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Topic:
For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
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burrie
Registered:
May '00
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Date Posted:
11/23/07 8:00am
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
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Just saw Lost Tales.
It felt good to be back in the Babylon 5 universe again, for such a short time. Let's hope that it's a new beginning indeed.
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"The console to unlock the door is probably hidden in some room twelve floors up, or something. How does that make sense?" - K. Katarn
"Ace stole the shuttle from Wedge. An embarrassing tactical mishap quietly forgotten." - Best explanation for Tydirium
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Rebel_Spook
Registered:
May '02
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Date Posted:
11/27/07 9:27pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
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Just watched Lost Tales last night On Demand. I have to say that while I was happy to see some of the characters that I came to love from the B5 universe again, there was a lot lacking. It seemed like this huge universe was all of a sudden shrunk down to only be occupied by a small handful of people. Also, neither my wife or I can really understand the purpose of the first half of the movie/episode. And even the second half felt like there should be more on "next week's" episode.
I did appreciate the nod given to Andreas Katsulas and Richard Biggs. They will definitely be missed.
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Sarah Lisbeth, Born October 5, 2002 8:17AM EST May God bless her and keep her safe all her life. Thank you, Father, for this beautiful blessing. Check out the York, PA FF board: http://boards.theforce.net/york_pa/b10787/
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The2ndQuest
Title: :
-Games
-LACWAC
-Lit Mod of Death
Registered:
Jan '00
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Date Posted:
11/28/07 8:53am
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
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Rebel_Spook posted:
Also, neither my wife or I can really understand the purpose of the first half of the movie/episode. And even the second half felt like there should be more on "next week's" episode.
I suspect the next volume might expand on both plotlines, since there was originally going to be a, supposedly large, Garabaldi storyline involved in Volume 1 originally that will be in Volume 2 if/when it happens. The Prince's storyline in particular seems like a great setup to a mini-arc in this series.
-----signature-----
K'Kruhk, 140 ABY: "Why haven't I come forth earlier to share my Jedi knowledge with Skywalker?
Well, it's kinda a long story, see, I had this freaking sweet hat..."
"If I don't die, I don't feel like I'm getting my money's worth." - Drew_Atreides
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Leto II
Registered:
Jan '00
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Date Posted:
11/28/07 12:16pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
- Date Edited:
11/28/07 12:22pm (2 edits total)
Edited By:
Leto II
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Yup, it's almost certain that we'll be seeing more of Vintari, when production resumes on the series.
This was only indirectly a budget issue (re: the Garibaldi situation). Since the hypothetical plan is for three episodes per disc, each about 30 minutes, there is just enough time to tell each story, and less room for extraneous cast members. As JMS said about "War Without End" and "Sleeping in Light," you have to decide what the story is about. Sure it would have been nice, for the fans and the actors, to have Sinclair visit with G'Kar, Londo, Garibaldi, etc...but it wouldn't have advanced the plot.
(The same with having more characters mentioned in the toasts around the table. It would have extended the scene for no particular purpose, and also undercut the idea that each character named someone personally important to him or her. No one would have mentioned Lyta, for instance, because no one at the dinner had that kind of relationship with her. Pretty much the only people might have were G'Kar, who was dead, and Zack Allen, who missed the party.)
As mentioned earlier in the thread, Garibaldi was mostly a casualty of the budget, but not because Jerry Doyle would have cost too much. The additional SFX shots, specialized costumes, and set pieces that a story set on Mars would have required were just too much for the available dollars. (This is also why the "alien trilogy" was always planned for Disc 2, at the earliest. Prosthetics and costumes are pricey, and obviously more affordable when done in combination with station fly-bys and green-screen "sets" and backgrounds already produced for Disc 1.)
Also, Warner Bros. would've budgeted this thing to return a profit on the most conservative domestic DVD sales estimates, since a TV sale is by no means assured, and international sales are always iffy, given exchange rates and other factors. I'm confident that sales have been more than sufficient to get us Disc 2 and beyond, and that the production will gradually build up a "bank" of material from the early stories that can be applied to the later ones at little cost, and thus improve the overall "look" of the project as it moves forward.
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against breeding, taste, intelligence, and humanity itself; and very few people appreciate the effort."
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The2ndQuest
Title: :
-Games
-LACWAC
-Lit Mod of Death
Registered:
Jan '00
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Date Posted:
12/8/07 5:47pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
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http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17700
During the shooting on TLT, I had dinner with several folks including
an exec from Warner Bros. when the subject of the coming contract
expiration came up. And the fellow from WB, whose name I'll omit for
now, was practically cackling about it...saying that they already had
their positions in place, and that they were looking to the WGA
fracturing and falling apart as it always had in the past during these
negotiations, splitting into factions and internal argumentrs and
dissension, while they just sit there and wait for the implosion to
tell us what the terms will be, and which we would then accept.
And I remember thinking, pal, you have NO idea the full extent and
nature of the wood chipper you're about to walk into face-first.
See, the thing of it is, on one level, he was right, that's how things
WERE. But things had changed. There is a tendency, in military
strategy, for the generals to fight each new war using the techniques
and tactics that had worked in the last war, often without
understanding that the shape of the battlefield had changed. We saw
it in the Revolutionary War, where British soldiers marched in strict
formation into the birth of guerilla warfare; in the Civil War, where
generals still had troops firing at each other from nearly point-blank
range without grasping that this wasn't necessary because the accuracy
of the weapons had improved by orders of magnitude leading to huge
slaughters, and in Vietnam, where we ended up playing the British to
the VC guerillas.
The shape of the battlefield had changed. In the past, yes, the
producers were able to divide the guild along set lines, pitting TV
drama writers against sitcom writers against feature writers against
unemployed writers against working writers.
But now we had a) more determined leadership and b) every writer in
each of those groups had sat back and watched as the DVD sales of
their work in every arena flew out of stores and made billions for the
studios while they saw nothing. It united the hell out of everybody.
So there ARE no fault lines this time for the producers to exploit.
But they're still running the same playbook as last time. And the
more it doesn't work, the more pissed off they become.
One side-effect of this...after the sales on B5:TLT came in, way
exceeding WB's projections, they initiated talks about what to do
next, including commissioning more DVDs. Looking at the calendar, I
suggested that they might want to hurry the bureaucratic process
because we were going to be in a strike situation soon, so if they
wanted to move, they'd better commision a script fast.
And they said in response, and I quote verbatim, "We don't want to be
pressured in the process because we know there's not going to be a
strike this year, we can handle the Guild."
Face, wood-chipper. Wood-chipper, face.
-----signature-----
K'Kruhk, 140 ABY: "Why haven't I come forth earlier to share my Jedi knowledge with Skywalker?
Well, it's kinda a long story, see, I had this freaking sweet hat..."
"If I don't die, I don't feel like I'm getting my money's worth." - Drew_Atreides
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Sniper_Wolf
Registered:
Nov '02
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Date Posted:
12/20/07 7:11pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
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Well after being nudged and proded for years I just finished In The Beginning a few minutes ago. The decade old effects didn't really look that great, some of the acting was a little suspect, but overall I enjoyed it enough to pick up the season boxsets. I'm wondering if you longtime B5 fans can tell me where the rest of the movies fall in the timeline since I want to watch them in chrono order.
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Winner of a Super Golden Ewok™ award.
I name you Sword of the Jedi. Always you shall be in the front rank, a burning brand to your enemies, a brilliant fire to your friends.
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The2ndQuest
Title: :
-Games
-LACWAC
-Lit Mod of Death
Registered:
Jan '00
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Date Posted:
12/20/07 10:17pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
- Date Edited:
12/20/07 10:27pm (8 edits total)
Edited By:
The2ndQuest
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-In the Beginning (you've already seen, but for completeness sake...) has the bulk of it's story set 10 years before Season 1, with the framing story scenes set 16 years after the second-to-last episode of Season 5, and 3 years prior to the final episode of the series).
-The Gathering was the original series pilot, and is set a few months before Season 1 (it's pretty rough compared to the rest of the series, so bare with it and some of those Season 1 eps  ).
-Thirdspace is set in the middle of Season 4 (the best episode break to view it during would be between "The Illusion of Truth" and "Atonement").
-River of Souls is set about 1 year after the second-to-last episode of Season 5.
-Legend of the Rangers, intended to be a pilot for a series that didn't materialize, is set about 2 years after ROS.
-A Call to Arms is set about 1 year after LOTR, followed by the spin-off series it sets up, Crusade.
-The Lost Tales Vol 1 is set about 5 years after the existing Crusade episodes (or, roughly, shortly after Crusade's theoretical 5th season, had the series been completed).
-----signature-----
K'Kruhk, 140 ABY: "Why haven't I come forth earlier to share my Jedi knowledge with Skywalker?
Well, it's kinda a long story, see, I had this freaking sweet hat..."
"If I don't die, I don't feel like I'm getting my money's worth." - Drew_Atreides
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Sniper_Wolf
Registered:
Nov '02
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Date Posted:
12/23/07 9:15am
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
|
The2ndQuest posted:
-In the Beginning (you've already seen, but for completeness sake...) has the bulk of it's story set 10 years before Season 1, with the framing story scenes set 16 years after the second-to-last episode of Season 5, and 3 years prior to the final episode of the series).
-The Gathering was the original series pilot, and is set a few months before Season 1 (it's pretty rough compared to the rest of the series, so bare with it and some of those Season 1 eps ).
-Thirdspace is set in the middle of Season 4 (the best episode break to view it during would be between "The Illusion of Truth" and "Atonement").
-River of Souls is set about 1 year after the second-to-last episode of Season 5.
-Legend of the Rangers, intended to be a pilot for a series that didn't materialize, is set about 2 years after ROS.
-A Call to Arms is set about 1 year after LOTR, followed by the spin-off series it sets up, Crusade.
-The Lost Tales Vol 1 is set about 5 years after the existing Crusade episodes (or, roughly, shortly after Crusade's theoretical 5th season, had the series been completed).
I'm halfway through Gathering and I can already tell why Sheridan was brought in to replace Sinclair. I've read before as well that Season One as a whole is inferior to the other ones but must be watched to have the later seasons make sense.
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Winner of a Super Golden Ewok™ award.
I name you Sword of the Jedi. Always you shall be in the front rank, a burning brand to your enemies, a brilliant fire to your friends.
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The2ndQuest
Title: :
-Games
-LACWAC
-Lit Mod of Death
Registered:
Jan '00
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Date Posted:
12/23/07 9:59am
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
- Date Edited:
12/23/07 12:57pm (2 edits total)
Edited By:
The2ndQuest
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Sinclair grows on you- his interaction with Garabaldi is one of the better friendships in the series, though you don't get much of it in the broader picture.
Season 1 has a lot of rough standalones, but also has some of the best episodes in the series too. And, yeah, about half of the Season 1 episodes are essential foundations for what happens later in the series. Season 1 is interesting because it's more enjoyable the second time you watch it after you've seen the whole series and can suddenly recognize all the little bits and touches weaved into even the crappiest episodes, and appreciate just how well planned out it was.
I feel I should also note that, except in the earlier outlines of the series, Sheridan was always meant to come in to replace Sinclair, and wasn't related to audience or fan response to Sinclair. The only thing that changed was, due to coincidental timing of both studio requests for a bigger name and O'Hare's desire to do more stage work, they pushed up Sheridan's introduction to the start of Season 2, instead of mid-season.
-----signature-----
K'Kruhk, 140 ABY: "Why haven't I come forth earlier to share my Jedi knowledge with Skywalker?
Well, it's kinda a long story, see, I had this freaking sweet hat..."
"If I don't die, I don't feel like I'm getting my money's worth." - Drew_Atreides
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Jedi_Johnson
Registered:
Apr '02
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Date Posted:
12/23/07 8:47pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
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I'm a big fan of Sheridan. So I was pretty happy come season 2. But fear not Sinclair plays a good part in the series.
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Sniper_Wolf
Registered:
Nov '02
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Date Posted:
12/23/07 11:10pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
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The2ndQuest posted:
Sinclair grows on you- his interaction with Garabaldi is one of the better friendships in the series, though you don't get much of it in the broader picture.
Season 1 has a lot of rough standalones, but also has some of the best episodes in the series too. And, yeah, about half of the Season 1 episodes are essential foundations for what happens later in the series. Season 1 is interesting because it's more enjoyable the second time you watch it after you've seen the whole series and can suddenly recognize all the little bits and touches weaved into even the crappiest episodes, and appreciate just how well planned out it was.
I feel I should also note that, except in the earlier outlines of the series, Sheridan was always meant to come in to replace Sinclair, and wasn't related to audience or fan response to Sinclair. The only thing that changed was, due to coincidental timing of both studio requests for a bigger name and O'Hare's desire to do more stage work, they pushed up Sheridan's introduction to the start of Season 2, instead of mid-season.
That reminded me of something that gave me a big interest in B5 that diehards like yourself can expand upon. I'm aware JMS wrote all of seasons three, four, and all but two episodes of season five. I've also read the majority if not all of the scripts were written or at least heavily outlined before shooting was started. Is that true or not?
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Winner of a Super Golden Ewok™ award.
I name you Sword of the Jedi. Always you shall be in the front rank, a burning brand to your enemies, a brilliant fire to your friends.
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The2ndQuest
Title: :
-Games
-LACWAC
-Lit Mod of Death
Registered:
Jan '00
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Date Posted:
12/24/07 9:35pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
- Date Edited:
12/24/07 9:37pm (2 edits total)
Edited By:
The2ndQuest
|
JMS planned out the whole story arc of the series ahead of time, with specific events and characters points for the course of the series' storyline, rougher details for 100 years of fictional historical events in both chronological directions, and then broader still 1,000 years in each direction (though it might have been a million years, I forget offhand). He actually had a set of notecards outlining episodes in each season (up until a hotel threw them out between Seasons 4 & 5).
Some details and characters were fluid, so some things weren't necessarily set in stone or were planned and never implemented, and characters had trap doors and backups should an actor become unavailable, so that a plotline could be carried on in some fashion. There was some reconfiguration/compression of the timeline events between Seasons 4 & 5 due to network factors (the network B5 was originally broadcast on was being disbanded when B5 was in it's 4th season, so events planned for early Season 5 were compressed to the end of Season 4 so the series could be somewhat complete, and then when TNT picked up B5 for it's 5th season, a few plotlines abandoned from Season 4 during the compression were expanded on and used to fill in segments of season 5 the compressed-intp-S4 stuff had once held).
So, while things did change while the show was filmed, there was a storyarc planned from the beginning that the show still adherred to- even early on. Like I said, after you've watched the series, if you go back and rewatch Season 1, there are small tidbits of foreshadowing littered throughout most episodes (and if you read the JMS comments he posted online back when the episodes first aired (which are collected at The Lurker's Guide), he even dropped some offhand comments to answer questions way back then that, in retrospective, were HUGE hints for events down the road even though there was no way to tell back then, so you can tell he was having fun secretly teasing the fans back then, hehe- I found it an interesting viewing approach back when I first watched B5 to read the Lurker entry for each episode after I had viewed it, sorta like a DVD commentary).
However, every script was not written before the show started filming- they were still actually written season-to-season like most shows, but they were all based on the preplanned outline.
-----signature-----
K'Kruhk, 140 ABY: "Why haven't I come forth earlier to share my Jedi knowledge with Skywalker?
Well, it's kinda a long story, see, I had this freaking sweet hat..."
"If I don't die, I don't feel like I'm getting my money's worth." - Drew_Atreides
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Leto II
Registered:
Jan '00
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Date Posted:
12/26/07 11:08pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
- Date Edited:
12/27/07 1:30pm (5 edits total)
Edited By:
The2ndQuest
|
The2ndQuest posted:
Sinclair grows on you- his interaction with Garabaldi is one of the better friendships in the series, though you don't get much of it in the broader picture.
Season 1 has a lot of rough standalones, but also has some of the best episodes in the series too. And, yeah, about half of the Season 1 episodes are essential foundations for what happens later in the series. Season 1 is interesting because it's more enjoyable the second time you watch it after you've seen the whole series and can suddenly recognize all the little bits and touches weaved into even the crappiest episodes, and appreciate just how well planned out it was.
I feel I should also note that, except in the earlier outlines of the series, Sheridan was always meant to come in to replace Sinclair, and wasn't related to audience or fan response to Sinclair. The only thing that changed was, due to coincidental timing of both studio requests for a bigger name and O'Hare's desire to do more stage work, they pushed up Sheridan's introduction to the start of Season 2, instead of mid-season.
Pretty much what 2ndQuest just outlined, above.
It should also be clear that as he got into the mechanics of how to tell the story in Year 2, JMS realized that he'd need to move Sinclair into the background, and give another character the Shadow-arc. Having eliminated Garibaldi and Keffer from consideration (although it is possible that Lise Hampton was planted in "Babylon Squared" in order to become the woman who disappears at Z'ha'dum; Catherine Sakai might've also filled this role), he settled on adding a new character.
When Michael O'Hare expressed concerns about typecasting (and -- according to some sources -- the network started asking for a star with a higher "Q" rating), JMS decided to kill several birds with one stone by having the new character replace Sinclair, instead of merely joining him, while keeping Sinclair "alive" in the show, ready to return for his grand exit.
(Which could now safely occur in S3 rather than S5, if that was indeed the original plan, and thus clear the decks for Sheridan to become the focus of the rest of the series.)
JMS's statements about the overall arc of the show having remained the same, if read in context, clearly indicate that the broad outline of the show was unchanged. That is, it was still the story of how the Younger Races, organized by the people at B5, threw out the Shadows and the Vorlons and took control of their own destinies. (With Year 5 showing the beginnings of the galaxy they would reshape in their own image.)
That it was Sheridan, rather than Sinclair, at the end, didn't change the grand design of the story. A number of his posts have touched on what might have happened, had Sinclair remained.
EDIT-Just masking some of the series spoilers as a consideration towards Sniper_Wolf, since this is all in response to his question and he's only just starting the show.
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"Pronouncing the first 'r' in 'February' is like making a homemade seaQuest DSV uniform -- it's a crime
against breeding, taste, intelligence, and humanity itself; and very few people appreciate the effort."
-- Lore Fitzgerald Sjoberg
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Leto II
Registered:
Jan '00
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Date Posted:
12/27/07 10:17pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
- Date Edited:
12/27/07 10:19pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Leto II
|
Woops...yeah, you're right; sorry about that. I should've caught that angle when I was typing up my response, but got carried away, there.
(Most of the time in here, we're discussing the series with those who've already seen it before.   )
-----signature-----
"Pronouncing the first 'r' in 'February' is like making a homemade seaQuest DSV uniform -- it's a crime
against breeding, taste, intelligence, and humanity itself; and very few people appreciate the effort."
-- Lore Fitzgerald Sjoberg
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Sniper_Wolf
Registered:
Nov '02
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Date Posted:
12/28/07 9:55pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
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Finished "The Gathering" and watched the first episode of the series proper. Really glad that Susan and Franklin were brought in as replacements. The original doctor was okay, but the Japanese first officer was frankly a terrible actress. I also cannot stress the uttery greatness and genius Londo is. I can't wait to see how he turns out throughout the series.
Now for a question that seems to be contested quite often, the DS9 vs. B5 argument. How much behind the scenes relations, rivalries, etc. were there?
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I name you Sword of the Jedi. Always you shall be in the front rank, a burning brand to your enemies, a brilliant fire to your friends.
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