Tangentially, JMS's Babylon 5 was tremendous (well, the first four seasons, at least) and met with high regard from SF fans. But then he made some TV movies in the B5 universe that had no relationship to the overall arc of the B5 story. These were met with less regard, to put it mildly.

When he heard complaints about said movies, he said something along the lines of ``When I created B5, I wanted to do something different and it was liked. Now that I want to do something different again, it's dismissed. Therefore I'm pissed off at the fans.''

The moment I heard this, I immediately disliked JMS, despite really enjoying B5. His apparently huge ego wouldn't allow him to accept that the reason that folks liked B5 was not because of the scripting, but the plotting. It was the big epic storyline that was important, and the effects that it had on his well thought-out characters. But as soon as you make a standalone TV movie that can't effect the show itself, you throw away the epic story and the character development. All that's left is the scripting. And you know what? He's really bad at it.

Go back and watch B5 with that in mind. You'll hear more turgid speechifying than you'd ever thought was possible, even in personal moments. I can understand it in the political aspects of the show, but you'll often have two characters just talking to each other and it sounds the same.

That's not to say that B5 was bad. It wasn't. It was great. But that success did not follow over to Jeremiah. The story arc is thin and the show is very episodic. There is some character development, but, I'm sorry, Sideshow Luke Perry and Theo Huxtable can't pull it off. (Not to mention that awful, awful actress that plays ... well, really, any of the women on the show, but specifically, Theo, the opposing, um, warlord?)

Anyway, JMS needs to note what he does well (story arc, not episodic scripting) and manage his ree-zources better.