PLUME: How much resistance did you meet when you originally mentioned in your pitches that it was a five year arc?
STRACZYNKSKI: Well, at that point, they were looking at you with aggrandizement in your eyes, going, “It may not even last five years. It may go six episodes.” These are the odds that we were bucking: in the last 25 years – except for Star Trek – you know how many American, space-based science fiction series have gone more than three seasons? Zero, other than Babylon 5. The tendency was that you would go one or two seasons and you were cancelled… or you were cancelled after 8 episodes. So when I said 5 years, they looked at me like, “You’re out of your mind. You may not even get that far.” But I said, “Why not strive for something that elaborate? If you’re going to get cancelled anyway, why not shoot for the moon instead of just shooting low?” I didn’t actually hit that part of it too hard, it was more about hitting the idea of a space show with sex and action and that kind of stuff – you’ve got to tailor it to your audience. For some executives at networks, you want to tailor it and make it sound as dumb as possible.
PLUME: When you were pitching it – in a nutshell – what was the concept that you presented to them when you were telling them, “This is what Babylon 5 is…” ?
STRACZYNKSKI: Casablanca in space. It had nothing to do with Casablanca, but they didn’t have to know that. It was mystery, danger, intrigue and action set against a galactic trading post. They all said, “You can’t compete with Star Trek – it’s going to be too expensive.” And it took 5 years to sell it.
PLUME: When you finally did sell it and get over that hurdle, what was the next hurdle that presented itself?
STRACZYNKSKI: It was keeping it going. The thing about a TV series is that it’s like this very large train, and you spend 5 years pushing it to get it to move – then, finally one day, it begins to move. For about a second, there is this wonderful feeling when you and the train are moving at the same speed, and it’s a great thing when you have it going… Then it begins to pick up speed, and you have to run as fast as you can to stay ahead of it or it’s going to run you down. The hard part of the following 5 years was staying in front of this massive train and making sure that whatever obstacles and problems came up, it didn’t jump the tracks.
PLUME: Is there anything, in hindsight, that you had wanted to do with the series when you set out, but for any number of reasons you didn’t?
STRACZYNKSKI: I can’t think of anything I really didn’t accomplish. There wasn’t much really that I wanted to do but didn’t get to.
PLUME: Was there anything that you wish was done slightly differently, but circumstances didn’t allow?
STRACZYNKSKI: Obviously, on any show, there are glitches and there isn’t a frame of film I wouldn’t want to go back and tweak. There are some scripts that I wrote that I look back on and I think, “That wasn’t the best that I could do. I would like to go back and rewrite them one more time.” There are some scripts that I wish the episodes would go fall off a pier somewhere. My own feelings aside, from time to time, I can’t see much beyond that.
PLUME: You’ve been described by a lot of people as being a complete workaholic who was very much invested in the show in all aspects. Is there anything you regret missing out on in light of the amount of time and effort you put into the show?
STRACZYNKSKI: Not really. It was monstrously difficult. It was all-consuming. I’d be at the stage from early in the morning until 7:30-8:30 at night with the shoot, grab a sandwich on the way in, and then write until 3:00-4:00 in the morning and crash and then do the whole thing all over the next day. I also knew that the opportunity that I had was one that I might never get again in the course of my life. Particularly after the second season, because we stopped getting notes from Warners after about episode 2 of year two. To be able to do a series with no network interference at all – whatever you write, you shoot, and no one has a problem with it and you have total creative control. I would go over and work with the guys in prosthetics and costumes and CGI and set design… I personally was hands-on with the editing of every episode… The scoring… every single aspect of that show, I was personally involved in. That chance might never come along again, so I was not about to complain about the hours. Although it was a lot of strain on my life – in my personal life, and I didn’t have dinner with friends much, I didn’t see movies… I just stayed home and worked all day. I would do it again in a hot second… In terms of reliving it. I wouldn’t try it again now, a second time, because it was just too damn hard. But doing it once was more than worth it. It was like putting in five years in the army.
PLUME: But it was something where you always knew where the end would be…
STRACZYNKSKI: Yeah, I knew that sooner or later I’d get booted out of the military and I’d get my life back again – so that goal was there and helped keep me more or less on track, but I don’t regret a moment of it.
PLUME: At what point did you see that it was catching on with audiences?
STRACZYNKSKI: I think it was about mid-way through the first season. A lot of people were saying, “Where is this so-called arc? I don’t see it anywhere… it’s just another science fiction show that’s all episodic.” Then we did a show called “Signs and Portents”, which started to kick the arc into full gear, and all of a sudden they began to say, “Oh, there is a story going on.” When we climaxed the first season with “Chrysalis”, we kicked over all the tables and they saw what we were really about to do – that’s when I saw people get really excited about it.
PLUME: This is one of the first shows that came into its own as the internet was developing… Was the fan reaction there palpable?
STRACZYNKSKI: Yeah, it was palpable. The first time I did a convention appearance for B5, I got booed by the Trek fans…
PLUME: A very reactionary boo, in your opinion?
STRACZYNKSKI: Oh yes. Yes. In fact, it was during a presidential campaign, and I said, “I hope to do a show that will one day be considered equal to or on-par with Star Trek.” Some woman in the first row yelled out, “Yeah, and Clinton will be president!” Well, both happened. I began to show up at conventions, and there was a larger and larger B5 contingent there – there was more flashbulbs going off. They began to realize that when I showed up at a convention, the attendance would go up by 20% or more – of people that had never been to a convention before. Probably the most stellar moment was in the second year of the series and there was a World Con in Los Angeles. I told them, “Give me a good-sized room because my people are coming.” They didn’t believe me, and they gave me a room that held, like, 800 people. I told World Con it was going to be, like, 4,000. They said, “No way are you going to get more than 20% of the convention – or 15%… It ain’t gonna happen.” I said, “You don’t understand… My people are coming.” I came to my presentation that day and saw this huge-ass line coming out of the convention center, and I thought, “Oh, they haven’t opened the doors up yet and let the audience in.” Well, in fact, they had let the audience in – the room was already filled – and the line that was going around the block were those that couldn’t get in. I agreed on the spot to do a second presentation later on the same day for those people who couldn’t get in the first time. Some people had been there since 8:00 in the morning to get a good seat. The proudest moment for me, though, was afterward when the con organizers found me and they said, “We want to thank you for the caliber fans that you have.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “When we filled up and there was still double that amount trying to get in – if it had been a Star Wars crowd, a Star Trek crowd, or a Battlestar Galactica crowd, they would have torn the place apart. The fans of B5 – to a person – said, ‘How can we help? What can we do? How can we expedite this?’ They were calm, they were reasonable, and they were helpful. We’ve been in the con business for 30 years and we’ve never seen this kind of thing before.” That’s when I knew that we were getting a really good, smart, intelligent, and friendly crowd.
Continued below…
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