[My computer froze while I was leaving this comment, thus trying again.]
OH NOOOO. It has been hijacked by time travelers!
Either you added this bit or my brain skidded over it the first time—
That was one of the additions! But seriously -- I think the mental record screech when the show slams over into the 5x16-18 plotline of betrayal/Drakh/Londo alone in the plaza really is a sudden siding-shunting of the plot tracks back to the original plan when the actual characters arcs had veered off somewhere else entirely. They SHOULD have noticed! And JMS has a good enough eye for character nuance - it really is one of his strengths - that there are multiple nods throughout these episodes to various characters who are close to Londo noticing something wrong ... only to shrug and get distracted with something else, because the plot has to go a certain direction. I think I said at the time I watched those episodes that it was one of the few parts of the show where it stopped feeling organic and started feeling like I could detect the author's hand redirecting the plot.
It's incredibly tragic, and it's good tragedy - I really do think it's well written and thematically solid ... but also, I think the fixits ARE justified. I don't regret that the show worked out as it did. Sometimes the best you can hope for is the least worst of the available tragedies; sometimes you can do the right thing and it doesn't save you. But I think Londo and the people who loved him laid the groundwork for a less tragic ending, and I am really enjoying thinking of ways to give them something better.
(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.)
Yes, I agree. In fact, quite a bit of what I like about the show is that sprawling, realistic messiness, some of which is planned and a lot of which is accidental due to the show having to clean up various messes along the way. I have another halfway written post in my head due to rewatching some of the early episodes for vid purposes, about how much of the groundwork I can see that the show was laying for characters and relationships that fell off a cliff (Sinclair and Delenn, Sinclair and Garibaldi, Talia and Ivanova) and while I can see how satisfying it might have been if those had come off - because the Londo & G'Kar, and Londo & Delenn groundwork DOES come off, and it IS satisfying), it also has a beautifully organic feel, because ... sometimes things don't work out, sometimes you love people and they go away and you never see them again and whatever you could have been doesn't matter. (Still would have loved to see Talia and Ivanova go somewhere. Still glad that Sinclair and Delenn didn't.)
I get the feeling that in JMS's original plan, the whole show would have been a tapestry of intertwining grand, fated, meticulously choreographed relationships, and instead we just get one that actually comes off as more-or-less planned (Londo and G'Kar) against a backdrop of people being messy and things going in 20 different directions at once, and it feels so much more real for that. It's like you talked about, one closed loop of time travel is perfect, but having it happen all the time makes it much less so. Like the Day of the Dead episode that introduces the idea that the dead can theoretically return to visit the living under certain conditions without breaking the rules of the universe, but it wouldn't improve the story in the slightest if dead characters were dropping in all the time, and making their deaths mean nothing.
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 know, and I think so too! He really is fantastically good at that. And it isn't something you typically see done well in a narrative final form that is this intricately structured. I think he's at his best in this tightrope act, and he works best when he's working against limitations (such as network TV). Actually it's not that different from the way some writers are best when they're working within strict genre limitations - writing romance, writing comics, writing fanfic, writing sitcoms. Some people do their best work with guardrails; some do their best work under incredible pressure, or while having the rug jerked out from under them repeatedly.
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.
Yes! It's just completely unlike anything I've seen before, in the best way, and if the tonal and subgenre changes are at least partly a result of network meddling and other factors, that's okay - it's gloriously itself, and it really does work.
no subject
OH NOOOO. It has been hijacked by time travelers!
Either you added this bit or my brain skidded over it the first time—
That was one of the additions! But seriously -- I think the mental record screech when the show slams over into the 5x16-18 plotline of betrayal/Drakh/Londo alone in the plaza really is a sudden siding-shunting of the plot tracks back to the original plan when the actual characters arcs had veered off somewhere else entirely. They SHOULD have noticed! And JMS has a good enough eye for character nuance - it really is one of his strengths - that there are multiple nods throughout these episodes to various characters who are close to Londo noticing something wrong ... only to shrug and get distracted with something else, because the plot has to go a certain direction. I think I said at the time I watched those episodes that it was one of the few parts of the show where it stopped feeling organic and started feeling like I could detect the author's hand redirecting the plot.
It's incredibly tragic, and it's good tragedy - I really do think it's well written and thematically solid ... but also, I think the fixits ARE justified. I don't regret that the show worked out as it did. Sometimes the best you can hope for is the least worst of the available tragedies; sometimes you can do the right thing and it doesn't save you. But I think Londo and the people who loved him laid the groundwork for a less tragic ending, and I am really enjoying thinking of ways to give them something better.
(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.)
Yes, I agree. In fact, quite a bit of what I like about the show is that sprawling, realistic messiness, some of which is planned and a lot of which is accidental due to the show having to clean up various messes along the way. I have another halfway written post in my head due to rewatching some of the early episodes for vid purposes, about how much of the groundwork I can see that the show was laying for characters and relationships that fell off a cliff (Sinclair and Delenn, Sinclair and Garibaldi, Talia and Ivanova) and while I can see how satisfying it might have been if those had come off - because the Londo & G'Kar, and Londo & Delenn groundwork DOES come off, and it IS satisfying), it also has a beautifully organic feel, because ... sometimes things don't work out, sometimes you love people and they go away and you never see them again and whatever you could have been doesn't matter. (Still would have loved to see Talia and Ivanova go somewhere. Still glad that Sinclair and Delenn didn't.)
I get the feeling that in JMS's original plan, the whole show would have been a tapestry of intertwining grand, fated, meticulously choreographed relationships, and instead we just get one that actually comes off as more-or-less planned (Londo and G'Kar) against a backdrop of people being messy and things going in 20 different directions at once, and it feels so much more real for that. It's like you talked about, one closed loop of time travel is perfect, but having it happen all the time makes it much less so. Like the Day of the Dead episode that introduces the idea that the dead can theoretically return to visit the living under certain conditions without breaking the rules of the universe, but it wouldn't improve the story in the slightest if dead characters were dropping in all the time, and making their deaths mean nothing.
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 know, and I think so too! He really is fantastically good at that. And it isn't something you typically see done well in a narrative final form that is this intricately structured. I think he's at his best in this tightrope act, and he works best when he's working against limitations (such as network TV). Actually it's not that different from the way some writers are best when they're working within strict genre limitations - writing romance, writing comics, writing fanfic, writing sitcoms. Some people do their best work with guardrails; some do their best work under incredible pressure, or while having the rug jerked out from under them repeatedly.
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.
Yes! It's just completely unlike anything I've seen before, in the best way, and if the tonal and subgenre changes are at least partly a result of network meddling and other factors, that's okay - it's gloriously itself, and it really does work.