JMS and Fiona Avery made three unfilmed
Crusade scripts available on a supposedly download-proof website (Bookface.com) that later went out of business. They were free to read, and I still remember them vividly. When it was announced that the site was coming down, some enterprising fans managed to archive the scripts by the simple expedient of doing screen grabs of the page graphics and then running them through an OCR program and manually correcting them in Word. They circulated as *.doc files on the web and via e-mail briefly until JMS politely but firmly asked that fans stop passing them around.
I suspect that JMS's two, at least, will be included when he gets around to publishing his scripts from the series. (I'm hoping the success of the
B5 scriptbooks will convince some of the other writers to take a stab a publishing through CafePress.)
The first JMS episode was a story from a little past the mid-point of the season. (The 13 existing episodes were not intended to air as the first 13. There were unfilmed episodes that would have taken place in between them.) In it Gideon discovers that the mystery ship that destroyed the
Cerberus and killed everyone aboard except him is still out there - and that while he loses its trail, he may have discovered a way to detect it the next time he's close.
A few episodes later the crew would have encountered fugitive war criminal Alfred Bester, tried and conviicted
in absentia for his actions in the Telepath War. Wanted by both EarthGov and the Interstellar Alliance (not to mention a certain vengeful billionaire named Garibaldi) Bester has stayed one step ahead of everybody. Now he is the only chance Gideon has of getting past a psychic lock that guards an alien vault that may contain a cure to the plague. Would bring a genocidal maniac to justice, or give him up for the
chance of saving every living creature on Earth?
Finally there was JMS's season finale in which Gideon finds that mystery ship and tracks it to its base - where he learns that it was an EarrthForce experiment gone bad, and the destruction of
Cerberus a horrible accident. He also learns something that Galen never wanted him to know, and they both discover another experiment more horrible in its implications than anything seen since the Shadows themselves departed. After escaping to Mars (and dimissing Galen from
Excalbur) Gideon travels to Mars where he plans to expose everything he's learned at a conference on the plague. But he's shot by a sniper just before he enters the chamber (and just before Galen, who has followed him, can intervene.) The episode ends with Gideon on the ground perhaps dead or dying and the mission of Excalibur in shambles.
Cool stuff indeed. Let's all meet in Atlanta and burn down TNT, shall we?
(Actually, JMS nuked the place in one of his comic books. No hard feelings there. None at all.
)
Later,
Joe
