ATTN JMS: My Take on Season 5

[B5JMS Poster]

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From: "David Joslin" <ryoko at earthlink.com>
Date: 22 Feb 1998 14:05:56 -0700
Lines: 31

Unfortunately, Charles is right: season 5 _has_ lacked a sense of direction,
much less a sense of building and gathering and slowly accelerating movement
toward some great finale.

More, as it stands the arc lacks gravity: having saved the galaxy from the
Shadows & Vorlons, having saved Earth from facism, and (at least as regards
the principal characters) having proven themselves in the conflict,
demonstrating finely the greatness in their souls, the crew of B5 has no
work of comparably noble work yet to do. Resolving the teep-mundane dispute
and putting down the Shadow's servants seem much more the task of Telemachus
than of Ulysses. Hence Charles' sense of the ending as epilog.

I suppose JMS knows something of all this; his unprecedented and utterly
astonishing outpouring of spoilers is otherwise unintelligible. Still,
continuity is earned and not promised; it develops organically and not
merely retrospectively. Insisting that there is an arc on the basis of
future developments amounts to a cheat, and an embarassing one on the part
of a writer of JMS's stature. I am sorry he broke his customary silence.

It is easy enough to see these structural problems arise from the conundrum
of JMS's having to conclude the series at the end of season 4 and now again
at the end of season 5. Dickens at least knew exactly how many issues his
serials would run; his novels would have had precisely the same difficulties
Charles is voicing had his editors jerked him around by taking away and then
giving back a year's worth of copy space. The fault here certainly does not
lie in the writing.

For my part, I like Lochley, much to my surprise, and I look forward to
seeing the plot play out. JMS's main point holds: he has every opportunity
still to take the show to "that untravell'd world, whose margin fades/ For
ever and for ever when I move."

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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Date: 22 Feb 1998 23:18:27 -0700
Lines: 35

As long as I'm being unproducerish....

>Still,
>continuity is earned and not promised; it develops organically and not
>merely retrospectively. Insisting that there is an arc on the basis of
>future developments amounts to a cheat, and an embarassing one on the part
>of a writer of JMS's stature.

I'm sorry, but this comment ranks in the top ten percentile of astonishingly
paralogical remarks I've ever seen.  What you're saying here is that the ONLY
thing that constitutes an arc is if the audience sees it before it happens, if
it's told it's there...as opposed to an arc that becomes clear in the light of
FUTURE EVENTS.

But an arc IS A STORY THAT GOES INTO THE FUTURE EVENTS.  That is the very
DEFINITION of it.  How many people here said they started watching B5 in its
first season and didn't know there was an arc until "Signs and Portents?" 
Plenty, I've seen them.  So unless it's *predictible*, unless you've been
briefed ahead of time that something's coming, paying it off in the future,
which is how I'm writing it, doesn't count.

Yes, I referred to future developments because THAT IS WHAT AN ARC IS, future
developments.  

This is the most astonishing conversation I've had on the nets in months.

Excuse me, I think I'll go get a ball peen hammer and bang myself between the
eyes for a couple of hours, it'd be easier and less painful in the long run....


 jms

(jmsatb5 at aol.com)
B5 Official Fan Club at:
http://www.thestation.com
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