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
Boy oh boy! You are gonna LOVE Season 3!
Also, "fucked by cast changes" is the tip of the iceberg. Some people think the show was cursed. When you're done with the series, look up the status of the main cast as of today.
Also again, check out this archive: http://www.jmsnews.com/ It has JMS' thoughts on the show, posted back when internet newsgroups were popular.
I already cried a little bit about it okay thanks
It's so weird how much of this show's lore is literally "yeah at this one convention back in 1997 the cast..." etc. Maybe if I paid attention to star trek or other shows with big convention attendance I'd see something similar but it really does feel like a uniquely babylon 5 thing where people have this oral tradition passed down of what the show Could Have Been. Yes i know jms's own posts aren't oral tradition but you get what i mean
I mean yeah I believe it, it's just kinda wild how much of a struggle it seemed to have been to make this show at all, and then all of these extra difficulties just pile on to it, but they still made something pretty good