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"TWCBN" Named and "B5:LR" Review

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\"TWCBN\" Named and \"B5:LR\" Review

<font size="+1">"TWCBN" Named and "B5:LR" Review</font>
<font size="3">A little news trickles in</font>

It figures. The one day I'm too busy with RL to get on the computer until afternoon is the day when some actual news turns up. So I've been badly scooped by a number of "B5:LR" readers who have already started threads about this stuff, and have been e-mailing me to tell me about it. I may have to turn in my press pass.
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Item:

"That Which Cannot Be Named" can finally be named. JMS's new series, which starts shooting September 4th will indeed be "Jeremiah" for Showtime, as *some* of us have been predicting for some time.
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The show is an MGM production with Paramount (of all people) providing some of the financing. I got a tip earlier in the week from someone who had seen MGM setting up their booth at the San Diego Comic Con and had spotted a poster for the show, but he swore the title read "Joshua" even though JMS was listed as producer. I decided to wait for confirmation before posting anything to the site about it.

The only thing I know about it plot-wise are some hints JMS dropped almost two years ago, when he was first tinkering with the idea. Once negotiations started he could no longer identify the project, and pretty much stopped giving specifics, only talking about the progress being made on the production side.
So the description that follows may be a little of because (a) I'm doing this from memory and (b) some things may have changed when it came time to actually write the script(s).

"Jeremiah" is a post-apocalyptic tale, loosely based on a French comic book from the 1960s. A mutant plauge bug wiped out every human above the age of 30 or so (a 60s fantasy if ever I heard one.) This leaves the children and young adults to fend for themselves, and it is not clear if the survivors will *also* start kicking off when they hit 30 or if the bug is dormant or dead. The story is rumored to start about 10 years after the initial catastrophe, and center on a now 16-year old kid named Jeremiah and his attempts to survive in this brave new world.

You can read the details from JMS's post in the forum. Something JMS can't yet talk about, because Showtime gets to make such announcements, is who will be writing, acting and directing for the show. But I wouldn't be surprised if Joe Dante ("Gremlins") directs the pilot. Dante has been involved with the "Jeremiah" project since its inception around the time that "Crusade" folded.

Item:

"Ain't it Cool News" is running a "review" of a rough cut (no music or FX) of "Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers." Their correspondent doesn't give any hints about how or where he happened to see it, but it at least *sounds* genuine, based on what we already know about the movie. It contains spoilers, but doesn't go into great detail. If you cut and paste the URL below into your browser, it will take you straight to the review. Frankly, I wouldn't recommend reading it. Those who want to avoid spoilers shouldn't, while those who want to know everything won't find much that is really new.

The most interesting thing about the review for me is that it was written by someone who doesn't seem to be a big "B5" fan, and knows so little about "Crusade" that he speculates that the *music* is what caused its demise. In other words, he's exactly the kind of SF fan that the movie is going to have to attract to score well in the ratings, someone who isn't a dyed-in-the-wool "B5" fanatic. And he was impressed, giving the cast high marks, saying the characters are interesting and that the whole thing had something of the feel of the original "Star Trek." (OK, some people have a very limited frame of reference. At least he didn't compare it to "Voyager."
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The main thing is that it was a positive review and, in the view of the writer at least, the story has real potential as an eventual series.

Here's the URL:

www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=9622

More news approximately when it happens...

Joe
 
Re: \"TWCBN\" Named and \"B5:LR\" Review

Joe, don't know what you're on, but your details on Jeremiah are wildly inaccurate.

1. The first issue of the comic (44 page european "album" format) came out in 1979. The last (so far) was #21 in 1998.

2. The plague is jms' idea. In the comic it was a racially motivated civil war.

3. The plage killed anyone has passed puberty. The series takes place 20 years afterwards.

4. Jms involvment was announced October 2000, after initally turning it down in April. That's less than a year ago. Yuo seem to have it confused with The World on Fire.
 
Re: \"TWCBN\" Named and \"B5:LR\" Review

Well, like I said, my memory of the plot stuff was hazy. However, JMS mentioned a project that he and a "well-known genre director" were thinking about collaborating on when discussing his options right after Crusade folded. He later identified the director as Joe Dante and confirmed that the project was Jeremiah. It had been put on the back burner by the time he and Chris Carter started talking about World on Fire, but I'm pretty sure that it was discussed first.

Thanks for correcting my info on Jeremiah. Now I just have to update the article.
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Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division

joseph-demartino@att.net
 
Re: \"TWCBN\" Named and \"B5:LR\" Review

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Joseph DeMartino:
However, JMS mentioned a project that he and a "well-known genre director" were thinking about collaborating on when discussing his options right after Crusade folded.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>I've been unable to find the message itself, but I found a post by myself quoting/paraphrasing the relevant part:

well known SF producer who sometimes directs

That sounds a lot more like Carter than Dante.
 
Re: \"TWCBN\" Named and \"B5:LR\" Review

Well, I'm having trouble finding the message that I'm referring to. The search engine at JMSNews is not very good as it won't let you check for exact phrases. The result is a ton of irrelevant "hits." But I did find both of these, which pre-date your October 2000 date, and which I also remember having seen the first time around, about six months after I saw the first references to Jeremiah and Joe Dante, putting the time frame in late 1999 or very early 2000.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>4/11/2000

I've had some nice offers, including a project with Joe Dante that I'm very
strongly considering, but in general I'm holding out for something *cool*,
whether it's my own show or someone else's.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>8/26/2000

* it's slated to start with a 2 hour pilot which I'll be writing and is due no
later than December

* it'll probably be shot in Vancouver since there are a lot of locations in it
that we can find in one place only up there

* there's a high profile director attached to the project and that involvement
was one of the real inducements for me to sign on with this because I've always
admired his work in TV and film<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Note that the reference here is to a "very high profile director" not a writer producer who also directs, and that the person he's talking about here has feature film directing credits, which Chris Carter does not.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division

joseph-demartino@att.net
 
Re: \"TWCBN\" Named and \"B5:LR\" Review

My October date was for when jms' involement with Jeremiah was announced on SciFi Wire. This would be the first time he cuold give anything firm on the show.

I also spesifically mentined the jms post you quoted about turning down "the project with Joe Dante.

What I'm trying to say is that I see no evidence that jms was involved with Jeremiah before 2000. I'm quite possitve that the message he posted in 1999 describing his then colaborator specified an SF producer. I certanly belived that at the time judging by my email archive, and so did a lot of newsgroup posters according to Google Groups.

Oh, and you typed 1988 instead of 1998 in the news item.
 
Re: \"TWCBN\" Named and \"B5:LR\" Review

Just would like to point out that there is a tv show with this storyline.I believe it is australian.Not sure but it may be called "the tribe".Its about kids who are the only survivors after a virus wipes out all adults.When they reach a certain age they also become infected.Now I was a big fan of b5 and hope the rangers series gets made,but has jms run out of ideas that he has to rip off an autralian kids tv show.

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Re: \"TWCBN\" Named and \"B5:LR\" Review

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by gp:
.Now I was a big fan of b5 and hope the rangers series gets made,but has jms run out of ideas that he has to rip off an autralian kids tv show.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

A. The source material for Jeremiah is a French comic book. Depending on when the show you're referring to was produced, any copyright infringement would be going in the other direction, methinks.

2. An idea is not copyrightable, anyway, if I've finally been able to wrap my brain around the whole copyright concept. And the idea of a lost tribe of children goes back at least as far as J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan.

Ro




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I have no surviving
enemies. At all.
 
Re: \"TWCBN\" Named and \"B5:LR\" Review

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by gp:
Its about kids who are the only survivors after a virus wipes out all adults.When they reach a certain age they also become infected.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Which is what makes it a completly different show than Jeremiah (where the survivors hawe aged beyond puberty, with many being in their late 20s).
 
Re: \"TWCBN\" Named and \"B5:LR\" Review

The basic situation of "kids surviving on their own with no adults" was also covered in a book that some of you may have read, Lord of the Flies. (Which some would argue has recently been remade as Castaway and Survivor, except that the contestants are only emotionally children.
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The twist with the virus and infection at the onset of puberty was done in the ST:TOS episode "Miri." And a superbug wiping out most of the Human race is the catalyst for Stephen King's The Stand. Truly there is nothing new under the sun.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division

joseph-demartino@att.net
 
Re: \"TWCBN\" Named and \"B5:LR\" Review

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See my post to the "More on Jeremiah" thread for my notes on the 70s TV series Survivors about people trying to rebuild civilisation after a deadly plague destroys most of the world's population.
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Re: \"TWCBN\" Named and \"B5:LR\" Review

I found this old thread when I was helping Antony move posts around into the new forums he has created. Imagine my surprise to find a Jeremiah thread amongst the Rangers threads.
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Interesting to see how it all started huh?
 
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