| Author |
Topic:
For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
|
Rebel_Spook
Registered:
May '02
|
Date Posted:
4/9/07 12:20pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
|
|
Where is all that coming from? When do we see any evidence of Gideon and the Excalibur crew becoming renegades? EarthGov finding it's own "cure" for the Drakh plague?
-----signature-----
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/
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
The2ndQuest
Title: :
-Games
-LACWAC
-Lit Mod of Death
Registered:
Jan '00
|
Date Posted:
4/9/07 4:09pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
|
|
It's from what we know about what would have happened in Crusade's second season and beyond, which first starts being set up in the unfilmed episodes of Season 1 (and vaguely hinted at in the existing episodes).
-----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..."
Is your Death Magnetic?
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Rebel_Spook
Registered:
May '02
|
Date Posted:
4/10/07 5:55am
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
|
|
I know that there are 3 unproduced scripts that are out there, but where do we get any specifics as to what would have happened in the second season?
-----signature-----
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/
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Leto II
Registered:
Jan '00
|
Date Posted:
4/10/07 8:19am
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
- Date Edited:
4/10/07 8:33am (3 edits total)
Edited By:
Leto II
|
JMS said that the cure found in S2 would turn out not to be quite what everyone thought it was, as Excalibur's crew would discover. No one would listen to them, which would then lead to their turning renegade.
It's very likely that Lochley would have grown in importance in subsequent seasons, but that it would be precisely her position as commander of Babylon 5 that would make her useful to the story. Once Excalibur went rogue, they'd need a mole in EarthForce to keep them one step ahead of their pursuers. They'd also need someone to act as their contact with the Interstellar Alliance. You can't do much better than John Sheridan's ex-wife for that role. Lochley would be ideally placed to help Gideon, and she'd be forced to confront her own version of Sheridan's rebellion.
During Clark's dictatorship, Lochley never had to violate her EarthForce oath, because she was never given a blantantly illegal order, or forced to fire on unarmed civilians. She didn't know, as the B5 command staff did, that Santiago was assassinated, and that Clark was behind it. But she does know about Earth's dubious flirtation with Shadow technology, and she trusts Gideon. So when Earth declares him an outlaw, she'd have to commit to one side or the other.
Also, Excalibur couldn't have docked at B5 without instantly being seized, but I'm willing to be Gideon and others could have come aboard on shuttles, and used the place for meetings and to pick up supplies.
We know the plague comes originally from the Shadows. We know that a similar plague was created by a Technomage using nanotech, and that the Drakh plague seems to use some of the same techniques. We also know that both EarthGov and the Technomages have some knowledge of Shadow-based nanotech. Finally we know (from the Technomage novels) that all Shadowtech has the quality of predisposing the user towards chaos. If the "cure" is an application of Shadow-derived nanotech, there is a good chance that it will retain this quality -- creating almost as many problems as the original plague would have done.
And since there would be unimaginable ethical and political pressure to use any cure as soon as it was discovered, it's entirely plausible that EarthGov would ignore Gideon's warnings, and use the cure. The argument against using it would come from a maverick captain who had at least tried to reveal top-secret information, and a Technomage who was inherently suspect.
It is interesting to note that B5 really got the Shadow arc rolling only in S2. Prior to that, much of the emphasis had been on Sinclair's missing 24 hours and the Minbari surrender, although the mysterious Shadow ships and the notion of an ancient enemy were introduced starting around mid-season. The original outline for B5 had called for these threads to be resolved by the fourth of fifth episode of S2, with the Shadow War then dominating until early S4.
Similarly, Crusade S1 would have been about finding a cure for the Drakh plague, although the Shadowtech thread would also have been introduced, having been set up in Jeanne Cavelos's novel trilogy. Early in S2, the plague story would have been ended, and the new thread begun. (The plague story was never sustainable over five years, anyway. We all knew the plague was cured.)
-----signature-----
Tighter Than a 10-Year-Old.
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Rebel_Spook
Registered:
May '02
|
Date Posted:
4/10/07 9:19am
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
|
OK, I have read the PsiCorps Trilogy, and am finishing up the Centauri Trilogy presently, I have not gotten to reading the Techno-mage trilogy, so I didn't know of the references to the Shadow tech.
It is not that I don't believe what you are saying, but can you point to an article, interview, or website that discusses this? I thought that when Crusade was cancelled by TNT, that it was pretty much dropped and that the books that refer to the plague simply brush over it and say that the cure was found, but don't go in any detail of the Excalibur going rogue or that the initial "cure" was inevitably detrimental.
I find it odd that since the disease was given a 5 year timetable to completely adapt to the human physiology that the sure would be found sooner than the planned length of the show. Heck, TNT's Crusade site even had a 5 year count-down.
-----signature-----
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/
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
The2ndQuest
Title: :
-Games
-LACWAC
-Lit Mod of Death
Registered:
Jan '00
|
Date Posted:
4/10/07 10:23am
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
- Date Edited:
4/10/07 10:25am (1 edits total)
Edited By:
The2ndQuest
|
JMS touches upon the broadstrokes of where Crusade was going in the Crusade DVD commentary tracks (though those commentary tracks, IIRC, are only available on the first printing of the Crsuade sets since theyw ere supposedly removed at JMS's order after WB violated their agreement by editing his comments regarding what happened to the show at TNT).
He also touches upon it briefly in Volume 10 of the B5 JMS script books when discussing the genesis of the spin-off in the context of meetings that would ultimtely lead to TNT saving B5. There he basicly points out that Crusade was initially going to be about empire building and would have been integrated more thoroughly into Season 5 of B5 to compensate for the lost Earth Civil War elements compressed into Season 4, but that TNT wanted a hook, a mission, and so JMS came up with the plague concept, returning Season 5 to be more standalone, with the intention of resolving it in the second season (since he knew the plague concept could not be sustained for an entire show since the show would be over if they found one and, thus, we knew the crew would fail to find a cure every episode until then, so he had to make it about something other than the cure).
The novels do kind of step around the resolution to Crusade (presumably as not to spoil things if Crusade were to be continued on another network, as it almost was on Sci-fi), but do touch upon aspects from it (though mostly those having to do with the technomage characters, Galen's backstory, who betrayed his lover, etc).
I wouldn't take TNT's website into much consideration- recall that, after they intentionally killed the series, they advertised it as a "special limited series" knowing there would be no resolution, and actively worked to prevent it from getting one on another channel.
-----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..."
Is your Death Magnetic?
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Rebel_Spook
Registered:
May '02
|
Date Posted:
4/10/07 1:07pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
|
OK, I'll have to see if my Crusade DVD set has the commentary on it. Hopefully it does, but I think I might be out of luck since I didn't buy it when it first came out.
Due to finances and just plain forgetting sometimes, I don't have any of the script books after #7, looks like there's more reason to catch up than I originally thought.
Too bad that TNT had to be that way about Crusade, I really wanted to see it succeed. Sci-Fi didn't exactly put out it's best when they did Legends of the Rangers, so I'm not sure that moving Crusade there would have been very good anyways.
I'm just glad to be finally getting the novels read and that the first new B5 in a long time will be coming out this summer!
-----signature-----
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/
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
The2ndQuest
Title: :
-Games
-LACWAC
-Lit Mod of Death
Registered:
Jan '00
|
Date Posted:
4/10/07 4:19pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
|
>>OK, I'll have to see if my Crusade DVD set has the commentary on it. Hopefully it does, but I think I might be out of luck since I didn't buy it when it first came out.<<
Well, I don't think there was actually a recall or anything, so it's still possible you picked up one before they retooled it.
>>Due to finances and just plain forgetting sometimes, I don't have any of the script books after #7, looks like there's more reason to catch up than I originally thought.<<
Well, I wouldn't buy it just for that Crusade tidbit (JMS points out he's saving most of the Crusade info for the eventual Crusade script books), but it is interesting to see where the spin-off series notion germinated from and how it almost affected Season 5.
>>Sci-Fi didn't exactly put out it's best when they did Legends of the Rangers, so I'm not sure that moving Crusade there would have been very good anyways.<<
Sci-fi was pretty supportive of B5, actually. In fact, had Rangers gone to series and been successful enough, it was very likely we would have seen Crusade resurrected alongside it. Rangers' failings have more to do with the script (which was rushed) and budget limitations (resulting in the VR kungfu weapons system). Sci-fi advertised Rangers heavily, involved fan support directly, etc. It was just bad luck that Rangers debuted against that football game whose ratings were unanticipated.
-----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..."
Is your Death Magnetic?
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Leto II
Registered:
Jan '00
|
Date Posted:
4/12/07 3:25pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
|
Rebel_Spook posted:
Too bad that TNT had to be that way about Crusade, I really wanted to see it succeed. Sci-Fi didn't exactly put out it's best when they did Legends of the Rangers, so I'm not sure that moving Crusade there would have been very good anyways.
One aspect of the Rangers situation that's been occasionally misinterpreted throughout fandom over the years is that it wasn't that Sci-Fi offered JMS a two-hour movie, and he decided to try to sell them a new series -- they asked him for a pilot for a new series, period. He gave them a number of possible stories for the project, including a continuation of Crusade, and Rangers is the one they picked, so that's the one he wrote.
As 2ndQuest mentioned above, the reason why they *didn't* go forward with the Rangers series -- and also why the pilot was not adequately funded, and couldn't get a budget-bump or schedule-extension to deal with the weapons system problem -- was that WB and Sci-Fi couldn't reach an ownership deal at the pilot stage, and never did later. SFC simply passed on the whole idea of doing Crusade, because at the time they commissioned the Rangers pilot, Crusade had not yet been broadcast on Sci-Fi. They wanted the Rangers series based on B5's ratings, and didn't want to consider anything Crusade-related until they saw how the series did "on their air" -- that is, with SFC's base audience.
By the time the show did run on Sci-Fi, they were haggling with WB over ownership of Rangers. Obviously, if WB was not going to share ownership on a new series developed for and with Sci-Fi, they were not going to do so with a proprety they already owned, but I doubt if SFC even asked at that point. The fact is, SFC turned down Crusade for reasons of their own, initially (while leaving the door open, should they make a deal for a Rangers series, and the ratings justifying a second B5-universe show).
Obviously, Warners' stance on the ownership of Rangers tipped the balance away from doing that series (although if the ratings had been great, they probably would have gone ahead with the show, despite not owning a piece). But of course, that was really a separate matter from the whole Crusade fiasco.
-----signature-----
Tighter Than a 10-Year-Old.
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Rebel_Spook
Registered:
May '02
|
Date Posted:
4/13/07 11:31am
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
|
Thanks for all the info, guys! I appreciate it. I have no intention of getting Script Book #10, just for the Crusade piece, I would love to have the whole collection to really be able to see what JMS was thinking throughout the series and get an inside look at the struggles and successes that he had as a creator/writer.
After I am done reading the last of the Centauri trilogy novels (have to do it slowly and carefully - never had to pay $24 for a paperback novel before) I plan to read the Techno-mage trilogy to get a little more info on them.
I didn't realize all the difficulties there were surrounding Sci-Fi/TNT/WB and the Crusade/Rangers. I wasn't aware that the WB had much to say in regards to where B5 went as I thought that JMS held all the rights and that the WB was just the distributor.
-----signature-----
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/
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
The2ndQuest
Title: :
-Games
-LACWAC
-Lit Mod of Death
Registered:
Jan '00
|
Date Posted:
4/13/07 3:56pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
|
|
Nope, WB owns B5, not JMS. The only thing JMS owns is the rights to any theatrical film.
-----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..."
Is your Death Magnetic?
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
Juliet316
Registered:
Apr '05
|
Date Posted:
4/14/07 11:04am
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
|
|
Like the mini - films in production?
-----signature-----
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
The2ndQuest
Title: :
-Games
-LACWAC
-Lit Mod of Death
Registered:
Jan '00
|
Date Posted:
4/14/07 11:22am
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
|
|
No, theatrical film only, not straight to DVD or TV movies.
-----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..."
Is your Death Magnetic?
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
The2ndQuest
Title: :
-Games
-LACWAC
-Lit Mod of Death
Registered:
Jan '00
|
Date Posted:
4/18/07 10:21pm
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
|
JMS update, the B5 bits:
The B5 DVD has been fully delivered to WB along with finals on all of
the director's blogs, the interviews, and fireside chats. I'd expect
to see them online in a few weeks, one at a time.
...
Finally, volume 11 of the script books is about to come out, and I
wanted to let folks know that there won't be any photos or memos in
this volume (well, one memo) because this covers the insane period
between the end of the fourth season and the beginnings of the fifth
season...all of the fireworks, all the twists and turns, much of it
never before revealed in detail, day by day, hour by hour, and in
order to cover all that the introduction/commentary section turned
into the longest one to date, and not by just a little. It's almost
23,000 words long, covering over 70 pages. If you want the skinny on
what happened during those explosive months, this is the definitive
last word on the subject.
Also, because these books are being written in chronological fashion
following the history of the show year by year, we decided to move
Sleeping in Light into this volume...so you get Deconstruction,
Sleeping in Light, and the season 5 debut, No Compromises, and four
others.
The one thing I can promise is that folks are going to be talking
about this volume for a very, very long time...and many things not
previously understood or debated about will be set to rights and
explained, once and for all.
-----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..."
Is your Death Magnetic?
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
The2ndQuest
Title: :
-Games
-LACWAC
-Lit Mod of Death
Registered:
Jan '00
|
Date Posted:
5/5/07 1:40am
Subject:
RE: For Justice, For Peace, For the Future- We Have Come Home: Babylon 5
|
-----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..."
Is your Death Magnetic?
|
|
|
Quote Reply |
Active Topic Notification |
Private Message |
Post History
|
 |
|
