Time to stop my long years of lurking.
The most damming evidence of Paramount's attempt too destroy Babylon 5 is in the timing.
What are the chances of Paramount making a huge and very surprise announcement of a TNG spin-off, right in the middle of B5's pilot production? Almost all other new shows for that season had been announced, and had commenced production well before that point in time. Also Paramount had a history of very long lead times in developing each of there other new Star Trek shows, from the aborted 1970's Star Trek II, up through Enterprise. All except DS9, a show that suspiciously seemed to come out of nowhere The fans usually knew what Paramount had in mind, from studio leaks, far before any of these shows even got close to production. But no heads-up at all for DS9. It's impossible to totally prevent information from leaking out on something as big and lusted after as a new TNG show, except if it was a spur of the moment thing and there had been no early info to leak in the first place. And on top of that the new TNG show, based on a Space Station positioned in the middle of antagonistic empires, just happened to come into being at just that exact moment in history? Amazing timing!
Then remember that Star Trek was almost thirty years old as of then and had always been about traveling from place to place, hence the word "Trek" in the title, but was now to make a surprisingly radical change in direction and become about an immobile Space Station, with the trouble coming to them. It's impossible to believe that after thirty years the TNG guy's would just happen to think that up at exactly the same time that B5 went into production.
After that, factor in that Paramount had to rush DS9 into production, even using TNG sets for the into ep, and was still so late that the first year is short of episodes. That kind of rushing costs big money in the film production world. DS9 even overlaps the last year of TNG and makes one wonder why they didn't want to wait until the previous show had ended, and then, dovetail into the new show with a full first year. They could have spent the last year of TNG to carefully develop there next big show, instead of off the cuff. What was the hurry, I ask?
I say, that for the first time, Paramount knew that there was a real contender for the crown of best SF show and that was B5. After almost thirty years of a monopoly on SF TV paramount saw B5 as the first real threat to there billion dollar franchise, saw that B5 might reveal, by good example, just how bland and uninspired TNG had become, and they fought back. Hard!
Paramount produced a show so much like B5 that it would confuse the potential new audience, and infuriate the hard core TNGr's by making them think that B5 was ripping off there show! I have a friend that is still a, religious level, TNG fan and he refuses to watch or even talk about B5 to this day! Hell, for years I had to educate people as to which show came first, and then they usually still dismiss B5. Actually I believe that Paramount hoped that the threat of DS9 would cause Warner Brothers to scuttle B5 after its pilot. JMS, himself, said that almost happened. As it is "The Gathering" was put on a shelf for six months and the first season was put off till the next year. By then DS9 was ready for its second year and the rest is history.
I really do think that if B5 hadn't had the much bigger duplicate show dogging it, that it would of had a critical mass in the ratings, become far more watched and would of led to B5 becoming a viable long term franchise. We could all be talking about how good year four of Crusade is right now, instead of this painful discussion.
By the way. I do love the original Star Trek and its six movies and even the animated years. I consider anything after Kirk and crew to be TNG, not Star Trek. The continuities and spirit are just to different to me. In some ways I think B5 is closer to classic Trek than TNG is.
Hope my first time posting doesn't make me look like a fool. And I hope I don't upset anyone.
TWT
