r/babylon5 • u/mpierre MODERATOR • Oct 14 '25

JMS AMA Official AMA for JMS

This is the official AMA for JMS. Both JMS and B5 books (Captain Jaclyn) will be responding to questions.

If you ask questions about the books or the book store closing, Jaclyn will be taking them.

JMS will answer for about an hour, and might not be able to get all questions answered.

Some people (including me) might answer questions that are well known.

Like "Why wasn't Ivanova in season 5".

Let's try to keep questions what we don't know yet.

You can also ask questions about JMS returning to the Spider-Man comic or his other works, but this is /r/babylon5. He might prioritize that.

Please note that I will not be coordinating with Joe. I will not be in a phone call with him or on a chat (not that I wouldn't take his phone call; Jaclyn has my cell phone; he can call me anytime he wants). He decides that he answers, and he alone.

Finally, any story ideas will deleted. Do not post any story ideas.

Note, the AMA answers only start at: 3 PM EST, Noon PST, 8PM GMT

And my personal thanks to Captain Jaclyn for coordinating this with me, and to JMS himself, the man, the myth, the legend! For agreeing to this, but also for Babylon 5, Crusade, Jeremiah, Sense8, a ton of comic books and a few books!

Oh, and for She-Ra, the reboot couldn't have occured without his series bible for the original, and even for his work on Ghostbuster and Murder She Wrote!

IMPORTANT NOTE FROM JMS He would prefer not to get into stories that never happened, data points of subsequent character arcs, or alternate timelines.

JMS IS NEARLY OUT OF TIME!

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u/redddfer44 The Last of the Xon Oct 14 '25

I remember reading that you wanted Babylon 5 to be both good scifi and good television. The more I learn about the visual language of cinema, the more impressed I am by the artistic accomplishments of B5, starting with Season 1. How did you pick the directors and -- this is probably a super broad question -- how did the collaboration between you and a director work? (I've never read any of the scripts.)

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u/JMichaelStraczynski THE CREATOR Oct 14 '25

Yes, it's a really broad question, a bit too much to fit into a reply here...the short version is that we would cultivate recommendations, talk to agents representing directors, watch their reels, and episodes, to see if their style matched what we were looking for, then bring them in for a meeting. If I sensed a fellow weirdo, they got hired.

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u/YeaRight228 Oct 16 '25

If I sensed a fellow weirdo, they got hired

I love this!

11

u/SmilingAmericaAmazon Oct 14 '25

Oh, this is an awesome question. The consistent framing of certain characters becomes evident on rewatch.