Yeah, but it's very hard to do a story about preparation in the sense
you suggest. "Well, let's go check out the White Star."

"Well...sure is a fast ship, all right...so, what're the Rangers doing?
Keeping an eye on stuff? Good..good...so, what's for dinner?"

Each individual episode must be *about* something, must have a story
that can stand on its own, separate from the arc, while adding to it. For
what it's worth, "Voices of Authority," which was originally slated to run in
the first 4, *is* a preparation kind of story...it gets into how they should
be gearing up for what's coming, the accumulation of allies and resources,
all that. Had it run as planned as #4, this would be answered. But the
sheer volume of CGI required, which was pretty hideous, put it into the #5
slot, which we thought would still be in the first block of episodes. Then
we found that #4 was the cutoff point.

All I can tell you is that what you're asking for is *there*, plain as
can be, right in the very next batch of episodes. (Also, do bear in mind
that the "shadow war" referenced in the show operates as more than just
discussing the shadows themselves, but what's going on back home as well.)


jms

Thanks. No, you can't please everyone, I learned that lesson a long
time ago. What you have to look at are the percentages. No matter *how*
wonderful the work, there will always be a certain portion who won't like it
because it isn't to their tastes. That simple. (I like bluegrass,
classical, Japanese music, celtic music, hard rock, and others...can't abide
straight-ahead country music or opera. That's just how I'm hardwired.) So
basically, a work of superior quality will get about 40% who love it, 50% who
think it's good, and 10% who hate it. A middle of the road work gets
30/30/30. A flop gets the first breakdown but in reverse. There's never
been a novel, story, song or painting that everyone on the planet thought was
nifty, without dissent. So as long as the percentages favor the notion that
we're doing right, I'm okay with it.

As far as the assessment of this latter stuff being my best work...god,
I hope so. I've been writing and selling since I was 17; in TV for a tick
over 10 years, and the absolute honest truth is that I think I'm just now
*starting* to get halfway decent as a writer. So many years you spend just
pumping out the bad stuff, the cliche characters, the implausible plots,
until you finally get to the good stuff. I write 7 days a week, 10 hours a
day, 52 weeks a year, except for my birthday, my spousal overunit's birthday,
christmas and new year's. I'm in constant battle with the English language,
slamming together different combinations of verbs and nouns and adjectives,
hoping to provoke an explosion whose flare can illustrate a notion, or incite
a moment of reflection. And half the time I feel like it's a losing battle;
the language beats you every time. But if script #152 is just 1% better than
script #151, well, that's progress.

And then I make the mistake of sitting down and watching something by
Serling or Chayefsky or Rose or Corwin, and conclude instantly that I should
get out of the profession before somebody discovers I'm a fake. THOSE guys
could WRITE. Hell, they didn't just write, they thunder'd and lightning'd
over the typwritten page, and the echoes have followed us down for decades.
So maybe someday, if I work hard, and write to the best of my ability, and am
sufficiently honest in what I write, I'll be good enough to carry their
pencil cases....


jms

{how can people be interested in a show that's getting cancelled all over?}

Kydreamer: what you have to remember is that the syndication marketplace
is undergoing *huge* changes right now, and has been for the last year. In
most markets, you're lucky if you've got even one or two independent stations
(non-CBS, NBC or ABC). Between the growth of Fox, and UPN, those stations
are now almost all locked down, and are required by contract to give
preference to programming made by their affiliated networks. Now you've got
2 hours a day that are available for prime-time programs, 8-10, that's it
(most indies usually show news from 10-11). That's a grand total of 14 hours
a week, and there are currently about 250 syndicated shows all competing for
those 14 available hours.

Usually, we rate between 30 and 50 overall, which is very good in that
crowd of 250, so in most cases holding onto the station isn't hard. But in
some markets, where the squeeze is on, and there's only one station
available, if UPN or FOX pushes hard enough...the show goes. This has,
however, happened in only about a handful of places out of something like 198
total stations, so we're still pretty solid. The problem comes when 15
people in one area all post messages that their station has dropped B5, and
what people tend to see is that there are 15 messages about this, so it must
be a big problem. (And in at least two, possibly three of those cases
another station, sometimes a *better* station, has leapt in to pick up B5's
contract.)

We've had a number of preliminary conversations with the folks at WB to
determine how best to adjust to this in the fourth season, which at this time
is looking very encouraging. Several notions have been suggested by them to
help counter or work with the changing syndication marketplace. Some of them
are quite interesting, though it's too early to comment much more than that.



jms