Points of Departure

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

Brent: Brent Allen, and I'm also watching Babylon five for the first time. Jeff and I are two veterans star Trek podcasters. You might even say we're now veteran Babbel on five podcasters.

Jeff: Hey, hold on. Fun little thing. Uh, oh, I messed up a thing over here. Um, we gotta start. Oh, I'm glad I caught it real fast. Are you cool with that? I'm fine. I literally didn't hit, I literally didn't hit record. So that would

Brent: be an issue. Yeah. Kind improv Hey YouTube, because listen, this is the unedited behind the scenes version of how all this works, but we're gonna do that part again for the second time.

Yeah. For the

Jeff: very second time. Hey,

Brent: can you pump the volume on that a little bit? Like, cuz it was kind of low for me on microphone. Yeah. Like pump, pump the volume on it just a little bit. Uh, cuz I want, hear that again. Cause that's cool man. Got new music.

Your new giver first time.

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

Brent: And I'm Brent Ellen, and I'm also watching Babylon five for the first time. And specifically I'm watching season two, two for the

Jeff: first time we made it. We got all the way all the way to season two, Brent, we are officially veteran Babylon five podcasters at this point.

Uh,

Brent: listen, we got brand new theme music to go with it. We, which is awesome by the way, cuz that other one is kinda getting on my nerves. Uh, what I know we threw that you by we, I mean, you threw that one together really last minute just to give us something to do. And I love what you put together for this new season.

Super impressed with it. Uh, we are two veteran Babylon, five star Trek podcasters right now, still watching the show for the first time. But you know what else we are Jeff? What's that we are two veteran star Trek podcasters. We are watching the show for the very first time and we're searching for those star Trek, like messages in the series and trying to decide if we should have watched it sooner.

Jeff: And yes, we should have. Yes. Right. I think we talked about this in the, in the wrap up.

Brent: I I'm gonna try that one again because I wanna change how I say that. Yeah, let's do

Jeff: that. I think it's great. This is a great time to make the change. Yes. Here we

Brent: go. You ready? You know what else we are Jeff? What's that we are two veteran star Trek podcasters as well, watching Babylon five for the very first time.

And in this show, we are searching Babylon five. To find the star Trek like messages in this series and trying to decide just how much we like this

Jeff: series that we are. We are star Trek podcasters though. And we are trying, we are loving Babylon five. I was gonna say, we're trying to like get into it, but we're there.

We're loving it every minute of it. But as star Trek, podcasters, we're not gonna be able to avoid it. We are going to be making some star Trek references, but to keep us on point to keep us honest, we're gonna play a little game called the rule of three Brent. That means you get up to three star Trek references and

Brent: me.

Oh, Nope, Nope, Nope. This is season two, which means everything multiplies. So now I

Jeff: get six. So you get six and I get 36 step. Yeah, sure. Hey, we get three. And when we drop one, you're gonna hear that sound. Everybody loves, but it's gonna keep us on point. It's gonna keep us focused on talking about Babylon five.

I like

Brent: it when people buzz themselves in the comments, it's the best .

Jeff: And I, this is the part of the show that I love and look forward to so much where we read some of the comments and things that have come through, but I we've been a little bit asleep at the wheel for, well, gosh, the entire, the entire first season of this show, remember back when we said people could listen to us and leave reviews on audible mm-hmm yeah.

People have been doing that and have they. Yeah. and I, okay. I didn't go and look, um, until we had the giveaway in the season, one wrap up last week and I was like, oh my gosh. So we still need to figure out what we're gonna do with all of the reviews that we received for the giveaway. But I do want to go back and catch the handful that left five star reviews for us before we did the giveaway.

Love it. So an Amazon customer says. The best shows reviewed by the best podcasters. I like it. That's pretty cool. And Hey, I forgot one really cool thing. These are all five star reviews, so, oh yes. Chris calls us amazing. Michael says it's a smart and funny analysis by star Trek vets and outta the UK. Mike says what a treat for long time fans.

There's a lot more verbiage. Audible lets you write quite a bit in there, but in the interest of time, I just wanted to give these awesome listeners and viewers a shout out and thank you for leaving. Oh yes. Five star reviews.

Brent: You guys are awesome. Let me add my thanks. Uh, that's super cool and super dope.

And we're on. That's amazing too. That's we can write a

Jeff: book. right. There

Brent: we go. Right. But thank you. No seriously guys, thank you so much for leaving those reviews. Uh, they mean the world to us and you know, while I don't know that they really help push us up in any algorithms or anything like that, what it does is when people are looking for cool podcasts, they look and see what you guys thought and said, Hey, they thought this was cool.

Let me check it out too. And then our little Babylon five community that we've loved so much, Jeff so much just froze. Oh, you guys are awesome. Wait, this, this is the best fan community I've ever been a part of. And I've been a lot of, part of a lot of fan communities,

Jeff: but every fan community has, you know, that guy in it.

Oh no. Do we got it? That guy, we got it. That guy. And this is the cool thing about Babylon five for the first time, we're gonna share all the reviews. You throw anything in there. It's gonna make it. I've actually been looking forward to bringing this one, uh, up. This is from apple podcasts. Okay. It's from plot this 90.

Brent: Okay. We got two stars. Your real name in there. Two,

Jeff: two stars this 90. Yeah. And it's great. Plotinus took the time, uh, to flex their brain cell and put these words probably onto, um, onto their phone or probably their parents' phone. It says podcast by two mucus covered man children who are incapable of watching an epic story unfold without making completely inane references in comparisons to their favorite children's show.

Brent: Well, I mean, he is not wrong. We do make completely Inna references to our favorite. Oh, I don't. Yeah, well, no. See it wasn't in children's show because I didn't come to.

Jeff: As a child. That's fair. I did. So, I mean, that's, I think that was very directed at me. Yeah. I feel very seen in that comment and mucus covered.

Yeah, totally mucus covered. Yeah.

Brent: Really? Oh my

Jeff: gosh. I wonder if like maybe did we have like, is there anything, do I have anything sticking outta my note? No, I don't think so.

Brent: No, you can't covered man children, man. The insults just keep getting better and better. Well, actually, no, I don't know that still doesn't top jump right to chuckle nugget.

Yeah, that was great. Like that's that one's still fresh, but

Jeff: like, and that's still one of my favorite stories of our whole podcast. Mark and I have talked, we've actually kind of become buddies online and uh, yeah, it's just fun. Go back and listen to some of our old stuff. If you have no idea what we're talking about on that one, one of the cool games we like to play on this show is we don't look ahead.

We don't read episode synopsis. We don't look at pictures. We just read the title. We came into this one points of departure. Brent. Do you remember what you guessed points of departure was gonna be about based on the title alone? Yeah,

Brent: I think this is one I waffled a lot on. Um, and I, I said something about the effect of like, people are gonna go there separate ways here.

Like, like people are gonna are gonna split apart. And I don't think that happened at all.

Jeff: Yeah. Not really. I mean a little bit. Mm, yeah. Sort of if you really read into it a lot.

Brent: Yeah. And sort of, how about you, Jeff? What did you say? So

Jeff: I thought that this was really gonna be focused on Deen and, well, I thought this was gonna be like six months into the future and Dylan was gonna emerge from her Chrysalis and we were gonna be talking about what happened to her.

And then we were gonna see the points of departure that president Clark was making from, uh, president Santiago. Right. I could not have been more. well, I could have been a lot more wrong to be honest, at least I used character names, but that's about all I got.

Brent: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. We, we both missed this one and you know, everybody out there had a good laugh at our expense,

Jeff: but which is one of my favorite things I love when people laugh at us for

Brent: that.

I mean there, but we did have a pretty major departure mm-hmm kind of before this episode, but still in this episode. Yeah. Which we'll get into, uh, Jeff speaking of big departure and stuff that happens in this episode, uh, for those of us who haven't watched this one in a while, or maybe we've never watched it before and you guys are just listening to us because you think that we're awesome.

Um, why don't you tell the folks out there what this episode points of departure was about?

Jeff: It's chaos on Babylon five and that hold on. I've got a, oh God, sorry. I have import, I have important updates that are pending. Remind me later.

Brent: Welcome. Welcome YouTube to the behind the scenes

Jeff: unedited, right? Sorry.

Well, anyway, Ivanova has been running for the last eight days trying to keep the station running. She's been grieving the present. God. Sorry. Here it is again. All right, just I'm gonna click. Okay. Real quick. Holy crud. Look at this dude. They turned up the lights babble on five. Got a visual upgrade. This whole show just looks a lot more.

I don't know, kind of dressed up. Maybe I should have clicked that update a little sooner. Anyway, Yvon has been holding things together while GU Baldy lies in a coma. Kar is nowhere to be found. Len is in a cocoon. Yay. Hi, and nobody bothers mentioning lawn. Well, she gets a call from the general and relief is on the way captain Allen Bradley.

Nope. Tron. Nope. Uh, captain John Sheridan is gonna be arriving soon. He's gonna take command of the station, command of the station. Wait, why is everything falling on a VVA to deal with? And why is someone coming to take command of the station? Oh, okay. Somebody at earth force for some reason has permanently reassigned Sinclair to minbar as an ambassador.

And for some reason, Sheridan was president Santiago's choice for command to the station. If anything were to ever happen to Sinclair.

Now, speaking of minbar, Lenir continues to watch over while some random gray counsel dude shows up and showers them both with his abject disappointment. He also shares that the rogue ship, the Tru Gotti is nearby. You remember the Tru Gotti, right? Well, probably not, but you might remember its commanding officer oval.

He's the guy that Deen said in legacies committed suicide. When the surrender order came down in the Earthman BARR war. Well, apparently the ship now under the command of his first officer Kalan has been cast out of minbar society and has been looking to pick up the war again. And now is Sheridan being given command.

They just might have their opportunity. You see Sheridan back during the war, mind and asteroid belt with fusion bombs that ended up taking out the flagship, the Menari flagship, black star, and three other heavy cruisers. We know this person as captain John Sheridan, the Menari know him as star killer and Klan.

Klan's here to kick the war back off. He threatens Lenir and Glenn only to get arrested and interrogated once left alone, he uses a suicide tooth and he dies in custody. The traga emerges from a dump from a dump gate. , that's a different episode. The traga emerges from a jump gate and they launch fighters.

They're go shared into attack, but he shows his experience as a soldier in war. He picks up on a few clues, specifically them using the phrase, nothing left except honor, and death, which is a far cry from honor and glory. And he refuses to engage. He calls for help in a Menari cruiser responses. They share the engines off the traga and it decides to self-destruct choosing death.

Over honor. In the meantime, Lanier wraps up 22 episodes of exposition and questions that we've had in about two minutes with shared and IVA, see Sinclair was abducted and brought to the gray council and apparently others were after Sinclair's experience. And while there they scanned him and found that he has a Menari soul, they believe that one generation soul moves into the next and that men Barry's souls have been moving into humans that forces them to call for an immediate surrender.

So they didn't destroy any more minbar souls. They haven't told this to anybody except apparently president Clark. And he doesn't believe that this is true. Anyway, also linear says that more changes are coming. Oh, also on his own privately talking to the cocoon that Dylan is. he wishes that he could have told them everything.

We now know that a great enemy is returning. Oh, and also Brent, how long ago did you call all of this? lay it on me.

Brent: First of all, I just wanna say how ashamed I am, how long it took me to pick up on the bit that you were doing

Jeff: through your . I loved it. I loved that. That you were just like, right. So it's

Brent: sorry.

I got it. I, I see what you're doing. I gotcha. I'm with you. Um, listen, this episode gave me everything that I needed from season one that like you remember last week in the wrap up when I was like, okay, here's all the stuff that season one didn't give me. And I'm kind of pissed about it. This one episode fixed it all.

It gave me everything I needed so that we can move forward. You know what I mean? Like, like I finally feel like we're going somewhere, like season one really just felt like it was just sort of meandering and circling and you know, like we heard from the, from the viewers out there, it's so much world building, well, you know what world building means?

Like that's, that's code for, ain't nothing happening, you know what I mean? Like nothing's people are like, yeah, I usually skip season one and just start with season two. And I'm like, well, if you know how everything's laid out. Sure. Because nothing really happens in season one. I feel like stuff's happening now.

And man, I, I loved this episode. It was it like, this is good TV, you know? And, and it, uh, I mean, I, I've got so many details to get into, but it, it really, uh, if you had skipped all of season one, The recap that Ivan gives you at the beginning. Mm-hmm of where everybody, like, she just gives you a okay. Here's where everybody is go, you know, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. And then at some, at some point later she's like, okay, here's where all the ambassadors are, which I love. She's like, lawn's doing something Ja car's off the station, the lens in a cocoon. And we still don't know what gosh looks like underneath the so like, yeah. I was like, it's it gave you everything you needed it.

It was the previously on. And then away we go, we've got a new captain, which Jeff, I like this guy. Same, same IME. Like, like I said, it in my, in my, my watch video, I immediately like this guy there, there was something about Sinclair that just turned me off. And, and like from his opening line in the gathering, I was like, who's this guy, but this, this guy, John Sharon, he's a little goofy, but man, he gets it.

yeah, he really gets it. And, and he like, you know, I mean more power to Michael Hara. You know, we discovered about some of the issues and stuff that he was facing. I didn't know that it was gonna lead to him going off the show, which I still wonder if he's actually

Jeff: off the show. I know they left a lot of doors wide

Brent: over.

He still, like, they didn't kill the character, like the character's still out there. So he very much could still be a big part of this show and moving forward. And you know, like, like I kind of wonder nobody tell me until after we're done, unless it truly is no spoiler, like, was this actually a part of the plan from JMS in the first place?

Or was this a reaction to behind the scenes stuff that was going on? I, I don't know. Um, because this feels, this feels like what would be the right next move for the story? Mm-hmm not just a casting change, you know? And so I, and man, I'm excited. I'm excited for where we're going. I'm excited for what we've got.

I'm kind of mad that I have to sit here and talk with you about this. Cause I just wanna go watch the next episode. how about you, Jeff? What you got? So

Jeff: this might be a fun conversation. I lemme start with the good on this and that's like, the production changes were striking and immediate. Oh yeah. Their,

Brent: their budget must have like doubled between season one and season two, like people was

Jeff: phenomenal.

My guess on a couple of things is people have been, I mean, I, I could literally, we could spend over an hour of me just naming the people who have given painful details about the computers that were used to process the graphics through all this. It's great. They were on Amigos. Cool. That's awesome. Uh, what I know from that point in time is like Pentium processing became a thing and processors.

So I think really they just upgraded their computers. I don't even know that it was necessarily even a massive budget increase, but well, well, you know,

Brent: you know, what I wondered was. Or you remember with star Trek, how they went back and remastered the DVDs and the, the, the film and they redid the special effects.

Yeah. Like I wonder if they've done that with, with BS BS, five with Babel on five, um, like have they gone back and Rema mastered some of this stuff from the original run? Because like, I even noted that I was like, it looks like early nineties graphics mm-hmm but it looked good. Like, it looks, it's kind, it looked crisp, it looked clear, you know, it, it still very much was computer generated.

There's no mistaking that, but it wasn't like fuzzy and, you know, looked like a painting at all.

Jeff: Either it survived the, the stretch to, you know, our wide screen, bigger TVs and all.

Does it

Brent: really

Jeff: count? I think it does. I mean, you literally went right to like, well, you know, starts, right. I mean, there's four, literally. I said the word you did and there's 400 other series that like remastered stuff, you didn't have to. Fair enough. Yeah. I loved, I love Sheridan. Like I said, immediately, he was likable, but I think specifically he was approachable, you know?

I mean, the minute he met uh Ivanova and then the aid that she , she just yanked and she's like, Hey, look, look like we expected him to be here. He's just cool. And yeah, and, and it, he's kind of ridiculous in what, you know, wanting to get his speech out and everything, but he's also tremendously competent.

Yes. In multiple scenes on this, he picked up on when he was, uh, interrogating Kalan. When the tra Gotti fighters were out there, he picked up on these little clues and were able, was able to piece together the whole tapestry from that, like, I was just really impressed. Impressed with him in a way that, yeah, Sinclair just never, never hit the needle for me, but overall, I, I didn't really care for this episode.

Like really? Yeah. Yeah. I was surprised to hear how much you loved

Brent: it. No, yeah. I, it was,

Jeff: it was totally necessary, right. It, it grabbed, it, it, it picked up right where Chrysalis left off and made the changes that needed to happen, made them in a way that made complete and logical sense. And now I believe that, like, we got Chrysalis, we got points of departure.

Now we're ready to go and do things like this was that pause before going, like, get,

Brent: get it all set because we have changes. Um, you know, I remember , I remember doing beam me up mm-hmm another podcast and we got to the end of the next generat. Season one mm-hmm and the very next episode, season two episode one is an episode called the child.

Yep. It is an ostensibly horrible episode

Jeff: objectively. Yeah, no question. No question. Yeah. Like

Brent: it's not a good episode. I, and I don't mean bad, like it's morally reprehensible or anything like that. Like, it's just not a good story, but there was so much that happened between season one and season two, that to try to explain all the changes that happened on the ship to my first time watcher was ridiculous.

So we had to watch that episode just so that he could catch all the changes that happened on the ship had nothing to do with the plot of the story. Mm-hmm it just had to do with, okay, this person's here, this person's here. Here's this new person over here. They got rid of that person. Here's this here's this here's that here's, that here's that this was way better than the child.

I maybe I just am so excited that we learned so much information. We got the information dump, maybe it's that I'm so excited that I, I mean, I predicted the entire thing and I got it. Absolutely correct. And we'll talk more about that in a few minutes. I'm sure. Or at least I will, you might drown me out. I don't know.

Jeff: well, first too

Brent: care for you. I don't care. I

Jeff: don't care. Don't care anymore. Jeff, you hit three. You just might care. Well, I think that gives us a good kind of launch question that I had and like, are we satisfied with how they wrote Sinclair off of the main screen on the main, like the show on this? Like, okay.

Are

Brent: we gonna, well again? Did they write him off? Well, they,

Jeff: they, this is what I think they wrote him off the main story. Now I have some huge theories on Sinclair. I don't know if you want to go there yet or not, but I've got a really big one. Okay.

Brent: Well, I mean, let's, let's, I think we're gonna, in order to, to have the discussion, we're gonna have to decide, cuz I didn't know.

I really, I was sitting here. I was like, okay, either Sinclair has been written off the show and they've brought in this new guy or Sinclair has been reassigned. He's still a part of the show. Ah, like in Stargate when the captain of the team gets turned into a general on the base, he's still around, but he's in a new role.

Okay. Yeah. Like did they do that with Sinclair? And are we gonna see Sinclair in the next episode? Or is Sinclair gone?

Jeff: I think we're gonna see

Brent: because either way he's alive. Yeah. The character's still there.

Jeff: So I think we're gonna see him again. I don't think it's gonna be next episode. I don't think he's DVD cover necessarily anymore.

Okay. But he's, he's the, he's the, the good, the, the excited to see Kai win of, of Babylon five now. Right? We're like, we're excited to see him. It's not like he's a bad, horrible person, but he's just that. key political religious figure that shows up from time to time to move things in a direction.

Brent: I'm so glad you said that.

Cuz like Howard is yeah, I was trying to high win. I

Jeff: was gonna say like VEIC Burle or something, but I he's. Well actually VE Bri might be a really good cuz he's pretty just kind of dry.

Brent: No, no Veta Burle was the worst. Um, he was

Jeff: terrible. I agree. But you know, like if you see my struggle in

Brent: naming, so if you said, if you said Gar or RO or no, or any of those people, I'd be like, hell yeah man, I I'm excited every time they're on screen.

Yeah. But neither one of them are religious figures

Jeff: and icons or anything like that. And I, and I think that's kind of where they're going with with Sinclair.

Brent: So, so let's just agree that for the sake of our discussion, until we learn something different Sinclair or Michael O'Hara is off the show and it's John Sheridan.

Yeah. That's my, that's my just make your conversation easier. Yeah. Um, I.

Very much appreciated the way they wrote him out because it made sense to his character. It made sense to his arc. It made sense to the relationships that, that they have established before now. Uh, it did seem out of the blue mm-hmm but the idea that they didn't just go make him an ambassador. No, no, no.

They called him to earth unexpectedly and he's been gone and he wasn't gone six months. Right. It's just been days. Yeah. It's been a week. That's all it's been. And you know, easily within this eight days, he could have had a few meetings. He could have gone here. He could have discussed some things over here and now he's been reassigned and we're, we're moving forward with this, with this new guy.

So yeah, I'm a hundred percent pleased with where they've done with where they've taken him. And as I said, he's still alive. So if they bring him back, even for a guest role, Or maybe he rejoins the Cale. I don't know. I don't know what's going on with him. Um, he's still there. This is okay. Here we go. This, this is not a jet Z AAC situation or a Tasha ya where they just straight up killed them.

Jeff: Right. You're tapped. I don't care. And I got one just keeping track. Cause I've lost track in past episodes.

Brent: I'm gonna use 'em anyway, I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. Cuz I've got like five other comments in my, in my note. Oh shoot.

Jeff: see. See, you gotta think about these things. Cause if you do more, I mean, yeah, they're gonna be here on YouTube.

They have to hear the buzzer, but I'm gonna go in the audio one. I'm just gonna literally I'll be like, and then what do you think? And you'll be like, and that's what blank. And then I'll just cut it out. I'll just cut it out. That would

Brent: be cruel and unusual. Terrible listeners. I know. Cause I know what I said.

You guys at YouTube. Know what I said? Yeah. That wouldn't be won't cool. Won't anyway. Uh, yeah, we're gonna lose subscribers if you do that. So, um, Yeah. I, I, I was perfectly happy with how they wrote him off.

Jeff: What about you, Jeff? Yeah, I totally was also, I think it's also consistent with Leeta Alexander was called to earth after she saw Kosh in the Dr.

Benjamin Kyle called to earth after seeing like, there's a pattern here that when you see or exposed or know a thing that shouldn't like, there's stuff, they recall you and reassign you. So this is totally consistent with what's happened to other characters. I thought it was brilliant.

Brent: That's great.

That's great. Uh, can I tell you the way I thought this episode was opening? Yeah. Is, uh, do you remember, uh, you, you know, what's usually a, a, a, a indication that a show that is set on a space station is, is about to get really good. Yeah. Is when they don't have a ship in the early seasons and all of a sudden they get a ship.

Okay. Okay. Mm-hmm and I really thought with the opening of this scene with this AGA ship that was out there and they're like, yeah, so he's gonna go to Babylon five with this ship. And I was like, cool, Babylon five is getting a ship and they're gonna now go, go do stuff. Right. And yeah, no, that's not at all what it was.

Um, but I was, I was really psyched

Jeff: out about that. I think it might turn it. And this is just me thinking as a design kind of a thing. Yeah. We've seen an earth force vessel. Right. We saw the Hyperion come through before, so they've got a design for an earth ship. Mm-hmm this was an entirely new design.

This ship looked awesome. It looked great. It looked, it looked, looks so good. Yeah. Like this, if this had come through the jump gate invoice in the world in this part two, I would've been like, oh, look at this. Instead of like, oh, look at that little ship they got there. They don't go and design a whole new ship and whatever for like to introduce John Sheridan, you know, like, I, I, I think this ship or ships, like it, we're gonna see more earth force vessels, right.

One way or the other, because it's a great design.

Brent: This, this one really reminded me of the X 3 0 3. You're not gonna know what that is because that's a star gate reference. It's you? It's a star gate reference, but it like physically, it reminded me a lot of, of a thing there called the X 3 0 3, which you'll eventually find out what that is when we do that podcast.

Jeff: Jeff. Yeah. Just a few more seasons of this. So the next question. Oh, go, go, go. Yeah. You

Brent: say I was, I was gonna talk about VVA because Ava's awesome. The way she's yelling at those people in the elevator, like they're just on her and she just goes, look, I'm gonna move your chairs down the hall into the fusion reactor.

If y'all don't shut up.

Jeff: Did she strike you as different in any way in this one?

Brent: Yeah, and I couldn't put my finger on it. What, what is it? Yeah, I don't, I, I

Jeff: don't know. The note that I took was when she was in, she was, she was happier I think. And I don't know if that's the right word, but when she was in Sheridan's room, like, you know, gave him the room and he was like, mm-hmm , Hey, I'm really gonna be relying on you.

And I, I, I feel like she was when you are upper, like executive level management or leadership and your, your superior swaps out, you kinda wanna make your best impression, you know? And so, right. The way I'm looking at it now is she was just doing that. She was trying to be like overly friendly and help him feel very welcome.

Mm-hmm and, and just came AC it sounds so bad cuz it's not that she's a mean person, but she just came across as nice. And that's not a thing I'm used to right. In a good way. Right. Like in a, in a good way. But. Yeah, she

Brent: was too nice. Well, but she also still had plenty of the snark because she's like, she's talking through the, uh, through the ambassadors with Sheridan and she goes, yeah.

And Len's in a cocoon and he goes a cocoon and she's like, yeah, about yay. Hi. And he goes like butterfly or moth. And she goes, yes, like that's so classic of ENVA like

Jeff: so good. So I, I connected a couple, I, I don't wanna say connected. I have a couple dots with her. I'm starting to connect. Okay. And I don't know what this is gonna turn into.

And part of me wonders if this show is too old to have gone here, but I kind of hope they're gonna go here. But she talked about, she keeps having dreams about earth force, one blowing up. Okay. So she's having trouble sleeping and having these dream things. We know that she doesn't do well when she doesn't get a lot of sleep.

Right. She felt when Sinclair was able to put her to sleep with the breathe in, breathe out. Yeah. Yeah. We also know she doesn't do well, waking up when it's still dark. There are these little pebbles in the road that have been dropped about her sleeping and the, where, where my mind goes with this. And maybe this is just 20, 22 sensibilities or whatever is self care and burnout.

Like she's not getting the sleep that she needs to take care of herself and are we gonna have an arc or a story or a something where like the stress is getting to her and she's just really burned out. I don't know.

I have no response to that. Yeah, yeah. Could be, yeah. I just wonder, I see the seeds there and, and maybe that's just me as a manager right. Seeing those things. But also, I don't know that in 1995, we were having those conversations on television.

Brent: I, I mean, sure. People talk about burnout, but only when it becomes a plot point.

Yeah. You know what I mean? um, Hey, you know, something we got, okay. Let's let's can we just go through the, the list of information we got in the episode,

Jeff: the episode, the sheer dump

Brent: of stuff? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I'm gonna start with one thing. And this was a thing that I complained about in last week's wrapup episode.

I said, I have no idea after that entire season, how the, the station is laid out, you know what we got in this episode, we got a map that's color, a, we got, yeah. And they said, this section is this. And this section is this. And this section is this. Now I don't know at all just yet, but that's what I need.

Jeff: Yeah. I know. So much more there's. Yeah, a couple of episodes ago. I forget which one, but YouTube was just full of comments about, oh, this stage, this section, this, this section that, and I'm like, how do you know that? How do you, right. Oh, apparently because in the future they start telling you what's on this station and where it is, right?

Yeah. So

Brent: I very expected that. Oh, sorry. I very much appreciated that. Like I was so excited. Like I didn't even care that the guy coming on the station was the bad guy. Yeah. Like I just wanted the map. it's like,

Jeff: think all we had to do was ask us screen this whole time. Welcome. Nobody did

Brent: this just like they did.

Oh, wait. I can't say oh yeah, yeah. Only they did it in their very first episode. Just saying just, yeah. Um, okay, so here's another similarity or reference only officers get real water. Everybody else gets a vibe shower,

Jeff: which sounds kind of great. Maybe

Brent: sounds amazing way better than a Sonic

Jeff: shower, right?

Because that's that, that's a, that's not a thing. That's well, in fact, I that's what I assumed a vibe shower was. I'm sure. I loved, I loved this reference to water because, so there were two things in this episode that really hit me as a, as a former submariner. Mm-hmm there are things that translate really well to starships and space stations.

You know, self-contained not connected to whatever on a submarine. We made our own water. We literally used reverse osmosis to create our own potable water for drinking and our own water for washing and plumbing and things like that. Was it good? It was fine. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't amazing, but it was fine.

okay. Yeah. You're not really, you're not that picky when , when you're living in a, in a, in a basic

Brent: wide awake night. Well, I mean, just cause, I mean, presumably you're pulling out of the ocean, right?

Jeff: Mm-hmm yeah. So there's some desalination and reverse osmosis that goes on. Was, was it still salty?

Brent: No, not at all.

Okay. Did it taste all minerally and everything like that, or just

Jeff: very bland, very bland. That's what water should taste like. So yeah. Okay. Yeah, it was, it was fine, but I, but we had a limited amount, right? So there's a term you and others may have heard of a Navy shower where you get in, you turn on the water, you get yourself wet, you turn off the water, you soap up, you turn on the water, you rinse it off and you get out like as quickly as possible.

And the least amount of water is possible. So that this totally resonated with me. Yeah. Yeah. There's a scene a little later when they, when the battle was going on or the stale mate with the tri Gotti and they were gonna send a message through the jump gate and just the exchange there. Oh, so good.

Prepare to prepare to open jump gate, jump gate, ready, eye send message, sending message. I, that is submarine language. That's how orders are given and, and, and acknowledged it. Just those two scenes to me, just actually like added this level of military realism to the station that I really appreciated.

It's a good catch. I didn't even have it in my notes, cuz it was just awesome. And to me it's like, yeah, finally.

Brent: Yeah. I, I didn't catch on military realism, but I don't have that same experience. So I'm but you know what? It makes me glad to know that that's a thing cuz I like when things are true to life like that.

Yeah. You know, or a little more true to life. Um, so we found out about the, the, the station layout a little bit, still got more to learn in that one. We found out that officers have vibe. We get real water where everybody else gets vibe showers. Um, we found out that them Inari do not hurt their own kind.

It's a code. Yeah. Even among their warrior cast. Mm-hmm even though, well, maybe it's time we start. Yeah. You're still not gonna hurt your own kind. Like, which sounds similar it sounds really similar to another group of aliens that we're familiar with, which maybe this is a, you know, we know that that one was supposedly borrowed some pieces from the other, and that might, that very well, seems like that could have been borrowed very

Jeff: possibly, but I also think this is not a plot point.

They're gonna stick to. Oh, really? Like I have a feeling that this is a thing where they're gonna be like, so we said that, but what we meant was like, it's a generally accepted rule that we

Brent: don't do it, but people still do it. Yeah.

Jeff: Especially when cuz if they, if men, BARR never hurt or killed other men, BARR, when Kalan grabbed the great council dude and had like the rolled up paper version of a Wolverine club to it, he shouldn't have been worried.

He should have been like, like what are you gonna do punch me cuz you're not gonna kill me cuz we're in Barry. Right, right.

Brent: Um, okay. Just to go into the next piece, Jeff, um, of things we found out, like just the information dump that we got. I would like to do something prior to declaring this. From a previous episode.

Oh, on Babylon five for the first time. Hold on,

Jeff: let me hit this previously on Babylon five for the first time I

Brent: said this, maybe there's something about Sinclair himself. That is really important to the Mbar and oh, Hey, whoa. Sinclair. I'm going, I'm going total. Cisco and OTO on you here. Okay. Sinclair is part Manari that's it?

Whoa, that's it right there. And it's a legacy. That's why, that's why the whole thing's been happening with him. That's why the whole thing's been happening with him because Sinclair is part Mumbar

Jeff: hundred percent. Hundred percent. Yes. Nailed it. Nailed it. Literally linear's talking and I'm just. Oh my how this, so you dropped that in, I think eyes, right way back in eyes.

We were guessing what legacies was gonna be about. And I was like, okay. Haha. Yeah. And then I'm gonna go crazy conspiracy guy. And I spent every episode after that, trying to find proofs. And the thing is like, we found them in every episode and then here it is like, you nailed it. You got it.

Brent: Perfect. The, the whole explanation for what happened to the 24 hours, why they erased his memory, why they brought him on in the first place, what the heck, the great council and to delin was doing there.

Why the dude came out of de Lynn's back quarters and like, you know, if he remembers we're gonna have to kill him, like the entire explanation for that was

Jeff: awesome. Yep. That's

Brent: amazing. Loved it. Like that's cool. You have these, you know, and that, oh, to go back to soul hunter, Jeff. Exactly. Yes. Go back to soul hunter where we're like, yeah, we got souls and you need to give these back to us so we can be complete again, give us the souls back so that they can be reincarnated.

Yeah. Or whatever your word is. And we're losing those souls to humans or they're getting planted into humans. So what does that say about humanity? Mm-hmm as a whole, and that's why they pulled back because Menari don't hurt each other. And these are actually Menari and they

Jeff: didn't wanna destroy the souls cuz apparently they were, they felt they were destroying them.

And if they shared that, yeah. They shared that Menari culture society would completely collapse.

Brent: And so would you would

Jeff: earth culture? Yeah. Everything. So galaxy would fall in

Brent: yeah. That this is what's going on. Like, so we can't share. I mean, they're gonna have to eventually. Okay. So we have that. Now we go forward.

I just, I just wanna, I'm sorry. I just wanna revel one more time. Just feel

Jeff: that it's incredible. I think it's, it was, it was something else. I was blown away. Like you, you have really nailed a couple things on, but this, like, I was blown away when you got draw getting plugged into the machine way back. Oh.

Was in the Wilder. Exactly. Yeah. To that's like, yeah, of course. Of course that this literally you're like, , here's this. Wow. It's literally the show, literally the show. Uh,

Brent: I can only imagine what the folks out there who like, knew were like, oh my God. Like, like, Hey, that's why we do this show the way we do it anyway.

Um, so we go forward and

then we get line's prophecy dump mm-hmm like, what is the freaking prophecy? All. These were the questions, right? Like what was going on at the battle of the line? Why was Sinclair having a hole memory? Why are they trying to keep him live? And then what is this prophecy like? I think those were the, and then how the heck do you find your way around Bab and five?

Like, those were the questions that I had. Right. All three of them. The prophecy is that a great enemy is

Jeff: returning, returning. That's a key word to me.

Brent: Yeah. And it's gonna take both sides of the Mumbar people, which I think in some level you think it's the religious and the warrior cast, but it very clearly is now it's the earth and the Mumbar.

Yeah, totally. It's gonna take them teaming up in order to defeat this enemy. And if they don't bad stuff is gonna happen. That's what the prophecy is about now. Whatever the heck has to do with her in a cocoon, I don't know may oh.

Is turning into a human.

Jeff: That was what I was thinking also. Was it, or like a, a hybrid, right? She's the next evolutionary step between human men? Like minbar humans or this, and then the, the triangle. Oh my God. One a squared is minbar B squared as human equals C squared of whatever the lens is gonna emerge as she is the PGOs of humans in minbar of evolution.

Brent: Yeah. Hey, there you go. I like it. I like it. I like it. Um, Hey and she's and she's about to push

Jeff: she's out. Yeah, right. I like, I like that. They're stretching it out a little bit more, you know, like I thought that's this episode, but it's good. It's good. Let they, well,

Brent: she, I mean, she's emerging from the cocoon now, so ostensibly that's gonna happen in the next episode.

Yeah. And, and that's, that's fine. We need to get that back, but that's what we get. I'm ready for this next episode. And can I, Jeff, I mean, I think that's why I liked this episode. I mean, because you're right. Like I think thinking back on what actually happened in this episode is just kind of meh, but all the stuff that we got was just freaking, freaking amazing.

Jeff: Yeah. Can I, can I drop my huge theory? Yes. So we know Sinclair's Menari now, right? Like,

Brent: well, everybody, well I, maybe not everybody. Okay. There's a question. Are all humans part Menari or is it just some

Jeff: humans are part men bar? What I understood in linear's explanation is that some humans are, and then some have whole minbar souls and some have part minbar souls.

Oh really? The souls are going in whole or in part to humanity. So I, I think there's, and then they ma there was a, a line, I think it was, um, oh my gosh. Who said it?

I think it was linear who said it, but I'm not sure, but he said that commanders, Claire was the first, there will be more. Well, he, well, it's the first

Brent: what? Because they, I, he was the first one that they scanned is what I understood it to be.

Jeff: But he says there he's the first, there will be more, well, there are more there already know there's more.

So there's gonna be more what, and so my theory is that because Dalen hasn't just been, I think that she's been excited about Sinclair, not just because, oh my gosh, you have a Menari soul because they got other humans that had minbar souls. They would, there would be thelens following and trailing other humans.

If it was just a question of the soul, right. I think that Sinclair is vain.

The God, the God. So vain Duco are like the big whatevers. Okay. It can't be Duco that went because Duco is what his death led to the Earthman bar war. So I don't think Duco can be anyone who's alive. Now it would have to be someone who's

Brent: unless the soul of Duco has just gotten reincarnated. Oh. In somebody who's 12 years old.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so far we haven't really had kids, but they've dropped Vains name. You know, a handful of times is like, you know, kind of the pinnacle of the leaders of the great council and what a men BARR strives to be. And so I think between Dalen, you know, you're the one, you're the prophecy. You are this, you're all these great things.

I think we're gonna find out. And this is where I think Sinclair's gonna pop back from time to time and eventually become a very regular character is he's gonna be, and. Here we go. And the Sinclair that, oh my God here. Just say, what is it right in Babylon squared when Zers was like, oh, oh, are you, oh, no, not the one, not the one because vain hadn't awoken in him yet.

It wasn't about him being in pain or anything. The Sinclair that we saw in the blue suit, wasn't just Sinclair. It was vain Sinclair. Right. Interesting.

Brent: And so Dylan was like, and that's why de was with him because it was obviously DE's hand saying, come on, honey, let's go.

Jeff: Exactly. So, and so it's gonna be evolved.

Tolen Sinclair or a vain Sinclair, and then XUS, somehow comes in and says, okay, now that vain has awakened you or whatever that now you are the. So there's my theory. There's my wild theory for this. All

right.

Brent: Well, Hey mark, that, this is the show that you did that on, because if you need to pull that clip later on for a future episode, you'll know how to go do that.

Uh, cuz I can tell you looking through all that stuff is a pain in the neck. trying to remember where you said something. Uh right. So anyway, big, huge information done. Yeah. Which is, is just awesome. And I'm, I'm ready to go. I add a couple other things that I just noted, which are more side things. Does linear seem older to you in this episode?

He seems more wise. Yeah. Like because before he was like, he was a kid he's kind of mousey, he's kind of whatever. And now like he's got some maturity

Jeff: on him. He's got some texture texture, like who was yeah, he said, uh, when, when Colleen had the PPG pointed at him, he was like, Look, dude, shoot me or don't shoot me.

I got stuff to do, like just and, and I think linear of last season, would've either been more academic about it or more awkward about it, but yeah, he just definitely has an air he's carrying himself with also

Brent: what the heck is the third FA of tomoto I know Oromo or whatever it was. What is, have we ever heard

Jeff: this before?

What is that? I think, I think he's, I think he mentioned that when he first arrived, like in his very first episode, but I, I totally think of that, of being like, yeah. I'm from the sixth bunk of the Franciscan order in Italy, or, you know, whatever I'm from

Brent: the I'm from the, the, the great house of whatever and the holder of the six rings and the Chaus of something you're up.

Jeff: Hey, now you you're getting really

Brent: close right there. I didn't say it exactly. You

Jeff: didn't. It's true. But right there. I don't know what that, I don't know what

Brent: I mean. I steal one from you.

Jeff: Does that mean I steal one? I only have one left. I'm gonna hold onto that. Like right. Let me have it.

Brent: Um, okay. Well, I can't say that because I've used all my things.

I was gonna make a, I was gonna make a reference to another captain on another show who came in and just gave orders without explaining what he was doing. And all he really had to do was just explain what he was doing and everything would've been fine. Mm-hmm but Sheridan needed to explain what he was doing when he was in command.

It wouldn't have taken much. Wouldn't have taken much for him to just turn around and be like, Hey guys, don't shoot. Why not? Cuz they're not gonna shoot back. They're trying to get you to kill them. Yeah, no, no, no. He just said don't shoot. And just, just let them fly at you. Especially

Jeff: in that whole space.

That whole space where like, oh, they're asking for a con for confirmation on this and he is like, confirm it. Yeah. There's space to be like, yeah, confirm it. They're not gonna fire back. We're fine. We're fine. Yeah, that's a great point.

Brent: I, I just, you know, anyway, um, she gets threatened at the end or at least I think he's a threat.

He's like, like we will, you know, we will remember your name and it won't be forgotten or something like that. Like we'll remember them with honor, but you,

Jeff: we won't forget your name. It makes me wonder, like I get into the, the guts of Babylon, like operations of Babylon five. And I'm like, is there gonna be something where the minbar pull funding or something in this?

Or like, Hey, you either he goes, or our money goes, or have we moved past that phase of world building for this? I,

Brent: well, I mean, I think that's what the Lynn's gonna be there to smooth over, you know? Yeah. So cuz cuz yeah. Anyway, um, Hey, those hand communicators in this episode I saw a lot of the hand communicators.

You do not put stuff like that directly on your skin and walk around with it all day long. Can you imagine the rash that these people have underneath those stupid hand communicators? Seriously? Yeah. Like that's why you put it on your shirt or you wear it as a watch or you just speak into the air or whatever you do, but you, this thing on the back and it looks so uncomfortable, like, like I'd just be walking in, like I'll, I'd scrape it on a cabinet or something and rip off, or, you know, like, I,

Jeff: I catch my watch on cabinet things all the time, and then you're gonna put this big thing on

Brent: my hand.

Have you, have you, I noticed you have an apple watch. Have you ever broken the glass on your apple watch? Because you hit a wall or you leaned up against something and you didn't realize it? I have not that. Wow. And they'll, they'll replace it for you, but like it. It's it's pretty easy to catch.

Jeff: Yeah.

You're their hand on their hand.

Brent: Yeah. It's yeah. Yeah. And nobody's sitting there itching it or anything like that, like, come on now. Um, alright. So I, I made this note is Sheridan the no Sinclair, and then later I said, no, no, no. Sheridan is not the new Sinclair. Sheridan is the anti

Jeff: Sinclair. Oh, wow. Okay.

Brent: You know, mm-hmm and I think if you think about it like that, that holds true Sheridan or Sinclair was the guy that the Menari wanted on the station.

Sheridan's the guy that he don't like, like two ends of the spectrum. He's not just a guy and they didn't get to pick him. Like, he's the worst guy you could have put on this station right now. Mm-hmm , you know what I mean? Um, you know, okay. That's pretty much all I got out of, out of being the anti Sinclair, but.

Jeff: Well, I think, I think there's more to it also, cuz we didn't get a lot of backstory on Sinclair, but we know that he studied with Jesuits. He had pretty humble beginnings. Like he's a line of fighter pilots kind of a thing. Right. And so much military guys Sheridan on the other hand was the privileged son of a diplomatic Envoy who apparently packed his way through the Himalayas or whatever had dinner with the Dai Lama who, by the way, uh, I think, I don't think the Dai Lama eats like he fasts every day after like noon or something like that.

So maybe by dinner he means lunch or something, but like Sheridan just really struck me as the like, Hey, I'm a rich white dude. I was on the football team in college and uh, still got my frat buddies. I stay in touch with. Um, but also I'm pretty cool and approachable. Whereas Sheridan was like, The picture of imposter syndrome, you know?

Well, I, I don't know why I'm commanding the station. I don't deserve, I don't deserve this. And Sheridan's like, of course I deserve this. I'm John Sheridan.

Brent: Yeah, you're right. Do Lama. He doesn't eat till after 1130. Okay. Yeah. Takes his final meal to 1130. Doesn't eat anything till the next morning. You know what that's called?

Jeff. That's called intermittent fasting. Yeah. That's what that is.

Jeff: And he's in great shape. He looks really

Brent: good. Listen, maybe I need to try intermittent fasting. I hear it's me. Yeah, I hear it's great for people like bodies respond to it

Jeff: really well. I intermittently fast when I sleep. Does that count?

That's about it.

Brent: I intermittently fast between mul

Jeff: yeah. Right between bites. Right.

Brent: it's very intermittent. Uh, okay. I, I got, I got one more. Well, okay. Should we talk about Sheridan in his.

Jeff: His speech was awesome.

Brent: Okay. I need to get the entire speech in. Like I wanna listen to the whole speech in one deal.

Mm-hmm because I think there's probably a lot in that to actually dive into with, with where they're going, but I don't know, actually I need to go back and listen to it all in one, in one deal. But yeah, cuz because he talks about like how, um, you know, the dogmas of the past, aren't gonna carry us through the challenges of the future and you know, like all these things, which seem very important to what's like the change of what's happening right now.

Yeah. So, uh, but it's a good luck speech that he has to give within 24 hours and he winds up giving it to an empty room and he is like, yeah, that's good.

Jeff: I loved that. Every everything about that was great. Yeah. They teased like twice he, you know, when he was practicing and then when he gave it to the shift with people on, on shift, they cut him off at the.

Old earth president Abraham Lincoln said mm-hmm and then he gets cut off. I thought they were gonna go down the, a house divided. Can't I thought they were gonna go down that route. Yeah. Yeah, because that's, that's been a big part of the story in here, but where he went on that on the, the line you brought up, I think is much more apropo to like the house divided is great for earth and the story that earth is going through.

Yep. But the dogmas of the past to get you through the problems of the future is the galactic threat that we're we're now facing. Right. All

Brent: right. I've got one more on my notes, Jeff. I don't know what you have left on yours, but did we get another new cast member in this

Jeff: one? I think so. So this ties with miles and we got a new character and a new, I think, a new set that they're gonna, we're gonna see repeatedly.

Oh, like the

Brent: bar, the bar they went in to go eat. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, but this, this, like he's the pilot of the star fur or something like that, he got way more lines and way more interaction than just a, a background, one off guest character. Yep. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like

Jeff: way back in Babylon squared, I started think, cause it was at like, uh, Del alpha seven or something like that was the pilot who went out there Uhhuh.

And I was like, oh my gosh, we're gonna start. And he had the camouflage star theory and I'm like, we're gonna start naming pilots. We're gonna start giving him personalities. I think this guy, I didn't catch his name. Um, but I think this guy is that like, he's gonna be the, the, the pilot with a name who then lets us kind of meet the other pilots around and then they're gonna hang out at this new bar.

Hmm.

My last thought I had was did, did you watch the open credits on this one? No, I skipped it.

Brent: Oh, okay. No. Yeah. I skipped it. There's a new

Jeff: voiceover. Is there. Yeah. You should go back and listen, cuz I, I won't give any of it away. Um, because frankly the voiceover gives a lot of the season away. Um oh really?

Yeah. There's a massive, what I think is a massive plot point that is in the new voiceover that like they said, it there's a graphic and I'm just like, oh my like the first episode and you just told me this is gonna happen. Oh God. So the

Brent: show spoiled

Jeff: itself. Yeah. So yeah, I mean it was just, I mean it is fine.

It's fine. Voiceover, the new graphics look great. It has a weird total like mid nineties thing where it shows the actor when it puts their name up and stuff. Like it's a real big redress of the whole thing. But, but I just, I dunno, they change up the voice over in a way. Is it,

Brent: is it Sheridan's voice instead Claires now?

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It was fine. It was fine except for it totally spoiled the season. So should

Brent: I watch it or not? Jeff? Well, if you got me spoiled, I do too.

Jeff: Right. I'm spoiled. You don't be spoiled. Like I'm not gonna tell you what it is, keep skipping it. Okay. And then when the thing happens, I can tell you, okay.

There it is. Go back and listen to the video. Okay. Yeah. All right.

Brent: All right. Well, I'll keep skipping it then. Cause that little skip intro. Button's

Jeff: amazing. It's that's so nice. Love it. Well, Brent, we've reached that part of the show where we boil this whole thing down. We see if the show has any of that star, Treky kind of quality to it.

Maybe it has a deep moral message to it. Maybe it's holding up a mirror to our society or giving us hope. The future could be better. And we're changing this up a little bit. If you remember, if you listen back to our, our season one wrap up Brent, uh, we're gonna split up the ratings on this a little bit.

Uh, I am gonna rate this episode on a scale of zero to five deltas as to the star Treky feel on it. You, Brent are going to rate this episode on a scale of zero to five star theories on just how much we enjoyed this episode. And then we don't get to override each other's ratings. We don't, we can talk about our ratings, but sure.

But we don't get to override it. Exactly. Got, and this will swap for each episode. We'll swap. Who does the deltas and who does the star theories? So, Brent, do you want to go and do your star theories first? Uh,

Brent: yeah, sure. I, I don't know what I've done. I've never done this before.

Jeff: I know, right?

Brent: Yeah. I'm going to, okay.

So star theories. This is, this is how much I liked. The episode, cause like I love the launch sequence of the star theories and like I'm follow. So they're, they're super cool. So I'm gonna give this one. Oh man. See, because you had, you had me questioning whether or not I really liked this episode or whether or not I, I liked the information dumps that we got and the setup for the future.

Yeah. Like the episode itself wasn't anything spectacular, you know? Yeah. I agree. But what the information we got was was pivotal. So I'm gonna give this one, two star theories because the episode itself, like, I, I, I get your point on that. And I, I agree the episode itself wasn't particularly amazing, but it did what we need to do to kind of

Jeff: relaunch the.

It was wildly necessary, everything and it was necessary. Yeah. Yes, yes. So, and

Brent: this is on a, on a, how much you enjoyed the episode. Yeah. Two. I'm gonna go to

Jeff: yeah. Two star furries. I, I can't disagree with that. I feel really comfortable with that one, cuz I mean, it was, it was fine. It was fine. It wasn't offense.

It was no soul hunter. In fact it was good enough that it actually made soul hunter mean something and that alone is worth a star theory. Like,

Brent: well it, you know, I mean that's where I, you know, I, I always go back to the Harry Potter stuff. Like if you ever read the books, like the second book just made no sense in the greater context until you got to the end and you realized what was actually going on in the second book the whole time, you know, but up until that part, you were like, whatever, , it's kinda like, so like I know what's going with so whatever.

Oh, actually.

Jeff: Well for deltas, right? This is that star Treky message. Mm-hmm in the whole thing. I think the conflicts in this episode were rooted in the question of purpose, right? The tri Gotti's purpose of pursuing honor or death, the Menari purpose of exploring the mystery of their souls and bringing Sinclair to their planet and possibly the president's purpose of driving a wedge between humanity and the minbar by putting Sheridan in place.

But I think it also explores the concept of consequences. It's been 12 years since the end of the Earthman BARR war, but the fallout is still super, super real. And Sheridan represents all that fallout to the Menari. So purpose and long term consequences, those are very star Trek themes, very star Trek, worthy messages, but they're just roots of this episode.

They're just parts of it. Yeah, it doesn't really dive into them and explore. 'em very much. What are you thinking? Oh,

Brent: before you can, before you pronounce your deltas, I want to stump for this one. Okay. Because I think this was a very star Trek episode. Okay. I don't know if it was five Delta star Trek episode.

I'm, you're the one who gets to decide that. But I noticed a theme running through this episode and this theme was about humanity, which is star Trek. Very. Yeah. Okay. And, and, and here's here was the theme. This was a theme about how we, as humans will fight to the bitter end, whether it's a bravery or desperation, and maybe they're the same thing.

Hmm. Right. And we, like, we first really encountered that idea during the flashbacks with delin and the gray council. And, you know, they're kind of talking to each other, going to maybe it's really the same thing.

This was the thing that defines us as humanity as we face new challenges is that even in a hopeless situation, we have zero. We can match up against these people in, in no way, but we're gonna fight to the end mm-hmm as humans, you know? Um, and, and then to tie that into Sheridan's speech, we can't clinging to the dogmas of the past because they're inadequate for the challenges which we must now face.

We have to, as humans grow and adapt in order to become the last best hope for peace in the galaxy or the last best hope for peace on earth

and in doing so, we have to work together with our Mumbar brethren. Now. We are more than what we thought we were. Mm-hmm , we're not just humans. We're now apartment. Like, you know what I mean? It's this we're bigger. We have to grow, we have to adapt, but there is a tenaciousness that's in us that actually may not exist in the Mumbar.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Like we will logically fight to the end, even if there's no hope and maybe that's what the Menari need in order to defeat this growing. Like that's, that's where it comes down to. Yeah. Is that, that it's it's humans being humans, humans, the being our best, even when our backs against the wall.

So I, I found very star Trek stuff in this, you know, running through the, the, the course of the whole

Jeff: episode. I appreciate that. And, and I just, so, you know, I did add a half Delta to my rating based on that, which will help, but, okay. I agree. That is very star Trek. I th. That's more, in my opinion, that's more of a mass effect message than even a star Trek message, which is great.

But it's that whole, it's that whole piece that where linear talks about we have to come together to defeat this enemy. Yeah. And that's that mass effect message is that every single player on the galactic stage brings something to the table, but it's humanity. It's humans that bring everyone together, actually unite everyone.

And then give that spark where like that exactly. Like you said, we're, we're gonna go fight the unwinnable fight because it's the fight worth fighting. It's very star Trek. It's also very massive effect to me, it rings very mass effect, but I was gonna go with two and a half deltas on there. I'm gonna bump it to three on there.

I, I, I struggle to bring it any higher than that. Just, um, just because these were. Underpinnings through the episode to me in a big way that popped up in it. This episode was a vehicle for launching the rest of the series. Sure. Yeah. In a lot of ways in setting up some of those themes that, uh, that are star Treky and thus justifies so much of what we're doing.

Brent: All right, Jeff. Well, here we are in season two. Yeah. We're we've got a lot of new stuff. We've got new theme music. We got a new captain, we got a new star fury pilot. We got a new mission. It seems like

we're gonna start a new game. We like our games here on Babylon five for the first time. And we kind of started this last week when we did our season one wrap up, but now we're gonna do it as we go forward. We're gonna do it as we. What we are gonna do is we are gonna put together the absolute 100% completely accurate definitive ranking of Babylon five.

Now, even though this is the first episode of the season, and we're, we're only, we're gonna do this to the seasons. All right. Uh, so even though this is the first episode of the season, Jeff, I'm gonna ask you where it is. This one I'll let you choose. Where does this one rank

Jeff: for the season? Well, it's a tough one, right?

I mean, there's a lot of things to consider here. I think though, in the scope of the second season of Babylon five and what we've gotten so far and what we've gotten so far right now, points of departure really has to land at the number one spot so far. This is the best episode of the second season that we've seen.

I,

Brent: I can't disagree with you, Jeff. Uh, I it's just, like I said, it's absolute a hundred percent completely accurate. Definitive.

Jeff: Yeah, no one can it's objectively the correct ranking.

Brent: Yeah, exactly. Uh, now next week we're gonna add in, uh, whatever the next episode is, and we're gonna decide if that episode goes above or below this one.

And that's how we'll do the season rankings. We'll keep track of our top five. Uh, actually we'll keep track of the whole dang season as we go through, but specifically that top five, uh, episodes. And at the end of the season, we will have not have to do the work that we did on the last wrap up. Yeah.

Because we will have that definitive ranking.

Jeff: It'll all be done. Well, Brent, that's it for points of departure. We're officially in season two also. That's our current number one episode for the season right next week. We're watching revelations for the first time, Jeff.

Brent: Yep. Are you sure that that's the title?

I'm pretty sure. Are you sure it's revelations and not just revelation? I'm gonna go double check. It's a mistake. People make all the time. They talk about revelations. When really they just mean revel. Sh it is

Jeff: the book of revel. Sean, this is the episode revelations. This is revelations. Just wanted to check John.

Didn't write this one. Well, we

don't

Brent: of Atmos, right?

Jeff: Right. We don't look ahead at anything. All looked really, all we know about this episode is now we know officially it's called revelations. And we like to guess what it's gonna be based on the name alone. So Brent, based on that, what do you think revelations is gonna be about?

Well, I'm gonna

Brent: make a strong prediction about this episode. Delin is gonna emerge from the cocoon. No, no. Yep. Yep. I'm declaring it right here. Right now. Declaring it to be so delin will emerge. From the cocoon in this episode, revelations, and we are going to it, it strikes me that it's plural. Right? Uh, I think the lens's gonna come out and share some stuff with us.

We're gonna learn. Uh, I, I think we might learn even more about this prophecy and what's going on with the Mumbar souls and humanity. And I think it might be kind of a, a continuance of that. Uh, and we'll, we'll find out what's been going on with Dylan during her time in the cocoon for eight, eight days is really a short amount of time

Jeff: in a cocoon.

It's the perfect amount of time for a week. Yeah. Yeah. It's still,

Brent: it's kinda short. Like I think butterfly is staying their cocoons for longer than seven days.

Jeff: I think that you're getting pretty cocky with, I mean, that's a huge, huge stretch on this guess. And I think you're getting, I mean, getting so many things, right.

I don't know. I think this is where you fall apart. It's possible. This is the end of your streak. There's no way, no way, no way. She's gonna stay with that little piece cracked open for a few more weeks. just,

Brent: do you know it was oozing out. Did you notice that? I did. Yeah.

Jeff: Oh. I was like, oh my gosh. So gross.

So I, the whole time it was sitting there, I'm just thinking who's gonna clean that up. Like when she gets out, like, do they have housekeeping? That's gonna come in and like,

Brent: yeah, they're gonna, they're gonna call them. They're gonna call the LA they're gonna wipe the ketchup off the wall and, you know, clean up the ooze from the cocoon.

So, right.

Jeff: Yeah. Oh, so gross. Well, I think we're gonna get some different revelations in this one. I'm going deep cut on this. Oh, we, you know who we haven't seen for a while. Talia winters. Ooh. And I think that the vicar is gonna show up again and we're gonna get, he's gonna share all kinds of stuff about Talia winters, and we're gonna get revelations about her and Cy.

Brent: Remind

Jeff: me who the vicar is. The vicar was that horrible, horrible guest star with the weird hat that was negotiating with KSH so that, oh, like the, the bionic

Brent: dude? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that guy. Ooh. Okay.

Jeff: Yeah. I feel like that's our

Brent: guy. That's a, that's a direct call out. If you nailed that, I'm gonna say you cheated and you watched this

Jeff: episode before tonight.

If you're watching on YouTube, I'm babe. Briefing this right now, calling my shot. That's where it's right there. Center field. Got it. Let's go. Well, we're gonna find out next week. Thank you so much for joining us on this. The best episode of season two so far,

Brent: don't forget the last best

Jeff: episode. the last best episode of season two.

The don't forget to subscribe wherever you're listening or watching to us, and please do stop by apple podcasts and leave a rating and review. We will happily read it here on the podcast or audible until. Audible. Yeah. Cause they leave. You can do that on audible and it's so cool that they're on there.

Well, Brent, until next time. Hey

Brent: Jeff, Jeff, Jeff. Jeff. I know. I keep interrupting you. Um, whatever you're about to say, mm-hmm please remember the core of what this show is not a star Trek podcast. Jeff, please don't go back to live long and prosper. Now that we're in a new season. Got it

Jeff: until next time folks, peace and long life.

Brent: Really?

Jeff: Really?