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Posted on Usenet 6 December 1994:
Okay, alternate-universe time to answer your question....
"What if Sinclair had not left Babylon 5?"
(Isn't this kinda like the Marvel What If? comics... "What If Dr. Blake's Nurse Had Been The One to Find Thor's Hammer?")
The differences would be more noticeable in the later episodes of this season, rather than the first batch, which are still dealing in large measure with the after-effects of the season finale.
So the first few episodes would have been somewhat the same in some ways to what is there with Sheridan. The problem that I had was that he [Sinclair] was becoming (and would have become) mainly a problem-solver character; there's a squabble or a problem between other characters who are rising in profile (G'Kar, Londo, Delenn, etc.), and he solves the problem in some way. These, to me, were the least nteresting episodes of our prior season.
It would've been necessary to bring in another character with a direct connection to the shadowmen, since Sinclair's main connection is to the Minbari, and it would've been straining credulity to plug him too much into THAT story as well... hero of the line, missing 24 hours, Minbari soul, AND a tie to the Shadowmen... c'mon, what else does he do, fly under his own power?
Had he stayed, the Shadowman tie probably would've gone to either Keffer or Garibaldi. Which, again, further removes Sinclair from the main thrust of the story. He would have stayed on as more of an observer of other people *acting*, while he *reacted*.
I can't get too specific otherwise without revealing, by contrast, what's going to happen later on this season. Suffice to say this: watch the show up to and through "The Coming of Shadows," "All Alone in the Night," "Acts of Sacrifice," and "Hunter, Prey." (That's about episode #13.) You can then ask the question again, but I have a real suspicion that once you've seen those episodes, and what Sheridan does, you won't NEED to ask, because you'll see how he fits into the overall story in a very specific fashion with is 180-degrees different than Sinclair.
jms
(all message content (c) 2001 by synthetic worlds, ltd., permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine and don't send me story ideas)
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It should be clear from the above that JMS (and Michael O'Hare, for that matter)
did originally envision Sinclair being the commander for the full five years. This, along with JMS's statement that "the story of
Babylon 5 [is] very much the story of Jeffery Sinclair" should be enough to settle
that tired old argument. (But it never is. *sigh*)
It should also be clear that as he got into the mechanics of how to tell the story in year two, JMS realized that he'd need to move Sinclair into the background and give another character the Shadow arc. Having eliminated Garibalid and Keffer from consideration (although it is possible that Lise Hampton was planted in "Babylon Squared" in order to become the woman who disappears at Z'ha'dum), he settled on adding a
new character.
When Michael O'Hare expressed concerns about typecasting (and - according to some sources - the network started asking for a star with a higher "Q" rating), JMS decided to kill several birds with one stone by having the new character
replace Sinclair, instead of merely joining him, while keeping Sinclair "alive" in the show, ready to return for his grand exit. (Which could now safely in S3 rather than S5, if that was indeed the original plan, and thus clear the decks for Sheridan to become the focus of the rest of the series.)
JMS's statements about the overall arc of the show having remained the same, if read
in context, clearly indicate that the broad
outline of the show was unchanged. That is, it was still the story of how the Younger Races, organized by the people at B5, threw out the Shadows and the Vorlons and took control of their own destinies. (With year five showing the beginnings of the galaxy they would reshape in their own image.) That it was Sheridan, rather than Sinclair, at the end, didn't change the grand design of the story. But he certainly didn't mean that he
always planned to switch commanders in mid-stream. He never said anything remotely like that, and a number of his posts, like the one quoted above, have touched on what
would have happened had Sinclair remained.
Regards,
Joe
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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net
