<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>NOTE: All smart-ass dialogue in the following post is purely the invention of the author and is not based on any direct eye- or ear-witness accounts. But conversastions somewhat along these lines
did take place.
)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Here's the deal:
When TNT bought
Crusade JMS gave them two choices for how to start things off:
1) Tell the story from the beginning with a conventional "origin" show where the crew meets, and gets the ship, etc. (Think
Encounter at Farpoint or
The Emissary.)
2) Just jump right into the mission (ala
Babylon 5 and
Star Trek: TOS) and fill in the backstory as you go.
TNT went for option 2. The first episode is set several months into the mission, the crew already know each other, we hit the ground running. After the initial approvals from TNT corporate in Atlanta, all the liason on work was done by the folks at TNT Productions in Los Angeles, the same terrific bunch of people who got the network to pick up
B5 in the first place, and who worked with Babylonian on season five. They're also responsible for the generally very good TV movies that TNT has been turning out for years.
Under this plan Babylonian productions turned out the first five episodes, starting with "Racing the Night." These featured the grey and red uniforms that the network had approved originally.
Around the time episode five was shooting, someone from TNT Corporate in Atlanta called someone at TNT Productions in L.A. The conversation went something this:
Corp: So, how do the dailies on
Crusade look?
Prod: Don't know, haven't been over there to see them yet.
Corp: WHAT? How do you know what's happening with the show?
Prod: Look, we have a bunch of TV movies shooting, in pre-production and in post - all with deadlines. There are only so many hours in the day. The guys at Babylonian are pros, we've been working with them for over a year. We know the quality of their work. We don't have to hold their hands. We'll check out the footage next week.
Corp: No,
we'll check out the footage
tomorrow. *click*
Atlanta gets Babylonian Productions to ship them rough cuts of a couple of episodes, overnight. These cuts don't exist on film, they are in the form of Avid digital editing files. Avid uses a lo-res format (comparable to a GIF file) to save space. Avid images also tend to be darker than film images, which everyone who works on an Avid knows and makes allowances for. The guys at TNT don't work on the Avid. Also few or none of the FX shots have been produced at this point.
They see the footage and hate it. They don't like the pace of the episodes, they don't like the "feel" and most of all, they don't like the
look. Everything is too dark. You can't see all the expensive sets and those grey uniforms just blend into the background. The call L.A. and order a production halt.
TNT sends reps to L.A. They repaint and redesign the sets and change the uniforms to something that will contrast better with the backgrounds. They still don't understand that the problems they think they saw don't exist on
film, they only show up on the Avid files.
They also decide that they want an "origin" episode after all. They think the audience is too dumb to understand the mission from what is explained in "Racing the Night." JMS points out that this shouldn't be a problem since the plan has always been to run
A Call to Arms immediately
before the premier episode runs at 10 PM Eastern, and he wrote the "Racing" script with that plan in mind. No, TNT tells him,
TNT: We're not running
ACtA before the first show. So we need a setup episode that
really makes the story clear to the audience. And it should have action. Open it with a fist fight.
JMS: Well, this is going to mean a new script and rewriting some of the stuff in the pipeline because now we're starting the show five months earlier in the storyline. We'll have to set a couple in between the new first one and "Racing", and then we'll need an episode where we explain the change in uniforms.
TNT: No, we want
all the new shows to use the new uniforms. We're paying for them, and we want to see them.
JMS: Huh? The new first episode takes place
before "Racing" How are we supposed to have the crew in the new uniforms six months earlier, then change for five epiosdes, then change them back.
TNT: You're the writer, you figure it out.
Which JMS did. He wrote "War Zone" exactly to TNT's order (with the requested mutiny, fist-fight, reams of exposition and lack of references to
B5 and Sheridan.) He wrote "Appearances and Other Deceits" to explain the uniform change (and make fun of TNT, although
that part of the show went right over their heads.) He also wrote some lines into one of his upcoming scripts to explain how they switched "back" to the black uniforms.
He changed Gideon's first meeting with Lochley from the charming and underplayed encounter in "Each Night I Dream of Home" to the more romantic-comedy "cute meet" of the Peter David script, "Ruling from the Tomb", because he wanted to introduce Lochley fairly early in the season and "Each Night" had been pushed back past the mid-point instead of airing as episode five as planned.
He put the best possible public face on the whole thing when rumors of what had happened leaked out (including an internal TNT memo listing "improvements" that could be made to the show) and went back to shooting.
Then the notes got more ridiculous, he and TNT had their famous falling out, and production was shut down for good.
Unfortunately before the second "uniform change" episode was filmed, and without several other episodes being shot that were supposed to be intermingled with the existing 13.
The result is 13 episodes that
have no entirely "right" airing order. Any way you slice it their are continuity errors because there was never time or money to reshoot scenes to cover them, and there are "missing" episodes in the mix. On the whole, and in
story and
character terms, JMS's order works best. TNT's order - all the "black uniform" shows first, leaves the crew using the nanotech shield
before they invent it.
BTW, when the show finally debuted TNT
did air
ACtA on the same night - which should have elminated the need for "War Zone." Unfortunately, they ran it
after the first episode of
Crusade - which didn't make
any sense.
Regards,
Joe
------------------
Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net
[This message has been edited by Joseph DeMartino (edited July 11, 2001).]
