SOME INFORMATION OF THE UPCOMING BABYLON MOVIE ON TNT
Two-hour TV movie. Covers the Earth-Minbari War in more detail, including Delenn's involvement and the death of Dukhat.
Production number: TNT MoW 2
Original air date: January 4, 1998
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Mike Vejar
Notes
- The story is framed by the old Londo Mollari ("War Without End") telling the tale to a group of Centauri children before Sheridan and Delenn are brought before him. (See jms speaks)
- Filming is scheduled to end June 30, 1997.
jms speaks
- TNT will show the pilot movie. The theory is to do the prequel first, then the pilot, then the series through one run at least, then the second original TV movie to freshen the cycle, then onward.
- In the Beginning will air in January, on a Sunday, in a 4 hour block the other half of which is the original B5 pilot, and then it will go to daily M-F runs of the first 4 seasons at 6 or 7 p.m.
- TNT is a commercial cable network, so there will be commercials. As I recall, the running time to which I wrote the scripts was 94 minutes 10 seconds.
- Is "In the Beginning" a linear story? Never said it was linear, only that it predates B5.
- No, the movie won't be linear per se, but broken up by Londo's narration, which will collapse some events together so we can cover the whole history of the war in about 2 hours.
- Plans are to have Dukhat in the B5 prequel.
- Will Delenn's makeup be the version from the pilot? No, we're using the series makeup, rather than add one more permutation.
- Spoiler for "War Without End part 2" The Londo scene in question is the one that takes place moments before Sheridan and Delenn are brought in, and then allowed to escape. (War Without End.) He can't exactly see to their execution since they outlive him in story continuity, now can he?
- You may not find out who built the Great Machine in the series, but that will be one of the features of one of the planned TNT movies. And there will be more on the Valen/Sinclair transformation as well.
- It contains surprises and turnarounds for many of the series veteran fans, and it does a great job of laying the foundation for the first two seasons for the newbies. It's a most elegant dance...and I'm actually kinda proud of it.
- Will It spoil some of season one's mysteries? That's an interesting question. When I sat down to write In the Beginning, my feeling was that I should look at the long term. Would the hole in Sinclair's mind be the same mystery it was in season one, or would it be kind of known thereafter? If so, then do you want to play with the mystery, or set up what actually happened? I figured, okay, let's go for the latter...let's let the audience know (which will mostly know by now anyway), and set up the background, with the characters not knowing the first season. I took basic greek tragedy as my model, with It functioning more or less as a Greek chorus that sets things up. If you want to play it as a strict mystery, then no, probably don't go near It...but frankly, if I were going to start someone off on B5, I'd definitely want to start with It, which sort of skims in and out of the overall storyline in a beautiful fashion.
FINAL COMMENTS
We always like to put new and interesting stuff in the Circular. It would be nice to have some stories on books or movies in production such as the new Lost in Space movie or Godzilla. Unfortunately neither Robin or I have time to do that much web surfing and it doesn't fall into our laps. If any such news comes your way please forward it to us to place in the Circular. Please remember, we can't use it if you have already sent it to everybody else.
Of course we would love to have original articles written by members too.
Dave Henninger
