Found this posted on Wikipedia. Granted it's two years old but wondered if anyone had heard if anything came of it, is still coming of it, or if it's dead like the movie.
J. Michael Straczynski's "new" Babylon 5 graphic novel?
- Thread starter Candlelight
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Found this posted on Wikipedia. Granted it's two years old but wondered if anyone had heard if anything came of it, is still coming of it, or if it's dead like the movie.
No sure how you can tie in Crusade pre-Season 4 unless it's a foreshadowing storyline, and the conspiracy refers to storylines featured in 'To The Ends of the Earth' and 'End of the Line'.
Although he may have discarded the pre-War Without End story in favour of wrapping up Crusade's virus arc...?
Although he may have discarded the pre-War Without End story in favour of wrapping up Crusade's virus arc...?
This is one of those JMS projects that I don't hold my breath for. Like Harlan Ellison's novel Blood's A Rover or The Last Dangerous Visions anthology.
I hope it comes to pass. I loved his officially sanctioned "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" book that focused on Sinclair. So to have another involving him would be great. The only problem would be the obvious retcon of having Sheridan and Sinclair meet pre-WWE.
Huh, for something that's been pending for two years, I've never heard about it. 
Not really. It's been hinted that they met before then. In WWE, part one, Sinclair mentions that the last time he saw Sheridan was during the Mars Food Riots.
According to To Dream, Sheridan was an upperclassman when Sinclair attended EarthForce Academy. IIRC, Sheridan hazed Sinclair, the "pleb". When they met again during the Mars Food Riots, Sinclair mentions the hazing to Sheridan who is embarrassed by it. I haven't read the book in years and have vague recollections of Sinclair telling this story to Catherine, also stating something about him and Sheridan getting cut off from the other troops.
IIRC, the Mars Food Riots, as well as Sinclair and Sheridan's meeting, were to be seen in this planned graphic novel (at least from my memory banks of JMS's many talks at Comic Con).
The novelization of In The Beginning also has them meeting briefly at a maglev train station.
I meant meeting exactly prior to WWE. That I believe IS a retcon...
It probably means that he would've taken story ideas he'd hoped to do in Crusade and rework them for the B5 timeframe and characters. Similarly to how he took the "mole" storyline from Laurel Takashima in the B5 pilot and applied it to Talia Winters instead. And some of the material in B5 season 5 was stuff he'd originally planned to do in Crusade, I believe.
They wouldn't necessarily have to meet for the storyline to work. Things Sinclair would be doing could effect what Sheridan was dealing with and vice-versa. Much like how it was in the second season with Sinclair, the Rangers, and Sheridan.
But it would be cool if they did meet, even if it is a retcon. Although, it be a better story, imo, if they didn't.
Not necessarily Crusade, but from some of his earliest ideas on a spin-off. After the fourth season, he proposed a series about Sheridan, Delenn, some of the rest, and the Rangers building the Interstellar Alliance. IIRC, it would've had them traveling to the different worlds in the B5 universe.
Then season five got green-lit, and he had to come up with another spin-off. Also, iirc, TNT wanted the spin-off not to feature the original cast.
JMS earliest notes for a spin-off go back to the pilot and first season of B5. In a Cinefantastique interview, he stated that there was one idea that could be spun off of the five-year story and that once he told that he'd probably "have said everything he wanted to" in television. (I'd quote the magazine but it's in storage in San Diego.)
Of course, from his "Sinclair" outline of the Babylon 5 story that spin-off would've followed Sinclair, Delenn, and their son on the stolen Babylon 4 dealing with the Shadows (not the Drakh) run amuck and Londo's reign as a puppet Emperor, eventually building something like the Interstellar Alliance in the process.
So I think some of season 5 took that empire building arc from the two ideas he had for those two spin-offs. Although, he probably would've used them as well in Crusade.
I'm sure Jan can speak with more authority on the subject.
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Does this mean that B4 really was supposed to have been taken into the future (in the original outline) as "Babylon Squared" heavily implied?
It's actually a bit more complicated than that. The Sheridan-led Rangers series gradually morphed into Crusade. They're not totally separate things. For example, the plague storyline actually became part of the picture early on. JMS publicly mentioned the concept as early as February 1997, months before TNT renewed the show for a 5th season. Also, the idea for a Rangers series that would focus heavily on the original B5 cast turned into a Rangers series with a new cast (and a lot of non-Ranger supporting characters), and then, very late in the game (and well after the plague storyline was developed), turned into a series about an EA crew.
Here is a post that I made some time about on the b5tv.com forums that attempts to reconstruct the evolution of the spinoff idea:
http://www.b5tv.com/showpost.php?p=291106&postcount=9
Also, here is a story on an interview with JMS from March 1997, in which he discusses possible Crusade characters:
http://www.geocities.com/area51/nebula/6029/f3a.htm
Thanks! I knew there were "holes in the mind" that needed to be filled. Sometimes I forget there is more than one B5 'pert 'round these parts.
Followed by Babylon 6 on the FOX channel.
"Babylon 5 was the last of the Babylon stations. There would never be another ... until we decided to change that."
There was also the Shadow technology controlling the Centauri vessels. That came from the stuff to be hinted at towards the end of Crusade's first season.
Yes. After Babylon 5 was destroyed Sinclair et. al. were to go and retrieve Babylon 4 and use it as their new base of operations.
What jms said was that he would shift season 5 plots into Crusade if season 5 wasn't green lit; not that he shifted planned Crusade plots into season 5. This event with the Drazi/Centauri/Lyta and shadow tech seems to me to have been originally planned for Babylon 5. (Centauri/Raider/Drazi plot being set up in season 4 episode Lines of Communication among others)
jms said:
Now there was to be set-up of Crusade added to season 5 but it ended up not being used when TNT didn't go for the Empire Building concept. The notes were published in one of the script books. Some extracts:
Yeah, does sound like Galen.
There's been a lot of time travel and consequence, but I'm glad we didn't see this. Babylon 4 was enough of a time travel story for this series. It's not Star Trek!
This actually sounds more like Legend of the Rangers.
Not sure what this means. With Ivanova absent from year five, I guess we'll never know...
