The Path of Sorrows - Comment

[B5JMS Poster]

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From: "Mac Breck" <macbreck at access995.com>
Date: 7 Jul 2000 15:55:18 -0600
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Regarding your comment in The Lurker's Guide about The Path of Sorrows:

"This one is a favorite of mine as well. It was one of the scripts written
while we were still shooting the first 5, before TNT got into the process.
When that happened, they made it clear that they *hated* this story, felt
that nobody would be interested in all this backstory...and asked for it all
to be taken out, let them run into this alien and make him an evil
character, an emotional vampire who drives them insane.
This was one of the first scripts where I dug in my heels bigtime and
refused to do what they asked. I knew it would be powerful; they thought it
would be utterly uninteresting. They were wrong."

TNT hated this story?  It just goes to prove that people who can't even
think one move ahead, shouldn't have any creative influence over TV that
contains any sort of arc.  How would they know what you were planning?  Were
you supposed to explain your every move in the context of where it fit in
the whole series, for the duration of the whole show??  That's just
ridiculous!  They'd have been better off with the continuing, meandering
extrapolation of episodic TV that is Voyager.  It's surprising that they
didn't try to get you to do this episode with nothing but exposition, rather
than visual storytelling.

I'm glad you dug in your heels.

Mac












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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Date: 7 Jul 2000 18:01:13 -0600
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>It's surprising that they
>didn't try to get you to do this episode with nothing but exposition, rather
>than visual storytelling.

That was actually their other suggestion when I vetoed the rest, that we NOT
see the flashbacks, but rather have them "talk about their feelings about what
happened."  They stated that nobody wants to see flashback stories, they only
want to see what's happening in the present tense.

 jms

(jmsatb5 at aol.com)
B5 Official Fan Club at:
http://www.thestation.com
(all message content (c) 2000 by
synthetic worlds, ltd., permission
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SFX Magazine)




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