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Even more of the original Babylon 5 plan
Okay, I found someone on Reddit who went through all the script books and typed up a summary of ALL the different Babylon 5 plans/plot/changes, and ... I can't believe I'm saying this, but if this is accurate, it sounds like the almost-cancellation/having to compress most of the plot into season 4 actually may have been an improvement over the original.
(It also sounds like JMS was constantly changing major details / long-term plans on the fly throughout all the seasons, which makes the cohesion of the final version even more impressive, even without taking into account all of the network meddling and cast changes! One reason why I've been going down a rabbit hole on this is because I really do think this is one of the most impressive creative feats I've ever seen pulled off, I want to understand it from a creative perspective myself, and the more I find out about it, the more impressed I am.)
Here is where I found it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/babylon5/comments/8hccek/crusade_questoin_what_was_the_darn_5_year_plan/
Technically the person is asking about the plan for Crusade, but the respondent typed up a long summary of ALL the changes leading up to it, and it's really fascinating!
Once again I am copying this under a detail cut in case of linkrot.
[In response to a question in which someone asked what the 5-year plan for the Crusade spinoff was]
Very complicated since the plan changed quite a bit in the details and you have to go back to B5 evolution to understand it all.
Will try to summarize quickly the plan evolution (french guy typing this quickly do forgive the typos here and there)
B5 Pilot and season 1 changed a bit due to actor replacement but are mostly the original plan.
B5 Season 2 : The minbari issue was originally that they were becoming infertile, Sinclair was the chosen one and was recognised by the triluminari thing. Delenn (who was supposed to have been a guy) in season 1 change race & gender to have a child with him that will be the minbari saviour.
Sakai has a terrible accident (mind wipe), Delenn confort Sinclair ans start a relationship with him.
The Sheridan replacement of Sinclair switched things around a bit but still mostly the same for S2.
Season 3 : Narm hold for much longer and fall only a third of the way in.
The relationsip part of the original season 3 plan is the same (Sinclair & Delenn start their relationship, Kosh gets closer to Sinclair). But galatic history wise, it's much slower than in the final version. The shadow stay hidden and continue to destabilize thing here and there, G'Kar become a refugee on B5 by mid season 3 after Narm fall.
Season 4 :
B5 is still NOT independent from Earth. Garibaldi fall back into his alcool addiction (something that will be used for S5 instead), he quits and become a mercenary on B5.
Mid season 4, the Shadow/Vorlon-Army of light war begins.
Same as in final version, Sinclair & cie have doubts about the vorlon motives, Delenn is pregnant by S4’s ending.
Season 5 :
Garibaldi is back and rejoin the staff. The cast and Gkar only discover now that Londo had shadow help.
Londo has no choice but to leave B5. He has regrets and want to help from home. He eventually become emperor and want to turn of the shadows but they put a keeper on him to force him to keep helping (pretty similar to final version).
Due to shadow influence, the military cast take over on Minbar and want to declare war on earth again.
On earth, Clark takes over, the B5 independence thing finally happens.
The shadows win the war and the vorlon are pretty much wiped out.
The minbari warrior decide to destroy B5 before attacking earth so they attack. That is the scene that was flashforwarded in season 1’s Babylon squared.
Sinclair, Delenn & the surviving cast escape right before B5 is destroyed (vision in signs and portants season 1).
End of Season 5
Start of second show, second first year plan : Babylon Prime Season 1 :
Main cast is the same minus Londo (recurring from Centori Prime), Gkar recurring leading the resistance and Zathras is in the main cast.
Sinclair & the B5 cast are refugee on Epsilon 3, protected by Draal and the great machine.
The whole galaxy is fucked. The surviving minbari non warrior grey council join them and still believe the chosen one, Sinclair, is the one that can save them all.
Since B5 is gone, they decide to go into the past to steal B4 and use it instead.
It’s basically war without end but they truly intend to use B4 in the present and not the past.
Their time stabilizer mess up, Sinclair & his son grow older due to that, the son become a fully grown adult in the mess but with the mind of a child.
They come back not at the time they left but 10-15 years into the future.
B4 is renamed Babylon Prime and since it has reactors, it can move around the galaxy.
After Season 1 (plan is not detailed there)
Sinclair forms the Interstellar Alliance to fight the shadows and free earth/minbar/narm. The first obvious allies are Gkar resistance.
Emperor Londo is a recurring character that does his best to secretly help them by drinking his keeper to sleep here and there.
Sinclair’s son become a minbari religious icon.
Eventually, they slowly take earth back from Clark and free Minbar and Narm.
It all end on centauri prime, with Sinclair and Delenn captured by the shadows & centauri allies.
Londo get drunk, manage to free them. Gkar is there and at this point has known about the keeper for a while. Londo ask for his help to kill him in order that he doesn’t warn the shadows.
They die together as friends as in the final show.
Vir becomes emperor. With the Interstellar Alliance help, they free Centauri prime and defeat the shadows. Delenn become leader of Minbar, Sinclair retire to a planet to spend his days fishing and their son become the new IA President.
The road is vastly different, but the end in 2281 is basically the same thing.
Since hoping for 10 seasons is a bit much, by mid season 2, JMS compress the plot and a good part of the second shows is compressed into B5 five year arc.
Plan 2 :
Season 3 B5 : Similar to what we had in the final version until the ending.
Sheridan goes to Z'ha'dum, blow them up with the white star.
The shadows attack B5 and destroys it.
The surviving cast members have to escape into the time rift opened in “War without end”.
They find themselves 20 years into the future, end of season 3.
No detail for season 4 & 5 of this second plan except that Sheridan comes back to life and rejoin the cast to start the fight again 20 years in the future.
It would have probably been similar to the Babylon Prime idea where they spend the two seasons freeing earth, fighting the shadows until season 5 would have ended on centauri prime with Londo (the time jump match for that).
Plan 3 :
JMS think it might be better to stay one more year in the present before having the time jump in season 4.
Production wise, B5 is cancelled, season 4 will be the last, so the plan will change again.
Plan 4:
The season 4 we got :
No more time jump, tie up as much as possible in one finale season.
Since the shadows are defeated there in season 4, it’s hard to explain how Centauri Prime is still under their influence in the future (flash forward seen in WWE). So comes the Drakhs as shadows of the shadows to explain that issue away.
By the end of S4, B5 is finally renewed by TNT for a S5 and a second 5 years show :
Plan 5 :
Since most of the story has been told in a compressed way; S5 is to be the bridge between B5 and the second show.
The second show will now be about the rangers travelling space to stabilize and expand the interstellar alliance.
Season 5 :
Elric & the technomages return to B5 & the known galaxy after the shadow war. He becomes a guide to ISA president Sheridan. Ivanova is B5 Captain and Franklin is second in command.
The first half is the season is mostly politics with Sheridan stabilizing the alliance and the internal conflict and trying to expand it.
Second half starts with Sheridan/Delann son arriving from the future.
The Drakhs starts messing with the alliance from Centauri Prime (similar to final version).
Ivanova is in a relationship with Byron the telepath but it doesn’t end well.
In the final episode, Londo is put under a keeper by the Drakhs.
Second show : Babylon 5 : Rangers
Main cast: Sheridan/Delenn/Gkar/Franklin/Zathras
Recurring ranger & technomage cast.
Show still centered on B5 (mostly beginning and ending of episodes), but we follow rangers and technomages going around the galaxy helping the IA members (against the drakhs and others threats).
TNT doesn’t like the idea want “a goal” for the show in the spin off, something more than just helping the IA.
Plan 6 :
Second show is called : The Babylon project : crusade
Earth will be attacked by the Drakhs with the virus, that will give the rangers a goal in the first season and make TNT happy.
The rangers travel the galaxy in fleets of White Stars to search for an antidote. They will travel mostly on former now abandoned lost planets to find advanced tech.
Main cast is Sheridan, Delenn, Marcus, G’kar, Zathras, a technomage, and Shereena, “a last survivor of somewhere (ring a bell? )
Going over post limit, go to next post ^
TNT doesn’t want any B5 cast in the second show.
Plan 7 :
Sheridan & Delenn are demoted to recurring.
Main cast is now :
Matthiew Singleton : Ranger captain of the lost star fleet.
Marcus Cole (all of this is negotiated while season 4 is being aired and JMS toy with not killing him).
A techno mage. Dureena : last survivor of a race
Zathras Since he knows the great machine, he is the only being in the galaxy that can understand the first one techs.
Dr Gwen Tracy
Varenni : Minbari warrior assigned by Delenn to the expedition.
Max Eilerson :IPX archeologist, only care about profit.
The show would have been about the hero having to navigate first one cities that were booby-trapped and face old creatures left there.
Drakhs would try to stop them here and there.
The white star fleet amiral ship is called the Excalibur.
In the end, the TNT deal for season 5 + spin off is signed at the last minute. (A funny story is that Peter Jurasik got his and Andreas contracts, went to Andreas in the middle of the night, told him “Sign it, it’s fair to us”. He did and went back to sleep.
JMS start to write season 5 in detail but the Claudia Christian mess happens (who knows why exactly). On top of that, his hotel throw away his season 5 episodes synopsis, he starts season 5 over.
Plan 8 :
Since TNT agree to a second show, he remove most of the politic / alliance building with the rangers from season 5.
With all the mess happening, JMS expend on the only arc from season 5 he can still write without Ivanova and he remember clearly, the telepath arc.
He admit he messed up that if I remember correctly.
He think about doing a full B5 spin off with telepaths having a hive/shared mind like Byron’s group (seeds of Sense8 maybe ? ) .
Garibaldi, who was to be on mars for most of season 5 (trying to stop Edgar’s many shadow projects) is brought back early to B5 since Ivanova is gone.
A whole sub arc with Sheridan son coming from the future is removed.
David was to have come and try to kill / stop Sheridan. He eventually fail and goes back into the rift and it’s never explained why. (My theory is that he had a keeper, I mean, the drakhs did put one on him according to the fast forward from WWE).
After B5 ends, a telepath war movie is planned between B5 & Crusade.
3 tie in novels are released (two before, one after, the telepath trilogy) but the movie itself is never made.
Lennier and Lyta die in the movie, Bester escape as a war crimimal. there is a long summary of what happened in detail, but my post is way too long already (have been typing for like an hour). If someone is interested, I’ll go into details.
After the cancellation, two other movies idea are brought up to replace it, also with synopsis in the books but they were cancelled too.
We finally arrive at crusade.
TNT refuse to have rangers in the show and that the ship be docked at B5.
So plan 9 :
It becomes a ship leased to the EA.
Without the rangers, JMS can’t show them going though the galaxy trying to build up the alliance, which was to have been the main center of the show after the plague thing was done.
In the mean time, a TNT exec meet Tracy Scoggins randomly and like her, so now they want her in crusade and the ship can go the B5 once in a while.
From there, it’s the disaster that is well known.
All scripts are rewritten by TNT, the order of episode is being moved around, it no longer makes any sense, they demand to have a sexual explorer on board the ship, more fights, more guns, they want to see Gideon pilot the ship from a Joystick …
Then it’s cancelled since the JMS-TNT relation are going downhill fast.
How it should have continued:
The apocalypse box manipulates Gideon over the course of the show, giving him what he wants when it’s in his interest.
They found a telepath recluse on a planet, it’s Bester.
The episode is full of flashback from Bester’s trial and escape after the telepath war. Bester actually help the heroes since he want to save the telepath on earth.
At the end, it’s discovered that Bester still has part of a former psy corp fleet augmented with shadowtech (during the clark administration) and that they are preparing their return eventually.
In the same episode, hunters are chasing our heroes and bester and it’s discovered at the end that it’s garibaldi’s men.
Dureena was to have been augmented eventually by shadowtech like the technomages (like Galen).
They discover Earth is still playing around with shadowtech. Earth call the ISA hypocrits since they are ally with technomages like Galen who use shadowtech.
Since Gideon and his crew want to go public with that, earthgov wants him killed, he his shot as he is about to reveal everything at the end of s01.
Season 2 :
The apocalypse box save Gideon, somehow.
Telepath arc : the senate wants to recreate a psy corps (linked to bester arc from season 1)
Drakhs/technomage arc : The Drakhs know how to use shadowtech but not how to create it, they try to bring the technomages to their side.
Mid season 2, the cure is found, they give it to earth then they are framed as traitors somehow by people in the government (because they know too much about shadowtech).
In season 3, Excalibur is on the run and wanted, they have to prove their innocence and stop the shadowtech project on earth (which is helped secretly by the drakhs).
Somehow the apocalypse box would have been a powerful telepath locked in.
Nothing is said after that.
2 years later, TNT lose the B5/crusade rights and scifi want to relaunch the show.
JMS thinks it’s too late for crusade so goes back to the original plan, a show about the rangers helping build up the ISA.
“The Hand”, from the pilot would have been just a group trying to take political powers. The whole thing about their being more powerful than the shadow was a lie.
They would have been dealt with by season 2. Afterward, they would have discovered a conspiracy against them in the minbar government and part of the rangers and would have to go against them.
Pretty similar to what crusade intended except with minbar instead of earth.
Also pretty similar to what the original Babylon Prime plan was, branded as outlaw, on the run and trying to save the galaxy. It seems like JMS really wanted that idea somewhere.
ANother great part of the plan of the second show was always "travel". From Babylon Prime to Crusade to Rangers, it was always about seeing more from the galaxy and not stay simply of B5. Some plans were about travelling in B4, some in a White Star fleet, the Excalibur or a ranger vessel, but it was always travelling around. They had started doing a bit of that in season 5 of B5.
In any case, what was always the true ending of the saga in every single plan, the fall of the drakhs/shadows, the liberation of Centauri Prime and Londo/Gkar’s death wouldn’t have been in crusade/rangers, it was put in the “legion of fire” novel trilogy.
[commenter]
BrotherChe
7y ago
Thank for this amazing detail. Had never heard most of this. Is it covered somewhere n book, or did you collect it from forums, etc?
Failing a more official and even more complete entry, I think this should be linked to in the sidebar. It's a great post!
[OP]
flobo09
•
7y ago
Well, a few years back, i found the whole collection of B5 scripts books in a UK library for sale and i took them.
They go in amazing details about the original plans, season by season and episode by episode. From cut scene to changed ideas, episode by episode.
While i was reading them all, i wrote a huge (in french) summary of the main changes to the plan/plotline over time.
Of course, the book goes into much more details than my summary.
What i posted yesterday was a very quick and dirty english translated summary of that summary i still have on my PC.
I could translate the whole thing, i guess, if people are interested in a more detailed version. (I only posted about the main changes in the summary, but even on what i call plan 1, there were subplan : 1a with Takashima staying, being the mole and shooting garibaldi in the finale, 1b with her and Kyle replaced and the way it impacted the plotline,...)
---
So, assuming all of this is accurate, apparently what was GOING to happen pre-cancellation is that there would have been a timeskip either at the end of season 3 or at the end of season 4 into the 20-years-from-now future we saw in "War Without End", a future in which the Shadows won the war, Londo and the Centauri were under the control of the Shadows (the Drakh were shoehorned into season 4 after the new plan had the Shadows being defeated in early season 4 so some other entity had to be inserted to explain the "War Without End" flash-forward), and this is where the rest of the show would have taken place. Either the final season/final two seasons would have taken place in the future, involved most of the characters on the run from the Shadows, trying to defeat them, and Londo enslaved on Centauri Prime.
So I think I was right in my original guess that Londo's redemption arc (as such) wasn't part of JMS's original plan for quite a while; it looks like in the various iterations of the show prior to the S4 cancellation/plot reworking - so all the way up through season three, even after the show was compressed from 10 seasons to 5 - Londo flees B5 after his connection to the Shadows is revealed and becomes Keeper-ified at some point after that, then slowly comes around and tries to help them while being Drakh-controlled on Centauri Prime. I mean, it's clear that Londo's better nature winning out eventually was the plan all along, but Londo spending a season or so rebuilding his relationships with everyone on B5 post-Shadow-War seems to have been a very late-in-production innovation (and I'm not gonna lie, I'm sure I would have enjoyed the other version, but I'm not sure it would have hit my buttons nearly as satisfyingly as the final version did ...). 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.
Other things that network meddling and/or actor departures apparently saved us from include an Ivanova/Byron romance (God help us; derailed by Claudia Christian leaving the show), Garibaldi being on Mars for most of season 5 (he was brought back because they'd lost Claudia), and a major season 5 plot thread involving a time-traveling David Sheridan from the future (changed for reasons not really explained, possibly because it didn't tie very well into the various versions of a spinoff series that season 5 was now essentially setup for).
I hate to say it but the telepaths and Byron actually sounds ... better than a lot of what we almost had? Including the original plan, maybe, because I actually kind of hate the flash-forward idea and it sounds like JMS was wedded to it in multiple versions of the plan for season 4/5 until the near-cancellation and the need to make season 5 a bridge to a new set of spinoffs/movies derailed it completely.
(It does sound like the plan for most of the pre-cancellation versions was to make the liberation of Centauri Prime, and Londo and G'Kar's deaths, a big part of the show's climax, and that actually feels like it fits better with the overall arc of the show and really did get derailed completely by the near-cancellation; a lot of what's in the spinoff book trilogy was going to be in the show, which I do regret to an extent because Vir loses out on getting the Big Damn Hero hero role that he presumably would've had in that. At the same time, the show basically writing them as a palindrome - we see their ending in the middle; then it's just getting there - is one of the most original things I've ever seen on TV, and I'm not sure that seeing a bunch of the events that unfolded leading up to it would actually have improved it a whole lot. Meanwhile, I would genuinely have hated to lose so much of the character interaction we got in season five. I can only assume I would have loved the unfilmed version too, but reading this is not giving me a huge feeling of "oh, what we could have had!" ... in a lot of parts it's more like "Wow, bullet dodged.")
ETA: The OTHER impression I'm getting reading this is that JMS was also insanely prolific and would hit the ground running every time, so basically the network would give him a change, an actor would fall off a ladder, and/or he'd have a daydream in the bathtub and 2 days of coffee-fueled frantic script revisions later he would have a whole new plan for the next two seasons plus 3 hypothetical spinoff movies, and this just KEPT HAPPENING on a constantly repeating basis for the entire run of the show and then some.
(It also sounds like JMS was constantly changing major details / long-term plans on the fly throughout all the seasons, which makes the cohesion of the final version even more impressive, even without taking into account all of the network meddling and cast changes! One reason why I've been going down a rabbit hole on this is because I really do think this is one of the most impressive creative feats I've ever seen pulled off, I want to understand it from a creative perspective myself, and the more I find out about it, the more impressed I am.)
Here is where I found it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/babylon5/comments/8hccek/crusade_questoin_what_was_the_darn_5_year_plan/
Technically the person is asking about the plan for Crusade, but the respondent typed up a long summary of ALL the changes leading up to it, and it's really fascinating!
Once again I am copying this under a detail cut in case of linkrot.
Like 9 different iterations of the B5-and-spinoffs plan; this is LONG
[In response to a question in which someone asked what the 5-year plan for the Crusade spinoff was]
Very complicated since the plan changed quite a bit in the details and you have to go back to B5 evolution to understand it all.
Will try to summarize quickly the plan evolution (french guy typing this quickly do forgive the typos here and there)
B5 Pilot and season 1 changed a bit due to actor replacement but are mostly the original plan.
B5 Season 2 : The minbari issue was originally that they were becoming infertile, Sinclair was the chosen one and was recognised by the triluminari thing. Delenn (who was supposed to have been a guy) in season 1 change race & gender to have a child with him that will be the minbari saviour.
Sakai has a terrible accident (mind wipe), Delenn confort Sinclair ans start a relationship with him.
The Sheridan replacement of Sinclair switched things around a bit but still mostly the same for S2.
Season 3 : Narm hold for much longer and fall only a third of the way in.
The relationsip part of the original season 3 plan is the same (Sinclair & Delenn start their relationship, Kosh gets closer to Sinclair). But galatic history wise, it's much slower than in the final version. The shadow stay hidden and continue to destabilize thing here and there, G'Kar become a refugee on B5 by mid season 3 after Narm fall.
Season 4 :
B5 is still NOT independent from Earth. Garibaldi fall back into his alcool addiction (something that will be used for S5 instead), he quits and become a mercenary on B5.
Mid season 4, the Shadow/Vorlon-Army of light war begins.
Same as in final version, Sinclair & cie have doubts about the vorlon motives, Delenn is pregnant by S4’s ending.
Season 5 :
Garibaldi is back and rejoin the staff. The cast and Gkar only discover now that Londo had shadow help.
Londo has no choice but to leave B5. He has regrets and want to help from home. He eventually become emperor and want to turn of the shadows but they put a keeper on him to force him to keep helping (pretty similar to final version).
Due to shadow influence, the military cast take over on Minbar and want to declare war on earth again.
On earth, Clark takes over, the B5 independence thing finally happens.
The shadows win the war and the vorlon are pretty much wiped out.
The minbari warrior decide to destroy B5 before attacking earth so they attack. That is the scene that was flashforwarded in season 1’s Babylon squared.
Sinclair, Delenn & the surviving cast escape right before B5 is destroyed (vision in signs and portants season 1).
End of Season 5
Start of second show, second first year plan : Babylon Prime Season 1 :
Main cast is the same minus Londo (recurring from Centori Prime), Gkar recurring leading the resistance and Zathras is in the main cast.
Sinclair & the B5 cast are refugee on Epsilon 3, protected by Draal and the great machine.
The whole galaxy is fucked. The surviving minbari non warrior grey council join them and still believe the chosen one, Sinclair, is the one that can save them all.
Since B5 is gone, they decide to go into the past to steal B4 and use it instead.
It’s basically war without end but they truly intend to use B4 in the present and not the past.
Their time stabilizer mess up, Sinclair & his son grow older due to that, the son become a fully grown adult in the mess but with the mind of a child.
They come back not at the time they left but 10-15 years into the future.
B4 is renamed Babylon Prime and since it has reactors, it can move around the galaxy.
After Season 1 (plan is not detailed there)
Sinclair forms the Interstellar Alliance to fight the shadows and free earth/minbar/narm. The first obvious allies are Gkar resistance.
Emperor Londo is a recurring character that does his best to secretly help them by drinking his keeper to sleep here and there.
Sinclair’s son become a minbari religious icon.
Eventually, they slowly take earth back from Clark and free Minbar and Narm.
It all end on centauri prime, with Sinclair and Delenn captured by the shadows & centauri allies.
Londo get drunk, manage to free them. Gkar is there and at this point has known about the keeper for a while. Londo ask for his help to kill him in order that he doesn’t warn the shadows.
They die together as friends as in the final show.
Vir becomes emperor. With the Interstellar Alliance help, they free Centauri prime and defeat the shadows. Delenn become leader of Minbar, Sinclair retire to a planet to spend his days fishing and their son become the new IA President.
The road is vastly different, but the end in 2281 is basically the same thing.
Since hoping for 10 seasons is a bit much, by mid season 2, JMS compress the plot and a good part of the second shows is compressed into B5 five year arc.
Plan 2 :
Season 3 B5 : Similar to what we had in the final version until the ending.
Sheridan goes to Z'ha'dum, blow them up with the white star.
The shadows attack B5 and destroys it.
The surviving cast members have to escape into the time rift opened in “War without end”.
They find themselves 20 years into the future, end of season 3.
No detail for season 4 & 5 of this second plan except that Sheridan comes back to life and rejoin the cast to start the fight again 20 years in the future.
It would have probably been similar to the Babylon Prime idea where they spend the two seasons freeing earth, fighting the shadows until season 5 would have ended on centauri prime with Londo (the time jump match for that).
Plan 3 :
JMS think it might be better to stay one more year in the present before having the time jump in season 4.
Production wise, B5 is cancelled, season 4 will be the last, so the plan will change again.
Plan 4:
The season 4 we got :
No more time jump, tie up as much as possible in one finale season.
Since the shadows are defeated there in season 4, it’s hard to explain how Centauri Prime is still under their influence in the future (flash forward seen in WWE). So comes the Drakhs as shadows of the shadows to explain that issue away.
By the end of S4, B5 is finally renewed by TNT for a S5 and a second 5 years show :
Plan 5 :
Since most of the story has been told in a compressed way; S5 is to be the bridge between B5 and the second show.
The second show will now be about the rangers travelling space to stabilize and expand the interstellar alliance.
Season 5 :
Elric & the technomages return to B5 & the known galaxy after the shadow war. He becomes a guide to ISA president Sheridan. Ivanova is B5 Captain and Franklin is second in command.
The first half is the season is mostly politics with Sheridan stabilizing the alliance and the internal conflict and trying to expand it.
Second half starts with Sheridan/Delann son arriving from the future.
The Drakhs starts messing with the alliance from Centauri Prime (similar to final version).
Ivanova is in a relationship with Byron the telepath but it doesn’t end well.
In the final episode, Londo is put under a keeper by the Drakhs.
Second show : Babylon 5 : Rangers
Main cast: Sheridan/Delenn/Gkar/Franklin/Zathras
Recurring ranger & technomage cast.
Show still centered on B5 (mostly beginning and ending of episodes), but we follow rangers and technomages going around the galaxy helping the IA members (against the drakhs and others threats).
TNT doesn’t like the idea want “a goal” for the show in the spin off, something more than just helping the IA.
Plan 6 :
Second show is called : The Babylon project : crusade
Earth will be attacked by the Drakhs with the virus, that will give the rangers a goal in the first season and make TNT happy.
The rangers travel the galaxy in fleets of White Stars to search for an antidote. They will travel mostly on former now abandoned lost planets to find advanced tech.
Main cast is Sheridan, Delenn, Marcus, G’kar, Zathras, a technomage, and Shereena, “a last survivor of somewhere (ring a bell? )
Going over post limit, go to next post ^
TNT doesn’t want any B5 cast in the second show.
Plan 7 :
Sheridan & Delenn are demoted to recurring.
Main cast is now :
Matthiew Singleton : Ranger captain of the lost star fleet.
Marcus Cole (all of this is negotiated while season 4 is being aired and JMS toy with not killing him).
A techno mage. Dureena : last survivor of a race
Zathras Since he knows the great machine, he is the only being in the galaxy that can understand the first one techs.
Dr Gwen Tracy
Varenni : Minbari warrior assigned by Delenn to the expedition.
Max Eilerson :IPX archeologist, only care about profit.
The show would have been about the hero having to navigate first one cities that were booby-trapped and face old creatures left there.
Drakhs would try to stop them here and there.
The white star fleet amiral ship is called the Excalibur.
In the end, the TNT deal for season 5 + spin off is signed at the last minute. (A funny story is that Peter Jurasik got his and Andreas contracts, went to Andreas in the middle of the night, told him “Sign it, it’s fair to us”. He did and went back to sleep.
JMS start to write season 5 in detail but the Claudia Christian mess happens (who knows why exactly). On top of that, his hotel throw away his season 5 episodes synopsis, he starts season 5 over.
Plan 8 :
Since TNT agree to a second show, he remove most of the politic / alliance building with the rangers from season 5.
With all the mess happening, JMS expend on the only arc from season 5 he can still write without Ivanova and he remember clearly, the telepath arc.
He admit he messed up that if I remember correctly.
He think about doing a full B5 spin off with telepaths having a hive/shared mind like Byron’s group (seeds of Sense8 maybe ? ) .
Garibaldi, who was to be on mars for most of season 5 (trying to stop Edgar’s many shadow projects) is brought back early to B5 since Ivanova is gone.
A whole sub arc with Sheridan son coming from the future is removed.
David was to have come and try to kill / stop Sheridan. He eventually fail and goes back into the rift and it’s never explained why. (My theory is that he had a keeper, I mean, the drakhs did put one on him according to the fast forward from WWE).
After B5 ends, a telepath war movie is planned between B5 & Crusade.
3 tie in novels are released (two before, one after, the telepath trilogy) but the movie itself is never made.
Lennier and Lyta die in the movie, Bester escape as a war crimimal. there is a long summary of what happened in detail, but my post is way too long already (have been typing for like an hour). If someone is interested, I’ll go into details.
After the cancellation, two other movies idea are brought up to replace it, also with synopsis in the books but they were cancelled too.
We finally arrive at crusade.
TNT refuse to have rangers in the show and that the ship be docked at B5.
So plan 9 :
It becomes a ship leased to the EA.
Without the rangers, JMS can’t show them going though the galaxy trying to build up the alliance, which was to have been the main center of the show after the plague thing was done.
In the mean time, a TNT exec meet Tracy Scoggins randomly and like her, so now they want her in crusade and the ship can go the B5 once in a while.
From there, it’s the disaster that is well known.
All scripts are rewritten by TNT, the order of episode is being moved around, it no longer makes any sense, they demand to have a sexual explorer on board the ship, more fights, more guns, they want to see Gideon pilot the ship from a Joystick …
Then it’s cancelled since the JMS-TNT relation are going downhill fast.
How it should have continued:
The apocalypse box manipulates Gideon over the course of the show, giving him what he wants when it’s in his interest.
They found a telepath recluse on a planet, it’s Bester.
The episode is full of flashback from Bester’s trial and escape after the telepath war. Bester actually help the heroes since he want to save the telepath on earth.
At the end, it’s discovered that Bester still has part of a former psy corp fleet augmented with shadowtech (during the clark administration) and that they are preparing their return eventually.
In the same episode, hunters are chasing our heroes and bester and it’s discovered at the end that it’s garibaldi’s men.
Dureena was to have been augmented eventually by shadowtech like the technomages (like Galen).
They discover Earth is still playing around with shadowtech. Earth call the ISA hypocrits since they are ally with technomages like Galen who use shadowtech.
Since Gideon and his crew want to go public with that, earthgov wants him killed, he his shot as he is about to reveal everything at the end of s01.
Season 2 :
The apocalypse box save Gideon, somehow.
Telepath arc : the senate wants to recreate a psy corps (linked to bester arc from season 1)
Drakhs/technomage arc : The Drakhs know how to use shadowtech but not how to create it, they try to bring the technomages to their side.
Mid season 2, the cure is found, they give it to earth then they are framed as traitors somehow by people in the government (because they know too much about shadowtech).
In season 3, Excalibur is on the run and wanted, they have to prove their innocence and stop the shadowtech project on earth (which is helped secretly by the drakhs).
Somehow the apocalypse box would have been a powerful telepath locked in.
Nothing is said after that.
2 years later, TNT lose the B5/crusade rights and scifi want to relaunch the show.
JMS thinks it’s too late for crusade so goes back to the original plan, a show about the rangers helping build up the ISA.
“The Hand”, from the pilot would have been just a group trying to take political powers. The whole thing about their being more powerful than the shadow was a lie.
They would have been dealt with by season 2. Afterward, they would have discovered a conspiracy against them in the minbar government and part of the rangers and would have to go against them.
Pretty similar to what crusade intended except with minbar instead of earth.
Also pretty similar to what the original Babylon Prime plan was, branded as outlaw, on the run and trying to save the galaxy. It seems like JMS really wanted that idea somewhere.
ANother great part of the plan of the second show was always "travel". From Babylon Prime to Crusade to Rangers, it was always about seeing more from the galaxy and not stay simply of B5. Some plans were about travelling in B4, some in a White Star fleet, the Excalibur or a ranger vessel, but it was always travelling around. They had started doing a bit of that in season 5 of B5.
In any case, what was always the true ending of the saga in every single plan, the fall of the drakhs/shadows, the liberation of Centauri Prime and Londo/Gkar’s death wouldn’t have been in crusade/rangers, it was put in the “legion of fire” novel trilogy.
[commenter]
BrotherChe
7y ago
Thank for this amazing detail. Had never heard most of this. Is it covered somewhere n book, or did you collect it from forums, etc?
Failing a more official and even more complete entry, I think this should be linked to in the sidebar. It's a great post!
[OP]
flobo09
•
7y ago
Well, a few years back, i found the whole collection of B5 scripts books in a UK library for sale and i took them.
They go in amazing details about the original plans, season by season and episode by episode. From cut scene to changed ideas, episode by episode.
While i was reading them all, i wrote a huge (in french) summary of the main changes to the plan/plotline over time.
Of course, the book goes into much more details than my summary.
What i posted yesterday was a very quick and dirty english translated summary of that summary i still have on my PC.
I could translate the whole thing, i guess, if people are interested in a more detailed version. (I only posted about the main changes in the summary, but even on what i call plan 1, there were subplan : 1a with Takashima staying, being the mole and shooting garibaldi in the finale, 1b with her and Kyle replaced and the way it impacted the plotline,...)
---
So, assuming all of this is accurate, apparently what was GOING to happen pre-cancellation is that there would have been a timeskip either at the end of season 3 or at the end of season 4 into the 20-years-from-now future we saw in "War Without End", a future in which the Shadows won the war, Londo and the Centauri were under the control of the Shadows (the Drakh were shoehorned into season 4 after the new plan had the Shadows being defeated in early season 4 so some other entity had to be inserted to explain the "War Without End" flash-forward), and this is where the rest of the show would have taken place. Either the final season/final two seasons would have taken place in the future, involved most of the characters on the run from the Shadows, trying to defeat them, and Londo enslaved on Centauri Prime.
So I think I was right in my original guess that Londo's redemption arc (as such) wasn't part of JMS's original plan for quite a while; it looks like in the various iterations of the show prior to the S4 cancellation/plot reworking - so all the way up through season three, even after the show was compressed from 10 seasons to 5 - Londo flees B5 after his connection to the Shadows is revealed and becomes Keeper-ified at some point after that, then slowly comes around and tries to help them while being Drakh-controlled on Centauri Prime. I mean, it's clear that Londo's better nature winning out eventually was the plan all along, but Londo spending a season or so rebuilding his relationships with everyone on B5 post-Shadow-War seems to have been a very late-in-production innovation (and I'm not gonna lie, I'm sure I would have enjoyed the other version, but I'm not sure it would have hit my buttons nearly as satisfyingly as the final version did ...). 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.
Other things that network meddling and/or actor departures apparently saved us from include an Ivanova/Byron romance (God help us; derailed by Claudia Christian leaving the show), Garibaldi being on Mars for most of season 5 (he was brought back because they'd lost Claudia), and a major season 5 plot thread involving a time-traveling David Sheridan from the future (changed for reasons not really explained, possibly because it didn't tie very well into the various versions of a spinoff series that season 5 was now essentially setup for).
I hate to say it but the telepaths and Byron actually sounds ... better than a lot of what we almost had? Including the original plan, maybe, because I actually kind of hate the flash-forward idea and it sounds like JMS was wedded to it in multiple versions of the plan for season 4/5 until the near-cancellation and the need to make season 5 a bridge to a new set of spinoffs/movies derailed it completely.
(It does sound like the plan for most of the pre-cancellation versions was to make the liberation of Centauri Prime, and Londo and G'Kar's deaths, a big part of the show's climax, and that actually feels like it fits better with the overall arc of the show and really did get derailed completely by the near-cancellation; a lot of what's in the spinoff book trilogy was going to be in the show, which I do regret to an extent because Vir loses out on getting the Big Damn Hero hero role that he presumably would've had in that. At the same time, the show basically writing them as a palindrome - we see their ending in the middle; then it's just getting there - is one of the most original things I've ever seen on TV, and I'm not sure that seeing a bunch of the events that unfolded leading up to it would actually have improved it a whole lot. Meanwhile, I would genuinely have hated to lose so much of the character interaction we got in season five. I can only assume I would have loved the unfilmed version too, but reading this is not giving me a huge feeling of "oh, what we could have had!" ... in a lot of parts it's more like "Wow, bullet dodged.")
ETA: The OTHER impression I'm getting reading this is that JMS was also insanely prolific and would hit the ground running every time, so basically the network would give him a change, an actor would fall off a ladder, and/or he'd have a daydream in the bathtub and 2 days of coffee-fueled frantic script revisions later he would have a whole new plan for the next two seasons plus 3 hypothetical spinoff movies, and this just KEPT HAPPENING on a constantly repeating basis for the entire run of the show and then some.
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That's adorable and feels honestly in character.
JMS start to write season 5 in detail but the Claudia Christian mess happens (who knows why exactly). On top of that, his hotel throw away his season 5 episodes synopsis, he starts season 5 over.
I remain curious about this stage even though for obvious reasons no one seems to have any more information about it than "there were notes."
even after the show was compressed from 10 seasons to 5
I would also love to know more about how the ten-season plan expanded from the oldest known five-season sketch, because no iteration of it actually sounds like a good idea.
Other things that network meddling and/or actor departures apparently saved us from include an Ivanova/Byron romance (God help us; derailed by Claudia Christian leaving the show)
Slightly contradicting this version of events in which Byron was a late addition, I have read for years that the original version of this subplot was supposed to be Ivanova/Talia, which if true would have been incalculably more interesting to me.
and a major season 5 plot thread involving a time-traveling David Sheridan from the future (changed for reasons not really explained, possibly because it didn't tie very well into the various versions of a spinoff series that season 5 was now essentially setup for).
I am similarly so glad that time-traveling David Sheridan never made it into the canonical show. Like the time-jump, JMS seems to have kept trying to crowbar him in and he just didn't fit. It wasn't that kind of universe. The closed-loop one-time-use at the center of the show actually just works.
(Agreed on the mild regret regarding Big Damn Hero Vir, but it's not like I had any difficulty loving him dearly as he turned out to exist.)
no subject
That's adorable and feels honestly in character.
I KNOW. I also saw a relatively recent interview with Peter Jurasik in which he talks about Andreas and includes 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.) They really do seem to have been nearly inseparable during their time on the show.
I would also love to know more about how the ten-season plan expanded from the oldest known five-season sketch, because no iteration of it actually sounds like a good idea.
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.
Slightly contradicting this version of events in which Byron was a late addition, I have read for years that the original version of this subplot was supposed to be Ivanova/Talia, which if true would have been incalculably more interesting to me.
I remember you saying something about that before! Honestly, given the absolute chaos that seems to have stalked every version of the show and its creator, I could see this simply having been one of many details elided from the above summary for space. 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!
I am similarly so glad that time-traveling David Sheridan never made it into the canonical show. Like the time-jump, JMS seems to have kept trying to crowbar him in and he just didn't fit. It wasn't that kind of universe.
Right?? 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. Turning time travel into a major component of the show's plot would have made it feel significantly less grounded, to its detriment.
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.
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.
no subject
His discussion of Vir taking over from Londo as the character to assassinate Cartagia was one of the first times I had encountered an author talking about that part of the process, where a character has evolved to the point that they no longer fit into their originally slotted role. That record scratch may be the one place where the singularity of the flashforward screwed the show structurally, because the narrative is locked into that future of Londo and G'Kar and it isn't a vision on the slant, it is exactly and literally per the accuracy of Centauri death-dreams and the nature of time travel in the B5-verse what will happen, and JMS had not built himself an out from it because it was such a tentpole in every version from the start. That said, I am also now wondering a little if it was a problem of darlings that should have been killed. If this summary is accurate, he had already had to jettison his beloved, however ill-advised time-jump and future-son. Maybe he just couldn't bear to lose this other, oldest, still mostly intact piece of story.
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.
Everything that leads to Londo accepting the Keeper for the sake of Centauri Prime still follows organically for me: JMS let his characters splinter themselves on their own faults and merits there. The fifteen years no-contact requires a team effort of idiot ball.
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.
I look forward to that post, because yes. The loose ends—whatever my personal objections to some of them—are so much of what makes the show feel real. It would be more neatly packaged television if JMS had known not to kill off Marcus because he was about to lose Ivanova, but Ivanova leaving the station in the wake of Marcus' death because she can't deal with it and needs to get her head together is exactly the sort of decision a person in her shocky, nonconsensually not dead state would make.
(Still would have loved to see Talia and Ivanova go somewhere. Still glad that Sinclair and Delenn didn't.)
(Ayup.)
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
Another testament to the benefits of improvisation, because that unswerving quality is part of what makes their characters feel like the spine of the series, but the rest is the actors' chemistry blooming in the unplanned extra time of their storyline.
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.
I don't think there is anything like it. The conditions that produced it are irreproducible. I'm just glad it exists.
[edit: meant to comment on this part earlier] In any case, what was always the true ending of the saga in every single plan, the fall of the drakhs/shadows, the liberation of Centauri Prime and Londo/Gkar’s death wouldn’t have been in crusade/rangers, it was put in the “legion of fire” novel trilogy.
Pace the just-passed Peter David, I did not particularly like or accept much of that trilogy, but once I imagine it undergoing the same process of contact-with-reality reinvention as the series itself, it becomes a lot more interesting to wonder about.
no subject
Yes, I agree - the betrayal-of-sorts on B5, the lead-up and Londo making his final sacrifice are all beautiful and devastating and completely in keeping with the characters' virtues and flaws. It's one of my favorite parts of the season, as emotionally wrenching as it is. And it gives us some moments of transcendental beauty and connection as well.
... And then the next fifteen years happens. And everyone comes SO CLOSE to realizing it - they all recognize something is wrong with him (even Sheridan, who doesn't know him as well as Delenn and G'Kar), Delenn even glimpses the Keeper for a moment - and no one follows up on it. No wonder he sounds so disappointed and perhaps even a little surprised with the "So you do not know" in the flash-forward! He tried to do everything except taking out a billboard in the Zocalo reading I AM BEING CONTROLLED BY AN ALIEN NECK PARASITE, TRUST NOTHING I SAY.
(Fixits will continue for the foreseeable future.)
The loose ends—whatever my personal objections to some of them—are so much of what makes the show feel real. It would be more neatly packaged television if JMS had known not to kill off Marcus because he was about to lose Ivanova, but Ivanova leaving the station in the wake of Marcus' death because she can't deal with it and needs to get her head together is exactly the sort of decision a person in her shocky, nonconsensually not dead state would make.
Yes! Whatever else was going on, JMS knows his characters inside and out, and is very good at writing grounded emotional states for them. Including letting them make terrible or self-destructive decisions, and be messy and completely fucked in the head.
I don't think there is anything like it. The conditions that produced it are irreproducible. I'm just glad it exists.
Same. And I am delighted that I finally got to experience the entire thing, and loved it just as much as I always hoped I would!
Pace the just-passed Peter David, I did not particularly like or accept much of that trilogy, but once I imagine it undergoing the same process of contact-with-reality reinvention as the series itself, it becomes a lot more interesting to wonder about.
I could easily see it being much more organic, naturally developed and in-character if it had been realized onscreen. I would have liked to see Vir in that, especially. (I do love how even the brief glimpses we get of Emperor Vir show how much he's grown up and yet still remains the same person - he has so much more gravitas, but he still thinks to offer his sincere condolences to the Ranger who brought the notice of Sheridan's wake, and his soft-spoken shyness at their group dinner is Vir to the core.)
no subject
And again, "The Fall of Centauri Prime" is such a mic-drop of an episode, it's impossible to imagine it not placed so conclusively toward the end of the show. "And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder" would have had to be improvised at the last minute of Season 4, but it feels like the show has been driving toward it from the start. Kudos to hindbrain plotting.
No wonder he sounds so disappointed and perhaps even a little surprised with the "So you do not know" in the flash-forward! He tried to do everything except taking out a billboard in the Zocalo reading I AM BEING CONTROLLED BY AN ALIEN NECK PARASITE, TRUST NOTHING I SAY.
I can't believe that knowing there was no chance to run the plot any farther forward than the twenty-years-later of the finale, JMS still wrote Delenn as capable of sensing the Keeper because all it does in the finished show is inspire the audience to frustrated screaming. Crusade was obviously turning in a completely different direction than any of his plans for the original future of Babylon 5. It's like ornamentally installing a Chekhov's gun. Maybe it was just another detail he couldn't bear to bin.
I am pretty sure that G'Kar gets put on the galactic tour bus in Season 5 because the relationship between him and Londo had built to the point where if G'Kar had been within hailing distance of any of the rumors coming out of Centauri Prime, he would have booked it over tout suite and a seventeen-year flashforward of loving tragedy would have gone right down the Drakh-punching drain. (Seriously, I understand Londo's worries about it, but I have faith in G'Kar's ability to go through just about anything if Londo is on the other side. It is another reason I find your fic perfectly credible.)
(Fixits will continue for the foreseeable future.)
(I am relieved to hear it.)
I could easily see it being much more organic, naturally developed and in-character if it had been realized onscreen. I would have liked to see Vir in that, especially.
Official request for future AU Vir, then.
(I do love how even the brief glimpses we get of Emperor Vir show how much he's grown up and yet still remains the same person - he has so much more gravitas, but he still thinks to offer his sincere condolences to the Ranger who brought the notice of Sheridan's wake, and his soft-spoken shyness at their group dinner is Vir to the core.)
Yes! He continues to grow into himself even in flashed-forward time. I really love him.
no subject
YES. As of 5x09, he doesn't even hesitate before physically interposing himself between Londo and assassins; by 5x16 he ends up on the wrong side of a war with his own people because Londo matters more to him than political divisions, race, or species. Also, Londo could not possibly have managed to find a friend who is more likely to punch the future in the throat if it gets in the way of what he feels is right or threatens the people he loves. G'Kar is the very definition of not lying down and accepting the fated tragedy in front of him. He's smart, he's loyal, he's unbelievably stubborn, he doesn't know the meaning of the word "surrender" in English or any other language. Being halfway across the galaxy is probably the only thing that could stop him from figuring out what's wrong with Londo and doing something about it.
(Edit: And once again I'm struck by the thematic parallels between Londo and G'Kar, and Delenn and Sheridan. Not merely the fact that both sets of characters end up caring enough for each other that they explode through the political divisions that separate them and their people, but also, the dynamics are alarmingly similar. I'm sure that Delenn fully empathizes with the entire feeling of "This himbo, war criminal, and enemy of my people is now mine, and anyone who even thinks about laying a finger on him can fuck right off before they find my teeth in their throat." She and G'Kar should have a nice non-alcoholic drink sometime.)
It is another reason I find your fic perfectly credible.
Thank you! <333
Official request for future AU Vir, then.
Adding it promptly to the ever-growing list.
no subject
This is a true fact and I also love this sentence.
[edit] I'm sure that Delenn fully empathizes with the entire feeling of "This himbo, war criminal, and enemy of my people is now mine, and anyone who even thinks about laying a finger on him can fuck right off before they find my teeth in their throat." She and G'Kar should have a nice non-alcoholic drink sometime.
Seconding this motion.
[edit edit] Actually, this parallel pinpoints a major reason that Sheridan made a much better partner for Delenn than I can imagine from Sinclair, by which I mean that even though the doubling of the rebirth ceremony as a marriage ceremony in "The Parliament of Dreams" was clearly supposed to point to Sinclair/Delenn, Sheridan/Delenn is so much more complicated, interpersonally, politically, interculturally. Sinclair always had that contemplative element which translated so well into his reinvention as Valen. Minbar was planetarily allergic to Sheridan and when confronted with most of its customs, he returned the favor.
Adding it promptly to the ever-growing list.
Huzzah.
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Yes! Sinclair and Delenn would have worked too, and would have been relatively uncomplicated and happy; he would have fit very easily into her world. In contrast, the entire Minbari warrior caste hates Sheridan, and he can't quite figure out how to make flarn right or get the point of Delenn staring at him while he sleeps for three days straight. (In which he stands in for the entire non-flarn-loving, non-sleep-staring audience as well.) Sinclair canonically could be happy as a Minbari; Sheridan and Delenn had to figure out a compromise betwen their two incompatible worlds of food and customs and unsleepable beds. I can see how Sinclair and Delenn would have fit together and worked, but I enjoy Sheridan and Delenn's push-pull much better.
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Thank you!
Revisiting this series even at mostly second hand has been at once illuminating and kind of mentally trepanning, because I saw it at an age when I had so little basis for comparison with other television shows and while I was not without tools for thinking about story at that time, I was also *checks airdates* thirteen to seventeen for its original run. I can apply a lot more argument to it now.
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That must be such an odd experience to be discussing it in the depth that we have been! I've had that happen with shows I saw at a similar or younger age, but not quite in this depth, I don't think. It's also really interesting to me that this *isn't* one of the shows I remembered with the vivid clarity that I do some of the other shows of my preteen and teen years - I can still describe individual episodes of, say, Quantum Leap, which I saw at a younger age, but with this show, it was just scattered recollections and a general sense that I'd liked it enough that I wanted to finish someday. Strange how the brain works like that!
Anyway, I've really been having a fantastic time talking about it with you, so I'm really happy that you remember it well enough to discuss it in this much detail.
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I have been and am still immensely enjoying it! And it feels sort of intellectually useful for me in that I have a traditional block on writing about movies that I saw before I learned how to think about them and Babylon 5 is from that same period, so being able to discuss it even informally should be a kind of practice on that front.
I can still describe individual episodes of, say, Quantum Leap, which I saw at a younger age, but with this show, it was just scattered recollections and a general sense that I'd liked it enough that I wanted to finish someday. Strange how the brain works like that!
Understood! I am sure I have mentioned the random handful of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes that burned themselves into my child-brain when any number of other media persisted only vaguely if at all. (Mind if I risk changing the subject entirely by asking which episodes of Quantum Leap really stuck with you?)
Anyway, I've really been having a fantastic time talking about it with you, so I'm really happy that you remember it well enough to discuss it in this much detail.
In fairness, I did rewatch a chunk of it in the mid-2000's after it had come out on DVD!
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I mean, it also makes sense that every time someone goes to the future and comes back, they change their own future in small or large ways. Maybe that was the original version, and G'Kar got a better life this time. Maybe their confrontation isn't quite the same this time around.
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Yes! Everyone ended in better places than their future pointed to. Whoops.
I mean, it also makes sense that every time someone goes to the future and comes back, they change their own future in small or large ways. Maybe that was the original version, and G'Kar got a better life this time. Maybe their confrontation isn't quite the same this time around.
Right, let me know when I can leave kudos on this one.
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As an avid viewer of seasons 1-4, it seemed obvious to me that the following season-if-it-happened would show Ivanova coming to terms with telepathy and using it during the next phase of B5's political conflicts. Having CC drop out, and the... rather sudden... appearance of Byron, really upended my appreciation of season 5, at least the first half.
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I just realized that Ivanova as a fully realized telepath, which I agree with
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Believe it or not THIS is a detail that I remember from originally watching the show XD Brains are weird!
My only qualm with all of this is that Garibaldi as a mercenary sounds fun and I'm not-fond of his eventual trajectory.
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I would actually have enjoyed Garibaldi as a mercenary, I think! I really wish his turn as a private detective in season four had happened differently, because I actually like the general concept, it's just that the show driving a wedge between him and the other characters was so frustrating and sad. (As I know you agree with!) But I like the show doing things with him other than being security chief if it finds interesting things to do.
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I support watching Season 5! It has some of the show's best acting in it and the visible traces of what is now an even weirder evolutionary record than had originally been apparent! What was understood at the time, and may still be the dominant narrative, because it's not even totally untrue, was that the cancellation of the show had forced JMS to cram as much of Season 5 as possible into Season 4, as a result of which he found himself with the equivalent air time to fill when the show was de-cancelled, thus leaving the impression that the original plan for Seasons 4 and 5 had been more or less what we got, only more evenly distributed—it is true that the second half of Season 4 is absolutely balls to the wall and the first half of Season 5 is kind of desultory—and presumably with some variance in B- or C-plots allowing for differences in pacing and the cast changes between the two seasons. The spinoff series was a known quantity while the last season of Babylon 5 was airing, but not how entangled it was with the plotting of said season and the wheeling and dealing of the renewal with TNT. I do not recall ever hearing anything about the proposed time jump etc. in the '90's. JMS was fairly open on message boards about subplots that never panned out, the rejiggering of storylines for a changing cast, the times his own characters surprised him with what they would or would not organically do, but the majority of the information in this post is new to me and it's not like I wasn't paying attention the first time around. It's nuts.
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Yeah, that was also my (original) understanding and I think you're right that it's not completely untrue, but it is absolutely fascinating to realize that - if the Reddit account is basically accurate, but I believe it's at least mostly accurate because it tracks so well with some of the otherwise inexplicable aspects of the flashforward in season three, sudden shoehorning in of the Drakh, etc - JMS didn't just compress what would have been more or less the same storyline, he compressed a 15-year timeskip as well! This probably would have made the Minbari civil war make even more sense than having it spread across two seasons (15 years for things to fall apart to that extent, plus Shadow manipulation, makes a lot more sense, actually!) ... and it's still possible he would have once again scaled back his apocalypse plans during season four, as opposed to having season five take place in a Shadow-dominated nightmare cosmos with a destroyed B5 as seems to have been the original plan. (That still would have been interesting, and looking at it in the big picture of the show, it feels somewhat more thematically solid - but I don't think I would've liked it better than the S5 we got, even allowing for the Byron of it all and the uneven pacing.)
One thing I do categorically like better about the upended version of the show as opposed to - from the sound of things - ALL of the pre-editorial-messing versions is B5 lasting throughout the entire series and its decommissioning and destruction as very nearly the show's final scene. That just feels so thematically solid that I'm amazed at all the various versions of this that would have blown it up mid-series! It's such a presence throughout the show as a place. I think destroying it mid-series would have blown up a lot of my interest in the show along with it; it would have felt like losing a major character.
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Yes! Once again, what we actually got was so much more novel and thoughtful than the original plan. I can see how the cliffhanger destruction of the station—the eponym of the series! its central setting!—would have looked mind-blowingly game-changing on paper, a sort of ultimate demonstration that all things in this story are subject to change, but also . . . as politely as possible, the target audience for Babylon 5/Babylon Prime would have seen The Empire Strikes Back. One of the most interesting things about the Shadow War as it exists is that it never has that moment where the villains seem to have won. Sheridan's katabasis at Z'ha'dum does not count; it's too weird and mythological and right around the same time the Vorlons reveal themselves as just as pitiless and utilitarian as the Shadows, totally upending the model of the war of light and dark which it sounds as though the original versions mostly stuck to and which is nuts to contemplate the show not deconstructing, since it's embedded right there in the concept of the three-sided truth. Letting the station last out its intended purpose until its foreseen ending in fire turns out to be one more example of the future that comes true in a different key doesn't wind up feeling like the safer choice, but a lot more adult.
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Also, even Star Wars recognizes that sci-fi audiences are not in it to fall in love with a beautiful, iconic location and then watch it blow up. We don't mind an Aldebaran or a Death Star, but we don't want to see the Millennium Falcon destroyed or Cloud City go up in smoke.
One of the most interesting things about the Shadow War as it exists is that it never has that moment where the villains seem to have won.
That's a fascinating point, and you're so right! The characters all have individual dark moments in their various arcs, sometimes multiple ones, but the show as a whole really never does. The closest it comes are personal, again - Earth seeming lost to fascism, Centauri Prime's brief brush with destruction by the Vorlons - but there's still the rest of the universe out there.
This actually ties into something Orion and I were talking about just this morning, about the show - he was saying that he's fed up with the Hero's Journey and specifically the refusing-the-call aspect of it (we all know you're going to take up the call! Let's just skip that part! We know you aren't going to go be a nerf herder or whatever!) and this segued into talking about how Babylon 5 doesn't really have that for any of the characters. They might not know exactly where they're going and they might take a circuitous path to get there, sometimes by way of villainy, but the entire show starts with everyone being there because they've already made the choice.
To be fair, TV is somewhat different because it relies on a recurring premise, but it still often starts with characters going through an abbreviated first part of the Hero's Journey in which they have to pick up the burden. (And in modern miniseries-style prestige TV, the entire first season can basically be some part of that.) But this show doesn't ever do that. It's not a coming of age story. It's not even that it isn't about people learning who they are - because for many of them, it is! But they never start out not knowing who they are or what they want. They just might need to change their mind about what that actually is.
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Agreed! I was just thinking in terms of flipping the narrative table, which only works if the underside of the table and the scattered pieces actually are cooler than the alternative. B5 destroyed is not cooler: it's an expected move and as you very rightly point out, the risk of unnecessarily losing the audience is high. Pulling a full le Carré and revealing that the great war against the forces of evil is really a Lovecraftian cold war in which the last of the elder races are fielding the proxy agents of the younger against one another—yet again more mature than the simpler twist of, say, just having the Vorlons turn out to be the bad guys instead—is much cooler! Legitimately a whammy to audience expectations and yet totally legible in hindsight! And once again possible because the show is successfully juggling so many different genres that playing by the rules of any one of them feels fair so long as it's been sufficiently introduced. All of these original outlines for Babylon 5 sound much more constrained by conventional sff tropes than the show ended up being. It's just fascinating to me how much it apparently stretched and grew, even when it tripped over the occasional Byron.
But this show doesn't ever do that. It's not a coming of age story. It's not even that it isn't about people learning who they are - because for many of them, it is! But they never start out not knowing who they are or what they want. They just might need to change their mind about what that actually is.
Yes! That is an excellent way of putting it. And ties in to your earlier point that all of these people are adults, even the younger characters like Vir or Lennier (who to be fair did get kind of shot out of a cannon in terms of his diplomatic placement: Vir got what everyone thought was a joke assignment, but Lennier went straight from contemplative statistics to witnessing a dude cheat at cards with his junk. I'm sorry, I will never be over the fact that I watched that scene on primetime TV). They are already on trajectories.
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tripped over the occasional Byron.
ALAS. (Apparently he also played a Minbari - I noticed the actor's name in the credits for "In the Beginning" as well.)
And ties in to your earlier point that all of these people are adults, even the younger characters like Vir or Lennier [...]. They are already on trajectories.
Yes, that! I am going to have to remember this for future writing purposes - it's not like I've never done this, but thinking about it very specifically as a character arc from one mature trajectory to another is really useful, especially in thinking about using older characters in traditional reinvention narratives (discover superpowers, portal fantasy, etc).
Lennier went straight from contemplative statistics to witnessing a dude cheat at cards with his junk. I'm sorry, I will never be over the fact that I watched that scene on primetime TV
Never over that! And never over the fact that it's one of the most vivid things I remembered about the show after 30 years, either. I still can't believe some of the things they got away with on the show when it came to Centauri sexual apparatus. In fact I think I may need to go rewatch the scene in "Sic Transit Vir" with Vir explaining Centauri sex to Susan. ("Once you get to five ...")
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He did voices for Babylon Park, too, which did a lot to ameliorate my feelings toward him.
but thinking about it very specifically as a character arc from one mature trajectory to another is really useful, especially in thinking about using older characters in traditional reinvention narratives (discover superpowers, portal fantasy, etc).
I support this plan, not least because I remain a fan of older characters in portal fantasies.
And never over the fact that it's one of the most vivid things I remembered about the show after 30 years, either.
It's indelible!
In fact I think I may need to go rewatch the scene in "Sic Transit Vir" with Vir explaining Centauri sex to Susan. ("Once you get to five ...")
The face of the Centauri diplomat who first had their Human counterpart sit down across from them and settle their clasped hands on the table in a sober and businesslike fashion . . .
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I had never heard of Babylon Park, have now gone hunting for it on Youtube, and regret absolutely nothing. That is hilarious and also the most 90s-era-internet thing to ever exist.
The face of the Centauri diplomat who first had their Human counterpart sit down across from them and settle their clasped hands on the table in a sober and businesslike fashion . . .
Culture clash at its finest and most embarrassing! (If Londo was the diplomat it happened in front of, he would probably have loved this.)
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"I cannot help. I am only an accounting program."
EIGHTEEN YEARS LATER I SEE TRON.
(If Londo was the diplomat it happened in front of, he would probably have loved this.)
YES.
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Yeah, even no more than I knew about the show, I had also absorbed that. I am now getting the impression it was a lot more complicated. I do love a lot of season five, and I think it ultimately ties off the show in one of the more satisfying conclusions I've ever seen on (western) TV. But also, I am just completely fascinated at how much of the original plan as now revealed - at least in the above Reddit post, take the source with a grain of salt - would have been unsatisfying for me as a viewer. At least as described in broad strokes. Maybe it would have been amazing in the actual execution! Who knows! I can't rule out that I'm at least slightly biased by knowing how the show actually ended, and I probably would have also liked the other version. But I also think Straczynski had a certain set of tropes that he just wanted to shoehorn in everywhere, and I could also see the 30-years-later fandom still rehashing flame wars about "was season 5 the WORST season" even if he'd had his way in everything.
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I just realized that is probably another bullet dodged, because the comparisons to Blake's 7 would have been even more unavoidable than when the station broke away from the totalitarian government of Earth.
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You should probably expound further on this subject, too, because all of my B7 vibes are secondhand (and mostly Tanith Lee) and this statement still pings correctly to me.
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I will, however, die mad about everything I heard about the departure of Andrea Thompson/Talia Winters. The story I saw was that JMS hated Thompson and decided to pull the Lesbian Trifecta all in one person in order to get rid of her (beating out Whedon's Lesbian Trifecta, spread over 2 people). Someone said that JMS also either had joked or actually had a container on his desk that was supposed to be Talia's brain in a jar, and JMS was also apparently just nasty about the actress.
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Though at the moment, I don't think I want to go any farther into discussing actors being unhappy on set - I'm sure there was plenty of turmoil behind the scenes (there had to have been, for the cast to have the amount of churn that it did) but I don't think I want to have too much of that in the back of my head when I'm rewatching the show.
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And thank goodness for that! I think I do remember hearing that, but not the follow-up that Garibaldi came back to the main action because of her departure -- that does make sense, though, because it does seem odd to "push him away" only to bring him back (for something that's not, like, hugely thematically relevant).
: The OTHER impression I'm getting reading this is that JMS was also insanely prolific and would hit the ground running every time,
He was, indeed, insanely prolific. If you can stomach a memoir full of awful child abuse, his Becoming Superman is a gripping read, but also full of the kind of stuff, both good and bad, where if it was a fictional character it would tax my suspension of disbelief, but apparently that's just how it was. One of the formative things seems to be, as a young man, starting out as a writer, he (cold-called, I think?) Harlan Ellison, and asked him for writing advice about getting better, and Ellison's advice was "stop writing shit", and JMS's takeaway was, OK, you have to write a million words of crap before you get good, so I better write those million words as quickly as possible -- and that basically seems to have set his writing pace for life XD (My write-up of the book is here if you're curious.)
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I think I do remember hearing that, but not the follow-up that Garibaldi came back to the main action because of her departure -- that does make sense, though, because it does seem odd to "push him away" only to bring him back (for something that's not, like, hugely thematically relevant).
Yeah, in this case I don't mind the lack of fallout (in general) for the brainwashing storyline and Garibaldi's estrangement from the other characters because I didn't really like that storyline all that much in the first place, but I guess that explains why there was so little aftermath for it, or much of an explanation for him being back on B5 when it had looked like he was staying on Mars at the end of S4. I do wonder if his romance with Lisa would have had more development if he'd been on Mars for most of the season, and also if he'd have clashed with Bester there instead of B5. I really liked him on B5 much better than any potential S5 with him on Mars, but it is true that it feels like most of his storyline is Mars-focused rather than B5-focused, and I guess that's why!
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Yeah! It was really interesting to read the memoir with the B5 rewatch fairly fresh in my mind, because it was illuminating in some respects (but also mind-boggling in others, because it was so hard to believe that someone with his horrific upbringing would end up so compassionate and even-handed about some stuff that had to have hit close to home when he was writing it...)
Yeah, in this case I don't mind the lack of fallout (in general) for the brainwashing storyline and Garibaldi's estrangement from the other characters because I didn't really like that storyline
Yeah, same. I was happy for that part to just sort of peter out, more puzzled about what the point of it had been in the first place, but learning that the point of it presumably got lost when Ivanova left the show puts that question to rest, and I'm happy with the result.
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Sad about Talia, though.
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I can believe some of what you're describing here is by the guy who created Crusade.
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LMAO.
I feel like the evidence points to JMS doing some of his best work when he was forced to improvise rather than being left on his own.