by Peter Woodward as usual. While Galen's
priorities may be different than the rest of the crew,
in a strange way he seems even trustworthier after this
episode.
Captain Gideon (Gary Cole) is also great in this episode,
and it was very interesting to see how he dealt with
Galen's betrayal. There were also some shades of Sinclair
(Babylon 5's first commander) in how he dealt with the
telepath investigator, very nicely done.
This
is the first episode to give Lt. Matheson (Daniel Dae
Kim) substantial screen time, and he comes across very
well. He is very likeable, and hopefully more time will
be spent on him and his telepath issues in the future.
Max
Eilerson (David Allen Brooks) and Dureena (Carrie Dobro)
are minor characters in this episode, but they work
well. I find Max to be especially amusing, his facial
expressions while listening to others are great fun
to watch. Dureena serves mostly as exposition in this
episode, unfortunately, (an obvious example is when
talking to Galen as he is leaving) but hopefully well
see more interesting facets of her personality soon.
No
sign so far of Dr. Chambers and Capt. Lochley...
The
only guest star in this episode is Michael Beck, as
the anonymous "Mr. Jones". He guest starred on Babylon
5 before, in the sixth episode of season two, "A Spider
in the web", as a cyborg zombie. He doesn't have many
lines here, but he brings quite a bit of presence to
the part, and is quite effective.
While
there weren't much special effects in this episode,
aside from the standard hyperspace scenes, but the "well
of forever" visuals were quite striking. It certainly
seemed mystical, ancient, and beautiful in its own way.
But what really impressed me in this episode was the
music, by far the best scored episode of Crusade so
far. Most of the time the score was very sublime, but
the music while at the "well of forever" was very nice
and appropriate. Evan Chen did a fine job here.
Overall,
this episode was mostly about character development,
and as such it worked wonderfully. But there is still
something that keeps it from being a great episode overall,
but I can't quite put my finger on it. But Crusade is
gaining depth after every episode, and this third episode
is among the best so far.
Rating:
8.5/10
-
Lars Joreteg
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