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I got seriously angry when I saw an interview with Ron Moore and he said they literally drew names out if a hat to pick the final five. Why the duck would you ever admit that publicly.
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Mar 4, 2021 03:54
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I disagree with the idea that everything on a serialized drama has to be meticulously planned from start to finish. The Prisoner worked fine without that.
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Mar 4, 2021 03:58
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The Prisoner was only a season long. It's something that loses efficacy the longer you go on.
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Mar 4, 2021 04:05
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Even B5, which was incredibly well planned, wasn't anywhere near as completely planned as it is touted to be. The whole V: The Series plotline getting dropped means we got a better show. Hell, Breaking Bad is considered a very tightly written show and that was absolutely written on the fly. There is a good and a bad way to write shows on the fly. Those tend to be the same rules as just "writing a good show". BSG was not a good show.
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Mar 4, 2021 04:07
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BSG was an anime
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Mar 4, 2021 04:10
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Maxwell Lord posted:I disagree with the idea that everything on a serialized drama has to be meticulously planned from start to finish. The Prisoner worked fine without that. The Prisoner was barely serialized. If you can even refer to it as a TV series and not a season-long acid trip, it was extremely episodic.
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Mar 4, 2021 04:49
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Maxwell Lord posted:I disagree with the idea that everything on a serialized drama has to be meticulously planned from start to finish. The Prisoner worked fine without that. If you're going to tell some kind of long-term narrative, you may not need a meticulous plan of every detail, but you still definitely need some kind of plan of where you're going instead of just writing wherever the spirit takes you and getting stuck into a dumb corner that you have to write something even dumber to get yourself out. If you want to convey some specific feelings or themes over time, then you gotta come up with them first, especially if you're working collaboratively, you gotta tell your partners about it, and don't just expect for somebody else to clean up your mess satisfactorily when something goes wrong. Although with B5 in particular, there were extensive plans, and then circumstances and whatnot made JMS pivot to something else. Planning out a bunch can even be a neat writing exercise if you're willing to not be married to it.
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Mar 4, 2021 04:49
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Maxwell Lord posted:I disagree with the idea that everything on a serialized drama has to be meticulously planned from start to finish. The Prisoner worked fine without that. You absolutely don't need to meticulously plan or pre-write the stories in advance, but it's good to have a medium-long term outline that can function as guard rails and keep your story consistent with itself. B5 as it stands bears little similarities with JMS's original Five Year Plan, but the bones of that plan are visible all the way from start to end, so it basically tells the story it set out to tell even if the way it got there changed along the way. There's no point where you brain starts sending warning signals about things being wrong the way a Ron Moore DS9/BSG storytelling style does once you hit things that are just obvious random thought bubbles he had that week or improvisation.
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Mar 4, 2021 04:50
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It's a matter of having structure you can lean on and build upon, instead of just waffling from one episode or one season segment to another. No strategy survives contact with the enemy, that doesn't mean you don't need one (or five).
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Mar 4, 2021 04:53
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Absurd Alhazred posted:The Prisoner was barely serialized. If you can even refer to it as a TV series and not a season-long acid trip, it was extremely episodic. also the end was almost completely nonsensical
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Mar 4, 2021 04:53
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JMS said, I believe in the commentary tracks, that about 80% of what he originally wrote ended up on screen. I'm sure he meant in terms of the very broad strokes, and adapting material from the original plan where he could work it back in. Even without unexpected production snags, just iterating on your ideas with other talented and creative people would necessarily lead to changes and, one hopes, improvement. I think I'd be interested to see an alternate universe's B5 that followed the original plan, even though I don't think it would be as good as what we got.
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Mar 4, 2021 04:56
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There's also things like foreshadowing, which is infinitely more meaningful if it uh...means something, instead of just being some abstract fuckin' nothing and then the writer coming out and saying that was fuckin' nothing, so you goddamn know when they got fuckin' nothing.
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Mar 4, 2021 05:04
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SlothfulCobra posted:If you're going to tell some kind of long-term narrative, you may not need a meticulous plan of every detail, but you still definitely need some kind of plan of where you're going instead of just writing wherever the spirit takes you and getting stuck into a dumb corner that you have to write something even dumber to get yourself out. B5 is a great example of having a plan and needing to change and adapt it overtime as circumstances dictated. For an example of what happens when a show has a plan, and then one day, runs out of plan, see: Thrones, Game of.
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Mar 4, 2021 05:07
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SlothfulCobra posted:If you're going to tell some kind of long-term narrative, you may not need a meticulous plan of every detail, but you still definitely need some kind of plan of where you're going instead of just writing wherever the spirit takes you and getting stuck into a dumb corner that you have to write something even dumber to get yourself out. Counterpoint: BrBa often had no idea where it was going. BrBa was at its best when the wrote themselves into a corner and had to get themselves out and BrBa was at its worst when they meticulously planned things. Now, the *way* BrBa wrote itself out of corners by going back and looking to see how they could use what they had to create a solution is genius because 1) it creates the illusion of foreshadowing and 2) it makes the story cohesive and clockwork like. It's like an hourglass, where various parts all start to come together until there is an inflection point when they break apart until they are forced together again, repeat. Contrast that with BSG or Lost where it just expands and expands until the inevitable heat-death.
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Mar 4, 2021 05:18
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sebmojo posted:also the end was almost completely nonsensical 1! 1! 2! 2! 3! 3! 4! 4! 5! 5! 6! 5! 6! 5! 5! 5! 6! 5! 6! 5! 6! 5!
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Mar 4, 2021 05:18
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As much as I admire the man, Shulgin mainstreaming psychedelics for scientists was a huge cultural mistake.
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Mar 4, 2021 05:23
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sebmojo posted:also the end was almost completely nonsensical And was the finest series finale of any TV show to date.
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Mar 4, 2021 08:27
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The Prisoner is such a mess that it's not possible to create a viewing order without continuity errors. Still great, but not really a good example of a well plotted show.
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Mar 4, 2021 10:07
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The penultimate episode of The Prisoner was filmed much earlier in the run (a year prior to 'Fall Out'), and had a couple of scenes reshot so it would lead directly into the finale. (They had to fudge an explanation for Leo McKern's resurrection and change of appearance, but it's The Village so hey, they can do weird stuff like that.) McGoohan also wrote the finale in a few manic days, which may explain a lot.
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Mar 4, 2021 10:19
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It's a tragedy that McGoohan wasn't available to be an interrogator in Intersections in Real Time.
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Mar 4, 2021 10:35
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Tsaedje posted:It's a tragedy that McGoohan wasn't available to be an interrogator in Intersections in Real Time. That was the plan? Holy poo poo, that would have been amazing.
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Mar 4, 2021 14:44
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Lemniscate Blue posted:That was the plan? Holy poo poo, that would have been amazing. Not quite. Knight Two in "And the Sky Full of Stars" (106 in production order) was originally supposed to be played by Walter Koenig; when he needed heart surgery, they offered the role to McGoohan, who wanted to accept but had other commitments. JMS tried to push the shooting schedule back to allow WK time to recover, but when that was impossible, he wrote the role of Bester for him in "Mind War" (110 production order, 2 episodes before AtSFoS in broadcast order)
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Mar 4, 2021 15:58
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Seemlar posted:You absolutely don't need to meticulously plan or pre-write the stories in advance, but it's good to have a medium-long term outline that can function as guard rails and keep your story consistent with itself. Enough of the original arc was in place that the bits getting changed could either be repurposed or, in a few instances, dropped. The Sinclair rewrite also completely changed the final portion of the arc, and overwhelmingly for the better, I'd say. The mole-on-B5 mini-arc had to get reassigned. The "station telepath" arc got rewritten, and then thrown out when Thompson left, and then reworked again when they got Tallman back as a regular, and then reworked again when Christian didn't come back for S5. On the other hand, the Earthforce arc, including most of Garibaldi's stuff, and the Narn-Centauri war arc stayed very close to the original plan, close enough that the changes are virtually invisible. The other amazing thing JMS pulled off was making sure that changes in one subplot didn't happen in complete isolation from the rest of the story. Sheridan's backstory and his subplots, in particular, feel extremely organic and are sometimes drivers of the story in ways that couldn't have been originally intended. Another good tip is to not put the word "Plan" in the opening credits of your show and then say in the writers' room, "We have no idea what the plan is, but let's not bother with that right now." And if you do, don't keep telling stories about how everything you did after that point was spur-of-the-moment or arbitrary. Honestly, they'd have been better off claiming the Cylons had a big plan and then seeing what the fan theories were, and then picking the elements they liked out of that.
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Mar 4, 2021 20:04
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Are there other shows that have done the show footage from not yet done upcoming seasons?
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Mar 4, 2021 20:48
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Early How I Met Your Mother did a few unreliable narrator gags with events that happened later on: 'oh wait that wasn't then, that was years later, I'll tell you about it another time' kinda stuff
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Mar 4, 2021 21:36
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MikusR posted:Are there other shows that have done the show footage from not yet done upcoming seasons? One that springs to mind is that in Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi briefly show up in the anniversary special a year before he took over the role.
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Mar 4, 2021 22:31
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MrL_JaKiri posted:One that springs to mind is that in Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi briefly show up in the anniversary special a year before he took over the role. Yeah but that wasn't material that was going to be used in a future episode.
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Mar 4, 2021 22:34
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Side note: B5 does it twice (assuming we're talking about the Sinclar-and-Garibaldi-last-stand footage), although more directly in Deconstruction due to it being filmed in S5.V-Men posted:Yeah but that wasn't material that was going to be used in a future episode. True. There's flash forwards to stuff in Breaking Bad S2, but again that's self contained within the year.
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Mar 4, 2021 22:40
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Side note: B5 does it twice (assuming we're talking about the Sinclar-and-Garibaldi-last-stand footage), although more directly in Deconstruction due to it being filmed in S5. In that case should have called the episode Under Construction. 
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Mar 4, 2021 23:01
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Londo's jacket being out at the cleaners so he has to wear his old purple one, just in time to see his vision correctly fulfilled is a nice little moment.
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Mar 5, 2021 02:21
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Tsaedje posted:Londo's jacket being out at the cleaners so he has to wear his old purple one, just in time to see his vision correctly fulfilled is a nice little moment. yeah. I always wondered if that was intentional to throw us off, or it was just dealing with a wardrobe decision.
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Mar 5, 2021 02:25
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You remember how in Babylon Squared future Delenn was wearing a red dress but in War Without End she's wearing a green dress? JMS didn't want to do something like that again. I'm not sure that anyone else really cared, but whatever, it works.
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Mar 5, 2021 03:10
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Red and green are the same color and anyone who has told you different has been lying to you. That's just good storytelling.
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Mar 5, 2021 03:27
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VinylonUnderground posted:Red and green are the same color and anyone who has told you different has been lying to you. That's just good storytelling. loving trichromat propaganda.
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Mar 5, 2021 04:13
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Pyramids, trilateral commission, trichromates, primates, triploidy of chromosome 21, majestic 12, holy trinity, son of god or god of sun . . . pay attention here people!
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Mar 5, 2021 05:22
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ultrafilter posted:You remember how in Babylon Squared future Delenn was wearing a red dress but in War Without End she's wearing a green dress? JMS didn't want to do something like that again. I'm not sure that anyone else really cared, but whatever, it works. That was an exotic fabric of Vorlon origin, and had a unique characteristic in that the appearance of the color would change depending on the temporal "reference point" of an observer.
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Mar 5, 2021 06:16
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Number_6 posted:That was an exotic fabric of Vorlon origin, and had a unique characteristic in that the appearance of the color would change depending on the temporal "reference point" of an observer. PURPLE! 
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Mar 5, 2021 07:14
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Side note: B5 does it twice (assuming we're talking about the Sinclar-and-Garibaldi-last-stand footage), although more directly in Deconstruction due to it being filmed in S5. The closest thing I can think of is maybe Lost when they did the surprise flash forward at the end of the season.
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Mar 5, 2021 10:54
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Some guy in sci fi wi fi said I should post here because I have seen the series before many years ago but am watching it with someone who had never even heard of it and I posted in the first time watchers thread because of this So now I will make the post here that I made there so as to not ruin the first time viewing experience ahem "We have both decided that the EA Omega is the best spaceship in scifi thanks and gobbless"
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Mar 8, 2021 14:56
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Psycho Landlord posted:Some guy in sci fi wi fi said I should post here because I have seen the series before many years ago but am watching it with someone who had never even heard of it and I posted in the first time watchers thread because of this Welcome fellow First One. That was me. We leave the younger races in peace while living vicariously through them in the other thread. I know that might not seem spoilers, but if one of the new watchers decides to google it because they don't know what it is and they happen upon the Omega X class, that would be a HUGE spoiler. Not being critical of you, just trying to keep them from getting spoiled. And BTW I agree with you completely. Did the goon that ordered the not-Lego Agenemnon ever get it?
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Mar 8, 2021 15:15
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