There is a point, however, where bias and being opinionated leads to error and
untruth, because one is so adamant to advance one's own viewpoint that all the
other facts get skewed to support that.

All through Lane's book, he skews the facts to bolster his point of view, much
as a creationist skews the facts of science to bolster his point of view.

For instance, he makes much of the fact that we shot 6 days instead of 7 for
S5, and that this therefore led to a 1/7th decrease in quality. Well, it
didn't affect the writing, the stories were still the stories. I wrote just
what I would have written for a 7 day shoot.

Further, a fact he omits because it would get in the way of his argument is
that we *did* have the liberty to shoot 7 days when we thought it was
appropriate *and did so*. (I think it was either A Tragey of Telepaths or
Phoenix Rising.)

He omits the fact, documented through shooting schedules, that on virtually
ever episode from S1-S4, we wrapped early almost every day, sometimes by an
hour, sometimes by a couple of hours. In 110 episodes, we had only about 20
days of serious overtime, over 5 years of shooting, and in each case the
overtime amounted to only a couple of hours here and there. Never once had a
forced call on an actor.

Why is this important? Because if you take an average of wrapping early 1 and
a half hours per day, over six days, you *have* a seventh day right there.

When we went to a 6 day schedule, we added about a page to each day's shoot,
and we generally didn't go home early, we wrapped on time. (Though in fact we
were able to go home early on some days, depending on the scenes.) That's it.
The main burden was on the art department to turn around sets quickly enough.
But there was no other qualitative impact otherwise. Not one. Zilch.

To be sure that it could be done effectively, I was the first one to do a 6 day
shoot, on Sleeping in Light, figuring that if I as a first time director could
do it, anybody could. And we did just fine.

Anyway, that kind of bias infects the whole book, because it wasn't done the
way he would have done it, and therefore it has to be bad. And he looks for
anything to bolster that point of view, no matter how insupportable. It's not
just that this is his POV, it has to be the truth, and he insists that no one
can have any other point of view, or that person is an uncritical fanboy.

But it's possible to be an uncritical fanboy in a positive *and* a negative
direction. And that is the case with the Lane book. He does not take the
facts in a critical way, examining them on their own terms, he lines them up to
try and reflect his thesis going in.

A person can have a bias that leads them to be blindly praising toward
something; and a person can have a bias that leads them to be blindly negative
toward something. This is a case of the latter.

I've never had a problem with critical reviews. Diane mentioned the B5
magazine, but if you actually look at the reviews in that magazine, many of
them do say negative things about various episodes. Mind you this is in a
publication that's licensed, and which I could have deleted that material if
I'd chosen to. But I let it go through, because I think we can all learn from
criticism, and if our own publication was exempt from that, then it was no
longer a proper magazine. I gritted my teeth a lot, but it went through.

There seems to be this perception that if something says positive things, then
it isn't being critical; if it's negative, then somehow it's more objective or
critical. This is fallacious reasoning. Criticism should be fair and
evenhanded and constructive and, where possible, based in factual reporting.

This book is none of those things.

jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
B5 Official Fan Club at:
http://www.thestation.com

>I admit I have a bias going into it since I liked
>Vol 1 a lot. Also I'm more inclined to agree based on the sole fact that
>I felt the same way about many things and specifc episode. Maybe that
>does not qualify me to look at it objectively,

But that's okay, and that's the point...your feelings about the episodes are
subjective, there's no such thing as an objective *opinion*. Facts can be
objective, opinions are a different creature. The language means what it
means. And you're as qualified as anyone else to give your opinion on anything
you so choose, and should not hesitate to do so.

It's when others try to disguise opinion as fact that I think a line gets
crossed.

jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
B5 Official Fan Club at:
http://www.thestation.com