I guess I'll bite on a few points, even though you say "Yes, the arc holds up in that all of the pieces amazingly fit together" which is what I thought you were saying wasn't true.
What I meant, and probably wasn't clear on in my first post, was that it doesn't hold up to repeated viewings.
and a tad anti-climatic. And it could be argued that the metastory really climaxed with "Z'ha'dum" than it did with "Into the Fire" or "SPOILER TITLE".
Well a climax is the middle of the story, by literary standards; the turning point. The end of the story is the denouement, the last major events and the resolution and moving on of the characters.
No, the climax is near the end of the story, the apex by literary and storytelling standards. Hence, why it's called the climax.
The climax does
not occur dead in the middle of this story . It is not the turning point, which is where the direction of the story changes and builds toward the climax. And there can be more than one turning point in a story.
The climax is when the main conflict of the story comes to an end. It is either resolved or it isn't.
The denouement (or resolution or falling action) is the shortest part of the story and results in the end when the story stops.
The middle the longest.
It goes back to the Three Act Structure that's the oldest form of storytelling.
Yes, novels can be broken into five parts: Introduction, Rising Action, Complication, Climax and Denouement.
However, that can be roughly fit into the Three Act Structure as:
FIRST ACT:
Introduction
(inciting action that drives character into ...)
SECOND ACT (the longest):
Rising Action
Complication
(point of no return)
THIRD ACT (the shortest):
Climax
Resolution (or denouement)
As structured by JMS, season four is entirely climax to the series, but an argument could be made that "Z'ha'Dum" was really the climax of the metastory that had been building since season one with the shadows.
The series was also more theatrical (stage, not film) than the gritty, realism that JMS initially promised pre-Gathering — i.e. "Hill Street Blues in Space."
I don't think Joe was referring to the grittiness of Hill Street Blues when he was referring to that show as a roadmap of B5; he was referring to the fact that many character arcs would span multiple episodes and that the show would track the personal lives of the characters over time instead of just focusing on unrelated events in single episodes.
In several magazine interviews, JMS had promised a gritty realism, such as had been seen in "Hill Street Blues" and other contemporary shows, not the clean, antiseptic future as seen in TNG and "Space:1999".
That it would be a "lived-in" future with a much more naturalistic approach to the characters.
And yes he did use the "Hill Street Blues" model of character arcs spanning multiple episodes, but he didn't execute it in the same way. "Hills Street Blues" usually had three stories in one episode, one that was beginning, one that was in the middle and one that was ending. JMS tried to contain each story with its own beginning, middle and end in a singular episode, but would have tiny threads be picked up in later episodes.
Characters tend to, after awhile, speak like JMS — like what Neroon says at the end of "Legacies" , "You talk like a Minbari, Commander." Well, it ended up more like "you talk like JMS, Commander."
Joe's speaking style is quite a bit less formal than any of the characters on the show I think.
Not literally Joe's exact speech patterns but his writerly voice. The dialogue all had a sameness, or JMS's writerly voice. Certain dialogue ticks were passed on to all the characters, which gave it the appearance that they all sounded alike after a time.
Although, Londo really had his own voice from beginning to end.
