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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Risa
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Well it's known that JMS pitched a space station show and was turned down... and then poof we get ds9.
Either way both are some of the best sci-fi ever.
~~Yup. DS9 originated as a rip-off of his idea once he got someone to pick it up because Paramount didn't want anyone watching sci-fi that wasn't Star Trek. But, it took on its own life and became another great series in its own right.~~
I am a big fan of both and argue that they are very different shows, with DS9 being a bit of a grittier Star Trek but B5 not just being another layer of grit but really being unafraid of directly portraying the consequences of allowing authoritarianism to persist unchecked and the suffering that it causes, without softening it with an alien species acting as a stand-in for the lust for power that some humans have.
Having re-watched B5 recently, except for the CGI, it holds up extremely well. Have been meaning to give DS9 another spin.
Also, DS9 has my favorite theme of any Star Trek series.
EDIT: I stand corrected.
Even JMS has actually admitted years ago that DS9 and B5 being in development at the same time was a coincidence. DS9 was already in early pre-production when he pitched B5 to Paramount. They turned him down, but also asked if he would be willing to retool it as a Trek show. Most likely, they hoped to recruit him as a DS9 writer and didn't expect him to turn that down. Granted, it seemed super suspicious, but now that Paramount's documentation has been released it's pretty clear nothing nefarious happened. The DS9 showrunners weren't even informed the B5 pitch had happened and the network didn't interfere with DS9 much if at all, so the only cross contamination came from the handful of writers they shared, like D. C. Fontana.
Thanks for the correction. Nice that it wasn't actually malice after all, despite really looking like it.
That Paramount seemed to think for ages that the details of how they started production of shows were valuable trade secrets that must never be divulged certainly didn't help. They could have cleared everything up as soon as it started, but chose to keep their mouths shut, which made them look super guilty. Paramount Executives: making baffling decisions for the past 40 years.
Oh nice! Thanks for the update I'd not heard this!
JMS has been very gracious and I do not believe Paramount.
Oh boy, have I got something for you!
B5’s security guard was supposed to be a shapeshifter. He should’ve sued, honestly. People thought he ripped them off because DS9 came out first.
Straczynski also pitched and write one if the best comic miniseries of the early 2000's, too. Rising Stars was limited by the style of art that was popular in comics at the time, but it's one of the best, most cohesive stories ever to be seen in comics at that point. Frankly, I think it's one of the examples of why comics started to be taken seriously as a storytelling medium, and it's kind of a mystery why every other edgy early 2000's comic got the Hollywood treatment, but Rising Stars seems to have been mostly forgotten. I mean, hell, if Cowboys and Aliens can get a major motion picture release and The Boys can be a massive hit, why can't Rising Stars ~~or Babylon 5~~ at least get some sort of animated series?
Babylon 5 already had a series.