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Noob question on Sinclair/Sheridan

A

asdfff

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/_\ (triangle salute) Hello all, this is my 1st post here. So far I can't find a large b5 community other than the scary wasteland that is usenet. In the last week I sat down and blew through all 5 seasons of the series.

And...I noticed a lot of parallels between sheridan and sinclair. (among other things, both had mates that got themselves in dangerous places--ie, it could have been catherine who went to zahadum and got killed)

1) Why was the male lead changed after the 1st season?
2) Was Sheridan *not* originally part of the 5-year plan at all?
3) How would the babylon 4 storyline have originally resolved? the zathras 3-in-1 "the one" speech was VERY clever, and I applaud JMS for it, but what could JMS have originally done, to reconcile the loss of a male lead after being pulled back in time?
 
1) Combination of O'Hare wanting to do theatre work, the network wanting a stronger lead man, plus JMS realising that Sinclair had allready "arrived" in his spiritual journey? Somebody else will have a better answer.

2) No. It would have been Sinclair that fought the shadows, liberated earth, and then went back with B4.

3) It would have happened at the end of the series, I think. Instead of going beyond the rim, he would take B4.
 
Flounder got it right on the money.
JMS realized he had too much for the hero to do, to believably do it with only 1 character, but, he did indeed originally envision Sinclair/Sheridan's role to be in one character. When it was originally all going to be Sinclair, going back in B4 would've been later in the series.
I believe the next step of progression was that came up with Sheridan and decided to do War Without End, midway through.
Then the final step, I believe, was that O'hare (and JMS concurred, I think) decided to leave after the first season, so Sheridan was brought in in Season 2.
I am sure someone else can put it even more succintly.

And then of course, I am sure you know about the whole Lyta/Talia/Lyta thing, right?
 
In the last week I sat down and blew through all 5 seasons of the series.
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!!! Damn!

I think O'Hare (Sinclair) also left because he was afraid of being typecast. By all accounts, the parting was amicable.

The idea of a Sheridan came up during season 1. JMS was thinking of making him the guy who's out there fighting the Shadows while Sinclair is taking care of stuff on the station, dealing with Earth and his Valen-ness and the Rangers. When O'Hare wanted to go, he just sent Sinclair to Minbar where he could do all the Rangers and Valen stuff off-screen, come back later with B4 and get sent off to his proper heroic conclusion, while Sheridan becomes the Shadow fighter guy.

Of course this was all decided after shooting Babylon Squared (season one ep when B4 appears) and so one would assume that the ghostly traveler in the blue suit that Sinclair touches and flies back from was planned to be Sinclair. By the time War Without End came (season 3 two-parter concluding the B4 arc) they made it Delenn and had to concoct the switching suit/stabilizer plot elements to accomodate this change, as well as the "three Ones in one" speech by Zathras.

(among other things, both had mates that got themselves in dangerous places--ie, it could have been catherine who went to zahadum and got killed)
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Yes- had Sinclair stayed on, Sakai would have gone to Z'ha Dum, been captured by the Shadows and sent back to lure Sinclair.

Have you seen the pilot, "The Gathering?" It takes place a year before season and was also filmed a year before seson 1 was filmed. A lot of it is sketchy in terms of quality but required viewing for a fan. It stars a different doctor and second in command (the actors were unavailable for season 1 by the time they got around to making it, hence Ivanova and Franklin). It also had Lyta, not Talia, and shows the incident of her connecting with Kosh that made her get involved with Vorlons in the first place.

It also has a different girlfriend for Sinclair who has a similar job to Sakai, which suggests that no matter what, whoever's running the station needed to have the girlfriend become a Shadow zombie. The only difference with Anna Sheridan is that they made it someone from his past, allowing Sheridan and Delenn's romance to develop slowly. Some fans (including myself) speculate that Sinclair and Delenn would have gotten involved as well, but JMS denies it.

And while I'm recommending B5 movies, check out In the Beginning if you haven't. Broadcast after season 4, it tells the story of the Earth-Minbari war and chronologically plays out the events of this time period that a one pieces together over 4 seasons while watching for the first time. Other films, like Thirdspace and River of Souls, are stand-alone stories with varying degrees of quality, while A Call To Arms was to act as a lead into the defunct Crusade spin-off series. All the films are available in a box set, while The Gathering and In the Beginning can be found on one double-sided DVD for real cheap.
 
Have you seen the pilot, "The Gathering?" It takes place a year before season and was also filmed a year before seson 1 was filmed. A lot of it is sketchy in terms of quality but required viewing for a fan. It stars a different doctor and second in command (the actors were unavailable for season 1 by the time they got around to making it, hence Ivanova and Franklin). It also had Lyta, not Talia, and shows the incident of her connecting with Kosh that made her get involved with Vorlons in the first place.
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I have always been unclear on whether changing Kyle and Takashima was entirely actor availability, or whether there were other factors (such as PTEN pushing for changes, which isn't uncommon after a pilot). I'm not sure, either way.

Lyta changing to Talia is one that I know I have seen quotes specifying that it was entirely a matter of Tallman not being available when the series was gearing back up.

I remember reading that Ivanova was always intended to be there. However, in the original plan (with Takashima as the XO) she would have spent the first season, a probably first few episodes of the second season, as a Corwin-like background character / junior officer. She would then have been promoted when Takashima went away.
 
Yes, because Takashima was originally planned as being on Clark's side and either shooting or ordering the hit on Garibaldi. She was also supposed to be "Control."
 
I read recently, I believe in a JMS Usenet post, that Tamlyn Tomita was unavailable to play Takashima in S1 because her movie career had started to take off and she was concentrating her time and energies on that at the time.

Of course, I could be talking out of my backside - wouldn't be the first time!
 
The budding movie career was also a factor in her being used for the character of Takashima since that character wouldn't have lasted beyond halfway through season two had everything gone according to the intitial plan.
 
I agree about Sinclair being the only intended original man in the blue spacesuit idea.

The image of the two Sinclair's touching hands was evocative of Michaelangelo's creation image. It was as if JMS was making a statement that the future Sinclair was making the B5 Sinclair in his own image.

Pure supposition maybe, but it was just a thought.

Nick
 
Wow, never heard that one before. So the filming completed on S1 and then O'Hare left and then they re-edited it for a Delenn voice?

I find this whole stuff amazing, the story it coulda been, the story it became - its amazing. Though I still think Sinclair is better than Sheridan, so I like to learn about the original story a bit more and think about what Sinclair coulda been.
 
Wow, never heard that one before. So the filming completed on S1 and then O'Hare left and then they re-edited it for a Delenn voice?
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Reading this, it sounds as if you're thinking of the scene where after Sinclair takes off his blue helment, Delenn reaches over and touches Sinclair on the arm. The scene Galahad was talking about was when present Sinclair touched "The One" and they had the explosion-like thing that sent Sinclair flying across the room. There was no Delenn voice in that scene. The scene Galahad refernces is one in which "The One" in the blue suit was originally going to have been Sinclair when Sinclair eached out and touched fingers with, but when Michael O'Hare left the show, and the B4 storyline was revisited in season three, "The One" that was in the blue suit that Sinclair reached out and touched fingers with was rewritten to be Delenn.
 
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