Working on Babylon 5 was quite an experience. Although I have worked on Broadway, in movies, and in TV, this was my first full-time TV series and my first venture into science fiction. What little I knew about the genre when I began the show, I learned from my son, Ben. For years he'd taken me into comic-book shops and bookstores, looking for all the items children collect--books, cards, caps, etc. What I discovered on Babylon 5, however, was quite different.
Working in TV is not all that dissimilar to working on stage. You follow the instructions of the director, learn your lines, hit your mark, and do the best job you can with the material. You try to discover who the character is that you are portraying and make that character come to life, for you and the audience. With Babylon 5, however, computer graphics are a large part of the overall production. While standing in front of a blue screen, you must use your imagination to "see" the creature in "Grail," the massive machine on Epsilon 3 in "A Voice in the Wilderness," and the destruction of Babylon 5 in "Babylon Squared." You can get some idea of the image from the director, but it's still very much up to you to make the scene believable.
During that first year of Babylon 5, I was fortunate to work with some truly talented people--including David Warner in "Grail," Theodore Bikel in "TKO," and Morgan Sheppard in "Soul Hunter." They were generous with their insights and advice about the acting profession.
I learned a lot while working on Babylon 5. Joe Straczynski has put together a wonderful story, and working with people like John Flinn, Mira Furlan, Richard Biggs, and Bill Mumy made the experience a very enjoyable one. When I returned to the set to make "War Without End," the cast made me feel right at home, and I very much enjoyed working with Bruce Boxleitner.
My favorite episodes are "By Any Means Necessary," "Babylon Squared," and "And the Sky Full of Stars." I like these episodes not only because I had a lot to do in them, but also because each had a significant part to play in the overall story. While "By Any Means Necessary" is not truly an arc story, it gives you a lot of insight into the character of Commander Sinclair.
Going back to Babylon 5 for "War Without End" last year was somewhat like completing a journey--Sinclair's return from Minbar, taking Babylon 4 back in time to fight the Shadows, transforming into Valen. Joe Straczynski has worked very hard to tell this story, and I am happy to have been a part of it.
Michael O'Hare (Commander Sinclair)
PILOT: "The Gathering"
Cast
Commander Jeffrey Sinclair ...............Michael O'Hare
Lt. Commander Takashima ....................Tamlyn Tomita
Security Chief Michael Garibaldi ..............Jerry Doyle
Ambassador Delenn ..................................Mira Furlan
Ambassador G'Kar ..........................Andreas Katsulas
Ambassador Londo Mollari ....................Peter Jurasik
Dr. Benjamin Kyle .................................Johnny Sekka
Lyta Alexander ....................................Patricia Tallman
Guest Stars
Carolyn Sykes .........................................Blaire Baron
Del Varner ..................................................John Fleck
The Senator ...........................................Paul Hampton
Eric .................................................Steven A. Barnett
Kosh .......................................Ardwright Chamberlain
Traveler .................................................William Hayes
Tech. No. 2 ...........................................Linda Hoffman
Tech. No. 3 ..........................................Robert Jackson
Businessman No. 1 ...........................F. William Parker
Hostage ......................................Marianne Robertson
Businessman No. 2 ...................................David Sage
Guerra ........................................................Ed Wasser
Ambassador Kosh will be Babylon 5's fourth alien ambassador, joining Delenn of the Minbari, G'Kar of the Narn, and Londo Mollari of the Centauri. Sinclair, Garibaldi, and Lieutenant Commander Takashima are waiting to meet him by Docking Bay 9 when the security alarm goes off. They rush into the docking bay and, through the mist, see the Vorlon ambassador lying on the floor.
The only way Dr. Ben Kyle can hope to save Kosh is by getting inside his encounter suit, but Takashima stops him with orders from the Vorlon High Command. "They insist that the ambassador's encounter suit cannot be removed . . . for security reasons."
Sinclair knows the Vorlons don't want anyone to see what they look like, but he isn't prepared to let Kosh die. He orders all recording devices in the medlab to be turned off and relies on Kyle to adhere to his doctor's vow of confidentiality. Kyle opens the suit, and a shaft of light streams out from the crack. Kyle stares into the bright white glow with astonishment, seeing, for the first time, the face of a Vorlon.
Kyle's tests show Kosh was poisoned, but the doctor cannot save the ambassador unless he knows exactly what happened. The only way to find out is by telepathic scan, and that means Lyta Alexander.
"No! Absolutely not!" she insists at first. But Kyle eventually persuades her that lives are at stake and she enters the isolab where Kosh lies. She takes off her right glove and plunges her hand into the Vorlon's encounter suit. Her eyes snap wide open as she makes contact and flashes back to Kosh's memory of the docking bay. There is a man coming toward him with an outstretched hand. The two of them shake hands, and the man presses a poison tab onto Kosh's wrist. The contact is broken, and Lyta screams, pulling her hand away and staggering out of the isolab to identify the assassin--Commander Sinclair.
G'Kar demands that Sinclair be sent to the Vorlon homeworld for trial and conspires to ensure the Babylon 5 council votes in favor of his proposal. Meanwhile, Garibaldi has found evidence that someone smuggled on board a Changeling Net, which could make the wearer look like anyone, even Commander Sinclair.
Sinclair and Garibaldi find the real assassin by tracing the Changeling Net's energy source. They go in with PPG rifles poised, but a laser blast knocks Garibaldi to the floor almost immediately, and Sinclair realizes he must go on alone. He stalks the corridor until someone jumps him and knocks the PPG rifle out of his hand. The two of them slug it out in a fist fight, as Sinclair's opponent morphs from one person into another. Sinclair throws him against a power grid, and his body is bombarded with electricity until his true form is revealed--a Minbari. The alien smiles up at Sinclair and tells him, "There is a hole in your mind."
It makes Sinclair wonder about the twenty-four-hour period in his life he can't remember. He was at the Battle of the Line at the end of the Earth-Minbari War when the Minbari surrendered on the point of victory. He never knew why.
Lyta Alexander, the first telepath sent from Earth to Babylon 5, arrives on the station as preparations are being made to greet a much more mysterious figure: a Vorlon. "No Human's even seen one," Security Chief Garibaldi tells Commander Sinclair. "Three expeditions have been sent into Vorlon space to establish formal relations. None of them came back."
Babylon 5 was just a dream in the mind of its creator, J. Michael Straczynski, until it was given form in the pilot, "The Gathering."
"What a rush of creativity it was," says Peter Jurasik, whose character Londo provided the opening narration. "It was everyone shooting from the hip. A flash of color here and a dash of energy over there, and we were just bolting from set to set. The characters were just emerging from the ground in front of your eyes. They'd never been done before, especially with an alien--you're making them up out of whole cloth."
"There was no time to get to know the character," agrees Andreas Katsulas, who plays G'Kar. "It was like a prearranged marriage. You've had no courtship, your parents have arranged it, and there you are: you have to unite yourself with this other person, and that's how the pilot was. A lot of the scenes that I had were in council chambers, G'Kar at his windup, speech-making peak, trying to persuade and argue and fight, so it demanded an energy--it's just sink or swim. I remember the first day, and I had a series of scenes where there was no time to say, 'Well, can't I maybe color this a little differently?' No, it was just go blind with instinct headlong into the fire."
"It was the first TV pilot I had ever shot," remembers Michael O'Hare, who took command in "The Gathering" as Sinclair. "It's a particular demand to shoot a pilot because it's designed to see if the show's going to be bought and if many more episodes are going to be shot, so it was an extraordinary amount of pressure. I spent a lot of time just lying exhausted on the floor of the lobby when I wasn't out in front of the camera."
"I think Jay Leno said it best," adds Jerry Doyle (Garibaldi). "When they asked him about his first time hosting the Tonight show, he said it was like sex for the first time. It didn't actually go the way you wanted it to, it was over too quick--and you couldn't wait to do it again!"
For the writer Joe Straczynski, who was finally getting a chance to see his vision come alive, it was an attempt to show off the complex world of Babylon 5 to a new audience. "It was fairly complex, and I realized in retrospect that I tried to cram too much stuff in," he says. "I was desperate to establish the world and then get moving. The theory, you must understand, was you would have the pilot and the very next week you would have the show. It was never meant to be a stand-alone. It's like an introduction to the show. But the way it was sold, the pilot aired first, and then nine months later came the series. Had I known that was going to be the game plan, I would have written it very differently. I would have spent a little less time on backgrounding and exposition and a little bit more time on character stuff and more on action."
A lot of action scenes and character moments became the victims of the editor's scissors, and around twenty minutes of material ended up on the cutting-room floor. "I wasn't used to being an executive producer at the time. I'd never had the final cut before," explains Straczynski. "In that kind of situation you can go one of two ways: you can abuse it and go nuts or you can be cautious. I went the latter route. When the director turned over his cut, even though a lot of things bothered me about it, I was not confident enough of my skills as an editor or anything to say 'Okay, I'm going to redo this now.' It still bothers me that I hadn't stood up for what I thought we should be doing."
Some scenes disappeared entirely while others were shortened. Small character moments were often lost, like Laurel Takashima's admission to using the hydroponics garden to grow real coffee, a habit later transferred to Ivanova in the series, and Sinclair persuading a Human not to have sex with an exotic alien because her species eat their mates afterward. The most significant casualties, however, were the subplots involving Delenn and Sinclair's love interest, Carolyn Sykes.
One of the strongest scenes in "The Gathering," for example, where Sinclair tells Carolyn about his experiences at the Battle of the Line, was originally twice the length. "It was my favorite scene of the film," says Michael O'Hare. "From the actor's viewpoint, character is the most important thing, and it's the first thing to go. The scene you see in the pilot is a very much tourniqueted version of the scene that was actually shot. One of the problems in shooting a pilot is that you have more shot than you use, and, unfortunately, scenes that have to do with character, in other words with a more personal view toward the individuals--who's the woman in his life? what's her view of things?--are the sorts of things you get more in the series."
Carolyn was originally supposed to meet with Delenn and be decisive in persuading her to help the commander. Delenn initially refuses, explaining she is only on Babylon 5 as an observer, but later decides "It is not enough simply to observe." The final confrontation with the Changeling Net alien originally had a section where Sinclair and Garibaldi are trapped in the alien sector, unable to breathe its poisonous air, until Delenn, using surprising strength and speed, rescues both of them.
In fact, much about Delenn in the pilot is different from what she became in the series. She was supposed to be an androgynous alien played by an actress but with a mascu-line voice. "It would really help to sell the alien," was Joe Straczynski's original thought. "You have a male character with very female mannerisms and a very androgynous look. Then the male Delenn would have gone into the chrysalis [at the end of the first season] and not only emerged partly Human but female as well. But the effect on the voice with the technology that we had then was not terrific. It really didn't sound proper. My feeling was if we couldn't make it work we weren't going to do it, so I went back to her original voice."
For Mira Furlan, who plays Delenn, the experience was not a pleasant one. "I remember my pain and frustration and unhappiness at being covered with all the makeup. I thought, 'This is the end.' They wanted to change my voice, and they wanted to put lenses into my eyes. That really brought me to the stage where I was saying, 'Is this what they need me for? Neither my face is good enough nor my voice? Not even my eyes?' "
Mira had recently escaped civil war in the former Yugoslavia and left behind a successful career in films and on the stage. When she first joined Babylon 5, she was still trying to adjust to life in the United States. "It kind of was in some strange accord with my life at that time," she reflects. "My whole world was disrupted and in that way my whole persona, my private persona with the language, with the context, the country--everything that I knew was completely destroyed, and so was my acting personality. I was not who I was before. I had to, as they say, 'reinvent myself.' But on the other hand, I was very happy to find my work again and to find my profession again . . . I definitely learned a lot through it, but it was painful."
Despite some reservations, the pilot was successful on many levels. First and foremost, it was strong enough to ensure that a series followed, but moreover it established the background, the environment, and the look of Babylon 5. It also set up the central mystery of Kosh and what lay inside his encounter suit. At that stage, it was a secret Joe Straczynski was keeping almost entirely to himself. "That was pretty amazing," says Patricia Tallman, who had to scan Kosh as Babylon 5's first telepath Lyta Alexander. "Joe told me something that no one would know for the next four years about the Vorlons. He told me, 'You're seeing God, you're touched by God, you're becoming a disciple.' And I never told anyone."
EPISODE 1: "Midnight on the Firing Line"
Cast
Commander Jeffrey Sinclair ...............Michael O'Hare
Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova ........Claudia Christian
Security Chief Michael Garibaldi ..............Jerry Doyle
Ambassador Delenn ..................................Mira Furlan
Dr. Stephen Franklin ..............................Richard Biggs
Talia Winters ...................................Andrea Thompson
Vir Cotto ...............................................Stephen Furst
Lennier ........................................................Bill Mumy
Na'Toth ..................................................Caitlin Brown
Ambassador G'Kar ..........................Andreas Katsulas
Ambassador Londo Mollari .....................Peter Jurasik
Guest Stars
The Senator ..........................................Paul Hampton
Carn Mollari .........................................Peter Trencher
Centauri No. 1 ...........................................Jeff Austin
Kosh .......................................Ardwright Chamberlain
Newsperson ...........................................Maggie Egan
Narn Captain .................................Mark Hendrickson
Delta 7 ...........................................Douglas E. McCoy
Tech. No. 1 ..................................Marianne Robertson
On Babylon 5, Centauri ambassador Londo Mollari discovers that the attack was the work of his people's old enemy, the Narn. He is enraged at the slaughter of unarmed civilians and worried about his nephew, Carn Mollari. It was Londo who arranged for him to work on Ragesh 3 because he thought it would be safe. "If Carn is dead, then there will be war," he tells Sinclair. "Today, tomorrow, the day after, it doesn't matter . . . There will be war."
It adds to the problems of the Human command staff on Babylon 5. Earth is caught up in the election of a new president, while raiders are hitting supply ships with weapons more powerful than standard raider guns. A newly assigned telepath, Talia Winters, has arrived and is finding it difficult to introduce herself to Lieutenant Commander Ivanova. "You will excuse me," Ivanova says, avoiding Talia's gaze, "but I'm in the middle of fifteen things, all of them annoying."
Londo has drunk himself into a crazed state. He has heard what his government intends to do about the attack on Ragesh 3. "The great Centauri Republic, the lion of the galaxy, will do nothing!" he screams at Vir, hurling a bottle of booze against the wall and shattering it into tiny pieces. He asks the other worlds at the council meeting to intervene. But Narn ambassador G'Kar informs the council that the Centauri have refused to go to the aid of their own outpost and shows a message from Londo's nephew explaining that
Ragesh 3 invited the Narns to their world.
Londo, seeing he will get no help from the Babylon 5 council, decides to take matters into his own hands. But on his way down the corridor, he collides with Talia Winters, and his thoughts of killing G'Kar are so strong, they flash into her mind. Moments later, Garibaldi confronts Londo and threatens to kill him if he dares attack the Narn ambassador. Londo knows he is beaten for the moment, but he has seen his death in a dream and believes one day he will die with his hands around G'Kar's neck. "It seems I am still on target for my appointment twenty years from now," he says.
Sinclair returns from a mission to confront the raiders, bringing with him a Narn hostage and evidence that the attack on Ragesh 3 was unprovoked. It is enough to bargain with G'Kar to get his forces to withdraw.
Ivanova sits at the bar as news filters in of Luis Santiago's impending victory in the Earth presidential election. Talia Winters joins her, and Ivanova explains that her mother was a telepath. She was forced to take drugs to suppress her talent when she refused to join the Psi Corps or go to prison. "The light in her eyes just went out bit by bit," she says, "and when we thought she could go no further, she took her own life." Talia is sorry about what happened to her mother but explains that the law is designed to stop telepaths from invading others' privacy. She hopes their relationship can start over again on better terms. "I very much doubt it," says Ivanova, and turns away.
A flash of light and a jump point opens, spilling a fleet of ships out into the space around the agricultural colony Ragesh 3. "Notify Centauri Prime! Tell them we're under attack!" cries a Centauri as the ships open fire and blast him into oblivion.
"I wanted to open up the show more than I did before," says Joe Straczynski, "take it out in space, show the starfuries, which were not known in the pilot--there wasn't time and we weren't ready--and to compensate by having a little more in the way of character stuff and action. A lot of folks responded well to those changes."
One of those folks was Peter Jurasik, who saw his character of Londo expand in some emotional directions not seen in the pilot. "What was great about it was that it did start to access some of the heavier tones in the character--which was wonderful to play," he says. "The comedic stuff was always at hand, or on face, for Londo--that was the delight. It was the hook of the character; you kind of wanted to go to a party with him. But what was wonderful about this was that Joe, really early on, was laying down the seeds for some heavier tones."
The Narn invasion of Ragesh 3 placed G'Kar and Londo at each other's throats for the first time. "Nothing like getting your hands around an old Narn neck!" says Peter. "There was a certain desperation in that. Joe likes to have hand-to-hand combat, and I really delight in any script where I can get my hands around a Narn neck."
"The Ragesh 3 thing began to set up the whole Narn-
Centauri conflict, which would play off pretty much through the
course of the series," says Joe. "I wanted to get that thread in motion. I wanted to show that this is not just about the station: this place is a nexus for a lot of different locations to come together, that this is a big-canvas story. The very first episode also sets up the political election back home, and we would play into that through the rest of that season, culminating in the last episode with the assassination of President Santiago."
The first episode also brought with it quite a few changes. Laurel Takashima disappeared, as did Dr. Ben Kyle and Lyta Alexander. Delenn's appearance, and to some extent her character, was also altered. After Joe had decided that a woman playing an androgynous alien with a male voice wasn't going to work, Delenn became more feminine and her makeup was softened, much to the relief of the actress. "I had so much more freedom," says Mira Furlan. "It was a whole different experience, and I enjoyed it very much. I enjoyed having my mouth, my nose, my cheeks, my neck. It was still a lot to deal with, but it brought me back to myself somehow."
The changes had a substantial impact on the storyline, particularly in the loss of certain characters' story arcs when the characters themselves disappeared. But there was never any thought of starting afresh and pretending the pilot never happened. "My feeling is fiction, like life, is open to changes, and let's use that to our benefit," says Joe Straczynski. "I just felt that we could use it as ammunition. So we referred to all the characters who weren't there anymore at various points in the story, and I made a few changes here and there. Originally, Takashima was going to be the one who shot Garibaldi in the back [in "Chrysalis"] or was involved in that conspiracy. That was a loss, but I just figured, 'Let's use it.' "
"Midnight on the Firing Line" was always intended to be the first show broadcast, but it was actually filmed fourth. Unlike those in later seasons, many of the first-season episodes were filmed out of order to allow for getting the special effects finished in time or, in the case of "Midnight," getting the sets built.
However, for Andrea Thompson, who joined Babylon 5 as the station's new telepath, it really was her first time on the show. "I remember walking onto the set, the main corridor, and I just got chills in my spine," she says. "I was always a science fiction fan since I was a kid. I grew up on it and really loved it. It was just a really magical experience, and I felt that I was part of something really important, something really big."
She admits to being a little nervous in her first scene, introducing herself to Ivanova (Claudia Christian) in the Observation Dome. "It was the first day of filming, and I wanted to do really well, and it was a little bit intimidating. Even actors get starstruck sometimes, and it was the idea of working on this science fiction series that I was starstruck over. So they rolled the first take, and I walk out, and I say, 'I'm Talia Winters, licensed commercial psychopath!' Claudia just roared and broke into laughter. The whole crew did, and I had to join them because it was really kind of funny. That really broke the ice, and we went on to shoot the scene. I went on to be very close with Claudia. We spent many afternoons drinking champagne after that."
It was also the first episode that Andrea got to meet and work with Jerry Doyle, who later became her husband in real life. Their first scene was in the transport tube, where she asks Garibaldi for his advice about approaching Ivanova. "We rehearsed it several times, and it went very smoothly. Then we rolled, and I go up, press the elevator button, and the doors open and there's Jerry standing there with his arms crossed and his trousers down around his ankles! It was really a pretty priceless moment. There were a lot of laughs that day.
"But it made the scene easier to shoot," she continues. "Oftentimes, especially when you know the cameras are rolling, you get a little tense and a little uptight, and I've always found it's the best way to make a scene work if you're not really focusing. I know a lot of people who are method actors, and they have to be really concentrated and all that, but for me it always works best if I'm laughing and loose beforehand."
Talia's introduction culminates in the scene toward the end where she finally gets to talk to Ivanova in the casino bar. It helps explain a little more about telepaths, the Psi Corps, and the laws that apply to people with psychic ability. It also brings into focus the friction between the two characters as Ivanova explains how her mother suffered at the hands of the Psi Corps, the organization that Talia represents.
"It was the first time that you saw any quality other than being uptight and very militaristic," says Claudia Christian (Ivanova). "I think it was good in showing her very tough faŤade slowly etched away by this person who has such insistence in talking to her. It was one of the nicer moments in Babylon 5, one of the most tender. And it was heavily laced with sexual overtones when we were shooting it because Andrea and I were just joking around so much."
This scene was followed (after the commercial break) by Garibaldi showing Delenn his second favorite thing in the universe. This turns out to be the classic cartoon Duck Dodgers in the 241/2th Century, which had the added bonus of being owned by Warner Bros., avoiding any royalty payments to show the clip.
"[It showed] A whole new element in Delenn's character, which doesn't come often," says Mira Furlan. "There are a couple of scenes like that throughout the whole series--you can count them on the fingers of one hand, the so-called funny scenes. I enjoyed it very much, and I would love to do more of that stuff."
"I thought Mira was good in that," says Jerry Doyle. "I remember we were sitting there looking at a blank screen--they weren't showing us the cartoon; they laid that in later--and as we were doing the popcorn thing, I remember her picking up a kernel of popcorn and looking at it. Another actor might have picked up some popcorn and started eating, but she [Delenn] had never seen popcorn before, so she was intrigued by what this food item was. Then I laughed because of what she did. What she did made it real for me in that moment, and when I was laughing, it was more at her and her spin on the scene than at the cartoon."