B5 Rewatch extra, further analysis of episode order
So I got hit with my semi-annual knock out cold last week so I’m only posting this now, but here’s part 1 of analyzing some behind the scenes factors of B5 season 1.
B5 Rewatch extra, further analysis of episode order
Part of what makes the episode order of season 1 such a debatable topic is that it was produced out of order, in fact it was produced very out of order. And I feel like I want to discuss some of the effects that had on the season as well as the two episodes with contested placement. So let’s start this analysis by listing the production order:
Bold are JMS eps, italics for DiTillio who should be the second most in-the-know writer as he was also script editor.
Gathering
Infection
Soul Hunter
MOTFL
Born to the Purple
Believers
ATSFOS
War Prayer
Parliament of Dreams
Grail
Mind War
Survivors
Chrysalis
Deathwalker
By Any Means Necessary
Legacies
S&P
Quality of Mercy
Babylon Squared
TKO
Voice in the Wilderness 1
Voice in the Wilderness 2
Eyes
Now we’ll move on to some early episodes I feel this effected (mostly detrimentally).
-The script for Believers was likely commissioned early enough that it can’t have had much to work out. Made all the worse as the main character is Franklin who wasn’t introduced in the pilot so Gerrold likely only had a few notes to go on about the character. He might have had rough drafts of Infection and Soul Hunter but almost certainly no chance to observe and get to know the character he’d chosen to focus on, not that either of those eps had done a lot to really develop Franklin’s character aside from as a generic space doctor.
-While I’m going to do a different meta about the directors as I’ve noticed this time with heavy scrutiny, the fact that my nemesis Compton directed so many early episodes almost certainly hurt the show starting off.
-As I noted in the Grail review, it being produced so much earlier than it aired shows as the script was probably still commissioned, and even carried through to production, when there was less to go on for the characters. That the episode focuses so much on the guest starts might have made up for that somewhat, but largely doesn’t as the world feels so under developed.
-I do find it very weird that Chrysalis was produced so early, although I’m sure it was done to give the effects team plenty of time with that one. But it does have a clear downside in that it does less to set up the changes coming next season than I think it might have done if it had been produced later. While I’m not sure when JMS accepted that O’Hare couldn’t do s2, I’m not sure he was certain/accepting of that even by the time they ended production, but he certainly wasn’t setting up for it in mid production season.
-TKO is such a weird episode, because it was definitely written/produced late enough that it shouldn’t feel like an early season episode, and yet it does. Didn’t JMS say after Grail that they were doing away with the damn cycles, and yet they show up almost at the end.
-In production order (mainly done by the out-of-order-ing of Chyrsalis, there’s less of a JMS dead zone in production than there was in the eventual broadcast order...hmmm.
Now let’s talk about TKO and Legacies in specific. I suspect that both episodes, is different ways, were initially meant to go late in the season, but for me (and making sense with production order) it works out better that they didn’t end up there.
Looking at the production order, I have little doubt when DC Fontana wrote Legacies it was expected to go right before Chrysalis, sort of the swan song of Delenn as she was and bookending the developments between Ivanova and Talia, as well as the closing line that makes me glad they didn’t do it that way but was probably written with the intention. That does not to me mean that that initial intention is the proper place for the episode to end up; all the episodes (including TKO of arguable placement) that on the DVDs come between Legacies and Chrysalis were written/produced after Legacies. Legacies was not written with Babylon Squared in mind so I maintain that it should not be viewed as if B^2 had already happened. Because the order those episodes end up in has a pretty big impact on how events might be perceived; because the episodes treat the Grey Council so differently that IMO Legacies can not come before B^2, and to me it’s clear that Legacies wasn’t written with the B^2 view in mind. To point to the triluminary being there isn’t enough to overcome that, the way they’re using the ‘triluminary’ (that I’m comfortable assuming is something else entirely) here does not receive any of the reverence Delenn shows in B^2 when she’s given it. The episode was written/produced as if it was a small piece of Minbari tech that could be used by anyone for Minbari-ness (that somehow did the stuff that happens in Legacies and is part of Delenn’s chrysalis device), not the holy sacred piece of super important Minbari culture that Delenn treats it as in B^2 when she’s given it, if anything I feel the revised/’recommended’ order creates plot holes like that that the DVD order doesn’t have in part because of the production order oddities.
As for TKO, I do feel like DiTillio wrote it to be the bookend of the Ivanova plot he started back in Born to the Purple; and if I’m giving him credit, maybe also as a throwback to the early part of the season when things were lighter before the series plunged into darkness at the end. So I do buy that it was *intended* to go very late in the season. The problem is that throwback feeling that just feels out of place with the episodes around it. QoM is a light and fluffy enough episode and it has some pretty heavy themes in it, just the slice of life structure and a comedy C-plot that makes it feel lighter than it mostly is. And like I said all the way back in my initial discussion of the ordering, if you move QoM somewhere else there’s maybe room for one episode in the final run that feels less portentous, its main problem for me is having both of them breaking up the flow too much. But because QoM has the Londo plot and TKO does not, I prefer to keep Londo’s last hurrah of good times at the end just before he falls into darkness. And because TKO is so...well bad, it doesn’t need to be placed anywhere specific so it’s the one that gets kicked back to mid-season and I see no real problem with that.
Next up: the directors get some scrutiny
B5 Rewatch extra, further analysis of episode order
Part of what makes the episode order of season 1 such a debatable topic is that it was produced out of order, in fact it was produced very out of order. And I feel like I want to discuss some of the effects that had on the season as well as the two episodes with contested placement. So let’s start this analysis by listing the production order:
Bold are JMS eps, italics for DiTillio who should be the second most in-the-know writer as he was also script editor.
Gathering
Infection
Soul Hunter
MOTFL
Born to the Purple
Believers
ATSFOS
War Prayer
Parliament of Dreams
Grail
Mind War
Survivors
Chrysalis
Deathwalker
By Any Means Necessary
Legacies
S&P
Quality of Mercy
Babylon Squared
TKO
Voice in the Wilderness 1
Voice in the Wilderness 2
Eyes
Now we’ll move on to some early episodes I feel this effected (mostly detrimentally).
-The script for Believers was likely commissioned early enough that it can’t have had much to work out. Made all the worse as the main character is Franklin who wasn’t introduced in the pilot so Gerrold likely only had a few notes to go on about the character. He might have had rough drafts of Infection and Soul Hunter but almost certainly no chance to observe and get to know the character he’d chosen to focus on, not that either of those eps had done a lot to really develop Franklin’s character aside from as a generic space doctor.
-While I’m going to do a different meta about the directors as I’ve noticed this time with heavy scrutiny, the fact that my nemesis Compton directed so many early episodes almost certainly hurt the show starting off.
-As I noted in the Grail review, it being produced so much earlier than it aired shows as the script was probably still commissioned, and even carried through to production, when there was less to go on for the characters. That the episode focuses so much on the guest starts might have made up for that somewhat, but largely doesn’t as the world feels so under developed.
-I do find it very weird that Chrysalis was produced so early, although I’m sure it was done to give the effects team plenty of time with that one. But it does have a clear downside in that it does less to set up the changes coming next season than I think it might have done if it had been produced later. While I’m not sure when JMS accepted that O’Hare couldn’t do s2, I’m not sure he was certain/accepting of that even by the time they ended production, but he certainly wasn’t setting up for it in mid production season.
-TKO is such a weird episode, because it was definitely written/produced late enough that it shouldn’t feel like an early season episode, and yet it does. Didn’t JMS say after Grail that they were doing away with the damn cycles, and yet they show up almost at the end.
-In production order (mainly done by the out-of-order-ing of Chyrsalis, there’s less of a JMS dead zone in production than there was in the eventual broadcast order...hmmm.
Now let’s talk about TKO and Legacies in specific. I suspect that both episodes, is different ways, were initially meant to go late in the season, but for me (and making sense with production order) it works out better that they didn’t end up there.
Looking at the production order, I have little doubt when DC Fontana wrote Legacies it was expected to go right before Chrysalis, sort of the swan song of Delenn as she was and bookending the developments between Ivanova and Talia, as well as the closing line that makes me glad they didn’t do it that way but was probably written with the intention. That does not to me mean that that initial intention is the proper place for the episode to end up; all the episodes (including TKO of arguable placement) that on the DVDs come between Legacies and Chrysalis were written/produced after Legacies. Legacies was not written with Babylon Squared in mind so I maintain that it should not be viewed as if B^2 had already happened. Because the order those episodes end up in has a pretty big impact on how events might be perceived; because the episodes treat the Grey Council so differently that IMO Legacies can not come before B^2, and to me it’s clear that Legacies wasn’t written with the B^2 view in mind. To point to the triluminary being there isn’t enough to overcome that, the way they’re using the ‘triluminary’ (that I’m comfortable assuming is something else entirely) here does not receive any of the reverence Delenn shows in B^2 when she’s given it. The episode was written/produced as if it was a small piece of Minbari tech that could be used by anyone for Minbari-ness (that somehow did the stuff that happens in Legacies and is part of Delenn’s chrysalis device), not the holy sacred piece of super important Minbari culture that Delenn treats it as in B^2 when she’s given it, if anything I feel the revised/’recommended’ order creates plot holes like that that the DVD order doesn’t have in part because of the production order oddities.
As for TKO, I do feel like DiTillio wrote it to be the bookend of the Ivanova plot he started back in Born to the Purple; and if I’m giving him credit, maybe also as a throwback to the early part of the season when things were lighter before the series plunged into darkness at the end. So I do buy that it was *intended* to go very late in the season. The problem is that throwback feeling that just feels out of place with the episodes around it. QoM is a light and fluffy enough episode and it has some pretty heavy themes in it, just the slice of life structure and a comedy C-plot that makes it feel lighter than it mostly is. And like I said all the way back in my initial discussion of the ordering, if you move QoM somewhere else there’s maybe room for one episode in the final run that feels less portentous, its main problem for me is having both of them breaking up the flow too much. But because QoM has the Londo plot and TKO does not, I prefer to keep Londo’s last hurrah of good times at the end just before he falls into darkness. And because TKO is so...well bad, it doesn’t need to be placed anywhere specific so it’s the one that gets kicked back to mid-season and I see no real problem with that.
Next up: the directors get some scrutiny