Your opinion of the non-JMS-written Babylon 5 episodes

[Mr Light]

Sometimes I wonder what happened with Larry DiTillio. Apparently he and JMS worked together on those children's animated shows... and apparently Larry is responsible for creating a lot of the background ideas of the B5 series... yet he was gone after Season Two. I know JMS decided he had to write everything himself because it was too complicated... but LOST is written by a gaggle of writers and that's a lot more complicated. Was JMS quietly unhappy with the quality of Larry's scripts?

 

[Christopher]

Sometimes I wonder what happened with Larry DiTillio. Apparently he and JMS worked together on those children's animated shows...

They worked on animated shows, but I wouldn't say The Real Ghostbusters was aimed at children, not when they were writing it.

 

[Candlelight]

Sometimes I wonder what happened with Larry DiTillio. Apparently he and JMS worked together on those children's animated shows... and apparently Larry is responsible for creating a lot of the background ideas of the B5 series... yet he was gone after Season Two. I know JMS decided he had to write everything himself because it was too complicated... but LOST is written by a gaggle of writers and that's a lot more complicated. Was JMS quietly unhappy with the quality of Larry's scripts?

Far from it. JMS knew the direction he wanted to take the series in those two seasons and decided to do all 44 scripts himself so he didn't have to keep tabs on other writers handling the episodes. I've never heard of any tales of animosity between the two.

Plus it probably saved the show a bit of money.

 

[Mr Light]

Jettisoning all the other freelance writers I understand, but it sounds like DiTillio was there on the ground floor and was intimately familiar with the show. Why couldn't it have just been the two of them writing it? JMS writes 2/3 of them he gets the other third. While I wasn't a huge fan of the episodes written by him, a differing voice to the soup would have been nice every once and awhile...

 

[Harvey]

DiTillo didn't express any animosity that JMS went his own way after season two in the script books. It felt more like...disappointment that he didn't get to carry some of the ideas he had to fruition, such as the aliens from Knives. With JMS solely at the helm (except for Day of the Dead, which JMS still had plenty of influence over) he tended to carry through his key ideas...and his alone. Beareau 13 was dropped in name because of a possible copyright conflict, but that didn't mean it had to be dropped completely. The quote from JMS suggesting it would change names suggests that it could have continued, but for some reason wasn't.

 

[Christopher]

Even with JMS deciding to write all the episodes, he should still have kept DiTillio on as story editor. Every writer needs an editor, and sometimes JMS definitely could've used someone to rein him in or balance him out. Just having someone else to do a pass on the scripts would've helped keep every character in the whole damn show from sounding like JMS.

 

[Reverend]

The Bureau 13 plot was continued, just not under any name and slightly in the background. For instance, who do you think it was messing with a Shadow Vessel on Ganymede? Or the original dig on Mars for that matter? Then of course there's the Shadow-tech Omegas, the Hybrid that blew up Gideon's old ship, the cyber-experiments un humans, both Gropos volunteers as well as the Lazarus project and of course there's the actual reason the Technomages did a runner. It's not stated that these are all linked, but it's not too hard to join the dots and of course, it is a secret organisation.
Had Crusade continued, I gather an Earthforce Black Ops group would have been very much in the forefront.

Spoiler: Unfilmed Crusade Scripts

Starting with the origin of the Hybrid being an Earthforce ship, based out of a secret facility where they've been experimenting with grafting shadow tech onto live humans, trying to create their own technomages as well as the hint that another Victory class Destroyer is covering their tracks.

 

[Candlelight]

Spoiler: Unfilmed Crusade Scripts

Starting with the origin of the Hybrid being an Earthforce ship, based out of a secret facility where they've been experimenting with grafting shadow tech onto live humans, trying to create their own technomages as well as the hint that another Victory class Destroyer is covering their tracks.

Spoiler: Unfilmed Crusade Scripts

I had always assumed the vessel hinted at in To the Ends of the Earth was a vessel similar to the Excalibur, but not of the same class, and most likely instead of Vorlon technology, the enemy ship most likely had Shadow weaponry.

 

[Mr Light]

Not to mention the fact that DiTillio wasn't invovled with Crusade but two other writers were.

 

[Reverend]

Spoiler: Unfilmed Crusade Scripts

I had always assumed the vessel hinted at in To the Ends of the Earth was a vessel similar to the Excalibur, but not of the same class, and most likely instead of Vorlon technology, the enemy ship most likely had Shadow weaponry.

Spoiler: Unfilmed Crusade Scripts

Well I should think an "identical blast pattern" probably means an identical weapon and remember that the Victory Destroyers were a joint Earth Minbar project, so it seams reasonably plausible that a black ops division of Earthforce would be able to pirate the blueprints somewhere along the line. No doubt it'd have Shadow tech, but the primary weapon would be based on the Vorlon principles.

 

[Candlelight]

Spoiler: Unfilmed Crusade Scripts

I had always assumed the vessel hinted at in To the Ends of the Earth was a vessel similar to the Excalibur, but not of the same class, and most likely instead of Vorlon technology, the enemy ship most likely had Shadow weaponry.

Spoiler: Unfilmed Crusade Scripts

Well I should think an "identical blast pattern" probably means an identical weapon and remember that the Victory Destroyers were a joint Earth Minbar project, so it seams reasonably plausible that a black ops division of Earthforce would be able to pirate the blueprints somewhere along the line. No doubt it'd have Shadow tech, but the primary weapon would be based on the Vorlon principles.

Why are we using spoilers for unfilmed scripts on a 10 year old tv show?

 

[Reverend]

Mostly because not everyone has read those scripts and it's usually better safe than sorry when it comes to spoilerage.

 

[Trubinator]

I liked plenty of the non-JMS episodes, but the one that stands out the most for me was Day of the Dead, which was probably my favorite S5 episode pre-SIL.

 

[JoeD80]

Even with JMS deciding to write all the episodes, he should still have kept DiTillio on as story editor. Every writer needs an editor, and sometimes JMS definitely could've used someone to rein him in or balance him out. Just having someone else to do a pass on the scripts would've helped keep every character in the whole damn show from sounding like JMS.

Larry never edited jms' scripts even when he was on the show, and it was Joe's style at the time to have every character be a part of him. That's what he was going for.

Not to mention the fact that DiTillio wasn't invovled with Crusade but two other writers were.

Actually, Larry was commissioned to write a script for Crusade. It would have been later in the season if a full 22-episode order had been given.

 

[Jan]

Even with JMS deciding to write all the episodes, he should still have kept DiTillio on as story editor. Every writer needs an editor, and sometimes JMS definitely could've used someone to rein him in or balance him out. Just having someone else to do a pass on the scripts would've helped keep every character in the whole damn show from sounding like JMS.

Larry never edited jms' scripts even when he was on the show, and it was Joe's style at the time to have every character be a part of him. That's what he was going for.

Plus this explanation of how TV works:

In a TV series, the story editor *NEVER, EVER* rewrites the executive
producer. It would be a hideous breach of protocol. On MURDER, SHE WROTE
or JAKE, or other shows, I *never* touched my exec's scripts. The network
puts an executive producer/writer on premises for one singular reason
(not counting the one billion others): to set the tone for the writing for
everyone else to follow. They rely on YOU to absolutely govern that
aspect, or you're not doing your job, and betraying your commitment to the
network.

So when someone says "It's ego not to let the story editor revise the
executive producer's scripts," that betrays a total lack of understanding
of how television production works.

Actually, Larry was commissioned to write a script for Crusade. It would have been later in the season if a full 22-episode order had been given.

Spoiler: DiTillio episode

I believe it was to be one of the 'sword' episodes, wasn't it? The trio of episodes where Dureena diasappears and returns in possession of a sword (of power?)

Jan

 

[Christopher]

Larry never edited jms' scripts even when he was on the show, and it was Joe's style at the time to have every character be a part of him. That's what he was going for.

And it got very, very tiresome after a few years of having every character not just "be a part of" him, but talk exactly like him and exactly like each other. I think if one writer does one thing too long, the result is a rut that needs to be broken. It would've been a more satisfying show to listen to if somebody else had been allowed to write character dialogue and give us some variety. And I think that if JMS had paced himself more, saved his creative energies by sharing the workload with others, he wouldn't have burned out so fast. I think his work was deteriorating in the last two seasons of B5, and it hasn't improved since. I think he had a finite amount of really good work in him and he used it up too quickly.

 

[Yoda]

It's hard to have an opinion of the non-JMS episodes... the early ones were mostly sucky episodes amongst mostly sucky JMS episodes... doesn't really tell you much. Day of the Dead was probably better than average for S5, but it was up against the freaking Byron arc!

I think that if other writers were brought in to play with the Egomonster's universe throughout the entire run of the show it would have helped. As others have said, if nothing else the dialogue would have gotten some much needed variety.

 

[Jan]

And it got very, very tiresome after a few years of having every character not just "be a part of" him, but talk exactly like him and exactly like each other.

Have you actually seen/heard him in person? He doesn't sound like any of his characters. B5 had a certain style of dialogue from the beginning. Jeremiah had a completely different style. Changeling yet another, though there was one obvious nod to those who'd followed his previous work ("Never start a fight...").

I think if one writer does one thing too long, the result is a rut that needs to be broken. It would've been a more satisfying show to listen to if somebody else had been allowed to write character dialogue and give us some variety. And I think that if JMS had paced himself more, saved his creative energies by sharing the workload with others, he wouldn't have burned out so fast. I think his work was deteriorating in the last two seasons of B5, and it hasn't improved since. I think he had a finite amount of really good work in him and he used it up too quickly.

If you've read some of the early versions of the non-JMS scripts that were in the Other Voices script books, you understand that often the other writers didn't have a good handle on how the characters sounded.

Jan

 

[Kira Nerys]

Liked all of them .

 

[JoeD80]

The trio of episodes

Yes, Larry was to write one part of the three-parter for Crusade. Richard Mueller (who also wrote for Joe on The Real Ghostbusters) was also commissioned to write a script for the three-parter.

I think his work was deteriorating in the last two seasons of B5, and it hasn't improved since

Have you read the series "Midnight Nation"? The one-shot comic "Dream Police"? The novel Tribulations? IMO, all good work done after B5.