The old "DS9 stole from B5" thing
- Thread starter Forbin
- Start date
JMS is the one making the claims, so it's up to him to provide the evidence. Has he?
To bring up a non Sci-Fi example, Dennis the Menace
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2010/10/18/the-odd-case-of-dennis-the-menace/
Did you read the post above yours? It has happened.
Burden of proof is 100% on jms.
Also, no, it's not particularly plausible that some execs "nudged some ideas." That involves a whole lot of supposition for which there's no evidence.
Who, if anyone, took this pitch at Paramount and when?
Crickets.
Is it possible? Yes. Plausible? Well, I think we need to see some real evidence if we're gonna make that assertion.
And frankly, even if that were true, at a certain point the weight of what is allegedly being "nudged" becomes so minor as to not be meaningful. Like, let's say maybe someone saw the B5 pitch and decided to suggest to Michael Piller that the next ST should be set on a space station. That's... not plagiarism, anymore than it was plagiarism when Stan Lee's boss told him to make a superhero team up book to compete with Justice League and Lee created Fantastic Four. There comes a point where this simply isn't a meaningful complaint.
Dude, you're on a message board organized to talk about a show that started in 1966.
I don't claim I'm not just as sad. However, this thread was dead and was then necromanced back to life after 8 years. It's a bit smelly and its arms keep dropping off.Dude, you're on a message board organized to talk about a show that started in 1966.
I don't think there was much more than a few vague similarities. I don't think in the beginning you can really peg anything being stolen that really shows. DS9 was very much its own thing initially. What pissed me off and made me stop watching DS9 was when they started the Dominion War. That felt so against the ideas of the series and very much stolen from the then very successful B5. And B5 did it so much better. It felt like DS9 was trying to compete and it didn't need to and I felt it ruined the show. That and when Trials and Tribbleations aired it was so fantastic that it made me realize how bad DS9 was at the time. So I think DS9 was worried about B5 while B5 was not concerned at all and it was to the detriment of DS9.
DS9's ratings had already started to flag when they tried to revitalize it with "The Way of the Warrior." It didn't stop the flagging.
And at their lowest they were on a map that B5 could never creep onto the edge of.
I think the biggest, weirdest indication of that there were studio executive suggestions/guidance influencing early Deep Space Nine is that the Prophets (and Sisko's relationship with them) were such a big part of the pilot, seemed they would be a big part of the show ongoing, and then didn't appear again and, "In the Hands of the Prophets" aside, weren't really referenced again for the first 2.5 seasons.
? The prophets were talked about all the time. Hell, Kira's boyfriend for the first season was a Vedek. The prophets themselves didn't have a big role at the time because Piller was still running the show so it was still episodic and it didn't start to become more arc driven until Behr took over
Second season. Pretty sure Bareil doesn't appear until "In the Hands of the Prophets."
And aside from frequent references, we have Kai Opaka's role in "Battlefield" - not Prophets directly but clearly a part of her motivation.
And there's the Prophets appearing during the "Circle" trilogy.
And aside from frequent references, we have Kai Opaka's role in "Battlefield" - not Prophets directly but clearly a part of her motivation.
And there's the Prophets appearing during the "Circle" trilogy.
"Battle Lines"?
Um. B5's ratings were worse than DS9's. Why would the people at DS9 borrow ideas from a show that was doing worse than they were??!
http://users.telenet.be/WebTrek/Ds9/Ratings/ratings.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5#Broadcast_history
Whoops. Yep, thanks, that's what I get for posting quickly.
Which is funny because I think I read that Ira Behr and Bill Mumy were neighbors at the time.
Well, from a brief round of Googling, Babylon 5 has a higher rating currently than DS9. Plus it was using CG from the pilot on where DS9 didn't start using CG until the next to last season. B5 had huge space battles. While it didn't have the viewing numbers of DS9, it had a lot that people in Hollywood would notice and try to emulate. It is just amusing that DS9 tried to copy Babylon 5 in several obvious ways about a season after B5 did it first. DS9 still never had any space battles on the scale of B5. Never. And so much Star Trek talent was involved in B5.
"A higher rating currently."
You mean like on Rotten Tomatoes or something?
Who cares?
The shows both ceased production decades ago. What some netizens think of them now has no bearing on which was more successful or whether anyone would have looked at B5 and said "we want some of that success."
Rating = roughly, how many people watched the shows on television when they were first being broadcast.
Serious. B5 was niche entertainment before niche entertainment was a programming model. Many more people watched DS9 than B5. Hell, many more people watched almost anything but B5.
The assertion I addressed originally was your absolutely, demonstrably untrue reference to the "then very successful B5." It was not.
Even when DS9 was only pulling in the 5s and 6s, B5 was mired in the 1s and 2s. It rarely if ever made it into the 25 most-watched syndicated TV hours, a list that was usually topped by Xena, Hercules, and, uh, a show called Deep Space Nine.
Hell, in 1998 even Earth: Final Conflict was usually in the 4s.
Do you have some idea now what a "rating" was, when it meant anything at all to either of these shows?
If some dudes gang-voting at Metacritic or someplace like that are big fans of the show these days, then, good for them. They gotta do something with their time, right?
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