Will: relax.

You have to understand the way this show is going to be structured.
There aren't going generally going to be a lot of loose threads hanging
around. Episodes will resolve themselves. It's just that, from time to time,
we'll carom off some point that seems tangential, but which will later become
significant. You don't have to watch every episode. Hell, if I do this right
-- and this is one hell of a hat trick, lemme tell you, when it comes to
structure -- you can even watch them out of ORDER, within a season, and still
follow what's going on. The trick is to make it so that if something slips
past, the viewer doesn't trip over it. And when you do an episode that you've
set up before, that set-up should in some subtle, non-heavy-expository way, be
re-established for those who might not have seen the episode.

Telling people "This is a five year arc" in a big way almost as a warning
is actually more destructive than constructive; it might lead people to think
that they need to commit five years of their lives to get the whole story, and
it's hard to get people to commit to even one ten-hour miniseries. You can
watch any part you want, and get a good, solid, independently enjoyable hour-
show out of it. You can come in at any point you want. The key is that the
more you watch, the more you will pick up on the nuances and the threads we're
going to be playing with. Generally, we're going to keep those threads a bit
light in the first season, then begin to draw in more of the general story arc
in the second and subsequent seasons. Let's use the first year to get the
audience comfortable with the B5 universe, and with our characters, and in a
handful of episodes, carefully begin leading everyone where we want them to
go, so that when we start to accellerate things in year two, those who've been
with us from the start can get right into it, and those who come to the show
late can play catch up without any problem.

jms