Why Writers DON'T Need a Plan - Battlestar Galactica | Babylon 5

[@prismpyre7653]

I think the best showrunners and writers are those who have a *general* plan-- but are also willing to be flexible and adaptive based on what develops organically between the writers, performers, characters and audience over time.

[@fgdj2000]

Just call 'em by name: Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould 😂

[@Nostripe361]

Agreed. I like when a series has a basic idea of where it starts, where it ends, and how it gets there. But keep it open enough to change things if something better comes up or if something doesn't work and you need to change the story majorly. I write for fun and the way I see it is you make a skeleton of the story but you take your time as you write it to fill in the meat of the story.

[@Pintheshadows]

​@@Nostripe361 I always think of my drafts as bones, then muscle, then skin, and then a bit of makeup.

[@MetaStatistical]

@@fgdj2000 Or Sam Esmail. Or any book writer that already has a well-published book series and a showrunner that sticks with the major plot points.

[@formerlydistantorigins6972]

Personally, I think that's actually what most people are saying when they say they needed a plan. I know I do

[@socratesrocks1513]

Sir Terry Pratchett described it like taking a walk. He knew where he was headed and he had waypoints he knew he had to hit in order to get there. Everything else was out of sight, the waypoints sticking up like trees in a mist-filled valley where he was going from one hill to the next. That describes it perfectly for me. Know where you have to get to, have a few places you need to reach in order to get to your final destination, and otherwise let the characters lead you.

[@NicholasBrakespear]

For sure, this is the best way to write. Took me a while to really understand what Tolkien meant about a story "growing in the telling" - wasn't about spontaneous, aimless wandering. Was about knowing that even if you're aiming for that point in the distance, the route to it may need to meander, for the character motivations and rules of the world to hold true. Because otherwise you're creating a world that feels natural... then promptly bulldozing that proverbial forest to build a straight road through it.

[@KristovMars]

Sir Terry was a great treasure.

[@CyndisKrist]

Yes! You have your blueprint, and the story often begins writing itself as it unfolds.

[@NicholasBrakespear]

The main difference between BSG and Bab 5 is that where Babylon 5 differs from its original plan, you can see that a genuine, passionate and intelligent effort was made to ensure that any breadcrumbs sowed early in the show, were properly handled even when real-world circumstance interfered. That callbacks happened, even when something drastic had forced the story down a different route (like the commander of the station leaving after 1 season). And that these changes were properly addressed, drafted, reviewed, and refined into a final story state. At no point does the audience feel cheated or lied to; at no point do we sit there thinking, "Hey, you told us to pay attention to this detail, and then you did nothing with it." Even when certain things don't quite line up (the Babylon 4 storyline has some discrepancies etc), you can see that a reasonable effort was made to close plot holes, with a desperate desire not to cheat the audience. BSG is packed full of plot holes, missing callbacks and edge-of-seat mysteries that just... go nowhere. And when they do actually go somewhere? They're disappointing. It cheated the audience all the damn time. What this suggests is that one handled planning better than the other, by simple virtue of having some idea of where it was going. Babylon 5 may have meandered towards its destination, but the entire point of the show is that certain aspects of the timeline are set; certain major events are going to happen no matter what, and all of it has been foreseen by the wise and prophetic. Thus we have moments like the dying Centauri Emperor asking Ambassador Kosh how it will end, and Kosh replies - "In fire". He's not lying. Both literally and figuratively, that warning and prophecy comes true on multiple fronts. For BSG, it seems quite clear - they hadn't figured out the end point. They started with a fundamental question, revolving around the core premise of the entire show - the search for Earth - and didn't answer the question during their planning, and visibly changed their mind about that answer multiple times during the production process. This, ultimately, is the biggest pitfall. You can write by strict plan, if that's your thing. You can let the story naturally develop, with the character motivations and rules of the world leading you. But in either case, all stories are a question, and if you don't know the answer? Then the lack of an answer must be the entire point of the story - like the trembling yet never falling spinning top at the end of Inception.

[@rmsgrey]

Possibly the biggest advantage Babylon 5 has is that you can rewatch it, knowing where things are headed, and spot all the places where things were being set up that you missed on a first watch. Meanwhile, with Battlestar Galactica, you see the places where they committed things to screen that came back to bite them later - there being twelve Cylon models was reasonable - it fits neatly with the twelve colonies, and gives plenty of room to hint at X, Y or Z being a Cylon and have several known models running around, without running out for years - but having New Caprica, where Cylons are openly in charge, supposedly living peacefully with humans, immediately raises questions about why some Cylons are still unknown - which is mostly resolved by introducing the idea of the Final Five, except that way back when, one of the, what turned out to be seven regular Cylon models rather than twelve, was revealed to be number 8... Of course, being tied to a general plan does come at a cost - all that foreshadowing and preparation makes it harder and costlier to adapt if circumstances change, or a better idea comes along (though, as seen with the 8s, not having any plan can still leave inconvenient previously established facts to still tarnish your great new ideas). On the other hand, one of the things Babylon 5 did was have plans in place to cope with contingencies - every character had a quick exit planned so they could be dropped without completely derailing the show. There's also at least one instance where JMS reports having changed a detail as he was writing the final script - there was a particular moment in early season 4, which, by his account, right up to the moment he started writing the scene, was meant to have Londo do a particular thing, but, when he came to it, Vir stood up and said "I'm doing it" - so, in that scene, as aired, it's Vir that does the thing - by that point, we already know, from prophecy and from glimpsing the future on screen in War Without End, that Vir will succeed Londo as Emperor, but it's that one moment that convinced me that he will be a good one.

[@TheFallenFaob]

There was also the setup where they find Babylon 4 in the first season and that doesn't pay off until season 5 where they find out who stole the station and then that other big twist in the episode

[@rmsgrey]

@@TheFallenFaob While they discover Babylon 4 in late season 1, the two-parter where all is revealed comes just under two years later in season 3, not season 5. It seems that the original plan put the reveal at the end of season 5, but it got moved forward as a side effect of certain cast changes.

[@TheFallenFaob]

This just got put out kzbin.info/www/bejne/b6bJZ4iarrKblaM

[@SingularityOrbit]

JMS having "trap doors" to allow for losing and replacing cast members is another worthwhile point about having a plan -- a writer with an understanding of where their story is going can work through both production issues and their own sudden inspirations because they can weigh the values of every element of the show. A writer without a plan might kill a character off in a burst of dramatic inspiration, and then wish they hadn't when they realize that the character would have expressed a theme well in the end. A writer with a plan already knows the character's themes, so the pros and cons can be weighed.

[@brazil-y2y]

Great summary @rmsgrey but BSG also failed in writing likeable characters not just failing on the story. I own the DVDs of B5 and BSG. I can't get past season 2 of BSG anymore, meanwhile I have seen B5 sooooo many times.

[@erikrupp692]

The one thing JMS did as part of planning the 5 seasons of Babylon 5 was to have a trap door for each character. A way to write them out and replace them, altering the story, in case actors dropped out for whatever reason. He did end up having a couple major changes in the cast, but he had those backup plans (trap doors) to allow for the old characters to leave and new ones to enter. The effects on the overall story arcs were minor, but not unimportant. So while his plans were altered (first by losing a couple cast members, then having the 5th season look like it wasn't going to happen, so he wrapped up a major story in the 4th season that was going to carry over to the 5th), he still had the flexibility with his outline to be able to deal with those things and still have that backup plan in place ahead of time. That's where Battlestar went wrong. They didn't know how it was supposed to pay off, and the last season and a half did lose focus and seemed like the writers and producers ran out of ideas and just had to go with the best they could come up with. Having a plan for where each season was supposed to go, and how the series would end, would have made that series stronger.

[@BogeyTheBear]

I like to imagine an alternate reality with a Babylon 5 that had both Sinclair and Sheridan running concurrently. At the start of Season 2, Earth Force starts beating the war drums. One of the first moves is to assign the EAS Agamemnon as a permanent consort of Babylon 5 space, to the objection of the Mimbari and even Sinclair on the grounds that B5 is neutral territory. Sinclair and Sheridan start out with some measure of distrust with each other, especially when it seems Sheridan is part of some conspiracy tied back home. As Sinclair is drawn into the coming Shadow War, he finds it difficult to hide this from Sheridan and the Earth Alliance. Then it all comes out: Sheridan _is_ in on a conspiracy, but one set against Clark and the dark forces looming on Earth. Sinclair and Sheridan come to realize they've been planning for a fight on the same side, so they team up like Butch & Sundance. Then comes Severed Dreams. The EAS Alexander reaches Babylon 5 and teams up with the Agamemnon to defend the station. The Alexander sacrifices itself in the battle, so Sheridan agrees to take the Agamemnon out in search of rebelling Earth Force ships willing to stand up to Clark. When Sinclair meets his fate on Babylon 4 a thousand years in the past, Sheridan is recalled and takes command of Babylon 5.

[@TheFallenFaob]

If I remember right they had it where if Andrea Thompson had wanted to keep going with the character of Talia Winters they would have used her encounter with Kosh to change her back to the way she was before with a copy of that personality

[@ManOutofTime913]

I wouldn't say they were minor. The telepath arc was heavily neutered by Andrea Thompson and Claudia Christian, who both played the characters most instrumental to that arc, leaving the show. Patricia Thompson was meant to fill that gap but she was relegated to a recurring side character for most of the show without much character development, and they had to bring Robin Atkin Downes in as another side character we hadn't seen before to get that plotline moving. Combined with the quickly thrown-together nature of Season 5 in general, that served to turn a pretty interesting plotline into the worst part of the show. While it wasn't a terrible story arc, Walter Koenig was basically the only thing holding it together and giving it any impact.

[@BainesMkII]

@@ManOutofTime913 I've come to believe the telepath arc also would have worked better if it had run concurrently with the conclusion to the war. That could have kept the characters distracted to the degree that the telepath arc at times needed, and might also have kept viewers from noticing just how poorly written the arc was at times.

[@masteronionnorth2341]

Dark on Netflix is the best example of creators having a grand plan with the story plotted in advance. From beginning to end, Dark is a masterpiece regardlng writing and execution. Extraordinary achievement.

[@RowanJColeman]

For those wondering, the writers being interviewed are Paul Abbott, Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain and Russell T Davies.

[@frazzlesreviews5379]

Do you also have a link to the Matt Stone and Tray Parker lecture? I’ve tried looking for it but can’t find the full thing

[@RowanJColeman]

@@frazzlesreviews5379 It's not the full thing, but this is the video I used kzbin.info/www/bejne/rHi4f6SnaM-Jgsk

[@frazzlesreviews5379]

@@RowanJColeman brilliant! thank you

[@mahatmarandy5977]

JMS once likened telling the B5 story to telling a story about World War II: there’s a lot of people involved in the story, some live, some die, some are completely unconnected to each other. You can follow one platoon through the war, and change the members of the platoon, but the outcome of the war is always the same. I’ve studied the plan and the compromises he made in B5 quite a bit, and I think this outlook is generally consistent, though I do think it’s something that evolved over the course of the show as he got better at simply *actually making a show*. Up until the final season where everything fell apart, of course. You notice this more as the show goes along when he starts introducing little epi-arc of about 6 or 7 episodes, woven into the larger arc of the season and the arc of the show in general. IOW, I think he got more loose in the plotting as he went on because he had no choice. In the case of the RDM BSG, I think the backlash is that he insisted he had a plan, which gave false expectations to the audience, and when it became apparent he was lying, there was unmistakable backlash, and also a weird militancy that continued to insist, no, he really had one and this all makes sense because he’s a genius and you’re too stupid to understand it, even after he himself admitted he was mostly winging it. And you can spot significant left-hand turns at several points in the series where he just suddenly decided, “Nah, I’m not gonna do that,” such as when he dropped whatever the hell his original concept for the Cylon god was (You can find plenty of hints about this in the outtakes) I’d like to put the Stargate franchise out there as an intermediate example. The show was at its root episodic, but the writers generally had an idea where each season would begin and end, and sometimes longer arcs of 2 or 3 seasons were loosely planned out in advance. Some of these went nowhere, some finished but were ‘meh,’ others worked brilliantly. This allowed a somewhat serialized sense of purpose to the show, but allowed the flexibility you’re talking about here. And after the show had run about 5 years it hit a sort of critical mass whereby we knew so much about the universe that the writers could do callbacks and add new information which turned some episodes retroactively into an arc. Great show? No. Good? Yes. Successful? Yes. Flexible? Yes. Fun? Yes. Incidentally, “Yes, and…” is a technique in Improv comedy. It means you never negate or step on something your improv partner says in a performance. Instead you build on it and add to it. “I”m married to a horse.” “Yes, and it works because he used to be a unicorn.” “Yes. Damn evil wizard!” As opposed to “I’m married to a horse.” “No you’re not, that’s stupid. Let’s do this over.”

[@TheOneWhoMightBe]

What a great comment! I'm not a writer myself, but my main beef with nBSG is pretty much what you've described; they were winging it, and it showed badly. First season was great, subsequent seasons less so as the plot threads unwravelled. Compare to B5 where the first season was a bit of a slog, third was great, fourth was non-stop because the story was compressed, and fifth was a let-down but only because they got screwed in S4 by the studios. And at least some of us B5 fans don't consider LOTR or Lost Tales canon because they're not very good, showing that JMS isn't perfect, and the less said about Galactica 1980 the better. :) Stargate was also a great show, but sort of had a problem that by the time there was enough on-screen lore they also had a power problem in that there needed to be a bigger bad every season. I'm not sure where it really transitioned from a fully episodic show to one driven by long-term plotlines.

[@mahatmarandy5977]

@@TheOneWhoMightBe thank you that’s very kind. Stargate went almost full, arc driven in the Stargate universe series, which pretty much nobody liked (except me). I think what really killed them, though was that they weren’t very grim dark compared to the other shows, and between that, and the serialized storytelling, and the very real pacing issues in the first 10 episodes, it was just too much for fans to swallow all in one bite. Babylon 5 manage to circumvent that by having her largely episodic first season a somewhat less episodic second season, a mostly arc driven third season, a 100% arc driven fourth season…. And then they basically episodic fifth season. I have my doubts as to how well season five would have turned out. Had everything gone according to plan. I’m sure it would’ve been better than what we got, But I do feel like he intended to ramp down to an episodic show in that final season, regardless, and I suspect there was no way that that was going to work very well. Just a hunch though, I don’t really have any of us to back that up. In any event, yes, Stargate did ultimately suffer from power creep. At the start of the show humanity it was pretty much nothing, and by the end of the show humanity was like Aeneas, defeating entire armies, just by hurling his fingernail clippings at them. :) it’s hard to maintain a credible threat against someone so strong.

[@prismpyre7653]

Counterpoint: "Lost".....

[@kevinkorenke3569]

Lost is a great example of a writng team that seems to not only be unable to keep the story on track but seemed to relish the idea of the story becoming absolute chaos the farther along everything went. Unfortunately we saw the effect of that approach when the same writers took over Star Trek and Star Wars.

[@farseerflore9512]

Counter counter point, Star Wars before it became Star Wars: A New Hope. Lucas only imagined one film and never had a plan for more, hence why the first film was just known as Star Wars with the sub title A New Hope being added later once the film had already been released and Empire was in production. The scene with Darths TIE pinging off into space was just a gimmick that could leave open a second film and still include Darth as a villain.

[@yanni_ko]

@@farseerflore9512 counter counter counter point. There are plenty of interviews where lucas states he had written a massive story starting from “Journal of the Whills” which eventually become a humungous story that quickly became unfilmable. Lucas then made the decision to take a small part of his story and expand it out to become the original Star Wars. While the scripts for all movies were not complete, lucas definitely had a plan, the large beats of Anakins story were already formed.

[@KittyBoom360]

@@yanni_ko Half-truths/half-lies. We all know Vader killed Luke's father until that was retconned in Empire Strikes Back. And Luke and Leia, sister kissing brother before knowing they were siblings was just a funny embarrassment after another major change. Probably the only major preplanned plot point in original trilogy was something along the lines of good guys beat bad guys, Rebels defeat Empire. What was all preplanned were the sequels, and I actually think they suffered from this, plots forcing characters to behave a certain way that didn't actually make sense, like Anakin going all psycho felt forced to me and never really justified by the actual writing and character development.

[@markallen2984]

​@@KittyBoom360 Yes, it was obvious Lucas was making things up as he went along.... Why else could run-of-the-mill Jedis like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon perform feats that were well beyond the capability of Vader or Luke Skywalker who was supposed to be immensely, unusually powerful with the force? Also what about the absurd "immaculate conception" story that Anakin's mother talked about that was hastily dropped like a hot potato? After the success of the first movie, Lucas became primarily interested in selling dolls.

[@AnyZee]

Anyone can come up with a cool premise, but very few can refine that into a satisfying ending

[@SilortheBlade]

This is a good video and I think highlights hw we shuld look at this concept. B5 was amazing in that it had the key points planned out, but wasn't afraid to adapt. If a better idea comes up then run with it and make it work. IN the past I thought Sinclair was always intended to be written out of the show after season 1. We see him as an old man on B4 in the first season, then season 3 (I think) that comes to a head when he brings everyone to time heist B4 and it doesn't work out right, but completely makes sense with the first season episode. Then we realize Valen, Minbari not born of a Minbari, and see Sinclair become him, and it all makes sense. Then I find out the actor left due to personal issues, so I realized they made a change. but the talent was there that the change was so seamless that I thought it was naturally a part of the story. You can tell BSG didn't have a lot of story beats set at the start, outside of Cylons chase humans, humans look for earth. But that doesn't make it a bad show. They worked with the evolving narrative, and it works. New plot points come out and they help drive the story. I liked how you explained there is no one way to write. What matters is that it is written well.

[@nicoj84]

The bit about Sinclair and Valen was always planned I think. Don't quote me but I think I read that Sheridan was a substitute for Sinclair's role in the current Shadow War (2259). I think originally, Sinclair was to fight the Shadows and take Babylon 4 back to fight them again in the past. Hence the flashback with Garibaldi saying "this was the moment I was born for" while fighting a Shadow invasion of B5. Sinclair was still the commander. Clever how JMS wrote that back in as Sinclair was in the area having come back with them on the Whitestar and apparently failed to become Valen. Both Sheridan and Sinclair could exist at that fight.

[@-n-k-]

@@nicoj84 The original plan was to have B5 destroyed at the end of season 5, the crew steal B4, bring it to the future, and use it as a mobile base in the sequel show called Babylon Prime. The Sinclair - Valen thing came about during season 1 when JMS realized the way he was writing Sinclair made him sound like a Minbari, and then it became a convenient trap door for him. Edit: and that wasn't a shadow invasion, it was the Minbari warrior caste who destroyed B5.

[@rmsgrey]

The bit with old Sinclair at the end of Babylon Squared makes a lot more sense if that was Sinclair 20 years later, around the time of Sleeping In Light, disappearing into myth at the end of the series, rather than Sinclair 2 years later having been timey-wimey'ed to match already aired footage. It's not hard to imagine something of how the original version might have gone - Catherine Sakai's final mission before returning to marry Sinclair was to investigate something strange out on the rim. It's not hard to imagine that could have been Z'ha'dum, where she supposedly dies, only to return as Sinclair and Delenn are getting close, as a way of getting Sinclair to learn what the Shadows want, before returning to lead the final Shadow War. This version also doesn't need Lorien to bring Sinclair back to life with a 20 year expiry date - just for Sinclair to learn who stole Babylon 4 and realise his destiny.

[@Woodclaw]

In my limited experience as a storyteller, I think that the important element is to have a direction, rather than a full plan. Usually I know where I want to take my characters, to what kind of emotional neats, but I never plan how to get there. There is a really good advice from TTRPGs: "Plan challenges, not solutions." If you plan solutions, you lock your story on a single pre-planned trajectory, with little to no wiggle room for the characters. Planning a challenge means giving characters a chance to add a lot to the plot.

[@rmsgrey]

Another way of looking at that TTRPG advice is that GMs control the circumstances and situation - the things that present challenges - but players control their characters' actions - the things that enact solutions. If the GM goes in intending to force a particular solution, then they're taking over the players' role. That doesn't apply to writing a story, nor to most TV/movie writing, where the same writer who comes up with the problems is usually also the writer who comes up with the solutions, and it's generally good advice to have set up the eventual solution in advance of presenting the problem. That's not to say you can't get a good story by throwing problems at the characters and then seeing how they get out of them, but you can also get a good story by working backwards from the climax and filling in the setup afterwards...

[@Woodclaw]

@@rmsgrey although it's true that in TV writing there are usually a limited number of people working on the same script, it's also true that there is a series bible and a number of previous stories to keep in mind (unless the show is completely episodic). As such a writer shouldn't just "have character X do this to solve the plot".

[@rmsgrey]

@@Woodclaw That's true whether your plan is built around a sequence of problems the characters will have to solve, or a sequence of actions/decisions the characters will follow. If you're saying "we need character X to do Y for the plot to work" that's bad (except possibly if character X is way in the background where no-one will notice or care whether they're acting like a person or not). But you can get interesting stories out of "what would make it so that X would naturally do Y?"

[@SingularityOrbit]

In this comparison the "players" aren't the writer, but the production's needs and issues. To continue the RPG/scriptwriting comparison, having an idea of the story's themes and where it was intended to go from the start means that you don't keep mentioning a goblin deity as a looming threat for 50 sessions only to make the real Big Bad an undead army led by merpeople just for the sake of a twist. It also means that, if one player has to move away, it's possible to make the story of their character's departure tie in to the bigger themes of the campaign, so that the character's fate is remembered as worthwhile. Themes matters to a story, whether it's an improvised RPG campaign or a scripted show.

[@DanielRMueller]

I too thought of my TTRPG experiences, and how you have to adapt your campaign to the characters. But not just them. In my biggest campaign ever, going from Level 1 to 30 in a D&D 4 campaign, I envisioned the final conflict to be about some cult of aberrant beings (Mind FLayers, Aboleth, Beholders) that worshipped a "star". But sometime during the campaign, I decided to reverse the relationship between the aberrants and the star, in that the star had actually fought them before, and that all their machinations were to avoid it from happening again. Another example was a character that started to worship the Goddess of Death and Fate, and I decided to use her as source of visions. In a undead-related story arc, he encountered his brother and killed him, but he was later sent back - and the character disliked that and wanted to end his connection to the goddess, which lead to new shenengians that I could never have planned for, but made things interesting.

[@robertdullnig3625]

I think it is fine not to have a plan--if you don't imply there is a plan. One of the frustrating elements of BSG is the concept of secret Cylons. This element sets up the expectation that there will be a long-time character that is eventually revealed to be a knowing Cylon agent, and then the audience gets the satisfaction of seeing how they were secretly engineering things the whole time. In fact, this was a big part of how the show was promoted as it came out. In the end, though, all the Cylons are either revealed in the same episode they premiered in (and often pretty fast), or they were sleeper agents totally unaware of their Cylon nature and not even necessarily acting on it. The whole Cylon agent thing ended up being kind of a shaggy dog story, which I guess is fine watching it straight through years later, but must have been frustrating at the time. This is also a common criticism of JJ Abrams' "mystery boxes" as well as Steven Moffat's longer plot arcs.

[@kaitlyn__L]

I personally started to wonder if Tigh’s cylon nature influenced him to be so argumentative and thus undermine certain plans. If it pushed him toward alcoholism and so on. Even if it didn’t/couldn’t touch his overall morality.

[@Sephiroth144]

They HAD a plan. *Bender*: Hey baby, wanna kill all the humans. Then, of course, a few survived, so they decided to roll with it, try out some new things, settle down on a farm, etc. Its claiming they had a singular, unified plan POST Apocalypse that's aggravating- but I maintain, they absolutely had a plan- and to be fair, they were 99.999% successful.

[@reverseBLT]

I think the main issue we're usually trying to point out, when we say writers need a plan, is the problem of setups that never get adequate payoffs, if they get any payoffs at all. BSG and Lost had very talented writers, which is why it pretty much took viewers all the way to the end to feel dissatisfaction, because that's when all those setups that came about from years of "yes, and" and "therefore" *had* to be paid off, and too many fell flat or failed to materialize, leaving a lot of us underwhelmed. So I wouldn't say a writer needs to have *everything* planned out, but they need to have more than a vague sense of where they ultimately *want* to go. They need to know the answers to the questions they raise, how they're going to pay off the things they set up, and whether those payoffs and answers will be satisfying. Admittedly, that last one is harder than the other two.

[@MoOrion]

B5... there was a plan... The plan changed. Plans to deal with potential issues were made in advance and some of those plans were used when real life interfered with "the plan". The 5 year plan... changed... actors changed... plot points changed, character traits swapped, and 2 seasons worth of content was crammed into one season when they were told they weren't getting that 5th season... And then they got renewed for the 5th season... I would say that the general plan and the contingency plans existing before the show was made are what allows for the Effective foreshadowing and cohesive storytelling that make the show the incredible epic that it is. Shows that don't have even a general plot outline to work toward can not produce such tight intentional and consistent storylines. They are a different type of show. They have a wholly different feel to them. They can have foreshadowing... but it's more like throwing plot hooks at a wall and seeing which ones stick in the memories of the writers to come... They pick and choose what hints from the earlier episodes they want to bring back and flesh out... And the result can be some great TV... with epic multi season spanning stories... that are full of inconsistencies and barely patched up plot holes... As an example I submit Stargate SG1. It's one of my favorites... but a tightly planned story it is not.

[@rumblebars]

I was a huge fan of genre writer Harry Harrison. Who stated in interviews that he wrote everything like it was a short story, so it had to have tight focus and quick moving plot. This was padded out somewhat on the collaborations he did, but his own books really move along. And most of them are loaded with an air of tongue in cheek humor. He also talked about backplotting.... knowing exactly where the book/story would end but then writing an entertaining narrative leading up to it. For me at least, his formula worked quite well.

[@Hoagsgalaxynetwork]

I think an example of this in a non sci-fi story was, how I met your mother. That show was clearly written to end with Ted ending up with Robin at the end. In the process of the show though I think the writers missed how the show really was sending a message of how letting go opens up new paths. It was only when Ted fully accepts that he won’t be with Robin that he is then able to find his true love. Only for the show to then miss its own evolving message and have Ted go straight back to Robin that it gives a feeling of pointlessness to the overall story. Having an idea on how a story ends Isn’t a bad thing, but pay attention to how your Story shapes and changes and be ready to change things and the ending to better suit the new narrative structure.

[@rmsgrey]

There are a few problems with HIMYM, but the most relevant isn't that they had a plan , but that they didn't have a plan - they had a goal - Ted ending up with Robin - but if they had a plan to get there, it was more "and, at the end of season 4 or 5, we have the finale where Ted ends up with Robin" - which could have worked reasonably well if they'd ended after 4 or 5 seasons, but by the end of season 9, yeah, it was kinda forced, and not the best fit with how the later seasons had developed.

[@JamesZilla808]

The best advice I ever received in creative writing back in college: KNOW YOUR STORY’S ENDING. AND MAKE SURE IT’S EARNED. Your entire story is a journey towards that ending. No matter what that ending is, every single step is towards that end goal. As a writer, you NEED to know what those goals are. When the story is finished, and the audience steps back and processes what they’ve experienced while reading/listening/watching your story, they must NOT feel cheated or let down by that experience. Not only do things have to fit together in terms of narrative/plot, but they also have to make sense on an emotional level. That’s what having an “earned” ending means. Case in point: The last season of “Game of Thrones.” That’s a story that did NOT earn its ending.😢

[@mickbrown7793]

Speaking as someone in a writing group, there's a huge range between planners (where I generally sit) and the pantsers (those writing by the seat of their pants). But even an avid planner like myself never knows how a scene will turn out until it's actually written. Stay flexible - a plan is a map, but the map is not the territory - and the outline isn't the story. I often build in 'breaks' in the story where I'll stop writing, think about what's been done and then amend my plans before continuing with another arc of events.

[@erikrupp692]

Knowing where he was going with the story years in advance gave JMS a huge advantage in writing individual episodes. He knew what major plot points he had to hit each season, and was able to do it organically. It also allowed him to keep the budget down for the show, helping the production to be more efficient, knowing months in advance what needed to be created with sets, costumes, effects, etc. Battlestar suffered from having no plan for an endgame. After the third season they were lost and just making it up as they went along. Sometimes coming up with great stuff, sometimes coming up with mediocre stories and plot points.

[@SingularityOrbit]

It certainly would have helped if they'd known what they needed to build for New Caprica. They ended up having to use a lot of trucks and firearms with nothing to disguise their Earth origins, no chance to build a few shaped body panels and plastic clamshells. It's fine to film a rock quarry as an alien planet, but it isn't fine to look like you're also using the mining company's trucks as well.

[@udirt]

2000s BSG is fucking boring and, yes, plotless. I watched it sometimes because it was made to look interesting, but there just wasn't anything of interest going on in so much time of the episodes. And people acted horrendous, stupid, like egomaniacs that are not stuck on a spaceship with nothing left but everything to lose. I know it had many, many fans, but hope it's spot gets adjusted over time.

[@cje499]

Coming from a lad who prefers serialised storytelling and story arcs, I do prefer having some form of a plan in mind. That being said, sometimes, things clicks on the fly.

[@MartinFWhite]

The real problem was that Galactica writers said they had a plan, and it turned out it wasn't true. That's where people get upset. They were lied too.

[@NicholasBrakespear]

Yup, and the show structured itself like it had a plan, constantly telling the audience at every opportunity "Pay attention to this detail, because it's going somewhere... just wait for it... just wait for the payoff..." ...and the payoff never came. It never went anywhere. The closest it got was to say "Oh, actually you thought we meant this? We meant that."

[@TheKeyser94]

Also I love the fall of Centauri Prime and Londo Mollari, is one of the best arcs of the fifth season of Babylon 5, and technically the Shadow War didn't end after the Shadows and the Vorlons departed to the border of the galaxy, the remnants of the Shadows occupied Centauri Prime.

[@althesilly]

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable." -Some general in a minor second war.

[@Briaaanz]

I listened to a podcast recently by "Some More News" that talked about the writers strike. It was very interesting. It explained a lot on why TV writers do such a bad job for plot. Scenario 1: Executives will give a pilot a go ahead, then ask developer to get a team and crank out a season of scripts in a very short time period with a limited amount of money. Granted, those helps execs determine if a show is worth while, but full scripts frequently need more time and it's nice to get paid good money Scenario 2. Execs give writers an outline or existing script... which can be utterly nonsensical, then tell the writers to do a rewrite at a lower rate of pay.

[@joseph.irvin.photography]

Babylon 5's Shadow War set the standard for arc storytelling and the show still doesn't get the respect it deserves. I'm not a JMS fanboy but he did do something new in TV history and it still hasn't been successfully copied. It's all about the foreshadowing, and the fact that Straczynski followed through on nearly every thread that he started, in a literary and satisfying way. If you can't see that from watching Babylon 5 then you didn't really watch the show, plain and simple--the overarching story that JMS was telling was one resilient enough to survive the numerous character changes that happened along the way. Anyone who gets it, can look at the serialized shows that came after B5 and see how they really don't hold up in this degree. Are they still good? Absolutely! Anyone can look at the new BSG and see that it's that show's success that really altered the way television exists today. But its overarching story is far more conventional in its execution due to Moore & co. not having a plan to follow. The twists and turns along have less thematic relevance when looking on the show as a whole because there is usually no setup. I've heard people accuse BSG of being a soap opera and I can understand what they mean, because the randomness that sometimes happens is frankly sloppy compared to true arc storytelling.

[@HOTD108_]

Vince Gilligan has literally said for years that he had no plan for how Breaking Bad was going to play out and just worked it out as the show went along. F*cking Breaking Bad didn't have a plan.

[@mutantdog.]

He still had enough foresight to wrap up the Gus arc in S4, introducing a new antagonist for S5 instead to allow Walt’s redemption arc and a satisfactory resolution to the other plotlines.

[@emperorclaudius5499]

Fun fact: Michael Trucco who played Anders in BSG, spends the second half of season 4 in a bathtub because he had an accident that left him with a spinal injury. He later recovered and came back to film new scenes for "The Plan"

[@jon-paulfilkins7820]

And there was me thinking the writers were stealing from Douglas Adams wholesale!😜

[@evalramman7502]

NO. A writer/showrunner must always have a plan. Not a rigid one, but definitely a plan is required.

[@charly03090309]

BSGs 12 models were where it went wrong for me... The mystery box storytelling. They wrote that into the pilot without a clue where it would go... and came up with the "final 5". That nearly killed it for me. There was no logic to it in the first place. Why put a number on it. Surely there is more tensions knowing that everyone could be a cylon. ANd in the end they chose people who it made no sense to be Cylons, and everything/one coming together was just a huge deus-ex machina.

[@Ma55ey]

I agree.. having hidden cylons in the fleet was a great idea at the start.. but the reveal of who they were knecapped the entire story. It turned the whole cautionary tale of ai being the downfall of humanity out of revenge. To a petty infantile tantrum by one model who was jealous... which I'm my opinion, undermined pretty much everything.. don't get me wrong that story could have worked.. it just didn't in this case.

[@TheOneWhoMightBe]

@@Ma55ey I kind of get where Cavil was coming from: being a machine meant he could be so much 'better' than a squishy, fragile meatbag. But he decided to throw a tantrum like a toddler and burn everything to the ground instead of being patient (he was functionally immortal; he had time) and figuring out how to go about turning himself into a machine (again) so he could do things like witness the full glory of a supernova.

[@unportanter]

You're attacking half of the argument. People say "BSG is bad because it didn't have a plan" as shorthand for the real problem, which is that it didn't have a plan while constantly acting like it did have a plan. Much like Lost, but arguably worse, because it was constantly talking about 'prophecy' and 'plans' ........ and then it wrapped all that promise up with a season defined by superficial/silly/cliched gimmicks. They didn't write themselves out of a corner, they just screamed and danced until (some) people stopped noticing the corner was there.

[@dennismason3740]

I am 70. I didn't call myself a writer until a decade ago when my comments elicited responses like "what do you write?" and a made up some very interesting stories about my writing and later realized that I wasn't lying. This I have to say about writing. Write everyday, no matter what, 7 minutes or 17 hours, everyday. Take a day off once in a while. The stories are all out there. I wrote a novel that I misplaced. I weep when I think of it but then there are the streamers...the streamers change everything. Now we get 9 hour movies, as god intended. I have seen one-minute-movies that are brilliant (Mark Kermode contest). I write until the Spigot of the Muses opens and they rain down on me faster than I can type. The Muses thing is a bit haughty but an Old Hippy is wary...

[@Matthew_Raymond]

There’s a difference between a) not having a definitive plan starting out and b) having an in-universe “plan” that’s basically just a mystery box. The answer to a mystery should generally be obvious and consistent in retrospect, and you can’t do that if you never had an answer to begin with.

[@Matt42MSG]

I thought you made a strong argument for why planning isn't always a necessary thing, but not in the case of nuBSG. With Moore and associates, they could write well-crafted and fascinating episode plots but couldn't do the same with entire seasons. Eventually those episodes added up to an incoherent and nonsensical story. Similar problems occurred in DS9, with great episodes but weak overall stories that often didn't have any destination in mind and frequently never went anywhere meaningful. Maybe there are people who are so talented that they can spontaneously produce not only short stories but epic plots without thinking about them in advance, but most creators need to do a little planning to make things come out properly.

[@charly03090309]

Very interesting B5 link. The original ideas certainly sound worse that what we got, so its true to say that the enforced changes may have improved the show. But then its hard to know if they wereonly very early notes without the ideas behind the process. What is amazing is that it ended up as organic as it was (apart from a couple of moments in Babylon Squared. The final episode was meant to be 25 years after the end of the series, which better explained the aging that the "time jump").

[@wesleymarshall3741]

Watchers of BSG have every right to gripe out the lack of a plan for the story, and how BSG basically fell apart at the end. We were told, by the show itself, that they had a plan. Doesn’t matter that they never really had a plan, or that an exec wanted that line added to the intro. If they didn’t have a plan then they never should have said they did. I understand that almost no plan remains 100% intact as events occur, but the quality of storytelling delivered by B5 is on a whole level above that of BSG. BSG still had great acting and special effects, but the story itself suffered in comparison to B5.

[@amigang]

I feel it better for a show to have a plan than not, as I kinda do feel it lot of series now that there was no plan and they have to recon thing or have story arcs that lead to nothing or don’t make sense when you rewatch it which just makes it more frustrating to watch than not. If your a good enough writing team maybe you can pull it off, but I feel most writers today can’t sadly.

[@ThePrytanis]

The one-off show "The Plan", makes it absolutely clear that they didn't have one. Even in-character/in-universe. No Plan.

[@AceOfSevens]

I think Battlestar Galactica's issue wasn't so much having no plan as asking a bunch of questions that were supposed to get us hooked with no idea what the answers were. A lot of the disappointment is large chunks of the season 2 plot make no sense with where the story ultimately goes. If the Cylons knew no more than the humans, a lot of character actions don't make sense. The Plan patched things up best it could, but there are still issues.

[@NexusNoxCS]

Imo, rather than a plan writers need a framework. A Show Bible or something similar descibing the rules and style of the fictional universe they are creating. Amd they have to follow that framework with consistency. JMS could seemlessly adapt to Michael's leaving because he knew the setting, he knew the characters - he knew how to make ot all fall into place and make sense. The same is true for a lot of Moore's storytelling decisions (even if I do not agree with all of them myself). The opposite can be seen with shows like Lost, where writers were so enamored with mysteries they stacked them so thick and high, there was no way to make a satisfying emding, or Game of Thrones where the Showrunners in their hurry to quit the show defaulted to their planned emding instead of examining what they made so far and what would be logically consistent outcome from how the stories and characters evolved. Consistency and cogesivenes are king. Understanding is a three-edged sword, but trying to force it to be single-edge because three edges is too complicated and too much work is not the right answer.

[@DanCummins]

These are interesting topics. One aspect that I think deserves to be highlighted is the role of solid character writing in making PLAN or NO PLAN work or not work. I feel like a show or film can go wildly away from an original vision, and as long as the characters are behaving and making decisions consistent with who they've been established to be, I can roll with it. I think part of what made S3 of Picard so satisfying to alot of people, despite some wonky plot-shenanegans, is that the main characters acted in ways consistent with what we knew. Characters are the vessels through which an audience experiences a show. Conversely, I think the parts of BSG that really work are the parts that hinged on character beats and developement years in the making, and the ones that fell flat are the ones that required a suspension of disbelief around certain people. I think it was the Critical Drinker who said that if you flesh out the characters right, the story will be a lot easier, because their decisions drive the plot of the movie - roughly paraphrased. Rather than having a specific plot in mind and then having to shoe-horn the human part into it. Why did that guy kill that guy? Well the plot needed him to = sloppy. I think we can all agree that L O S T is the king of the 'have no plan, but pretend to have a plan' fallacy. When it was clear that the storyline was just throwing shit at a wall, they tried to rely on the character beats to save it, but bc they'd written their humans into such weird plot-corners, even that couldn't save the experience. Compared to that debacle, BSG's plotting looks like a finely tuned Swiss watch.

[@Trinity-Waters]

Loved these writing insights, especially because they involve two series I watch and admire greatly! Thanks for taking the time to elucidate. All productions depend on the writing. Some are enhanced by other factors, BUT writing rules them all.

[@stevenclark2188]

My understanding is the intense planning of B5 was mostly contingency planning so it could succeed as a Sci-Fi show, without being Star Trek, when that was pretty rare. The show had to be cancellable early, accept writing-out cast members, and made up almost entirely of cheap, set-reusing 'ship show' episodes with some early 3d animation to fill in the gaps.

[@Fuuntag]

For everyone, the Battlestar post season 4 movie “The Plan” was basically just watching Retcon: The Movie. It made sense to make the film given they had all the sets, digital assets and pipelines up and running, easy money, but the retcon angle always was a huge negative for me. Eddie if you’re reading however you did a great job. ❤ Tigh me up Tigh me down is still my favourite though 😊

[@ravenwilder4099]

Whether a writer needs a plan depends on the kind of story they're telling. The issue with BSG is that it set up long running mysteries and had prophetic visions of the future. By including those, the writers gave themselves certain plot points they HAD to get to (reveal the truth of the mystery - have the prophecy pay off), but without a plan for how to get there, which left the ultimate resolution unsatisfying. If they hadn't included mysteries/prophecies, the lack of a plan wouldn't be such a problem.

[@wolf1066]

Other "enemies" include actor unavailability (in some cases due to death or severe illness), which JMS had to deal with a number of times in the show, resulting in characters having to be re-cast or replaced with completely different characters. Right out the gate, two of the main characters introduced in the pilot were unavailable for the series - one of whom, from what I gather, was going to be revealed to have been involved in the plot to frame Sinclair for Kosh's murder but that plotline had to be pruned when she wasn't able to return. Sinclair (Michael O'Hare) being replaced by Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner) who was then replaced by Lochley (Tracy Scoggins), Lyta Alexander (Patricia Tallman) being replaced by Talia Winters (Andrea Thompson) who was then replaced by Lyta Alexander (Tallman again) - all caused significant changes in where the plot was going.

[@Carabas72]

JMS realised from the beginning that losing actors is just a thing that happens inb TV shows, and had planned accordingly. None of these replacements affected the plot in any real way.

[@BainesMkII]

@@Carabas72 Losing actors did affect the plot, and even the story quality. What it didn't do was derail the overall broad strokes, or leave completely gaping holes. The Season 5 telepath arc was designed around Ivanova being a major participant, and the already poorly executed arc was made weaker by her absence. Ivanova's story was meant to be twined with Talia, with both tied into the overall telepath story; both actresses leaving forced that to be cut short and/or drastically altered. Replacing Sinclair with Sheridan changed the tone of the series. Etc.

[@SpottedHares]

We need to accept that “Plan” is a very bold term. Their are a lot different things we can call a plan.

[@musicalnotextr]

Shawn Ryan - creator of THE SHIELD - once talked about coming up with story ideas for a TV show (at least his) takes lots of time and help & ideas from other writers. Thus he’s always skeptical when writers pitch having a five-year plan mapped out for their show - “If you came up with 5 years of ideas in just a few months, then chance are they’re not the best ideas in the world.”

[@Mad-Bassist]

Very interesting video! As an amateur writer, my fun was not plotting different landmarks in the story as well as an idea how it should end, but the journey itself. Between the landmarks, it was an adventure for me seeing where the characters go and what they do. This often leads to new adventures before resuming course, and I mentally let the characters guide me so to speak.

[@ThePrisoner881]

You don't necessarily need the entire show mapped out in advance, but shows like B5 and literary works like The Lord of the Rings benefitted immensely by having the world and character backstories (i.e. the LORE) mapped out before a single word of the script was written. In particular, Tolkien made detailed histories of all the major races of Middle Earth, including origins, culture, traditions, and much more. Doing so almost automatically ensures fully fleshed out characters in whatever drama you wish to create in such a world, assuming this lore is actually followed (I'm looking at YOU "Rings Of Power").

[@feagel]

Actually Tolkien wrote without a plan. He'd talk about characters just wandering onto the page like Faramir with no pre established backstory that he had to retcon in. Aragorn changed numerous times throughout rewrites originally being a Hobbit called Trotter. He even had to publish an entire new chapter from the Hobbit cause it was contradicted by the Lord of the Rings.

[@ThePrisoner881]

@@feagel I didn't say he wrote with a plan. I said he wrote the entire *history* of Middle Earth and its peoples before penning anything else. One can argue such an approach not only helps but may actually be *required* to enable Tolkien's "wandering onto the page" style of writing. So long as he remains consistent with his own lore, such improvisations will not lead to world-breaking mistakes. Write the rules *before* you play the game.

[@feagel]

@@ThePrisoner881 We look back on Tolkien's writings and view them as consistent but only because Christopher Tolkien pulled apart his father's notes for a cohesive storyline that didn't contradict anything already published. At the time of Tolkien's death a lot of his most recent notes were incompatible with the Lord of the Rings and so Christopher left them out of the Silmarilion. Hobbits were not initially intended to be part of his older works, originally it was just oblique references that he decided would merge the stories together even if it leaves logical and metaphysical incongruities.

[@Carabas72]

@@ThePrisoner881 Tolkien did no such thing. Because how else are you going to explain that one of the most powerful beings on Middle-Earth, Galadriel, who was around pre-First Age, basically plays no roll in any events prior to Lord Of The Rings? He was busy retconning her into the older stories but never fully got around to it. He created the languages of Middle-Earth before he wrote any of the stories, and that's it.

[@StounyCZ]

I think that the biggest problem is that BSG seems like two shows split right in the middle. There are the first two seasons where there was "a plan" and then there was the rest of the show that went completely sideways. It's definitely not required to plan every episode and every story beat before the first frame is ever shot (that could never work), but BSG shows how devastating it is to just try to come up with a story that would connect to what came before and failing. That's why having a plan and seeding references and foreshadowing works.

[@derekstaff]

I think the Nicholas Meyers quote you ended on contains a key point. You need to know the beginning *and* the destination. BSG didn’t have that last point. And maybe they didn’t need it when they did the miniseries, or wrote season one. But they should have figured out where they were ultimately going with it soon thereafter, so they culture better make sure everything added up. Yes, they should have been open to changes as the story developed, but an idea of how to wrap it up would be better. It’s always much easier to Ratchet up tension than it is to resolve it, so figuring it like early would help. BSG ended pretty well, but I think there is some evidence of the rushed, unplanned nature, and having figured it out earlier would have helped.

[@gregorymuir1985]

This. I can understand not wanting to lock yourself in stone from a miniseries but when you go to a proper season you need to know what the story is about and what you want to do. There's room for flexibility but you need a destination.

[@uliwitness]

Of course, knowing where you want to go is problematic if you don't know how long you will run. Do you structure the show in a way that whenever you get canceled, there is a sort of ending? Or do you pull a Farscape and end on a cliffhanger knowing that the station will be inundated with fan mail and give you a miniseries to complete the show? You can see how planning endings went wrong with Stargate, who basically for the second half of the series thought they were in their last season *every season*. So many times they wrap things up, kill the big bad, just to then have to pull a new one out of their ass. Apophis -> Revived Apophis -> System Lords -> Anubis -> Ba'al -> Goa'uld stand-in The Ori ... even sort of into Stargate Atlantis, which was officially designed to pick up after SG-1 ended, but when both kept running had to move to their own galaxy with their own Goa'uld-like enemy, the Wraith. They're all just different enough, and use lore to make things logical, but it's always the same idea of technically superior parasitic "emperor" aliens with faceless troops to machine gun down.

[@billj5645]

When I first watched BSG I didn't have any question about whether they had a plan, the overall theme of the show seemed to have a theme and they worked towards the goal of the ending. If you want to see a show where there was no plan, check out "Lost". They were clearly making up things as they went along, as if they didn't know if the show was going to go beyond the first season.

[@BCWasbrough]

I think for many of us, the criticism that the BSG guys didn't have a plan isn't about them starting the show. Them only having a rough outline when starting the show is fine. It's them having NO idea how they want to wrap up the show when starting Season Four. (Yes, there was a writer's strike that year, which threw off the schedule, but that's hardly an excuse for a show that had run that long.)

[@DanielS2001]

For BSG, I remember hearing that the writers had somewhat of a plan, but due to SyFy canceling the show half way through the production of Season 4, the producers had to try to come up with solutions to address some of the plots as best as they could (this is me going off of information I read well over a decade ago, so I could be wrong). When it comes to Babylon 5, a similar situation occurred where Warner Brothers had cancelled the show during the show’s fourth season production, which is why Season 4 ends the way it does (which wraps up the storylines). But, when Season 4’s numbers did better than the previous season, WB changed their minds, gave the show one more season, this this left the show’s creator to come up with stories for a fifth season since he had wrapped up a lot of the major storylines in the previous season when he believed the series was concluded), which included pushing the finale episode he created for Season 4 (which wrapped up the show completely) to Season 5’s finale (which is why certain characters weren’t present for Season 5 except for the finale, because those actors had already moved on to other projects and couldn’t come back for the fifth season). Again, all of this is me going off what I’ve read from a long time ago.

[@pablom-f8762]

That was the time of the writer's strike. Season 4 suffered from it, but STILL bettter than GoT season 7 & 8.

[@DanielS2001]

@@pablom-f8762 The show's main production was wrapped shortly before the strike began, and the only thing that was really affected by the strike was the web series "The Face of the Enemy," which was produced for promotional purposes (similar to how "The Resistance" was made for Season 3 and served as filler between the seasons) As a result of that web series being made during the writer's strike, it's not completely available on any website or physical media release (including the complete series release. There was a rumor of one of the Japanese releases including it, but I haven't been able to confirm it). You can find some of the episodes on KZbin, but a couple of them are copyright struck, which makes watching the complete web series impossible.

[@mvprime8]

You got most of that wrong. B5 wasn't cancelled, the whole network it was on (PTEN) was taken down. It was able to have season 5, when they found a new home for it on TNT. And the major plots of season 5 were always in the plan (the telepaths, the centauri). Some stuff was indeed compressed into season 4 and would've otherwise crossed over more into season 5, and stories changed because of cast changes, but people claiming the events of season 5 were not in the plan are just completely wrong.

[@DanielS2001]

@@mvprime8 Well, like I said, I was going off of information I've read years ago. Memory can be a fickle thing. XD

[@CoinOpTV]

cool video - feels almost like you could do a series on breaking down more of the craft of writing with sci-fi show examples.

[@RowanJColeman]

That's the plan!

[@msclrhd]

I think that as long as what you write is consistent with the world and characters you set up, then it doesn't matter how you ended up writing that. Do what works best for you, whether that is character and world/setting bibles, outlines of the story, or some other mechaism. JMS also had trapdoors for characters in case they left the show, so with something variable like a long-running TV show or series of films, having a way of dealing with that is useful.

[@shawngillogly6873]

Let me push back on this dichotomy by pointing out the elephant in the room. BSG was clearly playing off B5 and DS9's grand story arcs and strong narrative both in advertising and structure for the 1st two seasons. The show meandered badly in seasons 3 and 4, with resets, retcons, and "gotcha" moments to try to mask the fact there was no plan. The core of the critique is not that BSG couldn't have been a good episodic show. It's that the show promised a decisive, intelligent enemy with a clear aim. It delivered none of that. And the further it delved into Cylon mysticism, the more confused it grew. Now, I've said this like BSG was a bad TV show. It wasn't. But it was a masquerade. And while it wasn't exposed as thoroughly as Lost was, it would've been a stronger show if it had chosen to be *either* episodic *or* narrative. Not an episodic show painted as a narrative.

[@Klijpo]

I'm in firm agreement with you in that both approaches work. If there is a plan, it needs to be thoroughly adaptable and open to change; if there isn't, follow the journey and find the destination. B5 works because JMS had a fluid idea open to change. BSG suffered at the end because I think RDM & Co used the "God-plot" as a crutch too often to avoid having to do the work to write themselves out of that corner. I also think BSG, despite its general brilliance, forgot a crucial aspect of its make-up in its last season: that alongside all the character driven drama, survival narrative, and War-on-Terror allegory, it was also a show where space-fighters-go-pew-pew.

[@ryankinkor709]

Good analysis. The thing I would say, though, is that while not having a concrete plan certainly doesn't sink a story, not having a plan for a long-term story arc does. In the case of BSG, as much as I loved the episode-to-episode story beats and arcs, when the time came for the fruition of all the major story plot to be fulfilled (aka the finale), the end result was... not satisfactory. It would take a video of my own to explain why, but in a nutshell, I thought the story was forcing a narrative that went against human nature, and thus felt very unrealistic in a show that had dealt with human nature fairly well up until then. Yes, I am one of the types who wasn't happy that "God" didn't get explained. But beyond that, both the Cylon "plan" and "God's plan" made little sense in retrospect. The Cylons didn't have a plan at all, despite the tagline of BSG being "and that have a plan." Hell, the second BSG standalone film "The Plan," shows as much. And that's where the lack of a real writer's plan becomes plain. It doesn't hurt the show if it's largely organic and character-driven (like Breaking Bad), and it doesn't hurt a show for short-term story arcs. But if the draw of a show is partly or mostly based on a large plotline or mystery and you don't have a real plan for that, most of the time it backfires because you wind up retconning, contradicting, or discarding plot all over the place. Look at what happened with Game of Thrones if you want another example.

[@tyranusfan]

In my humble opinion, BSG's problem wasn't so much from planning (or lack thereof), but from the bad habit they had of sacrificing plot logic for Drama. So much of what is seen from season 3 onward is this constant lean into The Drama. You end up with deus ex machina events and characters dying and coming back, and it doesn't matter HOW or WHY, so long as The Drama happens.

[@Aloha_XERO]

Now let’s look at the mechanics behind the writing of Tony Gilroy’s implementation of Star Wars - Andor series

[@lorcannagle]

One of the most interesting comparisons I think of around this is Star Wars. For all that he claims it, George Lucas didn't really have a 9-movie plan. Details were being changed all the way through the original trilogy, like Luke was originally going to talk to his father's force ghost on Dagobah and Darth Vader was just some bad guy. Even when they were writing Return of the Jedi they hadn't decided that Leia and Luke were siblings - at that point the nebulous "plan" for the sequels was that Luke would be seeking his sister while Leia was alienated from him and Han because of her duties as a leader of the New Republic. With all that chaos and indecision the original trilogy are classics. And yet the prequels were far more tightly planned out and are awful. I feel the sequels' biggest flaw is something you bring up here. Instead of building on Force Awakens and Last Jedi and doing "yes, and", Rise of the Skywalker is obsessed with walking back controversial decisions in the prior movies and flounders as a result. Like imagine if Return of the Jedi spent half its runtime explaining that no, Darth Vader wasn't Luke's father after all, and Luke didn't really lose his hand in the fight...

[@LENZ5369]

Think that is a bit of a fallacy -there aren't just 2 options: detailed plan or improv. You can a general idea of where you want to go and a general idea of the major landmarks you want visit -and then fill it out with improv. Also the 'plan' doesn't have to span the entire show.

[@korakys]

First write the first page, second write the last page, then write the rest. You might need to re-write the last page several times as things change but you should always know where you are going even if you deliberately decide not to know how to get there first.

[@shadowvessel]

I remember Straczynski saying how B5 was a real world he opened a window to sometimes to see what was going on. I think that's the perfect way of describing a preexisting outline that organically changes as it's being told. Before he thought B5 wasn't going to have a season 5, the Shadow War and Earth War climaxes would've been in two seasons. I think season 4 originally ended with Sheridan's capture 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@benspencer8253]

This is a reallt interesting video about two of my favourite shows. While I think both methods of storytelling having their merits I personally find JMS' technique more fulfiling in the long run. Its worth noting that Farscape had a plan for the most part but there was a degree of flexibility as well. For example, i believe Chiana was only supposed to be a guest star on Durka Returns, but her acting was so good that the creators made her a regular. Also, the actor that played Scorpius was so impressive that the creators wanted to find a way to give him a more regular role in season 2. This led to the whole Harvey storyline in season 2, which for many fans is a favourite aspect of the show. Question would you consider making video discussing the merits of episodic storytelling in sci fi vs serialised storytelling?

[@Zoroasterisk]

I think that's a great idea for a video and would also love to see it

[@BenVaserlan]

What BSG Mk 2 did after season 1 was to plan 10 episodes ahead. That was stated on the Ron Moore commentaries that I listened to in the noughties. There are a lot of plot holes with the final 5. The comic book didn't clear those up.

[@TK_Brainslug]

great video as usual. If you write a normal network show you don't need much of a plan, but if try something bigger with overarching storylines, it comes in handy when you have some stuff planned out beforehand where to go

[@marcelo_27]

I think this doesn't have to be a all or nothing scenario. To me the main problem with BSG was that the final seasons had things happen for no reason other then plot. Like the whole starbuck and the all along the watchtower song. It really looks like something that could have used some planning.

[@NicholasBrakespear]

The song bugged the hell out of me. The big reveal, where they actually play the song? That was epic. I sat there thinking, holy crap, they're really going with the "it's actually set in the distant future, and they've forgotten their origins" thing. It was so epic... ...until it turned out to be literally nothing, and completely nonsensical, because they didn't follow through. Same with the antique Earth weapons on display in a couple of scenes - I think there's a tommy gun for example - and then.... that's just never explained.

[@Sephiroth144]

And personally, I tend towards Nicholas Myers way, with a few extras. Its good to know where you're starting, where your ending, where you're at (having a (reasonably) developed world for the action to occur in), and a some places you want to see along the way (set piece battles, events along the way from the beginning to the end, relationship changes, etc...) Essentially, a general outline with a few key focal points.

[@BogeyTheBear]

I'd say that while writers don't need a plan (a cadre of living, breathing characters tend to disrupt things as the story moves forward), a good _villain_ needs an awesome one. A common trap is to focus a plot around the protagonist's intentions-- to give the heroes a plan at the start (find the MacGuffin, use it to save the world soon as you move it from Point A to Point B). A protagonist has _goals,_ not a plan. As a protagonist is only as good as the forces arrayed against them, it's the bad guys you are better off focusing upon their schemes. The villains' goals are simplistic enough, but an excellent villain is going to try making it an unfair fight and figure out how to make their scheme seemingly fool-proof. It's up to the heroes to find and exploit the cracks.

[@ANonymous-mo6xp]

Babylon 5: Had plan, ended well. BSG: No plan, final season was garbage. The whole "final 5 cylons" thing was utter horseshit.

[@spaceidiot200]

if you raise questions and mysteries in your story, you need to be prepared to answer them. Or, at the very least know which ones you want to remain unanswered.

[@lcstark]

I mostly agree with your points, but to that end, I think the title of this video would be better recapitalized - instead of "Why Writers DON'T Need a Plan", making it "Why Writers Don't NEED a Plan". I love B5 to bits, and I think having a solid plan helped make it the way it turned out, but that's because it is what worked for JMS (and that he was able to make changes based on actor availability and TV exec meddling). Stargate SG-1 is to this day my favourite TV series, and while it is far from perfect, it definitely didn't need a plan. And I'd like to know whether or not Rockne O'Bannon had an outline of Farscape before making it, but I'd suspect he didn't, and it turned out great.

[@SilortheBlade]

I'd like to know on Farscape too. Most of the first season seemed to be episodic with no real plan, but once scorpius came on the scene everything seemed to click into place. I'd bet once they created him as a concept it made sense to run with him and the overarching narrative fell into place.

[@JamesSavik]

I think a better example of a show that was "made up as they went along" would be "Lost". That was the most irritating thing I've ever watched and given up on. B5 and BSG had an overall arc, and the show runners worked within that overall plan. There's a huge difference between strategic or high-level plans and tactical or low-level plans. In B5, major changes had to be made, and JMS did an excellent job transitioning between O'hare, who had to leave the show, and Bruce Boxleitner, as Commander of B5. Another major shift occurred in season 5 as the network weenies played games with potential cancellations. JMS made adjustments by leaving contingencies in place and writing around these difficulties. In Lost, it was obvious that the writers were wandering around for whole seasons desperately seeking a plot.

[@SilortheBlade]

The JJ Abrams school to BS writing. Throw everything possible at the wall and then leave someone else to clean it up. I really enjoyed lost and Alias, but they both suffer from this. He dind't need to map out everything, but there should have been some idea of where they wanted to go, and there was none. So it was all made up on the fly. Oh you ask did I forget to add the Starwars movies? No I did not, as I did not enjoy those at all.

[@johnsmith9205]

It's now painfully obvious that BSG didn't have a plan and it hurts to watch this again, as good as it really is, excluding the ending, of course. And if there was no plan, why did they put "... and they have a plan" in the opening titles, keeping us guessing for half a decade waiting to get some kind of answer, when it turned out we practically knew everything every step of the way and the show just had a fake mystery box the whole time, as it turned out when we finally saw "The Plan". Of course, the BSG forums on the old sci-fi channel website were conveniently removed so we can't go back and feel the pain reading the old threads with the crazy theories. Stallion Cornell was right, after all.

[@johnsmith9205]

Compare that with Babylon 5, where the mysteries of the first season were basically all answered by the end of the second season, meaningfully advancing the narrative. The final conclusion that both total order and total chaos are bad for the mere mortals was unexpected, but simple, logical and easy to follow, also giving a reward for the patient viewer without straining our attention span for too long.

[@musicalcolin]

I guess I'm going to take the contrarian position again. I love episodic tv, but I don't think BSG does good episodic tv. I also love serialized tv, and I don't think BSG does good serialized. Instead it does a really icky mess of the two in which the miniseries and the opening of each episode implies serialized tv, but the episodes are disconnected from each other. You might say that the scenes on Earth in the first season are serialized because there is one coherent (ish) story going through the season. But really it feels like they split one episode into 10 parts and put 5 minutes of it in each episode because the scenes don't interact at all with what's going on back on the Galactica. And I think you've misstated JMS's approach to writing: he had a really solid plan and that plan included multiple possible alternative plans ("escape hatches") in the case of a various of things going wrong. The most important part of the plan though is that it gave JMS a very firm understanding of where the show was going and what the show was about. Obviously, he revised the show at several important junctures (especially after season 1), but he always made sure to have a clear map of wear he was going so that he could have clear promise, progress, payoff, which BSG rarely has outside of a single episdoe. In my mind BSG is a weird amalgamation of TNG and B5 and fails at being both. So yeah I think if a show is promising to have an over arcing story (like BSG), then the story should be mapped out ahead of time. The Nicholas Meyer quotation though seems spot on to me.

[@KayOSweaver]

For me the shadow of the WGA strike is difficult to ignore in talking about this. I think the shrunken writing rooms and shortened wiring sessions have really hurt the shows with more improvised scripts in recent years. I think you can make good TV without a huge advanced plan like JMS, but you need to have sufficient time to massage and integrate the ideas you come up with into a cohesive whole. A lot of TV these days clearly suffers because individual writers create things, but there isn't time to look at how say episode 3 will impact episode 8 or how episode 1 does or doesn't set that up. Instead we get confusing zig zags and dangling threads because there was no overarching plan AND no time to stitch everything together. I guess what I'm saying is, give the writers the resources they need to do a good job.

[@rxforlife05]

One thing to consider also, especially with a TV series, is if you have a group of writers also. Yes, the show runner will have the final say, typically, but you also have to let your writers have fun also. If not they, their job becomes tedious. As much as I love Moore, some of my all time favorite writers on BSG were Bradley Thompson and David Weddle to the point where I would get excited when their names would pop up on the credits. Also actor chemistry plays a big role and often you don't figure that out until the actors interact with each on set day in and day out. Writers will gravitate towards characters that act will together to explore more of their chemistry. If two or actors don't work as well together the writers can find ways to separate them more. A lot of factors go into writing. I really enjoyed the parts of the DS9 documentary where it's Moore and writers are back in the writers room hashing out a new episode of DS9.

[@danielhall5364]

JMS had an over arching story. One of the most important things he had done was to have cut-outs for every major actor / character... If this was thought of w/ Disney's Mano / SW things might have turned out more positively for us fans and the IP... Just MHO.

[@AndrewLuke]

Really interesting look at how a BSG cast fave altered the overall series. Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe is fantastic and I'd recommend viewers check out that writer's special, and the series in general. I wasn't aware of the Matt Stone Trey Parker lecture on good plotting so I'll be sure to check that out. The story bible certainly worked for BSG in providing a compass for direction yes but it seems there was no destination. This is were I take issue. Large-scale planning is an ongoing part of the writer's job. In scripting, we are kind of writing a story bible right up until the pages reach the actors. As Babylon 5 fans know there's a lot of examples of this. Anyone who thinks writing is some creationist process is talking out of their bumhole. We write each commission on many levels. Think of storytelling as having layers. An ionosphere, orbit, earth, and core. BSG falls down, perhaps because of adherence to such religious fantasy principles. Yes but I can have a go at the low plan, what we call pantsing, because these are writers on a good stable salary with a big studio behind them. By comparison you appreciate how realist and philosophical JMS and his core team were, working their asses off on a shoestring budget. Writing can be hard. Very hard. It's truly most associated with fun and the stuff of dreams yes, and, if you're going to do it you have to commit. Because the more you write the more you map, the more magic you make.

[@ukmediawarrior]

Having heard JMS talk many times about B5 while it was still being shot and on the air it's pretty obvious he DID have a five year plan, one he shopped around to the networks. He started in on that plan but by season four he had been told by the network there would be no season five as they were cancelling the show so he had to change pretty much everything to tie up the lose ends .... then he DID get a season five but now all his story threads had been closed and he had to come up with an entirely new plan for that last season.

[@scottperry7311]

I think a good writer is someone who has the ability to make the story work. To create good characters, good plots and sub plots, good pacing, good world building, and the ability to let the story run but also know how to keep it from running away. Some writers are good with just "winging it" letting a story go and seeing where it winds up, and some writers need a detailed plan of where its going and what they want to do along the way, then there are those that have a basis and a goal and work towards that. Anyone can do this, but a good writer knows how to guide it and make it work. This is not different from other skills in life, some people are great speakers and are able to talk spontaneously on a topic, some need to plan out what they want to say on a topic in detail, some have the points of what they want to say but improvise on each point as they speak only looking at notes as a clue where to go next. I do think a good plan is better if its a long story over many years or many books because the writer can smooth it out and address plot holes and problems in advance. This takes skill to do. But if a writer is very good at spontaneous writing, has a mind to see the plot lines he or she creates along the way, and has the ability to weave them together the result can be just as magnificent. J.R.R. Tolkien and G.R.R. Martin are examples of the two extremes. Tolkien meticulously planed out much of he world and history of Middle Earth over decades. He refined his world over and over and in that world grew the seed of the Hobbit, which in turn lead him to create the Lord of the Rings trilogy to answer the question of the one ring, but the underlying mythos and world was well under way by the time he wrote both. However, Tolkien did change his story and let it flow many times and the Hobbit was one of those little thing that turned into something much greater and the questions left by the Hobbit and requests by may for more of that world lead to the Lord of the Ring in a more spontaneous way. G.R.R. Martin writes characters and events that start to take on lives of their own that lead the story, character, and plots along with a lot less of an overall plan or world building than Tolkien had when Martin started. Meticulous panning can lead to over planning and a perfectionist mentality that can cause a to b delayed or even a project to never be published or seen. The writes concern for a complete story line and more perfection in its completeness can be as great a detriment than a benefit. But not having a plan with defined endings and points to conclude the story can cause a writer to create a work that has many unfinished plot lines, and can even lead to the writer not completing the story. Because so many unfinished stories are published and seen vs longer more meticulously planed stories is from the fact that one is published/seen as it goes along, the other is only seen when the writer thinks it is complete, which may be never. I think each and every writer is different just like all people are different and this goes for how much they need to plan and how much they are able to be spontaneous and what works for them. In the end if what the writer does works, than it works and the proof is in a good story. The ability to let the story and characters flow, yet keep the story on point and going in an ultimate direction is a talent that is rare and unique to each good writer.

[@daviddavies3637]

The thing I find most intriguing about Babylon 5 when I look back at it, and it was a show I absolutely loved when it was being aired, was just how different the B5 universe actually was and how realistic, if sci-fi can ever be called that, B5 was. Something that's always bothered me about Trek, especially from TNG onwards, is just how similar each space-faring race was technologically. Even in Enterprise, you shouldn't expect the Enterprise to be able to take on races that were clearly much more experienced space-faring races, but it was. B5 showed a certain degree of planning that went beyond copying and pasting the races and their capabilities.

[@uliwitness]

I generally hate the "yes and" approach, and the kind of story that results from it. I love TNG, but it has *so many* two-parters and season finales that pull a deus ex machina out of their butt because they didn't plan how to get out of a situation. Impossible problems become obvious, and it makes the characters look dumb. JJ Abrams is a master at coming up with flashy trailer moments that get resolved in unsatisfying ways (he's great for designing a flashy series premise though, and then letting others run with it). However, an example for a show that worked amazingly despite not having a plan was Stargate SG-1. They planned the arc out per season, no farther, but they had a writer on the team who looked back and re-wrote scripts to refer back to previous episodes. Replacing new planets with ones we'd seen before, making the McGuffin a technology we'd already been up against before etc. It *feels* as if it had all been planned, sometimes even prophesied, but is much more ad-hoc than you'd think.

[@TheKeyser94]

They were implementing something that B5 already introduce, only that with pay military propaganda, and I not even joking, even that the military were way less involved in Atlantis, but SG1 was so blatant in their propaganda, that began to receive money from them, and Anderson even receive a medal.

[@nickasaro8789]

Even if I think a couple of points in the final season (mainly the timeline of the 13th tribe, their own cylon war and the final five) could have used some clarification, I personally loved it and for something made “without a plan”, I thought it held up remarkably well.

[@mutantdog.]

On the other hand turning the fact that they had only cast seven actors as Cylons into the basis of the whole ‘final five’ thing was kinda weak. Even worse considering the number system didn’t fit. The frequent retconning of itself, such as inserting new scenes into the ‘previously on’ section, was also weak. If they hadn’t proclaimed the Cylon plan every episode I might have been more forgiving but instead I often felt like I was being taken for a fool.

[@Firenutz]

For what’s it’s worth, I’m a “professional” career writer: published author of multiple book series for teens, and a credited staff writer and story editor for a couple of television series. I did alright for myself for the better part of fifteen years, and here is what I learned about the difference between serviceable and true great writers and stories. Serviceable writers construct stories with compelling enough characters who hook audiences, but they are unable or unwilling to free their characters to drive their own stories, explore their own relationships, test their own limits, and resolve/deepen their own conflicts. There is no shame in being a serviceable writer. I made a good living at it, had fun, met some people who became lifelong friends, and have some cool stories to share. But I didn’t create anything all that memorable or moving. Came close a few times, but nah. My work was serviceable. Great writers build worlds with central story arcs to be explored and discovered by the yet-to-be known true core of their characters, and they trust themselves (and key partners and staff at times) to adjust that arc as their characters grow and learn-even if that means those characters start to push the stories and conflicts far outside the originally intended arcs. Great writers inhabit their characters; in turn, we as the audience begin to know and feel the interior lives of those characters, sometimes to such a deep level that we ache to be them, to stand and fight beside them-or against them. I experienced one writers’ room with a pro like that for a brief time. The main characters felt as real as dear friends and feared enemies, and they told US what they’d do. If we were smart enough and humble enough, all we had to do was listen. It was like witchcraft. In the end we remember great characters who lived in us for a while. If plot holes, untied threads, continuity errors and the like aren’t abusive, we forgive them pretty easily over time-even rewiring our memories to account for and accept them.

[@Chief_Tyrol_]

Killing off Billy and Dualla not being a DUEL person was a huge let down for me. Billy and Dualla were supposed to be what Helo and Athena ended up being. Not hating on the pivot but it's where I thought things were going. Opera versus epic ig

[@vercoda9997]

I've always found that you can wander wildly off target, away from any kind of plan or destination - you can take pretty much any random thing or point or word and use that as a hinge to fold the story back on track, and neatly draw things to a close. You just need to be clever on how you link A to B to C to D to R to Y to Z. Take most writers a few steps off the path they wanted to follow, however, and they're lost, unable to figure out how to get back to where they need to go.

[@joestacey6185]

I think that BSG shows that his writing style doesn't work for Moore, at least in that instance. To use Meyer's example that you cited, if you don't have at least some idea of the journey then you run the risk of not reaching your destination.

[@GulliverFoyle-t3i]

Thought provoking video, thanks, and thanks for the link to the original B5 “road map” which was illuminating. For me, of all the main story arcs, I found the Earth civil war to be more satisfying than the Shadow War and IMHO threw up the best episodes & mini arcs, particularly the 3 episodes that culminated with “Severed Dreams”. Learning that this major arc wasn’t in the first draft timeline re-enforces the point that creating and then trying to rigidly stick to some sort of plan is counterproductive. While it’s true that any battle plan doesn’t survive first contact with the enemy, and with reference to Michael O’Hare’s departure, it’s also the case that “necessity is the mother of invention”. JMS had to re-write his road map and subjectively what we got was a better series in the end.

[@KenMathis1]

The goal isn't to never deviate from a plan, but to have a plan that forms the basis of your writing, and only deviate if those changes make the overall plan better, or are required by outside events. An initial plan sets the minimum baseline for the continuity of your show. If you can improve the show with a better plan while not contradicting anything that came before, then by all means go for it. The flaw with Battlestar Galactica having no plan was that a lot of the drama and entertainment leading up to the end was in the belief that a plan existed. That gave every moment more impact as fans tried to figure out what each moment meant in the context of a greater plan. When it turned out the events had no, or minimal, meaning in a greater context, it diminished the entire show, since all those events instantly became unearned. In short, if you don't have a plan, don't rely on the cheap bump in intensity from fans thinking you do have a plan. Don't lead fans to believe a largely procedural show is an epic show.

[@ManDragonA0]

I'm a big fan of both shows, and have thought about this topic many times. BGS (while I could argue was a better show) has two flaws. The first is that there was not destination in mind for the end. Making one up while filming the end of the last season resulted in (imo) a weak finale. (That said, the last sequence was brilliant, and I loved that part.) But the biggest flaw in my mind is that the viewers can tell that it's being made up as they go along, and that is never a good thing. It's not the lack of a plan that's the problem; it's that we could plainly see there was no plan on our first viewing.

[@WotFanar]

so I'm going to use the language of "gardeners": writers who let their characters decide where to go. and "architects": writers who plan everything out. So i think gardeners and architects have different strengths, gardeners tend to get better characters and flow and architects tend to get better arks and mystery. I do agree you have to be a bit of a gardener to run tv due to production being wild but i think the complaint of no plan comes up more when someone promises a plan. mystery box is a common gardener tactic where they string you along in a compelling way with the promise of answers that never come. i think how well this works for you is dependent on if you judge based on the moment to moment pleasure was worth your time or if the pain of being duped at the end overrides the anticipation. I think if you pose a mystery you should have a good answer for it and a few backups if your worried things may fall apart. that said I would also agree that as you go through things parts move and nothing needs to be locked down until you get there. as you said so long as you know where your headed and where you are taking diversions is encouraged.

[@AdrianColley]

10:23 "to say that the Babylon 5 we got is the result of JMS sticking to his precreated plan simply isn't true." It also isn't relevant. The plan for B5 existed and was coherent, so it could be changed to adapt to circumstances and still resolve the story arcs. By contrast, BSG didn't have a plan (except in the proverbial sense of "planning to fail") until the very last few episodes. Instead, they made things up as they went along with no clear idea of how they would bring any kind of resolution to the mysteries they were creating. They arrogantly assumed that they could figure it out later. They painted themselves into a corner. They were, ultimately, pretending that they had B5-grade story arcs, when in retrospect it's obvious that their process was "hey, do you know what would really blow everyone's mind?" When JMS had similar ideas, they were always moderated by the need to think them through before adding them to the plan. That's a tool that Moore and Eick decided, foolishly, to do without.

[@AdrianColley]

More simply: Moore & Eick lacked the talent to succeed at BSG without a plan. And they didn't know that until it was too late.

[@123tibbs]

I was a little disappointed in BSG ending originally but to be honest I've watched the whole thing 6-7 times and it just gets better every time. The more I tried to write my own head cannon for the answers I didn't get, the better I think it was to leave a few unanswered questions.

[@joesheridan95]

Oh, i´m still split when it goes to that ending. I would just have loved to see them get here in our time / jumping into lunar orbit and finding an incomplete ISS in Earth Orbit. But that one-hundred-thirty-thousand year-jump was great too. But what i still don´t like are three things: That ending was (in my eyes) to short.... i would have loved to see that as 2 or 3 episodes instead of the final one. 2nd: It was good to let the centurions go, but i really they they should have installed some safe guards in the solar system..... and i am still not fully into this: Humanity decided to loose ALL technology voluntarily. Yes to much technology killed them, but they had learned their mistakes. What they gave our species what such a tech-loss, that the dangers of too much hightech got lost on the way. I think there should have remained a technology-level that´s comparable to the one the galactica had onboard. Computers, but only networked when absolutely needed.... and a lot of absolute idiot-proof ship design. Galactica itself was absolutely finished, but the rest of the fleet? i am shure they would have been able to search for some more Tylium to refuel those ships and to build up a makeshift shipyard. At least to get the ability to prepare a fleet incase the centuraions come back or if somekind of disaster strucks our earth.

[@Ma55ey]

I was happy with how it ended.. it was kind of glorious.. I just think that the whole final five storyline didn't deliver what they were hoping it would.. it kind of derailed everything more than anything else.. but the production values and the cast still carried that show over the finish line.. even if the narrative crumbled a little...

[@stuartcooper8886]

@@Ma55ey I think that boils down to the fact that the final 5 was never planned. They were created due to them having 5 cylon numbers left to show by the start of season 3 (occupation) and then they decided the mystery of the final 5. That’s why they had to create Daniel aswell because the cylon numbering was off.

[@Ma55ey]

@@stuartcooper8886 Yea, I'm assuming they were going to have the other Cylons be revealed in the same way that boomer was in the miniseries at the start.. But decided to go in another direction.

[@123tibbs]

@@Ma55ey I didn't mind the final 5 part tbh, otherwise it would have just been some random new cylon characters introduced or some bit part supporting cast from the crew so I looking back I think it was probably the best choice - but maybe could have been some of the other main cast . Personally I would have liked a better explanation for Starbucks resurrection, and why she had certain knowledge, and the stuff with the hybrid 'you are the harbinger of death' could have been better explained, I think this could have tied it all together a bit better.

[@cha02psc]

Awesome video. Analagous examples would be the fact that neither Martok nor Weyoun were supposed to return in DS9. But because of how popular they were, Ira Behr and his team (including Moore) found creative ways to bring them back. This gave us cloned Vorta and the Martok Changeling. Best laid plans and all that.

[@anckrnews]

I’ve found that the extent to which the writers are making it up as they go, we end up getting something that feels like the first draft of a story. That’s what BSG feels like to me.

[@mpjedi212]

I feel a lot of this conversation is tied to the reactions to the Disney era Star Wars films, and I think a lot of that criticism is in bad faith, and ridiculously over the top. That said...I am one of the people who does think that if you are planning for a story that is designed to be finite, you should have some sort of plan. And "plan," as I mean it is...know what your story is about. Nobody says you need to have a locked in stone series of beats, but you should know what the theme or narrative goal is. Any writer worth is salt is going to leave themselves the freedom to adjust to an actor refusing to return, or a character becoming an unexpected fan favorite, any number of things. If you have your theme, and the ultimate point you want to make...you can improvise along the way and still know what the goal is.