I think Boxleitner has the wrong number of chins. I picture him more as the rebel alliance's General Longstreet, I mean General Hague, or perhaps Sheridan's interrogator. We already saw him as Sheridan interrogating Morden and in return him being interrogated on Mars. An average-Joe interrogator is more threatening than an over-the-top one like Herr Flick. The original series got that correct.
The Drakh plague was forced on him by TNT to add "urgency" to Crusade. The Telepath War would make more sense.
The Drakh seeded the Earth with the nanovirus at the end of the TV movie A Call to Arms. It was never going to be the sole focus of Crusade, which would also have likely included uncovering the truth about the source of the Technomage technology, discovering and defeating the secret Earthforce Shadow technology project that carried on after Clark died, the Telepath War, and perhaps the final demise of Bester.
Perhaps its The CW aiming for greater respectability, or maybe genre credibility among science fiction fans? That's what I would like to believe. Also hoping that JMS is not just going to retell the story we've seen already, he's going to make it a distinct experience. In his tweets he's mentioned some about how he's changed as a writer so I imagine/hope he brings all that to this project, or is allowed to. He did mention Battlestar Galactica in his tweets as well, and I'm hoping the reboot will be along the lines of nu BSG, where it takes the basic premise of the original, and has the original series' DNA, but does something very much different with it. That said, I hope that the B5 reboot will be better thought out than nu BSG was.
The only way I'd be interested in a reboot is if the writer makes it their own and has their own unique different ideas for it. Otherwise it seems unnecessary.
True, the Drahk Plague was going to be taken care of quite early, think they said early 2nd season, but then deal with Earth force using shadow tech, what the apocalypse box was, etc. As with B5, what they start with as a problem wasn't what they had to face at the end. And how about the Legend of the Rangers story? that could also be incorperated if this lasts longer than 5 years. I think JMS should plan out a 7 or 8 year arc since that was how long arrow went. I doubt the 15 years of Supernatural longevity. If they want to do that they could do a "spinoff" if its still popular at season 8.
Is having sex with an alien bestiality whether or not they have genetically altered their appearance to be more like a human? We also know more about the Centauris' reproductive apparatus than the Minbaris'. I don't think a Centauri female would be impressed by a human male. Perhaps the Minbari in The Gathering were meant to be androgynous hermaphrodites - but that's just my impression. ETA: Another thought - if Supernatural was so inordinately popular, why not play up the Lovecraftian elements of B5 a lot more this time. The First Ones were supposed to see us as ants but it didn't seem that difficult for Susan and Marcus to negotiate with some of them and Lorien was a comparative pussy cat.
Bestiality is wrong because animals can't give consent. Gorilla's with sign language? When animals rape humans?
The dictionary definition is "sexual intercourse between a person and an animal" - no mention of consent but I guess we assume that all animals are unable to consent anyway. Now if the animal is dead is that bestiality, necrophilia, or just a salacious rumour?
Well, this has me interested, maybe even intrigued, but not necessarily excited. For all its numerous and obvious failings, the original got so much right that a remake by the same guy seems kinda ... bold. Especially given that there's no guarantee that there won't be a repeat on some of the critical issues of the original (uncertainty if there'll be the chance to complete the story arcs, budget constraints, developments in cast and crew necessitating improvisation). At the same time, JMS's reasoning for doing this seems sound, and as someone that's created something over the course of years (not a creative work, as an academic) and that has to live with all the shortcomings baked into it due to my own inexperience back in the day, I certainly see the appeal of trying to do it all over again with a few decades extra in experiences. JMS is a vocal proponent of the five-part dramatic structure of introduction - rising action - complication - climax - denouement and set out to realize it season by season in B5, with it kinda falling apart in season 4 due to him thinking he had to wrap it all up by the end of the season. There was some drama between him and some and the cast and crew (most notably Jerry Doyle) after season 5 since he didn't try to get the show renewed past that point, seeing as he had finished telling the story. I'm sure he could fit the story into many different molds if necessary, but all things being equal and til he says something to the contrary, my guess is that he would aim for a five-season structure again if feasible. (Who knows if it will be.) Given the acrimonious nature of her departure and the aftermath, of all the original cast reprisals I'd like to see, this one is way up top on the list. Would be nice to wash out that bitter aftertaste. (As an aside, JMS is explicitly asking people not to post concrete story and even casting ideas & wishes - specifically who should play what role - anywhere, even in jest, since any idea being out there on the interwebs with a time stamp that predates his scripts & postings can complicate matters for him legally if he actually wants to do a thing - so fun as it is to fantasize about these things, we really shouldn't out loud.) I've already seen people badgering JMS on Twitter to please not make the reboot "woke", and ... boy do these dudes have a rude awakening coming. Because given the plans JMS had with the Minbari but couldn't realize at the time/get away with ... there are going to be some things.
He can have any of my crappy ideas for free, I disclaim them. Great, I like it when such people get upset.
It's not that easy. A formless disclaimer would not hold in a court of law. This might seem pedantic and petty, but JMS is extremely adamant about this, and with good reason: he was extremely online already during the creation of B5, which was highly unusual at the time, and on several occasions suffered the consequences of this. Most notably he was exposed to a story idea that lined up with one that he was already working on (it would eventually become "Passing through Gethsemane"), and it took a year before he could secure all the paperwork ensuring that he wouldn't get into trouble for actually developing it. The price of having a creator that is so extremely accessible to the fans of his creations is that we have to respect this one wish of his.
Same lead writer, doesn’t mean writing staff won’t have their own unique ideas. Cause if they don’t and it’s really just “The same story a second time”, the reboot is pointless. Gotta love the assholes who respond to any representation of non-cishet as ‘Woke’. Like their very existence is a political statement.
This is assuming JMS is going to be working with a writing staff, which he generally does not if he can at all avoid it. He wrote all the arc-essential episodes of B5 himself, basically only worked with one other writer on Jeremiah, and did all the scripts for Sense8 with the Wachowskis. He's not a writers' room kind of guy. With him managing to write all 22 episodes of the 3rd and 4th seasons of the original Babylon 5, with the show produced on a strict yearly schedule, my assumption would be that under modern conditions (when seasons are frequently just 10-12 episodes long and yearly schedules are less strict), he's likely to do all the writing himself. But, his counter to this (same guy doing the same thing) is the Heraclitus aphorism that you can't step into the same river twice, i.e. 2021-JMS and 1990s-JMS are not the same guy in his book. Time will tell if that's a nonsensical sentiment or not. I could well imagine him doing something new and fresh with the reboot, but as a huge B5 fan, I was more excited when I heard that JMS was working on an adaptation of the Red Mars series (nothing ever came of that) than about this.
Way back in the days of spec scripts, the M*A*S*H* producers delineated that they would never accept a script from any one on any level where after a series of unfortunate events, Hawkeye had to do surgery on trapper John, because half the damn spec scripts they received, 10s of thousands of them, all ended with Hawkeye performing surgery on Trapper/BJ, because dumb people think that their best ideas are original.