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Originally Posted by General Zod
JMS is a shitty writer. He over-writes and can not sustain tone. It doesn't help he puts brings together some of the worst actors.
The dude who played Garabaldi and the first Captain of B5, ugh. Dullsville. The chick who played Ivanova-PU!
I can not decide of B5 is ioverrated due to the shitty acting or tedious writing.
And he gets no support from me just for his dismissal of Deep Space 9. The last great sci-fi and the last great trek series.
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Ditto, Zod. IMHO, B5 was decent but suffered from JMS' rigid adherence to his "five year arc" and his insistence on writing almost every episode. As much as I admire his ablility to get the thing made, B5's quality suffered greatly because of that. What was great about DS9 was that they had story arcs but were never severely constrained by them.
O'hare was such a bad actor that the network had to jettison him (against JMS wishes) like they did half the cast from the pilot. Yeah, it worked out for the better story-wise, but that was just the first of several instances that the Powers That Be had to step in and save the show from its creator's egocentric lack of objectivity.
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Originally Posted by dudalb
"So in a nation with a couple hundred million television sets, it only takes 9,000 people from the internet to write in to a studio to get a show greenlit?"I am not surprised that a fanboy would think that. That somebody who has been in the business as long a JMS has would believe that shit surprises me. And if he is just blowing smoke up the fans' ass, he can find better things to do with his time.
I am still puzzled why JMS would feel the need to go out and, essentilly, troll for the job.
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Well, his whole Fanboy Plea just reeks of trolling and desperation. Knowing people who worked on B5 and its spinoffs, I 'm not surprised. I am, however, embarrassed for the man. All his whining about "political considerations" is just that -- whining. For JMS to have been in the business this long and not know that nearly every aspect of it is "political" tells me that he's either hopelessly naive or simply upset that Paramount didn't take his pitch (I suspect the latter). The fact is that creatively, Manny Coto was doing a fine job in retooling the show. The ratings were down too much from Berman & Braga's 3 years of crappy story telling. JMS knows that, he just doesn't care.
What I heard from two separate sources in the Paramount TV division after JMS made his "pitch" early last summer:
1) The JMS/Zybel pitch was shot down by the TV brass, NOT Berman & Braga, for being "very derivative and not very exiting" (the exec assistant's words, not mine). He apparently didn't just want to take over ENTERPRISE, but had a grand scheme to reboot the whole Trek franchise with some convoluted story arc.
2) A new showrunner was being brought in by the brass ( against B&B's wishes) to help inject ENTERPRISE with much need creativity and try to get the show back to its roots. His storytelling and ability to be true to the franchise caused them to choose him over JMS and Zabel (who I think is a huge hack). His name? Manny Coto (I found that out later).
So, there are your "politics". I think you can all piece together what happened. The Paramount execs aren't perfect but if they thought they could make money off of JMS idea, he'd be in like Flint. Manny Coto didn't have half the track record of JMS anfd their decision to hire him later proved to be wise (albeit way too late).
The fanboy pandering is not only unprofessional (that's what agents are for), but just plain pathetic.
Even B5 fans agree. From IGN:
" God knows that I love Babylon 5 and admire a great number of JMS's achievements as much as or more than most people but some of Joe's statements just seem a little off center. First of all, to exempt Star Trek: the Next Generation from the list of Trek series gone wrong just because "Gene was around to shepherd its creation" is an uncharacteristically naive statement from someone that's been around the television business as long as JMS. Star Trek: the Next Generation was an incredibly flawed show that survived because of an exceptionally strong cast that people wanted come back to week after week. The only similarities it had to the original Star Trek was part of the title and the name of the ship.
If the original Trek was a product of social changes and turmoil of the late 1960's then ST:TNG was definitely a product of the Ronald Reagan / George Bush terms as President. It was the kinder, gentler Star Trek with all of the edges filed down to nice, soft curves that wouldn't risk cutting anyone. Every Trek series since the original has had some good science fiction stories along the way, the law of averages would dictate that over seven years of a series you're bound to hit one out of the park every now and then but none of the series, TNG included, could really say they were holding up their end of the deal as far as being true to the original concept was concerned. Roddenberry's involvement with the day to day production was minimal at best, a figurehead that Paramount could use to help promote the series. As one friend who worked on the series told me at the time, "Gene would pop in from time to time to screw up everything we were working on then leave again for a few months."
In all fairness, Roddenberry had been in failing health prior to the startup of TNG and a lot of the ideas used during the first season came from work that Roddenberry had done for the failed Star Trek II series Paramount had hoped to use to launch a fourth television network in the 1970's. Paramount would later use the same strategy when the studio launched UPN (United Paramount Network) with the two hour premiere of Star Trek: Voyager. A look back at the writer's guide and the scripts actually written for that series show's the direction Roddenberry wanted to take. The original series was as much a collaborative effort as it was an original creation of Gene Roddenberry. No, from the time he walked through the front door, the man running the show was Rick Berman.
Berman has never been interested in producing a Star Trek series. As he would tell people working on the series, their only job was to make sure they could get the audience to stick around for the next commercial break. Sure, that's the job of any television series but the original Trek managed it in such a way that you would not only sit through the ads, you couldn't wait until next week's episode. Until the last four seasons or so of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, there wasn't a Trek series that could make that boast. And there has yet to be another one, partially because the target market has changed. The original Trek was unique; the later incarnations have had to try to not only live up to the original but to every other SF series since.
Which brings us to the author of the above usenet post, J. Michael Straczynski. Straczynski's Babylon 5 was one of the most original and groundbreaking television series since the original Trek and he deserves every accolade he's been given for his work on that series. His work adapting to post-apocalypse comic, Jeremiah was some very entertaining television. But the post trying to whip the Babylon 5 and Star Trek fans up to stage a campaign against the studio to somehow install himself as the new benign dictator of the Trek franchise smacks not only of arrogance but seems to indicate an even larger problem, that of a leader of a cult of personality.
Considering the talent involved, I have no doubt that Straczynski and Zabel's Trek pitch would be some entertaining television. Considering the combined disasters of Crusade and Legend of the Rangers, JMS would be better off getting Zabel's help fixing the Babylon 5 universe before trying to put their stamp on someone else's franchise.
Unlike almost any other genre, science fiction television and movies seem to breed this kind of cult-like admiration for talent. Like Gene Roddenberry, Straczynski has his share of blind followers that will praise his every success and excuse his every failure. Having an audience like that surrounding you is kind of like Elvis being surrounded by his Memphis Mafia; no one is going to tell him no, constantly praise his every idea and he'll honestly believe that he has the ability launch the kind of campaign that would get a major studio to consider putting him in charge of the most successful television franchise in history. Considering the problem with the person currently in charge, it would be just this side of insanity to hire someone like Straczynski after a campaign like this. At that point it wouldn't matter if JMS and Zabel had come up with most incredible take on the Trek franchise since Roddenberry shot The Cage, that kind of baggage and headache you just don't need.
Worse yet, once he started getting the faithful ready to drink the special kool-aide and get to work sending everything from emails to virgin sacrifices, he decided to call the whole thing off. Around 12 hours later, JMS posted a second message to tell the troops to stand down:"
IMHO, the guy's waay too complimentary of B5, but at he can see the forest through the trees.
JMS "apology" comes off as egocentric tripe. Whatever he posts, it always comes off as Moses coming down from the Mountain to "speak" to the people. But given how much the fanboys work themselves into a frenzy at his posts, maybe I shouldn't blame the man.
Or as IGN put it:
"Oh, man..... and we already drank the kool-aid........ On the bright side, there should be several pairs of lightly worn sneakers available by this time tomorrow."
