If you could ask JMS one question about the Babylon 5 universe...?

[Candlelight]

What would you ask? A production question? An in-universe question?

I'd ask how would Crusade have ended.

Or if you could go back, what would you change.

 

[Hound of UIster]

Why did he lie about his 5 year plan?

 

[OmahaStar]

One thing, eh? Well obviously, the most important question ever. Does he feel bad for giving us so few episodes focusing on Jane?

 

[Pauln6]

B5 was a flawed masterpiece no doubt. If I could go back I'd want to:

1) Feature Takashima a bit either so she could be the traitor - that would have been a blast - or just as a guest star.

2) Keep Na'Toth somehow even if it meant dubbing Julie Caitlin Brown's voice.

3) Feature Sinclair in one or two more episodes of seasons 2 & 3.

4) Let Catherine Sakai's own modified arc play out rather than simply transferring it wholesale to Anna. She wasn't simply an appendage of Sinclair and yet vanished without a trace as soon as he wasn't the lead.

5) Spread the Earth War into season 5 as planned - season 5 slowed down too rapidly, featured a fragmented cast and took too long to pick up momentum.

6) Feature Talia in about two more episodes per season focused solely on her building friendships with Garibaldi and Ivanova rather than telepath heavy plots - they had to cram in her love affair into one episode.

7) Resolve the Telepath War featuring (assuming she remained the traitor) Talia and Bester. Lets finally see Lyta make use of those recordings taken by Kosh to reinstate Talia's true (?) personality and win the war.

8) Let Claudia Christian take the time off she wanted! Too many changes in season 5 make it one of the weaker seasons. Claudia's presence for most of the season would have given the fragmented command structure more familiarity. I'd be happy with Lochley and Ivanova actually, an all-female command team is long overdue in sci fi.

9) Feature the drakh earlier on to establish them as credible villains rather than the poor man's shadows. Maybe show a wider range of shadow servants to maintain a sinister feel.

10) Feature the minbari as an androginous race to make Delenn's transformation more striking.

11) More Timov! She was a tour de force. It would ahve been great fun if she'd gradually become an ally of Londo and worked to help him set things right.

 

[FALCONX0N]

"What do you want?"

 

[Mistral]

In the end, what happened to Lenier.

 

[Tom Hendricks]

I would like to know about the Vorlon encounter suits. If they were alive as well and if the reason Kosh was in the different atmosphere was for the encounter suite and not for himself.

 

[Can]

I have already asked him a question personally in 2008 WonderCon

-Is there any possibility to see a more "Crusade" ?
-No , it is over. ( he was quite dismissive about that )

 

[Jan]

Why did he lie about his 5 year plan?

Why do you ask that?

In the end, what happened to Lenier.

Spoiler: Crusade changes

This would have been covered in "The Path of Sorrows" if Pat Tallman had been in that episode as planned. It was strongly implied that both he and Lyta died when the Psi Corps headquarters was bombed.

Jan

 

[The Evil Dead]

How was the Drakh plague cured?

 

[JoeD80]

Why did he lie about his 5 year plan?

What comment does this refer to? He wanted a five-year story and he ended up with a five-year story. When asked about his plan he said:

I plan out the basic *spine* of the novel. I know I'm starting at point A, I want to end at point Z, and I want to hit a certain number of spots along the way. Then I start writing. Once I've committed to that STRUCTURE, everything else becomes expendable or fluid ... the details are absolutely fluid.

In his early notes he laid out the structure of planned seasons (1 - intro, 2 - rising action, 3 - complication, 4 - climax, 5 - denouement) and he stuck to it. Now that we've seen the 10-page summary of his five-year outline we can see that yes, he started with a certain structure and changed details along the way, but the ending still had the end of the war and a great Alliance being formed. Garibaldi, Londo, and G'Kar pretty much followed the same story from outline to the screen. Sinclair's story moved aside and Sheridan took over, as well as taking in some of the planned story for Sinclair & Delenn's son. Fluid details; story still goes to same place. So I really don't understand what you are referring to at all.

 

[scnj]

I would simply ask "Why?" and leave him and everyone else to ponder what I'm talking about.

 

[Reverend]

How was the Drakh plague cured?

Spoiler: Crusade

Here's what I've been able to gather; early in Season 2 there's an initial "false cure" from the shadowy black ops part of the EA that'd been messing around with Shadow tech for decades. The same lot that built the ship that killed Gideon's ship, the same lot that chased the Technomages into hiding and most likely the ones that had a hand with the digs on Syria Planum and Ganymede, probably with links to Bureau 13/Department Sigma.
Later, the Excalibur crew tries to expose them and gets blackballed and forced to go rogue before finding the real cure somewhere out there.
The exact mechanics of how it's cured doesn't really matter, presumably they find some old Shadow tech that switches the nano-virus off, reprograms or otherwise neutralises or destroys it.

As for what I'd ask...can't think of a thing. Though I do sometimes wonder where all the collars went...

 

[ManOnTheWave]

What really happened to Sinclair?

 

[Titus Andronicus]

Now that I've thought about this question, one I do have is this: did he have any plans to do anything with Bureau 13? If I remember correctly, we only saw them once in the show.

 

[ClayinCA]

There's a novel and a graphic novel that answers that very question (although, admittedly, the latter is harder to find).

 

[Truth_Seeker]

The good thing about asking JMS a question is that you can actually do it and there is a big chance that he would answer at

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated/topics?gvc=2

 

[Reverend]

What really happened to Sinclair?

We know a fair amount of that.

Spoiler: Valen

He won the war, found and married the temporally displaced Catherine Sakai and about 100 years after he arrived he "went beyond the veil." What that actually means is ambiguous, but given Delenn's story in 'Confession's and Lamentations', I imagine he had a similar fate to Sheridan, though he stuck around longer. If I recall right, JMS said somewhere that Delenn eventually "dies" or rather disapprears while on some secret mission involving Valen. The pieces are all there so you can get a rough sense of it.

Now that I've thought about this question, one I do have is this: did he have any plans to do anything with Bureau 13? If I remember correctly, we only saw them once in the show.

We saw them more than you think...

Spoiler: Psi Corps books, Technomages and Crusade

they were just never named again. What was done to Ironheart and his Lurker friend, the digs on Mars and Ganymede, the Shadow Hybrid that toasted the Cerberus, the advanced destroyers that Ivanova faced, the cyber-organic experiments done on Robert Black and his team after the war, the ones that were chasing the Technomages into hiding...the list goes on.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I'd ask him what the deal is with Epsilon III. I always expected it to play a bigger role in the story or have its own story somehow.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Why cant you write decent dialog?