First of all, an apology for the long drought here. I shan't bother making excuses. I'm just going to start writing stuff again and hopefully do it more often :-)

Now, on with the show.

As many of you already know, Andreas Katsulas, who is best known for his role as Ambassador G'Kar on the science fiction series Babylon 5, passed away on 13 February 2006 from lung cancer.

To a fanboy like me, this is a fairly significant loss. I'm both blunt enough and honest enough to admit that it isn't so much Mr Katsulas' loss that I'm speaking of, but that of G'Kar.

Is G'Kar just a fictional character? Yes, he is. But there's really no question of anyone else ever portraying that fictional character now that Mr Katsulas is gone. Completely aside from JMS's pronouncement, it simply wouldn't make sense. No one else would have the right cadences, the right facial expressions, needed to bring the character alive in the same way.

Voice, actually, is what most comes to mind when I think of Mr Katsulas. With his face largely hidden within the prosthetic makeup that transformed him from a human being into a Narn, his incredibly expressive voice was a large part of what brought the character to life. Deep, sonorous, capable of an incredible range of emotional expression, Mr Katsulas' voice enabled JMS to make all the many transformations of G'Kar's personality -- from freedom fighter (in his backstory) to dissolute and corrupt politician, back to freedom fighter and from there to mystic and statesman -- and keep it credible.

Fans of classic Star Trek could always hope, as late as 1999 when De Kelley died, for more productions involving the classic cast. Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation and B5's contemporary Star Trek: Deep Space Nine can still hope for more, some day, as all their principal cast members are still alive.

But Babylon 5 fans must now come to terms with the fact that there will never be any more Babylon 5. Between the death of Richard Biggs (Dr. Stephen Franklin) last year, and Andreas Katsulas this year, there really wouldn't be much point. You could postulate stories that included others in the B5 cast but not them...but you'd always know they were missing, and somehow, a lot of the fun would be missing with them.

This might be just as well. Most of JMS's attempts to extend the B5 universe past the original series really haven't fared so well. But still, the part of me that's still a fanboy, despite my efforts to grow up, is saddened to realise there will probably never even be an attempt, now.