Crusade wan't picked up, so you are saying that JMS posted the ending of Crusade online at his online spot?
No, JMS never posted the Crusade ending online, or anywhere else, thus far. Crusade was supposed to run for five seasons (story time: January 2267 thru December 2271). Instead, TNT cancelled it before even one episode was aired. (See here for the reason why.
http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17127 ) Also, by their constant meddling, TNT made it impossible to put the existing 13 Crusade episodes in a correct order. Storywise, there's no order in which you can put the episodes and have it make perfect sense. Any way you look at it, there will be errors, e.g. Uniform errors (grey-red vs. black), continuity errors, etc. When it comes to screwing things up, TNT is full of pros.
Quote from
http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17127
JMS: Well... the comics. The books (shared universe-Distant Worlds and the Quote Book) um...(Jan: DVDs.)
Oh! Yes, DVDs. Well, we've finished up the commentaries for the set of movies that are coming out. And we're working currently on the Crusade DVDs. The hiccup we have hit on the Crusade DVDs...And by the way, they're selling great. I've heard that they've netted - netted, mind you, over 70 million dollars just from the first three and a half seasons. (applause) When they said, do you want to do the Crusade commentaries, assuming of course that we get the rest of them (something), I said "Absolutely." (they said) What do you want to talk about?" JMS: "I want to say what happened." (they stutter) "What do you mean?" JMS: "The TRUTH!" I want to put the truth out there. We are now on our fourth (something) of Legal Affairs. "He wants to do what??" "The TRUTH!" I have another conference call scheduled on Thursday with Legal Affairs. We're running out of time for the DVDs. I said, "Look if I can't get the truth out, then I don't want to support the DVDs."
Audience: I can see some big-ass disclaimers over that one.
JMS: I want the real truth to come out. Including the fact...I ran into some guys who worked for TNT about two years after Crusade went down. And they said, "Did you ever hear the rest of the story?" JMS: "What rest of the story?" TNT guys: "We found out, we did a research survey, a five year long study of our ratings. This was just after Crusade got going. And, we found out that the audience for B5 came for B5, then left afterward. And the TNT regular viewers didn't stick around for B5 and went away and came back. B5 wasn't adding to our viewer base." So...they decided to pull the plug on Crusade for that reason and use the money to buy another show. But they couldn't say that because they'd be in breach of contract with Warner Bros. So their job was to make it impossible for us so they could then say, "We aren't getting the show we want, our notes aren't being dealt with, therefore we aren't responsible, we're canceling the show, this is your nut Warner Bros., you take care of it." That is why all the notes became so egregious. If I had given them everything they wanted, they still would have pulled the plug. They just wanted out. Yeah, I want that information out there. (Audience: We'll take care of that) On the DVDs. You all heard the tenor of the notes? (agreement, requests for JMS to tell some anyway) That's all right. Other questions... Yes, sir.
See also:
http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17090
http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-781
http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-1139 (This was thought to be the reason for Crusade's cancellation, until
http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17127 came out.)
JMS gave us tidbits about where the story was going, online in the moderated Usenet Newsgroup
rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated, and probably also at conventions he attended. As Jan said, at the time Crusade went down, there were three unfilmed scripts that were completed ("To the Ends of the Earth" and "End of the Line" by JMS, and "Value Judgements" by Fiona Avery). The latest script in that group of three was "End of the Line" which was the Crusade Season 1 finale (i.e. story date: December 2267.). One of the tidbits JMS told us was that first the false cure would have been found, and then the real cure would have been found, the latter in mid-Season 2 (i.e. ~June or July 2268). Other than that, we don't know much about what would have happened from mid-2268 to the end of 2271.
This is the first I have heard that there was a cure found...I only watched the series, don't have the books and blogs knowledge you do.
Please explain more about how they found this 'cure' or if you know more...??
The cure
had to have been found because Dr. Franklin was on Earth when the plague was released, and he was infected (Crusade: "Ruling from the Tomb" and "Each Night I Dream of Home"). We
see Dr. Franklin on Mars. having just come in from playing tennis with Michael Garibaldi's and Lise's daughter in 2281 (Babylon 5 "Sleeping in Light"). Dr. Franklin later attends Sheridan's party on Minbar. The Drakh plague kills in 5 years, and it was released on Earth in early January 2267. If the plague hadn't been cured, everybody on Earth, including Dr. Franklin would have been dead by December 2271.
Obviously, a cure was found. We knew that going in. The story would have been
how they found the cure, what they found along the way, and what was revealed about the Earthforce Black Projects (Hinted at in Crusade "Patterns of the Soul."), especially those involving shadowtech, and what was revealed about the Technomages. The book trilogies "The Passing of the Techno-mages" and "Legions of Fire" reveal some of the information about the Technomages that would have been revealed in Crusade.
