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If there's one thing this show excelled at it was casting on a budget. Typical 90s sci-fi you have a low bar for guest/bit actors then suddenly David Warner turns up and loving delivers. JMS had to make money stretch and would reach out to people not getting a lot of work for reasons beyond their control or struggling in general and they did a stellar job on a shoestring budget. FYI in case you aren't aware, the actor playing Dr. Franklin was like 90% deaf, and memorized entire scenes he was in so he could read the other actors lips and know when to say his lines.
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Jun 5, 2020 02:58
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:I think that's just how JMS does his writing. While B5 was the predecessor for modern shows like Battlestar, Game of Thrones, Expanse, etc. I think Babylon 5 was very different in how it developed a lot of its 'twists.' JMS has said that a story shouldn't be predictable but you should be able to predict it. In that sense, if everything is laid out and explained well, the audience should be able to see where it will go. He's a big believer in a well-executed Chekov's gun. So, I think for a lot of B5, the 'twists' can seem almost obvious - especially if you're paying attention and binging through it - because JMS believes that they should be foreshadowed. This is different to a lot of modern shows that do serialised storytelling, where big twists just happen because it keeps the audience guessing/engaged. Wow, this person is a Cylon! Wow, this person killed the Night King! Can you go back and see the breadcrumbs or hints that led to those big moments? Naaah. JMS had to do a ton of things to make B5 be a functional show because of what he was dealing with, low budget, airing on a fly by night regional network PTEN, and all the challenges associated with a production like that given people coming and go with opportunities. He essentially wrote out the series in advance, the so called "series bible" he pitched to Paramount is what everyone claims DS9 is based off despite massive, massive differences. Once he finally found a home for the show he ended up doing a thing where he would create very intricate outlines for every single character giving everyone a "plausible" out if the actor ended up leaving the show or he had to fire/cut to save money. It'd be insane to think of that now when you have a show like Grey's Anatomy that just have a character leave via writing a farewell note after the actor said he was done that a narrator reads out over clips of the other people looking wistfull. pentyne fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Jun 6, 2020 |
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Jun 6, 2020 05:42
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Fair enough. There's the thing from when the show aired that JMS joining the B5 .usenet and discussing the show and stuff and dropping in details he would know, and all that has mostly blended into apocryphal stories since.
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Jun 6, 2020 10:15
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TheAardvark posted:Man how has there not been a new big-budget prestige show with this or a similar premise yet? It's hard to grow a new media franchise around such a classic 'nerd' pastime as sci fi. GoT was so notable specifically because it gained a massive foothold in the culture as a fantasy series. The Expanse was under a perpetual threat of cancellation its entire run for low viewer figures. Its only around still because it's Jeff Bezo's favorite show.
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Jun 6, 2020 13:28
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TheAardvark posted:I don't want to discourage the people who have seen the show from posting at all, you all have been mostly really good about it. I like the production notes a lot too. I'm fine with y'all keeping on posting, just please think hard about what whether what you're posting is going to change our perception of the story we're watching, or give us a perspective we simply cannot have within what we have seen so far. It's a frequent topic, someone said it's a good idea for some people to stay engaged with you blind watchers to keep up the thread activity. I was amped to see how people respond to surprise guest star David Warner. So many actors show up in early mid 90s sci-fi shows especially Canadian ones its a treat for people who's watched the last 20 years of the genre to see a young David Hewleet from Stargate or a famous VA like Warner having a small part. I also want to vote for the new thread title to be "Maybe they're Zorlons?"
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Jun 9, 2020 03:20
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Are you all on track to try and stay a few episodes within each other again? If someone is 5 eps in to season 2 and someone starts s3 the whole thread just needs to be blacked out for safety.
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Jun 15, 2020 09:45
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Torrannor posted:Very sad news, how can they all die so young (or relatively young, 65 isn't that old!)? At least 2 of them were at high risk for other health complications, but yeah they're dying in their ~60s or earlier while most of the OG Star Trek cast is still alive.
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Jan 22, 2021 12:25
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Still seeing traffic, has anyone mentioned apparently GW Bush and his neocon friends were fans of B5? Like JMS met them once or something and it was awkward how he had to avoid saying that it was people like them that the show was opposed to.
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Sep 23, 2021 07:11
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Finger Prince posted:So, tell us more about this "psy-corps"... probably thought the fake commerical was a good idea Is it a true story that JMS had to actually get it cleared to air even as a joke, and the subliminal message still had to last a certain number of frames or it was illegal?
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Sep 23, 2021 09:25
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TK-42-1 posted:Very much this. It's hard to respond to things without spoiling anything else even unintentionally. Yeah the whole plot from start to finish was allegedly written out in in quite some detail for a series bible JMS shopped around, so there's a lot of things that someone who's completed the series might casually mention thinking nothing of it not realizing it was slowly teased out across multiple seasons. Season 1 is before JMS started having to deal with major actor issues, network futzing with everything, and in general all the problems that came with trying to run a serial show in an era where they kind of didn't exist.
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Mar 25, 2023 23:26
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:It's kind of crazy how many B5 actors are gone now. We have Sheridan, Ivanova, Talia, Bester, Londo, Vir and Lennier that I know of, but that's it. Not sure about any of the others. Cast is borderline cursed. Ironically Marcus' actor is still alive.
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Apr 21, 2023 17:18
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TitusGroen posted:Honestly, that's incredible even by today's standards of golden age television. B5 was a extremely risky undertaking at the time, because network tv did not believe people could stay engaged with watching a serial show like that, much less a creator being willing to take the risk they would get their entire projected show run. In that era you could line the walls with failed 1-2 season long sci-fi/fantasy shows that fizzled out with tons of unresolved plots and dangling threads. The only reason B5 got as far as it did was a fledging regional network, PTEN, was determined to make it their flagship show, then TNT picked it up for a song and produced the 5th season so the series would be 'complete' JMS wrote the entire 5 year plan up as a series bible and presented it to Paramount. Allegedly, after rejecting him they took inspiration from it and went ahead to make Star Trek Deep Space Nine, the first Star Trek show to have major, multi-part story arcs, like part 1 of 5 or part 1 of 7.
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Feb 6, 2024 18:10
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