Straczynski writes television the way other people write novels: the whole shape decided before the first page, every grudge kept until it pays. Babylon 5 proves the method works, and also that his people sometimes speak in paragraphs when a sentence would do.
Fi1m perspective
Somebody on a space station stands up and says, at length, what they believe. Somebody across the table disagrees. Three seasons later the disagreement is still being paid for. That is the Straczynski habit, and it is also his gift. He created Babylon 5 (1994), wrote 92 of its 110 episodes, and planned its five seasons before the first one went out. A station built to keep the peace needs people who make peace difficult, and he found enough of them.
He came to television sideways, as a journalist and critic, then through 1980s animation (He-Man, The Real Ghostbusters) and the sort of live-action work that pays the rent: the Twilight Zone revival, Murder, She Wrote. Babylon 5, produced with Doug Netter and with Harlan Ellison as a consultant, is the turn. After it he wrote comics, including a run on Amazing Spider-Man, and features: the screenplay for Changeling (2008), story for Thor (2011), contributions to World War Z. With Lana and Lilly Wachowski he co-created Sense8 (2015), an ensemble piece about people connected across the globe, which is the Babylon 5 idea with the station taken away. He is credited as director on one episode of his own series. His work is writing.
What works is the long game. Loyalties change and the change is remembered. Decisions taken in season two are still consequences in season four. The politics are the politics of institutions, committees and compromised officers, and the early computer effects were used not to dazzle but to make the running of a station look like work. What does not work is the talking. His characters announce their purposes; the performances cannot always make an announcement sound like conversation, and too often someone is plainly waiting for their next substantial speech.
We spent the early episodes with our patience thinning, listening to people declare their principles at each other. Then, somewhere in the changing of sides, we realised we minded who won, and we minded until the end. What did it was the arc: a grudge given room to grow is more absorbing than a grudge resolved in forty-five minutes, and nobody in American television had given grudges that much room before.
Some who worked with him have called him controlling. That is probably true and it is also why the story got finished; a five-year plan does not survive a writer who is easy to argue with. Start with Babylon 5, forgive its first stretch, and do not expect anyone aboard to say anything briefly.
Biography
J. Michael Straczynski is an American screenwriter, producer and director. He created the science fiction series Babylon 5 (1993–1998), on which he served as writer, producer and director, writing 92 of its 110 episodes and devising its planned multi-year story arc.
Born in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1954, Straczynski attended Southwestern College and San Diego State University. He has created other series including Jeremiah (2002–2004) and Sense8 (2015–2018), and written screenplays for films such as Changeling (2008) and Thor (2011). He has also written extensively for Marvel and DC Comics.
