Jeremiah, a New Series from B5 Creator, Debuts Sunday

wka writes "This Usenet post, by J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5 ), outlines his new TV series Jeremiah . Based on a graphic novel series, it's a show 'about beginnings' after a killer virus has wiped out most of Earth's population, and it premieres on premium-cable channel Showtime Sunday night (regular airings to follow on Fridays). We can hope that the executives who interfered with Stargate SG-1 don't mess up this show."

Comments

Re:"Survivors"

[Anonymous Coward]

and the more recent TV mini series "Last Train"

Re:"Survivors"

[ArnoldYabenson]

Well, here is some "Jeremiah" art by the creator of the comic book series. It doesn't look to me like a clone of either, though YMMV.

based on belgian comic

[h0bbes]

It's based on the belgian comic "Jeremiah" by Hermann. It's a pretty decent comic imho, but apparently Hermann didn't have a lot of control over the TV adaption... It'll probably be a while before I get to see it here in Belgium anyways... He also published a great comic about the war in Yugoslavia : Sarajevo Tango More info here (in french), here and here (dutch).

Re:To JMS:

[Arrghman]

Crusade was canned by TNT before it ever even aired on TV due to 'creative disparities' (AKA, TNT wanted more scantly clad ladies and fight, JMS said no, plug was pulled).

And B5:LR is a potential pilot for a new series, which may or may not get picked up by Scifi... the jury's still out on that...

Re:The name

[IronChef]

Hrm, you don't normally suspect Showtime to be airing a sci-fi series.

Stargate
Outer Limits
Total Recall

off the top of my head...

Re:Haven't we heard of this before?

[norton_I]

Not to put words in his mouth, but I believe he would say something like "It isn't where you are going, but how you get there"

And, if you want to get technical, no it isn't. The B5 call to arms/Crusade deal is about searching for a cure that is *going* to wipe out earth if it isn't found.

This is about rebuilding civilization from the ashes after a major catastrophe. Still, many other people have explored this. However, each is does it in a different way, from a different perspective. I hope jms will do it well (though I don't have showtime, so I won't be able to watch it the first time through)

Re:The name

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Also, "jeremiah" is an awfully odd name for someone nowadays

Besides being the 85th most common name in 2001 (as mentioned by someone else), Jeremiah is also a prophet of the Old Testament. Quoting liberally from The Prophet Jeremiah:

The prophet Jeremiah was active in Jerusalem during the tragic period of the city's destruction by the Babylonians, which occurred over several stages... Jeremiah prophesied an ineluctable, unavertible disaster... Jeremiah castigated the people bitterly for forsaking God and the Torah and turning to idolatry. With a sense of the inevitability of a terrible punishment, he felt disgusted with his life. Gradually he became the leading exponent of the approach which called for surrender to Babylonian might and not attempting a rebellion against its awesome strength under the auspices of Egypt... Although Jeremiah was saliently a prophet of apocalypse, he emphasized the temporary nature of the destruction and the consolation to be found in the certainty of the nation's return to its land. (emphasis added)

Not really hard to see a connection to the show's theme, is it?

The Jeremiah characters and story line

[descubes]

More information about the characters and story line can be found there. The original is in French, and the fish doesn't translate pictures yet, but you can find an example of the artwork on the site.

Re:So I assume this means...

[MajroMax]

That reminds me, I still have one unwatched episode of Crusade left on my Tivo, from sometime last year, that I still haven't watched. I saw it the first time around, but for as amazing as (the first four seasons of) B5 was, Crusade mostly sucked.

The B5-fan in me makes me write this reply:

Crusade sucked because it was _not_ JMS's show. TNT, which had picked up B5 after the dissolution of PTEN (which was responsible for B5 in syndication), also picked up Crusade. Unfortunately, it occured around the same time that TNT decided to "refocus" on its core demographic of 19-23 yo males -- via the ever-popular venue of pro wrestling.

A high science fiction show, like Crusade, doesn't exactly fit terribly well with that target audience. To correct that fatal flaw, the TNT execs began pushing JMS to add features into the series, and they exercised much more creative control than was appropriate for even network executives.

All of the Crusade episodes before "Racing the Night" were specificially ordered by TNT to "introduce" viewers to the series -- JMS's plan was to begin the series in media res. The SciFi channel is airing the episodes in a "mostly correct" order, as sanctioned by JMS, but the TNT-ordered episodes are still lin there.

The uniform switching, by the way, was also a result of the TNT meddling -- any episodes that have the cast wearing uniforms seen in Racing the Night would be JMS-originals.

As related to Jerimiah, JMS has said that he will never, ever do a series again when he does not have near absolute creative control. When announcing the project, he said that he was happy to work with Showtime because they don't have the limits that network TV imposes on him (so this might be bad news for anyone relying on scifi/network syndication). So far as I've seen him write, he's had no creative issues, and it's his series.

Re:So I assume this means...

[nolesrule]

Events in Babylon 5 show that a cure for the plague was found. Dr. Franklin was on Mars without being isolated in 2281, even though crusade shows him 15 years earlier infected with the plague in an episode. And the plague was supposed to wipe out everyone within 5 years of the start.

JMS has also stated that the plague was not going to be the primary focus of Crusade and that a cure would be found in the second season and that Crusade would move in awhole different direction.