Joseph DeMartino
Moderator
This is from Jane Killick's invaluable B5: Season by Season guides, volume one, Signs and Portents, quoting comments JMS made about The Gathering. Although that was the B5 pilot, I think you'll see that his comments are relevant to Legend of the Rangers as well.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>"It was fairly complex, and I realized - in retrospect - I tried to cram too much stuff in," he say. "I was desperate to establish the world and then get moving. The theory - you must understand, was you would have the pilot and the very next week you would have the show. It was never meant as a stand-alone. It's like an introduction to the show. But the way it was sold, the pilot aired first and then nine months later came the series. Had I known that was going to be the game-plan, I would have written it very differently. I would have spent a little less time on backgrounding and exposition and a little more time on character stuff and more on action."<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Of course, some of the character and action stuff he's talking about ended up back in the revised edition of The Gathering, but even so you can see how the proposed plan colored the approach that he took to the script.
In the case of The Gathering, especially in its first release, the criticism was that it was plot-heavy, exposition heavy, thin on characters, and - despite its frenetic nine-act structure - slow in places. (I suspect that it is impossible for anyone who has seen the revised version to watch the original for the first time and really recapture what it was like to see it the night it aired. Although I'm willing to try. I just have to find someone to lend me a tape.)
I think it is interesting that with Rangers the complaints are that there wasn't enough background and exposition, that the identity of the One (despite the endless repetition of the mantra) was never disclosed for the benefit of new viewers, that the IA and the villains weren't adequately explained, and that the story rushed from action sequence to action sequence - except when it was getting bogged down in clunky "characer moments."
The opposite to what was dislike in The Gathering. Of course, in this case JMS knew going in that there was no deal in place for a series, and that there would likely be a gap between the pilot and the series. So he wrote it the way he said he would have written The Gathering.
Thereby proving that there is no way to write a television pilot that isn't going to tick off some portion of the audience.
Regards,
Joe
------------------
Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>"It was fairly complex, and I realized - in retrospect - I tried to cram too much stuff in," he say. "I was desperate to establish the world and then get moving. The theory - you must understand, was you would have the pilot and the very next week you would have the show. It was never meant as a stand-alone. It's like an introduction to the show. But the way it was sold, the pilot aired first and then nine months later came the series. Had I known that was going to be the game-plan, I would have written it very differently. I would have spent a little less time on backgrounding and exposition and a little more time on character stuff and more on action."<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Of course, some of the character and action stuff he's talking about ended up back in the revised edition of The Gathering, but even so you can see how the proposed plan colored the approach that he took to the script.
In the case of The Gathering, especially in its first release, the criticism was that it was plot-heavy, exposition heavy, thin on characters, and - despite its frenetic nine-act structure - slow in places. (I suspect that it is impossible for anyone who has seen the revised version to watch the original for the first time and really recapture what it was like to see it the night it aired. Although I'm willing to try. I just have to find someone to lend me a tape.)
I think it is interesting that with Rangers the complaints are that there wasn't enough background and exposition, that the identity of the One (despite the endless repetition of the mantra) was never disclosed for the benefit of new viewers, that the IA and the villains weren't adequately explained, and that the story rushed from action sequence to action sequence - except when it was getting bogged down in clunky "characer moments."
The opposite to what was dislike in The Gathering. Of course, in this case JMS knew going in that there was no deal in place for a series, and that there would likely be a gap between the pilot and the series. So he wrote it the way he said he would have written The Gathering.
Thereby proving that there is no way to write a television pilot that isn't going to tick off some portion of the audience.
Regards,
Joe
------------------
Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net
