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Bear in mind that if we had gone over to the other captains and
what was going on in the other ships, to make room for those scenes we
would've had to cut anywhere from 3-5 minutes of the other stuff. You
can't just add to the show's time; if that goes in, something else has
to come out. So you'd probably have to cut the scene between Sheridan
and his father since that was the only stand-alone set piece.
Any time you write something, you must decide "who is it
about?" This episode was about *our characters*, the ones we've come to
care about, and how they deal with this. To take away from that and
spend time with people we've never seen before, and won't see again,
would be to cheat our characters of the time on screen needed to pay
off all the things we've set up over the years.
Would it have been an interesting aside to show the other
captains? Sure. In a movie, with an open-ended running time, I
probably would have. But there's nothing I would want to cut out of the
episode as it now stands to make room for it.
jms
B5: The Other Side
John M. Graham <74166.3727@compuserve.com> asks:
> Any chance of talking WB into some sort of two-hour special at
> some highlight of the arc, or is this just too difficult in
> syndication?
It's too difficult to sell a one-shot thing like that in
syndication, I've been told.
jms