So this is not a huge surprise to me, because this possibility came to mind when I heard that. I just hoped those people at WB wouldn’t be total mental cases and they would see the light, but I guess not. This is all on WB, not JMS.

Thanks for another quality installment. Other than voicemail from me it was perfect.

And i’ll also point out, to all those who have given their hard-earned money to JMS, he’s hardly grown fat and lazy on that income.

WB wants more Lost Tales. It’s time for them to put their money where their mouth is. B5 is a proven product. JMS is a proven product. I don’t want another rubber suit monster. More B5 if only we get proper funding so we can see what the show would have been like if they would have had a proper budge all long. Jerry Doyle has a nationally syndicated radio show. I think JD was supposed to be in the next set, right? JMS has plenty of projects on his table. Both guys probably both would love to do more B5, but it has to be worth our wild.

C_R

What some people don’t get is that the TLT ‘extras’ with the sock puppets were a rather pointed dig at WB. From what I’ve heard, when given the budget for TLT, JMS’s response was along the lines of “For that kind of money you can hire sock puppets, not actors.” At the panel at SDCC last year both JMS and Doug Netter said that any future Lost Tales would have to have a bigger budget.

JMS posted that before the writer’s strike WB started talking about another Lost Tales disk but refused to commission a script since they thought there’d never be a writer’s strike. From what I gathered at the Seattle con in May, there’ve been other meetings since the strike was settled.

Maybe to us the decision is sudden but it may be JMS’s way of telling them that he’s tired of having his time wasted and that B5 shouldn’t need to keep proving itself repeatedly.

The real slap in the face to fans was Warner forcing him to do TLT on next to no budget, when the jms/B5 combo has proven itself a safe investment many times over. I heard plenty of fans complain about the limited scope of TLT, which was obviously a result of the lack of money. Arrogant? Hardly. In my view it was an admirable, honorable decision.

Over in rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated plenty of us have expressed disappointment, but not one that I recall has disagreed that this was the right decision.

This is an oft-repeated canard. The wrapping-up was done more by truncation than compression, so by and large the storylines in season 5 were the ones originally intended, and not tacked-on. If he had known he had a guaranteed fifth season, the fourth-season finale/cliffhanger would have been “Intersections in Real Time”, which ended up not that far from the end of the season the way things actually happened.

A far greater contributing factor to the lameness of early season 5 was jms losing all his notes for that half-season, at the same convention at which he tried unsuccessfully to get Claudia Christian to sign back on. Housekeeping trashed them, he tore the place apart looking for them (including dumpster-diving) to no avail, and he ended up having to reconstruct those storylines as best he could from memory. Suddenly losing Ivanova didn’t help either.

All this can be searched on jmsnews.com.

JMS has been stringing future Lost Tale info out since before th e the release of the first and now only installment. He has a point about legend of the Rangers but I don’t think his point with Lost Tales is valid sure it’s not as strong as the best of Babylon 5 but it’s far better then the worst of it so I don’t think you can say that it takes anything away as a hole. I think that it might add something to it. Had JMS come right out and said that he did not want to do anymore DVDs right after the release I would have understood but he went on about how another one was in the works and had even said that he wanted to try to get other people in to write in the future.

Now I understand that he is mad with WB for not stepping up and putting money behind it right now but why not try to get more money placed into a DVD start small and work up try to get say a 10,000,000 budget for the next one and then move up from there why is it a movie or nothing? This rings even more true given the current state of the economy, Paramount has had to pull back funding on Transformers and Star Trek which every one knows will pull in big money, and if big names like that are having problems what chance does Babylon 5 have?

The great maker had what I feel is a great mistake.

he changed his mind because he’s tired of trying to make quality product without proper financial support from Warner.

Also recall that TLT was to be three interlocking stories, but budget constraints forced the elimination of what, by all accounts, was to be the most ambitious (read: expensive) story of the lot. That also indicates low interest on the part of WB. What more would JMS need to do to finally make WB understand what they have in their hands?

Mike, you are entitled to your opinion, and I’m glad you feel comfortable enough to share it here. I would point out that a shoestring budget for a 22-episode season for a series is still bigger than the shoestring budget for a one-off direct-to-DVD piece. The series budget allowed them to build interesting sets and locales; the TLT budget allowed them to build ten pillars that had to double for station and Minbari cruiser interiors. I’m thoroughly convinced the sock puppet thing was JMS’ arrow at WB - “you want cheap? Here’s cheap!”

Please, in no way construe my comments as a JMS apologist. The tone in his message is quite arrogant. I understand and accept his feelings about B5 as the creator; but I think he underestimates the fans’ emotions. I’d be happy with JMS approved novels (like for Crusade, in Valen’s name!). I don’t think LotR or TLT “tarnished” the legacy of B5 in any way. Were they great? No. But they certainly weren’t unwatchable.

You want tarnish, look at the last ten years of Star Trek offerings. That’s tarnish.

I wish I had a website to put it on.

This is nothing but a slap in the face to fans. We bought the DVD, supported the franchise as best we can in the hope that we would get more content. Now he trashes the very thing we supported by saying it diluted the franchise?

Fine JMS … go and pout, take you ball and go home. You’ve pretty much just lost yourself a fan with an arrogant attitude like that. Why would we want to support any of your future projects? After all … you’ll just say they were crap down the road.

Brad Bowyer,
Louisville, KY

I think that The Lost Tales and LOTR were nowhere near as good as the best seasons of the B5 series and, therefore, I agree with JMS that they “Subtracted from the legacy”. However, I still don’t know that the reason that they were not as good has a whole lot to do with the lower budget as JMS suggested. After all, didn’t he and his crew produce some of the best science fiction television ever made on a shoestring budget week after week for five years?! I hate to slam JMS (whom I think is, usually, a great writer), but I think the problems with Lost Tales and LOTR being less than great lie mostly with the writer.

It seems to me that JMS lost his mojo after the fourth season of the series. I’ve been somewhat disappointed in everything B5-related that he has done AFTER season 4. I know the reasons why season 5 seemed directionless and uneventful: He was told by the distribution company that season 4 was the end and to finish it up, thus leaving season 5 stories seeming like an afterthought or an extremely extended and unnecessary epilogue to the main story. He also had SOME excuses for “Crusade” not being what it could have been - the creative “tug-of-war” between JMS and TNT hurt and killed the show before it had time to grow. But what was his excuse on “Legend of the Rangers”? As far as I know, he was given free reign by the Sci Fi Channel on that pilot, but he delivered a mediocre (at best) movie. Also, from what I read of the summary of the plot for the proposed feature film “The Memory of Shadows”, it didn’t sound like it would have been a home run either. And finally, last year’s Lost Tales was also disappointing and odd (for me, at least). The devil-in-human-guise story, while well-acted, seemed totally out-of-place for the B5 universe. Also, the Sheridan tale had some truly funny dialogue and was more B5-appropriate, but ultimately, seemed uneventful and unnecessary.

So, JMS hasn’t exactly been “hitting them out of the ballpark” since the end of season 4. It seems as if he has lost interest in Babylon 5 and only keeps making more stories to earn a paycheck or to try to satisfy hungry fans (maybe both). His heart doesn’t seem like it’s in it anymore. He pretty much said himself that he is satisfied with the completed 5-year story and doesn’t seem too interested in doing any more now that he is getting big-budget feature film jobs. MAYBE with a bigger budget he could tell a more epic story like we were accustomed to during the best seasons of B5, but that remains to be seen.

I know I will probably stir controversy with my comments, but I felt it had to be said. I was THE biggest fan of Babylon 5 during its best years and couldn’t wait to see the next episode every week, but I’m getting tired of being constantly disappointed with sub-par B5 stories. I want to get back the excitement and epic storytelling of seasons 3 and 4, or even the unexpected satisfaction from a handfull of good episodes from seasons one and two. But since 1998, all we seem to get is more “season 5 - level” stuff.

So, in conclusion, I suppose I have to agree somewhat with JMS on this. If you can’t tell a good or great story, then why bother at all? I don’t hold out much hope for a big-budget B5 feature film, as Warner Bros will not pony up the dough for one. They also wanted to re-cast the TMOS movie, and that doesn’t sit well with me either. I can’t see anyone else in these roles. I don’t really see the money coming from any other outside interests in the future without ultimately falling through like the “Memory of Shadows” deal. I hope that I am wrong. I would love to see a B5 feature film as long as it has the feel of seasons 3 and 4. On another tangent, it is UNFAIR that Joss Whedon can get a feature film made of a failed series that only aired for about 7 episodes before being canceled due to low ratings (”Firefly”/ “Serenity”), while JMS can’t get a feature film made of a low-rated (but much beloved) series that lasted for 5 years and 110 episodes!! It doesn’t make much sense to me. (Sorry, “Firefly” fans. I watched that show for 6 or 7 episodes, but hated it. ) In the end, I guess that Whedon has more pull in Hollywood than JMS does (although I don’t know why). Isn’t JMS having dinner with the big boys now? It also seems unfair that other low-rated cult favorites such as Stargate SG-1 and even Futurama will continue on making direct-to-DVD films, while B5 will simply fade away into obscurity. Unfortunately, it seems that B5 will always be just a footnote in science fiction history. Anyway, I will miss Babylon 5. I don’t think that there will ever be another sci-fi series that I will love as much as I loved it.

Depending on the color of your car, WHT-STR might be a good one.

C_R

“Late breaking news” from B5? ROFLOL!

Do people know about the dedicated Babylonpodcast Forum @ Farpointmedia?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9c9-Nl245o

Watch to the end for the whole song.

I don’t understand what that means? I’ve never received an email from you about any links, and I think Tim would have forwarded something asking about links, if he’d received something.

(pauses as she references Google)

Oh! This site? http://ftp.themadgoner.com/B5/B5Scrolls/B5Scrolls.htm

Dude, I definitely didn’t get any email about this one… we need to talk

Cheers

Ready…..

AIM…..

FIRE! *THWACK*

Life has been getting in the way of my recording for the podcast. Don’t you just hate that?

Thanks!

Summer:

I do have them all, and I believe Gary does as well. I haven’t volunteered, but if no one comes forward by the end of the week, I could pick it up without too much trouble.

I know how busy you are, but that wasn’t you, was it?

Val

Seriously, what does a guy have to do?

LOL!!!

And we’ve been very honest about the episodes that incorporate some less-than-stellar plotting and execution, and shutting down fan-productions that help promote the hell outta B5 isn’t his style.

I just hope that continues to be the case when we get to Season 5