Previously on rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated, Brian Harvey said:

> I'd be tempted to say that this is the difference between the idiot box and
> literature, except that very few B5 episodes are reorderable, so it's not just
> a question of TV vs. not-TV.  Still, I think this is why I found Crusade
> disappointing after watching B5 -- more often than not, I didn't come away
> with a sense of forward motion in the overall plot.  I don't think this can
> be blamed entirely on TNT.  But, I don't know, maybe if Crusade had gone five
> years I'd have ended up feeling differently about it.

We'll never know.  But, try to watch the first half of B5 season one by
itself, forgetting everything you know about what comes later.  I think
you'll find the same "lack of progress".

When B5 first aired, I watched "The Gathering" and thought, "kinda
slow, but it has potential, I'll watch the series when it comes out",
thinking that the series would start a lot sooner than it did.  When it
did come out, I had forgotten about it and missed the first few
episodes.  I managed to catch them later in repeats, and my initial
thought was, "This isn't going anywhere."  And honestly, if there were
TV scheduling conflicts at that time, I would probably have dropped B5
from my personal schedule.

It wasn't until the episode "Signs And Portents" that I was really
hooked into the show, when the threads started to really weave
together.

But conversely, if I had watched that episode FIRST, I would have had
no grounding on the various characters to understand or appreciate
their reactions to Morden, nor the various foreshadowings that were
revealed.  I would have been lost, and therefore uninterested.

IMO, the first half of season one of Crusade that we saw was very
likely just like that first half of season one of B5:  Lots of setup so
we'd have some understanding of the characters and their situation(s)
before the plot really starts to take off.  We were robbed, man, we
were robbed.  And by "we", I definitely include JMS in that.  You and I
were robbed of a potentially excellent story, JMS was robbed of the
opportunity to tell that story.

-- 
Jeffrey Kaplan                                         www.gordol.org
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