JMS on CompuServe (Jan 13, 1998) *POSSIBLE SPOILERS*
bbarrett at speedlink.com
bbarrett at speedlink.com
Wed Jan 14 01:53:31 EST 1998
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The following posts may contain SPOILERS for
upcoming Babylon 5 episodes.
Continue at your own risk.
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THE FOLLOWING MATERIAL IS THE COPYRIGHT OF THE
RESPECTIVE MESSAGE AUTHORS AND CANNOT BE
REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT THE EXPRESSED
PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.
Note that JMS has expressed his public permission
that all of his messages may be reproduced freely.
I give permission for my summaries to be reposted in
any form, however I reserve all rights to them and
the right to revoke this permission at any time.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Archives of this material may be found at:
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[ Summary of subjects in this section: ]
Sb: #14623-#Returning Fan
Sb: #14833-Returning Fan
Sb: #14689-Did I _really_ see...?
Sb: #14692-#Newton's Laws...
Sb: #14710-#Marcus....why
Sb: #14730-#Be These Truly Reruns?
Sb: #14722-<In The Beginning>
#: 14623 S2/Bab 5: General
12-Jan-98 07:02:01
Sb: #14506-Returning Fan
Fm: DAVID DERUBEIS
>>Londo is the classic case for me. He seemed like a trivial idiot to me
early on. But watching him in "In the Beginning" (and I also caught a couple
of early shadow war episodes) completely brought me around. What's
interesting to me is that it seems as though the depth of character was
_always_ there, I just didn't see it before. They've done that by sticking to
the storyline, and developing the foreshadowing hints that they dropped early
on that I simply didn't take note of before. I'm a bit ashamed as an avid SF
fan to have missed that aspect, but it's _television_! It's not _supposed_ to
be any good!<<
I dropped B5 in the middle of the first season, but I returned in the middle
of season two. A big reason they lost me in season one was exactly that; it's
very easy to watch it through the prism of previous TVSF. So much of what I
was seeing seemed to be the same sort of stuff which had turned me off about
other shows. In fact, Joe was playing with our expectations; the stuff which
other shows would have just thrown at us for an episode and then ignored was
expanded upon and developed in later episodes. The seemingly trite or banal
suddenly has purpose and meaning! It's a very clever ploy, but it had the
danger of turning off those of us who didn't realize that there was an
underlying plan. In retrospect, it's *all* right there, but initially, I had
to many prejudices to allow myself to see it. I expected an attempt to copy
Star Trek by someone who didn't understand SF, and I was going to see that, no
matter what.
David
#: 14816 S2/Bab 5: General
13-Jan-98 15:58:07
Sb: #14623-#Returning Fan
Fm: J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
"It's a very clever ploy, but it had the danger of turning off those of us who
didn't realize that there was an underlying plan."
Yeah, it was a risky thing to do...but I figured that if we did it
right, that would turn around eventually. You just have to hold true to your
plan and not get discouraged and wait until the rest of the world catches up
to you.
"In retrospect, it's *all* right there, but initially, I had to many
prejudices to allow myself to see it. I expected an attempt to copy Star Trek
by someone who didn't understand SF, and I was going to see that, no matter
what."
Don't worry about it...this happened to a *lot* of people.
jms
[ Summary: "You guys have demographics the Big Boys would kill for." ]
#: 14843 S2/Bab 5: General
13-Jan-98 21:49:01
Sb: #14833-Returning Fan
Fm: J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
Yeah, we're getting in the demographics, and they're terrific so far.
TNT is pleased.
jms
#: 14689 S2/Bab 5: General
12-Jan-98 15:33:12
Sb: #14581-Did I _really_ see...?
Fm: KEVIN WOOD
MOI, how do you handle things like this?
Presumably, a company like Optic Nerve will have a certain "feel" to their
prosthetics, and they'll get business because people like the look of their
work. Everyone I know who's seen BtVS has wondered about that particular shot,
after all.
Do you copyright the appearance of certain races, or what? The look of a
Mimbari's head bone, or a Centauri hairstyle is just as distinctive as a
Vulcan's pointy ears.
Thankyou for taking the time to answer.
#: 14738 S2/Bab 5: General
12-Jan-98 23:09:13
Sb: #14689-Did I _really_ see...?
Fm: J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
The way it usually works is this...most such companies do recycle stuff,
it's a given. They are just under the obligation to change 50% minimum
between what's done for a different show and the new item.
jms
[ Summary: "The Babylon 5 station appears to have a stationery
portion that encompasses a huge cylinder that slowly spins in one
direction. Shouldn't the exterior portion of the station counter-
rotate in relation to the interior portion?" ]
#: 14739 S2/Bab 5: General
12-Jan-98 23:09:13
Sb: #14692-#Newton's Laws...
Fm: J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
There is a counter-rotating flywheel configuration...it only looks like
it's stationary because it's maintaining that relative speed against the
rotation of the lower section.
jms
[ Summary: (See below.) ]
#: 14740 S4/Seas. 1-4 SPOILERS
12-Jan-98 23:09:13
Sb: #14710-#Marcus....why
Fm: J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
"And when B5 finishes its run (sob) we are on the lookout for the JMS touch in
other projects -- maybe you'll be involved in another feature film?"
I dunno...film really isn't my venue. In TV, the writer is in charge;
film is conceded as a director's medium. I'm too cranky to turn it over to a
director, and too busy writing to direct...so I guess that leaves me to TV.
jms
#: 14730 S4/Seas. 1-4 SPOILERS
12-Jan-98 21:14:09
Sb: #Be These Truly Reruns?
Fm: REBECCA ESCHLIMAN
jms,
After just over a week of 7:00 pm TNT-dedication, I have to tell you what an
astonishing experience it is to watch the early shows. Reruns of most shows
are normally comfort-food-stuff, when one either slips into the familiar like
a pair of old slippers or rediscovers what one already saw ("that's nice --
I'd forgotten that bit"). Very occasionally one catches a nuance that was
missed on the first go-round. But with the B5 reruns it's an entirely new
experience, because one doesn't catch a mere nuance, but entire leitmotifs
that may have been originally delineated, but are only fully visible in
retrospect.
Just to take "Soul Hunter" as an example -- the contrast of Psi Corps choosing
to use their "big gun" as a weapon as opposed to Ironheart choosing to
*refuse* to use his "big gun" (as just one example of the choices to act in
this ep), G'Kar's "ant" speech which revealed the more philsophical
underpinning to his character which flowers later (let alone the foreShadowing
of the whole First One biz), and even the powder-train effect of a throwaway
line with Ironheart's reference to a meeting in a million years (originally it
seemed like casual hyperbole -- who could have guessed that it was quite
probably the literal truth?).
The best of TV or movies have a 3-dimensional feel from the depth of the
characters moving in an engrossing plot. B5 more and more feels like a
flamin' tesseract! It is truly amazing to sense the layers from later
episodes blooming from incidents and statements in early episodes like a
Web-page with all of the hyperlinks "active" simultaneously.
I just have to thank you for the gift of retrospective astonishment. As
eagerly as I look forward to S5 eps, the neodiscovery of earlier eps is a far
rarer pleasure.
-rje-
The best thing we can do is to make wherever we're lost in look as much like
home as we can. -- Christopher Fry
#: 14741 S4/Seas. 1-4 SPOILERS
12-Jan-98 23:09:14
Sb: #14730-#Be These Truly Reruns?
Fm: J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
"Very occasionally one catches a nuance that was missed on the first
go-round. But with the B5 reruns it's an entirely new experience, because one
doesn't catch a mere nuance, but entire leitmotifs that may have been
originally delineated, but are only fully visible in retrospect. The best of
TV or movies have a 3-dimensional feel from the depth of the characters moving
in an engrossing plot....B5 more and more feels like a flamin' tesseract! It
is truly amazing to sense the layers from later episodes blooming from
incidents and statements in early episodes like a Web-page with all of the
hyperlinks "active" simultaneously."
And lemme tell you something...this has been INCREDIBLY hard to pull
off. If I'd known just how hard, I don't know if I would've tried to tackle
it. The only reason this got done was that I didn't know it couldn't be done
until I'd already done it.
One of the hard things was putting this stuff in, and having a number of
folks at the beginning say, "Where's the story? Where's this so-called arc?
It's nothing." I knew it was there, and knew that they'd know it was
there...but like life, we don't see the patterns until afterward. That was a
real risk. But I always wanted to plan this story for the long-haul, timing
it and measuring it out with the knowledge that -- though it ran on a weird
schedule for each of its original years -- in the long run it would show every
day for years. So it had to serve two masters, the short term goal and the
long-term one.
It's what I promised when I talked about holographic storytelling 4
years ago...the more you see, the more you can see *through* the layers to the
patterns they form, one behind the next. It's not a form that's really been
done much before, so I kinda had to find ways to make it work on the fly. You
have to have a mind like a rabbit warren to keep all the pieces together,
running simultaneously, to write this stuff.
What's been rewarding is seeing so many people now coming forward to say
much the same thing as you just said. It means I did it right. I gambled on
the intelligence of viewers, and that gamble has paid off.
All of which is one big reason why I'm going to be glad to be finished
with B5, as much as I'm going to miss it. It's been a hideous struggle to get
all this down on paper, and to stay ahead of the Machine, the camera, which
chews through stories at the rate of 24 frames per second. In a way, now I
kinda know what John Henry felt like, going up against the steam engine. Just
a few more steps, and I'll have beaten the damned thing.
jms
[ Summary: Speaks of the scene from "And the Sky Full of Stars," in
which Sinclair is shot by the leader of the Grey Council. ]
#: 14742 S5/Seas. 5 SPOILERS
12-Jan-98 23:09:14
Sb: #14722-<In The Beginning>
Fm: J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
"That would be the only place they would fit, but then I wonder why a Grey
Council member would blast Sinclair after they already know he has Valen's
soul."
Remember that Sinclair was going for them at that moment, and the blast
didn't hurt him, only knocked him out...they were deliberately *not* trying to
hurt him.
jms
[END]
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