In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum

Jeff: Welcome to Babylon 5 for the first time. Not a Star Trek podcast. My name is Jeff Akin and I'm watching Babylon five for the first time.

Brent: And I'm Brent Allen and I'm also watching Babylon five for the very first time. Jeff and I are two veterans, Star Trek podcasters who can push through anything. And this anything is a very long season Two of Babylon 5, but we have got to this part, Jeff.

We are watching this show for the very first time. We're searching for Star Trek like messages and trying to see. How much we like this series.

Jeff: And while this is not a star a, and while this is not a Star Trek podcast, Brent and I do have Star Trek podcasts, and so those references tend to find their way into our conversations.

But to keep us honest, we play the rule of three. That means each of us gets three references to Star Trek a piece, and that's it. Three.

Brent: One of those three. Now substitutions.

Jeff: Exchanges are really fun. Brent, we have a five star review. Yes. This one is from Audible. You can listen to us on Audible, which shout out Audible.

Yeah. Basically means we're authors.

Brent: I mean, we're published. We need a what's, What's the audible version of imdb? We need to get on

Jeff: that. Yeah, exactly. Well, this one's not too long. It's from Mark. And Mark says, Love your podcast. I enjoy hearing you guys theorize about what is coming up. Always enjoyable.

Thanks

Brent: Mark. You are very welcome. We enjoy theorizing about what's to come up and I promise there's gonna be some theorizing in today's episode as well.

Jeff: Just, just a smidge probably. Yeah. Well we have a four star review from good pods. I don't know, Brent, if you, uh, have used good pods before or not.

Brent: I have.

But is there scale zero to four or do they have a five star

Jeff: scale? So, uh, this is from Sam on Good Pods. Sam. Sam actually emailed me, um, about the review to let me know that Sam's one of those people who believes that no one and no one thing is truly perfect. You know what,

Brent: Sam is my people. Yeah, Right. I screw up people's ratings all the time.

If you come to me and you say it's five stars or nothing, then I do not value then I'm not gonna do your, your show or I'm not gonna do your survey. You know? Yeah. Like, Oh, we, we strive for this or nothing. You know, if, if, if we don't get at least five or 10 or whatever their rating is, then we've completely failed.

And I'm like, Then you have zero interest in actual feedback. All you want is to ba is just to feel good, which I'll be honest, getting five star reviews makes me feel really good. But I also appreciate genuine, well thought out, constructive

Jeff: feedback. Totally. And what I love about Sam's review and in the email Sam offered too, was, like I said, no one's truly perfect.

If I could rate you a 4.5, I would. So we're like as close to perfect as Sam will ever allow us to get. But

Brent: I wanna give a, Does that qualify as a five star review then? Oh

Jeff: yes. I'm gonna take every opportunity to hit that one. Right. But I do wanna just give a quick shout out to anyone listening on good pods.

And if you don't listen on Good Pods, it's kind of a cool little app that has this social feature, like you follow people, just other podcast listeners and you see what they're listening to. And it's a great way to help grow, uh, our audience. Cuz people will see, oh, that this person who I like and trust watched Babylon or listen to Babylon five for the first time.

Maybe you'll give that a listen also. So,

Brent: which makes a lot of sense because like if you are listening to something and somebody else is listening, you guys obviously have a shared taste and their good chances are you have more than one shared taste. Mm-hmm. It's

Jeff: not a bad idea. Creates a really cool community.

But Sam, in the four star review of us, uh, four and a half in Spirit says, I love listening to you developing the theories as I first watched when I was around 10, so I couldn't come up with them, and I now know what happens next. I'm really looking forward to you getting to season three, but two has been interesting as well.

All right.

Brent: Well, uh, Sam, was it? Yeah, Sam. Sam, Uh, we love theorizing. I'm not sure if you just called us 10 year olds or not, but, uh, regardless, it's been a lot of fun and you know what's coming next. We don't, Jeff, we don't, And this episode specifically, there's a lot of, I, I guarantee you I'm gonna call, this is like the serious black of Babylon five.

Okay. I'll explain that later. Just remind me, Don't let me get outta here without talking about that. Like

Jeff: there's your teaser. Yeah. I've got one more. This one is, uh, through our website, Babylon five first.com. It's a number five and the word first.com. We have a contact page on there, and Andrew used it.

Andrew sent us an email that I think is very appropriate for this particular episode. All right. He says, One of the things I've noticed is that based on your predictions from episode titles, you may be spoiled by modern serialized television and you aren't even aware of it. A lot of modern shows are presented as extended 10 hour movies with each episode smoothly running into the next Babylon.

Five isn't like that. Babylon five is a very transitional show with one foot in the old episodic way of doing things in the other, in the 21st century style of serialized stories. Episodes won't lead directly from one to the next, at least not for the first couple seasons, but no spoilers. There are foreshadowed sometimes, and they won't pay off for literally many seasons.

So I worry that when you make predictions that the very next episode will deal with the same stories or plot lines as the ones you're discussing, I worry you're setting yourself up for some disappointment.

Brent: Yes, we are setting ourselves up for some disappointment, but I will say we have gotten to that spot though, Jeff, where we say, this is what I want it to be about, which is a continuation of this story, but we know that it's not gonna be because that's the way this works.

Yeah. Like we've kind of gotten to that spot. So, um, I, I 100% feel everything you're saying there. Um, and

Jeff: I thought this was good for this episode because Yeah. Like it just, it, this is the continuation of like all those episodes we've been bagging on all season. Like they finally, like now they mean something.

At the end of the season. Well, you know, there was a four minute dialogue piece that told us they did more, More on that later. Okay. ,

Brent: because I, like, I have a suspicion I haven't, I haven't gone back and watched any of those episodes since we did them, because honestly, I don't want to watch most of them again.

True. Um, but okay. Here at the Serious Black thing, I'll just go ahead and say it. Now, here's my suspicion is when we do go back and do a rewatch, maybe, we'll, maybe, maybe we got our season two recap coming up here soon, a wrap up show. Maybe I'll do like a binge of season two just to go back, because what I suspect, I don't know if this is true.

Uh, do you ever, do you ever read Harry Potter?

Jeff: I never read.

Brent: Only watch the movies. You only watch. Actually, I think it's in the movie as well. Okay. There's a character called Sirius Black. Mm-hmm . We meet Sirius Black in the third film slash book. And he continues to be a presence throughout the rest of the, of the, the series.

He's actually a rather major character. Well, what you realize is after you have met him and then go back and reread the books, he was mentioned in the very first chapter of the very first book, Really? He, and I'm pretty sure that he was mentioned in the opening scene of the first movie as well, because it was his bike that he lent to Haggard, that Haggard used to fly Harry to the DS all those years ago.

Really? Yeah. Huh. And, and he comes in, he is like young, serious black, lent it to me. Now, sometimes the books and movies confuse themselves in my head and somebody's typing like, Oh, that was just the book, not the movie. Which actually, now that I'm thinking about it, that's probably correct. But he was there and you like, when you go back and re-watch it, you go, Oh, he was there.

Oh my gosh. It was there the whole time, huh. And I have a feeling that there is a lot for, particularly from those episodes we didn't like, That is like, see what was right here the whole time it was right here. And here's what I would say to you folks out there. If that's the case, let Jeff and I discover that upon the rewatch.

Like, don't steal the hoses right here from us. Like just let it be. Because I promise you, Jeff, at least as far as I'm concerned, just about everything in this episode was brand new information. Really? Uhhuh, . See by your response there. I know it wasn't, Yeah. But it was almost, this was all almost brand new information to me.

Okay.

Jeff: That's interesting. Mm-hmm. , I think for me, and this is, or diving way ahead, we'll get into this more, but this really con, a lot of it just confirmed things that had been planted through like all of those terrible episodes. That's not fair. Through all those episodes that we didn't enjoy as much as people think that we should have.

But Sure. ,

Brent: I believe you. I have no idea what you're talking about, but Okay. But we'll get there.

You know Jeff, I like our games here at Babylon five for the first time. We have the rule of three. We have whatever bit it is that we do at the end of the episodes. We have other things. One of the things that we do a lot that I absolutely love and, uh, one of our emailers here just, uh, just talked about it, predicting what the next episode is gonna be about based on title alone.

We do that at the end of every episode. Once we're finished with this one, we'll talk about whatever next week's episode title is gonna be.

We haven't seen anything. We don't know anything about it. We've never watched it before. Now's the time to pay the piper though. Jeff, now's the time to look back on last week and talk about what we thought this week was gonna be about and see how close we were. Jeff, do you remember what you said in the shadow of Zaha, that's going to be about, I do,

Jeff: more or less, if I remember right.

I thought that this was really gonna kick off the, the war with the shadow, the great war specifically. I, I talked about how, um, the opening credits have talked about, this was the year the great war starts, and we've only seen the Naan, Centi war. And I thought this was gonna be the shadows coming to start the big great war with Zas and Babylon for, and, and all that stuff.

And well, while it involved the shadows, um, there wasn't, there was no war in, uh, in this one whatsoever. Great or otherwise. What about you? What did you, uh, what did you.

Brent: Zas was not in this episode. No. He, Zas was predicted to be in this episode. But Zas not in this episode. But speaking of Zas, Jeff, you just mentioned this to me. You, you, you just said something. It triggered something in my memory. I was thinking about Zas cause I completely predicted this would be a Zas episode.

Yeah. Right. Because of the z and i, I figured that Zaha Doom would be where Zas was from. Oh. Or whatever. Like, I, I didn't know. Um, Cuz I promise this is the first time we've ever heard the word Zaha doom before .

Jeff: Yeah, sure. Except for like the, you know, the second episode of it. No Term season?

Brent: Nope. It wasn't in it, It wasn't there.

Um, okay. Zas, help me remember or spin the yarn with me here. Okay. Gotta go back. Cause we only met him in that one episode. Mm-hmm. . Right? Was Zas from the future? I believe so. So like, can I just throw something out there about Zas? Because if Zas is from the future and he's looking for the one, you know, and, and there's, there's what was Sinclair and Delin at the time?

Whatever that's gonna wind up being. Ifats is a time traveling alien who is in the midst of a battle, in a great war. Is he from a future war with the shadows when they come back another thousand years into the future Hmm. Or however va and he's coming back to try to prevent that war. Because remember what Dilin said in this one, They were defeated, not destroyed.

Yeah. If they can destroy them, then Zas doesn't have his war in the future and his civilization can be saved. Right. That makes sense. Like, like at, I know people are either losing their minds right now or they're just laughing their butts off at me. Right. It's one of the two. But just what if, I don't know why, Like you, you talked about Zas and, and all that kind of stuff and I was, I was kind of going, Well, who was zas?

Like,

Jeff: just trying to think through it. So, yeah, cuz I think it was from the future, but I think, I think that just shows how the word kind, the, the word the show kind of plays loose with certain words, right? Like shadows. Shadows is, I mean that's, that's just your applies to everything pronoun at this point.

Sure. You know, Hey Jeff Aiken, Shadow Shadows, That's, that's how it is now. But I think also Great War is now a thing, you know, cuz Zas said great war. You know, we've been fighting in the Great War for whatever amount of time and then the opening credits, and this is where God, all the way from the end of season one, people are telling us don't watch the opening credits.

And we try, like, I try to hit skip, but I tend to watch it with my daughter and all whatever. I saw him and right there, the great war. This is the year that great war start. Well. Which, which great war cuz apparently they were, they happen every couple thousand years or something.

Brent: I don't, I mean it's, it, I had a prediction the other day that what was, uh, oh no, where was it?

There was an episode where they talked about the shadows living out in the hyperspace.

Jeff: Yeah. That was the one with, uh, keer in the, there was the, uh, explorer ship, the explorer ship with the other captain guy that, Yeah, I don't

Brent: remember, Don't remember Buddies was, I don't know. I have to go back and watch it again, but, um, I remember saying that it's either species 8 4 72 or it's, it

Jeff: Yep.

Does that, I'm not gonna count it cuz you reference that was from a, there's a previous

Brent: Yeah. You're representative to a reference. Yeah. . Um, but it was, it remember like, uh, you know, come, come to the dark place and everything floats here. Yeah. That right there, uh, Uh, you know, maybe, maybe that's, that's what it is.

And they, you know, they come back every, every

Jeff: so often. I, Yeah. Well we've been kind of diving into this, Brent, so I think it's only fair for the people that are watching along with us or haven't watched these episodes in a long time. Maybe now, Brent, it's time for you to walk us through what in the shadow of Zaha Doom was all about.

Brent: Well, the Narn, Sonari, war Rages, Onlin, and Sheridan are making good on their promise to care for the Nan civilians. They're coming to babble on five at an incredible rate. Most of them injured, many of them sick, some of them alone. War is real, folks, and it's not just hurting those who are combatants.

That's pretty much all we're gonna hear of that for the rest of this episode. So here we go. Down in Nazo, Mr. Mor has requested to speak with Lando, but Lando is off the station. Veer takes this opportunity to go tell Morden what it is that he really wants, which is to see Morden's head on a pike outside the Red Keep and Veer is gonna look up at it and wave and give us the origin of one of our favorite Babylon five gifts ever.

So not what I thought was actually gonna be happening when I saw that gift,

but that's really it for Morden. You see, because in Captain Sheridan's office, he's been going through some of his late wife's stuff, including the ship logs and crew manifest, and who is on that manifest? Who's completely supposed to be dead and totally not as dead as he should be? That's right. It's mor.

You can imagine Sheridan wants to see Morden right now. Station Insecurity sets up a checkpoint and Nets morden just as he tries to push his way past. Ka. Nicki Sheridan's throwing the book at Morden over in the the holding cell, trying to get answers about what happened to his wife. All Morgan can say is, I don't remember.

While Sheridan's doing that, let's check out on a couple B plots that they got going on. Ava and Franklin are off discussing their lack of belief and in religion and yep, that's about as boring as it sounds. Natalia Winters, though she's got a little bit more of an interesting B plot, she's met with a guy named Pierce McAbee, which could be a very interesting name to follow up on depending on how this particular plot plays out over the next bunch of episodes.

Pierce is the leader of a new earth dome backed peacekeeping group called the Night. They exist and they're the first and last line of defense between the realm of men and the seven kingdoms against the wildlings and the white walkers who are forced to live north of the Great Ice Wall as Knights Watchmen.

They take no wife hold, no lens, father, no children, and, oh wait, Actually we're not really sure what it is the Knights Watch does here in Babylon. Five. Besides walk around with black arm bands and hang out because who doesn't love to accessorize? Okay, back to Morden, cuz that's done. Garabaldi has resigned in protest over Sheridan's treatment of Morden, especially since Sheridan hasn't even charged boredom with a crime.

Sheridan gets stopped by caution to Lynn, who insists that Morden be set free or it could ruin everything. At first, a Lynn is like, you're just gonna have to trust us and Sheridan's. No. And then the Lens's like, Okay, well, we'll tell you everything then. And Sheridan's like, that was easy. You see, long ago, millions of years ago before the Maari, the Nas Earthers and all the rest even existed there existed another set of races that occupied the universe.

We're gonna call them the ancient ones, or the first ones, we'll say ancient ones. Well, they all teamed up and fought against an even older race that eventually became known as the shadows. The shadows gathered on their home planet Zaha doom out on the rim. The ancient ones and the shadows fought The ancient ones defeated the shadows, but they did not destroy them.

After that, most of the ancient races decided it was time to move on from our universe, or ascend, or whatever it is that they did. But a few of those races did stay behind in order to guard against the return of the shadows. Over the years, new races eventually evolved and came to be, and about a thousand years ago, the shadows returned, gathering once again at Saha Doom.

The remaining ancient races banded together once again complete because it was time for the old ducks and the new ducks to unite under a new banner. Well, they also won defeated, not destroyed the shadows and the rest of the ancient races that were reigned behind. They decided it was time for them to move along as well.

Except for one race. KO's Race, the Volans and KO wears his encounter suit to hide his appearance because if anyone were to see him, they would recognize him. Yes, anyone? Whatever that means. And DeVos are now here to help because the shadows are gathering once again at Zaha Doom. As for Sheridan's wife, she was on board the IUs.

If you'll remember this story from bunches of episodes ago, the IUs was headed out to an archeological dig where they discovered newly found ruins of an ancient civilization on this weird planet out on the rim called Zaha Doom. And turns out those guys were actually the ones who woke up the shadows, dun, dun dun.

Well, they never actually tell us what happened to Morden, like the guy who was on the ship with his, with Sheridan's wife or why he's seemingly awake and alive and walking around today. But it does lead to Sheridan actually releasing Morton so that they can keep the secret that we know his secret because they're not ready for this war yet.

Sheridan later goes to see Ko and says, I don't wanna learn anymore about you. I want you to teach me how to defeat the shadows. And Kos agrees to be his. Mr. Miyagi. Jeff, what did you think of in the shadows of Zaha Doom?

Jeff: I love this episode. Like this is the episode we should have had , you know, I mean this was, well it should have been episode three, right?

I mean, so I was right. I got my little corkboard, I got all the stuff it was, it was Revelations. And I said, Hey, you know what? You know it would be wild. What if it was Zaha Doom that the IUs went to, and

Brent: they did not name this planet in Revelations?

Jeff: They did. It was the second episode. They called it. Zakar has dropped that name at least three or four.

They have not, Are you serious? Dead serious. Like, are you serious? Like, I know how to say Zaha. We have said Za doom on this, on this show. How else would you say it? I'd say Sha I don't know. I don't know. Uh, okay. Yeah. I was like, this is gonna make it personal for Sheridan. Like not only is there wild stuff going on out in the rib, but they killed mm-hmm.

They killed my wife. Here we are. It happened.

Brent: See, all I remember about that is Jaar had his book. I remember seeing a picture of the alien creature, like drawn out in the book. Like, like he's looking at boo from hocus pocus, like, you know, we're Flipp through . Um, and, and I remember him saying something about there was an ancient race and there was an ancient war.

But I didn't know that it was this, And I mean, I, I think the implication was, it was this, but I didn't hear the word shadows or Zaha doom or anything like that.

Jeff: They used all the words, like, literally. So this is,

Brent: but this is kidding me. It was these two, I'm gonna have to do this rewatch

Jeff: now you are. And yeah, we'll talk about a rewatch, cause I have some, we have some closing thoughts on this episode.

Right. But they did these teeny tiny little, little sliver chunks over like four or five episodes that we've been bagging on Uhhuh this whole season. But now, like, they mean something. I, one of the, like, one of the things that hit me too was last week we read Norman Lao's review at the beginning of the episode and he's like, Hey, for all the first ones, like, Oh, now we know what that means.

Are

Brent: you, me, Norman? First of all, well done. Yeah.

Jeff: Cause this is good timing. But this, this. This episode for me confirmed so many things that you missed in this, uh, in this season, Uhhuh that they've been talking about. But it literally added like a billion years of history to the lore that's going on. Yeah.

And that I'm still a little confused about just everything that went down to lead to this, but I think this is, I

Brent: had to, for, for the recap, I had to watch that scene where Dalin was talking about it like a few times. I really wish that there was like a little novel puppet show going on, like a shadow box show to just show me what happened.

Jeff: Like that. They just call it, they just call it a box. Yeah.

Brent: So, Oh

Jeff: yeah. So, but I think I'm starting to key. Thank you. I'm starting to key in that this is like Babylon five storytelling style, cuz that's what we got in season one. Battle of the Line was the big story and the missing 24 hours. So we just got these little teases and these little chunks and these pieces.

And then at the first episode of season two, we got like four minutes of exposition with linear telling us everything that happened. Right? And now in season two, we've got this whole season go by with little things or whatever, and we got four minutes of exposition with Thelen telling us everything that happened, except this one had some graphics that somehow Kosh was able to apparently film the IOUs stuff.

like, where did that come from? Right.

Brent: Well, you know, a

Jeff: day. But to me, like my last thought initially was, Man, I'm loving the escalation in earth politics that's going on. Like it's getting filthy. We got the Office of Morale last week. They talked about, and now, I mean, ripped from the pages of 1984, the Ministry of Peace, which in the novel, the new speak, they called it mini packs, and that's what they call it here too.

Like he's, I mean, he's not even trying, he's literally just like, This is Oceania. This is, or as Orwellian as it's possibly gonna get.

Brent: Yeah. I'm with you. I love this episode. This, this is an episode you don't miss on rewatch. Yeah, no. Like you just, you just don't miss it. I'm glad they put this in because apparently I've missed it all.

You know, last week was, was that episode, um, and now for a word mm-hmm. , where they basically went back and they told us what the first 36 episodes were like, what happened in them, like the, the big pieces, Right. The first, uh, 36 hours on Babylon, five . Yeah. I'm, I'm gonna stand by. That's exactly what dude was meaning when he did that.

Um, and, and I said last week that that episode felt like a, Okay, let's just recap everything we know so far, because we're turning the corner, right? And this episode feels like we've turned the corner and you tell me that it's kind of putting all this other stuff into perspective. Maybe it's the, Okay, now let's pull the pieces together about what, what's the other war going on, You know?

Yeah. Uh, so as, as we continue, so I, I love this episode. I didn't feel. In any way, shape, or form. Like we were spinning our wheels, we got answers, definitive, not little bits and pieces that you gotta put together and figure it out. It's a this happened and then this happened, and then this happened, and here's what this is and here's what this is and here's what's going on.

You know, like they laid it out for us, which is what I need. I need you to do that for me at some point just so that I know that I got the bread crumbs. Right, Right. Yeah. Or did I miss all the breadcrumbs? Let me go back and find the bread crumbs I missed. You know, I don't know about you, Jeff. I'm one of these people, like, if I, if I'm playing a game, I'm playing like Angry Birds, right?

You get to the end of Angry Birds and you know, it's got like three stars or four stars, however many you get for doing the level. If I only get like one star, I may have finished the level going. I'm going back and playing. Cause I want all three stars. Totally. Totally. I go, I, I play Zelda. I'm trying to collect everything.

Takes me forever. That's who I am with tv. Like I wanna go back and see all those breadcrumbs. So, uh, yeah, I, I did, I quite enjoyed this episode. Um, I love when we get to find out where our frequently used gifts come from. . Yep. That we don't know. Like, cuz you and I, we, we see pictures and we don't know what, what's what, you know, uh, like, I mean, I think of like delin with hair, right?

I, I, I absolutely saw pictures of Delin with hair way before we ever got dilin with hair in the show. Did I know that that was delin with hair? I thought maybe, but I wasn't sure. It could have been somebody else. It could have been a different thing. I didn't know, I wasn't sure exactly what I was looking at, You know what I mean?

Mm-hmm. , there, there are characters and actors that are in Babybel on five stuff right now that I'm like, we haven't even met this person yet. I have no idea who it is. Yeah. You know, and we'll find out when we get there and that's okay. Like, I don't mind that, but. This thing with, with, with Veer doing this, uh, that is way more evil in sinister than you would ever think from veer.

Like Veer has some venom. Yeah. He is spitting out at Morden and it's well

Jeff: deserved. Veer was next level in this episode. Good. Like, so good. Veers growing up. You know what I mean? Like this is, this is his coming out party where he is just like, you know, this is the debutante ball and he is dancing with everybody.

Mm-hmm. , even Sheridan, like, he was

Brent: great, right? Oh yeah. Well, when he went in and talked Sheridan, he is like, We're gonna have to release him. He's part of our deal. You know, I want to kill him, but

Jeff: we gotta let brutally, I wanna brutally kill him. Like not just mm-hmm. a little bit, but I wanna watch it happen.

I wanna live that long. Oh yeah. That was so much venom.

Well, I, I think let's start with the lighter stuff, right? And we can talk about the Hitler youth. I mean, uh, Night Watch . Oh my gosh, that was, Well, let's start with the fun thing you alluded to in your recap, but just the Pierce McAbee. Yeah. What a name

Brent: I, I've got to wonder if that name's not on purpose.

Jeff: You don't pull out Macabees, like those two books, There's two books in the Bible, Right. That the Macabees, and they're like, one is super, like deep theological stuff. The other one's just the story of the persecution of the Jews. And it is, it is rough, rough stuff. And you don't, that's not just a name you pull out of a

Brent: hat.

Yeah. Now, I mean, Abes was the hero of the Jews. Mm-hmm.

Jeff: still like, But do you pierce the hero? I. Yeah, it's, I'm thinking

Brent: it appears as an action word. Yeah, it, it's totally a thing. So I, I don't know. And earth dome's gonna pay 'em 50 credits, 50 bucks extra a week to wear a a match. 50 bucks is 50 bucks, man.

Hey, you want, you wanna put that thing on my chest? I'll sell. Hey, I'll sell advertising space on all my clothing . I may just

Jeff: wanna be you first. Maybe a little. But Zach was ka Nicki wasn't worried about it. You know, I'm curious if Talia, what Talia thought of the whole

Brent: thing. You know, Jeff, speaking of Ka Nicki, this is the first time I noticed him.

Yeah, I know. He is been around for a handful of up, So you keep referencing as Ka Nicki. I never remember that. He's like a thing in this show until you say it. But in this episode there was, there was one moment. It was that moment at the end where he is got the thing on his arm and Gar Baldi is like, what's.

He's like, if they want to gimme a 50 extra credits a week, who out and say no. Right. Like, I was

Jeff: like, Oh, that's totally connecting. Yeah, totally. Him and Thet Birds. Like he played Danny Zuko in the Broadway version initially. Right. And like that, just that that line was total zuko like so good. Yeah. But yeah, like this is the thing and where I, I don't have high hopes for Zach at this point.

Is this a

Brent: cult? Have they, Is this, is this actually a cult that they formed? Or is this something different? That's,

Jeff: I, I think it's a version of like the Hitler youth, literally, because Pierce said a thing and I, and I wrote it down, and even like italicized parts of it, we are less interested in actions than we are in attitudes.

Like, it doesn't matter what you do, it matters what you. . Mm-hmm. . And so what this is gonna force is for you to tell on your neighbor, you know, and all of those things that happened in late thirties, in the forties, in, in Germany during World War ii, under the Nazis. That's, that is what, And I mean, an arm band, really.

Like, they're not, there's not even an inch of subtlety in what they're doing. Yes. This is a cult. Yes. They're gonna get pulled into stuff. And I think we also saw a, a chip in Zach's integrity where Garabaldi quit. He resigned his position over how Sheridan was dealing with Morden. Mm-hmm. , he pulled Zach in and Zach's like, Yes sir.

Whatever you say, sir. I got you, sir. You take that mindset coupled with a nice little arm band and 50 bucks a week. I, I don't think I'm gonna be a fan of ka Nicki's here in a while,

Brent: you know? But here's the thing. I would, I would look at Ka Nicki. Not in a bad way, just as somebody who's been duped. Oh yeah.

He, you know what I mean? Like he's every

Jeff: man, like every man out there. Yeah. Yeah. Cause

Brent: look, you know what, He's not chief of security. He's not responsible for what happens. Nobody's gonna hold him accountable. Gar Baldi was, Gar. Baldi had a different level of responsibility. He had a different level of cognition.

Can Nicky doesn't, So if Sheridan wants him to go do it, hey man, listen, He's just following orders. He's a groo.

Jeff: Yeah. But we talked about that with Veer, even just following orders. I mean, you stand up in Nuremberg and that's still a conviction. Like that doesn't, you're not, that doesn't help. And I would like to think mm-hmm.

maybe this is okay. And, and I'll burn one here, because if, if he was a groo, a security guy serving on board the USS Enterprise 1701 D. Mm-hmm. and Picard, or Riker told him to do this thing. He'd say no, he'd threaten to resign his commission. Cause in Star Fleet, just following orders isn't good enough.

Brent: Like, well, I mean, they literally, Here I'll burn one too. Just on top of that, they literally had a whole episode about that, couple whole episodes about mm-hmm. that with Riker and whether or not he was gonna follow the orders of his commanding officers. An episode called Pegasus Great. I, which was the impetus for the enterprise series ba uh, Berman era series finale of, uh, of enterprise

Jeff: Shoot, What was the name of that episode?

These are the voyages. These are the Voyages. Voyages. Right. Hit that real quick. And for the record, that's actually not an enterprise episode, that's Pegasus part two. It's just Pegas is told through a different point of view. It's a, it's a next generation episode with enterprise actors in it.

Brent: Yeah. When we, uh, when we did that one for Be Me Up, uh, I, I told Matt, I said, Okay, the.

The episodes that were right before it, I was like, Get ready for the enterprise series finale. And he is like, There's another episode after this. I was like, I know, we'll talk about that next week. And then when we got to that one, I was like, this is the, I called it, it's the Burman era finale. Okay. Okay.

And in my mind, if you separate Berman era finale from series finale of enterprise, it actually works much better and it's much more palatable. I like that. Yeah. But you're right, it's Pega's part too. Like it's, Yeah, they, they tried to do something, it just didn't work and, you know, whatever. Do you know this is not a Star Trek

Jeff: podcast, Jeff?

Yeah, yeah. We took a couple minutes on that, but

Brent: yeah, let's get back to it. But no, but I, I think you're right. That is if, okay, let's, I don't wanna go there if Ka Nicki knows what's going on, if he understands why Morton should be released. Not, not just like, Hey listen, I guess I'm gonna just go do this.

It's what he told me to do. You know? But once he becomes fully cognizant of what's happening, if he continues to do it, sure. But outside of that, like I, he's going to eventually have to be there. He's gonna have to choose sides. Mm-hmm. . But he's not setting himself upright. You have to be careful of who you put in your circle.

And if he's gonna be in these people's circle, then they're going to influence him. Yeah. More than he is going to influence them. Oh yeah. Big deal. So,

I dunno if you had any question, Can we talk about, No. Can we talk about Garabaldi though? Leading up to Mr. Leadership guy over there? Yeah. Talk about Garabaldi. Leading up to Sheridan. Standing up to Sheridan and taking the step to actually resign. His post Garibaldi

Jeff: was incredible. He was so good and it wasn't, I mean, the fact that he resigned was a hundred percent the right thing to.

Mm-hmm. except for, I don't know if you remember this, but remember Talia's ex-husband, Matthew Stoner. Yeah. And Gar Baldi pulling him in for no reason and reading him the riot Act and taking him down to third degree for Yeah. Yep.

Brent: No, Do you remember, um, when Garabaldi woke up from getting his injuries and he went in and questioned the guy who shot him

Jeff: unsupervised by

Brent: himself?

Completely inappropriate. Yeah. So same level, appropriate for Sheridan on this one. Exactly.

Jeff: So I have all these great things to say about Garabaldi that are fully invalidated by those, but also, but also like maybe those led to him, part of his learning process, you know, his maturation as a leader, because he did, he gave Sheridan multiple opportunities.

To back away. He let him, Hey, do it like this. Let me be the jerk. Let me come in and do this thing. Whatever you do, this has to stop and it has to stop now. Right. And, and it hurt him to even like, Hey, okay then here's the deal. Let him go. Or I'm gone. Mm-hmm. it was, and then he did, he followed through. He immediately.

Yeah. And you could hear the combat badge get ripped off his skin.

Brent: Oh God. Well I'm, I just assumed that that is the Velcro detaching itself from the hair on the back of his hand. Yeah. Yeah. Cause that man's got some wooly hands. . He

Jeff: does. But yeah, Gar Baldy was fantastic. And what I love too, it wasn't like in, um, uh, with the drowsy where, um, Purple green, but where he was set aside, but he still found a way to like, help Ava out with everything.

He hadn't decided he was gonna come back. Right. Right. To the force. But he found a way to help of, Nope. He's like, I resign. And I'm out. I'm just gonna go down, eat some Chinese food at the Zo.

Brent: Hey babe. When Sheridan came and got him, he didn't stop eating for Eat . He's like, Dude, I'm in the middle of Ma Sushi or

Jeff: whatever he had.

He's like, That's cool. Chicken fried rice. Yeah. No, Garabaldi was, Garabaldi was a super high point in, in the whole thing. I felt like Sheridan's reaction, like everything Sheridan was outta character for him. Yeah.

Brent: But this one had to do with his wife. I mean, when we, the last time we talked about Sheridan and his wife, it was so over the top with Sheridan.

Yeah. And then we thought he got over it because he got the like, Hey, she would've gone anyway. So you didn't really kill her. You know? Uh,

Jeff: it just makes me think back to Sinclair and how Sinclair would have, I believe Sinclair would've found a way to hold, to do it within the regulations. Like he would've lawyered his way through it.

Sheridan's just a sledgehammer, and I've never thought of him as a sledgehammer. That is the difference between the two of 'em, I suppose. Yeah. But the one thing they have in common is they get five, uh, five o'clock shadow pretty quickly. Yes, yes. Like 10 hours in and he was already looking Pretty, pretty unsatisfactory.

There you

Brent: go. There you go. Man. I get 10 hours in and I still look like a baby's bottom 10.

Jeff: I don't, 10 days. 10

Brent: weeks. You're still Yeah, it's about the 10 months. Honestly. It just doesn't go. Um,

alright, I'm gonna switch topics on you. Cool. The whole thing, I don't know if you have anything you wanna talk about the conversation between share, uh uh, Ava and Franklin and the whole God basis foundational thing. That was completely a name to me. The one thing I did note out of that, Ava comes in and she says this to Franklin, I just downloaded your medical log and you've not been sleeping or you've not been whatever, taking care of yourself.

And I'm like, How does AANA just go download somebody's medical log? Like you remember when Franklin went and downloaded somebody's bank account information? Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, is this stuff just freely given in the future in baby on five? Like, does privacy mean nothing to these

Jeff: folks? This is an alternate future where HIPAA was never, never passed.

Right. I, yes. Right. But may, I didn't think about it so much as medical files as so much as just like, uh, medical doctors' logs, you know, from 3:00 PM to just his work logs of some kind. Okay.

Brent: Okay. That's a little better. That's a

Jeff: little better. But still, Did you know how long he had been awake? 36 hours. 36 hours.

Was it really? I was 36. That Okay. But my, my whole takeaway on that, like the whole God back and forth thing, Hey, interesting, new religions cropping up when there's aliens. Yep. Totally get that, That checks out. That would change a lot of people's views on what the Almighty would look like. . Mm-hmm. . Which by the way, there is an incredible book written by, I think, I think it's a Methodist minister, but it's, uh, from the mid seventies, it's called The Bible and Flying Saucers.

Okay. It's amazing. It's a pretty long essay, but the, the thesis of it is everything. We, almost everything we read in the Bible is the result of missionaries from other planets coming and like giving us Judaism and then Christianity. I

Brent: should go read this because I love when people, I, it's one of the things I love about sci-fi when you take known earth history and rewrite it in terms of particularly aliens doing stuff.

Oh, I, I, I, I eat that stuff up, man.

Jeff: Well, I think with your education you would love it cuz a lot of it, like you read it and you're just like, Yeah. Um, that, that, that tracks , that kind of tracks. So, but a fascinating thing. So it's like, that was kind of cool. Whatever. But my biggest takeaway was just Franklin, again, I have to stay up for 36 hours.

Avan was like, Well, you have a fully trained medical staff. Well, I appreciate your vote of confidence. He's take, No

Brent: one else can fix this but

Jeff: me. I'm Dr. Franklin. I'm the greatest ever. And no one else can. Just another, another check in the box of where I'm just like, I, He's terrible. Don't

Brent: like Franklin.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he get, you know, remember when he did the interview and he is like my buddy spaced himself.

Jeff: Like, What? You know what that's like, let me describe it for you. Literally, that's like coming up and saying, Hey, I'm, uh, I'm Jeff Aiken from the, the Food Network and I'm here to talk to you about this really great diner that just opened up.

Had a buddy that went to a diner once, spaced himself. , what, what, what are you even talking about, dude? Like, yeah. That's all I had on those two.

Brent: Yeah. That, that's really it. Okay. So the only thing that I really have left is, is the information we got from Dilen and Kosh, but it gave me a theory about Morden.

Okay. And what's going on. And I think we, we have to have a, they, they don't tell us in this episode what actually is going on with Morden. So I think they did actually. Well, that's what I'm saying. So my question is, is do you want to talk about the history of the wars and everything and then finish off on Morden?

Or do you wanna talk about Morden and then backtrack? Let's, let's,

Jeff: let's get to Morden last. Cause I, I have, I have another theory that ties to it. Cause

Brent: I have, I have, uh, I'm not gonna call this one explosive, but I, I've gotta think about Mor, Go ahead.

Jeff: Okay. So I was pretty blown away. Is that the right word?

Um, shocked. I was shocked at this story. Not in a good, not in a bad way, but just like, Well, now that I'm talking about it, maybe I shouldn't be so shocked, but it's like, here's this history that goes back billions of years that involved multiple races. We know that this involved the NANS at some point because of the book of Jaquan.

So it must have had the cent plugged in, had the Minbar. Mm-hmm. . And here's Earth what, once again, Earth having no clue of anything what whatsoever and just being shocked. Bruce Box Litner was great. His face in that whole scene is just literally what

Brent: I thought. BR Bruce, Box, Litner, This was a stellar performance beginning to end.

Oh yeah. What they like, regardless of what you think about what Sheridan did, the way he acted and performed in this episode. Fantastic. Yep.

Jeff: That and the editing, like when he was grilling Morden and the way it cut back like you felt what he was feeling, it was good. But so there's these first ones and apparently the VLAN are the first ones.

Yeah. Is that what you took out of this? No.

Brent: Okay. What did you No, no, no. Yes, yes, yes, yes. The vlan are, uh, first ones or ancient race. They're not the first ones. They're a part of the

Jeff: first ones. Yeah. So my, my interpretation was that the first ones in a billion years, they're gonna call the sari, the menari, the, the humans, the nans.

They're gonna be the first ones or the ancient ones. Right. So it's, it was like, it's more of an era than a race. Mm-hmm. and the shadows predate them. Elm. Yeah. Yeah. So like shadows are ancient, ancient history. Mm-hmm. . And then there's some ancient ones, and then there's some first ones that are tied to the ancient ones who have either taken off out beyond the rim.

Mm-hmm. gone to sleep,

Brent: or are Volans mm-hmm. . And there were, well, and there were. , like, so there, there's all these different ones. Most of them decided to move on, whatever, whatever that is. I interpret that as ascending. Okay. They just, you know, there's like, Oh, they went beyond the, they went like, all of that just seems metaphorical for me.

For they ascended to higher playing being, because that's where we go in sci-fi. Right. You just

Jeff: rung a bell for me. Jason Ahart. Yes. He ascended. Yes. When, when Dalen was it in, um, Babylon squared in the first season when she went in front of the great council. Right. And they said, Hey, we're gonna make you the new leader and all that stuff.

And there were questions about she wanted to stand babble on five because she believes in humanity. And she talked about that humanity represents the best of all of us there. You know, like we have to do everything we can to, to, to build. Humanity, take that with kind of the, the minbar souls coming in.

Mm-hmm. , I think that lend the prophecy that we've never really heard is that like humanity are the next two ascend to become, come to the level of the first ones in power

Brent: scope. The according tolan, the prophecy is that the two sides of the biari will have to unite mm-hmm. . And I think that's very clear that that's supposed to be the humans and the biari are gonna have to unite.

But yeah, I mean, what if that's more than just that? What if that's also the narn and the sari and everybody's gonna have to, everybody maybe, you know? Um, but I'm with you on all of that. I, I think that's all where that's going. Does that mean that there are gonna be the next ascend? Maybe. I don't know. I, I don't know that this story is tracking that far down the future.

Maybe to zas all of these people are the ancient ones. Exactly. And he's that time traveler thing that I was talking about, right? Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Um, but what, what stood out to me though was this first fight happened millions and millions of years ago. The next fight happened a thousand years ago.

Jeff: Well, the last major one was 10,000 years ago, and then there was an uprising a thousand years ago.

Brent: Oh, okay. Okay. So I'm, I'm glad to hear that because I'm like, Dude, you waited millions and millions and millions of years minus a thousand to come back, and now you're back just a thousand years later. Like a thousand years. A thousand years. That's a long time. Mm-hmm. , it's not that long, but it's a long time.

The difference of how long you stayed away though, , that's pretty sparse. But if they're coming back every thousand, 10,000 years, something like that, then fine. You. Got

Jeff: gotta defeat 'em. And that's a great time for me. I'm gonna get on my mass effect run because, and I need someone out there. I need someone to tell me like, is mass effect directly influenced by Babylon?

Because there's so many of these things we pulled out. But that's what happens with the Reapers. I talk, talked about the Reapers a couple episodes ago where, you know, they come through and they wipe out all organic life and they meld the tech, you know, bio and, and and tech stuff together, synthetic and organic life.

They do it on a scale of every 50,000 years they come and do this. And so like there's this rhythm being set up with the shadows coming in. But we saw a shadow, we saw 'em a couple times, but we saw one really great picture of them on Zaha Doom when, you know, K had his insider camera crew on the planet, apparently.

Mm-hmm. . But the, it turns around and it looked that 100% was harbinger. Infecting the collector body, the main, the main harbinger in mass effect two looked exactly the same. The eyes, the way the head moved, everything was exact. This means nothing to you at all, Brent, but mm-hmm. , I was just, my whole thing, I'm just like, Oh my God.

It is literally mass effect blew my mind.

Brent: So I just Googled is mass effect based on Battle on five and it is the third search engine hit. Okay. Yeah. So there's something like the predictive text. It's the third one that pops up, so

Jeff: that makes me feel good. Yeah. Did you pick up on, um, Thelen was talking about that when they came back for a thousand years ago.

Mm-hmm. , So they returned a thousand years ago and stretched forth their hand and then talked about how they kind of got swatted away or. No, I didn't pick up on anything with that. So I had one thought initially, and if you're on YouTube you can see this, but, and when Lawn had his vision back in the coming of shadows, there was that thing where like his hand was coming out of the moon or whatever.

Oh yeah. So is lawn the hand? Oh, but Brent, it gets more in all alone in the night in Sheridan's vision, Garabaldi said you are the hand.

Mm. I don't know what that means at this point, but Lawn or she, Well, Sheridan definitely says he is the hand. I don't know. I talked about Babylon five being pretty loosey goosey with words, but I also think they're pretty intentional about their words. I think there's definitely a through line there. I am.

It's gonna be one of those

Brent: things we have to watch on the rewatch. Man.

Jeff: I'm adding a yarn to the corkboard on the, the hand at this point.

Brent: Okay. Let me, let me add some more yarn for you then. Let me tell you the yarn connection I wanna make and then I'll tell you why. Okay? This is more of a question. This would be like a, make this like a yellow colored yarn.

Cause I don't know, it's just a question. I kind of doubt it. But are the shadows Andy core in cahoots?

Jeff: I think we've have postulated on that, Yeah. A little bit in the past, but it's starting to, there. There's a lot of parallels that are starting to pull them together. So here's

Brent: the, here's the reasoning for that. In this particular time, I can't, I don't, I remember saying this once or twice before, or at least having the thought.

But Morgan, can we agree that Morton's a space zombie? Morden Morden died and they resurrected his body and like what we see now is Morden is not Morton. It is something else altogether.

Jeff: I will say that his hair is inhuman. It is perfect. It is amazing.

Brent: It is so

Jeff: good. It is absolutely amazing. So I, I got a totally different impression in this and that was that IUs didn't explode.

Okay. And everyone died on it. That's the story that went back to to Earth Alliance. It landed, they did their stuff and the shadows captured them and they were given a choice. You work for us or you die. And Sheridan was guessing, well, maybe they kept some prisoners and they didn't respond to that. But I think Morden agreed to work with them.

And so, and that's part of why he has shadows with. all the time because they don't fully trust him to just go off on his own. It's not like he's programmed or there's a link like they're with him and they're telling him stuff. But I think he agreed. Maybe

Brent: he's a turn fan. You think that's it? I don't know.

I I think he's a space somebody. I, I could be wrong. You might be absolutely right. I there is about as much evidence for one as, or is the other Agreed. So, um, but I'm only connecting that back. Do you remember there was an episode, season one, maybe season two, I don't remember. They're all starting to run together.

There was, um, he was a space zombie. But it was you it was the episode where we saw San Diego. They have the, uh, Bureau

Jeff: 13. Yeah. Right there. It was the Mars guy. The Mars guy that died and they resurrected. Yeah. That, yep.

Brent: Mm-hmm. . So I'm sitting here thinking, and that was clearly Cyco. Yeah. Cycore has the ability to resurrect the dead.

Them lacking and put them in in service to themselves. If they're working with the shadows, clearly the shadows are far more ancient than they are. Did they catch that from the shadows or the Cy cor? If the, if the ancient ones have all ascended, maybe the shadows are the ones who get stuck and didn't get to Ascend, but though they're more ancient race than the ancient ones.

So whatever that is, there just feels like there is a connection to me that they're both having space zombies. Hmm. It

Jeff: would make sense. Morden has, Well, no, Cause Mars guy had a lot of agency like he

Brent: was in, so Yeah. And then he was glitching all over the place. So Cycore hasn't perfected it

Jeff: yet. Yeah. Cuz it's them doing it instead of the shadows who've probably been doing this, you know, for, for Len.

Yeah, that could make a lot of sense. I don't

Brent: know. I, That one, that one's yellow. That's very yellow thread. That's a, I'm not really sure, but I'm just making connections here. It drives

Jeff: a bigger question for me though, in that like, what's the shadow's motivation? What are the, because I don't see jms writing a, a story with, they're just evil and want to kill everyone.

Like there's no clear, good and evil happening here. So like mm-hmm. , what's, what's their deal? Like, why do they rise up? Why are they doing, why

Brent: would they, are they wanting to take over the, the universe? Is that their point? Yeah. Like why? If they haven't done it in millions and billions of years, boy that's that.

Boy, if you don't first succeed, try, try, try again. Cuz that's some all new meaning. So,

Jeff: but my last, uh, my big red yarn that I have then is cuz it was really like when they were talking about the IUs, the whole thelen exposition thing, there was just a lot of. I don't know. Inconsistent. Not inconsistent. It didn't flow well, like it wasn't.

Mm-hmm. , it didn't make sense. We talked about it. I had questions. You had to go back and kinda watch it a bunch to put the recap together. But like I said, it sounded like they captured the people in est. Gave 'em a choice. No one ever said that Anna died. That is true. She could still be alive. And if she is still alive, she's a morden.

She's working for the shadows. So here's the episode I wanna see and that's gonna be like episode 21 or 22 of season two most likely. Mm-hmm. is where Anna shows up on Babylon five. Ooh. And walks up to Sheridan and asks, What do you want? Cuz she's working for the shadows.

Brent: Sheridan's answer is you

That's interesting. That is definitely an interesting thought. Um, I really, man, now you got me hoping she's dead. And that just feels gross. Mm-hmm. . All right. So what do, what do we make of Sheridan? Going to KO at the end and being like, I don't want to learn anymore about you. I just want you to teach me to fight.

Cause I'm gonna go kill those dirty rotten SCO rolls. And he is like, If you go, you're gonna die. He's like, Then I die. Teach me how to fight him. And K is like dope. I like the attitude.

Jeff: Part of me was like, that's literally what you were doing. Like K said he was gonna get you ready to fight Legends.

Mm-hmm. like, he was doing this already, but you're gonna go, you're gonna go. I, I don't know. You mentioned, uh, I don't know, a couple episodes ago how, um, Sheridan has some definite Kirk qualities. You know, I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna be the one to do this. I'm gonna, And this, this is something Kirk would do, right?

Oh, you, So we could wait. We could wait like maybe one or two years and gather up our forces and do stuff and actually fight them. Or I could just go to the planet now, possibly kill myself and maybe take the whole thing. Yeah, I'll do that. I'll just go give a shuttle or I'll steal the enterprise. Like let's do that.

Felt very Kirk to me. I, I get it. You know, that's the picture of Sheridan they painted in this episode, but it still felt to me just over the top for him.

I dunno, he's just not a hothead to me. I, I didn't feel him as a hothead, and that's how he's acting.

Brent: I, I, this actually 100% rings true to me. Yeah. For what Sheridan is as a, as a guy who is the, um,

the, the commander of the army, he's the star killer. Like he's got this really cool vibe to him. Yeah. I mean, listen, Between Sheridan, Sinclair, Sheridan is far cooler, man. Oh yeah. He's the guy, but he's got a, he's got a beasty thread that you just don't see very often. Whereas Sinclair is just sort of this all the time on kind of a guy.

Mm-hmm. . Whereas she and, and Sheridan, Sheridan's the freaky one man. Cuz he, he'll go ape crap on you when he loses it, you know? And especially when it's so personal to him like it's his wife. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So does she, I don't think she's gonna show now. I think she's, I really think everybody else is dead.

I think the whole group is that. Now if we see her, maybe it's, cuz she's also a space zombie, but I, I get the feeling Morden's the only one that, that, that's doing this thing. Yeah. And he did say, and maybe he didn't die because he did say he must have been out doing a space walk or something. So if he was left alive cuz he wasn't there and he cut a deal with him, like, Hey, I'll do whatever you guys want me to do.

Just don't kill me. Maybe, Maybe that's, you know, but I, Yeah, I think the rest of the ERs crew is dead. Yeah. Like it would be weird. I think if they were actually still out there

Jeff: somewhere, the only person that could still be alive is Anna. Like every, no one else matters. And it would literally just be to like drive home.

Like just to push Sheridan over the edge. It, it'd be plot

Brent: stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, I got, I got one more thing. Um, how much did you love the Jedi mind trick? That Morden completely failed at pulling on Ka Nicki .

Jeff: It's so great. It was like, so, well, is

Brent: there something wrong with my card?

And he is like, No, but just step over there. I am not the droid. You're looking for . Yes, you

Jeff: are. Actually sit right there. , Let me blast your restraining bolt real quick. . And Ka Nicki was great too. He is just like, Look, you know, hey, this is, this is routine. Just step aside, like it's cool right after

Brent: he punches the thing on his deal and you're like, Oh, shoot,

That's, it Won't be a problem if you just step over there, sir, right? Like, Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Well, Jeff, I, I think with that, we have reached the part of the show where we try to boil it down and see does this have any of that Star Trek equality message to it? Does it hold a deep moral message? Is it holding up a mirror to society?

Is it giving us hope for a better future? So I'm gonna rate this on a scale of zero to five Deltas. Jeff, you're gonna rate this on a scale of zero to five star Furies of how much we enjoyed this episode. I'm gonna go first and mine's gonna be real easy. I'm gonna give this one. No Deltas really, there was nothing.

I mean, you could talk about some things here and there. There was no message. This was information dump. Of what's happening here. You could stretch and pull some things out, but that's not what they were going for at all. So zero Deltas to me. Fantastic episode. We've said sometimes lots of great Star Trek episodes would still get zero.

Deltas themselves. This is one of those for me. What do you got?

Jeff: So I think This's presented a very Star Trek message in it and a in a Babylon five way. And it was when, um, it was the whole piece of you can go get Morton right now. You can tell 'em we know everything. You can get 'em, you can do it.

Billions of people will die cuz they'll attack and they'll go. And then he told that story about Enigma in Churchill, knowing they were gonna bomb Coventry. But, but in Star Trek they talk about the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one except for when the few or the one actually outweigh the many.

This was strictly the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Yeah. Which is a zero delta message. Yes, I

Brent: completely agree. Because, because the, because the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the one is fine when the one is making the choice. Right. When Spock makes the choice to sacrifice himself for the needs of the rest of the crew of the enterprise, fine.

Mm-hmm. , when that choice is forced upon you, even through ignorance, that's not the Star Trek way. Yeah. That's not the message that they get put in there. So I'm, I'm gonna stick by zero Delta. Yep. You got on star fairies though, cause this, this is a good episode. I, I will. Great episode.

Jeff: There's a great episode and I, I loved pretty much everything about it.

Yeah. We got answers, . Yeah. You know what I mean? When we get answers, that's a big deal. And I, I mean we only touched on it a little bit, but ve. Ves hair grew, you know, two, three sizes, you know, to, in this episode. He's ready. You know, I mean, when he stood up to Sheridan, it was just like, that's on a need to know basis.

That's confidential. And you could see he was still a little nervous about it, but he is like, I'm gonna do it. Veer is like, he's totally my hero right now. Right. But I gotta be honest on a second, watch through, There were a couple cracks that started to show in this. For me, part of it was just, I mean, I, we talked about the Sheridan thing.

Mm-hmm. , you made really good points, but I still hold onto it a little bit. Uh, but, but really it's that whole Babylon five storytelling piece of peace piece, piece, piece. Oh, we're just gonna then literally tell you Yeah. Everything, Not show it, anything like that. We're just gonna, we're gonna tell it. But even with that, this has gotta be one of the top three, like moving the Galaxy Forward episodes that we've seen.

Mm-hmm. to this point. This is an awesome episode. I enjoyed it. I loved it. It is totally five star theories, period.

Brent: Right Jeff? Well, with that then, um, our next piece comes in ranking these episodes, ranking the whole series, season two. This is the 100% absolutely completely accurate definitive ranking of Babylon five, season two.

And so I will ask you good sir, where do you place in the shadow of Zaha Doom? While you think about that, I will remind everybody what our current top five is. I got a feeling this one's going to be changing, but we'll see where Jeff places it, cuz it's his pick and I don't get to change it in first place.

The number one episode of the season so far is the coming of Shadows. Remember we met the Sonari Emperor, that's where the war started, all that sort of stuff, Race through dark places. That was the one with Bester, I believe when he came back and they fooled him at the very end with Talia, uh, alone in the Knights.

All alone in the Knights was

Jeff: the alien abduction one. Strip,

Brent: right? It was that one. Mm-hmm. , Uh, Hunter Prey was one we just watched not too terribly long ago. And then soulmates, the Brohu Hahaha one, which made me laugh. I think this might be it for soulmates, but I don't know. Jeff, where do you place in the shadow of Zaha Doom?

Jeff: This is, This is a lot harder than it should be because Brent, this should be the new number one. Mm-hmm. like it should be. But I really, really liked coming to Shadows. Yeah. I really, really like the Bester episode. Like a lot was, I raced through dark places. I get that the shadows are like central to everything.

But I have been saying this throughout season two. I kind of don't care about the shadow stuff. I care a little bit more than I did before. Okay. Let me offer an idea, cause I have this idea, cuz this episode for me and maybe for you, we talked about it a little bit, changed how I see some of the earlier episodes that we've already ranked.

Mm-hmm. . We're not far from our season two wrap up show. Like that's just a couple more weeks. Would you be okay? What would you think if in that, you know, in the season one wrap up, we went through and did the full ranking and that took a really long time and it was rough we've been doing here. What would you think if we revisited our ranking, Like, like looking back on the season, you talked about maybe doing a rewatch, but like my ranking is gonna depend right now.

Like would you be cool if in the wrap up show we kinda review our rankings

Brent: and Yeah, I, because I think I'm gonna have to do a, a binge rewatch of season two before we get to the end of this whole thing. I really do. Yeah. And I suspect that a lot of our rankings may change and so I do think there's a, there's a, there we should do.

A revisiting of the rankings and we'll open it back up to be able to shift it. But I think we need to place like some rules, like let's, let's invent the game. Yeah. Like a, you know, like in a white elephant, like you can choose to move it, but if you don't, then the other person can choose it. And if they don't, then nobody can change it later.

Yeah. That's where it's like, like you've got to, or like whatever the role, you and I, we'll get together, we'll talk about what those rules are. Yeah. But we, it's, yes, I think we should do it, but I think we should turn it into one of our games that we play.

Jeff: Yeah. I think it's a good idea. I like that. Okay.

I'm gonna put, where

Brent: are you gonna place this one? That is still a hundred percent accurate. 100%. Right. Right. Seriously. Like, I can't

Jeff: argue with it. This is objective, Right. I'm gonna put this one then, based on that. Right. Under a race, through dark places. This is our new number three.

Brent: Okay. I would've gone one lower.

Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah. That's a tough

one.

Brent: It, it feels, it feels bad to say like number four.

Jeff: Right? Well, I like this and, and I, in my head, as you were going through when we were talking, I had it between those and I think I would rather watch this one than hunter prey again, and, which is a tough call. That's a tough, it was a tough call.

Right? But would you

Brent: rather watch this one than alone in the dark than alone in the night?

Jeff: Yes. Yeah. Okay. So that kind of on all like with, with both, like going through both of those and that's, that's a Yeah. Cause I was stuck on the, on the hunter prey at first. For me it was all, Yeah, it was, it was there.

But um, yeah, I think that's, uh, right. That's good. Well, Brent, that's it for in the shadow of Zaha Doom. Next week we're watching knives for the first time. We don't look at recaps, summaries, thumbnails, anything. All we know is the name of the next episode. So Brent, based on the title alone, knives, What do you think it's gonna be about?

Well, Jeff

Brent: is a good couple week run here. . I, you know, I said that I think we're gonna turn and we're gonna like, just press, press the gas on moving forward with the story of Babybel on five of what's going on. That title says to me, Nope, we're gonna just have a weird random episode thrown in the middle of it.

The only thing I can think about is this is gonna be like a murder mystery. It's gonna turn into, it's, it's gonna be a fun episode, it's gonna be a murder mystery, it's gonna be a whodunit. We're gonna get, um, an inspector coming from off the station who's probably some cool swa, you know, really good at his job, kind of a dude, and he's gonna interview everybody on the station.

It turns out like everybody's gonna be guilty of killing the guy, but turns out the guy is the one who actually killed himself and this has just been a test and he's actually still alive the whole time. Wow. That might have been the plot of a movie. That also had the word knives in it as well. But that's my guess.

Jeff: I'm almost afraid this is like one of the casualties of the viewing order that we've picked. Like, kinda like when we watched season one and it was like, we're going, we're going, we're going. And then the quality of Mercy, which was a great episode, but it's like this isn't fit at the end of the season.

Brent: Well, it, it, I've, I think we watched that. I said we got to that spot and I, I remember saying, with the exception of a handful of episodes, we could have watched the entirety of season one in any order. Mm-hmm. put 'em in a bag, shuffle 'em up. A couple of 'em have to fit in certain places. And other than that, have at it and quality of mercy, we could have watched way early in the series, or we could've watched it where we didn't, it wouldn't have changed

Jeff: it.

Yeah. But I feel like this is gonna be when those, it's like, oh, this could have been somewhere else. But my guess is, um, not too dissimilar to yours, but a little more focused. I think this is gonna be, we've really focused on the brutality of war. So far, right? With gro poses. Mm-hmm. and, uh, and the, and now for a word, this is gonna be about the subterfuge, the quiet killing that happens in war.

I think there's gonna be an assassination attempt. Um, I think it's gonna be by the narn. One of the Nas on lawn. And Ja car is gonna have to step in to smooth things over. Okay? Avoid an intergalactic incident over the assassination attempt. That's a way

Brent: cooler idea, maybe like way cooler

Jeff: idea maybe. Okay, well, we'll find out here next week.

Thank you everybody for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you're listening, or if you're watching us on YouTube, you can subscribe as well. And here's the little secret. We know that almost half of you watching this are not subscribed. So literally just. There, you're subscribed. Just do that really quick.

Pop over to Apple Podcast, Good pods, pod chase, or leave us a review. I'm happy to read it here on the podcast. So until next time. Hey, Jeff? Yeah? Yeah.

Brent: Can I see your Ient card please?

Jeff: Uh, sure. Uh, is there a problem? Not if you step over there, there isn't. I, I don't think it's gonna be necessary. Peace. Peace

Brent: and long life.