In your opinion, the best Babylon 5 actor

IMO, Andreas Katsulas (G'Kar) who sadly passed away earlier this year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Katsulas

Runner up would have to be Peter Jurasik (Londo Mollari).

Best guest actor: Wortham Krimmer as Emperor Cartagia in the fourth season. He chewed so much scenery, he's still coughing up plywood.

So was Mollari. I'd go with your choices too.

Walter Koenig was great as Bester, as I said in the Star Trek thread. What an evil bastard! :D

...charecters like his, make a show.

Turned in some solid performances as Bester. JMS gave him much more to work with than Walter ever saw on ST.

Speaking of villains, how about Ed Wasser as Mister Morden? Somewhat one-note, but great performances nonetheless. So slimy and evil and smug....

I just picked up my first two B5 DVD box sets (out of five). Guess which two of five seasons I went with first.

Hint: I saw all of the seasons from the first to the last.

Having just watched all of them in order myself. :)

Morden was a good character. Very one-dimensional, as you pointed out, but fitted his part perfectly.

We have a winner. I will prolly pick up season 2 next. Seasons 1 and 5? Maybe, maybe not.

better than season 2, IMO. It is true that season 2 did start the story moving, but at a pretty slow pace compared to seasons 3 and 4.

(I think part of the reason for this is that he rushed to get the main story finished by the end of season 4, because season 5 was in doubt).

Season 5 does still contain some interesting story. The last few episodes are fairly dull though.

Season 1 is by far the weakest, although I still prefer it to most Star Trek.

AKA Penn and Teller.

Season 5 didn't have much of an arc. It was all denouement and a springboard for Crusade. Plus I hated Byron. It really should have been Claudia's season but she left the show and was replaced with the less capable and less attractive Scoggins.

While season 2 has some real clinkers, it contains a lot of fore *shadowing* of the events in season 3.

My brother hates Byron too. He's just watched season 5; when I last spoke to him on the phone, he said "I'm glad Byron is dead!"

:rofl:

Crusade was the spin-off that TNT cancelled before the first episode was broadcast.

I saw all the eps that were broadcast and it was OK, better than OK actually, but not exactly B5 at its peak. But then again, it took B5 a couple seasons to reach its stride so who knows? How long did it take Seinfeld to find its audience? No network would that patient today. Thank god My Name is Earl got off to such a quick start.

It's a very, very strange business.

For example, the other DVD set I bought the other day was last Tuesday's two disc rerelease of Dazed and Confused with audio commentary by the director, Rick Linklater. Linklater expresses his frustrations throughout as in he only got 70% of anything he asked from the studio. He attended screentests where the audiences would laugh and seem to be enjoying the film yet turn in negative reviews. Those reviews denied him his wide release. Yet today, it's a cult classic and one of my personal top twenty favs. Maybe even top ten. Maybe.

As I remember seasons 1-4 were made by Warner Brothers, who knew that it was a 5 year story. Unfortunately they decided to cancel the show at the end of season 4 which forced JMS to rewrite much of the end of season 4 to include what was supposed to be in season 5 to complete the story arc rather than leave it hanging.

Then the Sci-Fi channel came along & offered to make season 5 of a series that had effectively just been finished so JMS had to write a season of stories that somehow related to the overall Babylon 5 story arc that he'd just wrapped up in season 4.

IMO, the best actor was Andreas Katsulas closely followed by Walter Koenig (Koenig might have edged it if he'd been in more episodes).

the actor that played Lorien (the merlin type charactor) was also excellent.
the worst to me was Jeff Conway I never thought he fit in

guess i am a big paste eating nerd. :)

My buddy RL, who supplied set dressings (the photography hanging in the crew quarters) to the show and got to make an appearance as an extra in an episode.

His website is here: http://www.thebarrens.com/

I actually have his "View from the Shuttle" hanging above my bed, just like Sheridan did. No he didn't hitch a ride into space. Fish eye lens shot of the sky combined with some darkroom magic and simply hung upside down.



And you call yourself a big paste eating nerd!