[My computer froze while I was leaving this comment, thus trying again.]
(Apologies for constant minor revisions to the above post. I think it's in its final version now?)
No worries! Either you added this bit or my brain skidded over it the first time—
Apparently the answer to the question of "Why did no one notice for 15 years that Londo was being meatpuppeted by an alien brain parasite?" really is because in most versions prior to the final one, he'd cut ties with B5 by the time that happened.
—and it's useful information, although then I feel that all the fix-its are even more justified.
(That said, I actually like the substitution of the Drakh for the Shadows because it's part of the messy aftermath of the mythic war: order whatever, chaos whatever, sometimes you piss off a client state and the next thing you know it's neck parasites all round.)
the utterly adorable detail that they would negotiate their contracts together, including alternating their roles on the opening credits. (I promptly had to go check and they do indeed alternate from season 2 onward.)
AWWWWW.
I bet they were amazing at conventions together. It never occurred to me to try to attend one.
I cannot get over how much of JMS's original plan (all his original plans!) sounds like a bad idea! I think the man is genuinely some kind of insane creative genius and yet it sounds like he regularly needed to be saved from the terrible implications of his own plots.
He really may have been best when improvising. It happens! I just feel it doesn't usually happen in the kind of long-form narrative media where it can be tracked and anatomized!
I do get the strong impression from the very first (mid-80s) summary that an F/F subplot was planned all along; it's really too bad that he kept losing all the main components of it!
Yes—one of his notes was "Lesbian/bi character?" Dammit.
The time-travel weirdness that we did get was just rare enough to be unique and interesting as part of the ongoing background-level weirdness of a show that also has telepaths, real prophesies, and visitations by the dead.
Exactly that! And structuring so much of the plot around time travel would also have tilted the balance of the show toward a particular kind of sci-fi, whereas one of the virtues of its actual, however accidental final form is that genre-wise it's incredibly fluid. You can get high fantasy, workplace comedy, and dystopian science fiction in the same randomly selected episode. It was part of what made it feel both organic and unpredictable. Half a dozen genre protocols at minimum could be in play at any time.
no subject
(Apologies for constant minor revisions to the above post. I think it's in its final version now?)
No worries! Either you added this bit or my brain skidded over it the first time—
Apparently the answer to the question of "Why did no one notice for 15 years that Londo was being meatpuppeted by an alien brain parasite?" really is because in most versions prior to the final one, he'd cut ties with B5 by the time that happened.
—and it's useful information, although then I feel that all the fix-its are even more justified.
(That said, I actually like the substitution of the Drakh for the Shadows because it's part of the messy aftermath of the mythic war: order whatever, chaos whatever, sometimes you piss off a client state and the next thing you know it's neck parasites all round.)
the utterly adorable detail that they would negotiate their contracts together, including alternating their roles on the opening credits. (I promptly had to go check and they do indeed alternate from season 2 onward.)
AWWWWW.
I bet they were amazing at conventions together. It never occurred to me to try to attend one.
I cannot get over how much of JMS's original plan (all his original plans!) sounds like a bad idea! I think the man is genuinely some kind of insane creative genius and yet it sounds like he regularly needed to be saved from the terrible implications of his own plots.
He really may have been best when improvising. It happens! I just feel it doesn't usually happen in the kind of long-form narrative media where it can be tracked and anatomized!
I do get the strong impression from the very first (mid-80s) summary that an F/F subplot was planned all along; it's really too bad that he kept losing all the main components of it!
Yes—one of his notes was "Lesbian/bi character?" Dammit.
The time-travel weirdness that we did get was just rare enough to be unique and interesting as part of the ongoing background-level weirdness of a show that also has telepaths, real prophesies, and visitations by the dead.
Exactly that! And structuring so much of the plot around time travel would also have tilted the balance of the show toward a particular kind of sci-fi, whereas one of the virtues of its actual, however accidental final form is that genre-wise it's incredibly fluid. You can get high fantasy, workplace comedy, and dystopian science fiction in the same randomly selected episode. It was part of what made it feel both organic and unpredictable. Half a dozen genre protocols at minimum could be in play at any time.