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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Just finished Sleeping In Light, so I'm saying goodbye to the Blind Watch thread and migrating here. Welcome amongst the Old Ones, those who have gone before. For many of us, the music in the finale (and preceding episode) will bring on waterworks. Please look forward to it. One thing to point out is the last few seconds - the show is framed (and this is debated) as an in-universe documentary piece. I don't want to take away any of the glow of the finale/series, but it's something to consider - was this an IA propaganda piece or a genuine retrospective? I believe the finale implication of Zak/Vir is tying the Centauri into the IA, if I recall JMS mentioning - but this is never elaborated on in show media, only books.
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Jul 24, 2023 16:46
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I believe all the book stories are JMS approved and considered canon though. All of them are long out of print but you can find them on the high seas. I've never gotten around to reading them but IIRC the Centauri, Technomage, and Psi Corps ones are well thought of.
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Jul 24, 2023 17:05
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CainFortea posted:Your writups have been great and if you look back through this thread you can see many people have discussed your viewpoints. Wow, thanks. You're right: I was OK until the scene with Sheridan passing on....then I got choked up. I can't even watch Medusa Cascade's review because she's going to be a mess. Iymarra posted:Welcome amongst the Old Ones, those who have gone before. I have passed Beyond the Rim. Good to hear about the Centauri rejoining the Alliance. I had hoped that the death of Londo meant the death of the Drakh's plans for the Centauri, but that wasn't spelled out in the finale.
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Jul 24, 2023 17:15
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Grand Fromage posted:I believe all the book stories are JMS approved and considered canon though. All of them are long out of print but you can find them on the high seas. I've never gotten around to reading them but IIRC the Centauri, Technomage, and Psi Corps ones are well thought of. The Centauri and Psi Corps trilogies are generally pretty well-regarded, the Technomage trilogy gets more mixed reviews, and most of the books before that are best left forgotten. There are two exceptions: one that details Sinclair's adventures on Minbar during seasons 2 and 3, and one that tells the story of what happened to the Icarus. The first eight issues of the comics are also worth tracking down cause they fill in some of the backstory for the series. The rest...well, you'll probably find them all bundled together if you go looking.
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Jul 24, 2023 17:37
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Wow, thanks. You're right: I was OK until the scene with Sheridan passing on....then I got choked up. Look at that...sun's coming up.  Always gets me. DrBouvenstein fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Jul 24, 2023 |
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Jul 24, 2023 17:47
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Wow, thanks. You're right: I was OK until the scene with Sheridan passing on....then I got choked up. I can't even watch Medusa Cascade's review because she's going to be a mess. She got through it much better than I would have expected, I think I was crying more than she was.
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Jul 24, 2023 17:48
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Wow, thanks. You're right: I was OK until the scene with Sheridan passing on....then I got choked up. I can't even watch Medusa Cascade's review because she's going to be a mess. Get your tissues ready lad, i always cry a bit when i watch this episode.... Medusas vid did the same for me as for her. Thanks for watching the series, it was a pleasure. 
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Jul 24, 2023 17:49
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Also Lyta erasure in the toast scene. She wasn't even mentioned. There's a very good reason for that, and someone mentions it at one point: Lyta went very scary before the end.
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Jul 24, 2023 18:05
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Just finished Sleeping In Light, so I'm saying goodbye to the Blind Watch thread and migrating here. So addressing some of your questions from the other thread: 1. In War Without End Part 2, future Delenn tells Sheridan that their son is safe. Peter David's Centauri Prime trilogy of books covers some of the events surrounding these moments. David Sheridan getting Keeper'ed triggers events on Centauri Prime, but the upshot is that they free him from it, and the Drahk get killed or forced off-planet. Vir is largely responsible, and 100% keeper-free. 2. As for G'kar, we saw what happened to him on screen several times starting back in S1: he and Londo die with their hands locked around each other's throats. The context is what changes. (Londo's keeper wakes up and forces him to strangle G'Kar; they're both dead.) 3. I suspect even in S4 that JMS expected Lyta to die in the Telepath War, which takes place a few years post-series. But when Sleeping in Light was filmed, Ivanova was supposed to be the one caught up in the Byron romance plot, and when Claudia Christian didn't return that plot got transferred to Lyta, making her more central in S5 than originally planned. You can maybe excuse it on the grounds that Zack didn't get his invitation; he'd have been the one to mention her if he'd been present. And let's take a moment to recognize Christopher Franke's music for the show. For SiL, JMS told him to write music that will make people cry, and boy howdy did he manage that. Also, JMS himself directed this one episode, though with expert help from the crew (especially John Flinn). Counting only the main cast, of those appearing in SiL, only Bruce Boxleitner and Claudia Christian are still alive: the man playing the character who dies, and the woman playing the character who starts a new life.
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Jul 24, 2023 19:05
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The David Sheridan thing always intrigued me. There's hints that something terrible happened to him, and more than that, that he did something terrible (he had a Keeper somehow? how did that happen?), but it's all left very deliberately vague in a way I appreciate. With all the prophecies and visions and time fuckery, JMS could have spelled out the future a lot more obviously, but he chose to keep some cards unplayed.
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Jul 24, 2023 19:34
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There was a keeper in the "traditional" Centauri gift urn Londo brought for David in Objects at Rest.
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Jul 24, 2023 19:40
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That's what I figured with G'kar. Although I'm not sure it's explicitly said, I like to think that G'kar figured out what happened to Londo and went back to Centauri Prime to give his friend a merciful death. No doubt that by them Londo had done his penance and earned a measure of mercy.
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Jul 24, 2023 19:43
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Absurd Alhazred posted:There was a keeper in the "traditional" Centauri gift urn Londo brought for David in Objects at Rest. Right right. I'd forgotten about that. Still leaves the mystery of what exactly he did under the Keeper's influence, and I think I prefer it that way.
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Jul 24, 2023 19:55
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:I have passed Beyond the Rim. Thanks for recaps. There are still the movies, The Lost Tales and Crusade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHpMAubwfQg
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Jul 24, 2023 20:29
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MikusR posted:Thanks for recaps. There are still the movies, The Lost Tales and Crusade. And the cartoon coming out soon!
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Jul 24, 2023 20:55
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Yea, you finished SiL just in time! You get a bunch of brand new B5 content in like 3 weeks!
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Jul 24, 2023 21:01
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Narsham posted:Counting only the main cast, of those appearing in SiL, only Bruce Boxleitner and Claudia Christian are still alive: the man playing the character who dies, and the woman playing the character who starts a new life. gently caress. That somehow never occurred to me before.
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Jul 24, 2023 21:58
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Narsham posted:3. I suspect even in S4 that JMS expected Lyta to die in the Telepath War, which takes place a few years post-series. But when Sleeping in Light was filmed, Ivanova was supposed to be the one caught up in the Byron romance plot, and when Claudia Christian didn't return that plot got transferred to Lyta, making her more central in S5 than originally planned.
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Jul 24, 2023 22:35
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Speaking of behind-the-scenes negotiation: depending on who you ask, there are differing accounts for why Ivanova wasn't in season 5. Whatever the reason, I liked Lochley OK, but the series was weaker without Ivanova/ Claudia Christian. Same with Andrea Thompson. I kept expecting Talia to show up as a Psi cop and she never did. Pity (I like Tallmann, though).
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Jul 24, 2023 22:42
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Speaking of behind-the-scenes negotiation: depending on who you ask, there are differing accounts for why Ivanova wasn't in season 5. Whatever the reason, I liked Lochley OK, but the series was weaker without Ivanova/ Claudia Christian. If you want to get really into it, there's a whole story about how this all went down when the cast was at a convention in the UK and an article in the trade press announced that she was no longer on the show and looking for new roles. F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Same with Andrea Thompson. I kept expecting Talia to show up as a Psi cop and she never did. Pity (I like Tallmann, though). BlackLagoon fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Jul 24, 2023 |
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Jul 24, 2023 23:04
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BlackLagoon posted:The short story is that she quit. Initially she started lying and saying she was fired, but eventually she fessed up to quitting. She might have been hoping she would be able to land a lead role on another series, or it might have been a negotiation tactic. (Apparently her agent called up jms after Lochley had been cast and asked he was "ready to negotiate".) Where did she fess up to quitting? She was claiming there was a weird fuckup with the agent as late as Babylon Confidential.
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Jul 24, 2023 23:07
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I don’t know if I’m confusing this with Terry Farrell quitting DS9 (as I know this was one of the reasons for her leaving), but wasn’t there also something about Claudia Christian wanting fewer episodes so she could do a movie however the studio wouldn’t accommodate it, whereas JMS would have written her out without an issue? Of course, when you bring JMS into the conversation, wasn’t there another issue where he tried unsuccessfully dating Christian?
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Jul 24, 2023 23:15
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Where did she fess up to quitting? She was claiming there was a weird fuckup with the agent as late as Babylon Confidential. BlackLagoon fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Jul 24, 2023 |
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Jul 24, 2023 23:18
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As I understand it, the story they've both settled on most recently is that when it was coming down to the line as they found out they were going to actually have a Season 5 her agent decided to play hardball without her permission and found out that the studio could swing harder. Christian and JMS both claim that the agent and the studio were telling each other and each of them different lies and that if there had been time enough for the two of them to talk personally it would all have gotten cleared up, but there were hard feelings for a long time until they were able to do just that years later. How much of that you choose to believe is up to you.
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Jul 24, 2023 23:53
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Lemniscate Blue posted:As I understand it, the story they've both settled on most recently is that when it was coming down to the line as they found out they were going to actually have a Season 5 her agent decided to play hardball without her permission and found out that the studio could swing harder. When it comes to Christian's departure from the show, it is a three-edged sword: Christian's side, Straczynski's side and the truth.
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Jul 25, 2023 00:28
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I don't blame her for being weird about it. Reportedly JMS is a big weirdo on an interpersonal basis, and she's had one very, very bad fan interaction.
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Jul 25, 2023 00:53
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SlothfulCobra posted:I don't blame her for being weird about it. Reportedly JMS is a big weirdo on an interpersonal basis, and she's had one very, very bad fan interaction. Jesus, yeah. In her place I don't know if I'd even be able to meet fans anymore after that.
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Jul 25, 2023 02:50
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Lemniscate Blue posted:As I understand it, the story they've both settled on most recently is that when it was coming down to the line as they found out they were going to actually have a Season 5 her agent decided to play hardball without her permission and found out that the studio could swing harder.
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Jul 25, 2023 10:25
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BlackLagoon posted:I'm not sure how well that meshes with the whole convention story. As it goes, WB sent Claudia what jms and the other cast members present at the convention understood as an ultimatum. "Sign the contract extension like the others did or you're out." And each of them went to her and tried to convince her to sign. At that point she must have understood her agent was playing with fire and still decided to go along with it. I think people forget that this was negotiation taking place in California between one set of people (I assume Christian’s agent and either Doug Netter or someone who worked for him) while Christian and JMS were at a convention in England. And the only convenient real-time communication was the telephone. (I can’t recall if AIM was regularly used at that time. E-mail required a computer and a service provider: no wi-fi, no gmail). And Christian and her agent seemed to think B5’s “hard deadline” was a pressure tactic and not the truth. The one bit that seems generally accepted is that Christian wanted a few episodes off to do another project, but wanted to be paid for those episodes (ie. Pay for 22 episodes but have several off). The show had released performers for other work, but hadn’t paid them. As JMS tells it, paying her for more episodes than she appeared in would have been equivalent to a raise, which would have triggered raises based on other contracts, and TNT gave them less money for S5 than they’d had previously. (I believe the actors all got “raises” but for a reduced filming schedule, meaning they’d actually be paid less and work less over the same period.) Beyond that, it’s unclear how much was misunderstanding and how much was deliberate playing hardball. We know Christian was unhappy in S4 with being reduced to Voice of the Resistance, so I’d believe JMS told her about his plans for her S5 plot and she and her agent thus thought she was integral to the show. She wasn’t. In a wider sense, someone decided what that hard deadline was. If they knew about the convention (which Netter surely did), then it was a strongarm tactic. If they didn’t, then it wasn’t. Without knowing what drove that deadline, it’s impossible to tell. I do suspect that whoever handled the contract negotiations wouldn’t have wanted JMS to have final say, so he may not himself have been fully in the loop. As for how closely Christian was working with her agent, who knows?
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Jul 25, 2023 15:04
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I don't think AIM was used for business at the time but even if it were it would've had the same constraints as email.
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Jul 25, 2023 15:49
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ultrafilter posted:I don't think AIM was used for business at the time but even if it were it would've had the same constraints as email. Jms is terminally online though, and I'd absolutely believe it if he did use it for business. Or icq.
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Jul 25, 2023 15:58
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jms and claudia negotiating while the uh-oh sound pops off constantly
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Jul 25, 2023 16:23
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JMS being very online in the early 90s was part of him being a massive weirdo.
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Jul 25, 2023 17:06
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Narsham posted:The one bit that seems generally accepted is that Christian wanted a few episodes off to do another project, but wanted to be paid for those episodes (ie. Pay for 22 episodes but have several off). The show had released performers for other work, but hadn’t paid them. As JMS tells it, paying her for more episodes than she appeared in would have been equivalent to a raise, which would have triggered raises based on other contracts, and TNT gave them less money for S5 than they’d had previously. (I believe the actors all got “raises” but for a reduced filming schedule, meaning they’d actually be paid less and work less over the same period.) Narsham posted:In a wider sense, someone decided what that hard deadline was. If they knew about the convention (which Netter surely did), then it was a strongarm tactic. If they didn’t, then it wasn’t. Without knowing what drove that deadline, it’s impossible to tell. I do suspect that whoever handled the contract negotiations wouldn’t have wanted JMS to have final say, so he may not himself have been fully in the loop. As for how closely Christian was working with her agent, who knows? And then she started lying about it, saying she was fired, or they tried to take her residuals, or whatever. Not the sign of someone who had just been bamboozled by their agent and was regretting listening to them instead of everyone else who told her exactly what was going to happen.
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Jul 25, 2023 18:22
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BlackLagoon posted:And then she started lying about it, saying she was fired, or they tried to take her residuals, or whatever. Not the sign of someone who had just been bamboozled by their agent and was regretting listening to them instead of everyone else who told her exactly what was going to happen. There's a distinction between "bamboozled by their agent" and "agent assured me that this negotiation tactic would 100% work and turned out to be wrong and I'm stuck spinning the story instead of admitting that I hosed up." I suppose it's possible Christian was just done with the show and has modulated that position because it'd make all the conventions awkward. But my sense, both at the time and now, was that she was taking a negotiating position and was genuinely surprised when "I'm willing to walk over this" turned into "I'm no longer on the show." Her perception of the negotiation process and the actual process were miles apart. I read that as "agent, who has been through a lot more of these negotiations than Christian, assures her of something untrue and she holds firm to that belief until she's suddenly off the show." I see the lying as her feeling hurt and betrayed because of a mismatch between what she though the process would be and what the process actually was: she definitely took what happened personally. And JMS always takes things personally. TK-42-1 posted:jms and claudia negotiating while the uh-oh sound pops off constantly I know less about Claudia, but I find it hard to believe any of the other producers would have left the negotiating power with JMS. By S4, I can believe he wasn't getting duped like he was over Pat Tallman's contract for S1, but he doesn't strike me as a keen--or realistic--negotiator.
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Jul 25, 2023 18:43
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Overthinking it alert: As much as I liked Sleeping in Light, I'm a bit confused how it fits with the events of War Without End. So in WWE, Sheridan jumps forward by about twenty years and finds himself inside Londo's palace. Somehow, both G'kar (sans Lyta, whom I guess finally found her telepath planet) and Delenn are also there; the latter seems like she's being held captive by the Centauri government. Delenn doesn't seem terribly surprised to find John there, so did she sense that Londo's end was near and felt the need to go to Centauri Prime? Where was the contemporary Sheridan (trying to phrase this in as least a confusing way as possible) at this time? Watching it the first time, I was left with the impression that Delenn hadn't seen Sheridan in quite a while but that doesn't jive with what we say in SiL.
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Jul 26, 2023 17:00
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Overthinking it alert: As much as I liked Sleeping in Light, I'm a bit confused how it fits with the events of War Without End. So in WWE, Sheridan jumps forward by about twenty years and finds himself inside Londo's palace. Somehow, both G'kar (sans Lyta, whom I guess finally found her telepath planet) and Delenn are also there; the latter seems like she's being held captive by the Centauri government. The flash forward in War Without End would have happened 2-3 years prior to sleeping in light. We know that Sheridan has 20 years starting from the start of season 4. We also know that David is born a few months after Objects at Rest, which is ~2 years after that. Finally, we know from Londo’s appearance in Objects that the Keeper is to be given to David when he turns 16, which would put those events about 2 years before SiL. The incident in the palace, it’s heavily implied, is the culmination of that whole fiasco - an attempt to rescue their son, which apparently succeeded, at the cost of Sheridan and Delenn being imprisoned. And then, the scenes we see.
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Jul 26, 2023 17:15
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Chevy Slyme posted:The flash forward in War Without End would have happened 2-3 years prior to sleeping in light. Ah, gotcha. That makes sense. it's such a well written show I knew there had to be details I was missing.
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Jul 26, 2023 17:35
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That story's part of the third novel in the Centauri Prime trilogy of novels.
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Jul 26, 2023 17:40
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Ah, gotcha. That makes sense. it's such a well written show I knew there had to be details I was missing. ultrafilter posted:That story's part of the third novel in the Centauri Prime trilogy of novels. And, to go along with this, the answer to your other questions about what happened w/ Lyta are also in other novels; but the tl;dr that doesn't actually get in to spoiling those, is her adventures with G'kar only lasted 2-3 years tops. She eventually comes back to collect on her deal with Garibaldi and returns to her war w/ the Psi Corps. It's a whole thing, but the takeaway in terms of understanding WWE/Sleeping in Light is that there's a solid 18 years of ~stuff that happens, and G'kar doesn't spend all of those loving off with Lyta.
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Jul 26, 2023 17:43
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