Within these new media, fans engage in a wide variety of activities and show a sophistication in their viewing and authorial construction strategies which is likely to surprise anyone not familiar with the course of fan activities in other science fiction shows such as Star Trek. In fact, I found fans of Babylon 5 engaged in many of the same activities as Tulloch and Jenkins report. In this section, I note some of these, and analyze in more depth those which have the greatest impact on construction of the auteur.
After speaking to the program director at Kens [a TV station in San Antonio] I found out he was interested in airing B-5 next season (this season they have a full lineup). The program director (at the moment I can't remember his name) said he was awaiting a call back from Warner about B-5 etc. So I sent JMS a message telling him that his gentleman was awaiting a call back and could he have someone at warner who is knowledgeable about B-5 call him. JMS said no problem.
-- Desiree Nehr, San Antonio, TX, Babylon 5 fan
As noted before, advertising for the show by Warner Brothers has been next to nonexistent. Because the show has (up to this point) been syndicated by an independent production company (PTEN), there has been no assurance that any station in a given market will carry the series. Additionally, the series suffered from initial low ratings, leading some stations to cancel it in favor of other, possibly better-rated, shows.
In response to this situation, fans have mobilized to lobby stations and convince them that an audience for the show exists. This sort of activity is not new; indeed, the original Star Trek series was preserved for a while by a similar sort of fan campaign. However, Babylon 5's fan community is more dispersed and must deal with the completely decentralized decision-making authority of hundreds of different local stations in its attempts to save the show.
In mobilizing a large, dispersed population quickly, the new media excel. Messages on newsgroups can propagate across the nation in hours or a few days at most. Fans outside the direct broadcast area of a particular station can contribute to write-in or call-in campaigns and can react quickly to changes in station policy; speed and numbers are critical to this kind of campaign. Additionally, JMS' presence on the networks allows fans to get his direct involvement in a way not possible with previous shows, as the quotation above shows.
Additionally, the web's ability to act as a journal of reference is invaluable in collecting information for mobilizing fan action. For example, a fan has collected information on writing to a variety of local stations, writing to Warner Brothers, and relevant notes from JMS in a page called KEEP B5 ALIVE: Write your local station now!.
Note that once again, the auteur is foregrounded. JMS's close contact with the fan community does make him the natural spokesman for this sort of effort (given Warner Brothers' silence on the issue), but this does not change the fact that JMS becomes seen as a saving presence. Not only does he personify the show, but he also begins to personify the power that the show may wield in the commercial arena.
One of the areas most extensively reported by Tulloch and Jenkins was fan fiction. Babylon 5 fans are beginning to be active in this area as well. As with any series, it is impossible for the official text to satisfy all the desires for fans to see certain stories told. Some fan fiction, such as the Sector Reports, by Daniel L. Stahl, actually concerns itself with plot events in the main text, but reported from points of view not seen in the episodes themselves. However, it is outside the scope of this paper to analyze the kinds and meanings of fan fiction.
Instead, I note that the new media play a part in the process of fan fiction creation and dissemination. First, there is an absolute, and well-respected prohibition on posting fan fiction to the newsgroup. Fan fiction could easily be construed as promoting story ideas, something which the newsgroup charter prohibits posting.
DO NOT POST STORY IDEAS to the Babylon 5 newsgroup. Since the show's creator/Executive Producer (J. Michael Straczynski, "JMS") is here and reading this group right along with us, he would have to withdraw for legal reasons if story ideas were posted. We don't want that! (The full FAQ explains/defines "story ideas.") DISCLAIMERS DO NOT WORK. Releasing the idea into the public domain does not work. Please respect the group's charter and do not post story ideas here at all. A mailing list exists elsewhere for creative ideas.
-- Joseph Cochran, Babylon 5 fan, in an automated mailing sent to new posters to the rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5 newsgroup
We will return to this issue in examining the first of the specific incidents.
As one would expect, fan fiction mostly finds its home on the web. The web's basic paradigm is that anyone can be a publisher and where, in the past, fans would have mimeographed or photocopied their stories today they put them on the web. Probably the most comprehensive fan fiction site is the Babylon 5 Creative site, maintained by Derek Beda. Even here, in what should be the bastion of counter-canon fan activity, JMS's presence and authority are felt. For instance, JMS is quoted not-quite encouraging fan fiction:
Obviously, I can't say anything officially here saying "Go write fanfic to your heart's content." Because PTEN would (correctly) stick my head on a pike in the middle of downtown Hollywood. However, let me be ABSOLUTELY clear in this: I have NEVER said, "Don't write it." All that I have EVER said is, "Don't put it in a place where I can see it or stumble over it. [3-1]
This quotation is interesting because it seems to promote two models at one time. On the one hand, there is the model of JMS as the creator of the Babylon 5 universe, inviting others in to play with his creation, to share in the authorship as it were. On the other hand, there is the assertion that PTEN would lose something by the act of fan fiction being created.
One is left to wonder, though, what that thing lost might be. Since no fan is able to create television broadcasts, it cannot be that fan fiction would compete economically with the original text. Further, as noted in the Web section of this document, no textual fiction is being produced on the web by the official sources, though it might be argued that fan fiction competes with the Babylon 5 novels and comic books.
However, I think this is unlikely to be the reason. Instead, the model that seems to lie unspoken behind this assumption is that fan fiction would represent a challenge to authorial control over the text, and this is not permissible for an auteur. To actively encourage fan fiction would be to suggest that not only are alternative interpretations of the main text possible, but that the direction and tone of the text could be determined by someone else, or that sources other than the officially sanctioned one could produce desirable material.
The appearance of fan fiction with JMS' blessing would break down the absolute barrier that now exists between official and all-other sources of text in the Babylon 5 universe. Even though JMS' blessing would still be needed to break down this barrier, the dismantling would represent a threat to the interpretive model, and this threat cannot be brooked. Thus, the potentially dangerous (permissive) first model has to be counterposed with the second (restrictive) model.
Interestingly, the fans running the site seem to also prefer the first model. The site not only quotes JMS on the subject of fan fiction, but cites him as an authority on writing itself. This is not completely out of line, as JMS is indeed a successful writer outside of his television career. However, there are many other writers (such as the eminent science fiction author Damon Knight) who have produced complete and detailed works on how to write for aspiring newcomers. Yet these other sources are not mentioned. Here again, JMS reigns supreme.
JMS's presence and presentation as the source of knowledge can only be attributed to a model which treats him as the authority, one to which fans as well as the writer subscribe.
Not all creative endeavors around Babylon 5 are serious. A good deal of work is done that is humorous or parodic. Some of the parodies are simple-minded direct commentaries on the text itself. For example, pages have presented captured and altered images of some of the show's characters, such as putting hair on the mostly-bald character Garibaldi.
Often these parodies are done in an appropriative manner, drawing on the style and form of other pop-culture icons. For example, the Everything I ever needed to know I learned from Babylon 5 web site parodies the popular book by Robert Fulgham, Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten of a few years ago. The site contains a list of one-line aphorisms based on actions and dialog from the episodes.
The presence of parodies shows a level of sophistication on the part of fans. First, there is the sophistication needed to catch the "in joke" parts of the parodies. More interesting, though, is that some of the parodies show that fans engage in depth not just with one show, but with several wildly dissimilar elements of popular culture. For example, one fan created a complex reworking of a recent episode, Comes the Inquisitor, but done in the style of the Animaniacs, a popular Warner Brothers Saturday morning cartoon show.
I was unable to find this item archived elsewhere on the web, so it is reproduced in Appendix I. Reading this parody in depth requires knowledge of several Babylon 5 episodes and characters as well as the Animaniacs characters, Warner Brothers corporate structure, as well as other recent events in television and American cultural history.
One of the dreams of every fan is to have an influence on the show. For years, Star Trek has allowed fans to submit scripts for possible shows (unagented, they are called "over the transom" scripts, and are usually plundered for ideas and then rewritten by staff writers). A guide for writing episodes in the Star Trek universe (either Deep Space 9 or Star Trek: Voyager) is available and fan scripts were used, in one form or another, on the Star Trek: The Next Generation series.
However, given the existence of the Arc for Babylon 5 series and JMS' increasing involvement in writing each episode, there does not appear to be a comparable avenue for fan participation in forming this text. Indeed, the newsgroup guidelines, as noted above, explicitly prohibit the posting of story ideas or anything that could be construed as a story idea.
Despite this, fans have had directly observable impact on the show at least three times. One time was due to the posting of something which could have been construed as a story idea, and will be discussed in the section on Incidents.
A more positive interaction occurred when JMS began writing episodes which dealt with the area of the station known as "Downbelow." That area is comparable to the slums of a modern city -- unmaintained, not covered by station services, and inhabited by the poor. Needing a name for these people, JMS turned to the net. Several answers were posted in response, and one was adopted:
Actually...y'know...it's funny, but I've been trying to come up with a name for the folks who just sorta roam B5, the "homeless" or others who have enough resources to get there in hopes of jobs or new worlds, and don't have enough to get off again...and who play a running game of tag of sorts with B5 security..."Lurkers" ain't bad.... [3-2]
The final interaction (so far) occurred without warning. In the episode titled Convictions, one character tells a joke to another. This joke is one that had been circulating on the nets for some time, but its use was a surprise to everyone.
Another scene with Londo and Lennier, btw, contains a small nod to the online fans of the show; we can't and won't use story ideas, but there's been so much humor, reams and reams of it, every imaginable kind of joke, that I dropped one of these jokes into an episode...one that's come up at a lot of conventions and on the nets endlessly. Just to acknowledge the fans in the only way I can. [3-3]
This is clearly somewhat disingenuous. There are many means by which fans could be acknowledged, ranging from listing in the credits, to "Thanks" mentions, to (as Star Trek has done) allowing fans to appear as crowd members or other extras in episodes.
Again, JMS operates within the model of centralized authority we have repeatedly seen. He is free to use elements from the networks and this appropriation is labeled as "a nod" to the fans. DeCerteau [3-4] gave us the term poaching to describe the appropriative acts of both active readers and writers in relation to a text. It seems hard to find a rationale whereby the poaching of one side is justified as homage, but the poaching of the other side is discouraged.
Many of the fan activities are based around the ongoing discussions, particularly on the rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5 newsgroup. We will next take a look at the activities which take up most of the discussion threads in the newsgroup. Some activities, such as discussions of the science and technology used within the text, are not particularly relevant to this study of author-fan relations and so will be skipped.
Without commenting one way or another on various speculations, let me dive in for a second on the general issue of "what means what."One of the things I learned doing other shows, like being on "Murder, She Wrote" for two years, was that you *must* play fair with the audience. The clues cannot be so small, or so diminished, that they will zip by too easily. There has to be at least a reasonable chance that people will glom onto things.
So the odds are that a single word, or a look, or something going on in deep background is probably *not* significant. Anything in foreground, which is given some weight, *may* be significant. [3-5]
-- J. Michael Straczynski
One of the favorite activities of fans of any complex or ambiguous text is the search for clues, as Jenkins noted in respect to Twin Peaks fans. Babylon 5 fans are no exception. Indeed, contributors to the newsgroup take apart the smallest details of the episodes, searching for the clues that they know are in the text. Of course, they know the clues are there because the auteur has told them so, an advantage not shared by fans of past television series.
Fans use these clues to build complex models of character, character motivations, plot twists, and so on, in an attempt to anticipate what might be coming next. Jenkins notes that a Twin Peaks fan used an analogy between that series and Charles Dickens' novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood to anticipate the identity of a mysterious character. Similarly, Babylon 5 fans are building models of the show in terms of what they know (such as J.R.R. Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings) and using these models predictively.
The models and parallels developed by Babylon 5 fans are varied and complex. One of the most thoroughly developed is reproduced in Appendix II. In this analysis, a fan makes a complex analogy between Babylon 5 and Shakespeare's Macbeth. The complexity of these models speaks to the type of viewer the show has attracted -- one with above-average education, and leisure time (in which to formulate these theories). These characteristics are also commonly attributed to users of the new media (the so-called wired). An interesting study could be done comparing Babylon 5 fans on the net to fans of other shows, but this is beyond the scope of this paper.
JMS reaction to the proliferation of models among fans is bifurcated, as are so many of his other responses. On the one hand, he rewards fans who pick up on clues he deliberately places: Congrats; you're the first person I've seen to get the MacBeth parallel. [3-6]
On the other, he actively discourages the use of these models for predictive purposes:
Though I may sometimes nod to one or another landmark of SF, I'm not doing The Prisoner, Lord of the Rings, Childhood's End, MacBeth, the Illiad, The Mountains of Madness, or any of the thirty other works that I'm supposed to be doing, all mutually contradictory. I'm telling this story, my story, and though it's nice to be compared to such other works, it does become bothersome after a while when everybody tries to pin down which work I'm supposed to be "doing" when they NEVER do this to novelists, because this is TV. C'mon, people, I've written published novels, and short stories, and plays, and radio dramas, and I *do* have a brain in my head to maybe make up something on my own, y'know. [3-7]
It is hard to know where to begin in analyzing a quotation like this. On the one hand, JMS echoes the complaint of many television writers who find their appropriative uses of material questioned by fan audiences, where print writers are rarely subject to such scrutiny. For example, the analysis relating Babylon 5 to Macbeth does not mention that Shakespeare drew most of his plots from common oral stories of his time and from the Commedia dell'Arte.
On the other, he is asserting his personal, imperial, control over the story being told through the text. A writer less married to the auteur model might be more willing to accept the predictive power of analogy models, seeing them less as losses of control than as ways in which fans can participate in the co-creation of the text. It seems to me that this participation is precisely what fans are seeking and what JMS is denying them.
As noted earlier, fans are aware of JMS's connection to science fiction and of the show's place in the lineage of SF on television. This has led some fans to scrutinize the text carefully for references to other science fiction shows, books, authors, and so on. One of the most sophisticated collections of discovered references is the Babylon 5 SF References List, compiled by Andrew Adams. It gives, episode by episode, references which have been spotted by fans. It also quotes JMS (generally from his newsgroup postings) where possible, affirming or denying particular references.
The model of affirmation and denial leads us back again to the model of the auteur, one in which the writer is telling a particular story and it is the job of the readers to see on that authorized story.
IMO [In My Opinion] nothing which we see on the TV screen in B5 is "self-evident". That is IMO part of the "rules" of this series. It ain't so until JMS tells us it's so.
-- David Shao, Babylon 5 fan
The project of looking for clues leads naturally to a situation where the primary goal of participating fans is recovering authorial intention or meaning. This project takes the entire text and, rather than attempting to form predictive models about the future course of the plot, instead seeks to assign meaning to what has been viewed.
In particular, of course, the meaning to be assigned is the one purportedly encoded in the text by the auteur. This linear model of encode-transmit-decode is not widely accepted these days by critical theorists, but it closely matches the model under which JMS and most of the fans in the new media seem to be operating.
This fact poses a direct challenge to new-media theorists who posit the Internet as a great leveler of differences. Under this utopianist formulation, the oft-quoted fact that "on the Internet no one knows you're a dog" should enable a peer-based interpretive community to form. In such a community the author (though not dead) would be merely one voice among many and his ideas would wield no more weight than any other. That clearly is not the case.
Even discounting the special voice of the author, the strict egalitarian model among fans does not hold. Within the fan community there are opinion leaders -- prolific posters, the writers of the episode summaries. These opinion leaders work to shape discussion, by which topics they choose to engage with and by how they engage those topics. Standards of right and wrong are enforced in the interpretive community. A comment along the lines of Rootham, whom I quoted at the start of the paper is much more common than anything along the lines of Huber's comment.
It is interesting to speculate on possible causes for this split (which, to my informal observation, seemed to divide a small 10% minority of critics from the 90% majority). One might point to the purported passivity of television as a medium, but this theory is itself dependent on the encode-transmit-decode model and is belied by the variety of active reader formulations in response to Babylon 5 noted above, such as fan fiction and parody.
Similarly, an argument that relies on a formulation of Babylon 5 fans as mindless or easily led fails to account for the depth and sophistication shown in fan responses, as well as running counter to the apparently correct formulation of the fan as someone with above-average education and (presumably due to higher wages) more leisure time.
Alternatively, one might point to weaknesses in the new-media theories about the Internet and its effects, particularly in the Usenet format where every poster is, by default, identified. However, this does not account for the fact that any poster who wishes to remain anonymous can easily do so. Moreover, it is trivial to fake identities online (see Turkle [3-8] for an in-depth discussion of this phenomenon); in fact it would not be difficult for someone to masquerade as JMS himself either for serious or parodic purposes. To my knowledge, no one has tried this (yet).
It is clear that simplistic formulations of the effects of new media on author-reader relations cannot account for the complexity of the phenomenon we are studying here. No doubt each of the possibilities outlined above plays a part and no one explanation can account for the whole. My own pet theory is that there is no reward structure for oppositional critical analysis in the fan community, whereas the rewards for friendly analysis are direct and obvious. For those who "guess correctly" there is the vindication of being proven right in later episodes; there is a demonstration of one's superiority to one's fellow fans. In some cases there is direct reward in the form of a positive comment from JMS himself, such as the one acknowledging the fan who caught the Macbeth parallel.
There is also the increase in status that comes from being recognized. As part of my technical work, I am occasionally active in the community on the sci.virtual-worlds newsgroup. Although I have not been a regular contributor there for many months, people still remark from time to time on my past participation. No doubt Babylon 5 fans experience much the same effect when they gather at fan conventions.
As we shall see in the section on Incidents, notoriety also plays a significant part, as well as positive status. In any event, notice -- the ability to rise above the undifferentiated masses of fans -- is the only currency in this community and it is most liberally applied to those whose interpretations are validated by the author or by the text.
I don't think Talia was Control, either. The statement by Talia indicated that the sleeper was code-named control, but it seems that there's the possibility that the spies made a mistake and either picked up disinformation or conflated two different plants. Control may well be someone else. [3-9]
-- Leo Maddox, Babylon 5 fan
Regardless of the why, a complex evolving series such as Babylon 5 contains enough ambiguities within it that even those who subscribe to authorial intent models can find and debate different interpretations. In this model, the general framework is agreed upon, but different sets of clues are introduced into evidence to support different, often contradictory, hypotheses about events not seen directly or fully on screen.
Jenkins discusses this phenomenon extensively in relation to Twin Peaks where the entire series seemed to revolve around a central mystery. Shows were laden with clues which pointed to one character or another as the murderer of Laura Palmer and fans delighted in finding additional evidence to support their particular theories.
Babylon 5 does not have a central defining mystery around which alternative interpretations can coalesce. However, fans still put forward different theories in any space which authorial intention leaves them (and leave them space it must, or risk losing all mystery). For example, in a recent episode, Divided Loyalties, one of the characters is shot at. The shooter is not seen on screen; we only see the gloved hands holding the pistol. Immediately, a mystery is suggested: who is the shooter?
Resolution of this mystery appears to come in the episode: a character is identified as a traitor and removed from the station. But the episode does not state definitively that this character is the one who did the shooting and this character arguably lacks certain skills shown on-screen being used by the shooter. As a result, a number of conflicting theories emerged on the newsgroup. Each acknowledged that there was one, right, answer but each cited different supporting evidence for its conclusions. Some, as in the quotation at the start of this section, even went so far as to hypothesize that characters' on-screen dialog was mistaken in some way, thus allowing more room for theorizing.
These theories are often related back to the author. JMS' previous surprises and plot twists which were not anticipated or understood by fans are cited as evidence for the more outlandish theories -- if the author was so clever before, simple explanations must be wrong in this case. Interestingly, this is precisely the mode of reaction Jenkins reported for Twin Peaks fans who were trying to out-guess David Lynch.
Part of the thing with screen romances is the fact that the audience, like or not are filled with Victorian voyeurs who watched these things like hawks. Once their interest is lost that aspect of the show looses its pull. You not only have to look at this as a realistic arrangement, but also as one that has dramatic value, rather than gooey sap. [3-10]
-- Bill Capeheart, Babylon 5 fan
One of the areas of strongest hypothesizing by fans working within the canon is that of character relationships. Because these relationships are rarely the direct subject of episode plots, fans have considerably more latitude in discussing the relationships than they do in hypothesizing around plot events while not violating a project of recovering authorial intent.
Relationships are almost always discussed in proportion to their romantic potential (thus supporting some model of Babylon 5 fandom as being similar to soap opera fandom). During the first season of the show, the station commander's sometimes-lover was introduced and heavy discussion of possible interpretations of the Sinclair/Sakai pair ensued. Fans came up with different motivations and scenarios for resolving the major conflict (whether Catherine Sakai should give up her independence and move her successful business operation to Babylon 5 station).
In the current season, the most heavily discussed relationship is that between Ivanova and Talia, a possible lesbian romance between two characters that began their on-screen relationship barely able to speak civilly to each other. While an analysis of that relationship itself and fans reaction to it (especially vis a vis the heavily publicized Deep Space 9 lesbian kiss which aired at approximately the same time) is outside the scope of this paper, the on-screen relationship brings to light an interesting aspect of the fan/writer relationship.
As noted earlier, the Babylon 5 story is governed by an Arc; however, no plot outline can accommodate all the vagaries of human action. In planning a five-year series, it is necessary to consider the possibility that actors may leave and yet the series should continue. JMS' solution to this was to make it possible for any given character to leave the show, and have the plot elements transferred to another character: "...in drafting the story for Babylon 5, I made sure to compensate for any possible changes. For lack of a better term, there is a "trap door" built into the storyline for every character. [3-11]
What happened was that Talia/Andrea Thompson (who happens to be married to Garibaldi/Jerry Doyle) had to leave the show because she became pregnant and the pregnancy could not be worked into the plot line. This is a perfectly ordinary, common reason for an actress to leave a television show. However, fans have refused to accept this reasoning for the character's departure; instead, they have sought answers within the confines of the canon provided by the Arc, despite JMS insistence to the contrary:
[...] give us some indication that >you< have the ability to distinguish between a "slammed trapdoor," and a "mystery" that will eventually be resolved and fully integrated into the plot. [3-12]
-- Theron Fuller, Babylon 5 fan
As the fan above points out, external readers of the text have no way to distinguish one set of circumstances from another. In a sense, JMS is being hoist on his own petard here. Fans are using the tools of the auteur to construct non-authorial interpretations of the text!
Throughout this section, we have looked at ways that fans act in response to and in relation to the text. We have noted a consistent (though bifurcated) response from the author, simultaneously attempting to maintain strict interpretive control, while encouraging the growth and development of the fan community which is essential to the show's survival.
The new media have thrown fans and the author into closer and more frequent contact than ever before, and have allowed faster, deeper and broader interactions. Throughout these interactions, JMS has acted to define the program's ideology by his (often Delphic) answers to fan questions, by labeling interpretations as right or wrong and by offering explanations of key events both in the Babylon 5 universe and in our universe where the show is created.
We have seen how JMS has attempted to assert his authority in contradiction to egalitarian models of writer/reader textual construction, and in contradiction to egalitarian models of how new media operate. We have also seen how these attempts have been less than fully successful and how even the authority structures can be turned against the author.
However, there is one additional aspect of the interaction which is worthy of in-depth analysis. The new media allow an author to be self-revelatory to an unprecedented degree. In particular, JMS has not shied away from self-description and self-explication. We turn to this process in the next section.
Copyright © Alan Wexelblat