Why Michael O'Hare left Babylon 5

http://www.blastr.com/2013-5-28/straczynski-reveals-moving-story-why-michael-ohare-left-babylon-5

by qohen • 13 years ago

90 37 13 years ago

alan_cx2• 13 years ago

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

twoodfin2• 13 years 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_cx2• 13 years 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.

twoodfin2• 13 years 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.

baddox3• 13 years 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."

davedx• 13 years 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.

TwoBit• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

wmil• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

lukifer2• 13 years 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.)

mixmastamyk2• 13 years 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.

lotharbot3• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

What's JMS? It's never expanded in the article.

Was that just lousy writer or is this like a prince/rapper thing?

lotharbot3• 13 years ago

The show's creator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Straczynski

mixmastamyk2• 13 years 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

Very interesting reading for fans that I recommend.

stormbrew2• 13 years 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.

Why Michael O'Hare left Babylon 5

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