Crusades "Fifth" Season-What Would've Happened?

[Dayton3]

Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

In one of the all too few Crusade episodes, the Drazi and other races only agree to give Captain Gideon and the Excalibur free passage across their space if he agrees to return to Earth after four years (if hes unsucessfull in finding a cure for the plague) and spend the last year shooting down ships from Earth of people desperate to escape.

I assume that in the way the series was originally planned, the cure WOULD NOT have been found before the last season.

So what was going to happen? How was Gideon going to get out of that one?

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[Joseph DeMartino]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

Actually the search for a cure to the plague was never what Crusade was about. We knew the plague got cured going in (from a couple of B5 episodes) so there was no way JMS was going to try to string that idea out for five years. (Even on B5 he said that no major mystery could go unresolved much more than a season, because then you just start annoying people the way Twin Peaks and The X-Files did.)

Even the Shadow War proper only lasted about a season, maybe a seaon and a half. By then we were off dealing with threads that weren't even visible in the first season. And S5 dealt specifically with the aftermath and effects of all that had been done in the previous four seasons. I expect that Crusade would also have covered a number of unrelated or only loosely related threads in the course of the five years.

An apparent cure for the plague would, in fact, have been found in season two, taking a lot of the pressure off Earth. JMS has said that the cure would "not be what it seemed to be." Most people take this to mean that it would not really cure the disease. My personal theory is that it would have, but it would also have done something else, something nobody expected. (Literally a case of the cure being worse than the disease.)

Going back to what JMS said - the crew of the Excalibur would discover the problem with the cure - whatever it was exactly - but no one would believe them. More than likely what they learned would tie in with what Gideon and company discovered in a late S5 script and the first season finale, both of which JMS made available for reading on Bookface.com. Excalibur and her crew would then have gone renegade, trying to gather evidence to back up their claims and save Earth from the mistakes of its own government.

All that stuff looked like it was going to be the heart of the story anyway. The plague itself was never more than a hook to get us into the show, and to start Excalibur on her mission. By the time we reached S5 the plague business would be old news and we'd be in the midst of the real story.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net

 

[LightNZ]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

yeah, that's what I read also......it would have been very interesting

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"Will you follow me into fire? Into storm, into darkness, into death?!

 

[Jomar]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

Specifically what would happen in the fifth year, JMS would spend months holding the fort against the many who wanted Crusade to continue for a sixth year.

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[GideonsMine]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jomar:
Specifically what would happen in the fifth year, JMS would spend months holding the fort against the many who wanted Crusade to continue for a sixth year.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


You have a point there! LOL




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Colleen L. Stanford
Gideon's Mine, all Mine
(he just doesn't know it yet, LOL)

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Specifically what would happen in the fifth year, JMS would spend months holding the fort against the many who wanted Crusade to continue for a sixth year.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Not necessarily.

He's hinted that the "looser arc" structure (and the fact that there are really multiple arcs, some ending sooner, some beginning later in the series) might make him a little more flexible on the time limit. There would still be a fixed end-point for the overall story, but if the show were really doing well, and the network were willing to commit to a sixth season well in advance, he could presumably "stretch things out" to six years by adding subplots and stand-alone stories.

Don't know if this is still the way he's thinking, or if this idea also applies to Rangers, but the possibility is interesting.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net

 

[Dayton3]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

So the cure would've turned out to be something that "altered human evolution" or something like that? Turned all humans into telepaths and all telepaths into stable telekinetics or something like that?

What exactly happened in the Season One finale script that JMS put out to read? I missed that somehow.

It seems like alot of unused story space for seasons two, three, & four.

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[whitestar90]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

Well lets see- Season 1 would have ended with Gideon and crew tracking down a shadow hybrid that destroyed the Cerebus. Gideon I think was killed and the next season would have seen the cure for the desease and the continued look at EA black projects involving shadow tech that goes back for more than ten years...

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Emporer Turhan-"How will this end"
Kosh-"In fire"

 

[Jomar]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

Was Gideon killed? I don't remember that. He was captured, I think, and given an either or choice which left him sort of dangling.

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[crazybillyo]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

I haven't read the script, but from what I've heard, the situation is almost akin to that of Garibaldi's shooting at the end of S1. He survives, but barely. It would have been killer to see the end of the first season of Crusade.

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Sheridan: Are you trying to cheer me up?
Ivanova: No sir, wouldn't dream of it.
Sheridan: Good, I hate being cheered up. It's depressing.
Ivanova: So in that case we're all going to die horrible, painful, lingering deaths.
Sheridan: Thank you, I feel so much better now.

 

[hypatia]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

Yes, it would have been interesting, no? I just think about the characters alone, and I can see how JMS had a literal universe of possibilities for characters to be "not quite what they seem". It's why I still stay away from TNT. I firmly believe that Crusade would have done fine if, well, everyone knows....

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"I do not believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense,
reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."-- Galileo

 

[Delbert]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

Trying to think back to the way B5 was planned out, let's have a look at how Crusade could have evolved:

Season One - Hunt for the Cure. Establish setting, characters, Apocalypse Box, hunt for cure, EarthGov & ShadowTech.

Season Two - Cure found, but not what it seems. Crew on the run from Earth & lacking ISA support. Further fun-ins with abandoned ShadowTech.

Season Three - Peak of EarthGov / ShadowTech story? Revelations about the Apocalypse Box. Still on the run.

Season Four?

Season Five?

The problem is that JMS used overlapping arcs to form the major story on B5, and would be likely to use something similar on Crusade. Now, if you look at the first half of B5 Season 1, would you believe me if I said that there was going to be a great battle between Law and Chaos, that Sinclair was going to be the saviour of the Minbari a thousand years in the past, that Garibaldi would be Head of Intelligence for an Interstellar Alliance and then run one of the most powerful corporations in the Earth Alliance? So, while we can make guesses at the overall story of Crusade, it's kinda hard to break down the beats.

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[Joseph DeMartino]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>So the cure would've turned out to be something that "altered human evolution" or something like that? Turned all humans into telepaths and all telepaths into stable telekinetics or something like that?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, I didn't say anything like that.

Just that it would do something else, and that we don't know what. I doubt that JMS would go into the area that you've suggested, though. The virus was based on Shadowtech, and the Shadows don't seem to have gone in for that kind of direct genetic manipulation. Teeps and Teeks seem to have been a Vorlon thing.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>I haven't read the script, but from what I've heard, the situation is almost akin to that of Garibaldi's shooting at the end of S1. He survives, but barely.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

As I recall, Gideon is on his way into a meeting on Mars where he intends to blow the whistle on a secret EarthGov project that he's unearthed. He is shot by a sinper on his way into a building. The episode ends without our knowing if he's alive or dead.

It was a classic JMS "kick over all the tables" ending, like "Chrysalis." Gideon and Galen are at odds, the crew is diverted from the search for a cure by something more insidious, there is a conspiracy within EarthGov that makes it difficult to know who to trust, and a main character lies wounded, and possibly dead at the end of the episode.

Knowing something of how JMS's twisted little mind works, I have to assume that the resemblances are deliberate, and that he was setting us up to speculate about the outcome based on what he did in B5 - and that he was planning to do something utterly different in S2 than whatever we expected.

(I was thinking about his comments about Tamlyn Tomita recently, how he knew going in that he would probably only have her for a year or two, and wrote Ivanova in as her second and set up the Alternate Personality as a way of getting rid of Takishima when the time came. What if Gary Cole only had a one-year contract from the start and Gideon was really supposed to die at the end of S1?

)

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net

 

[Technomage Roanna]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Joseph DeMartino:

(I was thinking about his comments about Tamlyn Tomita recently, how he knew going in that he would probably only have her for a year or two, and wrote Ivanova in as her second and set up the Alternate Personality as a way of getting rid of Takishima when the time came. What if Gary Cole only had a one-year contract from the start and Gideon was really supposed to die at the end of S1?

)

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I've been thinking along the same lines myself. I hadn't read The End of The Line script when it was on Bookface.com, so I didn't have as much to go on.

But killing off your lead would have been just the sort of thing I think JMS loves to do, and would have set all the other characters spinning in fascinating ways.

A pox upon the numb nutted anencephalic nitwits who tried to kill what they couldn't understand...

A slow moving, painful pox.

Ro

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A ship in a port is safe, but that's not what ships are for.

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

Joe DM do not post that thought in the Ranger's section. You may give the actors a heart attack.

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Andrew Swallow

 

[GKarsEye]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>A pox upon the numb nutted anencephalic nitwits who tried to kill what they couldn't understand...

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

anencephalic?

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"You do not make history. You can only hope to survive it."

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

From what I understand, The Apocalypse Box would have played a major role in the 'true' story of Crusade towards the end as it was gradually 'taking over' Gideon and eventually the ship in a search for something more disturbing. There was also talk of other Apocalypse Boxes hidden that Gideon's 'device' was trying to find. JMS also hinted that Gideon would pay dearly for his alliance with the box that was 'older' than the First Ones.
Either way, I hope we all get to find out!

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'I plan to live forever, or die trying' - Villa Blake's 7

 

[bakana]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR> anencephalic? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Pinheads.
Brainless Morons.
Vacuum for Brains.

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Yes, I like cats too.
Shall we exchange Recipes?

 

[Derian]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

*drool.....*

Damn, I wish the TNT execs hadn't had their collective heads up their equally collective asses.

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I'm lobbying for someplace more comfortable for our next gathering place. A nice resort with a beach. A bunch of pale skinned technomages in black robes would fit right in.

 

[Technomage Roanna]

Re: Crusades \"Fifth\" Season-What Would\'ve Happened?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by GKarsEye:
anencephalic?

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Literally a congenital absence of most of the brain.

Babies born with the condition do not live more than a few days.

In this case, the voluntary removal of higher brain functions as a condition of employment in TNT-Atlanta's executive offices.

Ro



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A ship in a port is safe, but that's not what ships are for.

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper