Epiphanies

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,

Brent: And I'm Brent Allen and I am the one who will be.

Jeff: and we're watching Babylon five for the first time. For you, the one who is,

Brent: Jeff and I are two veterans, star Trek podcasters, watching Babylon five for the first time. Searching for Star Trek like messages that are being done in a uniquely Babylon five way.

Jeff: While this is not a podcast about Star Trek, those references are sure to make their way into our conversation. So we play the rule of three. That means we get up to, and no more than three references to Star Trek a piece. That's it. Three. One of those. No substitutions, exchanges a refund. Hey

Brent: Hey, Jeff.

Jeff: we have a five star review.

Oh yes, this one's from Apple Podcasts and Read the World 81 left the review. They say a new perspective. I love this fresh perspective on one of my favorite shows. I look forward to the day when blind people around the world can listen to B five with audio descriptions and enjoy it as much as you tis. But a dream that I have.

Brent: That's cool. So I'm, I'm taking it that, that our reviewer here is blind and potentially blind, maybe talked about, I guess doing the audio description as you're, as you're listening, Jeff, I. I don't know if you've ever listened to an audio description of a movie, like had that piece turned on.

Jeff: I

Brent: My hat is off to anybody who like, that's how they watch a movie.

Cuz I've tried it. I can't keep track of it all. Like it is, it's like an amazing superpower I think you guys have or you just get used to it. I don't, I don't know. But it, it's amazing. But hey, listen, if that helps you watch this fantastic, fabulous show, then awesome. And yes, everybody should have that ability to do it.

Jeff: Yeah. And in fact, we'll use our little soap box right here to our massive Babylon five community. I don't know what this looks like, but if there's any pressure that we can put on, I don't even know who owns Babylon five and.

Brent: It's wb, they gotta do it.

Jeff: well this week

Brent: Right.

Jeff: who? Yeah, who knows. Who knows what's coming. This is an evergreen, generally an evergreen show.

So if someone else in the future, cuz I know it's gonna take him a while, but hey, tweet, write a letter, do something. I think this is a fantastic cause to get behind. But in the meantime, we have another five star review. Oh yes. Also from Apple Podcast. This one's from Keisha Livingston. Keisha says, great for Babylon, five fans and truly not a Star Trek podcast. I'm an old Babylon five fan. Jeff and Brent bring back the memories of watching for the first time. There are two Star Trek podcasters, but if you aren't a Star Trek fan, don't let that turn you off. I grew up with the next generation on tv, but aside from that, in the movies, I've seen very little Star Trek.

I've never seen Deep Space nine and only one episode of the original series. The Con one, you like me, might not get the Star Trek reference as they mentioned, but they limit it to three per host maximum each episode and even when they do make them, the context will convey what they mean. I'm amazed at their deep insights as Babylon newbies and feel like an idiot that I never noticed how much mass effect is a Babylon five game after putting well over 500 hours into that series.

If you're new to Babylon five or an old fan, you will love this podcast.

Brent: Keisha, thank you. Yes. You should watch more Star Trek. I would highly recommend it. This is not a Star Trek podcast, so that is the limit of which I'm going to, uh, say that.

Jeff: And I'll just say only 500 hours into the series. Keisha Livingston, come on. You need to get those numbers up. Those are rookie

Brent: Are they, because Jeff, I'm looking, I'm looking at this thing, I'm looking down the barrel at this mass effect thing. You know, I've got, I've got a, I've got a couple in, but I don't know, it's, that's a long, that's a lot of hours to put into a game.

Jeff: I have over a thousand hours just in the multiplayer,

Brent: Do you

Jeff: but I don't think that's a thing anymore. I think they've shut down those servers, or if they have, I haven't been on 'em in a long

time, but that was a long time

Brent: All right. Well, you know, Jeff, uh, along with our rule of three, And getting to read these fantastic reviews that come through. Thank you guys so much for all the reviews you guys send in. There's another game we like to play here at this show. There's lots of games. We like to play games, but the big game, the big game, this is the one, I think we probably hear about this more often than any other thing that we do.

And it's our predictions where we predict next week's episode based on title alone. Never having seen it before, never having tried to look at thumbnails, never reading descriptions that aren't really accurate. Anyway, and this is the part of the show where we look back at last week to see what we thought this week would be about based on the title alone epiphanies.

Jeff, what did you think that this was gonna be about and how close were you?

Jeff: Well, I thought that Earth Force was gonna become a force once again, so, eh, kind of kind of there. But I thought it was gonna come about because like Ivanovo was gonna go back and check her voicemails and be like, oh shoot, I should probably, probably call them back. Came across in a very different way, but on point with the Earth Force piece.

How about you, Brent?

Brent: Hmm. I was very specific with what I said with this particular episode. I said that basically what's gonna happen is by the end of the season, our Earth Force friends are going to return to the service of Earth, not necessarily that Babylon five would reunite with Earth, and this would be the episode that starts us down that path. I have no idea if I'm right or not. It kind of seems like maybe that might be where we're going. Possibly. Um, I wonder, Jeff is season four. Like a couple of many arcs throughout the season. Like, like I we're agreed that those first six episodes, that was like an, an arc. And, and I mean, very clearly, even after watching this episode, it seems very much like there's a dividing line between last week and this week, right? Like,

Jeff: Yeah. There's a moment like you can see the baton get

Brent: right, right. Like, so what if like, this is like the next six episodes or seven episodes, and then like, is there a third one out there that we haven't got to yet?

We don't know. Uh, but yeah, that, that was about as specific as I got. I'm gonna give myself zero credit for that because there just wasn't much to it because that's, that's all I really had. But Jeff, for those out there who have not watched this episode yet, or maybe they haven't seen it in a long time, or maybe they did watch it and.

They're still kind of scratching their head going, what the heck actually happened? I'm not really sure. Why don't you take a few minutes and tell us what really happened in this week's episode? Epiphanies.

Jeff: Well, the war is over and Babylon five is celebrating. We've got fireworks and everybody's having a great time. A local reporter finds Sheridan and says, you've brought together all these league worlds and driven out the shadows and the volans. What's next for you? He looks right in the camera and he says, I'm going to Disney Planet.

But when he goes, he may have to do so without Garibaldi. You see after Star. You see after staring at an early nineties indie alt rock music video for a while. He resigns his position, he's gonna find his own way, maybe start a business or maybe backpack across Europe like he and his buddies always talked about.

Back in high school, Sheridan promotes Zach to head of security, and Garabaldi has some very encouraging words for him as he's packing Jaar drops in to welcome Garabaldi back and to thank him for inadvertently setting up the situation where he was able to broker the freedom of his people. It's a touching moment with more powerful words spoken. Zach's really been hitting his stride lately. He's training up new security personnel and even goes toe to toe with Prime Minister Malawi as he returns to Babylon five to lay low, while the Centum figures out how to name the next emperor. And while the fallout of his decision to free the Nans passe. In his absence, he and the centara named Jokey mc, joker guy as the Regent Emperor.

He might think it's mostly ceremonial, but he sure loves sitting on that throne. Also, sitting in a hot seat is our buddy and our ally baster. Basters getting some orders from some other P cop guy. Apparently the loss of the shadows is disrupting a lot of President Clark's operations on Earth, so he's decided it's time to take Babylon five off the board permanently.

There's a multi-phase plan that starts with propaganda and is followed by framing Babylon five for an attack on earth forces. Because he's a solid ally and true to his word, bester, comes to the station to warn. To thank him for his sacrifice. They house him in the brig maybe and bring in Leeda Alexander to shield them from being probed or scanned. He insults her for being just a P five and demands that she is arrested.

Sheridan stands up for her and she successfully blocks those scans despite being just a P five, despite being just a P five. They have history from her time interning with the P cops, and it's a pretty uncomfortable relationship between them. Bester shares the first phase of the plan, but holds off on the second until he gets something. He wants to go to Zaha Doom to find the technology that can save his lover. Carolyn and maybe the other Cyco people that the shadows had yanked for piloting their. Sheridan agrees to take him. So he shares that his group, black Omega, the elite Cycore pilots will destroy some earth force ships so it can be blamed on Babylon five.

By sharing this, he has damned his team to certain death. Lava takes a wing of star furries out. They save the day, they destroy the black Omega ships. And when the Earth Force teams thank them, they ask who they are and they're shocked to hear that Babylon five might actually be the good Guys. Sheridan and crew get on one of the white stars, they head to the planet.

As they arrive, they see a bunch of ships evacuating headed away from the planet, and moments later, the entire planet explodes. Zaha doom is no more as they reel from the planet's destruction. Sheridan Wonders who is evacuating from the planet. These, these are the allies, the dark minions that Morden talked about and that Londo referenced in war without end.

Despite having seen the destruction that these allies caused on Centara Prime and having Londo literally tell him who they were back in wwe e Sheridan seems to somehow be clueless as to where they could possibly be going back on the station, Sheridan implies that Leeta was responsible for Zaha Doom's destruction being what the f, sorry, back on the station. Sheridan implies that Leeta was responsible for Zaha Doom's destruction being triggered, and she theoretically agrees. He tells her to keep him in the loop moving forward. Also on the station Bester visits his cryogenically frozen lover, where he shares that he has an ace in the hole.

That can really hurt Babylon five. We end with the new regent in his palatial bedroom. Waking up seems, ah, maybe he slept a little weird. He's got a little crick in his neck, so he goes to the mirror to try and work it out, but it's not just stiff and sore. The dude has a keeper on his shoulder. Brent, did you have any epiphanies while watching this one?

Brent: So Jeff, I'm gonna read you my exact quote I have written down here.

Jeff: All right.

Brent: This is a weird episode.

Jeff: It really

Brent: It's a weird episode. Um, things in this episode felt very disjointed to me. This episode to me, very much feels like episode one of a new season, a lot of world building that they're trying to reestablish. It felt like they're trying to establish certain charact.

There's new things going on with certain characters. They're, they're putting people into place, even existing characters that we know, like, Hey, we're gonna put this guy on the throne as the regent over there, and we're gonna move Londo back over to Babylon five and Kars back to Babylon five. And, um, you know, we're just, we're just shift shuffling folks around it.

It just, it had that sort of a, of a feel to it. This episode did not seem to me to have like a single point or a, a thrust, you know, like, what was the episode about it? It never really seemed to have that. It didn't coalesce. There was no like, here's the A plot and here's the B plot and here's what we're trying to do.

Uh, I had a professor of mine who once described something similar to this using these words, and I think it works here. Instead of a cannon shot to the old sci-fi heart watching this episode, it was rather like somebody picking up a handful of pebbles and just sort of throwing 'em at you. He was like, here's this one little thing here.

There's one little thing here, this one little thing here, and this one little thing here. That doesn't mean this was a bad episode. I hear people out there, but no, it, this wasn't a bad episode. I think this is one that we're ultimately, in the course of this discussion, Jeff gonna find, it's a little hard to actually discuss out of context with the rest of the season because it doesn't feel complete to me.

Like, uh uh, imagine having a movie podcast about Lord of the Rings, but you only do one episode on every 15 minutes of the movie. Like how are you gonna discuss that 15 minutes outside of the context of what's about to happen? Like it, it's just hard to do. You know what I mean? And it just feels incomplete, not bad, just incomplete.

And I think it's understandably so, cuz I feel like we're entering in a new. Season of, of hyper serialization storytelling. How about you?

Jeff: I kinda love what you said there about without the context of what's coming. The last thing I wrote here from my opening thought. I'm going to withhold judgment though, since this is really episode one in this arc.

Brent: Yeah,

Jeff: Like things are gonna, this, like you said, clearly they're, they're, they're setting things up to move places.

After last week, this was kind of jarring. In a way,

Brent: yeah.

Jeff: most series would have ended last week, right? We beat the big, the big bads. Everything's great. We see hope for the future. We have an encouraging moment with kind of the two mains of the, of the series and that, and that's it. But we have more than a season and a half left to go.

There's a lot more story to be told, but like, I think I said it last week, but I think it's is also like where things get tighter, smaller, maybe um, smaller on a galactic scale, but it was jarring cuz it's like it opened, it opened exactly how it should have opened a party celebration. You know? This is great.

Everybody's

Brent: Space fireworks.

Jeff: Space fireworks. Yeah, I'm sure there's someone out there who can tell me how that works. I don't think it's supposed to, but, um, you know, what do

I

Brent: it's a guy named Nick Lano. He can tell you exactly how all that works.

Jeff: yeah. It doesn't end well for one member of the squad, that's for sure. I think what I liked about, one of the things I really liked about it though, was how they celebrated, and then it just got right back into things like, that's real life. You know, you don't, you don't get to end on the high note.

There are more notes that follow, but appreciate how you described it, where it was like a lot of pebbles because th there were things that didn't line up for me in this one, and not even just in the episode, but in the context of Babylon five. And again, don't hear me say this is bad. These are things that I'm observing now and I have full confidence will work themselves out.

But one, so we hate ster again. Like outta nowhere. Last time we saw him, the enemy and my enemy, and we're buddies and we're gonna be great allies. Maybe they're just mad that he didn't show up for the final battle or something, but like he's just bad guy outta nowhere and still, and he, he's just bad guy while he's coming to do the right thing.

I'm sorry, I'm still on the, on the bester, on the bester train and then I, I feel like it did Sheridan pretty dirty where he is just like, I, I wonder where they could be going. I have no idea where those dark allies and music, you saw them, like you Londo showed you what they did, told you they showed up almost 20.

Like, hello. It's, it's right. Did you just forget that? So I get this, this was supposed to pivot us back to earth in the earth stuff, but I, I, I feel like it might, it might have tripped on that pivot a little bit, but I don't know that I'm not, that's not my judgment, that's just my initial thought watching this one.

Brent: Yeah. I, I mean, as I said, it's like we just stopped in the middle of the episode and we're like, okay, let's go record a podcast about it now, because it ju it's, it's just incomplete again. not bad. I bet once we, once we see the rest of what's to come, everything here is fine. They're laying down, they're laying down those seeds for, for what's getting ready to happen.

I think that's just what we're gonna find. I, you know, could be

Jeff: I'm hopeful as well. I, that's, that's, that's the, that's how I'm looking at it. This, it's jarring because we just got out of first ones and Lorean and the Volans and all this stuff, and now boom, we're back to Earth force and ster and Carolyn and cryogenic freezing tank that is clearly just paint

Brent: Right. So how do, how do we do this, Jeff? We didn't even talk about this first. Like, like how do I, I'm at a loss for how to discuss this episode. Um, I've got some stuff I want to make fun of the episode for because I just

Jeff: start with that. Let's do that.

Brent: Okay. Um, the decorations. The decorations around the station frankly looked like they were installed by a bunch of big construction workers.

Like somebody went to Party City, brought it back, like, Hey guys, put the streamers up. And it was just a big bunch of dudes like, uh, give me the staple. Going like,

Jeff: they're, they're in contract negotiations with the doc workers and they're like, look, okay, fine. We'll give you these new Benny's, but we need you to, we need you to decorate for the war thing. And they're like, well, you gotta get along to get along, or whatever. It's

Brent: Okay. I wanna talk about best friend, leader, just for a second.

Jeff: Okay.

Brent: Was it just me or did you pick up on the idea that there might have been a little more to their relationship back in Cyop days than just, Hey, he was a mentor and he treated me mean while we

Jeff: have a feeling buster's got a data crystal with some, uh, p n G and w MV files on it. That uh, yeah. What? Hey Beter, what's this data Crystal? We're helping you clean up. Oh, those just my tax documents. Don't need to open that. Don't need to look at that. I have a feeling he has, uh, has one of those for sure. Also, does Lida shop at Ikea? she even had like little blue and yellow

Brent: Right? Right. Um, so speaking of, of Lida, and I gotta talk about Zach here.

Jeff: Oh yeah.

Brent: You know, my hand, hands down was my favorite moment of the whole episode. It made me

Jeff: the same one I'm thinking.

Brent: Is it the one well here? Okay. Uh, we'll describe this in just a moment for our YouTube folks out there, I've got a special treat just for you. Zach totally checked her out, man.

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: I totally checked her out.

Jeff: I'll tell you what I love about that though. Back in Voices of Authority, when we had Chicky on there, he did the same thing when she was looking at Sheridan's

Brent: Did he

Jeff: and stuff. He totally, totally is like,

Brent: That's funny.

Jeff: Some eye line right there, and it's just like

Brent: Totally checked her out. He was like,

Jeff: kick My eyes are up here. Kiki up here,

Brent: right.

Jeff: Wow.

Brent: Hmm.

Jeff: That whole scene though was great. I, I feel like, and, and I don't, I don't know Jeff cutaway. I, I don't know a lot about him. I know he had a pretty tragic end to his life. And I also understand that his life was longer because of his time on this show. Like this was, this was, I I had heard a while ago in some comments.

The, the great community out there knows, knows my love for Zach and for Keni and had talked about he struggled with addiction most of his life, and this was one of the high points in his life, was having this steady job. And, um, part of it was jms, like kind of doing him a solid, you know, like, Hey, I'm gonna provide you some

Brent: Kinda like what Gu Baldy did for Zach. Jms did it for Jeff, right?

Jeff: Right. Yeah. Almost the same thing, but I feel like you can't, you can't have Jeff Conaway an actor and not have the kaki. Or if you could look at the stage, the Danny Zuko of Jeff Conaway show up cuz. Hello? Like, here it

is.

Brent: Yeah. It's just who he is. Some, you know, some actors have that one character that they play and every character they play is some version of that same character. You know, who else is like that? Denzel Washington. Yeah, I said it.

Jeff: It's a hot take.

Brent: Yeah,

Jeff: It's not wrong, but it's a hot take.

Brent: Jeff.

Jeff: Yeah. This is literally, but this Zack is literally icky after he got outta community college and got a job like, yep. Got a job. Garabaldi took a chance on me. I worked hard, did my stuff,

Brent: Got a few promotions and here he is, and he is kind of turning into a solid dude in his forties.

Jeff: Exactly. Yeah.

Brent: that's, that's exactly, and you know what? I got a lot of respect for a working man like that, you know, and I mean, and what did we see through, was it even last season, season two? I wouldn't, we, I forget when we first started seeing Zach, but.

Jeff: Season two is when

Brent: You know, like the whole thing with the Ministry of Peace, and he is like, Hey, for an extra 50 bucks a week, who modest say no? Ah, nah. You know?

Jeff: Gotta wear. He's gotta wear this armband. What's a big

Brent: just trying to pull food on table for his family. You know what I mean? To tons of, tons of respect for that. Jeff. I, I think the best way to really talk about this is maybe just to kind of go through the pieces of the episode, because I gotta be honest, there's some things about this episode I didn't get, I didn't understand.

I was like, what are they talking about? What just happened? Now? You had the recap. You were able to go through and dig it apart much more than I was able to. I was going to watch this one a second, maybe even a third time, and I never had a chance, so I've only been able to do my first watch. So I may need you to just explain some stuff to me.

All right.

Jeff: I'll do my best.

Brent: While we're talking about Zach, let's just talk about him. So, uh, we'll talk about Gar Baldy in a moment, but Gar Baldy resigns as post Zach gets promoted. Which is really cool. Um, he hits on Lida, sets up a date with her cuz he finally catches a clue. But when he's in there talking to her, he's like, Hey listen, people are a little nervous around you cuz you were really close to the volans and they, you know, rumor is they modified you and they weren't wrong.

Jeff: I loved that scene. I loved it. I loved it cuz any, any time in my opinion, like on tv, we as the viewer, we always know more than the people on the screen. Well, not always, but often we know more of of the story. And I love it when that gets called out. You know, and this is in those points where it's like, look, people are talking, this is what's going on.

But what that is, that's the, uh, you got some spinach right here. You know, like a good friend is gonna tell you don't really, you can, you're good , but a good friend's gonna tell you when you, you know, you got a booger hanging outta your nose. There's spinach in here, or Yeah. They don't want you to go in there because like you smell funny or whatever.

That's a good friend. What Zack did there was being a good friend, tota, it's just like, look. Yeah, people, people do think you're weird, like yeesh.

Brent: of nervous. Roger cuz. Turns out the Bolon weren't that awesome.

Jeff: Yeah. They, we, we know you did stuff or we know they did stuff to you and then they kind of killed a lot of people. So

Brent: Jeff, we haven't talked about that. I'm sorry. Can we back up just a little bit? Cuz we've never really discussed this whole thing with the Bolon. By the end, we're agreed they, they went bad. Like they just, you know, stopped caring and said we're gonna go kill everybody in the process. But up until that moment they were good.

Right.

Jeff: I don't know about that because I think, I think we can go all the way back. They, I, I, they weren't, they couldn't have been that good cuz someone tried to kill them on the very first episode. Right. Episode zero. That was the whole premise of

Brent: Do we know who tried to kill them?

Jeff: I don't think so. Was was it the Minbar person?

No, they were trying to kill sin. They solved that. I think it was a Menari

Brent: Somebody was trying to kill Sinclair and they accidentally got him,

Jeff: Something like they, I think they just wanted to get Sinclair. Wow. Wow. The comments are literally on fire right now. I can barely remember the gathering. But

Brent: Jeff, come on. You're supposed to be the one who was, you remember all this stuff?

Jeff: I remember the, the Menari assassin. I remember that.

Brent: Uhhuh.

Jeff: But also that might have been in insult. Okay. I'm, I'm just gonna stop talking. I'm gonna embarrass myself here pretty soon. But what we do know is, um, they just blasted death walker outta the air. Right. Boom. Gone. They never really bothered to show up to the council meetings.

People tell us they were there. I don't remember seeing Kosh at most of those meetings back at the end of the second season when their hurling a, the centi hurling asteroids at Narn, they filed paperwork to stop it. It took Sheridan standing up to getting his butt whooped by Kosh to get them to even go launch a single attack and even help out. I think I can look back and say they were aloof at best, I would struggle to have ever called them. In fact, we even talked about a couple weeks ago how the story that we un might even just been last week. I don't even, this is recently, we've seen a lot of really great TV here in the last couple of weeks.

But what some of what we saw of the Volans and what we learned last week doesn't really line up with what they taught us in, in the shadow of Aha doom when they did the big reveal, the Sheridan, because the Volans told their version of the story to the Menari. So for thousands of years, I, I, I think they've been playing pretty, pretty, not great.

I think they just became blatantly bad here, here in this season.

Brent: Hmm.

Jeff: don't

Brent: It's gonna be inter, it's gonna be interesting when we do Babylon five for the second time to sort of, to sort of track with those people. I mean, cuz there was the whole Jack the Ripper thing, which, you know, I, I remember, I remember then when that episode went out and people were all like, so what do you think the Volos now, well, what do you think of the now?

Huh? They're gonna play somebody like Jack Rubber. What do you think? And I remember having that thought back then of like, okay, so apparently the volans aren't all that they're cracked up to be.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: know? So, okay, let's, so I, I'd been looking for it at that point, you know?

Jeff: saw with, with Kosh two

Brent: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. He was an ass.

Yeah.

Jeff: And so it's like, was Kosh two an ass or was Kosh one just the softie? And if that's a softie. Oof.

Brent: Uh, you know, honestly, you know what I think, I think Kosh one was the guy in charge. He was the leader.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: And I

Jeff: Neuronic was like, that's

Brent: he's the guy. Yeah. Like, he may not have been like the overlord of all wars, but he was like, he, he had the in, he knew what was really happening out there. And some of these other Volans, like once he was out of the way, they're like, Nope, we're gonna just kind of have our own way.

We don't care anymore. This is the shadows. The shadows are now attacking us. This isn't funny anymore. It's time to just go, go be whatever. Because you could, you could really could say that it all happened because they went and killed.

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: honestly were the volo. Here's a question. Were the volans just doing what most creatures do when they're threatened? And I think about it and when he, when humanity is faced with extinction, will we not do anything and everything possible to survive, including wipe out all threats to ourselves?

Jeff: kind of. We've always done perceived and real, right?

Brent: And so isn't that kind of what the VLAN did when the shadows came and took one of their guys out, crossed a

Jeff: But, but they, I don't think they're the ones that crossed the line though. Going back to, are they good or bad? Kosh agreeing to go take out the shadows. Was the

Brent: attacking the vlan? Yeah, that's a point. That's a good point.

Jeff: Sheridan talked about, I, I, there were rules of engagement. I didn't understand the rules of engagement. Now that I do understand, I know that we can't, we have to, we have to choose to not make a choice.

But I think that Kosh one was trying to abide by the rules of engagement and for whatever reason, let Sheridan sway him. It might have been not Sheridan, but you're right. All the other Vos, the Kosh twos, threes and 40 sevens that were out there trying to push him, we're like, we gotta attack. This is our time.

We're done, we're done. And he was the log jam. He was the damn stopping that from happening in between all that pressure of the volans and then Sheridan standing up to him and just calling him out. He's like, fine. Fine. Let's do it. And, and all of this happened because Kosh won caved to the pressure. does that make him the bad guy?

Brent: I don't think so. Yeah, I don't, I don't think so. Anyway. All right, so back to this. Sorry, we just, I just realized we hadn't had that conversation of like, what did all that actually mean?

Jeff: Well, and I think like as we're talking, I have other thoughts coming up and I think as we work through the rest of his season, things are going to call back to some of the things that happened and we're going to be revisiting that final extended conflict. I think we're gonna be revisiting that more than once.

Brent: Mm. Fair enough. Uh, you wanna talk about Gar Baldy?

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: So he is, uh, he, he's basically the winner soldier, right?

Jeff: It's what it looks like.

Brent: I mean, he's had his brain messed with, he's had, and we've suspected this, like something's been off with him, right? Uh, he, he has some sort of keyword, some sort of like programming that was activated by the QR code that came through the, the mail

Jeff: and an A o l keyword is all . It was sent I'm sure. I'm sure that like that was, I don't even remember. I grew up in that time. I watched a lot of TV in that time and that was an effect they used like in a lot of music videos. Like that must have been like a i I am willing to bet even that like somebody JMS and the crew watched that and they're just like, yeah, that's good.

Nice job. Nice job,

Brent: So here's my question. When Garabaldi walks into C n C or, or the command center, whatever, and resigns and goes through that whole process, was that whatever this new programming and personality is, or was that Gu Baldy with this thing suppressed and he doesn't even realize that that's under the surface?

What do you think?

Jeff: I don't think he even realizes at this point. I think he's being influenced. Like I almost think, I don't, I don't think that it's a latent personality like Talia had, but I almost think in terms like the way Talia described that was, it was watching right? And was trying to influence and do these things through the, through through as they slept.

Oh my God. Maybe it

Brent: I was gonna say this, we've already seen it once and it was from Cyco and we know that Garabaldi was in Cycore. So if they have put something into Garabaldi that is similar to what Lida got, or I'm sorry, Talia got, now here's the question, right? Remember when Talia went bad, the idea was the original personality is completely destroyed,

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: right?

It's, it's done. Does something of the host mine survive? Is Garabaldi done

Jeff: No, no. I did, I did not wanna believe that it was cyco. I wanted to believe that was a ruse of some kind. And it was some something else. But you said no, take it at surface value. I think that's the right thing to do. It. It was cyco. Let's track back. Talia activates the new, uh, new personality, which is like a times 10 improvement to her maybe even more, and then kills the other one, which is fine.

They take her back. Cyco dissects her to learn how to do it. I get the sense Bester was personally involved.

Brent: With Talia being dissected

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: probably,

Jeff: that seems to be his, his thing and a thing Ster does. Try. Try and try again. Bester believes and understands that failure is just another step on the road to success.

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: So he used that stuff.

He learned from Talia, they fine tuned it. Now, it's not so much that it's gonna take over the personality, but more it can influence the actual personality. He's gonna capitalize on that part that was kind of latent in her brain and make the subconscious push to the conscious so that Garabaldi just so I don't think he's gonna die, this death of personality.

I think that he's just gonna get influenced and make some, someone else's gonna make his decisions.

Brent: thing about his decisions though is he has a good point about everything. He's making a good point. And if, if you and I didn't know that he had been compromised, we would've been like, okay, I guess it's just gu Baldy. You know? Like, that's weird, but I get it. I understand. You

Jeff: The best way to tell a lie, the best way to incite unreasonable amounts of emotion is to make sure that whatever you're saying is a kernel of truth inside of it. So if we think about during the war here recently, and he was just Nancy Mc naysayer all of the time. I think the program was trying to get instill doubt in Sheridan, in the Babylon, five forces and whatever, in, in, in a way that would negatively impact the outcome of the war. It kind of worked. I mean, it, it kind of made, it kind of made sense, you know, Hey, I don't know, I don't know what's worse winning this war or, or losing it. Like, if we lose it, at least we're dead. If we win it, we have nowhere to go. Yeah. Those are all true things. What he says here, I, I gave you my pound of flesh, like I gave you everything.

I'm done. I'm out. I'm gonna go make.

Brent: I've got, I've got a, I've got a business idea that I want to go try out. There's a lot of people out there that are willing to pay for this. I've got a certain set of skills. Let's roll. Let's go do it.

Jeff: all makes sense. But I think that whomever the handler is, you know, it's out there sending the messages or

Brent: what if it's Talia? What if Talia didn't get dissected and it's Talia? I don't think that's possible at all.

But what if,

Jeff: it'd be awesome. We get evil Talia and kind of evil garabaldi as a

team.

Brent: oh. And we know that the, the two actors have divorced by this point, so bring 'em back together. Just let that, let that x animosity seeth through the screen. Oh my gosh.

Jeff: It's total breath of Hitman Heart, Sean Michaels late nineties, where like they're doing pot shots. Like it's legit. It's real. You put that in the ring, you get that classic 60 minute Ironman match at WrestleMania 12. That was so good cuz they're

Brent: they're both professionals and make that happen, but Oh my gosh. Yeah. So

Jeff: That'd be so good. But yeah, so I think they're trying to, so discontent is the whole thing. I think ultimately what they're trying to do is get the people on Babylon five to no longer trust or believe in Sheridan. I think that's the game of whomever is controlling him

Brent: it Bureau 13? I mean, we haven't heard anything about them since that one episode. Down in the basement of San Francisco Ruins or San

Jeff: have said, right? Yeah. If what people have said and other people have stepped, rolled back and said, isn't so true. But if, if it is true, nothing in Babylon, five is stated, put on screen and never revisited. So yeah, it's gotta be, bureau 13 also hasn't been mentioned at all. I de I'm willing to bet we will never hear about it again.

If it's anybody. Right. If it's anybody, it's Bester.

Brent: Uh,

Jeff: is there in Cyco that we know?

Brent: well, apparently this new dude that, that rolls in, who's giving ster orders?

Jeff: True.

Brent: Whoever that guy is. Um, you wanna talk about ster? Let's talk about ster. So ster pops up on screen and you said it in your recap, Jeff and I, I think you and I texted each other just a little bit. We try not to talk about the show.

We save those conversations for right now. But investor's supposed to be an ally of Babylon five. We last left him with my fight. Is your fight, what the hell is happening? Did we just forget that whole situation?

Jeff: I think so. They're, they're mean to him. He walks in. Yep. I, I'm sure you got quarters for me in the brig. It's fine. Like, it's like nothing ever happened

Brent: He, he and Zach are just going back and forth because it's, it's, uh, what was, it was Zack and Londo, and we'll talk about that in a moment. And then it was Zack and Ster, and then it was Zach and the, oh no, Zack split. And then the Elvises came

Jeff: the Elvis

Brent: which by the way, I'm sorry, I should have said this earlier.

We were talking about Zach. They picked up the writing for him too. There was a noticeable difference in how they wrote for Zach in this episode versus previous episodes like this promotion. I feel like this promotion's gonna stick for more than just a couple of episodes. You know what I mean?

Jeff: I, yeah, I, I, my guess, and I, I have some stuff in the prediction for the next episode, but I, I, I think Gar Baldy, I, he's not out of the picture, but I I don't think he's working for Babylon five again.

Brent: I don't think, and that doesn't necessarily mean he's off the show.

Jeff: Exactly.

Brent: Yeah, yeah.

Jeff: He's either gonna be a new villain or maybe his business venture takes off.

Brent: of hope he's a new villain, Jeff. I really do those. When you take a guy who's a good guy, turn him into a villain, but you keep him in the show, it's what they should have done with Picard in t n G, season three. Just let him stay as the Borg for a season or two, and then you gotta go get him and rescue him and bring him back.

Let Riker be the freaking captain. Like let those changes happen. Let Garabaldi go do whatever he's gonna do and be the bad guy. You're itching to buzz me, so I'm just not, I'm gonna filibuster the whole buzz right now. Okay, there you go. Had to

Jeff: Fingers on the trigger.

Brent: I could see you. You're like You, you, you folks out there listening to the podcast of this, please go watch the YouTube video right there. This is about minute 46 on the, the YouTube video.

Jeff: It's pretty fun. It's pretty fun.

Brent: Anyway, um,

Jeff: yeah, but be so yeah.

Brent: ster comes on the station, um, they bring him into the, into the deal. They bring Lida into basically block the scan, and he's like, she's a P five, you're embarrassing yourself and her, and then Bester flips back and has a vision, or was he scanning people?

Jeff: I think he was trying to scan and she was blocking him.

Brent: Was she blocking him or was she turning around and rescanning him because he like flipped his head back and was like, whoa, what the,

Jeff: Yeah. I think it was like, not just blocking it, but throwing it back. And the first time I watched that, I had the same thought. I'm like, oh my gosh, he's gonna have some vision. He's gonna see some thing we're gonna

Brent: Was there a crow on, on Yvanova's shoulder or something like

Jeff: right. Yeah. Call back to that piece or a call back to uh, um,

whatever. Wow. I am top notch, top notch for you right now. YouTube.

Brent: that's, so getting edited outta the podcast for Jeff later, he's like, I'm not keeping that in. I'll make Brent look like an idiot, but I'm not gonna look like an idiot.

Jeff: That's is, this is, this is you. This is embarrassing.

Brent: So what, so was that, is, is that where we're gonna land on? He was scanning and, and he basically didn't get anything out of anybody until Lida turned around and was like, yo, pal, I'm gonna slap you back. But she didn't say anything at that moment.

Jeff: Nope.

Brent: Right. And. Hey, by the way, ster comes in like, please Captain, haven't we gone to this spot?

And he is like, no, I don't trust you. And guess what? Ster scanned them anyway.

Jeff: Yeah, that's, that's like as, as much as I want to, and I'm gonna stay mostly on investor's side as much as I'm there. I'm also like, really? You, you, you, you tried to scan, did, but also maybe it was just a power play. Like maybe he wasn't even necessarily trying to scan them. He was just trying to swat her down just to be like, one, she's a P five.

You're humiliating yourself. Two, she should be arrested. She's a, she's a blip and, and needs to come back. So, I'm gonna flex and I'm gonna show her what's what. And then she's like, oh, no, , no you're not. Uh, ba boom. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna land there. That he wasn't scanning, that he was just trying to mess with Lida and Lida.

Lida Flexed

Brent: All right. Oh, and hey, listen, maybe that lends a little bit more to uh, The idea of some other, so more, more of a relationship there than what we,

Jeff: we're told

Brent: yeah. Than what we're really told there. So

Jeff: Ster though. And this was a big key piece that, I don't know, they may, they, they put two, find a point on, but he's sacrificed some of his greatest team members, most skilled and talented team members to be able to have a shot at getting the gear off Zaha

Brent: what are you talking about? This was, I, I'm, I'm assuming you're talking about this monologue he had to, to frozen lady and I, Jeff, for the life of me, could not follow what he was saying or what he was intimating. Can you break that whole piece down for me? Because like, I'm, I'm so confused.

Jeff: I, I love that you called it his monologue, cuz my note here is, wow, that is very high school. Monologuey. So there were two main points that came outta that monologue on there. One was that we learned about Black Omega back in Ship of Tears, where he's got really elite pilots that work for him and they, they're Cyco elites and they've got cool star theories with awesome paint on their, on their ships and all kinds of stuff.

So he took some of his most talented pilots, and these are people, if we remember that Cyco is invested in, built up, you know, Cora's mother, Cora's father, food, housing, the whole thing. He's trained up as pilots. They've got this elite team. He sent them to certain death.

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: I'm gonna, I am literally gonna send you to go blow up these Earth Theory or these Earth Force people, also gonna tell better pilots and Ivanova and the Babylon five people that you're gonna be there and they're gonna be waiting and they're going to blow you up.

I'm gonna do that for the sole purpose of having something to leverage so that Sheridan will take me to Zaha Doom and I can get some tech that can pull this stuff outta Carolyn's brain and make her, make her a whole and well

Brent: So his whole, whole motivation, and this, this is a, this is about as basic as you get for sci-fi, or not sci-fi, but you see this a lot in sci-fi, is he's trying to get his dead wife back

Jeff: that's it.

Brent: And in order to do that, he's gotta go get this tech that he thinks might be on Zaha Doom. And in order to get there, he's gotta have Sheridan go with him.

And in order to get Sheridan on his side, he's gonna betray this thing over here and betray his boys to go do that. That makes Beter a bad guy.

Jeff: yeah.

Brent: That's a bad guy right there.

Jeff: That's a very, very bad guy thing to do. It's also a very, um, I don't know the word bad guy. Romantic, right? Like the intent there is to is to reunite with the love of your life. Right. Which is great. That's, that's a, that's a fantastic motivation. You're willing to send people to their deaths to. And risk like no matter what.

So if they don't take the bait, if they say, no, we're not taking you to Zaha Doom. We don't care if they call us bad guys and pin an attack on us, then he's killing Earth Force personnel. So either way, he's murdering people for the shot at a shot to go find some stuff to maybe help his lover. Yeah, that's bad.

That's bad. Bad guy stuff.

Brent: And so the whole thing that this is predicated on is Clark's plan to frame the people of Babylon five just to up his support back on Earth.

Jeff: know. I don't know that it's so much about upping his support as it is about wiping Babylon five

Brent: Justifying his, his not even support, I guess just justifying his impending attack, I guess. He's just come trying to come up with a reason and he is gonna frame him for that reason. Jeff, that's a, that's an interesting piece cuz this whole, this whole deal. Okay. Let's talk about this plan as far as we know it, because the, the dude comes in and he's talking to Buster at the beginning of the episode.

President wants to take out Babylon five, wants to take it offline, shut it down. He's got the ministry. He named them all Ministry of Peace, home Guard now Cyco. Did he name anybody else?

Jeff: I think he did, but he they him quite a

Brent: Yeah, and we're, he's got a pla master plan for all of them. We're not telling each other what you guys are all doing so that if somebody goes wrong, it's not gonna screw everybody else.

This sounds very, um, uh, uh, like terrorist cell organization, you know,

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: you know,

Jeff: You know what you know, and nothing else.

Brent: this is your resistance cell maybe so to speak, and, uh, you're gonna, you're gonna go do it. And so Ster knows what he knows just on his side of it. So he was, was it best's people who were supposed to go frame the, the Babylon five folks and then he went and told the Babylon five folks so that they could go,

Jeff: Yes. Yeah. His job was to set up Black Omega to blow up Earth Force to frame Babylon five, but then he double crossed that and went and told Babylon five that he

Brent: Okay. So let's talk about bigger bad guy. We just blasted Bester for being a bad guy for what he is doing. Okay, let's take Clark and put 'em on that same pedestal. He's going to blow up his own people

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: to frame other people to justify being able to go take them out.

Jeff: Yeah. Wow. Right.

Brent: Jeff, that does not sound like science fiction. That sounds like present fact to me.

Jeff: Yeah, kind of. Kind of every day, right. Just to look at the, look at the

Brent: And this is an evergreen show and I'm pretty much sure even in 50 years from now, hello to the future. Unfortunately, it's probably still happening in your world then as well. And that sucks cuz this is supposed to help us get past all that.

Jeff: but it's interesting to me. We, what we, what I think we can infer at this point is that Earth, so much of what Clark did, what Earth has been moving forward and doing has been because they've got the shadows, they've had the shadows backing them. We can do whatever we want because we have basic, we have superpowers behind us to blast stuff and go away.

Shadows are no. and so now, yeah, we can hold Babylon five at bay. They're worried with the shadows, they're handling them, it's whatever, and then, oh shoot, they didn't handle them. Now we have to, and I can't just go blow 'em up cuz like it's, it's a tourist stop for people. We saw that back in phase two of Franklin's walkabout where people just go to Babylon five.

So they have to turn public sentiment against it,

Brent: You know, I'm kind of surprised,

you know, I'm kind of surprised that travel back and forth to Babylon five hasn't already been forbidden from

Jeff: right? Yeah.

Brent: Like, but when you think about it, okay, if you're gonna do that, how much of a chunk does that really take out of Babylon Fives? Like how much of Babylon five is supported by tourism and trade back and forth to earth?

Because you still got the drowsy, you still got the Minbar, you still got the Sonari on some level. Uh, the Narn are gonna be rebuilding their stuff, so Okay, let's count them out. Uh, okay. You don't have the Marab anymore ripped to the Marab, uh, but you got the dudes with the masks.

Jeff: The vri? No, the, uh, gaem.

Brent: sure. You got the Brak or Brachi,

Jeff: Ri mm-hmm. . The vri, the, yep.

Brent: the vri.

You mentioned the Vee a second. I mean the, you've got all these other alien races that are coming to and fro, so.

Jeff: well and fro and two, but that was my, that was my impression of the Babylon Treaty was essentially we don't have earth funneling money to us anymore, so we need you to like pony up for defense. So we're gonna be kind of a community defense thing and open up again, like start docking.

Brent: need your docking fees.

Jeff: yeah.

When your docking fees, we need the trade that goes through. We need that stuff. I've been under the impression earth isn't a key part of their economic viability.

Brent: it is, or at least that's what they're telling us now, so,

Jeff: Or, or even if it's not economic viability, it's a stop on the way, you know? So it's still there. They're making a little money off of it, but if nothing else, there's still that feeling of, um, well we saw that with Garabaldi, who got the, um, he got the package right, the whole thing where they're gonna break into the post

office

Brent: gonna be a lot more now because prices increase due to whatever and Yeah.

Jeff: They're having to like black channel things and move it around, but it's still going back and forth. So, I mean, I guess cutting it off does that, but it was kind of shocking that that wasn't already the

Brent: Yeah. All right. So Londo and Kar, I think these, these might be really the two last big pieces of this whole deal before we move on. Uh, Ja car's getting his eye checked over, which, hey, listen, his eye just got dug out from a socket. Let's actually go to the doctor and let the doctor check into things and make sure that I'm not gonna, you know, receive some sort of infection.

Die from it.

Jeff: yeah, that was

Brent: good idea. Right. By the way, this was probably the most doctoring that Franklin, I, I've seen Franklin do that actually seemed legit being a doctor and not being creepy, and, you know, Hey, I can fitch out with a new eye. Oh, that'd be great. It's not gonna be as good because some of the, the nerve endings are awful.

He's like, yeah, but anything's better than this.

Jeff: That was good. That was, that was good. Dr. Franklin doctrine, you know, I mean, we, many of us have experienced that or seen it on, Hey, there's this experimental thing, we can give it a shot. There's these reasons, these risks, let's go for it and maybe not go for it, whatever. And Ja car's like, yeah, let's, let's do it, man.

Let's do it. It's just sad though that we know on the war without end timeline that

Brent: He's still, it's not gonna work. Yeah. He still has the, the eye patch.

Jeff: Yeah. Or maybe it, maybe it gets, it, it doesn't work. Causes an infection like that. That'll be the, the swerve that we get partway through the

Brent: right. So the whole thing with Jaar and gu Baldi, you mentioned it in your deal. He comes in, he is all pissed off. He's like, yay, yay. Thanks. Because of what you did, it actually helped lead us to the narn free people. That's one of those like pebbles, like it just sort of happened. There really wasn't much to it.

Right. Like,

Jeff: it was literally a, we got a tie bow on this whole thing. Like we had a whole episode where Kar went out looking for him, and now he's back. So we should probably wrap

Brent: Right, right. Uh, so you have that and then you have this amazing line with your car in Lando back on planet. And it really sets what the Lando Kar relationship is gonna be for the immediate future Anyway, where he says, pray that we don't notice each other again, like after just working together. Kars still like, you are dead to me.

I may not kill you standing right here, but you're done now. We also know from the future vision more is gonna happen. This isn't it, but this is where we are right now.

Jeff: I loved that scene for a lot of reasons. First, there was the tease that Kar was gonna walk away. So like Londo is doing his haggling, he turns in and he sees Kar. Then the camera goes off Kar onto just Londo. He pauses. So big surprise number one, he pauses and decides to turn back. Like I thought that was a big step for Alando.

Lando in the past would've just scurried away, but he turns and he looks back and part was like, Ja, car's not gonna be there. He's gonna go. We're like, we're, we're gonna play this out where they see and miss and see and miss, but nope, he's right there staring him down. But the piece of it that hit me the most, and this really got me on the, my second watch through that was not far from where Londo bought Kar drink in the coming of

Brent: Oh, good call. Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah. It was just like, oh my God. Which is still to me like the biggest, one of the biggest, if not the biggest gut punch scene in this series so far, knowing that and then, and now here they are where Kar is so excited about him a drink, and now he says, I you pray that we never notice each other again. Oh, it's beautifully horrible.

Brent: Now, speaking of beautifully horrible Londo, from the moment Londo set foot back on Babylon five, here's my note. This is the Londo that I know and love. This is the Londo I want. He's happy, he's gregarious. He's, he's no fool. He's calling out people for being mad at him, but he's got this witty rete going back and forth.

This is the Londo I like. This is the Londo that needs to remember how to dance and all this kind of stuff. However, to get us to this spot, Londo is effectively abandoning his post as Prime Minister. I understand, but that's not a good look.

Jeff: no.

Brent: He's abandoning his po, like he's still the prime minister, but he's not because now they appointed a regent to do his job for him.

Jeff: Regent Emperor. And that's the thing. I don't, and this is just my ignorance, living in the United States, I don't really understand how that works. Where you have a monarch of some kind and then a prime minister, like I don't, I don't really understand the division of duties.

Brent: I think that's different in every, every culture. Um, I think at least in England and our, hey, our listen, our England folks, please type in and let us know. I really don't mean to speak for you, but the way that I understand it with my Yankee mind over here is basically the prime ministers, very much like the president over here.

And the monarchy is just a figurehead at this point,

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: Uh, but the regent, though, the regent is the guy who's like acting as the emperor, but not actually being the emperor. Think, uh, what's his name? Deni Thor in Lord of the Rings, Sean Bean's dad or Amir Ander's dad, whatever his

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: Uh, he was the re he wasn't actually the, the steward.

He was the steward. I'm sorry he wasn't the king, you know, but he had all the power of being the king.

Jeff: When do you see this? At times where the uh, where the, the, the majesty, the monarch is four years old or whatever, so you know, the crown mother is the regent to the crown or whatever, or to the throne. But it was interesting as they were setting that regency up one again, not understanding their political structure.

Wasn't Joki Mc Joker guy? Wasn't he one of cart's guys and didn't Londo say, round up car's guys and get rid of

Brent: I think that Jokey Mc Jerson is, no, no, no. I think he's more or less like the butler at the White House. Like he, he'll serve through all the administrations. Like he's not, he's not anybody like, and I'm sorry, I don't, if you're the butler at the White House, or you know the Butler at the White House, you are definitely somebody.

But as far as an elected position, somebody who's actually a mover or shaker, I don't get the feeling that's who he is. I think he's more. Some sort of a, he's just there in that position and he continues to have that no matter who's in in office. That's my impression. I could be wrong, but all of this, uh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Jeff: So he's, I love, I loved how he made light of it when they're talking. We we're gonna name a regent and he is like, oh, well it's all just a bunch of pump and whatever and whatever. And Tolando is like, it's you.

Brent: he's like, really? And then he goes over, I think we're gonna change the curtains.

Jeff: he is great. He has a lot of

Brent: dude, you are the Scarlet Pimp right here.

Jeff: Yeah, it was a lot of fun seeing him in there and it's, and it was too bad because like I was looking, what, as soon as I named him Regent, I was looking forward to what would be the short, like spiral into complete madness. You know, just like where he goes from like, it's fun.

We're gonna do this and then we're gonna do this, and then do this, and then I'm gonna kill this person. And you're all horrible. Oh wait, you just elected a new Emperor . But nope, that's not gonna happen at all. I did not, I did not see this coming, even knowing that the allies in dark minions were headed to Centrum, I did not see this play.

Brent: with the, the, the thing,

Jeff: But the keeper.

Brent: okay, we didn't say it back in war without him, but I'm going to say it now. This little keeper, makeup job on the side of the neck with the eyeball that's moving. This is awful. It looks like this looks. Low budget, 1990s. Best makeup effect I could get at the moment.

Jeff: I have a cell phone for those listening and not watching on YouTube. I have a cell phone holder held up to my neck, and I think it has a better look

Brent: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, uh, I think they were probably doing the best they had that they could back in the, back in the day. No, no fault of theirs. But we have, we have said so often on this show how impressed we are by the special effects on Babylon five, how impressed we are by the makeup, particularly as it deals with KAR or, and being able to see the emotions through that makeup, particularly as it deals with that.

This particular one though,

Jeff: not

Brent: not so much. Not so much.

Jeff: David Warner would have thoughts about this one. You want me to act against that? I mean, this guy over here. Sure. Yeah, I'll do that. But

Brent: Yeah. I can do the floating jellyfish, fallas over here. But this little eyeball thing mm-hmm.

Jeff: I am a professional. I'm a

Brent: right. I, I have, I have some integrity I have to uphold here. Um, okay. I guess I have, I personally have two more notes then. Um, I love the new launch sequence for the star furries, which I don't know if that's a new launch sequence or if that's just the launch sequence for Black Omega and we're never gonna see it again.

But I loved this new launch sequence. I thought it was so cool. Um, and then to go back to the whole thing with where the watchers came from. So we are to understand that when Ster and Sheridan and the crew blip in over towards Zha Doom and they saw everybody leaving, this was those watcher guys and whoever else is out there.

Like, we don't know, like we've heard of the allies in Minions. We've never seen them outside of Morden. Right. But this is supposed to be one of them. They're leaving and they blew up a whole damn planet.

Jeff: Whole thing. It's a good thing. The white stars are fast,

Brent: Yeah. They didn't just blow up the stuff on the surface of the planet. No, no, no. They blew up the planet.

Jeff: which was wild. I, I was thinking that too, as they were like, get outta here. Go go. Because what I know is a moon, a moon blew up and it disrupted the cling on empire to a point that led to an alliance with the federation. And that was a moon. was a whole planet. But I had, I had a couple thoughts on that.

The, the people escaping, so we know there's the little keeper.

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: Was Cyco or Earth in that group? Were they part of the dark allies of the shadows?

Brent: think so, but I think it is possible. Like if we, if we found out one day that they were a part of it, it would not shock me in the least. I don't think that they were. Please don't answer that question. That's Jeff and I positing theories here.

Jeff: but if there was a group of people on Zaha dom looting that what's going on with the VLAN home world,

Brent: What's going on with Volans space? Because remember, it wasn't just the lon home world. If you entered Volans space, you were done. So what's going on in that space? Who's moving in? Because if the Lon are gone, that's now empty and there's a vacuum there, people are gonna fill it out.

Jeff: with very technologically advanced world. and just poor Jack the Ripper sitting on one of the planets going, what did I do now?

Brent: a great question. Like what did the Volans leave behind? What kind of infrastructure in their worlds did they leave behind? What I mean, what's going on with the gases and the atmospheres and stuff out there?

Jeff: yeah,

Brent: you know, uh, that's, yeah. Um, Jeff, did you have anything else before we move on to the next piece?

Jeff: I have a handful of other just big, big picture questions. One is, um, Sheridan comes down on Lida and is like, I feel like you had something to do with that planet blowing up and the people evacuating. And she's like, theoretically, yeah, maybe. I think that theoretically, possibly the wars might have left some stuff in me that made some things kind of happen.

So what else did they leave? Was it just self-destruct instructions for Zaha Doom? She goes into Lon Space. Does something go? So

Brent: does she become like the queen of Volans space if she goes in?

Jeff: right? Bo?

Brent: Oh yeah. If the shadows have minions and allies to the volans, have minions and allies that are left over there.

Jeff: I think if they do, it's like, well, yeah, over in Lon Space. Cause I initially, I would say yeah, the Minbar, right? Like Minbar are their allies and they tried to get everybody else and literally blew that opportunity. But are there other ones hanging out

Brent: but the Mbar have their own space.

Jeff: Mm-hmm. . So who's, who's in the VLAN

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: Jack The Ripper and other serial killers

Brent: I guess.

Jeff: Back to Ster Ster said. Uh, the second thing that he wanted to get across in his talk with Carolyn, uh, Carolyn in his monologue

Brent: Uhhuh.

Jeff: was that he has an ace in the hole that'll hurt Babylon five.

Brent: Hmm.

Jeff: So the que, you know, what is his ace in the hole? And then my final question, the great scene between Garabaldi and Zach we're gonna talk about here in a minute, a big part of that scene was Garabaldi handing the station lockdown codes to Garabaldi or Garabaldi, handing the station lockdown codes to Zach. One, what is Garabaldi doing with station lockdown codes in his quarters? And two, did they change them or does he still have those codes? Hmm. We shall see.

Brent: you change the locks when you move into a new house?

Jeff: Yeah, it's one of the first things I

Brent: You know the other thing you should do when you move into a new house, change all the toilet seats. Free advice, free advice, just throwing it out there. Change the toilet seats. Um, Jeff,

Jeff: Brent.

Brent: I want you just acknowledge this episode today, I think more so than any other show we've ever done in the three plus seasons of Babylon five for the first time I described this episode, and I feel like that's what this podcast on the episode has been. Instead of being this big cannon shot to a heart, this has just been all right, here's that one little thing, and then here's that little handful of pebbles, and here's that little handful of pebbles.

And I don't know, let's just throw this up there and see what's going on and all right, how want this over there? But Jeff, I think we've reached that part of the show where we do try to come back and see was there a cannon shot in the heart, uh, of the sci-fi heart. Anyway, does this have any deep moral message to it?

Is it holding up a mirror to society? Do we get hope for the future out of it? Is it what the episode is really about? Does it deliver that message in its own uniquely babble on five way? You, my friend, have the task of doing that this week. I apologize to you. You're gonna be rating this episode on scale of zero to five Delta Furies to see how strong the message was and how Babylon five was it delivered.

So Jeff, you got?

Jeff: When you hit one of the big themes on, uh, the Mirror to Society, and that was both President Clark and then Ster as we discussed. I just had President Clark down in my initial, but um, our conversation brought Ster in. But just that willingness to sacrifice other people to go kill other people and advance political aims, holy crud like that.

So on the nose, but more enlightening and fun stuff that came out of this one. Ja Car's Getting his eye looked at by Franklin and, uh, Franklin's like, dude, I heard, I heard they were gonna like hand control the narn over to you. Like, why, why wouldn't you take that? And Jaar says, I'm gonna read the whole quote because it's so good.

I've seen what power does and I have seen what power costs. The one is never equal to the

other. Oh, that's good. That was similar to the riff, uh, back in the long night when he said, um, you know, I did not remove one dictator from the throne just to become a dictator myself, but like he's getting more into the, the how and the why.

And so without diving into that one too much, cuz we've already talked through it, it's just such a powerful and it's power in humility where Jaar understands one, that a single person cannot be the central point of all power and nothing good comes from that. And two, having that humility to understand that like no one, no one becomes president and is then like eight, four or eight years later, they're like, that was awesome.

How do I do that more ? You know, I think about, you see pictures of all the presidents, and this is very United States centric, but I'm sure the same holds true for other national and world leaders. They have that picture the day they go into the office. Then they have that picture as they go out and they age decades.

In those couple of years, it's a huge price to pay and the amount of power you have, is it really worth it? It's an incredible statement on what people aspire to and what they actually get. It's actually a problem I call, I call the popcorn problem. We've all gone into a movie theater. We've all smelled that fresh popped popcorn.

Oh, it's magic, right? So good. You go, you pay $24 and 50 cents for the large bucket. You

Brent: Because, because the medium bucket is $24 and 25 cents.

Jeff: yeah, for just a quarter more, I can get you one that's this big and you get a refill.

Brent: Might as well. Right. Hey, by the way, another pro tip. Always get that refill when you leave the movie theater and take that stuff home.

Jeff: Yeah, it's awesome. I love it. Our local side note, our local theater delivers on Uber

Brent: Do they

Jeff: we can get movie theater popcorn for watching at home. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty great. But you get that big bucket of popcorn, it smells good, it's hot, and you get that first bite. You take it and you're just like, oh, that, that's okay.

Like it tastes okay. It never, ever tastes and feels as good as it smells, and that's power smells and it looks so good, and then you get it and you're like, oh wow. I'm gonna have to go to the dentist to clean all these holes and shells outta my teeth. Ugh. It's rough. It's incredible commentary from Kar.

Then we get this awesome sequence between Garabaldi and Zach where Garabaldi is like, dude, I took a chance on. I, I saw something in you. I gave you a chance and look at you. You're doing awesome. We talked earlier about loving a hardworking person, right? Going, doing the work. That's my path, right? I never, I, I never went to college.

I was in the military. I left the military. I went to work. I worked really hard, been successful. Yes, a large amount of my success is due directly to the privilege that I bring to the table, but I work hard to execute as well. But gar, but it all starts, but it all starts with someone giving someone a chance, and Garibaldi did that for Zach.

This really spoke to me because, as I've shared on the podcast before, part of my day job in the past and for a very long time was steering public policy around specific types of background checks. and one of the biggest ills we have as a, as a society is judging a person's future behavior on their past behavior, specifically their past mistakes. It's awful. It's awful. A person does all sorts of great stuff and they do one bad thing in their life and we're never ever going to let them shake that or whatever. Sinclair did that for Gar Baldy. Gar Baldy did that for Zach, and it's just such to me, and we, and we talked about the writing for Zach, his performance and everything, like he's doing great.

He's sharing and mentoring, you know, new security people. He's going toe to toe with the Prime Minister. He's gonna have some pizza with Le well, he is gonna bring a pizza to Alita. I doubt they'll be eating much of that, but it's great and it's all because someone took a chance on somebody. I call the people watching.

I call the people listening. Take a chance on somebody. Look at their whole totality of who they are, not just their couple of mistakes that they've made. If we were all rated on our worst mistake that we made in our lives, we'd all be pretty cruddy people, right? But we have more to our lives than that.

And that's what we got to see in this episode. Bre has had a lot of great messaging in it that happened in little Tiny Pebbles that were thrown at us throughout the episode. So I had mentioned three of them between the mirror to everything, understanding power and not judging people based only only on their mistakes.

And so one for each that I called out, I'm gonna give this one. Three Delta Furries.

Brent: You know, it's, it's funny, even you just sort of said it, even your Delta Furies felt like pebbles ju just a bunch of handfuls of pebbles. Hey, here's this sort of one thing over here and here's this thing over here and here's this thing over here. But nothing that was like, this is what the episode was about. Again, it doesn't make this a bad episode. It just, I think it, it, it's take the entire first season of Babylon five, boil it down into an episode. It's, it's, we're we're putting pieces into place before we start with the story. Maybe even next week's gonna be a little bit more putting pieces in place. I don't know.

I haven't seen it yet. Um, I don't know.

Jeff: yeah, it's a necessary episode, but you said it doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad episode. So, Brent, it's time to put your money where your mouth is. As we are creating the a hundred percent completely accurate and definitive ranking of this season as we have for the last three. Currently in the top five, we've got into the fire, the long night, whatever happened to Mr.

Garabaldi, the summoning, and the hour of the wolf. So Brent, where do you put epiphanies?

Brent: do you remember, uh, the long dark from season two?

Jeff: I try not

Brent: you remember late deliveries from Avalon from season three?

Jeff: I also try

Brent: How we took those and we just said we're gonna mark those as 22 all the way down at the bottom and let everything else fill in in between.

Jeff: I sure

Brent: I'm not doing that with this episode,

Jeff: It's good. I'm really

Brent: however, this is going at the bottom of the list, so this is gonna be episode number seven in the ranking right now.

This is probably the least enjoyable episode we've seen out of the season so far. Um, I think it's just due to the, again, I think it's just due to the nature of where the show is doesn't mean I don't appreciate It doesn't mean it was a bad episode. Was it better than any of the six we've gotten prior to this one?

No, it was not.

Jeff: I think I agree. It's tough. Again, like it's hard. It's just so hard to put my finger on this one, and this is one. That we might look back at on a recap, I think of the geometry of shadows in season two that we were able to look back at and be like, oh wow. We were unduly harsh on that episode the first time around.

I could see this being one of those,

Brent: I don't think, oh, no. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. We were not unduly harsh on Geometry of Shadows the first time around. We were perfectly harsh on the geometry of shadows the first time around. The second time around. At least I, cuz I did go back and re-watch it. Now I understand that episode and when we do it babbel on fire for the second time, we will be reasonably. More positive on that episode, although I still want

Jeff: I, I

Brent: back. Jeff, I'm still mad that we haven't gotten techno majors yet,

Jeff: I agree.

Brent: are techno majors, the Volans allies and minions that we haven't gotten yet?

Jeff: Well, they went out beyond the rim is what the techno majors were

Brent: Well, sure.

Jeff: ascended before the volans or

Brent: Oh yeah. Yeah. I completely cut

Jeff: Honestly, I think about it.

Brent: Go ahead.

Jeff: I almost think about it in terms of like, uh, walkabout and was it shadow dancing that were, we were pretty high on walkabout when we first watched it, and then after shadow dancing and then on reflections, like, oh gosh, no, that didn't even need to happen because you actually did it better.

You well did it differently a second time. It would've been great if you did it this way. Maybe this will be that on re on reflection. We'll look back

Brent: Comes the inquisitor, another episode that I still think, oh Jeff, we should, ooh, we probably have enough now to be able to go back to that episode and re-watch it and see it differently now, because that was the Jack the Ripper episode. Right? Comes the inquisitor. Right. That was an episode that I rem I was saying, I remember that one because I said That is de deep.

No, I'm sorry. That is Babylon five s duet from Deep Space nine, where when you come back and watch it later, and you really can appreciate what's happening once you have the full context of where it's going. Yeah. I wanna go back, I wanna go back and rewatch that now. I, I mean, it's gonna be, we'll do it with the Babylon five for a second time, but Oh, oh, I'm actually excited for that episode.

Jeff: I just think about how in war without End, Dellen kept talking about the great sacrifices it took to maintain the peace and we're like at the beginning of that. And so I think we saw Sheridan's big sacrifices that will tie back to Comes. The Inquisitor. I don't know that we've seen the lens yet.

Brent: What were Sheridan's big sacrifices,

Jeff: He died.

Sheridan

Brent: but he came back.

Jeff: Yeah. Is he back like good? Well, he is back with a shortened lifespan

Brent: mean, is this, is this like Sheridan's back the same way John Snow came back? Sorry. Spoiler alert. Uh, . It's kind of the same, but not really.

Jeff: That's gonna, I mean that, that's what Garabaldi

Brent: he's got more of a cough. I mean, dude, his, his hair this season has been on point.

Jeff: Every time. Every time.

Brent: every.

Jeff: Well, Brent, that's it for epiphanies. Next week we're gonna be watching the illusion of truth for the first time. We've never seen these episodes before. We don't know what they're about. We haven't seen thumbnails or anything, and we love playing our prediction game where we know what it's called.

And we guess what the next episode is gonna be about. Brent, what do you think the illusion of truth is going to be?

Brent: I feel like this one has to get back to Sheridan and Dalen because this episode really wasn't Sheridan and Dalen at all. Like at.

Jeff: that one brief moment and that was it.

Brent: then the moment with Garabaldi later with Sheridan, like that, that was in best, like Sheridan was just a piece in this particular one. So I feel like we're going back to that.

Let's hear illusions of truth. Is this an illusion with an I or an illusion? With an A.

Jeff: I an illusion.

Brent: Copperfield illusion,

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: illusions of truth. This almost I feel like has to get back to the propaganda that President Clark is running against Babylon five. The illusions of truth. What about you, Jeff?

Jeff: I, I think we're gonna get more into Garabaldi, right? We're

Brent: I'd be okay with that. Yeah.

Jeff: gonna get a little bit into his programming. We're gonna see him starting his business. We're gonna see him kind of like starting to establish himself as citizen Garabaldi.

Brent: gonna base himself on Babylon five, you think? Or is he moving, like, is he leaving our show? Like

Jeff: I think he's sta, I think he's staying on

Brent: is he going back to Mars?

Jeff: I don't know that Mars is a place people want to be right now. There. Last we heard, there's still like an active rebellion.

Brent: happens if Garabaldi goes, does go back to Mars? Does he get arrested? I mean, he's still a traitor or whatever and all that.

Jeff: Un Unless he's got something to turn over, like he'd have to have some bargaining chip.

Brent: Unless they know that they've had Garabaldi and they've pre-programmed him to re to do this.

Jeff: and he's just coming back to the roost, buys a ticket to Mars, ends up in San Diego. Right. You know?

Brent: Bureau 13 with uh, weird p op lady who's doing surgery on.

Jeff: Mm-hmm. . It would make perfect sense. I think the illusion of truth part is gonna come in though, that he's gonna be faced with things that regular Garabaldi is into, but programmed Garabaldi is not. So it's gonna kind of create this psychological cognitive dissonance within him. And I'm thinking that's gonna be like to, I like how you brought up more of the propaganda piece.

It's gonna be something where the programming is pro Earth, pro Clark, but the Garabaldi isn't there yet, and so he's gonna be wrestling with what is. Is this propaganda True? Is what I believe Is Michael Garabaldi True? I don't know what's true anymore.

Brent: Hmm.

Jeff: So we'll get more Garabaldi hitting walls and screaming and pumping soap out of his Daffy Duck soap dispenser, and

we'll

Brent: noticed? I'm sorry. You know what I noticed in this, uh, uh, in this episode for the first time we've, we've seen the Daffy Duck poster on the wall in his quarters. He also has this like Daffy Duck Pinnet, like on the other wall. It's like another, yeah, it's like another Daffy Duck thing over there.

Jeff: He's got all kinds of

Brent: Mm-hmm. . Do you think he likes Daffy Duck? Because Daffy Duck is owned by the WB and so is Babylon five. Like, and it was just easy to get the rights to it.

Jeff: I think Michael Garibaldi actually prefers Donald Duck, but they were told no . It's gonna be this one. We're gonna find out all about the illusion of truth here next week. Thank you all so much for joining us. Please leave us a rating, leave us a review. We'll read it here on the podcast. And also, please take literally 31 seconds, go hit the share button in your podcast app and share Babylon five for the first time with somebody who you know would enjoy it.

Maybe they're watching Babbel on five for the first time, or they're one of the longtime watchers who wanna relive it. Again. Either way, share this with them. It'll mean the absolute world to us. Until next

Brent: Hey Jeff.

Jeff: Yeah, man. What's

Brent: Hey you. Uh, I, I got some stuff. I gotta move. You wanna go grab a pizza and maybe come help me move?

Jeff: Maybe what's on the pizza?

Brent: Uh, you know, half pepperoni, half cheese.

Jeff: Oh my God. In Val's name.