Matters of Honor

Jeff: Welcome to Babylon 5 for the first time, not a Star Trek podcast.

My name is Jeff Akin and I'm watching Baby On Five Season three for the first time.

Brent: And I'm Brent Allen and I'm also watching Babylon five Season three for the very first time. Jeff and I are two veteran Star Trek podcasters watching this show this season, this episode. For the very first time. And here we have decided to apply that lens that we've gained as Star Trek Podcasters, where we overanalyze everything and look for those deep messages and meanings that are replete.

We're applying that here to Babble on five, and we're seeing how much do we just absolutely love. Love this series.

Jeff: And while this is not a podcast about Star Trek, Brent and I are Star Trek podcasters and fans. So those references are gonna show up from time to time. So one of the games that we play here on Babylon five for the first time is the rule of three.

That means we each get three references, two Star Trek during the entire episode. That's it. Three.

Brent: One of those three. No substitutions. Exchanges

Jeff: are really fun. You know, Brent, we have a YouTube channel. It's pretty cool. Lot of great. I do know that. Yeah. A lot of great people in the community there. And one YouTube.

Sorry. Yeah, it's all you. Somebody on YouTube. John Shaffer left this really cool comment a while ago with a dream guest star pairing that sadly we never got, but I would be all in for. Sarah Douglas and Louise Fletcher are two of my favorite actresses when it comes to villainy since they do it so well, and I would've loved to have seen them play off of each other in a movie or another sci-fi series before Louise passed.

Death Walker and Cay.

Brent: Yeah. Face to face. Yeah. That's, uh, if I can add to that, um, oh, what is her name? Um, Uh, she played Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter franchise.

Jeff: Yeah. And she's the queen and that was it. The Crown

Brent: She eventually was No, no, but I'm talking play that like sugary sweet evil lady with Louise Fletcher is Kai Win.

And, uh, Sarah Douglas Death Walker is probably the seminal one. I still, you know who I think, what, what I think of when I see her picture, because Death Walker obviously was under all the makeup. Uh, the, the, the bad girl from the Superman two movies. Superman two. Yeah. With General. And that's, that's who I still see with her.

Uh, you know, so that could be cool. Yeah, that could be cool. Hey John, uh, thanks for commenting. I'm sure John Shaffer is a relatively common name. I know a couple. John Shafer, if you happen to be the guy that I know, like in real life, hit me a text or shoot me something and let me know you're watching cuz.

That's awesome. But if you're not the John Chaffer that I know in real life, you're still awesome. And thanks for watching and listening.

Jeff: Well, I'm gonna stick on YouTube for the next one. This one's kinda long, but I think it's also a really important one. Someone left this comment on one of the Brent watches videos a while ago.

Hey, Brent Watches, that's a cool series. It's gonna say, if you're not watching Brent watches, you are, you are missing out on a huge aspect of what happens here at Babylon five for the first time. And

Brent: by the way, that guy's an idiot over there, so you know, seriously, watch it. Your own peril.

Jeff: Yeah. It's like he doesn't even understand how, you know, sci-fi and science work.

What's,

Brent: he doesn't know what, what this show is about. Gosh,

Jeff: I think this is Star Trek. Come on, . Well, Justin Marshall says, I know he says, I know I'm probably gonna get some flack for this comment, but just some thoughts I had as I read through the comments here. There are a lot of them saying how Brent will understand or better appreciate this episode in a season or two, or how it will make more sense as the plot develops.

Aside from that being a, I

Brent: remember this one. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yes. Fantastic.

Jeff: Yes. Good. I'm gonna go back and read the whole thing. That's fine. Yeah. Sorry, that's, this is such an important comment, right. I know I'm probably gonna get some flack for this comment, but just some thoughts I had as I read through the comments here.

There are a lot of them saying how Brent will understand or better appreciate this episode in a season or two, or how it will make more sense as the plot develops. Aside from this being a borderline spoiler, I think it misses the point of this podcast. I think of this podcast in the same way as Mission Log, how they don't jump the Star Trek timeline in their show.

Brent can only react to what he's seen so far. It would make no sense if at the end of each reaction he just talked about how he's excited to see how the episode links up in the future and didn't evaluate it on its own standing. First time viewers did not know what was coming, and this podcast is meant to mimic that experience.

I also think constantly telling them why each episode will appear so much better in a season or two is overhyping things and bound to lead to let down hashtag season two. Just my opinion, but I just my opinion, but I think it is far better to let those reflections come in, come in time and not jump the timeline and the comment.

What made Babylon five such an amazing show for me was that I did not know how much would link together or what episodes would matter more in a few seasons. The first time I watched it, it was an amazing and complete surprise to me when it happened, and I think we should be careful to not spoil that for the hosts.

Brent: Yeah. Justin, uh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for that comment. Jeff, you first started reading that and I was like, are you really sure you wanna begin season three? Like, this is a brand new season that, that kind of feels like we're slapping some people down, but here's what I really like about that, because we're right here at the start of a new season, and there's bound to be some things here in this season that are gonna happen that we're like, okay, we're, we're here, we're at the midway point of the show.

This is the, and the, the narrative arc. This is the, the climax, right? We've hit the rising action. This is where everything happens and there's bound to be some things that are. Maybe a little overhyped, maybe a, I'm just guessing. I dunno, we've watched one episode so far, um, for people out there that are listening to this part, like I've, you know what I've started, I've started seeing this, I dunno, somewhere, I think it might have been relatively early in season two, but at least halfway don't rob us of the rewatch, uh, experience either.

Yeah, because the rewatch experience is where we sit back now, we know what's gonna happen and now we make those connections. Like, like we, what we've always invited you guys to do is to sit back, laugh at us casual with if you wanna have a conversation with it, about it, with it, uh, uh, we have a discord server that Jeff and I aren't allowed onto.

Right, exactly. So you guys can go have all those conversations and say, oh, just wait till they see this and it connects there. Do you think like, have all those conversations over there, discord patreon.com/double five first.

Jeff: The five word first.

Brent: Yep. Uh, . But you guys go over there and check that out. But, uh, like, just join us in the show and, and especially the, oh, well you'll see this one, this one will come back around again.

Like, don't, don't tell us that we don't wanna

Jeff: know. Well, and let be really clear about it too, there's no prize, right? There's not a prize for you being like, I know all of the things. And I totally told Brent and Jeff the things, there's not a prize for that, right? Yeah. The prize, in fact, we saw a week ago on here, the prize comes when you leave us a review and you get drawn out of the hat.

The fun and the community comes from having a conversation about us as first time viewers. And just like Brent said, there's a whole other community on our Patreon, on our Discord server there. Dive in, right? Rip us apart, rip us to shreds, laugh at us, make fun of us, get excited about a thing. You get to do all that kind of stuff, but don't ruin it for us.

I, mm-hmm. , we are.

Brent: And not just us, but, but you and the listeners and everybody, cuz this is all the experience together, you know, like, like this is Jeff and I's experience, but we know that so many of you guys are doing this with us. Exactly. And it's

Jeff: so cool. And I think you get to hold onto that thing. So in the late season four into season five or whatever, and we get to go on and be like, oh, uh, kinda like the, uh, when Lee Alexander showed up, what about a month ago and I was like, Hey, so couple of you people out there.

I said some not cool things too. Uh uh, Matthew IGN being won on Twitter. Um, yeah, you were kind of right about that Litta thing, but you know, you get to celebrate that now. Not way back here. Mm-hmm. , you know, a season and a half before she even is mentioned again. Yeah.

Brent: And, and you know, the other side of that is like when we, like people will hold onto stuff until we get to a spot where we have seen something.

And then they'll go back and they'll like connect all the dots since the gathering to this one point that we're at now. And I'm like, cool. That's the rewatch . Yeah. Let's get that on the rewatch because I'm not guaranteeing that Babylon five for the second time is gonna happen. It's going to happen for Jeff and I on some level.

Yeah. You know, and I imagine it'll probably happen on a public forum such as this, but

Jeff: I think it's safe to say this Babylon five for the second time will not be 110 episodes long. We can say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It might be zero. That's very unlikely, but it will be less than 110 episodes. Mm-hmm. .

Brent: But we'll go, we'll go through it for sure.

And have that, have that part of the experience. So, yeah. Uh, you listen Jeff, we said this, I don't think we've said this particular thing recently. I am so grateful for everyone who takes the time to comment and send us a message. I am that much more grateful. For those of you out there, I'm gonna look you in the eye, YouTube and right in the ear podcast people.

Thank you for helping protect Jeff and I through this show. Thank you for helping keep us spoiler free. Thank you for keeping the integrity of this show fully intact. You guys rock. Everybody else who leaves comments, you guys rock too. But those of you who really, really like take up the banner for this much love.

Heck yes.

So Jeff, we like our comments. We do like our love. We like the games. We love our games. We love the game. We love our role of three game. We also love. The game where we get to the end of the episode and we predict what next week's episode is gonna be about, based solely on title alone, never having seen the episode before, not watching, uh, previews, not reading descriptions, not even looking at thumbnails if we can help it.

And last week we made two guesses. Now, one we're not gonna be able to talk about until we get much further down the line. That one was what do we think season three is going to be? What does season three entail? What, what's, what's that gonna be about? But we did make a guess at what this particular episode was going to be about matters of honor.

And this is the part of the show where we revisit that idea and see just how close we were now that we've actually seen the episode. So Jeff, do you remember what you said Matters of honor was supposed to be about

Jeff: I do in the fall of night, right? Avan gave Sheridan this really nice, beautifully wrapped Christmas gift.

He opened it up, it was a piece of the Black star, the ship that, the menari ship that he was responsible for blowing up. I was pretty sure that that was gonna offend some menari and would eventually put that whole star Killer Sheridan thing to rest. So I was off by quite a bit, unless you want to count the opposite of the Black Star as points, but I don't, I don't think that I will the white star.

I what? Uh, what about you? Do you remember what you guessed? Was it the White Star? Is that the name of it? Mm-hmm. . Yeah. The White Star. Yeah. Super, super deep cut there.

Brent: I don't think I, I ever put White star and Black Star together until this very moment. Really? I didn't, I didn't, I, the two names didn't even connect for me.

Um, although I do, I remember a long time ago somebody sent us a tweet like, what do you think's better? The white star, the Defiant? And I was like, I don't know what the white star is. Shut up. Oh wow. like, it was a long time ago. And now I'm like, I, I heard the name. That's where my mind went, was like,

Jeff: See, you're like, I don't even like White Castle that much.

They're actually super overrated and kind of

Brent: gross, kind of. Hey, let's talk about what I said this episode was. Yeah, let's do that. . Um, hey Jeff, just, if you'll pardon me for a moment, I'm gonna reach over here and pick up this, uh, this, this metal round object that sits upon my head sometimes. It's got a little dusty over the last couple weeks.

Pardon me while I grab it. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. And I put his right back on my head because what I said was this was gonna be an episode about lawn grappling with his position of what he has to do and breaking his alliance with the shadows. That's what I said. Now that may not have been all that this episode was about, but that was a significant portion of this episode.

Uh, and I also said Jahar would be building his resistance. That's what I said. I don't know how many points you wanna gimme for that one, how much credit I get, but you get some, uh, more than me. I think I hit that one pretty good though. And I think that was also another read the T leaves. It's gotta happen eventually.

It's gonna be right . Yeah. You know, you, you keep saying this episode's about the Great Egg. Eventually we're gonna get to another Great

Jeff: Egg episode. Right. And if we don't, I'm gonna be furious. I will write some very sternly worded letters.

Brent: What's crazy is because like even if that was just a one episode off like a bad first season episode that people like Skip so many people Keep referencing the Great Egg.

Yeah. It's like this has to be something s gotta be. Anyway, so Jeff, that's what we discussed. We thought that this was gonna be about, but for those people who are playing along with us at home, people maybe that didn't watch this episode before coming into listening to this show, or maybe it's just been a while since they've seen it.

Or maybe they didn't watch this at all and they're just joining us for the podcast for whatever reason, which they're definitely welcome to do that. Jeff tell us what matters of honor was actually

Jeff: about. Well, we're just a few days after the devastating impacts of the fall of night. Little CGI dudes are floating in space, piecing the station back together in the garden.

Sheridan meets up with Kosh asking all the questions that we've had burning for the last two weeks, cuz we had the recap in between. Why me? Why save me? We get more words out of KO than his cumulative total over the last two seasons. But he still basically says the same things. I'm a mystery and if I'm frustrating you good.

After that, Sheridan and Ivan greet one of the most reasonable earth force people ever. An Earth Force special intelligence officer that served on the Z Cindi Council. I think we. I think we still count guest stars. I dunno. Well, either way. His name's in Dowe and he's here to talk with the ambassadors about the mysterious ship that was captured by gun footage and aired on is N.

He wants to know what they know about it. Nobody from Earth recognizes it. The lens says that she's never seen it before, but that seems a little fishy. Lawn says that he saw it in a dream telling in Dowe that he saw so many of them that they blacked, they blocked out the sun and Jaar Jaar spills the beans and do asks him about it.

And Jaar pulls out his book of Jaquan along with some pamphlets and other reading materials, asking if Al has a few moments to talk about his Lord and Savior. The dude who wrote about the shadow. And speaking of shadows, Darth Lawn is ready to break up with them. He's gotten all he wants outta this relationship and feels like the cent can handle it.

Now, Morden's cool with it, but just they wanna figure out how they're gonna handle visitation with the kids. Who gets to keep which friends and who gets to keep the house. Morton's got a PowerPoint ready and he shares it with lawn breakups can get so messy. Really, he's not asking for that much. He just wants to ensure the sonari don't cross some line in space and that they capture a drowsy home world or a drowsy world for the shadows, which lawn doesn't need to worry.

His pretty little vial assumed head about at all. You see, Morton has already decided who gets to keep Lord RFA as a friend, and it's not lawn do. He's already arranged for the attack on this planet. I mean, Why he would want Zagros seven, though that's a mystery. Or is it? Earlier in the episode we saw drowsy smuggling a smaller ship off of a planet that we literally just learned is Zagros seven on that little ship.

One of the new faces in the opening credits is Marcus the Ranger. The other new face that we get in the opening credits is Zach Allen Ka Nicki. He made it. He made it to the main credits. Well, the drowsy helped Marcus get off the planet so that he could let Sheridan and Dalen know that the Ranger training facility there is in danger.

Dalen, Lenier and Marcus beat up some thugs and down below it is super awesome. And after all that, they get Sheridan and Ivanova. They sneak off to the planet, but on the way they transfer to a new. A very, very visually clearly minbar ship that apparently doesn't look like a minbar ship at all, cuz I guess it has some VLAN tech on it too.

It's called the White Star and it's meant for Sheridan and his crew to use against the shadows and it is a beast. It's big, super fast, can open jump points and has a ton of firepower. Oh, and it has artificial gravity. We see some of the rifts in the gray council who don't know about this ship as its crew is all from the religious cast.

Timing is totally on their side. They get to zagros seven and start clearing out a whole bunch of mines so that the rangers can escape just as they're about to finish a shadow ship pops into space. Sheridan plays his cards close to his vest as they engage the shadow. He doesn't want 'em to know anything about this new.

He digs deep into his toolbox. As he fights them, he escapes into a jump gate immediately followed by the shadow. He brings the white star at a hyper space at the deserted and lood mark he home world. And just as the shadow emerges, he opens a jump point in the jump gate causing a massive explosion. What a bone head maneuver?

Well, it blows the shadow to bits and allows them to return to the station. Leaving the white star some somewhere. Um, I'm sure it's safe, I guess. Well, Sheridan pulls Ava, Garabaldi, Franklin and Marcus into the observation lounge, the meeting room, and forms a war council. These are the people that he trusts and that know about the shadows and the Rangers, which apparently includes Ava because Ava is always right.

They're gonna meet every two weeks with no ground rules. Except the ground ruled that this is gonna be a psychologically safe place where anybody can say anything, especially if it has to do with the shadows. Oh, and do you remember that really cool earth force guy in Dolly? Well, he reports back to a senator on Earth and he gives her his report.

He says that nobody knows anything outside of some super old myths and legends. He leaves and Ayop walks in along with Morden. The senator assures him that

the Senator assures him that nobody that really matters knows anything about the shadows. Their secret is still safe. The Cyop wants to leverage this to do more evil things to earth citizens, and everybody seems cool with it. And Brent. Brent, we were right. We've been right all along. Cycore is totally working with the shadows.

What was your reaction to matters of honor?

Brent: Jeff, I gotta tell you, I enjoyed this as a, I ca it's hard to call this a season premiere cuz it didn't feel like a big monumental season premiere. It just felt like the next episode after the fall of night, which may sound a little weird, like as a, as a podcaster.

But in this day and age of, you know, you set up this super big season finale and then you have this super big season premiere. This was a little bit of a breath of fresh air to just be like, let's move into the next. We introduced a new cast member, which I don't know about you, Jeff. I did watch the opening to the, to the show I did as well.

And this guy's in the credits. Hopefully we see him more than six times. I, I immediately like this new guy, Marcus. A thousand times more than

Jeff: I liked Keer. I have a huge problem with Marcus though, and it has nothing to do with Marcus. It has everything to do with, uh, Jason Carter, the actor who plays him.

Oh yeah. Do you know what he was in? I think it was just before this role. Cause he had a recurring role on Beverly Hills 9 0 2 1 oh, and you don't,

Brent: you don't know this about, you broke up with the girl that you had a crush on in

No.

Jeff: No. Okay. No, but no. So he, uh, he played a character named Roy Randolph and he directed a play at the, uh, California University that all the, they all went to after high school.

Brenda got, Brenda Walsh got the, got the part. And everybody, even Brandon and, and Kelly and everybody were convinced that she had slept with this Roy Robinson, which frankly did you see the dude? Could you blame her if she did that guy? Yeah. Looks a bit of alright. But yeah, they all thought that she slept with him to get the part, but she didn't, she actually earned it, so he had a little run.

And so when I first saw him, I was just like, is that. Is that, is that Roy Randolph? Oh my God, yes. It's, and yes, that was an immediate trigger for me. I love 9 0 2 1 oh, I'll let you continue with your thoughts.

Brent: I've never pegged you for a 9 0 1, 9 0 2 1 oh kind of guy. But hey, to each their own,

Jeff: their next podcast

Brent: I'll be, if, if I could summarize, uh, Marcus Cole, I think is, is the character's name.

Um, this guy looks like what? Vigo Mortenson based, uh, Aragon on, or Arago, whatever his name is for Mor. Like when he did the Lord of the Rings like five years after this show came out. This is like the character he based him on. It. It is like this dude could have been his like body stand in while they were filming Lord of the Rings

Totally. Which he's, that is totally, it's the vibe. They're both rangers. It's just the vibe he gives off. But, you know, I enjoy this. I, I said a while ago, I remember, oh, it was the season two premier, Jeff, uh, when the show opens up on the Aon, uh, uh, Sheridan's old ship mm-hmm. and I, I said on the Brent Watches episode then, and, and I'll say, you know, if there's something that I've learned about sci-fi, it's when a a based or a station based crew gets a ship, things tend to start getting really, really good.

Mm-hmm. , well, that's not what happened last season. I got really excited that, that'd be it. If this white star is gonna hang around and this is the ship they now go use to do some stuff, which it sounds like it's going to be like Buckle and this ship looks dope. Yeah. It's got artificial gravity, which, which no other Earth Force ship has.

They gotta still do the spinning thing. It's got, uh, it's got, it can make its own jump point even though it's really small. It apparently has like supercharged weapons. It's, it's probably got like a, a souped up turbo engine in it as well. It's got its own like staff of people like , you know, they'll learn our language.

Like I, I, I'm gonna wait for that episode. That's probably like episode 15 in season three, where they start talking to Sheridan in Aana. Like, like somebody's saying something and they're talking about 'em. They like just chime in or they're like, oh, you understood what we just said? Like it's gonna be that sort of a deal.

And they're like, well, we were watching your lips move and we learned your language. So here we

Jeff: are. Cause we're smart, learned, we learned your language just about as fast as it took avan of it to learn how to use the ship's systems. Right.

Brent: Right. Well, you know, all she had to do was just watch the videos of the people.

Yeah. You know, ,

Jeff: galaxy, quest, the whole thing I, I did like too, how they, uh, Sheridan's blown away with the white star things. Amazing. What else can the ship do and Deen's like, all in good time, which I read as being, we'll let you know as the plot demands it. ,

Brent: we're not sure yet, but we'll tell you as the show goes on.

Um, I loved, I loved Lawn doing exactly what I said. It is time for him to break it off with the shadows. Lawn is still bad. Yeah, he is. He is still. I have a new theory about Lawn Jeff. Okay. That I need to save every Star Trek reference that I have for Wow. Okay. But, we'll, maybe not all of them, but, uh, don't let me get outta here without asking you about that.

I, I think it's super clear and we just need to have that conversation at this point. Um, I loved the whole thing where they carried over seeing the, the ship. And going, what is it? What is it? And that this guy was just sent out that was a senator. I didn't get that. That was a senator. I actually, you know who I thought that was at first the girl.

I thought she was the president until at some point I was reminded, oh no, no, president Clark is the president. Oh, , like, I forgot about President Clark. I was like, oh, she's the president of Earth now. Okay, cool. Um, but yeah, Morden's there and the Cy cops are there. I have a new theory, abouty Cyco and what they're doing, and we'll talk about that.

Like I'm, I just enjoyed, this is what the episode needs, like this is what I was looking for. It doesn't have to be bang, bang, bang, bang, bang every single episode. It doesn't even have to be move the plot super far forward every single episode, but just take those steps as we go through, and that's what this episode felt like it did for me.

Those are my overall thoughts on the season opener.

Jeff: Jeff, how about you? Well, this is my favorite season opener so far. Midnight on the firing Line. Not a fantastic episode. Points of Departure was a great episode. It was really good, but it existed to show us who John Sheridan was and that's cool. This was the first time when it's like, Hey, we're making some really good TV here and we've got a story that's that's rocking and rolling and we're gonna keep letting it rock and roll.

We're not gonna do, cause I feel like what season two did, and here I am describing how I like this episode based on the issues I had with the beginning of the second season. But I think the comparison's so important cuz that first part of the second season was like, Hey, we gotta introduce you to this new guy and then we're gonna remind you of some things that we probably should have spent more time on in the first season, but we didn't for whatever reason.

So now we're gonna dwell on it for like six episodes when it should have been like two or three and keep going. This one literally was like you said, we're just gonna keep going. Things are established, things are are moving. Nothing was jarring. It just felt like the natural progression. But what I did like about this one, I, this didn't have the big bang, bang of a season opener, but this had a cinematic feel.

This episode did that I haven't experienced yet. Some of it might have been lighting a little bit here and there, but I think the pacing and the way that they moved the episode out, it felt longer than 43 minutes. But not in, not in the way of like, oh my God, is this episode over yet? Like in the way of like, how are we only 20 minutes in?

There's so much. It's going on in a comfortable pace through this. Now I thought, I thought this was really good, but I did think it was pretty funny how on three different occasions they used the same transition to move the plot and that was, Hey, can we go talk some more private? I can, Dolly, we have to go somewhere private for your ears only.

And then Marcus was like, Hey, I'm gonna send you my little pendant so we can meet somewhere private, so I can then ask you to go somewhere private , so we can have this conversation. Well, no, they

Brent: needed to meet up with that, uh, airplane mechanic from Raiders of the Lost Arc. I

Jeff: know. Yep. Back him into the jet.

Right. I, I kind, I, I really want to hear about your lawn thing. So let's talk, let's just talk about the whole breakup. Let's, let's go through and talk about the breakup.

Brent: Okay. I, I mean, again, this was written in the tea leaves, you know, lawn lawn's been real squeamish about what's going on with the, the shadows, um, for a long time.

Mm-hmm. , you know what I mean? Like I still say lawn's gone full on bad guy. Like, regardless of how squeamish he is, he, he used these guys. Knowing, knowing full well what they would do. Like the first time, I could almost forgive him cuz he didn't exactly know what they were going to do. Yeah. He knew what they were going to do in, in, in taking the Nan home world and how that was gonna go down.

And he said, okay, one last time, let's do it. And he did it. And as much as it bothered him, he's still guilty and he has all that blood on his hands. And we talked about this in the recap, it completely rewrites that Geometry of Shadows episode from season three. Mm-hmm. , where dude's like, I hear billions crying out and they're your victims.

And they're like, oh, that's what he was talking. Yeah. Okay, cool. Not just a throw away conversation.

All that's the same.

This is the first time I feel like I've seen classic lawn in an entire season. Mm-hmm. like we didn't see this at all in season two. Not once. This was when he's in that spot where he's like, it's time for us to, you know, to say goodbye. And, and he is like, oh, one more thing. You know, we've got some bookkeeping we gotta take care of.

And he, and he goes, fine, I'll meet you in an hour and then you'll go away. And I'm like, yes. Like, that's the theo that I want to play in the reboot of Babylon five . You know what I mean? Like, like, yes. That's, that's the man they go through. They're like, Hey, we're, we need, you know, we're gonna take out this Zagara seven.

I'm a little confused about what his whole thing is with Lord rfa, because like in a, in a little bit, it kind of seems like he's like, oh, you want to disassociate yourself from us? Fine. But we're gonna still hang out with Lord RFA Uhhuh and be associated with the

Jeff: sonari. He's totally dating the sister, that's all it is.

Oh, we're breaking up. That's fine, because I'm just gonna,

Brent: I'll just go talk to them and I'm, I'll go around you and you'll lose your status or you'll whatever. Mm-hmm. . Um, but then there was the other side of like, listen, you stay on your side line, we'll stay on our side of the line, but we need this one little piece that happens to be on your side of the line, which I don't understand why they just didn't draw the line a little, a little hook in the little loop, like, just do that.

Um, but it clearly, that particular world, it was just about getting the rangers off of that world. Mm-hmm. , which I'm just now putting this together in my mind as I'm talking about this, the lens keeps saying, the shadows don't need to know that we know that they're coming so we can assemble our forces.

And they're actively pursuing a training base

Jeff: of their forces. Yeah. They, they totally know. They totally. So

Brent: they absolutely know. What's

Jeff: happening. Uh, but also I think I, I got some hints in this one that the rangers aren't this new idea and they're not really quite as secret as I think we were led to believe.

They are, like there are multiple training facilities. Mm-hmm. , the Menari negotiated with other governments to find a place to put their training fac. So like these are real high level conversations happening about special forces training camps. Marcus' brother joined and it was like, come and join the Rangers just like me.

No, I'm gonna go work on a mine. And then he died in some mystery shadow attack that we've never heard of. Was it an ARN mine that he was working at? Or the shadows attacked other places, but I just really, I was feeling like the rangers are this thing that's been around for a long time. Maybe they just added the human element or they added the something else.

But, so for the shadows it'd literally be like, I don't know, some other country scouting up the United States and being like, oh, they've got Navy Seals. Look at that. Yep. We've had 'em for a long time.

Brent: Well, and I mean, there's also the, the, the story that Marcus told Ava on the ship of like where he came from, he was like, well, my brothers were, my brother was doing this for a long time and he died in this particular attack or whatever.

So there's clearly been skirmishes and attacks and things like that that have happened between the rangers and the shadows. So Yeah. They obviously know something. Anyway, we'll talk about all that. But the thing that really sticks out to me about lawn is, is, uh, the, when, what's his name in do in Dowe?

Yeah, in doi. Uh, he comes to talk to him and he, he talks about his vision. Okay. Which one time out on that, we've heard a lot about lawn do's, visions. Mm-hmm. . What, is Lando a telepath or is he a, a suit sayer. A, a future seer. Are Sari future seers like?

Jeff: Well, I think this was, I think they covered this. Let's deal with lawn specifically on this.

I think it was either the Gathering or Midnight on the Firing Line. I forget which one, but they kind of covered, every sent sees their death like they, they, and so he's seen the sequence of events that lead to his death. But what we learned in signs and importance from Lady Laira was that they see possible futures.

So they see their possible death. Cuz to me, we do hear about the vision a lot. We hear about, you know, him and Jaar strangling each other to death, but we

Brent: also hear about the hand coming out of the sky and all other pieces, you know? Yeah,

Jeff: yeah, yeah. But I think if I know I'm gonna die with this dude strangling me, dude, I'm gonna be a superhero and be able to do anything because I know I'm not gonna die until this happens.

Unless, That's just what my current path is that I'm gonna die on. So I, I think every cent has a piece of that kind of future scene, at least just to them and their end.

Brent: Right. But I feel like Lawn is more than that. Like as Lady Laro was more than just, I can sort of see my death, uh, and the path that that's on.

Like she could feel the vibration. She

Jeff: could sense. Do you think some stuff, cause now we know Yvanova is a telepath. Yeah. And we have indication, maybe, possibly Lando is too, you might not get the reference. Somebody will, is this Knights of the Old Republic too, where all the party members can be trained as Jedi?

Is that what this is? Like? They're all telepaths and that's the end that we learn.

Brent: I like to think that we're all, uh, late in Jedi. Yeah. So I floated, I floated a whole thing that, that all, all Muggles are still latent wizards. And with the proper, proper stuff that can be pulled out. Anyway, that's a whole different situation.

Get back to lawn. So he has this vision of the ships flying over Alpha Sonari or Sonari Prime or whatever he is called, and they're just blackening the sky. And Jeff, I, I don't know about you, I could think of nothing else but the scenes where we saw on Kashia Prime. Mm-hmm. the Dominion ships flying over.

Yeah. And I'm like, that's the same, same situation is what that looks like. You know? Mm-hmm. , you have this, if you compare the, the shadows to the dominion from this other world across the wormhole, whatever, out of hyper. They're coming in to basically take over. They're sending their people, they're gonna flood the area.

Their home base is on that planet right over there, that they have formed an unholy alliance with them, as the Kardashians did with the Dominion, as the Sonari now have with the shadows, oh wait, apparently Earth has two more on that later. Here's the question. I don't know if this is under the same reference or if this is a new reference altogether.

Is Lawn, the gold duca of this show? Is Lando the guy who is, he is the villain, but at times he's a sympathetic villain that you see some hope for and you're like, wow, this guy actually, he could be a good guy. Like he could have some good parts to him, and I kind of see where he is coming from. I kind of feel for him, but no, he's just a villain.

and he's made his bed and he's gonna have to lie in it. Obviously those paths are different and probably where they wind up is different. Maybe not, I don't know. Maybe this winds up with the death of lawn and that's how

Jeff: the story ends. I, I want, and we, I mean we, we said it just a week ago, that lawn's irredeemable at this point.

But I, I still like, I'm still Luke Skywalker, you know, hoping to see that little bit of good, I think that maybe he's the DeMar of the Sentar, right? Who okay, just doing his job, gets full on evil, does this, and then realizes, oh no. That's the hopeful part of me.

Brent: Well, DeMar also was a drunk,

Jeff: so Yeah. Yeah.

Lines

Brent: up. And a lot of times he, you know, it was said, uh, that, that, uh, Casey Bigs the guy who played DeMar in Deep Space Nine, talks about how DeMars drinking was just because he had a guilty conscience. Mm-hmm. , it wasn't because he was actually like addicted. It was just what he did to numb the. The conscience.

The

Jeff: conscience. Yeah. I, I didn't do this math till just now, but I had a note that there was this scene with him and Inland and in do when he was asking about stuff and, oh, you know, welcome. Can I get you a drink? Can I, oh, nope, I'm on duty. Oh, joy is a duty to the sci that's, we have to enjoy it and do, but now, like Lawn's always drank and he used to drink other people's drinks, you know, when he was at the bar, but now he's even day drinking while he's at work, while he's negotiating.

I thought to myself like, oh my gosh, like he's looking for excuses to numb the pain. Yeah, yeah,

Brent: yeah. Uh, so DeMar is probably a much better example at at this point from what, from the information we have depends on gold

Jeff: caught. And I think, I think the other piece to that, to write on the same reference is the Dominion ultimately used Kashia and had no intention of actually elevating them to equal footing.

And that's, you know, that's what led to the resistance and. And then ultimately winning. When Morton and Lando are going over the custody paperwork, essentially he makes that comment that, uh, hey, we both know what promises and treaties mean. That's a big statement right there. And so to me, I was like, does, is this foreshadowing for shadowing the shadows, turning on the sonari?

Absolutely.

Brent: I think 100 that is a note here. 100% the shadow or turning on the sonari and I think lawn even sees it now. Yeah. Mm-hmm. , I think he understands that possibility. And you got refa over here is still, you know, dancing

Jeff: with him. And that's kinda that big tentacle energy that Morden brings to the table.

where literally reference. Cause I think cuz you ask like why, why bother going through the PowerPoint of, you get this, you get that If you're already in bed with Lorda, here's why. Cuz he's literally showing lawn. Look what we're about to do to you. Go ahead and carve this out. We're gonna take this right next to you and there's nothing you can do about it.

Brent: Yeah. Yeah. So that, that's my big, uh, that's my big lawn. That's, that's I think the, the glasses I'm viewing lawn through right now. Yeah. No, it makes a lot sense. I was, I was thinking gold de, I really Jamar, I think that's a far better example because DeMar still was a hundred percent about the furtherance and the domination of the Kardashians.

Mm-hmm. and Lando is a hundred percent about the furtherance and the domination of the sonari. And, you know, maybe rightly so, like it's his people. Yeah. Right. Maybe rightly so. But that's his deal. And.

Jeff: I was pretty surprised at how open he was about his vision within Dowe. Like, yeah, that was just a like . I feel like if some random special intelligence person showed up at my apartment and asked me about a thing I saw in my dream, I probably wouldn't be the first thing outta my mouth.

But then you have to ask yourself why. Why would lawn be so open with it? Other than reminding us as the viewer of his vision, I feel like maybe it was a cry for help. Like he's telling, Hey, here's somebody that I've got a treaty with, a bit of an alliance that I can tell you I've seen this thing. Do you have anything for me?

Any help? Any anything? I dunno. I feel like for me season three is gonna be a lot of digging for hopes of redemption for lawn because you're right, we got to see that glimpse of regular lawn again and I miss him.

Yes.

Brent: Lawn. I mean, I, I miss Lawn and Jaar, two guys in a room talking. Yeah. Who utterly hate each other. Barbing back and forth. It was Golden tv. And these two have been separated for an entire season. It's been

Jeff: painful. It really, like the closest we got was in now for a word, when they were in different places saying the same things, you know, but mm-hmm.

and, and they still, like, they still, that relationship transcended that and was awesome. But it's a, that's the only

Brent: bit we got. It makes you wonder what the actors, uh, Andreas and Peter, uh, who clearly had such a chemistry, and you're like, these two guys go out to dinner every Friday night together. And like, they're bringing wives home to each other's houses, you know, for, for dinners and whatnot.

And, and like, these guys are just gold together. What was that like for them going through season two, where honestly they weren't even on the call sheet together most of the time. Exactly. You know, had to be harder, so. Right. So that's my, that's my whole thing with, uh, with lawn. Um,

he's not last, last, I don't say He's not gonna get out of this so easily though. No, no. There's, they're not gonna get out of this so easily. Do you want to talk, do you wanna talk about the ending? Yeah. While we're still talking about the shadows? Yeah. Because the, I mean, the big reveal, big reveal of this episode, the shadows are on earth having formed an alliance with Earth, who by the way, has also formed an alliance with, uh, Sonari.

Mm-hmm. , which we know that they were talking about it in the last couple of episodes from season two. We get confirmation that treaty has been signed and is now fully in place. But Psyop is there. Morden is there? Earth Force Senator is there in the capital of the world, which is in Geneva. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I'm not, I'm not appalled.

I'm just, did we know this before? This moment? The,

Jeff: cause we now know it. Geneva. The Geneva thing. Yeah. Yeah. That came I think, I think I knew that for sure in and now for a word. Okay. I think is when, that wasn't too far

Brent: ago. Too far along then. Yeah. Um,

Jeff: yeah, there were a couple things that stood out to me here.

One, like the fact so that she's like, oh, only the Narn. The Nans are the only one that, that know anything about you. And Morden's like, yeah. And looks like we solved that problem. It's almost like all of this war and all this death and destruction was literally to silence the one group that could speak out against them.

That's a fair

Brent: point I hadn't thought about. Because the, the narn have the Book of Jaquan. Mm-hmm. , they have the history here that was written down and had, you know, like, like, uh, uh, Jaar said it, the book of Jaquan is painstakingly copied. Every line, every tittle, every slash every ink drop that got spilled while they were moving the deal, like it is, it is precisely copied from the original book of Jaquan.

Which by the way, I need the prequel. I want, I want, that's, if we don't get, uh, Babel on five, the reboot I want, I want the Jaquan story, like the original, you know, cuz because Jaar said he is like, before we went to the Stars, set it on Narn, you know, they're not space fairing yet. The shadows come out and he leads this big revolt and Well, sounds

Jeff: like they had spiritual leader and they had very little to do with the shadows.

He's like, yeah, we didn't engage with them. They didn't, they didn't bother with us. They were fighting some more somewhere else. They just used our southern continent, which also, oh my God. One of the, so they went and they took the Narn home world. Mm-hmm. . Now it's a Sentara thing. Are the shadows reestablishing on that southern continent?

Are

Brent: like, did they leave something behind on the southern continent that they can just like, Hey, let's go turn that bass back on.

Jeff: Yeah. Go back and do that. And I, and I go back to, oh, you don't remember the episode, but we talked about it in, um, confessions and Lamentations, how the marab had mirrored, like they had memories of Ja car's story and the Naar story.

Did they have a base. The Marab home world and somehow the disease is tight. Like is that their bio warfare thing? And now they've cleared out the Marab so they can have a base on Marab. They have their base on Zaha, they have their base on Narn, like they're totally reestablishing themselves and now

Brent: a base on Earth.

Mm-hmm , they're coming in for a

Jeff: base on earth. You know, the other thing on the earth thing I thought was fascinating and it's just one little quick thing where the Cyop says, cuz Morgan's like, Hey, this is just, you know, we can just say it's a rumor thing, whatever, rush it outta the carpet and the cyop like, well, I don't know.

People are pretty freaked out. I feel like we could use this for our program to

Brent: accelerate the program. Yeah.

Jeff: Which speed up the program, the program, like whatever that is. But Morton says Interesting and then moves on. I feel like, and then I, I know you've got more to talk about on the program, so I'll let you go there, but I feel like we had that one episode with the Luma who thought humans are so great cuz look how terrible you treat your poor.

Now we have the shadow. It's one of the most ancient evils to ever exist, and they're impressed at the evil in the conniving and the conspiracy weaving that Cycore is doing. He's like, oh, it's interesting. Hmm. Look how debased humanity is.

Brent: So, uh, two thoughts. One, we've been talking about there being these different fronts of enemies, right?

There's the shadows, that's the big, the big bad guy. But there's also home guard. There's also Cyco and there's also whatever President Clark is into which we are tying to home guard more than we are. Cycore. There's the uprising on Mars, right? Mm-hmm.

The Ministry of Peace, that's the new one that's come in. Yep. Right? What if they are all in league with each other and they're actually the

Jeff: same threat? Oh yeah. That totally makes

Brent: sense. That's, I mean, that's, that's what we got out of this episode,

Jeff: right? Mm-hmm. , it's all orchestrated. It's all one thing.

Mm-hmm. , shadows and Cycore and ultimately probably shadows.

Brent: They're directing the whole thing. Yeah. Okay. So what is the program? You got your red yarn? Okay, let's do it. Let's, let's, Hey, listen, folks out there listening, you guys out there watching in YouTube land, this is one of my, one of my things. So you guys are either gonna laugh at me or you're gonna pee your pants.

As far as how close I am, don't tell me either way. Just laugh or pee your pants. Um, so here we go. We know side core is wanting to breed Telepaths. We know that Cycore is wanting to make them stronger. They're wanting to get them so high and, and whatever. Right now I thought I floated the idea, what if it's to get them ascended, to become shadows, uh, or something of that nature, right?

What is this program? They talk about, uh, doing this and, and I started thinking and I went, well, what if actually what they're trying to do is do what is going on with the human mbar souls? Cuz we talked about how the human mbar souls like humans are starting to be inhabited by these mbar souls that are disappearing.

Right? And I thought for a moment, I don't think this is the case. What if the telepaths are the humans who have been embodied with the Mbar souls? Hmm. I don't think that's the case. But what if there is this deal? Basically what they're doing is they're trying to get humanity to a spot via the Cycore that they can receive these shadow ghost figures.

Cause remember we saw Mor talking to the ghost? Yeah. Things, what if they can attach themselves to the people, and it's about getting them to basically be these super soldiers that they can then download their consciousness into, right? Mm-hmm. , you know, you, you like, you smell what I'm cooking here. Yeah.

That the whole cycorp program, this program we've talked to, we could use this to accelerate the program. We've gotta, we can't let any latent telepathic get out there. We've gotta collect them all because we've gotta, we've gotta build up this base for the shadows to come in and take over their bodies.

In order to wage war and finally win this, this decisive battle and, and set ourselves up as the gods of the, of the universe. And think about it from the human, from the human standpoint, right? From, you know, I hate to say human, because it's human. I don't want the humans to be the bad guys. Yeah. But what's one way we can just go dominate the entire universe out there by teaming up with these guys.

Yeah. And we're gonna merge forces and, and in doing so, we get to go rule the whole with end galaxy. I, I personally don't care to rule an entire galaxy. That just seems like a lot of work, ,

Jeff: you know, but it sounds, seems like something a Cyco would want to do. Sure. Yeah.

Brent: So that's my, that's my, uh, that's my thought right now trying to piece what they are all doing together.

And I really wonder if Cycore is trying to develop bodies for the shadows to come in and have it.

Jeff: It really feels, it really feels like in sci-fi, a lot of times we talk about what's humanity's role, you know, what does humanity bring? And Dalen has talked about that, you know, they have the capacity to be the greatest of us, but if you have the capacity to be, to be the greatest, you also have the capacity to be the worst.

And so maybe we're like this, I don't know if genetic is the right word, but we're this some sort of, um, I don't know, thing that can connect with the inbar and become like a force for good and light as a inbar, or you can connect with the shadows and become a force for bad and evil it Here I go. Or connect with the VLANs.

Yep. I was gonna, so I was gonna say, right, how, so the Vons are the perfect question for where, how do they reproduce? Or do they, do they reproduce by essentially subsuming some other species that they've, I don't know, maybe spent an entire, like millennia building them up to believe that there's some sort of a, you know, oh, I constrain myself so everyone sees me as an angel or a god or a holy being, so that when I do show up I can just, you know,

Brent: kind of Jeff, how much, how much of human history of, of religious history, and I'm not just speaking of one religion.

Think of all the religions throughout human history have dealt, particularly Greek and Roman have dealt with the gods mating with humans. And having offspring. Right. It's

Jeff: Hercules, that's it's Wonder Woman. It's, it's

Brent: Maui. Yeah. It's,

Jeff: these are all the stories we, it's Wonder, yeah. Wonder Woman. Right? And so it, so I think like, that's a great example.

I think another one is in mass effect where the reaper, that's always mass effect for me. But the Reapers actually, they, they consume the, the races to create more of them. You know, that's how they reproduce. And I think that, I think you're, you're onto something and humanity is that magic key that anything can match up to, whether it's a menari soul, a vlan, or a first one, or the ancient ones or the shadows can utilize humanity to be the next version of them.

And so it's not just the prophecy of the darkness and the light coming together or whatever it was like the menari prophecy is literally the battle happens in the human soul. That's, that's, that's the final battlefield is, is humanity. Our hearts, our minds and our souls.

Brent: Jeff, if that's where we're going, I mean, this is a Star Trek message all the way through.

I mean, that's it. Like, it's the battle for, for the best of us. It's the battle for who we are. Like my gosh, like this is, this is, this is where New Trek, I think is going in, in a lot of cases. . Totally. Um, yeah. So that's what we got, man. That's, that's the shadows and earth connection now. Yeah. It's big.

Jeff: You wanna talk about the new guy?

Yeah. Let's talk about the new guy and the Rangers. We learned

a

Brent: lot. The Rangers, we learned a lot. Yeah. Learned a lot about the Rangers. Avanav already knew everything about the Rangers, which was awesome. Of course

Jeff: she does like . That was such a great scene. She's like, of course I know these things. It's my job to know these things, so I know them.

Brent: Right. And the day that I don't know something, that's when you should worry. Like, I just know everything. It's a question though. Oh, yeah. Did Sinclair contact her and we just didn't see it? Oh, that would've been cool. Or was she just in c and c when those messages were being relayed and she was just like, Hey, what are you watching right now?

Oh, hey, it's my

Jeff: dude. That was my question is if she could piece it together, who else is piecing it? And, and does that person who can piece it together get paid 50 credits a week to wear a night watch arm band? Oh,

Brent: yeah. That could blow up. Yes. Yes. Um, so new guy comes in. All right. Let, let's just, let's place an over under, uh, Keer was at six episodes.

He was in the opening credits forced upon them by the studio. I don't know that Marcus Cole was forced upon them by the studio. I don't know what his deal is. Folks, I don't really care right now. We'll talk about that much later. Um, over under on Marcus Cole, number of episodes that he is in, I'm going to set that number.

Let's here. Keer was at six. I'm gonna set the number at nine. Are you taking the over, are you taking the under? That's pretty low. Think.

Jeff: Yeah, I do. I'll take the under though. Oh, you are? Yeah. Oh, and I'm totally taking the over, I don't think that he got signed to a 50, a 50% deal. I doubt he's even getting paid for 11 episodes.

You don't think so? I don't think so.

Brent: Even though he's in the opening credits

Jeff: now. NATA was in the opening credits last season and she was in it twice. That's fair. Yeah, I don't put a lot of stock in the opening credit, you know what I mean? It's like, okay, so these are people that got a, a set deal. They're getting paid for six, for nine, for 11, for

Brent: 12.

Yeah. I was, I was also gonna say, I happen to know that Marcus Cole has an action figure Yeah. That I now have. Um, but Netta does as well, so, oh, um, yeah, I do. So you, you take the under you, you're taking the under,

Jeff: to be clear, I'm taking the under for, for this season. Yeah. That's what I think he's gonna last.

I think, I think we will see him through the end. I think he's a long term for us. Okay.

Brent: Fair enough. Fair enough. I'll even, I'll even take that, Jeff, we need to revisit this, like, I don't know where we put notes for the season recap, which is in six months from now. I know. We need to revisit how many episodes Marcus Cole is in, in this, in this

Jeff: season.

We could start the note. Normally we start the note two weeks ahead of time. Maybe we could be a little ahead of it. This

Brent: Uh, so yeah, I, I'm gonna place the over under at nine and uh, I'm gonna take the over. You're gonna take the under? Yeah. I do think, I think he's gonna show up more than we think he's going to, you know. Um, is it more than a, let's see, it's 22. Is it more than 11 episodes in a season? I don't know. Uh, that's why I'm kind of giving it a little buffer there, so, yeah, that's fair.

But I like this guy. You know, we've talked about him. He's a, he is a bad a fighter. He, he pulls out that stick and it goes on each side of it. And Dalin apparently has one as well, or he gave her his. That whole scene

Jeff: was great. I mean, the fight

Brent: scene, we've, it's the best fight scene I've seen in, in B on

Jeff: five.

Totally. Lanier. We've seen him in action before. Dalen, holy Cru. And then you add in Marcus and those, those poor, those poor guys, ne I mean, that was awesome. And you knew as soon as you stood up to him, you're just like, oh dude, this is not gonna end well for you. . What

Brent: did he, what did he say to him? He's like, uh, he's like, I don't like being disappointed or made fun of or something.

He is like funny with somebody who looks like you. I thought you'd be used to it, , whatever it was he said, you're like, dude, you're about to kick his butt. Yeah. You know, it's about to happen. Uh, Dalin can fight too, man. Like, she's, she's no joke either. She's not somebody to be trifled with either.

Jeff: Yeah. They did a great job blocking the shots too.

You got a lot of face, you know, like of, of throwing kicks and doing things. I wonder if Mayor Furland has some, you know, stunt background or anything cuz she was doing stuff that was really, really well done. , did we

Brent: know about the ju? Like have we seen that more, that that's a marker for the, for the Rangers.

What'd you think about the Jewel and the story that Marcus told

Jeff: about the Juul? I thought it was a neat story, but I also liked Marcus's reaction to the story. You know, Dylan's like, do you believe that? And he's like, I don't believe in miracles anymore. Been around too long. Mm-hmm.

Brent: you liked that reaction because it's a philosophy you personally ascribe to, or you just like the fact that he had that as his

Jeff: reaction? It's the same reaction I had to, it really, it's like, oh, that's a great story that you quench the, you know, the fire in these different things. Cool. Oh, and this happens when a ranger dies.

All right. That's a great story. Maybe it motivates some of you. For me, that's just a neat story. There's probably a shop on Menard pumping 'em out. You can buy 'em on the, the, the Zo store

Brent: Or

Jeff: not, or maybe you can. All I know is there are multiple Ranger training facilities, which was mind blowing to me. Like when we,

Brent: and they weren't and they weren't just on Babylon five. Yeah. The idea that there was Rangers not on Babylon five was blowing my mind.

Jeff: Really? So I feel like when Sinclair introduced them, we knew there was some on Babylon five and we knew there were some out about, like they were his eyes and his ears out and about, but I got the impression that they were like a real quiet like ninja group that nobody knew about and pretty small.

And we're working on, you know, we're working on working together, you know, we're, we're holding, holding trust meetings and all that stuff. Mm-hmm. But then they're like, oh, we got a training facility on Minbar. We got one on this Za Rose seven that the drowsy are like actively involved with helping us with.

How many of these things are there? How many, I mean, I don't know. I just, I. I totally thought the Rangers were this little, little thing that were gonna become, you know, small but mighty. But apparently they're all over the place. Well, and

Brent: I mean, and I thought it was all share or not. She, Sinclair. Mm-hmm.

He, like, he was the guy who started them all and he's got this ro running and, and he's working to get all the, and who knows what Sinclair's actually up to. We know he is out there somewhere doing something. Right? Yeah. But

Jeff: who, I mean who, he's on Minbar leading this stuff. And the thing is, like if Marcus' brother was a Ranger way back and got killed in some attack, that Sinclair episode was like six months ago in the timeline of Babylon five, that's not time for dude to die you to get trained as a ranger.

Come on. What more is there? You get

Brent: the idea that his brother was a better fighter than he is. Cause this guy's pretty good. Like, well, the, what might be better than bigger brother,

Jeff: just be honest with you. But he's got that whole thing too, where like, I don't know if he like, like died, you know, he shut off life support so he can live on next to zero.

you know, air or whatever. And then as soon as Franklin turns his back, he does the smartest thing any patient of Franklin's can do. And that is get the hell outta Med Bay or Med Lab. Yeah. Cuz Franklin might try to kiss you. Yeah. Or kill you. One of the two, like . It's not gonna be a good ending or save your life

Brent: when you don't want it to be.

Yeah. He'll force his way on you. Whatever he thinks is

Jeff: best. One way or the other, or I'll

Brent: put you on a diet. Um, so that scene by the way, I totally thought Franklin was gonna get shanked. Same. Totally. You know, like they were setting that up, they were blocking that. The camera was like Franklin's about to go down.

Jeff, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that he didn't, I

Jeff: was actually mad that he was calling for help. Like, he calls up, I need Jeff here. Oh, is it urgent? Nah. Like this, this, this thing's just literally beneath me and I need someone else to handle it cuz I'm better than dealing with this. And so as I was, I'm like, come on.

Just yank him around the throat,

Brent: just knock him down. To be fair, I think he was just busy moving into his new digs and he was just assigning the thing to somebody else.

Jeff: Did Med Lab get destroyed last week?

Brent: Like, no, I think we just got some more money between season two and season three, and they built a new set.

Jeff: Okay. Yeah. I kept saying, I'm like, I'm like, why not?

Brent: The one line of like, yeah, this place is better than the last one. Okay,

Jeff: cool. All right, great. What happened to the old one? We'll, probably

Brent: never. Maybe it, maybe it did get destroyed in the, the, uh, the Sentara attack. That's the only thing I can think of that is entirely possible.

Hey, by the way, so a week ago they've already fixed the thin on the outside that got blown off. They're, they're clearly still cleaning up some parts of the station, but mostly everything's back to where it's supposed to be. Yeah. For

Jeff: a pretty good repairs process for a station that a year ago was having strikes and union and labor issues and everything.

They are a well-oiled machine at this point.

Brent: I mean budget issues and resource, you know, getting resources and stuff. Like they just have an extra fin that they can go replace up there. Like they duct tape it back

Jeff: together. Like what'd they do? Maybe they got some extra money from the min, the minbar, cuz I mean, apparently they have so much money they can go and develop an entire like, experimental spaceship thing and, you know, great council and everybody doesn't even know that it's happening.

Hmm. That's

Brent: not what they said. That's not, not everybody's said. She said not everybody on the great council knows, which means some do. So what does this tell us about the great council? There's a division in the council, Jeff. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I want to hear what's, I want to hear more about that because we've, we've tracked this right there.

There's a, an imbalance of power in the Great Council now. Some people within the great council came, I mean, I'm gonna go back to dude from the Great Council, came and gave Uhlin the, the tri luminary that helped her build the cocoon or the chrysalis, or whatever you wanna call it, so that she could turn into a butterfly with hair.

Jeff: Yep. Yeah. But then, but then at the same time, the gray council yelled at her and chastised her for turning her into a butterfly with, with hum air. Yeah,

Brent: yeah. Right. Um, so there's something going on there, and we are, and we heard old draw say that, you know, he doesn't recognize men anymore. Stuff's going on in mind.

Like, what, what the heck's going on? So there's stuff happening on men, they're not exploring yet in the show, and

Jeff: I really need them to explore. They keep dropping these little pieces. Cause I, that was my big thought on the whole, I'm like, that ship must have cost a fortune to build. How do you not see that?

You know, how do you not. Because

Brent: the Mbar are a post scarcity society who don't actually deal with money unless they're dealing with outside forces. It's possible.

Jeff: I mean, after all they've had artificial gravity for some time, right? Two or three. That's my third. No, it was actually your two. Cause the other one you got to ride for quite a while.

I think we built, you Let me ride it.

Brent: Yeah. Okay,

Jeff: cool. But I do think that just, just straight up calling it the white star. This is where it's all gonna come to a head is Naroon is gonna hear that name and he's gonna lose his freaking mind. That's such to me that is such an in like, I get it. They're trying to reconcile Star Killer Sheridan with now Ranger leader Sheridan.

But to a dude like Naroon, that is not

Brent: gonna fly. No. But I love the connection you made there. The Black star, the Star Killer. Now this is the white star. And Sheridan's in control, he's gonna turn into the White Knight. Mm-hmm. , you know, the,

Jeff: the, it acknowledges, it acknowledges that redemption that you and I have talked about where like the Menari lens specifically and her, her faction are like, you are redeemed now and you're gonna do great things.

Yeah. You did this horrible thing to us in war where that's what you do, but you're good now where we

Brent: were kicking your butts and you were fighting back, but you know, we're gonna hold that against you, Uhhuh. Yeah. Okay. Um, and don't forget, there is something incredibly special about Sheridan himself, right?

It was, this is what made Kash get out of his suit and go rescue it. If that have been anyone else, KSH would've let that dude smash into ob obliterated pieces and Phil is gonna have to go clean him up off the, off the hole, you know,

Jeff: like. Those CGI guys putting the tracks back together would've been having little magic erasers on Oh,

Brent: absolutely.

As well. Yeah. They've been, yeah, they, and they would've been just picking up little bits of whoever that person was.

Jeff: Well, I think we saw so much of what makes Sheridan special on the White Star, and it was the, it was the comparison between him and Dylan, right? So like, they're on the bridge and is freaking out.

Oh my God, it's the shadows. We're not ready. We can't do this. And Sheridan's like, well, we're gonna have to, so let's do it. And she's panicked, losing her mind the whole time. And he's literally like, Hey, what's the craziest thing we can do here? And let's just make that happen. Like, whatever, let's get in.

So you've got Dalin who's like the reserved, quiet, oh, I'm a little nervous about on paper. On paper. There's no way we can win this fight, so let's not even do it. And Sheridan's like, yeah, you can always win. You know? Mm-hmm. , in fact, a ru, I'll use a rush quote. You can, um, You can fight. You can fight without ever winning, but you can never, ever win, win without a fight's from their song.

Resist. It's beautiful. 1990 fives, uh, test for Echo. 1996 is Test for Echo.

Brent: I loved Sheridan on board this

Jeff: Starship. He was in his element, man.

Brent: He was a lot You said I You said I had one more. You have one more? Yeah. Okay. Sheridan in command of the White Star after one episode is better than Cisco in command of the Defiant.

He, he was smart, he was strategic, he was a statistician. Uh uh, uh, uh,

strateg. That, that word right there. There you go. Um, when he sat back and, and, and he is like, yeah, go to the nearest jump gate. We can form our own jump point. Yeah. But I don't want them to know that yet. And now we're gonna be in the thing, Hey, we're gonna form our own jump gate inside the open jump gate, and it's gonna crush the shadow ship that we have no chance of destroying otherwise.

Cool.

Jeff: He's try that, when he even asked Lineer, he's like, Hey, can this thing outrun like the blast from that thing? And linear's like, I don't know. Maybe it's good enough for me. We're gonna try it.

Brent: Yeah. I love it. I, you know, it was just so great. By the way, bill, mum, I loved his acting at the very end of this episode where the, the whole thing happens and he's sitting there like, he's kind of out of breath and he's sitting down and like, are you okay?

And he's like, you know, Training in Temple. They didn't tell us that we could do this and when I get back home, I'm gonna make a few recommendations. And that moment right after he says it, where he just like he, his eyes sort of like, just like, oh boy, like this. That whole acting moment. I was like, I could feel what he was feeling in that moment because of how he's doing.

It was so, so good and I'm so glad that Lanier has become more than just the quiet, reserved little at attache to the Ambassador. Mm-hmm. . That he is a fully involved member of this cast. Now, you know, he's not just the kid from Lost in Space. He is

Jeff: this guy. Hey, dove right in. Hey, they don't speak your language.

I got you. Cool. Well good.

Brent: Yeah, right. Which by the way, wait, did I say this already? I might have said this already, like episode 15. The people on the ship are just gonna be like, Hey, I know what, I can talk your language now. We speak English

Jeff: now. It's cool. I watched the show. We learned it. Right.

Brent: At whatever point, bill Mummy wasn't available for that particular episode.

They now know how to speak. Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah. So, so they get back from the, the white star, which I'm guessing is like often some undisclosed part of space with the religious people just keeping it floating around. I think it's

Brent: just, I think it's just hiding somewhere. Mm-hmm. like it's, it's in the back cave of space.

Yeah. You know, they've got a space

Jeff: for it out there ready at a moment's notice. Mm-hmm. get to it. They come in and then he shared and forms his war council.

Brent: That's a cool thing. Mm-hmm. . Now I, okay. I know that happened in this episode, but I feel like that happened last season already. Really? Was there something similar to this from last season?

Like probably. Probably

Jeff: when the general Hag thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. So he brought the Earth Force people to, so yeah, when you think about it, and even when I was taking my notes, like the first thing I wrote was all the people who know about the shadows, the Rangers and the earth stuff. Yeah. I didn't say anything about the earth stuff.

That's still his own little separate group. That's also a part of this group. Yeah. But I thought it was interesting, like it's a great idea. I made the joke in the recap about, hey, there are no ground rules. Mm-hmm. , except this one rule . I'm just like, dude, that is a, that's literally a ground. Okay, whatever.

I get it. I get it. You're creating a psychologically safe space in the nineties that's advanced and great of you. Awesome. But he makes a comment or he says, this is made up of the people who are aware of the shadows and the Rangers, and I'm hoping to add more people eventually. Who are those other people?

As they

Brent: find out more humans that have Mbar souls or Mbar, I, that's an interesting group. Who are the mbar that are joining the Rangers?

Jeff: We saw a couple hanging out and was, it comes the inquisitor or whatever when they, but nobody of note like

Brent: it's all humans. But on Mi Bar in this whole group who are the like, mom, dad, I think I'm gonna go join this Rangers group over here.

Like, are they recruiting 'em outta high school outta temple? Like who are these guys? You know? Are they, are they some resistance group on their world? Because we know about all's right on Mumbar. Exactly. You know, Jeff, you got anything else about this episode? I think we're

Jeff: ready. Let's. Brent, we've reached that part of the episode now where we boil it all down.

We see if this show has any of that Star Trek e quality to it, like a deep moral message, uh, holding up a mirror to society, giving us hope that we will, or that we can be better in the future. We're gonna do this with me rating this on a scale of zero to five Deltas as to how, how Star Trek e it is. I'm saying Star Trek e because we don't not say how Star Trek it is.

It's just a label for all the cool things sci-fi does. And Brent, you're gonna write this on an episode of Zero to Five Star Theories to how much we enjoyed the episode and how Babylon five the episode was. So I'll go first on the Deltas, and I'll tell you, when I first watched this episode, a couple things stood out to me, but it was hard to dig through 'em.

It took my second watch through to really, really get to it. But there really was a star Treking message to it. And the two points that come to mind is Sheridan taking responsibility. For the Ranger's wellbeing, there's this scene where like, Hey, we gotta go do this. We have a V I P on the station and we gotta sneak behind him and go.

And he says, when I assume shared leadership of this group, I assumed responsibility for their wellbeing. That's leadership and its finest, right? An effective leader will always do what needs to be done to make sure that the people that they work with are taken care of. Now, this is how I, Jeff Aiken watches Star Trek , right?

I look for those leadership points, but to me, that's what Star Trek is about, is creating better leaders to move us into that future. But if you're not a leadership nerd like I am, the core message still applies and it pervades the whole episode. Take your responsibility seriously, right? Yeah. Do the things that you've committed to do, even if it jeopardizes you in your career, like shit, like, imagine.

Imagine if it wasn't cool, the cool and doi who was so cool and so recent, just a dude doing his job. He wasn't being a jerk like everybody else. But imagine if, like, imagine if Ben Zza was there, or, uh, Pierce, captain Pierce was on there, or even lawyer. Nata was there doing the thing. There would be held to pay for him coming, but he still would've done it because that's what you do to take care of your people.

There's another message, it's not as prevalent through the episode, but it's a line that says when they're talking about the shadow ship within Dolly, and that's where she's saying the ships are indestructible. And Sheridan says, I don't believe that. Like every ship has a weakness. Like we can do this.

And she says, believe what you will until experience changes your. What I thought was cool is in the storyline is it changed her mind. She saw a shadow ship get destroyed. So you can read whatever you want. You can take whatever college classes you want, watch whatever YouTube videos, do whatever research on your own and learn about a thing.

But until you do the thing, until you see the thing, you never truly actually know. And the flip side to that, the Star Trek message to it that's more implied by me than anything is that we have to keep our mind open to those changes. When we see something, it's against what we've learned through the book learning or whatever.

We have to be open to questioning that because we saw something different. I think there's some really good messages in it, but while one of them kind of pervaded, the other one didn't. I'm gonna give this one three Deltas. I

Brent: like it. I really like that message of take responsibility for what you've committed to at.

It seems, uh, like if I could pinpoint that particular one, that's a next generation Yeah. Message, you know, very, very much like all the way through. Right. Um, I, I like it. Okay. Let's talk about star Furies then. How Babylon five is this episode? Cause Babylon five is its own deal, right? Um, how much do we like this episode?

I like this episode quite a bit. Am I gonna look back on this episode and say, this is one of my favorite episodes of Babylon five ever. Is it one of my favorite episodes of the season? Probably not. This very much seemed to be just like it's another episode, but it moved everything, like, in the right ways, in the right direction.

Like it, there was nothing veiled, at least as far as we could see. Or if there was stuff that was veiled, there was also plenty of stuff that was clear and out front, you know? Mm-hmm. . Um, I enjoyed this episode. This is an episode that I absolutely will watch every single time it comes on, on a rewatch. I'm flipping through the channels.

If I see this episode on, I'm stopping to watch and I'm not changing the channel until it gets to a commercial and then I'm changing back as soon as I think three and a half minutes have passed. Cuz I'm back to watching this episode. I'm watching this episode every single time. I like this episode.

Really a lot. Um,

it's not mind blowing, right? Uh, but it moves everything where it needs to go. So I'm gonna give this one, Jeff. It's taken everything within me, not to say five star. I don't know that it's a five star Fury, uh, episode. So I'm gonna say four. I think this is a solid four star Fury episode. And I'm gonna pull a little asterisks cause it could be more, but I don't it.

I'm, I'm trying to combat against recency bias. Let's put it that.

Jeff: Yeah. Well, when I think about a, the five star theory episodes that we've seen, they have been massive. Like they either had a, like confessions and Lamentations is a great example where it just had such a punch you in the face message.

Mm-hmm. like, oh my gosh, this was huge. Or it was a big thing, like the long twilight struggle where like, oh my God, it was huge. I think five star theories is a, is a, is a high bar just as five deltas is a high bar. Mm-hmm. and, uh, and yeah, this, this was a great, great episode. I loved this episode. I was so refreshed to talk about recency bias.

I was so refreshed to watch this episode, but I think four star theories is really fair.

Brent: Yeah. This one should not wind up in the top five. Of our ranking by the end of the season. Like I would hope there are other episodes that are so much better than this

Jeff: one. Well, that's a fun thing we get to do right now because, uh, just like last season, we are creating the 100% absolutely accurate and definitive ranking of the third season of Babylon five.

We did this in season one and the wrap up, we did it through the season and season two. We're gonna do the same here in season three. It may not end as a top five episode, but Brent, where do you place matters of honor in season three so far? Well, out of

Brent: 22 episodes, this is the number one

Jeff: episode, Jeff. It is, it's the

Brent: only one, but it is the number one.

So I currently place it at number one and, uh, you know what, this one doesn't do. Remember that episode last season was at the long, dark or distant star and it was one of those two that were like, Hey, whatever other numbers there are, like, we'll leave the blank ones and then this one goes down at the bottom like this doesn't do that.

This is clearly a number one episode right now, and uh, that's where I'm gonna leave it. And you can't fight me on it cuz that's how the game

Jeff: works. That's right. I cannot, it's your rank to put it there. And you know what, I uh, I'm very tempted to argue this one's strong, but, you know, points of departure.

Stayed in the top position in for quite a, I stayed in the top five for a lot longer than five weeks. That was a, yeah, it's a good episode. I'm gonna be interested to see how this one fares through the rest of the season. I,

Brent: I think it's just gonna depend on the quality of the other episodes around it.

Yeah. You know, if this, if this season goes like season two and I'll be very upset if it does. Uh, but if it goes like season two, where remember we got to the end and we looked at it, half the season was not good and half the season was really good. Mm-hmm. , I really hope that more than half the season is really good.

I, I, I can forgive it if one or two episodes is a little, eh, but for the most part I now expect to see everything really topnotch. It. Let's think about where we are in the life of a show though, Jeff. , right? Mm-hmm. , we know from watching so much sci-fi watching so much trick, watching so much Stargate and Battlestar Galactica.

Season one is always rough. Season two is still rough, but usually better. And somewhere around season three, towards the middle, maybe at the end, maybe a little closer, this is where the show finds its footing. The characters know who they are. The writers know who the characters are. They've established everything they need to establish, and now they can just run with the show.

They get new budgets, they get new costumes. That's where I feel like we have to be with this show right now. Like it's, it's normal life. So yeah, I'm

Jeff: excited for it. Well, that's it for matters of honor. Next week we're gonna be watching convictions for the next time. We've never seen these episode, but.

We've never seen these episodes before. We haven't looked ahead, we haven't read any synopsis. We haven't looked at thumbnails or anything. So based on the title alone, we like to guess what we think the episode is gonna be about. So, Brent, what do you think is gonna happen next week on Convictions?

Brent: So convictions, when you talk about convictions, you're talking about people sticking to their guns about something, right?

Jeff: That's the type of conviction. Yeah. Right,

Brent: right. I don't, I don't think this is like a, a judicial conviction. Uh oh. It could be, I guess, but I'm gonna say this. Yeah, yeah. No, I don't think it's that.

I think this is people sticking to their guns. I'm sensing a Franklin episode as much as I hate to say it, maybe Gar, Baldy, maybe Aon of a, um, I do think it's, it's one of our core human people. I think the ambassadors are missing from this one. Lawn, Jaar, Kosh, uhlin may or may not be in. She's kind of Sheridan's girl right now, so she may pop up here and there, but I don't think she's the focus of the episode, even if she does show up in it.

Um, so I'm leaning towards Franklin, you know, could, oh, I know what it is. I know exactly what it is, Jeff. I know. Okay. The Great Egg people are back. Oh God. That this is the episode. This is the episode, and here's what it is, Jeff. No, no, no. I'm gonna combine it with the other side of convictions. Okay. This is why it's plural, because it's not just one conviction, it's convict sh Franklin has to deal with the fallout of what he did to that.

And so maybe it's, it's like new patients from the Great Egg. People are on board and they've heard of him and now he's like this big evil guy and they're afraid and he has to stand by his convictions. But people are like judging him or, or maybe And I re, oh Jeff, I hope this is the episode. I hope that, cause I love shows that do this Deep Space Nine did it.

Stargate SG one did it. One of those shows that everybody does it. The government of the Great Egg people have shown up on babble on five to Extradite Franklin to stand trial for what he did to that boy. And Franklin has to stand by his conviction while they're trying to get a conviction. That's what this episode should be about.

Jeff: Sinclair comes back and he literally just comes back to. Yes, take him. And if you ,

Brent: I should have gotten this guy fired, shared and being like, I read that file. Yes. You got him. Go. He's done. Sinclair should have fired you stuff he

Jeff: should've done. Yeah. Yeah. I want that to be the episode so bad. It's not all what I made the note here.

I think it's gonna be about, I think, I think we're gonna get a sidekicks episode. Oh, cool. I'm, I'm with that. I think it's gonna come down to Veer is gonna have to make a choice. He's gonna, this is where he is gonna start, like actively helping the non-resistance. And he's going to be in a couple situations where he risks getting caught, but does it anyway because he has, you know, a convictions about stuff.

Maybe we get some more of like his and LAN's uh, drink dates where they're, where they're meeting up for quick, quick drinks. But Brent will find out here next week. Mm-hmm. , thank you everybody so much for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you're listening to us, and if you're watching us on YouTube, subscribe as well, also hit the bell.

We will not flood your notifications. We'll make sure you're only getting the good stuff. And if you haven't already, please stop by Apple Podcast, leave us a review and we'll be more than happy to share it here on the podcast. So, Brent, until next time. Hey Jeff. Jeff? Yeah.

Brent: Yeah. Listen, I don't know about you, but I'm getting really sick and tired of all of these people coming into our show and making all these demands in our comment feed.

Dude. What's,

Jeff: where's your sense of mystery? Your sense of adventure

Brent: are, are you trying to cheer me up or something?

Jeff: What are you doing? Never. But I would, I wouldn't even dream of doing that. Good.

Brent: Cuz I hate being cheered up. It's depressing

Jeff: The, the peace, victory. Long life.