I tried an export from TrueSpace to X and was able to open animated model just fine in the DarkBasic Pro environment, so decided to try the import 1 more time into MED and it finally worked... after all the previous countless attempts! The only think that I know is different is I selected the last option in TrueSpace's X export settings, "Keyframe steps" and entered an accompanying frame count.

As a side note, TrueSpace is more robust for animation, but I really don't prefer MED or TrueSpace for mapping textures, so struggling with that in my mind.