See, that's one thing that JMS really needs to work on: his build-up. He's got to learn how to rev up his plotlines more quickly. If he keeps writing series such that it takes a full season just to introduce the background and the characters, and *then* he starts tossing in his interesting, long-term plot arcs, well, that's not good.

And if he'd jumped in feet-first and was good right off the bat, I wouldn't have cared about the lack of female characters. There's a lot I can forgive if a story captivates me. Hell, I probably wouldn't even have noticed if the story had grabbed me. But it didn't, so I was able to find all sorts of faults and then tune out after the second ep.

Which is a shame, really, because I know JMS is capable of writing some great stuff. I just don't have the patience to wait for it anymore.