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Did God save the Babylon 5 Story?

QMCO5

Member
I watched the DVD introduction to the 5th season and was interested in the brief comment JMS made on Claudia Christian’s departure from the show and the impact it had on the story. I remember from USENET posts contained in the Lurker’s Guide that Ivanova would have been the new CO of B5 in the 5th season and have a doomed romance with Byron. (Talk about heaping cruelty on a character!) I began to reflect how fortuitous it was for the story that Claudia left. If she had stayed it would have been all wrong reality-wise. The idea that Ivanova could fall for that Messianic nut-case is too incredible to believe. The Lyta-Bryon story is totally believable. Ivanova was also the face of resistance against EA and probably wouldn’t function well as a symbol of reconciliation. Lastly, from my military experience I don’t believe that a President of the Interstellar Alliance would have recommended or the EA would have approved a newly promoted Captain to take over B5, regardless of her inside knowledge. (We know why Sinclair got the job even though he wasn’t qualified.) In fact, the reason Sheridan gives Lochley for recommending her makes the whole point. Lochley was a seasoned Captain and served on the other side in the civil war. So, it seems to me that JMS planned a particular story direction for Season 5, but Claudia’s failure to re-sign enabled a course correction for the novel into a more logical direction, making JMS look even better as a writer.

QMCO5
 
So, when Claudia walked off the show "God sent her"? :)

I think you're missing the entire dramatic potential of the story with Susan in place, based on a desire for the kind of military "accuracy" the show wasn't exactly known for in the first place.

1) Susan's involvement would have been brief, more a rebound affair after the death of Marcus, whom Byron superficially resembled, combined with a rose-colored-glasses view of his struggle against Psi Corps. She would have regained her senses quickly enough. However...

2) She would still have been much more conflicted through the whole thread, especially when she faced her moment of truth and had to be the one to call in Bester to end the crisis, and she would have been emotionally devastated by Byron's death. (Remember the cold, angry Ivanova of "Sleeping in Light"? She would have been born here.)

3) Susan would have been brought into serious conflict with her friend and mentor John Sheridan for the first time in their relationship as their separate duties to the Earth Alliance and the Interstellar Alliance diverged.

4) The fifth season would have finally paid off the "Susan-as-latent-telepath" and "Susan vs. the Psi Corps" arcs that had been building ever since "Midnight on the Firing Line".

While JMS made the best of a bad situation in creating Lochley as an unexpected kind of character, there would have been nothing "illogical" or wrong about Susan's being given the commmand. The status of B5 was ambiguous to say the least after the end of the Earth Civil War and the founding of the Alliance. The IA was leasing the place and the EA was only going to be handling day to day operations. It was primarily returning to its early role as a commercial port, since the diplomatic mission was being taken over by the IA, and its military role was much less important in aftermath of the Shadow War. It was no longer a prime post or the fast track to promotion. Most EF officers who were effectively "neutral" like Lochley (didn't rebel, but also never got illegal orders that would have compelled rebellion and never got any unfiltered news about Santiago, Clarke or the true situation about Earth) or who actively supported the government (those not court-martialled after the war) would not want the job. There was still a good deal of anti-alien feeling on Earth, especially in the military, thanks to Clarke's propaganda, memories of the E-M war and the fact that in the end Sheridan's fleet was supported by the Minbari, Narn, Centauri, et. al.. Other than Lochley herself it is hard to think of anyone from "the other side" that Sheridan could have trusted or found acceptable. So barring Lochley he would have nominated a rebel anyway, even if it wasn't Susan.

I find it far more surprising that EarthForce would promote Ivanova to command one of its newest and most secret ships given her recent history, than that it would leave her in place at a station everyone had mixed feelings about and where the job was no longer so demanding as to require a more senior officer.

Regards,

Joe
 
I don't understand the reasoning that Ivanova could not have taken over as Captain of B5, but I partially agree with you about Ivanova & Byron. I have a hard time seeing Ivanova in the Byron subplot as well. I think it might have messed up her character slightly. The subplot does seem to fit Lyta better.

However, JMS is a good enough writer that perhaps the subplot would have felt significally different with Ivanova instead of Lyta. Byron was able to play on Lyta's sense of being used by the others as nothing but a weapon. If it had been Ivanova, he would have played on Ivanova's resistance to the Corps itself for what happened to her mother.

If the subplot was always supposed to be there, it could be that Byron would have been different given a different character to interact with.
 
I thought I would tweek everybody in the title since B5 characters invest the "universe" with similar power. :)

As for military accuracy I've been known to be picky on that subject, because I naturally notice those things as I watch any show or movie with military elements. Yet, over all JMS did an excellent job reflecting military organization.

You may have partly misunderstood my point. On an emotional level I would have loved for Ivanova to continue, although as much as I despised the Byron character I wouldn't have enjoyed seeing her get mixed up with him. I'm not as convinced that she would exhibit the proverbial pendulum by quickly falling into an affair. If she really deep down loved Marcus, I think it could take her a long time to deal with the grief. I also don't see completing an arc about Ivanova as latent telepath. She was not even a P1 by her own admission and Bester never expressed any interest in her even though he knew about her mother. To me her telepath story was over with Ship of Tears. Season Four doesn't bring it up again, so I don't see that there is a story to complete after that.

I also don't think your conclusion that Ivanova would have made a logical choice for B5 Commander necessarily follows from the conditions you name. The elimination of the Commander's role as a diplomat and the resurgence of B5 as a commercial port would argue more for a civilian administrator (kind of like Bremer in Iraq), especially since the military presence comprises only a very small percentage of B5 population and is mainly needed for security. It would be like a number of small military installations in the US that have been turned over to local governments for commercial purposes and the locals then turn around a lease a portion of those same installations to tenant military organizations.

Giving Ivanova charge of a new class of ship may seem strange, but she would certainly be qualified with her White Star experience. I don't know of anyone better than Ivanova who could put a new ship through a thorough shake-down. (I still don't understand why JMS couldn't have brought Ivanova back with her new ship for a two-part episode like he did Sinclair. :confused:) As an alternative she could also have been selected as the Commandant of the Top Gun School for starfury pilots. Franklin went back to Earth; why not her?

Oh well. I just hope she has a good part in the new movie.

QMCO5
 
...the military presence comprises only a very small percentage of B5 population and is mainly needed for security.

Not true. Although the show makes much of the "quarter million humans and aliens" who are on the station at any given time, about 99% of those people are transients, aboard for a few days or weeks as tourists or for business purposes, or merely stopping over to change ships. The permanent population of merchants, maintenance workers, shop and restaurant employees, dock workers military personnel is small, and the military contingent is probably the largest, since it would also include all the normally unseen engineering and technical crew who maintain the reactors, atmosphere, water and waste management systems, the core shuttle, the maint and security bots, etc.

Since the majority of the residents were military, the station had always been run by Earthforce, the arrangement was only going to be for a year, and since the future of the station and everything else was very much in flux, it made more sense to maintain the status quo rather than try something as novel as introducing a civilian administrator. (The analogy with Bremer and Iraq is completely innapropriate, by the way. In Iraq we wanted to lower the profile of the U.S. military as early as possible, even before there was any suitable Iraqi civilian authority, and so used Bremer as a kind of half-way point in returning power to the Iraqi people. B5 was an Earthforce installation being temporarily leased to the IA for a year, after which it would revert to 100% Earthforce control.)

If she really deep down loved Marcus, I think it could take her a long time to deal with the grief.

Well, JMS, who created the character, disagrees with you. So guess whose isight I'm apt to trust? :) What Marcus's death taught her is that you can't wait for everything to be perfect, sometimes you have to take love when it is offered, because you might lose the chance forever in an instant. She rejected Marcus because of her own fears and it would make sense that her awareness of what she had missed with him would encourage her to ignore any doubts she felt about Byron, because of what attending to her doubts had cost her before.

I also don't see completing an arc about Ivanova as latent telepath. She was not even a P1 by her own admission and Bester never expressed any interest in her even though he knew about her mother. To me her telepath story was over with Ship of Tears. Season Four doesn't bring it up again, so I don't see that there is a story to complete after that.

"To me..." And that's the problem. You're assuming that the story has no more potential than your rather blinkered view of it. Bester did not know that Ivanova could initiate contact with her mother. As a P1 Ivanova would not have been much of a teep, but she also wouldn't strictly have been a "normal" either. She would have been thrown out of EarthForce and put on sleepers if detected. That was a threat hanging over her since S1. You obviously missed this major character point. And that's not the half of what you missed. You may want to go back and watch the series again, this time paying special attention to everything involving Ivanova and telepathy.

And of course JMS didn't do a lot with this thread in S4. He didn't think there was going to be an S5, remember? That's why he didn't introduce Byron and his teeps late in the season. He didn't want to open new plot threads that he was never going to be able to resolve, or complicate existing ones. That's why Franklin asks Garibaldi if he should book two flights to Minbar in "SiL" - because JMS assumed that we'd never Garibaldi and Sheridan's continuing relationship in S5. But don't forget that it is Delenn, Lyta and Susan who are touched by the Shadows early in S4 - no one else on the crew. Lyta is a telepath, Delenn is "sensitive" to Shadows. Why Susan?

Trust me, she still had issues to deal with. Her relationship with Lyta would also have developed in S5 (with Susan being a rival to Lyta, whose love for Byron would have been unrequited in this version of the story. She would still have become his successor after his death. How would that have affected her and Susan? Intereting questions. Still think there was "nothing there"?)

I still don't understand why JMS couldn't have brought Ivanova back with her new ship for a two-part episode like he did Sinclair. :confused: )

Because Claudia Christian left effectively without giving notice and on very bad terms with JMS and most of the cast. She then spent months waging a very public fight with JMS, falsely claiming he had fired her, that TNT and WB tried to cheat her of residuals and a number of other absurdities. (The basic SAG contract sets the conditions for residuals. No studio could evade them or would be stupid enough to try. Residuals are calculated according to different formulas for basic cable shows than they are for first-run syndication shows, which may have been the source of Claudia's confusion.) She later admitted that she had quit the show, but by then production on S5 was over. While they were still shooting the series neither JMS nor most of the cast would have had any interest in bringing Claudia back for a guest shot, and it is unlikely that she would have accepted had one been offered. Michael O'Hare had left on good terms with JMS, his decision was made early enough that JMS was able to plan adequately for it, and not only did they agree to O'Hare's return for "WWE" in S3, the actor also agreed to shoot the messages that Sinclair would leave for Garibaldi and Delenn before he left Los Angeles at the end of production on S1. Two totally different situations.

JMS was fond enough of the character of Ivanova that he brought her back to B5 (and let her meet Capt. Lochley early in 2262) in the short story "Hidden Agendas".

I'm glad that hatches have been buried and everyone is friends again, and also hope that Claudia (and Susan) will figure prominently in TMoS

Regards,

Joe
 
You may have partly misunderstood my point. On an emotional level I would have loved for Ivanova to continue, although as much as I despised the Byron character I wouldn't have enjoyed seeing her get mixed up with him. I'm not as convinced that she would exhibit the proverbial pendulum by quickly falling into an affair. If she really deep down loved Marcus, I think it could take her a long time to deal with the grief. I also don't see completing an arc about Ivanova as latent telepath. She was not even a P1 by her own admission and Bester never expressed any interest in her even though he knew about her mother. To me her telepath story was over with Ship of Tears. Season Four doesn't bring it up again, so I don't see that there is a story to complete after that.

One of the side effects of Ivanova having sex with Byron may have been to turn her from a latent telepath to a full one. One consequence of this is that if anyone found out she faces instant dismissal from Earth Force. This happened to Harriman Gray in ‘Eyes’. Being a teep would make her eligible to join Lyta’s rebels in the telepath war.

Giving Ivanova charge of a new class of ship may seem strange, but she would certainly be qualified with her White Star experience. I don't know of anyone better than Ivanova who could put a new ship through a thorough shake-down. (I still don't understand why JMS couldn't have brought Ivanova back with her new ship for a two-part episode like he did Sinclair. :confused:){snip}

Oh well. I just hope she has a good part in the new movie.

One possibility. To win the rebels will need experienced tacticians and strategists to lead them. In ‘Between the Darkness and the Light’ Susan was basically acting as an admiral when she lead the White Star fleet against the new technology destroyers. The new Warlock craft appears to be a heavily armed marine/gropos transporter. After a couple of invasions Ivanova would able to plan land battles as well as space battles. A secret telepath with experience of winning battles, just the sort of person the rebel teeps would want as one of their generals.
 
Regarding Ivanova's promotion to a warship -- I find it believeable. Some captains would be quitely "retired" following the civil war, and bringing in a noted rebel to a prominent command would help seal the breach. Also, perhaps EarthForce was trying to make it absolutely clear to Sheridan that they were going to fulfill their promise to persecute no one on his side -- except him. Plus, as Andrew pointed out, she'd led an entire fleet, all of the ships involved being more powerful than most EarthForce ships.

As to why they gave her a new Warlock ship, with Shadow tech in it, I don't know.
 
I think the Holy Leprechaun would have preferred Ivanova because she was so much hotter than Lockley.

*I didn't just say that out loud, did I? :confused: :eek:*
 
... and the military contingent is probably the largest, since it would also include all the normally unseen engineering and technical crew who maintain the reactors, atmosphere, water and waste management systems, the core shuttle, the maint and security bots, etc.

So it means that those two asses from "A View from the Gallery" were military?
I wonder how the Station didn't blow in 2262?
It was really God that save Babylon 5!!! :LOL:


Almir
 
I guess we will have to disagree.

If Babylon 5 followed the same pattern as the real military then all the people that handle community services and tation maintenance functions on B5 are civilians. DoD began contracting out those services decades ago. Your claim that the military comprises the majority of residents lacks proof. The fact that you see some of these people wearing uniforms don't make them military.

I haven't had access to JMS as you have, so I'm not familiar with what he actually said about Ivanova's feelings re Marcus. I defer to your superior knowledge on that subject. Nevertheless, my experience confirms what I've said and the actual show is canon, not what might have been.

I definitely concur with you in anticipation of seeing Ivanova again.

QMCO5
 
I guess we will have to disagree.

If Babylon 5 followed the same pattern as the real military then all the people that handle community services and station maintenance functions on B5 are civilians. DoD began contracting out those services decades ago. Your claim that the military comprises the majority of residents lacks proof. The fact that you see some of these people wearing uniforms don't make them military.

We lack a name for civilians permanently attached to the military. They are not proper civilians - it is legal for the enemy to bomb them whilst on the base or in the armaments factory.

I haven't had access to JMS as you have, so I'm not familiar with what he actually said about Ivanova's feelings re Marcus. I defer to your superior knowledge on that subject. Nevertheless, my experience confirms what I've said and the actual show is canon, not what might have been.

JMS's postings are archived at the site www.jmsnews.com
 
As high priest of the Holy Leprechaun, I declare the Lochley is, in fact, way hotter than Ivanova.


Ok, I can't address the military stuff as well as Joe D, but I like to think I know a thing or two about women and drama (two things which are so related...)

Having Ivanova fall for Byron would be absolutely believable. And here's why:

- Everyone falls for the wrong person sometimes. Repeatedly. Often at the wrong time, and with dire consequences. Frankly, IMO, I consider it a positive learning experience, as long as no one gets literally abused or there any kids that result in the mistake.

- Ivanova has issues with personal trust. Everybody abandons her- including Markas, even if he did do it to save her life. Coupled with the guilt (when she says she didn't want him to save her, she means it), she is extremely vulnerable. Being with someone as a "substitute" for someone else you can't have happens all the time. There is a good chance that if you were ever in a short-term relationship, you yourself have been such a substitute.

Ain't love a bitch?

- Ok, so she could fall for the wrong guy- but why Byron? Remember that Byron is only an annoying prick to us, the viewer. To most characters in B5, he is a charasmatic leader trying to do the right thing for an oppressed people. That is a stronger babe magnet than any sports car.

- Most importantly, she wouldn't actually be in love with him, she would think she was in love with him. But it would be a feeling born out of frustration, fear, and loneliness.
 
Ivanova also realized, too late, that she really loved Marcus. She had played her usual game of keep away and had ended up robbing both of them at the chance of happiness, if only for a little while. Even if Marcus's death had happened just the way it did, wouldn't it have been less bitter for both of them if they'd been lovers for the year leading up to it?

Ivanova had all sorts of "good" intellectual reasons for rejecting Marcus's overtures. So when Byron takes the initiative with her - a teep, an enemy of Psi Corps, someone trying to achieve justice without recourse to violence - her very doubts would make her more likely to fall for him. She'd doubt her own misgivings. She'd had misgivings about Marcus, too, after all, and look what happened there. She would almost have forced herself to give Bryon a chance, for fear of repeating the mistake she'd made with Marcus. She would have felt that much more betrayed when he turned to blackmail and events spiraled out of control, realizing that in the end he talked a good game but had none of Marcus's genuine nobility.

Regards,

Joe
 
Even if Marcus's death had happened just the way it did, wouldn't it have been less bitter for both of them if they'd been lovers for the year leading up to it?

Ya. Ivanova's life and outlook is based on the idea that she could die any day- something I guess all career military folks have, but she has it even more (and being involved in multiple wars to save the galaxy certainly enhances that attitude). If she would have at least had something with him, she could at least heal from the grieving better by cherishing what little time they did have, rather than being filled entirely of regret.

Regret sucks.

And Marcus has himself to blame. He never made a move. Pfft, virgins. :rolleyes:
 

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