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Lord of the Rings?

Recoil

Regular
Ok, I know what everyone's first instinct is on this, but bear with me here! I'm trying not to open a complete can of worms. This thread isn't what you may think.

We all know there was a TON of debating going on back when B5 hit the air about how it was a ripoff or based on Lord of the Ring trilogy. (frankly having seen it all the way through, and read the books, I cant see how ANYONE could get LoTR out of season 1 and 2, but hey, thats just me) However there were some interesting parallels between the two. I just saw the Lord of the Rings movie (loved it) and the thought occured to me. Here is a brief summary of the things in noticed similar, THEN I will make my point, which is NOT to compare the two...

<table bgcolor=black><tr><td bgcolor=black><font size=1 color=white>Spoiler:</font></td></tr><tr><td><font size=2 color=black>
* There was a 'Ranger' in the Lord of the Rings Movie
* Gandolfs fall into the underworld could be similar to Sheridans leap at Z'Ha'Dum
* For that matter Khazadum, Z'Ha'Dum, sound similar
* Mordor, Mr Morden
* City of Lorien (Lorien was who Sheridan found at Z'Ha'Sum)
* References to darkness and the shadows when the fellowship was in Khazadum.
* Uniting all the races into the fellowship to face the coming darkness
* Lord of the Rings = LoTR
* Legen of the Rangers = LoTR
</font></td></tr></table>

Ok there were a few that I saw. My question is this. I DONT see that the stories are similar. I dont think they are at all. But I do remember lots of Lord of the Rings people citing a lot of this stuff during season 1 and 2. It kind of stopped around season 3 I think, however some of the examples I listed came AFTER all that stuff kind of died down. Which brings me to my point:

Do any of you think that JMS, being fed up at all the people drawing parallels, started doing things like naming Lorien his name, just to spite, or take a shot or two at the people who were trying to compare the two stories? If he did, I think its pretty damn funny. Even the Legend of the Rangers title, after all these years, maybe he is still kind of 'sticking it to' some of the early critics who tried to compare B5 to Lord of the Rings. So you think that's a possibility or a coincidence?

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

[This message has been edited by Recoil (edited December 22, 2001).]
 
B5 was never a Lord of the Rings ripoff, no. For one, it has no Frodo, no hobbits, and - for heaven's sake, it's missing one of the central characters: the Ring itself.

Babylon 5 evokes LotR in more than a few ways, that's for certain. All of the reasons you mentioned, and more - Elrond's "you must all band together to fight," etc., the rise of the race of Man.

But that's all it is. An evocation. A good chunk of good literature does this.

After all, Tolkien was evoking his prior literature, too...

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The writer's life is not meant to be a happy one. We all accept that going in. -JMS
 
Well the similarities in several names certainly do stop and make you think a sec, I still believe that the similarities are no more then casually related.

The fact is that Lord of the Rings is the basis for the fantasy genre as we know it today. Because the books were so encompassing, its actaully hard (in my mind) to not see similarities (especially in theme), in any scifi/fantasy show, especially one as epic as Babylon 5.

Just My Humble Opinion...

Xzalkis

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Every time someone starts a thread like this, we get to re-post what JMS said about it. He was Very Open about what he was doing, so there Is No Mystery.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR> Re: the name Rangers ... hey, when you grow up watching The Lone Ranger, and spend lots of time researching the Texas Rangers when you work (briefly) on Walker ... certain names spring unbidden.
jms

The Rangers actually owe more to the Lone Ranger and the Texas Rangers in general.
jms


I was the Supervising Producer brought on under Executive Producer David Moessinger when "Walker, Texas Ranger" was first being produced for CBS. I left in fairly short order to do B5, which had already been commissioned prior to doing Walker...
jms

... that isn't the reference I was talking about. Being on that show, I kinda had to look into the history of the Texas rangers in general, and being the curious kind of guy I am, I widened out into the Army Rangers, and other sorts. I'd been looking for a kind of name to attach to this group, and the more I thought about it, the more it fit.

As far as the costume is concerned...it's not medeival based; if you look at the ranger's outfit, than go look at a Minbari warrior outfit, you will discover a LOT of points of comparison. It was *designed* to echo Minbari warrior caste clothes, to reflect the fact that these two sides are working together. Go fire up "Legacies" and look at his uniform, then look at the ranger. You'll see the similarities in silhouette and line in various places.

Of course I've read and enjoyed Tolkein. But as I've said, I have no interest in doing LoTR with the serial numbers filed off. I've dropped references to it in dialogue, but the structure of the story has nothing whatsoever to do with LoTR. Basically, a lot of people have come up and said, "Oh, this is the same as Foundation," or "This is the same as LoTR," or "This echoes a lot of Dune," or "This is obviously a Homeric tale," or "There's a lot of Star WArs here." It uses the same tools as all mythic structure fiction uses. Hence it resonates. But I didn't sit there and think, "Hmm...Gandalf left, so I'll have Sinclair leave." That's just plain silly.

It's really a matter of what you bring to the table, that affects what you see in the story.

The roots of the symbolism and structure of B5 go back a hell of a lot longer than this. Here ... I'll give you one free.

G'Kar is in many ways my Cassandra figure, who in the Greek tales was granted the gift of prophecy ... all the disasterous things she predicted would come true ... but she was cursed by the gods that NO ONE would ever believe her. And later, when the war was at its height, she ended up in the service of.....

Okay, five points to the person who can supply that answer, and see the connection.
jms

The interesting thing for me in this and related conversations is that I frequently notice messages indicating that:

"jms is doing the whole Kennedy thing,"
or it's the Lord of the Rings,
or it's Dune,
or it's tracking the Bible,
or it's following Yeats ...
or it echoes Shakespeare, as in this case.

In a way, they're all right, and in a way, they're all wrong. Right in the sense that in trying to create myth, or a story using traditional epic structure, you can see echoes not only between B5 and other such stories, but also between those other epics. The mistake is in thinking (and this isn't directed at you, just sorta woolgathering) that it is in fact a parallel to any one of them. That leads you into the error of the blind men each touching a part of an elephant; if you think the trunk IS the elephant, you've erred, and all conclusions that follow are thus skewed incorrectly.

To the question of Shakespeare and Londo ... yes, there's some resonance there, because Londo is an almost archetypal tragic/comic, or romantic/tragic figure. There was certainly a fair amount of Falstaff in him; references to consulting three technomages certainly resonates with MacBeth being "endorsed" as it were by the three witches. You can look at Londo and see Lear, or Hamlet, or others ... and they all resonate to one degree or another, but none of them is wholecloth.

Right now, all that most viewers have of the B5 story is a piece of the elephant, and are assuming that that *is* the elephant. Another good comparison would be to say that if you stop a reader part way into The Lord of the Rings, they'll assume it's all about some hobbits on the road, having adventures. Because they don't yet know about Mordor, or Sauron, or the Rings, or Rivendell, or the sheer *scope* of the thing. I don't think anyone has yet twigged to what this story is, really.

One of the things really lacking in American culture, I think, is a sense of *myth*. So the story of Babylon 5 has a very mythic kind of structure. I think that's important. Which is why a lot of the elements I draw on aren't traditional television devices...literature, poetry, religion, hard SF, metafiction, Jungian symbology...there are an awful lot of ingredients in this particular pie, culled from the less likely aisles in the supermarket. You have to remember that my degrees are in psychology and sociology, with minors in literature and philosophy. So my tastes and predilections and resources are fairly eclectic and lean toward the classical. (How else to explain an atheist who's read the Bible cover to cover *twice*?)

And I think I just answered your question in far more detail than could possibly have been desired....
jms
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

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The 3 most common elements in the Universe:
Hydrogen, Greed, Stupidity!
 
Yea,

I know the stories are totally different, and that its totally cool to toss in a reference or two. The only reason I thought it may have been more of a shot at the people who were openly criticizing that he based it on was the whole season 4 finale thing. He did that little 'Faith Manages' as stab at all the people who were saying all season long that B5 was gonna get cancelled. So I thought it may have been possible he tossed in a few references just to irritate the LoTR fanatics out there who wouldnt give it a rest
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. Thanks for the quote Bakana, I have seen some of the stuff in there before, but certainly not all of it.

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'I don't believe in the no-win scenario' - JTK
 
A similarity in the occasional name doesn't make it a similar story. I read LotR many years before I saw B5 and I could never see a connection when people started asking JMS about it. As stated above, JMS has a huge background in literature of every genre and once in a while he subconsciously uses a name such as Lorien because it fits.
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I always seem to be diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
 
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..there are no original ideas, only original combinations..
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Gary

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Ome of the things to note about JMS posts is that it WASN"T just Rings.

Every troll out there seemed to find some favorite prior work that JMS just HAD to be ripping off.

All except the Correct ones, that is.

So far as I know, not a single troll figured out that it was "The Lone Ranger".

Guess JMS should have named a character "Tonto".
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The 3 most common elements in the Universe:
Hydrogen, Greed, Stupidity!
 
I couldn't get over how much Aragorn reminded me of Marcus Cole. I SERIOUSLY believe that JMS used Aragorn as a character type for Marcus, but really made Marcus his own character. I also think that the actor who played Aragorn held a striking resemblance to Jason Carter. Did anyone else hear that Carter tried out for Aragorn? I read that on the Jason Carter Fan Club bb.


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Ivanova is always right. I will listen to Ivanova. I will not ignore Ivanova's recommendations. Ivanova is God. And if this ever happens again, Ivanova will personally rip your lungs out.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Pointing out the similarities is not meant to be accusatory or degrading, just interesting...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You're correct of course, but what you may not appreciate is the history of thing kind of thing vis a vis B5. People actually did accuse JMS of ripping of The Lord of the Rings and other things in so many words. An entire website was devoted to proving that there wasn't a single original thought in the entire B5 concept and that JMS was nothing but a hack who stole from others. The original, UNmoderated B5 newsgroup was awash in this kind of thing, and it sensitized a lot of the fan community to it. So some of us have something of an allergic reaction to seeing Lord of the Rings paired with Babylon 5.

Also don't forget that there are new fans discovering the show all the time, and some of them do post threads saying, "Gee, this is just like LotR? Did anybody notice? Did JMS base the show on the books?"

It is one of those things that just comes up from time to time, like questions about Claudia Christian's and Michael O'Hare's departure, which just become wearing for those of who remember the "Babylon Wars" of old.
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Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division

joseph-demartino@att.net
 
Another thing that people forget is that almost the whole of Star Trek fandom accused JMS of ripping off DS9. I think that angered him more than anything else under the circumstances.
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I always seem to be diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
 
No, JMS did not rip off Tolkien or Trek or Star Wars or any of that.

He obviously stole most of his concepts from Dr. Seuss.

Seuss: One fish, two fish
JMS: G'Kar's song about fish

Seuss: Cat in the Hat
JMS: John and Delenn's conversation about cats and their Minbari equivalent

Seuss: I would not eat them on a boat
JMS: Military stylised after the navy (boats).

Suess: Whoville
JMS: Who are you?

Seuss: Was called Doctor
JMS: "Doctor" Franklin

JMS also stole from other sources. Ivanova's first name, "Susan," was used by the American women's suffragist Susan B. Anthony, and don't even get me started on the name "John."

The concept of a space station was done before in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, NASA and the Soviet space program. In fact, the idea of using alien life forms wasn't original either.

Even the title isn't original. "Babylon" was an ancient civilisation, and "Five" is the name of a number.

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"You do not make history. You can only hope to survive it."
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR> ...what you may not appreciate is the history of thing kind of thing vis a vis B5. People actually did accuse JMS of ripping of The Lord of the Rings and other things in so many words. An entire website was devoted to proving that there wasn't a single original thought in the entire B5 concept and that JMS was nothing but a hack who stole from others. The original, UNmoderated B5 newsgroup was awash in this kind of thing, and it sensitized a lot of the fan community to it. So some of us have something of an allergic reaction to seeing Lord of the Rings paired with Babylon 5. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Oh, okay, I see. If the comparisons have gone to those extremes and have gotten that controversial, then people's reactions to such make more sense. If done in moderation and for the right reasons, I still see it as harmless. However, it looks like a few people have ruined for people like me who see the discussion of the similarities and just fun trivia.

That's a shame. Thanks for clearing things up though.

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An Old Egyptian Blessing: May God stand between you and harm in all the empty places that you must walk.

Thoughts & prayers to soldiers fighting overseas and to their families.
 
"If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

If your only frame of reference is Star Trek or Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings any other work that resembles it in any way seems to be "based" on it. Some people take this to extreme lengths, especially if they are entirely ignorant of the sources their own favorites drew upon.

B5 bears a much closer resemblance to the old pulp magazine space opera by "Doc" Smith, the Lensmen series, than it does to Tolkein. (Although it handles a similar structure and some related themes in an utterly different way.) Still people looked at B5, especially in the first two seasons, and saw the following:

1) The Minbari are an older, peaceful, spiritual race that seems to be acting as mentors to Humans. Therefore Minbari = Elves.

2) The Narns must be the dwarves.

3) Delenn is one of the elven princesses, fated to marry a "mortal"

4) The heavy use of foreshadowing, prophecies about the return of an ancient enemy, the very name Shadows and the Shadow Eye (similar in some ways to Sauron's restless Eye.)

5) Delenn, of course, used a set of "magic" rings in the pilot. (Quickly dropped and ignored thereafter.)

These were indeed similarities, but that hardly meant that JMS took them from Tolkein. In fact, both borrowed many themes from many of the same sources. And all epics or would-be epics have certain things in common, if they didn't we wouldn't have the single collective name of "epic" to cover them.

Everyone seemed to see a similarity between Sheridan's fall at Z'ha'dum and Gandalf's at Khazad'dum - but they missed the rather obvious differences. Both went where they went despite warnings - but Gandalf went knowing he risked his life, while Sheridan went on a conciously suicidal mission. Gandalf knew he might not return, Sheridan didn't expect to. Gandalf dies essentially by accident, caught by the Balrog's whip just as he is about to escape - Sheridan calls down the White Star, then deliberately leaps into the chasm at the urging of Kosh. And Sheridan leaps to seek the one slim chance of surviving his own plan. The whole point of his going to Z'ha'dum was to call destroy the Shadows at the cost of his own life. That was hardly Gandalf's intention in braving Moria. The Sheridan/Z'ha'dum event has much more in common with the myth of Orpheus in the underworld (which he, too, braves to save his lost wife) than it does with Tolkein. Not surprisingly, since JMS has said that he had Orpheus in mind when he created that part of the arc.

Certainly the name Z'ha'dum was meant to ressonate with "Khazad'dum", and certainly both authors chose the names they did for their sound, and for syllable "doom", which makes the name themselves foreshadowing for the story.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division

joseph-demartino@att.net
 
I agree with Joe that just because there are similarities A, B, and C, it does not mean that B5 is a ripoff of LotR because of differences X, Y, and Z.

However, I think the point of these threads that look for the similarities is not to accuse JMS of ripping off Tolkien, but to just have fun pointing out the similarities. It's trivia and nostalgia. Maybe the part of me that likes that kind of thing is a leftover aspect of my Trek-trivia geekiness that infected my body in the early '90's.

Yes, maybe B5 is actually more like one thing than another, but it doesn't mean it's not also an original work too. Even *if* JMS had ripped off every basic concept from one place or another (and I'm **not** implying he did), he still found an original way of combining it all together.

Pointing out the similarities is not meant to be accusatory or degrading, just interesting, and if somebody wants to point out the similarities it shouldn't mean that people should leap out of trees and climb out of holes to point out two differences for every similarity. Let people just have fun with it.

Sorry, rant over.

P.S. Holy crap, what happened to the smiley faces? I just noticed. They changed since this morning!

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An Old Egyptian Blessing: May God stand between you and harm in all the empty places that you must walk.

Thoughts & prayers to soldiers fighting overseas and to their families.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by GKarsEye:
He obviously stole most of his concepts from Dr. Seuss.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Good catch. But you missed the most damning evidence of all:

JMS wrote B5 using the same twenty-six letters used by Dr. Seuss.

I think that should eliminate any remaining doubts.

(Actually, my favorite one of these was from Usenet several years back, where somebody proves that B5 was just a remake of The Dick Van Dyke Show.)


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-- Marty

[This message has been edited by MartinRoth (edited December 24, 2001).]
 
I'd just like to take the time to remind everyone that in my first post, I was not saying that B5 = LoTR, or anything like that. I was merely wondering if some of the similarities were put in there intentionally by him to piss off those people Joe D spoke of back in the day, just like JMS added that 'faith manages' line at the end of Season 4 as a jab at everyone saying B5 was gonna get cancelled. I agree with everything everyone has said, I just wanted to make sure that people didn't skip over that part of my post and miss the whole point. I wasnt trying to open up a 7 year old can of worms
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'I don't believe in the no-win scenario' - JTK
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>I was merely wondering if some of the similarities were put in there intentionally by him to piss off those people Joe D spoke of back in the day...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think this is absolutely the case with Legend of the Rangers, which could hardly be an accident and which he couldn't possibly have missed. For the rest, we have the chicken and egg problem.* Most of the direct references to Tolkein (like, "Expect me when you see me") pre-dated the heavy "he's ripping off LotR feeding frenzy. After that point JMS conciously minimized such allusions. (Although I have a feeling he kept the name Lorien just to piss 'em off.
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)

* (Which reminds me of an old New Yorker cartoon. An anthropromorphic chicken and egg are lying in bed together, the chicken looking happy and the egg puffing on a cigarette. The egg is saying, "Well, I guess that answers that question."
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)

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division

joseph-demartino@att.net
 
Well, it's definitely a sore subject.

I was in the Genie Babylon 5 SFRT discussion when JMS dissappeared from the online community for several days.

When he came back, we found out that he'd been offline because some Troll had gone to a lot of trouble to convince JMS that not only was the Troll a fan, but that his KID had done a "great" piece of Babylon 5 art specially as a gift for JMS and that it was attached to a particular E-Mail.
Begged JMS to look at the art and E-Mail something Nice to the kid about it.

JMS being a sucker for kids, opened the attachment.

A few seconds later, he realized what was happening and hit the OFF switch on his computer.

The Trojan Horse program had already erased his hard drive. The only thing left was a text file with the message:

"Star Trek Rules!"

He lost two or three completed scripts and rough drafts of a couple others. He had to try to reconstruct everything from paper notes and rough draft printouts.

So, yeah, some of us are still sensitive and become angry over Trollish sounding comments.




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The 3 most common elements in the Universe:
Hydrogen, Greed, Stupidity!
 
GKarsEye,

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I think you bring up an interesting concept. *chuckles* I like it!


MartinRoth,

Ohh, do you still have the material that proved how B5 was like the Dick Van Dyke Show? I would love to read that.
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bakana,

I have heard that story before, but I never heard what was lost because of it. Man...
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Ivanova is always right. I will listen to Ivanova. I will not ignore Ivanova's recommendations. Ivanova is God. And if this ever happens again, Ivanova will personally rip your lungs out.
 
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