JMS SPEAKS IV

[Wizz]

Re: SciFi Announces New Programs But No Mention of Rangers
<font face="georgia">
The SciFi Channel has indicated that it's moving away from space shows, with all the hardware/alien stuff that goes with it. (This as per its recent announcement about upcoming shows.)

So it looks like Rangers isn't going to go ahead. They haven't said it directly, but networks never do.

jms
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Re: And what did they pick to save instead?

<font face="georgia">Regarding Battlestar Galactica...you have to remember that this is something that had been originally in development for one of the networks and went down. Lots of development money had been spent by the studio, down to building sets. And SciFi is owned by Universal/USA Studios, which also owns Battlestar Galactica. Waste not, want not....

jms
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<font face="georgia"><font color="red">We thought we had Crusade but we didn't. We thought we had Rangers but we didn't. We don't even have another telemovie. So JMS. What do we have but soured memories?</font>

The five year Babylon 5 story that I set out to tell in the first place.

I said it before: that was my main goal going into this, to get B5 on the air
and tell that story. Everything else is lagniappe.
jms

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Hey, Lyta...
Welcome back.

[Wizz]

<font face="Georgia"><font color="red">What do the other producers do?</font>

Sam Egan as EP is my second in command on the show, and has written half the scripts for this season (including The Bag, last week's ep, and City of Roses,
this week's episode). Luke, as you point out, is also our lead.

The other listed EPs have nothing to do with the day to day operations of the show. They are contractual titles acquired during the period the project was
in development.

jms
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<font color="red">Does anyone how well Jeremiah is doing in showtimes ratings? We are now up to week 5-6? (just watched "the bag)... Is showtime happy with the show?</font>

Showtime is quite happy. We're generally out-pulling Stargate, which is an established show with a reliable audience, and each episode we build our audience by quarter hours, meaning people who stumble onto it stick around.

jms

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[Nommy]

la?gniappe n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana. 1. A small gift presented by a storeowner to a customer with the customer's purchase. 2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot2. See Regional Note at beignet.

[Lyta Alexander]

So JMS, what's next for the world of B5?

Dunno.

I do hope you haven't given up.

Given up what?

By the way - what went wrong?

Dunno...did something go wrong? Did the master tapes of B5 get degaussed or something?

Not to make light, but you have to look at this from my side...as I said, the main thing was the five years. We got them. Anything else is a bonus. The finished eps are there, and will be for as long as images are transmitted. It's there, on the shelf.

Will something else happen with B5 down the road someday? The universe being as cyclical as it is, almost certainly. But if nothing ever does, *I'm okay with that*.

I was at a convention a while ago -- one of the last I attended, and you can put a cause and effect thing there if you want -- and there were all these
actors and people campaigning for their shows to come back, from V to Battlestar to Lost in Space, you name it...and people kept coming up to me and
saying, with great gentility and real affection, "I hope you get your show back on again."

And I kept trying to tell them...I ain't here for that. I'm not trying to get it back on. If that were the case I wouldn't have chosen to end it after five years in the first place. I was there to celebrate that we'd *done* it, not that it should come back or that I wanted people to campaign for it. Which is why I haven't urged writing campaigns or anything else.

I set out to tell the story I wanted to tell, and I told it. If something else in the B5 universe comes along, terrific, I'm there...but if not, that's okay too. It's like Zack said in Sleeping in Light, which was meant as a sorta coda to the production of the show...everything we set out to do, we did, and nobody can ever take that away.

Hoping I'm not too far off base, JMS.

No, that's just about right.

The other thing that needs to be emphasized, in terms of fan letter campaigns, is that the currency of the fan campaign is that it's been in large measure devalued by over-use, at least in terms of how the studios see it (having been told this straight up). These days *any* show that is nominally SF or fantasy, when its time ends, gets a writing camapign to get it back or keep it on the
air. Good show, bad show, indifferent...the campaigns come regardless. So it doesn't really carry the same weight it did once.

And I think they've always been of limited impact anyway...it did have some impact on S3 of the original Trek, and if a show is "on the bubble" as they say, bordering between renewal and cancellation...but beyond that, it really doesn't have an impact.

The first ST feature wasn't commissioned because of fan mail, it came because Star Wars came out and did huge bucks and somebody in the Paramount brain trust said, literally, "waitaminnit, don't WE have one of those?" and rushed ST forward.

It's not passivity on my part as much as just trusting to the forces of history. Sooner or later, what goes around, comes around. My job is to make sure it's done right when it happens.

jms

[Wizz]

<font face="georgia"><font color="red">It looks like TLaDiS suffered from a lack of time to develop a script, a lack of resources (the B5/Crusade CGI files), and lack of time to re-develop the CGI that was lost. They were under time pressure to produce something before it could be affected by the looming strikes.</font>

Not true.

The script worked fine, the CGI worked fine, the time constraints were not an issue.

What killed us was the football playoffs. That is a matter of record.

They were hoping the show would do a 2.7 or 2.6 to get picked up. In *every market* where we weren't up against the highest-rasted football game in ten years, we pulled those numbers or better, in some places hitting a 3.1, which is just about unheard of for SFC. Those numbers came in because the show *worked*.

But we lost the east coast and most of the midwest to the game. When you averaged it all out, we got a 1.7 or thereabouts. The SFC knows why, we know why, it's not like that's an issue, and we *gained viewers* as the show went
along, which only happens if the show -- script, CGI, performances -- works. But in TV, the overall number is the overall number, and it's hard for a network to get past that, especially in dealing with advertisers.

If we'd aired on any other night of the week, there would be a LoTR series in prep right now.

jms
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If we'd aired on any other night of the week, there would be a LoTR series in prep right now.

<font color="red">Makes you wonder if someone wanted to sabotage LoTR.

I'm upset because they've only shown LoTR once. Doubly upset because my daughter screwed up the recording by canceling the program on the satellite receiver and I haven't had a chance to see LoTR at all.</font>

<font color="red">Makes you wonder if someone wanted to sabotage LoTR.</font>

No. The schedule was set prior to 9/11, and after the events of that day, sports events got pushed, and the football playoff ended up on the day that had been set aside for LoTR. Luck of the draw....

jms

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[Lyta Alexander]

Subject: from jms re: jeremiah arcs
From: [email protected] (Jms at B5)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated

Just to let folks looking on know that we're starting to move the arc forward in fits and starts, to some extent laying foundations but also making some big jumps along the way. This week's ep, Sam Egan's "City of Roses," starts to feather in some new information about the Big Death.

Then next week's episode is a big arc ep, "Firewall," which I wrote as kind of this season's answer to B5's "Signs and Portents," where we really kick the year one arc into high gear. If you're looking for a good place to jump on, this might be it. We really kick over some tables with this one.


jms

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<font color=red>What was the last thing Jimmy says to Jeremiah, in response to Jeremiah asking him "where?"</font>

It was the location they visited in "City of Roses."

BTW, there are clips from each upcoming episode at www.sho.com at the jeremiah area, and you'll find an interesting one there with Ezekiel from "Firewall."

jms

[Wizz]

<font face="georgia"><font color="red">I'll go for a post-Jeremiah JMS and a post-Buffy/Angel/Ripper JW teaming together.

You want my firstborn now, Joe, or wait for Joss to get dibs? [img]smile.gif[/img]
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Actually, I think that Joss is perhaps one of the best writers working right now; I'd put his work up alongside Sorkin any day of the week (who may be the best of us at the moment). If the prospect ever came along, and if our schedules ever coincided (probably the more difficult aspect of the whole thing, given his and my workload), I'd love to work with Joss on something.

jms

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and don't send me story ideas)
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