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Been Away Forever-Need B-5 News

Dayton3

Regular
I haven't been here for years. Don't know why. Too busy I guess.

A couple of questions

1) What is the latest information on the most recent B-5 project?

2) Does anyone know for certain how the storyline of Crusade was going to go if the show had lasted its other four seasons.?
 
1. Filming's finished, or on the verge of finished.

2. We know that the cure would be found half-way or so through season two, Gideon would be killed at the end of season one (and eventually come back thanks to something having to do with the Apocalypse Box), Dureena would have eventually come into possession of some form of powers similar to, but not quite the same as Galen, and Gideon, Galen, and the gang would learn that Earth was secretly exploring the use of left over Shadow technology, which would eventually cause the Excalibur and crew to become fugitives pursued by Earth.
 
He can do it so well.

But that said, the main male lead dying and resurecting, becoming renegades from Earth, does that not all sound a tad familiar to the seasoned B5 junkie ?

Tell me why not KoshN !!
 
2. We know that the cure would be found half-way or so through season two,

We do? I thought that JMS had only said that the show's focus would move away from the plague and towards Earth's secret use of Shadow tech, so that, by the end of Season 2, "it woudn't even be the same show anymore". That doesn't mean that the plague would be cured in Season 2. Just that that storyline would move into the background.
 
I got the impression it was a temporary cure. One that made mankind's destruction slightly less imminent. I thought I heard a ball park figure that said it would delay the effects of the plague for 30 years. Don't quote me on that though.

I'm sure JMS said that there would be a cure, but that it would not be quite what it seemed to be.

Maybe it's possible it would have been a total cure... but that Earthforce were going to hold onto it in the hope of getting access to alien technology over the rest of the five years.
 
I'll see if I can find JMS' post about it at JMSNews. I am sure he said that they would find the cure to the plague sometime in season 2, the Excalibur crew would then discover that it was not what they thought it was but no one back on Earth would believe them, thus prompting them to turn renegade.
 
Well here is the full interview from which JMS made his most elaborate comments on Crusade's intended storyline:

http://movies.ign.com/articles/035/035904p1.html

The Crusade comments are on page 4 of that interview:

http://movies.ign.com/articles/035/035907p1.html

JMS: "End of the Line" is one of two scripts that act as bookends. That one was the season finale, and the other one ("To the Ends of the Earth") would upped the ante midway through the season. We discover that there's a much broader problem even than the plague – it had to do with Earth using Shadow technology in ways they shouldn't be doing, and who was responsible for the destruction of captain Gideon's ship. Suffice it to say that – through a series of incidents – the Excalibur crew would have been considered traitors and have to basically be on the run. Further, the cure that Earth would have believed to be the right one would not in fact work as they think it would have worked. Our guys would find out about this, and no one would have believed them. As things unravel, it's a larger conspiracy, so basically – after the second year – the show you think Crusade is would be a whole different show, with much more depth to it, more political, more controversial in some ways, and would deal with the impact of technology on society, would cast our characters as renegades and loners without port, and turn the whole series upside-down. The whole plague thing was really just a way to get the thing going and give them something to do in the beginning while we establish the characters before we pull the plug and change the whole nature of the show into something I think would probably have been revolutionary... but we never got that far.

To my knowledge, JMS has never really elaborated on this any further than he did here. So it sounds like, Earth would discover what it believed to be a cure (from the sound of it, in the second season, but it's not spelled out explicitly), but it would either not really be a cure, or it would be a cure that's worse than the disease. In some way or other, it wouldn't "work as they think it would have worked".

Obviously, at some point, there is a cure that works, as we know from the B5 timeline that life continues on Earth for many years after the events of Crusade.
 
I post there all the time, it was irony!!! (Difficult to put across on a keyboard though...)

And I smell lovely, as i'm sure do you...

(Frantically digs himself out of hole...) :angel:
 
I post there all the time, it was irony!!! (Difficult to put across on a keyboard though...)

And I smell lovely, as i'm sure do you...
And in purple, I'm stunning!

(Frantically digs himself out of hole...) :angel:

Yeah, yeah...and buffoons was a term of endearment, right? Gotcha. :p ;)

Jan
(who did recognize your handle)
 
In the "Racing the Night" commentary JMS explicitly says that the cure would be found about half way through S2. Even before the show went into production I posted a message on Compuserve suggesting that the plague story would not run through all five years and that the cure would be found in time for the last year to two to be devoted to a larger sotry that wasn't apparent at the beginning of the series. To which JMS replied, "If not sooner."

I think don't think the cure would have failed. I think it would have fallen into the "worse than the disease" category. It would almost certainly have been yet another bit of adapted Shadow tech, either discovered by Gideon's crew or developed by some black projects agency with access to the stuff - EarthForce BioWeapons Division, the secret agency that destroyed Gideon's old ship and the R&D people at Edgars-Garibaldi all come to mind. (The E-G folks may have concealed things from Garibaldi or could be working from old data and records that nobody knows were connected with the Shadows.)

Consider what we know about Shadow and even other organic technology: It tends to be either deadly or to take people over and subert their free will. The Shadow ships, the Ikkarans, the Technomages, the Teep implants. They all take the user over. (I think the armor in "Infection" was itself based on Shadow technology. The Ikkarans either found some or the Shadows gave it to them - perharps through a third party - precisely so that they would wipe themselves out. I think the cure would have done something like that, either directly itself or by modifying the original Drakh plague.

Regards,

Joe
 
I hadn't considered the cure not working, or the cure being worse in the sense it might take over it's victims.

I was thinking more along the lines of what the cost was of making the cure (IE: like Deathwalker's immortality serum requiring the taking of another life) kinda scenario.
 
If you think about it, the nano-virus found on the "Memory of War" planet that Dr. Chambers managed to reprogram would fit the bill admirably, don't you think?
 
Man it would be sweet if the "cure" would end up turning earth's population turned into zombies...

*off to work on a fanfic hybrid of B5 and Dawn of the Dead*
 
Man it would be sweet if the "cure" would end up turning earth's population turned into zombies...

*off to work on a fanfic hybrid of B5 and Dawn of the Dead*
Or, slightly more realistic in context, telepaths. Hey, I really believe it can be done! After all, if a virus can be made to kill teeps, perhaps a virus can be made to activate teep genes. Perhaps Bester had a hand in it? With the help of Drakh.

I'll shut up now.
 

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