"One thing I wondered about, while reading the CIS and occasional AOL
repostings here, is how JMS felt about the general fan reaction to
"Messages From Earth", "Point of No Return" and now "Severed Dreams"
(which I don't see until Saturday).

""Messages From Earth", after all, was widely anticipated based on JMS's
own assessment that it was the best episode of the series to date. The
general reaction here was one of letdown, and looking back, I still see it
as the weak link in this important tryptch. Even if I see the three
episodes as essentially one huge episode, or a three-act episode, then
"Messages" is a weak first act.

"What I'm wondering, now that JMS is thankfully back in our neck of the
woods, is how much these kinds of general reactions surprise him or change
his own perceptions of episodes. Does he see "Messages" in a different
light now, judging from how many of us thought it had structural,
story-telling problems that can't be resolved, in the way that some other
misperceived 'problems' have been, by developments later in the arc?"


One of the problems in any discussion of this sort is the tendency to
accept one's own perceptions as the facts. The reaction I saw from fans
when "Messages" hit was that it was one of our strongest episodes. Okay,
you felt differently, and that's fair. But it doesn't invalidate the
many, *many* people who felt otherwise. I'm even willing to go out on a
limb here and say that it was very popular with the majority of viewers.
It came out very high on the P5 survey as well. I happen to like
raspberries more than strawberries. Does that mean that raspberries are
objectively better than strawberries and that the producers of
strawberries should reconsider their position? Of course not.

Which, in a way, is the answer to your question. There has never, in the
history of TV, been one episode of any series which is uniformly hailed by
every viewer, and liked or disliked for exactly the same reason.
Everybody sees the episodes differently. If I were to start running after
10 million viewers to change my opinion of the shows, with 10 million
opinions, each of whom thinks that their opinion is right (and it is, but
it's right for *them*, it's not *objectively* right), each of which is
contradictory with every other view...you'd go mad.

You just can't tell a story that way.

(BTW, what "story problems" are there in "Messages?" None have been
pointed out to me so far of any substance.)

So anyway, I'm happy that you enjoyed "Dreams," and that it compensated
for any lack of spiffiness in your view of "Messages."



jms

The other thing to bear in mind in all of this is that the degree to which
we are affected by an episode depends to some measure on what we bring to
the experience. Some elements are going to register more with some than
with others, due to our background and experience. Some women reacted
*very* strongly to "Comes the Inquisitor" because of their feelings about
the whole male/female dynamic and the way it had touched their lives
previously.

We will never all agree on these things, and never should. If we all
agreed we'd be the Stepford B5 Viewing Association.

(Oh, and one other thing...very often, viewers re-assess episodes after
the fact. "And Now For a Word" being a good example. When it first came
out, a number of folks weren't sure about it, because they were taken
aback by the narrative device. Lately, on the rerun, a *lot* of them, on
various nets, said they'd watched it again and re-evaluated their opinion,
felt it was under-rated, and better than they'd first thought. So, again,
which opinion do you listen to? Fundamentally, you have to follow the
story where it takes you. Nothing else makes sense.)



jms