Babylon 5 Actor Jerry Doyle Dies (dailymail.co.uk) 156
Slashdot reader tiqui writes: Jerry Doyle, best known for playing Security Chief Michael Garibaldi on Babylon 5 has passed away in Las Vegas at only 60 years of age. His B5 character was often paired-up with G'Kar (played by Andreas Katsulas who died in 2006 at age 59) and with Jeffrey Sinclair (played by Michael O'Hare who died in 2012, also at age 60) He seems to have lead an interesting life. Cause of death not yet known.
Slashdot reader The Grim Reefer quotes the BBC: Fellow Babylon 5 actor Bruce Boxleitner tweeted that he was "so devastated at the news of the untimely death of my good friend", while astronaut Scott Kelly said the news was "very sad to hear".
Slashdot reader The Grim Reefer quotes the BBC: Fellow Babylon 5 actor Bruce Boxleitner tweeted that he was "so devastated at the news of the untimely death of my good friend", while astronaut Scott Kelly said the news was "very sad to hear".
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It is sad. But this story is 2 days old. Good job slashdot.
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Re: Peekabo? (Score:2)
You would never have guessed that.
Now it's time for some daffy duck.
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Security Chief Michael Garibaldi on Babylon 5 has passed away in Las Vegas at only 60 years of age. His B5 character was often paired-up with G'Kar (played by Andreas Katsulas who died in 2006 at age 59) and with Jeffrey Sinclair (played by Michael O'Hare who died in 2012, also at age 60)
Holy fsck, am I glad I never had a role in B5, I'd be dead by now since I'm 62.
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Security Chief Michael Garibaldi on Babylon 5 has passed away in Las Vegas at only 60 years of age. His B5 character was often paired-up with G'Kar (played by Andreas Katsulas who died in 2006 at age 59) and with Jeffrey Sinclair (played by Michael O'Hare who died in 2012, also at age 60)
Holy fsck, am I glad I never had a role in B5, I'd be dead by now since I'm 62.
Well, Boxleitner obviously is still alive at 66, and Mira Furlan and Peter Jurasic seem to be fine at 60 (Mira has a little over a month to break the spell). Bill Mumy is 62, and Stephen Furst 61. So not every Babylon 5 actors dies at 60 (or younger)
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Security Chief Michael Garibaldi on Babylon 5 has passed away in Las Vegas at only 60 years of age. His B5 character was often paired-up with G'Kar (played by Andreas Katsulas who died in 2006 at age 59) and with Jeffrey Sinclair (played by Michael O'Hare who died in 2012, also at age 60)
Holy fsck, am I glad I never had a role in B5, I'd be dead by now since I'm 62.
Well, Boxleitner obviously is still alive at 66, and Mira Furlan and Peter Jurasic seem to be fine at 60 (Mira has a little over a month to break the spell). Bill Mumy is 62, and Stephen Furst 61. So not every Babylon 5 actors dies at 60 (or younger)
Are we sure it's really them, or just a bunch of Minbari in changeling nets?
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You know what? It kind of makes me very angry.. The joke "they'll be dead before the networks ever okay a B5 update" just doesn't seem at all funny anymore. And holy f@#$.. He was only around my age. Somehow I always thought I was younger than the cast of the show...
Don't believe it (Score:2)
Garibaldi faked his own death to get to the truth about who hacked the Democrats.
Damn B5 is one of the few series I want to see either remade, or expanded upon. Modern cgi would make those space battles even more epic.
Re:Don't believe it (Score:5, Insightful)
Garibaldi was awesomely acted by Doyle and he will be missed. RIP. Too young to die at age 60.
Time to binge B5 for my respects. I would love to see a prequel called "B4", mostly because I like puns. Any remake would be able to examine closely the tropes of POV and "anyone can die" as they reimagine the series as a space epic. Game of Thrones in space is something that could potentially get a huge audience and would definitely be welcomed by all.
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We know what happened (to) B4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Actually, according to Jinxy we know what happened to all the previous stations *except* B4 - all destroyed almost immediately. B4 though, we only know the very beginning of its story, and a few scraps of thousand year old legend. Could actually make for a wonderful prequel setting - almost no details and all that continuity demands is successful near-defeat of the Shadows.
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Game of Thrones in space is something that could potentially get a huge audience and would definitely be welcomed by all.
God no. Bad enough with JRRM chronicling the lives of everyone on one planet, let alone a galaxy full of them!
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Garibaldi was awesomely acted by Doyle and he will be missed. RIP. Too young to die at age 60.
Time to binge B5 for my respects. I would love to see a prequel called "B4", mostly because I like puns. Any remake would be able to examine closely the tropes of POV and "anyone can die" as they reimagine the series as a space epic. Game of Thrones in space is something that could potentially get a huge audience and would definitely be welcomed by all.
The prequel would likelly disappear before it got finished....
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[quote]I would love to see a prequel called "B4", mostly because I like puns.[/quote]
That is going to be a pretty boring prequel. Maybe the History Channel would show it as a Modern Marvels special.
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I don't know... even with the flaws, Severed Dreams is still probably one of the most spectacular space battles of the small, or large screen-- not because it was massive (which it was), but because it was *personal*. The textures could be a bit more detailed, sure, and perhaps the particle effects could be amped up-- but I don't think it would change the impact the battle had on the viewer.
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The difference vs TNG was that they didn't keep repeating the same CGI over and over every single damned episode. So how many epic space battles did TNG have with more than 2 ships? We are talking about dozens of ships here.
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Actually they did. If you binge B5, you'll see it. Small CGIs like a guy in a space suit or some repair bot, you see these basically every other episode. Nothing major, though.
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Or had discovered the production boosting benefits of factories...
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I think it wasn't the ships they were objecting to, but to the similarity in scenes.
Of course, considering how much more expensive CGI was at the time, it's hardly surprising. I mean we had a full Moore's Law cycle just between the ending of ST:TNG and the beginning of B5.
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Except that time is far less relevant than the fact that we had more than a doubling of available rendering performance just between the lingering tail end of one show and the beginning of the next.
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I think it wasn't the ships they were objecting to, but to the similarity in scenes.
Well, having two dozen ships of all races all going in the same direction with all guns blazing doesn't look too different from the same ships shuffled around all going in the same direction with all guns blazing. Not after the tenth such shot.
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No it didn't.
Yes it did. The Bajoran lightship [wikia.com] was the first major use of CGI in s Star Trek series.
However, the battles in The Way of the Warrior [youtube.com] weren't.
Do tell me how shit that looks compared to the battles in Babylon 5. Or how there are too few ships in one shot.
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B5 didn't have the budget for models, ST TNG spent millions on the models and filming them, B5 could never have done that.
Bull (Score:1)
Name those games that gad better graphics than B5. The whole point of the offline rendering of the B5 graphics on Commondore Amigas with Video Toasters was that NOBODY was able to do that in real-time back then.
There are two more points to make:
B5 used CG to do things they never could have afforded to do with models, and the CG was the best on TV at the time. B5 was the pioneer for this and proved it could work. This paved the way for Star Trek to shift to CG.
B5 holds up as well as it does even with its ver
Re: Don't believe it (Score:2)
By the standards of today it's clunky, but for the time it was good. And it was used in a good way too where it didn't become intrusive to the story.
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No, it was horrible even at the time. My friends and I all mocked the CGI segments.
Every time it switched from the live action parts to the CGI stuff was jarring because it looked so unrealistic and out of place. The end result is I would get immersed in the story and then one of the space scenes would pop up and ruin the illusion.
On original (NTSC) or on DVD (digital)? The Video Toaster systems were advanced for the day, but they output broadcast-quality video. When the DVDs were mastered, I believe that the original data was lost and it wasn't possible to re-generate the CGI to the higher video quality that DVDs offer.
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Seems like you and your friends lack all imagination, sucks to be you.
Wait, what? You needed "imagination" to make the B5 visual effects look good to yourself? Could one have used Dope or LSD instead?
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I could never take those crappy CGI scenes in B5 seriously. They would have been better just using models.
On B5's budget? Not a chance in hell.
The only reason it was possible to do space scenes that were *far* more extensive and three-dimensional than those of the Star Trek series despite having a smaller budget was because they used the new, cheaper CGI that came along in the early 90s.
I'm guessing that to do the equivalent scenes using traditional models would have pushed the cost into Hollywood movie territory. That obviously wasn't going to happen, not even on Star Trek's budget.
I appreciate that it's
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Star Trek's budget really wasn't that much higher
B5 had a budget of $800K per episode. Star Trek TNG had $2M.
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Star Trek's budget really wasn't that much higher
B5 had a budget of $800K per episode. Star Trek TNG had $2M.
Nope, as the AC said. You probably are confusing that with "Space: Above and Beyond" from the same time. And we all remember how great that looked. No, wait, nobody remembers, and we certainly don't see many reruns because that show flopped.
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Star Trek's budget really wasn't that much higher, but the space scenes, ships and effects looked far more realistic than anything in B5.
Whether Star Trek's budget was 2.5 times higher ($2 M) or only 1.6 times ($1.3 M), the fact remains that it had far fewer (and generally much less complex) space scenes than B5.
As I said, you couldn't do scenes of B5-level complexity using models on a Star Trek TV budget, let alone a B5 one.
And you keep going on about video game FMV being supposedly better than B5; I saw the pre-rendered intro sequence for (the CD versions of) the infamous Rise of the Robots on YouTube a couple of months back (see here [youtube.com])
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As I said, you couldn't do scenes of B5-level complexity using models on a Star Trek TV budget, let alone a B5 one.
Ahh, but are those complex scenes of many big ships in one shot actually realistic for a space battle? At least as screen filling as they are in B5 as opposed to tiny looking things shooting even tinier things at each other?
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Star Trek's budget really wasn't that much higher, but the space scenes, ships and effects looked far more realistic than anything in B5.
OTOH, I don't think Babylon 5 had a single shot done outside a sound stage. Lot's of exterior shots on all Star Trek shows.
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Except that chick that played the telepath. She wasn't that hot, but damn she was sexy. Patricia something if memory serves. Too lazy to google.
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Biggs was only 44 when he died of an aortic dissection. The others all died at only 59 to 60 years old. Far too young, from cancer, heart disease, and a drug overdose.
I read JMS still holds the rights to any B5 movies. He stated he was hoping to make one that included some of the original cast. But at this rate it won't be possible for much longer. Very sad.
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And Tim Choate (Zathras)
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And Tim Choate (Zathras)
Wait, which Zathras was that? Was that Zathras or his brother Zathras?
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And Tim Choate (Zathras)
Wait, which Zathras was that? Was that Zathras or his brother Zathras?
It was the quiet one of the family, Zathras.
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It was the quiet one of the family, Zathras.
He lived a sad life and died a sad death. He was pleased with the symmetry.
Neither... (Score:2)
It was Zathras
Re: Statistical anomalies... (Score:2)
Star Trek had a smaller cast, and we don't know how many extras that have passed away.
Katsulas did some Star Trek too b.t.w.
What was great with B5 was how the characters developed, they weren't static.
If doing new stuff in the B5 universe then it's better to have the original remaining cast just doing guest appearences. But some in the original that were junior can have risen to new positions. Doing a remake is not going to be good. Better to catch up on threads found in the original.
Some more about the ori
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Katsulas did some Star Trek too b.t.w.
As did Patricia Tallman and both Na'toths were in DS9 too
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Katsulas did some Star Trek too b.t.w.
As did Patricia Tallman and both Na'toths were in DS9 too
As was Majel Barrett.
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Londo Mollari did.
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Some more about the origins of technomages, the years following the drakh plauge - and did someone finally take care of the drakh considering that Vir didn't seem to be burdened by them?
A lot of that is covered in The Passing of the Technomages trilogy of books, which are really good. The other two trilogies, one about Centauri Prime and the other about the Psi Corps, are also really good.
G'Kar Said It Best... (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Welcome home, Mr Garibaldi!!!" The thing that made Babylon 5 stand out - especially given the vast amount of money being thrown at other contemporary sci-fi shows of the era, like Star TreK: Next Generation - was the passion that cast and crew had for the show and the respect they had for each other.
I think it's the story wide arch and that most of the episodes helped form the characters, explaining why they did the things they do later. If you watch TNG and miss five episodes you've barely missed a thing, it's the same crew on the bridge and their characters barely change at all. Sure it's a new situation every time but you can pretty much drop the crew from the first episode into the last episode and it'd all play out the same.
That said, I missed the beginning of the show and never got into it at fir
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And if you think about the time this show was being recorded, the cost of computer time to render all that
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In the beginning, they rendered on the same Amiga 4k's with accelerator boards they modeled on, but later they rendered on a network of Raptor machines(Alphas running Windows NT)
Sinclair said it: (Score:2)
Michael O'Hare is saying:
"Hello, old friend."
Re: Sinclair said it: (Score:2)
Well, at least they didn't let it go out over the show. And O'Hare had some paranoid problems so I can imagine that he might have been a bit of a problem off the set. That's why Boxleitner came in, to allow O'Hare to get treatment. Unfortunately it wasn't entirely successful. And for those that haven't experienced the dark side it's hard to understand.
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O'Hare had mental issues and it seemed very tactless of Doyle to publicly make fun of him like he did.
I don't know how much the rest of the cast knew about O'Hare's psychological diseases. JMS had promised O'Hare to not say anything about it until after O'Hare had passed. Doyle may have said things without knowing how serious O'Hare's problems were.
Babylon 5 was the best (Score:5, Interesting)
In honor of Doyle, think I might fire up the series on my Plex server. Saw this news the other day, as it came across the radio business pipeline (he was a somewhat conservative talk show host with a daily show). As a side story, when Doyle was first starting his radio show into syndication, he was making the rounds at the radio biz conventions. I got to sit and talk with Doyle for about an hour at the radio and records talk convention in NY that year. He was trying to pitch his show to all the program directors and network big-wigs (I was then working for a talk talent consulting firm). Of course, all I wanted to talk to Doyle about was Babylon 5. You know what, he indulged me for an hour.. and let me be a fan. He seemed actually excited to talk about Babylon 5 with a guy who was a fan of the show. He was a real gent and very regular guy. Hopefully he's riding a Kawasaki Ninja with Lennier out on the rim of the broken wheel.
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Sounds like an awesome guy; lucky you and perfect B5 reference.
Babylon 5: Final Farewell (Score:5, Interesting)
to the stars we return,
from now until the end of time,
we therefore commit this body to the deep.
The Curse of Babylon 5 (Score:5)
Michael O'Hare - Died 2012, aged 60
Jeff Conaway - Died 2011, aged 60
Andreas Katsulas - Died 2006, aged 59
Richard Biggs - Died 2004, aged 44
Tim Choate - Died 2004, aged 49
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Jerry Doyle - Died 2016, aged 60
Michael O'Hare - Died 2012, aged 60
Jeff Conaway - Died 2011, aged 60
Andreas Katsulas - Died 2006, aged 59
Richard Biggs - Died 2004, aged 44
Tim Choate - Died 2004, aged 49
*
Didn't we learn the other day, that deep spacemen die early from heart disease . . . ?
I guess that it now applies to actors, who play roles as deep space astronauts.
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They must not of paid them very much, rich people are supposed to live longer than this.
A curse??? (Score:1)
Dude, they have been extremely lucky to be in such a great show!
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BLAH! (Score:4)
"Survive, and maybe one day, forget how much it can hurt to be human. " - Michael Garibaldi
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The first or second regular-season episode (i.e., not the pilot) had the Soul Hunters. The Soul Hunters thought they were preserving the soul, which would otherwise be destroyed, while many others thought they imprisoned the soul (which happened in the case of one planet, as shown in one of the movies). This is never clarified in general. Therefore, at the end of the episode, Delenn was either freeing or destroying souls, we don't actually know which.
At that time, I wasn't used to that kind of moral a
Like something out of a bad film (Score:1)
Did they keep a cursed mummy or radioactive waste on the set or something? I've never heard of so many actors dropping dead after working on one set. And compared to the 5 year olds playing with crayons that make up most of the acting community these days most of them were Picassos.
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I've often wondered that myself, the only other instance I can remember of something like this is the cast of the John Wayne movie The Conqueror. The movie was filmed in the desert where atomic testing was done and many of the cast including John Wayne fought and ultimately died of cancer. So many of the stars of B5 have died it's like the show was cursed or something, it's pretty terrible.
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The movie was filmed in the desert where atomic testing was done and many of the cast including John Wayne fought and ultimately died of cancer.
The Utah desert where the move got filmed was downwind from the Nevada test site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downwinders#Health_effects_of_nuclear_testing [wikipedia.org]
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Close enough to effect a large number of the cast and crew.
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Close enough to effect a large number of the cast and crew.
Yeah, the fact that Wayne and probably most of the crew where also heavy smokers had nothing to do with it. This massage brought to you by the American Tobacco Institute.
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Yes, most of the crew including Wayne were smokers but would it have been as bad without the radiation exposure? Also I read a article a number of years ago (I can't find it right now otherwise I'd post a link) that at least three members of the crew died of cancers not usually associated with smoking such as leukemia and Agnes Moorehead (mostly know as Samantha's mother from Bewitched) died of uterine cancer, again not a type of cancer usually associated with smoking. Susan Hayward (the leading lady) died
Re: Like something out of a bad film (Score:2)
John Wayne did smoke quite a lot too, so did a lot of people at the time so cancer isn't a surprise.
Sad news (Score:2)
My favourite show of all time. He was perfect for the role and he played it well. Similar to JMS, can't speak much for his political leanings, but he was a genuine and authentic person from any interviews I've seen of him and snippets of his show.
Re:Sad news (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, JMS mentions his politics here in a good obituary - http://www.epictimes.com/07/28... [epictimes.com]
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He was perfect for the role and he played it well.
Agreed. He and Peter Jurasik were particularly brilliant in their roles.
Although I've heard his marriage with Andrea Thompson (Talia Winters) ending and the circumstances around it may have led to some of the some of the cast and plot issues issues with her sudden departure. Not suggesting Doyle was even at fault there... just an interesting behind the scenes footnote that reverberated through the show.
can't speak much for his political leanings
Yeah, he was practically channeling Rush Limbaugh on his show at times. And that I will fully put at Doyle
Re: Sad news (Score:2)
The love/hate relation of G'Kar/Garibaldi/Mollari with all the conspiracies and occasional seasoning with Bester is part of what made the show interesting. But even other characters were important even if they actually were more replaceable.
Sometimes an actor is just right for the role, so to the degree that the role is tuned to the actor.
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As a true nerd, I watched all the episodes on the DVDs that had commentary twice, once with and once without. Everyone else always seemed to not actually be their characters in the commentary. Doyle, on the other hand, just projected Garibaldi, and I couldn't pick out two distinct personalities.
Hopefuly he didn't succumb to Garibaldi's issues (Score:2)
Although I do suspect heavily that Doyle had alcohol-related problems much like his character. Sad.
Re:Hopefuly he didn't succumb to Garibaldi's issue (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure it's widely known, but several years ago while he was visiting Germany for a convention he was mugged and badly beaten to the point where he had to have a metal plate in his skull. Bill Mumy mentioned that on Facebook in his memorium. Until the autopsy results are released it's impossible to know but to have a steel plate attached to your skull he suffered significant head trauma, it may be related to that but I'm sure we'll find out.
Re: Hopefuly he didn't succumb to Garibaldi's issu (Score:2)
Having problems with alcohol is probably why he also did the Garibaldi role so good.
As for Conaway he had severe back pains forcing him on drugs, which plauged him.
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I read or heard somewhere that Doyle insisted that, if Garibaldi was going to have alcohol problems in the final season, it be shown realistically in all its ugliness.
Bester did it (Score:2)
Where was Wlter Koenig at the time?
I know it would be impossible to prove a telepath committed murder
Re: Bester did it (Score:2)
A telepath can't cure an addiction.
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I don't buy it. (Semi-spoilers) Considering what Bester was able to do to Garibaldi in season 4, I think telepaths do have the means.
Not many of the cast left (Score:2)
I wonder how Claudia Christian is doing?
The curse strikes again!
http://www.imdb.com/list/ls056207990/
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RIP Jerry Doyle (Score:2)
People claim... (Score:4, Funny)
That George R. R. Martin is the most frightful writer because all of his characters are killed off. But J. Michael Straczynski is far far more terrifying because his writing kills off the actors. :'-(
Here are the 2 promo clips he did last year (Score:2)
Re: FBI spin story pops here IMMEDIATELY (Score:2)
Paranoid much?
yup, you're right (Score:2)
I was in a hurry and missed it.
I know the difference but was not even thinking of "lead", the material. I was distracted while typing the brief post which when I typed it was timely and, I thought, of interest to the Slashdot community. I was thinking of "lead" (pronounced "leed") as in "to lead" while reading the original article in one window and composing my post in another and keeping an eye on the clock with little time before I needed to tend to something. I'm not a grammar NAZI, but this sort of erro