Babylon 5 script books, part 2

[sholio]

Some more random excerpts from the script books, currently going through season 2.

(At the present time, I've taken pictures of pages in the book and haven't transcribed it. Sorry for lack of legibility/accessibility! I will try to type them up later.)


It is very entertaining to me that you'll get pages of introspective and occasionally profound detail about the thought process that went into writing an episode, and then you'll get something like this.



Re: the below pictures - sorry, I didn't realize the photo quality was quite *that* goddawful when I was taking the pictures. The books are thick and floppy, sort of like phone books, and very hard to hold to take pictures of, especially without the shadow of my hand / the phone getting in the way.

Anyway, the process of deciding to kill off Keffer:




(There's an ongoing thread of JMS feeling really, really guilty, on behalf of the actors, about killing off most of the dead characters on the show. Apparently he promised Marcus's actor that he wouldn't kill him and then kept it from him until the last minute ...)

Another bit of particular interest to me was filming the scene in mid season 2 in which we first see the flash-forward to Londo and G'Kar strangling each other, and how much the actors were told about how to play the scene.




IMHO in the scene as filmed, you can't actually tell that this is the case and it *does* look like they're fighting to the death, but it's interesting that Peter was told not to play it with his character fighting too hard ...

Finally, a charming little detail: in the original version of Vir and Lennier's commiseration meeting in the bar in "Fall of Night" (which apparently was relocated from the script for a different episode; I couldn't figure out why I couldn't find that scene, which was alluded to in the Fall of Night script notes, until I located it in "Comes the Inquisitor", which is in a different volume) ... Vir goes for a hug:



I prefer the more emotionally low-key final version - I feel like it's more in character for them at that point in the series, and it also makes the hug in season five more of a surprise. But ... *Vir.*

Comments

[timespirt]

This is really good. Thank you for posting it.

[sholio]

Thank you! :) I'm having so much fun with these books and I need to post more of it.

[timespirt]

I know I'm enjoying it.

[lyr]

Thanks for sharing. It's interesting to get this perspective. But aww, poor Robert Rusler. Now I feel bad for the guy, too.

[sholio]

I'm glad you're enjoying! But yeah ... like I was saying in a comment below, I feel like some of JMS's problems were self-inflicted because of mismanaging his actors to some extent - conflict avoidant, just not wanting to hurt their feelings, whatever, but creating more problems than there actually would've been if he'd simply been up front about it!

[schneefink]

(There's an ongoing thread of JMS feeling really, really guilty, on behalf of the actors, about killing off most of the dead characters on the show. Apparently he promised Marcus's actor that he wouldn't kill him and then kept it from him until the last minute ...)
I get the impulse, not sure finding out at the last minute made the actor feel better though...

[sholio]

Ahahaha, right? I kinda feel like he created a lot of his own problems by being so conflict-avoidant with the actors (in some cases) that he ended up manufacturing problems that wouldn't have been problems if he had just been up front with them even if they didn't like it.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

I'm still unhappy about Marcus's death, all these years later. I can only sympathize with JMS so much, because he's the one who made the decisions to kill all these people, and then he didn't want to tell their actors?!

Ah, Vir.

[sholio]

Yeah, I'm getting the impression from these books that JMS was dealing with two levels of showrunning that were in conflict with each other, namely:

1. The Story, which he felt very strongly about and had a lot of personal investment in and wanted to tell it a certain way and not give the actors any more information than he had to so they could develop their characters along with the scripts.

2. The Actors, where he wanted everyone to like him and be happy on the set and feel satisfied with their storylines.

And you really can't have it both ways! Especially on a show where you kill characters off a lot and throw a bunch of twists at the audience.

[shippen_stand]

I do love these! Thank you for posting. That scene between Vir and Lennier has always stuck with me.

[sholio]

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed! It was such a good scene. :D