Slashdot Mirror
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."
Sounds like a similar premise to the excellent 70's BBC sci-fi "Survivors."
:)
Kind of a depressing theme, tho.
..there have been any number of killer virus stories on TV and none of them have been any good. Lets hope Strazynscki (sp?) doesn't end up falling from his divine pedestal like when Gerry Anderson did Space Precinct.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
...when it was called "The Stand!"
Doesn't this seem surprisingly similiar to the B5 movie A Call to Arms and the series Crusade? I'd've thought JMS would be just a bit imaginative in thinking of new series.
Why do you never see any Sci-fi shows about what the near future could really be like (sure a virus COULD wipe out humanity)? Something based on the book snowcrash would be pretty cool.
Carpe meam simiam!
I was a faithful watcher of B5 and even the short-lived spin-off, and Legend of the Rangers.
What was the point of Legend of the Rangers? was it a pilot for an aborted series? Anyway, I will *not* be watching this new series, even though it sounds fairly interesting, and in the past you have delighted me with your story arcs and special effects, and colorful characters.
The reason is the network that's picking this up. I'm not going to subscribe to a general movie channel to watch a sci fi series. This show should be on the Scifi channel. Not Showtime. The best of luck to this latest endeavour. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"And the Ground, Sown with Salt"...a very intense episode guest starring Jason Priestley
Your pain is only beginning.
But it *bugged* me. And it was beyond just the (extremely) crappy dialog, wooden acting and contrived plot happenings -- hell, if it were just that I wouldn't have liked TNG, either.
There was just something about the plot and characters that bothered the hell out of me, especially after JMS started writing all of the episodes. It got so bad that I would occassionally watch, but relied on episode guide websites to keep up with the happenings with the story arc.
Man, B5 bothered me. Yes, I'm aware that I sound a little on the neurotic side.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
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.
e r.lkl/index.html]
William shatner says hes doesn't understand Star Trek's success. [http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/News/02/22/shatn
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.
..that Captain Gideon and the crew of the Excalibur were unsuccessful in finding the cure for the Drakh plague.
Big B5 fan, Big H. Ellison(sp?) fan and so I took note of the credit to Ellison at the end of the B5 episodes. Ellison is a heavyweight writer compared to most of the TV fluff regurgitators. Yes, you can hurl fluff, it comes out soggy but dries quickly. It comes from the dust bunnies most TV writers inhaled when hidding/retreving their pron collections from under their beds. I always whimsically attributed the best of what was B5 to Ellison.
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
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).
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...
Cool, Twirlip of the Mists is on Slashdot! =)
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
JMS: Lois Bujold called - whe wants her Vor back...
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
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
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.
A virus wipes out most everyone, giving us a chance to start fresh. What to get rid of?
RIAA and ICANN. Can certainly do without them!
Any other (light-hearted) suggestions?
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I hate to keep repeating Aristotle's line about there being only so many ideas.
The idea of a plague is in many films and shows, like in "12 Monkeys", in which the survivors live in a hermetically sealed underground world and go back in time to figure out how it started. In an episode of "The Outer Limits", a time protection organization goes back to prevent a plague, only to discover that they were in fact its source.
I'll be frank, I have ideas that are WAY to the 49th weird, out there. However, until we have some way to get past the funks we're in, folks are going to recycle the same ol' ideas in newer and hopefully more interesting and more realistic forms.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
I've been watching a steady shift over the last several years from SciFi that had previously been kinda fun and thoughtful... to thinly veiled mastabation fodder for pimply faced boys, who have a small interest in science and a major interest in hot babes in tight rubber suits.
Some twenty-something executive at MGM, who retired as a teen-something executive at MTV, decides what "SG-1" needs is to off the geek and replace him with hot bods to make the pubescent crowd stay tuned. The last season of "Earth, Final Conflict" has been so nasty it makes peoples brains bleed. The last couple seasons of "Voyager" had degenerated into some kind of soap opera that just happened by chance, to be located somewhere in the galaxy other than Earth. What do all these things have in common? The same push to shift SciFi into some kind of primtime porn-light... all that's missing is the Ka-Chunka-Chunka music... Think about it... silly plots, no cohesive threads, flat acting, and lots of sexual titillation. Of course since it's aimed at young'ens, you got to keep the titillation to just pokes and peeks (you don't want the religious folks chasing you with torches and pitchforks), but the innuendo still lives.
I am so sick and tired of people doing stupid shit by rote, like there is some kind of magic in the act, without thought or consideration to impact or consequence. Screw with a good show to kick up the pimple demographic and oops there goes the adult and women viewers! Oh, so sorry! Take the brains out of a show, destroy the entire freaking premise, and make it about some foxy chick battling scantily clad sexy aliens. Scuse me while I puke...
The worst is a whole spate of new shows (most of which were thankfully stillborn), that didn't even bother to suck the brain out of a decent show, but just started off as a sexy SciFi/Fantasy babe doing whatever... They're not even waiting till they've suckered in a crowd of viewers now, they're just going straight after the pimply demographic.
I'll watch the first few episodes, beause I like to give folks an even break. However, I expect the producers of this show to give me something worth staying for. Something clever, thought provoking, a whole lot more than the tripe that is currently aimed at socially challenged pubescent geeks in dire need of a suitable sexual targets upon which to fixate. Dressing Penthouse Pets up in aluminum catsuits with flashing lights is not my idea of good SciFi...
Then again, who knows this may be just someone else's cup... all ya need is a little KY and some Oxy-Five?
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:
Not really hard to see a connection to the show's theme, is it?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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.
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
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...
You should already have a Dual-tuner PVR... The Hughes DirecTivo units are given away for free with a number of promotional deals, and cost around $100.00 even in commercial outlets.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
It stars the unwatchable Luke Perry. Of course, I managed to love the first season of Babylon 5 despite the unwatchable Michael O'Hare... so I will give this one a go. Hey, I just upgraded my DirecTiVo to 225 hours, I got room for the entire B5 series and all the B5 movies (will SciFi run it once more so I can do this?) and still have plenty of room left over for Jeremiah, so why not?
/. Google groups... is that a first? By the way, how much do you think I could get on eBay for a TiVo filled with every B5 episode? (j/k :)
I notice we've managed to
Edith Keeler Must Die
"I still hold out a little hope for Enterprise, because I personally think the story idea about the first days of deep-space exploration is a good one, it does seem to be succumbing to the hormone craze you mention, in a way that even Voyager didn't (at least not initially)."
:)
First off, we should remember that scantily-clad women have been a staple of Star Trek since the beginning.
However, I'm personally holding out even more hope for Enterprise because I think they might be trying for a coherent series in the same vein of B5. There are what, 8 or 9 episodes out there right now? And we're already seeing quite a few references to previous episodes and some genuine character development. I have the feeling that it will at least be more coherent than DS9 was.
"I hope they do more with their semi-coherant story arc of the "temporal cold war" in Enterprise"
I can see that as something that will start to simmer a little more in the future, but Not Right Now. Still working on character development as well as pouring some more gasoline on the Vulcan/Andurian thing.
"and it would be nice if they entered the Vulcan Symmetrists movement"
Symmetrists, shymmetrists. Where's the Human-Romulan War? We need at least SOME ass-whipping in this show, and if we can't bitch-slap the Klingons (damn that was fun...) we should at least be allowed to vent our anti-pointy-ear agressions on those green-blooded SOB's.
"as I've read it's based on a "lost script" of Rodenberry's"
I'm not sure it was even on a script. But it was really a very basic idea at the very least.
I just wish networks would stop touting all these new sereii from a guy that's been dead for a while now. The longer he's been dead, the less of the new series will actually have been his idea, until we reach some new series (already done with Andromeda?) that's based on some joke Gene told in a bar forty years ago...
If you've been keeping up with JMS's history with series, he doesn't take it up the ass just to ruin the story. He's been fighting the good fight to make sure his series doesn't get vamped up for bigger breasts and more action. If he doesn't like what the producers do, he says no (and it likely gets canned, like Crusade did).
As JMS has said, he's not going the TNT route again, and will never do a show unless he has complete control, which is why he's on Showtime. (Me wonders about why Showtime is screwing over SG-1, though.)
Zodiac Survey
No, what Shatner writes is not Canon. The only Canon is the shows and the movies, and not even all of the shows; the animated series is basically ignored.
(Computer graphics will have come of age when a Horta crewmember is shown in a Star Trek series as a normal, every-episode crew member.)
What I find sad is that the authors have no understanding of Vulcans, which are (or perhaps "were") as finely developed as the Klingons were in TNG. As I understand it, the Vulcans are basically the brain child of D.C. Fontana (I think the first name is Dorothy), who created wonderful back history for the species. For instance, one part that came out in the original series: Why are Vulcans so logical? Because they are extremely emotional, and tend to kill each other in their 'natural' state.
Perhaps at least that tidbit came out on tonight's episode; I couldn't bring myself to watch it. Apparently, neither could my TiVo; it recorded a re-run of Junkyard Wars, which was probably better anyhow.
If you ever see the book "Spock's World", by Fontana, pick it up. You'll be impressed by the true story of Vulcan. You'll wish you saw more of them. My greatest hope for Enterprise is that they'll eventually get around to exploring Vulcan, in a way that the original series could oly dream of... but what are the odds? The most nuanced charecterization I've seen of the Vulcan's so far on Enterprise is that they're jackasses.
Woo, there's some deep charecterization!
I'm losing interest fast; such damned shallow writing when there is such potential being *handed* to the writers on a silver platter is painful to watch.
He acquitted himself reasonably well in the last season of Oz. I'll give him a chance in this.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
("The mountains labored, and gave birth to a ridiculous mouse." From Q. Horatius Flaccus.)
That line just about sums up my opinion of "Babylon 5". After years of ceremonious buildup, and plenty of self-promotion from JMS on various online forums, after the mountains labored, they gave birth to a rather mean little story about how mankind is grown up now, and doesn't need the guidance of the wicked, bad, nasty, manipulative Shadows and Vorlons. Ugh. Let's not talk about Season Five, or all of the spinoffs from a show which, as an early episode reminded us, wasn't supposed to be just another "deep space franchise".
Add to this the fact that JMS's ear for dialogue, especially comic dialogue, was often terrible (I cringe at the thought of Bruce Boxleitner saying "Abso-fraggin-lutely"), and suddenly "Jeremiah" doesn't look like anything to get worked up about.
I have read this book, and once you get past the really boring and tedious first half or so, you do get some interesting Vulcan history.
However, it was written by Diane Duane, rather then D.C. Fontana (who wrote some of the best Trek episodes.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
...that JMS still has his grudge against SFX magazine. How petty does that look?
"Information wants to be paid"
Anyways, I was showing her the Net & demonstrating Google by looking for Jeremiah-related stuff; we found a preview announcement of the film. She read the synopsis / setup for the film & says this is (a) changed a lot, and (b) based on the first half of the first issue. So, original comic book much better than p8in-off TV show / movie... film at 11.
Anyone have news on the long-awaited Watchmen film? I'm just re-reading it, I always forget how excellent it is. Alan Moore knows the score...
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
This comic series is a classic.
Probably another case of turning art into a commercial mess.
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.)