The problem, Jaime, is that you've got about 42 minutes to tell your
story. You have to get into it, and get into it fast. Unless there's a
reason for the scene to be there, if it doesn't move the plot along, it
shouldn't be there. You'll note there isn't even a B-story in the
two-parter...there wasn't room.

Sure, it would've been nice to have Sinclair meet G'Kar, sit around, talk
about how they've changed...have Sinclair and Londo meet, talk about
stuff...have him and Ivanova sit around, talk about stuff...but then
you've got just a bunch of scenes that are basically, "Well, hello, how've
you been?"

The next sounds you would've heard would be the click of remote controls
changing channels across the nation.

As it is, in that two-part episode, you've got Delenn, Garibaldi,
Sinclair, Sheridan, Marcus, Ivanova, Lennier, Zathras, Major Krantz,
Krantz's second...it's our most character-intensive episode in a long
time, all of them being present in every other scene, plus the other three
characters we see in part two. It was, quite simply, stuffed to the
gills, and there wasn't room for a single wasted word.

That's the difference between a novel and a television show; you can stop
the action in a book as often as you want to have asides, but you can't do
that in TV with as much facility. To do the scenes you describe would've
meant turning this into a three-parter, and as it is part one is almost an
extended teaser for part two. It would've been moreso with these
additional scenes.

If it isn't necessary, it shouldn't be there.


jms

Beth: I quite agree, didn't mean to imply otherwise...it would've been
nice to see some of those scenes, it just wasn't practical. And you have
to make hard choices. As someone once said of writing, "You have to kill
all your darlings," meaning the nifty little things you'd *like* to do, as
opposed to the things you *have* to do.


jms