"I felt as if I had been *deprogrammed,* and stopped thinking of the
future in terms of that one vision of it, and being a hard scientist,
that's a pretty embarrassing admission to make. But it was stunning
to*feel* it happen to myself. After a lifetime of watching Trek as the
*only* vision of the future that most people were aware of, it's amazing
to become fully aware of the depth of the belief suspension, until it
seems like the "real" future is the one with the Crayola uniforms and the
communicators on the chest."

This was something I began to really understand during the first season,
and was something I hadn't anticipated going in. Some of the reaction
against B5 was so strong from some groups of ST fans...it wasn't just one
show vs. another, there was a vehemence in it that was coming from
something deeper.

Eventually I began to figure it out, that it was also two competing
visions of the future. I've mentioned before the angry letter I got that,
among other things, said that the person was thrown every time one of our
characters used a hand link when "everyone *knows* that by then we'll be
using chest communicators." It was a vision thing (to use a fairly recent
campaign slogan). The problem then becomes, for lack of a better term, a
religious problem...competing ideologies, notions to which one has
committed oneself. And the most heated wars are always religious wars.

It's been...interesting.


jms

"No one's claiming Trek doesn't have its failings. The issue at hand is
the B5 folk who feel compelled to constantly ridicule Trek. There's not
much point, and the attitude is suspiciously cult-like, even if they
aren't really a cult."

One fallacy in your thinking: while there are many ST fans who haven't
seen B5, there are insofar as I know *no* B5 fans who haven't seen ST, and
in most cases, began as ST fans. These are the same complaints many of
them have had with ST for a time long before B5 ever came on the
map...only now in some cases they have a show which is doing what they
have been saying should be done for some time now.

This is not a B5 problem...it's an internal ST problem.



jms