As you may know, I missed last week’s Babcast to attend a show that my daughter appeared in. When we got home, though, we found that some culprit had trimmed the hedge in front of the house into the face of Londo Mollari. As if the neighbors weren’t talking already, what with me on the front porch discussing Shadow attacks and mad emperors late at night.Thanks, people.

So, what do you think? Thank Tim… he’s been getting a lot of practice making Flash movies. You might have noticed an earlier version of this on DeepGeeking.com for a little while, but this is the finished version.

Feel free to download the Flash vid and use it to promote the podcast!

Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:42:18 -0700 (PDT)

Putting this on a recent thread here where it’s more likely to be seen in a quick fashion….

Several things just to update folks.

First, many thanks to all those who sent along research suggestions and offerings to be of assistance on the project I can’t talk about.

I’ve been swamped with deadlines and unable to reply to any of the public notes and private emails, but as soon as I can get my head above water, be assured that I’ll be in touch with many of you.

Second, as noted in the original thread before I hijacked it, yes, the plan at the moment is that I will be at Comic Con San Diego this year, primarily doing my thing on Thursday and Saturday afternoons.

There is a *chance* mind you, it’s just a slim chance but to be honorable I must mention it that a work situation *may* preclude my appearance there. Or it may not. I’ll know more by the end of next week, and for now as far as I know, everything’s on target for me to be at SDCC. If that changes, I’ll be sure to let everyone know as far in advance as possible.

One final note re: recent discussions on TMoS and more Lost Tales.

B5:TLT was commissioned at a $2 million budget to, yet one more time, “test the waters” for B5. We did what we could with that, and that was that. As we did with Rangers, which also suffered from not having a lot of money because of concerns about “is there really a B5 audience?” Which is, of course, a foolish question from a studio that has never really understood what it has in B5.

Of late, there have been more discussions from WB about doing more DVDs, again at a low cost, or a cable thing, again with minimal investment.

So for the last few months, I’ve been giving this whole subject a lot of quiet thought. And I’ve come to a conclusion.

B5 as a five year story stands beautifully on its own. If anything else is to be continued from that story, it should be something that adds to the legacy of B5, rather than subtracts from it.

As well intentioned as Rangers and TLT were, as enticing as it was to return to those familiar waters, in the end I think they did more to subtract from the legacy than add to it. I don’t regret having made them, because I needed to go through that to get to the point where I am now psychologically, but from where I sit now, I wouldn’t make them again.

So I’ve let everyone up here know that I’m not interested in doing any more low-budget DVDs. I’m not interested in doing any low-budget cable things or small computer games. The only thing I would be interested in doing regarding Babylon 5 from this point on is a full- featured, big-budget feature film.

It’s that or nothing.

And if it’s nothing, I’m totally cool with that because the original story stands on its own just fine. I’m not lobbying for it, I’m not asking fans to write in about it (nor should you) because such campaigns never really have much impact…that’s simply the position I’ve taken up here. Lord knows I don’t lack for other things to do these days. I’m busier on more prestige projects with terrific people and great film-makers than at any other time in my career.

At the end of the day, for me, it’s not just a matter of getting more B5. It’s a matter of getting more *good* B5 that respects what came before it and doesn’t have to compromise visually or in terms of action. The original show deserves better than that, the surviving cast members deserve better than that, and the fans who have supported it over the years definitely deserve better than that. A lot better.

So I’ve drawn that line in the sand, and I’m happy living on whichever side of that line the universe puts me. Just thought you should know, ‘cause it’s your show too.

jms

Amy Guskin - one of the fans responsible for the purchase and donation of the G’Kar mask - sent us the link to her webpage where she shows off her car specially-wrapped to promote Legend of the Rangers. In Amy’s own words, “For my own amusement, and at SciFi’s request, I’ve been documenting some of my time as a slavishly-devoted, unpaid corporate promotional tool. Thus, following are some of the adventures of me and my Legend of the Rangers-wrapped car in the Philadelphia metro area, in late December 2001.” Admit it - you’d love to have your car looking like G’Kar is sitting in the back seat, too.

Tom McFadyen has sent us a link to his site: B5Scrolls. It contains interviews with many of the people responsible for design and creation of the show’s visual effects, including Ron Thornton, Tim Earles, Mojo Lebowitz, and Everett Burrell. Additionally, there’s a fantastic section on the ships of the Babylon 5 universe. Go there now! Well, finish checking out the Babcast site first…

There will not be a Live Feed tonight, so unless Brad decides to pump out some Geek Spin fun tonight, we’ll be off the air tonight, and we’ll see you again, either tomorrow night for Slice of SciFi or next week for another Babylon Podcast recording session!

Mojo emailed the Babcast to let us know he’s updated his blog with more B5 behind-the-scenes information. This time, he reveals the evolution of the interior of the last of the Babylon stations. It has a happy ending for all of us who trumpet every aspect of the groundbreaking nature of Babylon 5.

As a quick refresher, in “A Spider in the Web” a friend of Talia
Winters comes to Babylon 5 to negotiate a deal to help Mars become
more self-sufficient when a man calling out “Free Mars!” murders him
before her eyes. Here’s the Lurker’s Guide page for this episode.
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/guide/028.html

Here are some sample questions we have lined up just as an example:

- Was Bureau 13 originally meant to be a regularly seen organization
like the Psi Corps?

- Amanda Carter’s grandfather was John Carter, a reference to the
series of books set on Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Was it your idea
to include that?

- This the second script of yours to feature cyber-organics; first the
Vicar in “DeathWalker” and the Lazarus Project in this one. Is the
idea of cybernetics and human interface something that interests you?

IMPORTANT NOTE: You can email as many questions as you like.
Deadline: Wednesday, May 28
Please forward to our Editor, Jan Schroeder
JanMSchroeder-@-gmail.com

There will not be a Babylon Podcast live feed or recording tonight.

Sorry for the short notice, but we’ll try to make it up to y’all next week.

Why? Because I didn’t know someone had made a music video for this song. Because we still need to get Tom Smith on Slice of SciFi one of these days.