• The new B5TV.COM is here. We've replaced our 16 year old software with flashy new XenForo install. Registration is open again. Password resets will work again. More info here.

The Aborted Reboot

I'm gonna' put this down to my incomprehensible sense of humor again :)

Having thought about it for a couple months now, I'm torn. On the one hand, there's no real NEED for a reboot, ...

Can you explain this? The whole 'need' thing keeps coming up these days (not just here) and I don't really get it. When is there ever a 'need' for anything to be remade/rebooted/re-imagined? Romeo and Juliet was just fine without having been re-imagined as West Side Story. Many radio shows didn't 'need' to make the change to television.

It's hard to explain as I'm of three minds about it. On the one hand, the story is the story is the story, and as a writer myself, you go with what you've established and don't go back and retcon or redo things. That's cheating. On hand #2, what I REALLY want is a conclusion to B5/Crusade/Rangers/Telepaths/Whatever, and that is clearly not going to happen at this late date. And if the story is ever told (unlikely) it'll have to be recast, which likewise ain't a-gonna' happen. And the first season is slow, and the 5th season is a disappointment. So, yeah, I find myself looking lustfully at the idea of redoing it. Mostly this is confined to how I'D do it, if it were up to me. But, y'know, y'wonder...

As to the rebooting: Epic stories get retold again and again and again. Sometimes badly, sometimes better than ever before. There was no NEED to rewrite Romeo and Juliet, but it's been done a dozen times in a dozen different venues because it's a solid story that means someting to people.

There was no need to remake Battlestar Galactica, but they did anyway. There was no need to revive Star Trek, but people wanted it. There was CERTAINLY no need to reboot Trek, but they did it anyway. This is just the nature of things.

... and there's many neat moments that would be lost if it was rebooted.

Lost how? Everything will still be right there on the DVDs of the show already made. And there might be new and equally wonderful moments in a reboot.

I meant in the context of the new story. I'm telling the story of King Arthur, say. There are still a few beats I want to hit, and if the previous version did a beautiful version scene X, and mine is just kinda' perfunctory, then it's lost to (my version) of the story as a whole, get it?

I mean, come on, Joe! You're not Roddenberry! You've got more than one trick in you! We believe in you!

I know you're only referring to (space based?) TV but really, JMS has already long ago proven he's not a one-trick-pony by virtue of his work in comics and movies as well as TV with Jeremiah. If you haven't checked those out, you're depriving yourself.

Jan

Friends, Centauri, Countrymen, I come not to bury Straczynski, but to praise him.

See, I said "Joe! You're not Roddenberry! You've got more than one trick in you!" What that means is that I *KNOW* Joe is not a one-trick pony. At this point his continually circling back to B5 every few years is kinda' starting to annoy me. Conversely, Roddenberry's continual pimping out of Trek was entirely understandable because he WAS a one-trick pony, that was all he had. He'd spent 20 years proving that he had not another damn idea in his head.
 
And I think Jan's point is that Joe's been publishing work that has nothing to do with B5 pretty much non-stop ever since the end of the show.
 

Latest posts

Members online

No members online now.
Back
Top