I'd just like to remind people of the value of well-written reviews: they tell you explicitly what you did well and what you did badly. If B5LR goes to series - and I hope that it does - then there will be a wealth of reviews and comments saying what people liked and disliked. Unfortunately, too many will be of the "it rox" / "it sux" type, but there will also be constructive reviews that the rpoducers and writers could look at to help them improve what they are doing. The web is probably the wrong place to look for these, for the simple reason that it will contain a huge number of reviews and comments, making the job of sorting through and collating them excessive, and because quality control is a lot harder on the web. Published reviews, on the other hand,
may be considered.
Taking Christopher Pike's AICN review, he says at one point:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>the ship's gunner-babe has to dive into a VR bubble to operate her vessel's defensive systems When she does this, we see her flying through VR-sim space like Superman (one arm back, one arm, thrust forward), hurling balls of flame out of her hands and feet (representing her ship firing at its opponent). We almost never cut away too see her ship actually *doing* anything in battle. It's all told from her point of view. This chick is flailing about (with poor wire work), discharging fireballs from nearly every orifice of her body, blowing-up stuff we can't see clearly. A really bad way to draw viewers into the tension of battle. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
So maybe the producers look at that comment and say, "hey, maybe we don't make it clear enough. Let's work out how to establish that better in the series." Or they note the comment about the wirework and see how they can make it look better.
As fans of B5, we all want to see the new movie, and we want it to be a success and go to a series which is as good as, if not better than, the original show. But we have to understand that, for whatever reason, it might fail. And when we approach reviews, we have to understand where the reviewer is coming from and what they are trying to achieve with their review. A well-written review is a good review, whether it says that the product being reviewed is good or bad.
Not sure where, if anywhere, this is going now. I don't think anyone would interpret this as an attack on themselves, but that is certainly not the intention. I am, I suppose, simply asking that people understand...
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", fp );
