Editors: Adam Richards, Andy Thompson, Owen Richards with net facilities by Robbie Langton
THE 
CHRISTMAS SHOPPING SPECIAL!
Some helpful hints and suggestions for amusing and interesting presents which might otherwise have slipped your mind:
| Now You’ll Log Into The Missing Babs Bits? |
by our seasonal anomaly correspondent: Kathleen Naff
The "missing" episode from the Babylon 5 series is to go on sale shortly on video. This episode was doomed from the start. It was the one from Season 5 during the filming of which Bucky the Horse met his unfortunate demise, so that large sections had to be refilmed using the replacement human actress. When it was finally completed and cut together, the studio executives dropped it after deciding that the plot was just too bizarre and unsettling for the average viewer. Although its omission made no difference to the main arc of the series, it’s on the cards that fans will flock to see this "missing" episode, and video stores already are hurriedly stocking up with copies of it.
FANGROK
FanGrok reporters have been told that the story centres around an ambiguous character who wears an obvious disguise, consisting of a full white beard which totally conceals his face and much of his upper, very substantial, torso. This creature enters the space station clandestinely via the heating system emission ducts during a sleep period, and plants suspicious objects within the crews’ sleeping quarters. It is, indeed, never clear whether this entity is a human or an agent from one of the other races, because his body is concealed entirely within a voluminous scarlet encounter suit.
WISHES
Sheridan naturally wishes that the entity rapidly be identified, but there is simply not enough to go on. One clue to his possible alien identity, however, is that deposits of a cold, white, powdery substance are to found where he went, and the internal atmospheric monitoring system noted distinct drops in ambient temperature in locations where he is suspected of having been. Another clue is the fact that he does not seem to speak English - his only utterances consisting of the syllable "ho" reiterated repetitively in a sinister baritone. The only other sound associated with him was a high pitched, silvery tintinnabulation, which may have been a side effective of a protective forcefield shield surrounding him.
ALL
Nor is his spaceship of any recognized construction: the station engineers would all have been most interested in examining the multiple tractor propulsion units attached to the front and seemingly receiving power transmissions via an elaborate set of antennae of complex design attached to their frontal upper modules - though some hypothesized that these were in fact merely a communication system and that the real power sources were some form of internal thermonuclear pile, evidence by the sinister ruby glow observable at the front of the units. Unfortunately, both the character and his means of transport disappear before any proper study can be made of them.
HAPPY
The alien rôle was originally earmarked to be played by Jonathan Frakes, until it was discovered that the cost of reinforcing the elevated portions of the sets and widening doorways would be too great: the accountants were not happy about this, so in the end they employed a female hippo called Marge, with moving jaw and expressions added later by toaster.
X MOSS
The danger is initially pointed out by Delenn, alerted after an experience in one of those Minbari religious trances she has. Meanwhile various Psi-Corps members on board are getting strange visions involving small, violently coloured small beings who appear to be held captive in some kind of sweatshop and forced to work on the creation of the mysterious alien devices. Londo Molari was initially captivated by the alien object left in his quarters, and there is an interesting scene of conflict in which G’kar talks him down from his elated state and finally forces him to give up the device. The rest of the objects are rounded up due to swift and efficient action by the security staff, with Garibaldi taking a guns-out hands-on approach to some of the more recalcitrant recipients. The creature flees, leaving behind only some traces of an alien moss-like subject, which they classify as Special Subject X: hence the name of the episode - The X Moss Special.