Babylon 5 on DVD [NO SPOILERS for Season 5, please]

[TwistedBishop]

What are you referring to, why the show ended? That's been made very clear: it was a ratings issue. It didn't bomb out, if that's what you're thinking. The ratings were fine. The problem was TNT didn't just want good ratings, they wanted people who tuned in to Crusade to stick around after it ended each night. And that wasn't happening. So TNT played some goofy game with Straczynski, sending him increasingly inane production notes. Think of it as psychological warfare from suits. I can't see how any of that is his fault.

Comparing Crusade to Babylon 5 isn't very fair. B5's first season was incredibly rocky, and if it had gotten canned then, when no one knew of the fantastic stuff to come in latter seasons, most complaints would boil down to the same ones we're seeing against Crusade. Crusade was never about spending five seasons looking for a cure to a plague; it was supposed to turn into a deeper story about Earth's corruption and leftover Shadow technology. You seem to be saying that, since Crusade didn't immediately jump to the climax of action that was akin to B5 Season Four, it was some utter failure. It makes no sense to me how you expect to instantly get into the thick of a story's plot.

I also can't believe you're suggesting Straczynski should have continued B5 past Season Five, which was the conclusion to the story he set out to tell. I think everyone who has experienced how awful fiction can get when it's extended for commercial reasons (X-Files and Buffy running way past their prime, and Wheel of Time's insanity) would support his decision to remain true to his story.

 

[KenM]

Instead of thinking that he can routinely churn out fantastic shows, he should have stuck with Babylon 5 and turned out season 6+ of B5.
B5 Season 5 was a drop in quality from B5 season 4. Crusade Season 1 was an even bigger drop in quality from B5 Season 5. The Network execs reacted when they realized a bait and switch had occurred and dropped Crusade.

From everything I heard about B5, JMS had a 5 year arc for it. The reason season 5 was so poor compared with seasons 1-4 was JMS was not sure until the very last minute that TNT was going to let him do a season 5. So JMS had to tie up all the major plot threads in season 4 and do some other stuff in season 5. I don't want to post spoilers here for people that have not seen the whole series.
From what I heard about Crusade, TNT wanted a show that was more action and lots of scantailly clad women, not the orginal version of Crusade, so JMS droped it.

 

[TwistedBishop]

KenM's right, there is that factor to why S5 didn't have quite the same punch as S4. However, it's not like the whole season was created off the cuff. Straczynski has said before that if he'd known there would be a S5, only about the last three arc episodes of S4 would have been moved into Fifth, which is basically what we saw happen with S3 leading into S4. That's not a huge change, but it does take some of the dramatic punch out of the beginning.

If you actually look at what Season Five was intended to be, had certain actors stayed on (I don't want to post spoilers here), it would have been a lot more powerful. That would have vastly mproved the entire Byron miniarc for me, which has always been my sticking point for the season. The rest of the episodes are fine, and they give us one of the best conclusions to a character ever on television.

TNT's idea of improving Crusade was asking JMS to include a sexual explorer, and having the female crew member (Dureena) raped as a blackmail tactic by the Captain. These people are chimps.

 

[Staffan]

What are you referring to, why the show ended? That's been made very clear: it was a ratings issue.

How can Crusade's cancellation be an issue of ratings when it was cancelled before they had even aired one episode?

 

[TwistedBishop]

Replace "Crusade" with "Babylon 5-Season Five", and there you have it. Same effect, different names.

 

[John Crichton]

Fellas, I'm gettin' a strong post-season 2 spoiler vibe off the current conversation. It's not giving away much but I'd like to be as pure as possible while still enjoying the DVDs and this topic. Thanks.

DVD Update: I'm on disc 4 of Season 2 at the moment. Just watched the ep of the "newscast" where the Narn/Centauri crusiers pop up and blow each other to space slag. Good stuff. The actual meat of the story is starting to heat up it looks like...

 

[Storm Raven]

Replace "Crusade" with "Babylon 5-Season Five", and there you have it. Same effect, different names.

"Hi, I'm TwistedBishop, and I don't know what I'm talking about".

Seriously. Crusade was cancelled because JMS couldn't live with the asinine production notes sent to him by TNT. Things like: the big gun on the Excalibur must be fired in every episode, you should have a "sexual explorer" added to the crew, characters should rape one another, and you should have lots of WWF-style fighting (in point of fact, one exec suggested that JMS look to the WWF as an example of how to do good character development).

Stupid people who shouldn't be in charge of driving themselves to 7-11 killed the show.

 

[KenM]

Fellas, I'm gettin' a strong post-season 2 spoiler vibe off the current conversation. It's not giving away much but I'd like to be as pure as possible while still enjoying the DVDs and this topic. Thanks.

DVD Update: I'm on disc 4 of Season 2 at the moment. Just watched the ep of the "newscast" where the Narn/Centauri crusiers pop up and blow each other to space slag. Good stuff. The actual meat of the story is starting to heat up it looks like...

Wait until season 3, hehe. One of the things I like about the show is how the characters evolve from show to show. Also in the later seasons, they start to refer back to stuff that happened in eariler shows.

 

[TwistedBishop]

"Hi, I'm TwistedBishop, and I don't know what I'm talking about".

Seriously. Crusade was cancelled because JMS couldn't live with the asinine production notes sent to him by TNT. Things like: the big gun on the Excalibur must be fired in every episode, you should have a "sexual explorer" added to the crew, characters should rape one another, and you should have lots of WWF-style fighting (in point of fact, one exec suggested that JMS look to the WWF as an example of how to do good character development).

Stupid people who shouldn't be in charge of driving themselves to 7-11 killed the show.

I did mention the production notes, didn't I? Exactly what does your repetition of what I had already stated earlier prove? The fact remains the entire Crusade issue started with ratings, most of it from the Babylon 5 Season Five run on TNT (but I suppose it might also have played off their reruns of previous seasons as well).

If you feel like debating the issue further, perhaps you should take into account that this is all coming from Straczynski himself. Here's what JMS had to say about it personally at the Hawthorne Comic Con last May:

"I ran into some guys who worked for TNT about two years after Crusade went down. And they said, "Did you ever hear the rest of the story?"

JMS: "What rest of the story?"

TNT guys: "We found out, we did a research survey, a five year long study of our ratings. This was just after Crusade got going. And, we found out that the audience for B5 came for B5, then left afterward. And the TNT regular viewers didn't stick around for B5 and went away and came back. B5 wasn't adding to our viewer base."

So...they decided to pull the plug on Crusade for that reason and use the money to buy another show. But they couldn't say that because they'd be in breach of contract with Warner Bros. So their job was to make it impossible for us so they could then say, "We aren't getting the show we want, our notes aren't being dealt with, therefore we aren't responsible, we're canceling the show, this is your nut Warner Bros., you take care of it." That is why all the notes became so egregious. If I had given them everything they wanted, they still would have pulled the plug. They just wanted out."

 

[Viking Bastard]

So TNT tricked JMS into quitting?