B5 sets were destroyed many years ago

[Lord Refa]

I picked this from JMSnews.com:

>>...when we finished B5, all the sets were demolished, no
>>bits and pieces of it remain...

This is difererent from what he (JMS) said before, that all the sets were in storage.

Should we take this as a confirmation that there are no more B5 sets for future use?

 

[sputnik]

actually i think he referred to the 'crusade' sets being packed and stacked by WB - indicating that the show wasn't quite dead.

i don't believe jms ever suggested that the B5 sets were kept, after all there's no plan/story left to tell with those sets following the successful 5 year story.

 

[channe]

There would be no reason to keep the B5 sets in storage if nothing was going to be done with them. I always thought that they had been destroyed after the show ended.

 

[gangster]

That was before "Ebay." Nowadays I suspect a lot of stuff that previously would have been destroyed or thrown away will be kept so it can be sold to fans.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
That was before "Ebay." Nowadays I suspect a lot of stuff that previously would have been destroyed or thrown away will be kept so it can be sold to fans.

[/quote]

Unlikely that a major studio would auction such items off via eBay. That's for fans and other individuals. A studio would use a legitimate auction house, or hold the auction at an SF convention (probably with some or all of the proceeds going to charity.) Actually Warner Bros. considered selling off the B5 sets, but while the people talking about it were hemming and hawing, SOP kicked in and the sets were destroyed.

Everybody remembers correctly, JMS only said that the Crusade sets had been saved, never that the B5 sets had been. Regarding sets in general, here's everything that JMS had to say on the subject in that particular post:

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
No. Most of the B5 sets were scrapped after we finished production, in large measure because they'd just gotten trashed over 5 years of shooting, and because WB didn't want to pay to store tens of thousands of cubic feet of sets for a show that was done. (This is par for the course on all series, btw.)

We saved a small number of the B5 sets for Crusade (part of the zocalo, some conference rooms, a couple of quarters and a hallway, that's about it) since we were going to be going back and forth to B5. But when Crusade went down, those sets were also elimated, as were the sets for Rangers.

This may seem like a bigger deal than it is; TV sets are not like feature film sets, they are made from lesser grade lumber, and they're not finished to the same degree because TV is more forgiving visually. You can get away with things that will appear on a small set that you could never get away with on a
big screen.

If someone said "Okay, do a new season of (fill in the name of the show)," the costs of building new sets would be probably about the same as if we'd stored all those tens of thousands of feet of old set for X number of years, and which would also have endured more wear and tear through the fold-and-hold process.

Why pay all that money to get old sets when you can pay the same amount and get new ones?

jms

[/quote]

Regards,

Joe

 

[Lord Refa]

so JMS said some of the sets were saved, I guess that's different from being stored. I knew they kept some of the sets for crusade, and assumed they were stored when the crusade sets were.

I thought they stored the sets because it was difficult to recreate them to look the same.

We all now the result of losing the virtual sets...

 

[Valen2k1]

WB held an auction via Ebay last year where they liquidated quite a few Babylon 5 props and costumes.

The Minbari Dream Chalice, B5 Security armor, the metal Psi Corps ID bracelet from one of the telepaths in stasis were all among many other items.

MGM sold a truckload of SG-1 stuff last year on Ebay.

Lucasfilm had Ebay auctions of Star Wars original art and items after 9/11, the proceeds were donated to the American Red Cross.

Columbia Pictures auctioned original Spider-Man props and costumes via Ebay after the movie was released. Someone paid several thousand dollars for ONE of Spidey's boots.

I think we're going to see this sort of thing on Ebay more and more as studios notice the market for this sort of memorabilia. It makes financial sense. Why pay to store it (or worse- destroy it) when they can sell it, and write the proceeds off on their taxes as a charitable donation? Ebay also makes sense as it would reach a FAR larger number of potential bidders worldwide than a physical auction.

 

[RW7427]

I agree with what channe said. If JMS had no more plans to continue the B5 story, then there would be no reason to save the sets from B5. He only designed the show to last 5 seasons, and that it did. He has stated that 5 years was all the he wanted. He has finished telling that part of the story.