Revelations | For the Second Time

[0:00] You can only watch it for the first time once. It'll be interesting to see what we catch and what we do. Have you ever played the video game Mass Effect? This is where Babylon 5 is becoming Babylon 5. That was great. I love that. 100% completely accurate, definitive ranking of Babylon. I love it so much. We're officially into it, Jeff. The year is 2025. The name of the podcast, Babylon 5, for the second time.

[0:33] Welcome to Babylon 5 for the second time. My name is Brent Allen. And I'm Jeff Akin. Brent and I, we used to be Star Trek podcasters, and then we watched Babylon 5 for the first time, and I gotta tell ya, everything changed. Now, we're watching this series for the second time, catching all that stuff there was no possible way we could have caught the first time around.

[0:55] That's right but don't worry folks we are still searching for those sci-fi messages that we find in this series those things that jms was laying down that we're picking up things maybe we didn't catch the first time around but we are looking for those that being said this is not our first time around this is our second time around which means uh by the nature of this show, everything is spoiler filled everything is on the table this is your warning out there if you have not seen this show stop right now go back and catch us on our first watch when everything was super spoiler free we had a great community of people around us jeff keeping us spoiler free there were people who were trying to give us spoilers and we had folks like you out there who had swords who were like swatting that i mean you guys you had lightsabers who you're just, like you were catching it for us which was awesome um you guys go check that out and then when you do see finish the series come join us back here uh because jeff and i could talk about anything from Anywhere in the entire franchise, canon, not canon, extra source, source, whatever, it's all fair game for Jeff and I to talk about this go-around. It is in this go-around. Today, we're watching the episode Revelations, the second season, or the second episode in season two. We're going to be looking for all the stuff, right, that we missed and everything.

[2:14] Yes, sir. Nia just said in our council chambers, hello to our council chambers who are joining us live for the recording. Nia's like, lightsabers? You could have said Mambari fighting pikes. The Den Bach. Yes, I could have.

[2:26] Huge miss. Huge miss. I know. I mean, I failed. I need to go back to the first watch. Right? Exactly. I'm going to relegate myself. It's about time. Sorry. I interrupted you. For the audio listeners, Brent threw his hands up in frustration, and Jeff was like, what are you doing? I was paying attention. But to your point, just to point out again, our council chambers, uh, uh, subscribers to our Patreon, they get invited to join us for our recordings and it's so cool having them here. They can correct us in real time on, uh, on things like that and offer us a lot of stuff, which I'm hoping they do in this episode revelations, because I remember from the first time viewing of this, I, I did not like this episode. Um, I remember, so we got a lot of Sheridan stuff. We got Garibaldi back. We got unchrysalist Delenn. And I think we got our first mention of Zaha Doom. We got some stuff, but I just remember being completely underwhelmed and disappointed with almost everything that happened in this one. Do you remember what you thought of this one? I was right there with you, brother. I was right there. My memory of this episode is I didn't like it.

[3:34] I remember we had just gotten our new captain, the one that we liked from the go. And the second episode out, he spends the whole damned episode pining for his lost wife. Now, I know that makes me sound like I'm a hard hearted man, but this was too much. Even for I have a big old softy. If there's any one of the two of us, that's a hard hearted person. It's huge. It is 100% me. I am the crier of the two of us.

[4:01] But I, I, it was just too much to me. It was too much too soon, but you know what? I think it was. I've been thinking about this. With nearly everything else that jms has done he's been really subtle about it he seeded it seeded it and then he talked about it garibaldi's drinking seeded it seeded it you noticed the thing you noticed the thing and then he talks about it right uh avon of his earring you know seeding those things the whole thing with avon of and her dad there was one little scene we got earlier and then it finally paid off londo's appendages right i mean it took a long time before we fully dived in and everything was just full frontal for us he seeded that and then they grew exactly.

[4:47] Um but with this nope it was just one big boohoo fest that's my memory i really hope i'm wrong about this episode though. I'm excited to listen to, I'm excited to listen. I already listened to this one. I listened to our last episode, Brent, and listening to our last episode makes me excited to watch this for the second time. Really? Because listening to us talk about it, I think this is going to be one of the episodes that really benefits from the second watch. Okay. But you, yeah, you did not like this one. In the second season, we started assigning star theories to things. And that was kind of how, you know, how we, how much we liked it, how Babylon five it was in your quote. Can we get negative star theories on this one? This was a slog of an episode to get through. Right.

[5:36] I, I thought this was an important episode for Sheridan, but it was super cliche. Um, I liked that they were slow playing the shadows and the Dylan stuff, but my quote was, it was okay that we get a new net off in this episode and immediately hated her uh our conversation basically went uh she sounds weak she sounds pathetic and has lost every bit of edge that she had last season can i talk about that just for a second yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna jump our our thing here into the jms speaks he talked about that in the lurker's guide oh really specifically yeah and and so you bring it up here now's a really good chance uh to do it one regarding the the change in the actor for an atoth you have to remember that this was not our decision but it was caitlin she was the actress that we loved from season one she wanted to go do other movies and stuff like that and more power to her but she wanted to pursue some some other parts they had made her an equal offer to the other cast but she opted to pursue films so they basically cast the next best actor that they could find to fill in the tots boots.

[6:47] They needed a character who was there with prior knowledge because they had to, she had to fill a role in the story, not just, you know, be a new person. And Mary Kay, the new actress, this is JMS's quote says, I think is trying to reinterpret the character. We're nudging her in the other direction. One way or the other, this will be made to work. Now, you and I know it won't. And they're going to cut her ass. It was made to work. They got rid of her. No, that's, I mean, it's, but here's what I love. They knew it wasn't working too. Yeah. You know what I mean? And the actress was just being obstinate about it, apparently. And they're like, no, no, no, we really need you to, and she was trying to do this. And they were like, okay, fine, we're going to keffer you. She got keffered before keffer got keffered. Right? Except she got covered to a prison. Yeah. And yeah, I loved the roll around on that. And they waited until we could get Caitlin back. Exactly. We'll come around on this at some point. Oh, Caitlin's available and wants to come do this? Great. Let's pull this back in now. Let's do it. You, Brent, we got some Psycor stuff in this one. And you were like, they are really building Psycor to be this really big thing. And it looks like Home Guard is going to be a really big thing in this too.

[8:05] So yeah you got you know 50 50 on that one we talked a lot about what the shadows are.

[8:13] What are they you were curious if they were a religious sect or a metaphor or actually the collective of all the bad stuff like the psychor and the home guard and the whatever just kind of all the bad guy stuff there there's some lines that you quote like psychor casts a shadow home guard casts a shadow they talk about the darkening that they bring the darkness that those things bring i thought that they were going to be a super race that lives on zaha doom and that they, constructed morden he's not human but some sort of a construct like a gola but you got super race living on zaha doom brent i'm gonna spoiler this thing a little bit i got some stuff in this one yeah dude yeah yeah you did we learn a we get a little more of a dive into jaquan we we see some more religious jacar in this one and you talked a lot about kind of the the parallel isms in stories and good storytelling where i'm telling like jacar's story but to help tell that story i'm going to go back and tell jaquan's story as it's going and you really really wanted that dive into jaquan i did i really did and we talked about that i think when we did our our original five-year arc episode that there's there's the here's what happened but here's what happened before and We got to discover those side by side. Yeah. Which is really cool. Yeah. You had a, you had a great quote. You said Londo at the, when this is all said and done, Londo has to be one of the good guys.

[9:42] Yes. You hope that Londo there was, you said, I hope it's written somewhere that Londo and Jakar can never be friends.

[9:53] Okay. Hey, even when they were friends in season five, they're still, they were still kind of frenemies. So I'm, I'm okay with where they were. I, I, I'm okay with where they wound up. It was a fun ride. Yeah. Not for Jakar, but no, I mean, no, no, uh, we were super, super underwhelmed with the lens transformation. Um, you had a lot of confusion around why she would even do this. Like, what's the point? Yeah. Your quote was great. All right, so she has hair. Yay.

[10:30] I like this a lot. You thought, we were talking about when Delenn says to Kosh, you know, show me. Let me see you. And you thought that maybe when you see a Vorlon, a true Vorlon, you see your future.

[10:45] Oh. And so Delenn was like, okay, this will play out. This will be fine. But you went a step further. And you said that maybe this is why lita got called back to earth because she saw her future which ties to psycor's future and they had to pull her back before she could say anything, interesting interesting how's a good guy man that's one of those red yarn theories that like like if if we when we get to the end of this run and we're not doing babylon 5 for the third time but we're just doing like individual like things and we run like a what if episode yeah That'd be a great, like, let's pull on this thread and see where the story, where we, like, let's write the story that could have been. Yeah. You know, that'd be, that'd be a fun one. I really liked that, that idea of yours. It was cool. But Brian, here's the big thing. Last one on this. My prediction. My prediction is that Anna, Sheridan's wife. Yeah. Got blown up near Zaha doom by the shadows. And so now Sheridan is going to have a deep personal stake in the upcoming war. You know what? But to be fair, Anna maybe didn't get blown up, but she died on Zaha Doom with the shadows, and it was personal for Sheridan. It was very personal for him. Yeah. It's why he went, right?

[12:02] It's the whole thing. Yeah. I listened to us talk about this, Brent. You, you already said it went and looked at a lot of JMS's stuff. I did. Scoured the internet. What did you get? He had quite a bit, quite a bit. A lot of it's still revolving around the change in character from Sinclair to Sheridan and things like that. Also, he's talking a lot more about how he's building things. In this particular episode, Jakar reads a poem that is quoting Yeats.

[12:28] Yeats. The great poet Yeats. Yeats, however you say his name. And he says this one aspect of the Yates quote and the Abraham Lincoln quote that we had and the Tennyson quote and many others that we've had so far, Jeff, is that I think a lot of folks at some point tuned out of or just aren't interested in literature and poetry because they've never really been exposed to it. So I'm being a little subversive. I work some of it into the show. I choose which has meaning to the show or the characters. Here's the clue in hopes that viewers will dig out the original material. I love that. So what he wants us to do is when we hear one of these quotes, he wants us to go research it and find out the material and dig that stuff out. I love that. Yeah. But he also says this, and this gives such validation to you and me. Granted, television must entertain at a minimum, but it should also elevate, ennoble, and educate. That's great. That's why we do this show. It's what we do. We're trying to dig out those messages. it's yes we are right to look for the messages through jms's work it's his intent exactly yeah exactly now we may have started as hoity toity you know better than now but this it also gives credence to what we've said it's not star trek does not own the the market on messages and sci-fi it's what sci-fi just does what it is as a genre yeah yeah um now regarding delin being male at first.

[13:55] Uh he does not mention androgynous androgynous is kind of like sort of a little in between.

[14:02] He no male oh wow uh the lynn was supposed to be male at first the plan was to turn to lynn from male to female in chrysalis and and all that sort of stuff is like it would have made a hell of an impact but my concern when i made the decision to not do that was basically we couldn't do it really well because they tried to they would have to alter her voice through the entire first season yeah because of having mira do the do the role as well and they just it would just sounded really bogus real bogus he says quoting him and they just couldn't get it right and he just decided it wasn't worth the payoff to do all of that work so they just allowed the lynn to be female that's a and stay female big decision it is and i love that they that they had those thoughts and honestly just the integrity of like we would love to do this we just don't have the technology to make it work right now which says a lot giving the cg they put on screen in season one where he's like this is good enough to go on which some of it was but to make the decision that the audio wasn't there you know that had to be really really bad yeah yeah um moving on with the lynn somebody had asked a question why does the lens hair go under her bone ridge and you and i've talked about how that bone ridge doesn't look right anymore right how like you see the gap and everything now in the makeup listen to this oh listen to this when the lens physical structure changed the epidermal layer on her head grew.

[15:30] Thinner so now there's a gap between the skin and the bone which has grown out and hair can be draped through it or laid over it that's amazing here's what i want to know was that on purpose or was this jms looking at an answer and going here's the answer that i'm writing right now off the top of my head either way i love it it's perfect i love it Yeah.

[15:52] And it also, again, gives credence to what you and I were calling out in our first watch. I'm like, no, this is a thing. People are like, ah, you guys are being done. No, like, it's a thing. Yep. Oh, turns out they did it on purpose. Cool. I'm glad with that. Just tell me. You know, I love that. So this one's not super important, but I do want to take it because I think it has a little funny story to it.

[16:17] Regarding Anna Sheridan and her last name. Apparently people were asking like, why did she take Sheridan's last name? This is the future. Don't people just keep their own last names? Because, you know, Star Trek does that too, right? And he's like.

[16:28] Yeah, she chose to take Sheridan's last name. That was her decision. You have that option. Some do, some don't. So if you have this rule that no women can take a husband's last name, that's betraying something. You're just being as restrictive as those who insist that women must take their husband's last name. He's like me. I'm pro-choice on every single level. She felt like it. So Anna did it. He's like, and as a side note, my own spousal over unit kept her own name. But then who in her right mind would take the name straczynski i love that it's funny because we see the other not necessarily the other side but more extreme side where we get lease hampton edgars garibaldi franz oh my word right right well no she didn't take franz's she didn't but she should have well although it says a lot about that's an example of somebody who is taking the name and not taking the name all at the same time doing it all she's schrodinger's maiden name there you go there you go um hey so something we do need to look at when we go back and watch for the third time not on a podcast just individually um something that he says another thing that can now be reinterpreted is the look on garibaldi's aides face his name is jack we finally get his name in this episode his name is jack the guy that shot him in the back right the look on his face back in sky full of stars when garibaldi didn't go for the whitewash of the security guards, financial records.

[17:56] Oh, so when that seems happening, look at Jack's face, there's a look on his face and there's a reason why he has that look because he's the betrayer and he's like, yeah, you should do that. You're not going to do that.

[18:08] You're not going to do that. And also how did the body manage to get out of the security station without anybody being aware of it? Speaking of Jack though, let's continue to talk about him just for a moment. Ah, there was a The question of whether Jack had had contact with the Psycorps and maybe he was doing this under Psycorps manipulation. He's like, no, Jack wasn't seduced by them, but he was there to meet the Psycorps and to escort them to see Sinclair. And perhaps maybe was there a contact that was made there? Okay. Maybe. I thought that's a nice little what if kind of a thing they had going on there. Ah, so he says this. People were asking whether Morden was human or not. I asked this question. Yeah, we both talked about it. Here's his exact quote. Morden is human. Morden Dat, I cannot say.

[19:02] Jakar looks different this year. Um they didn't change his makeup it's just andreas katsulas put on some weight over the hiatus okay okay and the makeup change he said he actually winds up dropping it fairly quickly and the makeup like corrects itself but you know and he goes hell we all actually put on a few pounds over the hiatus so whatever um speaking of this i think you and i have talked about this or at least we've had it shared with us that the new makeup for mira takes actually longer than the old yeah which is odd but just says there's a lot more detail work for it now so it does take longer i got two more things that i want to talk about one is this you know how you and i going through we're like okay jacar is the bad guy londo's the comic relief this this that and the other right yeah well regarding why people are now starting to switch places right this is exactly what i noted early on the intent to set up in the very beginning a situation where those who've seen sci-fi before you and me will go, Oh, I got this. That's the bad guy. That's the good guy. And that's the comic relief. And here's the ally and so on, because that's generally what we've seen on television and sci-fi. You set up various sides from one from day one and virtually nobody moves.

[20:17] So you get them to rely on their conditioning and then you begin to move the chairs around. And suddenly what you thought was the good guy is actually maybe something else. And what you thought was the comic relief is actually a tragic and dark figure. And what you thought was the bad guy is actually maybe one of the real heroes of the story. And you try to make a path where those results changes and you make them as interesting and as moving and as scary as possible. That being said, to all of you out there, all of you Babylon 5 veterans, when you're listening to another reactor, you're meeting somebody who for the very first time is going through the early seasons and they're going wow jacar is just the the warrior bad guy and all of that give him a break jms set us up on purpose yeah he set us up so don't get mad at us hook line and sinker right here yeah we oh you and i were he was and you're like that was you and i we fell for it he did it on purpose yep well done what i love about that brent well done jms totally well done and here's what i love Because he goes a step further and that they don't stop there. He doesn't like change their role and they stop. They keep changing. And I think at the end of the story for almost every character, uh, they are, none of them match an archetype. They're a little of this, a little of that, maybe a lot of this.

[21:35] Yeah, I'd say some of the most complex characters and character development in entertainment. So I want one more thing, and this is going to be a little, um, actually I'm going to save this. Okay. I'm going to save this for something that you and I call club 65. All right. I can't say more than that because we don't talk about the club outside of the club. We don't. But if you know what club 65 is, meet us there. And we're going to talk about more character arcs in the original plan. Do you hear what I'm saying? I am. Yeah. more character arcs specifically what would have happened if lita had stayed dr kyle had stayed takashima had stayed carolyn sykes had stayed and even some extra sinclair stuff okay okay so we'll talk about that in club 65 afterwards so that being said anything else that i have from jms and there is still a few more i'm going to save it for the episode well then let's watch the episode let's do it for you joining us for the first time what's going to happen is brent and i are going to watch this episode for the second time right here right now if you're joining us on YouTube, you're going to see the kind of cut up version of this. It's done for, for, uh, for copyright purposes. If you want to see the unedited complete version with all of our fumbles and thoughts and whatever, the kind of the rabbit holes that we go down, you can get that at our Patreon page. That's at patreon.com slash Babylon five first with the number five and the word first.

[22:51] And if you guys are listening to us on any of the podcasting apps, the audio, sit tight because you're going to catch the audio of the reaction we used to cut it out. We don't do that anymore because we want you guys joining in on the fun. And frankly, Jeff and I are talking a lot more during those videos, and you got to have the context for that anyway. So with that, Jeff, let's watch an episode. Let's go. Accessing file.

[23:18] This is madness how much longer will this come to be held hostage to its missing members their behavior is inexcusable ambassador delen remains indisposed indisposed she's in a cocoon yes and you do you have any idea when ambassador jakar will decide to grace us with his presence For that matter, do you have any idea where he is? His thing is blacker and bigger. And much bigger. Without any explanation, the other one picks the most breathtakingly inconvenient moment possible to explore new career options, like becoming a butterfly. I move that we reprimand both governments. You know, this is rich. This is rich coming from a guy who, in Born to the Purple, sloughed everybody off for the girl back in his room. Hey, Vera, you go do the whole thing. You got this. This is rich coming from him. This, Brent, would be the perfect episode to spin off the sidekicks show that we still want and need. Yeah, absolutely. Two representatives to this council. The guy was like, eh? Eh? You know, JMS said he wants us to write our own story. The motion isn't carried and the rest of the agenda isn't tabled. I recommend that we adjourn for the rest of the day and reconvene tomorrow at nine and try this again.

[24:36] I've told you all I know oh yeah from go investigate the attack on our base in quadrant 37 but this one we don't understand that they're fighting shadow fighters oh yeah.

[24:58] This says a lot about the narn sequence and how just their uh their natural go-to is essentially a kamikaze approach hey we're not going to win this so let's do as much damage as we can and that means sacrificing ourselves are they at zaha doom right now they are at zaha doom we're going to hear that here in a little bit jakar is going to talk about it they're at zaha doom what's funny about this and that's going on in the council chambers chat over here but you were adamant for, years that we didn't hear Zaha Doom until like late into season two. Yeah, we didn't. But even in like our first time discussion, like, oh, this Zaha Doom thing. What's a Zaha Doom thing? It was gone for you. Nope. I refuse to believe that it was in here earlier. It's groupthink, right? It's groupthink that they said it in this one. That's right.

[25:47] Destination Babylon 5. So they were fighting shadows there. Yeah.

[25:51] That's what they were fighting. Wow. And they did not do well. The Babylon Project. Right?

[25:55] No it's a lot to be said for that yeah hey these guys obliterated our entire planet well i guess they didn't yet not yet no these guys obliterated uh the whole raider party and they took out the they took out their base in quadrant 37 or whatever that was yeah because you can have 37 quadrants out there all right i'm gonna pause this because they're saying this in the chat bringing this up zaha doom equals kaza doom lord of the rings ams has specific words about this i would like to bring up right now is the name zaha doom a reference to kaza doom from lord of the rings this is from jms folks don't at me at him no it's not i always imagined that zaha doom was originally the minbari word for the word place za za has echoes of intel za and isil za not really no because i imagine the word zaha doom or because uh uh so there's za which means place and then doom which means doom it meant the place of doom okay okay in his mind that's not to say i wasn't aware of kaza doom but that was not on my mind at the time interesting that's what zaha doom means so let's correct all that my sister's coming for a visit and i have time before she was like i don't care maybe we don't like this episode because of the music frankly not great without every trick i know and nothing seems to work captain i'd like to put him down i see heads up captain i don't I don't really follow the rules and I make my own up all the time. Just the same. I'm afraid if we wait any longer, it won't do any good.

[27:25] Bottom line. I came into possession of an alien device capable of draining the life energy from one person. Hey, let's bring this thing back.

[27:34] But it can be used safely at lower settings to heal people. Still, there is a risk, and I wanted your permission before trying. It's his only hope. Nia's pointing out this is the first interaction between Franklin and Sheridan. We don't have much choice. Right, because it was Ivanova who interacted with him last week. Who are you going to hook up to the machine? Well, I can't ask anyone else to take the risk of something wrong. I'll have a conversation in the middle of a jazz club. I'll do it. No, you're not. What I really like about this scene, though, what an awful spot for Bruce Box. I know that I froze this. For the audio listeners, Jeff paused this right as Bruce Boxleitner closed his eyes. So he's just sitting there like stand sleeping. Actually, I think he has the look I would have after talking to Dr. Franklin, which is, oh my God. Right. That's exactly what it is. But early Dr. Franklin, let's be clear. But what I love about this is with Sinclair, Sinclair was buttoned up tight all the time. Like he seemed like he was always working. There were times he tried to get away, you know, but it just never worked out. What we see here again establishing our new captain he lets loose you know kind of you know space loose a little bit but he's wearing civvies having a little drink just being dude johnny lizzie johnny and lizzie do we ever hear from lizzie again.

[28:49] Even in road home when we go to the farm three years never even talked about it never even mentioned i took one look at the garden here and completely lost here's here's the sounds great I'm star. She's the conspiracy theory. Let's get you something to eat. Oh, okay. She's the conspiracy theory. And he's just like, oh, yes. Narns will never be able to prove that it was done at your instigation. Perfect symmetry. Morden's like, we're kind of killing it over here. I believe that this little demonstration will bring you some very interesting propositions. Yes. A person in an important position like yours hears many things. If you should hear about anything strange happening out on the rim, I'd appreciate being informed. I mean, this is the way the mafia works, right? Uh-huh. Yep. I'm going to do you a favor. Oh, now I've got a favor. Now you're in my debt. I like his pattern, too, where he's like, yeah, good stuff, good stuff. One more thing. Nothing has ever really been the same between us, not since Anna passed away. It's been two years. Johnny. Then why do I still have to remind myself that she's gone? Sometimes I will turn to say something to her. She's not there, but just for a second. I don't know why she's not there. Oh, his voice broke just a little there. I like that. Take this episode, put it three or four episodes later, give him a couple of little moments, and then pay it over here.

[30:03] That's a great point. we're watching this through president sheridan's eyes but we didn't know him at all when we watched this he was my friend for a lot longer than you were married to her and i miss her too, oh he's sopping up the ooze did he repair the crack she's trying to get out did he repair the crack dude we have to go back and watch just the the creepiness of this dude this right here totally tracks with into in-game linear huh yeah he is upset like he's already dude it's almost like at First, he was Delenn and Ducat to her. Like, oh my gosh, she's amazing. You know, I'm putting her up on this pedestal. But now with this, she is transcended. Like, she is, oh my God. This is just going to hit. And when he's crying, I mean, it rewrites him crying when she's in the chrysalis. Yeah. You know what I mean? He's not crying because, like, he's lost her. She can't. He'll never be with her now or whatever. Or maybe he will. Maybe he won't. Like, I just, look, it's like he repaired the scene. Listen.

[31:05] Soon now soon that is evil villain stuff right there silence of the lambs soon now it puts the chrysalis in the basket, couldn't sleep this is the device that's actually a really good segue from this conversation about Anna into this I thought we agreed I can't have you giving your life energy and operating this machine at the same time he's my patient.

[31:30] But when I took over B5, he became my responsibility. He's never met this man. Exactly. Two weeks into the job will look good on my resume. This is like an echo of what he did with the CNC staff.

[31:42] Where he's all, hey, you guys are great. I can't, I don't want to serve with anybody other than you. He doesn't know Franklin at all, but he's like, this is not your job, man.

[31:49] Like, yeah, let me do this. And in here, what he's kind of saying also is you're more important than I am. Right? Like I literally just got replaced. Actually, now I'm saying this. We had this conversation the first time. but uh shared he's like i just got replaced it's fine yes dr kyle also got replaced with this but in this moment the station can do without a commander it cannot do without uh cmo but it's cool on their first inter like they come to a comp they have a hard conversation come to a compromise and kind of save a life we must warn the others net off after a thousand years the darkness has come again this is important so clearly it's important but what stepping back important most of what we learn about the shadows moving forward up until you know later on is is from the minbari from delen everything the minbari currently know about the shadows has been filtered through the vorlon chakwan there's no filter this stuff was happening in a real time he captured it this is the most true record of the first shadow war that exists yeah so in a real way jakar is the voice of reason and truth that no one is going to listen to this is also perfect storytelling right here i'm gonna give this this episode some props the whole sheridan stuff notwithstanding we've had this whole season to sit here and say the shadows have come again they're back they're awake like this puts all i mean this amps everything up in all the right ways.

[33:14] So good and it's just i mean just you can feel the dial being turned slowly just up a little bit more.

[33:23] What's up doc what's up doc he's a luni tunes guy yeah exactly yes i love that.

[33:33] Of course it's the first thing he said no no i gotta see the commander i just want to get a big piece of velcro just slap it on his chest right now it's not cool man rip it off not cool, for a few days old place goes to hell well i hope i can prove otherwise who are you Captain John Sheridan, your new CO I don't know you Yeah, my friend is the CO And I think we'll get along just fine I'm gonna need more than you saying that I know you're tired Do you remember who shot you? Yeah, Jack, maybe not the time or place I keep trying So, JMS talks about.

[34:10] Very soon, Ambassador I may require your help In the interests of all our governments What a different Jakar We're seeing right here So actually I was getting ready to stop because I had a thought do yours first. I just said, what a different Jakar from season one. Here he is. We have to tell people, we have to help people. We have to come together. There's a thing bigger than that, which is seated, right? The whole things that are bigger than us, but, but also remember his whole purpose was to keep people at each other's throats. Yep. Huge, huge step shift. Huge shift. Here's the other thing. This is interesting. What does he say to Londo here? He's like the, the things between our people, between our people will never be resolved without centauri blood but then he says but i may need your help i now correspond that to later at the the the forgiveness thing my people can never forgive your people for what they've done but i can forgive you there's a nice parallel nice bookend right there that i find.

[35:10] He's like oh god, yes dr franklin could you please come to ambassador to lens quarters at one well i'm kind of in the middle of things mr he is squared up and this is urgent i think something may be wrong with ambassador to land so i'm not even minbari anymore yeah.

[35:33] Requires you requires him because he's human and she's now half human right i think yeah okay and honestly that means she knows what she's supposed to turn into yeah this is part of the plan not just hey i'm going into this thing because it's the prophecy let's see what happens she knows what she's what she's turning into except now she's a rock and i think franklin also has all the minbari medical knowledge as well like he might he's a big xeno biologist guy so yeah she died on a deep space exploration vessel that exploded you had nothing to do with that no but i'm responsible for her being on that ship in the first place yeah this is the part that's too much. Yep. Like the thing at dinner, our anniversary, fine. This, this sent it over the top to me. She'd arranged to meet me when we pulled into space dock off of, centauri prime i feel like bruce box light doesn't care about this either like he's just like i'm saying these lines because i need to like this is dumb i mean he's acting everything about him right now feels like he's acting yeah not not that this is john sheridan right it feels like.

[36:35] It's get in front of the class and do your monologue two week survey which i can kind of forgive him because he's so good she was gone and it is dumb it's just too soon that's i that's what i'm gonna maintain it's actually i said that this was awful and this is a bad way to take the character and blah blah blah i'm gonna rescind all that i'm gonna retract all of that that i just said i'm just gonna say it's just too soon it's just too it's just not seated well.

[36:58] And jms's defense he had to get it up and going yeah you know what i mean like keep moving he's he had a big changer he's got to he's got to get it done get it moving so here we go we used to talk to each other over long distance this was eye rolling to me yeah i actually really resonated with this at the end i don't know why you and i switched places on this one we didn't last time I talked to her. So what this was is you were like, this is dumb. Like, come on, whatever. And to your point, to your defense, it is such a trope, right? But when we watch this, I was very hot off the heels of my dad passing away, my mom passing away earlier. And I, because of COVID, I didn't get to tell my mom anything before she died. So this hit me in a real way. I think this is one of those things. I said this the first time as well. This is one of the examples of my, live our lived experience impacting our relation to the show yeah yeah i just didn't want her to go without telling her i loved her i had a problem with that he would be okay with her going as long as he got to say i love you one last time yeah right uh i'm sorry dude.

[38:08] Well you're clearly human because we still see the red mouth and the white teeth, We see the red inside the nose, where they can only go so far with the makeup. You, Delenn, are a monster. A dark and terrible place known as Zahadu. It has been dead for a thousand years. It's weird they just said Zahadu in this episode. We'll arrive in 12 hours, coming out of hyperspace as close to the enemy's homeworld as possible. I didn't hear anything. They're talking about this other world. Signs of life and return to hyperspace before anyone can attack. And if someone is living there. then all our races stand on the edge of extinction he gets it the narns have sent a military ship to investigate the world is it narns or narn isn't the plural of narn narn it's narns i don't like that i want to try i want to track that and see if that changes throughout the show because i'm pretty sure at some point the plural of narn becomes yes no a little under 10 hours but yeah, i think it sounds better as the plural the narn have sent ships yeah yeah look i gotta find out who did this to me given you a condition this will have to be a deep scan it may cause you some discomfort he's like i'm garibaldi you're not gonna have to go that deep i gotta take my my gloves off oh that's okay that's easier i'm raw dogging this scan.

[39:25] So apparently people were saying that this is a uh poke around and a big um a little late for that because i think so right here where they place the camera exactly where they place the camera and garibaldi's point of view here is exactly where where jerry doyle was standing on the set okay when they filmed this spot um they were saying that talia should have been able to see.

[39:52] Jack behind him but jms says uh not seeing the shooter from outside garibaldi's uh point of view basically you're having to look through his eyes the eyes see more than the brain recalls at any given moment um so when they shot the scene jms was actually on set they put the camera exactly where he was standing and so they were very careful to get his point of view that they could only catch it in the reflection and not see him anywhere else in the shot i like that because it's not like reading his mind lets you watch the episode exactly you have one camera well it's it's the thing that always gets me when people do go back in somebody's memory and somebody's mind and then the camera is third person outside of the person like that shouldn't you shouldn't that shouldn't exist exactly yeah you know ambassador delin's out of that weird cocoon and she's got wings just like a butterfly you gotta come see got wings just like a butterfly she got wings mr ducks oh got him yeah get him lou i love i love the adherence to due process here it's great dude yeah make my fragging solar year.

[40:56] He'll get his due process chief that's enough there's a new order coming back home garibaldi you can either be part of it or you can be stepped on here we go a winner or a loser here's what i here's what i love the side that's gonna win going back to jms's original plan right there's the stuff going on with the Shadow Men. There's also...

[41:17] The stuff with um stuff that's happening back home yeah the earth stuff and and jms is raising both of those things up in the same episode which is which is fascinating to watch the plan take shape even given the changes you know yeah like it's still those those nuggets during the time i served as vice president under santiago i owe it to personally oversee any inquiry i like that little moment there shuttle out captain you're a good man sharon thank you good work on this What a great Sheridan scene. Good Clark scene also. Like this shows how, you know, smarmy and gross the stuff he's doing. But this is so great for Sheridan. What we know of him right now is he can take these disparate puzzle pieces and put it together and put it together in real time when it matters. We literally see him putting puzzle pieces together of like, wait, though, they're my conspiracy theorist brain is really rolling and putting some stuff together. Yeah. Suzanne calls it out in our council chambers. And I thought the same thing, Suzanne, when I saw it, I love the blocking of how Sheridan turns away from Clark and we see them as a director with actors and stuff on things. I tell people, you don't always have to face people when you're talking to them, not on stage anyway. Yeah. Don't, you just don't.

[42:31] Even here, just to get into the jurisdictional stuff, the charge is attempted murder. Uh-huh. There's no charge of assassination or conspiracy or anything like that. So, like, we have to do our investigation here on the crime that he did. We don't have anything to tie him to the other thing. To put him to the other thing, yeah. But he also just got overruled by his commander-in-chief, right? Right, yeah. Assuming the president is commander-in-chief of the military, which I think we assumed it.

[42:59] I'm afraid to say that the ship dispatched to investigate Zaha Doom has been destroyed. If only they said where that happened.

[43:09] Well, the ship was out investigating something. This cannot have been an accident. I wish they would have known more specifically what that was. When a warship jumps to normal space, it's briefly out of contact because of the energy drain. It might have been attacked during that period. But that couldn't happen unless... Okay, yeah, this is it right here. Unless they knew a ship. So the intent here is that Jakar would look at both Sheridan and Londo. Not sure which one of them may have leaked this information, but pretty sure knowing one of the two did. Although jms says he thinks the editing focused on londo way too long in the shot he really really was supposed to be met it like he's not supposed to know who it is i told you to it's supposed to be even between the two but the editing focuses a little bit more on londo and and he says it kind of shifted i guess the feel of it the ship was coming and we're waiting for it but no one knew except you what exactly are you implying that's not too bad well he said it and he looked at londo and then it went to Londo and we never saw his eyes come back to Sheridan. It just cut to Sheridan next. If I may address the council, Ambassador Delenn has been unavailable of late. She has now returned and wishes to know if she may take back her seat on the council. Okay, I do like this moment. Yeah. And I just know because I watched this while I was putting together the video, this is a neat little reveal. You and I may have been underwhelmed on it on the first watch, but on the next, you know what? We are watching this through season five Delenn.

[44:34] This is the one that we know for the first time.

[44:41] See that in the credits coming up next season i think yeah maybe this amira is so beautiful she really is allowed to live on my world as an actor, to create a greater understanding. Like her makeup and hair here is on point. Unfortunately, she won't be able to get the makeup later. I have undergone this change with the blessings of my government. Sort of. So that I may become a bridge for our worlds. Some of my government. In the hope that we will never know war between us again.

[45:08] And so that I can have your baby. So imagine though, the music was great. The setting was perfect. I felt that her voice was very forward in the mix. A little stronger than a normal thing.

[45:21] Yeah and then maybe i'm i'm actually i know i'm just reading into this but imagine if she had had that affected voice up to this point and not only is like oh my gosh look at me but then you hear like ferland's voice i had to i would have been so impactful sure and james's point it's like even if we did it like yeah yeah you get one moment for this one little moment that people would not have really even appreciated as much as you and i did not the first time we watched at all no i will say i appreciate this moment far more on the second watch than i did the first watch same and i think in her explanation now we know rings directly to the original pitch and kind of changes right as the as the series progresses but but it's also we got our to lend back exactly now we have we have our to lend back and we get to watch her figure her stuff out this is gonna be there my jaw on the floor looking at her i can't say as i blame you has her genetic changed as well or just her outward appearance that's a good question she didn't seem too inclined to talk about it after our talk the other day and you blaming yourself for anna taking that job on the icarus i think it's something you ought to see i remember i called this her dating video it's part of a message anna sent to me about a week before she passed away you lost your wife a couple years ago i'm sorry it's awful somebody comes up and says i have a thing she recorded before she died that you've never seen do you watch it yes.

[46:44] Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Also, I watch it alone with no one else around. Right. Yeah, absolutely. You need to get out of this room right now. Yeah. I just think it's good. I think for him it makes sense because he has such a tainted view of what happened. But I still think it would be hard. Just like, oh my gosh, am I ready to do this? It's a lot of courage on his part that he's going to just do it. Also, it's in the script, of course. Oh, I don't know that it's that much courage. Yeah. This is my wife. Yeah.

[47:15] And, you know, Lizzie was smart enough to know. I am really excited about signing on board the Icarus next week. John and I were supposed to spend some time together. Dr. Chang thinks he's found the ruins to an ancient civilization nobody's ever heard of. The chance to be there when the discovery is confirmed is just too good an opportunity to pass up. Yeah, it turns out you shouldn't pass it up. I decided to put off our vacation and go when John called to tell me that he had to cancel, so it worked out just great. Though the poor dear looked so upset about breaking the news, I wanted to tell him I was going away anyway, but we had so much else to cover, and there's never enough time. I'll just have to fill him in when I get back. Someone said that love knows no borders, and ours certainly proves the point. Aww. In his case, this was perfect. This is exactly what he needed to hear. Well, he blamed himself, and he blamed himself irrationally. I'm just going to say that. The reason that she went and got to this is because I didn't say I love you or something stupid like that. No. Come on now. His opinion was unprocessed grief. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is why therapy is helpful, people. Yeah. So what's the problem? On a hunch, I just checked on the ship taking the prisoner back to Earth. He was transferred to another ship a half an hour ago. It had Earth Force security markings. The ID codes don't match any ship registered to Earth Force. Great. So he's gone and all the evidence with him. I'm afraid so. Because we didn't make copies. Ask the question of President Clark. Huh? Because we didn't make copies of the evidence.

[48:40] From JMS. Oh, I'm quite sure there was a backup made of all those data pieces. Yeah. Of all the data. I'm quite sure. But step back for a moment and ask what that entails. Will any of it stand up in any court of law? There's a difference between that which we know or think we know and believe or that which we can prove. And without the one most important pieces of all, which is Jack himself, everything else is speculative, circumstantial, and conjectural. I'm going to reframe that a little bit. In 1995, we actually moved data. We didn't just copy it because storage was at a premium. So the idea of just making a copy to give it was not a thing we thought of. It's a more modern technological thought because I don't buy that explanation. Hey, we have evidence. We should probably hold on to this just in case because maybe something will happen to the ship on the way. That's data hygiene right there. But data hygiene didn't really exist to that level back in the 90s.

[49:32] Music.

[49:42] That's revelations second time we did not like this episode the first time around what did you think this time i liked it a lot better i liked it a lot better and i'm gonna 100 give it i'm watching this through later eyes yeah also i think there's a bit of i knew going in the parts i wouldn't like which is sheridan boohooing about his wife and so i was able to just sort of gloss over that and pay attention to everything else going on in the episode which jeff was really strong it was really really strong so yeah i'm gonna give i i like this episode much better than i did last time how about you same i i actually really enjoyed this episode i again the the sheridan stuff same thing but you know what it didn't feel like it took up as much space as it did the first time we watched it i loved the jakar stuff the the shadow stuff the breakout out of the Lynn was incredible. And even though I come over here, like blah, blah, blah, Bester, Bester, Bester, that's not the point of this episode. This is totally in character for Garibaldi to overstep and get personally involved in a thing. This was an excellent episode.

[50:51] Yeah, I'm, I'm with you. And our, our newest council chamber member who is with us tonight, Dundra Dundra doll, you said it earlier, better, um, talks about this as great world building and context i'm actually going to push back on that a little bit i don't think this was a lot of world building this was this was the world has been built we're now it's context it's it's we're pushing things forward i this this was great i loved this i i loved every bit of this world building can just be a little mind-numbing this was not mind-numbing this was things are in place yeah now let's push things let's push some dominoes over totally did you get any messages or anything out of this one oh i feel like i should have i didn't to help bolster that our first time around we said no messages this got zero deltas from us the first time fair enough, um did you have any no i didn't get any okay hey real quick for all of you out there who are listening to us uh drop a comment down below send us an email send us a message if you got a message out of this episode let us know jeff and i missed it now twice in a row right yeah we didn't see it, I will say that there are one message possibly is, hey, pay attention to people when they bring big stuff to you. But we don't know that at this point. We as viewers are looking at Jakarby like, dude, maybe it's not a big deal. Power down.

[52:09] That's just knowing stuff. I will say one more thing about this particular episode. Uh, JMS considered this to be part three of a three-parter season switchover episode, starting with Chrysalis. Okay. Okay. And he, he considered these really to be one big story. I can see that. Uh, yeah. And he's like the, he's like, we deal with just as many issues in this episode as we did back in Chrysalis. It's just, now we're resolving them instead of leaving them open at the end, like Dylan's back and she's open and ready to go. We've got the shadows are bouncing around out there Wando has taken his first steps towards shadowdom um we've resolved the Garibaldi thing you know Garibaldi is going to be back in his spot you know Lanier is still having to clean up unfortunately yeah so gross so gross yeah so gross yeah that's cool we're looking at it well Brent as we develop the definitive and immutable and objectively correct ranking of the second season of Babylon 5 we don't get to pull all three episodes into that ranking, just two of those three, uh, you, the, the honor, the responsibility, the duty, the duty falls on to you, my friend to rank revelations. Our current ranking right now is in the top spot points. Oh, departure.

[53:26] Where sir, are you going to place revelations? Yeah, this one's really easy for me. Uh, my respect and admiration for this, for this episode has skyrocketed since the last time we watched it. However, there were still parts of this that made me want to you know shove a very sharp stick into my eardrums that's fair you know uh and we've we've talked about those so this episode still is going to take the number two spot it's not better than last week's episode it's i i just don't think it is and which is weird because if it's supposed to be the third part of a three-parter i usually generally love the third parts and this one nah not so much so yeah i'm this is going to take be our new number two where was it in our original like where did it finish in our original uh deal take a guess where do you think it was it was not the last there are 22 episodes we ranked so yeah yeah i'm gonna guess it's probably 18 to 20 somewhere around there it was in 20th 20 yeah long dark was 22 a distant star in 21 and revelations in 20. Here's the thing if this episode winds up in that same spot this season will have been a fantastic season my guess is it's gonna find itself.

[54:35] Five ish or so positions higher. I think so too. That's my guess. That's my guess. I would agree. Right. It's what I'm feeling probably the same as well. So Brent, uh, that wraps up revelations next week when we launched into Babylon five for the second time, this is one of the episodes. We were like, we're doing this. We're doing the geometry of shadows next week. Right. Do you, by some chance, remember what your prediction was for that? Um, I do, I do. I said that it was going to be about the guys on the rim. Um, and we're going to get more like different bad guys, right? Uh, so it's about the bad guys and how they all interact with each other. That's right. Because you thought that the shadows were the conglomeration of the bad guys. Yeah. I thought this is really deep stuff from Jeff here.

[55:27] This will be a dive into, uh, you know what the shadows are, you know, pulling it, pulling it deep for all of us here but hey i hope that you oh viewer oh listener are as excited for next week as we are geometry of shadows uh you know what just before to kind of put a point on it we just talked about the ranking we placed the geom oh my god brent we put the geometry of shadows at number 15 on the scene it might be earned listen i am not walking into this going i'm gonna pump everything up about this episode here's what i know this will not be my second watch of this episode though oh really no because i re-watched it later on in season two i went back and re-watched before we had like really said we were going to do all this so and i remember then going oh there's so much that we missed about specifically the the conversation that elric has with londo at the very end it's really just that's the biggest thing that's going to change is that little conversation at the end outside of that the episode is what the episode is um but i'm interested to watch it through these eyes now having finished the whole series yeah it's going to be exciting And folks, we're going to do that right here next week.

[56:32] Same place, same times, right? If you're on YouTube, Patreon, any podcasting app, thank you for being here with us. Thanks for being a part of this journey that we get to continue with you. Please, if you haven't already, subscribe, like, rate, review, comment, do all of those really cool things. But the one thing you can do if your heart is called, if the calling of your heart is to serve, please share this show with someone who either loves Babylon 5 already or needs to get into this incredible series. So with that, until next time. Hey, Jeff. Yeah, what's up, man? Hey, listen, I just want you to know I really love doing this with you, man. I do, too. Like, this is a lot of fun. I love doing this with you. What's up? Like why are we doing this right now? Now in here. Well, I mean, it's because we're watching all of this to see if it's more than what we watched in the first time. And, you know, but more than that, I can't say, I'll see what you did there. I like it indeed, my friend.

[57:39] Music.