From: flixman@news.dorsai.org (Robt_Martin)
Subject: JMS in SF Entertainment 10/95
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 07:50:58 GMT
This text is copyright 1995 by Robert Martin. License for free
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Let There Be Light
Let There Be Shadows
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain...
Joe Straczynski on creating the universe of Babylon-5
By Robert Martin
The collaborative nature of television often defeats the attempt
to bring the distilled vision of a single individual to the small
screen. But on the rare occasion when that attempt works, the
product is often something built to last--Rod Serling's The
Twilight Zone, for instance, or Gene Rodenberry's Star
Trek.
The phrase "Joseph Straczynski's Babylon-5" may not come
so trippingly off the tongue, but as that show continues to
unfold its five-year saga of war and destiny among the stars, it
has become clear to an increasing number of viewers that this is
not "television as usual." Every episode in the series, though
plotted to stand as a single narrative, simultaneously advances a
broader story--which is not simply a timeline, but a sprawling
novelistic saga with a variety of themes, subplots, and points of
view.
This broader narrative will reach its midpoint in the coming
season, and currently things are heating up considerably on
B-5. Most notably, the episode "The Coming of Shadows"
marked the beginning of what seems likely to become a war between
all the mortal races of the galaxy versus an ancient species of
awesome power known only as the Shadows. Our last, best hope is
that our alliance with the Vorlon species will help to pull us
through...but we don't even know what a Vorlon is, though the
Vorlon character Kosh has been a presence on the series since its
inception.
There's much more to be said about the show, its cast, its crew
and its fans, but this time we need all the space we've got for
the following lengthy interview. Those with access to any on-line
service, to the World Wide Web, or to the Internet can find a
wealth of background on the series; Babylon-5 data files
are available via file transfer protocol from ftp.hyperion.com;
Mr. Straczynski's on-line communications can be monitored on a
daily basis via the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon-5. And
a vast trove of information can be explored in The Lurker's
Guide To Babylon-5 on the World Wide Web at
http://www.hyperion.com/lurk/lurker.html.
Sci-Fi Entertainment: In 1986, when this concept was first
hatched, how did you figure the odds of getting this far with it?
Joseph M. Straczynski: You have to understand the way my
brain works, which is a dark and scary thing on the best of
days.... When I came up with this in 1986, I said at that time, I
will write the screenplay, I will get that screenplay produced as
a pilot, I will get the series, the series will run for five
years, and I will get off the stage. I never considered the
odds.... I said this is going to happen; I didn't know it was
going to take five years for it to happen. This show has been,
really, an exercise in sheer force of will. I decided it was
going to happen and nothing got between me and that. I don't even
allow any other possibilities in my head. It's like standing in
front of a long train with a chain on your back, pulling for five
years, until it starts to move. For one brief period, you and the
train are moving at the same speed...and then the train starts
chasing you. That's about where I am right now with the story
line.
SFE: Your method of weaving story-threads through the
series so that an episode in season two might play like the
conclusion of a season one story, and the various resonances that
creates--was that part of the initial seed?
JMS: Foreshadowing is a technique that's not much used in
series television--there's a lot of retro-continuity, where you
write episode sixteen to conform to facts established in episode
fourteen. But to write something for episode nine that won't be
referred to again for a year is pretty much unheard of.
Usually you structure a show around an hour--you don't structure
it around two years--or five years. There's stuff in the first
season of Babylon-5 that serves its own narrative purpose,
but will become far more relevant four years from now--as you go
along, it gains more depth. And that was always at the core of
the concept.
I grew up a science fiction fan--reading Ray Bradbury's The
Martian Chronicles, a series of individual stories which,
together, create a large tapestry. E.E. "Doc" Smith's
Lensman books, Childhood's End, the Foundation
novels, Lord of the Rings, Dune, Stranger in a
Strange Land are all sagas of that nature.
Looking at the SF shows that were done, I asked, why hasn't
anyone in American television--the British have done it--created an
honest-to-god, literary-structured saga? And the only reason is
that no one has ever done it.
So as a thought experiment, I asked myself, if I were going to do
that, how would I do it? What would it be, and how would I
structure it? I began putting together the pieces, and that
melded into another thought-experiment I had, which had to do
with the way television is made--about 30 percent of the budget of
any television show is wasted. So this came out of those two
ideas, to find a means to marry these two concepts.
SFE: It strikes me that the show might be more valued when
it exists as a set of laserdiscs on a fan's shelf, than in its
current form as a TV show; it seems a viewer might get more out
of it that way....
JMS: To some extent they might. The guy who is putting
together the collector cards for Fleer sat down and watched two
or three episodes per night, watching the whole thing through. He
wrote me back and was just wog-boggled, because when you see it
that way, the tightness of the structure just jumps out at you;
and, while he'd been following the show, he really hadn't glommed
onto what we were doing.
SFE: It's my understanding that renewal came more easily
this year, thanks to improved ratings....
JMS: The ratings have improved, and the demographics are
amazing, which makes the advertisers and the network very happy.
SFE: When the show was still struggling to establish an
audience, I imagine the TV-heads saying, "Joe, why don't you do a
nice little space show with bad bad guys and good good guys, so
the audience can have a reasonable expectation of what they're
going to see?"
JMS: I will tell you a true thing; during both renewal
periods, first season and second, no one ever broached that to
us--no one ever said, "Listen, we think you should pull back on
this arc nonsense and just give us regular stories."
That is why it took so long to get this series started in the
first place; it took us five years to find people who understood
exactly what it was we were trying to accomplish in the first
place, and would sign on for that task of telling this larger
story, in the way it needed to be told. Dick Robertson at Warner
Brothers and David Thompson at Chris-Craft Television together
are the brains behind the PTEN network. They backed this show for
the purpose of telling this story, and our contact at Warner
Brothers, Greg Mayday, who is terrific, also understands what it
is we're trying to accomplish--which is the reason we're doing the
show in the first place. So that has never even come up.
SFE: In that case, your experience stands in sharp contrast
to Harlan Ellison's well-known battles with TV executives. Have
things changed that much in television?
JMS: Not really. Remember, it took five years to find these
guys.
SFE: Speaking of Mr. Ellison, he is credited as "Conceptual
Consultant." What exactly does that mean?
JMS: Harlan's involvement is as peripatetic as Harlan
himself is; he is allowed to insert himself into the process
wherever he chooses. He's advised on costumes, on sets, he's come
in on the meetings with writers like Peter David and David
Gerrold. His description of the job is that he's the mad dog
nipping at my heels; I think of him as my Jiminy Cricket,
perhaps, a free-floating agent of chaos who, having been through
such experiences as The Starlost, can help me avoid the
pitfalls. And his job is to be honest with me, because when you
are a television producer, people are very seldom about to tell
you, "Joe, it sucks." You need someone around you who will do
that, as in the old Roman tradition--when the conquering hero
returns to Rome as garlands are being lain upon you, you have
someone at your shoulder to say, "Fame is fleeting. You, too,
will die." That's Harlan's job, to be the honest opinion that I
need, because he's never pulled his punches and never will. As
such, he is a valuable resource to me. He created the character
of the ombudsman, helped to write the opening narration. He's
contributed in many ways, but always around the corners, because
he knows the story is my story; but his contributions have been
very helpful in making that story much richer and deeper.
SFE: You have an extremely varied background as a writer; I
assume that is at least partly because you like doing a variety
of things. Now you have this massive commitment to a television
series.
JMS: I am single-minded in some ways--when I'm of a mind to
do something, I'll stick with it. I knew what the job consisted
of when I took it, so it's never been a problem. The only problem
was when, after five years of development--at a time when I could
have gotten any number of mainstream shows going--people around me
were saying, "Joe, it ain't gonna happen." Even my agent was
saying, "Joe, it's not happening, give it up." But I couldn't do
that. And then, of course, it did happen, and things have been
great since.
And the show is not the same; the show of the second year is not
the same show we were doing the first year, and the
Babylon-5 we'll be doing three years from now won't be at
all like the first-year show. As well, each episode is very
different from every other episode--some are very dark, some very
character-oriented, some have huge action set-pieces. What's
great is that I come from a background where I've done comedy,
I've done action, I've done drama, and I can take that diverse
background and apply it all to this one, very diverse series.
You'll get a very strong idea of one of the major changes by the
end of this season.
SFE: I understand that the final four episodes of season
two are being held back to open your third season. Why is that?
Isn't it a pain in the butt? JMS: A major pain in the butt.
We and Voyager are doing the same thing, as it turns out.
The new season begins, traditionally, in November. What happens
usually is that we, and the Trek shows, only show four to
six new episodes, then go back into reruns--so that, while we
build ratings through that early part of the season, the reruns
come in and you get cut off at the legs.
So they figured, let's back this up a little bit, let's start
showing episodes in October, get the momentum going, hit bigger
with the first third-season episodes, and build, presumably, to a
larger rating. From the numbers point of view it does make sense.
From a creative point of view, I was on the roof with a
high-powered gun...but what are ya gonna do?
SFE: I'd think that would play havoc with the way you
orchestrate the series' movement, judging from last year's season
ending.
JMS: It wasn't as big a cliffhanger this year, but I did
reveal Kosh, which was enough to keep people talking for a couple
of months.
SFE: Will the shift alter your approach to the third
season?
JMS: Since it's airing a week after the last episode of
season two, I changed the first third-season show to take place
one week after the events of the previous season--I moved the
dateline of the story up a little bit and changed some
references. The actual plot line remains pretty much the same.
SFE: The extent of your commitment to this show seems
unprecedented--writing fifteen out of twenty-two scripts this
season, and I know you take an active hand in a lot of aspects of
the show...
JMS: I'm involved in every aspect--costuming, prosthetics,
computer design, casting, everything.
SFE: And you're also deeply involved in the B-5
comics and novels. Where does it stop? This isn't how TV is
usually done.
JMS: You have to understand that this is my story and my
baby, and whatever precedent has been set by how things are done
in television, you have to keep in mind that I am a pain in the
ass--very stubborn--and like to have my own way.
Insofar as being involved in the comics and the novels is
concerned, my sense is that very often, when a franchise is
created, stuff is approved and just tossed out there to make
money. The stuff just isn't part of the show; it's just
tossed-off media crap. When I talked to the guys at DC, I said
that I wanted to do something that would really feed into the
show, and would be part and parcel of it. That way, the fans know
that this stuff has passed through my hands, and know that it's
been approved at the highest possible level of the show's
creative staff, and not by some flunky in an office who stamps it
"authorized."
That's why we haven't done a whole lot of merchandising. I'd much
rather keep a "boutique" approach to merchandising, than start
cranking stuff out willy-nilly. I don't want to create a huge
empire, I want to tell my story, and create a few ancillary
things here and there because they are the particular things that
I want.
As for where it stops, there are a number of places where it has
stopped, where I just didn't think it was worth my time to do
certain things, and I've just said "pass" on those.
Currently, I'm writing a four-issue story for the comic to tie
directly into the first part of the third season, introducing a
character who will be prominent through the season--providing that
character's back-story and so on. The character will go from
Minbar to Narn to Earth to Babylon-5. You'll see the entire B-5
universe through this guy's eyes. It's a wonderful opportunity to
do something we can't do in the show, because it would cost $10
billion.
SFE: How is the comic doing?
JMS: We're trying to work out a resolution to a situation
now, in that DC is cutting back on all their non-superhero
titles, rather strongly, and B-5 may come under that axe.
Our own feeling is that DC didn't handle it as well as they might
have; they didn't promote it very much, and they didn't ship very
much--while, whenever it reached the stores, it sold out in a day,
which we know by all the re-order requests that came in. But the
decision hasn't been made yet, and the feeling is that if there's
just a slight increase in sales, say about 3 percent, it won't be
a problem. If it does happen, it shouldn't be too difficult to
place the comic elsewhere, as two other comics companies were
interested in a B-5 comic at the outset; we went with DC,
to keep it "in-house," in a sense [Time-Warner owns both Warner
Television and DC Comics].
SFE: You seem to prefer those things that will supplement
the story, literary things...
JMS: Absolutely.
SFE: ...as opposed to things like toys and models...
JMS: Oh, I want there to be models...there's a model of
Babylon-5 in Sheridan's office, which he bought in the
"Babylon-5 Emporium" [a satiric jibe at SF merchandising,
in the episode "There All Honor the Lies"], and when the show
hits the end, everyone knows that it's going into the other
"captain's" office--mine.
I want the model to exist, so eventually it will.
SFE: Earlier you mentioned literary antecedents to
B-5. I had three I wanted to bring up; you mentioned
Tolkien and Bradbury. The third, related particularly to the
coming of the Shadows, is Lovecraft.
JMS: Well, there's a certain Gothic tradition that we're
drawing upon. Writers like Lovecraft, August Derleth, Lord
Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith--they're all writers who worked in the
area of the outre, dealing with dark areas that we can never
quite wrap our minds around--a great tradition going back to the
1930s, the '20s, and earlier. I would say that there are areas of
the Shadow mythos that are of that school, and in that general
area, though not particularly tied in to any one writer.
SFE: So may we expect that tone to rise in the third
season?
JMS: I like creepy stuff. I like walking down the hall, the
doors close, and there's a scratching from the other side...so,
yes.
SFE: You count yourself as an atheist, yet spiritual
matters often set the theme for episodes of the show, and seem to
be a large part of the arc. Some would see that as a
contradiction.
JMS: You have to understand that the writer's job is to be
as honest as he humanly can in his characterizations and his
storytelling. And, as I look at the long parade of human history,
religion has not gone away in the past 4,000 years of recorded
history, nor does it show any sign of going away any time soon.
If I have to be honest in looking at the world 250 years from
now, I have to say that people will still believe at that time,
and I must treat that with respect--the same way I'd deal with
scientific concepts. Because, truthfully, science and religion
are two sides of the same coin. The methodology is vastly
different--one relies on faith while the other relies on
scientific method--both are endeavors to understand who we are,
how we got here, where we are going, and what we are here to do.
I feel that one must approach both of those endeavors with equal
respect.
I have a background of religious studies, a minor in philosophy
from Northern California State, and majors in psychology,
sociology and literature. I have always been intrigued by
humanity's relationship to the mirror, its effort to come to
grips with itself, as the only known species that asks, "Who am
I?" My job is to explore that on every level, whether it's the
religious side, the spiritual side, the scientific side, or
within the aspect of each individual character. It all informs
the core theme of Babylon-5, which, like everything else in
the show, if you want to get it down to one sentence, is a
question: "Will you lead or will you be led by others?'
SFE: Beyond that level of recording future history, the
show engages spiritual matters--matters of self-knowledge, which I
guess is the atheist's best possible definition of
"spirit"--directly.
JMS: It comes down to the examined life versus the
unexamined life, and so much of contemporary society is bent on
distracting us from our own lives, with television, or the latest
movie craze or something else. There's always that opportunity to
be distracted each moment of your life, "I've gotta read the
paper, I've gotta get the laundry, I've gotta see this movie,
I've gotta..." on and on. And you never stop and just ask
yourself the questions that matter. What this show tries to do is
ask questions. We don't provide answers--my job is to ask
questions, start discussions, start arguments, and start bar
fights. If I do that, I've done my job.
SFE: You mentioned that there will be changes occurring in
the show with those last four episodes, that will be opening the
third season. Will the first third-season shows continue that
pace?
JMS: No, because you have to do these things by degrees.
The stuff that we do in the last four is pretty major stuff;
we're going to take a breather from that with several more
character-oriented episodes. And then, about mid-season, we're
going to pull a biggie; there's a structural change in the entire
core of the Babylon-5 universe. The closest equivalent I
can imagine--and this is not a one-to-one correspondence, but just
to convey the magnitude of the change--suppose, when you turned on
Star Trek, you found out that Starfleet has just been
bought by the Klingons, and the Enterprise must now serve
the Klingon Empire. Not just for an episode--that's what the show
is, from that point on. It's a change of that magnitude,
and I'm going to lead up to that with several nice, quiet, polite
episodes; get up behind 'em and whap 'em real hard.
SFE: You told Warner Brothers you're going to turn
Babylon-5 upside down--they said, "Joe, that sounds great,"
and clapped you on the back?
JMS: Well, yeah. Their jaws dropped. They said, "You're
really gonna do that?" And they started to get excited about it.
They knew what the first three-year structure was supposed to be;
the first year was sort of galloping around the galaxy, the
second year was our guys take it on the chin--they did a lot to
our guys, things didn't go too well for them at all--and the third
year is our guys fight back. That's the first three years, and
they knew that. And when I said, "bah-de-bah..." the room went
wild. Greg Mayday in particular was very excited, and really
taken for a loop by it.
SFE: You've said that characters will die long before the
show completes its run--unexpectedly, as in real life. Is anyone's
fate coming up soon?
JMS: Perhaps.
SFE: That's better than a "no comment."
JMS: When does this hit the newsstand?
SFE: In early September...
JMS: Then I can't tell you. [pause] But some stuff will
happen even before this season's up.... We could lose a couple of
characters. In a really permanent way.
SFE: That's a shame. I hope not, 'cause I love all the
characters.... I hope they all live long and, well, not prosper
exactly....[laughter]
JMS: If you recall The Shining, and the character
played by Scatman Crothers, the only one who understood what the
"shining" was, and understood the kid; he was the good guy, the
guy everyone could rely on, and was set up throughout the movie
to be the guy who would save everybody at the end. Then in the
last half hour of the film, he realizes, omigod, something's gone
wrong at the hotel--he gets in the snowcrawler, travels through
ten miles of ice and snow and blizzard, negotiates this hostile
terrain, nothin's gonna stop him, he's chuggin' along. He gets to
the door, flings it open, gets an axe in his chest, and dies. And
it hits you--here's the guy who was going to be the resolution,
and he ain't it, he's lyin' on the floor in his own blood. I've
done something similar, and you'll understand when you see the
episode.
SFE: Will we see any more of Michael O'Hare [Commander
Sinclair in Babylon-5's first season] in the foreseeable
future?
JMS: I've discussed this with Michael, and with Warner, and
it's all set up to bring Michael back for a two-parter, about
one-third into the third season.
SFE: And that will clear everything up? Like the matter of
his being "The One"?
JMS: It'll clear up everything--that thread will not be
abandoned, there will be some surprises there, and for everyone
who was wondering, "Gee, I don't see how this fits in," it will
suddenly make sense. The question of who is "The One," and
questions surrounding Babylon-4, will all be dealt with--it's
gonna be a corker of a two-parter.
SFE: When you are not up to your ears in production--and
even when you are--you communicate with fans, through GEnie,
CompuServe and the Internet. Why?
JMS: Bear in mind that I come from a background as a fan.
My sense as a SF fan is that they tend to be the most exploited
group around, told to watch the show, buy the toys, and shut the
hell up. Whenever I used to come to conventions, where producers
would show up with new shows, they'd say, "It's the best thing
since sliced bread. You'll see. We'll come back and we'll talk."
Then you see it, it ain't what they promised, and you can't find
them to talk about it afterward. You want to hit them with a
nerf-bat, but they're gone.
Also, I've been on-line since 1984; I was one of the first guys
on CompuServe. When this show got going, I said, "Should I change
this part of my life?" The answer was no, why not keep that
communication going? A lot of television producers are insulated,
they don't get to hear from guys in Iowa or Dubuque, about what
they think of their shows. And I think they would profit
tremendously from hearing that information. So my decision was to
keep that open, to respect the fans, to keep myself honest, to
keep me humble, because it's hard not to be humble with some of
the things that come flyin' through there, and because, for the
last fifteen or twenty years, I've been working to de-mystify the
whole area of television production.
I did a column for ten years for Writer's Digest on
television writing and what is involved with it, written columns
and articles and parts of books about this. So here we have the
opportunity, through this on-line exchange, to create a document,
which will ultimately be thousands of pages long, tracking this
series from the first development, to the pilot, through the
series, things that go right, things that go wrong--which no one's
ever done before to this extent. When we're done, there will be
this extensive document, a snapshot of the entire process,
available to anyone who is interested in the inner workings of a
television series. It's all there, available for download, and
people have been drawing upon it--I've gotten calls from
university television and film department guys, saying they
distributed it among their students. I heard from one producer
who said that he borrowed our ideas on structuring the use of
sets for a television project. That opportunity to educate and
inform is an excellent reason to continue.