If you could change one thing about B5...

[pascalahad]

I so want to steal the Doctor's TARDIS and go back in time to pay from my own pocket the 5000$ Foundation Imaging needed to buy a wide screen to render the special effects at a 16:9 ratio. So we would have decent-looking DVDs and the possibility of having the series released in a format close enough to HD.

And I would say in advance to jms that he was going to have his five years no matter what. It would have allowed the fourth and fifth season to have a better, natural pacing.

[Ubik]

I so want to steal the Doctor's TARDIS and go back in time to pay from my own pocket the 5000$ Foundation Imaging needed to buy a wide screen to render the special effects at a 16:9 ratio. So we would have decent-looking DVDs and the possibility of having the series released in a format close enough to HD.

Amen to that.

[Ninja_Squirrel]

Know what? I'll actually double it, if I may, and add Talia. ...I would have brought her back in S5 instead of Byron. Imagine how powerful that would have been, if Ivanova and Talia would have finally ended up together (again), only for her then having to call in the Psi-Corps, and to see Talia killed.

Oooohh! I like this idea for several reasons:

1. In general, I like the idea of characters (and their respective actors) not leaving so abruptly such as Takashima getting replaced by Ivanova off-screen in the gap between pilot & series, Talia leaving because the actress wanted to go, and Sinclair being replaced between seasons because of O'Hare's aforementioned health problems. Having gradual transitions and/or characters also coming back sometime (like what happened with Lyta) is cool to me.
2. Call me naive, but I always felt the Ivanova/Talia thing was played very subtle, so much so that I barely (if at all) caught it the first time around. I just thought they were becoming really good friends. Yes, obviously, Ivanova comes out and admits a love for Talia in the Minbari ritual, so I got it eventually, but sometimes I'm dumb. I like the idea that this could have gotten explored further, and it might have made season 5 better.
3. Robin Atkin Downes was a very nice guy at Phoenix Comicon, and if you look at his IMDb profile, his list of acting & voice work is as long as both my arms. So, he's a nice, talented guy, and he played the role of Byron very well. But, seriously, doesn't everybody hate Byron? Considering how JMS wrote him and why he included the telepath story arc (getting the cult thing out of his system), I don't think we're supposed to like Byron. So, having Talia there instead of Byron would solve that problem.
4. I never liked the idea that Ivanova was going to get mixed up with Byron. In a way, I'm not too happy it happened to Lyta. But, at least Lyta was in need of such a thing, so it makes sense. Ivanova was too smart & independent to get mixed up with Byron, and... Ivanova just deserved better. But, with Ivanova & Talia already having a history, any temptation to return to that in s5 would make more sense.

So, yeah, having Ivanova in season 5 but with Talia returning for the telepath story arc instead of Byron is brilliant. However, would that require that Talia's original reason for leaving was not the hidden personality, so that when she retuned she would be the more familiar Talia. Or, would even the "bad" Talia somehow succeed in seducing Ivanova into the teep group?

I liked Lochley, but I do think she was poorly written. However, knowing what JMS must have gone through to try and get those early 5th season episodes written in the first place, I don't know if she would have been poorly written under other circumstances.

I don't know about "poorly" written, but as I re-watch seasons 5 this summer along with the Tuning In To Sci-Fi TV podcast, I have noticed one thing... Lochley's style of talking is kind of..."rambly." Sometimes she practically repeats herself or comes up with weird examples to make a point, and in general, she just uses too many words to say too little. She's like me...only worse.

Other characters already have a well-established style of talking, so they can make their points faster and often more profoundly. Lochley though didn't seem to have that same "verbal efficiency," at least not in the first six s5 episodes I've re-watched so far.


Steering back to the main topic, here are a few more random "what ifs" that would be cool to explore:

• What if The Great Machine of Epsilon 3 had gotten explored more? It would be nice to know more about how it was made and why, who made it, what else it could do, whether it was the only one, etc. It's one of those mysteries that I'm okay being an open-ended mystery, but it wouldn't hurt to know more about it either.
• What if we had actually gotten to see the Vorlon homeworld.
• Since JMS chose to explore the technomages further in Crusade, a few of the TV movies, and a couple of the book trilogies (there were some in the Centauri trilogy too, if I remember correctly), what if he had explored them further in the main series instead of just the one season 2 episode?

[Ubik]

[*]What if we had actually gotten to see the Vorlon homeworld.

I think the Vorlons were so great precisely because we saw so little of them and their culture.

Having said that, I'd STILL be sorely tempted by the possibility of a peek at the Vorlon homeworld. It would have to look very alien and strange, almost like a Dali painting, everything disolving and merging together. Given we never really see a Vorlon's 'true' form, it's hard to imagine how they'd live.

Having recently read The Nautilus Coil again, I can't get the organic tech out of my head, forming structures with a mere thought. Would Vorlon cities perhaps adapt to the tastes of whoever was visiting / viewing it?

[Jan]

[*]What if we had actually gotten to see the Vorlon homeworld.

Well...technically we did, albeit only a tiny bit of it. When Lyta opened her mind to Byron, we saw the cavern and tanks where babies were being altered.

Jan

[DaveNarn]

So, I would like to have seen Sheridan's command experiences aboard the Agamemnon and his growing suspicion of anti-alien politics.

I've speculated about this as well.

I like the the whole Earth Force military concept and what we've seen of life on board a Dreadnaught.
John Sheridan commanding the Agamemnon could have made for some compelling stories.

Maybe assign him to B5 midway through season 2.

[Ninja_Squirrel]

Well...technically we did, albeit only a tiny bit of it. When Lyta opened her mind to Byron, we saw the cavern and tanks where babies were being altered.

Jan

It's funny you mentioned it. I just watched that episode, "Secrets of the Soul," this morning. However, are you sure it was a cavern? Maybe it was, and I just didn't pay enough attention to the walls. I always considered the possibility that it was a ship, a space station, or even if it was in a cavern, it could have been a colony world instead of the homeworld.

You may be right because I think Lyta did say she had been to the homeworld, but it doesn't mean she couldn't have been taken somewhere else within Vorlon space too. Wasn't one of the Vorlon colonies we saw near the end of the Shadow War built into the side of an asteroid?

[JoeD80]

he does have a tendancy to give characters longer chunks of dialogue, of the type that you'd rarely use in a normal conversation. It's that tendancy towards long monologues that sometimes creeps into exchanges between characters. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE some of those monologues, but it's a stylistic tick that sometimes lets the writing down, especially when he's dealing with more casual conversations between two or more people.

I personally think that is one of Joe's *strengths* in script writing. Those Sinclair/Sakai scenes you reference are some of my favorite.

But, seriously, doesn't everybody hate Byron?

No.

Ivanova was too smart & independent to get mixed up with Byron

The point was she would have her latent telepathic ability brought in to play by him, and that she would see similarity to Marcus. Normally she wouldn't get involved, but there are extenuating circumstances leading to it.

[*]Since JMS chose to explore the technomages further in Crusade, a few of the TV movies, and a couple of the book trilogies (there were some in the Centauri trilogy too, if I remember correctly), what if he had explored them further in the main series instead of just the one season 2 episode?[/LIST]

Well the thing is they had to be far away since they are effectively the Shadow equivalent of the telepaths - the weapon created for their side in the Vorlon/Shadow conflict. Apparently JMS had been toying with the idea of Elric being the one Sheridan meets on Z'ha'dum though.

Wasn't one of the Vorlon colonies we saw near the end of the Shadow War built into the side of an asteroid?

Yep.

I like the the whole Earth Force military concept and what we've seen of life on board a Dreadnaught.

Along these lines I would have liked to see Ivanova in command of the Earth ship in season five - so we could see her dealing with the Shadow tech that was installed.

[sarthaz]

It really drives me crazy when I see people say this. Yes, they are great actors. But the reason Londo and G'Kar are good characters? It's because the writing was good. I think it was an interview with Peter I was reading where he was asked how he made Londo come to life so well, and he said something like, "I just do what Joe writes."

Please don't misunderstand what I was saying. I'm not saying they transcended bad writing -- Londo and G'Kar are two of the best written characters in the history of television. But Joe's not perfect, and every now and then he wrote a line of dialogue or an entire scene that was a bit of a clunker or simply needed a little extra "oomph" from the performance. All I was saying is that during those (rare) times, an exceptional actor (like Peter or Andreas) can elevate a weak or average scene in a way other cannot.

[phazedout]

can I cheat and say IÆd change the contract from WB and give Joe all rights to B5, in perpetuity.

On that line, given Joe's hard work and obvious success now, can he not just *buy* the darned thing back, I'm actually pondering asking him this on his facebook page, but will now to her supreme Jan-ness in judgement afore me.
Phaze
on the "I am sadly cat-less, I miss my furry family " ID

[Jan]

can I cheat and say IÆd change the contract from WB and give Joe all rights to B5, in perpetuity.

On that line, given Joe's hard work and obvious success now, can he not just *buy* the darned thing back, I'm actually pondering asking him this on his facebook page, but will now to her supreme Jan-ness in judgement afore me.

JMS has mentioned a few times now that he's negotiating for the TV rights which would enhance the movie rights he already holds (because nobody really wants to finance a movie that can't eventually be sold to TV). As for buying it outright...how much would he be able to offer for that property that's earned WB well over 500 million dollars over the years (the one figure we know from DVD sales)? JMS is very successful but I doubt he could ever make that kind of offer and WB isn't likely to look at it as the property they're not inclined to market as long as they know there might be a buyer.

At least, that's my thinking from way over here in the cheap seats.

Jan

[WorkerCaste]

On a slightly different tack and something a little subtle, I would have changed it so that B5 got picked up early each season and got a modest increase in per episode budget each year.

[sarthaz]

Those Sinclair/Sakai scenes you reference are some of my favorite.

Interesting. I really liked Sakai and was frustrated that she ultimately had to get written out of the show. However, watching the series back recently, it was her scenes with Sinclair that really underscored to me why the show needed Boxleitner so much. Bruce was a little over-the-top at times, but when he starts talking about Anna in "Revelations", there's a deep emotion connection there that I wasn't feeling with Sinclair. The show needed that.

Which brings me to this post ...

I would like to have seen a season 1 that had John Sheridan as a recurring background character and a season 2 and maybe season 3 also that continued to see Jeffrey Sinclair as a recurring (more often) character. Even though replacing Sinclair had behind-the-scenes reasons, I still like the original cover story that too much of the main story arc was wrapped up in one character and needed to be split up. So, I would like to have seen Sheridan's command experiences aboard the Agamemnon and his growing suspicion of anti-alien politics. And, I'd also really like to see what life was like for Sinclair on Minbar with him becoming Ranger One in less than half a year and how he prepared for what happened on Babylon 4 a year after that.

I love this. One of my disappointments with the show was how they never got the chance to really establish the love-awakens-the-Shadows story properly. From Sykes to Sakai to Anna #1 to Anna #2, by the time of the big moment, that whole storyline ended up resting on Bruce's acting shoulders to sell a story that we never got to see. How great would it have been if they could have slowly built that story, where the audience lives with them being in love and then has her suddenly ripped from the show, and we feel and adjust to Sheridan's loss only to have her re-appear in "Shadow Dancing". She wouldn't even need to say "I'm Anna Sheridan ... John's wife." We'd know, and our jaws would drop like that snow globe.

So, yeah, that's my answer to the question in this thread. I would have liked the Sinclair/Sheridan transition to dove-tail more cleanly (as if it were planned from the beginning), affording the opportunity to see more of the Agamemnon (I always loved those scenes), more of Sinclair's time on Minbar, and more of the love affair between Sheridan and Catherine Sakai. That's right

[calloutdrummer1247]

If there is one thing I would change about Babylon 5, it would be the Londo story line. He is one of the most tragic characters I've ever known on TV. Here he was changing, wanting peace and the best for his people and the next thing he knows he is infested by a keeper. And what makes it tragic was that he felt that he had no choice. I think he should've grabbed a gun when he had a chance and blew that Drahk's head right off.

At any rate, the change I would make would come from the two part episode on Babylon 4. From my perspective, and being spoiled by Star Trek, they could've changed the future. Making the future, unwritten.

I would change it so that Sheridan heeds Delann's warning not to go to Za'ha'dum. I would also make it so that they have the Drahk war in the final season and drive off the drahk's for good, before Londo gets the keeper attached to him. It would end almost he same but no keeper. And G'Kar continuing to act as Londo's bodyguard. And my love for happy endings would have them continue to be on the advisory council.

And no telepath war. Just someone granting the telepaths a planet so they can be left alone. I mean why didn't they do that at the beginning of season 5? When Byron was asking for a planet to settle on, instead they get a colony on Babylon 5. Very dangerous since they have their own set of rules and culture. Okay, I admit I skimmed through the last season because I was looking forward to seeing what happens with Londo and the Drahk.

[JoeD80]

Here he was changing, wanting peace and the best for his people and the next thing he knows he is infested by a keeper. And what makes it tragic was that he felt that he had no choice. I think he should've grabbed a gun when he had a chance and blew that Drahk's head right off.

Uh yeah...and then the other Drakh would have set off the fusion bombs and destroyed his entire planet.