And the Sky Full of Stars

Jeff: Welcome to Babylon five for the first time, not a star Trek podcast. My name is Jeff Akin and I am watching babble on five for the first time.

Brent: Brent Allen, and I'm also watching Babylon five for the first time. That's

Jeff: We're two veteran star Trek podcasters that are watching babble on five for the first time we're searching for star Trek, like messages in this series. And by that we don't mean like, is this a star Trek episode, but does this give us a roadmap? Does this give us hope for a better future or frankly, does it teach us how to be better human being.

Brent: right. That's right. And Jeff did, did you know that this is not a podcast about star Trek

Jeff: It's not.

Brent: rather I should say it's a podcast about not star Trek.

Jeff: Yeah, that makes perfect sense

Brent: So, but that being said, uh, just kind of given the nature of who we are, we are sure to pull in some of those references. And so Jeff and I have sort of come up with a little game that we like to play, uh, where I don't know what we call it, the rule of three or something like.

Where, uh, we only get three Trek references each per episode. Now last week, Jeff, I don't think we came close to using our three. Um, so we'll see what

Jeff: than you think, like go back and listen. We actually hit quite a few

Brent: Oh, did we

Jeff: Yeah, we did.

Brent: you go. You keep better track of that than I do during the show. But anyway, with that, Jeff, choose your spots carefully, cuz I'm not giving you an EMI this week.

Jeff: We'll see about that. Well, Brent, you talked about the incredible interactions that we get, or you've talked about the incredible interactions that we get from people all across, all across the internet, right? YouTube from our website, Babylon five first.com. The number five, the word first or on Twitter at Babylon.

First, if it's cool. I wanna share a couple that we've gotten in the last little while.

Brent: What if it's not cool? Would you just do it anyway?

Jeff: No, I'd say okay. Well, I guess you don't really want to hear from our incredible listeners, but you know, I mean, that'd be a you thing, not a me thing. So,

Brent: Well it's cool then let's.

Jeff: that's why I thought let's start on Twitter again. That's at Babylon first and this is from Keith Gardner at J K G Oak 42.

Brent: What's up. Keith,

Jeff: Keith says. You guys are doing a great job.

I watched B five when it first came out and was blown away, no spoilers, but you will remember this episode. I listened to you on Stitcher. And this is my first episode with you love the fresh eyes on this. We'll have to go back and catch up.

Brent: do you know what episode he's refer? Like where, when did the, I know we're not always, these aren't always in time. What episodes he talking about? Do you know?

Jeff: I think this is, I think he's talking about born to the purple

Brent: Okay. Yes, we will remember that epi. I remember liking that episode.

Jeff: well, and we've already remembered it. Like we've already

Brent: a big thing in last week's episode. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Wao and Jaar, man, I I'm liking these two guys, although, you know, and cider Jaar, I don't know about anymore, but whatever

Jeff: And then one of my favorites from an episode a while ago, I went back to grab, um, some off of YouTube. Cause this, I tell you what on YouTube. It is. It is a challenge to keep up with all the comments on

Brent: mm-hmm , mm-hmm, , that's a good challenge,

Jeff: it's a great one. I, and the thing is there's really great conversations happening there.

And so like I'm drawn to that all the time. It's so cool. This one's from, and I'm gonna pronounce it wrong. I, I apologize. Galen Dugal on YouTube. It's very short, but this is so good. If you don't like lawn's password, just wait until you hear what Kara baldies is.

Brent: no.

Jeff: I don't want to hear it. I don't wanna know.

Brent: We're going to play the game right now. Jeff, you get one, guess I get one guess what's Aldi's.

Jeff: Oh my gosh. This is a family friendly podcast, Brent,

Brent: It is

Jeff: that makes this really hard. I think that's my guess for what his password is.

Brent: hard.

Jeff: No, just the whole phrase. Just the whole phrase I said and just leave it there. You can

Brent: gotcha. Gotcha. Um, I mean, it's either his second favorite thing in the universe, which is duck Dodgers or it's it's it's full on, um, uh, the, the, the king from space balls or, or, or president SCR from, from space balls. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Jeff: that kind of password an idiot would have on their luggage.

Brent: it's amazing. That's the same password I have in my luggage. Uh,

Jeff: God, that movie's great. that same episode on YouTube, Simon Giles hits us with some huge spoiler free knowledge. Brent, I, I read this, I lost my mind. So this is back, um, Again, he is all born to the purple. I'm pulling these from, he says, oh, by the way, it's the same guy who gets thrown across the room by both KOD off and trache.

And that actor is Chuck Norris's son.

Brent: Oh,

Jeff: What?

Brent: thank you. It's for spoiler free. Mm-hmm no way I missed this comment. What,

Jeff: isn't that incredible? I

Brent: get thrown. The guy gets thrown across, like, is it the same character getting thrown across? And this is like a running joke

Jeff: same actor in there. Maybe it is a kind of a thing. Maybe he's gonna be the guy who's like, oh, you throw me,

Brent: he just like, like it's what is it? In south park? Kenny gets killed every single week. Like this guy gets thrown across every week.

Jeff: but let's be clear. This is Chuck Norris's son. So really the room is getting thrown across him.

Brent: That is fair. That is fair.

Jeff: Love love hearing from all of you. It's fantastic. Again, Babylon five first.com. The number five, the word first at Babylon. First on Twitter, or you can find this on YouTube really anywhere you throw us a comment cannot wait to interact with you and share some of that great stuff right here on the show.

And speaking of the show in today's episode, we're discussing episode eight is this eight. It's hard to keep track, I guess, but this is, and the sky full of stars. Now last week, Brent, if you remember, we guessed what this episode was gonna be about based on the title alone. Do you remember? Do you remember what you guessed?

Brent: I think it, oh man, this was like a week ago. I think it was something of the nature of like, like some massive space armadas gonna come out and the sky's full of stars and. It had something to do with Indiana Jones's father and Charla, Maine and all this kind of stuff. Yeah. I was way off base. Like this is another one of those titles that I'm like, I don't see how it applies at all.

Jeff: I, I was even, I mean, you had an Armada and there's definitely like ships in this one. So it's a whole lot closer than me where I thought some alien was gonna come on board and be like, oh, look at all this great stuff. The stars on Babylon five or the flip side of like, Ugh, you should come see what we have on my planet.

Yeah. Not even, not even in the ballpark,

but to find out what it is about. Right. For those of you that haven't watched this in like 30 years, those of you watching along with us or those of you who aren't watching and just listening to our wonderful, beautiful soothing voices. Brent Allen is gonna tell us what this was actually about. Brent, tell us about the episode.

Brent: Well, it's another week on Babylon five, which means we're getting some more shady people coming to the station this time. It's a pair of guys who have arrived separately, but they're winking and nodding at you at each other, but they're winking and nodding at each other. So that definitely means they're up to something and that something is kidnapping Sinclair and using some kind of a weird mind probe to find out answers to this question.

Why did the Menari pull back during the war at the battle of the line? It's some matrix, like stuff going on inside Sinclair's brain and while he's reliving those last moments of the war, he's fighting it. Something fierce. We learned that Sinclair was in charge of a large platoon of fighters and they were in a tough spot getting killed, left, and right.

And Sinclair finally decides to go full on Kamikazi on him, but just before he Rams into the Menari ship, He gets flashy thinked, and the Mumbar pull him into their ship and proceed to torture him. It seems like for a few days, and we also learned that a board ship during that time was the gray council.

No, that whole thing delin was supposed to be a part of, at least that's who we're to assume it is. And that means delin was also there. And she had the weird triangle thing on her head that all the rest of them do and was a big symbol throughout the course of this episode. It's right about then that Sinclair breaks out of the mind probe.

And after a brief pew, pew, pew fight, where Sinclair thinks he's back in the war still after he comes to his senses, I'm try that one over Jeff.

Jeff: Yeah, it's. He

Brent: It's right about then that Sinclair breaks out of the mind probe. And after a brief pew pew, pew fight, where Sinclair thinks he's back in the war, he finally comes to his senses. And while he tells delin, otherwise Sinclair remembers everything. This time where there used to be a hole in his memory. But back with de one of the gray council turns out is lurking in the back of her quarters, cuz sure. Why not? And he's there telling delin that if Sinclair remembers so much as an I Iotta, then he must die. So Sinclair's got a big secret. He needs to keep, but he's gotta find out why and what happened. He has to Jeff.

He has to,

Jeff: he

Brent: he must

Jeff: must.

Well, I'm gonna tell you, Brent. Um, I watched this episode twice to, as, as is my custom to get ready for this, this, this podcast. And my reaction that I had initially is different than the reaction I had after I watched it the second time, but I still really got a lot out of this, but what's interesting on reflection.

So here's kind of where, where I landed after watching it. The second time, I love that we know more about what happened at the battle of the line that we got to see it, that we met his, um, one of his, well, we met the memory of one of his, uh, his, his shipmates soldiers that he, he flew with

Brent: the Tom riddle from the diary. Mitchell? Yeah. That's who we met.

Jeff: I mean, it's exact.

Yep. Yep. But really we didn't learn anything new in this, this confirmed everything that we know. And now Sinclair knows everything that we know.

Brent: Yeah. Mm-hmm . Mm.

Jeff: He did a log entry to that was the, the, the, the cap of this episode, the end was him doing a log entry. There was about, I don't know, 45 seconds long. I think you could have listened to that.

It gave you everything that happened in this episode.

Brent: but then we

Jeff: Exactly. We had to, we had to step through the whole thing. Right. And do, do all this stuff. Now, what the show did for me though, is I kind of learned a thing about me watching this and that thing. I learned, Brent, I kind of love this show. Like I felt, I felt a real connection to Sinclair.

I felt the anxiety and the tension when he was like falling through the corridors, when he was thinking he was back in the war. There's that security guard that came out, that he took a shot at. And I felt that I was just like, oh my gosh. And then you saw like the way they cut with the lens. Coming down a hallway while he was I'm like, oh my gosh, there, he's gonna shoot.

Like this is gonna go. I was so pulled into that. The first time I watched this episode that my takeaway was I, I love this show. It's great. I do think that 100% of the inspiration for one of my favorite episodes of deep space nine, which is inquisition almost all the inspiration for that was from this episode.

Right? So you had, I think his name was night, number two, that was basically director Sloan. And then they, he, Sinclair goes to bed. He wakes up in some weird place, just like bash she did in that episode. And then Sloan messes with him and like gets in his face and tries to get him to admit things or whatever.

Just like this night gets in Sinclair's head and tries to get him like. And then the overacting, the dramatic overacting by night, number two, who is not by the way, the super cool guy that actually sat at the helm for con in star Trek, too. How cool was that? We got Joe Akeem or whatever his name was in there. JohE

Brent: Joki.

Jeff: at that. It's so cool that he that's, that's great that he was in here.

Brent: Mm-hmm

Jeff: That's a lot of fun stuff. There's cool stuff to dig into. I'm sure there's more that we'll talk about as we dive in, but Brent, what was your first reaction to this

Brent: yeah. Um, I'm with you. I like this episode. I did not like this episode as much as I liked last week's episode.

Jeff: was perfect.

Brent: Yeah. But this was, this was a solid move. The story down the line. Yes. They could have told us everything in a piece of exposition as a log entry at the end, but that's not how you tell stories on television.

You have to show it to them and they showed it to us

Jeff: then told us. Or that he

Brent: and then told us this episode confirmed a lot of what we have heard before and actually showed us what we'd heard before. Kind of showed us how it went down. Um, I think we got some new things. I don't think we knew that Sinclair got pulled into the Menari ship and tortured for a few days

Jeff: to Ram it.

Brent: or that he tried to Ram it.

Right. Um, we didn't, we didn't know that delin is a Sati and part of the gray council that they had, uh, shrouds over their face and weird looking circles with lights and spotlights and all that kind of stuff. This, this episode got me quite a bit like, like when Sinclair first gets pulled into the mine probe and he's walking around deep space nine and it's empty.

Jeff: Deep face nine

Brent: I'm sorry.

Jeff: I'm not gonna buzz you on that one. That was a,

Brent: Babylon. Yeah. That's a SL. Yeah. Yeah. But like he's, he's walking around and, and everything's empty. And I was like, did he just get transported to like a different Babylon five? And I said, oh no, maybe he's on like a hollow deck.

Jeff: Inquisition I'm telling

Brent: Yeah, maybe he was on a holiday deck and then I went, oh no, they're in his brain.

And when you get to that scene where like the lights are shutting off, down the corridor and he's just standing in the one light pool and then the guy pops up in the corner. I'm like, this is fantastic. Like, this is so good. It was so it was just perfect. Like I loved it. I loved it a lot. Um, but we're also left with a lot more questions, you know?

Um, and that's, that's what I, that's what I like. We really didn't get a lot of answers, more confirmation. And then we got more questions, but you mentioned,

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.

Brent: and I'll close my opening pieces with this. You, you mention being more connected to Sinclair and I think that is spot on for this episode. I have said in previous episodes that for a guy who is supposed to be number one on the call sheet for the guy who is supposed to be leading the show, I am not connected to my captain, my commander at all.

Like I could care less about this guy right now. I have no attachment to him. This one gave me an attachment to him. It brought me around to what the heck is going on with Sinclair. It really, uh, the, the whole piece. And we've, we've said this, I feel like over the last couple of episodes that he's had, he's got some PTSD from the war and that's why he's going out, doing all these things that he really ought not be.

And Aldi's been calling him on it. Like, you don't need to be going out there doing that kind of stuff, dude. Um,

Jeff: totally. Mm-hmm

Brent: to see that this is what it's left over. Like when, when he is a commander sitting there and all of his people get shot down and then he just goes, okay, I'm ramming this sucker in and he's, he's full Bo like, this is how he's going to

Jeff: Mm.

Brent: He has accepted it. This is what he's doing. He's going down with a fight. He's going down with his people, with his crew and they're all gone. And just before he gets that moment of glory, he gets whisked away that can, that can mess you up, man. Like he was ready to go. And now all of a sudden he's alive when he should be dead. And that brings him to what's going on now. And he, you know, you imagine after the war, he's this great savior and hero the lone survivor of that battle. And you know, that's how he winds up with this military, uh, promotion to the, to the commander of the station. And he's the representative of earth. And cuz he's not gonna back down.

He's a tough fighter, you know, like all that stuff. And then the whole time he's just sitting there, like I should be dead. I

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: should be dead.

Jeff: Well, and I think in other shows the Mitchell, right? The Mitchell character there would've, he would've been there because he did something nefarious. Right. I, you know, I, I, I, I, I betrayed them or whatever. And the night kept trying to bring that up and make that play. Like, what did you do? What, no, I, I think that Mitchell just represents what he wishes happened to him.

Mitchell went out fighting, and that's what he that's how, like you said, Sinclair accepted it. And he now even 10 years later wishes, that's how he died. But here he is having to keep going.

I really liked how they talked about after, after the war, when he woke up, found out they had surrendered and he walked around forever trying to, had to talk himself out of strangling every minbar that he saw,

Brent: yeah.

Jeff: pure hatred. And I get that. I'm a vet. I never was in war, but I have a lot of friends who have been in war.

You don't just, oh, they signed, they signed the treaty. Okay, cool. Everything's fine. Now let's go and sing a song or whatever. No that's stuff sits with you for a long time. If not forever.

Brent: Yeah. And first of all, thank you for your service and to all who have served. Uh, thank you. Um, I can imagine, I can imagine. I, I mean, I feel that on a really stupid level involving sports, I have sports teams that I absolutely APO I hate, I hate everything about them. I don't like the people who play for them.

I don't like people who've played for them in the past. I don't like anything about these organizations and that carries through like, like irrational, like, like I, like, I get that irrational. I see somebody in another Jersey and I just wanna go punch them. Now I don't, because I'm a grown human being with, you know, command functions and sins and things that go, Hey, you probably ought not do that, but I ain't gonna lie.

It's kind of like it

Jeff: thought's

Brent: there. Yeah. The thoughts there, for sure. For sure. Uh, not at all. I'm sure what you're just describing or what' Sinclair, like on a very minuscule level. It is that, um, real quick, before we go much further, you mentioned the Knights and night number one was Joaquin from wrath of Khan.

Right. You know, we actually saw him two other times in star

Jeff: Yep. I'm so glad too, cuz he got credited for those other ones.

Brent: Yeah. He didn't get credited for the Ratheon, which is the one where you recognize him from. Right. But the other one, he was in the Andy Dick episode of Voyager, right. Where he was one of the Rolin. So you didn't, you didn't quite see him, but he was also in. Another season, one episode of T and G, which was not a great episode, but it's the one where like, like one group was exploiting another group kind of basically keeping 'em hooked on drugs. It was a drug episode

Jeff: right. Would Tasha Yas like drugs feel good? Wesley also we just gotta hit it.

Brent: I got, I gotta hit it, but I'm gonna wrap this next one into that one because night number two, cuz I just had to look him up a guy named Christopher Neme.

We actually saw him twice in Trek as well. He was in the bail Wolf episode of Voyager. And then he was in, uh, he was in as a Nazi in enterprise during the season four episodes, uh, during that fail when they were gonna make that the whole season arc and then Manny Coto thankfully pulled them out of that.

so, um, anyway, so those are those two guys, but definitely one dude pops on and I'm like, I know this guy. Joaquin, right. I'm gonna call him Joaquin night. Number one, I was like, I know this guy who is this guy who like it, it just, and you know, they come in and, you know, when they give each other that nod across the room at the very beginning of the show, I went, something's about to explode something is going to blow up and then, okay.

Maybe not blow up, but they're here to get Sinclair because they, you know, we're here to, you know, we're going to get 'em.

Jeff: well, and frankly, Joaquin never plays a good guy. Like he's never, he's never the good guy. So it's pretty clear. And, and clearly, neither, neither, neither is the other guy either. So, and you're right. You said it in the recap, like every episode starts with like, Hey, the big, bad is coming onto the station.

And we know they're the big, bad, because you can hear it in the music.

Brent: right. They're the guy who's coming on to the station. Uh, I got into speaking of music, that music faked me out, uh, Ben, the whole secondary plot, which mattered. V like it could have not been in this episode at all, wouldn't have made a difference. Um, although according to our friends, that's probably setting something up for another episode down the

Jeff: huge.

Brent: Um, although he died, so who knows what? But anyway, Benson, um, the, the, the little security guy he's getting roughed up, right. Uh, by, by these guys. And when those two guys walk off camera, there is this weird, like sound effect that could have just been part of the, the, the, the, the score. But I, it really made me think that they had disappeared via that cloak that we saw last week.

Like, it was like a, like, as they both walked out and I went like, now, I don't think that's what it was. I think they were just walking away, but like, I had to rewind it because I like it. It cause it gave me pause to, oh, is that what these guys are like,

Jeff: Oh, huh. That'd be huge. Really.

Brent: Hey,

Jeff: Be pretty big deal. If you're right, if you're right, like you win, you will win the Babylon five for the first time prize. I don't know what that is, but you would've nailed it,

Brent: Um, okay. Let's talk about this, Dr. Franklin's a hitchhiker

Jeff: yeah.

Brent: hopping, hopping around on a bunch of different starships

Jeff: I'll doctor for you. Is that cool?

Brent: right. The only question I have is did he have a guide

Jeff: Oh

Brent: to the galaxy?

Jeff: I'm looking for my B bump bump, but there it is. he'll be here all week folks.

Brent: Uh, but no, the really important thing. And this actually goes back to the bigger story at hand, he turns around and asks de so what did you do during the war? And she 100% sidestep that

Jeff: Yeah, she no sells totally.

Brent: right. And that's going to be, uh, she's definitely hiding some stuff. And so what do, what do you think, Jeff?

Okay. Let's let's specul. Is bad

Jeff: I think she,

Brent: what's going on? Like what? Like we have to

Jeff: I think the gray council is bad. And I think that Dylan is a part of the gray council, but I think that her experiences are changing where she's coming from. She was so she is face to face with Sinclair and he's got the gun pointed right at her face in talking about music and how the soundtrack really worked here.

The soundtrack, the blocking of the scene, everything said he was gonna shoot her like this. Wasn't gonna be the fake out and I'm just like, it's gonna happen. And then he faked out really well done scene, but what she kept saying was, I'm your friend, I'm your friend. And I thought one of two things. She's seen the world in a different way, and she's gonna start breaking from the gray council in, in little ways.

We'll see little things or second, that was part of the conditioning that they ran Sinclair through. I'm your friend. Yeah.

Brent: Yeah. That was my thing, because I was like, cuz when she, when he snapped out of it or maybe this was what snapped him out of it, she said welcome

Jeff: Mm-hmm

Brent: And I'm not sure which one happened first. I don't know if he snapped out of it. And then she said welcome home. Or if she said welcome home and then he snapped out of it.

I really don't know. But when she did that, like I went like that. My head immediately went to winter.

Jeff: totally.

Brent: Like they've got this dude and she's there to supervise. And when other gray council dude popped out of the back, because you always have somebody hanging out in the

Jeff: Yeah. What was that? And, and like, yeah, with the triangle and the gray eyes.

Brent: he's not even blending in right now.

So like, what's your deal? And you know, we know that there's, that the question has been asked and put before us, what is this a tie doing? Playing ambassador. Why is she here? She told her assistant, keep this quiet. Do not call me that she is clearly not in hiding, but she's clearly hiding who she is from everybody else. This has to start start. I know we're only eight episodes into what what's a 26 episode season or something like that. So we got lots to go, but you know, they're hyping this, this question quite a bit

Jeff: and it is starting Sinclair knows at this point. And he, in

Brent: Well, he at least knows that she was

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Like he at least knows that.

Jeff: And he knew enough cuz he, I mean he was gonna shoot her straight in the face and then she somehow pulled him out of that and immediately. He knew that he knew and that he couldn't let her know. Right. Like he immediately was

Brent: that he had to play stupid. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff: yeah.

I, I wanna believe right. That Dylan is, is experiencing things and growing much, like I can assume Sinclair did where he went from wanting to strangle minbar every time he saw them to now working in, in really great harmony with them, I wanna believe that's the path that she's on, but I don't have anything to prove one way or the other at this point.

Brent: so let's talk about the, the, the triangle, cuz we saw that quite a bit in this episode, the triangle mark on the

Jeff: Mm-hmm

Brent: head, which Dylan had in the. She doesn't have it. Now, the other guy clearly has it. We also saw the triangle in the staff, like the magic staff that they used. There was also the triangle, um, in, in the, the, the bonds that was holding, he was hanging from a triangle there. And then they actually did, like, they actually had a, a men in black flashy thing. That was also a triangle that, that did like the little ambulate of, of, um, van Helsing from, uh, the monster squad. I don't know if you've ever seen that movie, but you know, Wolf man's gotten, there you go. Uh, but this, this symbol, I mean, this isn't the deathly Hallows we're talking about here, but this symbol is something

Jeff: and I think you and I were talking before we started recording about how symbols actually have a meaning in this show last week when home guard branded, ion, that symbol was like a combination of it. It it's what we now know as the non-binary symbol. Right. It's a combination of male and female sort of a

Brent: That's what we use it for today. But back then, I mean, it would be humanity just cuz of male, female, right? Like, yeah.

Jeff: And so. They used that triangle so much. And so explicitly, like they, they didn't need to have him hanging at all. They made the choice to have him hanging and then had on a triangle.

Brent: mm-hmm

Jeff: I don't know what that means, but clearly something cuz gray council dude who lives in her closet had it

Brent: right, right, right. He, he very much had the, uh, the, the, the prior of the Ori, which you don't know what that is, Jeff, because you don't watch Stargate. We'll do that after we're done with Babylon five here and you'll find out all about that. You'll find out about your daughter's namesake actress and what all happened there anyway.

Um, Yeah. So here's then the question, and I feel like one of the nights asked this question. I didn't make the note, but talking about government stuff and they were asking the question, is there collusion between the like, is there something happening between the Mumbar and earth government or earth military or something?

Because that's what that, that's ultimately what they wanted to know from Sinclair was, was he in cahoots with the Babar and that's why he got out of there. Right. Um, what do we make of this? Cuz this feels significant.

Jeff: What if, what if there is some sort of collusion and this started out as a plan, right? And they, they were, we're gonna put a fifth column in place and you're gonna know about him and you're gonna make choices. Like you're gonna choose to put this guy in charge of babble on five, where these things are happen happening and going on, everything they said was true.

Here's where it gets wild in my head earth wants outta that deal. They don't want to continue anymore. Maybe they're not getting what they wanted or whatever. What better way to sever that than to start race wars. And so the home guard and these hate groups and the earth president Louis, Santiago really uniting

Brent: by the way, by the way, just to remind, remind us that he was reelected,

Jeff: Yes

Brent: which means he had been the president for at least a number of years. I don't know how many, I don't know how long a term is for earth presidents in the future, but he had been, he had overseen this over the last few years as well.

Jeff: so he made the decision he wants out. Yeah, he wants, he wants out and then he got reelected and he is like, all right, let's start mobilizing these, these, these hate groups that we've been putting together and whatever, so that then we can get out of this deal with them in Barri. I don't know. That's kind of what you started stepping through that.

And I'm like, I think there might be a connection in there and maybe these two nights are completely right. The

Brent: What's here. Here's what would be even more interesting is that if the Mumbar actually in cahoots with the earth first government itself, that once out,

Jeff: Menari one out.

Brent: no, the like, like, like this, this earth, first government, like the Santiago and all that, they're actually the ones in cahoots with the Mumbar creating these earth wars and are creating this, this thing. And I don't know why they would do that, but, you know, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. There's like we said more questions.

We, we got more questions. Then we received answers.

Jeff: point, It'd be really easy to have the cork board with the pictures and the red yarn, connecting everything we know exactly enough to become Babylon five conspiracy theorists. And that's it. That's all we can be

Brent: exactly. That's exactly what we should be right

Jeff: Yeah. I know

Brent: That's, that's exactly where we should be trying to so that all the people out there listening to us and all the people out there watching us on YouTube or wherever they're they're catching the show are just gonna laugh at us and see how absolutely.

And like, because the truth is Jeff, it's probably in front of our faces the

Jeff: the whole time I'd be like, oh my gosh, how could I not have seen

Brent: course. It was the whole time. Like,

Jeff: But you know, so there was a scene and I want to talk about a couple of these later that are

Brent: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Speaking of lawn, another nonono non-car episode,

Jeff: Totally felt

Brent: but this one was good.

Jeff: but, okay. So I'm gonna, I wanna pivot onto just one little thing. I observed that kind of, kind of pulls Jaar and lawn in a little bit. So there's a scene. I think it's Gar Baldy is reading the newspaper and you get a pretty good. What's going on in that newspaper. So I paused it.

Brent: Oh, I didn't even look at that.

Jeff: So, and I, and I was thinking to you when I paused it, cuz this is like, this is that incredible attention to detail world building stuff. So one, I saw that the newspaper is called universe today, like USA today, which I thought was, was pretty great. So a couple of the headlines in there, the one that brought Kar and lawn in literally says, NANS settle, radish controversy.

That was the headline. So that was the whole midnight on the firing line thing. I don't know how they resolved it, but it settled. There's not a controversy there anymore. There's one that said that San Diego is still too radioactive for occupancy. Now I feel like, I feel like something was mentioned about San Diego at some point, but I haven't gone back and listened to our stuff or watched in there, but I don't know if it was a war or a terrorist thing,

Brent: Yeah. I don't remember that. Oh, it might have been like some sort of a terrorist

Jeff: Yeah, I

Brent: it might have been.

Jeff: I don't remember. But the one that wraps into this conversation about the conspiracy theory was there was a big headline saying that CCO was in hot water for endorsing a VP candidate, something about like violet. So a, a lot of things jumped out to me here. One we've seen in just a, like two episodes, the power of Sycor and what telepaths can do.

We really just saw that, right? Like it was that last week or the week before we saw, you know, what they can really do. Why are they publicly endorsing politicians when they can just use their brains and influenced the stuff? So they're throwing a red herring over here and they mentioned the VP. I didn't take a note of the name on there.

I don't know if they are the vice president or not, but like they're publicly attaching themselves to a political figure. Well, I think we both thought after mind war that they're influencing public sentiment around things using their telepathic powers,

Brent: mm-hmm

Jeff: Armen BARR, telepath telepaths at all.

Brent: you know, I've had that thought.

Jeff: I feel like they

Brent: I've really had that thought. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff: is this a bigger issue? Right? So we're seeing the racial stuff going on. We're seeing that surface level government stuff of is earth colluding with the Menari, but is there something deeper where the Menari tele paths and Cyco are coming together for some sort of universal domination of these super mind people?

Brent: or, or that's actually who's at war.

Jeff: Oh man. Yeah.

Brent: Cy core and the it's actually, it's not earth versus Mumbar it's Cyco versus Mumbar. And so, okay. Let's, let's wrap around to this. Um, but, okay. I'm sorry. Before I just want, I just wanna throw this out there. That has nothing to do with this line of conversation. I wanna come right back to it.

Um, Babylon five has enough gravity to trap a fruit floating body. Like it has to produce its own gravity by spinning. I get that, but it has its own gravity to that's how big it is. Wow. I'm not really sure I'm not an astrophysicist yet, but uh, We'll see. We'll see soon. Yeah. Gimme a few years. Who knows?

Maybe, you know, read enough. You'll do grass Tyson. Anyway, we have to ask this question and go back to the, I think the, the central piece of it is why did the Mumbar pull back at the last moment? I think it's clear now that.

Jeff: Yep.

Brent: When the Mumbar captured Sinclair, they, they read his mind. They tortured him. They got him to confess to something, whatever it was that they did, that they wound up wiping his memory.

They wiped his memory. I know that in sci-fi world, you can do that with a device. You also can do it this telepath, and they have whatever this thing, he is the flashy thing. It's something that they got out of Sinclair that caused Vilma as a whole to pull back right. And to buy their time. So I have a new theory. I wanna spin a theory for you, the Maari war at war with earth, for whatever reason. I don't know why, but not because maybe they wanted to, but because they felt like they had to exterminate humanity to keep the galaxy safe. When they probed Sinclair's mind, he showed them that humanity actually could be worth saving and they didn't need to be exterminated because Sinclair's the ultimate good guy.

Remember, he's our hero of the story. He's not like Cy cor he's not like those guys. They, something happened where they said these guys aren't all bad. And we can't like, like, almost like the Mumbar are the ultimate like, like good guys. Like we're going to wipe you out if you are just completely evil. But if there's some hope of good in you, we're going to help you. And so they pull back and now delin as a Sati is sent to babble on five to help humanity become what it has the potential to be. That's why she's there, but she can't, it's, it's kinda like, uh, you know, imagine in all our old, uh, old things, when a God comes to earth, he can't tell people he's a God, he has to hide out as a

Jeff: mm-hmm

Brent: right?

Like you see that in, in ancient Greek mythology, you see that in Christianity, you see that in everything and you see it in all our sci-fi stuff. All, all of stargates kind of the same thing. Well, they don't pretend, but anyway, whatever. Um, so that's what delin is doing is she is almost disguising herself to help them become like, that's what they're doing.

Like they're kind of not taking the lead role, but they're behind the scenes with delin helping this to help humanity become as the last best hope for peace. That, that humanity is the last best. So now we're getting into a star Trek idea. This is a theory. I'm not saying that's what this is,

Jeff: but

Brent: as a theory,

Jeff: it totally tracks. And here's why I think it tracks, we know the Narn don't have telepaths we know that Jaar was disgusting with Alexander about that.

Brent: and somehow they're gonna have to die.

Jeff: Yeah. Right.

Brent: Jaar and Orlando have to die by the end of the

Jeff: Well, it's in 20 years, like cuz lawn has seen it. So we, we, we already know how that's gonna happen. I'm gonna assume Centara aren't Teles because the entire basis of their political power is having dirt on each other and hiding it and sharing it and whatever.

And if they're tele paths, well that's out the window. So minbar, we're calling it here. They're telepaths according to, to, to Jeff and Brent, that's what they are. They, we meet, they meet humanity and they've got telepaths and they're like, no, we went through centuries, right? To, to learn the discipline and the rules and the whatever to, to, to keep this safe.

You're just the wild west of tele you're gone. You're you're gonna destroy everything we saw in, uh, with, with iron heart. We saw the, what the potential, the potential for humanity is. So they're gonna put a stop to that. I love though that Sinclair, that makes so much sense. He's the Paragon of humanity.

Yes, we can make something out of this, but they're gonna need guidance. They're gonna need help. And that still ends job

Brent: yeah. And that's why she's there. That's what she's doing. And that's why she can't tell them what she knows. You know? So anyway, like I

Jeff: said though, here's here's my one hole. My one

Brent: Okay. I, oh, there's a lot of holes because I have, I have the biggest hole at the end

Jeff: okay. Yeah. Well, the big thing there is, if, if, if him knowing what happened means they have to kill him. Like wouldn't it just be kill him all, like don't just kill Sinclair. Oh. If, if he finds out about it, we're gonna kill him all or whatever. I don't know. I'm sure you've got bigger holes

Brent: I, well, I mean, that's it, my whole theory is ruined by triangle head dude at the end, screaming. If he finds out, we've gotta kill him. Like really you, if he finds out the truth, you have to kill him. Like that doesn't make sense at all either. So

Jeff: I had one more thought. I had one more thought that I wanted to hit before we dive into anything else. Because we can't, we can't have an episode of Bab on five without Jeff talking about how Sinclair oversteps his bounds as a leader, and doesn't do a great job. So Benson, the security guard, who is gambling gets called in, gets called into the principal's office.

And Sinclair is the one who reads the guy, the riot act and ends up making the decision to pull in from active duty. That's Gar Aldi's job. He runs that team. What the hell is the station commander doing one, having that conversation. This is the first time they've talked to Benson about it. There are situations where it makes sense to escalate that up the chain of command, not on the first conversation and who is he to make the call to pull him off of act.

In fact, he makes the call to pull him off of active duty. And then later on Gar all these team, the workers do a little mini investigation and decide on their own. Hey, he's fine. We're gonna pull him back. Like Gar, all these, what is he doing? It. Yeah, I was, I was, I was pretty blown away by both sides of his org chart.

Just completely cutting him off at the knees. I only have a little passion about this. I'm all worked up about this

Brent: well, re remind me what your star Trek podcast is about there.

Jeff: about, yeah. Leadership a little bit. Yeah.

Brent: literally, literally that, yeah. All right, Jeff. Well, I think with that, then we have reached the part of the show where it's time to boil it all down and see if the show has any of that star Trek quality to it. Is there a deep moral message?

Is it holding up a mirror to society? Is it giving us hope that we'll be better in the future? and to do so we're gonna rate, uh, once we talk about that, we'll also rate this scale, this episode on a scale, we're also going to rate this episode on a scale of zero to five deltas. So Jeff, I'm gonna throw it to you first. What do you think? Does this have a star Trek equality to it? How many deltas are you giving it? And do you wanna watch it again?

Jeff: This episode was fun, which is a really weird thing to say about the, the subject matter that we watched. But I just, I really liked how they used the mind construct as a way to show us what happened, you know, on the minbar vessel and those pieces, you know, I, I said, I watched this twice and I had a different impression the second time.

Would I watch it again? Maybe, maybe it's not one. I'm excited to watch again, the war prayer. Totally gonna watch that one again. Right? Like that's, that's like my standard here, this one. Hmm. Maybe, but as far as a star Trek message, I have a, I have a lot of thoughts on this. So there's a scene where night two is talking about how, how dangerous it is that earth is getting involved with alien.

And what we hear about him about, about his thoughts are so similar to what we hear today and what we heard in the mid nineties about immigrants, about refugees, about anyone who is other than us, right. They're coming in, they're buying all of our real estate. They're taking our jobs, they're funding our activities.

They're infiltrating, infiltrating our culture, Sinclair pushes back on him. And he stands up for working with them in Barri. And I think to your point about him being the Paragon of humanity through the last couple episodes we've seen, Sinclair has become the model of anti-racism. He's straight up calling people out on it.

And he's using, using his lived experience through trauma, like the trauma of being in war. He's using that to maintain peace and respectful, you know, uh, relationships with all the other, uh, all the other species I can see that. I could see that, uh, flip at some point though, where he does decide, oh my gosh, you're right.

They are horrible. I do wanna strangle them again. But at this point, this point he is doing great. The single thing in this whole episode that really stood out to me on this though, was, was that understandable hatred that he had in there because of the PTSD that we've talked about. But I think that, I think that his feelings line up in a weird way with home guard and the other hate groups in there.

Brent: Uh,

Jeff: I see Sinclair's path going in one of two directions. One what we're seeing him do, he's leading against all this hate, and he's going to be the example of what it looks like to build collaboration and, and, and, and respect and all those great things. Or he is gonna flip. He's gonna flip and he's gonna become a leader for some of these hate groups.

And the main reason I think that might happen was this little thing I interpreted at the end when night two is getting led off and his mind is exploded at this point, cuz Sinclair straight G him while he was in the mind chair and he says, we're still connected. Like you're still in here. Like I think he's still in his brain somewhere.

And so I, there, I don't know. I see the potential for some manipulation down the, down the, the down the path, couple, all that with a scene, you alluded to where Dr. Franklin was talking to Len. So earth was losing the war and they were gonna resort to biological and chemical weapons. Dr. Franklin refused to turn over his notes.

that? I mean, he stood up, he took a huge risk that star Trek. And I feel like this episode hit on huge messages refusing to go with the flow. When that flow is hateful and it's killing people. I mean, that's really the thing. That's what Sinclair's been doing. That's what Dr. Franklin did before. I'm gonna give this one, four deltas. Yeah, I was, especially, I only had it at three. It was the second viewing that took me to four where I'm just like this really? Because what you painted in your conspiracy theory. But also we saw that, like, Sinclair's not gonna allow these things to happen, period. And then we have that example of Dr.

Franklin putting his career on the line. That's why he ended up hitchhiking. Right? Cuz he's like, I'm out. I'm not gonna play this game. I'm not gonna give you my data. If it's going to kill someone. And to me, that's, that's the roadmap to a better future. That's what we think of as star Trek. What about you?

Brent: So I want to keep talking about that scene that you had right there with Dr. Franklin. The line that he used is he says, I took an oath that says all life is sacred. There is literally not a more star Trek message than that one line right there. If you wanna wrap up the entire. Of the gene Roddenberry vision of the future.

It is that all life is sacred by the way, the look that delin gave to Dr. Franklin, after he said

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: was telling some people could interpret it as, oh, you're so precious. Oh, bless your little heart. They could interpret it as that. Others could be like, there's hope for you

Jeff: Mm-hmm

Brent: That's the way to

Jeff: I think about your conspiracy

Brent: think actually fits in my theory a whole

Jeff: She's like, it's not just Sinclair. It's you too.

Brent: Exactly. And she's like, yes, we're doing the right thing. Um, so there's that you can't get more star Trek than that. There's also another great line that Sinclair says earlier about Benson and it applies to everything else. Right. Uh, which by the way, I think that all life is sacred line saying that Tolen. I feel like that's going to come back and have ripple effects when we find out what actually happened that day with the gray council, because all life is sacred. Why did they pull back? Because all life is sacred. Like, like that idea I think is going to come back. That's that, that's why this one I don't know is gonna come back, but I still found it a very star Treky thing.

He says this, the innocent lie, because they're going to be blamed. They're scared. They're going to be blamed for something they didn't do. And the guilty lie, because they have no other choice. Now, what I wish you would've said there, think this would've been more poetic is the innocent lie because they're scared they're gonna be blamed for something.

They didn't do the guilty lie because they are scared. They're gonna be blamed for something they did do. That's the way I feel like that line should have been written, whatever, but I think that's such a, an insightful idea. Like I could hear captain Picard saying that like, oh sir, he's lying. He's lying.

Yes. He's lying because he's either scared that he's, that he's going to get blamed for something he didn't actually do. Like I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna throw the book at you for lying. It's why are you lying? That's what really matters. Like that feels very star Trek to me. So that's two pieces. So for that, I'm gonna give this one actually only two deltas.

I didn't think it was that star Trek of an episode because those were just two sort of side bits. I feel like my theory is far more star Trek than what this episode was. And if my theory pans out, I reserved the right to come back and change my grading on this particular episode. But given what we know right now, the rest of the episode to me was a good sci-fi show.

This would've been an episode of star Trek. That's not very star Trek to me. It, it, I think this was a JMS wrote this episode. So this was a move the ball down the court kind of an episode that they did. And I, I have, I wonder, like, I really wonder does JMS write those episodes that move the ball down the court and then he lets the guest writers do the others.

Um, at least through the first season. Like, I, I don't know. I'm just guessing it's possible. We'll see people out there listening. They know, or some of them do anyway. Don't tell us. Yeah, just don't tell us, we'll figure it out when we get there. But so I give it, I give it to, would I watch this one again?

Yes, I would watch this one again. Am I gonna sit down and just put it on for funsies? Cuz I got 45 minutes to guilt. No, right now I'm going back to the war. Prayer for for that one, you know, or maybe even born to the purple cause I like that episode quite a bit as well. Uh, so yeah, Jeff, I give it two deltas.

Jeff: speaks a lot. Cause I know I've, I've scored a couple of episodes based on my optimism or lack thereof of what's gonna happen in the future. We have, we come star Trek, lets us come from such a place of privilege that up until recently everything was done. Like we knew all the stories they told and we could look back and say, yeah, this episode seems like it kind of, you know, missed the mark or whatever, but it pays off.

Like we knew all those connections. And so we could go back to the series and rate everything pretty, pretty, fairly, and objectively. We have no idea where this stuff is leading. So in the moment it might look like it's really great, but it actually leads to something that's the, or vice versa. You know, we just, we just don't know.

Well, Brent, that's it? That is sky full of stars next week. So we like to play this game. We've been asking you to not share any spoilers with us and thank you so much for not, I mean, you have no idea how much it means to us that you're helping us actually view this for the first time. But part of that is we don't do any pre-research.

We don't dive into things or learn anything about it. We literally look at the name of the next episode and then we guess what it's gonna be about. So, Brent, what do you think death Walker is gonna be about?

Brent: has, I mean, this, this sounds like soul hunter, death Walker, soul hunter. Is this soul hunter part two. Oh my gosh. Please let it not be that's. That's my prediction. That's my prediction. This is soul hunter. Part two. Maybe it's a different species. These are death walkers, and those were soul hunters. You know, I, I don't know, but this sounds so much like soul hunter.

I'm calling it soul hunter part two. They come back, they come

Jeff: oh God, it's too soon, too soon. I feel like between soul hunter and death Walker, like they're trying to help Slayer with their track listing for a new record.

Brent: oh

Jeff: so me, I, I think this is gonna be the episode that we thought infection was gonna be. So I think there's gonna be like a doctor scientist.

Somebody who comes on is in the med lab, infects patient zero, who then becomes a death

Brent: Oh,

Jeff: And here's the twist. Oh, oh, here's the twist on it.

Brent: uh,

Jeff: The plague or the disease or whatever, only targets aliens, not humans.

Brent: I I'll give you, I'll give you a, I mean, kind of on what you're saying there, space zombies.

Jeff: Yeah, yes.

Brent: That's where the show's going space ops. Isn't that kind of what soul hunter is? I'm just, I, I feel like it's gotta connect back. I don't know that it's the soul hunters. I just feel like they, they might make an appearance in this episode and, and it's gonna be connected.

Jeff: Oh man. I hope not.

Brent: I don't, I don't think our two things are mutually

Jeff: Okay. Okay. We could both be right.

Brent: that's what I mean, I don't think that we're necessarily mutually

Jeff: we're gonna go from hitting in the opposite direction of the bullseye to both like at least hitting the board.

Brent: right, right. We just came at it from two different angles, but we got

Jeff: well, we'll find out right here next week. Thank you so much, so much for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you're listening and give us that star, give us the thumbs up in your podcast that your, your podcast app you're listening to and everybody everybody's got an apple ID, Brent.

Brent: Jeff, did you, I found out this week, do you know where people can listen to us on? I didn't even know that this was possible. They can listen to us on the audible app.

Jeff: What

Brent: The audible, you, you know, those audio books that you like to listen to as well, you can listen to Babylon first Babylon five for the first time.

Sorry. Babylon first is our Twitter handle. You can listen to Babylon five for the first time on audible. And if you like, you can leave us a rating in review on audible.

Jeff: how cool is

Brent: Yeah, there you go.

Jeff: There's so many cool places you can check us out and we're so thankful that you do share the words, spread it, tell people that we're out there, we appreciate you more than you can possibly know. And until next time I must, I must find out,

Brent: Don't do

Jeff: I must find out what happened and why you won't let me live long.

And pro

Brent: you.

Jeff: I know, I know it's not a star Trek podcast. I know.