ATTN JMS: A few thoughts

[B5JMS Poster]

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From: bookter at scsn.net (Jerry Bookter)
Date: 20 May 1997 13:21:10 -0400
Lines: 33

Hi Joe--

First off, thanks. I really mean that, thanks. You are producing and writing what is just 
simply the best show on television, period, science fiction or otherwise. (I do have plenty 
of criticisms too but I'll save them for another post.) <g>

A few things have struck me as I look back over the course of the series run so far. You 
seem to be at your best when writing tragedy. The really big WHAM! episodes have been at 
least to me, the ones that feature horrible things happening (the destruction of Narn comes 
to mind as does the station's secession from Earth). I've been trying to figure out why this 
is so but the best I can come up with that it possibly reflects the viewer as much as the 
writer. Maybe the best example is "Passing Through Gethsemane". A true classical tragedy, 
yet through it runs a thread of hope. At the end Dourif's character dies, but he dies 
_heroically_, and achieves redemption. In the future we see that Londo (my favorite 
character BTW) will do the same. Perhaps all of B5 can be distilled own to one word: hope. 
They may look funny wearing all that rubber, but the aliens on the show are after all, 
literary creations that explore in various ways & especially from different angles the 
question of what it means to be _human_, and the eternal struggle to overcome our 
limitations, to become better, to be more than we are; and there's nothing like a little 
good old adversity to breed character.

Thanks again.


--Jerry in Columbia
WARP'der'n hell down South with OS/2 Merlin
*Visit Big Boy's Parrot-Approved Web Site at* 
http://www.scsn.net/users/bookter/bigboy.htm


... Every man is the architect of his own fortune. --Appius Claudius



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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Date: 23 May 1997 00:53:51 -0400
Lines: 12

The show is, just as you say, fundamentally about hope...and the power of
one person to change the world around him or her.  It says it ain't gonna
be easy, that it never has been and never will be...but if we just hang on
and keep fighting, we have at least a chance of making a better world.


 jms





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