How good are the script books?

[Recoil]

TSpeaking of stretches, think of "In the Beginning" and the doc-and-Sheridan-peacetalk mission

Yes, I couldn't agree more. I think I mentioned that very thing in another thread. It wasn't a part of the story that had to be told with Sheridan or Franklin. That G'Kar and Lennon could have done it with just about anyone there. I always felt that was stretching things just a bit. Good word.

 

[Chilli]

I think the framework and idea was already there, its just when O'Hare left the show and BB came in, they took Sakai's arc and gave it to Anna Sheridan. It can't be a coincidence that BOTH of them ended up working with IPX and exploring things out on the rim...right?

Also, Sinclair's girlfriend in The Gathering (Caroline?) was already a pilot, constantly off in deep space where she might have potentially encountered scary things. I do think that plot line was going to be *someone's*, from the start.

 

[Recoil]

Yep, good point.

 

[Jan]

Volume 11 of the Script books went on sale today at the reduced price of $29.99 for the first week. Coupon code GASHESWORLD will give an additional $5 off and is said to be good until the 24th of this month. This one has the longest introduction yet at 72 pages.

Jan

 

[KoshN]

Volume 11 of the Script books went on sale today at the reduced price of $29.99 for the first week. Coupon code GASHESWORLD will give an additional $5 off and is said to be good until the 24th of this month. This one has the longest introduction yet at 72 pages.

Jan

Thanks for the coupon code, Jan. I ordered Vol. 11 and the Karma throw pillow a few minutes ago.

 

[raw_bean]

Doh! I ordered the book before looking here. Oh well, I'll use the coupon code as an excuse to buy a couple of quote mugs! Thanks Jan.

 

[PillowRock]

That may be the Party Line, but I don't think I'll ever be convinced that is ENTIRELY what happened. It may have been a part of it, or something in the back of his mind he was formulating, but I still believe there were other factors that lead to O'Hare flat-out leaving the series. Factors we will probably never truly know about.

Well, the full version of the "party line" has always been that at the end of S1 all of the relevent parties wanted basically the same thing ...... but for completely unrelated reasons.

JMS had by then decided that previously planned coincidences of having that one character personally tied in to all of the sides of the story wasn't the best way to write it.

PTEN suits wanted a series lead with a higher TVQ rating than O'Hare provided.

O'Hare, a lifelong East Coaster, after one year in California preferred not to live on the West Coast for four more years of a series (visit for a week or two for a guest shot now and again: sure; live there full time for the run of the series: no).


Now, we'll probably never know who felt most strongly, or who first said out loud that taking O'Hare completely out (save for a couple guest shots) was a realistic option. But the rough generalities of the above convergence doesn't seem at all unlikely to me.

 

[Sindatur]

I was under the impression that evenafter JMS had made the decision that the entire arc was too much for only Sinclair (and would have to bring in the character who became Sheridan) that he still didn't intend for Sinclair to leave quite so early?

 

[Jan]

I was under the impression that evenafter JMS had made the decision that the entire arc was too much for only Sinclair (and would have to bring in the character who became Sheridan) that he still didn't intend for Sinclair to leave quite so early?

I've never seen anything to indicate that. What I recall is that he'd realized that the Sinclair character would have been relegated to being more of a catalyst (had he stayed) while the Sheridan character was brought to the forefront.

 

[Sindatur]

I've never seen anything to indicate that. What I recall is that he'd realized that the Sinclair character would have been relegated to being more of a catalyst (had he stayed) while the Sheridan character was brought to the forefront.

I remember from a commentary or something that he said he realized it was unrealistic for Sinclair to be everything to the arc that Sinclair and Sheridan made up, so he decided he had to split the arc between two characters, but, I thought Sheridan was meant to come in a half season or a bit more later, rather than starting right at the beginning of S2.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I was under the impression that evenafter JMS had made the decision that the entire arc was too much for only Sinclair (and would have to bring in the character who became Sheridan) that he still didn't intend for Sinclair to leave quite so early?

He didn't intend for Sinclair to leave at all. The original plan was to have the "Sheridan-like" character (who wasn't quite Sheridan as we know him because he didn't need to be) added to the story in essence to fight the Shadow War, which he would do with the advice and help of Sinclair. "Sheridan" would take center stage in that part of the story (basically seasons 2 and 3) with Sinclair coming more to the fore again in S4 and S5. (The Earth and Minbari Civil Wars and the founding of the alliance.)

JMS has often compared Sheridan and his part in the story to Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, the military hero who complements Frodo's Quest Hero. Imagine if at the end of LotR Frodo had destroyed the Ring, raised an army in the south, ridden to the rescue of Gondor, married Arwen and been revealed as the long-hidden heir of Isildur and rightful King of the Reunited Kingdom.

But when he first conceived of the "Sheridan" character, it was as an addition to, not a replacement for, Sinclair.

As for "Anna" being either Carolyn Sykes or Catherine Sakai - it doesn't work that way. The independent star pilot character was supposed to get into trouble with Earth's megacorps, probably a way into the Shadow Tech and black projects storyline that JMS had already been planning. The "lost wife" story was never planned for Sinclair. JMS's whole problem with Sinclair and the Shadow side of the story was that Sinclair didn't have a personal connection to it and JMS had never planned one for him. So he couldn't very well have written the Sykes character and later Sakai with that in mind. Instead when he started to consider splitting the arc between Sinclair and another character he came up with the dead wife as a way to tie that character into the Shadow War in the same way that Sinclair had been tied into Minbar since the pilot. At one point he considered make Garibaldi into the character who later became Sheridan, and JMS may have put Lise Hampton in place to give him an option there. (Since the network was also pushing him for a hot-shot pilot type for season two, he briefly considered making this character the one with the dead wife, but decided it was a bad idea.)

Everybody who tries to sell the "Anna/Sykes/Sakai" angle conveniently forgets that Sinclair's women were very much alike and both merchant pilots, whereas Anna was nothing like either and merely a scientist on an expedition.

Regards,

Joe

 

[vacantlook]

I have always wondered that had Sinclair stayed, and jms went about introducing the Sheridan-like character while Sinclair was around, if that Sheridan-like character would have held a similar place in the story in relation to the main characters that General Hague ended up having. In other words, a big military guy in EarthForce that wasn't part of B5 but popped in now and then (just with a bit more frequency than Hague ended up having).

As for the whole Anna/Sykes/Sakai thing, I would say it would have worked slightly different for Sakai than it did for Anna. Anna was with those that woke the Shadows, I figured Sakai would have been just randomly captured by the Shadows for use in a ship quite some time after they had been woken up by Morden and crew, but with Sakai out of the picture and a connection needing to be forged between Sheridan and the Shadows, Anna was placed into Morden's group. Sakai needn't be part of the group to still draw Sinclair into the plot. It still would have had a LOT going on for Sinclair though in terms of everything that occurs in the show.

I've sometimes wondered, especially since getting the script books, that when jms describes his initial process of developing B5 in that he had an idea for a grand epic and then he had another idea for a limited, personal story set on a space station, and then he realized he could combine the two, if Sheridan and Sinclair were parts of what he invisioned for each of the two different story ideas, respectively. That they, not sprung whole like Athena from Zeus's head or anything, but if each one of them were percolating inside his head, and his putting the two stories together is what caused him to end up feeling like he was overloading Sinclair's character with too much and thus split the Earth-Minbari and the Shadow war connections to main characters up in the introduction of Sheridan.

 

[KoshN]

How good are the script books?

Volume 11 is worth it for the 30 page Intro. "Okay, What the Hell Happened Here?", alone.

Regarding "Okay, What the Hell Happened Here?", it's amazing that JMS didn't have a stroke. I knew about a lot of these events in bits and pieces, unconnected, but to see it all in detail, connected in chronological order? Holy Crap! I would have said "Screw it! Let it end with Season 4." To see how one actress could come soooo close to ruining the show..... After reading that, it seems to me that Claudia was disingenuous from June 1997 on, was out of contact with reality (ditz - scatterbrained, flighty, thoughtless, and disorganized) and was trying to negotiate a better deal for herself, separate from the rest of the cast. As I said, disingenuous.. After the events of June through July 1997, personally, I wish they could have killed off her character (Ivanova).

 

[Telepath]

He didn't intend for Sinclair to leave at all. The original plan was to have the "Sheridan-like" character (who wasn't quite Sheridan as we know him because he didn't need to be) added to the story in essence to fight the Shadow War, which he would do with the advice and help of Sinclair. "Sheridan" would take center stage in that part of the story (basically seasons 2 and 3) with Sinclair coming more to the fore again in S4 and S5. (The Earth and Minbari Civil Wars and the founding of the alliance.)

That would have been great. Sinclair could have remained Entil'Zha and the story seeds planted in S1 would have paid off in S4 - even if he was only the great figure in the background while Sheridan executed the attack. Why was Sinclair removed so completely after S1, then?

The independent star pilot character was supposed to get into trouble with Earth's megacorps, probably a way into the Shadow Tech and black projects storyline that JMS had already been planning. The "lost wife" story was never planned for Sinclair. [...]
Everybody who tries to sell the "Anna/Sykes/Sakai" angle conveniently forgets that Sinclair's women were very much alike and both merchant pilots, whereas Anna was nothing like either and merely a scientist on an expedition.

I also read that Sakai would have run into trouble with a megacorps, but that could very well have involved black projects and a deal with the shadows. Additionally, both of Sinclair's women and Sheridan's wife had jobs involving travel to or near the rim - that connection is sufficient for me. JMS has never explicitly denied that Sakai would have ended up with the shadows - he only confirmed that a) Sinclair was never meant to go to Z'ha'dum and b) that Sakai could not have fulfilled Anna's role in waking up the shadows. Even so, the lost wife story could very well be applied.

 

[PillowRock]

After the events of June through July 1997, personally, I wish they could have killed off her character (Ivanova).

Of course, that was not really an option ........ unless they wanted to scrap Sleeping in Light and rewrite and reshoot the whole thing.

 

[KoshN]

Of course, that was not really an option ........ unless they wanted to scrap Sleeping in Light and rewrite and reshoot the whole thing.

And Sleeping in Light was/is a masterpiece. The thing is, I like Ivanova, always have. The actress that plays her? Not so much. Now, when I watch Ivanova, all I can think about is the crap CC tried to pull, the "friend" whe stabs you in the back. Kinda taints it, for me.

If anything, "Okay, What the Hell Happened Here?", made me feel better about Lochley/Scoggins. I wish Tracy would have had five years in Crusade. As it was, just as she was starting to fit in, Poof! and it's gone.