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The end of the Line

© David Ye

Well, it is finally going to end this week, after five years of intense and deeply satisfying drama it is all over. This week will see the airing of the last episode of Babylon 5 concluding its five year, some would say "historic" journey in which we saw great story telling from a remarkable man - J. Michael Straczynski. He is really the driving force behind the show being the creator, executive producer, writer (He wrote something like 91 out of 110 episodes, now that's got to be some sort of record) and director, this whole show was his vision from the beginning - he had this all planned out since 1987 - which was when the planning began. This was the ending he had envisioned 5 years ago when they filmed the pilot episode, well before any of the production crew had even gotten wind of what he was planning.

Babylon 5 was a remarkable departure from the "traditional" way of producing television dramas let alone sci fi shows, instead of having week after week of non - related episodes where the plot only changes within each episode and no sense of a general direction, B5 was a well thought out integrated plot with a definite beginning, middle and ending, a sort of "tele-novel". Where each episode is essential towards the continuation of the entire storyline and its overall direction. It has been a long and difficult journey for the show and its creator with constant threats of cancellation, changes to major characters, and a move from syndication to Cable company TNT after 4 seasons.

The story has pretty much held together in more or less the way that JMS had envisioned it ("http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/TV/9811/20/ba...") It has been one hell of a ride but we have finally arrived at the end, and what a ride!! We will probably never see anything like this again (But one hopes) so get those tissues out because you will be in for one intensely emotional ending!

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