Babylon 5: All the things that weren't

[RandyS]

How about General Hague actually appearing in Severed Dreams?

JMS killed Hague offscreen just because Robert Foxworth dared to appear on DS9.

(well to be fair, Foxworth's agent doublebooked him on B5 and DS9 at the same time. He had to choose which one to do, so he chose DS9, which was a two-parter. Still, JMS' "revenge" seems a bit harsh....)

I always loved the irony there. Foxworth went to DS9 and attempted on that show the very thing he (rightly) accused Clark of on Babylon 5.

And he did it AGAIN on Enterprise!

True.

 

[Lighthammer]

I believe her latent Telepathy was supposed to be awakened ala Secrets of the Soul, and/or there was supposed to be a cat-fight over Byron.

No cat fight was ever indicated in anything I ever saw. Ivanova was supposed to be the one in a relationship with Byron which is why he was planned to have a superficial resemblance to Marcus. Her small amount of telepathy would have been enough to really conflict her when it came to the rogue teeps and having to call in Bester. Lyta was just supposed to be a devoted follower.

Jan

I'm not sure if Byron entered the picture as new stories post series bible creation (IE coming up with ideas for season 5 after we got season 5) but I do know in the original setup while Takishma was still in the picture, Ivanova wasn't supposed to be a latent telepath. She was supposed to be a full blown one who managed to avoid the Psicore. She just wasn't a very powerful one. (Somewhere like P2-P3)

While talking about Ivanova, wasn't her brother supposed to take more of a role then he originally did? We know he died in the Battle of the Line, but I recall some small cliplets some where that suggested he may have been intended for a much bigger role in the overall story.

 

[Lighthammer]

So in other various thoughts, does anyone get the feeling Bester was intended to have a much, much, much bigger role then he did?

I just finished watching "Ship of Tears" from Season 3 and it felt like JMS was building him up for something BIG during the shadow war that never materialized. I suspect he was gonna do something big but never did because season 4 and season 5 ended up getting condensed together.

 

[Candlelight]

So in other various thoughts, does anyone get the feeling Bester was intended to have a much, much, much bigger role then he did?

I hated the fact that he simply got away at the end of Season Five. I'd much prefer (or expected) the Telepath War to take place or at the very least begin (proper) in season five and we'd have a true resolution for his character.

Instead the story is told in three novels. I watched B5 for the television medium, not it's spin off material.

I also hated how Crusade was essentially gonna be used as a spill over for unused or unfinished B5 storylines (like leftover shadow technology). Thank god Babylon Prime never happened!

 

[DWF]

While talking about Ivanova, wasn't her brother supposed to take more of a role then he originally did? We know he died in the Battle of the Line, but I recall some small cliplets some where that suggested he may have been intended for a much bigger role in the overall story.

Ganya Ivnov died during the battle with the Black Star not the Battle Of The Line and I think he was just added as an afterthought as a way of including Susan into the general storyline and explaining her single earing.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

So in other various thoughts, does anyone get the feeling Bester was intended to have a much, much, much bigger role then he did?

I hated the fact that he simply got away at the end of Season Five. I'd much prefer (or expected) the Telepath War to take place or at the very least begin (proper) in season five and we'd have a true resolution for his character.

Instead the story is told in three novels. I watched B5 for the television medium, not it's spin off material.

I also hated how Crusade was essentially gonna be used as a spill over for unused or unfinished B5 storylines (like leftover shadow technology). Thank god Babylon Prime never happened!

Yeah, that's exactly what I was saying earlier. Sometimes people jump the gun and just tell me it's no one's fault I'm against reading. Hell no, that's not the case at all. I read plenty of books, but the fifth season of Babylon 5 set so much up that really should have shown up on screen.

Not blaming anyone for the failings of future franchise attempts or anything, it's just weird to me that so many people think it was a good thing the way it was handled. Would I rather the Telepath War didn't even show up in book form? Of course not! That would have been even more aggravating! But hot damn, that entire fifth season, especially the (superior) second half, was one big tease for something that just never happened on screen at all.

"Remember, Garibaldi. Two years."

Yeah, alright, Lyta.

 

[Gov Kodos]

The telepath arc just seemed one where I wish there was either more done or less. Changing actresses who were integral to the arc kept the development of the story uneven. Season 5 made Lyta seem like she went on a psychotic bender more than on a rational path. Carrying Ivanova's and her story together just made the character seem less stable than she had been in previous seasons. I also had more interest in the telepath underground and would have liked to have seen more. I expect that would have been used more with Ivanova, transferring contacts to helping telepaths after having developed them working Vir's Narn refugee smuggling ring. Lyta's skills there seem to come out of no where, but would have been more believable with Talia as she had been of direct help to the underground against Bester. There was a lot of potential, but so much is indirectly referenced that seeing the whole story is fraught with a lot of need to interpret things and to resort to speculation that it would be easier to get agreement on whether the Romulan Empire in Balance of Terror were warp capable or not.

 

[RoJoHen]

I was generally annoyed with Lyta's arc towards the end because I really didn't understand why she was so mistreated. After all she had done to help Sheridan against the Shadows, after every time they called on her to do something, they repay her by kicking her out of her quarters. The Shadow War would have been lost without her; show some appreciation, people!

 

[Gov Kodos]

Yes, Lyta gets shafted by the Alliance. Even if she felt the Earth representatives couldn't be trusted, Delenn and the Minbari had always been helpful. Why she neither looks for help in that quarter, nor gets any is odd.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

I was generally annoyed with Lyta's arc towards the end because I really didn't understand why she was so mistreated. After all she had done to help Sheridan against the Shadows, after every time they called on her to do something, they repay her by kicking her out of her quarters. The Shadow War would have been lost without her; show some appreciation, people!

It didn't make a lick of sense to me, either. Lyta's "no one trusts me..." earlier on in the series was very fun to watch because I expected either people would come around about her (I liked seeing Zack make attempts, for example) or something darker would happen.

Watching the Byron thing, I figured that's where she was headed, and I really like her character as a heroine sort so I was somewhat disappointed but looked forward to seeing where it would go from there. Instead, she reverts back to the "no one trusts me..." phase, albeit with a very, very cool setup for things we... never see.

My heartstrings, though, ack, how they burned when Lyta looked back before getting on G'Kar's ship. No one's there! But Zack arrives... late.

I'm no shipper type, but maaan.

 

[Gov Kodos]

The shipper in me can't help but think Zack had Lyta in mind in 'Sleeping in Light' when he was talking about folks who didn't make it out alive from the shitstorm they went though.

 

[Lighthammer]

Lyta's story really did get messed up something horrible with all the comings and goings of various actors.

I'd really like to know how the whole intended story was supposed to be played out.

 

[RoJoHen]

My heartstrings, though, ack, how they burned when Lyta looked back before getting on G'Kar's ship. No one's there! But Zack arrives... late.

I'm no shipper type, but maaan.

Yeah, that moments breaks my heart.

 

[DigificWriter]

In the DVD introduction to Season 4, JMS says that if he'd known that Claudia Christian wasn't coming back for Season 5, he would've kept Marcus around and killed off Ivanova, which makes me wonder what his role would've been in S5. I've also been wondering what might've been done differently in terms of the pacing of the last two years of the series if JMS had had a guaranteed 5-year contract for the series and didn't have to worry about the show being renewed.

 

[Candlelight]

I've also been wondering what might've been done differently in terms of the pacing of the last two years of the series if JMS had had a guaranteed 5-year contract for the series and didn't have to worry about the show being renewed.

That's a tricky one. There's often been mentioned the rough plan for season four, with the Shadow War finishing around 408-409 (Into The Fire would've been a two-parter). The Minbari civil war would've been fleshed out more, and the Earth war would've taken more time, with the finale finishing around The Face of the Enemy, and Season Five beginning with Intersections in Real Time (not necessarily with that exact stories but at that point of the story, although it's been pointed out that if it had finished then we would've had season three and four finishing with Sheridan going missing). The Earth war would've then gone maybe up to 506, with the rest of the season compacted, and the ISA being born mid season.

HOWEVER...

JMS expanded and contracted the fifth season on a daily basis depending on what TNT wanted with a spin off series, so had Crusade been different (or not even on the table) then we might have had more of a 'resolution' to the series.

There was also the fourth season tv movies, which took over some of the storylines that JMS had considered for standard episodes IIRC (Thirdspace was definitely a script for an hour long timeframe... removing that god-awful elevator scene would've dropped about 20 minutes...).

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

The weirdest thing about the fifth season, to me, is that after the Byron arc is over -- the midway point, almost exactly -- there are so many scenes flying forth that are clearly character wrap-up pieces that we wind up with more "this is a series finale moment" episodes than with almost any other show I'm aware of, at least, in any genre.

So despite it all, in some ways the show got plenty of resolution. "Things moving on" was clearly a theme in "5.5", as modern-day marketing DVD-speak might call the back half, and yet in so very many, very important ways, that resolution just didn't happen.

It's messed up... I like Season 5 a lot in some ways, but next time I rewatch the series, I might just skip it aside from "Sleeping in Light". At least I'd feel like Lyta isn't completely screwed over by all the changing. Although her travels with G'Kar are probably pretty cool.

Despite it all, I like Season 5 more than Season 1 objectively. But in terms of all the setup with no on-screen payoff... bleh.

 

[DigificWriter]

I find myself wondering why JMS' original pace for S4 was so different, because he set a precedent for wrapping up one story at the end of one season and launching a completely new story with the beginning of the next season with Seasons 2 and 3.

 

[Lighthammer]

I always understood that JMS intended the Shadow War to take up the bulk of Season 4 but throughout season 4, we'd have more expanded story regarding Psi Corps and Clark's affiliation with the Shadows.

Sheradin's (or formally Sinclair's) motivation would have then been more motivated by removing the Shadow influence from Earth then it would have focused on an attempt to grab total power. It was almost intended as a mix between a Holy War (of sorts) as well as Political War.

I suspect we would have gathered more elements on the Shadow's influence on the Minbari too, specifically with a ploy to drive a bigger wedge in between the Castes.

 

[DigificWriter]

That's the thing about all of this that I'm somewhat confused about. As I noted, I see no reason for JMS having had a different pacing structure for S4 in mind initially because, as I noted, wrapping things up completely in one season and starting anew the following season is something he had already done once before with Seasons 2 and 3, with Season 2's finale The Fall of Night ending with a finite and definitive resolution of storylines and Season 3's premiere Matters of Honor introducing a completely new set of storylines that were carried over into S4 and ultimately resolved by in Into the Fire, with another new set of storylines being launched in Epiphanies.

 

[Candlelight]

He had no idea the show was gonna be cancelled or renewed. He wanted to finished as much as he could prior to the end of season four in case it truly was 'it'.

Though pacing wise he has said that he would only have spilled over the Earth war about 6 episodes into season five, and not much was actually compacted at all.