lurkers-guide/ftp/jms.radio.7-24-94

Transcription of "One Step Beyond" radio program 7/24/94,
KDHX-FM, St. Louis.  Chuck Lavazzi, producer.

Transcription by Maria Ana Montalvo [I've attempted to be as accurate
as possible.  Verbal hesitations (such as "um") have either been deleted,
or indicated by "..".  Verbal "keep busy" phrases, such as "uh huh," in
the middle of short speeches have also been deleted; I kept those in
long speeches to make this easier to read.  When I couldn't understand a
phrase, my best guess is indicated with square brackets and question marks,
e.g. [?? guess ??].  (Of course, this whole thing is my best guess.)  Enjoy.
mam 8/8/94]

Revised 10/30/94: Fixed some misspellings; filled in one of the spots
I didn't understand, based on a net discussion.  mam

Cast:
Chuck = Chuck Lavazzi
Otis = Otis Woodard
jms = J. Michael Straczynski
assorted callers


[introductory business deleted]

Chuck: ... And this week our special guest, from his home in California,
J. Michael Straczynski, the creator and executive producer of the science
fiction TV series, Babylon 5.  And if you'd like to talk to him, and us,
you can do it by calling 664-FM88.  We'll put you on the line, and you
can talk to the man who created this show.

Otis: Well, say his name again.

Chuck: J. Michael Straczynski [stra-chin-ski].  I think I pronounced it
right.  If I didn't, he'll tell me what's right [laughs] when we put him
on 'cause he's listening to this right now.

Otis: Well, the Babylon 5, and I'm sure there are people out there who are
fans of the Babylon 5 ...

Chuck: I sure am.

Otis: ... just like the Firesign Theater [last week's guests] so,
you'll get your ears full today on this wonderful show.

Chuck: So stay tuned for science fiction, Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski,
we're going to give away some tickets, and we're going to be playing some
sort-of science-fiction-oriented comedy and music in there on the show where
it's never the same show twice, you know, it's One Step....

Otis: One Step Beyond ...

Chuck: ... this one here.

[music containing sound bites from Lost In Space]

[Michael O'Hare's voice]: It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, 10
years after the Earth-Minbari war.  The Babylon project was a dream given
form.  It's goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans
and aliens could work out their differences peacefully.  It's a port of call,
home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepeneurs, and wanderers.
Humans and aliens wrapped in 2,500,000 tons of spinning metal, all alone in
the night.  It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last best hope for
peace.  This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations.  The year is
2258.  The name of the place is Babylon 5.

[theme music]

Chuck:  All right, and right now you're probably asking yourself, "What in
the world do those two cuts have to do with each other?"  OK, here it is.
The first cut you heard is something called "Celebration."  It was put
together several years ago for a Lost in Space convention, and we got that
from one of our listeners who calls himself Doctor Smith.  And of course,
among the many voices you heard on that was the voice of Billy Mumy.  Now,
it just so happens that Billy Mumy is featured in Babylon 5 as Lennier, the
assistant to the Minbari ambassador, so of course, the next thing we heard
was the main title for the TV series Babylon 5.  And the reason we did that
(finally we're getting around to the point here at 9 minutes after the hour)
is because on the phone with us right now, unless I've screwed up, is
J. Michael Straczynski, the creator and executive producer of Babylon 5.
Joe, are you still there?

jms: I hope so.

Chuck: Yes, you are.  You've been very patient.  We've had you on hold for
about 20 minutes now.

jms: It's always fascinating.

Chuck: We're glad to have you here.

jms: And you said it right.  The European version is stra-chin-ski.
The Americanized version is stra-zin-ski, but you can call me Joe.

Chuck: We'll do that, 'cause it'll be easier.  It's better than jms or
Great Maker, in terms of radio anyway.

jms: I think so.

Chuck: Yeah.  Let me explain, once again, that ... for those of you who
might not know, Babylon 5 is an internationally syndicated science fiction
television show.  Here, in St. Louis, it's seen on KPLR Channel 11 in Dolby
stereo at 10 a.m. on Saturday, which I think is an odd time, and repeated
at 8 p.m. on Sunday, so, you have a chance to see this week's episode,
which I believe is Legacies, and .. more than that I won't say, because
I'm going to turn this over to Joe, to tell us a little bit about Babylon
5, and how it might differ from some of the other science fiction shows you
may have seen on TV.  And I also want to remind you, our listeners, that
you can call us on 664-FM88, if you want to go on the air and talk to Joe.
So, Joe, lay it on us.

jms: Babylon 5 is a series set in the future about 250-some-odd years,
aboard a space station which is about 5 miles long, and serves as a port of
call, or a way station, if you will, similar to Venice, or other parts of
Europe during the 14th century.

Chuck: Uh huh.

jms: A place of commerce, trade, diplomacy, where different parties can meet
and work out their problems.  And .. what we're trying to do with the show,
which is I think different than what's been done before for American
television certainly, is that Babylon 5 is a five-year story.  Each episode
stand alone, because it has to.  You can't be sure to watch every single
week.  But over the long haul, as well as seeing the individual stories we
have in the series, you'll see a much larger story with a beginning, a
middle and end that unravels over 5 years.  It's an attempt to do for
American television what the British have often done.  Like The Prisoner was
a self-contained story ...

Chuck: Right.

jms: ... and it had a definite end point.  And this also has a definite end
point.  I also want to try and do for science fiction television what ... as
the print medium has been doing for..ever.  I grew up on the, on the true
sagas of science fiction, the Foundation books, the ...

Chuck: Oh, Asimov, yes.

jms: [?? Krell | Carroll ??] books, and the Dune books, the Lord of the Rings,
and asked the question, why has no one really tried to do something on that
scale for American television.  And I figured, well, someone has to be the
first one, might as well be me.

Chuck: So, I mean, this is kind of unusual, too, because it's rare for us to
actually have a science fiction either movie or TV that is really produced,
or the brain-child of an actual science fiction fan, ironically enough.

jms: Yes, this is the case where the loonies are running the asylum.

Chuck: Yes!  Yes, we're all in favor of that here.

jms: And certainly I've worked other shows, and very often they find guys who
really don't know science fiction at all, but have track records running
shows in general, and say here's a science fiction show; go run it.  And they
approach it with either no knowledge of the series or contempt for science
fiction in general.

Chuck: Yeah.  Yeah.

jms: A number of years ago, when I used to be a journalist, I was
assigned to interview the producers of the series V.

Chuck: OK.

jms: Uh, not the miniseries which was terrific, but the series itself.  And,
one thing one of the producers said, was that as long as we have space
ships and laser blasts, and funny-looking aliens, we are guaranteed the
science fiction audience.  We have to go beyond that.  And I was astonished
at the level of real contempt showed toward the audience.  And that
extends ... either contempt or lack of knowledge extends up and down the
entire Hollywood system.  Fortunately, that is starting slowly to change as
the old farts die off....

Chuck: [laughs] That's a very frank way to put it, yes.

Otis: That's very good.

jms: And those of us who know and grew up with this stuff can take their
place.

Chuck: Is that really happening; I mean, do you see that as a real
trend?  At this point?

jms: It's ... an evolutionary trend, yeah.  In the sense of one level
dying off, the next taking its place.  The other main concern, of course,
has always been .. the budget, because science fiction shows have
perennially been budget breakers.  They always cost huge, hideous
amounts of money, and they always go over budget.  And one reason that
networks and stations are leery of them is because they always do this.
Babylon 5 is the very first American science fiction TV series in history
ever to come in a few bucks under budget for the year.

Chuck:  I didn't know that.

jms: Yeah, and because of that, because of the model that we're using in our
production, suddenly the networks are looking around saying, well, maybe it
can be done, if we use the Babylon 5 model.  So now we have network and
studio VPs making tours of the facility, seeing how the heck we're doing what
we're doing.

Chuck: Oh, really?  So you're attracting a lot of attention with this.

jms: Yeah, and it is our hope ... that this will encourage more science
fiction on television.  Because I think that, the more competition there is,
the better off we're all gonna be, both those who make the shows as those
who watch the shows.

Chuck: Oh, for sure.  You know, let's back up a second.  You said the Babylon
5 model is enabling you to come in under budget.  What is that model?  I
mean, how does that differ from, oh, I don't know maybe, the Star Trek
series, or some other series people might know.

jms: What we're trying to do is ... my sense is when someone hands you 20 or
some-odd million dollars to make a show, it kind of behooves you to act
responsibly, which by itself is a bit of a break from tradition.

Chuck: [laughs]  I guess in Hollywood, I guess that's true, yes.

jms: But beyond that, we're doing what no one else is doing in town, is
taking full advantage of technology, and the changes in technology in
production, and post-production and other areas.  We have almost a
completely-digital studio, which no one else has at this point.  In
addition to that, we plan things out way ahead of time, because, again,
this is a planned-out series, where every episode story is worked out 5
years in advance.  I have every story for 5 years in my head.  Before we
roll one frame of film, we know what stories we're going to be doing that
year, what sets we're going to have to have constructed, what effects we're
going to have to have, and we have at minimum of 6 scripts already in hand.
So this gives all the different parties concerned enough time to sit 
down ... and design things and build things properly, without having to
rush.  It comes down basically to planning.  Which no one else does in this
town.  It's always last minute [?that?] you're getting paid is on the stage,
you're paying 24 hours of overtime to get things built in time, which is
madness.  If you know where you're going, and you plan out ahead of time,
you can save a lot of money and get more out of the process.

Chuck:  I want to remind our listeners here two things: we're talking
with J. Michael Straczynski, the executive producer of Babylon 5; the
phone number here is 664-FM88 if you want to jump in here and talk to Joe
and Otis and myself, and what else was I going to say, there was something
else I was going to bring ...  Oh yeah, I was going ... so ... what you've
just been saying is that really, one of the things that distinguishes
Babylon 5 from some other stuff we may have seen is that it is planned out
and has a finite beginning and end.  Is this why we sometimes, or at least
I sometimes, get the feeling looking at other shows, that they're making it
up as they go along [British accent], as they said in Monty Python?

jms: Well, most shows do, to one extent or another.  I think that Brisco
County, to some extent, was an exception to that, with their whole orb
story line.  They kind of had an idea where they were going, and that made
it, you know, for me as a viewer, an awful lot of fun.

Chuck: Because it seemed to be something extended.  I think someone wants
to go on the air here, so let's give 'em a shot.  Hello, you're on the air
with J. Michael Straczynski.

caller:  Yes, good afternoon.

Chuck: Good afternoon.

caller: My question was, how did you manage to get such intelligent
programming on commercial television.

Chuck: [laughs]  That's a good question.  Stay on the line, because ...
you know, he's here, you're here, and .. we don't have a tape delay, so
go ahead.

jms: You lie to the stations.

[all laugh]

Chuck: I knew it!  That's the secret!

jms: You tell them you're going to give them Baywatch in space, and
you give them this instead.  By the time they find out, it's too late.  No,
what's very fortunate for us is that as we took the show around for 7 years
it took us to get the show on the air, we'd find out that executives that
we had meetings with either got it, or they didn't get it, immediately.
And the first person who got it was Evan Thompson, from ChrisCraft [sp?]
Television, which was at that time putting a partnership together with
Warner Brothers.  And the Warner Brothers' vice president, Dick Robertson,
also saw the potential of what we had in mind to do, and believed in us,
and said stick with us and we'll make this thing happen.  And what you have
to do is find people like these, who understand the concept and are willing
to support it, where often the emphasis is on dumbing down the show.  And
these guys don't.  They're very good people.

caller: Terrific.  Well, that's a wonderful thing.  Thank you.

jms: Thank you.

Chuck: OK.  Thank you for calling.  And, we'll take her off the line.  Once
again, the number is 664-FM88, if you want to talk to Otis and I, and J.
Michael Straczynski, the producer of Babylon 5.  And I'll tell you what I
want to do at this point, Big O, we've got some business to do....

Otis: Yes, we have a little business to do.

Chuck: We got some business to do, and then we're going to play a couple of
pieces of music, and then we'll be back with J. Michael Straczynski, and
your calls about Babylon 5 and science fiction and stuff like that.  So,
Big O, lay the business on us.

[business deleted: PSA & promo]

Chuck:  Well, once again, our guest is J. Michael Straczynski.  He's the
producer, executive producer of Babylon 5, and we're going to drop off for
a couple of songs here that are science-fiction related, then we'll be back
with him and us and your calls.

Otis: That's right, you can dial 664-3688, and you can talk to a real, real
producer.

Chuck: Hollywood producer type.  Although, I don't ... Joe, I guess you're
not really a Hollywood producer in the old sense, from what you said.

jms: I really try not to be.

Chuck: Yeah.

jms: And one last point, very quickly, I was thinking about your caller's
questions.

Chuck: Oh, OK.

jms: And the other path, or the answer to her question is that you produce
intelligent science fiction by hiring intelligent science fiction writers.

Chuck: Ah.

jms: And you have your, like, Dorothy Fontana, David Gerrold, Harlan
Ellison, and others involved in your show, it certainly helps.

Chuck: And, I'm going to come back to that point, after the music.  So,
we're going to drop out here for a couple of things.  Well, here's one of
our favorite groups, the Bonzo Dog Band, and I guess, since we're in outer
space and also in the city, it's only fair we play a cut called I'm the
Urban Space Man on the One Step Beyond show, KDHX, St. Louis.  The phone
number here is 664-FM88 if you want to get in on the conversation.  We'll
be back in about, oh, five minutes or so.

[music]

Chuck: Well, there he goes.  That's Harry Nilssen [sp?] with Space Man,
and this is the One Step Beyond show, KDHX, St. Louis community radio with
Chuck and Otis and our special guest, J. Michael Straczynski, from
California.

jms: Hi there.

Chuck: Yeah, you're still there.  Ok.

jms: I'm in here.

Chuck: Yes.

jms: Surprising to both of us, but I'm still here.

Chuck: Yeah, hey listen, we've got ... it looks like someone's calling in.
Otis is going to screen the call and see if they want to talk to you on
the air but....  Let me remind folks, J. Michael Straczynski, the executive
producer and creator of the science fiction TV series Babylon 5, and we
have someone on line who wants to talk to you.

jms: Great.

caller: Good afternoon.

Chuck: Hello.  You're on the air with J. Michael Straczynski.

caller: Good afternoon.

jms: Hi there.

caller: First of all I've got a comment, and I speak for several of
a roomful of people we've got sitting here.  We really appreciate
the way Babylon 5 gives a realistic treatment of different religious
points of view as opposed to some of the other space shows that are on TV.

Chuck: Which shall remain unnamed.

[laughter]

caller: yeah.  There are so many.

jms: Well, I appreciate that.  One thing that ... personally I am an
atheist.  I make no bones about it.  But, as a writer, my obligation first
and foremost is to be honest in my work.  And as you look around what you
realize very quickly is that religion, whether it is human or alien or what
have you, is, and always has been, mankind's foremost and first means of
trying to understand the universe, and our place within the universe.  It
tries to answer the questions we haven't answered anywhere else yet.
Consequently, I think it behooves you to a) treat it with respect, and b)
to realize that it ain't gonna go away in 250 years.  It's been with us
since the dawn of sentient life on this planet, and it's going to be here
for a long time to come.

caller: OK, and I have a question.  When you talked about a station of the
magnitude of Babylon 5 with a quarter of a million people on it, it raises
some tremendous logistics problems, and I wonder if any background had been
put into that, as far as the development of the story went.

jms: Can you be more specific on that?

caller: Well, like, how many shipments a day of food and removal of waste
and processing of air and all....

jms: Got it.  Yeah, we have indeed put some work into that, trying to
figure out roughly the maximum number of ships that can come through any
one particular time, how much space we have for living quarters, and we try
to answer those questions in a realistic fashion without necessarily going
into them every single week.  It forms sort of a backdrop in the back of
our heads; whether we use it or not, it's always there.  And we try at all
times to again be realistic in how we handle this stuff.  For instance,
once problem you're going to have in an enclosed environment like this
aside from the obvious problems of waste products and food and so on and so
forth, is the fact that a lot of people, as with any large metropolitan
area, are going to come looking for a new life.  For a better life, for job
opportunities.  And they're going to come to the station.  And in our
universe, again, being realistic, space travel costs money.  You don't just
hop on a ship and go somewhere; it's going to cost you a lot of bucks.  And
once you get to Babylon 5 some of the people who are looking for new lives
spend a lot of money to get there, and have some money on hand to live for
a while in hopes of finding that new opportunity.  When they can't find it,
they often can't afford a ticket off the station.  So the question becomes,
what do you do with these guys?  And you can't just, you know, throw 'em
off into space and kill 'em.  To send all of 'em back to their relative
homeworlds is going to cost you an awful lot of money, which their
government doesn't want to pay for, and the [?business?] doesn't want to
pay for.  So they end up migrating down to the lower depths of the station
where they become known as lurkers.

Chuck: Oh, OK.

jms: And, they're basically Babylon 5's homeless.  And, they scavenge, they
scrounge.  Very often you have guys who are doing less than legitimate work
and they go down there and say I need 10 guys or 5 guys to do a job for us.
And it's a real problem.  How do you, how do you deal with that problem?
We're trying to answer that question.

Chuck: So, we'll still have homelessness 250 years in the future, you think.

jms: Yeah.  Yeah.  In particular in this kind of environment where you can't
just go somewhere else.  Once you're there, there's the station, and there's
space.

Chuck: Yeah.

jms: And you can't walk out the door.

Chuck: So I guess it's not dissimilar from the position people were
in, I guess, pre-mass-transportation when they'd reach a big port of call.

jms: In a way, yes.  It's kind of ironic, where we've come much further in
transportation technology, but, you know, by being in a restricted location
like a space station, it causes similar problems to what we had a long time
ago.

Chuck: Are we going to be seeing something more of the lurkers, 'cause so
far they've been kind of tangential, it seems to me.

jms: We will see them from time to time, yeah, certainly toward the end of
the season we see 'em popping up in a few places.  We try not to give too
much story weight there, because there's a limitation of what you can do
with that storyline.

Chuck: Yeah.

jms: But we do have some plans for down the road, though, yes.

Chuck: OK.

caller: Thanks for a wonderful show.

jms: Thank you.

Chuck: Thank you for calling.  And we've got another call, so I might as
well go ahead and put them on.  Hello, you're on the air with J. Michael
Straczynski.

caller: Hi.  Uh, I had a question for you about something regarding a
musical request.

Chuck: Oh, for me!  OK, well, go ahead.

caller: Yeah, I'd like to, yeah, um, I was wondering, I was wondering if
you were, if you were gonna play, I don't know the name of the song, it's
really famous, but I don't really remember the name too awfully well.

jms: La Traviata.

Otis: That's funny.

caller: But, the theme, the theme, the theme music they used off of, off
of Dark Star.

Chuck: Dark Star.  No, I know that's kind of a cult science fiction film,
but I've never seen it.  Joe, have you....

caller: I like, I like the, I like the title, I like the, I like the,
I like the song they used for the title off of that.  I was wondering,
I thought maybe, I thought maybe if you, if you were gonna, gonna
have that theme for the songs you could play that one.

Chuck: I don't think I have that with me though.

caller: Oh, heck.

Chuck: But thanks for calling anyway.

caller: OK.

Chuck: OK.

caller: Well, it's a good show.  I've seen it a couple of times.  It's
all right.

Chuck: OK, thank you.  Do you happen to know, Joe, what the theme
song for Dark Star was, 'cause I've never seen it.

jms: For some reason, Dark of the Sun is coming to mind, but that may
not be correct.

Chuck: Yeah.  We have another caller here.  Hello, you're on the air
with J. Michael Straczynski.

caller: Hi, Chuck, how are you?

Chuck: Hi!

caller: I just wanted ... I know I said I wasn't probably gonna call in,
but I just....

Chuck: Oh, this is ... OK, it's, yeah, OK, this is a friend of mine, Joe,
who is....

jms: My condolences to both of you.

Chuck: Oh no, she and I are both big fans of the show.  We watch it
together a lot.  OK.

caller: Yes, and I have to tell you that when I started watching the show,
I didn't expect to like it.  I really didn't.  I've been a science fiction
fan from way back, and most of the time things fall really short.  This
is ...  it's absolutely wonderful.  And the reason it's wonderful is
because it's so well thought out.  And planned out.  And it has a definite
storyline.  And I just wanted to congratulate you.

jms: Well, thank you.  I appreciate that.  That means a whole lot.  We're
trying to really be faithful to the genre, and have some fun doing it
while we're at it.

caller: Well good.  Thank you.

jms: OK.

caller: Byebye.

Chuck: OK, thanks Lynn.  Yeah.... Well, there we obviously, we have some
Babylonians out in the audience.

Otis: Yes, you know, I was listening, and you know, I think that, that
every now and then you expect something, you know listening, and
[??viewers??] saying that, that in the back you have these logistical
problems that sometimes you, you really don't, don't really confront, you
know, and I was thinking to myself as I looked at the enormity of this, of
this place, you know, the...  I always think that the next big war that the
world, the world sees is gonna be one over garbage.  It's gonna be some
country taking over another country to dump garbage on.  You know, I think
that looking for a planet that we could use as our really big garbage dump
is gonna be a big project.  And I wondered, you know you [laughs] as you
look at future plots, do you see anything like that zooming up ahead?

Chuck: Ecological concerns or any of that sort of thing.

jms: [laughs] Ecological concerns, or finding a planet to dump on?

[laughter]

Otis: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, finding a planet to dump on.
[laughing] That's probably that's what I'm looking at.

jms: We already have New Jersey.

[laughter]

jms: What more does one need?

Chuck: [laughing] What more would we need with a planet, yes.

Otis: [laughing] I guess you took care of that question right quick.

Chuck: Good thing there's nobody from New Jersey out there.

Otis: Yeah, I'll betcha there is.

Chuck: That seems to have provoked another phone call.

jms: Hey, I'm from New Jersey, what do you want.

Chuck: Oh, really?  That seems to have provoked another phone call,
however.  Let's put 'em on the air.  Hello, you're on the air.

caller: Oh, hi.  This is uh, Bob Mattingly.  Uh, the theme song
for Dark Star was Benson, Arizona.

Chuck: Oh, OK.  By who?

caller: I have no idea who played it.

Chuck: OK.  Well, as long as you're here, did you want to talk to
our guest, or did you just want to let us know about that.

caller: No, just a little bit.

Chuck: OK.

caller: Bye.

Chuck: Thank you.  Well, there you go.

jms: You know, Chuck, for 5 years I hosted a show like yours here in Los
Angeles.  I'm....

Chuck: Did you really!?

jms: I'm recovered now.

[laughter]

Otis: [laughing] It took a little while, I'll bet.

Chuck: I'm not, obviously.  I'm still doing this.  But uh ... let's see,
well, here's another caller, so let's put 'em on the air.  Hello, you're
on the air.

caller: Yeah, this is a guy from New Jersey, and I think you're all pretty
rude.

Chuck: Ok, well ... oops.

jms: From New Jersey, you have to _be_ rude.

Chuck: Yes, that's true.

jms: To survive ...  with all that toxic waste that gets into
your veins after a while.  It gets into your brain.

Chuck: Is that what it is?

jms: Must be.

[Otis garbled, talking at same time]

jms: That's why I'm a writer.

Chuck: And....  Writer, that's right, I was going to go into that.  Now,
you had mentioned earlier that you had a, a number of fairly well-known
science fiction and fantasy writers who had worked on the show.  And
we only touched on that briefly.  I'd like to maybe go back into who
some of those folks are and what we may expect to see from them.

jms: Well, they include some of the best and the brightest.  This past
year, we have ... our creative consultant on the show is Harlan Ellison,
who is probably known to every SF fan out there.  He wrote some of the
best Outer Limits episodes, Soldier, Demon with a Glass Hand.  He wrote
the Star Trek episode City on the Edge of Forever.

Chuck: Yeah.

jms: He's written multiple ... dozens and dozens of collections of short
stories.  He does the Sci-Fi Channel, and, a very well-known science
fiction writer.  We also have .. Dorothy Fontana, a.k.a.  D.C. Fontana,
who was involved with the original Star Trek, writing the episodes for
them.  Worked on War of the Worlds and other science fiction series.
Logan's Run.  David Gerrold, who also worked on the original Star Trek,
wrote Trouble With Tribbles.  And many other science fiction series beyond
that.  My feeling is, if you're going to write a crime or mystery show, you
want to get mystery writers.  You want to write a science fiction show, get
science fiction writers.  For some reason, this, this logic eludes a lot of
Hollywood producers.

Chuck: It never seems to occur to them, either in TV or the movies, does it.

jms: No, it doesn't as a rule, and again, go back to V for a second, the
writers they brought on for that show were almost all soap opera writers.

Chuck: Yeah.

jms: And it showed [?then?] in the final product.

Chuck: That's what you get.  We have another caller, so let's put
'em on the line.  Hello, you're on the air with J. Michael Straczynski.

caller: Yeah, it's me again.

Chuck: OK.

caller: I've got another question talking about the, the writing backup
you have.  Do you have .. actual .. technical backup, scientifically-based
people that give you input, because your science seems a lot more real
than, say, Star Trek.

jms: We do have technical consultants, medical consultants we used on, on a
script-by-script basis if something comes up.  But by and large, because
Harlan and Dorothy and David Gerrold and I, and others on the show grew up
reading science fiction, and have a pretty good science background, a lot
of it we just happen to know.  Which, again, makes it a little bit
different.  You walk down the halls of Babylon 5 production offices, you
don't tend to hear guys talking about their agents.  They're talking about
the latest improvements in SCSI technology coming from Intel, you know.
It's, it's that kind of a crowd.  And so because we're, you know, pretty
well-rounded in that area, we can just put it in ourselves.  We still have
a fact-check from time to time by guys who know, you know, the really good
stuff.

caller: That really shows.  I've seen a behind-the-scenes on, on Star Trek
where the script had blanks in it with "tech" in parentheses, and they
required other people to just fill in some technical mumbo-jumbo, and
watching that, as an engineer, it doesn't really come off all the time.

jms: Yeah, we never do that.

caller: Yeah, and it shows.

jms: Well, thank you.

caller: So, thanks a lot.

jms: All right.

Chuck: OK, thanks for calling.  Well, that's a good point, actually, and I,
I would agree that the technology, I mean obviously, it's still science
fiction.  So, I mean we really don't have faster-than-light travel, and we
still don't have jumpgates and so on, but it does to me seem a little more
plausible than let's say some of the near-magical things we've seen on some
other shows.

jms: Well, bear in mind that, that about 80% of the technology shown on
Babylon 5 is, is a technology we already have and have access to.  We
create .. gravity on Babylon 5 not by some magical button you push to
create artificial gravity, but the station rotates to create the gravity.
Most of what we use is more or less based on current technology, things....
We could do Babylon 5, we could create a Babylon 5.  It'd be a massive
endeavor, but what you see, you could build.  The jumpgates and a few other
areas are, of course, you know, they're a, they're a little bit fuzzier as
far as the science goes.  A little more rubber science going in there.  But
for the most part, we don't use faster-than-light travel; jumpgates allow
you to get around relativity, by going through, you know, hyperspace.

Chuck: Yes.

jms: Which, it takes care of the whole time dilation problem.  So we're
trying to stay pretty, pretty close and rigorous to it.  As a matter of
fact, we got an award a couple of months ago from the Space Frontier
Foundation.

Chuck & Otis: Oh, OK.

jms: For best vision of the future, and, and I sat with Pete Conrad, who
also got an award, because they were saying this was the first time anyone
had sat down and really looked at the commercial civilian space prospects
and done it in a realistic fashion.

Chuck: It makes sense to me.

Otis: Yes.  It is really... it is really interesting that .. when are the
ages, when or what, what do you find the age, what age group are you really
hitting.  I'm just saying, like, you know Chuck Lavazzi, seems like, that
he's, he's kind of one of those boomers, I believe.

Chuck: [laughing] Guilty as charged.

Otis: Are you, are you, are you really hitting the boomers, 'cause it seems
like all of the sudden the boomers are really catching on to these kind of
things.

jms: I don't know.  They tell me at Warner Brothers that the demographics of
the show are very good; that we're hitting .. the audience that we're
supposed to be hitting.  My personal feeling is I don't really write for any
particular audience.  I write what I think amuses _me_, and interests me,
in the hope that if it does so, there are enough people out there who are
as bent and twisted as I am, that will respond to the same thing.

Otis: Well, you know, kind of picking your mind, you know, my son, you know,
I have a, I have a couple of sons, and they're biracial.  And they look at,
they look at a show like yours that put people in this certain ... you know,
they're looking at, at, at a fast progression of a, of a race that's, that's
almost one color.  They see, they see a show like yours as being a place
where that, that whole process has escalated _fast_.  ...  I know I kind of
leave you speechless, but my, my, my little boy, he, he sees your show as a
place where, where, where the integration of the races just comes real fast.

Chuck: Ok, where perhaps that sort of thing is no longer as important.

Otis: Yes, that it's not important.

jms: Yes, definitely it's not important and, and we, we have had every single
ethnic mix you can think of on the show.

Otis: And we know.

jms: All of the .. the pairings on the show, the romantic pairings, have been
interracial.  My feeling is that, if we're going to go to the stars, either
we're all, we're all going to go, or nobody's going to go.

Otis: There you go.

jms: And that when you see something that is not a human coming at you,
suddenly the fact that the guy to your right is black doesn't make a whole
hell of a lot of difference.  'Cause you're both humans.  And I think that'll
have a great unifying force.  And that when we do go to the stars, I think
we're going to bring with us our language, our culture, our ethnic
backgrounds, and, and everything that makes us, makes us _humans_ have to go
with us.  And we're trying to hit that very strongly in the show.

Chuck: Hey, we got a caller here, so I'm going to put him on.  Hello, you're
on the air with J. Michael Straczynski.

caller: Hello, welcome.  This is a very, very minor point, but you'd
mentioned that .. Babylon 5 was 5 .. 5 miles long.

jms: Approximately.

caller: Uh huh.  Well, I was thinking, that .. in 250 years, do you think
that our conversion to the metric system would be complete?

[laughter]

jms: Yes, but mine is not.

Chuck: [laughing] Well, that makes sense.

caller: OK.  I was just wondering, because it's long overdue.  We were
supposed to convert, you know in a 10-year period in this country.

Chuck: So this is one of the cases where, we're talking miles and so on
because it just happens to be the way it's written.

jms: We're talking miles as it, as we're looking at it from the current
perspective.

Chuck: Yeah.

jms: But in the show, we tend by and large to use kil, uh, the metric
system, in kilometers and stuff.

Chuck: Oh, OK.

jms: I think once or twice we slipped, and, and put in, you know, miles or
something, or feet.  But we, we try and keep it metric.

caller: Ah.

Chuck: OK.

caller: Very good.  All right.

Chuck: Thank you.  You know, you touched on something.  We got us some
business to do here, but I want to just throw this out.  I think it's,
while it is true as Otis was mentioning that racial division don't seem
to mean much among humans, we are now seeing in the Babylon 5 universe a
transference of that kind of inter-group hatred to humans versus the
non-human species.

Otis: Yes.

jms: That's correct.  There are, there ... We as a race, one of our, our,
our less admirable attributes is that we always look for someone to blame.
And, someone to scapegoat.  And, once we have realized that we're all
pretty much the same, we're gonna look around for someone out there to
blame for our problems.  And so we blame alien immigration, and alien
migration, and aliens buying up real estate by the square mile, and .. as
a way of dealing with our own problems.  And in addition to which, the
Earth Alliance is only 10 years out of the war that we almost lost very
badly.  It almost wiped out humanity.  And when that happens, and you get
caught up short like that, it tends to give you kind of an inferiority
complex for a while.  When someone hands you your head, you get kind of
nervous for a while there after.

Chuck: [laughing] Yes.

jms: And so that, that inferiority complex is manifesting itself as
aggression among various parts of the human population.  You have the Home
Guard, which is .. sort of an anti-alien terrorist group.  You have political
stuff going on behind the scenes, which is saying, aliens, you know, we have
to, to restrict them, and keep their culture away from our culture.  And that,
that is a real problem in the time of Babylon 5.

Chuck: It's 3:45 in the afternoon, and Big O, you want to throw some business
at us here?

[business deleted: PSA, promo]

Chuck: Thank you, Big O.  And I want to remind our listeners we're talking
to J. Michael Straczynski, who is the creator and executive producer of the
science fiction TV series Babylon 5, and we're taking your calls at 664-FM88.
So you can talk to him, and us, if you just give us a buzz.

jms: One follow-up, by the way.

Chuck: Yes.

jms: You asked me before what Babylon 5 is about.

Chuck: Yes.

jms: And on one level, the answer that I gave you is absolutely correct.
But there is a second level that is to be considered.  And, and it's the
kind of thing which when you say this to, as I did by accident once, the
network executives asked, well what is the show about, and I made the error
in one meeting we had of telling them the truth.

[laughter]

Chuck:  Oops.

jms: And ... it is this.  You guys and I, and probably most listeners who
are out there, are more or less in the same age range probably, in the 30s,
40s, somewhere around there, given the audience we're probably going out to.

Chuck: Yeah.

jms: There is a sense in people more or less in our age range and a little
bit older that somewhere in the last 20, 25 years, we fell off the
merry-go-round.  That we stumbled.  And that we stumbled in Vietnam, we
stumbled with John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy and King.  We stumbled in
Korea.  Wherever it was, or maybe it wasn't any one thing.  It was a
series of stumbles.  And the problem is, when you stumble _a lot_, you
look at your feet.  You look down.  And what science fiction television
specifically, and television in general, must do, I believe, is to make
people raise their eyes back up to the horizon.  Because when you do that,
people discover something extraordinary.  That they're part of a grand
parade that is building the future.  That behind us are our ancestors
looking to us to say, make our lives have had meaning.  Make it so it
wasn't for nothing.  And ahead of us are our inheritors and our children,
saying, build the world we're going to live in.  And that it isn't just a
question of having a job, and coming home in the evening, and watching
television.  You're building the future.  That we have come to this place
through 2 million years of evolution, struggle, and blood, and that the
culmination of all of this is not Beavis and Butthead.  There is more to
come.  And that's the obligation of television, and science fiction, to
tell that to people, and say move on.  Build the future.  If you want it,
and you make them want it now, they'll build it tomorrow.

Chuck: Amen and preach it.  What can I say.

Otis: Wow. [laughter]  That's well said.

Chuck: Yeah, Otis was going yeah, yeah, go for it, while you were saying
that.

Otis: Right on.  Yes.

Chuck: I want to remind you we're talking with J. Michael Straczynski, the
creator of Babylon 5.  We are going to drop out for another music break,
and during this music break, we are going to give away some stuff. 

[rest of music intro, etc. deleted]

Chuck: ... 3:54 in the afternoon on the One Step Beyond show, KDHX
St. Louis community radio for the [?bipedal?] area, and here is Chuck, and
there's Otis, and here on the line from California J. Michael Straczynski,
producer... executive producer and creator of Babylon 5.

jms: Hi there.

Chuck: So, still with us, obviously.  Yes, obviously a somewhat more
dystopic idea of the near future there in that song.  But in a way, but
Babylon 5 in its own way, you were saying earlier, is .. both optimistic
and maybe not so optimistic as some other visions of our future, it seems
to me.

jms: Well, what Babylon 5, and most science fiction set in the future says
is that we do go on.  We don't wipe ourselves out in a nuclear holocaust;
we manage to keep, keep ourselves going somehow.  But, that, as we go into
the future and toward the stars, that which makes us human are our frailties
and our flaws as well as our nobilities, stay with us.

Chuck: Yeah.

jms: And we must still work at overcoming the problems that we have.
Personally, as a viewer of science fiction, I find the process of watching
someone in the process of overcoming more interesting than someone who has
already overcome everything.

Otis: Yes, so, Chuck is, Chuck is screening one of your calls out
right now, and, you said you had done radio at one time and was it ...

Chuck: I'm back.

Otis: ... was it this kind of radio that you were doing at one time?

jms: Yes, for 5 years I was the host of Hour 25 here in Los Angeles.

Chuck: Oh right!  I read that in your bio, yes.

jms: Yeah, it's a science fiction talk show, 2 hours like your, your format
is.  And, so we had a lot of guys on from the science fiction community,
come on and talk about their work.

Chuck: Well, we've got 2 people on hold now who want to talk to you,
so I better get 'em on the air.  Let's get the first on one.  Hello,
you're on the air with J. Michael Straczynski.

caller: Oh, thank you.  First of all, I wanted to .. give him a comment about
how much we appreciate his accessibility on .. radio shows like this, and also
on .. Internet.

Chuck: Great.  Yeah, I was gonna bring that up, but, thank you.

caller: And, I also have an Internet comment for him.  I, I read his post on
Internet every day, and I was wondering if the good comments and criticisms
and the help he gets from that balance out the damage done by people who
refuse to respect the no story ideas request.

jms: In general, yeah, it does balance it out, and, and, I'd say that 99.9%
respect that request, and the other [?hundredth?] percent you just have to
deal with.  I find that the net is very very useful for me, in one sense
because it gives you a sense of the room, as it were.  And on the other
level, as a writer, my job is to think of every possible question about my
characters and my universe, so that when I do sit down to write the show,
it is well-thought-out, and there is verisimilitude to it.  But I cannot
think of every possible question.  However, on the nets, I get every
possible question.  And then some.  And, by virtue of having to answer those
questions, and think about parts of the show I had never thought about
before, it helps me, when I write the show, to have a much broader
background of it.  So, I would say that, that over the long haul,
although there are, there are occasional flame wars, and occasional
aberrations, that the experience and the experiment has been more than
worthwhile.

Chuck: Great.

caller: OK, thank you, so I really appreciate that, and I definitely
enjoy reading all your posts, especially the sarcastic ones....

[laughter]

jms: Thank you.  It takes some, some kind of stupid to sit down and
mess with a writer in a written medium.

[laughter]

caller: No kidding.

Chuck: Boy, that's the truth, yes.

jms: Ah, but I enjoy when they do, because you can get them so well.

caller: OK.

Chuck: Well, thank you for calling.

caller: Thank you.

Chuck: And we have another caller who's been waiting to talk to you
here, so let's put her on.  Hello, you're on the air with J. Michael
Straczynski.  Ooh, and you'd better turn down your radio.

caller: Ok, yeah, I'm right here now.  Yeah, uh, my name is Don,
and, I tuned into the program because of .. J. Michael Straczynski
I've been following ... uh ...

jms: Well, stop following me.

caller: Oh, yeah, there, I'm following _you_, OK.  I've been following
your, your .. column in Writer's Digest from time to time.  And, what Chuck
and Big O may not realize is that you're kind of a Hollywood success story.
I mean you had very humble beginnings, and, you kind of starved to death for
a long time and, maybe you tried .. a couple of different genres before you
arrived at science fiction.  And, I wondered if you could talk a little
bit about ... genres....  Personally, lately I've been following westerns
a lot, because I think it sort of an up-and-coming genre.  Big O this week
has been sort of, lampooning westerns with....

Chuck: [laughing] That's true, yes.

caller: [laughs] And, so, can you talk a little about .. other genres that ..
may have some future.  And maybe westerns as an example.

jms: I, I, I am probably the last person you want to talk to and ask what's
going to be happening next year that will make some money, or, or be a big
genre, because I'm almost always wrong.  If you want to make money in the
comic book business, follow me around to the store and buy whatever I don't
buy.

Chuck: [laughing] OK.

jms: I ended up in science fiction more or less because that was always my
first, my first _love_.  When I came to, to Los Angeles originally, there was
not a lot of science fiction being done; there weren't 2 shows.  The majority
of what is done in television is cop shows and mysteries and what have you.
And I've always wanted to do science fiction, and always seized the
opportunity to do so.  And, it wasn't so much not knowing which genre to go
for as ... it wasn't around; there wasn't much, much venue.  And now there
is more science fiction being done, thus I've ended up where I am.  My, my
sense is .. that you'll be seeing more science fiction certainly to come ..
in the next couple of years.  I think that the westerns are in the process
of a slow and gradual comeback.  But unless, but if, and if the next
couple, three shows to come down the pike are very good, that will cement
that revival.  If they are not very good, then that will pretty much kill
the revival.  I think that the, the cop show is currently being very well
revitalized.  The mystery show is kind of floundering right now.  I think
it's going to go by the boards after the last season of Murder, She Wrote
for a while.  It'll go into sort of a, a hiatus.

caller: You were involved in Murder, She Wrote, too, weren't you?

jms: Yeah, I was there for 2 years, that is correct.

caller: OK.

jms:  And, but beyond that it's always, it's always a crap shoot
because you never know what's going to happen.  Everyone said that ..
cop shows were once dead on television, and that .. the franchise had run
its course.  But in point of fact it's always come back.  So, you never
really know what's going to come back, come back out at you.

caller: OK.  Thank you very much.

Chuck: Thank you for calling.

jms: What the, the caller was also alluding to, Harlan Ellison refers to,
you know, my background as kind of a Hora.., Horatio Alger story.  In
that, I'm a Jersey street kid by, by nature and upbringing.  And when I
came here to Los Angeles in 1981, it was without any contacts in the
business, without any friends in the industry, without family in the
industry.  And, my wife and I .. struggled to get in.  And, had some
very very rough times, but I am living proof that you don't have to
have someone who knows you in the business to break in.  You can, if you
have the persistence, the talent, and the luck, to do it on your own.
It's a longer and harder road.  I didn't eat a whole lot.  I'm 6 foot 5,
and there's a photo of me from that period of time where I weigh 150 pounds.

Chuck&Otis: Oh, whoa.

jms: Yeah, 'cause I was using money that I should have been using to
eat, and spending it on supplies.  Writing supplies.

Chuck: So you really were the literal starving artist for a while there.

jms: Literally, yeah.  It got so bad, one day I was, I was trying to
write, and I got this obsession for a candy bar.  And I didn't have 25
cents to go out and get a candy bar.  So I went down to the corner,
[?it made you even mad?] after a while, and shoplifted a candy bar.  I
ate it, it tasted like gall; I couldn't even finish it.  And, later on in
the week I got a check, a small check and went back to the store, bought
the same kind of candy bar, walked out, walked back in again, and put it
back.  'Cause I just couldn't live with myself for having done that.

Chuck: So it's not only the Minbari who have a strong sense of honor
here.  [laughs]

jms: I just couldn't sleep at night, it just bothered me.

Otis: I understand that, I guarantee you.

Chuck: I think I do, too.  We need to drop out for a couple of quick
bits of business here, and, I want to remind you we're talking to
J. Michael Straczynski, the executive producer of Babylon 5, and as
soon as we come back we're going to take your calls at 664-FM88.
And ...  when we do come back I'd like to, we haven't talked much
about the, some of the alien races that are in the Babylon 5 universe,
and I think they're pretty fascinating.  So...

Otis: Yes.

Chuck: I wondered, Joe, if we could go into that when we come back.

jms: Sure thing.

Chuck: OK.  We're going to drop out here, Otis has got something to
lay on ya, and then we got a couple of quick bits of business.

[business deleted: 2 promos]

Chuck: And this is the One Step Beyond show, and this is Chuck, and
Otis is on hand, and, on the line with us, all the way from
California, is J. Michael Straczynski, the creator and executive
producer of the science fiction TV series Babylon 5....

jms: [?So?] there.

Chuck: ... So, welcome back.  So there.  And we've already got a
caller who wants to talk to you.  I want to remind everybody,
664-FM88, 664-3688, is the phone number if you want to call up
and go on the air and talk to Otis and I and Joe.  Feel free to
do that, and here's someone who just did it; hello, you're on the
air.

caller: Hello.  Yes, I wanted to first of all comment and say this is
a really great station....

Chuck: Thank you!

Otis: Thanks.

caller: Well, you know, you gotta know who, who to rub and where and all.

[laughter]

Chuck: [laughing] Yes, ok.

caller: Well, actually, I'm from Indianapolis and I'm visiting some
friends here in St. Louis, partially because I knew that jms was going
to be on the phone and I wanted to hear this.  So, there are some ..
fairly .. big fans of the show.  I just wanted to make some comments,
maybe ask a couple of questions.

Chuck: That's what we're here for.

caller: OK.  Uh, yeah, we have a large group of fans at work, and
we sit there and we discuss the show afterwards, and try to figure
out what's going on, and of course, it's, it's kind of like
Twin Peaks, you have no idea, it seems like when you're sure you
know what's going on, the next thing some left curve goes out and
blows you away.  No, that's good, I like that.  At least you can't
second-guess it like a lot of the .. sitcoms and things like that
where, you know, you have the, it's, there's always, I, I guess you
can break it down into A occurs then B occurs then A does this to B
and B is embarrassed, but then C is cool, so they do that, you know.
But [?you don't?] follow that pattern at all, and I really really like
that, which makes this basically my favorite show on TV right now.

jms: That's great, thank you.

caller: Anyway, one thing that I, that I really like about the show
specifically is that the .. the people slash aliens or, I guess we want
to call them non-humans because, you know, "alien" is probably not
politically correct.  But anyway, yeah, that's a comment about your intro,
by the way.  Humans and aliens, now, come on, these are modern times,
we can't be doing this.

[laughter]

caller: We do it anyway....

jms: [laughing] It's a matter of perspective; they call us aliens,
we call them aliens.

caller: Right.  I guess that's true.  Anyway.  But on "the other
program," we note that, you know, Vulcans are always good; humans are
good; Klingons were bad, of course, but now they're good, they're our
friends; Cardassians and Romulans are bad.  And what's interesting in,
in .. B5, is that we can't really figure this out.  It's like we have
Narms [sic] who appeared .. harmless and bad, but, not always.  And the
Centauri who seem to be harmless, but they, they have a, they have a cold
streak.  The Minbari, who appeared good, but then also not always also.
And of course we, nobody can figure out what's going on with the .. Vorlons.

[laughter]

Chuck: Yeah, who knows, right.

caller: Yeah, who knows.  Well, I know one person that does know.

[laughter]

Chuck: He's on the line with us right now, yes.

jms: And I ain't talkin'.

[laughter]

Chuck: [laughing] Yes.

caller: Theoretically, of course.  Anyway, one thing I do like is it's
kind of different to watch this program because, one thing, and I'm
certain that this is intentional, it shows that basically everybody is,
everyone is self-interested.  And their self-interest doesn't even
necessarily match what their respective governments or worlds.  And I
know this is intentional and, and that's one thing that, that actually
keeps my interest in watching the program, because you could tell that
there's .. even friction caused by .. [?yeah, I don't know?] like,
somebody's decision, and you know, well, they probably weren't supposed
to do this, but they did it because it matched their own self-interest.

jms: Well certainly there is... in one of our scripts I dropped in a
line about that, where a character, I think it's G'Kar, says that there
are 3 elements in the universe: energy, matter, and enlightened
self-interest [laughter] and that makes everything run.  My feeling is
that I, I, as a science fiction viewer and fan, I'm  kind of tired of
the monolithic alien species, where they're all exactly alike.

Chuck: Yes, really.

jms: There must be differences between them, and, and in their heart
where, they are good or bad depending on circumstances.  I also wanted
to create a scenario in which we....  When the show first went on the
air, everyone said, OK, fine, this is a good guy, good alien, this is a
bad alien, this is the comic relief.  And they all got very smug and
satisfied with that.  Then ... which was the, the purpose and the
intent.  Now we move the chairs around a little.  All of a sudden, the guy
you thought was your friend, ain't your friend any more.  All of a sudden
your world is turned upside-down.  And I, I like surprises.

Chuck: Another *WHAM*, as it were.

jms: Yeah.  I like being surprised when I watch a television show, when
you see the most unlikely thing happen, and ..  when G'Kar saved Catherine
Sakai, no one saw that coming.  They all figured that he had some, some
agenda; he was going to hurt her or whatever.  Nope.  He just did it
because it was the right thing to do at that particular moment.

Chuck: He had his reasons, yes.

jms: He had his reasons.

Chuck: He had his reasons.

jms: And they may be exactly what he said.  Why not?

Chuck: Although, didn't he also say in that same episode that nobody on
Babylon 5 was what they appear to be?

jms: That's right.  And he was totally correct.

caller: Yeah, that, that was G'Kar that said that.  That was kind of
interesting.  Of course, and here's Mr. Heartless, and .. he smiles and
says, [?], not everyone is who they appear to be, and then of course
everyone is going uh-oh, what's going on.

[laughter]

caller: We thought we had it figured out, but not.

jms: Well, all of our characters go through an arc, a change in their
character, and, and, for that to happen you must start 'em at point A,
and move 'em toward point Z, and that means changing them along the
way, very subtly.

caller: Well, see, there's a little bit of a problem with all this.  And
that is that, basically, you, either intentionally or not intentionally
have gotten everyone conditioned that watches this, that we don't trust
anything now; we think that, you know, if you watch Twin Peaks, you know,
they'll show a close-up of a little, you know, you'd have this big wide
expansive room, and then, the camera just pans in and pans in, and before
you know it, it's looking at .. a little candle, where the flame is now
full-screen, and, and then you think, Oh, that's significant, and then,
of course, maybe it's not.  And that, that, that's what makes it
interesting.  But I did want to comment on that, and that is that....
I know that you've said before, on some of the computer nets and things,
that you don't want to drag things on so long that people lose interest.
And, you know, that's, that's of course my concern.  Not only that, but
also, has to do with the, the .. fact that there is this long-term
background story, and that the concern that I had, and that was the problem
with let's say Twin Peaks, was that, unless you watched absolutely every
episode, if you missed one you were basically _in trouble_.  And....

Chuck: Even if you didn't miss one, you were in trouble, 'cause I used to
watch that series.

caller: That's true.  But you had at least a fighting chance.

Chuck: [laughing] Yes.

caller: If you didn't, if you didn't watch every episode you were totally
in trouble.  And that's, that's one thing that I want to know, is about
this possibility of people maybe getting lost, and the question is, is the
viewership increasing, and, and/or will the earlier episodes repeat again,
I know they've repeated some of them already once, so people can catch up?
Or, or is it carefully designed in such a way that you won't have this
problem?

Chuck: OK.

jms: Yes.

caller: Oh, thank you.  That's it?

[laughter]

jms: The viewership does seem to be increasing.  What we try and do
with the show is that whenever there's an episode where prior
knowledge helps grasp what's going on, that information is imparted
verbally in the course of the episode.  So that, it was designed in
such a way that you can watch all the shows, half the shows, watch
them in order or _out_ of order....

Chuck: And you can still know what's going on.

jms: And still know what's going on.

Chuck: In fact, we just saw an example of that this past week's
episode Eyes, which relies on a number of things that happened in the
past, and those things are at least briefly touched on in the dialog.

jms: Yeah, we always check these things.  I, I go to some people who don't
watch the show every so often, and I have a script that requires prior
knowledge which is recapped in the script, I give it to the guys who don't
watch the show and say, does this make sense to you?  If you, never having
watched an episode, can you follow what happens here.  And they come back
and say, I was confused, we revised it so that it's clearer, so that you
can come in wherever you want to, and pick up the show.

Chuck: OK.

caller: OK.  One other thing ....

Chuck: I got another call on line, so... [?make it quick?]

[a couple of people talking at the same time]

caller: OK, one quick thing.  The question is concerning, at least in
Indianapolis, our, our problem is that, and I know people in certain
areas that absolutely don't get Babylon 5 at all, our station is 40
miles away, it's mono, [background sounds of disgust] we have a real
problem when everyone has these awesome, you know, surround sound TVs
and things like this.  And we can't pick it up, and it's very frustrating
that .. certain networks or whatever, are monopolizing the independents
or whatever stations, and it's very hard to get that, and, has anything
like this been addressed, or how, how are you dealing with that.  And
that's all I wanted to ask.  Thanks.

jms: Sure.

Chuck: Thank you, for calling.

jms: Each station tends to evaluate the needs of its local viewers.
And if you're in a locality which has an independent station or two,
and you want Babylon 5, your best bet is to write to your local station
and say please carry the show.

Chuck: Uh huh.

jms: And if they get enough response, people who want to see it, then
they go ahead and solicit it.

Chuck: Yeah, because if they think there's an audience, they'll fill it.

jms: Yeah.

Chuck: Yeah.  We have another call here.  Hello, you're on the air.

caller: Yeah, hi there.  I got to run real quick, I'm out here on my
cellular, but, I just wanted to mention one thing that I, I kind of get
the impression that nobody on your staff has any military experience,
specifically because you're always calling the Lieutenant Commander
"Lieutenant Commander."  And generally speaking, in the military, you
don't bother with that subrank when you're speaking with someone, unless,
of course, you're in the process of verbally slapping them down, at which
point in time the commander might call a lieutenant commander "lieutenant
commander" just to make it clear, to put her in her place. 

[laughter]

caller: Is that something you guys did on purpose, or is that just,
like I say, you don't have anybody with military experience in your life.

jms: No, we actually, we do.  In fact if you look at our military
costumes and the insignia, and lot of it is grounded very strongly in
military tradition.  What we realized, though, is that if you're
on, on the observation dome, and there's a problem and the tech turns
and says Commander, two guys are going to turn to you.

caller: Uh huh.

jms: And you want to have some means to distinguish them, because
the person who runs the station isn't the captain, it's the commander.

caller: Right.

jms: So saying commander could be, you know, vague and confusing.  So
we figure we'll keep this for right now and change it down the road.

caller: Yeah.  I just, I just noticed it, you know, in just person-to-person
conversation, though, and that, like I say, it's, it's, in my experience
anybody who's ever called me lieutenant colonel is making a point that I'm
just a lieutenant colonel...  [laughs]

jms: Got it.

caller: And I better get my act together.

[laughter]

Chuck: OK, well, thank you for calling.

caller: Sure thing.  Byebye.

Otis: Oh, that was like being in the Marine Corps when I, when they
changed the rank and I became an Acting Sergeant.  You know, they,
they, it was a, they, they, I was a sergeant, but they had another,
they had a little, a little technical thing so I had to .. remake
Sergeant again.  So to be called an Acting Sergeant used to be such a
put-down; I was so glad to make that extra stripe so that I could be
called Sergeant.

Chuck: No fooling about it.

Otis: Yes, no fooling around.  So are we... I really understand that,
that caller.

Chuck: See, I never would have known that.  'Cause I, I have no military
experience myself.

jms: Yeah, we were aware of it.  We just felt that this was, for now,
the better way to go.

Chuck: OK.  So it was more of a dramatic decision rather than anything
else there.

jms: Yeah.  Yeah.

Chuck: Once again I want to remind folks we're talking to J. Michael
Straczynski, the creator and executive producer of Babylon 5,
here on the One Step Beyond show.  And I also want to remind you our
phone number is 664-FM88 if you want to get in on the conversation
here.  And, well, we have another caller, so I guess we'll get 'em
on the air.  Hello, you're on the air with J. Michael Straczynski.

caller:  Thank you.  A short question and a long one.

Chuck: OK.  Oh, this is one of our, this is one of our programmers here at
the station, it's Elliott.

caller: Oh, hi there.

Chuck: Go ahead, Elliott.

caller: Thank you.  Um, what town in New Jersey you from?

jms: I was born in Patterson, raised in Newark.

caller: Oh, intense New Jersey.  All right.  [? I'm Union, myself??]

jms: Yeah.

Otis: [laughing] Intense.

caller: No, 'cause I just wanted you to know that people from New
Jersey are still out here.  If you remember the old Star Trek
show, the first one, that was kind of the, the new .. new frontier
in space.  And then they had the, the other Star Trek show, and that
was kind of .. a little urban yuppie village in space, and, and....

jms: [ ? ] David Gerrold calls a Club Med in space.

[laughter]

caller: Exactly.  Are you kind of the United States in space again,
or is this a real world colony; is there an African component, an
African village component; maybe .. an Islamic aspect to things.
You know what I'm, I'm not, you know what I'm getting at, is there really
a universal .. thing in space or is this just, once again, the US in
space.

jms: Well, no, there are, there are and have been, we've shown
Arabs, Islamic, Africans, American Indian .. Native Americans.  We
try to show everyone there isn't, like, a little Italy, or a little
Africa, or a little, you know, Saigon, because there isn't room in the
station.  They are all kind of shoved in together with each other.
And, I think, and that's more interesting in the long run to
have everyone sort of integrated, having to live with each other, than
being pushed off into various different small communities.

caller: Is it something like a submarine, where it's tight, and everyone
has to get along?

jms: Yeah.

caller: And it's, and it's done on a very hierarchical basis, like
there's the captain, and there's the, you know.  Is, is, is the Babylon
5 a hierarchical place, or is it ...

jms: Well, only in terms of....

caller: ... uh, a democracy?

jms: It's only hierarchical in terms of the military, which ..
has its ranks and its orders.  But ... Babylon 5 is primarily a civilian
living area.  The best comparison I could give to you would be a
military governor of a state, like California was, it had a military
governor before it became a state.  And, and, and, they have to deal
with all the real piddly problems that take place in terms of getting
water, irrigation put in, and, and construction, and there's a squabble over
water rights.  And has to monitor all of this stuff, and deal with the,
the Emperor of Mexico down the road, who has his own problems.  It's
more that kind of an environment.  It's, it's, it's a mix of things, it
really is.

caller: I'm intrigued from a question that someone had asked before.
Does someone truck away the garbage?

[laughter]

jms: Yeah, we got, we got garbage, we got toilets in Babylon 5.  We
did one scene where we have .. Garibaldi and Sinclair talking at
the urinals, just having a conversation.

Chuck: Something we never saw on any other science fiction series [? I
ever got ?] [laughter]  I always wondered where the bathrooms were
on the Enterprise, darn it, you know....

jms: Well, we always say where they are, you go right in the front
door, and you see them doing their business while they're having
a conversation.

caller: And why specifically Babylon, of all places, or all names?

jms: Well, a number of reasons, first and foremost being that, originally,
if you look at its history, Babylon was not, did not have the onus
that it has now.  It was designed to be a place of great commerce and
industry, and people would come from other countries to do business
there.  Gradually it began to unravel and eventually was thrown down
several times.  And rebuilt about 5 times, by the way.  Babylon itself
has been rebuilt about 4 or 5 times.  Beyond that, the storyline
of Babylon 5 is somewhat designed to track the history of the original
Babylon.  So if you were to get out a history book, and read up everything
there is on the first Babylon, you would get some idea of where the show
is going to go.

caller: Nineveh. ...  That was a joke, never mind.

jms: Yes.

Chuck: There are some things he's not going to comment on, Elliott.
I should warn you about that.

[laughter]

jms: Mene mene tekel upharsin.  [silence]  Never mind.
[Note: This is "The writing on the wall."  Thanks to Larry Hiller for
recognizing this from the clues given in the initial release of this.]

Chuck: Never mind.

[laughter]

caller: Yeah also, just one more quick question: .. anything on science
fiction _radio_ that you're....  I know, on my next, if I may do a plug
for next Thursday's show....

Chuck: Oh, go ahead, Elliott.

caller: I'll be doing some excerpts from Ruby: The Adventures of a Galactic
Gumshoe.

Otis: Oh....

caller: Specifically the sex with robots section.

jms: I love Ruby.  Is this Ruby I or Ruby II?

caller: Ruby I.

jms: Ah.

caller: The one that you can follow and make sense.

[laughter]

jms: Yes.

caller: Do you, is there, do you know of any radio science fiction that's
coming up that you're interested in, or anything in the past that you
thought was awesome .. [??], whatever.

jms: I loved Ruby.  I have the entire set, as a matter of fact, on disk.
Ruby's terrific.  Alien Worlds I kinda liked, and also worked on
for a while.  I love the Star Wars adaptations, which are now out
on cassette.  As far as new stuff is concerned, there ain't a whole lot
going on right now.

Chuck: We've got, in fact, an example here that I may get on called
Gyp Psychic in Hyperspace.  Are you familiar with that one?

jms: No.  That I don't know.

Chuck: OK, it's by a guy named ... I've forgotten his name now, but
it's part of something called Audio Comics.

jms: Oh, it's not a ZBS then?

Chuck: No, it's not.  No, this is FlamCo Enterprises, some, some weirdo
somewhere off in the Z who does this, but, we may get around to that at
some point.

caller: All right, well, thank you very kindly.

jms: Thank you.

Chuck: Thanks, Elliott.  And, boy, we've got another caller here.  You,
you seem to be provoking a lot of phone calls here, Joe ...

jms: Great.

Chuck: ... so let's put 'em on the air.  Hello, you're on the air.

caller: Oh, thank you.  Um, you were talking about such wonderful,
lofty things before, I thought we'd bring it back down to the gutter
again.  [laughter]  On the restroom scene, when .. Garibaldi and
Sinclair were walking from the restroom, someone passed them and headed
back into the men's room, and it looked very much like a woman.  And
that's been troubling a bunch of us for some time now.  [laughter]
What's the story about that?

jms: Um, my, my story is that if you go past the men's room, there's
another hallway there where, you, you really can't see it well on, on
the shot, but it goes off to the, to women's restrooms.

caller: Oh, OK.

jms: That's my story; I'm sticking to it.

[laughter]

Chuck: OK, fair enough.

caller: That window is kind of, you know, kind of placed in a bad spot
there now, I think I'd take the rest.., the window out of the restroom
if I was you.  [laughs]

jms: Yeah, it was meant to be a mirror, I'm not sure how well that
came off.

[laughter.  Many people talking at once.]

caller: Oh, I see.

Chuck: Oh, all right.

jms: Yeah, the director [ ?? ] shot for that.

Chuck: I'm afraid we missed that completely.

jms: Yeah, so did I.

[laughter]

caller: Thank you.

Chuck: Thanks.  Byebye.  Boy, here's another call.  But once it....
The phone number here is 664-FM88.  We're talking with J. Michael
Straczynski, the man who created Babylon 5, and here's another caller.
Hello, you're on the air.

caller: Oh, hello, I want to stay with the bathroom scene.

[laughter]

Chuck: [laughing] Oh, please....

jms: See what you've done now, what you've opened up with this.

Otis: Yes.

caller: There was a recent episode where the, I don't know what,
the PsiCops are trying to, to pay back the Commander of Babylon 5.

Chuck: Yeah, that was Eyes.

caller: OK.

Chuck: That was last week's episode.

caller: Ok.  I thought I'd seen it before, but there was one scene
where the younger, the PsiCop that's with the military guy, has confronted
the, I don't know her name, the executive com.., the executive officer.

jms: Ivanova.

Chuck: Yeah, Ivanova.

caller: Yeah.  In the restaurant.  And .. she loses her temper, and
refers to tearing his head off and using it as a chamberpot.

Chuck: Yes. [laughing]

caller: Well, in the 23rd century [laughter] what is the character's
basis for using that term?

jms: Well....

caller: I'm sure you have a _good_....

jms: I got a flash for you.

caller: OK.

jms: Which is that most of our language and terminology goes back several
hundred years.  A lot of it goes back a lot further than that.  Wednesday
was Odin's day, you know.  Thursday was Thor's day.

Chuck: Yeah.  Frika's day was Friday.  Yeah.  Right.

jms: Yeah.  But the point being that, we're still using terminology
now that goes back literally hundreds of years.  And, and to me, one
thing that is important with the show is to keep pointing toward the
continuity of the human species.  That parts of our traditions do go with
us.  We use the term bar-and-grill all the time.  How many realize
the fact that where that comes from was a time in, where, in, like the
17- or 1800s when isolated pubs would have a grillwork put in, you know,
there were no police in the area.  And to buy a drink you had to go in,
pass money through the grill, the grillwork, they'd slide the bottle
out to you, and keep the rest of it hidden behind, behind the wall.

Chuck: I didn't know that.

jms: That's where that comes from.  So to me, that, that terminology
will still be around; it may be archaic, as much of our language today
is archaic, but we still use it.

caller: But obviously it has to mean enough to them to use in extreme
emotional .. moments, because she was furious; that's the first thing
that came to her mind.

jms: Also she is, I'm sure she is read up on history, in particular
the Russian history, and there may be parts of Russia that still, that
don't have all the inner plumbing they should really have at this point.

[laughter]

Otis: And why wouldn't a spaceship sometimes, in, in circumstances, not
have a pot?  I, I, I could understand that, you know, some, somehow
this is coming clear to me.

[laughter]

Chuck: It's possible that the chamberpot may have changed somewhat in its
technology, but who knows, yes.

Otis: Be made out of different material but [laughing].

jms: All right, I'll resolve this for you right now.  Chamberpot is
a new word in the 23rd century that means TV antenna. [laughter]
OK?  We're clear on this now?

caller: I think I've got the big picture now.

jms: I'm coming over there.

caller: So I'll keep watching to see how all this great plotting .. gets
together with all the characterization and the dialog, and I'll keep, I'll
keep those things in mind.

jms: OK.

Chuck: Ok, and thank you.  I'm not gonna take another toilet query.  I
mean ...

Otis: No no no no no no.  I'm happy ...

Chuck: ... I don't want any more of this.

Otis: ... I'm happy to know that, I'm happy to know that there will be boys
and girls in the future.

jms: Oh absolutely.

Otis: That's right, not just one kind, just, boys and girls.  And you
just satisfied that, thank you.

Chuck: Big O, you've got some business to do here.  Let's get that out
of the way and maybe we won't get any more toilet questions.

Otis: I don't know....

[business deleted: PSA & promo]

Chuck: ... This is the One Step Beyond show, of course, with Chuck and
Otis, and we're talkin' to J. Michael Straczynski, who is the creator
and executive producer of Babylon 5.  Joe, I've been wanting to ask about,
and talk a bit more about the alien races, 'cause we haven't discussed
them very much.  And there's some ...

jms: No, we haven't.

Chuck: And there's some really interesting ...

jms: And we're not going to.

Chuck: Yeah, let's, let's .. could you give us, give the listeners an
overview of the various aliens that are showing up on Babylon 5.

jms: Well, we have in addition to humans the, which are one part of
the big 5....

Chuck: Right.

jms: We have the Centauri.  These are our first contact we ever made
with another civilization, about, roughly a hundred years ago, in B5
story time.  And it was from them where we first began to get jumpgate
technology that allowed us to go to the stars.  And .. they began trading
with us and, good relation, and they said, you know, Oh, we run everything,
we run the whole universe, the whole galaxy, we are in charge of everything.
Which we bought for a long time, until we got out there, and found out
they were lying to us.  [laughter]  Which, you know, well, what do you want,
it was a bookkeeping error, you know.

Chuck: Yeah.

jms: And .. then there are the Narns, who were conquered and ..
suppressed by the Centauri for the better part of a hundred years, and
have recently staged their own revolution and kicked them off, off the
homeworld.  And now the Narns are sort of the new kids on the block,
being very aggressive, and trying to, to overcompensate for what was
done to them by doing it to somebody else.  Then there are the Minbari,
who we ran into about 10 years ago, 12 years ago storytime-wise.
And .., the first contact we had with the Minbari, Delenn's people,
went terribly awry.  We first encountered a convoy of their ships,
for the first time; we don't know who they were, they didn't know who
we were.  They offered a gesture of respect of opening their gun
ports, which, we didn't take as being anything but an act of aggression,
and we opened fire.  They took it as being a, a surprise attack.

Chuck: Oh boy.

jms: Which destroyed their main ship and killed their leader.  And ..
their religious leader Dukhat.

Chuck: Ouch.

jms: And they declared jihad, a religious war, and determined to wipe
us off the face of the universe....

Chuck: This sounds....  OK.

jms: ... They .. and then, they, for, for reasons unknown, on the
edge of wiping us out, stopped the, stopped the war, and surrendered,
and no one quite knows why.  That's one of the big mysteries of
our show, why did the Minbari surrender on the eve of victory.

Chuck: Right.

jms: Then there are the Vorlons....

Chuck: Yes, there are the Vorlons, [laughs] whatever they are.

jms: They .. we only see one of them.  He is in his encounter suit at
all times which is required, or may not be required, it could be
camouflage to keep us from seeing what he actually is inside.
We've been aware of the Vorlons for, you know, some time now, but no one's
ever seen one.  All ships trying to enter Vorlon space have terrible
accidents.  They say don't do it again.  And, who and what they are
and what they want is our, is another enigma in our show.

Chuck: And in fact, the only two humans who ever saw a Vorlon got
transferred off the station.

jms: Very quickly.

Chuck: Yes.  Now, I gotta ask you, was that actually part of the plotline,
or was that just, a matter of the actors not being available.

jms: In, in, in both cases, we and the actors couldn', didn't reach
a, a meeting of minds for different, different reasons.  But, the one
thing about having a storyline tracked out ahead of time is that you
have trapdoors built in for every single character.

Chuck: Aha.

jms: And, and that departure _served_ us wonderfully by giving us another
layer to the paranoia we try to create in the show.

Chuck: Yeah.  So, serendipitously it all worked out.

jms: It did indeed.

Chuck: We got another caller here on line.  Hello, you're on the air.

caller: Hi Chuck, it's Brice.

Chuck: Oh, hi Brice.

caller: Two observations.  One, language and its terms are even older
than .. you and .. the author are describing.  I mean there are terms
that date back a couple of thousand years.

jms: Absolutely.

caller: So you might as well use the old worlds; they'll change in their
meaning but they'll be the same.  It's like bar-and-grill, that's a good
example.  And the other thing is the Japanese use co-ed public toilets now,
to go back to the subject you didn't want to.  So this'll ...

Chuck: Gee, thanks, Brice.

caller: ... probably help the program [laughs] sell more in Japan; I don't
know, they'll feel right at home.  That's all.

Chuck: OK.  Thank you.

caller: Uh huh.  Bye.

Chuck: Yeah, I should point out, I, I know that caller.  He is, in fact, a
linguist by trade.

jms: Ah.

Chuck: So....

jms: Yeah, I think, I think I mentioned it, they do, some of them do go back
a couple of thousand years, to the .. Eurasian and Euro-Indian ..
roots.  So, it does go back an awful long ways.

Chuck: Yeah.

jms: And why not use that language to show the continuity of the human
species.

Chuck: Yeah.  Well, of course at the same time it helps if you do have
somethings that refer to contemporary, the contemporary world, just by
virtue of the fact that really it's, it is a TV show that's being shown
to a 20th century audience.  So....

jms: You would think so, yes.

Chuck: You would think so.  And of course, I mean, obviously that's why...
we understand what the people are saying; realistically 250 years in the
future, whatever language was being spoken would probably be about as
comprehensible to us now as, our English would be to say, someone from
Shakespeare's time.

jms: Well, then again, not necessarily.

Chuck: OK.

jms: Pick up, there are a number of books which have, odd enough,
letters, from children, at the time of George Washington, 200, well over
200 years ago.

Chuck: OK.

jms: Those letters are as legible and readable today as they were then.
Ah, the [?? speeches ??] of Abraham Lincoln ring as soundly today as
they did then.  There, there is this, this sense people have that,
that the future will change dramatically from what it has been.  And,
and the future ain't what it used to be; it doesn't change that much
any more.  There was a great movie, for, for those of your audience who
are science fiction fans ... Just Imagine was the name of it.
It was a 1930's black-and-white science fiction musical.

Chuck: Whoa, this is a new one on me.

jms: It was set in the year 1980, 50 years hence.

Chuck: OK.

jms: And, and, in their version of the future, people ate pills
instead of having food, they had numbers instead of names, they
gave birth by machine.  And all these things, you know, to their mind
50 years was incalculable and all these things had to change.  Where
in point of fact it hasn't changed that much.

Chuck: Yeah.  It sounds like a cross between Hugo Gernsback and Brave
New World.

jms: Yeah, the chrome of technology has changed.  And, and certain
new words have come into the language, but if you were to blip back in
time right now to George Washington's period, you would not have that
hard a time understanding them, or them understanding you.

Chuck: I guess that's a valid point.  Ok.  I'll buy that.  Oh, here's
another caller coming in, so let's put 'em on the air.  Hello, you're
on the air with J. Michael Straczynski.

caller: Yeah, hi Chuck, it's David.

Chuck: Oh, hi.

caller: I just wanted to echo what he was just saying, his points are
very valid.  The largest changes that have been noticed, in terms of
science fiction accurately predicting what the future is actually
going to look like, are technological.  The, you know, Flash Gordon,
as one commentator once put it, lives forever in a world of analog
pages long after the rest of the universe has gone digital.

Chuck: OK.

caller: Yeah, the old fashioned, the U-meters and things like that, of
the sort that you don't see in science fiction today because everything
is all, you know, digital readouts now.

Chuck: Uh huh.

jms: There's a great example of this in the early Buck Rogers serials.
Their, their ship's been hit, and they're going down, and and and Buck
says to the other people in the ship, "All right, grab your anti-gravity
belts," and they pick up these slim belts, which could be anti-gravity
belts, you know, and put them on.  "Grab your ray guns," and they
grab what could pass for very good ray guns.  "Grab the portable radio,"
and they pick up these _huge_ [laughter] boxes, like 2 feet by 2 feet
with huge antennas, because they knew what a radio was.  They couldn't
get past where they were in current technology to foresee that a radio
could be the size of your palm.

caller: Yeah, there's an episode of The Flash that spoke to that too.
A character's been in cryogenic stasis for 30 years, and he wakes up
and says, "where are my personal helicopters, where are my gigantic
cities of the future," you know, you know, "what happened to my future?"
he cries.

[laughter]

jms: Part of the problem, I think, is that Americans view 200 years as
being a real long time when that's all we've been here for.  But if
you travel outside the country, to England or to Ireland, or or ...
I stood in, in [? New Grange ?], in a burial mound that goes back
to the Bronze Age, before the Bronze Age.  There you get a sense of
what real time is.  Stand on the cobblestones of Trinity College, and
you realize that at some point someone ran down those same cobblestones
to say there's a revolution breaking out in America.  To them this is
like yesterday's news.  We don't understand what real time is in this
country, but I think over the next few centuries we'll figure it out.

Chuck: We've gotten a bit myopic, I guess.

caller: It is hard to get a grasp on that.  Chuck's housemate, Jeffrey,
used to go to college in Jacksonville.  And he showed me... you know,
one of his, one of the earlier graduates of that school was William
Jennings Bryant.  And he showed me a brick wall where... you know
we think of Bryant as the great orator, you know, "You shall not
crucify mankind upon a cross of gold," and all that stuff.  And he
showed me a brick wall where young student William Jennings Bryant
carved his initials into the brick with a penknife.  And that made it
all real.

jms & Chuck: Yeah.

caller: We thought of him as a young human being suddenly; he came
to life in a way he never had before.  So you're right, we do have a
trouble grasping that, without something concrete, as it were, to grasp
on to.

Chuck: Or brick, as the case may be.

caller: Yes.

Chuck: Hey, listen, thanks for calling.  We've got another call coming
in.

caller: You're welcome.  Byebye.

Chuck: Byebye.  Ok, and here comes another caller.  Hello, you're on
the air.

caller: Thank you.

Chuck: You're welcome.

caller: Ah, jms, after reading some of your more sarcastic posts on
Internet, and then hearing some of Ivanova's comments on the show, I was
wondering if she was your alter-ego on the show, or if there's some of
you in all the characters.

jms: There's some of me in pretty much all the characters, particularly
Kosh.

[laughter]

caller: Uh oh.

jms: The less said the better.  But .. no, I love Ivanova because ..
I am.... Straczynski is by nature White Russian background.  And I've
watched Russians portrayed on television, and never quite seen it done ..
really very well.  With a sense of both astonishment and doom that sort
of follows them around wherever they go.  And I love writing for Ivanova.
And she is probably in some ways the closest to myself.  But there's
something of me in all the characters pretty much.  And, and that's kind
of half the fun, is putting your own personality into some of the
characters and watching them run around.  Basically, I, I go through
every day with, with Kosh, and Garibaldi, and G'Kar and Londo running
around in my head 24 hours a day which is a frightening thought on the
best of days.

[laughter]

Chuck: You know, Ivanova, now that you mentioned her, I thought had a
wonderfully typically Russian comment at the end of Grail, you know
the one about ...

jms: Boom!

Chuck: ... sooner or later, Boom!, sure.  [laughs]  You know, it's
all going to blow up eventually.

jms: It's, it's that Russian sense of impending doom.  There's a scene
in Soul Hunter, where .. she says that, in 200 years from now, we'll
still be as.. be human, we'll still make the same mistakes over and over
and over again.  And as Franklin says, Oh, you're a pessimist, and she
says, no, I'm Russian, we understand these things. [laughter]  And
that's exactly who and what she is.  That's what the Russian spirit is.
You hope for the best, expect the worst.

Chuck: Thank you for calling.

caller: OK, thank you.

Chuck: OK.  Another caller comin' in here; hello, you're on the line,
with J. Michael Straczynski.

caller: Hi.

jms: Hi there.

caller: I sort of, sort of took exception to some of the remarks I
heard.  So, you're warned.

Chuck: Well, OK, a little controversy couldn't hurt.  Go ahead.

caller: Well, I've heard this before that, I've heard this before where
people will criticize science fiction so called from like 50 years ago
and say, oh well, the future didn't come out like that at all.  I don't
know, I, you know, I think that there's... I would, I would argue that
there's, you know, that there's lots, lots of folks that would say,
you know, there's nobody... nobody would seriously take the point,
nobody would seriously argue that, you know, these people are trying
to predict the future.

jms: Didn't say they were.

caller: I mean.... Yeah, no, no, not at all.  I mean, you can, you can,
you can pick out, you can pick out .. books and movies that have,
that can portray just about any future that you can imagine.  You know,
and none of these, none of them are compatible with the others.  I think
a lot of what goes on is you get people .. a lot of these people have
their own .. peculiar .. sociological theories.  And they like to write
stories that sort of .. bear out their version of things.

jms: Yeah, my only point really was that, there is a sense people have
that 200 years from now we will be _vastly_ different people, and
everything will have changed at some point and we aren't really even
what we are now any more.  And in point of fact....

caller: Yeah, I would agree with that, you know, yeah, things change,
you know.

jms: They do, but not, I think, on a very human level, on a personal
level.  We.... Evolution doesn't work in 200 year bursts.

caller: Well, I'll agree with that too.  A lot, you know, .. you, you,
you're talking about things haven't changed in a long....  A lot of
things don't change over time, and that's very true.  Yeah.

jms: Yeah.

caller: Absolutely.

jms: I mean 200 years ago people got married, they had affairs, they
got separated, they raised kids, they had jobs, they hoped for a better
life for their kids.  And that'll be the same 200 years hence.  The
technology will change; the chrome will change, but the human heart
itself will not go through that much of a dynamic, I think.

Chuck: Yeah.

caller: Absolutely.  All right, that's all I want to say.

jms: Great.

Chuck: All right, thank you.  I think it's a good point.  It is
unrealistic to expect that human nature, whatever that is, is going to
suddenly radically alter itself within a couple of centuries.

jms: No, no.

Chuck: And I think it's a valid point.  I want to remind you it's
4:41 in the afternoon; we're talking to J. Michael Straczynski, the
creator and execugive .. executive [laughs], got my teeth [?? ].

jms: You can call me the resident god.

Chuck: Resident god of Babylon 5.  Thank you, that'll do just fine.
And, Otis has some more business to throw at us here.

[business deleted: PSA]

Otis: ... I can see the big problem on P5.

Chuck: B5?

Otis: On B5.

Chuck: Which is?

Otis: It's Musak.  We, all of us, you know, I'll be fighting to get a
little rap in, you know, and you'll be fighting to get some classical in,
you know, it'll just be .. the first big war, the big split on B5.

Chuck: We've seen no Musak on Babylon 5, have we?

jms: I try and avoid it.  [laughter]  I was once scared by Musak.  I was,
honest to God, I was in a supermarket in Glendale, California, and they
had the Musak going, and .. I heard Helter Skelter done Musak.  [laughter]
I left the supermarket at once, I didn't want to know who was at the
checkout counter.

[laughter]

Chuck: Isn't that one of the signs of the Apocalypse?  I think it is.

jms: I think so; it's the end times.

Chuck: It's the end times.

Otis: Well, also....

Chuck: Dobbs would know, Bob Dobbs would know about that; we'll have to
talk to him about it.

Otis: OK, yeah.

Chuck: We've got another caller on line, so let's put 'em on.  Hello,
you're on the air with J. Michael Straczynski.

caller: Well, not only did I call once, but I've called twice.

Chuck: [laughing] Well, OK.

caller: And I just had to say, I've, I've heard so far, I've heard the
writers praised, I've heard the producers praised, and .. the missing
element here is the actors, because ...

Chuck: Oh, I was just going to bring that up.

caller: ... they are awfully, awfully good, every single one of them,
and the restraint with which things are being portrayed, I think, is
very important.  I, I, I, I think it's .. people expect them to chew
up the scenery and it's certainly not necessary, and .. would bother
me greatly, so, I just wanted to say that the actors themselves
deserve a lot of the credit for this, so....

jms: I couldn't possibly agree with you more.  We have a terrific cast
overall, and they do play things in a more human, restrained kind of a
way than ... what you'll often get, in science fiction television, which
is sort of a stereotype or an archetype, where they sort of find some
personality trait to hook it on, and they play that one note for the
rest of their lives.  And .. they're all very talented, they're all
very good, and they're a joy to work with.  And the directors are also
very good too on the show; they're very sharp, and they try to give the
show a real, some sense of style.

Chuck: OK.

caller: Thank you.

Chuck: Thanks.  Yeah, I should point out, that .. that the friend
of mine who called in, and I, are both actors in fact in our spare
time, in our copious free time.  And, we have both been admiring a
lot of the work we've been seeing on Babylon 5 and, yeah, let's talk
about some of those actors, because we haven't mentioned names and
what they do, and how you ended up with them in the cast.  But I'd,
I'd like to into some of that, because I think you have a very good
cast there.

jms: Thank you.  Basically, we just cast the best person to walk in
the door.  The only interesting case off-hand was .. Jerry Doyle, who
plays Garibaldi.  Who used to be a stock broker.

Chuck: Oh, really?

jms: And he got caught up in this whole junk bond thing, as a matter
of fact.  And decided to go straight thereafter.  And came to be an
actor.  And walked in the door, and, his resume -- you're going to
love this -- his resume was 80% fiction.

Chuck: [laughing] OK.

jms: But you figure a guy who worked with junk bonds would do this.  And
at the bottom of his resume: member, Dance Theatre of Harlem.  Now....

Chuck: Don't tell me, that was the real part?

jms: No, that's, that's bogus.

Chuck: Oh, OK.

jms: And no one had ever called him on this.

Chuck: Are you serious?

jms: The Dance Theatre of Harlem, what the hell is that?

Chuck: A white guy who looks like ...

jms: Yeah....

Chuck: ... Bruce Willis, in the Dance Theatre of Harlem.

jms: ... Yeah.  Yeah.  And no one had ever called... all right, all right,
Jerry, dance.  And so he came in, you know, there's a scene where you
bring the actor in, you put 'em up against the wall, you slate them, which
means they say their name, and the role they're going for.  And so we're
taping him, and he says, you know, my name is Jerry Doyle.  What part are
you here to audition for?  The one I'm going to get.  [laughter]  When
he said that, we knew, we found Garibaldi.

Chuck: [laughing] OK.  Someone who has that attitude.

jms: Yeah, exactly.  And .. Claudia Christian comes to us from a number
of different films, including Hexed.  A terrific actress.  And, and all
of our cast, they came to us, as anyone does, on a standard audition, and
we tried to find the best possible synthesis of personalities.

Chuck: I was wondering, because I had never heard of or seen most of these
actors and actresses on the show.

jms: You may have, but not necessarily noticed them.  For instance, Peter
Jurasik, who plays Londo, was of course Sid the Snitch in Hill Street Blues.

Chuck: Yeah, I, my, many Hill Street Blues fans have pointed that out to
me, yes.

jms: And Andreas gets around a lot, you saw Andreas, who is G'Kar, as
the one-armed man in The Fugitive.

Chuck: Right, Andreas Katsulas, yeah.

jms: And he was in .. Hot Shots Part Deux....

Chuck: Oh, he got the chicken shot at him, didn't he?

jms: Yeah, yeah.  And .. a really nice guy.  And .. one thing that's
great about our cast is they're not only nice people, but they're also
very sharp.  Claudia is a Mensa member, a genius IQ.

Chuck: I didn't know that.

jms: Again, Jerry was a stock broker.  These are people who, who know a lot
of stuff and bring a great deal of intelligence to the role with them.

Chuck: Yeah.  I'm .. that's .. I'm just sort of impressed by that.  I had
no idea about those little bits of business.  But I was noticing.... I,
I was one of those folks who downloaded that Babylon 5 interactive, the
Mac version.

jms: Oh, yeah.

Chuck: You know, which I guess was something you guys had sent out as a
marketing gimmick ...

jms: Right.

Chuck: ... earlier in the year.  And I noticed some of the backgrounds of
some of these actors, and it is pretty varied, I noticed, but some of them
have some pretty substantial stage experience.  I notice Michael O'Hare,
who plays Sinclair, has had quite a variety of stage experience, as a matter
of fact.

jms: Yeah, he's been a Broadway actor for a very long time, and was very
well respected in that area.

Chuck: Yeah.  So it's quite a cast.  Here's someone coming in, so we'll
let them talk to you; hello, you're on the air with J. Michael Straczynski.

caller: Hi, this is your cousin, Chuck, from the television side.

Chuck: [laughing] OK.

caller: I happen to be driving in a car [laughs] hearing you talking to
the producer there of one of my favorite shows, and .. I was just wondering
if there was some way I can, that I can leave a card, or I can, that I
can contact him about possible job position either with his part, or
with Foundation Imaging who takes care of the special effects.

Chuck: Well, let me ask you this, do you have access to the Internet?

caller: No, not me personally.

Chuck: Ok.  I think maybe you ought to call us back after the show is
over, and we'll talk to you, we'll talk to Joe off-line about that.

caller: OK.

Chuck: Ok, thank you.

caller: All right.

Otis: Hey, can I....

Chuck: Now you got people calling in and looking for jobs.

Otis: No, you see, I got, I got this... I got both of you on the phone,
and I think that, that right now, this is Otis, and I'm looking at you,
Chuck, and then I'm listening to Joe, and there's a little society
developing, it's called the Internet group.  We are looking at them,
and... I'm looking at them with fascination and I'm... I notice that
when I listen to radio, TV, the announcer or the [??principle??] will
always say here's the number where you can get me on my Inter... a way
of getting 'em through the computer.  So, it's a whole group of people
collecting, they seem to be very intelligent, about your age and your
intelligence....  This group is getting _big_.  Is it international?
Is it, is it, is it ethnic people involved, all kind of folks?

jms: It's otherworldly.

Chuck: It's otherworldly.

Otis: It's otherworldly.

Chuck: It's cyberspace, yeah.

Otis: Amazing.

Chuck: We hadn't really addressed that, Otis, you're right.  But, jms,
Joe... he's known as jms on the Internet, that's how he signs all of
his posts, and stuff.

Otis: OK.

Chuck: And .. there is on the Internet a Babylon 5 discussion group.  For
those of you who have access to Internet news...

Otis: My, my, my.

Chuck: ... it's rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.  If you have access to news, you
know what that means, and if you don't, don't worry about it.  And, it is
a discussion group for fans of the show, but what's significant is that
Joe reads it and posts his own thoughts on it, quite frequently.

jms: About 500 messages a day come over my computer.

Chuck: Whoa.  So, that's a very busy group.

Otis: So, so, you get your computer and you're hooked up, you get hooked
up to access.  That's the way you do it.

Chuck: Uh huh.  Yeah.  And he's able to receive electronic mail from
the viewers, and is able to respond publicly to their comments about
the show, which is really kind of unusual.  I mean, this is becoming
more typical, but certainly this is one of the few instances I know
where the man who is the creator of a major television series has that
kind of direct feedback from the people who are watching it.

Otis: Yeah.

jms: A few of us have done it on a small basis.  Sneakers, for instance,
came in, and like 2 months before the movie opened, they were on line on
various services.  They were there for a week or two after it opened,
then they all vanished.

Chuck: Uh huh.

jms: This is....  The Babylon 5 on-line experiment has been going on now
since before the pilot, and .. has stayed on, on all the various nets
ever since, to get both the praise and the brickbats.  And to learn from
them.  Currently I am on Internet, CompuServe, GEnie, NVN, Bix, FidoNet,
and like 3 others.

Chuck: Good grief.  Now if someone....

jms: I have no life.

[laughter]

Chuck: Well, you know, I mean, but this is so typical, I think what
especially prompted Otis to mention this was that last week, our 
guests on the show were Phil Proctor and Dave Ossman, of the Firesign
Theater.

jms: Of course.

Chuck: And .. are you a fan of their also, I'm just wondering.

jms: I've heard it sometimes and enjoy it; I wouldn't call myself a fan
because I don't follow it that closely.

Chuck: Yeah.  And, Phil is also on the Internet, as it turns out, so
Otis is getting deluged by Internet stuff....

Otis: Oh yeah, it's coming at me.

jms: We're taking over the world.

Chuck: Joe, I gotta ask you something here that I've been wanting to
bring up.  It's something I noticed about Commander Sinclair; I was
watching Eyes again this morning, and noticed once again that Sinclair
seems to have a rather striking ability to outmaneuver and outflank
all the people who try to destroy him.

jms: Uh huh.

Chuck: This is at least the third or fourth time that he has shown
that he, he knows the law better, and is sneakier than, almost
everybody they've sent against him, and it suddenly occurred to me
what this reminded me of.  Let me preface this: were you ever a fan
of the old Secret Agent TV series?  With Patrick McGoohan?

jms: Of course, yeah.

Chuck: Sinclair reminds me a lot of John Drake.  Is that just accidental
or....

jms: I can see some of that; I think that anyone who gets to be in his
position and has survived over the years _has_ to understand how to use
the rules to your own best benefit.  Part of it is also that he was
trained by Jesuits.

Chuck: Yes.

jms: And Jesuits train you how to use the rule and letter of the law to
enforce the .. the heart of the law.  And so he knows how to do all that
stuff.  And I like a character that doesn't solve every problem by
punching somebody out.

Chuck: Exactly.

jms: I like someone who is smart enough to, if he sees a wall in front of
him, doesn't just go through it; he can climb over it, tunnel under it,
or go around it.

Chuck: Yes, yes.  It's sort of like the legal equivalent of jujitsu; it's
using your opponent's mass or his strength against him.

jms: Right.

Chuck: And I just... I gotta say we saw what I thought was a great example
of that in Eyes, where, in the final confrontation between Sinclair and
Colonel Ben Zayn, who is out to literally _get_ him, in any way possible.
It seems to me that Sinclair literally pushes every single button that
he knows he can push with that guy, plays him like a violin, and ..
gets him to self-destruct.

jms: Absolutely.

Chuck: And I thought it was really a very well done scene, and a great
illustration of the, the superiority in that sense of a brain over just
sheer massive force.

jms: Yeah, also in that kind of scenario, you really have to be, to be
committed to going through all the way, because if you don't pull it off,
if you don't push all the guy's buttons and he doesn't go off at you, you
just court martialled yourself for insubordination to a superior officer.

Chuck: So it was a very risky thing to do, also.

jms: Very risky.

Chuck: Yeah.  That's one of the things I admire about that character, but...
I'm glad to hear that confirmed, because I knew you were a Prisoner fan.

jms: Oh yeah.

Chuck: But I also didn't know if you were a Secret Agent fan as well.
Are we going to see any other indications of your interest in The Prisoner
other than the "be seeing you" that we saw from [laughs] from Bester a
while back?

jms: Well, that was a nod in their direction.  I don't want to do too much
because then you become, the show becomes a [??] _hommage_ rather than
what the show was about.

Chuck: Yeah.  Good point.  Well, I want to remind folks we've been sitting
here talking with J. Michael Straczynski, the creator and executive
producer of Babylon 5, and well, here's another person who wants to talk
to us, so, we're running out of time but we can probably get a few more
calls in.  Hello, you're on the air.

caller: Yes.  I have a question about PsiCorps.  I don't want to get into
it too much, but I'm curious as to how you developed that, what's the
nature of it?

jms: Nature of PsiCorps?

caller: Right.

jms: About 120 years ago, in B5 story time, for the first time they
were able to prove that telepaths actually existed; they are among us.
Now, what I have to do is sit back as a writer and say realistically
how would this develop?  And if tomorrow, science said yes, there are
actually telepaths living among us, they can read you minds, Congress
will be in the next day making laws about it.  [laughter]  Particularly
Congress, 'cause they'd be the first ones to want to hide from these guys.

Chuck: I think that's very plausible, yes.

jms: And they'll want to legislate them, to control them, to protect the
public from _them_ because of their, you know, the privacy issues.  And
on one level to protect them from the public, which could turn on them.
To want to create an organization to which you _must_ either belong to,
or take drugs to suppress your telepathic ability.  And the problem is,
when you set up an organization that will embrace you from cradle to grave,
and train you in commercial purposes, in military purposes, [?? all of a
sudden ??] the military gets involved and wants to have the strongest
telepaths they can get their hands on, that will in time become a rather
corrupt organization from the inside.  There's too much power being put
into one place.

caller: Well, they actually, they scare me more than the Vorlons, the
Narns, they scare me more than anybody on the show.

jms: That's the intent.  They should be scary.

caller: Well, thank you very much.

jms: Thank you.

Chuck: Thank you for calling.  Byebye.  Well, we are going to have to
get out of here, so....  And I ... Joe, you need to get going and I
really thank you for taking the two hours here to chat with us and our
listeners.

jms: No problem.

Chuck: Once again, I've been talking here with J. Michael Straczynski,
he is the creator and executive producer of Babylon 5 which you can see
tonight at 8 o'clock.  This week's episode is Legacies.  Is there anything
you'd like to tell the audience if they haven't seen it yet about Legacies?

jms: Ah... the show should speak for itself.

Chuck: Sounds reasonable.  Now, it... just a quick question then: Legacies
is a new episode; how many more new episodes have we got before the next
set of reruns?

jms: You've got the two-parter, which begins next week.

Chuck: OK.

jms: Then you've got Babylon Squared, which reveals what happened to
Babylon 4.

Chuck: OH, OK.

jms: And then .. The Quality of Mercy.  And then you've got a possible
break for reruns, and then, before the new season begins in November,
they may play Chrysalis, our last episode, the week before the new
season begins, 'cause it's a killer episode.

Chuck: Ok, that's a real *WHAM* episode.

jms: It sure is.

Chuck: OK.  And .. I understand also that we are going to be losing
Commander Sinclair.  Yes?

jms: Yes and no.

Chuck: Sort of.

jms: He's being moved somewhere off the chessboard, but he will be seen
from time to time.

Chuck: OK, great.  Well, Joe, thanks for taking time to talk to us once
again, and .. we'll be watching, believe us.

jms: Great, I appreciate it.

Chuck: Thank you very much.  Byebye.

jms: Thank you.  Bye.

Chuck: Well, that was J. Michael Straczynski, he is the creator and
executive producer of Babylon 5, and he's been our guest here on
One Step Beyond.

Otis: Well, it's been a great... another one of those mind-expanding
programs here at One Step Beyond again.

[wrap-up deleted]