Babylon 5 and the absurdities of the plagiarism charge

[Farscape One]

There’s a basic misunderstanding here on your end. If a show comes out, Aires on tv, and then another show copies them a bit it’s fine- it’s kinda lame but it’s fair game . Works are derivative

But if someone pitches an idea to a company, they reject it, and then use the idea anyway for their own show it’s a problem.

so you saying that the changeling term was filmed before the b5 pilot it actually strengthens my argument, it doesn’t weaken it.

Dude, you are twisting what I said.

The B5 pilot aired in Feb., 1993. "VORTEX", the episode that first uses the changeling term, was being filmed around January. You said yourself any similarities would be in their pilots. There's almost 6 months between the creating process of DS9 to "VORTEX". There is no way the DS9 people would know about that term being used on a pilot that was being filmed on a COMPLETELY different lot by a different company.

Unless you're saying JMS got the pilot scripted, filmed, post-produced, marketed, sold to stations for airtimes, etc. in less than a month.

I've got a lot of respect for JMS, but there is less than a snowball's chance in hell that happened.

 

[Akalabeth]

I don't links to the interviews yet. However, there are materials left over from the original 1988 pitch.i

Thank you for the links.
JMS said on twitter that he showed Paramount the pitch 6-12 months before DS9. Though he said this in 2018 so, that's a long time from 1991. Will maybe check out his book if its on kindle.
https://twitter.com/straczynski/status/1000265468693774336?lang=en

It would be nice if those scripts were available in individual volumes. I'm not going to drop 300 dollars on it. The promotional material says it differs a lot, but- I don't put a huge amount of weight on that since the quote is trying to sell the thing.

Dude, you are twisting what I said.
The B5 pilot aired in Feb., 1993. "VORTEX", the episode that first uses the changeling term, was being filmed around January. You said yourself any similarities would be in their pilots. There's almost 6 months between the creating process of DS9 to "VORTEX". There is no way the DS9 people would know about that term being used on a pilot that was being filmed on a COMPLETELY different lot by a different company.

What matters is the content of the pitch documents JMS showed to Paramount. If they used the word changeling, it's problematic for paramount. The fact that there's a shapeshifter is still a bit suspect, but would need to see the pitch document. I've only be able to find some promotional stuff or people summing up some of the information they read in the pitch.

 

[kkt]

There have been dopplegangers/changelings in mythology for centuries or longer. Why shouldn't they be found in science fiction?

 

[Takeru]

What matters is the content of the pitch documents JMS showed to Paramount. If they used the word changeling, it's problematic for paramount.

No, it's not. It's a non-issue! Changeling is an existing word, no one owns it. The characters in question aren't even remotely similar. One is a minbari assassin who uses technology to assume another person's identity and frame them for murder, the other is a member of an unknown species with he natural ability to mimic other objects, animals and even people.

So what did they have in common, based on Emissary:
1. A "changeling"
2. The wormhole/jumpgate
3. The religiously oppressed race and the oppressors
4. Diplomatic aim of the station (Sisko was ordered by Picard to get Bajor ready for federation membership)
5. The haunted commander who survived a massacre
6. The multi-species, transit hub nature of the station
7. Angel-like aliens
8. The station situated in neutral space
9. The darker tone
10. The prejudiced, female XO (according to the B5 pitch bible)

2. One is a one of a kind stable passage to a fixed location on the other side of the galaxy and the reason the station becomes noteworthy, the other is just the regular means of interstellar travel and nothing special in universe.
3. Generic backstory and the portrayal is very different. The Gathering actually portrays the Narn as more aggressive and vengeful which DS9 quickly rejects for the bajorans.
4. Babylon 5 was created as an interstellar diplomatic and commercial hub to hopefully prevent another war. DS9 was an old ore refinery/administrative center that's repurposed as a commercial and travel hub after he discovery of the wormhole, the station itself had no diplomatic aim.
5. Kirk survived a massacre too ...
6. That's the purpose of most stations.
7. There are no angel-like aliens in Emissary, the prophets are portrayed ad extra dimensional aliens with no concept of linear time, there's nothing angelic about them. There aren't angel-like aliens in The Gathering either, the Vorlons aren't revealed to be angel-like in appearance until the season 2 finale.
8. DS9 isn't in neutral space, it's in bajoran space.
9. This is ridiculous
10. Takashima wasn't prejudiced, "according to the B5 pitch bible" isn't a valid argument as we haven't seen it.

Some of those are false equivalencies, some are superficial similarities that are vey different when looked at in detail.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Station = station
Jumpgate = wormhole
Commander = commander
Vorlon = Prophet

Star Trek paid.

Bah humbug, I'm cooking dinner.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Yeah but the important thing is, Large interstellar war. Which until DS9 was completely antithetical to Star Trek. All of the major Federation conflicts, against the Klingons and Romulans, were pre-TOS. Everything since has just been an incident, or incursion, not a full-scale conflict.

Why is it important? Did JMS invent the concept of interstellar war or of interstellar war revolving around space stations? (He didn't.) Is there any evidence whatsoever that DS9 was planned to go down the route of interstellar war all the way back to Emissary? (Afaik, there isn't, the Dominion hadn't even been conceived of at the time. It was an eventual story direction grown organically over several years.) Is there anything at all to suggest the war on DS9 is specifically modeled after the one on B5? (I don't see how, since they were COMPLETELY different stories. DS9 doesn't have any equivalent at all to the Shadows/Vorlon conflict which was literally the ENTIRE point of the whole B5 saga.)

And haven't you yourself said that the suspicious similarities should be in the pilots (neither of which involves grand interstellar war) and that if DS9 was just copying what B5 had already aired, that wouldn't be a problem? The grand interstellar war on DS9 didn't even start until after B5 was already almost finished (the Dominion declares war in the season 5 finale, so June 97 - at which point B5 was already almost finished with season 4 and the B5 war was almost over).

 

[at Quark's]

If you study the history of some of the world's most important inventions, you'll find it isn't that uncommon that several people had a breakthrough at about the same time, independently, and that there's controversy about who really invented it "first". As if the time was ready for it to be invented, all previous prerequisite steps having been taken. and invention of it not only became possible, but to some degree, obvious even (not to discredit the absolute genius of some of these inventors).

Why would it be different for science fiction tropes, where contemporary moods like "fashion" even play a much greater role?

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
There's only so many ways to have a "crossroads in space" story; similarities were inevitable. And it was simply a case of Murphy's Law that every time they tried to avoid looking like each other, they ended up swerving right back into each other. It might have turned out better if JMS had set down with the Star Trek production staff, and leveled with them about how B5 was intended be essentially a 5-year miniseries with the story arc hidden for most of the first season. Maybe that would have kept DS9 episodic, the way The Great Bird intended Star Trek to be.

 

[kkt]

But I like DS9's story arcs. Neither B5 nor DS9 invented story arcs, there's no reason they shouldn't both have used them.

 

[Sci]

Let's be real here: if there were real evidence that Paramount plagiarized B5, there is no way in Hell Warner Bros. wouldn't have jumped at the chance to sue Paramount and win. It would have been a threat to their intellectual property, it would have been a chance to hurt a rival a rival studio, it would have been free publicity, and it would have been free money after legal and lawyers' fees.

The fact the Warner Bros. legal department never backed JMS's claims of plagiarism up is all the evidence we need to conclude that he's, at best, badly mistaken.

 

[somebuddyX]

Apropos of nothing it's interesting to think that if things hadn't changed early on and Babylon Prime had followed Babylon 5, it's final episode would have aired sometime in late 2003 (I guess the same could be said of Crusade though too)

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

Uh....those were retellings of/heavily and officially based on those older works, so they are not a very good comparison to the DS9 and B5 situation (neither is based on the other, and their similarities are coincidental)

Ants/bugslife and Armageddon/Deep impact were released suspiciously close to each other

 

[F. King Daniel]

Star Trek Into Darkness and Captain America: The Winter Soldier...

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Huckeberry Hound and Chief Wiggum ...

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

Huckeberry Hound and Chief Wiggum ...

Diamond Joe and the Kennedys

 

[Sci]

Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down are basically two versions of the same movie -- one for conservatives and one for liberals.

 

[Silvercrest]

No, it's not. It's a non-issue! Changeling is an existing word, no one owns it. The characters in question aren't even remotely similar. One is a minbari assassin who uses technology to assume another person's identity and frame them for murder, the other is a member of an unknown species with he natural ability to mimic other objects, animals and even people.

Both of them ripped off Uncanny X-Men. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Sydney

 

[kkt]

There have been stories about dopplegangers in literature for centuries...

 

[Sci]

Both of them ripped off Uncanny X-Men. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Sydney

Neither of them ripped off Uncanny X-Men. Tropes exist for a reason.

 

[Takeru]

Both of them ripped off Uncanny X-Men. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Sydney

They did not, try again.