So, let's go into deeper B5:TMoS speculation

[Stunaep]

Now that we now almost for certain, that B5:TMoS will be a theatrical film, let's speculate about the problems that this creates.

Who will be the director? Will it be teh standard B5 director(tm) Mike Vejar, or will a movie grade director be brought in?

I think we can pretty safely assume that Chris Franke will score the thing, so the next big question is, who will do the SFX. And how? With all of the B5 CGI lost by the Warners (and 99.9% of it would have to be redone anyway, even if the original CGI hadn't been lost), how much will our beloved station and stuff be changed to make it look good?

And how will the sets be handled? Aside from a few positive examples, the sets on B5 were rather horrible, even by TV standards. All the quarters on B5 had the same tiled, useless panels on them, and since most non-b5 sets were redresses of other sets anyway, with exceptions, they all looked pretty much the same.

My guess would be, that they'd set the bulk of the story mostly outside B5 (which would certainly make sense, since they have the money, and the teep war wouldn't concern B5 anyway), show Mars, Earth, perhaps (here's hoping) the Vorlon homeworld, and use only those locations on B5 that we haven't seen after Objects at Rest, so they could safely be redone (such as, say, Command and Control).

Finally, which actors won't be in TMoS? Assuming, that it's about the teep war, my guess would be, that the Centauri wouldn't be in it, thus no Londo and no Vir. There won't probably be much reason to include Delenn either, the same with Lochley and possibly Zack too (He did have that thing going with Lyta, so he might make it in).

So, what are your thoughts on the matter?

[grumbler]

First, I think that all of the major charactors will be in the film for at least a cameo, for two reasons:
1. JMS is very loyal to the actors, and has repeatedly said that he wanted to reward them with a chunk of the money getting cast in a theatrical release would get them, and
2. The fans would be highly pissed if he didn't.

As to the sets, you are correct that many of them were done the way they were for financial reasons (though I think you need to look at DS9 or TNG sets again if you think the B5 sets were significantly worse than they were, what with the "useless panels" and whatnot). Many of them wouldn't translate well to the Big Screen, but the "B5 look" is an important part of the atmosphere of the show, so I think we will still see scrumbled paint schemes and non-primary colors.

Where the story takes place is a somewhat delicate topic: enough has to take place on the station to make the "Babylon 5" name make sense to the non-fan viewers (and it is the station that is the trademark of the franchise), but the station is a limited venue and a good story will clearly have to include lots of off-station action. Especially lots of off-station space battles!

As I have thought about it some more, I am not sure the TeepWar per se has enough action for the first movie. What the non-fanatical fans talk about most in terms of B5 are the space battles. I think the movie will want to deliver a couple of those if it wants to draw those people back into the fold. It is possible to have space battles AND the TeepWar, of course, but I think the former is important enough that the latter should give way if necessary for the first film.

[Sigma]

Originally posted by grumbler
2. The fans would be highly pissed if he didn't.

Why?

[grumbler]

Originally posted by Sigma
Why?

Because we spent five years learning to care for these actors and would be pissed if some of them got "cheated" out of the payoff for sticking with "guerrilla TV" as Boxleitner put it.

Plus, I think most fans want to at least see the major charactors one more time. JMS can pass the torch in this movie, as far as I am concerned (because these are charactors whose story has been told) but I think the fans overwhelmingly would like to see it happen.

[Stunaep]

But he can't possibly include all of the 12 chief characters. LOTR did that, and look what happened. And that was a 3-film epic.

[grumbler]

Originally posted by Stunaep
But he can't possibly include all of the 12 chief characters. LOTR did that, and look what happened. And that was a 3-film epic.

Agreed, and that is why I noted that they would appear "for at least a cameo" which means a one-scene, few-lines appearance. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that none of our "heroes" are the main charactors of the movie... but I would be surprised if JMS stiffed any of the regulars who wanted to be in the film.

[Joseph DeMartino]

But he can't possibly include all of the 12 chief characters.

Oh, for pity's sake why not? He included most of them in In the Beginning, after all, and that was a 92 minute movie of the week.

They don't have to be major appearances. And anyone who thinks the Telepath War can only take place on Earth and Mars, or won't involve the station, or Delenn, or automatically excludes the Centauri, either hasn't had access to or hasn't paid attention to the hints that have been given about it, especially in "off-air" venues.

1) Lyta's rogues necessarily arm, train and assemble their forces outside of Earth-controlled space.

2) Psi Corps not only has the Black Omega squadron, but access to other spacecraft, including the secret motherships.

3) In order to fight a real war against a paramilitary organization like Psi Corps Lyta and company aren't going to be able to limit themselves to terrorist bombings, raids and guerrilla tactics. They're going to have to bring in heavy weapons, large numbers of people and protect their transports against intercept by the Corps. Did somebody say "space battles"?

4) Lyta's group is getting funding from the Narn, and from Garibaldi, and almost certainly paying off various alien governments to provide sanctuary for her people until she is ready to take on the Corps. A war like the one she is planning is necessarily going to hurt Earth, but since it will be a matter of internal EarthGov security and dealings with its own citizens, the IA will have to remain neutral. The individual alien governments will also have to keep hands off - officially. That doesn't mean that there won't be the usual arms smuggling to both sides, or that alien groups or governments hostile to Earth won't encourage something likely to be bad for the Humans. Certain groups with a particular dislike for Human telepaths would be especially tempted to intervene, if they could do so without leaving fingerprints. B5 would be a hotbed of intrigue in such a case, much like Berlin or Vienna in the aftermath of WWII. You'd certainly think the Drakh would like to encourage Lyta's little band, since however the war went lots of Human Teeps would likely die. Did someone say "Vir", "Londo", "B5"?

5) We know from both the unfilmed Crusade script "Value Judgments" and the final volume of the Psi Corps trilogy that the Corps loses the war and is destroyed, and that Bester becomes a war criminal after he slaughters thousands of teeps and mundanes housed in Corps "re-education" camps. We also know from these same sources that Bester blames the Corps's ulitmate defeat on the IA in general and John Sheridan in particular, because the Alliance interevenes militarily late in the war. (Did someone say "Space battles"?) Given the Alliance's charter, the only way that Sheridan could intervene in the war is if it spills out of Earth space and starts damaging, injuring and killing non-Earth facilities and people. So we have to assume that the war does exactly that. It may be the Psi Corps raids Lyta's off world bases, and that they retaliate. It may be the Psi Corps's "off the books" assets - including the carriers and the camps - are kept outside of EA boundries in order to provide Bester and company with "plausible deniability" - and the Sheridan finds them. Either way a much bigger war, which will clearly involve the IA Advisory Council, EarthForce, Babylon 5 and various former League worlds would develop by the end - and you just know that Garibaldi is going to be in the middle of all of it. (And just how will Sheridan react when he finds out that Garibaldi provides Lyta with the means to unleash a war that must kill thousands of people - in large part to avenge himself on Bester. Is this one of the unseen events that makes Stephen Franklin ask Garibaldi if he she order one ticket or two to Minbar in "SiL"? OTOH Sheridan and Garibaldi seem to have gotten over the Teep war by the end of 2266 and A Call to Arms.

6) We know that a certain Minbari's fate is intimately connected with the events surrounding the Telepath war. Did somebody say, "Delenn"?



Regards,

Joe

[SpooRancher]

As to "passing the torch", if you have Season 5 on DVD, the torch was already passed.

As to rewarding the actors, I am sure JMS will reward as many as he can. However, rewarding the actors with a substantial sum of money to do a cameo (one scene as suggested earlier in this thread) would be cost prohibitive. If they are to be paid to be there, they should have a major part to play. Else, they have wasted money, something that goes antithetical to the B5 history.

Now, it seems that there is a bit of a consensus that the project will involve the Telepath War. That is a possibility, even a strong one, but it is not the only possibility.

There are many areas that can be explored. Lyta and G'Kar's wanderings through space. The Technomages. Sinclair/Valen's years on Minbar (after events of WWE). What happened to Jason Ironheart? The Vindrizi? They could finish up Crusade in one fell swoop. These are by far not the only possibilities. They are only some. I am sure that JMS has far more ideas of what will be going on in the B5 universe than I do. I merely chomp at the bit waiting for him to reveal.

Great Maker, we stand ready for your next revelation.

[circularREASON]

I don't know about you lot but I am just excited by the possibilities.

[e5comp]

Technomages,
A movie about the Technomages. Blah I hope not. The Telepath war sounds much more interesting to me.

[Joseph DeMartino]

However, rewarding the actors with a substantial sum of money to do a cameo (one scene as suggested earlier in this thread) would be cost prohibitive. If they are to be paid to be there, they should have a major part to play. Else, they have wasted money, something that goes antithetical to the B5 history.

Boxleitner, Garibaldi, Furlan, Walter Koenig, Pat Tallman, et. al. would be at the heart of a Teep War story. G'Kar and some of the other characters might have less screen time, but still be crucial enough to the plot to command quite substantial salaries even for shorter scenes. I doubt JMS would bother bringing any of them in merely for "ships pass in the night" cameos a la Janice Rand as the transporter officer in ST:TMP - or that the actors would accept. But lead role and "extra with one line" are not the only options here. I'm sure suitable arrangements could be made, especially since a movie wouldn't have anything like the budget constraints of a TV project. For TV the studio gets paid a license fee by the network. If that doesn't cover production costs, the studio eats the difference and hopes that eventual repeats and home video sales generate enough money for them to break even or make a profit. With B5 WB's mandate was that the show's cost never exceed the license fee. With a movie the studio participates directly in the profit stream immediately, and it can collect fees from licensees who want to produce tie-in projects. This frees up the purse strings considerably. Will JMS want to be responsible in spending WB's money? Yes, of course he will. That's the way he is. But it isn't "wasting money" to get exactly the right character and actor to appear in a pivitol scene, and to pay whatever is required to get that actor.

If Lennier does something in the film that is motivated by his friendship with Marcus, and it is crucial that the audience know this, then it is worth paying Jason Cole any reasonable amount of money to come in and shoot a flashback scene with Bill Mumy, even if it only takes a day to shoot and lasts five minutes on screen. That isn't waste, that is a sensible allocation of resources. (Having the executive producer's office chair upholstered in chincilla would be waste. And don't think that kind of thing hasn't happened on some movie sets.)

But it isn't like paying the actors what they're worth would violate some kind of B5 philosophy. The show work hard to get the most out of every dollar, true - but that's because there were so few of them available. It isn't like they wouldn't have preferred to have a 3 or 4 million dollar per episode budget, like TNG and DS9 did (I think V'ger was even pricier.) But all WB would give them was about $900,000, so that's what they got by on. Necessity. Not choice.

Regards,

Joe

[Stunaep]

Quite. So there's nothing wrong with me assuming that for example Londo and Vir aren't going to be in the teep war story, no? I mean, surely JMS wouldn't just write them in just to be cute. I mean, I can't imagine doing something like that. And keeping the number of involved characters on a reasonably low level, would certainly benefit the movie. Of course, I'd like to see Londo, Lochley, Franklin, and whoever. But a movie only has two hours to tell it's story, and B5 ain't no LOTR, where you can introduce a new character with a funny name every five minutes, only to give him 3 lines, and make him play a crucial role. I just think, that the movie has better chances of being good and profitable, if they keep the number of main characters on a reasonable level. Even if your arguments do make sense, including the Drakh (who otherwise wouldn't have to be mentioned at all), Londo, Vir (of a race, that could easily be left out of the movie otherwise), would convolute the story, and reduce drastically the amount of character developement for other key players. You'd have to introduce the Drakh, their connection with the teep war, with the centauri, the centauri-ISA relations, Londo, Vir, their relations, the keepers, the Centauri as a race, and finally, give them something to do, so they won't seem like Deus Ex Machina, when they finally show up and do something. I'd rather have more G'Kar, Lyta, and Garibaldi, than a Drakh/Centauri subplot.

As for the earth and mars thing, I was just suggesting ways to avoid continuity conflicts with sets 'n stuff.

[Sigma]

And if i remember correctly, Lennier is also part of Telepath War.

[grumbler]

SpooRancher, in Season 5 the torch was extinguished, it wasn't passed on... and then came ACtA (and the attempt to pass the torch to Crusade's crew)! So it isn't impossible to have another shot at passing the torch on to a new batch of charactors, because it has been tried post-S5 twice.

Stunaep, I understand your concerns, but you continually refer to the need to "keep the number of main characters on a reasonable level" which isn't at ALL inconsistent with having all the major B5 charactors in the movie, because they wouldn't all be major charactors in the movie. It is entirely possible for JMS to write a script in which a major B5 charactor has an important bit of information to pass on, and does so. For the non-B5 fan, this is just a guy or gal passing on info. For the B5 fan, it's "hey! There's Londo!" It is a win-win, and entirely consistent with the way JMS does things (look at how many times JMS re-cast actors whom he liked just within B5).

[Andrew_Swallow]

Getting Londo in may be difficult but Via could easily talk to Lochley about the general situation in the galaxcy.