[Izkata]

Fun fact: The S4 finale that rates merely "good" is actually a rapidly put together alternate finale when they got renewed for S5, using some of that season's budget. This was so they could delay the real series finale to S5 (originally filmed for S4, when they were unsure they'd get an S5).

[JLO64]

Definitely not my favorite episode, but I got a kick out of the similarities to A Canticle for Leibowitz during one of the segments in it.

[philwelch]

That was a very conscious and deliberate homage.

[krapp]

It wasn't conscious or intentional. JMS only realized the connection halfway through writing it.

    "It was only when I was about halfway into the act that I thought, "Oh, crud, this is the same area Canticle explored." And for several days I set it aside and strongly considered dropping it, or changing the venue (at one point considered setting it in the ruins of a university, but I couldn't make that work realistically...who'd be supporting a university in the ruins of a major nuclear war? Who'd have the *resources* I needed? The church, or what would at least LOOK like the church. My sense of backstory here is that the Anla-shok moved in and started little "abbeys" all over the place, using the church as cover, but rarely actually a part of it, which was why they had not gotten their recognition, and would never get it. Rome probably didn't even know about them, or knew them only distantly.)

    Anyway...at the end of the day, I decided to leave it as it was, since I'd gotten there on an independent road, we'd already had a number of monks on B5, and there's been a LOT of theocratic science fiction written beyond Canticle...Gather Darkness, aspects of Foundation, others." -- Lurker's Guide

[philwelch]

My mistake, I knew he was aware of and commented on the parallel but I misremembered the details.

[mathgeek]

Where is your source for that? Would love to read anything and everything BTS on B5.

[JdeBP]

Then go to Midwinter, the home of The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5, and prepare to be absorbed for days.

[mathgeek]

Oh for sure, love it. I just hadn’t seen the above before and thought maybe a new source!