You see, Richard Biggs and Andreas Katsulas are gone.
Any television series that loses actors, either through dispute or death, can suffer. But this is different. Babylon 5 completed its story in the late 1990s--the novel finished, the author’s pen retired--so the two actors’ work still stands, complete and whole.
About a year ago, Warner Brothers approached Babylon 5’s Great Maker, J. Michael Straczynski, about finally creating a feature film, something that he always wanted to do for the cast.
He couldn’t do it. Not without Richard and Andreas. Not yet.
Instead, Warners Bros. is releasing Babylon 5: The Lost Tales on DVD, the first of a proposed series of anthology stories that work within the show’s universe. The initial two-part volume, Voices in the Dark, features the return of Bruce Boxleitner as John Sheridan and Tracey Scoggins as Captain Elizabeth Lochley, as well as Peter Woodward as Galen, a refugee from the aborted Babylon 5 spin-off Crusade. Future installments should feature Garibaldi, Delenn, Londo Mollari, and other characters long missed. A feature film still may come after that, but only when Straczynski can write it without Dr. Stephen Franklin and Citizen G’Kar.
That is a task both herculean and saddening.
Babylon 5 is the story of a turning point in humanity's future, told from the fulcrum of that chaos—a well-intentioned space station designed for universal peace but regarded as an ill-fated albatross. The human crew deals with squabbling alien races salivating for war, while an ancient threat begins to slowly grow to engulf everyone. Dr. Franklin (Richard Biggs) is the station’s chief medical officer, a xenobiology expert whose morality nearly drives him to his own destruction. Meanwhile, then-Ambassador G’Kar of the Narn plots his government’s latest incursions against their former masters the Centauri, personified by fun-loving and heavy drinking Ambassador Londo Mollari (Peter Jurasik).
Although fans rarely cited Dr. Franklin as a favorite character, Biggs created a flawed but humane man, a seeming anchor in the midst of turmoil. Biggs’ brightest moment came in the 3rd season, when Franklin, always pushing himself too hard to run the overrun sick bay, becomes addicted to stimulants. Finally realizing what has happened, he leaves his job and goes on “walkabout,” hoping to meet the man he used to be:
As a Foundationist, I was always taught that if you’re not careful you can lose yourself in the world. You get to busy with things and not busy enough with yourself. You spend your days and nights fighting someone else’s battles, living someone else’s agendas, doing the work you’re supposed to do, and every day there’s less and less of you in it all. Then, one day, you come to a fork in the road . . . and because you’re distracted, not thinking, you lose yourself. You turn right, and the rest of you, the really important part of you, turns left. You don’t even know you’ve done it, until finally you realize you have no idea who you are when you’re not doing all those things . . . .
I realized I had no idea who I was when I wasn’t being a doctor. I think I was using the stims to avoid facing that. So now I have to fix it.
When Franklin finally comes full circle, on the brink of death, the answer he gets isn’t one he expects to hear. That episode, that experience, was born out of Straczynski’s own life, written into a fictional character’s story arc without realizing until after it happened. It remains one of the most powerful moments of the series, not because of any originality but because of honesty, as well as Richard Biggs’ very real performance.
In his tribute to Biggs in his Babylon 5 script book, Straczynski said Richard had a “perpetual light” about him, and everyone expected him to outlive them all. But on May 22, 2004, Biggs felt tired and went to bed, never to awake again. His passing was sudden and shocking, and his funeral brought everyone together again, no matter what disputes had grown between them. Biggs loved everyone, and that feeling was returned in kind.
The loss of Andreas, however, is in many ways harder to take. Those who had the chance to meet this private man always were flattened by his dignity, laughter, and warmth, and those who grew to know him loved him dearly. For most fans, the complex dance between G’Kar and Londo is the heart of the series, and the two’s journey is dramatically, unexpectedly natural, filled with great crimes and quiet triumphs. Katsulas brought a soul to an alien persona that shone through whatever make-up and headpieces he had. Andreas claimed, however, that the costume actually helped--it made him feel sexy, allowing him to easily disappear into one of modern science fiction’s greatest characters.
A little more than a month after Katsulas’s death in 2006 after a brave fight with lung cancer, Straczynski and some of the cast of Babylon 5 attended an industry launch for In2TV, an online broadcast service through AOL. The gathering was held at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills, and as they entered, Straczynski stopped at the sight of something that hit him “with the force of a hammer to the chest.”
Just inside the entrance stood G’Kar’s costume--the uniform, the boots, the gloves and gauntlets, the sash--everything but Andreas. It was on a mannequin that ended at the shoulders, so that the costume “seemed to stand alone, and empty.”
Without Andreas, there is no G’Kar. Without Richard, there is no Stephen Franklin. Neither role can be recast; the actors gave everything to these characters, creating friends out of fiction and telling a story with more than just dialogue and plot device.
After both actors passed away, a former crew member created tribute videos for each, using only clips from their performances on Babylon 5. With the Lost Tales promising more Babylon 5 in the future, it’s good to witness the past and how two men enlivened it. They are in character, in the midst of a grand epic tale, but the actor behind glows through. When one loves their role, he can’t help but commit to it fully, wrapping his own personality round the fiction. When roles come to life, they are not birthed from a void; they become an extension of the player, and they become as vital as the breathing.
Thank you, Richard. Bless you, Andreas. We miss you.
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