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Subject: Re: CRUSADE was about Earth & Shadow minions & Technomages! Date: 17 Mar 2004 06:04:09 GMT From: jmsatb5@aol.com (Jms at B5) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv >>I hate TNT for killing the series. Why couldn't they simply TRUST >>jms to do a good job? Idiots. > >If you exclude the first half of B5's fifth season, the B5 movies, and the >initial scripts of Crusade. Otherwise, JMS's track record at that time was >poor >and if B5's initial ratings had not been so strong, Crusade would have never >been started. First, the ratings you cite were for the first half of season 5, which you said a moment ago were apparently not up to snuff...so you've got kind of a contradiction there. As for the "poor track record" comment, there are two Hugos, a Ray Bradbury Award from SFWA (the only other one haveing been given to James Cameron) and a dozen other awards sitting on the shelf that say otherwise. >Many of the mistakes of Crusade certainly were not TNT's fault. And on what specific information do you base this? Please show your work. You offer this up not as an opinion, but as a statement of direct fact. Please cite the facts to back this up. >The music was >JMS's idea. Yes, it was. And the network also thought it was great. It was a different style, an experiment. Sometimes experiments work, sometimes they don't. It's a better way to live than living a life in which one never tries anything that may fail. > The various navel gazing episodes so out of place for a series set >against a time limit were JMS's idea. Please cite your facts to back this up, and define your terms. >TNT made suggestions: some good, some >really moronic but most amounted to minor tweaks to the episodes. Again, you state this as fact. So in this case, I must assume that you have seen the actual notes from TNT, yes? If not, then how do you justify this statement as anything other than your opinion, offered as fact? And in point of fact, your statement is utterly false. Some of their suggestions included: "Can we lose the makeup on Dureena (our resident alien character) and make her an alien by her attitude?" "We'd like to have one of the characters include a sexual explorer, so when they make contact with a new race, his or her job is to go and have sex with them." "We want to see more fist-fights on the bridge." "We'd like to see an episode worked around a wrestler, since wrestling is hot right now." "We think you should give the captain a dog for a pet." "Rather than have the characters work their way out of the problem as depicted, we think it would be better if Captain Gideon arranges to have Dureena compromised so the antagonist will rape her, and Gideon will catch him in the act, and use this as blackmail to get the character to back off his demands." Minor tweaks? >JMS's >insistence on implementing changes as clumsily as possible probably ensured >the >demise of Crusade. Again, you are citing my intention, and my decision on how to implement changes. Please show your work and back this statement up. Further, the decision to cancel Crusade had nothing to do with the content of the show, but rather, as we learned later, the fact that TNT's market research had found that the B5 audience came in for B5 and didn't stay for any of TNT's other programming, and they decided they wanted out, in favor of shows that would bring in a sustained audience increase. But you didn't know that, did you? Why? Because you have no idea what you're talking about, and are sitting here, behind your keyboard, where you think you're an expert on things you know nothign about, batting around your own opinions as though they were facts hoping that someone would buy the bullshit. The only problem, of course, is when someone who actually has the facts contradicts your statements or asks you to back them up. Which you can't. Because they're not true. Oh, and as for -- >If someone suggests replacing dialogue with actually showing >an event that does not mean finding the worst looking riot footage possible. Sorry, but that was also done at TNT's direction. They demanded the inclusion of riot footage at the last moment to show the big repercussions, even though nothing was available that would work. Nor would they give us much money to buy anything else. Those were the shots that met with their approval. But again, you don't know what you're talking about, so really, what's an exec producer to do? jms (jmsatb5@aol.com) (all message content (c) 2004 by synthetic worlds, ltd., permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine and don't send me story ideas)