LosCon '94 Report

Some spoilers are included in this, but I'll try and put them near the end and ^L'd off....

I also picked up a (music) CD. A review of it will be posted shortly (quick review: it's DAMN good. Get it, and crank it when you play it :)

I arrived about 15 minutes late, so I missed out on the blooper reel (ack) and any requests on what we could say and not. The presentation consisted of Peter Jurasik (Londo without the makeup), Harlan Ellison, Larry DiTillio (exec story editor) and JMS in that order on stage fielding questions from the audience. They did show about a minute from an upcoming episode (The Coming of Shadows, to be aired mid-January or so); details later.

Most of the questions and resulting answers (sometimes off on a random tangent) were fairly basic, but were generally very entertaining. The following section is 100% from memory, no notes, so I may be wrong on a few things. Some of the ones I remember:

• A bunch of guest stars will appear this season. I didn't recognize most of the names, nor did I take notes.

• The B5 comic (from DC Comics) should be out next month. JMS wrote (or at least outlined in great detail) the first 8 issues, as well as the upcoming 3 books. He's trying to keep them canonical.

• Mr. Ellison has a comic series starting in January from Dark Horse, I think. The lead-in to his spiel about them was quite hokey, but probably part of the incentive to get him to come. It's not going to be a series, but more based on short stories he's done. Since they made such a point of mentioning the name, I'll just say it's got his name in it. :)

• Background info on Delenn: she was born into the Religious caste, and apparently selected for the Grey Council about 5 years before the first contact with Earth. She was onboard the ship with Dukhat when the Earth contacts opened fire, killing Dukhat. [So, we didn't manage to toast the ship, just managed to damage it enough to kill some of the occupants.]

• B5 is doing great in England, apparently doubling its audience share from episode #4 to #8 over there, and was something like #18 of Channel 4's programs. It starts in Australia real soon now, so no ratings yet. It's in (or will be in rsn) Italy, Germany, Greece, New Zealand, Japan, and the like.

• Harlon Ellison (who I'd never seen in person before, nor heard much about him) is a great storyteller. His faith in British youth's education was dashed by a recent trip to England. Apparently a shop selling various objects had some bad examples of customers. For example, scented, packaged, soap in boxes with "SOAP" written over it prompted a customer to ask "like, what do we do with it? Burn it?" Another pair of female teenagers commented on a crucifix: "This is the men's model: it has a guy on it."

  [My (unvoiced) comment was that the problems in the British Royal family is only the tip of the iceberg... British society is going to pot real fast]

• A suggestion to put Ellison in front of the camera received wide applause, but unless there's a stand-up comedy routine ["take my tentacle... Please!"] it'd be harder to fit him in.

• (Non-canonical; said in jest) Londo has a standard Centauri accent; Vir's got the weird one. Someone in the audience classified Londo's accent as 'pottsylvanian'

• G'Kar, Londo and Delenn each take about 2.5 hours to make up each day. As the day goes on, Peter Jurasik takes on the persona of Londo more and more until he talks to people in Londo's accent, etc. Kastulas and others are 'more normal'

• Hollywood still doesn't get sci-fi, or how to think ahead. JMS commented that other productions come up with a script, etc 2-3 days before filming, and so the sets, etc are put together at the last minute and under a lot of pressure, wasting up to 1/3 of the budget. JMS knows what will be needed down the road, so he can give plans to the crews, and say "I want this in 4 months". That way, they can work on things during lulls, etc.

  The odds of Hollywood learning about good production values, cheap toasterized efx, and most of all, a well-plotted series is pretty much nil. But, lots of independent filmmakers, etc are noticing B5 and learning.

• With the huge amount of backplanning involved, some fun stuff can be done. Apparently, episode #209, we'll learn something about random people that have been around the station, so JMS told the casting director "we want these people, and we want them seen in the backgrounds on episodes 204-208", etc.

• VCR tapes should be out shortly (January at the latest), with Laserdiscs next spring (April?). [Don't bother with VCR tapes; get the LDs :) ]

• JMS said that the cast & crew are quite committed to B5, and love what they're doing. He repeated the story about how after the Northridge quake, he told people they didn't have to come in that day, but they did anyhow. (Picket Fences was apparently the only other show to do this). They were filming Signs & Portents at the time, and had someone assigned to cut Ivanova out of the Starfury had a big one hit.

• The B5 CDRom (for computers) is somewhat on hold as Compton's undergoes some internal reorganization. Phooey.

• As to merchandising, JMS wants to keep it under control so it doesn't develop into a case of "the tail wagging the dog." All that was really confirmed was the soundtrack, comic books, novels, and a series of Galoob micromachines due out in time for Christmas.

• Like what he's said before, JMS enjoys writing for strong female characters (Ivonava), etc.

• Larry DiTillio apparently needs a raise, as he joked that he'd give away the arc for $15 afterwards. He said that he likes to write for the supporting characters, not the captain (Sinclair or Sheridan). Just his preference.

• [This was asked twice, and answered the same way twice.] There is no official Season 3 title yet. [Background: Season 1 was "Signs & Portents", 2 is "The Coming of Shadows". About 2-3 weeks ago, JMS posted here that his favorite choice so far was "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds"]

• Efx are getting much better this season. Lots more virtual sets. For example, the interior of the Narn cruiser in Revelations was 3 guys sitting behind boxes and filled in later. [In my opinion, it still looks blocky and too cgi-ish, like Doom real close to the walls]

• Star Trek was brought up. JMS favors healthy competition in the marketplace for Sci-Fi (and he wants to see more). He cited one example [Not sure if this was for real, or something he'd like to see] of the efx crews of B5 and DS9 trying to top each other. With the marketplace for independent stations shrinking rapidly [B5 will move to Thursday nights in a lot of markets early next year], B5's getting crunched. Write your local stations in support of B5!

• Sinclair's leaving was brought up again. Despite answering this so many times before, JMS was quite polite in his usual story. Sinclair's part of the arc was pretty small, and almost not worth it during the first part of Season 2. Therefore, a temporary parting was arranged. [O'Hare's apparently got some guest starring somewhere that JMS can't talk about yet].

• JMS also brought up this further analogy. With so many main characters (Delenn, G'Kar, Londo, Ivonava, Sheridan, Garibaldi, Franklin, Vir, Na'Toth, etc), if everyone was in each episode, they'd all have bit parts. Therefore, in some episodes [like G'Kar and the second half of season 1], some characters just won't appear. Sinclair's doing this for a season.

• "Sometime", Ellison will finish his sequel to "Demon with a glass hand". [He's got 3.5 years left]

  Now comes the section with some Season 2 spoilers. You have been warned!

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  Again... Spoiler guards

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• JMS commented that Sheridan needed to have a direct connection to the arc of this season, namely the shadows. He pretty much confirmed that Sheridan's wife was killed (or at least the ship was destroyed) by the Shadows.

• In the preview of the episode "The coming of Shadows", we got to see the sick Centauri Emperor. I won't say much, but JMS's old analogy of the Centauri Empire being sorta like the Roman Empire touches in a few places... everyone's scrambing for position. Vir actually shows some backbone to Londo, and Londo seems to recognize what path he's going to be taking.