Bits I've read today

[Joseph DeMartino]

1. Delenn was originally going to be male.

All the way through "Chrysalis". (Which would have made Delenn's emergence in S2 a much bigger surprise - for "him" and Sinclair, as well as the audience. )

This accounts for the hideous Minbari make up in the pilot. Male and female Minbari were supposed to be very hard to tell apart based on physical appearance alone, generally androgyonous in appearance and even movement. (That's one reason why the Minbari assassin was played by an actor with a relatively slight build.) Because Delenn would have been female for four out of five seasons JMS wanted to cast the actress from the beginning, rather than switch performers at the start of S2. (He was also concerned that Mira Furlan, who had auditioned for the pilot, might not be available when he needed her if he cast a male and signed him for the pilot and S1.) He wanted a continuity of performance and character, and planned to have Mira play the male Delenn, electronically altering her voice to avoid the obvious phoniness of dubbing a male voice over hers. (Which, again, would rob him of Mira's actual performance, substituting the voice actor's line readings for hers.)

But the electronic manipulation they tried also sounded phony. Since they hadn't found a suitable voice by the end of post production, and since they were expecting to start production on the first season almost immediately, JMS made the decision to drop the whole "male Delenn" thing (since he couldn't be sure they'd ever have a voice good enough to carry them through the whole first season.)

So they looped a single line referring to Delenn from "him" to "her" and used Mira's unalterned voice tracks - which a test audience had also responded to very favorably. Since the whole male Delenn storyline was being abandoned, there was no longer any reason to make the Minbar androgynous. They were now free to be as masculine and feminine as their Human counterparts and the makeups were altered to allow this. Thus we got to see a lot more of Mira's natural beauty, and we got a big, bearded and truly impressive Dukhat when the time came.

In the event, of course, Warner Bros. decided to put the series on hold until they had aired the pilot and reviewed the ratings, so it was nearly a year between the end of post on The Gathering and the start of shooting on "Infection". JMS used the time to refine a number of elements of the show, including the Minbari makeup.

Regards,

Joe

[Kevin]

Originally posted by OmahaStar
And yeah, they were going to do a new Tron movie, but it's since become Tron 2.0, a video game, and I haven't followed it at all, so I have no idea if any of the Fivers (boxleitner, jurasik, warner) are involved.

Of the three you mentioned, only Bruce was involved in the Tron 2.0 video game

[OmahaStar]

Originally posted by DoctorManbot
Im pretty sure everything there is correct with the exception of the 7 of 9 thing, which I don't know anything about.

She did.

And yeah, they were going to do a new Tron movie, but it's since become Tron 2.0, a video game, and I haven't followed it at all, so I have no idea if any of the Fivers (boxleitner, jurasik, warner) are involved.

[Jan]

I can definitely confirm all except #5 and #6. Though #2 should probably be revised to read '...made US history' since I understand that it's been done in the UK several times. And then considering that JMS also wrote all of the episodes in Season 4 and all but one of Season 5, he was one tired dude. In fact, there was serious concern for his health. When JMS says that he'll never try anything as demanding as B5 again because it darned near killed him, he's not exaggerating.

Jan

[DoctorManbot]

Im pretty sure everything there is correct with the exception of the 7 of 9 thing, which I don't know anything about.

[Vir]

Just thought I'd share a few things I've read today on other sites that I'd never heard before.

1. Delenn was originally going to be male.

2. JMS made history when he wrote all 22 episodes from season3 himself

3. The final episode for season 5 (Sleeping of light) was filmed for the end of season 4 as they thought it was the end. When season 5 happened they saved it for the end episode.

4. Alfred Bester was a science fiction writer whose most famous book was The Demolished Man which was about telepathic police.

5. A new 'Tron' film was in the pipeline but sadly there would be no Bruce Boxlietner or Peter Jurassic.

6. Claudia Christian auditioned for the part of 7 of 9 on Voyager.

Don't know how true they are, just bits I'd read.