Evan H. Chen’s soundtrack from the Babylon 5 sequel series Crusade is released on Sonic Images Records. 
Evan H. Chen’s soundtrack from the Babylon 5 sequel series Crusade is released on Sonic Images Records.
The Sci-Fi Channel officially announces that it will be producing a new Babylon 5 movie in 2001, tentatively titled Babylon 5: The Legend Of The Rangers, set three years after the events of Babylon 5’s fifth season, as the Anla’shok try to restore peace and order to the war-torn galaxy. Members of the Babylon 5 cast may appear in the movie – which is confirmed as a pilot for a potential new series with the same premise – but the cast will consist largely of new faces. Douglas Netter and creator J. Michael Straczynski will serve as executive producers.
Sci-Fi Channel premieres The Legend Of The Rangers, a two-hour pilot movie for a Babylon 5 spinoff created by J. Michael Straczynski. Andreas Katsulas reprises the role of G’Kar for what will turn out to be the last time. As it is scheduled opposite a major pro football playoff game, The Legend Of The Rangers fares poorly in ratings and is not picked up as a series.
Actor Richard Biggs, best known to Babylon 5 fans as Dr. Stephen Franklin, dies of a ruptured aorta at the age of 43. An actor perhaps better known to the general public for numerous long-running soap opera roles, Biggs played Dr. Franklin for all five seasons of Babylon 5, but also enjoyed long runs on Guiding Light (a show on which he was still currently appearing at the time of his death) and Days Of Our Lives. At one point before pursuing acting, Biggs actually studied to become a real doctor. Throughout his acting career, he also actively taught acting, and most recently had embarked on a touring acting workshop with his friend and former B5 co-star Jason Carter. He is survived by his wife and two sons.
Actor Andreas Katsulas, known to SF fans as Babylon 5′s eloquent Ambassador G’Kar, dies of lung cancer at the age of 59. After making a mark with Star Trek fans as Next Generation’s feisty recurring Romulan, Commander Tomalok, he landed the part of Babylon 5′s resident Narn ambassador and stayed with it from the 1993 pilot movie through the most recent Babylon 5 project to date, the 2002 TV movie Legend Of The Rangers. He also made appearances in Max Headroom, Alien Nation, Star Trek: Enterprise, Millennium, NYPD Blue, and movies such as the big-screen adaptation of The Fugitive.
Varese Sarabande releases Christopher Franke‘s soundtrack from the direct-to-video movie Babylon 5: The Lost Tales.
Warner Bros. Home Video releases the direct-to-DVD movie Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, a continuation of Babylon 5 written and directed by J. Michael Straczynski. Featuring original series stars Bruce Boxleitner and Tracy Scoggings, the movie is divided into two tangentially-related stories. Though initially promoted as the first of a series of direct-to-DVD Babylon 5 sequels, this proves to be the only volume of The Lost Tales when Straczynski decides to rest the Babylon 5 universe unless Warner greenlights a big-budget adaptation. This remains the final Babylon 5 project for over a decade.
Michael O’Hare, who starred in the 1993 pilot movie and the first full season (1994) of the science fiction series Babylon 5, dies of complications from a heart attack he suffered the week before. An accomplished stage actor who made infrequent forays into television, O’Hare had been out of the public eye (including the science fiction convention circuit) for several years.
Actor and radio talk show host Jerry Doyle, who played Security Chief Michael Garibaldi for the entire run of the 1990s science fiction series Babylon 5 (the only human character to survive the considerable number of cast changes from 1992 through 1999), is found dead in his Las Vegas home at the age of 60. After his final appearance as Garibaldi in the Babylon 5 TV movie A Call To Arms, Doyle joined B5 co-star Peter Jurasik in a recurring role in the final seasons of the Sci-Fi-Network-revived Sliders before a run for Congress on a Republican ticket, and becoming a conservative radio talk show host.
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Douglas Netter, the executive producer of the science fiction series Babylon 5 and its various spinoffs after the series’ run, from Crusade through the 2007 direct-to-DVD project Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, dies at the age of 96. A former executive vice president of MGM in the early 1970s, Netter also produced such TV projects as The Sacketts, Five Mile Creek, Hypernauts, and Captain Power, the series which introduced him to future Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski.
Actor and director Stephen Furst, well-known to the American viewing public as hapless Flounder from the 1970s frat movie Animal House and as Dr. Axelrod from St. Elsewhere, dies at the age of 63 from complications from a long battle with diabetes. Furst co-starred as much-put-upon Centauri diplomatic aide Vir Cotto in all five seasons of the 1990s science fiction series Babylon 5; he also directed episodes of Babylon 5 and its follow-up, Crusade, as well as voicing Booster in the animated Toy Story TV spinoff, Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command. He also directed (sometimes under a pseudonym) such Syfy original movies as Path Of Destruction and Basilisk: The Serpent King.
British-born actor William Morgan Sheppard, a genre casting favorite ever since his 1985 appearance as Blank Reg in the original Max Headroom TV movie (a role that permanently relocated him to the United States for the U.S. Max Headroom series), dies at the age of 86 in Los Angeles. With his wizened features (the result of a surgical procedure that cost him one of his eyes), classical stage training, and distinctive, vaguely-Irish-accented voice, Sheppard would go on to appear in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark, Quantum Leap, Star Trek VI, seaQuest DSV, Babylon 5 (a series in which he was a close runner-up for the role of G’Kar), Star Trek: Voyager, Doctor Who, and the 2009 Star Trek movie relaunch. He was the father of actor Mark Sheppard, a genre favorite in his own right, with whom he appeared in both Doctor Who and NCIS, playing older and younger versions of the same character. Prior to leaving the U.K., Sheppard had appeared in such series as The New Avengers, Hammer House Of Horror, and Day Of The Triffids.
Warner Bros. releases the animated movie Babylon 5: The Road Home. direct to DVD, Blu-Ray, and digital. Written by series creator J. Michael Straczynski, and featuring surviving original series stars Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Peter Jurasik, Bill Mumy, Tracy Scoggins, and Patricia Tallman, with new actors voicing other familiar characters from the series.
Warner Bros. releases the animated movie Babylon 5: The Road Home direct to DVD, Blu-Ray, and digital, offering the first new story set in the Babylon 5 universe in over 15 years, voiced by surviving members of the original live-action cast and new voice actors standing in for members of the cast who have died since its 1998 finale.
The soundtrack from the direct-to-video animated movie Babylon 5: The Road Home is given a digital release by Watertower Music, featuring the complete score by frequent WB Animation composers Kristopher Carter, Michael McCuistion and Lolita Ritmanis (Batman: The Animated Series).