Jerry Doyle had one part that mattered and he made it count. As security chief Michael Garibaldi in Babylon 5 he was the suspicious, plain-spoken, working-class man aboard, and he kept the show's feet on the floor.
Fi1m perspective
Garibaldi does not trust anyone, and Doyle plays that as a habit of work rather than a tic: the security chief who assumes the person in front of him has something to hide and is not often wrong. He is streetwise where the rest of the command staff are diplomatic, jaded where they are hopeful, and loyal in a way he would rather nobody mentioned. The jokes are dry. Under them is a recovering alcoholic who knows how quickly it could all go again, and Doyle never lets us forget it for long.
Born in Brooklyn in 1956, he flew corporate jets and then worked as a Wall Street stockbroker before moving to Los Angeles in 1991 to try something else. Within two years he had Garibaldi, first in the pilot Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993), then across the series from 1994 to 1998, then in Babylon 5: A Call to Arms (1999). J. Michael Straczynski wrote the character; Doyle played him opposite Bruce Boxleitner's Sheridan and Andrea Thompson's Talia Winters. What followed were guest spots on Beverly Hills, 90210, JAG, Sliders, Martial Law and NYPD Blue, some voice work, a few films, and eventually a talk-radio show that occupied him until his death in 2016.
We scored Babylon 5 a 74 and said its first stretch is stiff and its dialogue overemphatic. Doyle is one reason to sit through that stretch. In a show where people tend to announce their feelings, Garibaldi is the man who does not, and the long story the series tells, in which personal grudges are given room to become drama, suits him better than almost anyone else aboard. The first-season episode 'Survivors', which puts his past failures back in front of him, moved us more than a space station drama had any business doing, because Doyle plays the collapse as something he has seen coming for years and is not surprised by. He asks for nothing. That is why it lands.
The limit is plain and there is no point dressing it up. Doyle never found a second part of any size, and the roles after 1998 were the kind that keep an actor working rather than remembered. He was, by every account, reliable and exacting on set, and reliability does not get you a second Garibaldi.
Asked at his audition which role he had come for, he said the one he was going to get, and when told its name he replied: ‘That’s Mr. Garibaldi to you.’ Five seasons of the performance are in that line.
Biography
Jerry Doyle was an American actor best known for playing security chief Michael Garibaldi in the science fiction series Babylon 5 (1994–1998) and its related television films. He also appeared in guest roles on series including Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990), Sliders (1995), JAG (1995) and Martial Law (1998).
Before turning to acting in the late 1980s, Doyle worked as a corporate jet pilot and a stockbroker. He later hosted a nationally syndicated talk radio show and founded the content platform EpicTimes. Doyle died in 2016.
