Fair be the wind to thee

[dragonyphoenix]

Jeff Conaway, who starred in the sitcom Taxi, played Kenickie in the movie musical Grease, and as Zack Allan was one of my favorite Babylon 5 characters, died Friday.

"I don't know where actors go after they die, but I know people who help other people have a nice place to go. And I would like to go there if I can." - Los Angeles Times in a January 2011 interview

Comments

[lemorttoussaint.livejournal.com]

Man, thanks for posting this. I hadn't heard yet, although I guess the flood of Kenickie on my tumblr dash should have been a clue. :/ I loved Zack Allan. RIP.

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. I mainly thought to post it because kerkevic had posted when he went into the hospital. I didn't see it until I was logging off; PeoplePC keeps a news-page up, and it was listed there. So sad.

[valyssia]

I'm terribly sorry to hear this. I missed the news. I dearly love B5. It's easily my favorite sci-fi television series. And yes, that includes weighing it against the Star Trek franchise.

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

It is so sad.

Babylon 5 is one of my top three: up there with Firefly and Defying Gravity. I never really got into Star Trek myself.

[valyssia]

I do love Firefly. I mean, how couldn't I?

But for my the tight sweeping story arc of B5 is a unique and truly beautiful thing. The storytelling itself was just so tight.

Firefly had the better cast of the two shows, but the story just wasn't as brilliant. It was good, but it didn't last long enough to have the kind of foreshadowing and interwoven plot elements that B5 had. I'm not even positive Joss has it in him to stay completely dedicated to one story for the number of years it takes to pull that off. The reason B5's story is so unique is that Joe actually wrote the lion's share of the story himself. The number of eps penned by other authors is in the single digits.

The perfect sci-fi series in my mind would come out of the collaboration of someone with Joss Whedon's sense of character and cast and Straczynski's sense of story. That show hasn't been made and it probably never will be.

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

I don't see Joss ever creating the kind of foreshadowed and interwoven plot that Strazynski can. This is the guy who wrote the whole gypsy-vengeance speech because he needed a way to explain the moment-of-happiness clause on Angel's curse. Not that it didn't work out well, but he's more like "oops, I need to explain this" as he goes guy rather than thinking it out ahead guy.

[valyssia]

Yeah, but 'wow' can he assemble and ensemble cast, or what? And his characters are just...

Beautiful stuff!

Both cases are beautiful. The things that shine, really shine.

As someone who spends a heck of a lot of time twisting plots, I have to tout Straczynski. It's some serious, back breaking work to carry a story over seasons and maintain that kind of control...or I can only imagine it is. The man has my respect.

But back to the point of the post...

Hearing that one of the original B5 cast had passed on was indeed sad news.

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

It strikes me as slightly odd that I know him better from B5 than from Grease, which my sister really got into, watching it multiple times, but yeah, not a happy thing.

[laazikaat.livejournal.com]

I was just visiting and saw this post. How sad, he was lovely! I also enjoyed him in the 1983 show Wizards and Warriors which was a comedy/send-up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWEoHek8IM0

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

That was so cheesy! Thanks for brightening up my morning! *grins*