How much would you care to bet on that?? Though to tell the truth, I never got very far reading it because it's a very strange format. Jan
I imagine it would have to be since, (if it was like other games at the time) it's not a linear narrative and only acts as bookends and background to the actual gameplay missions, not to mention the potential for branching plots and alternate endings. When/if you do get around to reading it, feel free to post a broad synopsis! Seriously though, who has this footage? Or I suppose the more pertinent question; who has the rights to this footage? If they can dig it out and edit it together, it'd make one hell of a DVD extra! I mean just from a historical point of view, unless I'm mistaken this is the last time Mira Furlan ever played Delenn. I'm browsing through the archived site now and it's really surprising how much this was going to be an official and indeed canon production. They even had Janet "I directed all the arc episodes" Greek directing the footage on the actual B5 sets no less. There a bunch of stills from the shoot here, though for some odd reason they all appear to be flopped.
*I* think this whole thing is just needlessly complicated...there's just too many ranks, IMHO. Couldn't they have streamlined it somehow? As for Copeland's letter: He mentioned the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, but when was that rank ever used on the show?
I don't think it has any more ranks than a real world military, nor is it particularly more or less complicated than them. I dare-say given that Earthforce is probably a good order of magnitude bigger than said real world militaries I think there's plenty of room for things we haven't seen. As for a LtCol; so we never (knowingly) saw one. What's your point? Does not having a character of that rank with a speaking role in the 5 years the show was on the air make the rank impossible? We never saw an enlisted rank between Sgt and SgtMaj, does that mean there aren't any? Of course not, that's ridiculous. The bare truth of the matter is simply that it wasn't a show about the military. It was a show about character, some of whom happened to be military, while some were diplomats and others still were Brits with long hair. Personally *I* think you just plain don't like the fact that it doesn't doggedly adhere to the US Navy's system and I rather think that betrays a failure of imagination.
If what Copeland says is true, EarthForce has every rank that the Army/Air Force/Marines have, plus four more ranks that the Navy has. I'd say that counts as quite a few.
And? Seriously, how is this a problem? Earthforce is a MUCH bigger organisation than anything any nation currently has. It covers territory spanning light years, protect colonies spread across two dozen or more worlds and lost 20,000 in a single engagement without being completly crippled. More to the point though it's a joint service that covers space, air and ground operations, so is it any wonder that there are more ranks than a single Navy, Army or Airforce? I really don't see that there's anything worth getting hung up over.
Canada manages just fine. They also have a single, unified command (Canadian Forces), yet each subset of that service has the appropriate ranks *for that service*. Their maritime command, for example, has Navy ranks.
I believe that WB owns the rights, since it was technically film of their show, same way WB owns the rights to the episodes even though Babylonian Productions were the ones making it. Not completely sure, but I think that's how it works with the game too.
It's worse than you know. "Into the Fire" was supposed to have an extremely branching plotline. My understanding is that the script is set up like one of those old choose-your-own-adventure novels. You'd reach the end of one scene, and it'd offer you a series of options for which scene could come next, based both on your decision at that moment and what the current astropoltical situation was. There was a time-travel element to the game, so you could participate in historical battles, and thus alter history to one degree or another, in addition to more conventional branching based on your decision during the present-day storyline. Broadly speaking, as I recall, any historical mission would have one of three outcomes- You'd come back to find history unchanged from how you left it, you'd come back with some relatively minor change to history (like, the Dilgar survived the destruction of their star and were still a galactic power, or the Narn took on the role of interstellar assholes that the Centauri occupied in the prime timeline), or you'd come back to a present that was completely inimical to your continued survival, and would quickly be shot down and killed (Sinclair was never captured at the Battle of the Line, so humanity was wiped out in the Minbari War, or the Shadows defeated the Army of Light and were still running roughshod over the galaxy). There was a partially completed fanfic (First Half, Second Half, and there was more as well, but it looks like it isn't on-line anymore. Google isn't finding quotes from the later segments) that was suspiciously similar to the script of the game (the author always played coy even though the circumstances were fairly obvious those of us who were there, so I'm continuing in that vein in accordance with their wishes) which gives you an idea of what a possible play-through might've been like. It doesn't reach the ending, but it shows you a lot of the plot elements of the game, as well as the story progression for the gameplay mechanic how you could advance from Starfury pilot to starship commander, and possibly back again, as well as stuff like how the time-travel worked and some examples for ways you could completely break history. It would've been so cool.
We can only hope that's the case as it's probably the only way we'd have a chance of ever seeing it. Incidentally, I was just flipping through the Crusade BtS book and came across a fleeting mention of the game by Janet Greek. Between slagging off Gary Cole (ouch, she really doesn't mince words!) and expressing her general frustration she didn't get to direct 'To The Ends of the Earth', she mentions how the game shoot came up during the "week long hiatus" that lasted a month or two before the show was cancelled. So (until Lost Tales at least) this was the last footage shot with any of the main characters and defiantly the last thing shot on those sets that had been there since '93 before they went bye-bye. It's kind of sad in a way since all reports from the shoot I've seen were extremely positive and they clearly had lots of fun doing it. Damn, I remember that as a B5 fan that late '99, early '00 period was like having the rug pulled out from right under one's feet. Greak Maker only knows what it was like for JMS. Probably something akin to the rug being pulled out, rolled up and used to beat him about the head for a few months straight. The fact that he came back for more TWICE speaks volumes to his affection for the show, his regard for the fans and his stubborn inability to learn NOT to stick his head in a vat of boiling hot water. Let's hope he never learns! So less a DVD extra as a whole bonus disk on BluRay? Damn, how many discs was that game going to be on? I remember other FMV heavy games at the time tended to be (depending on compression quality) anything from three to six discs!
^Oh well, I suspected as much! It's a bit vexing since I'm certain I've read a reference somewhere to one or the other being a Major General. I had a quick flick through the novelization too and no luck there either. Perhaps what I'm half remembering is no more than just some old fan speculation. I've noticed such things often get repeated as fact. [edit] OK, out of curiosity I thought I'd knock up some graphics to go with the various alternate/unused insignia and rank schemes just to see how they'd look. There's some artistic licence here of course since they're all based either on descriptions or in the case of 'The Gathering' insignia, the best observation I could make from the DVD.
Because folks here have asked before and since this is the most active B5 thread at the moment: Volume 1 of "Crusade: What the Hell Happened?" will be available for sale on Wed., Aug. 25 at 10:00 AM Pacific time. For more information on the four-volume set, go to B5Books.com. Jan
So of the series episodes it's "just" the 10 produced JMS episodes plus 'To The Ends of the Earth' and 'End of the Line'? None of Fiona Avery's or Peter David's scripts, nor any of the unfinished "Sword Trilogy" scripts? I'm sure there's plenty of good stuff in there but I dare-say it's the unproduced material that fans are going to be most interested in.
Like with the B5 books, any scripts by other writers would be in an 'Other Voices' book. I'm standing by to scan whatever script drafts they decide on, but these four books come first. I'm sure more information will come later on. What there might be of the unproduced material is a major question. Jan
As I've said before, I'm constantly of two minds as to whether or not I actually want to see the unproduced stuff released, at least not in such raw form. While it's far far to late to get the actors back or anything like that, I guess after Buffy, Angel and Farscape managed to quite successfully continue their respective shows in comic book form I'd kind of held out the vague, admittedly dim hope that Crusade would find a home in that format. Particularly given Joe's log association within the industry. If however all the bible notes are printed then that's it, he's officially given up on telling the story.
Oy. Ranks and B-5. I remember telling Joe very early on (I think between "The Gathering" and the premier of the series) that Garibaldi needed to be an officer. (You aren't in charge of security on a station that size if you're a non-com!) But he was determined to have that bluecollar non-com feel with Garibaldi instead. <shrug>
^Not to contradict, but I've known WO2s (see previous pages for what one of those is) to be routinely in charge of security for an army garrison, under a WO1 RSM and/or GSM. IIRC the position is refereed to as a Provost. Not exactly the same thing I'll grant as he's only concerned with security, discipline and quite often the whereabouts of his stick within the camp. The family quarters on the other hand are looked after by the mod-plods (Ministry of Defence Police) which I think is more akin to EF Security as it was on B5. Either way, you don't get officers running jobs like this in my experience. Of course there's an Officer around in overall command but non-comms generally tend to see to the details. On another topic, since nobody appeared to have a clue about the Generals, here's a new question, mostly directed at anyone who still has one of the old (i.e. not mongoose) RPG books, as I'm pretty sure that's where the answer is. In a nut shell, I've gone and done the various Minbari Clan logos that showed up in 'Legacies' - the three I could get a reasonably good look at - and am now trying to link each of them up to their respective clan names. I'm 99.42% sure that the first one belongs to the Star Riders as it was the one draped on Shai Alyt wotsizname's casket, but the others I'm not so sure about. The names JMS has mentioned includes the Fire Wings, the Moon Shields and the Night Walkers and I have a vague recollection of seeing these logos named while leafing through some RPG source book circa 1998. Answers on the back of a data crystal.