JMS also borrowed from the history of World War II
Babylon 5
- Thread starter Kail
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Pretty much this. It's why I ultimately came to like B5 better than the 24th Century Treks, despite Star Trek being my all time favorite show. They stayed too close to an old school t.v. formula of resetting everything to status quo. DS9 was slightly better in this department, but not by much. Their hands were tied by TPTB, but they did try.
But yeah, we need to be careful every time someone starts one of these threads. Old fans get so excited about seeing it fresh through someone else's eyes that the conversations start to get dangerously spoilery. Most of the comments about Londo after Kail saying he didn't like Londo's choice about the outpost are spoilery, even when they try not to be. We know what's going to happen, and we got to watch it without any indication, no matter how vague, of what was to come. Let's give Kail and other first timers the same.
As for you Kail, glad to see you've decided to stick with it. As I said before, I think you'll find it a very rewarding experience when you're done. As someone else said, it's fun to do a second watch through and see just how much was actually foreshadowed in off hand comments and imagery.
So far I've done at least four watch throughs. How many has everyone done?
The most interesting watch through I've done is the "in universe chronological order" watch through.
That means that this watch through ended with "Deconstruction Of Falling Stars", which got hacked up to watch the first and last ten minutes with Sheridan and Delenn, then at the end, the other parts of the ep.
Coco Pops, why would you ever think that Bester wasn't lying? The Psi Corps always lies. Why trust anything any Psi Cop ever says?
Apologies for the possible spoiler upthread. I've spoiler tagged it now but I'm sure it was too late. I'll be more aware going forward.
I only counted fairly substantial differences and still came up with a list of 526 changed, added or deleted scenes. I hasten to add that the reason for that is mostly when JMS chose an early draft of a script for some reason.
More than I've kept count but at least ten. My most interesting one was when I compared the DVD episodes to the scripts in the B5 Script books a few years ago. The resulting list came to be known as the 'Joe Cuts' and is what caused JMS to call me insane.
I only counted fairly substantial differences and still came up with a list of 526 changed, added or deleted scenes. I hasten to add that the reason for that is mostly when JMS chose an early draft of a script for some reason.
It's also somewhat ironic considering people made similar claims that Tolkien wrote LOtR as an allegory for WW2, which he also denied doing. I still see that claim kicked around every now an again too.
And then there's my theory that B5 started as a "Birth of the Federation" project that never went anywhere morphed into a new concept. It's amazing how accurately it maps.
I may have said this before but it bears repeating: I seriously envy you your first two viewings.
I did hear and read a few times debate about a Babylon-5 'bible' floating around so to speak back in the days, I never did catch the show first time around but did watch the DVDs recently. I always seen the talk on the net how J. Michael Straczynski once pitched a show to Paramount/Viacom, he was rejected and later to the surprise of JMS they make their own 'space station' show. A number of B-5 fans claim they might have used his bible and scripts as the basis for DS9's first season I think JMS and Majel the wife of Gene Roddenberry and others have commented publically on the matter.
Yeah, the similarities between B5 & DS9 are very suspicious. Still I think the informed consensus is that if there was any shenanigans it was at the very early conceptual stage and the showrunners and writers were likely unaware where the initial concepts came from.
Still, they're both unique enough that it's really hard to claim there was any active plagiarism going on. At most, some exec may have basically filched JMS's rejected B5 pitch as a basis for the new TNG spin-off and others developed the rest on their own.
But that's another very old debate that just won't go away and all a bit academic these days.
Still, they're both unique enough that it's really hard to claim there was any active plagiarism going on. At most, some exec may have basically filched JMS's rejected B5 pitch as a basis for the new TNG spin-off and others developed the rest on their own.
But that's another very old debate that just won't go away and all a bit academic these days.
Did you happen to catch what Timov spells backwards? Anyway, as a small side note, I always remember Keith Szarabajka (the guy who played Matthew Stoner) from that Stephen King miniseries Golden Years.
That matches with what JMS has maintained, as well.
It was also WW1 that Tolkien denied that LotR was an allegory of, although he admitted that aspects of it were influenced by that war in which he served as a fusilier. The BBC have made an interesting web documentary hosted by John Rhys-Davies available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zgr9kqt
Recently bought a few official Babylon 5 magazines and now that I finally started to read them I have to say they are pretty cool. All the people behind the scenes get their time to shine, small part actors can get their word out and all episode/book reviews are honest, which is to say that they are not always positive. JMS pretty much says in one of his columns that there wouldn't be any point if the magazine would just be full of some sugar-coated promotion fluff from the main stars.
I would say highly recommended reading for fans.
Michael O'Hare's interview was interesting in retrospective. He kind of dodges the question about the reasons why the sudden change between commanders, but gives all the credit to JMS for supporting him in many ways and getting a chance to finish the storyline. Apparently JMS even loaned some rent money to him and didn't even ask it back.
I would say highly recommended reading for fans.
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I'm not sure if there was ever a "conspiracy theory or not. Not having been there, I'll never know one way or the other, but Forbin's thoughts on the subject more or less agree with mine. Whatever went on behind the scenes, we fans were the clear winners on that one.
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