March 21st 07, 23:44 #11
I think you are missing the point. I thought the idea here was to point out (and granted, there aren't many) continuity ERRORS.
Lets face it, JMS isn't perfect. He made mistakes. So people are putting them here. Coming along and trying to explain them away (which is another way of saying - make up excuses for JMS as if he meant to do it) just doesn't accomplish anything.
You guys can say what you want about the caste thing. Sure fans like to make up a reason to explain how it "might" have been meant. But truthfully, it was a mistake. Pure and simple. It happens. This show probably was the best for continuity in all of television, but mistakes WERE made, so just live with them as goofs. Who cares...
/just not a live with my head buried in the sand kinda guy
this is all very true, i can say that i have seen probably every episode of every major scifi TV series since the fifties, and while there are many classics and my DVD collection will attest to my love for the likes of star trek, the twilight zone, the outer limits, BSG (old and new), buck rogers and many others, but B5 is the only i watch closely enough to spot these errors readily.
there are almost certainly fewer errors in B5 than in any other show ever, but as we all LOVE B5 we spot them, thankfully though it is an unconditional love and so we can easily forgive these errors. of course after all this is said the brilliance of well planned, wonderfully made TV has been proven beyond doubt
There was only one mention of two Minbari castes - it came in "Grail" and the speaker was Lennier. Now as it happens JMS replied to a message on the web at just around the time "Grail" was filming in which he states that there are three Minbari castes and names them. So I don't think this is an error or that he "added" the third caste later.
"Grail" originally aired in the U.S. in July 1994. It was production number 109 and would have shot around December of 1993.
From: STRACZYNSKI [Joe]
Subject: Yeah, fairly much, as far as it...
To: GENIE
Date: 12/25/1993 7:28:00 PM
No Thread
Yeah, fairly much, as far as it goes. There's some Jananese influence, as well as some early European influences, as well as middle Eastern influences. (There are three Minbari castes: the worker, warrior and religious castes.)
Here's another from April 1994, 4 months before "Grail" aired, in which JMS casually refers to a "worker class" Minbari, indicating that their existance was known to the on-line community well in advance of the episode:
Subject: Lennier is not in the cargo area...
Lennier is not in the cargo area during the beating, nor is he in BG during the negotiations. That's a Minbari of the worker class. (You can generally tell from the orange-ish smock-thingie they wear.) Sorry.
That post refers to "Deathwalker", which had just aired in the U.S. It was shot as episode 113. JMS comment would seem to indicate that they had already established a different wardrobe for Worker Caste Minbari by that point, and that it had been used in previous episodes.
Clearly JMS had already conceivd the Worker Caste in season one, even if it remains technically possible that he invented them the day after "Grail" finished shooting.
I think Lennier omits the Workers because they either don't figure much in his thinking (the typical attitude of the Religious and Warriors which he is much more likely to need to outgrow than Delenn) or he knows that outsiders like Aldus are unlkely to have contact with them. (He is contrasting the level of cooperation the Religious caste will give Aldus's quest with that of the Warriors, so he may simply have been focused on who Aldous be speaking to, not cluttered up the discussion with details of Minbari culture that had nothing to do with Aldus's mission.) Delenn doesn't correct him (or at least doesn't do so in front of their guest) because to do so would cause Lennier to lose face and the point is a minor one. (As Delenn says with regard to concealing Aldus's request from the Warrior caste, "So we will not tell them, and spare them the confusion." That could equally apply to her not teling Aldus about the Worker caste.
BTW, although I agree that In the Beginning contradicts "Points of Departure", I don't think this is an error. JMS conciously decided to violate continuity because when it came time to depict the incident on-screen in the context of the TV movie - rather than in a passing reference in dialogue - it made more dramatic sense to do it that way. The same way Zathras's appearance in "War Without End" contradicts what was stated in "Babylon Squared" - for production reasons there wasn't the time or the money to shoot what the earlier episode called for, so JMS just fudged the whole thing and kept on going, trusting to the pace of the episode to carry the audience past the hiccup. But neither is technically an error, which is an accidental mistake like losing Delenn's original gown and having the sleeves mismatch, or Sheridan putting Jack the Ripper in the wrong end of London.
I actually do think that he knew had all 3 Castes planned from the start. My point was that it was an oversight in filming that they didn't catch.
Ah, well then. I stand corrected.
Odd he didn't make more of that, but I suppose you can't follow up on every subtle point, not realistically.
"If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal."
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
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Chris Springob
Location: Pullman, WA
There are a few discontinuities between "Babylon Squared" and "War Without End". There's a list of them here:
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countr...de/061.html#NO
Also, there's an effects glitch in "No Compromises", where, when Garibaldi is in a starfury outside the station, the thrusters are firing on the wrong side of the ship, relative to what would be necessary to keep the ship stationary with respect to the window on the station. This is also explained in more detail on the Lurker's Guide page for that ep.
Also, I'm sure there must be one or two continuity errors that came about as a result of the changes to the show that came between The Gathering and the regular series....I just can't think of what they are right now.
(unless you count the changes in the makeup for Delenn and G'Kar)
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Also, here's a list of nitpicks for the show at nitpickers.com:
http://www.nitpickers.com/tv/reposit...pg=s&sp=i&tt=3
Not all of them are valid, and some wouldn't fall under "continuity errors", but there are also a few good ones in there.
That would have to be an "oversight" in writing, rehearsal, filming (several times: master shot, close up, close up, close up and probably at least two takes of each) and a review of the dailies (since they would have been able to reshoot the next day if they'd caught it.) Seems improbable to me. It wasn't an actor getting a single line wrong. The exchange runs like this:
Lennier explains that there are two Minbari castes, the Warriors and the Religious.
Lennier: "The warrior caste... would not understand,"
Delenn: "So we will not tell them, and spare them the confusion."
Aldus: "These two parts of your society. Do they ever agree on anything?"
Delenn: "Yes. And when they do, it is a terrible thing. A terrible force, as recent events have shown. Let us hope that it never happens again in our lifetime."
So the whole scene continues with a discussion of the "two" castes (the two "active" castes, who are relevant to Aldus's quest and to his later question.) That has to be deliberate, especially given that JMS didn't allow ad-libs on set. So either he invented the Worker Caste after the episode, forgot about them when he wrote the episode, or he deliberately had Lennier ignore them (and Delenn let the error slide) because that's simply what Lennier would have done as a proud member of the Religious Caste.
Well one way or another, its a goof. They make a big point about two castes in that episode, and we all know there are three.
The "well it was written that way intentionally because they wanted to show the worker caste is overlooked" story is pretty .... creative at best.
How can you demonstrate something like that, when you have never TOLD the viewers there IS one?
GaribaldisHair
Location: Hull, England
I could have sworn JMS said that the asteroid belt thing was just something that he decided to change when it came to making ItB because it worked better that way.
That being the case, it is a little harsh to describe it as a continuity error.
Likewise, Zathras appearing the conference room in a flash in Babylon Squared and being discovered in a corridor in WWE. Again JMS acknowledged the change on ths basis that it worked better for the script the way it turned out.
In many ways B5's continuity errors stem from the fact that things are foreshadowed and referred to in scripts a long time before they actually have to show the event and when it comes do it JMS finds it just doesn't work the way it was originally going to.
I can live with that!
Cake or death?
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