July 4, 2022

Mind War

Looks like we have a villain, and it's...Chekov?!?

Two veteran Star Trek podcasters watch Babylon 5 for the first time. Brent Allen and Jeff Akin search for Star Trek like messages in this series, deciding if they should have watched it sooner.

Psi Corp, Psi Cops and Chekov?!? Does this episode answer the questions Jeff and Brent have had, or will it (sending telepathic signals to you...)?

Catch Us On YouTube For the Full, Unedited Episode: https://www.youtube.com/c/Babylon5FortheFirstTime Follow us on Twitter: @BabylonFirst Website: https://www.babylon5first.com/

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Transcript

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

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

Jeff: We're two veterans star Trek, podcasters watching Babylon five Well, for the first time.

we search for star Trek like messages in this series and ultimately decide if we should have watched it sooner.

Brent: That's right. And guys, while this podcast is not a podcast about star Trek, as Jeff said, we talk about star Trek and other shows and we're bound to pull them in because really how could we not, I mean,

Jeff: It's what

Brent: so similar or not. You just, it's just your reference point now. All of that said, we, we are, we're not going to apologize for it, but we did decide to make a game out of it.

And here's the game. We each get three star Trek references, at least till we get to the end, when we actually make the comparison to star Trek, we get three star Trek references. And, uh, once you hit it, you can't say it after that. So good luck trying to get across what you're trying to say once you've hit all three of them.

Uh, so with that, Jeff, I know you and I have both hit our limits a few times. Choose your spots carefully.

Jeff: to happen. Just spoiler alert. It's going to happen in this episode,

Brent: it's going to happen by purpose

Jeff: right. And it might even happen by like minute three of this one, um, might not take long, but not only do we talk about star Trek, not only are watching Babylon five for the first time we love. Interacting with you.

We're on Twitter at Babylon first. We're on YouTube. In fact, if you're listening to this and not watching it on YouTube, we put the raw deal on their warts and all, all the mistakes, everything you can check it out and you can see are clearly made for podcasting faces. As we, uh, as we talk about it, you can even send us emails through our website at, at Babylon, you can send us emails through our website, Babylon five, the number five first spelled out F I R S t.com.

And Brent, I want to share a couple of comments that we've gotten from people here lately.

Brent: Love it. I haven't, I haven't heard any of these. So go ahead.

Jeff: I'm going to, so first from JW, at JW zip on Twitter, they say, uh, You may have to rewatch the entire show after you've watched it for the first time. A lot of the references may not seem important at the time, but become vital later on Babylon five for the second time, perhaps.

Well, JW, we've got like 104 more episodes to go before that. So

Brent: know, what I love about that is I can't wait to find out what the references are that people keep telling us about. Like, I know they're there. I don't what I don't want you guys to do is tell me what the reference, oh, this is important because it sets up stuff later. Don't tell, I don't want to know if it's important or not

Jeff: Yeah. At all, don't even go there.

Brent: get there and discover that stuff, but I love no.

things are important for later on. And the speculation is just rife with Jeff and I to figure out what is it that's important or not important. Like the blue arrow is the blue arrow on Dylan's head important

Jeff: Is she an avatar?

Brent: Is she? Yeah. She in the last Airbender, like what's going on,

Jeff: We're going to have so many questions and it's going to drive all of you. Just absolutely mad to hear us sometimes. And that's one of my favorite things is whenever we put this out, I just like to imagine you screaming at us. How could you not think that's a big deal? Well, it's our first time. That's how.

Brent: right? Or, or maybe even like, I love this character, this character better, you know, this, I can't wait to see what they do with this character. And your guys are out there like, yeah. That prayers are like two episodes and

Jeff: Yeah. Or you're going to dead that going to be yikes. Over on YouTube, violent silence says, and this is a pretty lengthy one. So I'm going to, I'm going to condense it down a little bit with a chunk. I love, I just love, love the metaphor of that violence silence put up here. They said, I don't know if you guys are familiar with older trains, but when they started moving, they'd pull away slowly and you could feel each carriage pull against the couplings as they reached their maximum extension.

If you pull the way too quickly, you could risk a carriage becoming detached. Once all the carriage has were in motion, you could accelerate the train. And this is essentially the problem with Babylon five pacing and with all the genre pieces overall for events later on to matter, you got to make sure all the pieces that are a part of it are properly connected.

So you get a lot of episodes early on that are just putting things in motion. But as a passenger you're feeling the carriage is jerk as much as going on a journey. I thought that was really, uh, we've talked before on this about mid nineties, first seasoned. Saifai being like, that's a,

Brent: Oh, it's so rough.

Jeff: That's a thing. yeah. It was one of the best ways I've ever heard of.

Brent: And like one of the things I think that Babylon five is doing, from what I understand JMS had the show pretty much like written or plotted out of how he wanted to do things. It was a serialized show, more so than deep space nine was this doesn't count, but more so than deep space nine was.

And, um, that was really tough in the nineties. Cause everybody wanted episodic week to week, they could throw it in syndication and it didn't matter type of stories. So the idea that he's coming along with this, like this is really early in that, in that realm, like, you know, TV shows are pretty good at doing serialized stuff.

Now that was different back then and uh, yeah.

Jeff: When finding a

Brent: new level of respect.

Jeff: a network home and a time, and those things, it was hard and you got moved around and with, I mean, it wasn't only star Trek series or only Babylon five. It was anything just about that was on TV is they would write it in an order. They'd air it in something just wild and unexplainable for, for no good reason.

Those are all real things that happened. And so, Yeah.

So thank you very much to, uh, to violent silence for one of the best descriptions that I've ever heard.

Brent: I love it. And you know, one of the things I should say is so far Babylon five doesn't feel serialized. It still feels very episodic right now, but I understand that it's supposed to be,

Jeff: I, uh, I

Brent: don't know how nobody tell me. I don't know how.

Jeff: I hear you. Um, yeah, I, I've got thoughts on kind of that a little bit later on because yeah, we'll just. I think we're, we're hitting the same thing a little bit there. So, yeah. And speaking of later on today, right now, we're discussing mind war for those that it might've been a while since they've seen this or those who haven't watched, but are listening to us anyway, or watching along with us.

Brett, why don't you tell us about the episode

Brent: Well in mind war a telepathic fugitive pays a visit to Babylon five, but he's being pursued by cops, not just any cops, psych cops, and these aren't just any psych cops. These are level 12, psych cops and the fugitive, just as in any telepathic fugitive, he is one that has power to bring down the entire earth Alliance, military structure.

How exactly well that's on a need to know basis and you don't need to know which means we're going to find out. Now the psych cops need to interview Talia because she knows the future. Intimately, but she hasn't seen him. And after confirming it with a very invasive mind probe, they let her go. And that's when the fugitive, Jason makes his presence known to Natalia.

He tells her that he was a volunteer for a special program to be turned into a telepathic captain America. And now not only is he telepathic, he's also telekinetic, which sounds super cool, but it's also super dangerous. Like pinch your quarterback, like pinch your carotid artery shut until it kills you dangerous.

But before they get too much further, Jason starts having this big mind quake, which starts shaking the station and doing all sorts of bad stuff and puts everybody on high alert. This is actually why Jason came to Babylon five in the first place. He was hoping Talia his former lover could help him manage his mind quakes as he finishes a transformation of.

and Ascension, you might call it into pure energy. He tells Talia what I have Novo said a few episodes ago. Sycor is bad, bad news. They're far more powerful than we ever imagined. They're pulling all the strings in the government behind the scenes. Well, no time to worry about that right now it's Holly has to go get Sinclair to come help, get Jason off the station before more bad stuff happens.

And after a little bit of convincing Sinclair agrees, but on the way they meet the psych ops and in a pew pew pew action style act five, Jason finally gets off the station, uh, sends into pure energy. But before he goes, he leaves Talia with a gift, the gift of telekinesis. And while all that was happening to Sinclair's girlfriend, Catherine is checking out a planet which she's been hired to Terraform, Dzhokhar, warns her that some really weird stuff happens there, but she doesn't listen and goes anyway.

And when weird stuff does happen, Katherine and gets rescued by some NARKN ships that were sent by Dzhokhar. And he tells her that ancient beings can't POS that we can't possibly comprehend live there. And the best we can do is just leave them alone. Yeah. I don't think we're done with that storyline yet either.

Jeff.

Jeff: Brent, this is the episode I've been waiting for.

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: it's like, and it's, and it's not just going to say it's not just because checkoff is in it. Yes.

that's right. Checkoff is in this one, but honestly, we're finally starting to get into the search beyond the surface on things we're seeing, we're seeing the, the dirt we're, we're hearing kind of how things actually work.

Um, Just in general, we've had questions about Cycore since our pilot episode with the gathering, uh, Ivanova did started asking even more on our behalf and not only are we getting some of those questions answered, but they're all th th it's like, we have our first piece of meat on a thing where it's like, this is, this is actually something we have a big, bad villain.

And it's something that like, I can understand, you know, Sycor wanting to control everything. So I'm like, Yes.

but my thought was, we were talking about episodic versus serialization. And, and I just want to think this is because this is from the mid nineties and we didn't know serialized television at this point, but wow.

They could have been dropping some seeds for this. And every episode up to this point, and I think this did this felt like it should have been a continuation of an ongoing storyline instead. It felt like. Remember, we have, telepaths remember there's a thing. And now we're going to actually, we're going to do something with them and it's going to be wild.

What we're going to do with them. We also got some depth to Dzhokhar in this Dzhokhar so far has been, Hey, check that out Jakarta so far and why I, I could go, but he's just been kind of, you know, oh, look at me, I'm a smart, you know, smart, bad guy, whatever. Look, I'm a politician, but there's a lot here to, uh, to dive in.

I want very much to believe that, you know, so Catherine went to go to this planet to mind some Q 40 Quantium Quantium 40, which is what they make jump gates out of. So. But she got this great job and he went out of his way to make sure she didn't die on this mission. You lined up some fighters to go interceptor.

And I want to believe that this was out of the goodness of his shriveled NARKN heart. Like he was the Grinch in his heart, grew 10 sizes that day when, when he saved, when he saved little Catherine. And I believe that because he talked about how no one on this station is what they appear to be. He said that multiple times,

Brent: Yes. I think that was an important

Jeff: Yeah. message received.

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: We got it. But, but I, I think we know Dzhokhar enough that, and I think he even hinted at this a little bit, but I think he's just doing this to eventually hold it over. Sinclair's head. This is another bargaining chip. Yeah. I saved your girlfriend, dude. He says, she asked him, why, why did you do this? And He says, Why not, it's not profitable to let me go, let you go die on this thing, but to save the commander's girlfriend.

Well, it brings us back to why not? So maybe

Brent: could just be, you know, a good person and like, Hey, bad stuff happens out there. I can't let you go. Here's the thing about Dzhokhar and, and, uh, w yeah, let's talk about this B plot. Before we jump into the, into the main deal, he reminded me so much of queue.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Yeah. And I don't mean episode one queue. I mean, like every other queue, since then a queue who comes in, who is mischievous and is. talking about it, but at the end, when you see the whole thing, be displayed, turns out, they're just looking out for you.

Jeff: He wrapped,

Brent: to help

Jeff: wrapped up at a lesson. There's a lesson

Brent: Exactly. You know, and I think of episodes like tapestry,

is it all right? I'm going to spoil something possibly for YouTube and Jeff, I'll let you decide to leave this in the show or not because you do the editing, the entirety of Picard season two, which I called from episode one, I was like he's. Cause, cause that's the thing that you learn after watching Q even in his episodes and Voyager, Q's not a bad guy.

Jeff: exactly.

Brent: I know they set them up to be a villain, but he's really. He, he is very much coming in, caring for, he's trying to get usually Picard to be at a different spot in, in, in his thinking. And he's helping him to get there, but it's in a really backhanded way, you know, it's, it's in a very mischievous way. And that's what I saw in Dzhokhar was she's going to go do this mining, uh, this, this planet's in NARKN space, so you're gonna have to clear it with the Narcan.

And he comes in and he's just all like, Ooh, he could have just told her, Hey, uh, you don't need to go there because you're just, you don't have permission and you know, we're gonna fight you on it. And, and I forget all the, you know, he could have told her the whole thing about there are beings out there that you can't comprehend and bad stuff happens.

He was like, no, no, no, no, just, you know, there's ghosts out there and bad things tend to happen and whatever, and we're not going to let you go. And she's all like, I think you just want to keep it to your. And we see him go. And like he says, I need a heavy fighter pilot and make sure it's really well-armed.

And you're like, oh my God, he's going to go like, kill her, shoot her out of the sky. And now he's sending people to rescue her because he knows something's about to go down. And I was like, that just feels like cue to me on every level, because the way he set it up, the way he was talking to her was not like he was acting on her behalf.

It was very much like he was acting for his in, in his own interest,

Jeff: Well, there's a version of it where she just listens to him and just doesn't go, right. Or the version that she does, try and go over his head and then they just tell her, no, there's this, you know?

there's beans there they'll rip you apart.

Brent: Uh huh.

Jeff: He wasn't like, he didn't necessarily, he had the end in mind, but he also didn't know that he was going to end up there.

He was like, look, I'm just going to be cool. I'm going to tell you it's not good. Kind of leave it there and then see, I'm going to let you see what you're going to do. But behind the scenes, I'm going to kind of make sure things are cool and you're right. Like that's totally cue a hundred percent. Wow.

Jakarta is Q. Hm.

Brent: Um, but Dzhokhar Dzhokhar is he's a, this is the first time we've gotten to cars is con he's kind of a good dude now. And I mean, in my, the way I interpreted this, wasn't just fully self-serving like, he just, he released him. Like he was looking out for her,

Jeff: W, well, I think too, like I agree that it's really just the talk of the last couple episodes behind me say, Nope, Nope. He's got an ulterior motive. Don't don't don't trust him. And ma maybe that's more a reflection on me.

than it is on him. But I think even at the end, when they're talking about those weird, you know, kind of space, Christmas tree, table topper, aliens that are out there, he said something about how, like, it gives him comfort and peace in knowing that there are things bigger than them that they're not ever going to understand.

Like they're not the pinnacle of the universe, you know? And like that's, that's. Deep deep philosophical stuff for this just, you know, evil reptilian guide to come in with. So, I mean, just real three dimensions to Jakarta. And this one that I really appreciated. So Sycor Sycor is going to be our bad guy.

Looks

Brent: Yeah. Well, I mean, we, we kinda knew that we anticipated that and we said that a few weeks, a few episodes ago that Sycor is going to be the, like, there's more here. What I find incredibly interesting is the idea that I think we kind of knew. We just heard it here. You always said, you always thought it was the government in charge, but it's not Sycor is back there pulling all the strings behind the scenes.

They're the ones that are in charge. Couple that with the other things that we've been learning. About the earth cultures. We got to preserve that the new president, uh, who are those, those, the people that came and got the, um,

Jeff: it took the bio, the bio weapons

Brent: yeah,

Jeff: for the earth Alliance. yeah,

Brent: Yeah. Those guys show up and now you have Cycore all of a sudden and okay.

I got us on a whole other level, check off, appears on the screen. I saw checkoff and then I saw the girl that was with him and I went, I was like, Hey, that's checkoff. That's really cool. Wait, is that Deanna? Troy? Is that Marina's art? Do we get to have them here? And I'm like, oh, no, pretty, pretty quick. That got dispelled.

But my first, that was my first, uh, uh, thought as they go in. But I mean, Sycor is bad news. They walk in and they're all like, like I'm just going to read your mind and Sinclair's like, get out of my mind, you know? And I'm sitting here, like, shouldn't there be like a helmet or something you could put on that, like block.

You know, something that just, I have to have some sort of production, cause I can't stop you from doing

Jeff: Well, it's just like unchecked power. Right? So, uh, we learned there's grades and we heard this. before Talia, when she introduced herself, when she came in and was Like I'm a P five, um, thing, which is okay. I

Brent: I completely missed

Jeff: Oh yeah. I caught it like in her thing and I'm just like, okay, good, good for you. I guess that's something.

Well, it is Jason. Um, I iron heart. Um, yeah, which I'm sorry. That's ah, yeah, same, same writer's room is pain givers with that. one, but still Jason's a P 10 cause all instructors at the academy or a P 10 and the cops are P twelves. So, Ooh, that's kind of a big deal, but I think that. like, there's the. Where Sinclair and Garibaldi are kind of problem solving where Jason could be.

And then Garibaldi walks past. I'm going to start calling him by his Babylon five name. I'm going to be fair walks past Bester and Bester just as like, oh, only 50 apartments. We've got to search. Cool. Oh, also a Garibaldi. That's anatomically impossible, but you're welcome to try any time. Yeah. It's like, whoa,

Brent: Okay. I'm sorry. We've had this discussion about characters before Garibaldi investor going at it. Garibaldi is mopping the floor with them.

Jeff: you think

Brent: I think so.

Jeff: so?

Brent: I really do.

Jeff: You know, I, I didn't realize, so the, I don't, I don't know who the actor is, who played Besters the, the other, uh, hop. I'm not sure who she was. She got turned into molecule. Dustin has gone, but she was like six feet taller than him. Like, I never realized how short he was, but he carries himself.

Like I feel, and I, I have to own that. I've had teachers through school named both Koeneke and Canuck. So I always get this mixed up. It's Walter Canuck, Right, It's the name? It's Canuck. Okay. Because I've had both and it's just so Walter Canuck, what this episode proved to me is all the time he was check-off on star Trek.

And I feel like I'm going to let my buzz on checkoff kind of bias the checkoff reference. Maybe. I dunno, if you don't like it, leave a comment. It's fine. Put it in the review. But, uh, but he should have been a villain this whole time. right, In the wrath here. We all get myself in the. Whoops star Trek too, in there that, that scene where he's like, oh, smiles and set the alpha five checks out.

Then he gets all cold and hard that really played through in here where he's like, I'm friendly bureaucrat. Also. I will destroy you. And so that's where I think if he and Garibaldi went at it, like he's going to be that little scrappy guy. Who's also literally getting into Garibaldi his head the whole, I don't know. I I'm taking Bester on that one. I am.

Brent: I, they, I think Garibaldi is just going to smash them. I really do like best or might get in his head, but I think Garibaldi is coming through and he's, he's got that, that, that security chief is he security team is that.

Jeff: I think so. Yeah.

Brent: Right. He he's got that, that stuff. I think he's taking them, taking them to the floor in,

Jeff: well,

Talia almost took care of all due to the floor. I was so excited. I got my scene, the one that I wanted, where like they're in the elevator and she finally gut punched him for his like, yeah.

Brent: okay. I got a question. I got a question about that. So they walk in and she's talking about like, I can, I can send some motions. They kind of come through, even when you don't want to. And, and when she's saying that he's sitting there, like staring her down, like checking her out. Here's my question. Was he doing it on purpose to like test her and see?

Or was he just like distracted and like,

Jeff: I think he's that guy at the bar who is just sleazy and greasy, but believes with his whole body. That she's into it. Like, yeah.

she's gonna, she's gonna, oh, you can pick this up. Well, here you go. What do you think about this? Oh, and, and then at the end, like she got punches and walks out and he's like, I think I'm in love.

It's like, oh my

Brent: Didn't she smile as she walked out though.

Jeff: did. I think, yeah. That's, I'm going to blame that on mid nineties TV.

Brent: I'm just, I'm just, I mean, like, I think Talia was putting up a fight, but I think there's, she might like

Jeff: Oh,

Brent: kind of be into it as well. I don't know.

Jeff: not.

Brent: I don't know.

Jeff: But you talked about Sycor and the, uh, the earth, culture and earth first and all those, those pieces there. I had the same thing and I took a note that like, how strong is the influence that they're having? Like, are they. Steering public sentiment in a way, you know, like where they're just making people, maybe they're not forcing anyone to do anything, but they're just introducing that doubt or that feeling.

Um, whatever that's causing people to just come out with jingoistic, you know.

national or planetary, uh, stick, uh, feelings in there. And they're doing that in a way for an end, right? Well, this, this can help us achieve, you know, whatever. Cause they want their fingers on the, in the economy and the politics in energy, in everything that's going on.

So I kind of wondered, Yeah.

this is this, their work making everybody here. Just be so anti alien,

but Jason, Jason Ironheart. So did you ever read dune the do novels at all?

Brent: I did not. I saw the new movie that came out. That's uh, I saw the old movie a long time ago and it put me to sleep I so many times. Oh, it's horrible. It's horrible, Jeff. Yes, it's so

Jeff: spoiler alert. Uh, I'm going to reference it in our closing thoughts. The, the David Lynch film, it's going to be a reference because, and I'm going to go dune here for a minute, so you can check out whatever, but there's somebody, somebody is going to be like, oh my God. Yes, Jason Ironheart has become the Kwisatz hat rack in this. so he's already some sort of a genetic rarity just by virtue of being a telepath. One in a thousand humans are telepathic And then one in every 10,000 of them could be telekinetic possibly then.

Brent: of them are crazy.

Jeff: Yeah.

So it's, so he's already this rarity in there, and then they pump him full of drugs or Milan spice. If you read this stuff and it breaks his mind.

Oh, what are you thinking? I heard that.

Brent: I'm sorry. Did we talk about. I've been Nova's mom was a telepath

Jeff: Yes.

Brent: and she chose not to go to Sycor and chose the medication piece to that and went crazy

Jeff: Oh, wow. Wow.

Brent: telekinetic. And is that genetic is Ivan Nova a telepath. And we don't know, just saying, is she a telepath? And we don't

Jeff: Well, and I think

Brent: or was her mom a telecom telekinetic

Jeff: was she part of this experiment and that whole thing, right?

So they're like, oh, you don't want prison. You don't want cycle or we're going to do some exp, oh my God, Brent.

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: That's huge.

Brent: Sorry,

Jeff: you're listening and you know the answer to that question, Do not answer it. Don't tell us. Dad is huge. Because it is, he was talking about that right there, pumping it's full of drugs.

They were trying stuff out and they got, then it got really, really bad in dune. That's what happened. So Paul, uh, tradies or a tray at ease depended on how pure you are with Frank Herbert, Um,

is a genetic genetic, uh, planned out from a breeding program, the Penta gesture, it breeding program. Then he does all this spice, all this Milan, just bro.

And it breaks his mind just like Jason. And now he can see the universe. He's really the shortening of the way, which is what Chris has had. IRAK means he can see everything and he transcends it. All right. It takes off, right.

I'll be back at, Hey, see ya. I'll be back in a million years as good CDN. And then Tanya, here's your gift.

Here's your thing. Now in dune that led to 10,000 plus years of famine and strife and war that they came out of on the end of the golden path in a, well, what could have been a much better place for all of their it's humanity and dune. But the point is that that formula, the quiz has had a rack that successful experiment at the bene Jesser or working towards change the entire universe.

So how is this going to change Cycore? How is this going to change telepaths to me, I think we've got that piece scale P five P 10 P 12. Jason had to have been off that scale. And then the fact that he could gift telekinesis on Natalia who showed no aptitude. Whatsoever this, if this were other scifi, I don't want to use my, my buzz on this one.

Cause I've only got one left, but if it's for other science fiction series, this would have been like one little episode and like, oh, well that was an interesting thing that he turned into a being of light and went away. This has th there's so many pieces hanging here. It has to turn into something big.

Brent: I would, I hope that Jason comes back. Like he's still an entity out there somewhere like he's, he's a Voss or CAUTI or whatever his

Jeff: I forget his name He hasn't been here. yeah,

Brent: he's out there, but he's just. Just sort of floating around, you know? Um, I, I really hope that we haven't seen the last of him because what I, like, I have questions like as Tahlia Nalla P 10 P 20 P whatever, like, what else has she gotten besides telekinesis?

Where is this going to go? What's going to happen? Because he, he quite obviously they kept using the word transformation. I'm gonna use the word ascend. He ascended, he, he, he shed his mortal core coil and it now exists as pure energy. And he said he could see it all. He could exist everywhere. You know what the sounds to me like the traveler,

Jeff: Yeah. Oh, yep. Is that two or three for you? That's two. He's only have one. left, but Yeah. exactly. Really

Brent: traveler and that's, that's who he sounds like they could see everything can be everywhere. Everything everywhere, all over. Horrible movie. Don't go see it. Uh, Michelle Yeoh is amazing. I did not know that data from Goonies and Michelle Yeoh were of same age that they could be married, but turns out they are.

Jeff: That's kind of, I'm going to need a minute. I mean, really well. yeah. I guess so.

Brent: Yeah. Jay, I mean, she, she was amazing with that movie. Just want to throw this is not about that. Maybe. Um, you might want to edit that out anyway. Um, where was I going with all that

Jeff: So she's, he was a traveler. He could see everything,

Brent: He could see everything and it was everywhere all at once. And I think this has to come back in and somehow we have to be leading to a showdown with psych.

Right or something's gotta happen and he's gotta be the thing that comes back in that Marshall's the resistance, or is the day you sex Mokena

Jeff: who comes in at the end

Brent: exactly. Um, somewhere that's that's got to be, cause I hope he's not, not gone. I really hope that this isn't, um, okay. What, here's, what we're setting up in this episode that they're psych cops and that they're, we, we heard they're controlling everything and they're working these weird experiments and now Talia is a telekinetic and nobody knows, and maybe she even jumped up a few scales deal on the, and we're going to have to deal with that, but we never hear from Jason

Jeff: right. He was just, he was just a plot device that made those things and, oh, he, we literally will see him in a million years when the series gets real rebooted or SQL or whatever. Yeah.

Brent: I mean, and that might be entirely what it is, but I hope that's not.

Jeff: I wonder if that's one of the spinoff movies that came as like, Hey, let's go follow Jason Ironheart through the universe. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know.

Brent: Do they recast them? Like do they, cause they have to bring them back into a body and on

Jeff: No, just keep him as a Mr. Mr. Clean CGI guy.

Brent: Mr. Energy. Okay. Well, there you

Jeff: Why not?

Brent: there you go.

Jeff: Well, those are my thoughts that I saw in there. Brent, was There anything else that you saw in this one?

Brent: I had a, I had a couple little notes here, one, um, and some of these are just side notes, things that I picked up on when he's going into rent the room. Now I thought this was real interesting. As far as how the station operates. You can go rent a room, you know, in deep space, nine, you're just given a room.

You're just given quarters. You know what I mean? Like here you actually have to rent a room, which is, which is more towards the future because, or towards reality, I think, you know, but he said, they said it's 500 credits a week now. Correct me if I'm wrong. But isn't that what Catherine said, she paid for roses and chocolates in the last episode

Jeff: remember.

Brent: cost or 500 credits.

Jeff: Wow.

Brent: And I'm like, like, I don't know what current, how currency exchange rates go with that. But if she made 500 bucks for roses and chocolates, that's quite a

Jeff: Well, she made a comment if I remember, right. I think she said something about like

these were hard to find, or these costs a lot. It's something offhanded, but yeah, that's a week a week for a room.

Brent: for 500 bucks. That's, I mean, that's a lot of money for, for a room for a week,

Jeff: And it wasn't. that nice of a room,

Brent: no,

Jeff: little tiny TV. It even had like the.

Brent: it's a hundred bucks and 500, 500 credits is equivalent to a hundred bucks maybe or something like that. Like, I dunno what the exchange rate is, but.

Jeff: It even had like that in hotel thing of like welcome to Babylon five Zocalo is located on the butt, which is kind of like on the little TV screens does a nice little touch, I think kind of to what you were talking about in the last episode, just those little touches, you know, the signs that they had in the last one on this one, where they had a fully voiced like intro video, it's just playing in the background.

Really, really cool. World-building

Brent: Speaking of world building or station building, I should say they have sky buckets traveling

Jeff: oh yeah.

Brent: uh, the deal, you know, monorail upside down monorails, uh, traveling around to get you to get you down. It sounds like a good place to go have a private conversation.

Jeff: think, you know, unless there's, you know, Mike's everywhere or whatever, or they have something recording it in that unbelievably painfully obvious blue screen they're working up against, but you know, I mean, it's.

Brent: It was in the nineties, but like

Jeff: Yeah. And that was, that was uncomfortable to watch.

Brent: And I mean, think about like, they recorded that on, on film, translated it to SD and we're watching everything on upscaled TVs

Jeff: True. Yeah,

Brent: On streaming, like that's, that's not going to hold up very well at all at all. Um, okay. I did want to bring out this piece though, this planet that Catherine goes to check out these beings that came out of nowhere and jacked up or shuttle, and these Dzhokhar talks about what are the words you said them earlier.

He said, these are beings that we cannot possibly comprehend things that we like. And I love the fact that we don't understand some things that are out there. These beings are out there. They're doing whatever these sound a little bit like, whatever it is that Jason might've just turned into.

Jeff: Whoa.

Brent: Possibly.

Jeff: so maybe that's right. So he, he took that weird, you know, kind of energy form and then maybe like part of his Horsch through spaces, like maybe They form that shell, you know, or something that we saw in there. Wow.

Brent: can go and that's where they're going to go hang out. I don't, that's the like, cause I'm trying to think always in my head I'm like, okay, why do you put this, a story in this B story together? Why are these two coexisting in the same, the same episode? That was the only connection I could make between the two

Jeff: No, on this one,

Brent: or just the not everybody's here, what they seem,

Jeff: right. I think, you know, so far there hasn't been a real connection and the A's and B's that, I, I don't know if we're going to, so to me, the B in this one felt like, well, Hey, we just introduced Catherine. And so it makes sense to do this thing. And I think like for me, the two big messages out of that piece story were the car. um,

just your car in general. And, you know, the, the higher, you know, we're, I'm thankful, there's things that are, you know, we're not the peak or the whatever. And then, um, his piece on not everyone here is what they seem. But the other big thing I think out of it is this is the second episode in a row where they've really talked about the value of quantum 40, the Q 40.

And then in this one, we learned that that's what they make jump gates out of. And the earth is already like six months behind and jump gate production. So I think there's something there. Um, that's going to turn into something that's so I think that was the point of this B story and the timing of it was just, oh, Catherine, here now.

Let's let's do it.

Brent: By the way, the more I see Catherine, the more I like

Jeff: Agreed. Yeah.

Brent: I like, I'm really glad she stuck around. I'm really glad she's walking around. Cause I like her a

Jeff: I love when she was,

Brent: to see more of her,

Jeff: I loved when she was side mouth in Dakar and her ship. And she's like, it's not a very healthy place. right?

Brent: right? Is she the girl from Rambo?

Jeff: Is she,

Brent: I think she is, I think she's the girlfriend Rambo. Cause it's been driving me crazy. Trying to figure out where I like she's got that face and I think she's the girlfriend Rambo

Jeff: um, I'm going to look it up. I have to know. I can't not know this. Let's see here

known for, give me your film. Oh gosh. I am. DB is so much easier to read on my phone. Go back. Oh, she was on a next generation and send them, I'm cutting all this. Then I'm looking at Ensign, Leanne, Sue it's for you. YouTube. You can get to see All this.

Brent: I have,

Jeff: Rambo first blood part

Brent: she's a girl. Yeah. She's the girlfriend rainbow. Yeah. As the girl in the village or whatever, right. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't tell you how long has it been since I've seen that movie?

Jeff: Look at

Brent: dude. So we had, we had Kimiko and whoever this girl is in remote.

Jeff: Yes, we had karate kid part two Rambo, first blood part two, all

Brent: There you go. There you go. Um, so with that, that's really all I had for the main discussion. Are we, are we ready to turn this into the, uh, conversation about the Delta's let's boil it down. What do you say,

Jeff: I think it's time.

Brent: Well, uh, so let's do that. Why don't we see if this show has any of that star Trekkie quality to it? Is that a deep moral message? Is it holding up a mirror to society? Is it giving us hope for a better future? Jeff, I'll throw it over to you first. What did you pick out of this episode? Is it star Trek or not?

Jeff: So the other thing that we wait until ask each other as if we would watch this again, or if we feel like we would have watched it sooner on here. And so I'm going to kind of, I'm going to, I'm going to dive into that one first, before I get to the deltas, but we didn't talked about this in our, in our recap, we just did, but I, I think the effects really, really hurt this one a lot.

Like to me, here's the callback, it's David Lynch's dune, where you just have these super high concept ideas that you can't, you can't really translate visually and especially not?

on the kind of budget that TV and Babylon five or especially running on at the time I had to suspend my disbelief, like so much, especially at the end.

So the ad that we, you know, the pew pew pew thing, when, when, uh Bester and the girl were trying to like mind shut him down or whatever, and just, I mean, it's just. It was ridiculous. And it was ridiculous to me that they were talking about how he's not, we wouldn't even call him human. You wouldn't recognize him as human at this point, but he's the most human looking person on the station.

Like just as a dude. And then when he ascended, or as he said, when he became, that was, that was terrible. Um, I had a tare S T five 20 in the mid eighties, and I feel like I could have done a better look and energy guy than that one. But the effects aside, this really felt like a super important episode to me.

Right. We got the insights into Cycore Talia with her telekinesis, all this stuff that we've, we've talked about. We're going to look back at this episode a lot. I think this is going to be, oh Yeah.

This back, you know, back into mind war back in mind war. I think that's the thing we're going to hear, but between the visuals, the pacing that I think.

Wildly inconsistent and made. There were some parts of this that they spent like 43 minutes on that felt like they could have spent four seconds in there. That's I don't, I don't think I'm going to watch this one again. I'm uh, I'm good. I'm good with it, but Delta's, that's what we're here to talk about.

So Dzhokhar's explanation of the thing that Katherine saw and comparing us to ants. And this was a thing too, that we have as little chance communicating with them as ants do to us, Brett, that's not only like a star Trek like message. That's literally an entire season of star Trek discovery, these things where the 10 see

Brent: Right,

Jeff: So there you go. There's your star Trek. And then on top of that, I think that the idea of. Ascending. I like, I like using that word. I kind of like your mind evolution of potential of the, of the mind is a very star Trek message, but the way they do it in this episode, forcing it through drugs, experimenting on people and then the drive to do it for assassinations and for wild political and economic power.

That's not, that's not so much a star Trek thing. So despite

Brent: Is it not though.

Jeff: no, I don't think, it is

Brent: I mean, think of every Starfleet Admiral that you've seen except for the guy in discovery.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: sounds very star Trek to me. I'm just saying, it sounds very

Jeff: well, it's very, um, star Trek insurrection, right? So yeah, where he's going to use. But, but I think that like, the point of that movie was that that's not what Starfleet and the Federation are about is using, you know, using the people for that kind of a thing. It happens for Sure.

But they go in and, uh, and attack it.

Like, that's the thing, Hey, you're doing this thing. We're going to shut you down. We're going to stop. And maybe, maybe that's where Babylon five goes, maybe, but that, despite the fact that you literally have star Trek walking around on this and in full disclosure, I knew in the back of my head, like, I'm like, Yeah.

I'm aware of Walter candy was on this blew my, I slipped my mind.

Like I wasn't there when he showed up. Like, I totally like fanboyed for a second. Oh my God. That's Yeah.

Brent: Right.

Jeff: I jumped out of my seat and it hit me how it showed me how old this series is by how young he was

Brent: He looked,

Jeff: And I felt like what a wasted, what a waste for paramount and the Roddenberry camp to have not taken more advantage of like a clearly super skilled actor, a good looking young guy, who's killing it on Babylon five.

He couldn't find a spot for him and all your star Trek stuff that was going on. yeah. But I got to score it. And so I went with two and a half deltas on this one. As much as last time I scored it higher. Cause I felt, uh, optimistic about where they were going to go with things. I don't have that same level of optimism on this one where they're going to go with Sycor on this one.

So I'm going to give it a two and a half, but you,

Brent: I'm going to echo everything you said about the graphics and the effects and how much it takes you out of this episode. The, like this is an episode that is begging for a 20, 22 reboot,

Jeff: time, big time.

Brent: it into this, but put modern day writers on the episode, put affects budgets and affects technology. And man, you could have something wild with this episode.

Absolutely. A lot of the way that honestly, This time, period. Well, not even this time period, the early seasons of next generation, where the rate, the way that the original series was. And, and even in Voyager and stuff, like you watched some of those, those effects in voyage, or like where they're doing species 8, 4, 7, 2, which is the first fully CGI character.

Cool. But it's rough, you know, and it's not as rough as this,

Jeff: it's still pretty pretty. Yeah.

Brent: Yeah. Yeah. Um, so that one, that one was a, that one was tough

as far as the episode goes, though, because as star Trek fans, we're very used to watching stuff where the concept is far outstripping. The technology of being able to put it on TV. We've done this for years. This one, I enjoyed a lot in that, in that, uh, that respect that said, this is not an episode I want to watch.

just, it's just not, um, I really wanted to feel a lot more for Jason than I did, and I kinda just didn't. I was like, dude, just shut up and ascend, like quit messing stuff up and just go ascend. It will be fun. Um,

there were some places where I was just like, why don't they just kill the dude? Just like, like, like in a, like an end of the threat, like, he didn't seem like he didn't seem like he was like, I don't want to die. I want to live. I want to survive. I want to go on. And like, like I want to, I want that side of it.

He wants to go on and explore and he wants to find out what's next. And he wants to transform into this thing and who knows what he could possibly be. So he has to stay alive to see that, but he can't be captured and go back. Cause I mean, like I'm sitting here watching, like, okay. So if they would've captured him and taken him back with.

They're going to get, like, not even halfway to the jump gate and he's still going to ascend

Jeff: it's going to happen no

Brent: then he is in the same place. Right? Like they're not going to stop him at that point. Like, so like, there's a, there's a bit of me that like, I needed a little bit more on that

Jeff: You know, I think I want to take that really quick and go back to my dune reference. So the fourth book, God, emperor of dune, um, it's it's, it can be a slog. A lot of it happens inside a leader of the seconds, mind, really short version, a person, the son of Paula tradies puts, um, things on him that turned him into a Sant ha like a hybrid sand worm human thing.

And he lives for thousands of years, but he knows he can see what happens if he lives long enough. Like he can see the golden path and where it takes him. He can also see the, the, the chaos that the universal fall into. If he dies too soon, he can see both of those. And so he's desperate to live and there are these like multi page thought processes where it's like, I can't die.

I have to live. I have to continue. I have to do these things. That's what we needed from. Where he sees, if I ascend, these are the things that will happen. If I fail to ascend, then these are the, he doesn't have to say what they are. He just has to say the, the, the galaxies, depending on me, ascending, I have to, and then there's some stakes and then we care. Yeah.

Brent: Yeah. Or if I ascend, I can stop Cycore from whatever they're doing and taking over an earth or whatever is going on. Like, like I, I needed something there. It just didn't get it. As far as how star Trek this episode is applying that lens to it. I think I'm a little higher on the star Trek scale than you are.

I'm going to go ahead and give this a for Delta star Trek. And here's why, because when I watch this, I saw the message. You can't fear, life forms. You don't understand. He was, he was about to ascend. He was about to become something that they didn't know how to control. And yes, they were there to get control of him because they wanted to utilize them.

They wanted to dissect them and find out what caused him to become that. But there was also a, they can't let him out. They can't let him go. And they can't, uh, they, they don't understand it. And what we saw was Sinclair was he didn't know what was going on, but he went to talk to the thing. He wants to talk to Jason in this case.

And he got to know it and he wasn't trying to use it. He heard his side, he understood where it was coming from. And I'm putting it into its terms because it kind of was losing its humanity. You know, he said that it was like, I'm not even Jason anymore. I'm, I'm more than that. But he goes to understand it.

And now you can have a respect for life, you know, and, and whatever it is that he's going on to become, we have to allow him to go become that. You have these people who don't want to let him become that. And we're going to allow this to happen. We want to facilitate that happening. Like this seems totally captain Picard to me.

I could see this in next generation as, as a type of, as an emphasis. Uh, to get there. So I, and I had images in my mind at the end of, um, you remember the big space

Jeff: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Brent: from, from next generation, they're just watching. It's like, oh, they're going off and they're doing their own thing. And like, I totally had those vibes at the end of this episode for that.

Um, but then again, the Dzhokhar thing and the whole, I compared him to Q earlier, and I go back to that, like, you're, you're actually here to work together. Like we can work together. Oh. And by the way, let's talk about the interracial relationship between Jason and Taulia in 1994, seeing this on TV of them saying we were ex lovers of saying that we were in a relationship was huge, was huge.

And it's totally something star Trek would have done, um, or should have done. And, and yeah, so I give this a four Delta star Trek type episode. I don't want to watch it again, but. Uh, I do find those messages in there and I, I am more excited about what the fallout of this episode is going to be of where we're going to go, because this episode is clearly setting stuff up.

It's clearly setting pieces into place. I'm more excited about where it's going then coming back and exploring this particular one that much more

Jeff: Agreed. I'm excited to reference this episode. Not watch it again. Well, that's it. Brent that's mind wars next week. Well, before I tell you what we're watching next week, just a reminder for everybody listening, we don't look ahead. We don't even look back. Right. We're just watching them as they come out, watching it for the first time.

So we look at the title of the next episode, that's it. And then we like to play a little game where we guess what the show is going to be about based on the title alone. So, Brent, what do you think the war prayer is going to be about

Brent: The war prayer

Jeff: prayer

Brent: coming right off of mind

Jeff: Yeah, I, yeah.

Brent: I'm going to go with this as a sequel. This is a sequel to this episode of direct SQL, like, like, uh, we might even get our first previously on

Jeff: wow.

Brent: that. I'm probably saying that just because of the war, like the whole war reference, like the mind war and then the war prayer.

Um, maybe Jason's they, somebody feels like he's a God now and they're praying to him now. That's probably not it. Um, but yeah, I, I, I'm going to go with it's, it's a cul they're trying to figure it out. And I mean, we've got a fall. I mean, God, they just dropped this big thing about Taulia and this new gift that she has.

We've got like, they can't let that sit for episodes. We've got to see what's happening with that. Like next up.

Jeff: So, so I think they are going to let it sit for episodes. We've only seen a couple episodes of this so

Brent: You're probably right, but

Jeff: The way I feel as they're like, Hey, we did this cool thing. Well, we'll come back to it. And here, here in a little bit, and there's my guess is that this is going to be one. It's going to be a previously on Babylon five.

They won't do the previously on, but this is going to call back to the NARKN and Centauri. And, uh, the, the, the, the negotiations that I believe have been referenced a couple of times for the Euphrates sector. So this is going to be, um, things are escalating. We're getting close to war and, um, I don't know how prayer is going to work into it, but I just, I feel like we're, we're, we're due for some Centauri and NARKN, uh, coming together.

And I think they've referenced the Euphrates, uh, negotiations in at least two other episodes since, uh, since midnight on the

Brent: And, you know, I mean, it could have absolutely nothing to do with war or prayer. Uh, I'm reminded of parliament of dreams, which had nothing to do with the parliament or dreams. Um, right. So who knows it might be absolutely nothing to do with any of that

Jeff: And that's the fun thing. When you're watching Babylon five for the first time, we're going to find out right here next week. Thank you so much for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe on whatever podcast, a podcast app that you're listening to on. Give us the star, give us the thumbs up. Wherever you're listening.

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Highlighting what you had to say about us until next time.

Brent: Jeff,

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: are you trying to communicate? Telepathically?

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: Oh, geez. This guy's never going to get it.