Three Little Questions???

Sorry, in the original post I typed Voyager when I ment to type Enterprise.

And, I too have been rooting for Enterprise but have been disappointed with most of the episodes. I've been a Trek fan starting with the original series lo those many years ago.

Thanks KoshN for Bonnie Hammer's address. I'm off to 'hand write' a letter.

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God be between you and harm in all the empty places you must walk.

How people reacted during the Origianl B5 run depended on Where you were.

I frequented GEnie.
The Original Home of Grid Epsilon and the Lurkers.
JMS read the Genie Babylon 5 topics on a daily basis and posted replies to the discussion very frequently.

GEnie did have one big distinction over most of the other B5 discussions:
Genie's forums were Moderated.
Good Manners were enforced, both by the moderators and by the majority of people posting.

In fact, it was much like this board in that respect.
Trolls and flamers were politely asked to either Desist or Leave.
If they did neither, the Sysops had the authority to cancel their access.

I only remember that happening TWICE.
A pretty good record for a discussion that lasted for over 6 years.

All that is not to say that we didn't occasionally discuss the show's Problems.
We just kept it Polite and Constructive.


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Do not ascribe your own motivations to others:
At best, it will break your heart.
At worst, it will get you dead."

A small question: when you talk about constructive criticism, does anybody here thinks that JMS will move an inch to accomodate our opinions? I don't say it in a bad way. In the past, he's stated that to listen to the fans on that would lead to a story written by comitee, something that he would NEVER do.
By the way, I agree with him. His stories are far better without this kind of input. I doubt Narn would ever be conquered, if he did listen to us.
So, question: what kind of positive criticism can we offer, that wil make for a better show?
I'm not being facetious here. I want sugestions about what we can realistically do to improve the show and it's chances.
For, example, I live in Brazil, S. America. Obviously, I didn't see the pilot yet, but I'm confident in the quality of a future series, and want it to happen. How many of you think it would help if I sent an e-mail to any of the addresses Joe de Martino provided us, asking for it? would it help or hinder the cause? Any toughts?

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never surrender, never give up
God, I need a better tag line

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>...when you talk about constructive criticism, does anybody here thinks that JMS will move an inch to accomodate our opinions?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Maybe. JMS has always said that he'll listen to criticism/suggestions from anybody, the cast, the crew, the fans, the guy who sweeps up the set and the woman behind the craft-services table. (Some of whom have spent more time on soundstages than a lot of famous directors, and probably have as good a feel for what works and what doesn't as anybody.) But he makes the final decision. Because if he listened to everybody and implemented their requests, the show would be chaos. (And he already had the Shadows to provide that.)

Besides, many requests are diametrically opposed to one another. Almost every major character had a block of fans who hated him/her and wanted him that character off the show. Those same characters all had another block of fans who wanted almost everybody else off the show and to have it renamed The Adventures of Marcus Cole or The Susan Ivanova Hour or what-have-you.

But he does listen, and he does incorporate criticism, especially if he agrees with it. (And he will certainly have had his own critique of the show. Anyone in his position would. When I was directing shows for the theater I would still give the cast notes after performances, even re-block bits of staging I wasn't happy with.)

The murderer plot in "The Quality of Mercy" came about because folks weren't clear on how judicial matters, and especially the "death of personality" were handled in B5 and how exactly the teeps fit into things.

Delenn's gravity rings disappeared. Lots of small, subtle things were done or not done on the show as a result of fan feedback. But if there was something everybody hated that he felt strongly needed to be in the show, he stuck to his guns. That's what he meant by not writing by poll or writing by committee. That was one of the problems with ST:TOS.

The audience loved the Kirk-Spock relationship, and the writers did as well, because they were fun to write for. Because of this, Trek gradually turned into The Kirk & Spock Show. By the third season Spock was routinely giving Kirk information that should, logically*, have come from the doctor or the chief engineer. This greatly diminished the secondary characters, to the detriment of the series.

So, yeah, I'm sure JMS wasn't thrilled with the way the weapons pod turned out, and it will probably be different in the series. (It was only done the way it was because the original version, in which Sarah's chair dropped into a holo-sphere and she fired the weapons from there**, proved too expensive for the movie's budget.) We'll have to see.

Regards,

Joe

* you should pardon the expression.

** Probably something like the weapons control system in The Last Starfighter, if you've seen that.

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net

An even better example of how Fan Feedback can affect a show was the "Lost In Space" series.

After the first season, someone at hte network found out that 75% of the Fan Mail was addressed to or about "Dr. Smith".

And since most of the scenes with him were also with the Kid & the Robot, the series turned into "Dr. Smith tries to trick The Kid".


Yes, JMS has Always listened to fans.
That's why he spent so much time online during B5.
He Wanted to hear what people were thinking.

He even screened a few episodes at Conventions before they were aired.

Until Warner made him stop.
They told him he Could NOT show completed episodes before the Stations had shown them.

So, the next time he did it, he used a copy that wasn't QUITE complete. Some of the FX and Music wasn't finished yet.


And, he asked us to Promise not to tell anyone what the episode was about, no matter how much they begged.
IOW, he appealed to our baser instincts:
"I know Something YOU Don't!! NYAAA! NYAAA!"



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Do not ascribe your own motivations to others:
At best, it will break your heart.
At worst, it will get you dead."

I don't recall gravity rings. Where were they positioned on Delenn and at what point did they disappear?

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God be between you and harm in all the empty places you must walk.

Starstuff, Delenn had gravity rings in the Gathering, B5's pilot. She used one to shut G'Kar up when he insisted on a military alliance between the Minbari and the Narn and mentioned the Grey Council. If memory serves me well, it was a set of nine rings.

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"You do not make history. You can only hope to survive it."

More precisely, Delenn had a set of high tech devices embedded in rings.

We know that ONE of those rings was the controller for an artificial gravity field.

We have No Idea what the Other rings were for because we never saw her using them.

There is not reason to think that All the rings were gravity control.
After all, why would she need more than One of those?

But, there are all sorts of possibilites for the other rings.
Too bad we'll never know wht they were for.

On the PLUS side, Delenn not using them any more cuts WAY down on the boring and useless "lord of the rings" drivel.



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Do not ascribe your own motivations to others:
At best, it will break your heart.
At worst, it will get you dead."

Amen to that.

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'I don't believe in the no-win scenario' - JTK