Expert: Byron Pennyworth - 6/5/2007

Question
I still remember being 13 years old watching the The Gathering and instantly
being hooked on what would turn out to be the single greatest Sci-fi story
ever told.

That said I've always wondered what would have been if JMS had not been
forced by the studio to make changes (Sheridan, Talia) and had given the
show the backing it deserved (not knowing if Season 4 would be the last or
not). I understand everything is canon now but is there anywhere that I could
pice together JMS's original untarnished vision for the B5 universe and do you
think we will ever get to know what happened to Gideon and the rest of the
Excalibur crew.

Answer
Believe it or not, JMS made most of those changed because he wanted to, and because he thought it would tell a better story.  Most notably he replaced Sinclair with Sheridan because he realized he'd brought Sinclair too far too fast and that it would have been near impossible to have one character take both the "shadow" and "minbari" journey, if you will.

We'll never know, but here's my take.  Originally Laurel Takashima, Lyta Alexander, and Ben Kyle never would have been transferred.  Sinclair would have kept going out with Karolyn Sykes (whose job was very similar to Sakai).  Minbari were supposed to be androgynous, and Dellen was supposed to appear male.  Throughout the first season  Sykes and Sinclair would've gotten closer, eventually getting engaged.  Takashima would have been revealed to the audience as Bureau 13's "control" and shot Garibaldi in the back at the end of season one to keep B13's assassination of President Santiago a secret.  The details get hazy here.  Dellen's transformation would have also made her notably female.  Lyta and Kosh would have grown closer.  Takashima would have remained as second in command, likely until the start of the Civil War, where she would have to be... killed? to prevent the break-away from going horribly awry.  At this point the "Corwin" character would have been played by a stoic yet humorous young Russian woman who would then take Takshima's place on the station and show.  The Earth Civil war would have happened mostly as shown, with Sinclair at the head.  Mars' liberation would have been much more personal.  The shadow war would happen the largely the same, except that Sykes would "die" on Z'ha'dum and Sinclair would almost immediately try to rescue her (remember that both Sinclair's ladies and Sheridan's lady all had jobs taking them to the rim), he would have died, come back to life, won the shadow war, won the civil war, married Dellen, and then (at the end of the series) they both would have gone back in time 1000 years to win a Shadow War.  AGAIN.

Basically you just have to look at foreshadowing that ended up not being foreshadowing.  Look at it like a writer and backtrack from what did happen.  "If this was my second choice, what would this have replaced?"  And then try and use both techniques at once for a Big Picture.

As for Gideon and his crew:  He was to be shot and killed in the last episode of the season, and his consciousness transferred to the Apocalypse Box ("It's the only way, you see?  It's the only way.").  The Excalibur would have found the cure to the Shadow Plague (it is, after all, a leftover shadow plague, not a drakh plague as the show suggests) very early in the second season (I assume Gideon would have figured it out in the box and told somebody, likely Matheson or Galen, who had found the box.  The real show would have then focused more on Galen as he tried to stop the Earth's evil plan to create an army of Technomages!  I'm can't make this up!  

Warning!  If you haven't read the Technomage trilogy of books there are SPOILERS ahead!  SPOILERS  SPOILERS  SPOILERS!

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_SPOILERS!

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And it's eeevil because technomages are secretly shadow tech and to make the tech a sentient being has to be sucked of their life-force until they die!