JMS on Captain Power

J Michael Straczynski served as Executive Story Consultant on Captain Power and was largely responsible for the story arc of the 1st season. Following the revival of interest in Captain Power, JMS got some Captain Power questions posed to him on various newsgroups. The following extracts are reproductions of his posts.

Cap'n Power

Posted on CompuServe
25 November 1995

I found an ep of Captain Power at Wal-Mart for $2.00. Should I buy it?

Well, either buy it or burn it....

Re: JMS: Why no action figures

Posted on USENET
26 April 1995

Captain Power was, certainly, an extreme case, and yes, I walked off that show after the first season because I felt the merchandising was starting to drive the show, and determine where the stories were going to go. That won't happen on this show because I won't *let* it. If that makes me a little leery on this stuff...well, that's better than being too eager, I suppose.

Off Topic?

Posted on USENET
27 January 1995

Sci-Fi Channel has indicated many times that they would like to acquire Captain Power, but (in what I must say I think is a doofy move) the producer won't release the show unless SFC agrees to finance new eps. Cart before the horse, if you ask me. Get the show on first, create the need, THEN do more.

Doofy, I tell you. Doofy, doofy, doofy. Maybe even doofiest.

JMS! HELP! RE: B5-Capt Power

Posted on USENET
9 November 1994

I had very little to do with Captain Power after walking off the show because I thought there was too much power being given to the merchandising aspect. And I'm not sure how much to reveal; I can say that Larry DiTillio, who came in after me as story editor, edited an entire season worth of scripts; 24 scripts are lying around, waiting to be filmed. I kinda gave him the elements I wanted to see dealt with, and left. (I seem to remember a Starlog interview with Larry a couple of years back where the arc is pretty much spelled out for year two.)

NOTE: For an extract of that article, See DiTillio Speaks - The Shape of Wars to Come

Re: ATTN: JMS: Position on Captain Power?

Posted on USENET
1 July 1996
I was the story editor on Captain Power. The show was created by Gary Goddard, not by me. I was brought in to basically run the story part of it once he had sold it. In that capacity, I was more or less left alone, and could do what I wanted (though the first episode has a lot of Gary's fingerprints all over it). Some of what we did there was pretty good; in other cases, I wouldn't mind if the negatives fell off a pier somewhere and were never seen again by humankind.

Looking for Captain Power

Posted on USENET
12 July 1995

Yeah, the Siskel and Ebert thing was great. For those who didn't hear about this...we worked *very* hard to make Captain Power nominally a show for grownups, screw the toys. And we got hammered in the press, mainly by people who hadn't watched the show. So one day, I'm watching SisBert doing their collective thing, a video round-up installment of their review show...and suddenly they say, look, we don't normally talk about TV series, but there's this one show you gotta check out, it's got a dopey name, and forget the toys, but there's something Going On with this show, it's really got a great story.

It was, alas, too little too late for CP.

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