Conflicts of Interest

Jeff: Welcome to Babylon 5 for the first time. Not a Star Trek podcast. My name is Jeff Akin and I am the one who was. Sorry to, uh, interrupt you there, but you know what? We're watching Babylon 5 for the first time for you. The one who is.

Brent: that's right. Jeff and I are, uh, two veterans, star Trek podcasters watching this show for the first time. Uh, but we're doing that thing that we do as Star Trek podcasters, where we're searching out, I mean, Jeff, we are peeling back layers. We are looking around corners. We're we're shining light into the darkness, looking for messages that this show is trying to tell us and trying to tell us it in a uniquely Babylon five way. Sometimes we win, we fail, but here we are every single week searching for those messages.

Jeff: And as we search for those messages, we need to remind ourselves this is not a Star Trek podcast, so we only get up to no more than three references. A piece, two Star Trek, each episode. That's it. Three. One of those no substitutions. Exchanges a refund. I would like to brighten your day a little bit. Brent, is that something I can do for you?

Brent: Yes, you can. But as you do that, I'm gonna talk to the YouTube folks here just for a second. They might have just seen me smell my fingers and I, I, I'm sorry. It looks so weird. You know what it is? I, because I, I have to just shout it out. I have a bottle of lavender essential oil on my hands, and it's like, like dripping a little bit around the edge or like, there's a little bit dried.

And I was, I was trying to see like, is that, yep, that's, that's, that's the lavender smell. It was not that. It wasn't anything else. I'm not trying to be weird. I just had to shout that out for you folks. Here,

Jeff: Oh wow.

All right. 

Brent: the unedited version. Here we go.

Jeff: There's nowhere to go but up. Like this is gonna be great.

Brent: Gotta feel content somehow, Jeff.

Jeff: Yeah, it's almost as if we had an episode here with not much to talk about, and so we, you know, slipped in scenes of other cartoons and stuff. Hey, uh, can I do something to brighten your day a little

Brent: I would love for you to, Jeff, please wake me. Wake me up a little bit. Get me excited about something.

Jeff: so I've got a five star review.

Brent: Woohoo.

Jeff: Oh yes. This is from Apple Podcast. It's from Troll Dan, and it might be the shortest review in the history of Apple podcasts. Good show, show is good. Even when the hosts are,

Brent: That is, you know what? That is our aim to be wrong, but be good and let everybody laugh along with us and sometimes at us, and we're perfectly okay with that. Yeah.

Jeff: Totally. Okay. All right. We have another five star review. Oh yes. Also from Apple Podcasts. SLU says, hi guys. Greetings from Europe. First of all, I want to apologize for my poor English. It is not my first language. I'm a huge fan of B five, and I really appreciate the work that you've put into this podcast.

I watch you on YouTube too. Your analysis of the show so far is amazing. Keep up the great work, and the best is yet to come

Brent: Listen, your English was perfectly fine. No need to apologize the, if I didn't know that you didn't speak English as your first language, I would not have even had that as a blip on my radar. Um, thanks for listening and shout out to all of our international folks. Jeff is a huge percentage of our listeners, like huge.

Jeff: this is going back a couple a, a little bit of time, but we, you know, so some fun inside information for, for people. We have advertisers that reach out to us and you're gonna notice that outside of, on the YouTube side, um, them doing their advertising thing, we don't really do a lot of that kind of stuff.

We try and keep pretty clean product for you or anything. We do. Do we want it to add value to you as a, as a, as a viewer or a listener?

Brent: need to call time out and say that you just said Doo do.

Jeff: Do, do, do, do, do do. I did, I did do the do

Brent: I am a parent of an 11 year old, just for the record.

Jeff: and we're both mentally about 12, so it all fits.

Brent: That's why he and I get along so well.

Jeff: Yeah. But yeah, so they asked us for some metrics, you know, stats on our audience and at the time 46% of our audience was US, based

Brent: was US based.

Jeff: us. Yeah.

Brent: 54 was international. That's awesome.

Jeff: It's pretty, uh, it's amazing. I love

Brent: so cool. Amazing.

Jeff: So I'm sorry about all the times we talk about things going on in the United States and you're like, oh, that was crazy. Like those guys, wow. That's so sorry.

Brent: Well Jeff, uh, that did brighten my day. That did brighten my day. Maybe what's coming up next though, depending on how it goes, may actually dampen your day. Cuz this is where you gotta go, where you're right or were you wrong and you gotta fess up. This is the part of the show where we look back on what we did last week, where we predicted what this episode was gonna be about and it's time to pay the piper to see how close you were or how miserably far away you might have been.

Jeff oh one, who was, what did you think this episode was gonna be about and how close.

Jeff: I am gonna give myself more points on this than I deserve, and I'll explain why. Here's what I thought. I thought that we were gonna be starting the Voices of resistance stuff and that kind of going out into the world was gonna ping a Ava's former lover and big time home guard guy, Malcolm Biggs. Now, that part didn't happen at all, but let me strip away all the names and all the specifics and just say that we're, and just say that we're gonna have, uh, stuff going out into the, into the galaxy and having a callback to a season one love interest for someone coming back into the show.

And I nailed it.

Brent: Strong people.

Jeff: wrong people, wrong situation and kinda the wrong outcome, but you know, it was a call back to, uh, to, uh, to a season, season one. Love interest. Brent, how did you do on this one?

Brent: I said that this was gonna be Mars resistance and smugglers trying to figure out if they really wanted to be a part of this new alliance that Sheridan was forming. No points on that. I did say, though, however, that this would also be Garabaldi trying to figure out where he belongs, which ultimately was the Garabaldi plot line of this 

Jeff: Yep. 

Brent: So half point.

Jeff: Together, we nailed it

Brent: There you

Jeff: depending on how you do the

Brent: my powers combined.

Jeff: Well, Brent, for those that it might have been a while since they've seen this, or they simply haven't watched it at all, but are watching or listening to us anyway, why don't you tell us about conflicts of interest?

Brent: Well, it looks like Jeff is finally gonna get his wish because this one sure seems to be a lot about Garabaldi. We open with him conducting business. When a client walks in all miffed, that Garabaldi hasn't done what he said he was gonna do, which is to rescue the client's daughter Garabaldi smiles, snorkel and sort of lets 'em go on for a bit until he says, Hey, turn around.

And there she is, the man's daughter. So mission accomplished and to top it all off, Garabaldi is only gonna charge the guy like one third of his normal fee. So listen, despite everything that's happened, Garabaldi is still a good guy, right? Right. While he's doing that, he's being peeped at by those shady dudes who recruited him in the last episode.

They have a mission for him. This is gonna kind of be a test, and if he passes, then he is proved himself. And if he doesn't, eh, then he is dead and we don't really care, which means it's a perfect time for Sheridan to order Zach to clean up some old business because you see Garabaldi has yet to turn in his badge and his gun, or I'm sorry, his ID card and his P P G or also his backup P ppg garibaldis a little miffed and takes a cheap shot at Z for being the one to come and take it.

But what Zach doesn't know is Garabaldi has a backup iden card that is until Garabaldi uses his backup IDEN card, and it flags for Zach, who then turns around and deactivate. The backup card because really, would it have been too much trouble to deactivate the card like as soon as Garabaldi resigned, whether he still had it in his possession or not?

Well, unfortunately, that little act is gonna leave Garabaldi in the lurch when he is caught between a rock and a hard place while he's on this mission, which also happens to include his old girlfriend from Mars, Lee Hampton, now Lee Hampton Eggers, like Edgar Eggers. Edgar Eggers, yes. Edgar Egg, like richest man on earth.

Dumb Eggers. Yeah. That guy is his old girlfriend's new husband. Well, because he's actually really good at his job, girl. Baldy, of course, is going to get them out of the situation. He's gonna send lease on her way and he's later gonna lamb. And he's later gonna lamb blast Sheridan for having the audacity to deactivate his backup identity card that he shouldn't have even had in the first place.

Like he's actually blaming Sheridan for the three dead bodies that he had to leave behind. Oh, and what was it that those three dead bodies were after a while, they were still alive. Well, lease was there to obtain a new piece of biotech that has something to do with researching a possible genetic flaw in Telepaths.

You know, nothing major, but I'm sure we're eventually gonna come back to this. Well, while all of that is happening, Ivanova is busy getting the new television studio up and running for the voices of the resistance, and she sits there and says, well, it's all ready to go Captain. Except she just kind of do it.

She doesn't have enough power. So she takes a trip to Epsilon three, hoping to get draw to help her with the power needs to transmit all the way back to Earth. And Epsilon, three's got enough power to make 'em transmit all the way beyond the rim to where, you know, Kosh 2.0 electric Boogaloo is gonna be able to hear this stuff. Only the problem is, is draw's kind of busy.

So she meets up with none other than Zathras! And Ivanova's like, Hey Zathras,, what are you doing here? And Zs is like, Zs live here, Atheros work here. What is it you are doing here? And IANA's like, didn't we send you back to the future? I mean to the past, like to good old 1885. And Atheros was like, no, I never went too past.

You must mean Zs, not Zs. Zs has never been too past, nor has Zs or Zs or Zs or Zs or Zhara or Zs or Zs. Zs now, he did get into past and he's still there, but Zs has never been to the past and Yvanova's brain exploded. No worries though, because Zs helps her and she sends out her very first broadcast as the new voice of the resistance, making it super clear that they are not against Earth.

They love Earth, but they are standing against Clark and his people and whatever they're up to. That's it. Jeff, what was your reaction like to this episode? Conflicts of interest.

Jeff: This episode had a lot of really great moments in it. For sure.

Brent: That sounds familiar. I feel like we've had this conversation before, Jeff.

Jeff: Yeah, it's ringing pretty true. But, but, but these moments were great. I love the callback to Lisa. I love that she came back, we met her in a voice in the wilderness, part two and Garabaldi, and that was great. Like for real, you know, she's like, oh, I'm, I am current.

I am, uh, Lisa Hampton and I'm currently being pumped up by Franz. And, uh, and Garibaldi was like, cool, cool. Good for you. Click. Oh my gosh, I can't believe this. This is the worst thing ever. But he was cool about it. This one, he's like, Hey, uh, what am I? Like, you've had some bad stuff happen. I, I, this, this was a roller rollercoaster ride episode for Garabaldi.

So I loved him. Reuniting dude and his daughter and un and undercharging him. That was, that's the garabaldi I loved, right? Garabaldi was my favorite character in season one. And it's stuff like this that made me. Love him. I hated him making it personal with Zach. I loved him being honest with his feelings about his feelings with lease, but I hated him blatantly violating rules and regs that he knows well.

I loved him being incredible at his job. Honestly, I kind of don't care about him and Sheridan so much anymore. You know what I mean? Like at the end of the episode when he gets the, you know, spoiler Lord, he gets the job offer. I want him to go, just go to Mars and work with the guy who's sleeping with your girlfriend.

Like, it's awkward. It's weird, but it's gonna be great, dude. Go do your thing.

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: I love, love that we got londo and Jaar in a room together. Felt

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: felt good. Uh, I loved Atheros.

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: I didn't much care for Zs, but I loved Z Atheros and my final thought, That little like pattern screen, the logo thing they have for the voices of resistance is the dumbest possible logo of all time.

Captain, captain Clark, president Clark, with a line through his face Really did, are they like, Hey, hey, Garabaldi. You know that guy whose daughter the, you rescued the daughter and does she have like, like a nine year old sister that could draw our logo for us? Like just tell her what we're doing and Yeah, we'll put it up.

It'll be fine. Ah, what about you? How did you feel about this one after you watched it the first time?

Brent: Well, I like this episode. I wanna go on record. I, I don't know that there is an actual episode of season four that I have disliked yet. You know, like I, I have, I think I've actually liked these episodes. I actually like this episode a lot more than I did the one from last week. I find myself coming out with two main reactions.

The first one. Yep. That all just happened. And two z

Jeff: Atheros. Yeah.

Brent: I'm not gonna poo poo this episode. Honestly, though I just didn't have much of a reaction at all. It was very, okay, there we go. Of, and I, I, I have a, I'm beginning to wonder something. I feel like I'm wondering stuff every week these days. Is it possible that the reason for this right now, cause I wanna reiterate, there hasn't been an episode in the season that I haven't liked yet, but I haven't had much of a response to a lot of them yet.

You know what I mean? Especially since the lon shadow stuff ended. Right. Um, is it possible that j m. Is such a masterful storyteller that he has set everything up so perfectly and put it in place in such a way that events are now unfolding in this part of the story where your response is, well, of course that's what happens.

Of course. That's how it comes to be. Yep. Kind of. I kind of expected least to come back into the story at some point. Did I know how? No, but I certainly expected her to come back into it. Of course, GU Baldi is gonna get taken. He needs to get taken off the station. The best thing that can happen to Gu Baldi right now is he leaves Babbel on five, goes and does his job somewhere else.

And he just decides his policy is gonna be, I'm not talking about Sheridan and I'm not talking about Babbel on five. I'm just, I'm gonna go live my life and do my thing. That is the best thing he could do right now. Um, But I, I really wonder if it's not that like, like is it JM S's fault for just being so good that we're like, okay, cool.

What happens next? Where are we going next? Now, all of that said, the big exception here is Z Atheros, because Atheros Jeff is like the Spanish Inquisition. No one expects the Z Atheros.

Jeff: it's true. And it's great. Every time he shows up,

Brent: I hope this is not his last show on Babylon five.

Jeff: I feel like too, because I mean there are two, but it turned into three ways they could have done that whole scene. There's the way they could have done it where they showed a vava flying down to the planet. And then later showed her flying back and she's like, yep, got everything set up. And honestly, that would work, right?

Because we know what's on Epsilon three, all the math checks out, so, okay. Could have

done 

Brent: Talked withdrawal. He wasn't available to come in and shoot the scene this week, but we're all good. He's gonna give us power. Let's go.

Jeff: Yeah, that's what I almost feel it was. They originally had this and like, yeah, let's have her go down. They can ivanova, Andro can have another moment, you know? And they'll call back to season three, that'll be great. And

Brent: Because you know what should happen at the end of this draw, something should happen to draw. And Ivanova is the one who goes down to take over, like with her like latent telepath abilities and whatnot. Like that's how she ends up is as the battery,

Jeff: Can I give you my dark prediction though, of why that will never happen

Brent: because Sheridan's gonna die and Ava's gonna take over the ruling. The station

Jeff: Worse.

Brent: Ava's gonna.

Jeff: Ivanna's gonna get that telepath virus genetic thing. Like, she's gonna be the, like, the catalyst that makes this real for

Brent: is she gonna be the, is she gonna be the odo who like also has the cure and it comes out of her blood? Or is she dead? That's number two, right?

Jeff: that was quick. Maybe. I don't know. Honestly, if I, if I was jms doing this, I'd kill her. Make it big, you know? I mean, I don't want her, I am not saying, I do, I do not want Ivanova to go away. I, I want my season and a half more of Susan Nav, Susan Ivanova. But, but like, if you want, wanna make this a thing, cuz I love Garabaldi with that cute or that thing or whatever it was, and oh, oh, your humanitarian husband bi me man.

But then the second of Ava gets it, he's, he's on it. Right? And it's very

Brent: because since season one, Gar, Baldi, and Ivanova should be a thing.

Jeff: No. Nope, St I will die on the, I will die on this. Garibaldi and Ivanova the same as Sheridan Ivanova last episode, where she's like, I'm not into you, you're not into me, but for goodness sakes, tell me I look good sometime. You know? That's, that's what buddies do. That's, that's, that's Ivanova and Garibaldi.

They're buddies.

Brent: All right, fair enough.

Jeff: But yeah, so draw Hey, dude's not around and available. Well, hey, let's see. Let's see if that Tom choke guy's around. If he's, if he's, we can, we can do a Zs thing. Well,

we can't do 

Brent: like, here's the thing, Z, this didn't need to be Zs. There was no particular point to have Zs in here except for Pure, we love Z Atheros. Let's put him in his fan service. That's That's it really. Right?

Jeff: I have one theory though, because he was atheros through and through and I feel like they added the whole, there's 10 of us, well, nine now, whatever thing, just, you know, because we've, we've seen Zs around and whatever. That's interesting. But this Atheros did the same thing in the past as Atheros did, which was talk about.

Zs is a beast of burden.

Brent: Oh, sure,

Jeff: You know? I like the dirt and all this poor.

Brent: walking on him.

Jeff: Yep. You get used to it as I thought. Maybe, here you go. Maybe I'm looking at you red sector here. Maybe for Brent, there will be a redemption of Z Atheros

Brent: Stop it. Stop

Jeff: gets a sock. He gets a sock, and then he's free.

Brent: Zs is a free elf. Um, I have to tell you something about this though, Jeff,

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: when I first saw Zs was like, Woohoo, Z Atheros. And then he's talking. Zs seemed a little different to me here, and the voice didn't seem quite right and the makeup didn't seem to fit the face of the actor that was underneath. And I really sat back and went.

Is this even the same actor? Did they get, go get somebody else who could impersonate the voice a little bit and then try to put the prosthetics on and cuz he just seemed off, he just seemed a little different. I looked it up. No, it's the same actor. It really is. It's, it's the same dude doing the same thing.

But this, this atheros did seem a little off, and I don't know if that's intentional in the part of j m s to show that actually these are different Z Z Zs size.

Jeff: Zk.

Brent: Right. Okay. Um,

Jeff: I

Brent: if it's, as he has written a handful of, you know, things for Zs, i e the thing where he's so self-defeating. Right. Uh, that he's inserting more of that into play it up because the character is growing as he's writing.

I, I'm not sure which one it is, but.

Jeff: I think it's less, less malignant than either of those things. I think it's literally. We want to draw for this scene. He wasn't available. Uh uh dude, can you be here next week and do Atheros again for us? Hey, costume and makeup department. Can you dust off all that? Those prosthetics? Oh, we, we have those tucked away.

They hurry with a couple days notice and they, and they put it

Brent: There you go. And had a, had a phenomenal scene. It was a one day shoot for, for Timote or whatever his name was and there we go.

Jeff: it was great. It

Brent: It was fun though. It was, it was the highlight of the episode.

Jeff: And then we got Sheridan trying to offer his, uh, services out there. I, yeah,

Brent: We'll see what happens with that in a future episode, I'm sure.

Jeff: he said a thing. I think for me, there were two things that happened in that scene. Well, one, Londo and Jaar were in a

Brent: Yes. And they were, they were speaking civilly with each other. Yeah.

Jeff: agreed. Even and from, from an agreement as small as that, great things can come and grow. But the two things I got were, uh, the sonari know about the jock and they, it's like a children's story to scare, scare kids to sleep or whatever.

And the second thing was Sheridan's incredible statement, that it's easy to come together against a common enemy, but now we have to come together for a common goal. And so that community building that Dalen was talking about last week, he's putting into action. It really hit me how we were seeing that in action.

Where you got a sonari, you have a narn, both of whom would not hesitate to completely eviscerate and murder the other one given just a, any opening whatsoever. And Sheridan, Sandy be between them, just being like, guys, we gotta come together. There's bigger stuff than any of us and he was making a very compelling argument.

Now, I wasn't clear at the end if they agreed or didn't agree to let the rangers and the white stars go and patrol their space for the jock. I wasn't clear on the outcome of that, but they listened and that's a big deal. That's Sheridan being awesome.

Brent: I dig it.

Jeff: It's good. Then we've got Garabaldi and Rammstein again. Rammstein wanting him to do some work. Yeah, the the guys in the leather outfits.

Brent: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, they come in. I, I like that opening. Look, he'll go do it, and he'll either do it well or he'll die, in which case we don't care. 

Jeff: Yeah. 

Brent: good. Um, I gotta tell you, you mentioned liking to see Lisa and having this come back, I cared absolutely nothing for it.

Jeff: Really.

Brent: And by that I'm not saying I hated it. I'm saying I literally had zero emotional connection to this. They could have brought in a complete stranger. It could have been her, it could have been Leona Kimmer. I, it did not move the needle for me whatsoever. In fact, I might have really liked it much better if it had been Leona Kimmer. know, old Uncle Mike is coming back to the rescue. You know what I mean?

Jeff: The scene that I, the scene I loved between the two of them would have worked with Keer. Uh, well, not as much, but because it was, it was when they were in his quarters and he's like, so you had all this bad stuff. Franz went off and cheated on you, and you were lost. You, you haven't seen your daughter in a year and you never called, you never anything.

And he is like, look, we're done. We're done. I'm gonna do this job. And, and we're outta here. You're not a part of my life anymore and I'm gonna move on and do great things. And you know what? I don't even need to drink to make that happen anymore. This is powerful stuff right here. All the stuff leading up to it was kind of, yeah.

Little whatever, but then he is like, I can feel good about this and I don't have to drink to do that. And

Brent: That was good. I did like that part. Yeah. Yeah,

Jeff: Yeah, the actor, what she said, everything was so, like, she was truly happy for him in that moment. And to me that that was a maybe the highest point emotionally in, uh, in this episode where it's just like, there are people that truly care about you, Michael, like

Brent: I'm, I'm glad you got out of that, that, so I'm gonna amend what I'm getting ready to say here. What my note says is this, I seriously hope that this is just serving the purpose of connecting Garabaldi to Edgar. For whatever work he's gonna be doing. What I do not wanna see is Garabaldi and le try to have a thing together.

I do not wanna see her having an affair with Garabaldi on her husband. I do not wanna see, uh, them falling in love and then something happens to her husband and now Garabaldi is coming in to take over. Cuz he's gonna, I don't, I don't wanna see any of that. Just, I'm okay if she really doesn't show back up and it's really Garabaldi and Eggers going forward.

Cause I'm interested in this Eggers guy. Like, I think this could be an interesting piece. Um,

Jeff: I hope they stay connected. Lease. I like, I like lease, but, but I agree with

Brent: but I could be down for Garabaldi and lease together in a more platonic relationship and something that is, that is good for Garabaldi to realize because Garabaldi is a very bitter man right now. He's very bitter and that, that is what I want to see they'll explore right now. You know what I mean?

Like they're stringing out. This garabaldi is just pissed off doing his own thing a long time. Right Now we need to get to, okay, what happened to Garabaldi in that chamber with the Cycore folk? What did he, what happened when he looked in that mirror and they like winner soldiered this dude. And he is like, erase all of that to where he like, they are slow playing this slower than they did to Lynn and John Sheridan coming together as an item.

You know what I mean? And I need them to, you know, get that. That's, that's the Garabaldi story. I'm interested in the idea that Garabaldi learns and recognizes that there are people who truly care about him and you know who some of those people are. Sheridan and Ivanova and Zach and Steven, and. So on and so forth.

You know,

Jeff: Zach was great for him in this

Brent: he needs to come back and apologize to Zach. He really does. Cuz that was, that was awful of Gu Baldy to do that to him and lay that on him and put a guilt trip on him. That just is completely unfair. And I'm just going, I hope that's not true. Gu Baldy, I hope that's whatever is, is programming is going on.

Um, but I could, I could get with Lease being there if it served that purpose for Gar Baldy,

Jeff: Yeah, I almost see him being like the contracted or even whatever, had a secur corporate security now for this Edgar Industries or whatever. And maybe he reports to lease, you know, or something, but they, they, they form that, that supportive relationship or

Brent: be okay seeing her being like some big powerful executive in this company.

Jeff: yeah,

Brent: what I mean? Like letting her be a, a strong female character that's outside of the, the military command.

Jeff: and frankly in the parlance of Babylon five, not only a strong female character, but also a strong female Martian born character, which I think translates into our world here. You know, so I can be a woman on a board who might be an immigrant, you know, or something like that. But look, I'm. Powerful. I'm brilliant and I'm doing these great things.

I think there's a, the potential for some really great, um, analogies down the road. If this goes anywhere right. This, this could just be another job for him and this is a way to pull him into the job.

Brent: I like it. Jeff. The biggest question, to me, the biggest thing coming out of this, um, cuz I'll say this, I've liked all of these episodes. Um, I haven't had much of a reaction to all of these episodes, but I will say this, I think every single one of these episodes. Is important. I don't think any one of these is a throwaway episode.

Like to get wherever we're going at the end of the season or in season five, we need what's happening here. Like, I I, I'm recognizing that the thing out of this episode that we need, and you referenced it earlier, whatever this genetic flaw is in the telepaths, whatever this potential virus is with Telepaths and what that's gonna do, because we still have that stack of frozen telepaths in the back over there.

We've still got Ster and his folks out there doing whatever they got going on. And remember that one, uh, telepath dude was like, Hey, uh, president Clark's trying to do this multi-pronged attack and we're gonna use some of our telepath friends too. Like, I'm interested to find out where this piece goes cuz it really does sound like a virus that's gonna, uh, come in and infect the hole.

Jeff: That could be rough. I found it fascinating too, like the, uh, the Telepaths who came to disrupt that whole deal had the, uh, cyanide tooth thing. Now, for all of you out there who are not, Have not, are not married, or you are, uh, you know, you're not the, the, the, the groom in the or the husband in the relationship.

I'm gonna let you know on a secret, and I might get in trouble for this. I'm taking a pretty big risk sharing this, Brent, just, uh, if I go disappearing, you know that they, the brotherhood got upset and found out about this, but after you get married, they install this thing in your, in your tooth so that at some point in your marriage you're gonna come stumbling through the door.

Maybe a little drunk, maybe a little whatever, and your wife's gonna be like, oh my God. Again, where have you been? What were you doing? I don't understand why. And all you gotta do is flick that thing open, bite down, you're done. Problem solved these telepaths was. Their, their groomed husband cyanide teeth to stop from getting captured by the highly competent and effective Zach and Zach security crew, who even with all of the help and everything else from everybody still, uh, beat, beat Garabaldi to the, to the punch. That was pretty cool. My big question, I'm gonna, I'm gonna test your knowledge here a little bit. So they have these military issue,

Brent: Jeff, are you, are you sure you want to test my knowledge?

Jeff: I am

Brent: You've tried this before a while ago.

Jeff: I am testing your knowledge because I know that you know

Brent: Okay.

Jeff: and I'm just, it's trust me. Trust me. Here. Come along for the

Brent: I'm with you.

Jeff: Come along for the ride. He, these military issue, PPGs on, uh, the station. Why do they have PPGs and not like projectile weapons or laser?

Brent: Um, I'm pretty sure that PPGs have been established to be projectile weapons and not energy-based weapons.

Jeff: Well, I mean, like, they don't have like, like bullet gun, what do they call, they had a name for that back in grade 17 is missing where they had the thing slug, a slug slugger or something like that.

Brent: Um, are you

Jeff: but why do they use that particular sort of

weapon on this station? Mm-hmm.

Brent: Uh, so it doesn't blow a hole inside of the station? I don't know.

Jeff: Yeah. Hey, you know, we saw a lot of, in this episode,

Brent: lot of bullets.

Jeff: a lot of PPGs getting blasted through all of the structures in the station. Took down a door, took down the vents whole time. I'm just like, I thought, but I don't, yeah, I don't understand.

Brent: I, I am almost positive, Jeff, that I remember back when we did the gathering, the very first episode, um, I did a little bit of research on the kind of the behind the scenes, and one of the things that we got from that was the, the things that they changed when they remastered it for t n t versus the the P 10.

And one of the, one of the things they changed was acknowledging that the P P G was a projectile weapon and not an energy-based weapon, because later on in the show, they made it a projectile weapon and energy-based weapon. Although, as I'm saying this out loud, I may actually have that back.

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: have said in the gathering that it was a projectile weapon, but through the rest of the show, it's an energy-based weapon, and they changed it to turn it into a, into a energy-based weapon.

I may have that backwards. Do you know you remember off top of your head? Can you?

Jeff: I forget exactly what PPG stands for, but it's some sort of plasma gun something. Plasma gun.

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: So it's plasma, which could be

a Projectile right? Like 

Brent: gun, right?

Jeff: Yeah, in fallout you get a plasma weapon and it's a projectile, but it shoots plasma and it uses your energy, weapons

Brent: It's a phased plasma gun

Jeff: There it

Brent: and it fires a bolt of energized, super heated helium sheathed in an electromagnetic field propelled by an opposed magnetic field. Boy, oh boy. Does that not sound like, all right. It's how the holodeck works. It's a hologram. But it's wrapped in these force fields so that you can touch it and do stuff with it, and it looks and feels exactly like the real thing. And you're like, that is the biggest bunch of BS I've ever heard in my life. But good on you for figuring out how to explain it.

Jeff: Yeah, it sure sounds good. It sure sounds good. So you made a prediction a long time ago, multiple times. Um, very small one that came to fruition in this

episode. Yeah, the little, the little com badge thing they've got on their wrist. Yeah.

Brent: yes. Garbo was like, it keeps pulling my hair. Look, it doesn't even grow back anymore. And I was like, yes, it does.

Jeff: I was like, Brett said that, he said that.

Brent: are a hairy man, Jerry Doyle and that, I mean, that must have been like, uh, I, I've truly imagined, like in real, Him putting that on and off his hand every day for work was like a behind the scenes makeup trailer conversation.

And j m s wrote it into the script, like had to have, because it just, and it was their own like, little nod in, in the show, like,

Jeff: They're like, haha, haha.

Do you have anything else either?

Brent: I'm, I'm ready for the next segment whenever you are, brother. Uh, yeah.

Jeff: All right, Brent, we've reached that

Brent: the under.

Jeff: All right. Right.

Brent: Hey, just so you guys know YouTube, uh, can I tell him, Jeff, is that okay?

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we've mentioned it in like the

Brent: Oh, did we? Okay. Yeah. So before the show, Jeff and I set and over under how long we think the episode's gonna be. Jeff, set this one at an hour and seven now that includes all the preamble. That includes anything that may or may not happen after that, you would only know if you actually stuck around and didn't bounce out on our show earlier, which is okay if you do.

It's just you missed some good stuff at the end. Um, and it incorporates all that. You said an hour seven and I took the over on this one. Let's, let's see what happens. We're, uh,

Jeff: yeah. Let's see what

Brent: 45 minutes right now. Let's go Jeff.

Jeff: All right, Brent, we have reached that part of the show. We are gonna boil this all down. We're gonna see if this episode has any deep morals, any messages. If it's holding up a mirror to society, any hope will be better in the future. And we're gonna see just how Babylon five those messages are delivered.

Brent, you're gonna do that by rating this episode on a scale of zero to five Delta Furies. So lay it on me,

Brent: Jeff, I'm gonna read this exactly as I have it written down in my notes. I got nothing. If this were an actual episode of Star Trek, it would be one of those. That we said didn't have much of a Star Trek message in and of itself. So I'm forced to say that this particular episode was plot, plot, plot, but no messages.

And that means no delta furries. But I can't leave it there because the other question is how uniquely Babylon five was this episode. For that, I'm having to make an assumption, Jeff, that once we know the entire story, there is going to be a lesson and we won't be able to get that lesson at the end without having everything that's happening here, and we will understand it then.

And so on the basis of that assumption alone, despite last week, having said, I'm just gonna try to take these episode by episode, I'm actually gonna reach back into our past, into our old bag of rating systems, and I'm gonna pull out two star furries. Because I did enjoy this episode and it certainly was Babylon five. That's what I have written there. However, over the course of our conversation tonight, Jeff, you have reminded me of something that I did forget about. It's easy to come together for a common enemy, but now we have to come together for a common goal. That's so good. That's a line to pull out and put in the book of Star Trek messages and it's so true.

One of the interesting things about the Star Trek thing, the, the history of Star Trek was the world had just come through World War iii. The world Earth was pretty well decimated. It was not a great place to be. We kind of blasted ourselves back to the Stone Age, not not quite the stone Age, but we weren't doing great.

And then we met the Vulcans. They came in first contact, right? And when we realized that we weren't alone, that united humanity, well, what was it about that, that united humanity, that we realized that there's something bigger than ourselves out there. And now we just had the fuzzy, warm feelings that, hey, we get to do this.

No, really it was more like, Hey, we're we have a bigger enemy out there that we need to like get our crap together for? Is I kinda the way that I get it? And eventually it evolved into something bigger and better. But they're absolutely right. It is easy to come together for a common enemy. I think one of the things we see in the world out there, and this is a huge, this should be a huge red flag.

Everybody should see this and call it out for exactly what it is whenever you see it. If, if a politician, gosh, this is two weeks in a row, if a politician can make them the enemy. And rally people to an enemy. If they can, if he can give or she can give the people that they want voting for them an enemy to rally against. It's what Hitler did with the, with the Jews. It's what Charlamagne did way back.

It's, uh, with, um, um, it's the reason he made Christianity, the, the, the state religion. It, it, the Muslims. I think I, I forget my history.

Jeff: Or was it the barb? Like the

Brent: Barbarian. Yeah. It's, it was something I, I, I forget my history with what it was, but if you can unite people around that enemy, it will bring people together to do it in a better way.

Though we're not gonna unite around an enemy, we're gonna unite around a common goal that, that is beautiful. So for that as this was just sort of a throwaway piece, again, I still think it might be part of a larger thing that we'll notice when we come back. I'm actually gonna give this one, one Delta Fury, let's.

Jeff: That's fair. That's what I was gonna, I was gonna come in and stump on was like this line. It's great. And it, it is, it's a line in a, in a moment in this one that should pay off, down, down the line. So, couldn't argue with you if I wanted to, but I don't even want to.

Brent: Well, Jeff, with that, uh, we are creating the absolute 100% completely accurate and definitive ranking of the fourth season of Babylon. Five. Now, Jeff, it is your job this week to place conflicts of interest Inside of our rating system, we have our top 11. The question is, now, which episode gets pushed out of the top 11, or is this one the one that's gonna be the one hanging out?

Our current top five, though, just to recap for the folks out there at home into the fire, the Long night Atonement, whatever happened to Mr. Garabaldi, and number five is the summoning. Jeff, does this episode crack the top five for you? If so, if not, where does.

Jeff: It does not, it does not crack the top five. And I think this is like my chance to put my, and maybe our money where our mouth is, where like we, I, I don't think we sounded super excited about this episode today. We didn't have a lot to talk about, but this was a good episode. Like there was good stuff in here.

This was a better episode. Than the illusion of truth. This was not a better episode than the Hour of the Wolf. I'm gonna make this our new number

Brent: Sounds.

Jeff: one of the games that we love playing here on uh, wait. Oh, and that's it. For conflicts of interest, one of the things we love to do on Babylon five for the first time is play our games. And one of the favorite games that we play is where we guess what the next episode is gonna be about based on the title alone.

Next week we're watching Rumors, bargains, and Lies. For the first

Brent: I'm sorry, what was that name?

Jeff: rumors, bargains, and lies.

We haven't seen anything about this. No thumbnails,

Brent: That's a very long name. Ru. Ru. Rumors, bargains, and Lies. Okay.

Jeff: Rumors, bargains and lies. Brent, what do you think, based on that alone, do you think the next episode's gonna be about?

Brent: Got it. I know it. I'm laying claim to the Crown once again. You know what, this is Jeff. This is Babylon. Fives in the pale moonlight. This is absolutely Sheridan doing something super shady. Cuz remember he had that conversation with Londo and Jaar, right? He's doing something super shady to bring more people into this alliance that he is forming.

He talked about those Raiders at the League of Non-aligned Worlds. We've already seen him have to bring the Lincoln and Dono worlds in for the whole Bolon shadow thing. And then whatever, she's gotta bring 'em back. He is gonna do something. This is him being bad. And

Jeff: Is he gonna have some like sonari killed or

Brent: I have no idea. I, I, I, I, I'm not gonna speculate that far, but I'm gonna leave it with she, Sheridan is going full Ben Cisco on this one, and he is gonna do something bad for the purpose I, because I think it's in the pale moon light for the purpose of bringing these other people in, because Sheridan is clearly amassing a new alliance of folks to stand against Earth. And there's also this draw and all this other stuff. So I think he's gonna do something to bring these folks together. But I think it's gonna be a little sh I think Sheridan's gonna get his hands dirty in this one, and I really hope it involves him sending Lo Londo and Ja car out on like a little buddy cop mission. I really hope that it involves that, but I don't know that it does.

Jeff: a buddy cop mission between two buddies that want to kill each?

Brent: That's Jeff. How awesome is that?

Jeff: I know,

right? Yeah. I'm, I, 

Brent: TV to me.

Jeff: I'm loving this idea. I'm trying to think like, you know, cuz the thing in a pale, in the pale moonlight was Cisco knew and he went along and whatever, but Garrick Garrick is the guy who did the, did this stuff. I'm trying to think who Sheridan is gonna like try and partner with to make this happen and my gut tells me.

Okay. Okay.

Brent: I mean,

Jeff: That's the buddy cop

Brent: yeah.

Jeff: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Wow.

Brent: And it'll all be for the greater good. And you know what, what it means when somebody says it's for the greater good.

Jeff: It's never

Brent: You the bad guy.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: This is, this is Sheridan playing the anti-hero for an episode. And it wouldn't surprise me, Jeff, to know that this episode actually came out after the pale moon light.

In the Pale Moon light. And when we look at this episode to sit back and go, actually this one, like I love In the Pale Moonlight. This one might be better if it's where I think it's going. It could be. We'll see.

Jeff: We'll see. Oh man. Now that's like the first

Brent: You haven't given your deal yet. What do you think?

Jeff: I haven't yet. Cause I, I'm, I'm like, I'm buying into yours. But the first thing I wanna look at is I wanna look at those air dates before I even watch. I just wanna look at the air dates and be like, how do these things line

Brent: I'm looking right now just because I want to know it. It's not a spoiler to look at air dates, is it? Well, here I can tell you this. Conflicts of interest was May 5th, 1997.

Jeff: okay.

Brent: Rumors, bargains and Lives was May 12th. You keep going Jeff. Say what you wanna say.

Jeff: Oh, no, I'm gonna let you look. I'll edit

Brent: Okay. In the Pale Moonlight was um, oh no. In the Pale Moonlight was April 13th, 1998. So it was almost a full year in the P moon. Light was almost a full year after Babylon five. Oh my gosh. If they did this show and then Ba Deep Stein literally stole the idea.

And this is one of the things people are talking about

Jeff: Yeah, this is the smoking

Brent: or no. Or it's, it's back to that. Oh, you guys are gonna do that? That's cute. Watch what we do and we're gonna one up it.

Jeff: Oh man. Oh my gosh. I hope this is what the episode is.

Brent: I do too. Like I wanna go watch it right now just to see if that's what 

Jeff: my gosh. So my mine seems so boring now in comparison, cuz my whole thought was, you know what episode, we recently heard the term rumors a whole lot in recently, last week. Rumors of the Warrior Cast doing this. So I, I felt like this is gonna be Dalen on Minbar doing the politics stuff, right, going addressing the rumors, making bargains, dealing with, and probably making lies.

Cuz I think what she's gonna be doing is going on to try and establish herself as a person of power and

Brent: The, I don't

Jeff: minbar. Deen's not a Pure Men Bar, or she's the most Pure Men bar, depending on who you ask. She's the only one who will tell you

Brent: Is it gonna be, is there gonna be a B plot with something that's happening with Earth that's gonna somehow mirror what's happening with Dylan on Minbar?

Jeff: ooh. Probably, although I think it was a b plot. It's probably gonna be the Garabaldi stuff and, and not around his programming, but around him and Edgar

Brent: Sure. Because we're just gonna slow roll the whole Garabaldi programming stuff. Oh my gosh, Jeff, if we drop Garibaldis programming and this is just where we go, I'm gonna be mad at all of you out there who say that nothing's wasted

Jeff: I will write some letters. They'll be very sternly worded. I prom, I, I'm

Brent: and then send them to the past

Jeff: Yeah, I

Brent: to tell them off.

Jeff: We've done it before. We've gone to the past. We,

you know, we can make it 

Brent: the show from the future.

Jeff: Oh gosh. I'm excited for this next episode. We're gonna find out exactly what happens next week. Thank you everyone for joining us here.

Please rate, Subscribe, review, do all the things that everyone always tells you to do at the end of a podcast. The one thing I'm gonna ask that you do it, I've asked for the last couple of weeks, but it's very specific and we're asking this for a very good reason, and that's to hit the share button on YouTube.

Apple podcast, Spotify, good pods, overcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, you name it. Wherever you're audible, wherever you're listening, hit the share button and send this to somebody who loves Babylon five or is about to fall in love with Babylon five and they just don't know it. So, Brent, until next time, listen.

Brent, I look, I do not have, I do not have the time for your I just don't.

Brent: oh, but Jeff, no, no, no, no, no, no. You, you, you must be thinking of Brent. You see? I am Brent, not Brent.

Jeff: There there's two of you.

Brent: Oh, no, no, no. There are 10 of us. We are all Brent. You see it's slight variation in how you say the name. You see there's, there's Brent, and then there's Brent. And Brent Then, then there's Brent, and then Brent. And then there's Brent, and Brent and then Brent. And there's, you gotta cut me off.

Jeff: How long you can go?

Brent: There's, there's Brent. And Brent and Brent

Jeff: Oh my God. In Valen’s name.