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The Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski, Vol. 1
chromatic writes "It's hard to overestimate the influence that Babylon 5 had on American
television, especially science fiction and dramas. When it debuted, it was a
smaller, scrappier competitor to Paramount's revitalized Star Trek franchise.
When it ended, it had proven that not only could you tell a complex, layered
story over multiple years (and through the demise of syndication, yearly
struggles with funding, and often frustrating and unexpected troubles with
schedules and actors), but that a lean, creator-driven show could succeed
artistically." Read on for chromatic's review.
The Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski, Vol. 1
author
J. Michael Straczynski
pages
454
publisher
Synthetic Worlds Publishing
rating
Worth reading for B5 fans and television students.
reviewer
chromatic
ISBN
none
summary
Notes on and scripts to the first half of Babylon 5 season 1.
Through the course of the show, its creator J. Michael Straczynski (JMS) wrote 92 of the 110 episodes filmed, including every episode of seasons three and four and all but one episode of season five-- a record-breaking achievement. Now he's publishing all of his scripts, as written, in multiple volumes from Babylon5Scripts.com.
There are plenty of books about screenwriting and many include a few examples of actual scripts (another book from JMS himself reprints the script to the Hugo-award winning second season episode "The Coming of Shadows"). Yet what other book or series of books even promises to show the development of a series from inspiration to the final frame of the final episode? What's in the book (and the forthcoming volumes) for a Babylon 5 or sci-fan, let alone someone interested in the mechanics of television?
The Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski, volume 1 includes the first five JMS-penned episodes from season one, as well as the unfilmed draft of the pilot movie "The Gathering". Each episode includes a short essay with notable information about the writing, planning, or filming of the episode. There's also a short section of photos at the end, along with seven memos from the start of the project through the filming of the pilot.
Subsequent volumes reportedly will include similar information. The second, including the remaining seven episode JMS wrote for season one, is out and shipping now. The rest will follow every few weeks. Positives
The big draw, of course, is the scripts themselves. In particular, the draft of the pilot episode, "The Gathering", has a few major changes from the filmed version. Delenn, the Minbari ambassador, is still a masculine character in this draft. Kosh, the Vorlon ambassador and victim of an assassination plot, has a lifemate travelling with him on the station. For the most part, the changes made before filming are obviously for the better. (Though cutting Kosh's lifemate was the right choice, losing a line of dialogue about one reason for the Vorlons's obvious paranoia about their biology was a pity.)
The scripts appear as written, including typos and, occasionally, vague hints to what will occur later in the series. For example, the first appearance of a First Ones ship (the Walkers at Sigma 957 in the episode "Mind War") has an explicit note that the as-yet unmentioned "Shadowmen" ship will look very different. Another suggestion during the scene of the battle with raiders recommends using real-world physics for the Starfury crafts to differentiate from other dogfights-in-space shows.
If you're interested in scriptwriting, directing, acting, or editing, comparing the script to the finished product may be very educational. Straczynski writes sparse action, leaving most of the interpretation out of the script. Of course, the episodes so far are mostly character and background pieces with comparatively few action or effects scenes needing guidance. It may be that larger battles and flashbacks have more description; it's too early to tell.
The new material is interesting, and in a few places tells stories that never actually left the set. One explains why the change of station telepath from Lyta Alexander to Talia Winters took place between the pilot and the first episode. Another expands on the trials of pitching a show to television executives, especially during the first few attempts of the late '80s. None of this is essential to enjoying the show, but it does provide background for why things in the series happened the way they did. Drawbacks
Other scripts contain scenes that never actually aired. It's not always obvious whether this was due to time constraints, edits, or other decisions. Aside from a few mentions in the episode introductions, there are no notes in the scripts themselves related to what did and didn't make it to the screen. This may not be a drawback; they're much more readable this way and serious students may want to watch and read the episodes simultaneously anyway.
Though the scripts represent the bulk of the show and the introductions and memos provide some detail, there are plenty of decisions made during filming that don't actually have explanations in the book where you might expect them. Walter Koenig's character of Bester, the Psi-Cop, has a crippled hand, yet the book doesn't mention this at all. It's difficult to know how much detail to include -- and the permissions and availability of the material may make it difficult to include (production notes? director notes?) -- but this is by no means the whole story. Keep the Lurker's Guide handy for more details.
The book itself is solid but not remarkable. The script formatting reproduces faithfully an actual shooting script in length and layout. The print quality is good.
Very picky readers may quibble about the length and weight of the book -- most of the non-script material uses whitespace a little too generously, with large top and bottom margins and more than double-spaced type allowing only around twenty lines of text on a letter-sized page. Hopefully subsequent volumes will tighten the layout somewhat. Conclusion
While it's always possible to find bootleg or transcribed scripts online or at conventions, often at vastly inflated prices, the chance to read the official versions as filmed is worth considering for serious students of film or television as well as Babylon 5 fans. The bonus materials are nice, but they're probably more interesting to fans than students; more information about the process of how a script went from the paper to film might satisfy both groups.
The quibbles are minor; if you're already a Babylon 5 fan, you know what to expect here. If you're not a fan or a screenplay geek, this isn't the place to start -- but if you find the creative processes behind television or movies fascinating, this is an easy way to soak up wisdom and hard-earned experience. It's well worth your time to compare a few episodes in script and filmed form.
chromatic's life goals include writing a novel (done), a comic book, and an episode of a television series. Then he can sleep. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Through the course of the show, its creator J. Michael Straczynski (JMS) wrote 92 of the 110 episodes filmed, including every episode of seasons three and four and all but one episode of season five-- a record-breaking achievement. Now he's publishing all of his scripts, as written, in multiple volumes from Babylon5Scripts.com.
There are plenty of books about screenwriting and many include a few examples of actual scripts (another book from JMS himself reprints the script to the Hugo-award winning second season episode "The Coming of Shadows"). Yet what other book or series of books even promises to show the development of a series from inspiration to the final frame of the final episode? What's in the book (and the forthcoming volumes) for a Babylon 5 or sci-fan, let alone someone interested in the mechanics of television?
The Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski, volume 1 includes the first five JMS-penned episodes from season one, as well as the unfilmed draft of the pilot movie "The Gathering". Each episode includes a short essay with notable information about the writing, planning, or filming of the episode. There's also a short section of photos at the end, along with seven memos from the start of the project through the filming of the pilot.
Subsequent volumes reportedly will include similar information. The second, including the remaining seven episode JMS wrote for season one, is out and shipping now. The rest will follow every few weeks. Positives
The big draw, of course, is the scripts themselves. In particular, the draft of the pilot episode, "The Gathering", has a few major changes from the filmed version. Delenn, the Minbari ambassador, is still a masculine character in this draft. Kosh, the Vorlon ambassador and victim of an assassination plot, has a lifemate travelling with him on the station. For the most part, the changes made before filming are obviously for the better. (Though cutting Kosh's lifemate was the right choice, losing a line of dialogue about one reason for the Vorlons's obvious paranoia about their biology was a pity.)
The scripts appear as written, including typos and, occasionally, vague hints to what will occur later in the series. For example, the first appearance of a First Ones ship (the Walkers at Sigma 957 in the episode "Mind War") has an explicit note that the as-yet unmentioned "Shadowmen" ship will look very different. Another suggestion during the scene of the battle with raiders recommends using real-world physics for the Starfury crafts to differentiate from other dogfights-in-space shows.
If you're interested in scriptwriting, directing, acting, or editing, comparing the script to the finished product may be very educational. Straczynski writes sparse action, leaving most of the interpretation out of the script. Of course, the episodes so far are mostly character and background pieces with comparatively few action or effects scenes needing guidance. It may be that larger battles and flashbacks have more description; it's too early to tell.
The new material is interesting, and in a few places tells stories that never actually left the set. One explains why the change of station telepath from Lyta Alexander to Talia Winters took place between the pilot and the first episode. Another expands on the trials of pitching a show to television executives, especially during the first few attempts of the late '80s. None of this is essential to enjoying the show, but it does provide background for why things in the series happened the way they did. Drawbacks
Other scripts contain scenes that never actually aired. It's not always obvious whether this was due to time constraints, edits, or other decisions. Aside from a few mentions in the episode introductions, there are no notes in the scripts themselves related to what did and didn't make it to the screen. This may not be a drawback; they're much more readable this way and serious students may want to watch and read the episodes simultaneously anyway.
Though the scripts represent the bulk of the show and the introductions and memos provide some detail, there are plenty of decisions made during filming that don't actually have explanations in the book where you might expect them. Walter Koenig's character of Bester, the Psi-Cop, has a crippled hand, yet the book doesn't mention this at all. It's difficult to know how much detail to include -- and the permissions and availability of the material may make it difficult to include (production notes? director notes?) -- but this is by no means the whole story. Keep the Lurker's Guide handy for more details.
The book itself is solid but not remarkable. The script formatting reproduces faithfully an actual shooting script in length and layout. The print quality is good.
Very picky readers may quibble about the length and weight of the book -- most of the non-script material uses whitespace a little too generously, with large top and bottom margins and more than double-spaced type allowing only around twenty lines of text on a letter-sized page. Hopefully subsequent volumes will tighten the layout somewhat. Conclusion
While it's always possible to find bootleg or transcribed scripts online or at conventions, often at vastly inflated prices, the chance to read the official versions as filmed is worth considering for serious students of film or television as well as Babylon 5 fans. The bonus materials are nice, but they're probably more interesting to fans than students; more information about the process of how a script went from the paper to film might satisfy both groups.
The quibbles are minor; if you're already a Babylon 5 fan, you know what to expect here. If you're not a fan or a screenplay geek, this isn't the place to start -- but if you find the creative processes behind television or movies fascinating, this is an easy way to soak up wisdom and hard-earned experience. It's well worth your time to compare a few episodes in script and filmed form.
chromatic's life goals include writing a novel (done), a comic book, and an episode of a television series. Then he can sleep. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
"It's hard to overestimate the influence that Babylon 5 had on American television, especially science fiction and dramas."
No it's not, you just did it with that sentence.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
And while MJS may have written the vast majority of the episodes, the very best one was written by David Gerrold! That's my review.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Babylon 5 is a show that 15% of the population of the United States has ever heard of!
The first 3 posts were sabotaged, and the fourth disappeared.
I really did LOVE B5, my mom and my sister and I all used to watch it religiously together. But I'm not sure why this deserves a book review.... Either you want to read the scripts or you don't.
I tried so hard to get into that show, but just couldn't. I saw it as corny just too out there. I do like Star Trek, but am not a devouted trekkie thinks everything else sucks, but that is just my opinion.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
When you have Will Robinson in your show you know it's going to be a hit!
including all of seasons four and five and all but one of season five -- a record-breaking achievement.
;)
I can see why no one had ever been able to do that before!
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I haven't read any of the actual scripts yet, but I've read the entire 40-odd-page intro and the memos. The introduction is fascinating not only for the "making of" information and the stories it tells, but for the self-deprecating, occasionally humorous writing style.
I'm not sure I'd spend $40 just for the background material, but I have no regrets about spending $30 for the combination of background and the scripts themselves. (There's a $10 discount on each volume for the first week that it's on sale.)
Through the course of the show, its creator J. Michael Straczynski (JMS) wrote 92 of the 110 episodes filmed, including all of seasons four and five and all but one of season five -- a record-breaking achievement.
I'm normally not one to gripe about things that should be fixed by an editor, as I'm one of the worst offenders, but I'm at a loss here to figure out what this sentence was intended to mean. Can anyone clarify?
sigs are a waste of space
Does anyone know what J. Michael Straczynski is up to these days? I keep hearing rumors that he is "doing something big", but nothing ever materializes out of it...
B5 Rules
Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning
http://www-fi3.starwreck.com/
Funny!!!
:T:R:A:N:S:
It's easy to forget in the world of Firefly, Stargate, Farscape, etc just how hard it was to get any real sci-fi series that were not named Trek on the air prior to B5. Babylon 5 struggled it's entire existance with ratings, but the fact that someone actually aired a 5 season arc without having to dumb it down, and change it radically to accomidate the Least Common Denominator is impressive.
My dream is that some day we will get JMS and Joss Whedon to sit down and do a sci-fi series together. With JMS's strengh in plotlines and story development and Joss's characters it would be one of the best series ever. Certainly better then the upcoming SW:TV series. Han with wookies indeed.
"(and through the demise of syndication, "
I had wondered as a kid why CTV suddenly stopped showing Bab 5. It used to be on right before Star Trek TNG on my CKCK TV station, then poof it was gone, or moved to Saturday afternoon. Then it was on here and there, and I realized they were trying to kill it off. There were times when I felt I couldn't go on, not knowing what was going to happen next on Bab 5, but I sadly got over my addiction and ended up not watching most of the last two seasons since they weren't readily available to me. One of these days I'll have to get ahold of the DVDs and watch the series in its entirety...
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
When it ended, it had proven that not only could you tell a complex, layered story over multiple years (and through the demise of syndication, yearly struggles with funding, and often frustrating and unexpected troubles with schedules and actors), but that a lean, creator-driven show could succeed artistically." Read on for chromatic's review.
... good as HSB. By the time Babylon 5 appeared, there were numerous TV shows imitating HSB's layered stories, mixture of short and arc plots, ensemble casts, etc. -- including thirtysomething, St. Elsewhere, and so forth. Almost all of these shows were better than Babylon 5, they just weren't science fiction.
It seems to me that Babylon 5 was an attempt to produce something a little like Hill Street Blues in space. It wasn't as well written, acted, or
From the article title, I thought the book would contain all of the scripts from "Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors"!!!
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
It's funny!
Redundant, sheesh....
-GRR
This line no sig
That should read:
Fantasy != Reality
"Piter, too, is dead."
He's probably doing other things as well, but that's one thing I know he's currently writing.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
When I first started watching it I thought Vir looked familiar, but I couldn't place the face. Then I watched Animal House, and there was Flounder! I had no idea that one guy wrote most of the scripts.
B5 was fun and entertaining, but I wouldn't hold it up as an example of great writing. I think in the end, the show was just taking itself too seriously, and I could never quite shake the suspicion that JMS seriously believed that he was conveying some profound philosophical message with B5.
That show was not "casual watcher" friendly...
If you tuned in, and had no explanation of what had happened up to that point, you would not get it. It would probably take weeks and weeks before you were up to speed.
td
hard core geek-ware
When it ended, it had proven that not only could you tell a complex, layered story over multiple years but that a lean, creator-driven show could succeed artistically.
You're talking about ST:DS9, right? No? Oh.
As far as I can tell, all B5 proved is that really crappy Sci-Fi can still well enough to stay on the air for a few years. It beat ST:Voyager and ST:Enterprise to the punch, sure, but who cares?
I've been renting B5 from Netflix so I can watch them all in order. Frankly, I'm surprised it made it past the first season. The writing was horrible - especially the dialog; The special effects weren't even up to BSG:TOS standards (fifteen years later!); And the acting was horrible (thank god they ditched the Sinclair character).
The improvement between Seasons is noticable, but the writing still sucked through Season 2. It's improved in Season 3, but the dialog _still_ sucks.
It's fun to watch. It's enjoyable. But only in a campy, 90's-retro, I-probably-could-do-this-myself-and-maybe-better kind of way.
Me. But if you knew me, you wouldn't trust me either.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
WTF? I thought I filtered out JonKatz stories years ago.
Yes, Law and Order, CSI:*, and all the other top-rated shows that everyone knows about owes deep allegiance to... what was that again?
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
...and fail financially.
At least, relatively speaking. How many BILLIONS of dollars have been made off of the Star Wars franchise? How many BILLIONS of dollars have been made off of Star Trek? Shit, probably even the humble Back to the Future trilogy of quasi-sci-fi movies made more money than the entire run of B5.
Why? Mainstream appeal. Regardless of how good a show is, if it appeals only to SlashDot nerd types and "Comic Book Guy" types, it'll get frowned upon and scoffed at by investors.
Sad but true.
It's a duopolist's world. The cola world has Coke and Pepsi, the fast food world has McDonald's and Burger King, the software world has Microsoft and... err... and Microsoft, and sci-fi has Star Trek and Star Wars.
Everyone else, regardless of any amount of genuine merit, is a bit player, and will be treated as such by The Powers That Be (and Joe Sixpack).
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
I'd rather have the scripts of Terry Nation.
Auron may be different, Cally, but on Earth it is considered ill-mannered to kill your friends while committing suicide.
Back in that time, those effects were not bad.
Believe me.
You might not remember it, but back then, when the enterprise of STNT had only canned model shots and only moved left/right, the quality downsides of the rendering was vastly offset by the increase of in creative possibilities.
And you know that Star Treck had about 4-5 times as much money per episode?
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Those Video Toasters were state of the art back then if you wanted to do it in house, on time, and within budget.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I liked B5, and may or may not read the scripts. The article tells me a little about them that makes my reading them seem more likely (for the scenes that didn't make it, for example). If it just covered exactly what happened on-screen, I would be less inclined to read them. Plus, this collection hadn't made a very big blip on my radar.
BABALERT! BABALERT! BABALERT!
What a silly word. So glad they dropped it. Babcom was bab enough.
Interesting. B5 changed my life at the time. It helped me see things differently. Even it this is the past and I'm focusing on other issues now, B5 will always have place in my heart.
t ml#b5-anchor
:-)
Some great links:
Babylon 5 Lurker's Guide
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/lurker.html
B5 quotes I gathered (and published in an open book):
http://www.alexandre.leroux.net/quotes/quotes_e.h
Free B5 great game:
http://ifh.firstones.com/
Cheers
Animoog.org
B5 had poor writing, bad acting and so so graphics. Scifi folks were so desperate the time for "semi" good scifi, that B5 became a classic. DS9 sucked at the time, Space Rangers flopped (thank god) and Earth 2 got canceled (It was a bit to slow).
These days we have better writing and acting on shows like Battlestar Galactica. It is a show that could bridge the gap, letting scifi geeks enjoy the tech aspects, and other folks enjoy the good drama.
JMS is so damn full of himself its a wonder he can get through any doors.
"It's hard to overestimate the influence that Babylon 5 had on American television" Sorry pal, it ain't going to be THAT easy for you to validate those hundreds of hours you wasted watching TELEVISION.
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
"Walter Koenig's character of Bester, the Psi-Cop, has a crippled hand, yet the book doesn't mention this at all."
That is because Walter Koenig suggested it when they started filming.
For example, the first appearance of a First Ones ship (the Walkers at Sigma 957 in the episode "Mind War") has an explicit note that the as-yet unmentioned "Shadowmen" ship will look very different. Another suggestion during the scene of the battle with raiders recommends using real-world physics for the Starfury crafts to differentiate from other dogfights-in-space shows.
This reminds me of that SNL skit where William Shatner tells the Trekkies to get a life, when posed the question, "Well um, I was wondering if you could settle a bet for me and my friends, okay? Um, like, when you... um, left your quarters for the last time? And you opened up your safe? Um... what was the combination?"
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Midseason three and season four are when it really gets to be excellent, like biting the nails, I, Claudius, excellent.
Payoff for all the previous crud you had to shift through. Keep the netflix faith. It's worth it.
Season 5? You can pretty much skip it entirely.
One of the biggest things I loved about B5 was that this is the first Sci fi show I could remember in a long time that copious amounts of sarcasm, quips, snide insults, clever philosophy, and unique circumstances. JMS tried to do something new, and that's what sci fi fans want. Your hard core sci fi fan doesn't want what they saw before and they want something edgy with good dialog, good plot, and a healthy dose of snark. Before B5, the snide sarcasm was something left for the last 3 minutes of a Star Trek episode.
Have you noticed just how much snark made it's way into original sci fi series these days? B5 started it. SG1 made it a sci-fi standard. Joss with buffy/firefly turned it into a fine art worthy of hanging in the l'ouvre, if one could hang such things. Even Andromeda, which is an okay sci fi series, still has loads of snark. Snark and sarcasm are the highest forms of humor (I feel) and require intelligence and attention span to get. US TV executives of major networks shoot for the lowest common denominator and these are not traits most Americans have.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
(and hence, are morally suprior to you.)
Straczynski's The Real Ghostbusters episodes come out? :) That was ABC's number one rated animated series at the time when he was on the staff. After the network tried to come in and change the show, Straczynski gave them the finger and quit. The show went downhill soon afterwards.
/. is irrelevant.
I still want to know who was really behind the poison attack on Kosh in The Gathering, but I guess it's a bit late to learn more about Vorlon internal politics, although the comment about "losing a line of dialogue about one reason for the Vorlons's obvious paranoia about their biology" perks my interest.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
When is a book of his Ghostbusters cartoon scripts coming out? That'll be sweeeet.
I play Nerd-Folk!
Seriously, avoiding anything related to the show and/or its "competition", do scripts really sell enough or have enough appeal to warrant the paper on which the books will be printed? Not to mention that its not even the scripts for the whole series.
There were a set of companion CDs for some (if not all) the Star Trek series a few years back. Each CD contained complete scripts for the series, synopsis, the original 'next time on...' videos, and pictures. It retailed for $15-20, which is half as much as this for 7 seasons worth of scripts.
Now for the admission, I am a Star Trek fan. I watched B5 sparingly and never was able to get much into it. I am not one of those Star Trek or nothing fans either. I do enjoy other science fictions show, I just never enjoyed B5. While I can see this item appealing to maybe some of the B5 fans, I highly doubt many of them will be too enthusiastic about getting it. I say this because, I have seen Star Trek books on sell for years that I would probably never consider purchasing because they are just too much and are not something with which I would be that intrigued.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Hill Street Blues followed in the footsteps of Dallas and the Soap Operas. That's a close metaphor but not really the same thing. Babylon 5 had a charted existence of five years with foreshadowing in season 1 that paid off in season 4 and 5. It was more like an epic novel that was filmed than an ongoing series. This gave a lot of power to the show that those that never got into it, or came in late, probably don't see.
And Hill Street Blues never played with the scope in other ways. Wars that lasted seasons, destruction of planets, occupation and genocide. Epic stuff that certainly Star Trek never really tried to pull off and that is far to wide fro the scope of a cop show, even a very good cop show.
Soap Operas and Hill Street Blues never tried that kind of scope, its nearly impossible to do, partially because audiences forget, and partially because the planning involved.
C'mon HSB?! Everyone here knows T.J Hooker was the best! :)
B3 & B4 totally ruled, B5 just ripped them off
Quick, someone call the The Narn Bat Squad
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
It was picked up because it was a CGI show that could be done on the cheap and the studios were rushing to see if the concept would work.
I don't recall which network picked up B5 but NBC went with 'Seaquest DSV' and CBS went with 'Space Rangers,' a 'space-based science fiction show' and they all came out within a week or two of each other.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Turn in your nerd credentials immediately, B5 may be fantasy, but every nerd knows deep in his little nerdy heart that Star Trek is REAL!!
Buy his best setlling book here: Rising Stars HC. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!
... because of shifts in when I had to program my VCR. In no way was there a "five-season arc"; rather it was choppy and changing, much like the last two seasons of Andromeda.
A measure of how lame it was could be seen in the commercials for the boxed set, which quoted the NYT saying it was "a galactic United Nations." Describing a setting is not the same as critical praise, and I can think of a lot of things that are more complimentary than comparison to the UN. But perhaps "uneven and hard to follow even with the episodes in order" would not sell many DVDs.
At first, I thought Michael Straczynski must be a great programmer who I had not previously heard the name of. Then, when I started reading, I assumed that Babylon 5 had somehow influenced modern computers (maybe it had something similar to Javascript or PHP). I was some way into the review that I remembered that 'script' actually has another meaning.
Long, involved stories are more rewarding to an audience that makes the effort to keep up. Short, episodic stories are easier for casual viewers to watch, but less rewarding for people who do show up every week.
It's just a different approach. To make a comparison to prose writing, you can either publish a new short story each week, or you can publish a new chapter in a novel each week. Most TV goes for the short story approach, because they want the casual viewer. B5 went for the serialized novel approach, because, well, that's how the show was designed.
They did start out trying to keep the episodes new-viewer friendly, but by the middle of season 3 it got very serial -- which was fantastic for people who had been watching all along, but became a barrier to bringing in new viewers.
B5 painted a far more realistic believable version of the future than Star Trek ever did. Trek was too sterile really. One thing I liked about it was the sense of continuity. I'm too young to know much about the shows that came before it really, but I know that Star Trek didn't seem to bother at all. You'd get stupid things in Trek like the classic going back in time one episode by emitting chronoton particles from the warp emitters and then convienently forgetting about it when something bad happened.
And then theres the charactors. In babylon 5 they had charactors that were believable again, not all of them were perfect. Alcoholics, workoholics etc. Believable passtimes too. Garibaldi liked watching cartoons for example. Compare that to ST:TNG. Every bloody one of them liked classic music, jazz, or shakespeare. Occasionally there were exceptions like Dixon Hill, but no that often. You see it a lot more in show nowadays. Crichton with his pizza and beer. Walsh with his toy dinosaurs. O'Neill with the simpsons. Teal'c watching star wars. It endears the charactors to you because it's the kind of thing you'd do yourself.
Any other series that I have seen has not impressed me, and is most likely the primary reason for their demise.
Wow. I didn't realize that you had that big an impact on the ratings.
How many TVs do you have in your house?
Hey, I liked B5. I found it better and more interesting than Star Trek. Just IMO.
I have seen at least one post here decrying someone's enthusiasm as mistaking their personal opinion for fact. So I won't make broad statements about how B5 changed TV, or Sci-fi, or even the room temperature. That being said, I will say that B5 affected me stongly. It was not just a question of the characters or story lines, but the underlying philosophy. Example, when Sheridan is at Zaha Dum and is being interrogated by (assumably) Lorien. When he's asked if he has anything to live for, he suddenly remembers Delenn, and that turns the tide of things. There are other examples, but that's the most obvious. There was an underlying hope and gentleness to the series that I really enjoyed. nw '98
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
No cliches? What about "...last best hope" ? My wife and I have ridiculed that phrase for years now.
I mean, who thinks "Special Effects? Lets get some old Amiga computers and use this 'Video Toaster' software. That works great!."
I think you're forgetting the general quality of computer graphics in 1993. The Video Toaster was still the best reasonably-affordable system back then.
B5 looks a bit dated now, but so does any CG- or model-based sci-fi from the early 90s.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Nearly every show now has a multi-season arc. These were inexistent when B5 was created (aside from the occasional and rare cliffhanger). Joss picked it up for Buffy, Angel and Firefly. The last few seasons of the X files started to concentrate more on scripting ahead. DS9 and Enterprise started making use of larger arcs (although still lacked any sense of long-term continuity), and it enabled the multi-season dramas like Lost. It heavily affected/enabled nearly all the following sci-fi series like Stargate, farscape and Battlestar Galactica.
The thing nobody has been able to match is to have an END. This sounds stupid, but it implies closure and a pre-written script that arcs over multiple seasons. It allows you to set up character attributes in season one that they will not make use of until season 4, and when done right it makes for a fantastic viewing experience.
Pre-scripting the story arc also allows for a continuity that would stop you from making a mish-mash of abandon technology and general stupidity like you always get in the Star Trek universe.
And I'm STILL understating it.
They're probably all tuned to reality shows, and is most likely the primary reason for their success. Let's kill him.
... I thought he had a volume of Perl scripts he wrote.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
This is good news for anyone who wants to learn how to write riveting, non-cliche riddled dialog. Read these scripts and do the opposite.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
For one with a low tolerance for cheesy dialog, perhaps even... deadly.
include $sig;
1;
I thought for a second there you might have put the scripts in the post as well.
~ 'C' is for coward, good enough for me.
Was a creation of Koenig he wanted to make Bester more human. Strazynski went along with it.
(tidbit picked up from some interview or another)(hence it not being in the script)
who came here looking for some tricked out collection of ksh goodies?
So you prefer the "noseridge-of-the-week" look over something really alien?
It's hard to overestimate the influence that Babylon 5 had on American television...
Um, dude, I think you just did...
This is the best Democracy money can buy?!?!?
Your IP has been logged. Expect a knock on the door at 2:00AM.
It's been noted a couple of times that the main difference between TV writing in the UK and the US is that US shows are more often than not written by committee, whereas in the UK, it's not that unusual for a single writer to writer an entire series (...sorry, season), pretty much by him/herself (especially for comedy shows). Doug Grant and Rob Naylor created and co-wrote six seasons of Red Dwarf as did David Renwick who had huge success writing long running comedy and comedy-drama shows for the BBC.
Although not written by it's creator, the new (and terrifically popular) series of Doctor Who are written the same way. AFAIK the only "committee-driven" show on UK domestic channels (excluding the large amount of US programming we import) is the comedy My Family. This isn't to say that there aren't story meetings, but the open re-writing of scripts by other writers that happens on shows like The Simpsons would be a rarity.
Granted we are talking about the more cut-throat, ad-powered cable TV in the States, but I'd just like to point out that, dependant on your perspective, it's not that wierd to have a successful creator-driven show.
That's what I thought when I read the headline, "I wonder if they are sh or csh scripts."
Star Wars IV: A New Hope doesn't, and it's from the seventies! :)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
where are my +1 funnies when I needs 'em
Check out The Wreck Store. They now officially sell the DVD to USA too!
Actually, the rendering was done, iirc, on a farm of dual or quad cpu NT boxen running Lightwave. For non-SGI hardware, that was probably about the state of the art back then.
When the ST:Voyager pilot came out, JMS commented that for the price of that episode, he could do an entire season of B5, plus have enough left over for a wrap party.
What B5 was *really* the first in, was epic scale SF on TV. Other have done it better since, but when you consider episodes like Severed Dreams, which used to hold the record for most FX shots, it's a remarkable accomplishment for a show with a modest budget.
Parts of it don't stand up to the test of time, but I'd rather watch that then the hideously overly politically correct ST:TNG most days. I've realized out of 7 seasons of TNG, there's about a dozen episodes I'm still willing to watch.
I don't know if you'd know this, but I do remember hearing it from Walter Koenig himself at a Con... Bester wasn't _scripted_ to be played with a crippled hand, but Koenig came up with the idea and suggested it (it was an unspoken thing and didn't in any way change the earlier scripts as they were originally written). JMS decided to allow it.
It wasn't something JMS came up with or had originally penned, hence I could see how it wouldn't have a place
in his original notes for season one.
I have mixed feelings about how it adds or doesn't add to the character, thought it certainly makes Bester _seem_ a little more three-dimensional or "realistic"...
There is no right or wrong answer-- just yours.
so it's a 50/50 chance of either a flunky story with a flunky script or a completely mind blowing story with a mind blowing script
:)
or is it a one in 4 chance
Yeah...I know...actors didn't re-up their contracts. But it still stank to have so many story arcs killed off.
Who cares? Just run.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For those of us walking around sans trekkie-suits, it's actually quite easy.
Was much much better than B5. I watched all of b5 over the years, a few decent episodes, alot of 'same old' crap. Unless you are an avid follower it's just yet-another-ok-scifi.
show up and blast anything not Trek. Frankly, Paramount's bland, boring cash cow should have been allowed to RIP after the hideousness that was TOS. TNG (aka Milk the Fans), and DS9 (90210 In Space) were barely watchable and Voyager... well, at that point, Braga and Berman had given up completely...
" Nearly every show now has a multi-season arc. These were inexistent when B5 was created (aside from the occasional and rare cliffhanger)."
Dallas. Falcon Crest. Dynasty. Do I need to continue?
These all had multi season story arcs, but since they occurred before B5, they apparently never existed.
Seriously, the shit you mods mark insightful is just amazing.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
Enterprise and arc? Bullshit, they had one story they stretched out for 20 episodes, that's not an arc that's being incompetent - same for most other shows. I have yet to see anything which has a planned story like B5. Most of the time they don't because its a waste of money and the show might be cancled. (And don't say Lost - I don't believe they do anythiing but making in up as they go)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Lost is arguably the most successful series ABC has ever produced.
The other night, my wife and I began suffering through another episode of Lost. I turned to her and said; "This show sucks balls! Normally, we would never watch this show but, due to a total lack of anything else to watch, we suffer through it each week. That's really sad! It's the exact same thing with Surface. I wonder if Lost and Surface are produced by the same people because they both suck in similar ways. Awful acting, terrible scripts, pathetic plots, they're horrendous!"
She replied; "Yea, you're right! I keep meaning to rent a movie on these nights but, I forget everytime. Let's go to bed."
Lost sucks! Baylon 5 sucked so bad that I never watched any episode for more than 15 minutes and most people wouldnt even know what Babylon 5 was, if you mentioned it to them.
It has been a number of years since I saw the show.
A coworker gave me the entrie seris on VHS. I don't own a tv. Another friend gave me an old vcr off of a junk pile. I hooked it up to my TV card, dowloaded kdetv and I am now watching the series again.
I always liked the first commander better, but this time around I am convinced that the series would have been even better if that actor stayed. He was a much better actor than the actor who played John Sheridan. The plots just seemed to fit the first commander better and seemed like a hacked fit for the second.
I'm guess JMS was forced to make that decision.
I would love for Jeremiah to come out on DVD. I moved to a place without a television before I could see how that show turned out. The last episode I saw was when the older people invaded the military mountain with the post apocolypse adults.
So you prefer the "noseridge-of-the-week" look over something really alien?
The only "real" aliens in Bab 5 were the First Ones. Star Trek has flirted with "real" aliens at times too -- the Sheliak from TNG and the Tholians come to mind. I could also mention 8472 but Voyager never existed in my World ;) Of course the only "real" alien (non-humanoid) that had any recurring impact on Trek would probably have been Q. It's hard to say if he counts or not -- since they always get to show them in humanoid form.
Kind of hard to blame Bab 5 or Trek for the budget/time problem with showing "real" aliens though.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
As a non-fan of B5 since the pilot episode, I found this guy's examination of the show pretty enlightening. He was a fan but now, after some time has gone by, he watched it again and decided "Babylon 5, from beginning to end, both sucks and blows."
Link found on The Mumpsimus (who also kindly, unknowingly, contributed the Subject of this post).
*sigh*
Babylon 5 started out as a god awful sci-fi show with shitty writing, a boring, John Kerry-like main character and bad music. After they ditched Sinclair for Sheridan, things started to pick up. The writing was on par with Star Wars prequel dialogue the whole way through, but for some reason, I could set that aside and enjoy it. I did the same with Episode III, so not surprising. There was an occasional gem in there, too. But too many times, the spirit of JMS would possess one of the characters, causing him or her to engage in some philosophical diatribe for way too long.
Babylon 5 took its final dive with Legend of the Rangers. What a god-awful piece of shit that was.
Schlock or Crap... hard to decide...
I thought a battering from the NBS was spelled "whamwhamwhamwhamwham"
...damn near failed out of engineering school 'cuz of B5...
I am curious, do people feel that B5 predicted the current political events quite well? Some of the quotes and behavior of the NightWatch, the use of external threats (often exaggerated) to cause and then justify actions that people would not stand for otherwise, the arguments used to rationalize a grab for power, etc.
Once a viewer said that such features of a dictatorship could never occur in an established democracy. JMS responded that they are bound to happen as long as people think they cannot happen (paraphrased). I fear he was right.
Look up "telenovela" then chide yourself for your cultural ignorance.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
Pic here. The 5th one down. Sorry it's in Russian...
Mantis-looking thing
I couldn't agree more. But I'd use a different example.
The movie-era model of the Enterprise.... no bloody A, B, D, or D... is about the most fantastically beautiful model of a spacecraft I've ever seen; easily looking better than anything I can think of before or since. You could tell, from occasional clumsiness, in TMP that motion control camera technology wasn't *quite* there, but by TWOK, it was perfect and convincing. I mean... that was a starSHIP. And the remaining difficulty in working with such a huge model (I think it was eight feet long.) combined with a couple years of refinement of motion control technology meant that it moved like the heavy cruiser that The Enterprise is meant to be.
Contrast that with the CGI Enterprise E from Nemesis. Not only did it not look as good overall, but the way it moved totally destroyed the majesty that should be associated with the name Enterprise. That silly thing was flitting about the screen like something out of Wing Commander. Just totally wrecked the illusion and un-suspended my disbelief. that did.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Walter Koenig's character of Bester, the Psi-Cop, has a crippled hand, yet the book doesn't mention this at all.
No, Walter Koenig is missing a finger. He was missing a finger during StarTrek too, back in the 60s. JMS just decided that it fit the character, and emphasized it slightly. That isn't the kind of thing that is going to go into a script, especially when you don't really know who is going to be cast in the role.
I think the only time that the hand was even hinted at directly in the script was in Season 4 or 5, when there are some scenes taking place in Bester's apartment on Mars. Even though he is at home, he leaves one of the two gloves on, the one on his "crippled" hand. That was probably the only time it would have been mentioned in a script, and those books are a long way off anyhow.
Oh how I wanted to like B5. I really wanted to like it. But I just couldn't.
Problem 1. Too much time spent on one-dimensional characters
The protagonists couldn't have been more one-dimensional. Delenn with her religious quest, Sinclair and Sheridan with their blind following of her, that silly relationship between Delenn and Sheridan. They were all so cookie cutter. Ivanova and Garibaldi were a little more faceted and interesting, as was the doctor. But those characters and their facets were largely neglected in favor of showboating the boring heroes.
Problem 2. Shadow war took too long to build up to, then ended too quickly and in an anticlimactic way
Then there's the shadow war. It took *years* to develop. The shadows were totally a faceless enemy for a very long time and when their motives were finally revealed, they were eliminated from the story in short order. This contributed heavily to the show's one-dimensional feel. With the face of the enemy being a mystery for the vast majority of the shadow war, it didn't feel like much of a war. When the motives were revealed and the true fighting broke out, I felt it was over too quickly. That, and the Shadows took the Vorlons with them when they packed up and left! Two mystery races gone in an anticlimactic poof.
Problem 3. Londo and G'Kar and their governments were the best part of the show, but were totally neglected
Then there's Londo and G'Kar. Let me just first say that the story of the Centauri Republic's rise, fall, rise again, and fall again and how they took the Narns with them for the ride was one of the single most moving things I have ever seen on TV. And the way Londo and G'Kar personified the emotional roller coaster, and how they went from bitter enemies to friends was an amazing piece of writing. But JMS neglected this amazing story arc to an extreme! The Centauri/Narn arc took a backseat to *everything* else. So much so that it was even depicted in disjointed order!
~~
So in short, B5 wasted all its time on the monologues of mono-dimensional characters and failed to effectively deliver the profound story of Londo and G'Kar. If I were JMS, the main characters would have been Londo and G'Kar. Screw Earth Alliance and the Minbari. They were boring as hell for the full 5 season run. JMS had gold with the Centauri and the Narn and he buried it. I felt very betrayed by Babylon 5.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Actually, the first season of SeaQuest was quite good. It was the changes made for second season that reduced it to utter crap. The third was better than the second, but by then it was too late.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Are you kidding? You can see the rectangles around the ships where they spliced them in.
Jeremy Logan's Website.
*nt*
Star Wars IV: A New Hope doesn't, and it's from the seventies! :)
It looks a lot better than most other films, but the original version is still pretty dated in terms of having the translucent box effect around the models from the compositing. I prefer it over some of the CG work in the Special Edition, but it is noticeable.
I was mostly thinking of low- to medium-cost TV and film, though, since B5 was made on a very tight budget. If you compare the visual of B5 to its contemporaries - MANTIS, Space Precinct, VR.5, and so on, suddenly it starts to look pretty impressive. Even Space: Above and Beyond (which had an enormous budget) didn't outdo it until after the pilot.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
babylon 5 sucked, you pretentious sonsofbitches. the emperor has no clothes.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Imagine my disappointment when I was expecting Perl or Awk scripts.
Well as long as Joss won't be allowed to touch it after the first season, so we don't have to suffer through plot holes, OOC, rewriting the history of the show as soon as he gets a new favourite actor (case in point: James Marsters).
Star Trek and especially Star Trek Next Gen are better, although both have flaws and definitely show their age. The worst flaw of the original was its reliance on titillation, through cheap violence (Scott vs. Klingons) and sex. Kirk's "heroic" character was overblown as well. Next Gen's "save everything in the last 2 seconds" routine grew thin, character consistency was sometimes lacking.
One of the problems I've seen with the Next Gen replacements/competitors is stagnation-limitation-repetition. There are too few characters and too few settings. Star Trek and Star Trek Next Gen were expansive. That was their greatest strength. There is little limitation in the aimless exploration of space.
Deep Space 9's setting was static, which is not a good thing. It was too myopic and tedious with personality conflicts, particularly Odo vs. Quark and the whole Cardassian-Bjoran blah. A worse series, Voyager suffered from a repetitive "prattle-like" personal interaction with its too-few characters, characters who lacked the quality of Star Trek (original) or Next Gen. Neelix was totally boring and annoying, for instance.
Babylon 5 is a show I watched a number of times but never found compelling.
As for the label "Anonymous Coward", it's stupid. One of the best things about the Internet is the ability to be free from the framing-priming effect of identity politics. In other words, when what is said is more important than who's saying it, that can be a good thing, often.