Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: Crusade’s “The Long Road” A mining colony is menaced by a fire-breathing dragon… By Sarah, Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on September 21, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 1 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “The Long Road”Written by J. Michael StaczynskiDirected by Michael VejarProduction number 107Original air date: June 16, 1999 It was the dawn of the third age… We open on Regula IV, where a couple of miners are being menaced by a large gold dragon. They call in reinforcements, in the form of the EAS Medusa. Their ground troops are menaced by the same dragon. On Excalibur, Gideon can’t sleep, so he’s shooting some hoops in the unconvincingly large gym. (Seriously, the space behind Gideon is way more than you need for a basketball court. Also it’s empty, including no other hoop.) Matheson informs him that the Medusa has asked for help. Regula IV is a human colony of back-to-basics types who converted their ships to buildings and live an agrarian lifestyle. But there’s also a mineral on the planet that has antiviral properties that might be able to help with the Drakh plague. Gideon is confused by the report of a giant dragon that is messing up mining operations. Also there has been other sabotage. All on the prank level, and nobody’s been hurt. Gideon and Galen meet with Captain Daniels and Lieutenant Meyers on the Medusa. Galen recommends that just he and Gideon go down and check the place out, but to do so discreetly, as if they’re part of the colony. They dress in native clothes and go to a bar and wait. Gideon tries to pay for a drink with a local coin, but it turns out that he could buy the entire bar with that coin. Sure enough, after closing, a gang goes after them—but then a gentleman named Alwyn shows up, making an incredibly dramatic entrance, and says that Gideon and Galen work for him, and the overpriced coin was a symbol to let him know that they’d arrived. He also makes some comments about how they’re not his brightest employees. Once the gang leaves, Galen greets Alwyn in a friendly manner. It’s clear that he’s also a techno-mage, and he and Galen have known each other for years. Galen suspected it was him from the golden dragon, which is something he used to do to entertain children. Alwyn didn’t bugger off with the rest of the techno-mages—instead, he settled on Regula. Alwyn is hoping that Galen’s presence means that the techno-mages have come home, but no such luck. Galen says he left prematurely, and Alwyn translates that to them booting him out, which Galen is in no position to deny. Gideon asks why he’s engaging in a campaign of terror when this mining operation can save lives on Earth. Alwyn angrily takes them to the mining site, which is destroying the fresh-water supply, and which also displaced several colonists. That is the campaign of terror. The spot with the highest concentration of the mineral is very close to the settlement, and Daniels has refused to mine elsewhere for that reason. Alwyn is trying to make it more trouble than it’s worth for them to continue. He tried reasoning with Daniels and the rest, but it didn’t work, and his pranks are only a delaying action. They’ll come with ships, and Alwyn makes it clear that he will defend this planet with all the power at his disposal—which is considerable. Gideon checks in with Excalibur, and Alwyn and Galen catch up. We find out that Elric, the one techno-mage we’d met before, was Galen’s mentor. Elric took Galen in after Galen’s father died. Elric has also apparently died. He and Alwyn apparently didn’t agree on anything, but they respected each other, and Alwyn is sorry he’s gone. Alwyn also offers Galen a place on Regula, but Galen politely declines, saying he goes his own way now. A group of colonists ambush the mine and take the workers hostage. If the EarthForce ships won’t leave, the hostages will be killed. Daniels sends Meyers down to lead the rescue team. They encounter a dragon, but Meyers knows it’s a hologram and they fly through it. They go to the inn and take prisoners, asking them where the hostages are being held. Alwyn then arrives and sends holographic demons after the troops, but these are able to become solid. He and Galen calmly banter while the demons make mincemeat of the Medusa troops. Then Alwyn tells the colonists that they should release the prisoners—and the hostages. But they refuse. “We don’t have to be reasonable. Not as long as we have him.” Their discussion is cut short by the bartender’s daughter, Claire, who collapses. Alwyn determines that she’s suffering an overdose. The mining operations have kicked up dust into the air, and now they’re breathing a much more concentrated dose of the mineral. Claire and her father live closest to the mine, and she goes outside more, so she’s gotten it first, but this will be everyone soon enough. Gideon offers to take her up to Excalibur. Chambers can do a full workup and that’ll be proof that the mining operation is harming the colonists. Alwyn and the colonists are skeptical that this will be enough to convince Daniels, but they give it a shot. Meantime, Alwyn goes to the inn and lectures the colonists, saying he’s ashamed of them. Taking hostages is the choice of a coward or a criminal, and makes them no better than the people they’re trying to get rid of. They’re going down a road that will destroy them and their way of life. So Alwyn’s going to handle things his own way. Gideon informs Daniels that the mining operations are harming the colonists, but Daniels isn’t interested in listening to reason, especially given that the colonists still have hostages. Then Galen contacts Gideon. Gideon interrupts Daniels to talk to Galen, a conversation that isn’t on screen, and then Gideon informs Daniels that Alwyn is going to use the power of the mine to manipulate enough energy to destroy Medusa. With no choice otherwise, Gideon fires Excalibur’s big-ass weapon on the mine, destroying it utterly, and seemingly killing Alwyn. Gideon delivers a healthy Claire back to the colony. The colonists agree to let the hostages go and help Daniels find another mining site. They want to honor Alwyn’s memory by acting in a manner he would have approved of, as they hate that the last thing Alwyn said to them was that he was ashamed of them. Alwyn, of course, is still alive, but he needed to fake his own death, a decision he made when they said that they didn’t need to be reasonable as long as he was around. That meant he needed to not be around anymore. Alwyn and Galen say their goodbyes. Credit: Warner Bros. Television I’m not subtle, I’m not pretty. Gideon’s job in this episode is to be the grownup, and he actually does quite well with it. He pays attention, he listens, and he has sensible solutions. The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Matheson appears just long enough to banter with Gideon about basketball and provide the mission of the week. Never contradict a techno-mage when he’s saving your life—again. Alwyn and Galen’s relationship isn’t the father-son one you’d expect, given the casting, but it’s obvious that they respect each other and Alwyn thinks that Galen has promise. Welcome aboard. Marshall Teague shows up as Daniels, his third role in the franchise, having had the recurring role of Ta’Lon through four seasons of B5 and also guest starred as Drake in B5’s “Infection.” Scott Paetty plays Meyers, Alison Lohman plays Claire, and Mik Scriba plays the bartender. But the big guest is the late great Edward Woodward, father of Peter, as Alwyn. Trivial matters. Elric was seen in B5’s “The Geometry of Shadows,” where the concept of techno-mages was introduced. He was played by the late great Michael Ansara, which is why Galen makes a comment about his voice (Ansara had one of the best voices ever). Elric died prior to this episode, which surprised me, as Ansara was still alive at this point; he didn’t die until 2013, though at this stage in his career he wasn’t doing much acting beyond voiceover work as Mr. Freeze for various Bat-productions. Galen’s backstory with both Elric and Alwyn is fleshed out in the 2001 novel trilogy The Passing of the Techno-Mages by Jeanne Cavelos. The armor worn by the Medusa troops is the same armor used in Starship Troopers and also used by Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy, Firefly, and Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda at various points. This was the seventh episode filmed, but was placed second both by TNT and the chronological order published in Across Time and Space: The Chronologies of Babylon 5 by Terry Jones & I. Marc Carlson. I have also decided that the latter is the order I will be doing this rewatch in. Production order doesn’t work on any level from a story perspective, and the SyFy airing order has significant timeline issues. I seriously considered the TNT order because that’s what people would have on DVD and streaming services, but ultimately I think this rewatch is best served going in the official chronological order. The echoes of all of our conversations. “You know something about this, don’t you?” “Perhaps. And if I’m right, it’s definitely something you should see.” “And if you’re wrong?” “Well, that hardly seems likely, does it?” —Gideon and Galen. The name of the place is Babylon 5. “If they come with guns, they will leave in boxes.” First of all, I want to say how absolutely hilarious it is that I’ve watched two episodes of a space opera show in the last week that had a giant dragon in it—there was “Once La’an a Time” on last week’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and this. Anyhow, this is an excellent episode. It really only feels like the Medusa asked Excalibur for help because the show’s about their ship, but I don’t much care because the episode works beautifully. A lot of that is on the back of the guest casting, and while it would seem obvious to cast Peter Woodward’s Dad as a fellow techno-mage, it’s also true that Edward Woodward is brilliant. His Alwyn is bombastic, compassionate, opinionated, and heroic. I particularly like the way he played it when the colonist said that they didn’t have to be reasonable because they had Alwyn. The look on Woodward’s face perfectly conveyed what Alwyn himself would state outright later on: that the people of Regula had taken the wrong lessons from his presence. Honestly, the whole episode would be worth it just to have Woodward père et fils bantering together, but it’s good for other reasons, too. One of those is Matthew Gideon, who comes across so much better here than he did in as a clichéd tough guy in “War Zone.” He’s a good mediator between the people on Regula, including Alwyn, and the Medusa crew. The back-and-forth between the Medusa and the colonists is escalating to the point where there’s going to be a body count, and it’s to Alwyn’s credit (and to Galen’s and Gideon’s, since they obviously know exactly what Alwyn is doing) that he finds a way to do a more controlled escalation that will solve all the problems. The lack of any of the rest of the crew is disappointing, but also the double-act of Gary Cole and Peter Woodward, as well as that of the father-son duo, make it work. Marshall Teague’s Daniels is a bit too clichéd a hidebound military asshole, but it’s forgivable, and I have to admit to being amused at how well Scott Paetty played Meyers as completely out of his depth when he leads the raiding party to try and fail to get the hostages back. (His attempt to act tough with the prisoners is hilariously awful.) Next week: “Appearances and Other Deceits.”[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: <i>Crusade</i>’s “The Long Road” appeared first on Reactor.