Joseph DeMartino
Moderator
There being little else to do with regard to B5 at the moment beyond continuing to be bummed about Richard Bigg's passing and waiting for an announcement from Warner Bros., I decided the play the "title game" again. Since Dan Dassow of the Mod was kind enough to sort the list of titles that JMS said included the correct one into alphabetical order, I decided to see if it could be whittled down to something managable by eliminating titles according to some relatively objective rules.
The list started out with 506 entries. I started with three assumptions:
1) The "TMoS" could be either a final or a current working title
2) That case matters in the title, and therefore the "o" had to both be included in any guess and represent a word that would not be capitalized in a title
3) That even for a working title JMS would use something straight-forward and not whimsical or too "in-jokey"
(In fact, I don't think JMS would have released the initials of something that he knew was merely a place-holder or working title, but I was trying to make as few assumptions as possible.)
These three assumptions led me to immediately eliminate all purely "joke" titles, meaning everything with "Spoo" or "Straczynski" in the title, as well as all titles that either missed the initials or strained to cover them "TV-Movie or Series", "The Movie Script", etc.)
Amazingly enough after applying just those rules and not even trying to weed out titles I though inherently unlikely because they were bland, silly, or hard on the ear, and even having missed a couple that should have been cut, I found I had reduced the total to 48. Fewer than 10% of the guesses posted to the Mod turned out even to be worth considering. Amazingly at this point the list didn't contain a single guess that didn't start with the word "The"
Next I cut all the titles I thought too generic ("The Men of Space"? Puh-LEEZ) or too "inside" to mean anything to the general public ("The Mastery of Shadowtech", "The Metamorphosis of Sinclair") or too clunky to advertise. (The last title I mentioned could have been cut under both rules. "The Migration of Technomages" is another that strikes the ear with a dull thud.)
That got the list down to 32:
The Madness of Souls
The Magic of Shadows
The Makers of Shadows
The Making of Shadows
The March of Shadows
The Mark of Shadows
The Marriage of Sinclair
The Marriages of Sheridan
The Mask of Sorrows
The Master of Shadows
The Masters of Silence
The Meaning of Silence
The Memory of Shadows
The Memory of Sheridan
The Merchants of Souls
The Merging of Souls
The Migration of Souls
The Mind of Sheridan
The Minion of Shadows
The Minions of Shadows
The Moment of Silence
The Movement of Shadows
The Movement of Sinclair
The Movement of Starlight
The Movements of Shadows
The Movie or Series
The Murder of Souls
The Mystery of Sheridan
The Mystery of Souls
The Myth of Shadows
The Myth of Sheridan
The Myth of Souls
At this point I would do some further cutting. Despite the precendents of The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock, I seriously doubt that JMS would use a title with either Sheridan or Sinclair's name in it. (In fact I'd say the chance of Sinclair's name being used is zero since it seems unlikely he could be a major character in the kind of film WB is likely to want.) Neither has the exotic and memorable sound to American ears that both "Khan" and "Spock" do, and neither is a household word. One of the things a movie title needs to do is help sell the movie. It has to be something that at the very least intrigues the audience. (The Chronicles of Riddick ressonates with both history and fantasy titles and suggests an epic story, even to those who haven't seen Pitch Black.) The one possible exception to this is The Myth of Sheridan, since the word "myth" undercuts the bland ordinariness of "Sheridan", and a trailer identifying Sheridan as a living man would make people wonder what myths there could be about him.
Anyway, eliminating the titles that I think too obscure, too personal or too aethetically or marketing challenged leaves us with this group:
The Mark of Shadows
The Mask of Sorrows
The Master of Shadows
The Memory of Shadows
The Memory of Sheridan
The Merchants of Souls
The Minions of Shadows
The Moment of Silence
The Movement of Shadows
The Movement of Starlight
The Movement of Shadows
The Mystery of Sheridan
The Myth of Shadows
The Myth of Sheridan
The Myth of Souls
I suspect the actual title (assuming it doesn't change between now and the release date) is on this list, and that it is more likely that it contains the word "myth" and/or the word "shadow" than that it doesn't.
What do you all think?
P.S. You can access the full initial list that I worked from here.
Regards,
Joe
The list started out with 506 entries. I started with three assumptions:
1) The "TMoS" could be either a final or a current working title
2) That case matters in the title, and therefore the "o" had to both be included in any guess and represent a word that would not be capitalized in a title
3) That even for a working title JMS would use something straight-forward and not whimsical or too "in-jokey"
(In fact, I don't think JMS would have released the initials of something that he knew was merely a place-holder or working title, but I was trying to make as few assumptions as possible.)
These three assumptions led me to immediately eliminate all purely "joke" titles, meaning everything with "Spoo" or "Straczynski" in the title, as well as all titles that either missed the initials or strained to cover them "TV-Movie or Series", "The Movie Script", etc.)
Amazingly enough after applying just those rules and not even trying to weed out titles I though inherently unlikely because they were bland, silly, or hard on the ear, and even having missed a couple that should have been cut, I found I had reduced the total to 48. Fewer than 10% of the guesses posted to the Mod turned out even to be worth considering. Amazingly at this point the list didn't contain a single guess that didn't start with the word "The"
Next I cut all the titles I thought too generic ("The Men of Space"? Puh-LEEZ) or too "inside" to mean anything to the general public ("The Mastery of Shadowtech", "The Metamorphosis of Sinclair") or too clunky to advertise. (The last title I mentioned could have been cut under both rules. "The Migration of Technomages" is another that strikes the ear with a dull thud.)
That got the list down to 32:
The Madness of Souls
The Magic of Shadows
The Makers of Shadows
The Making of Shadows
The March of Shadows
The Mark of Shadows
The Marriage of Sinclair
The Marriages of Sheridan
The Mask of Sorrows
The Master of Shadows
The Masters of Silence
The Meaning of Silence
The Memory of Shadows
The Memory of Sheridan
The Merchants of Souls
The Merging of Souls
The Migration of Souls
The Mind of Sheridan
The Minion of Shadows
The Minions of Shadows
The Moment of Silence
The Movement of Shadows
The Movement of Sinclair
The Movement of Starlight
The Movements of Shadows
The Movie or Series
The Murder of Souls
The Mystery of Sheridan
The Mystery of Souls
The Myth of Shadows
The Myth of Sheridan
The Myth of Souls
At this point I would do some further cutting. Despite the precendents of The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock, I seriously doubt that JMS would use a title with either Sheridan or Sinclair's name in it. (In fact I'd say the chance of Sinclair's name being used is zero since it seems unlikely he could be a major character in the kind of film WB is likely to want.) Neither has the exotic and memorable sound to American ears that both "Khan" and "Spock" do, and neither is a household word. One of the things a movie title needs to do is help sell the movie. It has to be something that at the very least intrigues the audience. (The Chronicles of Riddick ressonates with both history and fantasy titles and suggests an epic story, even to those who haven't seen Pitch Black.) The one possible exception to this is The Myth of Sheridan, since the word "myth" undercuts the bland ordinariness of "Sheridan", and a trailer identifying Sheridan as a living man would make people wonder what myths there could be about him.
Anyway, eliminating the titles that I think too obscure, too personal or too aethetically or marketing challenged leaves us with this group:
The Mark of Shadows
The Mask of Sorrows
The Master of Shadows
The Memory of Shadows
The Memory of Sheridan
The Merchants of Souls
The Minions of Shadows
The Moment of Silence
The Movement of Shadows
The Movement of Starlight
The Movement of Shadows
The Mystery of Sheridan
The Myth of Shadows
The Myth of Sheridan
The Myth of Souls
I suspect the actual title (assuming it doesn't change between now and the release date) is on this list, and that it is more likely that it contains the word "myth" and/or the word "shadow" than that it doesn't.
What do you all think?
P.S. You can access the full initial list that I worked from here.
Regards,
Joe
