What I Hope For Rangers

[channe]

I hope... well, I hope that "Rangers" will make me as emotionally involved with the show and the characters as I was with B5.

B5 ruined normal television for me. I hope that Rangers will continue the trend.

Anybody agree?

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Channe, Freelance Writer Extraordinaire and The Next JMS
--
B5 Synchroninity of the Day: I just found out that the new dorm I'm living in next year has been named Breen Hall.

 

[Jomar]

How could I help but agree with you. However I honestly don't think it will have quite the emotional appeal. I don't believe anything ever will again

I'm not sure I would want to go through another five or six years like Babylon 5. There were times I was so strung out I couldn't think of anything else

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[WarpPig]

I agree with you both completely. B5 was more than just TV for me.. it almost became like a game, studying each ep for that little clue to the future, or the nice visual touch in the background... I also spent hours each week on the net, trying to find the smallest spoiler to future episodes. B5 and Crusade were shows that interfered with normal life unlike any others!

WarpPig

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[bruckner]

I have to agree with you. Babylon 5 seems to have reached out to people like no other TV series. It has been a source of comfort, strength, encouragement and joy. It is the only show that has truly made me think about issues -- like the future of mankind and religion.

I'm hoping that JMS will give us even more to think about with "Legend of the Rangers". It is a different sort of show -- but one that shows tremendous potential. I'm sure a number of moral issues are bound to crop up as they venture out into space.

It's funny how things seem to permeate your consciousness. In watching a show this weekend, I wanted to yell, you are going against the Prime Directive. You can't mess with someone's culture! But, that was a different show -- a different set of ethics!

Anyway, I'm looking forward to "Legend". It's been far too long since my gray matter was challenged by something on the tube.

Sandy




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Sandra Bruckner
Editor/Publisher
ISN News: The Zocalo Today (www.isnnews.net)

 

[RW7427]

I loved the emotional stuff that was in B5. I am fascinated by how characters interreact with one another, what they think, how they feel, all that kind of stuff. B5 had a lot of that in it, and I hope that LotR does as well. I loved watching characters develop and grow and change. That makes a show so much more worth watching in my opinion.

And welcome Sandra Bruckner! It's nice to see you here!

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Long live the Salad Rangers! We live for the Salad Bar, we die for the Salad Bar.

 

[Jomar]

Hi Sandy,

Welcome aboard

I know this is slightly off topic, but I learned more about Babylon 5 from the Zocalo than any other source, and I feel sure you will be keeping us up to date with information about the Rangers movie, and the series too. We're all getting so impatient

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[bruckner]

Jomar,
Thanks so much for the kind words about the Zocalo.

I'm as anxious as you all are about the Ranger project. It's a terrific cast and production crew. Should make a fantastic team working together on a regular basis.

Sandy

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Sandra Bruckner
Editor/Publisher
ISN News: The Zocalo Today (www.isnnews.net)

 

[Mondo Londo]

I think I read somewhere that B5LR would be more "action oriented" than B5 was. Do you think that means "less character driven?"

I hope not, but you can only stuff so much into an hour. I also wonder if the scale of things will affect how we feel about the characters. In B5, so many things had a galatic importance to them -- even things that only had an effect on B5 alone had an impact on 250,000(?) people, right?

So does that mean that these characters will have as much impact on the galaxy as Lt. Commander McHale's PT73 had on WWII? If that's a bad example, how about "Mission Impossible" in space?

Either way, if that's the case, will we care less about them than we did Delenn, Sinclair, G'Kar, Londo, Sheridan, Lyta, Bester, et al?

I don't know...

Obviously, many great works have been about ordinary people. Even about ordinary people in everyday situations. However, the one B5 episode seen through ordinary people (Mac & Bo) has received extremely mixed reviews on this site.

Of course, these won't be ordinary people in ordinary situations; but they won't be the people tipping the fate of the universe in one way or the other at a instant, the way Londo, Delenn, Sheridan, G'Kar, Lyta, etc. did.

The people on this site also enjoyed Crusade, which didn't have as broad a canvas as B5, but it was involved in saving the birtplace of humanity (at least in the 13 episode we had a chance to see). So that's still important stuff.

The Liandra, though, as I understand it, is a castoff ship with a castoff crew (that's why MacHale's Navy came to mind, a bad comparison I'm sure, but...). Will we see it in the same light as something like the NCC-1701 Enterprise?

Please forgive these early morning ramblings. I just wonder if we got too spoiled by the scope of B5 to appreciate anything else.

I'm pretty sure there was another thread about this. There, I listed my expectations and hopes for B5LR to be:

Excitement
Action
Danger
Suspense
Drama
Adventure
and of course,
Fun!

I stand by it.

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"What's up, Drakh?"

Michael Garibaldi

 

[drakh]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mondo Londo:
I think I read somewhere that B5LR would be more "action oriented" than B5 was. Do you think that means "less character driven?"<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Jms had a column on the now defunct Psycomics website. In one of the columns he talked about how characters were the buildng blocks of any story, and that when writing, one should always start with them, and let their motivations shape the plot.

So, no, I don't think Rangers will be less character driven.

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You are not entitled to your own opinion. You are only entitled to your own informed opinion.
-- Harlan Ellison qouting Gustave Flaubert

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>I think I read somewhere that B5LR would be more "action oriented" than B5 was. Do you think that means "less character driven?"<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

No, I think it means it will be less plot-driven. The B5 story was a terrific epic, but its intricate politico-military arc made it inflexible. You couldn't just hare off and do an interesting story unrelated to everything else very often, and some interesting ideas were no doubt tossed because they'd screw up something two years down the line and there was no easy way (or not enough reason) to change the later events. Both Crusade and Rangers were designed to have less intense arcs, in part, for this reason. (The other reason was that JMS didn't want to get trapped by the nature of the show in having to write entire seasons all by himself.)

If anything I think having a show that has an overall end point but more built-in flexibility in getting there will make it easier to do "character stories."

As for comparisons to other shows: I think Mission: Impossible comes closer to it than McHale's Navy. (I think JMS may have used M:I as an illustration himself.) But that doesn't mean the Liandra's missions will be any less important. Even in today's world we don't know how many terrorists attacks or even small-scale wars haven't happened because covert intelligence led to the arrests of the would-be perpertrators or threats of intervention by neighboring powers cool things down.

"If we don't prevent the assassination of 'A' the Drazi and the Gaim will go to war" is a pretty compelling story in and of itself. And every good non- arc show in the history of television has managed to do something similar week after week. With a Crusade or Rangers we'd just have the added bonus of an overall story along with the stand-alone episodes. A different kind of show than B5, but not necessarily an inferior one.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net

 

[GKarsEye]

I will say that the "politico-military arc" is what made me fall in love with the show.

Also, "character" episodes don't need to be considered separate from "plot" episodes. After all, the character is shaped by the plot, and vice versa.

With a show like Rangers, there is lots of potential for great stories, but also more of a risk for some failure, since there's not that much of an arc to support it. It'll go both ways. Overall, we know the quality of the characters that can come out of this franchise, so it's all good.

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"You do not make history. You can only hope to survive it."

 

[bakana]

I have faith that JMS will give us more of the things he enjoys doing:

Kicking all the applecarts over.
Making us Like the characters.
After he's gotten our attention, Mistreating the characters.
Turning our expectations inside out.
Whacking us between the eyeballs with our preconceptions.
Breaking all the "rules" of what you can and can't DO on television.

Oh, and messing with our minds.

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Yes, I like cats too.
Shall we exchange Recipes?

 

[SataiDelenn]

I agree with you all.

I also agree with GKarsEye. The military/political arc was a great thing on the original series. The ongoing twists and turns made me look forward to the next episode like no other series I had ever watched before.

I'm finding something similar with The West Wing. I'm just as much an addict of that show... one of the few non sci-fi shows I will make time for.

But... I also agree with Joe. I was pleasantly surprised when on the odd occassion B5 branched out and did something either loosley related, or not related at all to the Shadow/Earth Gov/Narn-Centauri plot.

Confessions and Lamentations is one of my favourite episodes, and from memory it is not strongly linked to the arc or the many conflicts in other episodes.

What do I want from rangers?

Intense, character driven drama.
Eye popping special effects. (I watch shows for the drama, but have to admit that the effects are also something I love)
Characters I will empathise with, and others I will come to dislike intensley. As much as I thought Cartagia was a fantastic character and a wonderful bad guy... when he met the Great Maker I was almost out of my chair and dancing.
An arc.
Continuity with the established B5 Universe, including Crusade.

That's about it! Not asking for too much!!

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Sheridan: "It's... damn inconvienient!"
Delenn: "The truth often is."