After a long fight with lung cancer, Andreas Katsulas passed away on February 13 at the age of 59.

Katsulas enjoyed a long and varied career in theatre, television, and film, including roles in such genre favorites as Max Headroom, Star Trek, Alien Nation, Star Trek:TNG, and Inner Sanctum. He even appeared in the TV movie The Death of the Incredible Hulk. But for me he was and always will be G'Kar, from Babylon 5.

G'Kar was what brought me into the show, you see. I didn't bother to watch the show when it premiered because I worked nights and wouldn't be able to keep up with it. All I knew about the show was what I had heard or read about it or seen in previews — space station, humans, aliens, etc. But I was home one night with one of my roommates flipping channels, and we happened across the show. The episode was "Mind War," and we were hooked immediately. I was blown away with the final scenes between G'Kar and Catherine Sakai, especially the idea that no one on the station was entirely what they appeared to be.

TV is usually so easy, you know? The good guys and bad guys are pretty clear. Londo Mollari was a kick: a fun-loving, life-of-the-party kind of guy. G'Kar was dour and angry and strident, always beating that "Centauri are bad!" drum. It never occurred to me that while Londo was indeed a fun guy to be around, he was also willing to turn a blind eye to some pretty horrible things if the end result benefitted him. It certainly never occurred to me that all of G'Kar's doomsaying and anti-Centauri bias was, in fact, true. I enjoyed watching both Londo and G'Kar, but it was G'Kar's journey that kept me coming back: his love for his people, his pain at their betrayal, his passionate determination to wrest some good from all of the horror.

The reason that I cared so much about G'Kar was Andreas Katsulas' performance. Somehow, while buried under pounds of prosthetics and alien make-up, he brought G'Kar to life. Andreas Katsulas played a lizard from outer space and managed to make him the soul of a complicated and wonderful show. I'll miss him.