grumbler
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I totaslly agree that The legend of the Rangers was dreadfull, and agree that that was completely JMS’s fault. The acting wasn’t bad, it was the concept and the dialogue that let the show down, and those were totally the responsibility of JMS.
However, I totally disagree that Crusade sucked. It was far more rich and deep than the first 13 episodes of Babylon 5 itself, and the concept for the rest of the five-year arc was great. The problem was that the show was strangled in its crib, and we saw some of he squirmings under the blanket (namely, the first six episodes aired, which were designed by TNT Atlanta to give them the excuse to pull the plug).
And [i]Thirdspace[/i] was not the last movie made, it was the second one made. It was a ripoff of HP Lovecraft (or an homage, if you prefer) and he similarities it shared with Wing Commander were at best incidental (unless WC was ripping off Lovecraft). I agree it was not very good overall, but it had some great acting that rescued it from the dialogue.
Now, if you want to bitch about [i]River of Souls[/i] you have to stand in line.
Now comes news from the mira-f yahoo group that, in response to a quesion about TMoS, Mira Furlan, at Visicon in Missouri during the weekend of Feb 19-20, 2005, revealed that there would be no movie for the time being:
[quote]Question and answer session at VisionCon – I think someone asked the question – she said “It’s dead” and something to the effect that jms would probably try to resurrect it at some point. She didn’t elaborate much more than that, at least not in public. And it’s basically what she repeated to various people who asked the question of her at the autograph table – I was sitting next to her the entire time she was autographing.[/quote]This kinda conforms to the vibes we all have been getting from JMS’s latest posts – that Wb features was not happy with the way things were shaping up.
Maybe the good news is that WB television will take advantage of this. That surely is the only good side to the movie cancellation I can see.
JMS’s comment on the news about recasting
[quote]I would like to be able to comment on this, but for the time being I am not
able to do so.jms[/quote][url]http://jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17259[/url]
Well, given that “Diane Baker” isn’t a current B5 charactor and is the mani charactor in the movie as written by JMS, I would argue that the movie was gonna do just what you say: have a new main charctor with the old cast in “supporting” roles. In fact, that is what would HAVE to happen given that JMS has said repeatedly that the story of Babylon 5 itself has been told and he won’t be revisiting it.
Recasting the original charactors is dumb, though. Better to have none of the original charactors in the film at all. I don’t think a movie needs big names to sell, though. It seems that The Lord of the Rings did just fine with a cast that was generally unknown before their appearance in it.
The reason for the feature film is to make the kind of money that a feature film can make, which dwarfs anything a TVM can make. Plus, with the virual guarantee of significant DVD sales (WB made more than $100 million on the sales of the series sets) made it seem like a no-lose situation. They seem to be rethinking the idea of distributing it themselves, though, so they may be following your line of reasoning.
I would have preferred a TVM myself, because it would be likelier to happen and would be in our hands sooner.
Hey, I can post here again! Every time for the last month or so, the site rejected my login. A new computer does wonders!
As for the movie project, JMS seems to feel it is on track. On August 24th he noted that “Oh, and in the next week or so I should be turning in the next-to-final draft of the TMoS screenplay.” Note that he is no longer pretending it may not be a movie.
Also, the Crusade series is due out in region 1 December 7th 2004.
The vibes I get from the reviews of the unfilmed scripts (I haven’t seen the scripts themselves) is that the renegade Earthforce types who were exploiting the leftover shadowtech were in possession of the answer to the plague (which had to do with the fact that the plague was “intelligent” and centrally directed) and that the Crusade crew found out too much about the actual state of the shadowtech experiments while gaining the info that lead to the cure to be “allowed to get away alive” – which was to be the basis of the actual five year arc for Crusade.
My guess as to the plot of the new movie is that it follows this plot line – including the involvement of the PsiCorps in such experiments, and the Telepath War that results when the “mundanes” find out how much the PsiCorps has to do with the secret “leftover shadowtech” experiments.
A summary of what i think I know, and a prediction with a spoiler warning:
Okay, so and what do we know about [i]B5: TMoS[/i]?
1. It is definately a theatrical release.
2. The name is [i]The Memory of Shadows[/i]
3. It was to iclude Richard Biggs (“Doctor Franklin”), who recently died of a burst aorta.
What can we surmise?
1. It will include some, if not all, of the original cast (based on the fact that RB was included and JMS has always said that his first feature would “reward” the cast).
2. It will have sub-plots that include both the real plot of [i]Crusade[/i] (which is to say the attempt by rogue Earthforce and PSi Corps elements to exploit leftover Shadow tech) and the technomages. Both of these based on clues JMS left in his Hawthorne, NJ appearance.
3. That it will cover the Telepath War (based both on his clues at Hawthorne and the fact that he has always said this would be the story of the first movie).
4. That the reason B5 and all derivatives are not being shown anywhere world-wide is because WB thinks the rights will be worth more soon.
Now, if we want to be really clever, we can guess what the story will be about. And, as I am clever ( 🙄 ) I will do that, after a brief
******** spoiler warning for B5 and the Technomage series*************
Highlight to see (and please do NOT quote as it may then be visible)
[color=black]I think the way this all hangs together with what we have seen on-screen, what had appeared in the novels, and what has happened in the movie industry in the last few years, is that this is a trilogy of movies. The basic plot line is that the Psi Corps, either alone or with help, is attempting to create new technomages. Some are both Teeps and technomages, a seemingly unbeatable combination. The first movie concentrates on the eforts to defeat the greatest seeming peril, that of the Psi Corps creating Teep TMs. The remainder deal with tracking down the source of this technology, and do not necessarily feature the B5 main cast.We know from the technomage novels that the technomage technology was created by the Shadows but therafter overseen by the Drakh, and the Drakh remain a part of the B5 universe even though the Shadows have departed. Whether the Drakh are directly helping the renegade forces or whether the Psi Corps is stealing the info isn’t clear as yet. But this plotline, taken in particular from what we saw of the never-shot [i]Crusade[/i] scripts, makes a lot of sense. Galen in [i]Crusade[/i] was to run up against what seemed to be an insane pseudo-technomage at an Earthforce base in the JMS-written episode [i]To the Ends of the Earth[/i], which was to have been the first-season finale.
BTW, the [i]Excalibur[/i] was going to discover the cure for the plague in something like episode three of season two, but then be forced “on the lam” by the machinations of the renegade Earthforce types controlling the Shadow tech.[/color]
********** end spoilers *******************What else do we know?
1. That JMS is going to executive-produce a new series starting no earlier than next mid-season changeover. Even the type of show is unknown until it is revealed by the network.
2. That JMS was offered the helm of [i]Enterprise[/i] for the upcoming season but turned it down in favor of the guy they eventually brought into it.
3. That there is another project now green-lighted, that JMS said “wasn’t it” when referring to B5:TMoS – my guess is that it is the B5 computer game [i]Into the Fire [/i]but I have nothing whatever to back that up.
So, my cards are on the table. Any takers?
On the 15 June post, my ideas are this:
1. I doubt the new adjunct project is a TV series. WB has been stunned and pleased by the DVD sales (basically, they recouped the entire costs of the first three seasons at least through DVD sales alone), but planning a new series before the movie is even started seems way premature to me. It could be a miniseries to “whet the appetites” for the movie, or it could be something less obvious. But it has to be one of the things [i]The Memory of Shadows[/i] wasn’t, and a lot of them (animated series, comic book, radio play) don’t make much sense. But another one of the things it wasn’t was a computer game, and we know that [i]Into the Fire[/i] by Sierra was over 90% complete when it was shelved. Given the propensity for movie/game tie-ins, I would regard this as a good bet.
2. On the new show he is EPing, I have little idea, save that this is the likeliest thing besides TMoS that would get him to London in time to see his play produced there. I recall that about 4 years ago he and Josh Wheden were very close to doing a TV series together, and this may be the culmination of that effort now that Wheden is done with Buffy and Angel and soon will be done with Firefly (which I believe is in shooting now). JW will be ready for a series in 2005, and if JMS is going to England in, say, the fall, it may be connected with the TV series, and JW has been interested in a revival of the [i]Dark Shadows[/i] series in Victorian England if rumor is true. Not much chance of all this coincidental stuff being true, but it is an interesting set of circumstances.
3. On the “coded message” to England and Australia, I have to believe that this is the news that the R2 and R4 movie sets will have all five movies in the boxed set, rather than the three previously announced (their sets as announced lacked ItB and tg, because those had already been released). Another possibility is that JMS himself has decided to attend some cons in those countries because now he has a reason to do so.
4. On the new book series: great news. The three trilogies were very strong and I am looking forward to more of them.
[quote=”LexxLurker”]You can also find it on the front page of Sadgeezer.com [url=http://www.sadgeezer.com/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=211]here[/url]
Thanks though grumbler! :wink:[/quote] You know, I thought about making this “news” but decided against it because I wasn’t sure it was “worthy.” Now I know! 😆
Well, JMS posted a few more tidbits today. You can find the whole post (including some info on the Biggs memorial service) [url=http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17108]here[/url] but the two key points for fans are:
1. that the title is, indeed, [i]The Memory of Shadows[/i] and
2. that Richard Biggs was to be in it (and by inference the movie features the original cast).Biggs died of an aortal tear, according to the LA Times. It is, unfortunately, almost instantly fatal.
I agree that it was an excellent ep. I knew about #1 but didn’t catch 2 &3.
It is probably the “Bestest Bester” episode they ever did. 8) I loved how coldly they handled the “mundane” at the end. It was an insight into Bester more powerful than anything else he did in the series.
[quote=”Headgehog”] Nice one! I can add it to the review if you’d like.[/quote] De nada. I was just offering feedback to you, and don’t feel really competant to interpret your style.
[quote]I normally use the pub paragraph to sneak in some good and/or cheap jokes about the character. Occasionally I use it to offer insights. But in Galen’s case, I was purposefully going for something demeaning, without being too evil. [i] you should have seen some of my rough drafts… those would have gotten some hate mail[/i].[/quote] I know. You don’t like him as much as I do, but that’s okay. It makes reading your stuff far more interesting!
[quote]Thank-you, it was my pleasure. Writing up these reviews can be a lot of fun. And I most certainly enjoy feedback, of any kind.[/quote] I would say they are the best part of the site, if I wasn’t afraid of offending someone else! 🙂My guess would be the feature flick. That’s just a guess, though, and someone else would just as likely guess that they have outlived their usefull lives, maybe.
Nice charactor reviews, but I feel you have missed Galen’s essential charactor with your “if you met him in a pub” description. IMO, it should read,
“If you were to see Galen in a pub, he would be the one sitting in a corner, people-watching. If you asked him how he was doing, he would reply “suprisingly well, considering the circumstances” and then go on “and you are remarkably cheerful, considering what is about to happen to [b]you[/b]!”
I don’t regard Galen as a git, per se, but merely a Cassandra, doomed to know things that will bring grief to others. He is a “Kosh who feels the weight of being Kosh-like.”
If you have read the Technomage trilogy, his “assholiness” becomes more understandable, though not really more human.
In any case, I enjoyed these profiles as much as all the others, which is to say a lot. I keep trying to bring other people to this site, and think I will now post links to your charactorizations as further advertisements. Thanks for your efforts.
[quote=”bambooshoot”] Does that make me a junkie? [/quote] Not until you actually buy a season DVD! 😆
The ides of May have come and gone, and still no definative word. Since The WB has announced their schedule for next seaon, the TV series on the WB has to be discarded. It now seems all but certain that this is a feature.
Still no definative word, and the tension is getting pretty high on the fan boards! 🙁
A report filed on B5TV.com by one of the fans today:
[quote]JMS was at a Comic Book Convention to help raise money for Hawthorne High School’s floundering art program. I’m sure you’ll be getting much more info because I met people from both the Moderated site and JMSnews.com.The day just finished with JMS generously answering questions for an hour and a half. The Q&A took place in a large classroom where someone had written J. M. Straczynski: TMoS 101, on the blackboard which he erased when he came into the room. There was much joking about the TMoS project all through the session. He said he wished he could talk about it but couldn’t. However, halfway through when someone asked a question about the Mages he pointed to the erased blackboard without saying a word. Later, when someone asked about Crusade he again pointed to the erased blackboard. Was he joking? We’ll soon know.
[/quote]
While it would be fun to think JMS is going to give us something in this movie about both the Crusade and Technomage arcs, it is unfortunately just like JMS to pull our legs in matters like this.Only a week or so until we know (the “Ides of May”).
Nice review. One of the key plot elements, I thought, was the similarity of this virus to the nanotech used in “The Memory of War” (and those who have read the Technomage Trilogy can understand that similarity). It thus opened the possibility that the Drakh virus could be reprogrammed.
For me it was [i]Sleeping in light[/i], the final B5 episode. The fact that it was all planned from day 1 to end with this episode (if not quite in this fashion) made it easy for JMS to set up some great final visuals. And the recitation by Ivanova of the “moral” of the 5 year tale was very moving.
Interesting note from JMS on the usenet 1/12/2004 about this episode:
[quote]For S5 I did commentaries on The Fall of Centauri Prime and Sleeping in Light. The latter was the hardest, since it was the first time I’d seen the episode since it aired. (I just couldn’t, it was too hard.)
I should have done so, though, because when we got to B5’s destruction, I’m ashamed to admit that my voice broke, it just hit me so hard. After we were done, i wanted to go back and do it again, to fix that, which I thought was unprofessional, but the WB boys prevailed upon me to leave it alone. I just hope it doesn’t come across as dumb or something.
jms[/quote]
DuLt,
The last episode in the series proper (i.e. in sequential time) is, indeed, [i]Objects at Rest[/i].
The episode [i]Sleeping in Light [/i] takes place 20 years “after the action” (and I agree with HH that I wish it were possible to see it again for the first time, as it were). I have a thread on that topic somewhere down the line, but don’t read it until you have seen the ep. JMS noted on the usenet recently that he broke down a bit during the taping of his commentary for that episode on the season 5 DVD – you will have that to look forward to, as WB convinced him to leave that moment untouched (those who have seen the ep will know EXACTLY the moment Joe’s voice broke).
The episode [i]The Deconstruction of Falling Stars[/i] was filmed at the start of the fifth season in time to air as the final ep of the fourth season. It takes place anywhere from one to one million years in the future. That’s the ep where you see the “fully evolved” humans.
Something I did not know until recently that the “New earth” they are moving to in that ep is, apparently, the Vorlon home world. Hence Lyta’s comment that the VHW was closed “for a million years.” I wonder how the Vorlons knew?
I guess I should have seen it (Joe loving “prophecy” so much) but I didn’t. I though Lyta’s was a throw-away line, but maybe there is no such beastie in JMS’s writing!
Lexx,
None of the three titles you propose (great though they are) had been posted by the time JMS said that the real one had been posted! 🙁
I think most of the speculators are focussing on
The Memory of Shadows, and
The Movement of Shadows
with the former being overwhelmingly more popular, as far as I can see.But you are correct that the speculation based on those favorite titles all seem to be based on the concept of leftover Shadow tech. Clearly, it is a direction JMS has wanted to explore based on the planned future of [i]Crusade[/i] (in which the [i]Excalibur[/i]’s mission was going to turn out to [b]really[/b] be the saving of Earth from secret organizations inside Earthforce who were going to use Shadow tech to take over the planet… and maybe the galaxy).
There has been a slight delay, as noted by JMS on January 29th:
“It’s taken longer than hoped for to be able to talk about this, because it’s taken longer than hoped for to go through all the machinations of the deal. Depending on the nature of a given deal, it can take a few weeks to a couple, three months to actually cut the deal and finalize the language in terms everybody can agree with. We only literally finished the deal last week.
Writing on B5:TMoS is complete, and as soon as the powers that be sign off on everything, it can be turned in and we can start moving. At that point, I can say more about this.
Figure another couple of weeks.
jms”
Naturally, speculation has been rampant as to the meaning of “TMoS” and JMS noted on the 30th (after a lot of guesses):
“Just to honk you off even further about all th is…in the speculation of titles…one of you was correct.
jms”
According to one of the posters on the google group, these are the suggestions that had actually been made by the time JMS announced one was correct:
Babylon 5: The Meanng of Spoo
Theatrical Movie, original Story
The mother of Sheridan
The Minbari of Steel
The Mollari of Spoo
Triluminary-Modified operating System
The Man of Steel
Too Many odd Suggestions
B5:TMoS – Theatrical Movie of Sorts
B5:TMoS – Telepaths Move on Saturday
B5:TMoS – Terribly Mean of Straczynski
Babylon5: The MIND of Straczynski
The Meatballs of Swedes
The Marriages of Sheridan
The Mutation of Sinclair
The Men of Space
The Mammaries of Susan
The Meaninglessness of Speculation.
The Minstrations of Sugar
Telepath Monopoly of Space
Trans Morphing Optical Stuff
The Meaning of Sh*t
The Mighty Obvious Script
The Mound of Scripts
The Movie of Surprises
Time Makes Our Society
Twenty Minbari Order Sandwiches
The Movie Script
The Memory of Shadows
The Movement of Shadows
The Mark of Shadows
The Memory of Sheridan
The Murder of Shiv’kala
The Martyrdom of Sinclair
The Mystery of Souls
Telepath Minds on Speed
Babylon 5: The Music of Sondheim
Babylon 5: The Making of the Series
B5: The Misdirection of Speculation
Telepathic Mindwipe of Sheridan.
Terrific Marvels of Space (a documentary)
Babylon Five : Total Marmallisation of Spacestation
That Mean Ol’ Straczynski (from B5_Obsessed at b5tv.com)
The Movement of Starlight
Two Marsupials on Speed
Talia, Marcus, or Susan
Terribly Mean of Straczynski
Babylon 5: The Myth of Souls
Babylon 5: The Myth of Shadows
Babylon 5: The Mystery of Sheridan
Techno-Mages of Silliness
Techno-Mages of Song
Techno-Mages on Strike
The Movie on Sunday
The Movie opposite SuperBowl
Telepaths: Meet our Sponsor
Throw Morden off Station
The Mouth of SheridanNot many seem like likely candidates, eh?
There is a B5 mod to Space Empires 4, but that is a strategic game and not likely what you are looking for. More on the B5 SE4 mod at [url]http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=23;t=004079[/url].
Great action scenes (Jackson’s forte) interspersed with silliness that no good producer (Jackson’s achilles’ heel) would have allowed. The Rhohirrim should have been whipped up out of sight of the enemy and then their charge should have been a surprise to the orcs – would have been far more effective.
Denethor should have been left out, as should the silly Gondorian cavalry charge with lances against buildings.
The Dead shouldn’t have been used as a deus ex machina to wipe out all the orcs. As it turned out, the entire existance of the Rhohirrim (and the Gondorians) was unnecesary, as the Dead Dudes could have saved Gondor on their own (and killed every orc in Mordor, for that matter).
The movie should have, instead, featured Aragorn’s deception that he had the ring. That was key (in the books) to Sauron’s preoccupation with the forces of the West, and would have taken no additional onscreen time to explain.
The rest of the action bits I accept as Peter doing what Peter does best, but I thought the heart of the story simply wasn’t there. The good guys all just suffered because that is what good guys do.
Pity Jackson never read the books before doing the movies. What a treat we would have had if he didn’t rely on others’ interpretations of the books, or if there had simply been a producer involved who was determined to ensure that the best bits from the books got into the movies.
It was still a great flick, though. I loved getting dizzy watching the hobbits crawl up the stairs past Minas Morgul, and the special effects for the battles will by themselves convince me to get the DVDs, flaws and all. I would give it a B grade.
I just got the S4 set in the mail from Amazon (and it was only shipped yesterday free via USPS – I am impressed!)
I naturally set out to watch all the original stuff first – the commentary, specials, and bloopers. I must say that the commentaries were subpar compared to the rest of the DVD sets. There were two main problems.
First, the cast commentary had too many people: Boxleitner, Doyle, Jurasik, and Tallman. When they were on, they were very, very funny. Through most of the episode (“Falling toward Apotheosis”), though, they seemed afraid of stepping on one another and so kept silent. They were also (bar Jurasik and especially Tallman) woefully ignorant of the episode, and so kept stating clunkers like “why did I do this?” The least they could have done was watch the episode ahead of time so as not to sound like boobs. When Doyle said “Maybe I should have watched this series” in the season 2 commnetaries it was funny. The joke has worn thin by now.
Second, JMS shares one of the commentaries with director Mike Vejar, and selects the mosy unlikely episode of them all for his own commentary. The co-Vejar ep, “Faces of the Enemy” is an excellent episode to show the directorial side of things, and Vejar should have been left to himself for that one. The solo JMS episode, “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars” wasn’t worth a commentary. It was obviously quickly written, filmed, and edited to make the schedule to be shown at the end of season four (because it wasn’t started until the beginning of season five, so it could replace the season-four-ending “Sleeping in Light”) and quite frankly was a clunker of an episode. JMS’s commentary seems an attempt to lift up its rep but the show and his defense of it just demonstrate the severe (and understandable) shortcomings under which it was filmed.
I think JMS commentaries on “The Long Night” and “Epiphanies” would have been more appropriate (or maybe “Endgame” instead of one of the above).
To be totally picky, I loved the original Christopher Franke orchestral score done for the DVD, but have to ask why it couldn’t have been done as a accompaniment to a chronological video representation of the series? As it is, the video messes with time quite badly. In chrono order, it would have been more powerful and maybe could have been released to the music video channels as an ad for the show. Even better would have been the chrono video with the music PLUS SOUNDS that made CF’s work so striking. The purely musical element left out half of CF’s repertroire.
The eps themselves seem quite well-done, with better CGI than in the past, though I have only had a chance to see a couple of eps.
[quote=”Headgehog”]I don’t mean to be critical of anyones’ posts here, but I think we’re doing that speculation thing that he asked us not to do. [/quote] When JMS askes us not to speculate, he is referring to speculating on the usenet site where he himself appears (I think he is concerned about the “silence implies consent” issue) not the fan boards. I am sure he understands perfectly well that his announcement will lead to speculation on boards like this – and in fact that almost surely is why he reveals these kinds of things. It keeps the juices flowing and the franchise alive.
[quote=”snooklepie”]…would such a story deal with what ultimately happens to Lyta Alexander? Bester? i would love to see what the future of a character such as he would be like.[/quote] The fate of Lyta has, indeed, been kept under wraps. [i]The Fate of Bester[/i] is, in fact, the title of the third book in the [i]Psi Corps [/i]trilogy, so if you canot wait, get the book and find out! 😉
Note that the trilogy deals [b]not at all [/b]with the Teep wars – it only covers the prequel and sequel to the war. That’s probably my Exhibit A in the “JMS is keeping the Teep Wars for a feature film” theory.
[quote=”Nebagram”]A Teep wars series would be so awesome, but I too was of the impression that JMS was saving that for a feature film (which would be the better option, IMO, but never mind)…[/quote] If I am reading the tea leaves right, JMS was always saving the Teep Wars for a feature. However, the stock of B5-realted materials has taken a huge hit since he mapped out his strategy, with two failures in a row (though the books have done nicely, that’s only “nicely” compared to other small-niche-market books.
So, I don’t really think the money would be there for a theatrical flick, much as I would love to believe otherwise. In a way, that’s good, because from script completion to theatrical release would be years.
Even if it is only a TV miniseries, I think JMS needs to bring out his best concepts to the next B5 product, and the Teep Wars are almost certainly that. Plus, he could get the series actors to play the roles now, when their chronological age is correct for the role, not five years from now when things would be more difficult.
[quote]… if memory serves correctly, no one, not even a [i]fan[/i], has been as enthusiastic about a B5 revival as Jerry Doyle has been.[/quote] True, but Doyle has been talking about just a continuation of the series. Straczinski has already said he has zero interest in writing for such a project, and Katsulas and Jurasik have already also said that they will not return to a series unless it is at least partially written by JMS. So, I think Doyle’s effort is doomed to fail, but at least Jerry has kept the name of the franchise in play.
All we can do is keep doing our part to make sure the DVD sales are strong, and hope for the best. And I think the Teep Wars would be “the best” even if only in a miniseries format.
[quote=”Nebagram”]My fave would have to be the entire last fifteen minutes of “Z’Ha’Dum”. From the bit where the Shadows surround B5 to Sheridan’s final leap into the abyss, the hair on the back of your neck stands on end and doesn’t go down until the credit sequence.
Sheer brilliance.[/quote] Word! But note again that it is all the music, and in fact was more than 25 minutes long. Boxleitner doesn’t speak but half a dozen lines of dialogue for that whole period, and Delenn none, but what you remember are the looks on his face and hers at the end, along with the music that tells you what they are feeling. Great stuff.And the music that accompanies the otherwise charactorless and robotic “Death Ride of the White Star” is maybe the best Franke did until “Sleeping in Light.”
[quote=”fluffy bunny”]….. ‘All power to engines. Give me ramming speed’[/quote] Thoug others have commented on it, I also always wondered why everyone ordered “ramming speed” like it was a different speed than “full speed.” Did the EA navy actually PRACTICE ramming speed, and if not what were the poor schmoes in engineering supposed to think when they got that order? 😀
It was a great moment, though, I agree – though made so by Franke’s music during and just after that scene – otherwise it risked being hackneyed and cliched..
And made even more of a moment by Leftcourt’s “sorry we were late” line.
This topic hasn’t been milked nearly enough!
Of course, EVERYONE liked the scene where Delenn rides to the rescue in [i]Severed Dreams [/i]but my favorite part of the whole series was probably the Minbari Civil War, and especially Neroon’s* confrontation with Shakiri at the end of it… “but YOU said that life and death were merely two possible outcomes, neither to be desired above the other… that death was merely a release from our obligations… ” and then asks him what he is willing to die for. A great moment, and there is a great resolution to the conflict. But Neroon is gone, and there is still a full season of B5 to go!
* the series didn’t have NEARLY as much Neroon as it needed, and the same actor’s appearance as the MiniPax’s “Mr Welles” nearly ruined the whole thing, since the actor’s voice is so distinctive.
I haven’t got all the links I collected about this topic on this machine, but from what I understand JMS to be saying, the new project is:
1. Babylon 5, not a spinoff
2. Not a series
3. Not print media
Now, that seems to me to mean that it is either a TV miniseries or a feature flick. Given the money involved in the latter, and the fact that the series it is being derived from is neither Trek nor a 1960s TV series that you can recast, i am betting for the former.
If I had to guess a subject, I would say its finally the Teep Wars. I know JMS has been keeping this back as the topic of a feature film 9which is why the series and books just skip right over it) but even if it is a TV miniseries I think he has to realize that he won’t be able to have his stars around forever, and the only subject that seems worthy of all the hoopla would be the Teep wars.
Anything as bland as the bulk of the TV movies or [i]The Legend of the Rangers[/i] would kill the franchise dead. JMS needs to hit a home run with this one, and his best-developed idea HAS to be the Teep Wars.
Comments?
It would have been hard to kill off Ivanova during season 4 as she had some arc-play left in her (and while Lyta picked up the Byron arc, I cannot imagine Lyta playing Ivanova’s role in Sleeping in Light!). JMS clearly had the “battered old warhorse” fate in store for her for some time. I agree that the “Marcus sacrifice” bit was overplayed (because surely they could have had many volunteers willing to each give up a bit of lifespan for her and so avoid the “all or nothing” nature of the sacrifice) but Joe indulged in a bit of deus ex machina on purpose in that arc, I thinkl.
Imagine the possibilities for the fifth season if CC had stayed on, and played out the role of Byron’s lover. Sheridan and Garibaldi are now caught in a situation where they cannot even trust the station commander’s judgement when it comes to the telepaths! There could have been some excellent dramas played out along those lines!
Yeah, JMS himself shutting out the lights (and NOT escaping, according to some! 😀 ) was a gret feature, but foreshadowed by JMS himself and so not that surprising to me.
Charactors disappearing aren’t unusual in a show (and we never saw why bester disappeared, for instance, or a whole bunch of others) but killing off the stars is kinda rare. In the most famous such case (“Dallas”), they had to decide that an entire season and a half of the show was a dream to bring back somebody they had killed off.
No, JMS’s killings-off were homicide premeditated. None of the “stars’ just disappeared with lame excuses, they were executed right in front of us.
The only charactor that died after “Objects at Rest” (at least, those that we didn’t know were doomed, like Londo and G’Kar and Sheridan) was Lita Alexander, and we pretty much knew her fate after season 5, so I am not sure the caveat is significant. My point was simply that the plot arc doomed a whole bunch of charactors, and that was both moving and significant (both from the standpoint of JMS’s vision and the standpoint of reviving the series).
Personally, I like the series per se to be finished, and want any future eps/movies to expand on it, not reflect on it.
“The eye that does not see” is G’Kar after Cartagia finishes with him.
“The one who is dead” is Sheridan.
“That which you fear most” is the Watcher that the Drakh put on Londo, when he surrenders to them after the Battle of Centauri Prime.
I think JMS has said pretty much exactly this.
Depending on what punctuation one chooses to put into the spoken phrases, the intro dialogue might also have been:
No. 6: Who is Number 1?
No. 2: You are, Number 6.Kinda changes the meaning, no?
By the way, the digital version finally allowed me to solve a personal mystery: did the script and CGI on [i]Severed Dreams[/i] disagree?
They DID!
The ship the [i]Chruchill[/i] rams is the [i]Roanoke[/i]. The ship blasted by B5 and [i]Alexander[/i] was, in fact, the [i]Agrippa[/i]. Sheridan calls for a targetting solution on [i]Roanoke[/i], thinks he is firing on it, and calls for its surrender, but in the special effects, all of that happens to [i]Agrippa[/i].
Given the time constraints the show was under (and the fact that they brought in outside firms to help finish the CGI) this is understandable, but I [b]thought[/b] something didn’t fit. Nice to get a chance to prove it to myself. Bless the digital revolution! 8)
JMS has said that his understanding is that it is a done deal, based on the strong sales of the B5 DVDs to date. Right now B5’s Season 3 is ranked #17 at Amazon- pretty good for a cult product with little advertizing.
[quote=”SadGeezer”]Excellent post Grumbler – very informative ( oh, and welcome!)
What did you think about the DVD quality (as compared with what is rapidly becoming the defacto dtandard for series DVD quality, Anegl or Buffy (or of that standard). I’ve not been very happy with navigation and graphics but the video quality was superb for the other two seasons.
Interesting comments about the interviews, can’t wait to see them myself!! :)[/quote]
Thanks for the welcome. I have lurked here for a while, but the release of Season 3 got my creative juices flowing to the point where I had to share! 😀
The DVD quality has the same problems as the other seasons, i.e. the mismatch between the filmed and CGI resolutions. Not noticeable on TV, but noticable if you watch on your computer and stop or zoom.
Sound seemed even better in this DVD than the first two, and it was pretty good even then. [i]Severed Dreams [/i]with the music cranked up is very, very moving (especially the choral bit when the Narns do their “Picket’s Charge”).
Its kinda ironic that the DS9 defenders mostly defend their show by pointing out the seasons when they started to copy B5’s ideas (like the story arc, the ship available to the commander, the secretive but castly powerful enemy, etc). And I happen to agree with them!
DS9 got pretty good towards the end. I think that it didn’t have a final episode NEARLY as compelling as B5 did, but overall it ended on a stronger note than B5 did, IMO.
Of course, we all know that B5’s final season was gutted by the cancellation during the 4th season and the last-minute reprieve.
Imagine what JMS could have done with the DS9 budget though! (drool)
I have it in hand. It is quite a pleasure to be able to see [i]Severed Dreams[/i] again without the wear on my old tape…
I naturally watched the stuff that was new first. That consists of:
1. JMS commentary on Severed Dreams, the finest episode of the series,
2. JMS commentary on Z’ha’dum, the final episode of the third sesaon
3. Commentary by Boxleitner, Doyle, Biggs (Dr. Franklin) and Wasser (Morden) on Interludes and Examinations, which was episode 315
4. 3 documentaries on the set and makeup design,
5. A “data file” with personnel and miscelleaneous topics.
6. An “easter egg” with bloopers/outtakesThe JMS description of SD was very good. He rightly liked the episode a lot (it won a ton of awards, including the Hugo) and had some interesting comments about how much they decided to blow the budget on this one. His comments on editing were especially interesting (particularly where they dealt with his complete trust in Chritsopher Franke’s music – at two points they left the sound effects from the series as shot to rely wholely on Franke’s music). The show epitomizes the series as a whole, and JMS’s comments on why he did what he did were right on. I never realized that he had cast Rance Howard (Ron Howard’s dad) as Sheridan’s father without even a casting call, based on Rance’s work in Ron’s movies. It certainly was an inspired choice (Boxlitner noted on The Lurker’s Guide that the whoe crew would stop to listen to Rance Howard’s lines).
JMS’s commentary on Z was even more interesting. He was far more critical of himself as writer, noting that today he would have used half the diologue to get the same effect in some of the longer scenes. Also wothy of note was several shortcuts they took to stay within budget, as they had pretty much used all of it in Severed Dreams and Shadow Dancing and Z was produced on the cheap. He was, however, proud of the way he balanced what the audience knew that the charactors did not with the reverse. And, of course, this was an episode more filled with “fulfilling prophecy” than most, and he was glad he was able to draw in all the strands he had strung in the whole buildup to “Z.”
The most inetresting single thing he said was at the very end of the Z commentary, when he thanked the fans for sticking with “the four years of Babylon five and the additional year.”
The only really interesting thing in the cast commentary was that every one of them really, really respected the work of Stephan Furst. Even when they made fun of them with their “he’ll always be Flounder” remarks, they also noted that “no matter what my dialogue, when he is on-screen the audience will follow him.” They have the usual kudos for Jurissic and Katsulas. I was happy to see Ed Wasser get some air time, as his was always one of the more interesting charactors. He loved playing the sleek bad guy. Nobody else said anything they hadn’t said before.
Nothing revolutionary in the documentaries or the data files.
I really, really wish they had not chosen I&E for the cast commentary. Far better would have been Boxleitner, Doyle, Biggs, and either Claudia Christian or Jason Carter doing commentary on Shadow Dancing, which for my money was the second-best episode in the whole series. Even better would have been some special effects people talking about the same, as this was a episode which used special effects very well to create emotion, while the cast was reduced in large part to acting in front of blue screens.
All in all, easily the best season of B5, but not the best DVD from the standpoint of “new information.” Of course, a lot of the new stuff was going to be released earlier anyway (how many times can you hear the cast talk about how grateful they were for not being an alien in prosthetics?) but you could have hoped for some new cast members besides Ed Wasser (and the pretty much uncommunicative Stephan Biggs). How about Furlan or Katsulas or Jurasik or Tallman or Mumy or Fuerst or…
