Attn:JMS Kudos, Kudon'ts and other points of interest.

B5JMS Poster b5jms-owner at shekel.mcl.cs.columbia.edu
Tue Sep 3 06:36:30 EDT 1996


Subject: Attn:JMS Kudos, Kudon'ts and other points of interest.
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 No. | DATE        |  FROM
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+  1: Aug 31, 1996: JAJ <cairbre at wolfenet.com>
*  2: Sep  3, 1996: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)

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From: JAJ <cairbre at wolfenet.com>
Lines: 83

I have no idea if anything in her is a spoiler, so I'm going to despoil
it just in case

Start of Spoiler Space.










Part Way Through Spoiler Space









Almost There










Okay, We Made it.

	First of all, I have to ask, have you been studying at the Harlan
Ellison School of Rants and Repartee'? Your reply to Herr Fuller was
delightful in the extreme. 
	Clear, concise and not once resorting to attack or provocation. It must
be a bugger all nuisance when your troll comes back with a live grenade.
Ah well, life will go on.
	Now, to the meat of it all. I've just finished a marathon session of
recorded eps. I have consistently noticed an issue that creates a
glaring continuity gap for me and a large number of my friends.
	When the B-5 security staff is engaged in some form of combat, there is
no effort made to seek effective cover. I suspect the, "stand upright in
the center of the corridor and pray nobody shoots back", is a dramatic
issue, not necessarily a technical one.
	My personal profession is deeply involved in personal, site and
organizational security and I've found the day to day operations of
B-5's security section to be admirably realistic. I also realize that
this is a fairly petty point and is completely dismissable by most of
the viewers. But (knew there had to be a "but", didn't you) one of the
things that has kept my enraptured for the entire series and about a
bazillion reruns on video, is the internal consistency with both
"reality" and the reality as you've defined it for B-5.
	Having the security officers effect their apprehensions and engage in
their battles from positions of good cover, demonstrating good tactics
can be brilliantly effective on the screen. No, it doesn't have the
dramatic, "High Noon face off", appeal of Zack and company squared off
against all comers, but it does have the appeal of the confusion and
visual dynamics of a firefight.
	Okay... pedantry mode off. 
	Joe, you hear it all the time but I have to say, "thank you."
	Not necessarily for B-5 alone, but for the way in which you handle your
position. I had the dubious "honor" of meeting Roddenberry a number of
years ago. He was a pompous, pretentious ass who would do anything to
say exactly what he thought you wanted to hear. His own agrandizement
was outstripped only by his inane assertions of the superiority of his
"universe". I have yet to see you drop to this. For that, for
compromising where you need to for business and technical reasons but
not tossing your ethos aside, for accidentally shitting on a fan's head
and then making it right, I sincerely salute you and thank you.
				Jeff James

P.S. To the rest of you, I'm sorry this is as long winded and nit-picky
as it is, it says something for B-5 that this is the only thing that
I've bothered to address. Thank you all, as well, for sticking it out
through this post.



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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Lines: 11

We do sometimes use cover for our security teams, as we did in "The Long
Dark" and "Ceremonies of Light and Dark," but the problem is that our sets
aren't really set up for that sort of thing as a rule.  But we do it where
we can.



 jms



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