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

"Survivors"

[Bill Kendrick]

Sounds like a similar premise to the excellent 70's BBC sci-fi "Survivors."

Kind of a depressing theme, tho. :)

To JMS:

[jafac]

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. . .

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.

Re:To JMS:

[Our Man In Redmond]

Yes, but Showtime has the resources to do something like this and do it right -- and in "do it right" I include "sell it to another non-subscription network after a year so us freeloaders can see it." Similar to what they've done with Stargate SG-1.

Most pay TV content that's any good eventually works its way onto a more accessible medium. Heck, even the lousy stuff eventually ends up on DVD in the hope that someone will buy it.

Oh yeah, and the only explanation for "Legend Of The Rangers" that makes sense is that it was a pilot for a new show. Although if they do decide to go ahead with a new Rangers show I hope it fares better than Crusade did.

Re:To JMS:

[mbourgon]

Actually, JMS said that there were two reasons he decided to do this new show:
1) Complete creative control
2) Big budget. He could make "his idea" of the show a reality.

And, just to be a karma whore... straight from JMS on rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated:

I haven't talked a lot about Jeremiah here because, basically, I haven't had time to put my thoughts together due to the rigors of actually *making* the
thing. But we're now closing in on the premiere, and I figured this might be a good time to start laying out some of the information. (This will, however, be kinda brief because I'm fighting a bit of a fever and intend to go lay down after this.)

The Showtime series tracks the aftermath of the Big Death, which wiped out roughly six billion people, anyone over the age of puberty. It's now 15 years
later, and people have been ridinng on the ashes of the old world for the most part, the available resources slowly declining and running out. It's a moment of transition: either the decline continues, or now that they are adults, people start to rebuild a new world out of the ashes of the old one. The question is what shape will that world take, and who gets to choose?

Our lead character, Jeremiah (Luke Perry) is a wanderer, trying to find out what happened to his father, who disappeared during the last days of the Big Death while en route to a locale specified only as Valhalla Sector. He wants to find out the end of the story. Along the way, he encounters our other lead, Kurdy (Malcolm Jamal-Warner), also a drifter, and the two are thrown together by circumstance into a duo. The two-hour premiere follows their lives, the dangers they encounter, establishes the world of our series, and sets the stage for a new dawn.

Basically, I wanted to do a post-apocalyptic series that wasn't all darkness and grimness...I wanted to tell a story about hope, that this isn't about
endings, it's about beginnings. When the Black Death hit, lots of people thought it was the end of the world. It wasn't. What followed the Black Death was the Renaissance, a new beginning, as our characters face a new beginning.
[JMS continued with an episode list]

Read closer

[Hammerself]

"And the Ground, Sown with Salt"...a very intense episode guest starring Jason Priestley

Your pain is only beginning.

Maybe I'll try it out, but...

[Skyshadow]

I could never really peg down why I disliked B5 so much. I mean, it had a lot of things going for it: a story arc, a vision of a flawed future where some aliens were more powerful than humans, etc.

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.

Re:Maybe I'll try it out, but...

[Bodrius]

I really liked B5, but I have to admit in the end I watched it out of loyalty for the good parts of the series, rather than because of its final quality.

I still think it was one of the best SF shows ever, but I can't help but think they went downwards since the first season, even though the story was supposed to actually start much later.

It seems to me that B5 was at its best before it became an epic story. During the first seasons (the prelude?) the characters were complex and subtle, the politics made sense, the storylines were interesting... you had a great sense of foreboding.

But when the epic started, the characters became complicated and yes, pulpish. The acting quality decreased. All sense of subtlety was lost, which also killed almost all the sense of mistery in the storylines. It seems their ambitious story made them lose control of the narrative.

So I assume this means...

[gorsh]

..that Captain Gideon and the crew of the Excalibur were unsuccessful in finding the cure for the Drakh plague.

Re:So I assume this means...

[JeffL]

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.

I think part of the problem with the fifth season of B5, Crusade, and to some degree Legend of the Rangers, was kind of a too-much-of-a-good-thing syndrome. For example, in B5, [what's her name, the woman commander] gives a nice speech before attacking the Earth fleet, about being death incarnate and all of that. The speech was a bit cliche if taken out of context, but for the situation and the character it worked well. Mostly because through the show, she only gave a few speeches like that, maybe one or two a season. When they happened they were pretty cool, but then there are characters on Crusade that only talk in fancy speeches. It's too much, they lose all impact and end up just being cheesy Shatneresque spewing.

I am sure JMS still has it in him to make a good show, but I think he really needs to go back and watch the third and fourth seasons of B5, and maybe In the Beginning, and see what the balance was that really made them work. Don't just take the best bits and try to only use those in a show.

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: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.

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).

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.

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)

SciFi and Hormones...

[Genda]

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?

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:Postapocalyptic depression

[Rimbo]

"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."

If you'd actually READ THE ARTICLE, maybe you'd read that this is precisely what JMS is doing. He points to how people thought that after the Black Death, the world would end. it didn't; in fact, the Renaissance followed on its heels.

He wants to show how, after this "Big Death," people discover a chance to re-mold the world into a way that maybe is more of a utopia.

Take the whole world apart piece by piece, look at the lessons learned from the past, and try to put it all back together the right way. That's what JMS says he's after. That's not depressing... that is hopeful.

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]

JMS

[Brendan Byrd]

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.)

"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?