The problem with Larry is if you poke him, he tells stuff. Poking
doesn't bother me.

Since he's already spewed a bit...some small details.

The person coming in to be the new CO on B5 will have a rank higher than
commander. Thus it makes sense, given this and other factors yet to be
revealed, to promote Ivanova to full Commander rank, and expand her duties to
get her out of C&C a bit.

We're going to be adding a couple of characters...more of the ISN
link...and some here (and on other nets) have been correct when they say that
the Starfury squadrons should have some kind of squad commanders of their own,
in addition to when Ivanova or others take over. We'll be developing a
character to fill that slot.

On the question of Na'Toth...some background.

As y'all may remember, originally we had Mary Woronov slated to be
Ko'Dath, G'Kar's assistant. She had *very* real problems with the idea of
wearing prosthetics, and also wouldn't wear the red contacts. So we went our
separate ways, and Ko'Dath had an unfortunate accident with an airlock.

This happened, however, right between shooting two episodes in which we
*needed* G'Kar's aide present. So our casting director called in Caitlin
Brown on about 24 hours notice, and in fact in her first episode, it's mainly
Ko'Dath's makeup, somewhat modified, rather than the sleeker Na'Toth makeup
you saw later. Slight differences.

If you've seen Caitlin Brown on the "Making Of B5" program, you know she
is a *gorgeous* young woman, who has mainly played romantic leads in films and
TV. She has continued to get offers in that direction, and over the hiatus,
did a film again as a romantic lead with Marlon Brando and (also in the cast)
Faye Dunaway.

And the very real question is, Does she want to hide her face, be known
for playing an alien, and lose the chance to further expand her feature
film/romantic lead career? Her answer, after much agonizing, was no. She'd
never really intended to stay with it forever, was only coming in on an
emergency basis (but we liked her performance so much we kept her in the
role), and she was the *only* actor on whom we didn't have long-term options.


We very much wanted her to come back, and did everything we could to
convince her, but this is what she wants to do. And while this is NOT mutual,
it is amicable; I fully understand why she wants to continue on the process of
becoming a major player. And as she says, she has a very attractive face; why
hide it forever?

This being the case, what we're now doing is recasting the role of
Na'Toth with a different actress. It won't be a different character, since
it's got nothing to do with the story, it's an actor thing. We'll get someone
the same size, shape, voice and personality, write the character exactly the
same, same name, and move on. Which happens all the time.
And, obviously, the prosthetic will be the same, so Na'Toth will still look
the same.

So, this is entirely her decision, and we wish her luck. It doesn't
affect the show or the story, so it doesn't cause us any problems, so why
treat it in anything other than an amicable fashion?

Insofar as I know, that's all Larry blabbed about. Go ahead, tell me
there's more...tell me Larry blabbed about Sinclair's sex change...go ahead,
watch a grown man have a cardiac infarction....

jms