The Babylon 5 20th anniversary reunion panel

29 May 2013 Rob Buckley US TV 4 Comments

Babylon 5 was, in retrospect, one of the most influential sci-fi shows on the past two decades. It demonstrated that TV sci-fi could be clever and could have ongoing storylines, with proper world-building; it also showed that you could use CGI for all your space scenes, without models. It affected Star Trek: DS9 while that show was still being made.

Twenty years later, and the surviving Babylon 5 cast recently reunited with creator J Michael Straczynski for a panel in Phoenix, which you can watch below. Along for the show were: Julie Caitlin Brown, Jason Carter, Claudia Christian, Robin Atkin Downes, Jerry Doyle, Mira Furlan, Stephen Furst, Peter Jurasik, Walter Koenig, Bill Mumy, Tracy Scoggins, Pat Tallman and Andrea Thompson.

Amongst its revelations: Michael O’Hare had to leave the show because tragically, he was suffering from mental illness, including paranoia and hallucinations.

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  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.

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