Reggie Bautista 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.
>From what I remember from reading JMS's posts at the time (I'm a B5 fan back from the
>original season 1 days), the deal was that they brought
him in to pitch his show, and he convinced them how a show set a space station would
work (since the common belief was that a space show had
to be set on a ship traveling around) and also that the show would have an overall
story arc, rather than being totally episodic. They rejected him
and then announced DS9 a few months later, set on a space station, and having
something of a main arc, unlike the previous ST shows. Sleezy,
but not actionable. The main annoyance was DS9 fans calling Babylon 5 a clone/rip off
of DS9.
The HUGE irony of it is that CBS did the same thing to Gene Roddenberry some 20 years
earlier! Roddenberry was brought in to CBS, where they
interviewed him for hours about how he would do things on his proposed show. Then
they rejected his idea and announced their new show "Lost In
Space". Apparently they had just brought him in to siphon any ideas he had so they
could use them on their show.
As for the B5 Season 2 DVD's - I suspect the cost difference between those of B5 and,
say, Buffy, is likely because 1) Buffy has a bigger audience,
and 2) maybe they spent more more remastering the B5 footage for DVD format - it's an
older show and likely requires more effort to transfer.
For those that have the Season 1 DVD's - what do you think? I thought the quality was
great, and the shows were much better than I had
remembered. I hadn't seen any Season 1 episodes in about 8 years, and had always
thought the first season was the weakest, but I had forgotten
all the best parts.
-Bry
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