Babylon 5 In Depth – G’Kar, The Messiah

Religious themes run through Babylon 5 like veins, angels and demons, faustian bargains, prolonged discussions on the nature of the soul and gods, but it’s no mere battle of good vs evil. Even the character you might believe farthest fallen shows himself capable of redemption, and his most bitter and vengeful enemy manages to forgive him.

This is the tale of Ambassador G’Kar of the Narn, last of the governing body known as the Kha’Ri. Proud, stubborn, and wrathful, G’Kar represents a people who have suffered greatly at the hands of the Centauri, centuries of slavery and oppression, their homeworld ransacked of its resources, and countless deaths even before the bloody struggle for liberation. The role is played by Andreas Katsulas, and given that the role calls for a great deal of emotional extremes backed by incredible gravitas, all under a layer of prosthetics, it was a tall order made of him.

Babylon 5 In Depth – The Sad Tale of Londo Mollari

Now to start going deeper.

It is clear which actors truly loved what they were doing in this series, and while the series also has some golden examples of terrible acting it also features some of the best performances in science fiction history. I’d like to start with Peter Jurasik in the role of Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari. There will be spoilers in abundance from this point onwards…

Mollari begins our story as someone forgotten by his government, given a position deemed to be of negligible importance, representing the Centauri Republic in the Earth Alliance diplomatic and trade station just about to open it’s doors. Given the fate of the previous Babylon stations it was practically a death sentence for any sent to take the job, so Mollari is found to be living his life to the decadent extremes that his people are accustomed to, cramming his life with as much joy as he can before he’s either killed or dragged home.