Jimmy Akin

This is just a note for B5 fans who may want to know about this:

Over the next year JMS is releasing a 15-volume set of all the scripts that he wrote for the TV series Babylon 5 (which is the vast majority of the episodes of the show).

These are the productions scripts and include scenes and dialogue that were filmed but never broadcast.

There are generally seven scripts per volume, plus a lot of bonus materials. The bonus materials include newly written introductions by JMS to the scripts, talking about how they originated, what was going on with the show at the time, what production issues were encountered, etc. The bonus materials also include behind-the-scenes photos from the set and a lot of production memos that he sent out during filming talking about the design of various props, alien races, and characters who were meant to be on the show (some of whom never were–like the The Boss and mysterious Mr. Jones).

I’ve seen the first two volumes (which are out), and they’re actually a lot cooler than I thought from the bare description of them.

Among other things, JMS explains things that weren’t necessarily clear on screen. F’rinstance: An early season 1 episode "Infection," which dealt with a piece of organic technology from the planet Ikara that grabbed a person and turned him into an "Ikaran war machine"–as Mr. Garibaldi once termed it. This episode was one of the first filmed and is generally regarded as one of the least successful of the show’s five year run (it’s basically a man in a rubber suit monster episode),

BUT

in volume 1 on the scripts, JMS explains something that could only have been obvious in hindsight (and wasn’t obvious to me even then until he pointed it out): the Ikaran device is (a) dark and scaly with lots of pointy, insect-like leg thingies, (b) organic technology, (c) that incorporates a living being into itself, (d) seizes control of his brain for its own purposes, and (e) turns him into a form of armament.

Does that sound like anything ELSE we encounter on Babylon 5?

It’s SHADOW TECH.

The Ikarans got ahold of some left over shadow tech from the last Great War and used it to try to impose genetic and ideological purity on their planet, leading to them all being wiped out (since nobody is ever pure enough).

The tech in question was one of the things that the Shadows used to create infantry units since, as JMS points out, an army needs to control the ground as well as the sky.

So. It’s still a man in a rubber suit monster episode, but at least it’s a man in a rubber suit monster episode that fits in to the overall shadow mythology that JMS created for his universe.

The volumes also contain alternate, unfilmed versions of some scripts. For example, volume 1 contains the original, unfilmed version of the series pilot, "The Gathering," which is significantly different from the one that finally got shot.

Volume 3 (coming out in January) is set to explain why actor Michael O’Hare (Cmdr. Sinclair) was forced out of the show by The Powers That Be and the introduction of Bruce Boxleitner (and who ALMOST got his role but at the last minute didn’t).

But the really COOL thing will be volume 15, which will be given FREE (including free shipping) ONLY to those who’ve gotten the rest of the set.

What will be in volume 15?

Take it away, JMS:

"It will also [in addition addition to a bunch of other stuff]contain the Babylon 5 writers bible…the production draft of "The Gathering" as a companion to the original draft offered in volume one…and something very special."

"For over ten years, fans have asked "What would Babylon 5 have been like had Sinclair stayed?" Well, that question will be answered in this volume."

"After we finished the movie, but before we got the series going, WB asked to see a breakdown on this five-year arc thingie. So I wrote a six or seven page, single spaced outline of the ENTIRE FIVE YEARS with Sinclair still in place. The document makes for fascinating reading when compared with the series as it developed. NOT ONLY THAT, but the same document has a brief outline for A POTENTIAL BABYLON 5 SEQUEL SERIES, which would have been entitled BABYLON PRIME."

"Finally, by popular request, the nearly-legendary alternate version of the script for “The Exercise of Vital Powers” containing the Londo/G’Kar seduction scene, written in as an elaborate practical joke on the actors, will also be included.

So, if you want

GET INFO ON THE B5 SCRIPTS.

Steven Greydanus’s review of Brokeback Mountain IS UP.

As you might guess, he gives it significant marks for artistic merit (three and a half stars) but gives it a -4 moral/spirital rating (which is as bad as it can get on his scale), resulting in it having no appropriate audience and an overall recommendability of F.

He thus was able to separate the artistic craftsmanship of the film from its moral content, which is a very important distinction to make. Something can appear beautiful and even moving and still be gravely immorally.

"And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light" (2 Cor. 11:14).

That’s the thing about sin: If it wasn’t in some way attractive to people, they wouldn’t do it.

Steve also bring out a point that I had been thinking about: When a morally offensive movie has artistic merit, that makes it MORE dangerous, not less, because it is better able to draw the viewer into the immoral worldview of the film than a ham-fisted, low-quality film.

Steve also points out that there are NO sympathetic heterosexual male characters in the film. Homosexual males can get sympathy, and so can heterosexual females, but not heterosexual males. He writes:

The film allows its sexually omnivorous protagonists to be morally ambiguous, and its straight women can be likable or sympathetic. Yet essentially every straight male character in the film is not only unsympathetic, but unsympathetic precisely in his embodiment of masculinity.

In the end, in its easygoing, nonpolemical way, Brokeback Mountain is nothing less than a critique not just of heterosexism but of masculinity itself, and thereby of human nature as male and female. It’s a jaundiced portrait of maleness in crisis — a crisis extending not only to the sexual identities of the two central characters, but also to the validity of manhood as exemplified by every other male character in the film. It may be the most profoundly anti-western western ever made, not only post-modern and post-heroic, but post-Christian and post-human.

GET THE REVIEW.

I wanted to touch back on something that I meant to mention regarding the non-retraction retraction issued by Catholic News Service regarding its erroneous ranking of Brokeback Mountain as an "L" film ("limited audiences") rather than an "O" film ("morally offensive").

Here is the text of what they wrote:

Editor’s Note: "Brokeback Mountain," originally rated L (limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling), has been reclassified O — morally offensive. This has been done because the serious weight of the L rating — which restricts films in that category to those who can assess, from a Catholic perspective, the moral issues raised by a movie — is, unfortunately, misunderstood by many. Because there are some in this instance who are using the L rating to make it appear the church’s — or the USCCB’s — position on homosexuality is ambiguous, the classification has been revised specifically to address its moral content.

The part in red is how the L rating is normally explained, and it’s fine. That’s what the L rating means.

But the part in blue is a misinterpretation of the L rating that reveals something interesting.

Note that in blue the editor says that L restricts films "to those who can assess, from a Catholic perspective, the moral issues raised by a movie."

If that’s what L means then y’know what? EVERY movie should be rated L.

NOBODY should be watching a movie if he is unable to correctly assess the moral issues raised by it. If you’re going to get suckered into thinking something immoral in a movie is really moral then you SHOULDN’T be watching that film.

I don’t care whether it’s The Incredibles or Silence of the Lambs. If you can’t accurately handle the moral issues a film raises–whatever those may be–then that film is not for you.

This reinterpretation of the L rating completely steamrollers the need for all other ratings–including O. I mean, if you’re a moral theologian and can correctly "assess, form a Catholic perspective, the moral issues raised by a movie" and that’s a sufficient reason NOT to give it an O then guess what: No films need to be given an O since SOMEBODY (at least the film critic who would have otherwise given them an O, and if not him then the pope) will be able to assess the moral issues they raise.

So ALL films really should have an L.

Clearly this is not what is meant by the ratings system or there would be no other ratings. No A-I, A-II, A-III, or O.

The conventional (in red) description of what L means is correct: These are films that have a limited audience because they contain material that many adults would find troubling.

"Many adults would find troubling" is a different criterion than "morally offensive according to the teaching of the Church." There are a lot of things that many adults would find troubling that aren’t in themselves morally offensive. Showing gruesome murders, for example, is troubling to many, but the mere showing of them isn’t morally offensive as long as the film contains a moral structure that doesn’t ENDORSE the gruesome murders.

Same goes for showing immoral heterosexual and homosexual relationships. That can be troubling for many adults, but it isn’t morally offensive if the film doesn’t ENDORSE these relationships.

So if a film shows evil but does not endorse it, that’s reason to go L.

But if it shows evil AND endorses it then that’s reason to go O.

One of the things presupposed by the distinction between the L and the O rating is that L films are NOT morally offensive. If they were then they should get an O.

As I’ve pointed out before, if the central theme of a movie is morally offensive (e.g., an endorsed-by-the-film homosexual relationship that is what the film is all about–or an endorsed-by-the-film extramarital heterosexual one that is what the film is all about) then the film is morally offensive. (And if the central theme of a movie being morally offensive doesn’t qualify it as a morally offensive picture then I’d like to know what on earth COULD.)

It doesn’t matter whatever aristic merits the film may have in presenting its central theme. If the central theme is morally offensive then those artistic merits simply serve to help the film in delivering an immoral payload to the audience. They’re sugar for the poison pill, and there is all the more reason to slap an O on it so that the faithful can be warned.

Note, incidentally, the elitist attitude of the non-retraction retraction: We who are the cognoscenti and are able to "assess" the moral issues raised by Brokeback Mountain are able to "handle it" and so it is only an L, but because of complaints from the masses, who are too ill-informed to "assess" the moral issues it raises, we’ve got to slap an O on it even though that’s not what it really deserves.

So the non-retraction retraction is not just resentful (blaming the audience) and disingenuous (appearing to classify something as morally offensive but indicating that it really isn’t) and hypocritical (giving something a  rating that one doesn’t believe it deserves), it’s also elitist (viewing the audience as too stupid to handle the truth).