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Crusade (1999), a short-lived spinoff to Babylon 5, picks up the B5 storyline following a biological attack on Earth that dooms its inhabitants to death within five years. Maverick Captain Matthew Gideon and the crew of the Excalibur desperately search known space for any information on how to cure the plague before the literal deadline.
- Note:Quotes are organized by episode, in the order that series creator J. Michael Straczynski intended for them to be seen (intended airdate order).
*See the Crusade article on Wikipedia for an explanation of the multiple episode orders.
- Eilerson: Nations rise and fall. Planets live and die. But corporations go on, through good times and bad, because it's all about profit. [N]
- Galen: Never contradict a Technomage when he's saving your life. Again.
- Gideon (to Matheson): Don't think.
- Galen: Yes, quite right. If you wanted to think, you should never have joined the military in the first place.
- Galen: I was just thinking on whether or not a comment would be 'most wanted or least needed'.
- Gideon: I thought you said you don't hold a grudge?
- Galen: I don't. I have no surviving enemies. At all.
- [Eilerson and Matheson are discussing going back to the planet.]
- Eilerson: I say we find out what the problem is, take care of it. I believe blowing it up is the usual solution to these things. And then we go back for the rest, and avenge the untimely death of Crewman...
- Matheson: Varelli.
- Eilerson: Varelli. [pauses] Vivisected. Terrible way to die. We have to have our priorities, after all.
- Galen: Did you say... vivisected?
- Chambers: Yes, nearly all his internal organs were missing.
- Galen: ...now that is interesting...
- Galen: When you have reached the end of the road, then you can decide whether to go to the left or to the right, to fire or to water. If you make those decisions before you have even set foot upon the road, it will take you nowhere. [pauses] Except to a bad end.
- Holographic Galen: Oh, my. Whatever shall I do? They've all left without me. I knew I'd forget where we parked that shuttle. I hope something dreadful doesn't happen to me.
- [He looks up to see a ship overhead.]
- Holographic Galen: Oh, look. Something dreadful.
- Gideon: They don't want us leaving with what we know. Too bad we don't know anything.
- Galen: If I'm going to die, I'd rather do so in a room with a view.
- Galen (ref:to Gideon): Ten years ago, I rescued a stray cat. That brings with it a degree of obligation. I can't exactly go wandering off every time he gets stuck up a tree, now can I?
- Galen: In the end, it's all the story of Job, isn't it?
- Gideon: Some days, it feels like our faith is being tested, same as his.
- Galen: Where do you put your faith, Matthew? In science? Your luck? This ship?
- Gideon: I haven't decided.
- Galen: Well, then, if this is the story of Job, a great deal of people are being inconvenienced for your benefit. Hope you appreciate it.
- [Dureena attempts to get Galen to teach her everything he knows about technomancy.]
- Galen: The answer is still no. For now.
- Dureena: Then there's hope?
- Galen: There is always hope, only because that is the one thing no one has figured out how to kill. Yet.
- Chambers (on the porn that came from Eilerson's data crystal): There's something you don't see every day.
- ...
- Chambers: As a Doctor, I have to say that's totally unrealistic. An alien life form like the Pak'Ma'Ra is not biologically equipped to interface with humans in that kind of...
- Gideon: It's an amazing thing, technology.
- Gideon: I may have an idea.
- Dureena: I don't think you've recovered from your last good idea.
- Gideon: That would explain it.
- Matheson: How odd. To know everyone's heart but my own.
- [Gideon orders that probes be dropped onto the planet.]
- Galen: I want you to know that this thing just made a very large dent in my ship. Did you ever think about looking outside before you start throwing things overboard?
- Gideon: Maybe next time you'll let us know when you're coming. So what brings you here this time?
- Galen: An attempt, in all probability foolish and useless, to prevent you from going down to that planet.
- Gideon: Galen, my people have been looking for this place since we left Earth. Now that you're here, what could you possibly say that would change that?
- Galen: Well, how about if you go down there, the odds are that none of you will return alive? [pauses] Clear me for docking. Put away the breakables. Turn on the landing lights. I'm coming in.
- [The crew finds a planet that is a paradigm for Earth's infection with the Drakh plague.]
- Galen: Oh, how wonderful. A paradigm. I'm sure the race that died beneath us would love to know that their fate had been reduced to a paradigm.[pauses] Sorry. Do go on.
- Eilerson (to Dureena): I've decided to re-define our relationship. You pretend that you can't speak. I'll pretend that I can't hear. We'll get along famously.
- [Gideon returns to grab a weapon.]
- Eilerson: Where are you going?
- Gideon: To follow a friend into hell.
- [Gideon talks to the Apocalypse Box.]
- Apocalypse Box: Do not trust.
- Gideon: Do not trust who?
- Apocalypse Box: Galen.
- [Miners on a planet report sabotage... and a gold dragon.]
- Galen: If I'm right, this is definitely something you should see.
- Gideon: And if you're wrong?
- Galen: Oh well that hardly seems likely, now does it?
- Alwyn: If they come with guns, they will leave in boxes.
- [Alwyn's demon-like creatures are attacking Earthforce personnel.]
- Galen: The teeth are a very nice touch.
- Alwyn: You think so? Not too big?
- Galen: No, I think they are just about right.
- Alwyn: Yes, I suppose you're right.
- Matheson: Showing that we can obey the new regs is all that stands between us and the creation of a new Psi-Corps. I'm not gonna be the one to mess that up.
- Durkani: Sooner of later, the truth is going to come out. The truth is --
- Kendarr: Out of fashion.
- [launching the probes with the interstellar encyclopedia.]
- Matheson: There are probably some who'll say that by doing this, we are interfering with their culture.
- Gideon: Probably. Screw them.
- [Galen visits Dureena's quarters for the first time.]
- Galen: What have you done to your quarters?
- Dureena: I made it the right size. I don't know why everybody else always makes things huge. This is the way I like it, nice and small. Have a seat.
- Galen: Do you think I'm hiding things from you?
- Dureena: Gideon says we all have things to hide.
- Galen: Does he? How unfortunate. I was hoping he'd come farther than that.
- [Upon first contact with the Fenn in hyperspace.]
- Gideon: No it's not! It's mating with us?
- Galen: Well it's not exactly the first contact situation that I'd envisioned, but ...
- Gideon (to Galen): I didn't ask how you screwed me, I asked why.
- Galen: Every technomage knows the fourteen words that will make someone fall in love with you forever, but she [Isabelle] only needed one.
- Gideon: What word?
- Galen: Hello.
- [Lochely is walking around, having left Med Bay without permission.]
- Lochley: No, I'm fine, I'm fine.
- Gideon: Of course. You're just holding up the wall in case of emergency.
- Lochley: Yeah, well, I thought it looked kind of weak. I try and do my part.
- [Lochley has invited Gideon to stop by at B5.]
- Matheson: You're smiling.
- Gideon: No, I'm not.
- Matheson: With respect, sir ...
- Gideon: It's gas. Look, who are you going to believe, me or my face?
- [After receiving orders to go to Theta 49, Eilerson complains about the destination.]
- Eilerson: IPX doesn't give paid holidays.
- Gideon: For a cause like this, I think we'd all happily chip in.
- Max Eilerson: [to Gideon] Must be difficult for you, being a career military officer, having to play the roles of jailer, ferryman, executioner. That's where we're different. I just do what I'm told. The corporation knows all, sees all, and tells very little. If we make a bad call, we can honestly say that we've acted in good conscience based on the information available. Absolution in absentia, the blessed state of being able to say, "It's not my fault."
- Gideon: Granted, I'm a bit eccentric, as captains go.
- Dureena: Yeah. You gamble.
- Gideon: Yeah.
- Dureena: Yeah. You cheat.
- Gideon: That's subjective.
- Dureena: You never tell anyone the whole truth.
- Gideon: And who does?
- [Dureena finds a lost tribe of her people.]
- Dureena: Your colony is the last of our people.
- Female Elder: No!
- Dureena: Yes. Xander Prime is destroyed. That's why I travel with the Humans. Our world as you remember it is dead. Until today, I thought I was the last of our race. If you don't seek help for the plague, it will mean the true end of our civilization.
- Galen: Now that I have your attention, be a good fellow and humor me.
- [Matheson walks in the bullet car, where Galen has just been for a few hours, sitting.]
- Matheson: You like going nowhere at 120 miles an hour?
- Galen: Of course. That is man's natural condition.
- Max Eilerson: I try to never upset someone who's at the helm of a rapidly falling object when I'm in it.
- Lochley: Look, Captain, I didn't ask for this assignment. This whole Drakh virus conference was Dr. Stephen Franklin's idea. ... Now when Earthforce asked for an officer to oversee it, the good doctor put me at the top of his shortlist. Now, right now, my main goal is to find a cure for this so I can go Earthside and thank Stephen in person with a large brick.
- Gideon: Well, there's incentive.
- Lochley: Captain Gideon, 'security' happens to be my middle name.
- Gideon: That's all well and good, but just in case your last name is 'breach' it won't hurt for me to double-check.
- [Lochley confronts Gideon regarding an autopsy report.]
- Lochley: You know what you are?
- Gideon: Ruggedly handsome?
- Lochley: A control freak.
- Gideon: Can't I be both?
- [Trace and Eilerson argue over who gets to dance with Dureena.]
- Dureena: Gods, I am drowning in testosterone.
- Eilerson: Well, luckily for you, you're equipped with flotation devices.
- Lochley: Who was your old hero?
- Gideon: Truthfully? John Sheridan.
- Lochley: John Sheridan? No kidding.
- Gideon: Were you ever under him?
- [Lochley chokes on drink.]
- Lochley: Can I be blunt?
- Gideon: That's a trick question, right?
- Gideon: You're telling me some guy actually managed to land you? Got you to lower your defenses enough to commit, and then let you get away? God, he must be the biggest loser in the galaxy.
- Lochley: Oh, major loser. They don't come any bigger.
- Gideon: Loser have a name?
- Lochley: John Sheridan.
- [Gideon spits out drink.]
- Gideon to Lochley: Captain, you are the most double-talking, suspicious, second-guessing individual I have ever seen since the last time I looked in a mirror.
- Lochley: Do you believe that there is a supreme being?
- Gideon: Aside from John Sheridan?
- Gideon: Captain, I have five years to cure the Drakh plague. Do I believe in God? I'll get back to you on that in five years and one day.
- Max Eilerson: One man's lunatic is another man's saint or holy martyr. In the words of T.S. Eliot, "Saint and martyr rule from the tomb."
- Dureena: You know, on my world, it was considered great evil to even try to presume to speak on behalf of the universe.
- Gideon: Plato once said that for everything that exists, there is a perfect form of it somewhere. A perfect Human being, a perfect chair, a perfect stick; so that everything is a Shadow of that one perfect form. Now, if we follow that train of thought, that means that somewhere in the universe there exists the perfect form of an absolute and complete idiot. And he left here an hour ago.
- Eilerson (to Rolf Mueller): The term is prodigy. Seven letters, three syllables. I can see why it might give you problems.
- Gideon: This is my command. I'll do whatever's necessary. If that means turning the entire galaxy upside down and shaking its pockets to see what falls out, then that's what I'll do. I'm not subtle. I'm not pretty, and I'll piss off a lot of people along the way. But I'll get the job done.
- Trace Miller: I've got plans for the weekend and being dead ain't part of 'em.
- Dureena: Yes, I'm a thief, and a damned good one. Need to get inside something? Get out? Tunnel under? Go around? Go through? I'm it. You're going to hit some pretty strange places and you're going to need a lock pick. There isn't a lock made that I can't get through.
- [Gideon hears Galen over a comline.]
- Galen: Hello, Matthew. I just wanted you to know that I am here, and I'm watching, in case you should need help.
- Gideon: Who's this?
- Galen: Have you forgotten me so soon? Sad, but the way of the world, I suppose. Expect me when you see me.
- Eilerson: I can appreciate dramatic irony as much as the next person, but this is pushing it a bit.
- Drakh Captain: And when your world is gone, who will support you? Who will you serve? Who will you be?
- [Gideon and Matheson talk about Eilerson.]
- Matthew Gideon: He may be a pain in the ass, but he will be our pain in the ass.
- [Gideon records in his log.]
- Gideon: It's now three days since our visitors arrived on behalf of Earthgov's political affairs office. There's apparently some concern with how our work here is being perceived back home. They've been assigned to help us. Before their tour is finished, I may have to kill them, assuming Lt. Matheson doesn't beat me to it.
- Mr. Welles: If anyone knows how to survive political change, it's me.
- Eilerson: Never a Rosetta Stone when you need one.
- Gideon: Eilerson was right about all of this. I hate it when he's right. He'll be insufferable for days.
- [Gideon gripes about the new grey uniforms with red trim.]
- Gideon: I look like a bellhop.
- Gary Cole — Capt. Matthew Gideon
- Daniel Dae Kim — Lt. John Matheson
- David Allen Brooks — Max Eilerson
- Peter Woodward — Galen
- Marjean Holden — Dr. Sarah Chambers
- Carrie Dobro — Dureena Nafeel
- Tracy Scoggins — Capt. Elizabeth Lochley
- Alex Mendoza — Trace Miller
- Crusade quotes at the Internet Movie Database
- Lurker's Guide to Crusade
- Crusade at The Great Machine (B5 & Crusade wiki)
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