Secrets of the Soul

Jeff: Welcome to Babylon, five for the first time, not a Star Trek podcast. My name is Jeff Akin and I am the one who was,

Brent: And I'm Brent Allen and I am the one who will be.

Jeff: We're watching Babylon 5 for the first time for you. The one who is,

Brent: Jeff and I are two veteran Star Trek podcasters that are taking our skills that we have acquired from our time. In the Alpha Quadrant and applying them right here to Babylon five in the J quadrant quadrant 12, cuz you can have more than four in Babylon. Five. Anyway, you guys don't what I'm talk about, we're taking the skills we've learned there, applying it here to Babylon five and searching for those important messages that Babylon five is delivering in its own unique way.

Jeff: it's really those Babylon five messages, not not Star Trek messages because it's not about the Star Trek messages, and this is not a Star Trek podcast. We play the rule of three. This is a game that limits us to a total of no more than three references to Star Trek per episode. That's it. Three one of those plays, no substitutions.

Exchanges are refund.

Brent: And Jeff, what happens if we do make those references?

Jeff: You're gonna hear this

Brent: That's right because as we say, while this is definitely not a Star Trek podcast, those references are bound to slip in from time to time, maybe even on purpose. Not so slippery as much as forced in. Crammed in, shoved in. Jeff. Now, along with the rule of three, there's another game we like to play at the end of the show where we try to guess next week's episode based on the title alone.

Well, this is the spot where it's time to play our favorite game,

Jeff: time to pay the pipe burn.

Brent: and this is the spot where we revisit our prediction from last week and see if we got it right. So, Jeff, it is your turn, my friend. What did you say Secrets of the Soul was gonna be about?

Jeff: I thought we were getting,

Brent: hold on? What did you say Secrets of the Soul was going to be about and how close were you?

Jeff: I thought this was gonna be racing Mars, but instead of Marcus and Franklin, we were gonna get Londo and Jaar on their way to Sari Prime and that it would be ending with, uh, with Lando getting ready to be crowned as emperor.

Brent: Yeah, none of that happened.

Jeff: That's a goose egg. Big time. What did you think?

Brent: Uh, well, I said, uh, I said it was gonna be a Lanier episode. It's time for Lanier to come back. He's been out for a few weeks. It's time for him to come back and we were gonna see what's going on with him over in Ranger school. I thought we should have had him a few episodes ago, but we should have caught up with him and, uh, yeah, this was gonna be all about Lanier.

Jeff: Uh, it is, you know, we're playing some soccer here, some football, we tied zero.

Brent: Well, I mean, Lanier was in the intro.

Jeff: True,

Brent: He's still in the intro. What is going on with Bill Mummy? Is he like out making a movie right now and that's why they wrote him off? Or like, what, what is going on?

Jeff: It's gotta be something I.

Brent: If there's a Nons spoiler answer to that, I'd love to know like is there a real world answer? I don't want anything having to do with in Universe, but is there a real world answer Why Bill Mummy's not around right now?

I'd love to know. Well, Jeff, for those who have not seen this episode in a while, or maybe they've never seen this episode and they're listening to us anyway, just because, which is awesome. Jeff, why don't you tell the folks at home what this episode was actually about?

Jeff: Dr. Franklin is diving headfirst into his new role as Interspecies Virologist and biology specialist. He starts the day by making a Pak Morath throw up a barium compound, and honestly, it's kind of downhill from there. He meets with the Hayak ambassador, you know, the big puffy headed aliens that we've seen in the background.

In fact, I think that one of them was riling people up in the summoning before Sheridan came back from his, you know, short trip to the dead. Well this ambassador with the

Brent: False. Sorry Jeff. We have never seen this alien before.

Jeff: I'm a hundred percent sure we've seen this

Brent: This is a, this is a brand new alien. We have not seen this alien

Jeff: You have homework my friend. I want you to go watch the summoning

Brent: We have seen Mark ha I remember Mark Hab. These guys are brand new.

Jeff: or rip to the macab. These are the macab with inflated butt heads. I, I had, I wasn't gonna say it. I wasn't gonna say it, but they're the butthead aliens.

Brent: Oh, they are a bunch of butt heads, but that's neither here nor there. I'm sorry to interrupt your, your oso eloquent recap. Please continue.

Jeff: Well, this ambassador with the blessing of the Council of elders agrees to turn over all their medical files and databases so Franklin can catalog and study them. It's pretty cool, right? Well, Kiran, the Hayak version of Netta number two ain't cool with this at all. What if he finds out, she asks, finds out what you might be asking?

Well, as expected, Franklin does find out whatever this is, and that is that there used to be another related species called the Hayak Doe. No, not the Muta do, but the Hayak Doe that lived on their home world and the Hayak, they genocided them. So the secret is out and it gets even better. Turns out their inner breeding before the genocide has tweaked their genetics so much that now they're dying out.

Franklin gets them to agree after Kieran tries to attack him holding a gun. Honestly, that I'd be embarrassed to give, uh, my five-year-old nephew to play with. But, uh, they agreed to share this secret with the alliance, so the best and the brightest can come together to find a way to keep the hayak alive. Also, more telepaths and, uh, teep or a tele or a teak. Also more telepaths and a teak or a telekinetic. Come to join, Byron. There's some fighting with thugs down below. And despite Byron's absolutely blatant racism or mundane and prejudice, lead totally falls for him. They get it on Telepath style, which is different.

From human style, but we end up getting a glimpse into what the VLANs did to Lita and to everyone else. Byron is infuriated that the Vorlons created Telepaths to fight their war, and now for some reason he's gonna take it out on the normals. So, Brent hit me with how this one hit you.

Brent: Oh, Jeff. O Jeff. O Jeff. O Jeff. Okay. I need to, I need to own something right here at the beginning cuz of where this is gonna go for me now. This is me. Uh, I have a rule. I don't talk about stuff unless I have personal e e experience with it. I don't speak to other people's experiences. I can only speak from my experience.

That being said, I want to acknowledge, uh, especially for those of you out there in the podcast world who can't see my face, I am a white, middle-aged, heterosexual, cisgendered male living in America. What this episode brings up in me is something that I and many people like me have been dealing with for a long time.

Oh yeah. Let me also say, I'm from Kentucky. Kentucky's part of the south. Now Jeff, I don't know what you deal with up there in the northwest, but down here in the south and, and people like Kentucky's not really part of south. Yes sir, it is. We're a special brand of the south. We're the hillbillies. We ain't the rednecks.

We the hillbillies. All right. Here we go. Anyway, and I can say that cuz I are one, I want to acknowledge all of that because as much as I wish that I have everything figured out, The truth is, I don't, I don't have all the perfectly acceptable, socially awesome answers to the issues of our day today. I, I don't have them all.

I am still in progress and I'm in progress on so many different things. There's a lot I still, frankly, don't get, I don't understand, which is why I don't speak to it. I'm trying, I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to listen and hear from my friends, from my neighbors, from people who are different than I am.

That being said, there is also still a lot ingrained in me from my own childhood, from my own upbringing, and sometimes it, frankly, it's hard to tell the difference between what was put into me and instilled in me as a child and what is my own independent thinking as a caring adult who values people and values life.

This episode, This episode started as one big eye roll for me. I tried watching this thing so many times, the, like, I, I kept getting interrupted. There were, there was more than one occasion I would try to come up here at, kind of, at the end of the night when things were, were you, you know, calming down. And I would sit here and I would fall asleep at the computer doing my reaction video within 10 minutes.

And I had to scrap the whole thing and just start over. I hate Byron. I wanna put that out there. I hate this guy. His whole Messiah complex is incredibly annoying. I want to punch him in the face every chance I get. I just like that dude. Like, I just, and not righteously either. Like, it just, there are moments in this episode where the acting and the editing and the directing and the cinematography were elementary at best.

I thought the score was really good all the way through though. So we're going along with this episode and I catch on pretty quick. Byron is starting to do this thing, which we've done a lot in Star Trek and we've done a lot here on Babylon five, and we've done a lot in all these other sci-fi, which is you're dividing people into us versus them.

That's what Byron's doing. Oh, the normals versus the tele way. Blame ster for doing this earlier. We blamed lots of other people, and I thought that that's really where this was gonna go. I didn't even think this was an intended message. It was just they're, they're kind of doing the plot and this is what's coming alongside of it.

I've seen this a thousand times. I had a few notes on it, mostly about how it leads to the division of mankind and how that's never helpful. I talked a, I thought thoughts about Lita showing the journey of the girl next door, getting swept up into it and going, going so far as joining a cult or even a cult of a personality.

All that was fine, but then, then the ox stuff hit. And the Hayak do, and we learned about their history and we learned about what happened with them. And then this episode came crashing together for me. Jeff, I wanna be clear about something. I do not like this episode. I did not enjoy this episode. This is not even a Schindler's List type of an episode where like, man, I can never watch that episode again.

But gosh, everybody should watch it. This is not that kind of an episode for me. I do not like this episode. I have so many issues with this episode, but I cannot deny this as being a poignant and perhaps even an important episode in the Babylon five catalog. On the one hand, we have Byron who is gathering a, and I'm sorry if this is flipping our whole thing upside down, Jeff, our whole order.

It might, I'm gonna try not to, but I'm giving you the opening pieces. On the one hand, we have Byron who is gathering a following. Um, he's basically trying to set us up for a race war. You can feel it coming. And rather than finding commonality and harmony, he wants to gather his own retreat to his own, find his own homeland, not allow insiders, outsiders in and have his own space and be better than everybody else, is really where he's wanting to go.

The Hayak and the Hayak do show us, Jeff, where that path leads.

The hayak. Were doomed by their own racism. You have this occasionally, we get this in Babylon five. Jeff tko comes to mind. Uh, the, what's the, what's the one, um, that had the gospel singing and RFA was dying.

Jeff: Uh, the Rock cried out, no hiding

Brent: No hiding place, right? Grace 17 is missing. You have this thing where like what's happening in one is showing what's going on in the other and they're working together.

This was doing that in such a way of like, here's where Byron is wanting to take us. Here's what the future 800 years looks like with Theo to show us where this is gonna lead cuz it's not a good place to go. That's, that's where this episode became. So, uh, I, I can't say brilliant cuz I don't think it was a good episode, but it, that's where this episode really began to work.

Now all of that said, while I think a lot can be said about this, this episode in terms of what it is saying about racism and driving wedges rather than uniting and where that leads, that's the easy stuff to talk about, Jeff. That's the easy stuff that we can just sort of pick over. But to me, this episode goes a big step f further, this episode goes a step further than Star Trek ever did.

And frankly, that is the part that speaks to me. That is the part that, that, that cries out to me. Here's the issue, here's the question, and I d people don't address this that often Are future generations responsible for the sins of their fathers? In this episode, we see Franklin talking to the Hayak, and when he realizes what they've done, he immediately makes a decision and holds them responsible for what they did to the Octo.

I'm sorry, for what their ancestors did to the Hayo, but because he, he then he softened on that and we can talk about why later, but then he is like, well, you tried to hide it, and like, yeah, that has been our shame. What do you do with your shame? Like it takes some time to bring that out. Like, and, and I mean he's, oh, you're guilty of this too, and we can talk about whether or not that was right or wrong.

It's a Franklin thing. You probably can see where at least I'm coming down on it. I don't know about Jeff, although I got a good idea. And then you go all the way to the end. The whole thing happened with Lita and the Vons, and we watched Byron double down, even triple down on holding people responsible for what they did to us for the sins of those who went before you.

You had nothing to do with it, but your grandfather did. Or somebody who looks like you. Somebody who is of your type did this, and so now you're gonna be responsible for, he doubled down. He said that we're gonna hold them responsible. Jeff, I think these are the conversations we as a society should be having today, because there's a lot wrong with our society that stems from the sins of our fathers and what is our role and our responsibility in that today?

From my perspective, what I mostly see though is some people think that we should just. Understand that that's the issue and we should just accept it without actually ever having a conversation. And that I think is wrong. This idea of like, Hey, you're responsible for this because you are this type and this type oppressed us 400 years ago or whatever.

Like, and we don't wanna have that conversation. You should just accept it and, and let's go on with it. And we need to be having that conversation. So in the end, so I can sum this up. I think this was an incredibly weak episode. I think it was an eye rolling episode, but I also think it's an episode that said a whole lot, Jeff, and it's gonna be real interesting to dive into and it's, it's gonna be real icky ticky ground that again, I go back to, I'm still a work in progress.

I don't really have it all figured out. How about you, Jeff? How'd this one stick out to you?

Jeff: So you can see my notes over on our Patreon. We post our notes on Patreon and what you're gonna see, you're right, you did, you flipped this on its head. So your opening thoughts are very much reflected in my closing thoughts, right? Because my opening thoughts, I'll, I'll just read 'em. It's two lines. I got nothing here.

It's a season one episode with Byron. We're learning a lot about the other races and I kinda like that. I've seen the Hayak before

Brent: The hi,

Jeff: have, we have seen them, we've seen the Hayak before. We've seen them. It's just too bad. They got really bad actors to portray them. Those were my opening thoughts. Now my notes take me on a journey to the end and my closing thoughts on this that reflect a lot.

So I look forward to that. But I think you're right. Cause when I even look at my other notes on here, I mean I got nothing here as far as notes, you know, on the stuff that happened. Really. But I think like the questions you pose, that's our conversation, you know, so let's just on, on the surface, just say, this episode happened, things happened.

Great. Okay, cool. Uh, it was, it was wild when Byron and Lita hooked up and every person in that room was feeling it. Right. Like, okay, there you go. But I, I, I'm, I am very curious and I, and I appreciate you. Owning your place. I will do the same, much like Brent White, cisgendered, heterosexual Christian, male, uh, in an executive leadership position.

You know, I'm all those things. I'm from the Pacific Northwest, but I'm also in, in the part of the Pacific Northwest that up until around 1940, had laws on the books, excluding people that are black, uh, from, uh, owning land or being here specifically being, yeah. We had what was called the sunset or sundown laws that if you were essentially, uh, if you were darker skinned than a paper bag, a brown paper bag, and you were found out, found out outside, after the sun went down, vigilante justice was an acceptable course of action in the state of Oregon.

Yeah, there's a reason we have high schools still to this day, whose mascots are the dragons. Uh, it's not because of our rich partnership with our brothers and sisters in Japan. No. Um, it's because of an organization in the United States who, uh, has a dragon, uh, in its leadership position. A

Brent: grand. Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah. Oregon for being, for being, uh, very progressive in a lot of ways, has a, has a pretty horrifying, um, horrifying history. We were the only state that was admitted into the union with laws, um, excluding people that are black.

Brent: Wow.

Jeff: So, yeah. Um, lots so, so. Right.

Brent: Kentucky. Wow.

Jeff: think, and, and frankly, I mean, I'm not, this is not defending slavery, it's not defending the political position of the Confederacy in the South, but dude, at least they were out in the open about it.

Right. You know, and still it's still a thing we talk about. We, and this is, this is my segue into kind of our conversation in Oregon to this day. There's a lot of groups that actively suppress that part of our history that, you know, we just talk about how progressive we are and how welcome we are to people and you know, let's embrace our diversity and all of these things when really, I mean, 80 years ago we were actively lynching people because of the color of their skin.

But you don't hear that. We don't talk about it. But the question on that to segue us in, am I as an Oregonian born and raised here? What's my level of responsibility in that?

Brent: Yeah. Yeah. It becomes that I, so you, you're right. You can see your notes. You also can see my notes on Patreon, and you'll note that my notes are about seven times longer than Jeff's. Um, the majority of those are just observations I made during the episode of like, oh, look at this. Oh, look at that. Um,

Jeff, if you don't mind, there are a handful I'd love to hit, but I'm just gonna leave the rest of them cuz they're not, they're, they're, they're not super important, uh, too on, so can we, can we put a pin in this conversation just for, just for a few moments and kind of run through a couple just observations about the episode as a 

Jeff: Yeah. Let's do 

Brent: Alright. Um, alright. Byron and his Messiah complex. I, this is getting worse by the episode. Right. You know, he, he walks up, he's like, hit me. Just hit me. Okay. Well, did you feel any different between one, two, and three? Then why do you think five, six and seven is gonna be any different? Just get outta my way.

Like, it's like he started by going like, I'm gonna crucify myself for you. And then it turned into like, okay, you're stupid and get outta my way now.

Jeff: I kinda loved that I, I got notes. I kinda loved that scene. Part of it, I loved part of that scene. Let me be really clear,

Brent: yeah, yeah. Uh, a lot of my stuff about Byron goes to this whole, um, Messiah complex. I can't decide if he is, if this is a cult or if this is a cult of a personality because it's very wrapped around him. There are some times when he's in his closed quarters that it does kind of feel like he really is thinking about his people and less about his own elevation.

But then we get a line where he's like, Hey, if I wasn't locked up, I could have prevented this. It had to be me. Right? And I'm sorry. At the end when, um, uh, when Byron and and Lita walk through the, through the spot where everybody's sleeping and then they go into his little tent in the back, my my note was, these two are gonna bone, that's how this works.

He, he is taking her back there to have his way and he's gonna smooth talk her into it. And she walked right into it.

Jeff: And everyone they walked past knew exactly what was about to happen. They've, they've seen, they've seen that time after time.

Brent: probably because a lot of them were a part of that.

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: Like, frankly, I, I don't know. I don't know. I can't, I'm just saying that's the, that's the vibe that that thing gave off all the way around. My biggest problem here, though, obviously with him, is this whole, uh, Byron is, is getting more and more brazen about you.

And I'll go back to this. He's, he's insisting on this uverse them thing. And that's the basis, by the way, of this racism. That's the basis of the hayak. And the hayak do is this, this, this uverse them. Uh, he says at the end, or he says in one spot. He's like, uh, he was attacked by one of you. Oh, well, by he's talking to Franklin, I think in the moment, right?

And he is like, oh, this guy was attacked. Yeah, he was attacked by one of you, not by one of us. That's a problem. That's how these wars start. Was, is this idea of sorting us into, into one verse other, I mean, you can, you can sort people based on anything. Male, female, uh, white, black, Hispanic, uh, Asian, um, long hair, short hair, dark hair.

Male, female, gay, straight binary, non-binary treks, uh, Jedi wannabes. You, you can divide us on anything. And most of the time that stuff that we're dividing people over is something you have zero control over. It's the lot you're born into in life. There's just no control over it. Your age, your abilities, your, your, uh, neurodiversity.

You can't control some of that stuff.

He's, I mean, he's driving it. He's driving it, he's driving it. Ugh,

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: ugh. Anyway, um, Byron has some of the worst game I have ever seen in my life, but it's a hundred percent working on Lita.

Jeff: big time. Yeah.

Brent: You're a, B, C F M O. What,

Jeff: Like, that's the moment. As, as soon as he says that, as soon as he says that, she goes, oh gosh, look at the time. I, I forgot. I have a thing tomorrow. Gonna have to head back. Oh my God, how did I get myself into this?

Brent: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, okay. I do wanna talk about Lita though. Um, Lita talking to Zach.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: She is talking to Zach, or I'm sorry, lemme take that back. Zach is talking to Lita the exact way an ex-boyfriend is talking to his ex-girlfriend about her new boyfriend.

Jeff: Exactly. I felt so bad for him. One, one, let me own, I was wrong. I called it a while ago. I thought they were being intimate. I thought these things were going on. Nope. Uh, apparently flashed the pan and he's Zach's a little jelly. He's pretty jealous on this, but also not wrong.

Brent: no, he's a hundred percent right. Um, now let's talk about who's not wrong. Lita. Lita brings up some really good points and some legit feelings. She did a lot for the folks there. Uh, and she didn't get much out of it in return. That actually begs a whole other question. That is not a Star Trek message. This is not the thing.

This would be unintentional, but what do we owe to those whom serve? Jeff, you served in the military. What does society owe you?

Jeff: Nothing. I mean, that's probably a controversial thing to say, but you know what? I got paid for my time. When I was in there, I got benefits that lasted afterwards. You know, I mean, I go apply for a lot of jobs. I get preference in that, you know, and in the United States there, I mean, that's not every job, right?

But just some, mostly government jobs. Uh, but I have access to loans and healthcare that other people don't have. Um, so I mean, we take care of our veterans, but you know what? You owe me nothing. I, I made a, I made, and I think this is the key point for me on this one, I made a choice to serve, you know, if, if it wasn't the case, right?

And I know that we have some people listening that were in the Vietnam War, and I won't, I won't insult them by saying they served, cuz many of them don't see it as service. They were forced, forced into that. Some did. And that's, that's fine. You know, some did serve and feel it that way, but, um, I think choice plays a big role in it.

At no point was, I mean, at no point was Lita forced to do anything for the league or for Babylon. Five. She was. Forced into her situation with the VLANs. Um, she put herself in the situation, right? She went out there. I think part of what we saw in this episode is that things happened to her beyond her scope of choice, but everything she did for Sheridan and Babylon five, she chose that sh

without promise of, of remuneration or compensation.

Like, it was never like, Hey, you do this thing for us and we'll give you nice quarters. It, so yeah, I, I'm, I get it. I hear her, but I'm also not fully on her side. Not fully, not fully. I am be definitely partly there,

Brent: again, it, it brings up the question, what do you owe to those reserves? Because I think she has some really good feelings. And Byron, and what happens is Brian's playing on those. He knows that she has those. So he's playing on those with her. Uh, cuz she brings up, like, you guys tried to force me out my, out of my quarters and she's blaming Zack.

Zack's, Zack's relaying a message is what Zack's doing.

Jeff: although I go back. Zack should have invited her to live with him.

Brent: I would agree with you there. Um, you know, what does a church owe to its pastors or a mosque owe to its Imam?

Jeff: A mom.

Brent: What does, uh, what does a community owe to its firefighters? It's ems, it's police officers. What do students and their parents owe to teachers?

What do, what do kids owe to their parents? What, uh, what do we owe them more than what they've already gotten? I, because that's kind of, that's kind of where lead is going. Um, and again, that's where I go, this is how, this is how people get mixed up in the cults. You play on those things where you feel like you're slighted.

You feel like you, you didn't get a fair shake, you know? And, uh, again, it turns, it gets, it turned into a us versus them. Lita acts like she went out and did all this stuff for all these other people. Don't forget Lita, uh, Lita is part of the galactic community and what was gonna happen with the VLANs and shadows affected her too.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Like she, she's also an Earthling telepath, though she may be. She's an Earthling. The Earth Civil War is her civil war, so just,

Jeff: Yeah. Well, I think, I think fundamentally, right, cuz I, reflecting on what I said a little bit, I think fundamentally, I, whether you served to that point, right? Whether you've served or you haven't served, whether you had a job or not a job, you're, you are, as the minbar would say, you are a manifestation of the universe.

You exist. And at the very minimum, this is what you're owed. Dignity and respect. Period. Now dignity and respect can show up in different ways, right? And I think to your other point on cult leaders, my job as a cult leader is to manipulate and reform your idea of what respect and dignity looks like. They didn't give you big quarters cuz they don't respect you in what you did.

Now actually, they didn't give you bigger quarters cuz you don't have a job. And you know, it's like in our society it's, it's, this is how things work and you're not playing the game right or wrong. You're not playing the game. But he manipulates that. And I think that's, uh, it's easy to say respected and dignity, but that looks different to people.

And as a good cult leader like Byron is shaping up to be, um, yeah, he's, you twist that and you turn her, you take that little bit of victim that's living inside her and you ramp that up as much as you can with you over here with that silver platter of just like, And I got all the respect and dignity you could ever want right here.

Look, I'll even have my flock awkwardly hold and touch you to tell you that you have that respect and dignity.

Brent: Right. To show that you're one of us. Uh, Lita. Let's talk about her though. Um, Lita does not have a history of being a very wise person.

Jeff: I can

Brent: we've seen this. She is, she is, she her. Her choices are, are very questionable at best. Um, she wisely tells Ard no to being his telepath baby mama. I'll give her that.

Uh, she did the thing with Kosh that maybe she should have, maybe she shouldn't have it happened, but she gets mixed up with the VLANs and she allows them to change, change her and transform her. She winds up leaving Psycore, which again we can think is a good thing. It may not be, may have been whatever.

Uh, but after Kosh dies, she winds up staying with the vlan. And now I don't know what all went into that. Yeah. Why did she and dude's abusing her

Jeff: Hardcore.

Brent: Kosh two, the electric Boogaloo Fullon abusing her, you know, um,

I'm looking, Brent's looking for it in his notes. I just lost my note. Where it,

Jeff: It's a long, long set of notes.

Brent: Well, it's a long set of

Jeff: That's what you get

for being so thorough.

Brent: it's true. It's true. Uh oh. Yeah. Here it's, um, she has something good going with Zach and then suddenly she doesn't, like they just drop that whole line. You know, uh, she rightly gets involved with the earth stuff cuz she's, like I said, she's a member of the earth, but now she's mixed up with this guy who is just a smooth talker and Zack turns into the bad guy all of a sudden.

I mean, her decision making is questionable at best. Right. That said, I hate what they've done with El character out of this episode prior to this episode. You know who lead? I still was. She was a strong, independent, uh, lead in her own story.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: She was the lead in her own story. And now, She is the one in which the main character of another story simply comes home to rest. She is the one who provides for the other. She has taken on this role of comfort for Byron and being his second fiddle. And I, I hate that for Lita. You know, like, I, like, I really do like, I'm like, this is, this is, Avan would never do that.

Jeff: Right. But I think, I think one thing we are learning about Babylon five is it's, it's a story of, um, failure and redemption. And, and for a lot of people, and I mean we we're, we're watching that happen in real time with Londo, you know? And, and we've watched it happen with Jaar and I think we're gonna get an abbreviated version with Lida.

Like, this is my hope. And my dream is that she's becoming that second fiddle, but soon she'll be the third and then the fourth, and then the fifth fiddle. You know, cuz Byron's gonna do his thing. And then we know this telepath war is coming. I think she's gonna be the thing that pulls us out like that saves us and you know, gives the killing blow or whatever.

That ends everything. But it's gonna come down to that moment where Byron's like, I believed in you. I built you into what you are. And she's gonna be like, you did. Oh, I love you, but I can't, you're so wrong and you didn't do this. I did this for myself. Goo mind blow up. And everybody dies in a mind, bloodless

Brent: gonna use the four lawn powers that she got to.

Jeff: it's all gonna unlock.

And then she'll have to live in an encounter suit forever cuz she's gonna go full von. And if you listen to like, uh, Tropic Thunder or whatever. You never, you never go full for lawn, but she will.

Brent: Um, so we, we have all of that, uh, I wanna save this one for just a moment. Okay. The whole scene, uh, Lita and Byron are doing it and everybody wakes up and they're kind of like, whatever. And then all of a sudden we see Lita in this like BTA tank. It actually reminded me of, um, Wolverine 

Jeff: Oh wow. 

Brent: we saw Wolverine getting made.

But then like, like she's full grown in this thing, but then we phase over and there's a fetus growing, and then it fades into a telepath that kind of looks like a grownup version of that fetus. And then that happens again. And then, and then there. And the one that was really distinct was there was, there was one that clearly looked Asian, the fetus did, and all of a sudden it went into an Asian, uh, uh, telepath.

And I'm like, what is the, what is this trying to tell us? Jeff? I, I like, is this trying to say that Lita was the mother of all these telepaths and these telepaths were I. From Lita and she's like their mom and they've fast grown up or something like I, I, I'm not a hundred percent sure what that whole vision thing was.

What did you get out of that?

Jeff: I think the gist is that the voor lawns did and were seeding all of the worlds with telepaths.

Brent: Okay. They said that they directly said that, so I'm with you on that

Jeff: But that's like was still happening. Like they're still like creating them and infusing them into their societies and blood and bloodlines to expand the amount of telepaths that are,

Brent: they're ripping these fetuses out of their mother's wombs, doing something to them and sticking them back in their mother's wombs to be born on earth.

Jeff: That, or they're going and creating them or, so I, I, I, I don't know the, like the, the, the whole vision was kinda weird and part, like, my whole thought was, I get that they're seeding all of these, these species. My two big questions then are why are you still doing it? And two, where are the narn Nars?

Because why wouldn't you just rese narn with telepaths?

Brent: It, it almost seems like I, I don't know what the vision was supposed to symbolize or what All I could see this, the vlan seeded telepaths into all the different races of the galaxy because we needed to fight the shadows. Like

Jeff: Because those telepaths were so, I mean, they were instrumental critical in the defeat of the shadows. I don't know, Brent, what we would've done without the telepaths on our side in that battle with the shadows.

Brent: They, I mean, you know, we couldn't have won without them. 

Jeff: No way. No 

Brent: it's a good thing that our war became their war.

Jeff: Yeah. It's a good thing. We had, then we had ster on board. I mean, without that I, I have no

Brent: No, uh, I mean, well, and not only that, don't forget like whatever telepathic thing drawl has that puts him down into the battery of Epsilon three. And, you know, without that being the secret weapon that she wanted to keep up his sleeve just in case. Like

Jeff: Yeah. This would be a very different series. We'd be watching the shadows cuz they would've won

Brent: Yes, exactly. I just,

Jeff: s you know,

Brent: but, but, so that's, that's even the spot where Byron, he twists everything. He goes, they did this to turn us into cannon fodder because we were used in their war. Nevermind the fact that everybody is a part of the galactic community that was being impacted by this. I just like, like, that's the thing that gets me about Byron and, and about so many of these things is, is you are acting as if like something happened to you or to your people that was bad and evil, and that you were used as much as you were created and then.

Allowed to go, like, you know, and you weren't even really created, we seeded it way back here, and evolution has happened over the course of time to wherever you are,

Jeff: you're genetically modified people. That's it like.

Brent: but not even like your ancestors were, and it's just continued through your d n a, you're a new, you're a new thing.

Jeff: Just like a kiwi or a banana. It's, you know, you were modified at one point and now you're the normal thing. But I think Brent, the thing that I, that blows me away or confuses me with this is he's not wanting to go after the VLANs for this whole thing. He's wanting to go after the normals who had nothing to do with this.

Brent: and that, but, and that's what they said. Like, like he said, he said at the end he's like, uh, we have to hold everyone else responsible for what they've done. We've gotta hold them responsible for something that they didn't actually do. Much like the OC. Are being held. The hayak today are being held responsible for what their ancestors 800 years ago did.

Jeff: I see those as very different things.

Brent: Let's talk about that. Let's get to that part of the conversation.

Jeff: So, so by, so I'm a normal and you are a telepath, and you find out the VLANs, genetically modified your ancestors to bring you here to fight their war. So here I am living in a society that's created Sitecore as a way to regulate Telepaths. But I didn't even know till like a season ago that Telepaths had an impact, or a season and a half ago, um, had had an impact on shadows.

I, I didn't know that. And in fact, no one ever absolute actually knew that this core group of small, you know, command people in the structure understood that. So now you're gonna come attack me for what they did as contrasted to the hayak who genocided a species and then. Knew that as a society, they knew it and actively covered it up.

So if you're a Hiac doe, and I'm a hiac and I'm part of this big thing that's like, we don't talk about the Hiac Doe, they don't exist. We don't acknowledge anything that ever happened, and I'm perpetuating that narrative. I've got a level of accountability there. But if I'm just dude showing up and there's genetically modified people over here that I had no idea about them ever and never knew what they were there for or how they were created, I don't think I have a level of responsibility in that I might have a level of responsibility in the Sitecore that we created and I let perpetuate and how we treat you.

Right? Like I, that would be a legitimate beef. You know, Cycore is evil and it's horrible and how you've treated humans is awful. But I got Byron's thing as being about more than just humans. I got about being about telepaths as a whole.

Brent: Yeah. I, when I was, when I was in school, I went to a very conservative sign, a contract and obey the rules, kind of a school. And if you disobey the rules, we can convene a court that will kick you out of the school because it's that kind of a school. Part of that court involves, uh, certain deans and certain this and certain that.

But it also includes a student representative, uh, both male and female, to sit on the court. I got called for that court. Numerous times to sit in that spot.

Jeff: I love that.

Brent: Um, one of the things that I c and I think I, I don't know why they kept calling me because I think they had to have hated me because people would get caught on a lie, okay?

And they would try to ring these people up on every single time they told the same lie, trying to get out of being. What do you do when you get in trouble? Uh, not, I mean, mostly you, you try to, you try to get your way out and you hold up a story until you can't hold the story up anymore, and then you're like, okay, fine.

This is what really happened. Right? And they would try to just nail this person for every single moment that I'm like, no, no, no. This person was telling one lie to multiple people, but they were telling one lie. And, and I would, I would, I would stick up for the person to be like, you didn't get through to them yet.

You didn't, you didn't break through the barrier and have them continue to, to, to, to lie or, or to, to, to have them face the truth. I kind of see that a little bit with a hayak and I hear what the person said. This is our shame. Okay? This is something that they, as a people are deeply ashamed about. Of course, they're going to try to hide it, especially if it doesn't really affect anybody else at this point.

We're gonna try to hide it.

Jeff: Pretty harmless.

Brent: It's pretty harmless until you go, oh, shoot, uh, this is actually decimating our people and we have no idea how to, and it, this, this is going to lead to their extinct extinction. And probably rightly so, but not because they chose to hide it. Just because that's what happens when you make those kinds of choices.

Again, do the sins of the father get revisited on the children? Are you responsible for the sins of those who've gone before you? Should you be responsible for those sins? The fact that they got to a spot where they said, Hey, you know what? Here's actually what happened. I would rather celebrate that and say, Hey, now that we're here, we can move forward.

Versus saying, well, you just got caught. You didn't actually, you, you just, you're more sorry that you got caught than you are that you actually did it. And I'm gonna hold you accountable for all this other stuff you've done up to this point. That doesn't help.

Jeff: Mm.

Brent: And.

Jeff: what breeds, it's what breeds the resentment that we're facing now in society. So I'm gonna prop myself up and get ready for the blasts to come and the unsubscribes to follow. But the reason if I, if I came on here, Brent and I started talking about my level of white privilege and what my white privilege has done to create a space for me in society that I may or may not deserve and that I may or may not have earned fairly.

There's a substantial percentage of white men out there who are gonna turn that off and tell me to go fly a kite using a whole lot of other

Brent: you know why? Because the vast majority of white men, and I'm gonna hold up my hand in this, do not feel or understand what has happened as a result of their white privilege. Because they have had to work, scrape, scrap from the bottom, pull themselves up from their bootstraps in order to get to where they've, they are.

And they don't, they don't feel like they activated some superpower of white privilege. They may fail to understand how that happened and how that works and we can ha, that's what I mean when I say I have a lot of residual stuff in me that I'm still trying to figure out. I am in process on this people, guys.

I do not have it all figured out yet, those people that would click unsubscribe Jeff. I understand why.

Jeff: yeah, that, that's kind of where I'm heading is it took me a long time. I have, I have all these, God, I have this story. I was in a leadership development course and we had a full day session on microaggressions, which is fascinating and I recommend everyone learns about microaggressions. Those are the tiny things that we do without even thinking about that other people, and I didn't understand what the guy was talking about at one point.

I told him, I just said, Dude, I've built a whole career outta breaking rules and doing things my way and in front of everybody. This was back in, I think, 2011, and he says, uh, he's like, well, of course you have. You're white. And I lost it, and my classmates in cohort lost it. It was not, that was not received well.

But fast forward of about 10 years now, I was like, oh my God. He was right. He was right. I had to learn and understand. But my point in this is there's, there's justice, right? Justice is a acknowledging a wrong to make things better moving forward. That's a very simple definition of justice. Then there's accountability and vengeance, which is going back and somehow punishing a person or society or group or whatever for a thing that happened.

There's this turning point that the hayak reached. We were wrong. We acknowledge what happened. Please help us. Justice says, thank you for acknowledging that. Let's move forward and help you safe. What vengeance tells us is now we're gonna go back and we're gonna punish you for all that time. That doesn't create vengeance.

Now, that's why I brought the white privilege thing. There's a way of talking about white privilege that says there's all this stuff that has created an inequitable society, and as a white, cisgendered, heterosexual Christian man, I get to show up differently than other people and then move forward with that.

But instead, there are very powerful groups that insist on going back and getting that vengeance. And so as, as someone who hasn't gone on the journey or isn't far on the journey, you hear a word like white privilege or about hi Acto genocide, and you're like, dude, that wasn't me. I was on food stamps just like everybody else.

How's this? How are you mad at me about this thing? I had nothing to do with it. It becomes a me thing and a fear of loss thing to me as opposed to, Hey, let's acknowledge this and figure out how to move forward with it. And I think that, that, that's the difference, right? I have a level of accountability in perpetuating the lie, the mistreat, the whatever, a level of accountability for that.

But it's, it's not about going back and punishing them, you know? And I think that's what I appreciated in this hayak storyline and Franklin's involvement even cuz Franklin started there. How dare you.

Brent: real quick. Yeah. Yeah. It was Franklin being Franklin. Franklin, I'm better than you and you are gonna be held. I'm not gonna help you at all because you did this. And then in 2.8 seconds he was like, well, here's some stuff we could actually do.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. His journey was very fast. But it was, but it was the, the Council of Elders, it's a thing I actually thought was pretty great with, uh, the, the ambassador to her attache, where like the attache, she was ready to kill to keep this thing, you know, quiet where she's like, dude, look, the Council of Elders Aret going to come out and say, Hey, we were wrong this, but instead they're gonna like, here's everything.

And when someone says we were wrong, we're actively going to not deny it.

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: And that's, wouldn't it be cool if they owned it and said it, which the ambassador ended up doing. But it would've been cool if the council did that. But you know what, at least they, I mean, it's a step. It's a step. And I think that's a thing too in modern society, and I think we've talked about this a few times, we have to celebrate the steps.

They didn't go all the way, but you can't punish them and be mad at them for not going all the way. They took a step. That's a big thing. 800 years of repressing this, this, this one story, this one lie. It's a big deal to come out and say that, you know, and you gotta celebrate that and that celebration can't be a mission accomplished.

Right. We're not talking about George W. Bush on the deck of an aircraft carrier here. This is, hey, great job. How do we come together to move you forward?

Brent: We still have more work to do, uh, with that. I mean, let, let's, let's, let's call it out. The most direct example we can, at least here in America, at the end of the Civil War, slavery was abolished in America. Phenomenal. Step forward 1963. Jeff,

Jeff: Civil Rights Act. Mm-hmm. I think 63.

Brent: Civil, right. That's just when, hey, it's now a law that we actually have to treat them the same

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: because I, I just said it.

There's a them, what's the, them black people versus us as a white people, like there, the, we still divide along these lines. Instead of coming together and, and working together. The idea that Byron, and that's, that's what gets me so much about this US first film. Byron wants to take his people and go away and go do their own thing and have their own homeland, and we're gonna just go over here and be by ourselves and we're going to, and as if that's gonna help, as if that's ever helped.

Versus this idea about humanity, this thing that we hold up, that Babylon five has reaffirmed several times that Star Trek has affirmed several times of humanity's greatest asset. What do we say? What's it say in the beginning? Our greatest thing is to be able to build coalitions, 

Jeff: yeah. We build community.

Brent: build community, and come together. That said, I can, I can understand it on some level, a very microcosm of a level. I lived overseas for a while, lived in South Korea, was there for about three years. It was a neat place to go. It was a very, I was a very, I was the minority in that situation.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: I was in a country that did not speak my native language, that had very different rules and customs in the way people act.

And I tried to assimilate as best into that society as I could. But you know what, I still was, I was still a white American hanging out over there. And you know what, there were times when it was really nice to have my Native American, not Native Americans, my people who are natively from the United States, uh, in a, in a group where we could just, like, we didn't have to do the other culture thing.

We could just be us. And, and there was just a little bit of a breathing easy. I like, I understand that, but that doesn't help. Like there's a breath that can happen there. But that's not how we move forward as a society. We weren't impacting anything here. It's not until we started mixing in with the society that we were around. Again, though, I I, the bigger thing, to me, it really goes and, and it, it lays in this, Byron is trying to do something that ultimately the Yak did so many years ago, and we now see where that path leads and it's not where you want to go and Byron's trying to take his folks there. That's the, that's the amazingness of this story.

That those two things are set side by side and in us versus them and, and, you know, what, what are the sins of the father that, that future generations have to have to behold? What do we as Earthlings owe to the Telepaths? What do we actually owe to them? What does the, what does society owe to lead as a, as an individual?

What do the, what do pe what do the Hayak owe to the memory? He says it's only the hayak do could forgive you. You know, but there's none of them around to either that, which I will all the way. I'm just, I'm, look, I didn't say this. I was saving it for this right here. Jeff, did you see that picture of the hay?

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Who was that?

Jeff: Does the Hayak No.

Brent: Jeff. That was Zaris.

Jeff: What?

Brent: That was Zaris.

Jeff: What

Brent: Yes. There

Jeff: like a less butt

Brent: on that planet right down there. Look at that picture again. It looked just like that. Here, I'm

Jeff: I just thought like, like a less butthead of the hiac. Are you pulling it up?

Brent: I'm gonna try to pull it up. Hey Jeff, we've, we've gotten to that spot of the, of the conversation where it is time to strip this all down and see what are those messages that Babylon five is trying to say. We've already talked about a lot of it, but Jeff, your point here is to boil it down and tell us, uh, rate this episode on a scale of zero to five white stars. What does this show, what does this episode try to teach us? And what, what's Babylon five trying to tell us in its own unique way?

Jeff: this is gonna get edited around in the audio version. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna move this back. Dude, it is zaris 100%. I just looked it up and, but here's the thing, like on my little, my little search here, my image search, there's a regular hayak next to it. They, they are the hayak with hair zaris and the Hayak doe are, are hayak with hair and facial hair.

That's what they are. They're alive. They're on Epsilon three.

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: Are they clones? Are they, what are,

Brent: there's nine of them down there and they said, Hey, we've got all these news as obviously the zaris are clones, right?

Jeff: mm-hmm.

Brent: Like it, just look here, I'm gonna pull this in. This is, this is, I'm gonna do this on behalf of our YouTube folks. You said you're editing around this anyway,

Jeff: Just for the audio. So yeah, this will, this will go outta order cuz when we're done with this, I'm gonna dive into the white, white star thing, but

Brent: All right. Hold on just a sec. I, I'm gonna get this in cuz YouTube, I want y'all to see this cuz y'all are like, either you've already Googled it and, and I'm wasting my time. Or you're, you're just not

Jeff: can't believe, I didn't think

Brent: I'm telling Dude. It was, it

Jeff: so obvious.

Brent: first response. It was absolutely my first response and I cannot wait to be able to tweet this to, uh, jms and ask him, cuz I don't, I don't the here's what I wanna know, folks out there.

Is this blowing anyone else's mind? Like, or do you guys just understand that this is

Jeff: Everybody is telling right now. Everybody's like, well, Jeff's just an idiot. How did

he 

Brent: th this is, this is, this is Zaris a thousand years ago, like minus a thousand years, right? Like the mouth is a little different. There's, there's a few things that are different, but dude, that's Zaris man.

Jeff: done, sir.

Brent: I'm saying he could have gone down to Epsilon three.

Jeff: That's where they may end up going. Like, that's gonna be the thing. They're gonna go down, they're gonna get zaris. They're gonna tell Kiran and Zaris to take a room and they're gonna, they're, they're gonna be the Adam and Eve of, uh, of saving the hayak.

Brent: Hey. There you go.

Jeff: Okay? White stars.

Brent: I'm looking up Zaris right now. It, it just,

Jeff: Be careful, dude. Be careful.

Brent: I'm looking at an image. That's all.

Jeff: Okay? White,

Brent: All right, you white stars. Go.

Jeff: your anger has nothing to do with me. What will satisfy your anger will never come from me or anyone else here. I'm afraid you must look for it elsewhere. Oh my God. Think about everything we have discussed today around racial inequities. Think about all of the absolute hate that is being legislated and perpetrated against people in the LGBTQ qia, A two s plus community.

Oh my God, people are angry about that stuff, but they're not angry at them. Right? They've got anger and other places. What an incredible message. What a Babylon five way of showing it. I, it was ridiculous. The whole hit me. Hit me again. But he made the point. Look, dude, you hit me. Do you feel better? What a great pivot.

What a great moment to look at that pivot between justice and vengeance. You punched me three times. You good? We got justice. We able to move forward or did you just get some adrenaline out, refocus some of your anger in a horrible place. Wouldn't it be neat though if Byron took his own advice here? He's gonna take out his von anger on the people that weren't altered and I'll little spoiler it to spoil.

Little spoiler alert to the end on the rating of this one, Byron's blatant hypocrisy is gonna gonna hit the white stars on this one. But we've been talking about the Hayak. And the Hayak Do that is where the, like what you just said, the Hayak R the end of the plan that Byron is perpetrating. He has a chance to look 800 years in the future and see what's gonna happen.

Cuz here's the message we need everyone. Everyone matters. You might think you might feel that you're causing some, that you're solving some problem now by segregating people, closing doors in their faces, denying them basic medical care or even genocidal them like you might think you're fixing something, but it's gonna come back to bite you.

Every person matters. For me, I think of Rush's Natural Science from 1980s permanent waves. It's been a long time since I got to bring up Rush, and here I am. Our ecosystems matter. We cannot think about only ourselves. We have to think about everyone and how we mix together to make a greater whole. The song itself, it's a beautiful song.

It goes through like 16 different time signatures. It's very complex. When I play along to it, I still mess up. It's ah, it's great. But it uses this beautiful metaphor lyrically of title pools, and there's this line that comes to mind for me. It says, living in their pools, they soon forget about the sea. So we have Byron actively creating a title pool on Babylon, five, advocating for a bigger tidal pool, somewhere on another world, separating himself from everything.

And in that he's going to forget about the sea, about the galactic community, and he's gonna build this horrible resentment for people. This. Brent back many times. We've said there are Star Trek episodes out there that would be zero Delta episodes. We've said that there've been Babylon five episodes and Star Trek episodes that back in the old days, would be a zero star Fury five Delta kind of an episode, right?

This one's really close in the middle, and we'll get kind of what we would see in the Star Fury. Look at how you rank this one. But as far as white stars go, I'm giving this one four white stars.

Brent: Well, we're not doing star Furies anymore cuz it's just white stars.

Jeff: Yeah, well I was saying we get like a glimpse, like in how we rank it, like, oh,

Brent: I would, I gotta tell you, uh, I would have this for me, Jeff. Uh, and this is in my notes so the folks on Patreon can go see it. Uh, this, I, I literally had this, I can't think of a better Star Trek message that we've seen in B in Babylon, five than we have in this one.

Just to, to prop up exactly what you're saying. The idea that we need each other to stay alive, black, white, male, female. Let's dare say it. Let's take it outta that. Let's put it into the world of politics, because that's what we do. Republican, Democrat, wig, Tori, my British friends. I think I said it right. I could be wrong. Maybe. I don't know. Uh, political folks from all over the, the world. The globe. Take your deal out. We need each other to stay alive.

And then I said this, if we still did Deltas, this would be a five Delta episode through and through, but zero star Furious race. I did

Jeff: Look at that.

Brent: I, I do not like this episode. There's, I have so many issues with this episode, but there is something absolutely phenomenal in this episode that I didn't think was intentional at first.

And then there was some stuff that was really intentional and it's just pheno like it, it's a discussion that needs to be had.

Jeff: we've been talking for over an hour about it cuz, and, and there's so much more. We have scratched the surface of what we could talk

Brent: I think you and I came in here thinking this would be like a sub 50 minute episode.

Jeff: I did. Yeah.

Brent: yeah.

Jeff: Well, like I said, we don't do star theories anymore, but we do rank these episodes cuz we are creating the absolute definitive incontrovertible ranking of all the episodes in season five of Babylon five. And that's your job right now, Brent? Our current top five in the top spot, the very long night of Londo malaria.

Number two, no compromises. Then learning curve, a view from the gallery. And in fifth place the Paragon of Animals. Brent, we are pushing more and more the depths of this ranking. Where I ask you is Secrets of the Soul gonna land?

Brent: Uh, Jeff, you know what we've said about season five so far. It's been 

Jeff: a lot of things. 

Brent: it's been very meh. Like it's not been awful. It's just been there. We had the amazing episode of very long Night of Lado Malar. I actually really liked no compromises as season open. I thought it was really good. The rest of the episodes have just sort of been there. Uh, for me, this is the first episode I explicitly say I did not, like, I didn't, I didn't, I did not appreciate this episode for, for the plot that it was trying to take us through. So for that reason, this is number seven. I'm not dropping this to 22. It's not, this is not, I'm pissed off kind of a thing. This is, I just didn't like it.

So it's gonna go at number seven for me.

Jeff: Yeah. I think this is an objectively bad episode, like you mentioned earlier, structurally, mechanically, uh, it's, it's, it's bad. So that's a, that's a seventh is a generous ranking on your

Brent: Well, I mean, here's the thing. When it gets down to the end, could it be 22? Honestly, I hope it is because that means the rest of the season's gonna be better, you know, but if it, if it was in that 19 to 22 range, that wouldn't shock me at all about this episode.

Jeff: Well, that's it for Secrets of the Soul. Next week, we are watching Day of the Dead for the first time. We've never seen these episodes before. We don't look at thumbnails. We don't look at descriptions or anything. Brent, it's your time to make your prediction. Next week we will pay the Piper, but what do you think Day of the Dead is gonna be about?

Brent: This isn't a Klingon episode, right?

Jeff: I

know, 

Brent: don't have clingons in this, in this show. Okay. Uh, first of all, day of the Dead. Uh, if this one does not involve masks with skulls painted on them, or like those little skulls, I'm gonna riot because Day of the Dead is. It's an actual, like event that gets celebrated mostly by our, our Mexican, uh, brothers and sisters down there.

Um, I really enjoy that for them. Uh, and it's a cool, cool festival to go be a part of. I've got a few of those that I picked up from the Mexican pavilion at Epcott, um, which I don't know how authentic that makes them, but it makes me feel like they're authentic. Uh, anyway, uh, you know, I keep going back to Lanier every week.

I, I, I keep talking about Lanier in my prediction. Uh, I think he's gone. I'm sure he will return at some point. Maybe he will just have a random appearance here and there at some random time. But I, I feel like we're in it now with Byron, this whole, like, we're gonna hold him responsible. We're gonna do this.

And so I think we're, we're in this whole Byron thing and Lanier will just show up whenever Lanier shows up, probably down the line. So that being said, I think we continue really where this one left off, I think Day of the Dead is a celebration. Um, and I think it's probably gonna be some other race out there that's celebrating it.

And they're honoring the past and the, the ancestors, the ghost of the past, and they're gonna come to Babylon five to celebrate this thing. And I think what's gonna happen is the Telepaths are gonna get involved and they're gonna screw with people and make them think they're seeing their ancestors and how awful they've been to Telepath so that we can escalate this whole thing.

I, I feel like that's where this is going. How about you?

Jeff: Just on your prediction. It just made me think of a little, uh, I know people love it. They love it when I sing. Remember me though, I have to say goodbye. Remember me? Don't let it make you cry. Dia de lata a little coco, right? It's gonna come outta yours.

Brent: Yeah. I.

Jeff: I am in a very different place than you on this one.

So you bring up Lanier week to week Mine. When is Lado gonna be emperor? This was supposed to happen like last

Brent: Early. No, it was supposed to be early in this season,

Jeff: Yeah, we're well past early. I think this is the one where we're gonna be on Sari Prime. It's gonna be the day of the dead because Regent Emperor Jokey Mc Jerson is finally gonna pass away and Londo will be crowned emperor.

Brent: Ok.

Jeff: And we'll find out right here next week. Thank you everyone so much for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you're listening or watching. Please leave us a rating and a review and share this podcast with someone who loves Babylon five, or is about to fall in love with this incredible series.

So, until next time.

Brent: Hey Jeff,

Jeff: Yeah. What's up?

Brent: have you ever drank MIM before?

Jeff: Actually I did, I had this whole digestive kind of thing going on. Ended up getting like the, you know, the colonoscopy and a bunch of stuff. I was, I was fine, but uh, yeah, I had to do something. I had to take it down for a test.

Brent: Yeah, that's kind of gross. Um, I think that we should use this as a time to remind folks out there that digestive health is important. Please make sure that you're getting all your screenings and all your testings, and if something's going on, please go get it checked out.

Jeff: That's a good idea. But personally, I say that we get the hell outta here.