I'm going to test myself, and see how much I can say without saying too
much.

You have X-number of characters. They're all in the same place. You're
trying to tell a story that has a great deal of scale, and covers all kinds of
worlds, changing politics, alliances, on and on. The question becomes, how do
you *illustrate* that? To use a line from the original Trek, when a mob guy
is brought aboard the Enterprise, he says later, "All I saw was a room and
five guys."

So now you start saying, "Hmmm...what if I remove Character A from the
chessboard, and move him over *here* for a while? He wasn't going to be doing
much for the next little bit anyway. And we won't just "deal" with that
change, it's part of the story...it broadens out the story to include Place A
*and* Place B. It has repercussions down the road. It comes up again in the
future. Elements from Place B now become known on Place A. Character A may
even make an occasional reappearance to keep us even more closely connected
with Place B, which is necessary because Place B is very, very important."

What we have in mind here isn't quite comparable to anything that's been
done before. The character will still be alive. The character will continue
to have an impact on the story. The character will be spotted from time to
time. The character will continue to show up in the comic and the novels.
And through this move, you have the benefit of substantially opening up the
B5 universe, you help create the realignment of characters and loyalties that
was anticipated for this season, and it helps kick over the tables, as we did
in Chrysalis.

Just a slight refinement on the argument.

jms