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Missing ships?

I think you may be beating a dead horse here, Vacantlook. Yeah, there was a goof or two. But sheesh, why make such a big deal of it? JMS and co. are, after all, only human.
 
Maybe they should have done B5 on radio. That would have been a whole lot cheaper and we could have visualized everything ourselves...

:)

Joe
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That is a possibility for JMS's second B5 project. :LOL:
 
Maybe they should have saved a whole lot of money and not shown any of the ships blowing up from the battle. After all, if a person can imagine one ship blowing up, they can imagine them all doing it.
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It's been a few months since I last watched that episode, but didn't Corwin tell Sheridan something about the status of "enemy" ships after the Agrippa blows up?

The reason why they showed the two cruisers arriving in the first place was because if you're launching an attack on a major space station that has support from two EA destroyers, then you better bring support. So, you establish they are there, and then concentrate on telling your story with the main ships doing most of the fighting.

Although they were involved, the main battle was between the destroyers--and that's where the storytelling was taking place. JMS has said the cruisers weren't involved directly against the station; the Starfuries were taking care of them while the station and destroyers fought the main battle. Anything showing the other ships, including their destruction or disabling, would have simply been set decoration, not to mention distracting since we wouldn't have seen them fighting at all by that point--it would have been a jump from arrival to destruction without showing how they were damaged. And that's what JMS is talking about regarding adding time to the episode that they don't have.

Remember that the live action and CGI was done separately, and that because of the sheer amount and complexity of the effects in Severed Dreams, they didn't finish the episode until two hours before it was sent to the stations, which is one of the reasons that episodes have so many flubs. It's possible that adding a line at that point--since all the live action was usually filmed first and they decided to cut out CGI of the cruisers getting hit during editing--wasn't possible.
 
Of course they're human. I never said I expected perfection. In fact, I have previously said in this thread that I understand and expect imperfection in the show. That doesn't mean that it doesn't ever irk me to see it.
 
Hell, they could have just done B5 as a book and avoided having to show anything. Then all we'd have would be words and our imaginations. They wouldn't have to worry about showing or not showing anything that went on.
 
...the Starfuries were taking care of them while the station and destroyers fought the main battle.
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It sure would have been nice to have seen this in the episode instead of having to learn of it online.

Anything showing the other ships, including their destruction or disabling, would have simply been set decoration....
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It's not set decoration to see what happens to two large ships out of four large ships sent to engage in a military action against the main characters and the main setting of the story. Set decoration would be more like a shuttle flying to the station during an establishing shot.

And that's what JMS is talking about regarding adding time to the episode that they don't have.
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If you don't have time to provide resolution to something in a story, you don't put in the setup for that resolution and let it sit there hanging.

The whole issue is minor, which is something I have said repeatedly, yet no one seems to recognize it; instead it seems people only see the complaints. It is minor. Yes, jms and company are human. Yes, it's imperfect. That does not keep it from spawning some form of irk. It does not ruin the episode, but it's still there nonetheless.
 
Since they were in the business of telling a story, rather than submitting a ship inventory to EarthForce, maybe they wanted to show the maxium number of ships arriving for their dramatic impact. <snipping everything else>
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Missing ships? "Fah!," as Londo might say.

Joe, I enjoy so many of your posts, here and on the moderated ng, but _this_ one, I'm snipping out and saving somewhere for the next time someone complains about the color of a jumpgate or what kind of energy beams shoot out of what kind of ships...or how many ships are/aren't accounted for in a scene.

For the life of me, I cannot understand how people interested in this sort of technical detail are able to appreciate Babylon 5 at all; it seems much like analyzing and cataloging a single species of leaf mold on a particular leaf of a specific branch of one tree...while missing the awesome spectacle of the entire forest.

You've just nailed it so perfectly here. Babylon 5, while it certainly maintained a scientific and technical standard far above most sf television that preceded it, was not a documentary program on the Discovery Wings channel: it was a story. JMS is a storyteller, and what caught our attention and kept it riveted for five+ years was the _story_.

I don't know why people wouldn't just assume that ships not seen or otherwise accounted for weren't either destroyed in battle, or retreated. Either way, who cares? If that point was important to the _story_, JMS would have fit in an explanation somewhere.

And to the person who said something about how it would only have taken 3 seconds or so for Corwin to state something about the ships, what 3 seconds of the episode would you have sacrificed for that bit of trivial bookkeeping?

Thanks again, Joe. It's always refreshing to see you state the bleedin' obvious.

Aisling
 
What I find remarkable about this thread is that tempers are rising, and over what? A few pixels on a screen that didn't get shown. In the vast scheme of things, that ranks right up there with how many times Michael Jackson picked his nose as a child.

I don't care who started it, or why this thing seems to be spiraling, but I think life's too short to waste your anger on what seems fairly trivial to me.
 
What I find remarkable about this thread is that tempers are rising... <snip> I don't care who started it, or why this thing seems to be spiraling, but I think life's too short to waste your anger on what seems fairly trivial to me.
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I've been noticing this over on the moderated newsgroup too, and my best guess is that everybody is wound up over waiting for the announcement -- I mean, some people have been on tenterhooks for the entire month of January, and now the first week of February, too. People are arguing about B5, religion, cats even, fer cryin' out loud!

So basically, it's all JMS's fault. :)

Aisling
 
...the Starfuries were taking care of them while the station and destroyers fought the main battle.
Click to expand...

It sure would have been nice to have seen this in the episode instead of having to learn of it online.

Anything showing the other ships, including their destruction or disabling, would have simply been set decoration....
Click to expand...

It's not set decoration to see what happens to two large ships out of four large ships sent to engage in a military action against the main characters and the main setting of the story. Set decoration would be more like a shuttle flying to the station during an establishing shot.

And that's what JMS is talking about regarding adding time to the episode that they don't have.
Click to expand...

If you don't have time to provide resolution to something in a story, you don't put in the setup for that resolution and let it sit there hanging.

The whole issue is minor, which is something I have said repeatedly, yet no one seems to recognize it; instead it seems people only see the complaints. It is minor. Yes, jms and company are human. Yes, it's imperfect. That does not keep it from spawning some form of irk. It does not ruin the episode, but it's still there nonetheless.
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Thank you for pulling apart my post and commenting on the fragments rather than dealing with the argument as a whole. God, I hate that.

My whole point was that they originally intended to show what happened to those ships, but they ran out of time and probably couldn't make the quick fix you suggested (the dropped in line). The shot showing the support ships arriving *had* to remain in the episode because they showed the *main* ships arriving as well, and they sure as heck didn't have time to redo it.

All I'm saying is that the missing fate of the extra ships was unavoidable, and that it really wasn't a mistake (like the misread line or the wrong ship being shown). Rather, it's an editing admission that the creators hoped that the audience would either (a) miss when they first saw the episode, and (b) make the logical assumption of their fate based on what is still in the episode.

I know that you think it's pretty minor--you've said that several times and I agree with that. What I'm disagreeing with is your reasoning that they could have easily avoided the omission, and if you go and reread the responses to your intial post, you'll see that most of them are doing the same. Do you begrudge us the opportunity to debate?
 
Vacantlook,

Far, far more ships were destroyed offscreen in Shadow Dancing than Severed Dreams, so why not focus on the former episode? Hell, in SD we saw the destruction of half the capital ships lost - better than any fight bar No Surrender, No Retreat! So, celebrate what you got, never mind what you didn't.
 
"Shadow Dancing" contained fleets engaging one another. "Severed Dreams" contained four major ships attacking two major ships and a space station. When there are fewer ships, the lack of half of those fewer ships actually being in the fight beyond showing up is much more noticible.
 
They're fighting about cats? Now that's just wrong. (Obviously I haven't been following that thread in awhile)
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Well, I was taking a little license to be colorful -- honestly, you couldn't really call the "what do you mean my obviously domestic shorthair isn't really a Manx cat?" threadlet a fullblown argument. <g>

Aisling
 
I've always assumed they were destroyed by fighters. Hyperion class Cruisers aren't all that big so you get enough fighters on em and they don't amount to much. :cool:

... and I would think that the mix up between the Agrippa and the Roanoke would stick out more than two extra cruisers going missing.
 
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