On Jan 21, 3:12 pm, Steve Silverwood 
wrote:
> B5 really pioneered lots of things.  It proved that a serial show --
> not just episodes but a real story arc -- was a viable programming
> model.
No, "Wiseguy" and "Hill Street Blues" had already
established that.
Heck, even "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp" had played with the
idea. B5's innovation was making the long-term story arcs themselves
coherent storytelling, not just the episodes and the short-term arcs.
The closest thing since may have been the first two years of "Alias".
> >Lost in Space is fun and campy but was it really any more important than
> >Fireball XL-5, The Starlost or UFOs?
>
> Not hardly.  LIS shouldn't have even been included in the list.
It's not a question of artistic value, but one of historic importance.
There are plenty of parallels. The American musical, for example, was
strongly influenced by "The Black Crook" (1866, I think) and the 1902
"Wizard of Oz", but neither one is tolerable today. No one ever does
"The Black Crook", and the single amateur performance of "Wizard of
Oz" last summer was the first full-dress production since the 1920s.
Similarly, "Lost in Space" is a landmark, even though most of it is
bloody awful. "Fireball XL-5" was a kiddy show, "The
Starlost" was
repudiated by its creator even before it went on the air, and "UFO"
was an adult production of a kiddy-show concept. (And "Fireball XL-5"
and "UFO" were British, anyway, which puts them out of
"Pioneers"'
purview.)
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