The reaction to Racing The Night

 Posted on 8/13/1999 by jmsatb5@aol.com to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated


>I am not standing up for TNT here, but again I must point out what has been
>said in other posts. All 13 episodes that TNT is airing have been stated by
>JMS
>to be *"True Crusade"* as he saw it in his vision.
>
>The show was stopped by TNT after they wanted to interfere. Since JMS did not
>agree to the changes, TNT stopped production.
>
>I am not justifying what TNT did, but you can not blame them for the shows

Not entirely true. The 20 pages of notes we got that were truly offensive were
turned down by me.

But they kept after us on other stuff on a daily basis. They wanted Dureena's
makeup softened, on the theory that it was a cliche if she actually *looked*
like an alien...they kept making demands of other scripts, including revisions
in such already finished scripts as "Well" that weakened the script...

What I said was that "War Zone" was the only one written at TNT's behest, not
that they didn't have input into the rest of them. It was only with
"Appearances" that I finally hit the wall and simply stopped taking their
notes.

Every day there was a campaign of attrition and the constant threat that if
things weren't done, either the first shut-down would be permanent, or there
would be another shut-down. The show was essentially held hostage.

I think that there's more positive than negative in all the episodes aired, and
I'm proud of what we did under the conditions under which we had to labor; but
understand that their fingerprints are on all of the first 8 to various
degrees. I separated War Zone from the rest because structurally, that's a
story I would never have told if there wasn't a gun to my head.

The only episodes totally free of interference are the first 5 shot.

jms

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