Subject: [crackmonkey] A "Babylon 5: Crusade" fairy tale
From: Rick Moen <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 02:31:15 -0800

Some of you are already fans of J. Michael Straczynski's 5-year
televised science-fiction story, "Babylon 5", and have been looking
forward to the follow-on series, "Crusade" (which will air starting
in June, on Ted Turner's TNT cable channel).  As to the rest of you,
the heck with you.

News of a sort follows:

The following is a transcribed acount of JMS's remarks at Mega Con. To
see a major spoiler of one of the Crusade eps shown go to isnnews.net .
Kat's report, shown below, is there too.  [RM adds: omitted]  Thanks
again to my good friend Kat for doing me a huge favor that I will have
to pay back at DragonCon. 

JMS's Fairy Tale 

Q: "I'd like to know how many episodes are sold and what plans you
have..." 

JMS: "For?" 

Q: "Crusade." 

JMS:  "Thank you.  It's a very long story.  There's stuff I can say, and
there's stuff that I can't say.  So, I'll tell you what I can say and
lie about what I can't say."  

"We shot 13 episodes.  And TNT will be airing those on June 9 at 10:00,
starting then and going straight through, more or less.  And we had...
they had said they weren't going to do more beyond that, beyond the 13." 

"We tried at that point to take it to the SciFi Channel, but it was so
late in the game....  It takes a lot of money to be able support an
entire season of a show.  The SciFi Channel had already allocated their
funds for the year, so they couldn't pick it up." 

"If the show does well, the first 13, then it will be considered for a
season, beginning with the second season, on the SciFi Channel.  If the
show does well, it will go on." 

"As for more what happened... let me tell you a fairy tale.  And every
fairy tale begins with Once Upon A Time...."

"...There was writer of songs in a kingdom.  And he wasn't the best
writer of songs on the entire planet.  There were others who were as
good or better.  And he had written 110 really good songs... and four or
five long odes.  And they said, 'Do some more songs for us.'  And he
said, 'Sure.'"

"And he began writing more songs.  And those were for this little
kingdom, which was great.  As were the ministers, who had always before
worked with him.  Then, the King heard about the new songs that were
being commissioned.  Not the Emperor."

"Not the Emperor Theodore and his wife Lady Jane.  I ain't talking about
them.  I'm talking about the lower king of a particular land.  All
right, I don't want the Emperor getting pissed at me.  And he (the King)
said, 'Well, I should be involved creatively.'" 

"And thus there came... runners would come with scrolls, which the 
singer/songwriter would look at and burn."

"Now this is just a fairy tale.  Okay?  This is nothing but a fairy
tale.  This is not about Crusade.  Okay?  I'm just telling you a story
here.  And the King became wroth.  He waxed Wroth, and Wroth wasn't
very happy about it.  Old joke; I'm sorry."

"So they called for a grand meeting at which, along one long table 
were ministers, and emissaries, and ambassadors, and functionaries 
and assistants, and programming - uh,... a whole lot of guys.  Now,
on the other side of the table was the writer of songs.  And they had 
plenty of these huge scrolls in front of them.  And they began to 
open the first one."

"And the writer of songs said, 'No.'" 

"And they brought someone in with a book to explain to them what the 
word 'no' meant, because they had never heard it before.  And they 
said, 'No to what?'"

"I said...  The writer of songs said, in this imaginary story, 'No
to all of it.  No to all of it in all its parts and pieces, from page 1
to page 20.  No to all of it.'  The writer of songs felt that what they
wanted was, in modern terms, for a moment, sort of Baywatch meets
wrestling in space.  Which was not applicable, exactly, to our fairy
tale scenario.  (Aside:  If I ever work again, it'll be a miracle.)"

"It became clear that, if the King's emissaries were not properly 
responded to, they may say 'You can only write 13 songs.'  And 
the writer of songs said, 'Better 13 songs that I can believe in 
than 22 that I do not.'"

"So there were 13 songs, and the writer of songs has moved to a
different kingdom, knowing that the 13 songs were songs that he wanted to
hear.  And in the 13th song there was a sub-thread in the song about
people who come in with suggestions, which is rather similar to the
King's situation.  Astonishingly, the King saw the 13th song and didn't
realize what it was."

"And the writer of songs moved to another kingdom and lived happily 
ever after."

"And this has nothing to do with Crusade or your question, but I 
thought I'd tell you that story because it amuses me."