How bitter was J. Michael Straczynski towards DS9?
- Thread starter TalkieToaster
- Start date
Indeed.
I agree. If you'll note my previous post I didn't day he was a bitter person, just prickly regarding people wanting to adapt his work and understandably wary of dealing with studios and large corporations in general.
I bought up the subject because some people still make accusations the DS9 production staff/Paramount ripped JMS and B5. I maintain both shows are different, had unique stories, different way of story telling. DS9 borrowed a lot from Original Star Trek and Next Generation.
If you do pay attention to the credits of both shows, you would be seeing some same people working on both Star Trek and B5. There would easily be some knowledge of what one show was doing to the other. Rick Berman, Ira Steven Behr, Ronald D. Moore, probably made decisions to avoid making things resemble B5 too close.
B5 had telepaths for example, Humans and Minbari, for example, used the drama as part of an ongoing story. They had Psi Corp, one being played by Star Trek Alumni Walter Koenig. Did some very interesting stories throughout the series. DS9, although Star Trek had previously established telepathic species like Vulans and Betazoids, the subject for the large part was avoided, or had some fun the subject. Like the Vulcan Mind Meld not working on Gul Dukat, or Lexandria Troi sending some sort of Empathic signal to make DS9 crew members fall in Love with each other.
Another accusation that came up was with the Klingons once an enemy and became allies with the Federation being similar to Minbari once enemies then friends with Earth. That really annoyed me because the Klingon relationship was established with prior Star Trek long before B5 was produced. DS9 even had them turn Foe and back to friend again through DS9s' run.
If you do pay attention to the credits of both shows, you would be seeing some same people working on both Star Trek and B5. There would easily be some knowledge of what one show was doing to the other. Rick Berman, Ira Steven Behr, Ronald D. Moore, probably made decisions to avoid making things resemble B5 too close.
B5 had telepaths for example, Humans and Minbari, for example, used the drama as part of an ongoing story. They had Psi Corp, one being played by Star Trek Alumni Walter Koenig. Did some very interesting stories throughout the series. DS9, although Star Trek had previously established telepathic species like Vulans and Betazoids, the subject for the large part was avoided, or had some fun the subject. Like the Vulcan Mind Meld not working on Gul Dukat, or Lexandria Troi sending some sort of Empathic signal to make DS9 crew members fall in Love with each other.
Another accusation that came up was with the Klingons once an enemy and became allies with the Federation being similar to Minbari once enemies then friends with Earth. That really annoyed me because the Klingon relationship was established with prior Star Trek long before B5 was produced. DS9 even had them turn Foe and back to friend again through DS9s' run.
Please allow me to rebuke this statement with a deliciously ambiguous quote from Majel Barrett-Roddenberry as Lady Morella in the B5 episode "Point of No Return":
"This station [Babylon 5] continues the work of my late husband"
And what did Walter Koenig once say at a Star Trek convention what his favorite episode was? "Mind War"
Bob
I'll give you those and I'll add Pat Tallman's account of when she was doing stunt work on DS9 and went to the food table during a break in filming.
She says that one of the crew came over and wanted to express his love of B5 - the funniest part was, she said he skulked over and whispered to her all conspiratorially, as if anybody hearing it would mean he lost his job.
He then went on to say, "So what are you doing HERE?!?!" in a VERY disparaging way toward DS9, as if Pat was slumming it by leaving B5 and coming down to DS9's level.
I LOVED the way she told the story and it's SO TRUE, too!
Wow, a light operator? Very damming.
I cannot even think of one thing that Babylon 5 made better than DS9... it was always a pretty amateur-ish show and I cannot see how the five or six good episodes the show had justify watching five seasons of bad to passable quality.
The one thing B5 did which I think exceeds any similar thing done on Star Trek was the handling of time travel and prophecy.
The whole thing where you see a glimpse of how the future turns out, and then later find out how it turned out that way two seasons later was extremely ambitious and pulled off extremely well. Only Lost has come close to pulling that off as well as B5 did. The B4 arc, Sheridan's brief trip to 20 years in the future, Londo's 'Five chances to save his planet' and vision of his death, all of that was executed extremely well.
The whole thing where you see a glimpse of how the future turns out, and then later find out how it turned out that way two seasons later was extremely ambitious and pulled off extremely well. Only Lost has come close to pulling that off as well as B5 did. The B4 arc, Sheridan's brief trip to 20 years in the future, Londo's 'Five chances to save his planet' and vision of his death, all of that was executed extremely well.
I agree but this is simply easier when there is only one writer behind the show, like JMS was, starting with Season 1. The problem is that JMS is a very very average writer.
One thing B5 did better than any series of Trek was creating a sense of how vast and enormous space is. With Trek, going to a planet 5 light years away was like going down to your corner grocery. The new JJ Abrams movies are even worse about that.
I really think the one thing B5 did better than any other TV show was foreshadowing. It had a knack for giving the exact right amount of information about future events to make them exciting.
The one thing B5 did better than any other TV series was make the colorblind feel unwelcome. I found the special effects to be unwatchable.
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Well I think at times even B5 used plot speed at times. But one thing to consider without the success of TNG, B5 likely would never have seen the light of day.
Is this the Bafta winning, Hugo winning, Ray Bradbury winning J Michael Straczynski we're still talking about?
Average writers win those by the bucket-load.
Nominated for the BAFTA but didn't win. Not bad for the very first feature film made from his script, though.
Jan
B5 had the distinct advantage of an actual pre-planned story arc
I don't even disagree, Lost did pretty well considering they were constantly writing themselves into corners.Similar threads
