Discussion: ideas on how the show could have gone - SPOILERS

madrab

MAJOR SPOILERS!!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

ok guys, looking for some ideas here, i have always wondered what would have happened if JMS had been able to make the show 100% the way he wanted (ie no networks cutting stuff/seasons, no actors leaving, etc)
here are the main things i wondered about, big ones first

Michael O'Hare/Sinclair never left the show
Andrea Thompson/Talia never left
Season 4 not 2 seasons condenced into one
B5's original destruction (maybe im just imagining this one)
Claudia Christian/Ivanova never leaving
Jason Carter/Marcus not leaving
the Drakh in their original form
Patricia Tallman/Lyta not leaving after the pilot
the great machine

so from the start, if sinclair had stayed in it would he have been sheridan character, or would they have kept him on b5 for 1 more season while introducing sheridan before moving sinclair to mimbar? would war without end have been the same? i think it is safe to say that the valen prophecy would still be the same, but i cant help wondering would it have been later in the shows life? would that scene with the shadows invading b5 & sinclair & garibaldi holding the fort ever have happened?

Talia, was she meant to be there or just put in after lyta left after the pilot? well apart from that one, if she hadnt left then we can assume that lytas role would have been played by talia, afterall her gift from ironheart was only starting to blossom & kosh was spending time with her, and of course who can forget her "relationship" with ivanova

The season 4 thing is obvious, what would have happened to season 4 & 5 if jms wasnt told that there would only be 4 seasons, season 4 shadow war? season 5 earth war, mars "war", centauri war & start of telepath rebellion

B5's destruction, ok im probably the only one who thinks that b5 was originally meant to go down in a blaze of glory at the end of season 5 (not that i didnt like they way it went but i would have preferred a more Z'ha'dum way to go, ie taking out the last of the shadows or something like that)

Ivanova never leaving, also an obvious one, we wouldnt have had lockley as captain (oh if only it were true ) & also marcus might have been resurected (ok long shot there, but jms said that if he knew that claudia was going to leave he would never have killed off marcus)

ok people should have gotten the message by now so further spoiler tags shouldnt be needed

... ok im going to bed but i will continue tomorrow

Karl Hungus

madrab wrote:

Michael O'Hare/Sinclair never left the show
Andrea Thompson/Talia never left
Season 4 not 2 seasons condenced into one
B5's original destruction (maybe im just imagining this one)
Claudia Christian/Ivanova never leaving
Jason Carter/Marcus not leaving
the Drakh in their original form
Patricia Tallman/Lyta not leaving after the pilot
the great machine

Ok...

I think the main thing is that Talia and Lyta were basically the same characters. The whole story of the most powerfull telepath was originally planned from the very start, Lyta making contact with Kosh, but seemingly when they introduced Talia, they needed a new 'Most powerfull' and the whole thing happened with Talia's mentor who had ascended to a higher level, and left her with the gift. Obviously when Andrea Thompson left, Lyta was writen back in. Odd. So I don't think it's possible to ask what if both Andrea and Patricia never left, it's the same character.

Oddly enough, I think season 4 being 2 seasons worth of story crammed into 1 really worked to it's benefit. The whole pace of the season carried with it a frenzied urgency, a genuine feeling of "We're running out of time" which fitted the storyline perfectly. I've honestly never seen a piece of TV, Film or anything that has the feel that Season 4 of Babylon 5 has. It wasn't condensced to the point where it loses coherence, like Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars. B5 Season 4 was the most unrelenting, intense peice of storytelling I've ever come across.

Pugsley

Oddly enough, I think season 4 being 2 seasons worth of story crammed into 1 really worked to it's benefit. The whole pace of the season carried with it a frenzied urgency, a genuine feeling of "We're running out of time" which fitted the storyline perfectly. I've honestly never seen a piece of TV, Film or anything that has the feel that Season 4 of Babylon 5 has. It wasn't condensced to the point where it loses coherence, like Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars. B5 Season 4 was the most unrelenting, intense peice of storytelling I've ever come across.

Id have to agree on this, from a season4 perspective it did give us the best series of sci fi ever, however it left series5 a little 'distant' from the other 4 series simply because they wrapped pretty much everything up at the end of the civil war, I still stand by that I liked season5, but it could have definately been better.

Also think Sinclair leaving was a great thing, hated him and didnt think much of Season1 because of it (not to mention theres a LOT of filler in series1). However Ivanova leaving was a pretty big blow, really didnt like Lockley at all, she wasnt in it all that much though but Ivanova would have done a far better job of it imo. As for Marcus Cole, I thought his charecter was really good, but I still think it was a good thing he left, simply because his death had probably one of the most emotional scenes I have seen, when Ivanova was talking to Dr.Franklin in med lab afterword. I agree with KH on the Lyta/Talia point, nothing really to add to that, and I dont think the Drakh staying in their origional form would have had much effect either. As for the great machine, they could have used it more, it was only used maybe half dozen times, if even, which is a bit of a waste of such a potentially powerful resource.

madrab

i totally agree that series 4 was amazing with nonstop action & plot devices, but i preferred the slow start the second half of series 1, & series 2 before it all kicked off in s3 & 4.

yeah i would have preferred if Talia had of stayed in the show (not because i had a huge crush on her & Ivanova i swear ) i think her character had more of a hatred of the psicorp, but i wonder would the byron story have been the same?

yeah i just feel that the great machine was just forgotten about, i would also have loved to have seen another episode of Ivanova searching for more of the first-ones

OMcGovern

The whole "slowly revealing secrets" plot device was great, no doubt.
Series 4 was fantastic... because it didn't pace itself.
I thought that series 5 would have a LOT more... ie. the telepath war.
I was expecting a war, not a small hippy protest in the bowels of B5.
I expected telepaths attacking "mundanes" in terrorist style, leaving high ranking
personel hiding from the public. Maybe fighting the mundanes to a standoff and getting their own telepath homeworld. They hinted at an elite PSI corp fighter wing when Bester helped intercept "weapons components" in one episode. I was hoping the telepath pilots were better than mundane pilots and had a huge advantage over them.

Oh well.... maybe I should write a few novels !

Pugsley

OMcGovern wrote:

The whole "slowly revealing secrets" plot device was great, no doubt.
Series 4 was fantastic... because it didn't pace itself.
I thought that series 5 would have a LOT more... ie. the telepath war.
I was expecting a war, not a small hippy protest in the bowels of B5.
I expected telepaths attacking "mundanes" in terrorist style, leaving high ranking
personel hiding from the public. Maybe fighting the mundanes to a standoff and getting their own telepath homeworld. They hinted at an elite PSI corp fighter wing when Bester helped intercept "weapons components" in one episode. I was hoping the telepath pilots were better than mundane pilots and had a huge advantage over them.

Oh well.... maybe I should write a few novels !

We didnt actually get to see any of the telepath war in the series, Byron was just a precourser, there was a trilogy of books about the telepath war (maybe somone else can give names?)

ixoy

Pugsley wrote:

We didnt actually get to see any of the telepath war in the series, Byron was just a precourser, there was a trilogy of books about the telepath war (maybe somone else can give names?)

Actually no there isn't. What you're thinking of is the Psi Cops trilogy which I've read and consists of:

Book 1 - The emergence of teeps and is set centuries before the beginning of b5.
Book 2 - which details.. the rise of Alfred Bester *before* we get to see him appear in Babylon 5.
Book 3 - which details what happens to Alfred Bester *after* the telepath war and thus several years after the penultimate S5 episode.

ixoy

Hmm as to the above:

Originally S4 would have ended with "Intersections in Real Time" I believe (according to the B5 commentary for that episode). Thus S5 would probably have extended Sheridan's capture beyond the one episode into the fifth season and, assumedly, fleshed it out beforehand too.

I think O'Hare leaving proved beneficial. JMS says as much, feeling that to have had Sinclair become both Valen *and* save the galaxy, etc would have placed too much burden on one character. This way both characters have their own clear role rather than divide it. If Sinclair had gone back in time at the end of the show, it would have meant we'd never have got the bittersweet death of Sheridan in "Sleeping in Light".

I'm also pretty sure Jason Carter was always being written out. JMS however might have changed that plan if he knew Claudia was leaving in S5. Instead she'd probably have died and Marcus lived on (again, this is from the DVD commentaries).

Another change is that we'd never have had Warren Keffer since he was foisted upon JMS by the studios. Now he didn't contribute too much but it would have meant someone else had to die to report the sighting of the shadows.

The other possible changes are more of Na'toth, who pretty much vanished. I feel she could have helped protect G'Kar when his principles got the better of him. She might also have been able to save him from the various Centauri traps, particularly those involving Refa.

And Franklin would have been Dr. Kyle instead. Now granted it didn't make much of a difference seeing as Kyle went into xenobiology but would Kyle, a more venerable gentleman, have had Franklin's exubrance and, latterly, problems with stims? How would it have affected his judgment in some situations and his determination to save people?

Agamemnon

In the original plan for the series, Sinclair was to use the Great Machine to go back in time and become Valen at the end of the show's 5-year run. JMS said he needed a third hero as well as Sinclair and Delenn (the 3 "Ones"). This was Sheridan and he was going to be introduced towards the end of S2/start of S3 but Sinclair's departure changed that.