Crusade - You are the producer
- Thread starter Bry_Sinclair
- Start date
NOooooo!!! NOT Larry DiTillio! Remember him? Architect of such gems as 'TKO', 'Eyes' and 'GROPOS'? At least you need somebody someplace close to JMS' level and it ain't DiTillio.
Peter David might work. Harlan definitely. Neil Gaiman, since we're dreaming anyway.
Jan
To be fair to DiTillio, his writing background appears to be almost entierly based in the realms of Saturday morning cartoons. Sure, JMS started there too, but that appears to be all that DiTillio aside from B5 and a few episodes of Murder She Wrote.
IIRC he also has a background in writing sourcebooks for pen & paper RPGs and his real talent is in nuts and bolts world building and if you look closely, that's reflected in his B5 scripts. While the plots and dialogue leaves a lot to be desired, there's a lot of detailed background information to be found. Indeed, I'm pretty sure it was DiTillio that wrote up the bible on most of the background aliens like the Drazi, Grome, pak'ma'ra, Hyach, Yolu etc.
...also, I've always had a soft spot for GROPOS. If the guy that played Keffer actually had some acting chops, I think it would have been a whole lot better.
IIRC he also has a background in writing sourcebooks for pen & paper RPGs and his real talent is in nuts and bolts world building and if you look closely, that's reflected in his B5 scripts. While the plots and dialogue leaves a lot to be desired, there's a lot of detailed background information to be found. Indeed, I'm pretty sure it was DiTillio that wrote up the bible on most of the background aliens like the Drazi, Grome, pak'ma'ra, Hyach, Yolu etc.
...also, I've always had a soft spot for GROPOS. If the guy that played Keffer actually had some acting chops, I think it would have been a whole lot better.
Yes, he did. And I agree, there was a lot of world building in his scripts and that made the B5 univers richer than it might have been otherwise.
From what I gather, an *awful* lot of 'Keffer's' scenes ended up on the computer equivalent of the cutting room floor.
Jan
Hate to disagree with you, but I have to defend DiTillio here. Not only did he give us "Born to the Purple" but he also gave us the incredible "DeathWalker." Sure, he's no JMS. But then, neither is JMS ... "eeeeee-kaaaa-raaaaa" anyone?
You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have, Babylon 5.
I'm probably in the minority but I actually preferred the TNT episodes. The only JMS ep I liked was Racing the Night.
I think if I were to change stuff, I would have started the arc sooner. By the 13th episode of Babylon 5 (production wise) we already had Mind War and Chrysalis. Crusade had a handful of hints but nothing major (I guess that we're aware of) and To the Ends of the Earth was due to 'kickstart the arc' the very next episode before cancellation anyway...
I would keep the cast as was but lose Lochley. I would have shown more episodes with other ships helping (it seemed like they were the only ship out there at times) and maybe one episode set on Earth on the other side of the fence.
And maybe adapt my own fanfic about the Excalibur drifting powerless into Vorlon space...
I think if I were to change stuff, I would have started the arc sooner. By the 13th episode of Babylon 5 (production wise) we already had Mind War and Chrysalis. Crusade had a handful of hints but nothing major (I guess that we're aware of) and To the Ends of the Earth was due to 'kickstart the arc' the very next episode before cancellation anyway...
I would keep the cast as was but lose Lochley. I would have shown more episodes with other ships helping (it seemed like they were the only ship out there at times) and maybe one episode set on Earth on the other side of the fence.
And maybe adapt my own fanfic about the Excalibur drifting powerless into Vorlon space...
Yeah, see? Forgot that...
Honestly, the whole searching for a cure premise is stupid. You don't randomly fly around to planets of the week and hope to stumble across a cure to an engineered plague. You go after the guys who made it. The chances of stumbling across something useful on a random planet of the week are so low you're better off buying lottery tickets. Instead, hit Drakh research stations. Capture their scientists.
If you're going to keep the plague premise, at least drop the planet of the week bullshit and make it about raids against Drakh holdings.
If you're going to keep the plague premise, at least drop the planet of the week bullshit and make it about raids against Drakh holdings.
You do realize they weren't really just going to random planets right? They were being fed information by Alliance members and the Rangers, and the planets they were visiting had been selected as possibilities of previously being hit with the Virus
Why would anybody think that the Excalibur's mission was the only angle being pursued to find a cure? Of course there was research being done all over the place. Of course there were military people involved looking to capture Drakh for interrogation. But you also have to remember that while the audience knew where the Drakh were based (Centauri Prime), neither Earth or the Alliance had that information.
And the whole searching for a cure thing was to make TNT happy, anyway. See what JMS had to deal with?
Jan
Just happened to watch "Each Night I Dream if Home" today. It dealt explicitly with doing research on Earth by infecting a volunteer. The random planets concept was tied into the box that Gideon kept asking for advice. That was certainly going to be developed more in season two. Also, the Shadows are the one who made the virus. Kind of tough to go after a race that no longer is around.
Yep. They call it the Drakh plague/virus, because they're the ones who used it, but the Drakh never understood how it worked. If they did, they would have been able to alter the virus to work faster on Humans. That was covered in A Call to Arms.
The Apocalypse Box was a Vorlon, wasn't it?
We don't know, but, it used Gideon's voice.
I suppose it would fit better if the box had been a Shadow. It supposedly lies a lot. And tends to get people killed.
Well... Considering that the Vorlons were as bad as the Shadows in the end and probably lied more, the Shadows were more upfront about what they wanted weren't they, I would say it could go either way...
I mean, the Shadows never said they were the good guys. The Vorlons, well pretending to be angels could be constituted a lie.
Similar threads
- Locked
