Passing Through Gethsemane | For the Second Time

[0:44] The year is 2025. The name of the podcast, Babylon 5, for the second time. Welcome to Babylon 5 for the second time. My name is Brent Allen. And my name is Jeff Akin. Brent and I used to be Star Trek podcasters, and then we watched Babylon 5 for the first time, and everything changed. So now we're watching this incredible series for the second time because Babylon five is the only show that you get to watch for the first time twice. And along with that, we are still searching for sci-fi messages that we find within the show. Sometimes it's just ones that we pull out. Sometimes it's ones that the creator himself, JMS inserted into the show.

[1:30] Now, that being said, Jeff and I have seen this show before. We've already completed our first watch, which means from this point forward, Jeff and I have free reign and fair game. I feel like that should be the name of a song, Jeff. Free reign and fair game. Free reign and fair game. To talk about anything from any point in the timeline, in canon, out of canon, anything goes. It's all fair game. So if you have never watched Babylon 5 for the first time for yourself, please stop this episode right now. This is your last spoiler warning. Stop it right now. Go back and catch our first watch. Do a watch along with us. And then when you have completed your run, catch back up with us. Because as Jeff said just a moment ago, this is the only show that we know of anyway, where you can watch it for the first time twice. For this week, we're watching Passing Through Gethsemane. Now, for me, this episode was like, I don't know, the greatest thing ever. I loved every bit of it. If I remember right, I'm just like, there's this. I love that.

[2:33] This character's incredible. We're talking about one of my favorite subjects, justice versus vengeance. We're talking about forgiveness. I get to be a nerd in my Catholicism and everything, which back then I wore a shirt that had like all the different crosses from the different rites of Catholicism. It said celebrate diversity. Today, I've got my Catholic established 33 AD jersey shirt on because I don't get to wear this outside of Sundays very often. Was it really 33 AD? That's a good question. There's a lot of questions as to what – where that really was. I mean I think I can say with fairly good confidence it was probably more like 26 to 29 AD. Right. It started a little bit – well, technically – well, actually, it didn't start until after he was resurrected. All right. Well, Catholics explain it to us. Yeah. Yeah. Still 26 to 29 AD. Probably maybe, you know.

[3:28] Time's a weird thing right but yeah i adored this episode do you remember what you thought about this one on the first watch i thought this was a great episode a fantastic episode not one it was one that was very unexpected well i don't and i think this held up um i don't think this is this is a game-changing world-breaking episode like if you pair the 22 episodes of this season down to the 10 that you need to run the story, this one's getting cut. That being said, I also, my feeling coming out of this was this episode. And I, I, I think this episode colored the rest of the show for us, maybe at least the rest of the season, because it certainly seemed to set the tone for where we were going and what was going to happen.

[4:19] And I don't know that I can fully explain why, what I'm curious about. And this is the question I have in my mind. You and I both have a fairly strong religious background, Jeff. Were we so drawn to this episode because of that, because of what we brought to the episode ourselves? Or was this episode really that important? Because ultimately, we never really talk about Brother Edward again. Brother Theo shows up in like one more episode after this. Like the impact of this episode does not seem to reverberate through the rest of the series. And I can't even remember any major great character moments that out of this episode that really like spend time developing characters like we've had in the last couple of episodes. So I'm really curious. That being said, as a piece of 45 minutes television, great episode. Would love to watch this one every single time. Not a knee slapper by any stretch of the imagination. But it's also not Schindler's List where a great episode only ever need to see it once. It's not that either. I can watch this episode again.

[5:21] Well, Brent, I listened to our for the first time recording on this one. Would you like to know what you actually thought? What did I actually think? Well, he said, there's really not a lot to latch onto in this one. It's pretty preachy and feels like a filler episode. Yeah. He said, once you get below the surface and you see what it really is, there's quite a bit more, but, uh, ultimately you really appreciated the questions that it asked and kind of what the, the situations that it posed for us. But on balance, you're like, yeah, I think under the surface, it's great on top of it. Not a great TV episode. Really? Yeah. interesting. Cause I really feel like it was a good 45 minutes of TV now thinking back to it. Right. But I, I kind of see everything else that I would have said there, like kind of on the surface up here, it's, it's whatever, but I think there's a lot more underneath it. Interesting. That's what I remember out of it. Okay. For me, what else did we say? I freaking love this episode. Of course. Um, my favorite thing was that it explored justice versus vengeance and forgiveness, kind of what I remember it as well. But throughout the episode, I had to keep saying to own my bias, like I am a Catholic and this is where I'm coming from. And in fact, when we got to the end and we did our ratings for things, I had to be like, look, if I was just watching this myself and not doing this for a podcast, this would be X, but I'm going to own my bias. I'm going to be a professional here. And so instead it's going to be Y.

[6:51] So it's a professional here. We get Lita and Kosh in this episode. Lita comes back? Lita comes back. Okay and we uh we have a lot that we thought about this specifically there's a there's a soul like we we felt like it's like he's sucking her soul out of her or whatever like this weird moment and so we had a yeah quite a long discussion around what does that possibly mean my theory was that uh that was the way that vorlon reproduce and that either kosh was going to be a, Vorlon baby daddy sort of a thing or or the mommy we didn't know how it worked you were just really upset that we got Lita and not evil Talia yeah I really wanted evil Talia back man one of your biggest fears as we go into this for the second time viewing is that you're going to make a Stargate reference in our first time viewing that will ruin the show for me now that we're watching it and uh this is one that you made a reference in this one that didn't ruin it for me i was to say you're not sure what i was talking about right and you did such a great job let me see if i got the quote here you said uh i don't want to bring up names or too much detail for future's sake.

[8:09] But, uh, there are these aliens that like assume the role of gods and they feed off the worship of the people that they have, um, you know, they have around them. And so that was your theory around what was happening with Lita and Kosh. Wait, wait, wait, wait, say that one more time. There's these aliens that kind of assume the role of gods and feed off the worship of the people that they're over. Okay. Yeah. You did great. Okay. Cause I said something like, I think I made a comment along the lines. Cause you, you, you, you assume that I'm talking about the ghoul there. Now. Yes. Stargate. Okay.

[8:41] My, uh, my comment during the episode was, oh, so kind of like Zeus and you were like, yeah, Zeus, that's it. That's what it is. So nice job on that. We, uh, we wanted to add our Marcus count, um, or add to our Marcus count and count the number, or I'm sorry, we didn't want to add to it. We wanted to change our Marcus count into the number of times. Franklin was not inappropriate with a patient okay we decided lita in this episode would be patient number one okay let's see we get the scene where uh brother edward is talking to the to delen and lanier about their the minbari faith and you really felt that this was jms kind of working through his personal beliefs i am very excited to get will you please remind me of that when we get to that scene okay Because I would love to, I want to watch it through this lens, especially in light of something that JMS himself personally says. And we'll talk about that in a moment. Go ahead. I hit again that Sinclair was going to become Valen. Dillon kind of shuts Lanier up at one point when he starts talking about Valen. Like, don't do it. And so I went on like, because it's Sinclair? Ixnay on the alien vein. Right. Not here. Not now.

[9:59] You had a pretty profound theory. And it's one that came true. We never celebrated this one, but it's kind of a big deal. You said, your theory is that we will never see Brother Edward again. Hmm.

[10:14] Brent hitting the deep cuts on this one. I was true minus one. Right. I think we get him one more time. Like in episode 17. Yeah, we get brother Theo one more time and the rock cried out. Right. Oh, you said Edward. Yeah, Edward. Oh, yeah. Because it's Brad Dorff or whatever his name is. He never comes back. He did. Yeah. He never comes back once he's gone. No. Unless he's playing a doll. Which was pretty cool the way you pieced that together. I mean, it's just magical. Right. So impressed. We actually talked a lot about, like, what is the point of this episode in the Babylon 5 canon? Like, what are we doing? We already touched on the death of personality stuff before. These are characters that aren't going to be around a lot. Like, we weren't really sure what it was about. And we agreed that the point was to highlight the concept of forgiveness. And we guessed that because that's going to be a common theme throughout the rest of the series. Certainly following Londo storyline.

[11:21] We took a long circuitous route to get there, but yeah. We got super theological in this one. There's a lot of quoting scripture, going into discussion around Catholic traditions, dogma, things like that. But ultimately, I mean, you can go listen to the episode if you want to dive into it. But the, the crux of everything we talked about was, uh, the concept of faith through, or the concept of forgiveness through the Christian faith. And we acknowledged that that's where we're coming from, right? That's where our expertise is. We know, we know it's not ubiquitous. There are other views of it with other faiths. I shared a really, really difficult story, you know, timing. We've talked about timing a couple of times and, uh, we watched this episode, and i had just recently lost a good friend who was murdered yeah and uh that's there when her family forgave the the murderer and uh so i shared shared that story it was very.

[12:29] Apropos to what we watched and the last one i've got is you asked a fantastic question that i think is the question to explore we we brother malcolm right is the guy at the end after the mind wipe The guy who kills Edward and then gets mind wiped. Your question was simply, was the vengeance worth it to him? Like between the time of killing him and being mind wiped, did it make anything better for him? That's what we talked about. You've mentioned it a couple times. I'm excited to hear what you found because you scoured the internet. You read things, probably listened to some things, watched some things, really dug deep, got your magnifying glass out, sleuthing around the internet to find things that Joe Michael Straczynski himself has said about this episode, what did you gather for us? Yeah. So, you know, we know that Joe had a fairly well-respected career prior to starting Babylon five. Yeah.

[13:31] One of those things was a twilight zone. If I remember correctly, he did the new twilight zone prior to doing Babylon five. Is that right? Yep. I believe that's true. Well, he said, this is my twilight zone story for Babylon five. Oh, okay. That's how he described it. That's how he thought of it. It's got some very strong emotional twists as we go along.

[13:55] This was originally supposed to be the fifth episode of the season with Voices of Authority, next week's episode, slated to be the fourth. But visual effects on Voices was too much, so they flip-flopped them, which a big piece of it. I don't know if there is a break between this episode and the next, like a planned break. But he's like, Voices is a Wham episode, he says. So if he wanted to end on the Wham episode, but they just couldn't get it ready in time, so they had to flip-flop them. This episode also almost never happened. I found the story rather interesting. All right. There's two versions of how this goes. I'm going to try to sort of meld the two stories together to make sure I'm getting the details correct. Okay. Okay. There was someone, he does not mention who, who did not consider what he was saying. It was no fault of his own. It just happened. It was not whatever. And he said, in essence, what if somebody in Babylon 5 found out that they had been mind wiped and had been used and used to be something awful in a previous life? What if somebody found that out?

[15:03] Well, I already had passing through Gethsemane on the wire at that time for season two. But I saw him say that, and I had to scuttle the story. because in the writer's world, if anybody says anything even close to what you're talking about, you can't do it. You can't say, here's the script. You have it for free. Just do it. Just go. I understand the legalities of things. I do feel like in our society and their thing, it's just taken too seriously. I also, by the way, feel the same thing about jokes and comedy, and this is speaking to somebody who used to be in comedy. Listen, people have similar ideas all the time. The rule in comedy is whoever gets it to TV first wins. They own it.

[15:48] But people have similar ideas all the time. And just because you're working on something and somebody else mentioned something, that should not mean that you have to scuttle your ideas. I think that's completely asinine. Armageddon, deep impact, right? All those things that happen. Yep. Babylon 5, Deep Space Nine. Whatever. I think that's all just – it's pooping. That's Brent's personal theory, but JMS had to scuttle the story. It laid there untouched for over a year. He was working out for early season two. oh really he was very chagrined over what happened finally he could meet the person, now i don't know if this was a person online or if this was a person on the crew or what finally he got to meet the person and got them to sign a release notarized explaining the situation indicating what had happened he i take it back he does say it was a fan okay it was a fan if that fan had not been fair and reasonable that's and and had not said it's okay to do this like it's not my idea it's his idea like if they hadn't like he had to get a notarized note saying that, uh after a year he said if that had not happened um this episode which many consider to be one of our best which i love that he says that many consider this to be one of our best because i do i i.

[17:10] But there's something that happens between initially watching an episode and then thinking about it. Uh-huh. You know, you think about all the people that yell at us about having an opinion on something. It's like, dude, we're taking a snapshot of this particular moment in time. I myself changed my mind about that same moment in time, and I haven't gone back to it yet. And they've been sitting on it for 20 years. Right. Right. So it's okay. But regardless, many people consider this to be one of our best. If he had not been so reasonable to do that. I would have killed him. They would have never made this episode. Wow. Would have never seen the light of day. Yeah. That's really, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. Somebody asked a question if the other monks are also mind wiped, not just Brother Edward. Oh, wow. Okay. Fair question. That's a good like con question, right? That is a good con question. No, the other brothers are not mind wiped. They're legit with wherever they are. One could ask if any person in a clergy position has been mind wiped.

[18:14] Now, that being said, how do mind wipes work? Not what are the mechanics of how do you make it happen, but what is actually going on like within things happen. What happens with this new personality? Where does it come from? Somebody asked that question. JMS provides his answer. Good question. Would you like to know? I would, yes. there are templates that are used.

[18:37] Some variations in a government monitored situation, which this one was not because they thought he was dead. Right. You know, mind wipes are kept in the people who are mind wiped are kept in servile positions. They are not allowed to achieve because then that would be some sort of a reward. It's not like they get a mind wipe and like, here, go serve your community and go make something. And no, no, no, no. You have you are kept clean up trash on the side of the road. That's what you do. That's what, that's what you do for the rest of your life. That is your punishment just with a changed brain about it. It's like, he says those guys you see long picking up trash on the side of the road, those guys in bright orange, you know, things, those are mind wipes in society. Then mind wipe people are no longer actually considered people. Oh, wow. They're not even considered people at that point. Wow. This is really not much that different. He said, again, this could go back to the, to the message side. Than the way we view prison inmates today. Yeah. Who are given numbers, they have no civil rights, and they're treated like cattle. And he notes many of them deserve it. A few deserve worse, and a few deserve better. And I would go as far as to say even it's how we treat people when they're outside of the prison system.

[19:59] We kind of brand them the rest of their lives as less than a real person. But I thought that was real interesting. you just you don't even consider them to be a person anymore it's like you basically turn them into an npc right like that's one of the things the kids are saying oh you're such an npc but like they really are just like go do that thing maybe give a quest out from here or there but you're not going to do anything cool uh somebody asked if the minbari have more than one religion if they're a mono religion society or not these are good he said nope they're one religion, The warrior cast tends to follow it, but they don't lead it, but they still maintain those beliefs on the name of the episode, Jeff passing through guest enemy. Let's talk about this. Let's have, let's have the theological conversation. Okay. Why this title? We now know what it's about. Yeah. Yeah. Did we talk about it at all in the first run? Why this title? What does it mean? Because Edward literally has his Gethsemane moment of, and we talked about this last week. I think you brought this up where it was, you know, take this, please take this from me. If you're not, that's fine, but please don't make me do this. I'm also totally willing to do this. Yeah. It's the total trial of faith, really. JMS says, Jesus Christ was a person who had to sacrifice himself to atone for the sins of others. Right? That's what they say. Yeah.

[21:25] Edward, specifically brother Edward, not the other guy. Parallels Jesus Christ because he sacrifices himself to atone for the sins of another, in this case, his other, his own other. Charles. There you go. Charles. And that is the idea. The idea, although Jeff, he doesn't say this, but it goes back to what you had said last week that this episode would kind of be about. Wait, was that last week? Did you talk about Jeff last week? Not necessarily being about Jesus, but about the people around watching this happen. Was that you?

[22:13] I don't think it was last week it wasn't me i think we've actually had that conversation before, but not last week maybe so jeff here's the thing you know last week i listened to the episode and i got to the to the thing our discussion of what this episode possibly could be was rather lengthy and and um when i texted you your prediction because you didn't listen to it, I just gave you what you came up with by the end. Okay. I believe I could be wrong. I believe we had this conversation. Somebody had this conversation somewhere. I'm trying to see if I have it down here. Yeah. I think it says somebody had the idea of what if this is not passing through going through the trial that Jesus went through, but what if this was our Babylon five crew walking, watching somebody else? Like if you're literally like you're in the garden of a semi, you're passing by and there's jesus over there doing this thing you're passing through gethsemi while that's happening in many ways this is our babylon five crew watching brother edward go through this thing like that's exactly what this winds up being yeah i think that was what you had mentioned last week it's very possible because i feel like we've talked about that in the past yeah so anyway um.

[23:28] I like that i certainly like that all right one more thing and uh everything else we kind of got to talk about later okay jms gives one caveat to to this episode overall, he says it's been commented and complimented on that he would expose a belief system in his show specifically meaning christianity here right catholicism he would do that in his show of a belief system that he doesn't personally agree with because jms is an avowed atheist right and you and i i think had lots of conversations about that yeah or can you really be an atheist and go through this and write this sort of stuff. Like what's, what's the deal here?

[24:11] He said people commented that he could be this tolerant or the idea that he could be this tolerant is apparently something that is really praiseworthy. JMS says, I would just suggest that at some point, when, and if I should offer a viewpoint from another perspective, one that I may not personally agree with that, that same tolerance be given since the virtue of tolerating divergent attitudes has already been deemed praiseworthy. And this is something ever to try for basically he's like yeah so you're praising me for doing this with this one thing uh in the future when i do it for something different please remember this and just remember you you're praising my tolerance level of this not that i'm getting your particular person, right we talked about that back in divided loyalties because he was like it's funny because people are like you're so great you're so tolerant and then i'd hint at a same-sex relationship and And oh man, they're like, how could you, what's wrong with you? It's like, well, I'm just over here, over here being tolerant that you praised me for. Yeah.

[25:14] All right. So everything else, Jeff, I've got to talk about during the episode. So why don't we go watch an episode? Let's watch it. And that's exactly what's going to happen right now, folks. We're going to bring up the episode. We're going to watch it right here in real time with you. We're going to stop. We're going to talk about things. We might hit message conversations. We may just react to stuff that we see during the episode itself. If you're watching this on YouTube, you're going to see the edited version of that all cut up and everything. If you want to see the full and the unedited version of that, you can head to our Patreon page. It's patreon.com slash bad nerds. And if you're listening to us on an audio app of some sort, maybe you're just listening to the YouTube version. Maybe you're on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Maybe you're on Audible, Good Pods. What else are we on? Podbean. Castbox, all the things. Castbox, all those things. Podcast addicts. You're listening to us. We don't want to leave you guys left out. So you guys are also going to get that conversation that happens mid show and you'll get the post conversation that happens after because we're not going to necessarily rehash everything we talk about in the middle of the show. So stick around with us. Make sure you guys listen to all of that. You might even hear some of the episode being played. So Jeff, let's go watch an episode. Let's go.

[26:28] Accessing file. It's very karate kid sounding. It's a great shot, though. It's been through much worse. I think he's doomed. Got a chance. Care to put money on that? Cameling is one of the lesser sins. I've always thought that if you're going to sin, you may as well go for one of the really big ones. Dude, Edwards. Don't mind. Flirting hardcore right there. I'm trying to concentrate. Sorry. Concentrate all you want. There's nowhere you can go. Two guys playing chess in the park. I'd expect a comment like that from someone with no clearly defined pattern of faith. I believe in a little of everything. Check. And I do believe... Mate? Mate. . Ivanova, go. Ambassador Kaush is about to come out of hyperspace. He wants you to meet him in Bay 13. You want to tell me where you learned that little move? Divine inspiration.

[27:19] Oh, and speaking of divine inspiration... That's a great gift. Edward. Right. Edward, show the captain what you show me. Right. Paul's so right. There's no nukes in chess. He doesn't get it. This is beautiful. I keep telling him he should sell them. Work of this quality could fetch quite a price. The joy is first in the making and then in the giving. I'm doubly blessed. It's some fun conversation in the chat there. Stuart's like, he doesn't know how to write chest, write chest. He doesn't know how to write chess, which is why you actually never see the board. It's just like, we're playing chess. And I said a chess word check. So there you go. You know, it's interesting. What strikes me here, knowing that people who are mind wipes are considered not to be people at all. Look at how brother Theo is teaching is treating Edward like he's an equal, like he is a person. He still sees a person there he sees somebody new sheridan doesn't know any different yeah which this really has to throw shade doubt everything on this idea that those people aren't even people anymore you know yeah you keep this up as a society something's gonna happen then people gonna revolt or something yeah do you really like it oh absolutely well then when i finished it it's yours if you'll have it i'd be honored thank you cool i'll be 50 credits force it on him right he's like yeah if you'll have it.

[28:42] You and i know that's cost of shit yeah we know that now yeah there is no way on a first watch that i would have known that's why you would, Yeah, we like spent time with it last season. Still would not have known that that was caught with children. Stuart makes the point that Brother Theo doesn't really know Brother Edward's background. He's just treating him like he would treat anyone else. Is that true though? I don't know that that's true. I think it is. I think. I feel like Theo knows exactly who he is. You should be informed. Informed of what? Returning.

[29:18] Okay that is so weird what are they doing with her just so i read like i actually read about this uh in this scene they put her on a dolly and she had to get down on her knees and they had to do the take so many times because when it would get to the end of the track she'd fall over, so it took them forever to film this yeah she's sitting on a dolly it's just like making her look like she's kind of floating there wow ever since i made contact with ambassador kosh I've been called there. Did she just look so intense? Did they? Not at first. We held position for three days, beaming a signal into their territory. I gave him the last of my money in exchange for the life pot. He left me there with five days of air, food, and water. The next thing I remember, I was on the Vorlon homeworld. Well, come on. Tell us about it. I can't. I wish I could, but I'm not allowed to talk about most of what I saw. The rest, you wouldn't believe anyway. Ambassador Karsh says you'll be working for him from now on. Is this a condition for being released? It's entirely my decision. I'll be based here, but I'll be gone much of the time. You do realize that sooner or later the psychor is going to find out that you've come back. When that happens, they'll come after you. If you're on your own, we may not be able to protect you. I have a Vorlon. I think I'm going to be okay. You will.

[30:34] I have a donk. Well, either way, you've been through a lot. Now, you seem fine, but I'd like Dr. Franklin to do a full workup, just to be sure. Unless you have an objection. No, not at all. I'll stop by as soon as I've settled. Great, my HMO doesn't actually have coverage on the Vorlon homeworld, so. Now there's an interesting good luck charm. Oh, this is where it all starts going south. That's not mine. Mm-hmm. It fell from your bag. I don't remember putting it there. I think I would have remembered a black rose. Then it appears you have a secret admirer. Good seeing you, Brother Edward. Or the exact opposite. I kind of want to pay attention and see if we see that Malcolm dude slip by at any point. Interplanetary expeditions.

[31:12] To sponsor this segment of interstellar network news okay here's what's really cool first time around you throw ipx out there whatever whatever have we heard of them before yeah probably could i have pointed that out to you or would i know anything no absolutely not knowing that they're as big as that you know where we really know them from is crusade yeah like we really got to know them in crusade uh seeing that here is kind of cool you know like just in universe it's it's what it is. It's got three names, so it's probably an assassination. After which time, the 12-person jury found Lester James Monroe guilty of the seven murders committed during a 10-day killing spree in New Vegas. The mind wipe will take place Monday at midnight. Jeff, pay attention to Garibaldi's words and Dylan's reaction here. Okay. After which he will spend the rest of his life serving the community that he harmed. You know, guys like this make me long for the days of the electric chair.

[32:07] Hell, sometimes I think we need electric bleachers. What exactly is this? death of personality. By erasing all his memories, you destroy the personality that committed the murders. You then build a new personality and send him someplace where he won't run into the family of his victims. And after that, he spends the rest of his life doing community service, helping society. They say it's more humane and keeps the prisons from getting overcrowded. But you don't agree. Oh, I'm an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth kind of guy, Ambassador. So you support a system that would leave everyone blind and toothless. Right. Thank you, Gandhi.

[32:40] The bad guys so on that jms says you know things were always very heated political discussions at the lunch tables around the set when things got especially hot you could almost always bet jerry doyle was right there in the middle of it one day when talk turned to the death penalty jerry said that he was not only in favor of the electric chair but that he was all for electric bleachers no waiting that way he said okay i always make it a point to listen to the cast and graft some of their real life experiences onto their characters so his position ended up coming out of garibaldi's mouth in this episode okay literally what he just said yeah and dylan's reaction to that line is pretty much the way that mira reacted when she heard this in the first place it's like what so what would you do you just have a world that's eyeless blind and toothless yeah sure that makes sense. Please.

[33:35] By the way, doesn't make sense. Well, but again, that goes into a lot of the ideas of forgiveness, redemption, justification. There are some places where that need not happen. There are other places where that very much must happen. What makes me think about the idea of like, so let's just say they killed that Luther Monroe guy or whatever. Just kill them. Mm hmm.

[34:00] What does that do? It takes them off the board, right? Like he's not going to kill more people. But what does that do? He's left, what did he say, 10 people in seven days or seven people in 10 days? He's left that many holes and the ripples from those holes in society. And him facing the death penalty doesn't do anything to remedy or fix those holes, those wounds. What this does, and it's the whole thing, you're going to go back and serve the community. You're never going to make up for what happened, but you can try to at least repair, provide some repair for what happens. The world, the community may be an improved place because this person is being asked to restore some of what they destroyed as opposed to just wiping them off the board. The whole making them not people thing aside. It's a cool concept. No, not this. I was standing right here. Maybe you're in another room. Death walks among you. I know what I saw. You say it was there? It was there. Get you into another quarters for tonight. And my people go over this place tomorrow and see what they can find. I'm sorry, Jeff. Paul over in our chat says, I love the hand acting. Yeah, he's very. This is not going to help our audience, our audio audience. So I apologize, audio audience. But for our video folks, let's watch this again and pay particular attention to Brad Dourif's hands in this scene. And if others are brought into this whole thing. Understood.

[35:26] Big pointing that's almost Sheridan level pointing his hands are open and wide I'm going to try to do this for audio the hands are very expressive and they're just staying out there the fingers are tight together with the thumbs out.

[35:46] His hands are in this V position 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 over this place tomorrow and see what they can find. Nine. Is that okay? Ten. Eleven. Eleven seconds before he moved his hands. They were just hanging in air. You got to wonder what the direction was. Well, that's an old, unless you have an emotional reason to move, don't move. So he said his line and he's there and he has no reason to move. So he's frozen. Just hold it. I'll just hold it. That's dude. That, that takes Harrison Ford's pointing thing and Nance that up a notch. Now I have to go back and watch Brad Dorff and everything and see if the hand thing is like, is it a Brad Dorff thing or was it that particular thing? Yeah. So, hey, by the way, I'm sure we talked about it in our first watch. You know the director for this episode? Yeah, Adam Nimoy, right? Yeah. Yeah, we talked about that.

[36:43] JMS gushed over the job Adam Nimoy did with this episode. Really? And he talked about how he really, like, he studied the script. He took time to understand it. He broke it down. Like, he really dove into this script. And I got to tell you, I really wonder if a part of why this episode rings out so much is because of the work that Adam Nimoy did. Listen, give all the actors their flowers. Yeah. But because of this director and what he did, I really wonder how much that actually made a difference. Well, and Mitzi in the chat, he also directs Zaha Doom, which was an incredible episode. Does he really? I don't remember that. That's cool. A non-localized phenomenon. I'm not sure I understand what that means. Was this the scene of light at the wall? Was this the scene that we were talking about? Like JMS kind of working through his own. Yep. Is also a projection. It does not exist inside us any more than the light exists inside the wall. But this shell is the only way we can perceive it. We believe that. So then where is this projection being projected from? That's what Dylan's answering right now.

[37:52] I'm tracking the conversation, honestly, for my own sake, but also for... Universe itself is conscious in a way we can never truly understand it is engaged in a search for meaning so it breaks itself apart investing its own consciousness in every form of life we are the universe trying to understand itself so the universe is a being out there trying to understand itself we're never going to understand it we're these little peons right the universe is projected breaks itself apart projecting various pieces of itself upon all these individuals us as individuals trying to figure itself out yep and that's what the soul that's what we think of the soul is but when the soul hunters come and steal a piece it robs from the greater whole which is how can they but you can't steal a projection there's nothing to steal it's just photons at that point well i don't even know if it's that i think i think but there are new photons behind that one them being projections it's us being projections is their belief right that doesn't necessarily mean it's true uh-huh and so maybe there's more to it than a projection.

[39:02] May i ask you a question now of course for you personally what is the defining moment of your belief the history the doctrines the emotional core of it it's a great question i thought you were going to talk more about the universe stuff i think so in in christianity i think we have a similar belief that I think it's in John, but it's the body of Christ. Like we are all the body of Christ, right? And that idea that you may be the foot and I might be the toe and you might be the this, and we're all just a piece of thing to be able to do his work. I would say that was 100% a metaphor, but I understand other things may take that a little more literal than I or my sect would. Yeah. But that was more just a metaphor explaining our roles in our jobs. Yeah. Uh, but this feels like a blown up version of that.

[39:59] If that was a literal thing or if that is to be properly interpreted as a literal thing, this could come from that. I could see that. And they don't necessarily have Christ. So it's the universe. Right, right, right. I've given this idea of being pieces of the universe, trying to figure stuff out. I've given this a lot of thought since watching this the first time. And I think there's a lot to it that starts to make sense when we talk a lot about the importance of learning history is so we don't repeat it, right? What do we do all the time? Repeat history. Yeah. Repeat our failures. All the time. All the time. At a macro level, at a personal level. And so I feel like it might be one of those things where the universe is trying to figure things out. And so like it gives this thing a go. Hey, maybe when I do this, this thing, oh, shoot. No, that did not go well at all. All right, well, let's take some of the stuff we learned and try it again. And then it's like, oh, shoot, that actually turned out so much worse as it kind of keeps going through. And maybe with the Minbari belief, we get to a point where it's like, hey, I'm going to try this thing. There it is. Nailed it. Mission accomplished. Yeah. I always say, when you go out and you try something, you fail. You didn't fail. You just learned how not to do that. Yeah, exactly. I just found out a way to not actually make that happen that I wanted to have happen. And all the different ways that you try it, you, that's all you're learning is how to make it not, it doesn't work this way.

[41:23] Which comes in handy when you need to do it again because you can say, hey, all those ways over there, that's not going to work. Right. Let's do it this other way. Let's do it this way that it is going to work. Or is more likely or might possibly or whatever.

[41:34] The other thing that I love about the idea of us all being part of a greater whole, like real pieces of it, is that now if I do something to help you, I'm actually helping myself. I know some people that would very much decry that because then that becomes a more selfish motivation. Right. But I don't see that as selfish at all. it's just what happens what's how we like it's an added benefit like a bonus right like oh cool but also somebody else but it also helps me and that's cool well the flip side of that is if i help myself i'm helping you yeah right like it's all one thing the other side to that though is if you are hurting i am hurting if you're feeling good i'm feeling good right and so this kind of takes what we talk about a lot those people right you know like oh those people that don't have homes oh my gosh they're so whatever what no they're you right the pain that they're feeling you are also feeling and experiencing i have i have another pet sci-fi theory yeah i might have shared this with you once before we know there's a thing out there called the multiverse does it exist i don't know maybe sure we also know that there's this stuff out there called dark matter it's stuff that puts off gravity in the universe that we cannot detect we have no idea where it's coming from. We just know that it's there because of gravity that we can't explain otherwise. Okay. What if religion, what if what we think of as religion? Oh, by the way, we also know that the two interact. They can interact. The multiverses can interact.

[43:00] Yeah, okay. What if what we think of as religion of the spiritual, the whatever, is actually the beings from another multiverse, from another universe trying to interact? But it's why we can't necessarily directly interact, but we can feel the presence. We can feel the interactions. But what it is is it's this – a grander universe that is somehow broken into – into a multiverse and what we are is we're really this multiverse trying to get ourselves back together like we're trying to reach out to each other and and understand each other and get each other back together yeah those moments you feel it's like you're both close to each other out of phase you know or whatever but dude that just takes this occupying the same space at the same i mean also the ideas of ghosts and and you know anything that's that's spiritual anything that's that's that's metaphysical almost like uh supernatural what if what if that's actually it's it's a multi-plan a multi-universe alien so to speak again that's i'm not i'm not spouting this as religion i'm just saying this is my sci-fi like what if you know it's fun to think though because i just watched uh the hbo series welcome to dairy the it the it uh prequel thing and like that theory makes it's almost like hey we took this evil being from this other universe.

[44:24] And to save this universe we put them here in yours kind of thing and so then you get the stuff and whatever and that's a good theory it's fun it's fun to think about right like it's it's that's that's where we're trying and i think it would explain a lot honestly would right there's a character in there who can see the dead right he's like a much older hailey joel osmond but yeah yeah why not like when you die maybe just go to one of these other universes so why not sometimes you go through. You know? There you go. On the night before our Lord was crucified, he spent the night alone in the Garden of Gethsemane. And he knew that they were going to come for him. And in a moment of weakness, he asked if this, pass from him if he could be spared i love that he says that's in a moment of weakness really i've never considered that a moment of weakness me either i think of it as a moment of humanity.

[45:14] But he did not have to be there when they arrived he could have chosen to leave to postpone the inevitable for a few hours or even days he knew what would happen but he chose to stay to sacrifice himself, and thus atone for the sins of others. It's a very fragile human moment, and I've often thought about that night, and I honestly don't know if I would have had the courage to, I love that so much. Bro, guess what you're going to get to do here in a little bit. Well, I mean, that's good writing. Yeah. Let me tell you exactly what this episode's about. You don't have to question it. Perhaps we could continue our discussion in a few days. I would very much like to hear about Valen sometime. I would like that. As would I. Valen was the greatest of us. A thousand years ago, he came from nowhere and formed the Great Council and brought peace to our people. They say he was a Minbari, not born of Minbari. according to the another right there Dylan's like whoa you're going too far that's what we needed like that's the thing Mimbari not born in Mimbari again like I feel like that's the first time I've heard that is it not it might be goodnight yeah they're just feeding us along do you see what brother Edward did yeah he did the thing he did the thing like with the hands and all of that.

[46:34] Interesting it's the thing I like about a lot of the orders of Catholicism I've postulated that these folks are all Jesuits and that's a thing with Jesuits they're very.

[46:46] Ecumenical, right? The crossing of things. And some of my favorite Catholic teachers out there are mystics I've talked about before, but there's one of my absolute favorite, Father Richard Rohr. In an interview, he said this thing once. He's like, if I was born in India, well, they asked him, hey, are you like a priest? Do you believe, do this? He's like, oh yeah, I believe deeply, you know, and that Jesus came, he died for us. I believe all of those things very deeply. But if I was born in India, I'd be a Hindu. And I would believe those things very deeply. And they kind of see where the connective tissue of belief at a higher level than just, oh, this is the thing that we got from our geography. Right. So him doing that thing with a Minbari makes, it's totally on brand for a Jesuit. He's feeling good about his conversation. And now stuff's about to go not great. Sorry. It's all right. Hello? Hello? Again, the hand acting. Hello? He's just spreading his arms all the way. I can't unsee it now, right? Uh-oh.

[47:56] Hey, Charlie. You killed her. I love that his name is Charlie. Chucky. So he just did something that broke the mind wipe. Right? That Minbari that was in the elevator with him, or not Minbari, Centauri, that Centauri that was in the elevator with him was a telepath and broke his mind wipe. That's why he's getting this flood of stuff in his head now, right? I think that's it. Yeah, and it's kind of trying to pull some of it out. They're actively pulling it out, or this is just everything that's been submerged in his subconscious coming forward? I don't remember. I don't remember. Now, is that one of his victims and he's seeing like an apparition, or is this a real new victim? It's one of his i think it's a past thing i don't think it's a new one, so um in a in a moment we're gonna see something and it's gonna reference back to something that just happened in the middle of this uh conversation okay um so he's he's in this elevator with this uh centauri guy right yeah uh edward has this bag on his shoulder yeah that It ends up dropping. And we'll notice the Centauri's already gone. Right? Which is why I don't think this is a Centauri trying to pull this stuff out. I think this is flooding through.

[49:13] And what we see is here he has dropped his bag and left it behind this is going to come back later okay yeah just remember this nia is pointing out that they're actually playing some of this over the loudspeaker in this area as well that they'll mention that later they created a lot of theater when garibaldi and lita violate the mind of the centaur you know what it is it's it's It's the Technomages. They're making it happen. It's magic. It's magic. Technomagic.

[49:42] I lost the bag, the one you gave me. I'm sorry. A bag can be replaced. Right now, I'm more concerned with you. Have you spoken to anyone else? Again, giving humanity to somebody who doesn't have humanity. But I don't think you can help me. I'm having memories. I still think Edward knows who he is.

[49:57] There's an interesting shot set up here that I think I'm reading into too much. But this is the angle of theo over edward this gives me real confessional vibes does it like theo's the the priest the you know the confessor and there's and that the little like the grading behind it like that's usually between the two of them like if they just blocked that a little bit differently it would have been there but well and their their clothing the way it's lit is black effectively now we know it's not really black but it is also i mean just the lighting like brother Theo looks like a boss right now yes uh-huh you know question in a confessional is the priest usually seated a little higher than the person who's in the other side of the booth with him not necessarily no there's there's no real they're not sitting on pillows or anything over there it might be it depends you know there's not a confessional has to be this thing we're not elevating the priest no but I think there's there's like there's a power differential there right you know i mean most people kind of at least have that feeling of like looking up you know at a thing and do they i would imagine i know as a kid i sure felt that way i never did or well you were also thought i never did i don't know where they're coming from or what they mean perhaps it's best to leave them alone that's terrible advice by the way to just leave it alone nothing.

[51:15] Like it is deeply troubling him. Just shove it down. Do you want me to stay with you a while? No, no, it's all right, I'm fine. One of my monks is having bad dreams. Here's where we find out that he knows, I'm guessing. He has my sympathies, but I don't see what I can do. He believes there are memories he cannot account for. For eight years, Brother Edward has been the best of us. I would hate for him to discover that at some earlier time in his life, he was something very different. I told you he knew who he was. I can't believe it. Not him. Neither can I. I do not have the resources to find out. I think he doesn't know, but he's piecing it together. do if i know edward he certainly started digging into this on his own i need you to get there first dude i just love how much he cares you know like i i will amend what i said and i'll go with you yeah he knows something he thinks he suspects something is up but he's not sure what i'll go with you on that okay he's peace i lost my bag somewhere around here and his whole inclination is to help right he's like there's something bad happened i want to take care of him and voices.

[52:25] I love that brother Theo is like something bad happened to him or he did something bad and it's not relevant to me. I just want to make sure I can take care of him. Well I need to know about it or we need to help him work through it before he discovers something about himself and it ruins everything that he is. It hurts him. Yeah. Because he is a person to me. He's a person to me. Now I want to know how this mind wipe isn't just picking up trash on the side of the road. how did he get to go join an order? Yeah. Uh huh. Cause the template made the template just didn't. Doesn't make sense there work. It didn't, it didn't hold on in this particular case or something of that nature. If they have a monk template, like they're going to get treated like people. Although I will say, you know, Theo tells him, he's like, Hey, you should take these little things and start selling them and we can make money. He's like, no, I can't do that. I can't do that. Why? Because he can't make money. He can't be rewarded for his service and his work. Like that still rings true. That's both mind wipey and Franciscan.

[53:25] I lost my bag somewhere around here. There was a Centauri. Perhaps he saw it. So the bag thing comes up again. There is a question if the Centauri stole the bag to which JMS went, dude, were you even watching the episode? It was plain as day in front of you. The Centauri was already long gone by the time he left his bag on the floor. He just dropped it. So no, the Centauri didn't steal it from him. Okay. JMS didn't actually say those words. I may have interpolated on top of them. It makes sense, though. Forgive me. I still have some trauma I'm working through. At 12.05 tonight, the death of personality was carried out against Charles Dexter, also known as the Black Rose Killer, for the ritualistic mark left beside each of his victims. Nine people were murdered by Dexter before he was found, arrested, and convicted. Following the mind wipe, Dexter will be transported out of the Orion system and put to work serving the society harmed by his actions. God, could you imagine that? Just seeing yourself and having no memory of it?

[54:32] What happened? So this is independent of what Edwards just said. After they erased his memory, they transferred him to an interim facility back home. So we'll just piece this together. He was mind wiped. He was templated. But a fire breaks out. They presume he's dead, so they stop looking for him. But he still has this desire to serve, and he winds up at a monastery. Yeah. Because where else is he going to go? Because he's outside of what his programming and the controls are that are on him. Fair enough. Yeah. I can't go back, Theo. Paul calls this out, and the chap, I see it there, too. Now it is the confessional. You got the bars between them. Edward is up higher than Theo, kind of looking down. Yep. Things have changed.

[55:14] They say it's humane, merciful. His eyes just turned black. Discover you're a monster, a murderer. Listen to me, Edward. We can work this out. No, it's too late. What if I had died, Theo, never knowing what I had been? How can I confess my sins to God if I don't even know what they are? The blood of innocent people is still on my hands. Is it, though? That's dogmatically incorrect. Are the creation of somebody else. And my soul is the soul of a killer. And everything that I have done has been a lie. That's not true, Edward. Yes, listen. You have helped, cared for people. It's very real. It's not enough. That's what you say. Who knows what other crimes I may have committed that they never found out about. That I don't remember. I am a murderer, Theo. You know, this is an interesting thing. Because in particularly in Christianity, Catholicism on some level, Jeff, I would imagine you can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but it goes to here. There is a difference between being forgiven for your sins, your individual sins, the time you lied and the time you did this and the time you lusted and the time you did this. And you got to I mean, you better keep really good account. Right. Yeah. And being forgiven of your sin.

[56:39] Your sin nature yeah all of this your your capacity for sin of sin it's kind of like the one like it's like the umbrella that covers them all because it's not just the individual sins as much as your sin as a whole your nature of who this is and that that is then forgiven and he is going off though what about all these other things that i haven't even accounted for yet because he's accounting sin by sin and brother theo is.

[57:08] And looking at it on the bigger umbrella side of it, you know. When the second Vatican – before the second Vatican Council, so like the 60s and 1960s and back, that was really the expectation in Catholicism that you would show up to confession and be like, I lied 418 times. I did this 13 times. like, but they, the little like safety valve they had was at the end of that, you would say for these and for all of the sins I have committed that I remember or not, I am truly sorry. After the second Vatican council, and it's really evolved in the last 60 years, that has changed to where it's like, no, like exactly what you said, we are sinners by nature. And so when you go to confession, which by the way, misconception, not required in Catholicism, not required. It's offered, um, because we've been forgiven. It's done. It's already done, but it's there. So you can go and you'd be like, Hey, like I've really been struggling with this thing or, you know, like whatever.

[58:12] And the two things that really happened when a priest does a good job is they validate what you're feeling and then talk about how, like, Hey, here's what this means and looks like through the eyes of the church and here are ways you can whatever and do but it's almost like a mini counseling session more than it's a mea culpa mea culpa go do 14 Hail Marys and you're all good like you may still end up doing 14 Hail Marys or whatever just the tradition of it all but the best the best confession I ever had was after I'd been away from the church for about 17 years and the first one I came back to and I told the priest this that and the other and what he had me do was I'd felt I had really hurt two very specific people.

[58:52] And that were no longer a part of my life and he says i want you to write a letter to them whether you send it or not is up to you but you write a letter as if you're going and it was it was incredible like it forced me to kind of work through a lot of this stuff he didn't make me make me to go do hail marys or our fathers or any of that stuff that's in the trophy stuff some of them still do but that was a great it was a great confession i felt better afterwards although i'd already been forgiven i actually felt that there's a piece of me that has long had a desire to walk into a catholic church and go through the confessional thing one out of sheer curiosity for what it's like there's there's other reasons why i think but it also just feels like weird to me like i'm not catholic so i don't know that i should or that i could or what like hey i'm just here trying to check out what this whole thing is about like i don't want to be like that either but i i do feel like there there could be some really beneficial pieces to that almost as a counseling way that you mentioned you know uh to just to just go and i'm pretty sure they wouldn't just like kick me out and be like, no, you'll kind of come out here.

[59:54] I'm pretty sure they'd be like, yes, come in. This is what we're for. I'd say 99 out of 100 priests would be like, yeah, let's do this. Let's talk about it. Let's do the whole thing. There's always the one, right? Yeah. Oh, you have to go through our RCA process and blah, blah, blah. No, no, no. It's available to everyone. Yeah. Especially because you've been baptized. Like you're a baptized Christian. So it's like, yeah, you should know this. Come in here and we should be able to, we should tell you this stuff. Interesting. I got dunked though, not sprinkled. It doesn't matter. Okay. Catholic Church recognizes all other Christian baptisms. As long as you're baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, they recognize it. Dang it, it was the Holy Ghost. It was the ghost for me, actually. There must be justice. If you ask God to forgive your sins, he knows what they are, even if you've forgotten. Yeah. Leave it in his hands.

[1:00:46] Goodbye. There's a great verse. I'm sorry. I hate that. No, it's great. This is good. There's a great verse. I want to say it's in Romans that talks about how it's okay if you don't know what to pray. The Holy Spirit knows what to pray for you. Yeah. Like you can just be like, hey, I don't even know what to say here. I feel like I should. I feel like my heart's in this spot. But I don't even know what to – I can't verbalize it. Do it for me. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, done. Here's my feelings. Yeah. Yeah, but it's this – hey, listen, for all these – I don't even know. I don't even – I don't have the capacity to know, but you do. So here you go. Yeah. I'm just – and that is in many ways ultimate faith. Right. I don't even know what this is, so I'm just going to depend on you to do it. I don't even know what the heck you're doing. Giving it to you.

[1:01:36] It makes me think in terms of justice too, like where's the real value, right? Is the value in going through sin by sin, crime by crime, or is it saying, Hey, look, I messed up and I want to do better. Like which of those two things is better for everyone? You know, but as a society, we still have that drive to, you have to pay and you have to do this. And it's really unfortunate. Yeah, I mean, that's where I go back to. It's more your sin. Hey, I am a sinner.

[1:02:04] I sin. This is what I do. Yeah. And I can't reconcile it on my own. That's my confession. I can't do this on my own. I can't reconcile because there's all these. I don't even know what all I do. This is just my thing. I can't not do it. It's so much. And it needs to be reconciled from someone else on my behalf. And there you go. Yeah. What Edward's doing here is a thing. We just keep talking. But I think what's so great about it, because we can sit here and be like, like, no, you're wrong. Theo's like, you're not, we can sit back here and do it. But I think what he's experiencing is what so many lapsed Christians and people who've lapsed in their faith experience where they're like, hey, I feel, I want to go back. I want to rejoin my community. I want to go back to my church. But I mean, I've done awful stuff. God would never want me back. The stuff I've done, like, oh my gosh, I'm not forgivable. It's the thing you hear a lot with people coming back and it's like, well, guess what? You've actually already been forgiven. Like, it's good. It's good. But I just appreciate here Edward's desire to balance the scales. I did bad. I need to make it better. But it's unfortunate he's in that place of that means punishment. Hey, there you go. Now, he forgot to turn off his comp pad after talking to Delenn. It's a good thing, too. It recorded voices in the hallway, voices Edward thought were just in his head. So I had my people check the area. Somebody tapped into the PA system and used it to rattle him. We also found traces of a chemical on the wall of his quarters that would look like blood for a few minutes and disappear.

[1:03:31] Someone's here someone wants him to remember that's not enough shake a mind wipe like this you need more you'd need telepath yeah what are they gonna get out of it yeah they thought they didn't get when he was mind wiped instead of executed revenge revenge not justice revenge.

[1:03:48] There's a big difference here he is in the garden we watched convictions a couple weeks ago the note from jms speaks was this is dark this is gritty yeah that's nothing compared to this episode right this is a dark and gritty episode yeah yeah oh he's about to get them kicked out i knew you would come we came all right it took us nine years to find you but we finally ran you to ground look around you know who we are i think so you're the sons and daughters and husbands, of the women I murdered. You escaped justice before. You didn't pay for what you did. That's going to change. We wanted you to know what you had done. We wanted you to remember it all so that you'd know why we did it. So that it'd be fresh in your mind when you got to hell. Now that we're here, they don't have the guts to do what is necessary. So powerful.

[1:04:47] I'm sorry. No, go ahead. I was going to say, so powerful. I don't know if I'd have the courage to do that if I were in. Here he is. Doesn't even hesitate. All right, let's go. Well, on the other side, he says, we've been hunting you down for nine years. We've gone through all this. We've done all this. And now that the moment's here, they don't have the guts to do this, but I do. Wait a minute. Maybe it's not guts. Maybe it's just a thing called humanity. Maybe it's a thing called compassion. Maybe it's a thing called redemption, not even forgiveness. I'm not going to say you're going to forgive the guy, but we've said it before. We'll say, I think we even said it last week. Like bitterness, it's like drinking a poison, hoping that the other person dies. Yeah. Right. It's like drinking a poison yourself, hoping that somebody else dies. That's what bitterness does. Their bitterness isn't there the way it is with him. Anger. Sure. Does it absolve him? Does it make everything okay? Absolutely not. But to take life for life, eye for eye, to go back to the lens words, what we're just going to be toothless and blind because this is the way we are, you know, but Garibaldi has another viewpoint. So why wait? Just take them all out. Why are we waiting? Why are we hanging out? I'd like to see it done this way.

[1:05:58] There's value to that as well. There is, for sure. But it goes to a thing we talk about a lot, and I actually just talked about the other day in a very specific situation, but dehumanization, right? When you put a label on a group of people, it's easy to hate them. That's all it does when you put a label on. It makes it easier to hate. It's super hard to hate Edward. And so for nine years they've had this idea of who this black rose killer is yeah and then the second they're faced with brother edward everything changed for them and i think that's the power of human humanizing someone yeah who hired you sorry that information is confidential look we're running out of time and you're gonna tell me who they are the centauri i'm gonna label them all the centauri really are just a... What are you going to do? Punch him. Torture it out of me? Not likely. You have no jurisdiction over Centauri telepath, so you can't arrest me. I wouldn't mind punching this guy in the face, but I also wouldn't mind just kicking him in the balls. All six of them. Yeah. Where were they? We have a little surprise for you. Kick him in the tentacles.

[1:07:08] Do it. Dude, it's pretty nuts how complicit Sheridan is in this. Let it go. Let it go or i'll fry every synapse you've got okay here's the thing you know what's great about this and thank god thank god for pat tallman coming back she can sit there she can do the thing with the eyes and she can talk to him we know exactly what's happening right now, she doesn't have to sit there and go pain right not till later she does that later but only because it was established that that's how it's done she doesn't have to do that she You can just be like, just do this and we can see the person. And we know exactly what's happening. Brown 42. They're in Brown 42.

[1:07:52] Why would the Centauri know that? Hire him to break the mind wipe. Don't tell him anything else. Also, because soon to be Malcolm is probably an idiot. Let's go over there. Let's split up. Let's search by quarters. Man, we'll take him to Brown 42, Shane. Then we're going to beat him up. In here. Someone help. In here. Metal alert, Brown 42. We need a trauma team stat. Take note of how long it takes for the med team to arrive. Okay. I knew what was going to happen. I didn't wait for them to come, so forgive them for doing what had to be done. Forgive them for they know not what they do. I always wanted to know if I would have the courage to stay at the Garden of Gethsemane. Now I know, Theo. Captain. Dude, Zach got there before the med team. We caught him trying to sneak out of back ways. Got blown on his hands and shirt. You did this? Yeah. I don't deny it. He had it coming after all these years and murdering. Son of a man. Thank God they didn't have this guy throughout the rest of the episode. Move it. Right. Captain, calm down. Calm down. They cast him for his looks.

[1:08:56] Wow. Just swinging hook. Right. Go at him, Nimoy. That's a director's choice right there. listen to uplifting music underneath is there enough forgiveness for what i've done always take my hand i just want to point out you know there was a point i remember in the first watch where i declared blondo irredeemable and later he was redeemed and i said then that even when i said that there is never a too late if he ain't dead you ain't done right i just want to echo theo's words here there's always always enough forgiveness by the authority which the apostolic see has given me I grant you a full pardon and remission of all your sins in the name of the Father, of the son of the holy spirit jeff is that familiar to you at all it is it's very similar to um what used to be called last rites it's basically the absolution of all sins before you die they now do more of a blessing of the sick but it might also be called extreme unction from jms.

[1:09:53] The absolution scene based on what used to be called the rites of extreme unction or last rites is now called celebration of passing i went to the catholic church's information office and got the actual text i made a few small adjustments here and there condensing it a bit on the logic that edward didn't have a lot of time and modified a few small points here and there basically on the logic that you know over the next couple of hundred years some things could change you know but what he just did there like that's not him just like googling it or whatever like he actually went to the office and pulled the real text and then you know twinkled with it just a little bit but that's actually what it is like he actually had to go get it yeah you know that's great it's great welcome back that was a short trip ambassadors errands aren't you oh well okay so we've never really seen the med team get there they never showed up okay so on the question of why did it take so long for the med team to get to edward or ever well brown 42 is in a pretty distant part of down below you don't have trains or cars down below it's just transport tubes the central core shuttle and besides even if they gave a damn about what happens down there they generally don't it'd still take at least five to ten minutes to get a trauma team down there and edward was dead within about three jms points out and we know this from his own autobiography i was once mugged a half mile from a police station a mile from a hospital took him 30 minutes to get me to the hospital yeah.

[1:11:22] Where does revenge end and justice begin? Yeah. Forgiveness is a hard thing, isn't it, Theo? I don't think anything can ever be more difficult. Keep this in a place of honor. Right next to his socks in his bathroom. Brother Theo, I'm ready to go now. Good. I'll walk you to your ship. This is Brother Malcolm. He has just joined the order under most unusual circumstances. I asked for him specifically when I heard he wanted to serve others. You must excuse the captain, Malcolm. I believe you are saying that forgiveness is a hard thing, but something ever to strive for. He's rubbing his nose in it. Will you not, Captain? I don't think he's rubbing his nose in it at all. I think he's teaching. Oh, yeah. He so was. His form of teaching is very much. Good luck to you. It's whatever works. I'm sure it will. Thank you, sir. I remember the first time Jeff being very impressed and taken aback at Sheridan's response here. Because you see his like i'm gonna kill this guy and you see him have to make a decision to forget whatever his other character's name was and shake his hand as brother malcolm.

[1:12:34] Where does revenge end and justice begin right here sheridan right there that's where it happens in your heart he made a decision yeah wow kosh headpiece just chilling not like raised up on the mechanical thing and just set off to the side. Yeah mitzi brings up a good point that whole scene only works because of bruce box lighteners, acting yeah dude she's got the gills on the neck uh-huh she's got the gills in the neck i saw them the gills we know are so she can breathe his atmosphere the atmosphere yeah but i still don't get this thing well i think i i actually i think i know what that is council chambers back me up if i'm right or wrong um kosh like goes into her body and is like walking around as her this is him coming out of her body that's where the goth look come when he's in her she's kind of got the because a little it's very much a little bit like and there's a little bit of of kosh left in him, much like there'll be a little bit of kosh left in sheridan later right or in her in her brent that is it passing. We just passed through Gethsemane, uh, for the second time. We talked about a lot during the watch itself. Um, is there anything that popped out you want to cover here now that we're on the other side, man? I gotta tell you, I still don't know that, um, this is a monumental episode in the overall story of Babylon five.

[1:14:03] Tell me more. What comes out of this episode? Lead us back. Okay. That could have happened in any episode. Uh huh. You know um does sheridan learn something here that he applies later i don't know that we can make a direct connection we can maybe imply some things but we don't get that yeah i don't think so yeah i think you're right there's there's i this this episode just like i said it you small this down to what episodes really matter this isn't one of them it's just not whatever i said the first time we watched this i'm going to go back to what i said at the beginning of this episode as 43 minutes of television. This is must watch TV. It's so good. Yeah. It makes you think. It makes you feel. It gives you it. It.

[1:14:53] It presents a situation. It shows you both sides. It gives you something. And then it says, discuss, have fun with it. Go. Yeah. Right. You know, and you, and you can just go and have discussion after discussion. You can talk about how, uh, the, what the symbolism of this means. Hey, by the way, we've got another episode coming up later in, let's hear, this is number four in about 12 episodes or so. Where symbolism is gonna be a lot this episode shows you how to do it correctly yeah okay okay you know this episode even even with him seeing the body of of this supposed dead person which i think you and i both agree that wasn't really there but but he saw it he reacted like this, is a fantastic episode of television this is a great standalone episode of television i think you could take this episode frankly and put it up for any amount of awards and it probably ought to win few yeah you know direct this might or acting jeff this might be the single greatest filler episode of all time yes yeah it does nothing and is near perfect it yeah.

[1:16:13] Single greatest episode of filler ever, ever. How about you, Jeff? Anything coming out of this episode? Yeah, nothing really more other than what you just said. It makes me, again, think of part of like the Catholic liturgy. So I think the point of this episode is really to get us to be wearing the right lenses as we move into the rest of the series. Same thing I thought when we watched it the first time. In the Catholic liturgy, there's a set of sets of readings. Like the pinnacle is there's a reading from the gospel. But prior to that is a reading usually from the Old Testament that relates to the gospel. And the intent is that you hear the gospel through Jewish ears. Right now, thousands of years later, we hear the passages of the gospel and we're like, oh yeah, prodigal son. That's okay, cool. Yeah, I get that. But when you were Jewish back then, and that was the stuff some of this stuff was like, what in the heck is this guy? Like it would blow your mind to hear some of these things. And so that was the intent behind like doing the, the old Testament reading. I think that's this episode. It's supposed to give us the eyes and the ears to be able to be watching for.

[1:17:29] Just a revenge ending and justice beginning. What forgiveness looks like, what courage in the face of the unbeatable looks like, You can look at so many of the moment of Edward there in the brown garden of Gethsemane accepting what is coming to him, right? Like, hey, this is my life. So it's coming. That's Londo when he gets the keeper put on him. I'm going to show up willingly, stand up tall, and take this thing. I think this really...

[1:18:04] Set up so much of what's to come so that it will matter more. Now, could those things still happen and be powerful on their own? Absolutely. This isn't necessary for those things, but I think it just strengthens them and makes them bigger. The fact that we were talking about this episode all the way into season five, I think about the very long night of Londo Malari, and we referenced this episode throughout, just shows the echoes and the reverberations and the power that it has in the canon. I feel like we talked about messages quite a bit during the episode itself. We did, but there's one that I want us to discuss a little bit before. You and I both pointed it out, and I want us to have the discussion. You and I are both going to come at this from our individual backgrounds. As you do. With where they are, and we can't be anything other than that. So we're just going to let it be. Also, by the way, the episode is what brought it up, not us. So we're going to discuss. Okay. Okay. Um...

[1:19:05] There was a question that was asked. Sheridan asked a great question. Where does revenge end and justice begin? And you and I both just sort of flippantly said, not flippantly, but it, you know, it begins in the heart. It begins in you. Dive into that a little bit more, Jeff. Oh, gosh. I was actually talking about this earlier today. Where are you now? Uh-huh. I talk about forgiveness and stuff on a pretty regular basis. It's a normal thing for me. So for me, I think that decision really comes from a level of maturity, emotional maturity, societal maturity, spiritual maturity. I think that the desire for revenge is totally understandable and justifiable, right? We are humans and sometimes we – the idea of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth is very appealing, right? Think of Hammurabi's code and like if you steal, you get your hands chopped off like, yeah, that's, you should know better, right? You can't do the time, don't do the crime. Like we've got all this stuff that's been really hammered into us forever, but also resonates with.

[1:20:13] A lot of our humanity, you know, like, I mean, we, we are, if you go back through time, we're, we're a violent species, you know, and we've solved or attempted to solve a lot of our problems through violence. So that, that, that desire for vengeance and revenge makes sense, but it doesn't help. Right. I mean, we've seen this in movies and TV and books and video games, but that moment when you get your hands on the person that wronged you or whatever. And it's like, what is that going to get you? Okay. You kill them. Now what? Now you feel guilty because you killed somebody. Like now you feel worse. Like it's going to make me feel better. It will. Is it? Yeah. For 30 seconds, maybe eight seconds, like maybe, but not in the longterm. And it's understanding that piece of like, it's about justice is about healing. Right? Like I don't know that there's value in punishing a person, right? Like what does that do? When I grew up. I got to be – can I give a caveat? I am 100% with you on all of this. I have often said that I think our current punitive system, putting people in jail for anything that they do, just is bad. It's dumb. And it doesn't work. Okay.

[1:21:31] And you guys have heard me. I've been loud and clear about the idea of forgiveness and being a person who forgives and not hang on to bitterness or whatever. That being said, I am also human too. And I'm not immune to this. And I've got to imagine if somebody, God forbid, ever came in and did the absolute worst to my little girl. I saw a video today. There was a court sentencing of a guy who killed a son. And the father is there in the courtroom. And in a moment when people's guards were down, he launched at this dude. And now that father's probably in jail himself and probably going to do some time himself for that. But I got to tell you, the most human person of me, I'm just full confession here. If somebody ever did the worst to my little girl, I'm not forgiving. And justice would be the electric chair.

[1:22:34] I can sit here and pontificate and say all this right and wrong, and I'm going to here in just a moment. But I also just fully acknowledge in my humanity, I'm not like, no, that person's done. I can't imagine anything less than that. There's a comedian who does a bit where he's like, I didn't understand real love until my son was born. My son was born. I held him. I'm like, I would die for you. Like, I don't even know who you are and I would die for you. He's like, but I didn't really understand it until my daughter was born. Because she was born. I held her and I'm like, I will kill for you. Yeah. Like, that's a thing. It's a real thing. Yeah. But I want to take that because I acknowledge that. That makes total sense. I imagine the same. Like, this is my question. We are called, right? As people of faith, we are called. As our values as a society call us, we don't do that. We trust to the system and we let these things happen or whatever.

[1:23:35] In my mind, I will rip the flesh off of the son of a bitch that hurts her. You know what I mean? It will be brutal and awful. There's chat going on about the It series. No, I don't like horror. This would be beyond. It would be awful what I would do. But I also wonder, would I have the courage to stay in the garden, right? Brother Edward asked that. Jesus did it. We read about it. There it is. I often wonder if I would have the courage to do the same. And it showed up for him and he did. So...

[1:24:09] Dear God, please never let this show up for either one of us. But there's a part of me that wants to believe I would have the courage to be like, hey, this is awful. I'm going to love my kid and I'm going to be there for them and I'm going to do all that stuff. And I'm going to have compassion for this guy and understand there was stuff going on and like he's hurting too and all that. I want to believe I would have that. I don't know if I would though. I don't know if I would. Yeah. It's real easy to sit here in the comfort of our little office chairs and our little air-conditioned houses in different corners of the United States of America and pontificate about what we would do in a given situation. And the truth is... Who knows, but I know what I would like to do and I know what I would like to think that I would do. And I know that what I would like to encourage others to do. Now, the example that you and I have just both gone through, Jeff, is the most extreme example. More every day more reasonable we can come back to where does justice begin and revenge and katarina has a great quote and i'm sure it's hers revenge begins when the revenge begins when the one who does quote unquote justice enjoys inflicting pain on someone else really profound Even if it's a bad person.

[1:25:34] Maybe they don't even care if it's a bad or a good person. They just enjoy it. Inflicting pain. You know, I've talked about this before. I'm not going to go through all of it. But when I was going, I've talked about it not in detail here. Maybe someday I will. Maybe I won't. But through my own journey of being very wronged and having to find justice and forgive and do those things, I did a lot of work around what forgiveness was. And one of the really important steps was the third and five steps. And it's understanding, what did I write back here? That at some point, the other person will be held accountable for what happened. I might never know how. I might not know when. I may never see it or even know about it. But I have to believe that at some point, they'll be held accountable. And I'm not the one responsible for that accountability. They will get their comeuppance somehow, most likely not in the way I think it should happen.

[1:26:34] But it will happen, and I have to trust and believe that. And once I can, I can move forward towards forgiveness. I don't get stuck on that need for revenge. Yeah. Although still, sometimes, God, it'd be great. I would love to. But also. I think in another real practical way, there is a point where, and Ben says, there's a reason why justice should not be served by the direct victims or the family of the victims or something like that. Like there's a reason why that probably ought not happen.

[1:27:09] But I've got to – for most things, okay, you're wronged somehow, some way, big, small, whatever. I think in the best of us kind of a moment, you get to that spot. You're standing over this person. You, you are, are, are Caesar in the gladiatorial ring and you can go thumb up or thumb down. Right. And you realize in that moment, like you could do it. You could make any call you want. I don't need this anymore. I just don't. It's okay. I don't. That's where justice. You know, just justice can be served without revenge being dished. Oh, quote that. That's really good. That's really good. Quote that. You know, the best example of that that comes to mind for me right away. The end of the Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi. He's got John Kreese, right? Yeah. Maybe it's the beginning of Karate Kid 2, but he comes in. Beginning of 2. Yeah, he can. He's just.

[1:28:17] Honk. That is the beginning of 2. Hey, you want to hear what JMS has to say? say about this episode and some messages on this. He's got it handed out to us. Yeah. He's, he's got two things. One about the moral ambiguity of what's going on here, particularly, I think with the mind wipe situation, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's something more, he says, or maybe just the moral ambiguity of this whole thing, you know, the whole episode, he says, that's really the intent to get people to talk about the issue raised and to examine the issue. What you and I are doing right now, Jeff, is why this episode exists. Mission accomplished, sir. To get us to do this. Good job, Joe. We won't tell you what to think about an issue because I don't have the answer myself. Oh, that's humility. Right. That's good. But if it made you stop and consider this stuff and decide for yourself where you fall in the discussion, then it's done its job. Probably a question to ask. Where do you fall on this issue? Should you know where is justice and i think i think that's the the the question where does revenge and injustice begin when does when does justice tip over into revenge yeah those are two very different things justice can be served without revenge being dished um he also says this.

[1:29:42] As an atheist, I believe all life, all life is unspeakably precious because it's only here for a brief moment, a flare against the dark and then poof, gone forever. No afterlife, no second chances, no backsies. So there can be nothing crueler than the abuse, destruction, or wanton taking of a life. This is spoken by a man who grew up in abuse. Yeah it is a crime no less than burning the mona lisa imagine imagine burning the mona lisa right yeah can never get that back for there is always just one of each i read that jeff and it gave me pause yeah and i've i've thought about this for the last couple of days because i did these a couple days ago um i talked about this on the trek profiles podcast yeah um i i was able to go there if you guys want to go check that out i was episode number 100 yeah you're 90 i was 99 i was the last one before he stopped yep um uh because you shut him down he's like i can't do this anymore i just can't get any better no he said i can't get any better that's the acne that's the pinnacle right there um uh by the way shout out to john who had a big hand in helping us get through our first watch of this, same guy.

[1:31:01] Anyway, as a person of faith, I have the same preciousness towards life. Now, this is just me and my faith, okay? On 316, what does it say?

[1:31:12] For God so loved the world that he sent his only son for God. So loved people for God. So love the word us that read the word people right in that, that he sent his only begotten son. People is God's number one priority. People was Jesus's number one priority. You read the stories about his life. How often people come to him and talk about money, or they talk about following the rules, or they talk about taxes, or they talk about government. And he was always like, that doesn't matter. That doesn't matter. That doesn't matter. What matters is people. What matters is people. What matters is people. My number one value is people, period. Because of my faith, that's my number one value. Because of my faith, the whole Star Trek, all life is precious thing. It is, it is precious to me.

[1:32:12] Because of my faith, what I find interesting is JMS because of his no faith, his faith, life is precious. I find that incredibly interesting considering the origin of both of those places and a place where JMS and I probably could get along swimmingly well on many of those issues, even though we come from two very different backgrounds. I like that. I like that a lot. A lot to think about, right? Mm-hmm. People, life, holding all sacred. Yeah. Yeah. I love that observation, though, because I think so often it becomes painted with the brush of faith. And through this, it's like, no, it transcends that. It's people and people. Mm-hmm.

[1:33:03] And to go back to the original question, the question we've been asking, where does justice begin and revenge end and all that sort of stuff? I think a lot of times that has to do with your value of people and your, do you value human life? Do you value all life? Where are you on that? Those people that were with Malcolm or whatever his name was before he got changed, they had a value that once they stood on the precipice, they said, no, we don't need to do it. He interpreted it as cowardness. He did. Yep. He did not have that same value of life. It's interesting because it's, in a weird way, it's a strong move of courage to get to that point and say, yeah, I'm not going to do this. Yeah. I'm better than this. I can rise above this. This isn't me. Well, can you rise above your next responsibility, my friend? This week. It's on you to rank this one. Yep. We got our three right now, Day in the Strife, Matters of Honor, Convictions.

[1:34:02] There's no discussion, Jeff. This is our new number one. Good, because if you said anything else. There's no discussion. This is such a great episode. Oh, my gosh. Jeff, I'm really curious. Do you have pulled up where this episode landed on the final ranking of our first watch? I do. Do you have a guess?

[1:34:24] Gosh, there's so many good episodes in this season. There's the severed dreams trilogy. All three of those. There's the war without end duology. There's Zaha doom. Let's hear one, two, three, four, five, six. I can't imagine this being higher than seven because of the importance of those episodes. So I'm going to guess somewhere between seven and 10. Okay. Good guess. It's number nine. Spot on. Yeah. All right. And yeah, when you look at what's above it, it's just like, oh, yeah. Oh, my God. But here's the difference. Okay. Those are the eight episodes that would make the streamer season. Exactly. This is the best filler episode ever. It's the number one.

[1:35:11] I'm assuming that there are other episodes that are unnecessary. Yeah, probably. The season, but still. But yeah. Number one. I think that makes a lot of sense. I don't disagree. So Brent, we're done. That's it for passing. We have passed through Gethsemane and we're moving on. Next week, this is an episode that really has stuck with the community and a lot of things. In fact, I think beyond even our community. You mean the episode for next week? The episode for next week. Okay. uh you had a new name for one of the characters and that has stuck beyond even this community of listeners here which i think is fantastic we're watching brent voices of authority when we watched this for the first time we played a game where we would guess what the episode was going to be about based on the title alone do you remember your prediction for this one.

[1:36:06] Yeah i said this one was going to be getting back to earth uh you remember when we saw that Senate later, Senate lady hanging out with Morden. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. Earth is going to be sending order orders to Sheridan and he's not going to be okay with it. Probably from that lady there. That's what I said. Cool. How about you? I thought it was going to be a Londo episode. I thought we would, uh, kind of see the new, uh, shadows, Morden in crowd, Rifa, the emperor who we don't know the name of yet. Um, kind of checking Londo's. Cartagia, you mean? Yeah, it's Cartagena. We don't know that yet. So just the emperor and Rifa, they're going to check Londo's ego, kind of bully him a little bit, remind him that he's just the ambassador to Babylon 5. Next week, though.

[1:36:54] We're going to watch the whole episode. We're going to meet Chickie. That's right. It's going to happen. So make sure you don't miss that. You can do that by subscribing wherever you're watching, wherever you're listening. If you want to see the unedited versions of this, where we watch the whole thing, there's some fun stuff in this one where Brent actually went off camera for a little while and we went a whole different way. You're not going to see that on YouTube. You're not going to hear it on the audio stuff. You're only going to see that at our Patreon page, patreon.com slash bad nerds. There's a link down in the show notes you can follow. Get access to a lot of stuff. If you're not in a position where you can financially get into that Patreon piece, that's totally cool. We love that you're here, and you can still help if you feel called to by sharing this show. Share it with somebody else who loves Babylon 5 and wants to watch it for the first time for the second time. So with that, I'm going to wrap. Hey, Jeff. Yeah, what's up, man? You know, you kind of paused when I started talking about that John 316 thing.

[1:37:53] Did you have any other thoughts on that i give you a chance i mean like you talk about your faith you talk about your john 316 you know what austin 316 says oh man don't don't don't look we all know what austin 316 says do you know what aiken 316 says oh heavens oh uh no what's that love yourself forgive others and prosper indeed Indeed.