A shocking Babylon 5 cameo

While rewatching Babylon 5′s pilot movie, I was struck by an incredible cameo, but the significance of it requires knowledge of its specific moment in time, and some context that may be unknown now, so it may be overlooked today.

At around the 20 minute mark, the scene where Lyta Alexander conducts telepathic business in a lounge begins with a panning establishing shot, and at the start of the pan is this woman, typing away. Blink and you miss her!

This is actually Kiki Stockhammer. In the 1980s and early 1990s, she was a demonstration model for trade shows, where she was the “face” of Amiga related software, and every graphic designer in the world using the Amiga’s video card (Video Toaster) was familiar with her face. At one point, she was one of the most famous spokesmodels in the computer and graphic design world due to her role with the “big dog” at the time, NewTek. She even appeared in Video Toaster’s demo VHS tapes. 

Kiki Stockhammer got her rep because, unlike other demonstration models and presenters, she not only recited the technical specifics, but actually set up and demonstrated the hardware competently, and could answer intelligently technical questions about performance from industry people in the audience. That strikes me as something of a very low bar to clear, but please remember that this was a very different time, and everything I have read says she is a deeply technically competent person.

Kiki Stockhammer is arguably the first streaming video star. When the first box-top “digital video” set came out in 2000 (5 years before YouTube), Kiki had an internet only show called “Kiki at Midnight.” This was not true streaming as we know it, but rather a kind of internet-receiving TV station that required special hardware. As a technology, it was a dead end, but it was an interesting intermediate phase toward the streaming video internet we know today. 

Kiki Stockhammer was known as “the Geek Goddess,” and after the end of her time as a software presenter around 2000, she started fronting a Star Trek themed tribute band. It’s not hard to see in her the beginning of later geek culture personalities like Olivia Munn. Come to think of it, I wonder if they will introduce a character in “Halt and Catch Fire” based on her.

Boy, the internet and computer technology sure age in dog years. I write about stuff that happened in the 1920s and 1930s on this blog, and somehow, all of this feels…older. For that reason, the significance of Kiki Stockhammer’s cameo in the Babylon 5 pilot, which probably got tons of computer nerds cheering, is absolutely lost to the modern viewer. 

The Kiki Stockhammer story has a happy ending. I looked her up to see what she’s doing now, and incredibly enough…Kiki Stockhammer is still presenting products at engineering conventions, though now she’s called a “technology evangelist.” 

I don’t want to share personal social media photographs without permission, but if you do look her up, nearly all of the photos you find are alike: middle aged software guys who remember her shaking her hand, clearly thrilled to see her again!