Re:Did Disney's The Lion King Rip Off an Old Japanese TV Ser...
by philwelch on Friday March 20, 2015 @11:33AM
(#9238314)
Having watched both B5 and DS9, I would agree that they have similarities, but a great number of them are coincidental, overblown, or convergent evolution. For example, in DS9 they eventually get the Defiant and in B5 they eventually get the White Star, but any series that takes place on a space station is eventually going to want some way for the characters to get off the station and take trips.
Did Paramount see that B5 was in development and decide, "we need a space station show too"? Yes. Are the two series especially comparable? No. There's ten times as much similarity between the backstory to Star Trek: The Next Gemeration and the writings of the Argentine Marxist J. Posadas, who believed that nuclear war on Earth (World War III in TNG) would inevitably lead to visitation from benevolent communist aliens (first contact with the Vulcans, as shown in Star Trek: First Contact) who would usher in a utopian paradise of communism (as repeatedly established in TNG, where Picard gives passionate speeches about people no longer caring about accumulating wealth and that there's no money in the future).
But back to the point with Kimba: the article I jj posted in the comments repeatedly mentions references to the notion that Disney was explicitly working on an adaptation to Kimba until their effort to get the rights fell through, to storyboard artists using stills of Kimba as points of reference and to quotes from people involved in the project implying that it was an adaptation.
Did Paramount see that B5 was in development and decide, "we need a space station show too"? Yes. Are the two series especially comparable? No. There's ten times as much similarity between the backstory to Star Trek: The Next Gemeration and the writings of the Argentine Marxist J. Posadas, who believed that nuclear war on Earth (World War III in TNG) would inevitably lead to visitation from benevolent communist aliens (first contact with the Vulcans, as shown in Star Trek: First Contact) who would usher in a utopian paradise of communism (as repeatedly established in TNG, where Picard gives passionate speeches about people no longer caring about accumulating wealth and that there's no money in the future).
But back to the point with Kimba: the article I jj posted in the comments repeatedly mentions references to the notion that Disney was explicitly working on an adaptation to Kimba until their effort to get the rights fell through, to storyboard artists using stills of Kimba as points of reference and to quotes from people involved in the project implying that it was an adaptation.