A new B5 series on the horizon?
- Thread starter Reverend
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I think a good episode that illustrates the difference between the long-lasting effect of JMS-scripted episodes versus non-JMS scripted standalone episodes is "Survivors." When JMS writes a story about Garibaldi dealing with alcoholism in the fifth season, it (a) isn't resolved in one episodes and (b) has an effect that lasts more than one episode. When JMS writes an episode about an attempt on the President's life, that attempt can succeed. Babylon 5 standalone episodes (not written by JMS) are all about maintaining the status quo.
The only drawback I saw to the way jms approached the storytelling was that it practically burned him out. Other than that it seemed to work out quite well to me, because the focus was with one writer: jms himself, keeping a better coherency on the overall story. With the more separated episodes, not all of them may have fit as neatly into the overall story, but then they weren't supposed to be that way. Those episodes provided detailing and background for the characters and setting. An episode like "Survivors" divulges Garibaldi's issues with alcoholism, never intending to resolve the matter. It may not have been one of the better episodes, but I don't feel it damaged the show either. I don't see that as "maintaining the status quo" so much as building the world around the story.
God - or in some cases the Devil - is in the details.
God - or in some cases the Devil - is in the details.
I was recently watching a where Boxleitner said he wishes that JMS had continued the story of Sheridan and a few of the other main actors rather than going with a whole new crew. But I think that's probably cause he really loved the material, and was as disappointed as anyone Sheridan was taking a backseat to cameos. Jerry Doyle is retired from acting too, and a lot of the cast are dead (either irl or ic) - though I'm sure any remaining will happily appear, I can't see anyone commiting to a seires.
Agreed. I always get a little annoyed when people refer to the stand-alones as "filler episodes" as if their only function is to waste time that could be spent on the main arc.
DiTillio was for obvious reasons (he has a background in RPG world building) especially good add adding details that fleshed out the universe even if the main plot wasn't always the show's best work. 'TKO' is probably a good example of that. There's a surprising amount of background information in that script.
Indeed. As I recall 'Believers' and 'Soul Mates' were sent back to the writers by JMS to be rewritten, essentially because they maintained the status quo and didn't advance the overall story.
I'm not sure what the original draft of 'Believers' was like beyond it being "too Star Trek" but I think the main difference with 'Soul Mates' was that originally, Londo's wives just showed up, made trouble and left. It wasn't until the second go round that Peter David incorporated the divorce plot.
With all due respect to Boxleitner, I think what he misses most is the steady pay-checkand what was by all accounts a good working environment (by the standards of the industry.)
"Soul Hunter" is the one Joe said was too "Star Trek" in the first version. He provided both versions in the script books. "Believers" was pretty much filmed shot-for-shot what Gerrold wrote. The B-plot about raiders was added when Richard Compton hadn't filmed enough footage to fill the time.
So this thread has morphed into a full blown B5 discussion? Interesting and understandable since we don't have anything to talk about. I've got a question...has Joe ever stated why he hasn't explored the novel route since the conclusion of the previous line? I know most fans really enjoyed the three trilogies we got and I always thought that novels were the best way to continue telling the B5 story.
In these days of the eBook/Kindle, novels would be the way to go. I think there'd be more of a market than traditional publishing houses would expect.
^A good start would be if they had the old books on there. You know, so I could BUY them. I mean, I understand why books go out of print, and don't get reprinted. But how hard is it to get a guy to feed the pages into a scanner? Or is this another fun intellectual property rights issue?
Well, he did say back in the day that he'd created Crusade for TV rather than print. Also, a publisher would have to want them and there's simply no interest on the part of the previous B5 publishers to do any more.
Said e-publisher would have to pay a license fee to Warner's. And probably pay the original writers a percentage, too. And having read e-books that had obviously been scanned, it's not optimum since OCR isn't foolproof.
Skipping back to the original topic, here's a good interview with JMS in which he touches on what he had planned. The interview starts about an hour in and lasts for about 2 hours.
Jan
Every B5 thread always morphs into a full blown B5 discussion.
In addition to what Jan has already said, though it's true the later novels were and are well regarded among fans, they just didn't sell enough to make any further printings a wise business decision. Probably because only fans bought them and B5 has never had the kind of broad appeal to make any kind of serious merchandising viable. Maybe *now* a new line of books will (going by how long Lost Tales was on Amazon's top 10 best selling DVDs list) but the suits don't see it that way.
A slightly more viable option would be a comic series, given that the industry doesn't seem afraid to dip into relatively obscure IPs for a limited run. As to why that avenue hasn't been pursued? Probably the same as anything else; the publishers first need to contact WB to get the licence and so far nobody has.
On the other hand, if this new series or a movie does somehow get made (and does good business) *then* we'll get more novels, a comic book tie-in and probably a republishing of the old stuff.
What about DC, who is owned by the WB, would they even need to negotiate for the rights? And JMS has written comics for them, so they're already familiar with him.
No...not as such. The demonic possession tale was actually adapted for B5 (with a different ending) from a short story that had been published in a small magazine called "The Book of Dark Wisdom" (IIRC). Nothing printed for the Prince Vintari segment.
That's a bit odd, from what I can tell. At one point several years ago, Mongoose (the rpg people) wanted to do B5 comics but one source said that DC had stepped in and said that they still had the rights to do B5 comics. I don't know how reliable that source might have been. At any rate, none have come forth from DC since then.
As for DC being familiar with JMS, I gather that their editorial policies would need to change from back when they published B5 comics before. Apparently, as long as JMS didn't write the story, he had complete editorial control but if he did wrote the issue, his stuff was subject to being edited. http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-4619
Jan
That's my understanding, too. It would be like making a new Trek series---Paramount would have to lease the rights to CBS, even though they're both owned by Viacom.
