She was so perfect as Delenn, one of my favorite characters, in my all-time favorite show. Babylon-5 was a big part of my formative years and some of her best scenes and voice still rattle around in my mind. I am truly saddened by this news. The world has lost a great actress and soul, too soon.
In the beginning is the only B5 movie worth watching the rest are garbage, the 5th season was also quite terrible I don’t know how much it was them moving to TNT and how much it was them essentially rushing the 4th with the looming cancellation and tying too many loose ends at the end.
B5 was unique for its time because back then especially sci-fi was essentially still stuck in the syndicated monster of the week model where you had little to no continuity plot wise across episodes because it made the show easy to watch out of order and thus it could easily be syndicated.
Ironically another TV show that started as a mainly syndication format show during the 90’s - Stargate SG1 started to lose steam when they went too heavy on single plot seasons, they came to a point where they’ve essentially ran out of bad guys and they had to invent a new more and more powerful bad guy every season, and at the end even the cast seem to have given up on the show.
With the exception of the final episode, which was filmed along with Season 4 before (as you said) they knew they would get renewed for a 5th. Absolutely gut-wrenching episode.
Still, season 5 does have its moments, like the "We are one" declaration from G'Kar...
Basically half of the main cast (7 out of 14 or 15 depending on how you count) have died below life expectancy for their birth year. The causes of their deaths are all different or at least had very different comorbidities. That is really weird.
I am quite sad to hear this news. Only a week ago I was bingeing on all the old DVDs for Babylon 5. Upscaling on my Sony 4k TV was spot on for all but the CGI generated content which looked as if they were 640x480. Netherlees I enjoyed rewatching it all. RIP, Delenn. I had a huge crush on Ivanova.
The CGI was ruined by publishing in widescreen format. The live shots were filmed wide screen, but the CGI was not, so they chopped off the top and bottom of the screen and called it a day.
Some of the CGI looked like they'd done it on the cheap. I don't see the sense in having ships moving around B5, it's a waste of mass, far better to have them in a parking orbit, especially if B5 is at a Lagrange spot.
Maybe they should redo the CGI if they ever decide to re-release on 4k Blu-ray.
It is very sad. Us Russian kids didn't get to see Star Treks, so B5 was the first real sci-fi TV show that we saw in mid 90s, and it still has a very special place in my heart.
