And like don't get me wrong I'm not trying to criticize the cast members because for the most part they either had legitimate medical issues or were being paid shit (they all were) or in this case I guess Andrea Thompson being married to Jerry Doyle made things uncomfortable in addition to that, but like, god damn
Michael O Hare was just a straight up better lead actor than Bruce Boxleitner. Sorry Bruce but holy shit him having to leave downgraded the whole show. Maybe he gets better later on but he really feels like K-mart Captain Kirk
Now Andrea Thompson is gone and it just totally ruined her entire character arc and robbed us of a gay romance that they only even started to explicitly show in this episode! And it just doesn't make any sense within the show. She's supposed to have been like super scanned and modified by her psionically ascended lover in season 1, and he just like, didn't notice that she had this whole ass programmed personality riding along? We're robbed of any payoff to that, and in this episode, like, I dunno. It's just weird because it's explicitly stated that the telepathic password will trigger the sleeper personality and destroy the initial personality and literally not a single person is like, "wait, won't that effectively kill that person?"
I read something claiming Andrea Thompson wanted more screen time and JMS said no or something and if that's the case idk, big fuck up there, I didn't particularly like her character that much but I spent like half of both seasons going "What, did they forget they've got a Station Telepath?" So IMO she should have had more screen time like, by default.
In lamenting these cast changes i realize na'toth's actress left after season 1 and i didn't even realize because there's hardly been any na'toth. Shit sucks i liked her
I also saw redditors talking about even more cast changes fucking up the show like lol god damn babylon 5 had it rough
Uh-oh, I'm apparently only 4 episodes away from this one...
I'm committed at this point, but main oh man do I hope it gets better. I feel pretty tolerant of the tropes of 90s television, but you get jerked around a lot in early Babylon 5. And I get that they don't have the budget to be doing episodes with their alien cast every week, but it kind of stands out how they will just be gone for several episodes.
I do appreciate the ambition, it's pretty impressive that they managed to make this show. But it makes the flaws that much more obvious.
Definitely. I'm glad we got the one season of Michael O Hare, and I kinda thought they didn't take advantage of the transition for more storylines where the new crew had to warm up to Sheridan. It feels like I'm taking longer to warm up to him than the other characters (Delenn, especially)