Welcome to Show #236!
Tim and Summer chat a bit about the new Captain Power project that’s in the works, so we’ll see where that one takes the story as production progresses!
Feedbackapalooza: Telepath smackdown? Either way, this episode seems to be chock full of questions from Adam from start to finish.
POLL: Pat Tallman asks us to run a poll on what the fans say their favorite Lyta episodes are, so go vote, already! Poll will close at midnight Pacific on May 9th, and Pat has said she’d love to join us later to talk about the results!
Lurker’s Guide 2.0: Summer is expanding the documentation to be covered at Lurker’s Guide 2.0, the major change being converting the episode guide into a full Wiki with cross-referenced topics, tidbits and everything you’d want in a Wiki. She’s also still searching for pictures of rare collectibles, photos of magazine covers and toys, and all sorts of other B5 goodies that didn’t get included in the original guide during the years after Crusade. Let her know if you want to lend a hand.
More Parody/Filk Songs Wanted: If you know of any more B5-related fan songs out there, definitely let us know, so we can let other B5 fans know where to buy them! And if those CDs are out of print, let’s brainstorm on ways to get those songs back out there for fans!
Babylon Podcast Social Communities:
Twitter: @babylonpodcast
Babylon 5 Information Gathering: If you know of a dead or abandoned B5 related website that may be in need of a new home, let Summer know! Maybe we can mirror it here or house it on a sister site.
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Promo: Slice of SciFi
Promo: Technorama
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I am not hearing a no about the Star Trek: TNG show, Tim.
I do believe that before he gets to a ST:TNG show, he’s slated to do a Doctor Who show with his daughter and Slice of Scifi news editor Michael Hickerson. Not sure if we’ve bought enough scotch to coax Mike Mennenga to stay at the boards, though 😉
And don’t forget about that Lensman podcast too!
I hope he advertises the Doctor Who show. I would listen to that, but the way this season is going, I am not sure how much more I can take.
Joe, if – IF – I do a Star Trek show, it’d lean more on TOS, though all series would be on the table. (Just to pique your curiosity, “Spock’s Brain” is NOT the worst Trek episode ever…)
As for a Doctor Daughter show, Meg has expressed interest, but there has been some upheaval in the Callender household that will need some sorting out first.
TOS, man, I would have to actually buy the DVDs to remember those episodes. Enterprise and Voyager has at least 5 episodes worse then Spock’s Brain, easily.
Tim: Agreed. That “space hippy” episode (Way to Eden?) was way worse.
Agreed. “The Way to Eden” is a tad worse than Spock’s Brain. It hasn’t aged well at all.
What I’ve always found truly disturbing was that both “Spock’s Brain” and “The Way to Eden” evolved from scripts written by two of TREK’s best writers: Gene Coon and Dorothy Fontana. I’d love to see the earliest drafts to see where things went wrong.
Kind of real old news, but I just remembered.
Premiere Collectibles has been selling signed copies of Jerry Doyle’s book at over half off for a while now. I figured I’d throw that out there.
https://premierecollectibles.com/categories/jerry_doyle/have_you_seen_my_country_lately
As someone who doesn’t get to go to conventions and stuff often, I found this to be a steal. For the price you’d pay for a retail copy, you get one signed, like his politics or not. Nice to have something in my collection that’s signed by one of the B5 cast and a convenient excuse to start collection more.
Great option if you B5 collection is missing something with his signature on it.
Regarding Adam’s approach to finding a new audience –
Gotta say – the thing that really drew me into this show was the music. I think everyone credits JMS’s great writing and the superior acting; but no one ever discusses the music as a strong point everything from the theme to the accenting action skits (except for Sleeping in Light and when people feel the need to bash Crusade’s very unique and fitting soundtrack). B5’s music had a spacey feel that no other sci-fi show ever really captured. I remember humming, hell still at times find myself humming, one of the various themes.
Perhaps the special effects aged poorly, and perhaps the budgetary woes highlight inconsistencies and problems 20 years later. But let’s face it – the music is timeless, and that needs to be said.
I came across this link (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcn07f_babylon-5-suite-music-through-the-y_music). It’s worth a review just to listen to the music as it is, without the words, pictures, or other items presented during the opening.
Bill, we have on occasion talked about how we all enjoy Christopher Franke’s score, but we have never dedicated an episode to discuss the music of Babylon 5. We may have to rectify that oversight.
B5 did release many of the individual episode scores through sonic images. I don’t believe the regular episodes are still available except ebay, but there is a best of compilation cd at amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Babylon-Compilation-TV-Christopher-Franke/dp/B000002VUZ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305649837&sr=8-1
Thanks Gary – good finds!
The music for B5 is one of the best I’ve heard for any TV show, including anime.
As for the special effects, they’ve aged well for me. Then again, I’m one of those gamers that is trying to fit in newer games in between older games.
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=209302145771323&id=139652459402959
JMS is looking for some help. If you do animation 2d or 3d, you may want to click that link!
For those interested. Ordering for ‘Other Voices vol. 2’ just opened up.
I just heard the podcast from last night with the Carrie Dobro interview and Summer remembered this time to mention the Pak’ma’ra porn scene. Good, but not as relevant as if it was with David, Marjean, or Gary Cole if he agrees to an interview. 🙂 😛
One question I have that I don’t think I really have seen any information about on Crusade. What were the ratings for the shows when aired on TNT even after it was known that the show was cancelled? I have heard that the TNT executives who sabotaged the show wanted to charge a large fee for the 1st season episodes already shot if another network picked up the show. They didn’t want to look like fools if Sci-Fi Channel picked up the show and had a hit with the show. Good ratings would have been an indication that they were wrong and didn’t want anyone to find out. 🙁
I also heard a rumor that one (or more) of the executives at TNT that axed Crusade later moved over to the Fox Network and were partially responsible for Firefly being cancelled. Has anyone else heard of or could validate or invalidate this rumor?
Rob in MI
I’m 99.9% sure that rumor’s total crap.
The guy responsible for killing Firefly had been at Fox about ten years, and left Fox about 8-12 months after to start his own production company. I remember doing a little research on him at the time, to see what his track record with scifi shows was, but I’ll be damned if I can remember his name.
I think I railed about him on an ancient blog I used to have, even to the point of hoping his new company was so spectacular a failure that it would be used as a case study on what NOT to do, but that blog’s so long gone I’m not even sure where any of those posts are.
As for TNT wanting to charge a huge fee for Crusade, I think you’re getting your scifi show data mixed up! 🙂 FOX was the one who made the fees for Firefly so exorbitant, so that they wouldn’t look like fools when it became a runaway hit for someone else. I think TNT didn’t want to pass Crusade on because their B5 reruns were still on the air, and why air the prequel to a show that’s on someone else’s network?
Scifi Channel did have a chance at Crusade before TNT picked it up, but they couldn’t buy it because they’d just committed to 3 years of “First Wave”… despite the fact that their B5 reruns had done very well. IIRC, it was just bad timing between when they picked up “First Wave” and when Crusade was offered to them as a new show.
Thanks for the info about the TNT executive going to FOX rumor. I thought it was JMS himself on the interview you did with him on the podcast say that TNT wanted to charge Sci-Fi 3 or 4 times the normal rate for either Crusade or it could have been the B5 reruns?
Now that I think about it, it was for the B5 reruns and Sci-Fi wanted the B5 universe shows as a package together. I had never heard that Sci-Fi had a chance to fund Crusade before TNT. I had heard it was the TNT people in LA who were always behind B5/Crusade that came up with the idea for a B5 spin-off. How then would Sci-Fi have had 1st chance at Crusade? I haven’t finished reading Crusade: What the hell happened, so I could be remebering other theories from other people.
Rob in MI
Sci Fi did not have a chance at CRUSADE prior to TNT. They only tried for it after things went sour with Atlanta. They didn’t end up with the shows because a) They had spent their original programming budget on FARSCAPE, FIRST WAVE, etc., and b) TNT wanted an exorbitant buy-out on B5’s syndication package–and Sci Fi didn’t want to buy a spin-off without being able to air the parent series.
Thanks for the info.
I wonder if the Sci-Fi Channel had considered buying the rights to the 1st 4 seasons and funding a 5th season the way TNT did, when TNT did? I don’t remember the status of Sci-Fi at the time, but getting B5’s 5th season would have seemed like a priority for them. I wonder if there were any negotiations between Babylonian Productions/Warner Bros. and the Sci-Fi Channel in the summer of 1998 like there were with TNT?
Rob in MI
Am I confusing S5 with Crusade? Was it S5 they couldn’t pick up from WB/PTEN because of the First Wave spending?
I know there was a B5-Scifi deal being bandied about at some time, and it was before TNT entered the picture.
Nope, Summer. No Sci Fi Channel dealings prior to the production of the thirteen CRUSADE episodes. Remember, TNT was a corporate sibling of WB, whereas Sci Fi was in bed with Universal.
BABYLON 5 went from PTEN (years one to three), to network-less syndication (year four) and finally to TNT (year five plus the reruns of the previous seasons). CRUSADE was made for TNT and then shopped to Sci Fi after things went sour.
I must be remembering an aggressive fan campaign begging Scifi to pick up Season 5… I have that connection stuck in my head for years, now 🙂