History Trivia / BabylonFive

** Delenn's mentor, Draal, is played by Louis Turenne in the two-parter "A Time in the Wilderness". In all of his subsequent appearances, he is played the hammy John Schuck. This is {{Hand Wave}}d by explaining that Draal has [[FountainOfYouth age-regressed]] as a result of being linked to the Great Machine.

* CreatorBreakdown: By Season Five, JMS was exhausted and in poor health from years of overwork and an unhealthy work environment.

* ActorSharedBackground: Creator/JerryDoyle was an alcoholic in his youth, and the lingering effects killed him at age 60, decades after he'd quit. He's the reason why Garibaldi falling off the wagon was a big plot thread in Season 5, as he did not wish to risk downplaying how destructive the illness is.

* QuoteSource:
** CharacterDevelopment
** MindRape

* RealLifeWritesThePlot: JMS revealed after Michael O'Hare's death that [[PutOnABus Sinclair's departure]]/the introduction of [[SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute John Sheridan]] was because O'Hare had developed schizophrenia during Season 1's filming; it eventually became obvious that the stress of the role was too much for him, and he left the show at JMS' own urging to seek treatment.

** This is the reason why WB hasn't done anything with B5. Warner Bros. TV themselves weren't responsible for B5: WBTV's first-run syndication division was, and they were denied the credit (and the profits); [[https://www.cinemablend.com/television/2407022/why-babylon-5-will-probably-never-return-to-tvthe execs are apparently still bitter about it]].

* NetworkRedHeadedStepchild: Thanks to the PTEN block's quick disintegration and the fact that Warner Bros. higher-ups resented the show (because it was developed outside of WB and the first-run syndication people took charge of it, not the network division, meaning they couldn't take the credit for the show's success; they also would delay renewing the show until the last possible moment, costing the staff time), the show quickly became this after it ended; WBTV execs [[https://www.gamesradar.com/jms-babylon-5-25-anniversary/ prevented JMS from doing anything with the property]] and did not rerun it...until around 2020-21, after the shakeups at Creator/WarnerMedia; this seemed to have cleared the way for not only the show being added to Creator/HBOMax, but a reboot with JMS at the helm being announced for Creator/TheCW.

* CreatorBreakdown: By Season Five, JMS was exhausted and in poor health from years of overwork and an unhealthy work environment: an absurd amount of electromagnetic energy was being routed right into his office. An inspector later said that no amount of money could entice him to spend even an hour in the room where JMS had been laboring for years. The MythArc was noticeably [[{{Padding}} put on hold,]] especially early in the season as he struggled to adjust to [[WrapItUp the compressed plot lines]].

* DigitalDestruction: The [=DVDs=] have an infamously poor transfer, looking actively ''worse'' than the original broadcasts in some situations. The show was originally shot on 35mm film and framed for both widescreen (16:9) and fullscreen (4:3) so it could be broadcast in fullscreen at the time and converted to widescreen later. However, Creator/WarnerBros only had the effects generated in fullscreen aspect ratio. When the decision was made to release the episodes in widescreen, any scene with CGI had the top and bottom of the image cropped and the remaining image was then stretched to match the widescreen aspect ratio. This resulted in a loss of 'crispness' in the pure-CGI scenes, and was particularly hard on any process shot (A shot including both CGI and live-action footage). The result was that the process shots became comically degraded even when compared to their own pure-CGI scenes. Exacerbating the situation was that even the live-action footage wasn't taken from the original 35mm masters (Which could have been upgraded to HD at will) but instead were re-ports of the episodes that had already been converted to widescreen for broadcast in PAL regions. [[https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/22/babylon-5-digital-video-quality/ This article covers the scenario in detail]]. The 2020 remaster sidesteps these issues by using the original film masters and retaining the 4:3 aspect ratio.

** It was the decision of Creator/WarnerBros to only render special effects in the fullscreen aspect ratio, despite the show deliberately being shot so it could be converted to widescreen at a later time. When the time came to release the series on DVD they also chose to re-port of the episodes that had already been converted to widescreen for broadcast in PAL regions instead of going back to use the original 35mm film masters. This resulted in extensive DigitalDestruction, so some parts of the final product looking even worse than the original broadcast.

** The [=DVDs=] have an infamously poor transfer, looking actively ''worse'' than the original broadcasts in some situations. The show was originally shot on 35mm film and framed for both widescreen (16:9) and fullscreen (4:3) so it could be broadcast in fullscreen now and converted to widescreen later. However, even though they could have rendered the effects for widescreen as well, Creator/WarnerBros only had the effects generated in fullscreen aspect ratio. When the decision was made to release the episodes in widescreen, any scene with CGI had the top and bottom cropped and the remaining image was then stretched to match the widescreen aspect ratio. This resulted in a loss of 'crispness' in the pure-CGI scenes, but was particularly hard on any process shot (A shot including both CGI and live-action footage). The result was that the process shots became comically degraded even when compared to their own pure-CGI scenes. Exacerbating the situation was that even the live-action footage wasn't taken from the original 35mm masters (Which could have been upgraded to HD at will) but instead were re-ports of the episodes that had already been converted to widescreen for broadcast in PAL regions. [[https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/22/babylon-5-digital-video-quality/ This article covers the scenario in detail]]. The 2020 remaster sidesteps these issues by using the original film masters and retaining the 4:3 aspect ratio.

** The [=DVDs=] looked like hammered sh*t. The show was shot in widescreen, but framed for both widescreen and fullscreen. They could have rendered effects for widescreen and even HD back in the day, but Creator/WarnerBros were cheap and didn't provide a couple widescreen HD monitors for the effects team. Something like tens of thousands for additional hardware. The rest would have been left to computers running another render overnight from the animation files. Basically at the cost of electricity when it comes to individual episodes. [[https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/22/babylon-5-digital-video-quality/ The already-dreary CGI was made even worse,]] which killed the possibility of a {{remaster}} for a long time. The 4:3 aspect ratio looks so much better in the remaster: nothing important missing from the sides in live-action, and CGI has nothing cropped from the top or bottom.

* RealLifeWritesThePlot: JMS revealed after Michael O'Hare's death that [[PutOnABus Sinclair's departure]]/the introduction of [[SuspiciouslySimiliarSubstitute John Sheridan]] was because O'Hare had developed schizophrenia during Season 1's filming; it eventually became obvious that the stress of the role was too much for him, and he left the show at JMS' own urging to seek treatment.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece:
** "Incoming message for you, Captain; it's Ambassador Mollari." "Londo? ''[snorts]'' Probably calling Collect." (Still funny, though.)
** Zathras proclaiming that he is "trained in crisis management." Buzzwords like that were common in the 90s workplace.
** The Zima ad in the background of ''T.K.O.'' was purposely put in there by as a gag. He said he would be amazed if Zima still existed in the 21st Century, let alone the 23rd. (It actually did--briefly.)

** Ed Wasser is best known for playing the Shadows' MouthOfSauron, Mr. Morden. In the pre-series pilot movie "The Gathering", he has a bit part as an operations staffer named "Guerra". Neither role involved any makeup, so they looked identical, leading to some fan speculation about Morden making an EarlyBirdCameo as a undercover spy. (This was {{Jossed}}.)

* CreatorsPest: The character of Warren Keffer. The studio demanded that [[AcePilot a hot-shot pilot]] be added to the crew. JMS admits to despising that trope. Naturally, he was [[MauveShirt killed off at the earliest possible opportunity]]. He wasn't that bad a character, all told, and he got a respectable death scene which furthered the plot.

* SpoiledByTheCastList: "A Tragedy of Telepaths" suffered from this. Julie Caitlin Brown's name appears in the guest cast list, spoiling the episode's revelation that her presumed-dead-for-two-seasons character Na'Toth is still alive.

** Michael O'Hare was found to be suffering from mental illness and replaced with Bruce Boxleitner in Season Two, though he did make guest-appearances in Season 3 to close out his story.
** Lt. Cmr. Laurel Takashima in ''The Gathering''. For whatever reason, Tamlyn Tomita didn't like the direction the series was heading in, and bailed before the Season One premiere.

* ReferencedBy: In ''ComicBook/ActionComics'' Annual #8, an entry in the ''ComicBook/LegendsOfTheDeadEarth'' crossover event, the two warring species are the Zarn and the Zentauri.

** Numerous, but Michael O'Hare having to leave B5 to treat his mental illness was the biggest. Had he stayed, the "War without End" storyline would occured at the end of Season 5 and had a much-slower burn. Moving the resolution to Season 3 caused an unfortunate plot hole: for the remaining two seasons-and-change, the time-travelling Sheridan knows first-hand that a cataclysmic fate awaits Centauri Prime and does sweet f*ck-all to prevent it, [[IdiotBall which makes him look like a nitwit]] at times. This urgent news concerning the future of his fragile Intersteller Alliance (which Sheridan came back from the dead to co-found) just conveniently slips his mind, without even a token explanation like TemporalSickness.

** Michael O'Hare apparently had Bechterew's disease, along with visible signs if you recognize those. His vertebrae had already begun to fuse by the time he was on [=B5=]; that's why he was on loads of painkillers and sleeping pills. He also suffered from asthma. He had to give up tons of roles because of his poor health. There were other rumors swirling around about drugs or network pressure to hire a more marketable lead, and Jerry Doyle spoke out on the guy in the past. If you ignored Doyle's usual reactionary sentiment, it was clear that O'Hare was suffering from something. His mental health decline forced him to resign as the show's lead, which meant that he had to be replaced. (There was never supposed to be a Sheridan at all.) "War Without End" was filmed when O'Hare got into a good enough state to come back for filming. He was on very strong meds, and the side effects showed. His physical and mental state declined further. By 1998, the year when [=B5=] was originally planned to end, he was in a very poor state; the treatments were never entirely successful. There are convention videos from after he left. He had visible tardive dyskinesia by '96; by '98, he must have been on different meds, likely to get rid of the TD, because he gained plenty of weight. By '99, he looked about 70 years old, and was not even 50.

** Tracy Scoggins was known for playing bombshells or the LovableSexManiac Cat Grant on ''Series/LoisAndClark.'' She is the last sitting commander on Babylon 5, a role which doesn't allow for much humor or {{fanservice}} (although we do see her crawling through ducts in a tank top at one point).

[[folder:A-R]]

* AwesomeDearBoy: Jerry Doyle took up acting because he was a self-made millionaire by 35 and needed a new skillset to add to his portfolio. He just randomly decided to audition for [=B5=] and got cast in it. (Of course he was in some small things prior, most memorably as a Creator/BruceWillis [[SimilarSquad "Wannabe"]] in an episode of ''{{Series/Moonlighting}}''.)
* BlackSheepHit: Notably, around the end of Season 2, the network notes ceased. The studio just stopped sending suggestions and demands, apparently content with JMS doing his thing or just ignoring him completely. This may have had something to do with {{Creator/PTEN}}'s decay from an "aspiring fifth network" to "nickname for the Warner Bros. syndication package".
** It's still one today to Warner Bros.; entries elsewhere on this page discuss how petty and tightfisted they are concerning B5.

** Creator/MichaelOHare (Sinclair) apparently had Bechterew's disease, along with visible signs if you recognize those. His vertebrae had already begun to fuse by the time he was on [=B5=]; that's why he was on loads of painkillers and sleeping pills. He also suffered from asthma. He had to give up tons of roles because of his poor health. There were other rumors swirling around about drugs or network pressure to hire a more marketable lead, and Jerry Doyle (Garibaldi) spoke out on the guy in the past. If you ignored Doyle's usual reactionary sentiment, it was clear that O'Hare was suffering from something. His mental health decline forced him to resign as the show's lead, which meant that he had to be replaced. (There was never supposed to be a Sheridan at all.) "War Without End" was filmed when O'Hare got into a good enough state to come back for filming. He was on very strong meds, and the side effects showed. His physical and mental state declined further. By 1998, the year when [=B5=] was originally planned to end, he was in a very poor state; the treatments were never entirely successful. There are convention videos from after he left. He had visible tardive dyskinesia by '96; by '98, he must have been on different meds, likely to get rid of the TD, because he gained plenty of weight. By '99, he looked about 70 years old, and was not even 50.

** When asked about sequels, Straczynski was known to say that he didn't see how it would be possible "so long as Andreas Katsulas (G'Kar) and Richard Biggs (Dr. Franklin) remain dead." That said, he did ''The Lost Tales'' after their passing, and now with his Hollywood success, there seem to be very early feelers out about a real [[TheMovie movie]]. He also noted that Ta'Lon, played by the still living Marshall Teague, is similar enough to G'Kar that he could be used for further stories. However, with Jerry Doyle's death in 2016, followed by Stephen Furst in 2017, and Mira Furlan in 2021, this is looking less likely.

* CreatorBreakdown:
** It was revealed after O'Hare's passing that he had been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia for the entirety of Season One, in no small part due to the stress of helming a new TV show, but this was not known by the public or his castmates until after his passing. According to JMS, O'Hare held the show up with his bare hands to ensure that the rest of the crew would have a job to go to. But he was in no shape to do it again in Season Two, so he was conspicuously [[PutOnaBus written out]] off-screen.
** By Season Five, JMS was exhausted and in poor health from years of overwork and an unhealthy work environment: an absurd amount of electromagnetic energy was being routed right into his office. An inspector later said that no amount of money could entice him to spend even an hour in the room where JMS had been laboring for years. The MythArc was noticably [[{{Padding}} put on hold,]] especially early in the season as he struggled to adjust to [[WrapItUp the compressed plot lines]].

##Lennier takes a subtle jab at ScottyTime. (When Scotty came back in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', he admitted that he would often reserve power to give the illusion of TimTaylorTechnology when the Captain inevitably demanded more speed.) When Sheridan orders more power for the engines:

** Lyta's eyes [[BlackEyesOfEvil turn black]] whenever she is using her telepathic powers against the Shadows (or even just to interface with their technology), which requires quite a bit of effort and strain from her. It is worth noting that the black contacts that Patricia Tallman had to wear to get this effect were by all accounts [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p681SSXNeLY intensely uncomfortable.]]

** In ''The Gathering'', Takashima's dialog is clearly looped, but no one else's is. This is because PTEN balked and wanted a "[[{{Chickification}} softer]]" performance from their female lead. JMS was pissed, and it was a factor in Tamlyn Tomita's quick exit from the show.

** American actress Creator/ClaudiaChristian played the born-and-raised Russian Susan Ivanova. She barely has any accent beyond an occasional stilted speech pattern in early episodes. The In-Universe explanation is that she spent most of her life studying abroad [[spoiler: so her mother could prevent the authorities from figuring that Susan was a latent telepath.]]

** The first and most famous is Jerry Doyle's feud with Michael O'Hare. Doyle inerpreted O'Hare's frequent outbursts and tendency to go off on strange tangents as prima-donna behavior, and often referred to him as "the whackjob" in public. When O'Hare left the series after season one, Doyle threatened to "kick the whackjob's ass" if they ever set foot in the same room again; true to his word, they never again appear onscreen together. We now know that O'Hare's odd behavior was due to his inability to tell reality and hallucination apart.
** Creator/ClaudiaChristian and JMS had a falling-out after she opted not to return for Season 5. Claudia claimed he hit on her and she turned down his advances; Joe alleged that she was leveraging the future of the series for higher pay, which he alludes to in a LowerDeckEpisode when one character [[PutOnABusToHell speculates out-loud that Ivanova quit over a salary dispute.]] It got ugly and played out in real-time on the internet, with both parties talking past other, rallying fanboys to their side, and pitting them against one another. Transcripts of the feud are available online.

** Creator/RichardBiggs (Dr. Stephen Franklin) died of a ruptured aorta in 2004 at a mere 44 years old.

** Creator/StephenFurst (Vir Kotto) died from diabetes complications in 2017 aged 63.
** Creator/MiraFurlan (Delenn) died from complications from West Nile virus in 2021 aged 65.

* RealLifeRelative: Anna Sheridan (played by Beth Toussaint) first appeared in a video to her sister-in-law, which was recorded prior to her disappearance. Toussaint wasn't available for the episode where Anna [[spoiler:returns as a Shadow agent]]; Creator/MelissaGilbert (Creator/BruceBoxleitner's real-life spouse at the time) was cast in her place.

* RomanceOnTheSet: Jerry Doyle was also married to actress Andrea Thompson (Talia Winters) during season one, but between seasons one and two, the couple went through an extremely bitter and acrimonious divorce. The set afterwards was something of a minefield.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:S-Z]]

* ScrewedByTheNetwork: Par for the course for a '90s syndicated show, as local stations could (and did) pre-empt it. Claudia Christian joked that her friends assumed she was bullshitting when she claimed she was a TV regular, since ''Babylon 5'' was often pre-empted by Clippers games in the Los Angeles area. [[https://www.cinemablend.com/television/2407022/why-babylon-5-will-probably-never-return-to-tv Per JMS,]] the reason why no network reruns the show anymore (and why JMS hasn't been able to do anything ''B5'' related in recent years) is due to unnamed executives at Warner Bros. Television nursing a grudge against him and the property for costing them money. (See [[{{Trivia/Crusade}} Trivia/Crusade]].)

** Claudia and Andrea were jokingly making out on-set one day, and Joe spotted them and wrote it into the show. You never know when the muse will strike.

** Numerous, but Michael O'Hare having to leave B5 to treat his mental illness was the biggest. Had he stayed, the "War without End" storyline would occured at the end of Season 5 and had a much-slower burn. Moving the resolution to Season 3 caused an unfortunate plot hole: for the remaining two seasons-and-change, the time-travelling Sheridan knows first-hand that a cataclysmic fate awaits Centauri Prime and does sweet f*ck-all to prevent it, [[IdiotBall which makes him look like a nitwit]] at times. This urgent news concerning the future of his delicate Intersteller Alliance (which Sheridan came back from the dead to co-found) just conveniently slips his mind, without even a token explanation like TemporalSickness.

** In the ''Babylon 5'' script books, JMS states that he had Season Five neatly-plotted out... and then the only copy of his notes were stolen while at a con. His failed attempts to recover them resulted in the contentious "Telepath Colony" arc, which was supposed to last three episodes but wound up being eleven. JMS had other plans for S5, but those notes went missing (again) in a hotel room. Compounding the problem was Claudia Christian, the only cast member whom JMS couldn't re-sign; the departure of Ivanova and the introduction of her replacement Lochley caused additional strain on the season.

** JMS offered to put the show on hold for a year so O'Hare could get treatment, but O'Hare refused to be the reason why so many people would lose their jobs, as there was no guarantee the show would come back. The wrap-up with Sinclair was filmed after O'Hare got his condition back under control. Strangely for Garibaldi, he never crossed paths with his "old friend" in Season 3, instead communicating over a grainy video recording. This is because Doyle and O'Hare got into a fight beforehand; Doyle gave an ultimatum saying he'd quit if O'Hare remained on the show. Clearly, this ultimatum was still in effect for season 3, which is why Doyle doesn't share any screen time with him.
** Creator/ClaudiaChristian [[http://40.media.tumblr.com/e06eab5bc96626d2db817292d85be254/tumblr_nc9buxZjCd1qc2k4vo1_500.jpg broke her ankle]] between shoots and phoned the studio to inform them. She was certain that her character was going to be written out. Instead, JMS simply wrote her accident into the script and production continued.

** The [=DVDs=] looked like hammered sh*t. The show was shot in widescreen, but framed for both widescreen and fullscreen. They could have rendered effects for widescreen and even HD back in the day, but Creator/WarnerBros were cheap and didn't provide a couple widescreen HD monitors for the effects team. Something like tens of thousands for additional hardware. The rest would have been left to computers running another render overnight from the animation files. Basically at the cost of electricity when it comes to individual episodes. Long story short [[https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/22/babylon-5-digital-video-quality/ the already-dreary CGI was made even worse,]] which killed the possibility of a {{remaster}} for a long time. The 4:3 aspect ratio looks so much better in the remaster: nothing important missing from the sides in live-action, and CGI has nothing cropped from the top or bottom.

** The [=DVDs=] looked like hammered sh*t. The show was shot in widescreen, but framed for both widescreen and fullscreen. They could have rendered effects for widescreen and even HD back in the day, but WB were cheap and didn't provide a couple widescreen HD monitors for the effects team. Something like tens of thousands for additional hardware. The rest would have been left to computers running another render overnight from the animation files. Basically at the cost of electricity when it comes to individual episodes. The 4:3 aspect ratio looks so much better in the remaster: nothing important missing from the sides in live-action, and CGI has nothing cropped from the top or bottom.

** Creator/WarnerBros' bungling [[https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/22/babylon-5-digital-video-quality/ resulted]] in the show's already-dreary CGI being made even worse, which also killed the possibility of an HD {{Remaster}}.