9 ms·

Why Michael O'Hare left Babylon 5

90 points by qohen 13y ago

alan_cx 13y ago
As a full on B5 fanboi, thanks for posting this.
twoodfin 13y ago
Wow. JMS was very active on the message boards while the show was on the air (Delphi first, IIRC, then rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5), and of course the topic of the O'Hare->Boxleitner switch was a heated one. His explanations were always rather unsatisfying, and now it's clear why. Babylon 5 was not great television. But it certainly should get credit for being pioneering television, both for its reliance on CGI vs. traditional FX, and its wholehearted devotion to a serialized story (and not merely an ever evolving "soap opera") over the traditional episodic format. And with a season-spanning canvas on which to tell stories, it had more than a few transcendent moments.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Not great television? IMHO, and IMHO only, it was the best TV series ever made, for the reasons you cited. I have never seen character driven serialisation like it, before or since. Even though its 20 years old, and visually iffy by today's standards, people still come to it fresh and enjoy it as much as people did all those years ago. OK, rationally, it has problems, but to call it not great is doing is a gross dis-service.
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    There's lots to enjoy about it, and certainly I was more or less obsessed with it from the first time the pilot aired as a "Movie of the Week", well before it finally started syndication. But the writing, acting and direction all average a B+ at best, and that's being generous. Maybe we have different definitions of "great television", but mine requires a fairly low incidence of cringe-inducing dialog and stilted acting. Again, that's not to say there weren't some great performances and beautiful, memorable scenes. I could watch Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas (RIP) spar for hours.
    - stormbrew 13y ago
      I think the scope of it, really being one of the first truly serialized SF shows to succeed, more than makes up for its shortcomings in other areas. There's rarely been so cohesive of a whole series story as B5 on TV and that's laudable all on its own.
  - baddox 13y ago
    Most reviews I have heard agreed with you. I have heard nothing but praise for the show. But after watching the first 2 or 3 episodes several years ago the best word I can think of to describe it is "unwatchable."
    - kposehn 13y ago
      I do have to say, keep going. Season 1 is...an inkling of something good coming. Season 2, B5 starts to get interesting Season 3, they hit their stride and then hit you upside the head mid-season (no spoilers!) Season 4...holy shit Season 5, things wrap up. Not.
      - majormajor 13y ago
        Yeah, for a new watcher, I'd really only recommend a handful of episodes from season 1 (And the Sky Full of Stars, Signs and Portents, A Voice in the Wilderness, Babylon Squared, Chrysalis). Then maybe about half of season 2, then all of seasons 3 and 4. I swear there used to be a page on the Lurker's Guide[1] that had arc-plot-heavy episodes in bold or something, but I can't find it at the moment. [1] http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html
      - rosser 13y ago
        As amazing as Season 4 was, I can only begin to imagine the levels of awesome it would've reached if they hadn't had to wrap up all the open storylines out of concern that they wouldn't get renewed for the fifth season. If they'd gotten renewed in time, the Season 4 finale would have been Intersections in Real Time.
        kposehn 13y ago
        I know! Season 5 was empire building (according to JMS on Lurker's Guide) but he really wanted to split 4 across up further.
      - baddox 13y ago
        Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever endure an unenjoyable series for that long, at least until I run out of series that I enjoy from the first episode.
  - davedx 13y ago
    Battlestar Galactica was the only series to do what Babylon 5 did, but better, IMHO. Both of them were awesome, but I've rewatched all of BSG several times now.
    - philwelch 13y ago
      B5 had a much more cohesive story. BSG was better in other respects (acting, SFX) but the story was mostly improvised from season to season and it's much less satisfying.
- TwoBit 13y ago
  Not great television? It often ranks as one of the top ten sci fi series of all time. It's in my top three. Season 3 and 4 in particular are almost without peer.
  - gilgoomesh 13y ago
    It was innovative. It was epic. It had a huge effect on Sci-Fi television (which was largely Star Trek:TNG and nothing else at the time). But it was cheesy and uneven. Yes, seasons 3 and 4 were some of the best sci-fi ever made (at the time, at least). But season 1 was mediocre at best and has aged pretty badly. Increased production values for new TV also makes a lot of Babylon 5 difficult to watch, now.
    - wvenable 13y ago
      Speaking of production values, at least JMS had the foresight to film B5 in widescreen. I got B5 on DVD a few years back and watched the whole series again with my wife and I didn't feel it aged that badly except for the first season.
      - Osiris 13y ago
        The Wikipedia article goes into this. They wanted to film widescreen but certain necessary equipment wasn't provided so they filmed in 4:3 but with the idea that you could crop it to 16:9 later. Also most of the SFX were done in 4:3 but could be cropped. The widescreen conversion thing was executive short sightedness at it's finest!!! We offered to do ALL of Babylon 5 in widescreen mode if Warner Bros would buy us a reference monitor so we could check our output. (only $5000 at the time) Ken Parkes (the "Business affairs" guy) and Netter (penny wise, but pound foolish) said no! So we did everything so it could be CROPPED to be widescreen! Each blamed the other by the way. Doug Netter said, "Ken Parkes said no". Ken Parkes said, "Doug Netter said no". SHEESH!!! So for $75 an episode they could have had AWESOME near Hi-Def.
        wvenable 13y ago
        Like so many other great shows, B5 was destroyed by network executive short-sightedness.
- wmil 13y ago
  It's tragic that there's not enough interest in the property to re-do the CGI in higher res. They saved all of the assets so that they could be re-rendered later. Warner Bros lawyers demanded all copies, and promptly lost them.
- smegel 13y ago
  B5 was before my time...Stargate SG1/Atlantis were my favourite contemporary SciFi series by far (dont even mention Universe to me). However, when I went back on watched B5 I was blown away...the depth of character development and relations, the politics, blew me away. It was great television for me even though it looked like watching a well worn VCR tape on an old death-ray CRT TV.
PhantomGremlin 13y ago
Sort of OT to the main topic, but, as they briefly mention in the story, quite a few actors from B5 have died: Michael O'Hare Richard Biggs Andreas Katsulas Jeff Conaway Tim Choate If it wasn't "great" television, what is? I'll take G'Kar sparring with Londo any day over the pablum on TV now.
- mrexroad 13y ago
  i didn't know that g'kar (andreas katsulas) and zach (tim choate) had passed away. thanks for posting. g'kar and londo's story lines were nothing short of fantastic.
INTPenis 13y ago
Story wise I think it blew Star Trek out of the water, I really do. I much prefer the dark, gritty and realistic locales of B5 over the white polished Apple spaceships of Star Trek.
- lukifer 13y ago
  Spend a little time in the DS9 universe, which arguably has more in common with B5 than the rest of the Treks. (Supposedly, the show's core concept was stolen from a pitch by Straczynski which was declined, with B5 following through shortly after on a different network.)
  - mixmastamyk 13y ago
    DS9 was enjoyable and had a few great episodes, but I don't know that its had a lasting effect on me as B5 did.
  - lotharbot 13y ago
    As a big fan of B5 (it's one of two shows I own on DVD; the other is Firefly) who is currently 5 seasons into DS9 on Netflix, I find the "stolen concept" concerns overblown. I've heard people try to compare tiny elements from the two shows, saying "look at what a rip-off this is" (as if the Trek writers took JMS's five-season script and cribbed from it liberally), but it strikes me as more like the Trek writers took a little inspiration from JMS's pitch and then went an entirely different direction with it. I mean, they are both space stations with numbers in their names. The remaining similarities are equally superficial. They're not really trying to tell the same type of story -- B5 is about massive-scale diplomacy (with war as an extension of diplomacy, like Clausewitz said) and empire-building. DS9 is mostly standard Star Trek style one-off episodes: aliens who feed on creativity, time travel to Roswell, Bajoran politicians abusing power in trying to recover stolen farm equipment. Even the "big" storyline of the Dominion War is a much smaller scale than B5's Shadow War. Sure, they both had huge battles, but I'm inclined to blame that on advances in CG -- ST:TNG certainly referenced huge battles, like during the Klingon Civil War, but never put them on screen. Thus, I contend that DS9 has way more in common with the rest of the Treks than it does with B5, and liking one won't translate into liking the other.
gcb0 13y ago
What's JMS? It's never expanded in the article. Was that just lousy writer or is this like a prince/rapper thing?
- lotharbot 13y ago
  The show's creator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Straczynski http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Straczynski
mixmastamyk 13y ago
A shame that O'Hare couldn't continue, he was great in the role. Last year rbanffy posted an interesting link by a writer exploring what could/would have happened had he stayed: http://www.webcs.com/b5/neverwas.html http://www.webcs.com/b5/neverwas.html Very interesting reading for fans that I recommend.
- stormbrew 13y ago
  If you look in the right places you'll actually find the original 5 year outline from the extra volume of the B5 script books. There were bigger changes than anything on that page. Notably that B5 would have ended on the brink of the Shadow War, not after the end of it. WWE might have even been essentially the series finale.

90 points by qohen 13y ago

As a full on B5 fanboi, thanks for posting this.

Wow. JMS was very active on the message boards while the show was on the air (Delphi first, IIRC, then rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5), and of course the topic of the O'Hare->Boxleitner switch was a heated one. His explanations were always rather unsatisfying, and now it's clear why. Babylon 5 was not great television. But it certainly should get credit for being pioneering television, both for its reliance on CGI vs. traditional FX, and its wholehearted devotion to a serialized story (and not merely an ever evolving "soap opera") over the traditional episodic format. And with a season-spanning canvas on which to tell stories, it had more than a few transcendent moments.

alan_cx 13y ago
Not great television? IMHO, and IMHO only, it was the best TV series ever made, for the reasons you cited. I have never seen character driven serialisation like it, before or since. Even though its 20 years old, and visually iffy by today's standards, people still come to it fresh and enjoy it as much as people did all those years ago. OK, rationally, it has problems, but to call it not great is doing is a gross dis-service.
- twoodfin 13y ago
  There's lots to enjoy about it, and certainly I was more or less obsessed with it from the first time the pilot aired as a "Movie of the Week", well before it finally started syndication. But the writing, acting and direction all average a B+ at best, and that's being generous. Maybe we have different definitions of "great television", but mine requires a fairly low incidence of cringe-inducing dialog and stilted acting. Again, that's not to say there weren't some great performances and beautiful, memorable scenes. I could watch Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas (RIP) spar for hours.
  - stormbrew 13y ago
    I think the scope of it, really being one of the first truly serialized SF shows to succeed, more than makes up for its shortcomings in other areas. There's rarely been so cohesive of a whole series story as B5 on TV and that's laudable all on its own.
- baddox 13y ago
  Most reviews I have heard agreed with you. I have heard nothing but praise for the show. But after watching the first 2 or 3 episodes several years ago the best word I can think of to describe it is "unwatchable."
  - kposehn 13y ago
    I do have to say, keep going. Season 1 is...an inkling of something good coming. Season 2, B5 starts to get interesting Season 3, they hit their stride and then hit you upside the head mid-season (no spoilers!) Season 4...holy shit Season 5, things wrap up. Not.
    - majormajor 13y ago
      Yeah, for a new watcher, I'd really only recommend a handful of episodes from season 1 (And the Sky Full of Stars, Signs and Portents, A Voice in the Wilderness, Babylon Squared, Chrysalis). Then maybe about half of season 2, then all of seasons 3 and 4. I swear there used to be a page on the Lurker's Guide[1] that had arc-plot-heavy episodes in bold or something, but I can't find it at the moment. [1] http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html
    - rosser 13y ago
      As amazing as Season 4 was, I can only begin to imagine the levels of awesome it would've reached if they hadn't had to wrap up all the open storylines out of concern that they wouldn't get renewed for the fifth season. If they'd gotten renewed in time, the Season 4 finale would have been Intersections in Real Time.
      - kposehn 13y ago
        I know! Season 5 was empire building (according to JMS on Lurker's Guide) but he really wanted to split 4 across up further.
    - baddox 13y ago
      Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever endure an unenjoyable series for that long, at least until I run out of series that I enjoy from the first episode.
- davedx 13y ago
  Battlestar Galactica was the only series to do what Babylon 5 did, but better, IMHO. Both of them were awesome, but I've rewatched all of BSG several times now.
  - philwelch 13y ago
    B5 had a much more cohesive story. BSG was better in other respects (acting, SFX) but the story was mostly improvised from season to season and it's much less satisfying.
TwoBit 13y ago
Not great television? It often ranks as one of the top ten sci fi series of all time. It's in my top three. Season 3 and 4 in particular are almost without peer.
- gilgoomesh 13y ago
  It was innovative. It was epic. It had a huge effect on Sci-Fi television (which was largely Star Trek:TNG and nothing else at the time). But it was cheesy and uneven. Yes, seasons 3 and 4 were some of the best sci-fi ever made (at the time, at least). But season 1 was mediocre at best and has aged pretty badly. Increased production values for new TV also makes a lot of Babylon 5 difficult to watch, now.
  - wvenable 13y ago
    Speaking of production values, at least JMS had the foresight to film B5 in widescreen. I got B5 on DVD a few years back and watched the whole series again with my wife and I didn't feel it aged that badly except for the first season.
    - Osiris 13y ago
      The Wikipedia article goes into this. They wanted to film widescreen but certain necessary equipment wasn't provided so they filmed in 4:3 but with the idea that you could crop it to 16:9 later. Also most of the SFX were done in 4:3 but could be cropped. The widescreen conversion thing was executive short sightedness at it's finest!!! We offered to do ALL of Babylon 5 in widescreen mode if Warner Bros would buy us a reference monitor so we could check our output. (only $5000 at the time) Ken Parkes (the "Business affairs" guy) and Netter (penny wise, but pound foolish) said no! So we did everything so it could be CROPPED to be widescreen! Each blamed the other by the way. Doug Netter said, "Ken Parkes said no". Ken Parkes said, "Doug Netter said no". SHEESH!!! So for $75 an episode they could have had AWESOME near Hi-Def.
      - wvenable 13y ago
        Like so many other great shows, B5 was destroyed by network executive short-sightedness.
wmil 13y ago
It's tragic that there's not enough interest in the property to re-do the CGI in higher res. They saved all of the assets so that they could be re-rendered later. Warner Bros lawyers demanded all copies, and promptly lost them.
smegel 13y ago
B5 was before my time...Stargate SG1/Atlantis were my favourite contemporary SciFi series by far (dont even mention Universe to me). However, when I went back on watched B5 I was blown away...the depth of character development and relations, the politics, blew me away. It was great television for me even though it looked like watching a well worn VCR tape on an old death-ray CRT TV.

PhantomGremlin 13y ago

Sort of OT to the main topic, but, as they briefly mention in the story, quite a few actors from B5 have died: Michael O'Hare Richard Biggs Andreas Katsulas Jeff Conaway Tim Choate If it wasn't "great" television, what is? I'll take G'Kar sparring with Londo any day over the pablum on TV now.

mrexroad 13y ago
i didn't know that g'kar (andreas katsulas) and zach (tim choate) had passed away. thanks for posting. g'kar and londo's story lines were nothing short of fantastic.

INTPenis 13y ago

Story wise I think it blew Star Trek out of the water, I really do. I much prefer the dark, gritty and realistic locales of B5 over the white polished Apple spaceships of Star Trek.

lukifer 13y ago
Spend a little time in the DS9 universe, which arguably has more in common with B5 than the rest of the Treks. (Supposedly, the show's core concept was stolen from a pitch by Straczynski which was declined, with B5 following through shortly after on a different network.)
- mixmastamyk 13y ago
  DS9 was enjoyable and had a few great episodes, but I don't know that its had a lasting effect on me as B5 did.
- lotharbot 13y ago
  As a big fan of B5 (it's one of two shows I own on DVD; the other is Firefly) who is currently 5 seasons into DS9 on Netflix, I find the "stolen concept" concerns overblown. I've heard people try to compare tiny elements from the two shows, saying "look at what a rip-off this is" (as if the Trek writers took JMS's five-season script and cribbed from it liberally), but it strikes me as more like the Trek writers took a little inspiration from JMS's pitch and then went an entirely different direction with it. I mean, they are both space stations with numbers in their names. The remaining similarities are equally superficial. They're not really trying to tell the same type of story -- B5 is about massive-scale diplomacy (with war as an extension of diplomacy, like Clausewitz said) and empire-building. DS9 is mostly standard Star Trek style one-off episodes: aliens who feed on creativity, time travel to Roswell, Bajoran politicians abusing power in trying to recover stolen farm equipment. Even the "big" storyline of the Dominion War is a much smaller scale than B5's Shadow War. Sure, they both had huge battles, but I'm inclined to blame that on advances in CG -- ST:TNG certainly referenced huge battles, like during the Klingon Civil War, but never put them on screen. Thus, I contend that DS9 has way more in common with the rest of the Treks than it does with B5, and liking one won't translate into liking the other.

gcb0 13y ago

What's JMS? It's never expanded in the article. Was that just lousy writer or is this like a prince/rapper thing?

lotharbot 13y ago
The show's creator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Straczynski http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Straczynski

mixmastamyk 13y ago

A shame that O'Hare couldn't continue, he was great in the role. Last year rbanffy posted an interesting link by a writer exploring what could/would have happened had he stayed: http://www.webcs.com/b5/neverwas.html http://www.webcs.com/b5/neverwas.html Very interesting reading for fans that I recommend.

stormbrew 13y ago
If you look in the right places you'll actually find the original 5 year outline from the extra volume of the B5 script books. There were bigger changes than anything on that page. Notably that B5 would have ended on the brink of the Shadow War, not after the end of it. WWE might have even been essentially the series finale.