Legend of the Rangers

[KoshN]

Rangers didn't get low ratings becaused it looked rediculous. In fact, as the broadcast went on, it picked up more viewers each quarter-hour, if I remember correctly. The problem was the huge audience that of that football game that kept viewers away from Rangers. The west coast broadcast of Rangers had very nice ratings, but since the east coast broadcast's ratings were low, that's all that seemed to matter.

Oh, I'm aware of the story behind the ratings. It got the ratings it got on the West Coast because it was B5 related. That's what brought people to the show. However, at the time I saw many comments after it, from B5 fans about how they'd orchestrated a group viewing of other B5 fans and others to whom they'd recommended watching B5:LotR, and how they were embarrassed by how bad it was. When I was watching it by myself, I was thankful that I was alone and not with anybody to whom I'd recommended it. Saved a big ol' there! I kept watching it because I kept hoping it'd get better.

I'm not disputing that Rangers had some problems. As you mentioned, having the Rangers' council look too much like the Grey Council was confusing, even to long time fans.

Why JMS does that to us, I'll never know. I suspect he's just a bit evil that way.

Having Minbar look so different than every single other time we had seen it wasn't good either.

True, but that didn't bother me too much. We were seeing Minbar at night. <shrug> However, the pink cotton candy hyperspace with shakeycam bothered me. So did Minbari Nials flying backwards, and that fact that we only ever saw familiar ships and B5 in the distance. However, we did get to see MaintBots up close.

And while I can appreciate what was trying to be done to set up David, not to mention several of his crew, as not quite fitting in in the Rangers, it was done too clunkily.

Yes, it was in a rather ham handed fashion. How'd you like the David connect-the-dots exposition, to explain things to the viewers?

But I still found enough of the thing to be intriguing to make me want to see more.

I bet I could cut it down to a good 10 or 15 minutes. In that way, it's almost as bad as "Star Trek V - The Final Frontier" which I could cut down to only the camping scenes, and come out with a decent short.

There were several characters I liked, the Narn engineer and the Minbari healer in particular.

Yes, they are two of my favorite characters from the pilot. My favorite character was Dulann, the XO. I felt bad for Andreas, with the lines he was given for his last B5 universe appearance.

 

[KoshN]

The biggest problem for any sequel to overcome – movie, tv show or comic – is the expectations of the viewer. There is none, or very little, for the original but a follow-up has an immense uphill struggle to prove itself in it’s own terms – a child in the shadow of a famous parent.

As far as I'm concerned, Crusade did well there, but it has thirteen 44 minute episodes, not just ~88 minutes.

Saying that however, LoTR was pretty bad in places, and it can’t be put down to lack of cash like the Lost Tales.

Oh yes it can! Both had $3 million budgets. Both were made after Warner Brothers lost, sold or destroyed almost all of the 1993-1999 B5 and Crusade resources. Everything made after Crusade was operating under a handicap of missing resources.

Someone once said, and I paraphrase a bit here, you can’t cut the head off a production team and expect him to function the same way without the body.

B5 worked for a lot of reasons. LoTR looked like tv sci-fi by the numbers.

B5:LotR looked like the morphing of B5 and a "Sci-Fi Channel Original" weekend Z-movie.

I also believed it had potential (most shows do), but I have my doubts on whether it would/could have ever been reached.

....because at The Sci-Fi Channel, the budget would have remained tight. Plus, it was The Sci-Fi Channel's idea to ge with a new, 20-something cast.

OMG, when I look at Crusade now, it looks like the good ol' days, and at the time it was a step down from B5. Back when Crusade was in production, only some of the B5 sets had been destroyed (because they were worn out.). By the time the Rangers pilot was filmed, almost all of the B5 & Crusade sets (even the newly constructed, post-hiatus, elaborate Crusade sets) were destroyed. Hell, I watch "The Rules of the Game" and it feels 99% like B5.

 

[Triple F]

Oh yes it can! Both had $3 million budgets. Both were made after Warner Brothers lost, sold or destroyed almost all of the 1993-1999 B5 and Crusade resources. Everything made after Crusade was operating under a handicap of missing resources.

Pretty irrelevant (to this argument at least). jms made a conscious decision to have things like the ship designs look very different – presumably to show there was more to the B5 ‘verse than had already been seen. One failing that the show didn’t have was a lack of CGI, extras walking about or actors done up in prosthetics (which the Lost Tales did suffer from). Though I note that it did have one thing in common with Crusade. Executive interference.

At the time jms said there wasn’t any (but that’s just typical hype), cost did effect the whole Liandra gun pod thing (the set for the original idea was going to be far and away the most expensive and time consuming to build), but the studio execs also felt folks wouldn’t accept the concept of a fully articulated chair. It’s the same reason why the ship didn’t fire beams, instead the exedcs wanted energy bolts. (I noticed that was a complaint some folks raised at the time).

Anyway, it’s done and filed under crap in most folks book. Maybe a bit unfair, but there you go.

Personally, I thought A Call To Arms in a few respects was far more clumsy in execution - it also felt very rushed in places. Sheridan was looked upon as a bit of a dithering old fool for a fair section of the movie, just to fit the story. The part where the captain of the other vessel calls his little girl just before he decides he has no option but to ram the ship against the planet killer, while stating that he promised his little girl to protect her from the monsters, felt like a last minute (and poorly placed) addition.

Sections of the CGI was truly terrible, did you see the unfinished model of the Warlock fleeing the imploding death cloud. They’re going to look for First Ones to help find a cure for the plague. Plot twits like that are reminiscent of 1930’s serials where the viewer is treated like they had the memory retention of a gold fish. You know, buck rodgers with their cliff hangers and the next episode starts with a whole new set of the goal posts in order to allow our hero to escape.

No, didn’t like it very much. That and river of souls. Not so much for the story ideas but more for how they were actually put together.

 

[KoshN]

Oh yes it can! Both had $3 million budgets. Both were made after Warner Brothers lost, sold or destroyed almost all of the 1993-1999 B5 and Crusade resources. Everything made after Crusade was operating under a handicap of missing resources.

Pretty irrelevant (to this argument at least). jms made a conscious decision to have things like the ship designs look very different – presumably to show there was more to the B5 ‘verse than had already been seen.

Perfectly relevant. Don't know if what you said above is what JMS said somewhere, but I don't believe it [1] and in reality it was forced upon him by having no ship models of adequate resolution to be seen in anything BUT the distant background. All he had of the 1993-1999 ship models was the stuff Babylonian had given to Sierra for the aborted B5 Space Combat Flight Simulator. Warner Brothers lost everything else. That's why, other than the MaintBots we saw working on the Liandra on Minbar, all we saw in close-up were the new ships, the Valen, Liandra, and the dirty snowflake ships of the baddies (which were all made from scratch), NOT because of any "conscious decision to have things like the ship designs look very different – presumably to show there was more to the B5 ‘verse than had already been seen." The only reason they worked on the MaintBots was because they were going to be shown working on the Liandra, and the Liandra WAS going to be shown in close-up.

One failing that the show didn’t have was a lack of CGI,

Lack of good CGI. Personally, I didn't like the new oily, colloidal suspension look of space, or the pink cotton candy hyperspace with shakeycam. Why he has to constantly screw with the look of hyperspace, or come up with "quantum space" (in B5:TLT, from the Vorlons even though we can't go to that planet for a million years to be able to discover such things.), is beyond me. Seems to me that sometimes he just likes screwing with the fans to see if our heads explode. Not good. Bad JMS!!!

or the lack of extras walking about or actors done up in prosthetics (which the Lost Tales did suffer from).

Well, B5:LotR didn't have many extras, either (all I can remember are the various ambassadors on the Valen and then the Liandra), though it certainly had a few more than B5:TLT.

Though I note that it did have one thing in common with Crusade. Executive interference.

Some executives should be shot.

At the time jms said there wasn’t any (but that’s just typical hype), cost did effect the whole Liandra gun pod thing (the set for the original idea was going to be far and away the most expensive and time consuming to build), but the studio execs also felt folks wouldn’t accept the concept of a fully articulated chair. It’s the same reason why the ship didn’t fire beams, instead the exedcs wanted energy bolts. (I noticed that was a complaint some folks raised at the time).

The execs didn't want the Liandra to fire beams? First I've heard that one. The Enfali fired beams, for a few seconds.

Anyway, it’s done and filed under crap in most folks book. Maybe a bit unfair, but there you go.

Personally, I thought A Call To Arms in a few respects was far more clumsy in execution - it also felt very rushed in places.

"A Call to Arms" was fine art compared to the Rangers pilot.

Sheridan was looked upon as a bit of a dithering old fool for a fair section of the movie, just to fit the story.

Yeah, that was clunky. However, I think that was the first time that a technomage had communicated with him that way (electron incantation).

The part where the captain of the other vessel calls his little girl just before he decides he has no option but to ram the ship against the planet killer, while stating that he promised his little girl to protect her from the monsters, felt like a last minute (and poorly placed) addition.

Utterly corny.

Sections of the CGI was truly terrible, did you see the unfinished model of the Warlock fleeing the imploding death cloud.

No, but there were a helluva lot of ships flying all over the place at the time. I was watching the Excalibur, and saw a few Omega Class Destroyers and Drakh cruisers trying to escape.

They’re going to look for First Ones to help find a cure for the plague. Plot twits like that are reminiscent of 1930’s serials where the viewer is treated like they had the memory retention of a gold fish. You know, buck rodgers with their cliff hangers and the next episode starts with a whole new set of the goal posts in order to allow our hero to escape.

"First Ones" ??? or just other races. Had to be in Sheridan's voiceover at the very end. I'll have to check that out.

No, didn’t like it very much.

I loved it, and "In the Beginning." Those are my two favorite B5 TV movies, and I rate them a 9 and a 10 out of 10 respectively.

That and river of souls. Not so much for the story ideas but more for how they were actually put together.

"The River of Souls" was my least favorite B5 TV movie, UNTIL the Rangers pilot came along and made "The River of Souls" good. Lochley actually wasn't bad in "The River of Souls." At least it had a good ol' B5 feel to it. To me, the Rangers pilot felt like it was written by somebody who didn't know jack about B5. The Rangers pilot is to "Babylon 5" as the B5 novel "The Touch of Your Shadow, the Whisper of Your Name" is to "The Shadow Within" and The Technomage Trilogy.

[1] He says stuff like that to put a good face on things. It's not the unvarnished truth, but is really just PR talk.

 

[Triple F]

Perfectly relevant. Don't know if what you said above is what JMS said somewhere, but I don't believe it [1] <snip>

He did, honestly. Remember the Liandra was an old ship that was apparently haunted, and was even going to be ‘alive’ to some degree, apparently it was going to have a personality. The Valen was a new design to show co-operation between Minbari & Humans, and the flying brick thing wasn’t a reaction to the design when he saw it, it was always in the script! The dirty snow flake=new race.
http://jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-16469
(The stuff about the Liandra comes from Chris Wren who designed it)

Some executives should be shot.

No argument here.

The execs didn't want the Liandra to fire beams? First I've heard that one. The Enfali fired beams, for a few seconds.

They didn't have a problem with beams per say. But they thought that seeing beams come out of her hands and feet would be too confusing to the viewer. That's from Chris Wren as well.

"First Ones" ??? or just other races. Had to be in Sheridan's voiceover at the very end. I'll have to check that out.

Pretty sure he said something about finding first ones that were left behind, might have imagined it, but at the time I remember thinking wtf.

[1] He says stuff like that to put a good face on things. It's not the unvarnished truth, but is really just PR talk.

Yeah, It's the producer part getting the better of him, but really just the realities of a commercial marketplace so no harm, no foul.

[edit] Forgot to add this one.

Personally, I didn't like the new oily, colloidal suspension look of space, or the pink cotton candy hyperspace with shakeycam. Why he has to constantly screw with the look of hyperspace, or come up with "quantum space" (in B5:TLT, from the Vorlons even though we can't go to that planet for a million years to be able to discover such things.), is beyond me. Seems to me that sometimes he just likes screwing with the fans to see if our heads explode. Not good. Bad JMS!!!

Apparently, (at least it’s how the folks at atmosphere saw it) It was to carry the joke of the reporter puking up. The original script just had hyperspace but as that was too familiar it was decided that it wouldn’t be believeable she’d react that way, so something new had to be created and quantum space was described as hyperspace but blue!!!!

And I agree with you, jms doesn’t view such things as very important it’s the point of the story which is of overriding importance, this time it was a one off gag (and as a writer I can’t blame him for that) but it does screw with the heads of a few fans. The ever increasing size of the White Star is the classic example of that. He kept adding rooms and corridors then a bloody docking bay and hanger. : ) The arguments about that I’ve read were often very heated and just a bit funny at times. Pixel counting gone made lol.

 

[Jan]

Pretty sure he said something about finding first ones that were left behind, might have imagined it, but at the time I remember thinking wtf.

I think you may be thinking of this:

SHERIDAN: ...We know there were other races as old as the Shadows...One of them must have found a cure. We'll find them. We have to.

Jan

 

[KoshN]

Perfectly relevant. Don't know if what you said above is what JMS said somewhere, but I don't believe it [1] <snip>

He did, honestly. Remember the Liandra was an old ship that was apparently haunted, and was even going to be ‘alive’ to some degree, apparently it was going to have a personality.

That doesn't sound good.

The Valen was a new design to show co-operation between Minbari & Humans, and the flying brick thing wasn’t a reaction to the design when he saw it, it was always in the script!

http://jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-16469
(The stuff about the Liandra comes from Chris Wren who designed it)

I didn't have a problem with the look of the Valen, i.e. that it was shaped like a brick. Looked a little Romulan in general shape, with the fluted Minbari bonecrest edges around the sides and back. My problem was how quickly it was dispatched by the dirty snowflake ships of the cronies of The Hand (corny name ). I just assumed that the Valen was outclassed by the dirty snowflake ships, and that the enemy knew exactly where to hit it and how hard to hit it.

The dirty snow flake=new race.

Yeah, I know. I remember the movie, even if I haven't been able to force myself to watch it in years.

Some executives should be shot.

No argument here.

They didn't have a problem with beams per say. But they thought that seeing beams come out of her hands and feet would be too confusing to the viewer. That's from Chris Wren as well.

That whole Liandra weapons firing method was a fiasco. When they couldn't get the chair, they should have gone to a Whitestar style firing setup, not early Whitestar with the two Minbari in motorized chairs (unnecessarily complex, and we never saw what these Minbari actually did.), but latter Whitestar like they had with Marcus or Lennier doing the firing.

Pretty sure he said something about finding first ones that were left behind, might have imagined it, but at the time I remember thinking wtf.

I'll address this in reply to Jan's post.

[1] He says stuff like that to put a good face on things. It's not the unvarnished truth, but is really just PR talk.

Yeah, It's the producer part getting the better of him, but really just the realities of a commercial marketplace so no harm, no foul.

Yes, but you have to take stuff said before the movie comes out with a grain of salt because of it.

[edit] Forgot to add this one.

Personally, I didn't like the new oily, colloidal suspension look of space, or the pink cotton candy hyperspace with shakeycam. Why he has to constantly screw with the look of hyperspace, or come up with "quantum space" (in B5:TLT, from the Vorlons even though we can't go to that planet for a million years to be able to discover such things.), is beyond me. Seems to me that sometimes he just likes screwing with the fans to see if our heads explode. Not good. Bad JMS!!!

Apparently, (at least it’s how the folks at atmosphere saw it) It was to carry the joke of the reporter puking up.

As Jay Leno has been known to say, that' a long way to go for a joke. Not worth it. Now, the B5 universe is saddled with it.

When you wrote "Apparently, (at least it’s how the folks at atmosphere saw it)" were you also talking about what I called "the new oily, colloidal suspension look of space" ? I know that JMS wanted to tinker with the look of hyperspace to make it look more 3D and turbulent. I just wish he'd kept the color of normal hyperspace the same as in B5 and Crusade. Why pink? GAH!!!

The original script just had hyperspace but as that was too familiar it was decided that it wouldn’t be believeable she’d react that way, so something new had to be created and quantum space was described as hyperspace but blue!!!!

So, DITCH THE JOKE!

And I agree with you, jms doesn’t view such things as very important it’s the point of the story which is of overriding importance, this time it was a one off gag (and as a writer I can’t blame him for that) but it does screw with the heads of a few fans.

Visual continuity IS important. It makes movies and TV shows that are supposedly part of the B5 universe, FEEL LIKE they ARE part of that universe. When you start screwing around too much, like the changing color of regular hyperspace, and the introduction of "quantum space," you RUIN the harmony, the familial feeling of the movies and TV shows. In B5, the texture of hyperspace evolved, but the color stayed pretty much the same. Then in Rangers, it's freaking PINK! If he'd just messed with the texture some more, I could have lived with that, but to step-change the color (sort of a burnt orange-red to "BAM!" PINK?) No. This was like the change in color of the jump points from B5 to Crusade, but waaaay worse. In Crusade, the jump point vortex colors were less saturated.

The ever increasing size of the White Star is the classic example of that. He kept adding rooms and corridors then a bloody docking bay and hanger. : ) The arguments about that I’ve read were often very heated and just a bit funny at times. Pixel counting gone made lol.

I didn't have too much of a problem with that.

 

[KoshN]

Pretty sure he said something about finding first ones that were left behind, might have imagined it, but at the time I remember thinking wtf.

I think you may be thinking of this:

SHERIDAN: ...We know there were other races as old as the Shadows...One of them must have found a cure. We'll find them. We have to.

Jan

I think that was Sheridan spouting a little PR talk. You have to realize who he's addressing. Do these people know that Lorien took all the remaining First Ones away with him at Corianna 6? Probably not. Remember Marcus' conversation with the Mars Resistance leaders and how little they knew of The Shadow War? (Racing Mars) Marcus, "Just my luck! My first time in my life, I'm a war hero and nobody knows about it."

Sheridan's just trying to keep people's spirits up at this dark time, and give them a good feeling about the chances of the Excalibur's mission. Besides, they don't have to find First Ones, just other races who might have been exposed to the same plague (which is just really a Shadow test, with the worthy races finding a cure in time.....survival of the fittest.).

 

[Jan]

I think that was Sheridan spouting a little PR talk. You have to realize who he's addressing. Do these people know that Lorien took all the remaining First Ones away with him at Corianna 6? Probably not.

He was talking to Lochley and Garibaldi.

Jan

 

[KoshN]

I think that was Sheridan spouting a little PR talk. You have to realize who he's addressing. Do these people know that Lorien took all the remaining First Ones away with him at Corianna 6? Probably not.

He was talking to Lochley and Garibaldi.

Jan

Well then, maybe then he'd suffered a brain fart.

 

[Triple F]

Pretty sure he said something about finding first ones that were left behind, might have imagined it, but at the time I remember thinking wtf.

I think you may be thinking of this:

SHERIDAN: ...We know there were other races as old as the Shadows...One of them must have found a cure. We'll find them. We have to.

Jan

That’s the one. But it was also a line used a little before it - when it’s mentioned the Shadows technology was centuries ahead of their own so how could they hope to find a cure within 5 years, and they knew that there was races at least as old as the shadows out there. It’s sounds a bit like a typo, or rearranging the B5 verse a little as coming in contact with ancient civilisations Millions of years ahead of humans (which shadows where originally supposed to be) was going to be problematic (from a show making viewpoint). Maybe he was thinking Drakh and it came out shadows . . . .dunno.

That whole Liandra weapons firing method was a fiasco. When they couldn't get the chair, they should have gone to a Whitestar style firing setup, not early Whitestar with the two Minbari in motorized chairs (unnecessarily complex, and we never saw what these Minbari actually did.),

He wanted to show something different. And it certainly was that. ; )

I didn't have a problem with the look of the Valen, i.e. that it was shaped like a brick. Looked a little Romulan in general shape, with the fluted Minbari bonecrest edges around the sides and back. My problem was how quickly it was dispatched by the dirty snowflake ships of the cronies of The Hand (corny name ). I just assumed that the Valen was outclassed by the dirty snowflake ships, and that the enemy knew exactly where to hit it and how hard to hit it.

I didn’t have a problem with the look either, and yeah, it did have a bit of a romulan ST:TNG feet to it. The scene showing it’s destruction was a right mess, it didn’t come out the way it was meant to. But a few things had gone wrong with the CGI. Chris spent a while creating a hi-rez texture map for the planet B5 orbits but couldn’t believe it was missing from the final shot!!

jms has said that the LoTR hyperspace was a bit more how he originally envisaged it, Dangerous and turbulent basically. Said it looked better than how it did when made by lightwave. The software had nothing to do with it really (the LoTR one was created in Maya) but it was recreated from scratch and it’s the addition of volumetric (sp) elements which goes a fair way to set that up, and it takes time to render). Alec was saying the same thing about Quantum space in the Lost Tales – they didn’t have time to fill it out as much as they wanted!!

A thing to remember is that although they didn’t have the models of the original B5 ships they could have replaced a few of the ‘important’ ones. But instead they designed and built 4 new vessels, and used the low res stuff from the library given to the Sierra game as background fillers.

LoTR was meant to show new stuff. But I think it showed a little bit too much new stuff in one go, and having a new Canadian EFX team (who largely didn’t know what B5 was BTW) didn’t help. As for the writing/acting . . . . . . mewww, that's just personal taste and was a bit stringy in places.

Visual continuity IS important. It makes movies and TV shows that are supposedly part of the B5 universe, FEEL LIKE they ARE part of that universe. When you start screwing around too much, like the changing color of regular hyperspace, and the introduction of "quantum space," you RUIN the harmony, the familial feeling of the movies and TV shows. In B5, the texture of hyperspace evolved, but the color stayed pretty much the same. Then in Rangers, it's freaking PINK! If he'd just messed with the texture some more, I could have lived with that, but to step-change the color (sort of a burnt orange-red to "BAM!" PINK?) No. This was like the change in color of the jump points from B5 to Crusade, but waaaay worse. In Crusade, the jump point vortex colors were less saturated.

I completely agree with that. But I think it boils down to this idea that it’s the story that important. However, the narrative of a story is an important element and in some respects jms focuses a bit more on the dialogue side of things.

The B5 ‘verse is just a setting for that dialogue and is – to a degree – a poor second cousin to the dialogue. It could explain some of the things discussed here, Shadows centuries older than humans, the Liandra weapons system, Quantum space to frame a joke, jump points looking different . . . . . . . . But that’s another topic of debate all together.