10 years since Z'ha'dum

[Chris Springob]

10 years since Z\'ha\'dum

One of the lines that always struck me from "Sleeping in Light" comes from the beginning of the ep, when Sheridan says to Delenn "It was....20 years ago that I died on Z'ha'dum." It's hard for me to wrap my brain around 20 years, as I was only 21 years old when SiL aired, and am 29 now.

Well, to get some sense of how long that is, it's now been 10 years since "Sheridan died on Z'ha'dum", so we're halfway there. The episode first aired in the UK on September 22, 1996, but didn't air in the US until late October '96. In Minneapolis (where I was living at the time) I specifically remember that it aired on the night of Halloween--Oct. 31st, 1996--10 years ago today. So if the show was being broadcast in "real time", we'd still have to wait another 10 years for "Sleeping in Light".

 

[Jade Jaguar]

Re: 10 years since Z\'ha\'dum

So if the show was being broadcast in "real time", we'd still have to wait another 10 years for "Sleeping in Light".

If it had stayed a property of PTEN, that would probably be the case.

 

[Mike G]

Re: 10 years since Z\'ha\'dum

Why did the season finale air at the end of October?

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Re: 10 years since Z\'ha\'dum

Why did the season finale air at the end of October?

Because they held the last four episodes of each season to air immediately before the start of the next season. So the week after "Z'ha'dum" aired, we saw "The Hour of the Wolf".

As for why anyone would do such a thing...

I'll tell you what. If you ever find out, drop JMS a note and let him know.

All I can say is, "It was PTEN". It is a bit like answering a question by saying, "It was the 60s." It isn't very satisfying to the questioner, but sometimes that's the only answer there is. You really did have to be there, because there's no way to describe it to someone who wasn't.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Mike G]

Re: 10 years since Z\'ha\'dum

Fair enough.

 

[GaribaldisHair]

Re: 10 years since Z\'ha\'dum

I believe JMS frequently pointed out the obvious point that airing the season finale immediately before the start of the new season kind of rendered the end of season cliffhanger redundant.

I much preferred C4's approach in the UK of airing the season finale, waiting a few months and then sneaking the new season into the schedule with nothing but a few late night promos to let us know it was coming.

 

[darth_librarian]

Re: 10 years since Z\'ha\'dum

I watched it in the UK, on a tiny TV in some student halls.

That was 10 years ago? Now I feel old...

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Re: 10 years since Z\'ha\'dum

I much preferred C4's approach in the UK of airing the season finale, waiting a few months and then sneaking the new season into the schedule with nothing but a few late night promos to let us know it was coming.

Of course, the best was the end of season 4, where PTEN's weirdness proved both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because the delay made it possible to shoot "Deconstruction" as the first episode of the S5 production run and swap it for "SiL". (Otherwise S4 would have had only 21 episodes and no proper cliff-hanger, which is something you still want as a climax to the season for reruns and home video.) A curse, because by the time PTEN made the last four episodes available to its local affiliates the stations all knew that a) there was going to be a season five and b) they weren't getting it. So instead of having what amounted to a 26 episode season starting in late September, they had only four episodes of a series that was being continued elsewhere. So a lot of them simply dropped the show. Others found something with more staying power in what had been the B5 slot and burned off the last four at odd hours. (In my area, after bouncing around in different timeslot in S1 and S2, the series ran consistently on Saturdays at 7 PM on my local UPN affiliate - it was, in fact, the lead-in to Voyager. )

But the last 4 episodes of S4 ran at 3 AM on Sunday morning. There were no on-air announcements of the move, nor was the local paper's TV Book ever given a program note to run. I only knew about the change because I went to read the description of the next episode, saw it wasn't there on Saturday at 7 or any other night in normal evening hours and then went through the book line by line until I found it. Called the handful of local fans that I knew and set my VCR.

The result was that millions of fans who didn't know the show had been moved, or who watched on affiliates who had dropped the show outright, didn't see the last four episodes of S4 until TNT reached the end of the first cycle of reruns. Fans asked that they show the last 4 of S4 before beginning S5, or slot them in early in the 6 PM reruns, but there was really no practical way to do this. Most fans had seen the "final 4", so they'd just be annoyed at having them rerun so soon before getting to new episodes. Also TNT had been heavily promoting the show as their first venture in weekly series production and they weren't going to push the debut back 4 weeks in order to run episodes that hadn't been produced for the network. And running them in the up-front in the rerun strip was a disservice to those who were just coming to the show through the reruns.

It must have been pretty disconcerting to go from "Intersections in Real Time", with Sheridan being interrogated and the rebellion seemingly on the verge of collapse to "No Compromises" with Sheridan being sworn in, married to Delenn and all chummy with Garibaldi again. And then having to wait about 16 weeks for the reruns to get to then end of S4.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Chilli]

Re: 10 years since Z\'ha\'dum

I much preferred C4's approach in the UK of airing the season finale, waiting a few months and then sneaking the new season into the schedule with nothing but a few late night promos to let us know it was coming.

And then there is the approach my TV channel chose .. the approach of letting people wait 1 1/2 YEARS. GAH!

That was brutal .. and I, too, am feeling old.

 

[PillowRock]

Re: 10 years since Z\'ha\'dum

I believe JMS frequently pointed out the obvious point that airing the season finale immediately before the start of the new season kind of rendered the end of season cliffhanger redundant.

And, of course, PTEN's airing strategy meant that the logical place to put a big cliffhanger (*purely* from the POV of the initial airing run) would be at the fourth from last episode of the season.

 

[KoshFan]

Re: 10 years since Z\'ha\'dum

Just be grateful that it did air.