"Jose J. Ortiz-Carlo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
In the end, he decided not to prosecute. In various posts of his to the newsgroup Rec.Arts.Scifi.Tv.B5.moderated and on Genie and AOL, he as stated that he doesn't think Pillar, Berman, Taylor, or any of the other creative people involved in DS9 stole his ideas or even knew about his pitch (in fact, IIRC he is still good friends with Jeri Taylor, one of the original DS9 production and writing crew), but he thinks that the network suits kept feeding ideas to creative about the kind of show that they would support.
At the time, which was near the launch of both B5 and DS9, Straczinsky took the opportunity to address the questions regarding what was referred to, at the time, as a "striking similarities" between B5 and DS9. According to JMS, he had the chance to pitch his story idea to the producers of Star Trek, shortly before Gene Rodenberry's death. His pitch was rejected. Months later, Paramount announced the release of DS9.
According to JSM, the similarities between the two shows in question were, most likely, NOT accidental. He felt ripped off. I don't know if he chose to prosecute, or even if he had legal grounds to do so.
Most of jms's postings to the places I mentioned above are collected at
http://www.jmsnews.com . There's a post from June 19, 1995 with the subject heading "Re: DS9 vs B5 comments" where addresses his view of what happened in some detail, from a viewpoint of 3 years after both B5 and DS9 were announced. If anyone wants to read it but doesn't have the time to navigate through jmsnews.com, just let me know offlist and I'll email you a copy. (jms has given blanket permission for anyone to repost or resend any of his posts.)
If you're really interested and have the time to dig through for relevant posts, the first several months of the jmsnews.com archive back from late 1991 and early 1992 have lots of more detailed info as it was happening.
Reggie Bautista
Interesting Stuff Maru
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