Thanks. He's a fascinating character to explore, and the most careful balancing act of the bunch; part of the character's appeal is that on a very fundamental level, you *like* him, and you don't want to see him on this terrible slide downward. So every so often, you have to pull him back, go in a different direction, remind us of his basic humanity and potential for heroism. He is, really, any of us caught in a web of events spinning more and more out of control every day.

jms
*****
>>Notice how in this episode, Londo says, "I'd never threaten you or the others".
Three episodes later, in "And Now For a Word"....

Hi Robert--

I did indeed. Poor Londo. Like Joe says, we all _want_ to like the poor little fat guy. I mean, after all, he sits up waiting for hours for his only remaining friend in the whole universe. He's so damned pathetic. And we want to believe him too, when he says, "I'd never threaten you." Then he turns right around and vindicates every doubt we ever had.

I truly hope that sometime before the series ends Londo will redeem himself, even if it's the last thing he ever does at the very moment before he dies. Something to give his life meaning, an act that causes his epitaph to read something good despite all his earlier sins.

******
The Rangers will be an increasingly important presence.

jms
******
What one finds depends on what one looks for, and what one sees.

jms

*****
I certainly hope so. We've done all we can to help the process along. We've put many of our actors up for it via the application process, which is time-consuming and expensive, we made videocassettes up for academy members of two of our best episodes ("Coming --" and "Geometry of Shadows"), also very expensive...so we can only hope they get the recognition they deserve.

I think we'll have a strong shot at some of the technical areas, like EFX, costuming, makeup, sound editing, music, that sort of thing, IF enough academy members actually *look* at the episodes, but the non-tech stuff, acting/writing/directing, are always long-shots in the SF genre, sadly.

jms
******
Okay Brett, here we go. Please fasten your seatbelt and hang on:

Opens on Centauri Prime. Refa is lovingly fondling the emperor's throne when Londo comes in. They talk about how the Emperor is out among his people. Refa tells Londo that they have an opportunity to end the war (been going on about 6 months). Scene shifts to G'Kar's quarters. He is talking to G'Sten (W. Morgan Sheppard) the Narn Warmaster. The Narn are planning an attack on a major Centauri supply world. It will require stripping the defenses from the homeworld, but he feels if they can cut the supply lines, the Centauri will lose their nerve. He also tells G'Kar that the war is going badly and they continue to lose battles. G'Kar argues that they shouldn't leave the homeworld undefended. G'Sten (who we find out is G'Kar's uncle) says the homeworld will be defended enough. Before he leaves, G'Sten tells G'Kar his father would be proud of him. Back on Centauri Prime, Refa tells Londo they have intercepted information that the bulk of the Narn war fleet will attack the supply world. Londo says "And we will be waiting for them?" No, Refa says. Your friends will. We will attack the Narn homeworld. Londo gets upset at this. Refa tells him that you started this and you can't back out now. Londo asks how they will attack the Narn homeworld. Refa says they won't directly assault it, but use mass drivers for planetary bombardment. Londo is shocked, since mass drivers are banned by every civiilized world. Refa says it will end the war sooner and save Centauri lives. Londo reluctantly agrees to call in his friends. He says it will be the last time, because his friends are beginning to scare him. Refa tells him that Londo will be coming with them to the assault on the Narn homeworld. In C&C, Lt. Corwin picks up an energy surge from the planet below. We now see Delenn, in her quarters, meditating. Suddenly there is a glow of light on her face. She smiles and says "Hello, old friend." Now in Sheridan's quarters, he is taking a shower (yet another B5 first!). Ivanova calls him to tell him about the energy surge. Her transmission breaks up and there is a bright light in his quarters. Draal appears to him. (John Schuck).

(All before the first break!)

Back on B5, Draal explains his younger appearance as due to the effects of the machine below. He invites Sheridan and one other down to visit him. He says Sheridan will know which other to bring. And he warns him not to wait too long to come. G'Kar has been summoned to Medlab by Dr. Franklin. He tells him how a Narn escaped from the Centauri. They had been interrogating him, asking him about the homeworld defenses with a certain sense of urgency. G'Kar goes back to his quarters and calls G'Sten. He argues that this info, along with the fact that the Centauri didn't finish securing their latest conquest as they always do, but pulled out their ships early, that the Centauri are planning an attack. G'Sten says the assault on the supply world is too far advanced, and besides, that's not really enough info to go on. Sheridan is walking along the corridor and Delenn calls to him. He says he doesn't have time, but she tells him Draal appeared to her also. They then talk with Garibaldi, who argues against them going down to the planet. They finally convince him it will be safe. They take a shuttle and head off. Delenn leads him down corridors. Sheridan asks her if she knows where she is going. She replies that she has an excellent memory so she is "absafragginglutely sure" of where she's going. Sheridan is a bit shocked, but she says she is learning the language. (Not really clear, Joe said it refers to something that happened in the previous episode, Divided Loyalties.) They show more of that shot of the walkway over the vast machine cavern. They come into the room from VITW and see Draal in the machine. He appears to them. He tells Delenn it is good to see her, but boy has she changed. As you have, old friend, she replies. Draal then tells Sheridan he has been watching him. He has also been using the machine to sort of monitor things going on in the universe. He tells Sheridan that he has made good, tough decisions. He also says that Sheridan is involved in a conspiracy of light against his own government. Sheridan tries to bluff his way out, but Draal stops him. Draal tells him it is time for the machines in the planet to be used. He places them at Sheridan's disposal. He says he will remain in touch. When Sheridan asks how he will contact him he says there are several others here who maintain the machine and they help keep him informed. One in particular is very helpful.

The Narn war fleet jumps out of hyperspace. They start an attack run and 5 shadow ships shimmer into existence. G'Sten wants to leave, but the jump engines aren't recharged yet. So he orders an attack. (This all happens at long distances.) The shadow's body ejects a spiky ball, which opens up into those little shadow ships. (Very cool!). The little ships go after the Narn fighters, while the beams from the shadows start damaging the Narn cruisers. Three of the cruisers concentrate their beams on one spot and manage to cut off one end of one of the legs(?) of one of the big shadow ships. While this is going on, we see G'Kar praying over his holy book with only a candle for light. The scene occassionaly switches back to him from the action. Two Narn cruisers are left, so they open jump points to escape. The shadow's body ejects another ball (not certain if the same kind as before). The balls enter into the jump points and destabilize it. The Narns can't pull out and are both spectaularly destroyed. One shadow ship mates or connects to the damaged one and they all shimmer out. G'Kar uses his gloved finger to put out the candle.

(Everyone stops and breathes now.) Halfway point.

Draal is escorting Sheridan and Delenn when there is a disturbance in the planet. He tells them it is time to return. They all have much to do. He tells Delenn it is time she tell Sheridan. Delenn says goodbye to her friend. After they leave, Draal says "Zathras! Zathras! Where is he when you need him?" Centauri ships (some big ones we haven't seen) start bombarding Narn with mass drivers. Huge explosions of light show on the planet. Back to B5, Ivanova alerts Garibaldi about the attack on Narn. He readies for riots once the news gets out. In the Zocalo, an ISN reporter starts giving the news of the assault. The Narn homeworld is being devastated, their infrastructure being destroyed. A huge fight breaks out between Narns and Centauri in the bar. Ivanova and Garibaldi greet the returning Sheridan and Delenn and advise them of the riots. Delenn is escorted back to her quarters. There is a long tracking shot in to a Centauri cruiser, the assault continuing. Standing in a window, the battle reflected in the glass, is Londo. He watches, with increasing discomfort. (Wonderful SFX, and Peter does a great job). G'Kar gets a message from homeworld. It is occassionaly a bad transmission, due to the continuing attack and power failures. G'Kar wants to return to homeworld, to be with his family. As the last member of the Kar-ri(sp?) he must stay where he is. The Narn government has one more duty for him to perform. Sheridan is in his office listening to the reports of the attack on Narn. G'Kar slowly enters, and tells Sheridan, "my government has instructed me to come to you.... and ask for sanctuary."

Commercial break.

Shots of the station, guards in full riot gear with rifles. Londo arrives, and Garibaldi informs him he will have a full guard on him and his quarters at all times. He asks Garibaldi to tell Sheridan he wants a full council meeting. At the council meeting, Kosh, Sheridan, Delenn are there, as well as the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. (The Markab seat is empty.) G'Kar is there, but not behind the table but sitting next to it. Londo states that the Narn government has surrendered. There are certain terms. All members of the Kar-ri will be arrested and tried for war crimes against the Centauri people. Sheridan says he wants Earth observers at the trials. Londo says, "Request denied!" Second, if any Narn kills a Centauri, 500 Narns will be killed as punishment, including the family of the Narn who did it. Third, Narn is now a protectorate of the mighty Centauri Republic. All Narn worlds now belong to the Centauri. The Centauri will appoint a provisional government to run Narn. Londo now says that G'Kar must be arrested, as he is the last member of the Kar-ri not under arrest. Sheridan stands up and says that's not possible. Sheridan tells Londo that G'Kar asked for sanctuary on B5 and Sheridan has granted it. Delenn stands up and states that the Minbari government also supports this. Londo is furious. He says G'Kar no longer represents a government and is only a mere citizen now. Londo insists that G'Kar no longer appear at council meetings as he is no longer an ambassador. G'Kar slowly stands up. He says that the Narn will not give up, that you cannot hold back those who are willing to fight for their freedom. He warns Londo they will be free once more, if it takes a thousand years. He walks out of the council chambers.

Commercial break.

Sheridan in his office listening to reports that the Centauri have taken over some planets near the Narn homeworld. However, Centauri Prime says they are not interested in being expansionist. He gets a call on his link that Delenn wants to see him. He goes into a room, filled with Minbari and human rangers. Delenn, Kosh and Garibaldi are there. They explain that the rangers have been there a while gathering info. They are an army against the coming darkness, which is coming much closer now. Garabaldi tells Sheridan that he has known, but couldn't tell Sheridan about it because of a promise he made to a friend. Delenn has been in charge of the rangers and she is now giving Sheridan equal authority over them. They are his army, to use as he sees fit. Sheridan is a bit shocked by all this. He finally accepts, stating that B5 will be a beacon of light against the forces of darkness.

End.

WOW! This took longer to write than to watch. Brett, I can't begin to convey to you the impact of this one. Huge amounts of SFX, Peter and Andreas (Londo & G'Kar) are absolutely magnificent. At the end, the once proud Narn ambassador is humbled, humiliated, and a broken man. You literally forget to breathe at times, the suspense is so heavy.

If you have any questions, let me know. I may be a bit off on the breaks and the sequence of events may be a bit off, but it is from memory. Again, I would ask that you don't say anything about this publicly or spread it around privately.

Thanks. Again, if you want more details, ask. I've pretty much put in everything.

Barbara
*****
Tom, Don, and interested others:

Just back from the Comicon and it was great.

Michael O'Hare is wonderful. Funny, intelligent, well-spoken. He even did a demonstration of stage fighting with a member of the audience.

Peter David is very funny and loves in-jokes. He showed us a pilot of a show he and Bill Mumy created for Nick called Space Cases. His daughter Ariel stole the show from her father, as well as the microphone occasionally.

Now to the stuff you're really interested in.

First, I've met Joe twice now. Everyone should make an effort to meet him or at least see him in person. His writing reflects his personality, especially his honesty and passion.

Second, he claims to be terrified of speaking in front of crowds. Well, all I can say is he's a wonderful actor as well as writer, because you can't tell. He's a wonderful storyteller in person (as well as on TV).

Joe showed a tape set to music (someone else will have to provide the title) that showcased just about every special effects shot they've ever shown on the show. Then he showed the season two blooper reel. All I can say about it in a family forum is that Jerry Doyle must be a lot of fun to work with.

>>Well, from my experience, Joe allows us to tell people WHAT we saw, but nothing about it other than how much we liked it. It's VERY tough not to spill the beans.<<

That's for sure. Joe made everyone raise their right hand and swear an oath "so help me Kosh" not to reveal details. So I won't. But there are three things I feel I can say about "The Long, Twilight Struggle":

One, at the end of the episode, we gave Joe a standing ovation.

Two, WHAM,WHAM,WHAM,WHAM,WHAM, WOW,WOW,WOW,WOW,WOW, OHMYGOD,OHMYGOD,OHMYGOD,WHAM,WHAM,WHAM.

Three, Joe wrote previously "Hell, in some ways, when compared with "Struggle," "The Coming of Shadows"
is a light comedy in which nothing much happens." Let me tell you, he was not exaggerating or lying. He told the complete and total truth.

I now return you to our regularly scheduled reruns.

Barbara

*****
Actually, Drazi are asexual, carrying the attributes of both, with their basic appearance reading to us like males.

jms
*****
It's really sad, but...see, on the one hand, I like filet mignon, and occasionally lobster, and all the other hoity-toity foods you're supposed to like and eat when you're a TeeVee producer, but see...I hate even to admit this in public, but...I actually kinda *like* McDonald's burgers. I don't know why, but there it is. I usually end up ducking into one when I'm by myself, because the explanations...well, you see my problem.

jms

*****
Greetings, all. I was browsing through the Internet B5 newsgroup today, and I caught this interesting post regarding a BBC program on medieval history and the three ages of mankind. Interesting insights. Thought you might enjoy it:

-- Bob

From: Niall Teasdale <nt@sss.co.uk>
Subject: ATTN: The Third Age - BBC 2 Reveals All
Date: 19 Jun 1995 08:00:28 GMT

I beg your collective pardons if someone has noticed his before, but...

There I was watching a program on medieval history on BBC on Saturdays night,
when suddenly this professor is telling me about the Three Ages of Mankind.
Here goes:

The Sibyl (whe're not sure which one, but our best guess is the Sibyl of
Cumae who sold the Sibylline Books to King Tarquin) prophecied in Roman
times that history would be divided into three ages. The interpretation
(because she couldn't have known about Christ) was that the First Age was
the time of the Old Testament, and the Second Age was the present period,
after the birth of Christ.

The Third Age of mankind would be the final age before the end of the world,
when MANKIND'S HIDDEN PURPOSE WOULD BE REVEALED! Before then there would be
a last emperor who would unite his people through the false words of the
Devil (Londo?).

Now it just so happens that the medieval scholars who were interpreting the
texts came up with a date for the end of the world: 1260.

That's exactly 1000 years before the time of B5, and I believe it was at
that time that the Shadows rose up and were knocked back by the Vorlons and
the Minbari.

Sounds like that might explain the Third Age business. And it all comes
from watching history programs on BBC2.

Niall

*****
I was just looking over the Lurker's Guide, and I re-read this quote, from Delenn's speech in "In The Shadow of Z'Hadum":

"The last time, the Shadows lost because they moved too quickly. Now, they are being careful, gathering their forces slowly....The Shadows will move now, before we're ready for them."

Isn't this contradictory? First, she says the Shadows lost previous wars because they started too early, and now they're taking more time to prepare. Then she says we don't want to attack right know because we're not ready.

Now, the Shadows are slowly gathering their forces, and continue to amass power as their forces converge and build up around Z'Hadum.

The "good guys", on the other hand, seem to be disadvantaged by the waiting: The Centauri and the Narn are pounding on each other; the EA and Mimbari have growing internal strife, with growing isolationism - it seems possible that hostilities may again erupt between the two; and the Vorlons have had thousands of years to rebuild their forces in preparation for the Shadows' next resurgence - a few more months (or years) wouldn't seem to make much difference.

It seems the only forces that are growing to help against the Shadow's are Sinclair's Rangers, whose powers seem kind of minimal, at least for now; and the arrival of Babylon 4 from the past next year.

Therefore, wouldn't it make sense for the Vorlons, whatever Rangers have gathered, maybe the Narn (whatever's left - it would've been better if they attacked before the war started) and Delenn's friends in the Mimbari (there's got to be some) to pound the heck out of the Shadows now, before they're ready? If someone blew up Z'Hadum, it seems that would deal a serious blow to the Shadows' plans.

(Of course, jms probably has something up his sleave, but we have to wait too long for the new episodes which explain all of it, dammit!<g>)

Colin
******
The forces you describe are not sufficient to take out the shadows, even at this stage. It's going to take a much larger force, which is what Delenn et al are trying to gather.

jms
*****
"We crave ACTION."

And you shall have it. In abundance.

jms

*****
It would get rather redundent and boring after a while if the same war continued for three seasons, would it not?

jms

*****
You're assuming that the relationship you saw between Delenn and Sinclair was a romantic one. It was a close one, on her part in particular, but not based on romance. We'll explain what that means in year three.

jms
*****
"It's a rebirth ceremony, all right, which sometimes doubles as a marriage ceremony."

Amazing how everyone went for the secondary meaning and omitted the most obvious meaning in presaging the rebirth Delenn went through in "Chrysalis."

jms
*****
<I mean the transcript of Londo narration for The Gathering.>

Here it is:

Babylon 5, The Gathering

"I was there at the dawn of the Third Age of Mankind.
It began in the Earth year 2257 with the founding of the last
of the Babylon stations, located deep in Neutral Space. It was
a port of call for refugees, smugglers, businessmen, diplomats
and travelers from a hundred worlds. It could be a dangerous
place but we accepted the risk because Babylon 5 was our last,
best hope for peace. Under the leadership of it's final
commander, Babylon 5 was a dream given form. A dream of a
Galaxy without war, where species from different worlds could
live side by side in mutual respect. A dream that was
endangered as never before by the arrival of one man on a
mission of destruction.*
Babylon 5 was the last of the Babylon stations.
This is it's story..."

<Also, I haven't yet seen posted the real 2nd season narration (not the one I typed in, that was actually 1st season). Has anybody posted it yet?>

Don't know but here it is:

The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. A self contained world 5 mile long, located in neutral territory. A place of commerce and diplomacy for a quarter of a million humans and aliens. A shining beacon in space, all alone in the night. It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, the year the great war came upon us all. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2259. The name of the place is Babylon 5.

Asha
*****
A question for you, Joe, on something that's been on my mind:

When you came up with the idea for Babylon 5, why did you decide you wanted to make it into a TV series?

If I have the chronology right, you were a script writer at the time you came up with the idea. Was it just logical to go TV since that's what you were currently doing? Why didn't you just put it aside and plan to write five 500 page novels when you had the time. (Mind you, I'm glad you chose to put it on TV!)

In some ways it would be easier to write it. You could do flashbacks, flashforwards, move between planets, and never have to worry about the budget or the current limitations of CGI technology. Or did you think the story could be told better visually, with the words being brought to life by actors?

Just nosy and trying to pass the time till October. Thanks!

Barbara
*****

Any time I come up with a story, I try to look around to determine where it would work best. This one *felt* like it belonged to TV.

More than that, though...I went into this looking to create a saga for TV. It wasn't so much coming up with the story, and realizing it was a TV saga, as it was, "Nobody's ever done a multi-year science fiction saga for television. As a thought-experiment, can I come up with something that would work in this medium?" This led me to the structure that became Babylon 5.

jms
*****
As I responded in private mail, I'm drawing upon a number of military influences in the show; some from WW I, in the Great War and how WW I sort of slid into WW II; some tactical and strategic elements of WW II military; and some of the political elements that went into the Vietnam and Korean conflicts. Actual tactics and battles will vary; there's a major battle setpiece in a later episode that uses more contemporary and futuristic elements such as long-distance (thousands of kilometers) tactics, interceptors and the like.

Also as I noted in email...I just learned today from someone high up in military PR in Washington that Babylon 5 is very popular with many branches of the military. They call it a "force multiplier" (morale booster) for naval and air force and ground troops (apparently the show gets shipped out to bases and to carrier/battleship groups). It's also very popular with many folks in the Pentagon and the Secret Service. (In one case, the Secret Service apparently did an analysis of one of our episodes as an exercise in character analysis of military persons under high-stress situations.) The Flying Tigers have also been very supportive of the show, even allowing us to use their symbol in the series.

jms

*****
Re: hints about next season....

Well, how about a major change in the very structure of the B5 universe?

How major?

Imagine if, one day, the Enterprise crew discovered that their ship had actually been constructed by the Romulans, and that they were morally obligated to go off and serve the Romulan empire...and that didn't change at the end of the episode, it *stayed* that way for the rest of the season.

That scenario bears *no* resemblance to what I have planned for year three, so there's no point in riffing off it and looking for clues. But that is emblematic of the Major Event waiting about halfway through the third season.

How's that for a start?

jms

*****
Thanks. Yeah, the idea of getting out of this part of the Biz and back into novels or plays is very appealing. The pace would be FAR less difficult, you write at your own pace, there aren't 250 people standing behind you waiting for pages.

I've been writing, first part-time, then full time, since I was in high school. Full-time since about 1979. 3,000 pages a year. Writing twelve hours a day, every day, except my birthday, my spousal overunit's birthday, christmas and new year's. By the time B5 is finished, I think I could well use a slightly slower pace...maybe sit by a nice, quiet little stream for a while, feed the ducks....

jms

*****
Actually, I kind of began by writing plays and short stories. Got commissioned to write a full-length play while still in high school, which was performed at a full assembly of the school, and shortly thereafter was hired to write another full-length play which ran in summer stock at a local college for something like 16 weeks. I was barely 18. (It was later published in book form by a leading playbook house, and -- I'm chagrined to note -- is *still in print*, still being produced around the country and overseas.) Wrote something like a dozen produced plays, one-acts and full lengths, before seguing over into radio, journalism, then TV.

jms
*****
Actually (and this is far more information that anyone could conceivably want), since it's come up...yes, definitely more than a few books. The total stands at 12 produced plays, 2 published novels, 1 published anthology, a number of published short stories, a dozen or so produced radio dramas, something over 120 produced episodes of television (I'm afraid I've lost count, could be 130 or so by now), and over 500 published articles for places like THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, PENTHOUSE, VIDEO REVIEW, LOS ANGELES HERALD EXAMINER, WRITER'S DIGEST, TIME INC. and others.

jms

*****
Actually, the baseballs *were* CGI. Amazes me that they made such a big deal out of it in "Forrest Gump." We just did it and threw it away.

jms

*****
Yes, we'll change the theme again. The theme and narration changes with the theme and part of the storyline we're entering. Some don't like the year two theme as much as the 1st because it doesn't summon up the same feelings; it shouldn't. It's a different chapter in the story. I've already spoken with Chris Franke about my ideas for the music for year three, and I think it'll be pretty kick-ass.

jms
*****
The problem is the medium. If an artist wants to do art in the form of paintings, he needs canvas, paint and a subject. If an artist wants to do art in the form of television, he requires, oh, about $22 million, give or take. In the case of ST, closer to $39 million, figuring $1.5 million per show, which is actually on the low side. That's per season.

When you've got THAT much money riding on it, plus in the case of ST, literally *billions* of dollars in revenue from merchandising...well, you begin to understand why things happen the way they do sometimes.

We're *trying* to set a better example. Many producers putting new SF shows together have come to us, and we've given them tours of our stage and facilities, explained how we do what we do, and many of them are now using the "Babylon 5 Model" in putting their shows together for the networks and studios. As far as I'm concerned, the more the merrier.

jms

*****
Then again, you've got Thomas Jefferson who said, "Given the choice between a government and no free press, and a free press without a government, I would choose the latter."

The job of the reporter is to get out the facts that an informed electorate (emphasis on the word informed) needs in order to determine who to vote for, what bills to support, what changes to implement. This is often inconvenient for politicians, who'd much prefer that they did what they did in the shadows. Consequently, they paint this picture of the media as a ravening beast, the "liberal press," when in fact virtuallly every major newspaper, TV station and radio station in the country is owned by Big Business, which is invariably conservative in nature.

Politicians and those citizens who fall for the okeydoke speak of the "media bias," but the media is made up of may disparate people, from different backgrounds, political beliefs, income levels and educational backgrounds as, well, the country itself. There's no such thing as a collective "media bias," there are no secret cell meetings where the new agenda is established every year. It doesn't exist except in the minds of politicians who wish to create this image in order to discredit the messenger when the news is inconvenient for them.

And the reality is that the American press today is *tame* considering what it has been like in the past. There was absolutely NO pretense about journalism, newspapers wore their allegiances like banners. Editorials and cartoons were vicious beyond description.

Without reporters, there would be only one source of information: the government story. Period. Where I come from, that's not only unAmerican, it's downright Soviet. They may be unpleasant at times, they may be rude, they may sometimes fall into the unfortunate realm of the cult of personality, but the system is self-correcting; such individuals fall from grace pretty fast in journalistic circles...they may even be impertinent. But the simple truth is, sometimes the only way to get pertinent information is to ask impertinent questions.

jms
*****
"Paramount HAS increased the avenue of approach for more SF/fantasy by CREATING the market with TNG."

The only thing wrong with this statement is that it isn't true.

ST creates a market for more ST, nothing else. As one who has had to speak with just about every network and studio major domo on this subject, the overwhelming concensus has always been, "The market isn't big enough to sustain more than one SF series, and that's Star Trek." From time to time, grudgingly, one or the other tries it, but almost always half-heartedly.

I heard that line scores of times in the process of trying to sell B5, which is one major reason why it took 5 years to sell it. If what you say were true, then there should have been dozens of SF space series by now. But there aren't. There's only us, and we had to work hard to overcome the ST-Is-The-Only-Marketable-SF problem, combined with Paramount's little games (making sure we're relatively invisible to Entertainment Tonight, getting Stephen Furst kicked off a guest-shot on the old Arsenio show to avoid promoting B5, and other little tricks I could go into).

None of which is to say that ST is bad, or that the people who make ST are bad, this is Paramount stuff.

But we had to fight hard to overcome the stumbling blocks put in our way that are part and parcel of ST, so you will forgive it if the hairs on my neck stand up when someone CREDITS the development of shows like B5 to ST. It is absolutely, positively not true.

jms

*****
Yes, it is difficult selling anything new to television. But you do not usually hear, "We've got one hospital show on the air now, that means you can't sell any others because the market's full." Yet that has been the case with ST for years.

What will cause *more* SF shows to come is, well, more SF shows that succeed. Up until now, ST has been viewed (using the industry term) as a "non-repeating phenomenon." And if you step back and look at it from a network POV, they're quite correct. Very, VERY few science fiction series have ever made it past the second or third year. But you can point to many mainstream shows that have gone five, eight, twelve, even fifteen years (in the case of such an abombination as "Hee, Haw"). "Murder, She Wrote," which I was a part of for two years, has been on the air...what? Eleven years? Twelve? Not one SF show has ever done that.

As soon as you have more than one SF show that lasts more than, say, three or four years, then you might see more. We are one of the very, VERY few to make it to its third season. And, consequently, some network and studio types are thinking maybe it can be done, maybe you CAN have more than one around at the same time. But they're still edgy, and they still use the line that there's only room for ST all too often.

I'm not making this up, Don. Even once we got the series pickup, we were told by a WB exec, "I'm not holding out any hope for this. It has never been shown that there's any market for SF other than Star Trek." (That person has subsequently come around.)

And as an SF fan myself...the more good SF on television, the more I like it. The Morgan/Wong pair from X-Files are doing their new Space series, and I wish it all the best. The more the merrier; competition helps the field. I just wish the folks at Paramount understood that, and took a healthy competition as something good, not something to be attacked or destroyed in order to preserve a franchise.

jms
*****
To confirm word already leaking out via John Copeland on AOL...yes, we received word that BABYLON 5 has been renewed for its third season. I got the call this evening, and have spent the time in-between doing Producer Stuff, and taking care of a small bug that hit last night, and has thus taken a bit of the edge off the news.

Nonetheless...we've been renewed. Shooting on year three will begin around July 31st. This season will put us past the halfway mark on the series total. Expect Big Things and some major changes not just in characters, but the structure of the B5 universe itself.

And now...to work. With thanks to all of our friends on the nets who have stood beside us through the last two years.

jms

*****
I was just on hyperion. On the what's new page for the Lurker's Guide is a message signed by John Copeland, a producer of Babylon 5 .

Date: 95-06-08 22:22:38 EDT

Well you can all relax, break out the champagne, or
whatever your pleasure is -- we got official notification
for the third season this afternoon. We're good for 22
more eps. Prep will start next week, and we intend to
start production in late July. The third season will
premiere in Nov. We feel pretty good here, I hope all
of you do as well. Thanks to all of you fans for
your support. We'll try to live up to your expectations.

John Copeland

OK, Joe, can you tell us the name of the 3rd season yet? Or do we have to wait until the last episodes of this season air?

Elyse

*****
While I'll let the other question slide for the moment, yes, I'd like to see either Sakai or Takashima again. Some of what I'd considered for Takashima I recently transplanted into more fertile ground (he said vaguely and mysteriously), but yes, I'd love to do it sometime.

jms
*****
"...you don't have anything up your sleeve, by any chance?"

Constantly.

If I didn't, it wouldn't be Babylon 5.

jms
*****
Assuming we're renewed (we hope to finally hear next week), there are plans afoot to unveil an official in-house fan club operation here at B5, which would handle some convention liaison stuff for other conventions, and would eventually lead to a proper B5 convention which we would put together using the very same folks who make the show. Since there's the benefit of PR, we wouldn't so much be looking to make a profit as just breaking even and, most important, having a good time...so the sense of it would be closer to a fan-run convention in tone.

But be assured, that's at *least* a year down the road. Maybe more.

jms
*****
Yeah, you're right, it probably is in October; I was going off a mental countdown, just approximating. The last 4 take place between late October and mid-December, 2259.

jms
*****
There's another Lincoln quote that you don't hear very often, I think it was about a book or play, which I think is great..."If you like that sort of thing, it's the sort of thing you'll like." That line has gotten me out of more diplomatic situations than anything else I can think of.

jms
******
I disagree strenuously with the notion that the universe as presented in the current ST series is a "brighter vision of the future." It looks to me like humans have left behind everything that makes us humans. We've been bioengineered to within an inch of our lives. There seems to be no interest at all in what happens back home on Earth...politics, changes in culture, fashion, new music. One's job description seems to be the end-all and be-all of his or her life. "Recreation" is always the sedate card playing type, the nightmare dinner party of the 1950s, or living out a fantasy world in the holodeck because there's nothing much in the real world.

Passions and spikes in our humanity have all been hammered down and eliminated. Remember "Invasion of the Body Snatchers?" That, to me, is the Star Trek future...set aside your passions, do all for the collective good, it's a better world that way. Maybe you call that perfection; me, I call it a nightmare.

jms
*****
No, what usually happens is that you sense a calling one way or another early on; you are assigned to (for lack of a better term) a teacher, who guides you and sees if your calling is sincere (the teacher is from the caste you feel called toward), and if the calling is true, you can enter that caste.

jms

*****
THE FILE ON VALEN, PART 1

Author's Note: This series of posts began as an attempt to sort
out Minbari religion, with a goal of figuring out the mysteries of
the past (Valen) and the present (The One). It soon became evident that
too many ambiguities remain--with the promised explanation of The One
not due until the two-parter around Episode Ten of Season Three, that
leaves about fourteen more episodes in which JMS can continue to salt
more clues to tantalize us. Accordingly, this post--the first of three
--is something of a dossier on Valen and his prophecies, taking stock of
what is known, what is ambiguous, and what remains to be revealed.
Although these posts do not resolve the mysteries of the arc, they may
prove helpful to others in organizing their thoughts about where the arc
is taking us. I have taken pains to anchor my remarks in what has been
shown us from "The Gathering" through "Confessions and Lamentations."
Because the matters discussed here invite speculation, I strenuously urge
those who reply on the rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5 newsgroup to remember the
distinction between analyzing what is known and inventing story ideas.

I would be remiss if I neglected at the outset to acknowledge my debt to
those posters on rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5 whose previous analyses have
contributed to my thinking on the matters treated below. Unfortunately,
the volume of contributions to the group is such that it is impossible to
keep track of each individual's contributions to the common effort. As
always, the Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5 maintained by Steven Grimm at
hyperion.com has proved to be of immense value.


WHO--AND WHAT--WAS VALEN?

For an initial understanding of Valen's role in Minbari history, we can
turn to a trio of remarks from JMS:

Valen was the one who brought Minbari civilization together,
he is their Christ-figure. [Lurker's Guide, "Babylon Squared"
page, "JMS Speaks"]

Prior to the time of Valen, the Minbari's greatest spiritual
leader, there was killing of Minbari by Minbari. There were
three warring castes, which he pulled together when he formed
the Grey Council (three from each caste forming nine, Worker,
Warrior, Religious Caste). Since that time, and the Minbari
have been in space for well over a thousand years, they have
pretty much hewn to that rule; it is their greatest taboo.
Once the three sides were integrated, the warrior caste mainly
contented itself with external threats. [JMS on UseNet, 14
December 1994]

Valen called the Nine together and formed the Grey Council about
a thousand years ago, give or take; died not long thereafter.
[JMS on UseNet, 29 December 1994]

Early assumptions that Valen was a Minbari have lately been challenged
with speculation that he might have been a Vorlon. It has even been
suggested that "Valen" is a corruption of "Vorlon." We know from "In the
Shadow of Z'ha'dum" that "about a thousand years ago" was also the time of
the last war between the Shadows and the Vorlons (the last of the First
Ones to actively engage the Shadows), a war in which the Minbari allied
themselves with the Vorlons. The coincidence in timing has raised the
possibility that, given the enormity of what Valen accomplished, he might
not have been a Minbari, but a Vorlon. The suspicion was at the heart of
this post by Christopher Novosad:

Holy Valen! So the warrior caste has been ticked off for
1,000 years. No wonder they're so scary. They've held a
grudge against Valen for that long. Now all their scoffing at
the prophecy and the religious caste makes sense. Personally,
I think these guys killed Dukhat to ruin Valen's prophecy --
Revenge motivation (of course the humans could have gotten
VERY lucky and I'm wrong).

Delenn refuses to help the Children of Time because someone
interfered with Minbari religion and the results have caused
her and her people to avoid doing so to others. Valen is said
to return. So 1,000 years ago, how did Valen do his coming and
going? I'm beginning to seriously wonder is this Valen guy was
a Minbari at all. Someone subduing a violent caste sounds like
manipulation. And those prophecies do hint at more knowledge
than the Minbari had at that time. Of course he could be a
Minbari with powerful friends so he could maintain control and
reign in the warrior caste AND set up the new Minbari government.
Or he could be powerful himself. Perhaps he had the help of
three triluminaries; I'm sure their powers, creatively applied,
could go a long way.

This post drew a response from JMS; unfortunately, he opted to write in
his Delphic "I hate it when he does that" mode:

Christopher: save this message of yours and keep it at hand
going into the [third] season, around the 10th episode or so.
[JMS on UseNet, 13 June 1995]

Not everything in the Novosad post was on target--when Delenn spoke of
interference with Minbari religious matters, she had someone else in mind:

I view Delenn's comment about "suffering the interference of
others" in regards to matters of the soul in "Believers" to be
a reference to the Soul Hunter. [Lurker's Guide, "Believers"
page, "JMS Speaks"]

Nevertheless, Novosad was clearly onto something. It may be telling that
JMS has greeted other inquiries--direct and indirect--on Valen's origins
with silence. On the basis of what we know, Valen's race--Minbari or
Vorlon--remains to be confirmed. There is a case to be made for either
possibility.

***Valen as Vorlon?***

The case for Valen being a Vorlon hinges upon the 64,000-credit question:
What do Vorlons look like? A growing body of speculation, to which I
find myself increasingly attracted, argues that whatever a Vorlon is made
of, a viewer who looks upon a Vorlon perceives the Vorlon as a figure
from the viewer's race. Some have speculated the viewer would perceive a
reflection of himself; others propose that the viewer would perceive an
archetypal figure from his own race. I lean toward the latter, but either
possibility would account for Kosh's assertion that if he emerged from his
encounter suit, he would be recognized by "everyone" ("In the Shadow of
Z'ha'dum"). The language of the Minbari references to Valen that we have
heard treats Valen as a prophet, not a deity, and that suggests that he
looked like a Minbari to other Minbari. Even if JMS's characterization of
Valen as a "Christ-figure" implies that the Minbari do regard Valen as a
deity, the analogy suggests a deity who took Minbari form. Assuming that
a Vorlon had the capacity to appear to the Minbari in the guise of a
Minbari prophet/deity named Valen, what evidence do we have that such a
thing did occur?

A. As Novosad observes, to subdue the warrior caste would have
required great power. Possibly Valen's power was the moral
authority of a prophet, but more conventional kinds of power
cannot be precluded.

B. Although Valen established the Grey Council with equal
representation from each of the three Minbari castes, he
seems not to have identified with any one of them. This is
implicit in Minbari ritual references to The One (Valen) and
The Nine (the first Grey Council). When, in "Babylon Squared,"
the Grey Council asked Delenn to succeed Dukhat as Leader (the
ten cycles of mourning having ended), we learned that the Leader
of the Minbari comes from the Grey Council. The fact that Valen
was not part of the original Nine, yet led them, argues for his
being somehow distinct from them.

C. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Valen's activity was
related to the Grey Council's coming into possession of its
three triluminaries, which JMS has indicated are not Minbari
in origin. The Vorlons may have provided them--more on that
in Part 2.

D. The Minbari religious rite demonstrated by Delenn in "The
Parliament of Dreams" culminates in the phrase "And so it
begins"--the phrase that Kosh speaks in "Chrysalis" shortly
after Delenn has begun her transformation. There is
circumstantial evidence that the rite was initiated by Valen
and that it reflects prophecies he made that are coming to
pass in Delenn's time. (For more on the rite and the
prophecies, see Part 3.)

E. Members of the Grey Council evidently possess certain enhanced
mental faculties--Delenn's ability to block a telepathic scan
(seen in "Legacies") and the grey triangles that appear on the
Counselors' foreheads under certain conditions, for example.
There have been hints that Vorlons have the capacity to induce
such enhancements--for example, had Patricia Tallman remained
with the show after "The Gathering," the "enhanced telepath"
plot would have arisen from Lyta Alexander's having scanned
Kosh, not from Jason Ironheart's having made a gift to Talia
Winters. (More on the grey triangles in Parts 2 and 3.)

Aside: An aspect of the lost Kosh-Lyta plot line may
be re-appearing in the Kosh-Sheridan plot line. Kosh's
dream-contact with Sheridan in "All Alone in the Night"
and his subsequent "lessons" for Sheridan may be enhancing
Sheridan's mental perceptions. Sheridan's awakening with
the phrase "In memory of The One and the Nine" at the
Minbari dinner in "Confessions and Lamentations" suggests
his drowsy mind telepathically picked up a phrase from
Delenn and/or Lennier's meditations.

F. In "Confessions and Lamentations," Delenn describes how, as a
little lost girl in a Minbari temple, she saw a figure "bright
against the dark" who told her that if she believed, her parents
would find her, and that "I will not allow harm to come to my
little ones here in my great house." We do not yet know
whether Minbari are monotheistic or polytheistic--the "my" in
the reassurance to little Delenn might be "Valen's," but
we cannot be certain. We have seen several indications that
Vorlons are luminous ("The Gathering," "Midnight on the Firing
Line," and "Chrysalis"). Perhaps what little Delenn saw was a
a Vorlon assuming Minbari form; on the other hand, the glow she
saw could simply have been part of a visionary experience.
(Keep in mind that we have not heard any explicit evidence that
Valen had a radiant presence.)

G. There is circumstantial evidence that Vorlon intervention in
Minbari spiritual life might be part of a larger pattern of
Vorlon intervention on worlds caught up in the Shadow-Vorlon
conflict. JMS may have hinted at this long ago:

Religion is actually a fairly common topic in the
B5 series; it's in "By Any Means Necessary," "The
Parliament of Dreams," and several other episodes,
sometimes subtly, sometimes as a main theme. And
we will be dealing with CROSS-POLLINIZATION OF
RELIGION ACROSS SPECIES AND WORLDS, and you will
see some of the Centauri pantheon of gods. [JMS on
UseNet, 7 December 1993; emphasis added]

The cross-pollination might be as simple as an alien wearing a
Roman Catholic priest's collar (referred to by JMS in a post
I neglected to copy), but it could be much, much more. Another
world that might have experienced a Vorlon intervention is
Narn. It will be recalled that about a thousand years ago--that
is, at the time of Valen's activity and the last Vorlon war with
the Shadows--the then agrarian world of Narn suffered contact
with the Shadows:

Let's just say for now that about a thousand years
ago, Narn was used as a lay-over and supply spot for a
Shadowman group that landed there for a time, and used
it briefly as a base of operations. [JMS on CompuServe,
11 November 1994]

Whatever happened during that brief period, it evidently
entailed resistance from the Narn, at least in part led by the
prophet G'Quon [G'Quan? Even JMS has been inconsistent on the
spelling], whose book of teachings includes an image of a
lesser Shadow minion:

The shadows have their servants, which are being
recalled to their places of power. That was one of
their lower-level types. [Lurker's Guide, "The Long
Dark" page, "JMS Speaks"]

We saw in "By Any Means Necessary" that G'Quon's teachings entail
sun worship. If G'Quon were an intervening, luminous Vorlon,
that might account for that aspect of Narn faith. (In many Earth
cultures, solar deities are luminous in aspect or dress.) So far,
however, we cannot advance beyond speculation on this point. The
situation is further complicated by our lack of knowledge of the
role of G'Lon, an apparent contemporary of G'Quon whose religious
teachings differ in content (alluded to by Na'Toth in "By Any
Means Necessary"). Obviously, we need to learn more about Narn
religion(s).

Aside: In "By Any Means Necessary," Londo derides Narn sun
worship as primitive, which may mean a solar deity is not
found among the Centauri pantheon of gods. It will be
interesting to see whether that circumstance bears any
relationship to this remark by JMS:

Nnnnnnoo, not really; the Centauri don't actually
have an equivalent to G'Quan or Valen. Believe it
or not, this one answer may add another layer to a
scene in one of the last episodes of this season.
You can infer it backwards once you see it, but now
you'll have it going in. [JMS on UseNet, 8 June 1995]

Aside: At least since "The Coming of Shadows," there have
been several posts exploring evidence that suggests Stephen
Franklin has a past connection to the Vorlons that he has
not acknowledged to anyone else. (I wrote two such posts
myself after "Hunter, Prey;" the topic has enjoyed renewed
interest since "Confessions and Lamentations.") If the
Vorlons have been manipulating religion among other species,
it will be interesting to learn whether they had anything to
do with the emergence of Foundationism, to which Franklin
adheres ("In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum").

***Valen as Minbari?***

In spite of all the preceding circumstantial evidence, there is no proof
that Valen was a Vorlon. An alternative argument can be made that Valen
was a Minbari--especially if we assume that Valen was a Minbari working
with the benefit of Vorlon instruction or assistance.

A. We have already seen two instances of Kosh acting as instructor
or mentor to members of other races. The full extent of his
direction of Delenn's activities remains to be revealed, but
from her knowing to greet him with a bow in "The Gathering," to
her needing to see him before beginning her transformation in
"Chrysalis," to her working with him to arrange Morden's release
in "In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum," their interactions suggest a
collaboration in which she is the junior partner. More open to
our view have been Kosh's lessons teaching Sheridan how "to
fight legends." Furthermore, Kosh stated in "Hunter, Prey" that
hearing a mind call out to him, as Sheridan's had in "All Alone
in the Night," was something he (Kosh) had experienced once
before. The source of that previous call has yet to be named;
possibly it was a Minbari named Valen, although other names
(Sinclair? Delenn? G'Quon?) come just as readily to mind.

B. None of the lettered points from the "Valen as Vorlon"
argument given above precludes Valen from being a Minbari;
each point can be adapted to fit a scenario in which the
transformation of Minbari civilization is effected by a Valen
who is a Minbari who happens to be a beneficiary of Vorlon
teaching/assistance. I won't spell out how such adaptations
might have occurred because that would venture into the
forbidden terrain of story ideas.

C. If Valen were a Vorlon, we would expect his teachings would
promote an identity of Vorlon and Minbari interests. However,
there is one suggestive indication that although Minbari
interests are closely allied with those of the Vorlons, they
are not identical. That is the ritual statement intoned by
Delenn when she enters the Grey Council's meeting chamber in
"Babylon Squared":

In Valen's name, I take the place that has been
prepared for me. I am Grey. I stand between the
candle and the star. We are Grey. We stand between
the darkness and the light.

We have seen a pattern of imagery in which darkness is linked
with Shadows (as their name implies) and light is associated
with (luminous) Vorlons. Yet, acting in Valen's name, the
Grey Council does *not* ally itself with the camp of light;
rather, it positions itself as a mediating influence between
the two opposing forces. Presumably this means something more
subtle than that the Minbari occupy the front lines against the
Shadows--JMS has repeatedly admonished us that simple equations
of the "Shadows = Evil" and "Vorlons = Good" variety do not
apply. The precise nature of the mediation that Valen intended
the Grey Council to provide has yet to be revealed to us. I
shall return to this point in another context in Part 3.

There is more to be said about the ritual statement Delenn intones upon
entering the Council Chamber, but that entails a consideration of Valen's
career, to be reviewed in Part 2.
*****
THE FILE ON VALEN, PART 2

Author's Note: This is the second of three posts that assemble a dossier
on Valen and his prophecies, taking stock of what is known, what is
ambiguous, and what remains to be revealed. I have taken pains to keep
my remarks rooted in what has been shown us from "The Gathering" through
"Confessions and Lamentations." Because the matters discussed here invite
speculation, I strenuously urge those who reply on r.a.s.t.b5 to remember
the distinction between analyzing what is known and inventing story ideas.

WHAT HATH VALEN WROUGHT?

Valen's great achievement was to end civil strife among the Minbari and
to unite them in more common purpose under the leadership of the Grey
Council:

Prior to the time of Valen, the Minbari's greatest spiritual
leader, there was killing of Minbari by Minbari. There were
three warring castes, which he pulled together when he formed
the Grey Council (three from each caste forming nine, Worker,
Warrior, Religious Caste). Since that time, and the Minbari
have been in space for well over a thousand years, they have
pretty much hewn to that rule; it is their greatest taboo.
Once the three sides were integrated, the warrior caste mainly
contented itself with external threats. [JMS on UseNet, 14
December 1994]

But what can we identify as the specifics of Valen's teachings? What
legacy did he leave to the Grey Council and to the Minbari as a whole?

To begin with, there is the clue of the ritual statement which Delenn
intones upon entering the Grey Council's meeting chamber in "Babylon
Squared":

In Valen's name, I take the place that has been prepared
for me. I am Grey. I stand between the candle and the star.
We are Grey. We stand between the darkness and the light.

As noted in Part I, "between the darkness and the light" seems to refer
to the age-old conflict between the Shadows and the First Ones (for our
purposes, the Vorlons) in a mediating capacity. In Valen's time, that
took the form of alliance with the forces of light (the Vorlons), as
confirmed by Delenn in "In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum." Early in Season
Two, JMS posted

Valen did have something to do in the struggle against the
Shadows at a prior time. [JMS, UseNet, 6 November 1994]

On the other hand, the explicit identification of the Grey Council with
a place *between* the light and dark suggests the possibility that the
Grey Council could be called upon to tilt the other way. We have yet
to see any indication of what sort of circumstances would produce such
a response.

At this time, the meaning of "I stand between the candle and the star"
remains unexplained. The parallelism between sentences suggests that
"candle" and "star" are to be viewed as opposites, like "darkness" and
"light," but the nature of the opposition is obscure. It might be as
momentous as birth (Lennier placed candles before the chrysalis from
which Delenn was reborn) vs. death (a return to the "star stuff" from
which we all are made). However, other oppositions of "candle" to
"star" are possible: Mundane/near vs. heavenly/far? Short-lived vs.
long-lived? Feeble vs. brilliant?

Valen assembled the Grey Council with an emphasis on threes--three satai
from each of three castes--and from that we might reasonably suspect that
the importance of tripartite imagery in Minbari civilization results from
his influence. And that brings us to those three three-sided objects in
the Grey Council's possession, the triluminaries. When one poster to the
newsgroup observed that, inasmuch as the Minbari had only three of the
devices,

There is good reason to believe the Minbari Triluminary device
is an artifact not created by the Minbari

JMS memorably responded [Usenet, 1 June 1995],

DING*DING*DING*DING*DING*DING*DING*DING!

(No one dared ask JMS whether that was the sound of a bell ringing or a
percussionist playing a triangle. If the latter, shouldn't there have
been *nine* dings? But I digress . . . .)

If the Minbari didn't construct the triluminaries, who did? From what we
have seen of the technologies of the different players, there are two
candidates: the Technomages and the Vorlons. The Technomages, of course,
are masters of technology. On the other hand, some of the uses to which
we have seen triluminaries be put are tied to events that seem to be
leading to the imminent Shadow-Vorlon conflict (the "Great War" and the
"Shadow War" of the Season Two and Three opening monologues, respectively),
in which the Vorlons will apparently participate, whereas the Technomage
response to the approaching war has been to vacate those sectors of known
space in which the conflict will unfold. That suggests that earlier
Technomages would have been unlikely to have taken part in the war during
Valen's time. Besides, Technomages are reported to have lived on many
worlds; so far, only the Minbari have been seen to possess triluminaries.

By default, that leaves the Vorlons, whose technological achievements are
extraordinary--just recall the organic technology we saw in "Hunter,
Prey." Indeed, the Vorlons' technological prowess stands high on the
list of reasons why other races strive to establish dealings with them:

The Vorlons are the great unknown . . . Their technology is
vastly superior to just about everyone else's. To unravel the
mystery, to maybe get a *piece* of their tech, is more than
sufficie inducement, I'd think. [JMS on UseNet, 28 April
1994]

It may be that the Minbari already have a "piece of their tech"--three
pieces, in fact. Whether Valen was a Minbari or a Vorlon (see Part 1),
he would have been the most likely conduit for the three triluminaries
to come into the Grey Council's hands. But how were they distributed
among the Council? Was any of the three devices accessible to any satai?
Was one device allotted to each caste's trio of satai--i.e., allocating
them along caste lines? Or were all three triluminaries entrusted to
the three satai from a single caste? The satai who gave Delenn a
triluminary in "Babylon Squared" said it would not be missed because
there were two others, but we don't know to which caste he belonged.
Once again, we're still missing significant details.

More important, once you have a triluminary, what can you do with it?
We've seen that a triluminary can be used

to interrogate a human prisoner ("And the Sky Full of Stars"),
to erase and to restore that prisoner's memory (implied in
"Chrysalis;" Rathenn restores Sinclair's memory with one in
the comic "In Darkness Find Me"), and perhaps to scan that
human for a Minbari soul (not shown, but we haven't seen any
other device that might do so);

to knock out Minbari warriors guarding Branmer's body, leaving
them no memory of what had happened to them ("Legacies");

to power Delenn's transformation from a Minbari to a half-Minbari
half-human being ("Chrysalis").

Several of those functions suggest that one can use a triluminary to
manipulate a subject's mental faculties. This raises a possibility
that the triluminaries might be responsible for some or all of four
types of enhanced mental faculties possessed by members of the Grey
Council.

First, we have seen that under special circumstances, grey
triangles appear on the foreheads of the satai. Delenn's
appeared during Sinclair's interrogation in "And the Sky Full
of Stars," and at the end of that episode, we saw a triangle on
the unnamed satai who warned Delenn that Sinclair would have to
be killed if he recovered his memory of his time aboard the Grey
Council's ship. Delenn's triangle also appeared during Morden's
visit to her in "Signs and Portents."

Second, also during "Signs and Portents," when Morden visited
Delenn, he took on the aspect of a black silhouette, as he later
did in the presence of the enhanced telepath Talia Winters in "In
the Shadow of Z'ha'dum."

Third, when Alisa Beldon scanned Delenn in "Legacies," Delenn was
able detect the scan. Indeed, Delenn had some capacity to block
the scan, which she used when Alisa detected the word "chrysalis"
(Alisa: "She shut down real fast when I touched that").

Fourth, we have the testimony of the rogue Soul Hunter in "Soul
Hunter" about the Minbari--testimony based upon the resistance he
met from the satai who prevented him from catching the soul of
Dukhat:

The Minbari: pale; bloodless; look into their eyes and
see nothing but mirrors; infinities of reflection.

The "mirror" metaphor may be nothing more than an expression of the
rejection of his intentions that the Soul Hunter encountered, but
because we have also seen mirrors figure in Kosh's apparent study of
ways to confound Talia Winters's telepathic ability ("Legacies"), the
remark might refer to some kind of mental shielding.

To be sure, there is no proof that ANY of these special faculties is
related to triluminaries--indeed, there is no evidence whether these
faculties are unique to satai or common to all Minbari--but the
possibility that triluminaries are used to strengthen/enhance satai
faculties (perhaps upon their appointment to the Grey Council?) cannot
be dismissed out of hand.

In addition to what he provided to that first Grey Council and to the
generations of satai who followed, Valenn is the most likely person to
have established the religious rite that Delenn performed in "The
Parliament of Dreams." With its recitation of a text and its ritual
consumption of food, the ceremony has obvious affinities to familiar
rites such as the Christian Mass/Eucharist/Communion and the Jewish
Seder. In part, the institution of the ritual may have been one
aspect of Valen's determination to bind the Minbari castes with a
common culture. In part, however, the ritual seems to be a means to
express aspects of Valen's prophecies. Those prophecies are taken up
in Part 3.
*****
THE FILE ON VALEN, PART 3

Author's Note: This is the third of three posts that assemble a dossier
on Valen and his prophecies, taking stock of what is known, what is
ambiguous, and what remains to be revealed. I have taken pains to keep
my remarks rooted in what has been shown us from "The Gathering" through
"Confessions and Lamentations." Because the matters treated here invite
speculation, I urge those who reply on r.a.s.t.b5 to remember the
distinction between analyzing what is known and inventing story ideas.

PROPHECY AND FULFILLMENT

So . . . she's done it, hasn't she? She's in there. We told
her to wait. "The prophecy will attend to itself," we told her.
Now we are committed to the path.

So says a clearly irked Satai Hedronn (caste unspecified) to Lennier as
Delenn's transformation proceeds in "Points of Departure." From our
perspective, it might seem more accurate to say that JMS will attend to
prophecy, for at this writing, the ancient prophecy situated at the very
heart of Minbari belief resembles nothing so much as Bad Bad Leroy
Brown: "like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone."

Surely so important a prophecy came from Valen--the Minbari "Christ-
figure" who was "the Minbari's greatest spiritual leader" (JMS--see Part
1). It was Valen, then, who predicted that a time of great change would
come when the Minbari would encounter a race as yet unknown to them who
would play a great role. As Delenn said in "Babylon Squared":

This Council stopped the war against the humans because of
prophecy, because Valen said that humans, some among them, had
a destiny, which we could not interfere with.

The catch was that Valen's original prophecy did not identify the race
whom the Minbari would encounter:

There was the prophecy, but they didn't know specifically
to which race it pertained until much later. [JMS on UseNet,
16 June 1995]

We learn in "Babylon Squared" that Delenn was sent to Babylon 5 to study
humans in order to determine whether they were the race about whom the
prophet spoke--a possibility that confronted the Grey Council when scans
of Jeffrey Sinclair and other human prisoners resulted in the discovery
that humans had full or partial Minbari souls ("Points of Departure").

As late as "Babylon Squared," some satai remained skeptical that the
prophecy referred to humans; as Hedronn's remark in "Points of Departure"
indicates, it was Delenn's unilateral decision to enter her chrysalis--an
action that Valen may also have anticipated, in that it required a
triluminary to achieve (see Part 2)--that forced the Grey Council to move
forward in dealing with the humans. And even then, the Council was not
unanimous on the nature of humans, as we learned from Neroon's rage in
"All Alone in the Night." Because Neroon also mentions the possibility
of a "great war" coming, in the context of debating Delenn over the
interpretation of Valen's prophecy, we can conclude that the approaching
Great War also figured in Valen's prophecy.

Aside: Does Sheridan's use of the name "Great War" in the
opening credits narration for Season 2 foreshadow Sheridan's
learning the details of Valen's prophecy?

Our best view onto Valen's prophecy is the Minbari rite performed by
Delenn in "The Parliament of Dreams." As the hooded celebrant, she
says,

"Will you follow me into fire, into storm, into darkness, into
death?" And The Nine said, "Yes." "Then do it in testimony
to The One Who Will Follow, who will bring death, couched in
the promise of new life, and renewal, disguised as defeat."

[Red fruit is distributed to the congregation.]

"From birth, through death and renewal, you must put aside old
things, old fears, old lives. This is your death. The death of
flesh. The death of pain. The death of yesterday. Taste of it,
and be not afraid, for I am with you, to the end of time. Taste
of it."

[The celebrant eats the fruit. The celebrant unhoods.]

"And so it begins."

As I interpret, punctuate, and capitalize the ritual text, the celebrant
recites words originally spoken by a prophet, except for the positive
reply to the prophet's initial question from The Nine. The prophet, of
course, was Valen, for who else would have had the stature to ask The
Nine (that is, the original nine members of the first Grey Council) to
follow him through an ordeal--or to ask them to do so "in testimony" to
someone to come whom they have never met?

As is often the case with ritual/mythic language, the death and renewal
imagery in the text lends itself to several interpretations. At the
time Valen instituted the ritual, "death and renewal" could refer to
the death of the old order of Minbari civil strife and the beginning of
the new Minbari that Valen established through the creation of the Grey
Council. At the time that Delenn celebrated the ritual in "The Parliament
of Dreams," "death and renewal" could refer to the end of her life as a
pure Minbari, and to the beginning of her life as a half-human, half-
Minbari. (Compare the robe she wears to her robe in "Chrysalis.") After
her traumatic interview with the Grey Council in "All Alone in the Night,"
she tells Lennier, "Very soon now, I will be going into darkness and
fire," which harks back to Valen's ritual question.

Aside: When Delenn sees Kosh in "Chrysalis" before undertaking
her transformation, she responds in part, "Now I will keep the
promise." Is "the promise" the positive answer she gave to
Valen's ritual question as celebrant in "The Parliament of
Dreams," or does it refer to something else?

Above all, at the time of the events we have witnessed in *Babylon 5*,
"death and renewal" can also refer to a need for a Minbari society in
political and crisis to renew itself. After a thousand years, the order
Valen established is breaking down. Since "All Alone in the Night," the
Grey Council has been out of balance (four satai from the warrior caste,
only two from the religious caste), and since "A Voice in the Wilderness,
I" we've known from Draal that the old values are on the wane with the
emergence of "a self-involvement above the needs of others." And the
agent who brings with him the hope of renewal is The One Who Will Come
--Jeffrey Sinclair, a human with a Minbari soul.

That is what most have concluded from Zathras's having identified the
Sinclair from the future as "The One" in "Babylon Squared." However, the
possibility has been raised that Delenn might somehow be The One. One
poster to this group wrote

So who IS the One? Some of the evidence points to Sinclair,
but other bits seem to indicate Delenn. Yet neither seems to
fit all the facts . . . .

To which JMS responded,

Exactly. What you have here in your message are two pieces of
the puzzle. You're confounded by the fact that somehow they don't
quite seem to fit into one another. That's because there's one
last piece missing in this part of the picture, which fits in
between them. The intent is to put this piece into clear view in
year three, probably between episodes 8 and 11 approximately. At
that point, the question of the One will be fully answered. [JMS
on UseNet, 16 April 1995]

Although Delenn certainly has a role to play in Sinclair's coming to know
his destiny as The One, the matter of Valen's prophecy seeming to refer
to her as The One might better be explained as a misleading consequence
of the multiple interpretations (noted above) to which the language of
the ritual text lends itself. The very name "The One" suggests a single
person.

As to the "piece missing in this part of the picture," there is this
recent post to the group:

A few more tidbits: Michael O'Hare will be returning for at
least one two-parter in season 3 (we knew that), and this two-
parter will feature Babylon 4's return, and Sinclair's discovery
of *the rest of* the story of the Battle of the Line. [Report
on JMS at ComicCon, 30 June 1995]

It was at the Battle of the Line that Sinclair was captured, taken aboard
the Grey Council's vessel, and scanned, whereupon it was discovered that
he had a Minbari soul. When the phenomenon of soul-migration was
revealed in "Points of Departure," it prompted a flurry of speculation
on this newsgroup that Sinclair's Minbari soul was that of Valen--the
Minbari belief that souls are recycled having been established in "Soul
Hunter." This line of speculation takes on yet more weight in the light
of the ritual Minbari dinner that we witnessed in "Confessions and
Lamentations," for there we learned the Minbari expect Valen to return
(another part of his own prophecy?). We have it direct from JMS that
Valen died after founding the Grey Council:

Valen called the Nine together and formed the Grey Council about
a thousand years ago, give or take; died not long thereafter.
[JMS on UseNet, 29 December 1994]

What the Minbari anticipate might be the return not of a mortal body, but
of an immortal soul. Time will tell.

So how does Sinclair, as "The One Who Will Follow," go about bringing
the Minbari "death, couched in the promise of new life, and renewal,
disguised as defeat"? As the object of the soul-scan that led the
Minbari to surrender in the Earth-Minbari War, he brought the Minbari
defeat. As initiator of human-Minbari cooperation (e.g., founding the
Rangers) in the face of the resurgent Shadow-threat, he has begun to
bring the Minbari a renewal of purpose. (What would Draal think?)
If the Minbari as a race have been dying--i.e., suffering depopulation
through soul-migration--Sinclair confirms their doom; yet, he promises
new life by demonstrating that the Minbari souls have not been lost, but
have merely found a new destiny/destination.

How, then, does Delenn figure in the prophecy? The fact that the
wording of Valen's prophecy of renewal can be applied to her entering
her chrysalis suggests that Valen foresaw a Minbari would become a
bridge between humans and Minbari. Certainly that is how Delenn has
interpreted matters, to the point of acting unilaterally in the face
Grey Council urgings to wait. In terms of the paradigm of the mythic
hero set forth by Joseph Campbell, Delenn seems to be what Campbell
termed "The Goddess"--a woman of beauty and magical power whom The Hero
(Sinclair for sure; as for Sheridan, we'll see) encounters upon setting
out on his quest. Think of Ariadne assisting Theseus to battle the
Minotaur, or Medea assisting Jason to obtain the Golden Fleece. (And a
tip of the hat to David Meleedy for his recent post urging us to apply
Campbell's work to our analyses of the arc. Campbell's *The Hero with
a Thousand Faces* should be required reading for this newsgroup.)

One question we might ask about Valen's prophecies is, how were the
Minbari to recognize that the time had come for his prophecies to be
fulfilled? The fact that the Minbari did not know how to recognize the
race (humanity) whom Valen predicted that they would encounter--indeed,
the Minbari nearly annihilated humanity in the jihad of the Earth-
Minbari War--indicates that Valen's prophetic language was allusive,
not clear-cut. I presume, however, that Valen would have made some
provision for "signs and portents" by which a later generation of
Minbari might recognize the prophesied time had come. At least one
other satai besides Delenn has recognized something extraordinary is
happening. The unnamed satai in "Babylon Squared" who gives Delenn a
triluminary remarks,

These are curious times. I feel a great change in my bones.
A new beginning, an end, I cannot say. We are surrounded by
signs and portents, and I feel a darkness pressing.

(Andrew S. Liebeskind has suggested this satai might be Rathenn, the satai
who restores Sinclair's memory and brings his soul home to Minbar in the
comic "In Darkness Find Me," and a friend whom Delenn and Draal briefly
mention in "A Voice in the Wilderness I".)

The need for prophetic signs brings me back to the grey triangles that
occasionally appear on the foreheads of satai. We know that the
triangles have specific meaning:

While the triangle is one element of the Grey Council
symbology, it is not present and visible at all times and
under all circumstances; it has a particular purpose or
meaning. [Lurker's Guide, "Babylon Squared" page, "JMS
Speaks"]

As a working hypothesis, I suggest the grey triangles might be "prophesy-
sensors"--i.e., they will appear when a satai is in proximity to an event
foretold by Valen. (This would lend itself to my suggestion in Part 2
that the mental capacity that produces the triangles might be related to
triluminaries.)

Delenn's triangle appears during Sinclair's interrogation in
one of the flashbacks to the Battle of the Line in "And the Sky
Full of Stars"--i.e., about the time Sinclair was discovered to
have a Minbari soul.

At the end of "A Sky Full of Stars," we saw a triangle on the
unnamed satai who had been eavesdropping on Sinclair and Delenn's
conversation--i.e., not long after Sinclair had recovered part
of his memory of his capture during the Battle of the Line.
(Where was Delenn's triangle during the end-of-episode chat with
Sinclair? Perhaps she had suppressed its appearance so that
Sinclair would not see it.)

Delenn's triangle also appeared during Morden's visit to her in
"Signs and Portents"--the arrival of the Shadow menace--the
threat to which Sinclair/The One will respond with actions that
offer the Minbari the renewal of purpose Valen foresaw would be
needed.

Of course, this hypothesis is one that will be tested when we see the
circumstances that prompt the *next* appearance of a satai's triangle.

Thus, it would seem that the stage has been set and the players put in
position for a time of conflict and change that brings with it a hope of
renewal for the Minbari. One way of grasping the transition in progress
is with two simple diagrams. The first suggests the situation that
Valen brought into being about a thousand years ago:

SHADOWS * * * MINBARI * * * VORLONS
Dark Grey Light

This arrangement accords with two of the sentences spoken by Delenn when
she enters the Grey Council's chamber as a satai: "We are Grey. We stand
between the darkness and the light."

In contrast, the new order that Sinclair, The One Who Will Come, is
challenged to create is one that seems to have not one, but two races
between the extremes of Shadow and Vorlon--and that features as well as
select company who, in different ways, represent the union of interest
between those two races: Sinclair (a human with a Minbari soul),
Delenn (a half-human, half-Minbari), and the Rangers (humans and Minbari
working together). Schematically, we can represent it this way:

DELENN
SHADOWS * * * * HUMANS * * * * SINCLAIR * * * * MINBARI * * * * VORLONS
Dark RANGERS Light

Although "Dark" and "Light" still apply to Shadows and Vorlons, the term
"Grey" will not suffice for the three intermediate groups. How to label
them? There may be a clue in the explanation that Delenn gave the Grey
Council in "Babylon Squared" when she declined to become Leader in order
to remain on Babylon 5 studying humanity:

[Humans] do not seek conformity. They do not surrender. Out of
their differences comes symmetry. Their unique capacity to fight
against impossible odds. Hurt them, they only come back stronger.
The passions we deplore have taken them to their place in the
stars, and will propel them to a great destiny.

Whereas Minbari live in a highly structured society where a rigid caste
system enforces powerful norms of conformity, humans are more passionate
(less structured) non-conformists whose disorder somehow generates their
capacity for greatness. We can add those factors to our diagram:

DELENN
SHADOWS * * * * HUMANS * * * * SINCLAIR * * * * MINBARI * * * * VORLONS
RANGERS

Dark Non-Conformity Conformity Light
Creative Disorder Stable Structure

The contrast between human and Minbari qualities suggests as well two
additions to the characterizations of the Shadow and Vorlon extremes.
As I noted in a mid-June analysis entitled "The Shadow-Vorlon Conflict,"
one way to view the Shadows' actions is to see them as "culling the herd"
of galactic races by encouraging a "survival of the fittest" in which
aggressive races grow stronger and weak races face destruction. The
Vorlons, in contrast, adopt a more passive, hands-off attitude. We can
represent these qualities on the chart with "conflict" and "calm."

DELENN
SHADOWS * * * * HUMANS * * * * SINCLAIR * * * * MINBARI * * * * VORLONS
RANGERS

Dark Non-Conformity Conformity Light
Conflict Creative Disorder Stable Structure Calm

We should note that although "conflict" and "calm" appear as opposites,
they both can be regarded as dangerous extremes. This is more obvious in
the case of Shadow "conflict"--the wars the Shadows provoke can lead to
the deaths of billions. But too much Vorlon "calm" might also be a
dangerous thing. Is it the "calm" of an idyllic age, or is it the "calm"
of stagnation and ossification? Time will tell, but perhaps such danger
is the reason that Valen elected to position the Grey Council BETWEEN the
light and the dark, rather than solely with the light (see Part 1). Were
we to extend the diagram farther to the left, we might find "CHAOS"; were
we to extend it farther to the right, we might find "STASIS". (Readers of
Joseph Campbell's *The Hero with a Thousand Faces* will recognize this
kind of opposition as part of his mythic paradigm of the Universe.)

Of course, advancing that possibility isn't all that much of a stretch in
the light of what JMS himself told us back before Season 2 began (UseNet,
24 September 1994):

One of things that I like to play with is the layering of ambiguity.
Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that we set up two sides:
Shadowmen vs. Vorlons, which looks like evil vs. good. Fundamentally,
I would find that boring. What you would then have to do is get into
WHY they're doing what they do, and HOW they're doing what they do.

There is, for instance, the "good" that says, "We know what's best
for you, we'll protect you, nurture you, but you'll do it our way,
and we'll keep you away from ideas and beliefs you shouldn't be
exposed to." Okay, maybe that fits one definition of good...but is
it?

On the flip side, for instance, there's the "bad" that says "There
must be conflict and death, because it's only through conflict and
death that we grow stronger, that we can eventually create an ordered
universe. The gene pool must be kept strong. To do that, there must
be war and strife and death." Okay, maybe that fits the definition
of evil, but is it?

The key, again and always, is that nothing is what it seems on
Babylon 5. And even if it looks like it IS what it is, you have to
look at WHY it is what it is...and maybe at that point it isn't.
One of the things about this show is that you see as much as you're
willing to see. You can gloss over it, say, "Okay, these are the
good guys, these are the bad guys." But the closer you look, the
more you see the shades. I imagine when the Shadowmen are more fully
revealed, some folks'll think we're going for a basic good/evil
conflict...but believe me, there's a hell of a lot more involved in
it than that.

Let's look at that diagram again:

DELENN
SHADOWS * * * * HUMANS * * * * SINCLAIR * * * * MINBARI * * * * VORLONS
RANGERS

Dark Non-Conformity Conformity Light
Conflict Creative Disorder Stable Structure Calm

Recognizing the dual hazards that Conflict and Calm can represent matters
because each half of the inner pair on our diagram--that is, humans and
Minbari--seems to be drifting toward its neighboring pole and the danger
that pole represents. On Minbar, there are signs of resistance to change
in that faction of the Grey Council that seems not to believe that Valen's
prophecies of change are coming to fruition (to judge from Delenn's
expulsion from the Council and the assignment of her place to Neroon, an
enemy of humans who is not from Delenn's priest caste, but from the
warrior caste). As for the humans, Earth Alliance has entered a period
in which "creative disorder" threatens to degenerate into "destructive
disorder" owing to the corrosive conspiracies of Psi Corps, the Clark
Administration, and Bureau 13.

If that is correct, then the challenge that faces The One and his allies
is to provide a center--to provide a new balance, a new intermediation
that the Grey Council can no longer provide. CAN THE CENTER HOLD? To
preserve stability without letting it become static, to channel creative
disorder to positive ends, to find a safe balance between deadly extremes
--perhaps *that* is the challenge confronting Sinclair and his allies.

sorso@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu

*****
(Comicon 7/1-2)
This report has some spoilerish stuff in it (we all know JMS never gives
away *too* much). You have been warned. BTW - all quotes are from JMS and
are as accurate as I could make them.
The bloopers were rolling when I arrived and there were some *great*
ones. My favorite was probably from "There All the Honor Lies". Lennier is
facing off with the other Minbari and the other guy says, "Since we are the
same, you may ask your questions. Bill Mumy must have drawn a blank because
he said, "Who does your bone? That is fantastic carving." :)
After that JMS opened the floor to questions. The first was "When will
we see a script by Harlan Ellison?" Answer: "When he finishes it."
He then related a story about getting a large article in _T.V. Guide_.
As he was doing the interview he was getting really sick of the questions
comparing B5 to Star Trek. Turns out that the actors were getting the same
questions. JMS didn't like it so he "did the worst thing [he] could possibly
do to this guy. [He] called Harlan [Ellison]. What does a consultant do?
Enforcer, that's what he does." So Harlan finds out that the article is
called "Babylon 5: The Show That Isn't Star Trek" and Trek became the focus
of the article. So apparently Harlan Ellison "took care" of things and the
focus of the article changed.
As for what Harlan really does - recommends style, creates characters
(the Ombuds is his), helps write the narration. As JMS said, "He is a free
floating agent of chaos. Whatever he wants to do, Harlan can do."
Where did the the shadows' appearance come from? "I said I want sort of
a spider, arachnid, crab, weird sh*t thing." Apparently from there Ron came
up with two different designs. JMS showed him the one that was most like
what he wanted. Ron said, " My condolences," and that became the shadows.
He then shared the story about the Shadow Ships. He asked Ron (the
effects guy) where the bizzare effect for the texture of those ships came
from. Ron called his dog over and explained that he computer-sampled the
dog's nose. JMS said, "Let me get this straight - our guys are being menaced
by large dog noses?" He said that he's never looked at the show the same way
since.
Who's coming back?????
We will see the "guys" at Sigma 957 once more, this year.
We won't be seeing Ironheart for a million years.
JMS is trying to bring back Dwight Schultz's character, but there are
no immediate plans.
Babylon 4 will be back.
Sinclair will be back. (more on this later)

This is JMS's overview of the show this far:
The first year was our characters glumping around the galaxy.
I actually wrote that down for our PTEN presentation...
glumping - how that's spelled, I had to find that out. Year two
is: our guys take it on the chin a lot, and they do.
Particularly in these last few episodes. Year three is our guys
fight back - in a big way. And there are some major changes
planned, for about mid-season.

There was an illusion that we may find out something along the lines of the
Earth Force being a wing of another power. Of course this was burried in a
long analogy, and this is my interpretation.
My favorite story of the session was, by far, this one. JMS got a
message from the administrator of hyperion.com. (The major www site for B5)
and he got a call from the pentagon. The pentagon wanted to send info to the
troops all over the world, since B5 has a mjor military following. The
pentagon wanted to send them the synopsis of the episodes, since they
couldn't send tapes. They were calling because they couldn't figure out how
to access hyperion.com! JMS said, "The PENTAGON - can't get on the world
wide web! Scared the hell out of me!"
When I asked why we were waiting until October to see the end of the
season we got to participate in "interactive television". JMS would start a
sentence like, "Warners in their infinate________" and an audience member
would supply a word like "stupidity" and JMS would point to that person and
then finish the statement. The end result was that Warner Brothers decided
that it would be better to hold off the last four until October and lead
right into the next season in November. One audience member suggested
sending Harlon Ellison in on them, but JMS said that that is reserved only for the "important stuff". :)
JMS did tell us the third season narration (as best he could from
memory). He wouldn't specidy who would say it, but it will be something like
this:
The Babylon Project was the last best hope for peace. It failed.
But in doing so became something greater - the last best hope for
victory. The year is 2260, the place, Babylon 5

When asked about Andrea Thompson, JMS said, "I will neither confirm nor
deny whether or not Andrea Thompson will be with the show next year. That's
all I can say."
We should see all four major homeworlds next year and maybe a few other
places.
Babylon 5 will be shown in "LetterBox" format in the U.K. next year, but
will remain wide screen here.
First season cassettes will not be available for a while yet. Warner
Brothers had made this decision and JMS is fighting it.
One of the last questions was "Is Garibaldi from the Bronx?" Answer, yes.
JMS really hemmed and hawed about telling us the season 3 title. He
finally did - but it isn't final. He's leaning towards, "I have become
Death, destroyer of Worlds."
The last question was about the parallels of Kennedy's death and
Santiago's on the show. JMS said that the scene with Clark taking oath was
staged exactly like it was when Johnson took oath on Airforce 1. As for
other parallels - it wasn't just supposed to be Kennedy's assissination, but
also WWI, WWII, Vietnam and several others. Not just one thing.
We were then given a big "hush hush" type message to come back to the
room the next day for something "really cool".

******
JMS was *incredibly* hush-hush about the reason for this session. So we
went in knowing that it was something really big, but nothing more.
The first thing we saw - before they even introduced anyone- was a video
of episode clips shown to "I Need a Hero" from the Footloose soundtrack (I
forget the artist). This was _incredibly_ well done. We gave JMS a standing
ovation for it. There was a clip for each phrase in the lyrics. Some of the
clips that went with the lines were:
"I could swear there was someone, somewhere watching me" - Sheridan
looks over his shoulder and sees Kosh standing there.
"He's got to be strong, and he's got to be fast and he's got to be
fresh from the fight"-a series of "our guys" punching someone.
"Late at night I toss and I turn and I dream of what I need" - Ivanova
tossing and turning on Sheridan's couch (when they refused to pay the
rent)

It was a lot of fun, and we asked, but JMS refused to sell it to us.

When JMS took the stage he confirmed that they were picked up for the
third season. We then did interactive television to explain about the last
four episodes being held until October.
He then showed us a tape that explained blue screen and virtual sets.
For example in "Acts of Sacrifice" (I think it is - the one with Ivanova's
really *weird* sex scene) when the alien and his little assistant came off of
their ship we see a very busy loading dock - but all that was there was the
ramp and the stairs. I was really surprised how many sets really don't exist
anywhere, but in the computer - some that you wouldn't think of - like Down
Below and the really long lines of Gropos were als o made simpler by CGI.
After explaining all of this, he explained that because they didn't have
to build all of these sets that they came in *under* budget for the first two
seasons. They got audited because of it, no one could believe they actually
came in *under* budget.

JMS then capitulated to the fans (like me who complained that work caused
them to miss the bloopers the previous day) and showed a *second* blooper
reel. He warned us that, "Actors, when they go up on a line, tend to speak
very - frankly...so if there's anyone here who wants to protect small
children from *amazing* language - leave now."
Many of them were sight gags, so my audio tapes aren't helping me
remember, but here are some of the better audio ones:

"You're talking about the cold-blooded sluther...sluther?" - CC
"But if she's sick I'm surprised you didn't call one of your own
doctors." (RB) "...... I didn't think of that" - BM
"Thirty cwedits...cwedits?" RB, "You skwewy wabbit" - JD
3 shots of BB trying to say "Taro Isogi" - each differently
"General, I'm Richard Sheridan - no I'm not!" JEJ
"Sir Captain John..." (he obviously forgets the next word) - BB
(to AT, very seriously) "What you are is what you are. You can't
change that by taking a few pills...*why* are you laughing?" JD
4 shots of JD trying to say, "Captain, begging your pardon, but have
you gone space happy?" On the fifth he just says, "Oh, f*ck it".
"Stop hogging the f*cking shot!" - JD
"Ramirez - go" "Lt. Ramirez, you're going to die at the end of
this episode. You need to pick up your check now."
(Ramirez) "I'm gonna have a great dinner on your 30 credits, Doc."
"Dream On, Get lost" - RB, "Get f*cked" - JD
from "Soul Mates" - "Med lab this is Sinclair" - BB

(Key: CC - Claudia Christian, RB - Richard Biggs, BM - Bill Mumy, JD - Jerry
Doyle, BB - Bruce Boxleitner, JEJ - James Earl Jones, AT - Andrea Thompson)

JMS then explained that he made a promise to Warner Bros. that they would
never *hear* about him showing an episode. So we had to take an oath. It
went like this:

JMS: Repeat after me, ok?
Audience: ok
JMS: I
A: I
JMS: Name
A: name (every person in the room said that! I couldn't hear one
real name from the room.)
JMS: do hearby affirm
A: do....
JMS: That I endorsed Margaret Thatcher
A: That I...
JMS: Oops, that's the parliament one. I
A: I
JMS: name
A: name
JMS: If you do that again, I'm going to pour this glass of water on
this guy .
JMS: I
A: I
JMS: The undersigned

and then there was a really long list of ways we wouldn't tell about what we
saw. (Including distribution on the Ônets) - this isn't the net - this is
e-mail right? Well, anyway - he showed one of the last 4. And it was really
good. We were the first group to ever see it. We were really impressed.
However, it does make it fairly obvious who the traitor is (of course that
was also revealed in a blooper - oops, JMS) but that is actually revealed in
the one before the one we saw.
JMS concluded with another Q&A. Some were the same as Friday's.
He did talk about the traitor in "Divided Loyalties" - not who it would
be, only that some "major" player would be exposed as a traitor in DL. (This
is probably old news, but *someone* might not have heard it yet)
He then gave the "Klingon"analogy again. He made it very clear that he
was ***not*** making a point to point comparison. This is what he said:
Imagine in Star Trek one day there was an episode in
which the Federation sold out to the Klingons and the
Enterprise became a Klingon vessel - and it *stayed*
that way. That is the magnitude [of change] we're
talking about for Babylon 5.

Having made it very clear that he was displeased with Warner Bros.
holding the last four episode he told us that it was somewhat fitting that
they adopted Michigan J. Frog as their mascot for the W.B. network.
"Something that will not perform when you want it to" - I'm not entirely
sure that I understand it, but the audience thought it was really funny, so
maybe you do to.
Remember Zanthras from "Babylon Squared"? He'll be back
When the question of the videotapes came up again, JMS explained (again)
that W.B. is holding those too. Someone then asked if the W.B. executives
were working for Paramount :)
He told the story about siccing Harlan Ellison on _T.V. Guide_
It was then 3:00 and he was thrown off the stage, but not without
thanking us (the fans) for making the show the success it is.

******
This was just a panel Q&A, no nifty videos or anything. It generally
digressed/desintigrated into banter between JMS and Peter David, and was very
entertaining.
Question one, Why don't we see torpedos in B5? JMS: We do, in Voice in
the Wilderness. Peter David then made the interestin observation that in
movies set in modern times (Hunt for Red October and the like) we can launch
a torpedo and it will track it's target. In Star Trek they launch a missle
and it goes "swoosh" -clean miss. Why can we do it now, but we can't do it
then?
Hmm...some of this Q&A had to be locked in the Purple Files (deals with
what was divulged on Saturday)
BIG SPOILER!!! He did tell us about a third season script. G'Kar and
Londo are trapped in a transport tube after an explosion. Londo says they
have to work together to get out. G'Kar says, no - I want to see you die.
So Londo says, oh- you want to kill me fine. G'Kar says no, if I *kill* you
there will be profound consequences, but if I do nothing and watch you die...
So Londo says that G'Kar will die too and G'Kar says, fine - it'll be worth
it. And the whole episode progresses they stay like this. As they finally
get found they are lying on the floor breathing the last of the oxygen the
converasation seems to go like this:
Londo: Idiot
G'Kar: Fool
Londo: I hate my life
G'Kar: I hate it too.
Londo: Shut up.

More semi-spoilers: The first three third seasons titles are - in order:
Matters of Honor
Convictions
A Day in the Strife (the one I just described)

The next question was, "Is Delenn becoming a `space groupie'?" (Because
she was interested in Sinclair, he left and now she's interested in
Sheridan). JMS explained it like this, "There can be a close proximity
relationship that may not be based on romantic love, but something else,
which we'll explore in the third season."
Someone then asked the panel to introduce themselves <!>. JMS said he
was Rondo Hafman (?), Peter David said, "Call me Ishmael" and JMS pointed to
Michael O'Hare and said, "And this is Elanore Roosevelt."
Another Warner Bros. Story - JMS wanted something released and they
wouldn't do it. So JMS is screaming over the phone and says something to the
effect of "I'll stick a knife in his heart if he doesn't release it. - a
*small* comment" So it gets back to his partner, Doug Netter and Doug says,
"Did you say that you were gonna stab this guy in the back?" JMS said, "No,
I'm gonna stab him in the chest so I can see his eyes when he goes down."
Apparently Doug Netter gets a lot of phone calls from people saying, "Do
you know what he (JMS) has done *now*?"
The guy next to me asked a strange question, "Michael, I'm sure working
with Joe is very nice, but can yu say anything about it?"
Michael said, "He's a wonderful dancer. But well, I'm Elenore Franklin
(sic) I lead if I want to dammit. Working with Joe is great. He has an open
door policy, he fields a lot of ideas the actors have," and as he's saying
this, looking at the audience JMS is looking at him like he's nuts. Like he
*would never* do any of those things he was being accused of. The audience
kept laughing at JMS's expressions and Michael it took Michael a while to
catch on.
Micheal's other works basically consisted of a movie called "By a Thread"
playing in Europe, it might come here if it gets a distributer.
I asked where all the extras came from and Peter David started chanting
"contest, contest, contest...", JMS added, "we usually go to prison work
programs". In reality they are bound to the screne extras guild. (bummer)
In talking about really great actors They told about Peter Jurasik doing
the whole banquet scene (where he's up on the table and passes out) in *one*
take! And he really hit the table hard. There's a little fruit jar next to
head and a little fruit pops out and lands next to his head.
That lead to this story by JMS:
Our actors kind of get carried away sometimes. There was one
shot in the episode, in "In the Shadow of Zha'Ha'Dum", where
Talia is slapping Sheridan. And she really got into that. She
hit him so hard, that the sound you hear on the episode is not,
in fact, added. That's the actual sound of her sluggin' him! He
lost his line. He forgot his line for a second and said, "What
the hell was that?!?!"

Peter David did an *outstanding* impression of Londo. He was talking
about the first take for the scene in "Soul Mates" - the wives are going at
it and Vir is about to loose his mind and Londo walks in and says, "Well,
well, well and here you all are" in that big blustery Londo Molari voice.
Well apparently the first time he did it the *crew* fell apart.
One of the very few times Mira Furlan ever lost it was in trying to do
the really long eating ritual scene from "Confessions and Lamentations".
"The Geometry of Shadows" and "The Coming of Shadows" were sent to the
acadamy to be considered for Emmy nomintaion, but JMS feels that they will
probably be blown off because it is science fiction. It cost $60,000 to do
this so they hope it will get them some notice.
The next question was, where did "Psi-Corps" come from?
Peter David answered, "I thought you'd say it just popped into my mind
one day."
As another digression JMS told us that the head of the English division
of Mensa has formed a splinter division of Mensa and is calling it
"Psi-Corps". "If that doesn't scare you, well, it scares the hell out of
me!" JMS said. What made it even worse is that the guy has never seen the
show!
Peter David then interjected with, "But it's ok, because all they do is
sit around at their meetings and go <big sigh>, hense *psi*-corps."
[Probably actually "Sigh-corps" -WBE]
We all moaned.
So then he gave the real reason for the psi-corps - the need to protect
the telepaths and they need to keep the telepaths "in-line" so the
governement creats a group to "regulate" telepathy and then it becomes the
Psi-Corps.
There is an episode of the comic coming out soon that gives the history
of teh Psi-Corps - but it turns out that the whole thing is really a
Psi-Corps brochure. Like it says that a telepath saved the president's life
so they invented the Psi-Corps.
"No - it's because we're all paranoid"
Michael O'Hare then added, "How are they going to get prospective
psi-corp people to buy the comic book? They'll just pick it up and say, `I
know.'"
Staying with the Psi-Corp theme the next question was, will there be
anymore episodes about the Psi-Corp?
JMS informed us that there will not be in the last four, except in one
where Lyta Alexander returns from the pilot. She is on the run from the
Psi-Corps and has news that one of our guys is a traitor. "And one of them
is - big time."
There was some, IMHO, boring discussion on Londo and G'Kar being tragic
figures. But this interesting point was made by JMS,
Certainly in many ways Londo is a tragic figure, no
mistake about it. But in a way so is G'Kar. G'Kar is,
to some extent, modeled after Cassandra, of Greek
mythology. This is a woman who was given the power
of premonition by the Gods. And she would always
know what was going to happen, but *no one would
ever believe her*. And she ended up in the service of
Aggamemnon. Well, look what ship Sheridan came
from...yeah, work it out"

Next topic: Will Sheridan ever go to Zha' Ha Dum? "At some point,
possibly in the third season"
The purpose of the third season is to pull together all of the threads
that were set up in the second season.
What happened to the CD Rom? Comptons scaled down from 300 titles to 35!
So there are 4 offers from other companies to do it. JMS thinks it will be
"extrodonarily cool". He's going to have information on it that hasn't been
aired yet, but it will be encoded. So if you type in "shadows", the screen
will go black and a voice will say, "What do you want?" But if you enter
"Zha' Ha Dum" which is where the shadows are from the computer knows you've
seen that episode and all kinds of data will come up. (I think this is a
*really* cool idea) It will also have some "making of" stuff on it. It will
take you from script writing to costume and set design and see the shooting
and have the dailies on it. You can then take the dailies and edit them
yourselves in different ways drop in the music and make your own 30 second
scene.
A great Bill Mumy story. In one epidsode he had to meditate. JMS didn't
write the chant so Bill asked JMS what he was supposed to say. JMS told him
to just make it up. So Bill did, "Za Ba Ga Bee". JMS knew he had heard that
somewhere but couldn't place it. So he let it go. Once the show *aired* he
realized that "Zabagabee" (sp?) was the name of one of Bill Mumy's albums!
So after it airs, he pulls Bill aside and says, "Don't ever do that to me
again - I will hurt you bad."
Bill is incredibly jealous of Mira now because she doesn't have the big
head piece anymore and her hearing isn't obscured. He apparently said to Joe
(as relayed by Peter David), "Could we just have Lennier crack open the
cocoon a few fatal moments early? And he's bathed in a weird light, and his
bone falls off."
JMS replied with, "If you want to be female, yeah, we could work that
out. If you want to do the whole show in drag for three years. Of course
with the costume he wears you couldn't tell the difference."
Michael O'Hare talked about the end of "Parliment of Dreams" - the scene
where Sinclair introduces all these people from "dominent" Earth religions.
They used real people from the various religions and Michael had to go and
ask them their names. JMS says that he went down the whole length of the
central corridor and got each name. After one time he went back to the top
and got even the very difficult names right. 30 people and their religions.
So Michael says that he went and wrote them all down and had about 20 minutes
in his trailor to learn them. JMS just looked at him, and said, "Mine was a
better story, Michael". Peter David (and the audience) were still impressed.

I asked about the scene with G'Kar's moving dinner and the line, "stay
put" being an ad lib. I asked if there were others - unfortunately he says
there were not.
Then something very intersting happened. JMS relayed a little bit of the
disaster that accompanied The Big Bang Convention. It seems that Michael
O'Hare only had a verbal agreement with those people and they ended up
refusing to pay him. The other four actors who did recieved check, found
that they were all bad. Well, they are taking legal action against them for
the bad checks, but Michael was still up a creek. So what JMS did was hold
an auction right there. What he auctioned off were 5 places for names of
fans to be used in an episode. The highest bidder would be a major (one
time) character, on down to just a passing refernce of the fan's name.
Bidding started at $200. The final wind up was: $900, $800, $750, $720 and
$650. All of the money went directly to Michael O'Hare. Now, I have no
idea what people get paid to do convention appearances, but it seemed to me
that close to $4000 was a lot - until Peter told us how Michael O'Hare came
to appear at Comicon.
Michael called Peter David and said that he understood that Peter was the
guest of honor at Comicon. Well, because of all the brew-ha-ha with Big Bang
many fans didn't go (like me). So Michael asked to appear at Comicon so that
fans who wanted to meet cast members, but avoided Big Bang, could have a
chance. Peter told him that Comicon could pay him for appearing and Michael
said that he didn't care - this was for the fans.
Moving on, JMS told us about his opprotunity to play cops and robbers in
the dealers room. There was a shop-lifter in the dealers' room. They tried
to grab him, but he bolted. So JMS tackled him. If you've ever seen JMS -
you know that he is *not* a man you want tackling you! He's a big person!
So JMS wrestles this guy to the floor and holds him for the cops.
So one of the organizers comes over and says to the guy, "Do you know who
this is? You were arrested by a celebrity!"
The guy says, "F*ck you."
Back to the B5 universe, the question was asked if Peter David would ever
play a Centauri. Peter said, "I don't know *why* you would want that -
besides it would be redundant."
JMS was asked what he'd do after the 5 years of B5 (he's worrying about
getting it done first - then he'll worry about later) but the comment that
was brought up was to do Merchandizing. So Peter David yells out, "They
aren't some Deep Space Franchize!"
JMS then told *another* story. After Peter submitted the script for
"There All the Honor Lies" he calls up and asked if that line will be left
in. Joe says, "yeah," like, "why wouldn't I?" and Peter says, "You *are*
dangerous, aren't you?"
On a more serious note, if PTEN folds, B5 will not go to the WB network.
WB said that they will move B5 into direct syndication through WB
distribution.
JMS said that he did have the idea that it would be very cool to pan
across the Zocolo and see Mike and the 'Bots from MST3K. He told his wife,
who told him to lay down until it passes. (I say we start a letter writing
campaign to see this:)
Q: Do any of the other major characters have Minabari souls?
JMS: Next question
Hmmmm.........
Turns out the comic got ahead of the t.v. show and there will be a
comic with a spoiler in it. It has something to do with who is
working for the shadows.
Speaking of the traitor...What will happen to that person? "They
will go away for a very long time."
Shooting for season 3 begins on July 31.

On a personal note...
During the course of the weekend someone made the comment to me that JMS
has a mind like a steel trap. During the autograph session following this
panel, I learned exactly how true that was.
On Friday JMS had signed a picture that I had brought (and gave me one,
too) and I spelled my name for him due to the unconventional spelling.
On Sunday I was spelling it for Michael O'Hare as he was signing my
convention pass and I said, "K-y-m" and JMS who was sitting next to Michael,
said, "b-e-r-l-e-e." My jaw just dropped. People I send e-mail to on a
daily basis don't remember how to spell my name!

*****
Jeannette Simpson (faa35@dial.pipex.com) wrote:
: Here follows some random thoughts on Psi Corps, Talia Winters and
: Delenn.

: First a question. Who created Psi Corps?

: I would be interested in knowing if the original intent when Psi Corps
: was created was to genuinely protect the 'ordinary' citizen from
: uncontrolled scans by untrained telepaths. In a society where it was
: known that a certain few had psi ability it would be necessary to
: set up some form of control. How else could 'ordinary' people be
: comfortable around psis except by being confident that they are not
: being scanned without their knowledge or consent.

It seems that 'normal' people's paranoia pushed those with
psi ability away, out of normals lives. As to who created
Psi-corps...it must have been a psi. Angry and embittered about
being ostracized and realising the potential power of a focused
group of psis, he/she probably installed the Corps is mother,
Corps is father attitude. With that kind of mental power
and the inherent evil of humanity, it was only a matter
of time before Psi-corps started to pull some strings.

: Psis are brought up within the Corps and then work *for* the Corps, or
: within the government or the commercial world. Do psis work for Earth
: Force? (Is psis a valid word?)

Psis (I'll go along with its validity if you will) *only*
work for the Corps, don't they? There was Stoner, but it looks
as if he was actually still a member. The question is probably
does Earth Force work for the Corps???

: Amongst themselves do psis communicate telepathically?

Now that would be gutsy. An episode with entire conversations
with only facial expressions!

: Have we asked ourselves just why the Psi Corps, presumably with the
: backing of the Earth Government, is making a drive to find and control
: all those with psi ability? We know that certain branches of the Corps
: are experimenting with psi but to what ends? What is their greater
: intent?

Greater intent.... greater power through forced evolution.
Paranoia about those with psi ability outside the Corp would be
a great incentive to take them under the mat/paternal Corps wing.

: We still haven't discussed just why certain humans began to develop
: psi abilities although this question was asked some time ago. Any
: thoughts on this?

OK, Mayish sort of next evolutionary step, an inevitable maturing
(Childhood's Endish) (no, not highlighting plagiarism, just commenting
on just how many have approached this subject). We've been getting
better at communicating since we started to hunt together in the
Mesolithic and then onto a more complex form of communication in
the farming Neolithic. As soon as the pebble is pushed the momentum
it has insures an increase in momentum and so on ... it doesn't stop
now. Which came first ... the need for a better communication or
the ability to do it? Maybe in some way the events in and around
B5 are instrumental in rolling us (using the above analogy) into
the next (and final?) step upwards, the 3rd Dawn. To progress any further
we may have to drop this individuality thing alltogether (I don't know how many
times that concept has been thrashed out in the literature).

: Psi Corps takes budding young telepaths and indoctrinates them, makes
: them feel 'different' and 'special'. They are separated from the rest
: of humanity. As we have seen with Talia, indoctrination stifles free
: thought and produces blind obedience. Look at what it took to stir
: Talia into questioning all that she had been taught and how disturbing
: she finds it.

Ahhhh good point. They want to remain distinct from normals so
as to maintain their advantage. What if a psis could teach a normal
to begin to develop their own power. It can be done, lok at Ironheart's
gift to Talia. As Sheridan said, we pushed them away, now look what
they've become / we've done.

: There are great similarities between Talia and Delenn. Both are now
: alone, outcast from their 'family'. Talia no longer trusting the
: Corps, Delenn cast out both by the Grey Council and her people. Both
: have 'become' something else. Talia with her gifts from Ironheart and
: Delenn with her transformation into something neither Human nor
: Minbari, not welcome in either camp.

This is a common theme in B5. Where once they were leaders, they are now
doubted and out cast. They will unite however, they must! To defeat
the coming darkness..... A common enough writing technique that is
very well suited to the kind of tingly wow feelings that only
really good TV can pull off.

: Delenn, once with a clear calling, now falling into fear and doubt.
: Delenn, with shattered pride, fighting strange emotions, stumbling on
: the path, tumbling into darkness. Delenn, once certain of prophecy,
: sure of her role, now alone and lonely.

Londo, having made a decision as well now feels as if his
life is running away from he himself, he too realises that
which he has lost. As for the EF personnel, Sheridan has felt
alone/helpless/forgotten(by Haigue). Garibaldi: "My own man
shot me in the back, how do you think I feel?" Franklin:
I've looked into the eyes of God too many times today Susan"
(actually there was a bit about doubt etc, can't remeber it off
hand).

Out of the pit of desperation and fear ..... sounds a little
like what Kosh is teaching Sheridan.

: Thinking about it, all our major human characters are alone: Garibaldi
: without Lise, Sheridan without Anna, Ivanova without her father, her
: mother or her brother. It is always those with nothing to lose who
: will take the greatest risks

Typical!!! I bollox on about stuff only to find you've summed
it up pretty well perfectly Jeannette. Serves me right for not
reading properly first. Not only is it those who have nothing
to lose who take the greatest risks, those with nothing are probably
more human than those contented, a fundemental Christian ethic.

Robin.

*****
Okay, I was at my dentist's in Boston this afternoon. Now, he is
also an Science Fiction fan, and a couple years ago I turned him on to
watching BABYLON 5 starting with the original movie. (I even got him to
subscribe to the comic.)

Anyway, he had the B5 CD playing in his office when I showed up
for my appointment. This was cool since I don't have a CD player and so
never bought the disk. (He also bought a couple of the B5 T-shirts when
he mail-ordered the CD. (When I convert someone to B5, I do a -good- job!))

Anyway, he told me one of his patients is a nun, who has watched
B5 a couple of times. Now while she's not a big fan herself, this nun's
convent in Boston is involved in publishing, which takes her on business
trips to Chicago to deal with another convent located there.

And, it seems this nun told my dentist (I said this was a 3rd-
hand story!) that this entire convent of nuns in Chicago -LOVES- B5 and
they all get together regularly to watch it.

So, JMS, did you happen to notice a group of nuns following you
around when you were in Chicago? If not, maybe I can find out exactly
where this convent is, so we can get them on the mailing list for any
future appearances you might do in that area. (Seriously.)
*****
I'd love to get more information on this; heck, we can use it for PR
if nothing else. I'd particularly love to know what specifically they
like about/watch for in the show.

(In thinking about this, there's some stuff in the second or so
episode of year three that they're absolutely gonna *love*. All I can say
is that I hope I get a product placement notation from the Vatican. BTW,
there were real nuns in the line in "Parliament of Dreams.")

jms

*****
Wars generally don't just *begin*, they roll into one another and
grow. When did WW II begin? When Germany annexed the Sudetenland? When
they invaded Poland? When England got into it? When Pearl Harbor got
bombed? Did it in a sense begin with the assassination of Archduke
Ferdinand, which led to WW I, which with a minor pause led into WW II?

jms

*****
1) What was "the promise" that Delenn said she would keep when Kosh
revealed himself in "Chrysalis" ?

2) What are the qualifications for becoming Satai ? How does one get
into the Nine ? Are they voted in by all other Satai ?

3) What is the nature and purpose of the Triangle on the foreheads of the Nine ?

4) If the Shadows are much older than the First Ones then WHY haven't they
left this part of the Universe ? Even more puzzling, WHY would such an
advanced race bother themselves with the races in/around Babylon 5 ??
The Walkers at Sigma957 seem to be Ancients yet they don't concern themselves why ?

*****
For their own purposes, the shadows chose to stay on this side of the
Rim. The other questions will be answered soon enough.

jms
*****
(frank hummel-hummel@netcom.com)
JMS has said the Great War would not last for 3 years, that the
War would end within a year or two.

This means that part (if not all) of seasons 4 and 5 will deal
with the BABYLON 5 universe -after- the Great War.

I was thinking about B5 the other day and realized I had been
thinking in traditional TV story terms. This is never a wise thing to
do with JMS with regards to BABYLON 5.

What I had been think, what I had been assuming, is that the
Shadows would -loose- the Great War.

What if the Shadows -win-?

*****
> What if the Shadows -win-?

What if, by the end of the arc, you *want* the Shadows to win?
*****
BTW, Mark, as promised, we amalgamed your name and Julie's into one
name (Julie Musante), and that has now been used as a major character in
"Voices of Authority," as per the auction. It's a big role, and a very
memorable character who has some...intriguing scenes with Sheridan.

jms
*****
The Moral Spectrum
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The suggestion that Kosh 'would be recognised' is indeed an intimation that
he would assume the form of either a member of that race, or of one of it's
mythical archetypes. Note that the above 5 characters could in some ways all
be considered human -

Morden - is a human, possibly a shadowman (whatever that is), possibly no
longer entirely human.
Sheridan - is the archetypical human - his tactics in the war against the
Minbari were partly based on deception, possibly indicating a
slight leaning towards 'chaos'. However, he is still widely
regarded as one of the 'good guys'.
Sinclair - is the crux, the cornerstone of the events that are happening. He
is the single point around which so much seems to be moving -
physically human, and yet spiritually Minbari. More on him later.
Delenn - physically human, and possibly regarded as spiritually so as well.
There is a great blurring of the differences between the two
races when we start talking about soul migration.
Kosh - *might* at least appear to be human.

Note if you will the moral spectrum that these five characters define.
Kosh and Morden both appear human (maybe :-] ), but have their own
moral standards. Sheridan and Delenn are physically human, but have the
morals of their respective races. And Sinclair sits in the middle. I
would agree with the contention that Valen has been recycled into
Sinclair - it provides us with a logical reason for the position of
Sinclair, and for his acceptance by at least some of the Minbari. Of
course, this could be a self-defeating argument, since if Valen was a
Vorlon, then if Sinclair is the One, this suggests that Sinclair is at
least part Vorlon?! It may well be that this is not a problem, if souls
are a universal common denominator between races, (and they certainly
are between humans and Minbari), then there's no reason why Sinclair's
soul couldn't be ex-Minbari, ex-Vorlon. Hmmm.

The Great Vorlon Conspiracy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Premise - everything that happens is part of either a Shadow *or* a
Vorlon plan

We have seen the evidence of Shadow intervention in the form of
military aid and information to Londo. But how are the Vorlons
involved? The obvious answer lies in Kosh's involvement with Delenn and
Sheridan - Delenn seems to be little more than Kosh's sidekick at
times, and Sheridan has certainly been taken under Kosh's 'wing' :-] I
would submit, however, that there is a lot more to the Vorlons than
meets the eye. First, let's look at what we do know -

1) they have awesome tech, based heavily on biotechnology
2) they are 'luminous' (suggesting a link with 'triluminary'?)
3) they fought the shadows a long time ago and know all about how to fight
them
4) they've been involved with the Minbari for a long time
5) they would be 'recognised' by everyone
6) they know what's going on with the shadows (Kosh's answer to Delenn's
question in Chrysalis)

From this we can infer that the shadows and the Vorlons are indeed
enemies, and have been so for a *long* time (certainly more than the
1000 yrs since last they fought). So, why haven't the Vorlons 'beaten'
the Shadows? I submit that there are several possible answers:

1) The military answer - they can't
Their forces are so finely balanced that they cannot beat each other
without external aid. This would fit in with the fact that the Minbari
helped in the little war 1000 yrs ago. Were they really necessary? Did
they make that much difference, or was there another reason for their
involvement?

2) The military answer - they can
If the Vorlons control more space and are more advanced than just about
everyone else put together, then it follows that their military
potential is probably more than all of the other races put together. If
you had that sort of power, 1000 yrs to play with, and a known enemy,
why not build (or should I say grow?) a million battleships (who needs
crews when the ships think for themselves), and turn Z'ha'Dum into a
big ball of radioactive slag (maybe they did - it didn't look too
friendly on the surface). So why haven't they done it?

3) It's nothing to do with the military
The Vorlons are incapable of winning the war because it has nothing to
do with pure military power - it is a spiritual and moral war as well.
And it's hard to win that sort of war with battleships (despite the old
saying about 'when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds
will follow'). Ever the seeds of the shadows taint grow when you're not
looking - the Vorlons offer apparent stagnation - but undoubtedly more
in reality (see the later section on immortality).

It seems unlikely that given 1000 yrs, the war hasn't been resolved,
unless the war could not be won until now, or the Vorlons have chosen
not to for reasons of their own. I suggest that both of these options
lead to the same conclusion - Vorlon manipulation of other races, in
particular the Minbari. We have seen that there is a distinct
'migration' of souls to human 'hosts', and that now the first Minbari
has become, at least in part, physically human. I'm not sure when this
began, but I suspect it's been within the last 1000 yrs. What if the
migration of souls from one race to the other is part of The Great
Vorlon Conspiracy (hereafter called TGVC). Of course, much of our
evidence seems circumstantial, but my contention is that the Vorlons
have been engineering a new race for some purpose (namely human -
Minbari 'hybrids').

Minbari Psi-powers and those triangle bits
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So far, the only Minbari we've seen that have those triangles, have, I
think, been members of the grey council. We have also seen the
triluminaries, which are the same shape (and have at least some uses as
'psi-amplifiers' - witness Delenns use of hers to alter memories and
probe thoughts - something most Minbari don't seem to be able to do).
If there is some link between Valen and the Vorlons, and if the Vorlons
and/or Valen gave the tri-luminaries to the grey council, perhaps these
are the tools either to defeat the shadows or to manipulate the souls
of the Minbari users.

Witness the connection between Talia's meeting with Morden (he went
'dark'), and Delenn's meeting with Morden (he went 'dark'). (I can't
remember if he did so when Morden and Kosh met - can anyone remind
me?). In Talia's case, she is 'the future' (what the renegade telepath
on B5 said when they'd tricked Bester), and in Delenns case she had a
funny triangle thing. Rather than being 'prophecy sensors' (an
intriguing notion), I suggest a rather more mundane use - they are when
Minbari psi-powers come into use (*knowingly* or not). We know that
with the aid of the triluminaries they can alter memories etc. What if
all the members of the grey council have been to a certain extent
'altered' by their handling of these items? The times when we have seen
the triangles are when the Minbari is in need of extra psi - power - to
defend Delenn against the Shadows accompanying Morden (and possibly
Morden himself), to probe the memories of Sinclair on the Minbari ship
etc., to break through the psi-blocks of other Minbari. They are just
the visible manifestation of the psi-power or psi-link induced or
maintained with the triluminaries.

It seems that psi-powers are vital in the coming conflict. If Talia is
the 'future', mankind has (all of a sudden) started producing large
numbers of telepaths, Koshs teaching seems to be aimed at expanding the
consciousness of Sheridan (and no I don't entirely know what I mean by
that - but that 'beauty in the darkness' was a prime example of the
sort of weird stuff Kosh is doing). Note especially, Kosh's examination
of Talia - (I think that was prior to the Ironheart episode??) - maybe
he was checking on how the experiment was going? i.e. what he was
asking was 'how far have you come and how much can you take' (can you
handle Ironheart's gift?? - was Ironheart a part of the plan??). More
weird stuff - bizarre questions and thoughts, just like the beauty in
the darkness episode with the rag doll alien Gregorian chant singers.
(one of my favourite episodes).

Shadow subversion of the Vorlon plan
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Premise: both the Vorlons and the Shadows are manipulating psi-powered humans

For this I would point to Bureau 13 (the manifestation of the shadow
intrusion into psi powered humans). I suggest that the Grand Unified Theory
of Conspiracies proposed earlier is exactly right in this case. Both the
Vorlons and the Shadows know that humanity is special -
1) They will walk among the stars - Delenn
2) They are not for you - Kosh to Morden
3) They build communities - Delenn
>From this I suggest that just as the humanity - hybrid - psi experiment is
coming to fruition (it seems bizarrely accurate to guess at trends a
thousand years away concerning so many topics unless they were intimately
connected and / or causing them), the shadows, in the form of bureau 13 and
Clarke, are trying to subvert the one race that can finally win the war.
There might well be a link between the perfidious dealing the the 'Ministry
of Peace', the Clarke regime, Psi-corps, and the appearance of Talia's ex -
1) Psicorps backs Clarke in the election
2) Bureau 13 seems to be heavily staffed by telepaths
3) The Minipax guy had 'talked to Talia's superiors', and then included her
in a hand-picked audience.

Will we see Minipax with empaths going around 'persuading' people to be
loyal to the Clarke regime? (Who knows if Talia's ex was the only one?
And someone said that the Shadow agents on Mars in the B5 comics seemed
to be capable of mind-control)? Note especially that even Talia did not
seem to be immune to these effects, but maybe she will with time
(certainly she and her friends were able to alter the memories of
bester - reminiscent of the effects the triluminaries had, don't you
think)?

Anyway, enough of this thread - onto the next ...

The Use of Mythic Archetypes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ok - for this I'm going to raise a few comparisons with known mythology
or religion. And bear in mind here that a) mythology is often the
religion of dead cultures, and b) religion is at least in part a
manifestation of moral concepts. (Please don't flame me on the
Christianity as myth concept - as a practising Christian I don't
necessarily agree with the views I'm putting down here ... but I still
think they're valid in the context of B5!). OK - so I know that JMS
doesn't 'do' a particular book or mythos, but what he does do is appeal
to mythic archetypes and stereotypes (concepts which are repeated
throughout many religions and cultures - a good example is the flood
narrative in genesis - which sounds awfully familiar to the same story
in Sumerian and Egyptian mythology).

Vorlons = Angels/Elves, Morden = Serpent/Ringwraith
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
or: direct comparisons really annoy jms ...

Can we consider the Vorlons to be Angels? Well, there are some analogies
with the Garden of Eden story. To some extent we are playing out elements of
the OT/Tolkien (or the concepts at least), on B5, right now!
1) Satan and his buddies getting kicked out of heaven - The Vorlons et al
beating the Shadows eons ago, kicking Morgoth out of middle earth and
beyond the 'wall of night', (beyond the veil??).
2) The names of the planets etc in the B5 locality - Euphrates. Tigris,
(both I believe headstreams of the river that ran out of the Garden of
Eden. Also, historically, where many scholars believe civilisation to
have started.
3) 'Go on Londo, take another bite of this lovely apple' munch munch munch
4) 'I will come back with much gold if you tell what what is happening on
the rimsss'
5) All sorts of stuff on immortality (see later) - in the OT Adam and Eve
were kicked out of the GoE lest they eat of the Tree of Life - and
Cherubim (angels=Vorlons) and a flaming sword were put in place to
prevent their return. If we take the analogy further, is the tree of
knowledge equivalent to psi-powers? The Vorlons may have given us those
(or maybe only to Minbari/human hybrids), but they stopped us getting
immortality when they destroyed Deathwalker's ship (note I didn't say
Deathwalker as well - I'm still waiting for a season 3 episode - 'return
of the mackerel'...)

Immortality and what wishing for it does to you
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Let's look at the attitudes of everybody on the station to immortality.
There is a VERY distinct difference between the 'good guys' and 'bad guys'.
Bad guys -
Refa to Londo after he talked to Turhan -
'so what did he say'
'he said we were both damned'
'a small price to pay for immortality'

also -
Londo's assumption of a destiny for both him and his race - his
constant harping on about the past (we fell on them blah blah eclipsed
the sun blah blah I led them blah blah) - he's desperate to have a
place in history - perhaps another definition of immortality

the good guys -
Kosh to Sheridan (ok so he's not a good guy, but he's not far off)
'if you go to Z'ha'Dum you will die'
'then I will die, but I won't go down alone, and I won't go down without a
fight'

Delenn to Lennier -
'very soon I shall being going into fire (...), I won't be coming back' (is
this right?)

Witness the difference between the characters. Those allied with the
shadow conspiracy are desperate for their place in history (connections
with Windswords - military domination of Grey council - Deathwalker -
immortality treatment??), they are desperate to keep what they have, to
be immortal either in person, or to gain immortality through their
deeds. Sheridan, Delenn, (and Vir?) have all realised that they
probably won't live long, but they'll make the most of it - they are
willing to accept destiny, rather than trying to shape it (though
Delenns assumption of her role in destiny smacks of deliberate action)
- this is essentially the story of Gilgamesh, where a guy discovers
that immortality ain't all it's cracked up to be and goes home to make
the most of what he has. It is only after Sheridan accepts his possible
doom that Kosh agrees to teach him. Was the 'if you go you will die'
statement a test? Is the prime test of good/bad your reaction to an
offer of immortality / threat of doom? There are lots of mythical
archetypes about rebirth only after death (the phoenix syndrome - in
Christian terms you could draw comparisons with the dead to the world,
alive to God terminology)). Perhaps Delenn and Sheridan will die, but
out of it will come something greater?

Back to the Vorlon Conspiracy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WHY?
If they are manipulating humanity / Minbari to produce a race that can win
the war, OR if they are just doing for the fun of it, the question remains -
why? I propose two solutions -
1) They wan't successors (dealt with rather more expertly than I could in
another long post)
2) They want companions - 'will you be our friends?' (but 'jms don't do
cute') so 1) looks likely.

Either way, humanity's destiny is to walk the stars - but will they gaze
outwards in wonder or desire? There seems to be a link between the concept
of walking the stars as a power (like the Shadows or Vorlons), and the
concept of immortality - (starstuff references here). The humans are 'not yet
ready for immortality'. The Vorlons offer immortality through deeds, a place
in the evolution of the universe, and an end to it (or is that the end ...),
whereas the shadows offer immortality in person (perhaps), so the question
is, do we float down the river of history and out to the sea, or do we try
and build a canal and go our own way? I suspect the latter would be
disastrous - the universe takes care of itself (Delenn said something about
this in the starstuff talk didn't she?).

Conclusion
~~~~~~~~~~
The Vorlons don't want to reveal themselves now,because that would in
some way prevent us from reaching our potential. 'We would not
understand'. Perhaps we would worship them as supernatural beings,
perhaps we would deny the spark of divinity that is in us all, and how
then could we walk the stars? The Vorlons may have given the gift of
knowledge (psi-powers?) to humanity and the Minbari (in the latter case
enhanced by the triluminaries?), in order to prepare them to take a
place among the stars, and to assume immortality *when we are ready*,
The shadows are trying to twist us into grasping for immortality now,
before we are ready, before we have matured enough, perhaps into a race
that can defeat the Vorlons, or at least make them give up and go
beyond the veil like the rest of the ancients.

It is only by accepting the doom of death and through it the gift of
change, painful though it is, that we will evolve into something
better. It is only by grasping at our destiny now that we will truly
abandon it.

My thanks again for your patience, and for the excellent quality of the
few posts I have read. Sorry if I've waffled, but hopefully you've
enjoyed it. Finally, a message to jms - Your story is devious, sick
and twisted. I love it.

Thank you. :-]
John Dolan

*****

Have you found yourself wondering what our Babylon 5 cast did to
pass the time during the hiatus between production of Seasons Two
and Three? Well, for one thing, they taped appearances on game
shows to be broadcast later this season on the BabCom entertainment
channels.

To be sure, they weren't eligible for every game show. No one
could get on *Jeopardy* because everyone on Babylon 5 is always
in jeopardy. No one could get onto *To Tell the Truth* either--
after all, on Babylon 5 "everyone lies." It did come as a
surprise that no one got past the screening committee for
*Masquerade Party* inasmuch as no one on Babylon 5 is what he
seems to be.

Still, there were some memorable appearances. Lennier would have
won the jackpot on "Twenty-One," but at the last moment he panicked
and started counting in base eleven, with disastrous consequences.
Fortunately, Minbari honor was preserved by Delenn's performance
on *The $25,000 Pyramid*.

Kosh Naranek emerged from his apartment, but not his encounter suit,
to appear on *You Don't Say*; meanwhile, the producers' willingness
to move to a larger studio made it possible for Kosh's yacht to
clean up on *Name That Tune*.

Other appearances of note included Catherine Sakai on *Treasure Hunt*,
Talia Winters on *Concentration*, Alisa Beldon on *Tattletales*, and
Richard and Stephen Franklin on *Family Feud*. The back-to-back
appearances of Morden on *Let's Make a Deal* and Londo Mollari on
*The Price is Right* drew especially high ratings.

And in the face of serious competition from every quarter, Susan
Ivanova proved to be a standout on *I've Got a Secret* . . . .

*****

The following is based on the Minbari Prophecy from The Parliament Of
Dreams.

Will you follow me into fire, into storm, into darkness, into death. And
the Nine said YES. They do this in testimony to the ONE who will follow.
Who will bring death, couched in the promise of new life, and renewal,
disguised as defeat.

From birth, through death and renewal, we must put aside old things, old
fears, old lives. This is your death. The death of flesh. The death of
pain. The death of yesterday. Taste of it and be not afraid, for I am
with you till the end of time. Taste of it. AND SO, IT BEGINS.

I corresponded with JMS on this subject a long time ago. He suggested my
comments, taken a little further, could lead me to FERTILE ^_^ ground.

1) Kosh said it would end In FIRE.

2) The Technomage said a STORM is coming.

3) Sinclair and several other Minbari have said a great DARKNESS is
coming.

4) Now comes the DEATH (i.e. the probable death of the NARN homeworld
and lots of others)

WE MUST NOW STEP BACK AND REMEMBER TO LOOK AT EVERYTHING FROM THE BIG
PICTURE, RATHER THAN THE LITTLE PICTURE. THIS IS HOW KOSH LOOKS AT
THINGS (I THINK).

5) This speech must have surely been originally made by Valen when he
first came on the scene 1000 + years ago.

6) It is also written in the kind of style that could lead to another
modern person reading it, perhaps the Minbari chosen to fulfill the
prophecy (i.e. Delenn) IN FACT, I THINK THE AND SO IT BEGINS COMMENT AT
THE END WAS HERS, NOT VALENS OR THE PROPHECY.

7) And the NINE said Yes. (Undoubtedly the Grey Council, although which
one, Valen's Grey Council or Delenns. Probably Valen's)

8) They do this in testimony to THE ONE who will follow. This is the
first mention of the ONE, even before Babylon Squared.

9) Who will bring death, couched in the promise of new life. The DEATH
is the current deaths and the ones about to occur. I think the entire
Second Age of Mankind is dying for reasons shown below. The promise of
new life is the birth of the 3rd age of mankind.

10) And renewal disguised as defeat. The renewal is once again the
birth of the 3rd age of mankind. It is most definitely being disguised
as defeat right now. In fact, I think we will see much more defeat on
the side of light, before we get the renewal.

11) From birth, through death and renewal, we must put aside old things,
old fears, old lives. Once again, the birth of the 3rd age, when mankind
will have put aside the old things, fears and lives (souls) from the 2nd
age of mankind.

12) This is your death. The death of flesh, the death of pain, the
death of yesterday. Remember the episode where Sheridan was inhabited by
a total energy creature who came through the rift near Babylon 4. I
theorize this was a creature from THE THIRD AGE OF MANKIND, who is no
longer flesh, but all energy, who accidently came through the rift and
inhabited Sheridan, etc.

13) Taste of it and be not afraid, for I am with you through the end of
time. Is the "I" Delenn, or is it Valen. I think it is both, in some
ways. Remember Babylon Squared, Zathras said he came from the year 4993,
a Great War, A Terrible War, A Great Darkness. It is the end of
everything. Sounds consistent to me. Great War, but also great hope of
peace. They need Babylon 4 to help save the galaxy on the side of light.
They must have, or it is the end of all. The IDIOT leader of Babylon 4
implied this was not earth time. I think it was.

Delenn was there in 4993 at the end of Babylon Squared. She is there
till the end of time.

14) Sheridan asked Kosh, has this happened before. Kosh said ONCE. I
think Kosh meant the death of the first age of mankind and the birth of
the second. It happened once before. The second time will be the death
of the 2nd age of mankind and the birth of the third.

Well, I would love to hear everyone's comments.

*****

From the home office, in GrandRapidsMichiganDome, it's the
Top 10 Hidden Meanings of the Name of our Vorlon pal, Kosh:

10. Body composed entirely worn-out Koosh(tm) toys

9. It's KOSH-FM! In the city by the bay, the city that
rocks, the city that never stops!

8. Acronym for Kiss Off Settlements, Humans

7. Middle child of triplets.
(Older brother, Osh. Younger sister, B'Gosh!)

6. (#6 is triple-encrypted and locked in an old Velveeta
box under Joe's front porch. Sorry!)

5. "Vorlons" actually elaborate prank by students at Za-Ha-Dum
Institute of Technology. KOSH translates as "April Fools!"

4. No hidden meaning.
"My name is Kosh Naranek. People call me Kosh Naranek."

3. Acronym for Kawasaki's Obligatory Sponsorship "Hi-there!"

2. Really a Minbari word meaning "ZIMA"

and the number one Hidden Meaning of "KOSH" is...

1. Too hard to spell original name: Straczynskosh!

*****
Why do Vorlons speak so briefly?
-They're Koshious

How do you approach a Vorlon?
-With Koshian.

What do you call a baby Vorlon?
-a Babylon

What fabric is Kosh's scarf made of?
-Vorlon polyester

JMS: Knock, Knock.
Elana: Who's there.
JMS: Kosh.
Elana: Kosh who.
JMS: Gesundheit.

How does Londo talk when he's having problems?
-He Babylons.

What do you call a baby chick of a certain species of waterfowl?
-A Babyloon

What was the name of Kosh's Fifties style singing group?
-The Vorlons

When Lon Chaney Jr. was a toddler, what was he called?
-Babylon

What do you call a balloon in the shape of an infant?
-A Babyloon

*****
>
>I was wondering... Kosh said in "Hunter, Prey" that there was only one other
>instance of him stepping into another person's mind like he did in "All Alone
>in the Night." (the one where Sheridan was captured) Now, Delenn said that
>she was found in a temple by a shining being and told she would be fine until
>someone helped her. Perhaps both Delenn and Sheridan in the same kind of
>circumstances (lost, scared) allowed Kosh to talk to them on some psychic
>plane. So the only two people Kosh has been able to TRULY talk to has been
>Delenn and Sheridan. (Delenn knows Kosh a lot better than others...) What do
>y'all think?

Interesting. JMS has said that Delenn saw Valen in the temple as a child. I've
wondered if in Chrysalis, Delenn smiled when she saw Kosh because she saw the man
from the temple again.
*****
The third B5 book from Dell is due out sometime in the next 4-6
weeks.

Dell has licensed another 5 novels, and is currently considering
proposals/outlines *from established SF pros* (with several novels
published, preferably not just media tie-ins) for these books.

jms
*****
Well, the Mars colony grew over time, from a few people to cities.
It covers about 150 years, though the first 50 of that were very small in
nature.

jms

*****
I *greatly* enjoyed the Chicago ComicCon. Lots of fun, many good
people, a hard-working staff dedicated to making sure things go well, a
terrific operation. This was only my second year there; I went for the
first time a year ago, dragged along by Harlan. Glad I went.

High-points for this convention...helping pile on a shoplifter (me
and another guy, the one who ran the booth in the dealer's room) trying
to escape, the two of us holding this guy, struggling to get away, for
the cops, and a con organizer saying to him, "Hey, you've just been
arrested by a celebrity," and the shoplifter's response, "Fuck you"....
the B5 reception, even *with* the MST3Kification of one of my episodes...
the pleasant, friendly, enthusiastic fans who were a joy to meet...it was
an unvarnished terrificness.

jms
*****
Lets start by looking at the Vorlons. We know they are the 'good' guys
and extremely advanced. But how do we know this? Maybe I missed it,
I don't have all the episodes on tape to re-watch (unfortunately) but
what have we seen them do that makes them so advanced? All we
really know is that we don't know much about them. They seem benevolent
but I have my doubts. When asked their position on the Narn - Cantauri
conflict, Kosh wrote off both species as 'dying, we should let them pass'.
Not a very compassionate point of view. They also prevented immortality
from being commonly available. So they are manipulative, mysterious,
won't miss the Narn or the Centauri and seem to be at war with the Shadows.

The Shadows on the other hand are manipulative, mysterious,
won't miss the Narn or the Centauri and seem to be at war with the Vorlons.
Delenn said the Shadows were waiting, gathering their forces. I find this
hard
to believe. The weapons, and battle style(appear out of noweher , already
shooting)
they use would make them pretty damn devastating right now. Imagine the
Agememnon, the Cortez, B5 and two Minbari cruisers are
all gathered together. 3 battlecrabs appear. Remember, at the Narn
colony (CoS) they didn't come through a jumpgate
and nobody saw them until they de-cloaked. So before anybody
on this armada can yell 'Whoa baby!', at least three of the ships
are in two pieces. Before the other 2 can yell 'Fire!', they are cut in two
and B5 is chopped even finer.

I think the Shadows have all the force they need if the war was about
attacking us. I think the war has already started. It is strictly between
the Shadows and the Vorlons and is over foreign policy implementation.
I think the Vorlons and the Shadows are the same species. The Vorlons
are a part of the species that wants to mostly let
nature take its course in (as someone else said) culling the species.
The Shadows want to take a more active role.

This sounds simplistic, but in human history, many wars have
been fought over differences in political positions. What is this
species ultimate goal? Some have suggested looking for
companions or successors. I think any of these could work. I think
we (Minbari, Humans) are being used as pawns by these
powers. Kind of like the way the Vietnam war was partly between North
and South Vietnam and partly between the US and the Soviet Union.

Well, there it is. We'll find out sooner or later. Right or wrong, it sure
is a fun ride.
**kent

*****
In article <199507130905.AA191376318@relay1.geis.com>,
<straczynski@genie.geis.com> wrote:
> Eric: a very good analysis/contrasting of the roles of the two
>characters. Very much dead-on.
>
> jms

Here is the original post:

From eric@biomed.medsch.ucla.edu Thu Jul 13 10:56:46 EDT 1995

My friends and I were talking about B5 the other night when we
hit upon an interesting observation: both B5 commmanders
(Sinclair and Sheridan) are necessary to win the war with the
Shadows. How so? Here is a condensed version of our reasoning:

Sinclair: He has a Minbarri soul, thus making him acceptable to
work with the Minbarri. He is the one that will (or has?)
cement(ed?) the human-Minbarri alliance, which is fairly
obviously needed to fight the Shadows.

Sheridan: Not popular with the Minbarri for his destruction of
the "Black Star". However, this is mentioned as the only major
Earth victory in the Earth-Minbarri war. Sheridan did not fight
fair: he fought to win. He is the one who will do anything to
beat the Shadows, especially since he blames them for the death
of his wife.

Sinclair's role is partially accomplished: he has started the
alliance. Sheridan's role is still to come: he has to fight the
Shadows, with the training Kosh will give him.
*****
JMS--

You have indicated that in B5's back-story, Earth saw a sudden upsurge
in the number of its telepaths and the strength of their psi-powers;
the figure "100-150 years ago" is the range I recall off-hand.
(Earth Alliance has been keeping genetic records on telepaths for
about six generations--dated circa 2080 on James Kiley's B5 Timeline.)

It has now been reported that in B5 Comic #8, we are shown that when
Sinclair and Garibaldi first became friends on Mars, they witnessed
a Shadow ship being excavated from a site on Mars by another Shadow
ship.

Was there a cause-and-effect relationship between the telepathic
upsurge on Earth and the initial presence of Shadows on Mars?

More particularly, was the presence of the first ship--whether it got
there because of an accidental crash or a deliberate plan to conceal it
from detection or some other circumstance--the *prelude* to the sudden
upsurge in telepaths on the nearby planet Earth?

OR, was the arrival of that first Shadow ship on Mars a *consequence* of
the Shadows having detected the upsurge in telepathic skills on Earth?

*****
The net is like any form of technology; it can be used for good or
ill depending on who's behind the keyboard.

On another level (if I can mix metaphors for a moment), the net is
like a large, and very capricious beast. If you show the least fear, it
will eat you. It's very clear that most of the folks at ST are afraid of
the nets, they HATE the nets, because info they don't want out GETS out,
the criticism can be very harsh...it's tough. In the case of B5, we work
WITH the nets, to the extent that even after showing an episode, giving
people new information, and information = power on the nets, if I ask that
it not be posted publicly until the show airs, in virtually every case
that request has been granted. Because you know who I am...and I know who
YOU are. That dialogue doesn't exist with ST.

For those not plugged in, it can be terrifying. Mira Furlan has
commented, in one on-line message, that the nets can be very cruel. This
is true. People forget sometimes that there's a person at the other end
of the keyboard, and especially when critiquing actors, do so in terms so
often cruel and unnecessary and hurtful. Michael O'Hare recently commented
at Chicago comic con that he was *deeply* hurt by many of the things said
about him on the nets...here in particular.

So it takes a *very* tough skin to stick it out here, lemme tell you.

jms
*****
Yeah, I walked off the show when they a) decided to emphasize Slimer,
and b) make Janine a "mommie" character rather than the hard-as-nails,
sharp, sarcastic person she'd always been. It wasn't a show I wanted to
do anymore.

I've actually walked off a *lot* of shows in my time, something I only
really realized lately. Walked of The Real Ghostbusters when they softened
it down and knocked all the corners off; walked off Captain Power when the
toy company got too much control over the stories; zipped off Jake and the
Fatman when my exec producers got screwed over (if they went, I went);
finally left Murder, She Wrote to do B5. All but the last were over story
control/story integrity. My agent is frequently driven to distraction over
this. Money doesn't work to hold me. If it ain't right, it ain't right.

jms
*****
I have nothing but good things to say about Angela Lansbury. She is
probably one of the classiest performers I've worked with, fiercely loyal,
takes responsibility, wonderfully talented...I think she knew that I was
flattered and impressed to be working with her, and I kinda suspect she
thought it was kinda cute, in a dopey kind of way.

Our offices were not far from the shooting stages on the Universal
lot, and most of the time I was stuck behind the keyboard. But when it
was one of my scripts on the floor, I'd try to get out there once or
twice, just for a few moments. I'd slip in, watch for a little bit, and
then vanish again...and one day Angela came out and pulled me in, saying
that she was intrigued by the way I'd just materialize and vanish again,
that it was like some magical white horse appearing out of nowhere, and
then vanishing. She and her husband Peter were both very kind to me.

They even put my novel, OtherSyde, on the bookshelf in the set of
her New York apartment; it can be seen occasionally in some shots.

She's tough, but fair.

jms

*****
Re: "he writes at close to Asimov's speed."

One thing I miss here, and wish there was more of, was more on the
task of writing. I think there's a good opportunity here for more on the
technical side of all this...the writing, how the different departemtns
(departments) come together, all the production stuff nobody tells you.

So on the writing speed issue, a little something that may be of
use.

Mark Twain said, "Never write a scene until you have finished it to
your satisfaction." Meaning in your head. You should always play the
scene over and over in your head, filling it out further and further each
time, until you can play it like a movie. Then, when it's all worked
out, you sit down and transcribe it.

This is kinda how I work. I finish a scene, load up what I need to
do in the next scene...and distract myself, here on the boards, doing
something else, and gradually filling out the scene over and over until
it's crystal clear. Then when you sit down to write it, it goes quickly.

Also helps to type 120 wpm, but the other helps a *lot*.

jms
*****
In article <199507140950.AA164105421@relay1.geis.com>,
<straczynski@genie.geis.com> wrote:

> One thing I miss here, and wish there was more of, was more on the
>task of writing. I think there's a good opportunity here for more on the
>technical side of all this...the writing, how the different departemtns
>(departments) come together, all the production stuff nobody tells you.

I for one would enjoy hearing anything you have to say on the subject.
I've always enjoyed listening to Jack Chalker tell his publishing
stories at cons. Unfortunately, I don't have the writing bug, and I
wouldn't even know where to begin asking questions.

For whatever it's worth, I've learned more about appreciating a story
on multiple levels from your show and especially as it relates to this
newsgroup then I ever have before. Frankly, when I was going through
school, I was bored to tears when this sort of thing was taught. As
I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate it more. Still, for the
most part, I enjoy reading a story just for the story. I've read a
great number of SF books over the years, attended cons, and talked
with authors.

I've never ripped apart a story as much as I have this one. I suppose
it makes a difference when the story is dribbled at a rate as slow as
this one is. Normally I'm more concerned about what is going to
happen next then paying attention to the motives of the characters. I
don't think anyone has ever done something like this before either.
Serials and such have been done before, but I don't think they were
ever plotted from beginning to end. The fact that you CAN take a
microscope and examine the show in minute detail and it still hangs
together is the coolest thing I've seen about the show.

It's interesting to me that at this point, I can look at episodes like
'War Prayer', and be pretty sure which scenes were written by you, and
which ones wern't. The scene with Kosh, for instance, very much
sounded like jms writing. Londo on the other hand was way off. Even
his speach about 'my shoes are too tight', although a good speach, did
not sound like the character I know.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that B5 is populated by my friends.
These characters have become real to me in a way that I've never
experienced before. So much so, that even the wham episodes don't
surprise me, although I'm never sure what's going to happen, when it
finally does, it's the obvious thing to happen.

Well, I've rambled a bit, back to the subject at hand. Yes, actually
I do have a couple of questions. How do you put your children through
such pain? That's one of the reasons I've never been able to come up
with a story, I'd hate to put my friends through things that would
make the story interesting.

Jay
*****
Putting the characters through pain is never a problem for me.
That's where all the *interesting* stuff happens. And growth only comes
through pain and struggle. So it's for their own good, really.

jms
*****
straczynski@genie.geis.com wrote:

> Putting the characters through pain is never a problem for me.
>That's where all the *interesting* stuff happens. And growth only comes
>through pain and struggle. So it's for their own good, really.
>
> jms

To quote from S C Sykes' novel "Red Genesis":

"Our need to create,to move and rearrange, to *make better*, is due to
our need to reach toward that wholeness we all lack. It's the very
pain of our imperfections that causes us to reach inside and find
whatever gifts we may have. Those with the greatest pain, the greatest
need, speak most eloquently for those who have no voice."

Jeannette
*****
The weekend of July 29th, I'll be doing a presentation at San Diego
Comic Con that Saturday from 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. If you're anywhere in the
area, I suggest you try and be there. You may need to get there a bit
early; each time I've done one of these presentations, even though they
keep giving me progressively bigger rooms, they keep filling up.

Couple more merchandising items in the works, looks like they might
be kinda cool.

As noted in a side-topic, and thus probably missed, Dell has signed
to do 5 more B5 novels.

The B5 stage is getting busier every day, as more folks begi
reporting back to work. The first batch of scripts are being broken down
by the Assistant Directors into shooting schedules, construction is going
bigtime on a couple new sets and a total redesign of another (Medlab), all
continues on-track for day one of shooting on July 31st.

To the best of my knowledge, Michael O'Hare has *still* not been paid
the balance of his fee for appearing at Big Bang, a total of $5,000. Nor
has there even been any contact from them. Phone calls remain unreturned.

We hope, in a few weeks, to be announcing, finally, an official
Babylon 5 Fan Club, which will offer some items not available anywhere
else. (Some of them will be made by the same people who make the real
props themselves, thus guaranteeing 100% authenticity to what'd done in
the show.) (Make that *what's*.)

We hope that, within a year or so of the fan club getting going, to
put together a *proper* B5 convention, with not only the actors, but
people from every department, giving them the chance to show what they
do, and how, and allow a chance to interact with viewers.

Lately, from published figures, B5's overnights have been above those
of Voyager (3.4 compared to 2.7 or thereabouts). Much to the surprise of
people at PTEN, B5 episodes which have now aired multiple times are still
doing very well. This is very unusual in reruns.

There *may* be some movement on the videocassette issue. More on this
as it develops.

Finally, expect a big online presence/push for the October/November
period, possibly with a B5 web page and other new on-line resources
(multimedia and the like) provided by PTEN.

My sense is that right now, we're *just* about where X-Files was just
before it broke through. I think we'll finally break through that glass
ceiling in our third season.

jms
*****
Judging from the "buzz" I've been getting lately here in LA from my
various industry contacts (as a freelance animator, I talk to a lot of
different people), I think JMS's opinion that the show is where the x
files was last year is dead on. I've noticed a lot more people talking
about the show (positively) than before, and there seems to be a lot more
interest.

*****
Nothing can be storyboarded until it's written in the script first;
so usually it's something like

EXT. NARN HOMEWORLD (CGI)

A giant space aardvark emerges from a jump-point, snarling and spitting.

There's only been one case where all I wrote was, "They fight. Ron,
go nuts." Other than that, it's always scripted shot-for-shot, often as:

ANGLE - SHERIDAN'S STARFURY

As it blows TOWARD CAMERA, and we

REVERSE - HIS POV

The giant space aardvark turns, prepares to fight.

jms
*****
That was kinda the problem; Sinclair didn't really *have* a direct
or personal connection to the Shadows. I figured it'd be too much to do
that on top of his direct, personal connection to so much else of the B5
storyline. I figured he'd get into it by virtue of his involvement with
so many others touched by it; problem is, very soon that turns you into
an expositional sounding-board or a problem-solver, with the other person
at the core of the story. It's one of those things you don't really see
until you're well into the writing of the story, as with any novel.

jms
*****
The "They fight; Ron, go nuts" was in "Coming of Shadows," I believe.

jms
*****
I'd suggest that, in "There All the Honor Lies," it's implied that
Delenn's reproductive system has come to function more closely to that of
a human female.

jms
*****
Yes, the events as described in the article you describe (it was in
"Penthouse") are correct, and happened as written. (I should know, I
wrote it.)

When I sent the article in to Penthouse (knowing full it would
forever firebomb any chance of ever working in animation again), they asked
why on *earth* I sent an article on kid's TV to *PENTHOUSE* for
chrissakes.

"Because I want the creeps at Broadcast Standards and Practices,
who turn white at the slightest hint of anything improper, to have to
flip through Penthouse to get to the article about them." The woman at
the other end of the phone just about croaked laughing.

jms
*****
Dreams function on many levels. Some cultures use them as a kind of
second, or parallel reality. They make good literary devices. Also,
there's a fair amount of thematic undercurrent about free will vs.
predestination, and one of the ways to tap into that is to use dreams as
subtext and metaphor.

My own dreams are not particularly noteworthy, except in one respect:
about 90% of them take place in the same place. See, I always moved around
when I was a kid, spending as little as 6 months, sometimes a full year,
moving with my family from town to city to state from one end of the
country to the other. (Don't ask.) So I think in large measure to counter
that sense of rootlessness, my brain kinda created this "home town" and
that's where I spend much of my dreamtime. I know the layout of the
place, where the stores are, my favorite comics/magazine shop, the same
house (in which the renovations are *finally* finished to the second
floor, I'm happy to say, and now they've gone on to doing some landscaping
and suchlike outside), there are even a couple of theaters in which I see
movies I *almost* remember the next morning. (I actually wrote down one
of them in some detail, a Star Trek movie, belive it or not; did the
whole outline beat for beat from the dream. Not bad. Not good, but not
bad.) We had a third theater in town, but it got cobbled into a mini-mall
and it's just too much of a mess.

And *nothing* extraordinary happens there. It's pretty much just a
mirror for what I do in my waking hours. Story problems I'm working on
during the day, I'm working on "over there" at night, just in a different
mental place.

Back to the show...I have, at times, used early dream images. The
shot of Londo looking up to seeing huge ships passing overhead in "The
Coming of Shadows" is a direct dream-steal from years ago.

jms
*****
If we can get the B5 fan club up and running (or when, as it looks
now), we hope to offer the blooper reel, or a version thereof.

jms
*****
Jeannette: I saw a great commencement speech today by Tom Brokaw on
CSPAN...he had a lot to say about the Internet, interestingly enough,
and a great term for the more offensive among us...the "petty
dysfunctional."

jms
*****
All our CGI was being done on Amigas; I think they've now totally
transitioned to a PC base.

Re: my computer...I have two, one at my home office, the other at the
B5 main stage office. They're both pretty much the same, though: Dell
Pentium 90s, 32 megs ram, 1 gig drive (office) vs. 2 gig drive (home),
4x CD Rom, 17" monitor (Nanao vs. Supermatch), 28.8 modem, Imagine 128
bit video card (office) vs. 64bit #9gxePro (home), Soundblaster 16....
these systems didn't just arrive, guys with orange vests and cones helped
them taxi into place.

If B5 runs it total five years, I'll most likely retire from TV.

None of the other B5 actors are on the Internet that I know of,
though some do get printouts from folks.

Currently, I watch X-Files (though lately it has seemed much in need
of a good fourth-act every episode), which is about the only genre stuff
I have time to watch consistently.

To the last question, authors I'd recommend: Michael Bishop, Jonathan
Carroll, Connie Willis, Ed Bryant, any of James Blish's stuff (though he's
no longer with us)...that's all that comes to mind offhand, but there are
a bunch more I'll think of the second I get offline.

jms

*****
We have an Audio Spotting Session. At this, I sit down with John
Copeland, Chris Franke, George Johnsen, and screen the newly-finished
episode (it's been edited and on-lined). I call out the time-code for
the beginning and endings of sections where I want music. E.g, "Okay,
in at 03:23:15 (three minutes, 23 seconds, 15 frames), out at 04:15:23."
Sometimes I will have specific ideas on the kind of music ("I think we
need to go soft here, mainly strings, some brass, but *light*"), other
times I just leave it to Chris to get what the sense of the scene is. If
there is a big EFX sequence going on at the same time, as in a battle
scene, the sound design people (also in the meeting) and I go over the
scene with Chris, and decide which elements will be carried by sound, and
which by music, making sure each carves out sufficient space in either the
high-end or the low-end to accommodate the other.

jms

*****
Forgive me if the ideas (below) have been posted before but I'm a new
user and an avid B5 fan. I would appreciate any constructive critisism
of the points raised, or any other comments you may feel are important.

i) I had gathered the impression that the Vorlons, were infact the
Vorlon spacecraft. (ie Vorlons are living spacecraft)

ii) That Kosh is the last of a species (in our galaxy anyway) that we
would know better as an Angel.

iii) and that the "Dark Soldier" distroyed at the end of the episode
"The Long Dark" briefly appeared as a Devil (ie it had horns and
cloven hooves)

iv) I'd come to the conclusion that we were witnessing the continuing
battle between good and evil.

*****
"I'd come to the conclusion that we were witnessing the continuing
battle between good and evil."

Half-right. The other half involes *defining* what good and evil
ARE, and are not.

jms
*****
It strikes me that B5 is possibly one of the most scrutinized and
documented television series ever produced. If you look at the web pages
at http://www.hyperion.com/lurker.html and study them, you will see how
unified this story is. The breakdown, cross-references... JMS, if you
ever let something big slip through, we're all going to catch it, you
know! <grin>

This series is breaking ground in a way I hadn't considered before. Not
only have the viewers had a rare opportunity to interact with the primary
creative mind behind the show, but that same mind has thrown down the
gauntlet to us. The challenge is to see if we can figure out what's
going on before the end of the story.

As we get closer to thinking we've figured something out, we are shown a
new piece of the puzzle that hints at something much larger - like an
edge piece of a jigsaw with a hole in it just waiting for a piece to fit
on the other side, revealing the puzzle to be larger than we had
originally thought.

The longer I look at this thing, the more I realize we're looking at
something quite new and different from anything we've seen before. It's
more than just episodic TV, and much more than a "soap opera". It's more
than a mystery. It's more than just a drama. It's much larger than a
miniseries. And, video-novel doesn't seem to give it justice. The only
word that comes to mind is "odyssey." Babylon 5 is an odyssey, the likes
of which we will not see again for some time.

*****
In article <3ubfu4$jia@ixc.ixc.net>, John Staats <staats.@inx.net>
wrote:
>She's sensitive, fine. No problem. But for an *ambassador* to
breakdown
>under harsh questioning seems a bit melodramatic. C'mon, she's
*DELEN*-
>she has her wits about her; we don't need to see her crying on camera
in
>a long, uncomfortable scene. I think subtlety is what we should be
going
>for. Someone under stress in her position should be able to stand the
>heat better.
>
>Sorry if I disagree. I think that JMS is simply trying to show
Delenn's difficulty in being an outcast in both of the worlds she now
has a foot in. I also think that Joe can relate to her circumstances.
JMS had a childhood that had him moving around quite a bit, and not
really being able to get a foothold in any of the places his family
moved to. A good story teller has ways of moving us to empathy as far
as his characters go. Remember this: If Delenn had waited just a few
moments before "losing control", it would not have been shown on camera
because the newspeople were distracted seconds later. It was a short,
poignant scene, and I can thank JMS for allowing us to peer into the
confused and weary soul of our beloved Minbari ambassador.

*****
OK, how many people here actually knew it was his b'day?

All I know for certain is that JMS is about four months older than I am.
Could someone who really knows JMS's birth date please confirm the date.
This would be a good job for Her Serene Royal Highness Elana Who.

Assuming that John Carr is correct that 17-Jul-1954 is Mr. Straczynski's
birthday, two notable events also occurred on that date:

1) Walt Disney celebrated J. Michael Straczynski's first birthday by
opening Disneyland.

2) "TV Guide" celebrated J. Michael Straczynski's forty-first birthday by
finally giving "Babylon 5" the respect it deserves.

*****
It's really kind of hard to explain; it's a mix of many things, some
tension (everything has to be ready to go on July 31st, no delays, no
revisions, no backsies); it's a bit like going back to school after a long
summer break (less so for me, since my "summer break" is filled with
the summer school of writing scripts)....

A dead stage is a dark, depressing thing. No actors, no sound, just
edifices standing and waiting for someone to give them life. Now, slowly,
you have carpenters appearing, set dressers appearing, lighting crews
appearing, and there's sound, hammers banging and cranes lifting and drills
whirring...people walking from set to set discussing revisions,
improvements...the previously empty halls are populated by runners, PAs,
directors, staff, crew...it's like this huge engine slowly beginning to
turn, and every day you hear the turbine whine growing just a little
louder until you know the sucker's about ready to take off.

So there's a LOT to do; but overall it's a very good time. As of
now, five scripts have been published in-house and in WB, and everyone is
nuts about them; the set improvements are great; the actors are excited,
and everyone's ready to kick butt. It's cool.

jms
*****
Londo: nobody else wanted the job, it was considered low-priority.
Delenn: it was the calling of her heart. G'Kar: a good career move to
ally new forces, and he was an up-and-comer. Kosh: is.

jms
*****

In this week's COMICS BUYERS GUIDE Peter David describes an
illuminating incident that occured during the weekend of Chicago
Comicon. For the entertainment of readers here I'm posting a portion
of Peter's weekly BUT I DIGRESS column.


THE ADVENTURES OF JOLTIN' JOE STRACZYNSKI, PART II

Joe, his wife, Kathryn, and the David clan walked into a 1950's
style restaurant in downtown Chicago.

Joe was wearing his BABYLON 5 jacket. The guy seating us asked
about his connection to B5, and, when Joe told him, started to
bow and say, "We're not worthy." And then, to the flustered Joe's
surprise, the guy turned to the already-seated diners and
announced, "Attention! Attention! This guy is the creator of the
TV series BABYLON 5!" Major applause, major ovation.

It's one thing when you have an audience of rabid B5 fans at a
convention cheering you. That's expected. They're "pre-sold,"
as it were. But what a crying shame that Warner execs couldn't see
that spontaneous outpouring of support from "civilians."

Joe later expressed a degree of self-consciousness over the entire
thing, but he got no sympathy from me.

Hey, when you wear a jacket with a big honking BABYLON 5 logo and a
name patch that reads "Joe Straczynski," you abrogate the right to
complain, when you're recognized as Joe Straczynski of BABYLON 5.
The jacket is leather and wool, and it was 80 degrees out, so it's
not like he <needed> to wear it.

Ah, the dichotomy of being talented and humble--

It's great to hear the show is finally starting to mainstream. And I
agree about the Warner execs. They'd be surprised.

Melody
*****
I was kind of aghast when I saw that Peter had printed what happened
in the dealer's room at ComicCon, when I helped tackle and bring down a
shoplifter, holding him for the cops for about ten minutes while he was
hoping to get away. I found out about it when I went into my local comics
store and the owner came over and said he felt a lot safer seeing me
there...and I wondered what the hell he was saying, he was obviously
kidding on the square...then I found out. Ah, well....

jms
*****
It really depends on the breaks. Sometimes a regular cast member
can be there every day; sometimes they get a day or two off here and there
within the course of an episode.

Guest actors are booked by days needed, or if it's a major part, then
a full-week deal is made.

What most folks probably don't know is that when you shoot an episode
you first begin by doing a production board, and what scenes are shot in
which order is determined by *where the scenes take place.*

For instance: we have 3 stages. So in the morning, we'll shoot all
the scenes that take place in medlab. If that takes all day, then that's
how long we're there. Once we finish, if it's say around lunchtime, we'll
generally try and stay in the same stage to minimize the hassles of going
from stage A to C, because then you've got to re-rig and set up and that
kills time. Sometimes you'll change stages if you've got Actor B only for
3 days under contract, and you have to adjust.

We take it as a matter of pride that in 44 episodes, we've had only
about 8 days of overtime on a shoot, and never once have we done a forced
call on an actor.

jms
*****
I've just written...oh...about 20 messages in the last hour, from
questions here...none of them stopped me. This one did. I guess I
didn't see it coming. Some personal stuff I don't generally get into on
the nets. I'll sometimes talk about it at conventions, but I try not to
drag it in here. But since it's come up, I guess I can handle the
answer.

No, I didn't have a particularly great upbringing. I grew up within
an abusive, alcoholic, wife-beating environment. We moved every six
months or every year, trying to stay one step ahead of creditors, used the
last name "Stark" when Straczynski was too "hot." I really didn't
understand the situation much; I figured every family was like this. I
didn't begin to really get a sense of how crummy it was until I began to
see how other families *did* have normal lives.

My feeling about it overall is...don't whine or whinge about it,
deal with it and move on. Too many people use crummy childhoods to
explain away crummy behavior in the present. That doesn't wash with me.
Does that "emotional baggage" still "haunt" me, to use your terms? No,
not really. Am I still pissed about some of it? Hell yes. Why not?

There's a line in a Billy Joel song..."You still have a rage inside
you / That you carry with a certain pride / It's the only part / Of a
broken heart / You could ever save." That's kinda it, but not quite so
maudlin or self-indulgent. Anybody who had a perfect, blemish-free
youth and adolescence raise your hand....

That's what I figured. So we deal with it.

(Great joke...when Jesus intervened in the stoning of a woman and
said, "Let you who are without sin cast the first stone," and suddenly a
rock comes flying into frame, and he says, "Mommmmmmmm!")

I do tend to use some of it in my work, because it grounds me in
reality, and the reality of *the scene*. I used a lot of it in an
episode I wrote for TWILIGHT ZONE, "Acts of Terror," about a wife
beater...which ended up being used (and is still used) at some shelters
for battered women in counseling centers, about how to find your own
power and authority. But that's what a writer does; I've used bits and
pieces of my life all over the show, including the scene between Sinclair
and Catherine Sakai when they get back together for the first time, which
is almost verbatim from stuff I've gone through.

If there's anything that has stayed with me, it's manifested itself
in a fierce loyalty to friends, because when you move every 6-12 months,
you don't get much chance to find them. I grew up in the streets of Newark
and less terrific places, and you learn a little something about sticking
together when you grow up in the streets. Anytime somebody wants to take
on a friend, they have to go through me first. Hurt me and I'll hurt you
back in equal proportion; hurt a *friend* and I'll tear your fucking head
off. And then I'll get nasty.

Is that a particularly salutory trait? No, not really. It sounds
good on paper, but it puts me into constant trouble. I've tried to
moderate that a little...but how do you moderate loyalty? When the phone
rings at 3 a.m. and it's someone you know in pain or in trouble or in
jail...how do you quantify and decide *this* time you'll go but *next*
time you won't?

So yeah, I've had a tough ride. I sacrificed a lot to get here; I
have zero social life, except for my pal Harlan. I haven't been to a
party in something like two years; don't get out to see movies but maybe
4-6 times a year; when I was breaking in, I had to choose often between
food and writing supplies...and always chose the latter, and if you look
in one of the back issues of WD, you'll see a picture of me from taht
period, at 6'5" weighing about 150-160 pounds. But that was my *choice*.
We all gotta do what we gotta do; I decided that I'd either make it as a
writer, or I wouldn't make it at *all*.

Because sometimes, kiddo, that's what it takes.

But with all of that...the present-tense reality is that I'm pretty
reasonably content. I'm doing the only thing in the world I'm the least
goddamned good at, and people are actually *paying* me to do that which
I'd have to do for free otherwise, because I can do no other. I have a
nice house, and I work on a show I enjoy, I write what I want...so I'm not
angry all the time, as I was once before. Most days I figure that's a
good thing; other times, I worry if it's taken the edge off the work. But
in the interim consideration...I'm content.

As for pursuing a Psychology degree...wasn't out of any particular
desire to understand myself. Hell, at that time, I hardly even wanted to
associate with myself, much less understand myself. No, I just went in
with the assumption that you should never major in writing if you really
want to BE a writer...learn other stuff, read other books, see other kinds
of lives...become a generalist, so you can apply a little bit of everything
to the work. That seemed most conducive to being a generalist.

Until Skinner came along and suddenly math was involved.

But that's another story for another time....

jms
*****
No, I don't really think trauma is a requirement for artistry; I
know a number of writers who had nearly idyllic backgrounds.

jms
*****
The two keys in creating characters for TV are: allies and enemies,
you create people who you know will come into conflict with one another,
because conflict is a huge part of drama, not the whole of it, but a
necessary ingredient. So you also build some who can be sympathetic, or
funny by turns, but you don't want to minimize or throw away a character,
you add a layer of depth to it to give meat to the humor when used.

It's kind of like planning a military campaign, really.

The world and the characters of B5 kind of came together at the
same time, one feeding off another until they took on a life of their
own. And building both was a joy.

jms
*****
Something the best TV shows have, which B5 has double, is an Everyman
character, the person to whom the TV audience relates. I remember this
was explained to me on my first TV pitch by Danny Arnold, the creator of
Barney Miller. Of course, Barney Miller was the Everyman character among
the kooky cops and the even kookier crooks. The audience discovers all
the craziness along with him.

What's great about B5 is that they have two Everyman characters, Ivanova
and Garibaldi, and they work beautifully.

John
*****
Chris: the point you make is exactly right. The music for each
season is designed to reflect the progression of that season; some feel
they don't like season two as much as one, because it doesn't summon up
the same feelings. But that's the intent; it's not supposed to summon
up the same emotions. It's kind of the equivilant of creating a
different cover for every new installment of a series of connected
novels.

What do I have in mind for season three? What I indicated to Chris
Franke was to look at a piece of music he did in "The Long, Twilight
Struggle" and interpolate some elements of that into the main theme, with
a very hard sound. The piece in question is about the middle of the
first really...um...busy scene after the act break.

jms
*****
I think that, by all rights, anybody should be able to "get" each
episode. The only thing that varies is their degree of..er...getness.

Getnosity?

Whatever.

The stucture is fairly straightforward: the primary story in any
given episode is relatively self-contained and self-explanatory. You can
see that one episode, and no others, and be able to follow it. If you
CANNOT do this, then the episode has failed. The key, as I've noted from
the start, is that the MORE you see, or know, the MORE you can get out of
any episode.

The impact of Talia's situation should be the same whether you saw
the comic or not. (And, remember, the idea was that the comic would come
out AFTER the remaining year 2 episodes, as a nice little frisson, not as
required data.)

I continue to get email and snail mail from people who are still just
now finding the show...and they watch one episode, and that's fine, then
they watch a couple/three more, and THEN they realize that there's an
overall arc, that this is a bigger story than first appears. For those
who dig out every last detail, it's hard to imagine following the shw
(show) minus all this...but it's absolutely possible, and happens
consistently. It's your *perception* that has altered by virtue of now
knowing what more is there. If you don't know the rest, you can still
enjoy pretty much everything there on its most basic level, as an action
or character story.

jms
*****
Last reminder: next Saturday is San Diego Comic Con, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
and if you're in the area, you may want to drop by for the B5 presentation
scheduled for that time.

A company is in the process of licensing a slick, full-color B5
magazine; looks pretty good. More as this develops.

For those into this sort of thing...the literary SF review,
FOUNDATION, published out of England, is doing a whole issue on media SF,
with particular attention to B5. I've turned in what they say will be the
ceterpiece of the issue, a 28 page, 7600 word article titled "Approaching
Babylon." Although it contains a few things mentioned on the nets, about
90% of is it new stuff, background info, personal observations and the
like.

Finally, one week from tomorrow, we start filming on year three, with
episode #301, "Matters of Honor," which also introduces a new recurring
character named Marcus.

jms
*****

humespc@Direct.CA (Patricia Humes) wrote:

>But what I am intrigued about is the Third Season Title:
>
> I AM BECOME DEATH, DESTROYER OF WORLDS

Robert Oppenheimer, about the first test of an Atomic Bomb,
(Quoted in Richard Rhodes, _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_)

We waited until the blast had passed, walked out of the shelter and
then it was extremely solemn. We knew the world would not be the same.
A few people laughed, a few cried. Most people were silent. I
remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, Bhagavad-Gita: Vishnu is
trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to
impress him he takes on his multiarmed form and says "Now I am become
Death, destroyer of worlds." I think we all thaught that, one way or
another.

(According to _A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations, edited by Alan
Mackay, the preceding lines of the Bhagavad-Gita are:
If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst into the sky,
That would be like
The splenour of the Mighty One)

-Hil

*****
In article <3ur6c0$1ud@acme.freenet.columbus.oh.us>,
gwhite@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Gabe White) wrote:

>
> But let me remind you, I wasn't making all that stuff up.. B5 fans (in
> general) DO tape the episodes and watch them over again (sometimes even in
> slow motion). And they (in general) DON'T care if the show's a rerun.

Actually, they do. We would much prefer to be watching new episodes.

BUT, unlike a lot of other shows, THERE ARE THINGS GOING ON IN THE BACKGROUND.
Events happen in the scenes that tie in to future episodes.

Example 1:
For the episode A RACE THROUGH DARK PLACES, a large number of characters were
going to appear as the various people being put through the Underground
Railroad. These characters were put into the four previous episodes to
ARTDP to
establish their being on the station. Because they were planned for in advance.
I have never seen another show take that kind of premeditated action.

Example 2:
A group known as the Rangers were presented in an episode (the title escapes me
at the moment), and are garbed in a particular manner. Not only did we see a
few more of these guys in previous episodes (before their existence was
established directly), but if you do watch reruns - you can see them doing
various establishing actions in the background that tie into later events.

This is called SUB-TEXT. It's a technique that allows you to establish
something in an almost subliminal manner. It's one of the advantages of B5
being written
as a 5-year novel with a definite and pre-established arc. Things build in
little ways into very BIG things.

Try borrowing a tape from one of your friends who _does_ tape B5. Watch the
episode once for the Main (A Story) and the understory (B). Then watch it
one more time and watch the crowd sequences. One watcher noticed that in
this last
week's episode, he saw a couple of the background piece characters do a
message drop.

Also JMS is not above sticking in some near subliminals (things that can _only_
be really noticed by frame-by-frame) -

Example 3:
In the episode THE LONG DARK - a memory flashback is happening to one of
the guest stars just before a commercial. This flashback ties in to a
creature you will not see until the end of the episode (and even then only
as a distortion).
If you watch that flashback as it ends frame-by-frame, you will see the
face of the creature almost clearly - and it was a very nice piece of
makeup work).

Example 4:
In the episode that is being shown in most markets this week (AND NOW FOR
A WORD), which is a one-hour in-context news show episode in the B5
universe, there is a PSI Corps commercial. Watch the commercial. There
will be a flash near the end of that commercial. Watch it frame-by-frame.

In short, watch for yourself. Some of the things you are being told about
the show by its detractors are just plain wrong.

*****
Never follow somebody else's path; it doesn't work the same way
twice for anyone...the path follows you and rolls up behind you
as you walk, forcing the next person to find their own way.

-- J. Michael Straczynski, on Compuserve

Welcome to my quote collection, Joe.

*****
>I found the sudden bonding between Ivanova and Winters rather
>unconvincing - this would have worked much better if it had been built
>up more obviously over several episodes. Similarly the plot line of


Terry, that -is- exactly what -was- done.

The relationship between Ivanova and Winters has been in
development since the first episode "Midnight on the Firing Line". It
has been developed and built upon slowly and carefully for TWO seasons
in a number of episodes!

I noticed this and others I know did as well. Some of us referred
to it as "The Drinking-Relationship". In "Midnight", Talia offers to buy
Susan a drink, which Susan refuses. In "Mind War", Susan gives Talia a
drink of water, after Talia is mind-probed by Bester. In a later
episode, Talia again offers to buy Susan a drink, which Susan now accepts,
but only for coffee. Then in a 2nd season episode, Talia shows up in
Susan's apartment with a bottle of champagne, which Susan agrees to drink
with her, but only if Talia takes off her Psi Corps badge.

Their changing relationship, over a period of -two- years, has
been one of the most realistic ones I have seen portrayed on TV in a long,
long time.

Bravo to JMS!

*****
You've occasionally told us at which point in the series we'll
see something (e.g. end of second seson, start of fourth season,
etc.). Could you give us some idea if/when we're going to see
the third option given to telepaths, that of going to prison?
Are telepaths segregated into their own prison, and if so, what's
it like inside? Or are they in with the general population?

[I'm not even going to bother asking if it's Ivanova who gets
to see the inside... :-)]

*****
Expect more on this topic in third season.

jms
*****
I didn't look to any writers or other works for inspiration for B5;
I came up with the story mine own self. To "look for inspiration" always
sounds deliberate to me, "Hmm...whose template can I use...?" I don't
work that way. It's basically the product of all the stuff I've seen and
read over the years, my interest in politics, philosophy, literature,
sagas, SF, language, culture, history...it's this huge, honking stew
which I more or less fitted into the B5 statin.

jms (station)
*****
Yes, the Rangers will play a more important part in year three, and
Sinclair's part in it will be revealed.

jms
*****
In article <3v8n6b$6dc@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
BKnight255 <bknight255@aol.com> wrote:
>Okay, okay, I'll bite.
>
>What's with all the references to bat-wielding Narns? Did they demand the
>official Baseball Rules in payment for assistance to the Earth Alliance
>during the Earth-Minbari War?
>
>Seriously, where'd this particular phrase come from?

It's from a joke Joe told here a LONG time ago. If you've watched the
show, you know that the Zima people are one of the major sponsors of
it. In the first season there are a number of Zima signs and Zima
being served in a surprisingly large number of episodes. This was a
joke on Joe's part because if you thought about all of today's
products that would be likely to be available in 2259, Zima isn't one
of them :-)

Anyway, the topic here comes around to Zima occasionally, and once Joe
had something like this to say about it (I don't have a copy of the
real post, I suppose I should track it down): "I've wanted to film a
scene where this short guy with a hat enters the Zocolo and zes 'Zo, I
walk into thiz bar', whereupon a squad of bat wielding Narns decends
on him from all directions and proceeds to beat him into a pulp"

Zo, it has become traditional around here to refer to Joe's squad of
bat wielding Narns when making a really bad joke.

Jay
*****
Michael O'Hare is an excellent, skilled, and versatile actor with good
credits, references, and reviews dating over years.

You, like so many unthinking fans of the show, have confused the actor
with the role he played.

Sinclair is a war vet, a supposed hero, survivor of an unwinnable war,
with a huge gap in his memory. He is suffering from a classic case
of traumatic shock, and having difficulty believing he's alive; he
watched all his friends destroyed before his eyes, his ship was grabbed
by a huge enemy ship.....and yet, here he is alive, still convinced
he's dead. (And, if the truth be known, probably feeling *REAL* dang
guilty about it.) Think of Sinclair's fondness for going out personally
and facing down danger.... this is a habit pattern typical of many
combat vets, who've been so traumatized that they only feel really
alive, really in contact with the real universe, when their lives
are on the line, a fraction of an inch away from death. Garibaldi
has to call him on this, more than once.

Sinclair is insecure, driven, unsure of what's really going on around
him, terrified that he's losing it because he has no clear memory of
what happened.... and he's been placed in charge of a station MUCH
larger than his career and command experience would justify.
He does NOT know what's going on around him, and the only man he
can come close to trusting is one he's known since the original
dust-ups on Mars.

Of *course* he's stiff as a stick of wood; that's what the CHARACTER
CALLS FOR.

But if you *look*, you see the desperate human being peeking out from
inside Sinclair's surface personality... the lost, alone, bravely
heroic character who finally found it in him to try to propose to
Sakai; replay that scene, and watch the delivery. O'Hare's playing
on three or four different levels all through that scene; it makes
you *squirm* with discomfort and frustration.

This kind of thing is NOT bad acting; it's far better acting than
clod-like TV audiences deserve. When you put Michael O'Hare to
work with a director like Janet Greek, and a decent script, like
some of the work ol' wossisname, the tall guy who's growing a beard,
does.... you get some of the best work that's ever been done on TV.

So, the answer is "NO. O'Hare did not get 'forced out because of his
terrible acting.'" He was feeling a little hemmed in by the part, I'm
sure; but he was making a tough role work, and work well... that's part
of what an actor does. Straczynski found that he could loosen up a
couple of plot strictures by writing in an additional character,
Sheridan, so it wouldn't have to look like Sinclair had been personally
involved in about 90% of the human race' interaction with the Shadows.

Sinclair has been moved to an "ambassadorial" position on Minbar, and
has appeared in a canned message during Season Two; we're told he will
be showing up to a greater extent in Season Three.

Remember, JMS has to have all those "Rangers" underfoot for something....

*****
>No wonder you like having Harlan around!
>

Craig, I think I speak for Joe when I tell you that the Hugo Awards
-- and Edgar awards, and on and on and on -- in Harlan's resume are
the very *least* of reasons to want him around. He's brilliant, quick,
mercurial, unpredictable, entertaining, compassionate, opinionated,
literate, down-to-earth, approachable, honest, a forthright defender
of his friends, an implacable enemy of his friends' enemies, and he
makes Joe look even more egregiously tall than he already is.

As David Gerrold once said, if Harlan Ellison did not exist, it would
be necessary to invent him.
*****
>As David Gerrold once said, if Harlan Ellison did not exist, it would
>be necessary to invent him.

And the application papers to have him patented would be a hoot . . . .

*****
(SD Comicon 7/30)
I went to the enchanting San Diego Comic Con on Saturday and saw JMS'
presentation. For a change, he was alone: no other B5 people or
Harlan or even his wife were to be seen. The room was packed, with
many people standing in back--500 people? As soon as he came into the
room, the crowd started chanting, "Joe! Joe! Joe!" He looked
embarrassed, but he also was appreciative of the enthusiastic support.

He showed several videos. The blooper and music videos don't really
bear description; they have to be seen. JMS reported progress on
getting an official fan club and magazine going, and those videos may
be available through the fan club.

Another video was developed to show to Warner Brothers. It showed how
digital effects were used to develop shots. For instance, the shot of
the Lumati arriving on B5 was just the two people walking down a ramp.
The crane and all the background were added digitally. Many scenes
are composed of many parts. For instance, the Zocalo scene shown in
the opening credits was made of two or three partial shots of the
first floor of the Zocalo, then the second floor is another shot. In
the rock garden, not only is the surrounding background added, but
plants in the foreground--properly out of focus--are added as well.

JMS mentioned that another studio was boasting they'd be totally
digital by the year 2000. B5 is almost totally digital *now*. Only
in the final assembly (I think) of the episodes is anything moved
physically now. JMS plans to digitalize the last bit this year. You
notice in the credits that the music is performed by the Berlin
Symphonic Film Orchestra? Chris Franke doesn't go to Germany, much
less the Orchestra coming to California: They video teleconference!
Chris Franke sees the orchestra; the orchestra sees Franke. They
play, and the digital recording is sent electronically to Franke and
the B5 production staff.

After the videos, JMS had a question and answer period. Someone from
the far left of the room asked something like, "We know Delenn now has
human biology. Bottom line: Who will be the father of Delenn's
child?" JMS answered by taking the next question from the far right
of the room. JMS talked about the bear. It was a gift from David
Gerrold (Peter David?), the J.S. standing for Joe Straczynski. In
punishment for such wanton and deliberate cutitude, JMS spaced the
bear. David is now putting the bear in another show (name forgotten--
sorry), where a character will comment, "Who would space such a cute
bear?" JMS is considering how to retaliate. In response to a
question about the rangers, JMS said we'd see ranger ships with
combined technology from Earth, Minbar, and Vorlon! So that gives us
something to think about while we wait for the final three.

While I don't remember all the questions, answers, and statements that
contributed, the same theme underlaid the presentation as underlays
Babylon 5 and JMS himself: All are about ethics. Responsibility.
Integrity. Making moral choices. Further, I think, making those
choices oneself: neither imposing your choices on others nor yeilding
your moral responsibilities to someone else--not your boss, not your
spouse, not your government, not your church. Your ethics are your
responsibility: you will suffer for bad choices and prosper from good
choices. And, all are about excellence. If we want excellence from
others, we have to strive for it ourselves. We cannot be better than
we try to be, so we should all strive for excellence and encourage it
in others.

Later, I met JMS touring the show just like any other fan. I picked
up the longer B5 CD, and was told that the limited edition CD is now
worth $80-$100! Can anyone confirm this?

The night featured a costume contest in a huge theater near the
convention center, with something like $1000 in prizes. One B5 skit
appeared, with Talia, Ivanova, and a Centauri. It didn;t win a prize,
but it got a good reception. Another skit had Hawkman, in a costume
with huge brass wings, appear from behind a rock. Perhaps in response
to the MC's running gag reading warnings--e.g., "The white zone is for
the loading and unloading of passengers only"--the audience started
chanting, "Rock! Rock! Rock!" This was repeated at the slightest
pause during the rest of the show, often led by the Klingon Assault
Group. The grand prize was deservedly won by a huge Battlemech.
About eight feet tall and as wide, it walked (slowly!); it blinked; it
strobed; it smoked. It flooded the darkened stage with its own
lights, and looked even more impressive with the stage lights on. The
rock won a prize, too.

-- "Bother," said Pooh, as he bounced off the Starfury.

*****
This report is based on 12 pages of madly scrawled notes. Items in
quotes ("") are words that I'm 90+% sure are exactly as said. The rest
is my memory based from my notes. A few things are locally out of
order. Spelling errors and things which make no sense, probably my
error.

The program started with the lights going out and the "Requiem for the
Line" video short. Stunning. It's a video montage accompanied by the
Chris Franke's "Requiem for the Line" (track 12 (US)). It started with
shots of each character [I forgot how many there are!], went into the
'Battle of the Line' from _And the Sky Full of Stars_, and followed with
masterfully arranged set of clips and quotes. I was so transfixed I
didn't get any notes on which clips, and I had a tear in my eye I didn't
notice until the light came up. Stunning. WB promo folks, this is how
you do a promo. I have a hard time imagining how anyone with any SF fan
blood in them could see this clip, and not have an immediate desperate
desire to watch the show.

After the lights came up, JMS took a look at the packed, standing room,
crowd and said, "(I'll bet?) the Gargoyles panel is pissed" (the
Gargoyles panel was next door at the same time). Much laughter.

JMS confirmed that B5 has been picked up for a 3rd season (old news).
Much applause and cheering. Shooting begins Monday (Jul 31). Episodes
will be starting in November. Grumbling and standard old news/stories
about the 4 episodes which are delayed until October.

JMS looked over the audience and said how "Astonished and gratified to
see us (all?)". Many years ago he would(/could?) go around on the
street and say things like "Narn", "Mimbari", and "Centauri" and get
only crazy looks. Now people might actually get a different reaction.
It's like B5 is a "carrier of some terrible disease" which transfers all
these things in his head to ours.

The promise to make "each season better and (?) than the season before"
was reiterated. More cheering.

He gets lots of questions on "how we make the show". He described the
basics of virtual sets (what they are, the advantages). He says it's
really cool when we [the audience] don't notice that sometimes. The
regular example is in "The Coming of Shadows" where the emperor and
Sheridan are talking. 'It's great how well you matted the space CGI
through the windows.' 'There were no windows; it's all CGI.'

B5 has been nominated for 3 emmys, and has good chances for some ones
yet to be announced. Scream from the crowd for Andreas Katsulas (I
agree - *especially* after seeing something else recently). Grumbling
that actors never get recognized in science fiction.

He works with such a bunch of smart-asses. Anyone can say to him, this
sucks. And, he followed, "If they're right, they get to stay."

Bruce Boxleitner did an intro for the B5 emmy tape where he talked
backstage about what the show was about, the story so far, etc.. Ron
Thornton (the visual effects dude) asked JMS how he liked Bruce's intro.
JMS said he thought it was good, etc. Ron: "It's a virtual set, you
schmuck". Yup - they did a fake backstage, brooms and all, on CGI -
smart-asses :).

More on virtual sets. JMS shows a videotape of virtual sets. It's
something originally done for WB folks, so they can understand what is
being done. No sound. It's lots of clips from the show, first in the
raw footage form, and then in the final form. For example, Morden's
entrance in _Signs and Portents_, the underground from _A Race Through
Dark Places_, the Lumati arriving in _Acts of Sacrifice_, the second
season opening credits 2-level bazaar, the Zen rock garden (plants
CGI'ed in), the inside of the Narn cruiser from _Acts of Sacrifice_, the
famous "no-windows" Centauri Emperor-Sheridan scene from _The Coming of
Shadows_, the arrival of Richard Franklin (off the cargo ship's ramp) in
_GROPOS_, the many lines of arriving soldiers in _GROPOS_, and perhaps
some I missed. A highly cool thing to see was pencil composites, a
combination of raw footing with pencil sketches of what the CGI should
look like. Another cool thing was the 2-level opening credits scene.
They had tape on the floor where the extras had to make sure not to go
over or they'd be walking on air! Most of these scenes are finished in
a day.

The series has been under budget for the pilot, season 1, and season 2.
JMS is very proud of this. "Hell, if B5 can do SF well and under
budget, maybe it (help?) do more." Other producers have come to tour
the B5 operation, as have the 'thousands' of WB VPs. "How the hell do
you do this?"

Every day, everyone, the crew, producers, and actors, have a picnic type
lunch behind the set. "Give people respect and creative freedom" and
it's amazing what they will do.

The B5 Christmas (?) Gag Reel was shown. To the tune of Oingo Boingo's
_Weird Science_, it's a fast paced collection of bloopers, off camera
moments, funny (smart-ass?) jokes played, and other humorous moments. I
was too busy laughing to get down most of what the scenes were - I've
seen other good descriptions the net (e.g. Chicago ComicCon report) so
check there. Some good ones I remember were Claudia Christian going
from a cracking up face to the stern straight Ivanova, an ISN anchor
getting repeatedly stuck on the word "Ak-dor" and punting with the
quote, "I am not a very good 'Ak-dor'", a B5 running amok scene with the
prod crew also running amok, Biggs and Doyle with "cwedits? It's not
cwedits you scwewy wabbit", Doyle getting stuck in the love scenes in
_GROPOS_ and saying "let me think about sex with my second wife", in the
'sleeping-in-the-office' scene from _A Race Through Dark Places_
Boxleitner falling asleep a snoring out "Su--san... Suuuuu--san", and
the (in-?)famous "Medlab, this is Sinclair" "blooper".

6 scripts have been completed for the 3rd season. There will be major
changes for this seasons, many "in the format itself". Previously
mention on the net analogy of imagining in Star Trek, the Federation
being taken over by the Klingon Empire, and then what does the
Enterprise do. Warning was given not to take the analogy 1:1, but
rather to get an idea of the scope.

In what is the best description I've heard of what B5 is about (and why
I like it), JMS said, B5 is "showing about change, choices, and
responsibility." He continued that this is hard to describe to TV
execs.

Exec: "What is this show about?"
JMS: "Change, choices, and personal responsibility."
Exec: "What the fuck are you talking about?"

Not wanting to stop there, JMS described a problem he had while
initially pitching B5. He had various series artwork, one of which was
a picture of the B5 garden. It had a person standing upside down on the
"ceiling" of the garden. Exec asks what makes the guy stay up there.
Foolishly, he responded, "Krazy-glue". The exec took him serious! "No
that won't work, he'll have to move around... and then... and then..."

More on some upcoming episodes. "Delenn is put up against the wall.
[...] Kosh (is like?) I need to be sure about you, and puts her
through the wringer." _Comes the Inquisitor_

Then JMS gave us a few indescribable moments of perfect beauty.

_The Long Twilight Struggle_ is his favorite episode, perhaps next to the
_The Coming of Shadows_.

Upcoming seasons. Another repeat comment seen on the net. The first
seasons was the character galumping around, the second season was the
characters taking it on the chin, and in the third season they start to
fight back in a big way. Also **see Major Spoiler note***.

JMS wants the series to portray sense of wonder, both amazing and
frightening and "wished to make a show the fans could (watch?)".

Now came a question and answer session.

Q: When will we be seeing the Robert Culp episode (Demon on the Run?)?

A: Maybe next year. Digression on Harlan, and his exploits with the
TVGuide article. Remember that guy in the Godfather who stood behind
the Godfather never said a word? Sometimes the Godfather would nod
back, and the person in front of him would be gone the next day. That's
Harlan. Much laughter.

Q: What was Morden's back history before the Sinclair/Sheridan change?
Clarified: Morden was on the ship which had Sheridan's wife on it,
how would the connection work with Sinclair?

A: There was no personal connection.

Q: Will we see more of alien ships? Especially Vorlon ships?

A: We will see more of Vorlon ships. We will also see a ship made of a
"combination of Vorlon, Mimbari, and Earth technology." Apologetically
(?), it will be called the "Dwight Star".

Q: What computers are used for rendering?

A: Used to use Amiga's with Lightwave. But since Amiga has gone, well,
were Amiga has gone, now using PCs with Lightwave. Groans from
audience.

Q: If the series were a book, what would the titles of the chapters be?

A: Who knows?

Followup: (question was trying to get what would the titles of seasons 4
and 5)

A: No, and titles for first 3 seasons.

(IMHO) HIGHLIGHT OF THE PROGRAM:

Q: 'I was on the WWW and saw this really really neat B5 site, it has
everything about B5, the episodes, and ...' (cut off by numerous sighs
from the audience implying 'welcome to the sunlight, yes it is bright
and warm, you see...')

JMS: wait... How many people here are on the net.

For the sections I saw (I was in the front, of course :), 95% of the
hands shoot up. (probably 75% of the audience)

JMS: HOLY FUCK!

Much laughter...

In the upcoming months expect an WB-official B5 fan club and WWW site.
The fan club should have a B5 magazine. Videos such as the B5 Gag Reel
may/should/will be available through the club.

Dell has commissioned/planned 5 more novels.

Still talking about the comic book (cancelled/no cancelled status).

Q: Zach Allen, will we see more of him?

A: We'll see a lot more of him. He's caught in the whole nightwatch
situation, like Londo is caught.

Q: Kosh, what's happened to the people who have seen him?

A: You'll see Lyta in the next episode.

Ever see the Shining? Scatman Corothers is the one guy who knows
everything. He understands the shining, has the power, goes up to
rescue them in the blizzard, and gets an axe in the chest.

"I always want to do that."

Q: How much do you leave to the writer (when you hand out story
assignments)?

A: Depends (on the story and writer). Usually one of three things.
Either an A story, B story, or "This must happen".

Q: How canon are the novels and the comic?

A: The major points are canon, but with the diverse hands involved,
there may be some "variation in the details."

Q: How do the actors relate to the science fiction?

A: Generally not so much interested in the science fiction and technical
aspects, but more in the emotional aspects of their character.

Peter Jurasik as he goes through the makeup, the accent appears, and by
the time he's finished makeup, he's completely Londo. Says a line in
Londo accent, that Jurasik would/might say to him, and the house comes
down with laughter.

Andreas Katsulas rarely is around without his makeup. Seeing G'Kar
backstage smoking a cigarette is quite an image.

Q: When will we know more about the Vorlons and the Shadows?

A: "When I tell you?"

Q: Is B5 still the most popular show in Iraq?

A: Back story: the Eurpoean countries beam B5 around with satellites.
Iraqi's pick it up, and apparently it is well liked... a show set in
Babylon portrayed in a good light, cool?

JMS has a recurring nightmare that he'll wakeup and see a headline,
'Saddam Hussein's favorite show is B5'.

In answer to the question, no idea.

Q: Is Mimbari society based on Plato's Replublic?

A: Certain elements are in there. There are also historical parallels
and other elements.

Q: Will shows released be released on laserdisk and videotape?

A: WB is afraid that it would make any money. How many of you would buy
tapes? (lots of hands go up) That's what I say.

More on this upcoming.

There will be no re-edit for the tape/disk release. They will be
released in letterbox.

Germany and France have already contract for letterbox broadcast.
England is still talking.

Q: When will there be a B5 role playing game?

A: No one's licensed one.

Q: What's happened to Lou Welch?

A: We'll see more of him.

Q: When will people find out about Londo's connection to the shadows?

A: It will come out gradually. Remember, Londo's never seen them. He's
sworn that this is last time he's dealing with them. Of course, there's
someone else who might be making deals with them... Refa.

Q: Why the subliminals?

A: It seems like something the Psi-corps would do. They wouldn't be
above doing such a thing.

Story in checking with FCC re: subliminals.

JMS: What is a subliminal?
FCC: anything 2 frames a second or less.
JMS: So 3 frames would be ok?
FCC: Well, kind of, why
JMS: Thanks! <click>

more story

Got a call from Steve Grimm that B5 is very popular with the military.
It's a "force multiplier" (morale booster). Digression on calling
things what they are. Anyway, Steve got a call from the Pentagon. Some
troops are in locations where they can't get video equipment and they
want synopses. So the Pentagon wants to know how to get the WWW pages.

Q: The story of the bear from _There All the Honor Lies_?

A: How many people haven't heard it? (Barely a quorum raises their
hands)

(see _There All the Honor Lies_ jms speaks notes)

I hate cute and he sends me a teddy bear! soo...

JMS: I'm going to get you.
PAD: What are _you_ going to do?
JMS: Fuck with your script.

But PAD may get the last laugh. He has a new show, _Spare Cases_ (?),
and is putting on line where a bunch of kids have teddy bears, and one
says, "What kind of *monster* would space a teddy bear?".

But I'll get him back. I don't know how, but I've got 3 years.

Q: Heard back from NASA on starfuries?

A: no

Q: Will we see the Mimbari rings from the pilot?

A: eventually

Q: Will we get any Janet Greek directed episodes?

A: I wish we would. Jokingly, he said, "She sold us out." We plan to
get one with Adam Nimoy (Leonard's son) - "Just to piss off paramount".

Q: Will we see more of the Technomages?

A: Yes, eventually.

Q: Have you decided how to connect B^2 to the current eps, with the
Sinclair change.

A: It will make sense.

Sinclair will be coming back for a two parter as the head of the
rangers.

Q: Is Kosh the only Vorlon?

A: No.

Q: Delenn -- now that she has cramps -- err -- well -- Who will be the
the father of Delenn's child?

Audience member: I will!

A: stutter .. stammer.. (no comment)

Q: (didn't hear question)

A: The blooper reel will sell with the fan club. There will be limited
edition PPGs (made by the people who make them as props!) available.
Authentic caps, too.

Q: Laurel Takashima?

A: I do want to deal with her, but do it properly, not as some throwaway
set of lines. Tamlyn Tomita is busy these days.

Q: Having commanders lead mission is unrealistic

A: (interrupting) no it isn't. Base commanders led missions all the
time in WWII and many of them died. Others do it for the flight time
and to keep the respect of the men.

Q: Keffer?

A: We'll do something interesting to Keffer.

Q: What would you do if you have a fantasy budget? Actors?

A: Just said this on the net, not sure what I said.

Q: Will we find out about President Clarke and the death of the
Santiago?

A: There's a rule in writing, where if you set up a situation (?), you
got to pay it off. So, yes, we will see this next (the 3rd) season.
And when the truth gets out, and he knows B5 brought it out, how will he
react? What we he have to do?

Q: Why are the characters able to do everything?

A: I don't think that's the case. Only Garibaldi, Ivanova, and Sheridan
can fly Starfuries. Not Zach, not Talia... amusing if she did... CRASH!

Q: Out of the 3 episodes which were the ones which were spec?

A: They started out as spec, but once they were in the B5 process, they
were no longer alone (?).

THE END

It was really really cool. Marking my calendar for next year!

Enjoy!

Dave Morrison

Now, a final **major spoilers** for season 3/end of season 2.
----
In the 3rd season, G'kar is dealing with the fact he is no longer in
power and the Centauri are running Narn.

*****