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:To JMS:

[JordanH]

• This show should be on the Scifi channel. Not Showtime.

I disagree. If it's really good, maybe it'll bring in a wider Scifi audience. Looking at it another way, there may not be any room for another competing Scifi channel, but it's also unhealthy putting all the Science Fiction on one channel. The Scifi channel might take it's target audience for granted if they don't have more competition.

True, UPN and others put on Scifi, but the more Scifi the better, I think.

Now, if it's just the case that you won't be buying Showtime for this one program, that's understandable, but complaining because their putting Scifi on a general movie channel? That doesn't seem reasonable.

Postapocalyptic depression

[rufusdufus]

The main reason to pick a story about postapocalyptic humanity is that the sets are cheap and the costumes are rags. The downside is that no matter what your angle, a story based on the demise of billions of people is depressing.

William shatner says hes doesn't understand Star Trek's success. [http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/News/02/22/shatne r.lkl/index.html]
Well why should he? Is just an actor. But Gene Roddenberry knew.

Star trek has a very forward view of the future, one where there is hope and success. Based on humanity "working it out", not being "wiped out".

If you want to make a hit, do a show that is connected to the present, that shows the fruits of out labors and dreams, not the failure of them.

Re:Postapocalyptic depression

[Our Man In Redmond]

Well, wars are depressing, but people make good war movies. If done right you could have one hell of a series about the remnants of humanity trying to piece itself back together.

You also have lots of room to explore. What will we try to recreate? Will we still have baseball and soccer? Will Sun Tzu and von Clausewicz still be relevant? Will we have clean water? Countries? How will we communicate with people in the next town or halfway around the world? What happens to religion? Do we use a near-apocalypse as proof that God exists and has spared us, or as proof that God doesn't exist because He wouldn't have allowed this to happen, or do new mythologies spring up built around the darkest days of the End of the World As We Knew It?

The trick will be in doing it right. Bad sci-fi is easy. Good speculative fiction is all too rare.

Sitting at the fire

[bill.sheehan]

I have just finished watching an episode from the second season of "Earth, Final Conflict." I watched it with the stunned fascination of someone seeing a car wreck. How could a show with so many good ideas have gone bad so quickly?

Answer: The writers. It's all about the writers. It's always all about the writers. It's about the writers remembering one simple thing: the people sitting around the campfire asking the bard or shaman, "Tell us a story. Tell us a story about noble kings and fearsome battles and tender loves. Tell us a story about ourselves, our secret fears, our greatest hopes. Tell us a story.

I'm not an SF fanboy, but I do love good SF. There's so little of it about. JMS loves good SF too, and it shows in his storytelling. JMS also loves history, Scripture, legend, fable, and humanity. Humanity most of all. He once said

"As an atheist, I believe that all life is unspeakably precious, because it's only here for a brief moment, a flare against the dark, and then it's gone forever. No afterlives, no second chances, no backsies. So there can be nothing crueler than the abuse, destruction or wanton taking of a life. It is a crime no less than burning the Mona Lisa, for there is always just one of each.

"So I cannot forgive. Which makes the notion of writing a character who CAN forgive momentarily attractive...because it allows me to explore in great detail something of which I am utterly incapable. I cannot fly, so I would write of birds and starships and kites; I cannot play an instrument, so I would write of composers and dancers; and I cannot forgive, so I would write of priests and monks and Minbari..."

I am sitting eagerly by the fireside, awaiting any tale JMS wants to tell. Because when he's good, which is usually, he's one of the finest storytellers of our age.

JMS badly needs an editor

[EvilBastard]

B5 was crusing fine until Season 4

Since then we had

- Angstmaster-2000 telepathic poets in space actually called Byron (start of B5 Season 5)

- Crusade, with special effects *worse* then then those available in computer games at the time. Oh and Technomages. Shudder. One of those shows not so much cancelled as dragged out the back and put out of our misery.

- The Legends of the Rangers Tae-Bo Weapons System, and a moral creed lifted straight out of "Galaxy Quest" (NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER SURRENDER!)

Give him a strict budget, some different writers and a pre-planned polished storyline, and he's fine.

Let him run free, and it's a disaster. I call it FrankHerbertitis (Frank Herbert + John Campbell [ed] = Dune. Frank Herbert on his own = Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune...)

On the bright side, at least we have Gene Roddenenbury back, in $pirit if not in flesh...

Battlestar Galactica ( Bring it on ! )

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring that one to life again instead of giving us more bad Sci-fi !!

Re:I read everyone elses posts first...

[Anonymous Coward]

> But is this a Babylon 5 sequel? Nothing about the time period, or technology (except gasoline use, does that count?) rules it out. And we already know that much of earth would be devastated before the shadow virus was contained/fixed/cured.

This is not a B5 story; same creator, different universe.

Re:Why not..

[Fweeky]

> Why do you never see any Sci-fi shows about what the near future could really be like

Because most producers, and indeed, most writers are just too unimaginative to work realism into a series like this.

Just look at Star Trek; the aliens are all humans with ridged heads and various stereotypes, the society is dull and boring, and the people act completely unlike real people.

Sure, you can throw in (Sociopathic|Pychopathic|Weird) (Killer|Assimilator) aliens in and have a few dodgy unrealistic unconvincing space battles (when was the last time you saw an "antimatter" powered ship in Star Trek explode and light up half of space and literally melt the hulls of anything nearby? Hell, when was the last time you saw a quantum-photon-xeon-pentium torpedo that did anything but dent a ship?), and have some sickening ultra-transparent "morality" tales, but at the end of the day it's so phoney that there's not a chance in hell anyone's going to go away from watching it thinking they've really seen what the future might be like, or some idea that could make them think for more than 5 seconds.

There are all sorts of issues that would make for great stuff in sci-fi, but because they require skill and imagination (not to mention a few ounces of clue) they're avoided.

Thankfully, we still have some decent quality writers in other areas of media..

[waits to be bitchslapped for dissing Star Trek.. I do like it really, honest]

"So I cannot forgive"

[hyacinthus]

So JMS is "utterly incapable" of forgiveness, eh? What a terrible burden it must be for him, to carry all that resentment around with him. (Certainly this explains why he didn't take criticism of his show too well.)

An incomparably finer storyteller in a different age once wrote some words which JMS should take to heart, they start like this: "The quality of mercy is not strained..."

(Oh, and one more thing: "one of the finest storytellers of our age"? Your judgment is abandoning you, Bill. Just because he's an atheist doesn't make him a good writer. And anybody who could write "Thirdspace" isn't that fine a storyteller.)

Re:"So I cannot forgive"

[bill.sheehan]

No fault of yours, but I took his quote out of context. What he's talking about is being unable to forgive murder.

I stand by my assessment of his skills as a storyteller, however. We're talking about writing for television, telling a story in four 12-minute blocks once a week, twenty-odd weeks a year, for five years. Aaron Sorkin is the only other writer I can think of who does it as well, and he's getting his material from the Washington Post.

He gets no special credit from me for being an atheist. Where he does get credit is for embracing faith, spirituality, and religion in his stories and characters.

I'm neither a writer nor an English literature major, but if I were to try and pick the one element that puts JMS (and Sorkin) at the top, it is their understanding of resonance. They (like you) refer to Shakespeare, Scripture, myths, and so forth. Those familiar with the references are rewarded by a much deeper understanding of the characters and stories. This is where writers like Brannon Braga (gack!) fail - they don't have the education and background in literature and end up relying on formula.

In the end, it's all a matter of taste. I like JMS. I like Sorkin. I loathe Braga. I also like A&W Diet Root Beer, so what can you say?