Shadow Dancing

Jeff: Welcome to Babylon 5 for the first time, not a Star Trek podcast. My name is Jeff Akin and I am watching and loving Babylon.

Five for the first.

Brent: And I'm Brent Allen and I'm also watching Babylon five for the first time. Jeff and I are two veteran Star Trek podcasters who are watching the series for the very first time. And we are looking for what we call the Star Trek, like messages embedded. Within this non Star Trek show and trying to decide just how much we like it.

Jeff: And because we hail from Star Trek, those references are sure to make their way into our discussions. So to keep us focused on Babylon five, you know, more than the incredible show already does. We play the rule of three. That means each one of us gets up to three references to Star Trek per episode.

That's it. Three owner. Those plates, no substitutions, exchanges are refund. Hey

Brent: Hey, Jeff.

Jeff: we have a five star review. Oh yes. We're back to Apple Podcast this week, and s Boyle says the last best hope for first timers each week. I look forward to hearing the exploration of my favorite show by the Star Trek Veterans.

They go into this not knowing anything about the show, bringing back my first viewing memories. The only difference is we weren't expecting consequences. They, they've been warned I'm nearly at the end of season one already, and I believe they are fully on board, but without actually spoiling anything.

They've only seen the foundation for the building site Stripped by making sure the viewer knows this isn't Star Trek and the foundations have been dug and poured. The building with all its rooms is yet, is yet, but a dream. So enjoy the wild guesses and admire the deduction of these guys as they wonder around this site in their high vizz.

Was gonna say red shirts, that's buzz number three. And I'm out. But hoping these guys last the full five seasons. Great show. Keep it up.

Brent: Well, uh, we are here at the end of season three. Jeff, what do you think? We got two more in us.

Jeff: Maybe.

Brent: I think we're gonna make it. I think we're gonna make, you know what I love Jeff. I, I mean, we are here at the end of season three and I don't, I don't know when that that, you know, review came in or, or email came in.

Um, but there are still people finding this show

Jeff: Yeah. This is a pretty new

Brent: and going all the way back to the beginning and not just jumping in with where we are. They're going all the way back to the beginning to catch up and, and we, we do get those emails of people who are like, Hey, let's talk about Sinclair and how you guys keep bagging on the actor Michael O'Hare

Jeff: And we're like, please just keep listening.

Brent: We're there. We get there. We get there. And, and, and that, that, by the way, that's not annoying to me. That's just them being where they are in their watch through, and that's totally cool. And I'm like, just keep watching. You'll be, you'll we'll get there.

Jeff: We gotcha. I love when people write us emails or messages or reviews where they buzz themselves.

Brent: That's always hilarious. Yeah.

Jeff: fun. Well, hey, we have another five star review You. Yes. Also from Apple Podcasts. Haver Monk from Norway says nothing like B five through fresh. Having seen all of B five more than 20 times across the years, and yes, I counted few things come closer to experiencing it for the first time, like listening to someone else doing just that.

This is pure dopamine in podcast form. A few episodes in these guys felt like old friends that don't know. I am stalking them and listening to their speculations and analysis is a lot of fun. Looking forward to the rest of this awesome journey with you.

Brent: You know what, you don't have totalk us. You can actually like come introduce yourself to us. You sent the, you sent the review. You can send us in emails. Uh, you can do the comments down below, but. , you know, where you real. If you really want to talk to us and like just kind of hang out and talk about stuff that might have something to do with the show.

Might actually have nothing to do with the show and just get to know Jeff and I like on a personal level, our Discord page, which is available through our Patreon page. Um, and yes, this is a hundred percent a shameless plug, but also, um, an invitation to come join us guys.

Jeff: It's a lot of fun. There's a really a lot of really cool relationships that we formed true friendships with people from all around the world. Um, it's great. And another way to make sure that you're staying in touch with us, just like Haver Monk did, just like s Boyle did. In two weeks. Two weeks, Brent, we are wrapping up season three of Babylon five, and as we've done with seasons one and two, we're gonna have a big wrap up show.

It's gonna be a lot of fun. We're gonna talk about a lot of really cool things, but to you, the listener, the viewer, what you want to care about outside of the great content that we're committed to bringing you week after week. And if you're not watching us on YouTube, pop over right here and you'll see the Star theory that was 3D printed by Wash a little while, well actually quite some time ago, but we've been holding on to this for a while.

You send us a review that comes in, you're gonna be automatically entered to receive one of two of these star theories. That's right. There are two opportunities for you to win one of these, so get in a review, get it in as soon as you possibly can. I'm gonna run our little like review report and make sure I've got it all fresh in two weeks time.

Just before we go on, Mike. And then we'll be selecting two winners. to get one of those cool, incredible star theories.

Brent: I'm, I'm gonna make a, an ask of the, the folks who receive these. Um, these are unpainted. So like, you can actually still paint these and I feel like I'm holding it upside down. Um, but whatever.

Jeff: spaceships. There's no right site up or like,

Brent: it's whichever way the person in it is sitting, but you're, you're, you are. Right. Uh, but anyway, you know, one of the things they do for the star furries in the show is they like, paint the top with something that's like, unique.

Uh, I wanna see you paint this thing and then send us a picture of whatever you put. Uh, I, I wanna see the painted version of these things.

Jeff: Yeah, that'd be super.

Brent: Well, Jeff, uh, you know, we love so many different things that we get to do here. We play the rule of three. We get to read reviews from super cool folks out there. We get to do giveaways and, and promote that. One of the other things we get to do is at the end of the show, we play. Where it's almost a highlight of the show.

We try to predict what the next week's episode is gonna be based on title alone. And this is the part of the show where we look back at last week and try to decide if what we predicted last week that this week was gonna be about. Were we correct or not? So Jeff, do you remember what you said shadow dancing was gonna be about and how close were you?

Jeff: So I was kind of right on part of it. I thought this was really gonna be about building up their fleet. And I thought though that it was gonna be leading to the big battle with the shadows that was, you know, kind of set up last time we got the buildup of the fleet and the kind of politics around that and, What was happening, but I thought that the focus of this episode was gonna be yvanova's, latent, uh, telepathy and either feelings of inadequacy or unlocking an untapped, um, kind of power within that.

That was not even mentioned in this one whatsoever.

Brent: I don't know, the last time we mentioned Ivan's, latent telepath.

Jeff: I know. Is it not a thing anymore? Like was that just for the

Brent: It's just something that got dropped, you know? Um, I don't know.

Jeff: it didn't get dropped. Nothing gets dropped in babble on five. Nothing.

Brent: there's still one more episode of season, uh, three left and season four and five are still on deck. So

Jeff: Yeah, there are 45 more episodes and some movies, so maybe it comes

Brent: maybe,

Jeff: Maybe.

Brent: or maybe

Jeff: did you think?

Brent: Uh, I said that this was going to be, um, the shadows, uh, taking some losses, like with the telepath thing going on and the new fleet of white star ships that the shadows are, are just, uh, getting hit. And so they have to change their tactics in order to gain the upper hand of the.

Um, not really at all what this one was about. Not really at all. Like, there's, there's shadows and a little bit of war stuff, but that's really, yeah. So I, I didn't, I didn't, I'm not gonna give myself any credit for this one. Um, but Jeff, for those who are listening out there who didn't watch this one first coming into this episode, um, or maybe they've never seen it ever and they're just listening to us anyway, which is dope.

Uh, why don't you tell the folks out there how this episode actually went down?

Jeff: We catch up with Dr. Franklin on his walkabout, and to be honest here, it does not look to be going that well. He's sleeping under an army coat while huddled on the ground, which is basically the universal signal for things aren't good. The family of an apparent candidate for your local school board is walking through down below with a tourist flyer, because I guess down below is a tourist destination now.

But Franklin shows his humanity as he connects with their poor, poor daughter ever. The hero though, he hears someone getting mugged and dives in for the rescue to thank him for his troubles. He gets stabbed in the gut from a legit crocodile Dundee style knife. Like for real. This knife is no joke.

Brent: That's not a knife. This is a knife.

Jeff: yeah, seriously that I think it might be the knife that Paul Ho Paul Hogan used.

That thing was massive.

Brent: By the way, if you don't know what Jeff's talking about, you need to go watch the movie Crocodile Dundee. Jeff, we should do a watch of Crocodile Dundee just because we said that.

Jeff: Right.

Brent: Go

Jeff: We're gonna wait for, uh, my wife to pull outta the garage.

Brent: Oh, I hear

Jeff: dunno if you Oh yeah. I don't know if you can hear that, but there it is.

Brent: We gotta wait for the car to actually go out of the garage and for the garage to shut

Jeff: School starts this week for, uh, for us. So my daughter is out, uh, wrapping up, like the last, like, oh, it's, we're going back. They have a whole play, play thing with some of her, some of her friends. So,

Brent: awesome. We started a couple weeks ago, and, uh, I gotta tell you, so we, we homeschool our kids and you know what conversation we never have to have in our house. Come on, it's time to get up. Let's go, let's go. Get up, get outta bed, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. And, uh, I'm just, I'm laughing at all my friends, like, I've heard from so many friends who are like, what happened this summer?

Like, nobody's, you know, it's so hard to get 'em outta bed. And I'm just like, ha ha ha. And then we're also done before everybody else gets outta school too. So,

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. And you're, you have, uh, someone knocking on being a preteen, so

Brent: Oh, he, no, there's no knocking. He is, he is. He is fully in that mode and conversations are happening that I was like, oh, they're coming and now they're here.

Jeff: I'm just thinking about how like this 24 hours a day and he's gonna sleep. 23 and a half of

Brent: I would kind of be okay with that, to be honest with you.

Jeff: All right. Back to it. Bleeding out alone. His dream comes true and he meets himself. Himself is not very nice, but himself is very honest. He helps Franklin understand that he has run away from everything his entire life, always looking for the easy path. So if he wants to run away from life, Now's the time, but if he wants to go again and yes, he literally asks him in this, what do you want?

It's a little on the nose and Babylon five, but Franklin won the stabbed. Franklin says that he wants to give it another go. He wants to do it again, and he wants to do better. So the not stabbed Franklin spews a bunch of super toxic masculinity at him. So he gets up, climbs up a ladder into the marketplace where he can get carted off to med lab and be saved barely.

But remember that cuz we are not done with the doctor. Dalen and Sheridan are ready to strike. They know where the shadows are heading and this is a huge opportunity for them. But even with the new white stars, they need more ships. The shadows are an overwhelming force. Dalen is pleading with the league worlds for ships.

They play some politics, but eventually they come around. So the plan is to send Marcus and Ivanova or Ava in the white star to patrol the uh, to p to patrol the area. The attack will happen in so they can alert the waiting fleet with some time to kill between prepping ships and getting the white star on patrol, Dalen tells Sheridan that they're gonna sleep together.

Well, they're gonna spend the night together. Well, actually Sheridan is gonna sleep while Dalen channels her inner atheros and belts out an old Earth classic. Every move you make, every step you take, I'll be watching you. Yeah, Menari ladies like just stare at their suitors while they sleep so they can see their true face or something.

But, Hey, Sheridan seems into it. So good on them. That's great. Marcus and Ivanova swap watch rotations while Ivanova tries to figure out the weird angled minbar beds. H Honest question for everybody out there listening or watching cuz I know this fan community. Have any of you tried this? Have you tried like angling your bed and sleeping like that?

Let us know. Tweet us. Let us know in the comments. I wanna know how it went cuz I don't see it going well while they talk. Marcus shares that he's fluent in Minbar and he bears his heart to Ivanova but doesn't translate it for her poor guy. And it would've been a good time for him to have done it too. Cuz here come the shadows and that might have been his last chance. They blast the shadow scout ship and it almost looks like it's bleeding in.

Shortly after a horrifying amount of shadows appear out of nowhere, just in time, the fleet pops out and it is on pew, pew, pew. Boom, boom, boom. The fight rages on with Sheridan Dalen commanding the fleet from a super cool room on a Menari cruiser. The Babylon five forces are victorious, but at a terrible cost for every shadow ship destroyed.

The B five forces lost two, knowing it's just a matter of time before they strike back. Everybody gets to work planning, but before they can really get to work, Sheridan kind of outta nowhere. Cher's his vision from way back in early season two. I think the episode was all alone in the night with Thelen and Ivanova.

They dream interpret the whole thing. Calling out Ivan Ava's latent telepathy and. Apparently, if I understood this correctly, there is a mirror version of Sheridan, an equal and opposite version that is important to the shadows. I think they call 'em the intendant. Between this and a few other scenes, we see a teeny, tiny little ship pop out of a shadow ship and hyperspace and head towards, I don't know, probably Babylon five. Well, Franklin, remember the doctor, we talked about him earlier. Well, he's in med lab. He's healing up, but he sees all the casualties pouring in from the battle. And just like before his walkabout, he can't leave well enough alone. And just like before his life-changing experience on his walkabout, he can't trust others to do what they need to do.

So he pulls himself into a wheelchair and takes charge of the situation. Sheridan comes in, offers him his job back. Franklin says he's changed and he's gonna do better. You see, he met himself and just like Jeff Aiken, he didn't like Dr. Franklin either. Well, Sheridan and Dalen do their thing. Sheridan lies comfortably on his bed, on his back flat.

Imagine how weird. Honestly, this whole thing would've been in those angled beds, like Dylan's just like staring at him and he's kind of staring at her on those things. Whole different take when you put 'em in the menari ones. But she seems to like what she's seen. She meanders over to a table. It has both a snow globe on it.

And Jeff's absolutely ingenious prediction from way back in season two in a scene that we just saw a few weeks ago. The bedroom door slides open and a woman pops in. She says, hi, I'm Melissa Gilbert, Bruce boxer's wife, and Dalen drops the snow globe. But just prediction rises from the table causing a rewind of the scene, and then she actually says, hi, I'm Anna Sheridan, John's wife.

And the prediction explodes in a theory of lights in confetti. Brent, were you shadow dancing through this one or shadow boxing

Brent: I'm not sure I would shadow anything through this episode. , uh, God, I thought it's gonna, oh, now everybody's gonna comment. Brent doesn't understand. Um,

Jeff: subtlety nor nuance.

Brent: right, right, right. I don't understand character arcs or narrative story flow or, uh, you know, which absolutely accounts for why I've been able to predict like 50% of the show before it ever happens.

Whatever. Here's the thing. I am so tired of Franklin's walkabout story that I am glad it has finally come to a conclusion. At the same time, I am glad that that wasn't a one episode story. Like they let him sit in it for a while, but it was time to wrap that story line up cuz I just, I, I didn't care about it anymore, especially after last week with him sitting in the corner with the dts, you know, rocking back and forth.

Um, personally though, Jeff. I loved the Franklin stuff in this episode. I really did. I loved the, what was it? Superman two. Superman three esque, Superman two where, uh, you know, they're kind of not really beating each other up, but, you know, they're, they're facing each other and, and, you know, it's two halves.

And, you know, the, the one Franklin, the, the, the ghost Franklin, whatever we're gonna call him, he was saying to the real Franklin, like, I felt like he was speaking for me. He was saying everything that the other guy needed to hear. This is who you are. This is where you've been. This is what you've been doing.

This is why you've been doing it. This is why you're stupid and you need to get over it. And it was, it was that hardnosed tough love, but coaching and calling you to be better. And at first you just thought he was being jerky, mc, jerk face until bloodied up. Franklin like starts trying to climb up the wall.

He's like, I want it, I want to do it again. I want a do over. Which was a little cheesy, but he turns and he is like, put one hand in front of another. Go get it. Do you really want it? Do like, I was like, yes. That's where he was going with all of that. And then, uh, and I may be in a different spot than you, than this whole deal when, when Franklin is at the end of the episode and he's finally stepping back into being who he is, his best self.

I didn't see it as him coming in and just not being able to leave well enough alone and not being able to trust people. But he saw a, a massive confusion and a place where he could step in and lend his strength to bring calm and to bring order. And he did that without being able to lift a finger. He had to do it from a wheelchair.

He had to let his people go do it without him being the one to go do it. And then he has this conversation with, with, uh, Sheridan. And, and I love this conversation cuz he is basically repeating everything that he told himself earlier. But for the first time I went, you know what, this is the strongest, most confident, self-aware Franklin that we have ever seen on this show.

And all of those things that we have hated about Franklin don't seem to be in this guy right here. And it felt to me like, like this is a Franklin that I want to follow. This is the Franklin, uh, that, that I, that I want to want to, uh, have as a C M O if he can stay like this and, and have his, um, Just have his head on straight, you know?

Um, I, I loved this piece with him. And then even the, the, the last part with Franklin where he rolls over and he is like, whoever taught you how to hold a cauterizer like that, right? Which is first was like, oh, yeah, now he's a jerk. But then he says, he says, let me show you how, and he takes it and he, it's not like he takes it from her and he boxes her out and just does it.

He actually, he does the coaching thing where he, he grabs me, he's like, no, let me show you where this is. And he's actually turning into a teaching moment for Franklin. And it was a real brief half of a second shot. But, but personally, I, I latched onto it and I loved the Franklin stuff. That to me, really was the highlight of this episode.

Jeff: you have to know a thing, right? That I, that I've been told many times by our community. I have a extreme bias and I'm not capable of seeing the good in Franklin. Uh, but I have notes right here that echo what you just said. Where in, in my opinion, what we saw of Franklin was kind of there. And, and we, this is stuff for us to discuss, but just cuz you brought it up, I want to bring the, my, my point and.

what we saw was the Franklin Pret stems, right? Which, when he was kind of telling people what to do, I, I am, I'm going to accept like your piece of like, Hey, I can't get up and help people and cauterize wounds and do this stuff. I can't do that, but I can divvy up resources and help bring order to this.

But again, he was yelling, he was like, go do it. Go make it happen. Like he was just like back to, you know, crisis triage guy who he was all the, and it was a crisis. There was triage. Like that was the situation. But it's the, he was carrying himself in that same way of, I have all the answers, go do what I say now, but when he talked to Sheridan, what we can talk about.

And then in that moment with the doctor or the nurse at the end, that those were those glimpses of like, oh, so there's still like, cuz cuz you're, you're you right? You're still you. But he's. , he's learning. And it's not a, a switch that gets flipped, like it's going to take time. And I think that at the end of the, like the literal end of his moment was like, oh, he is okay.

He is, he is taking that

Brent: Right, right. I think I read that, that scene differently than you did. Um, because I, I totally understand what you're talking about. I just felt the difference was where before he would be like, go do this. Go do this cause I'm the best and I know everything, and just do what I say to do. Where this was a person coming in, leading lending strength, and frankly dropping a little bass in the voice to get people to move, but not in an overlord, commanding way.

In a, in a, in a, a leader. He, he's doing it the right way. That's the way I read it. But I think regardless of that, you and I are at the same spot at the end of the,

Jeff: Yeah. We get to the same place. Yeah.

Brent: will tell you though,

Jeff: Sorry for

Brent: no, it's okay. Uh, I have to ask though, what the heck was that episode with the lounge singer about?

Now

Jeff: Seriously, that was his

Brent: if this is the episode where he meets himself and he has tough questions and he has to go through this process, then what was that about? And this might be a first time that I have ever had Jeff an episode that I was kind of high on that. Like I, I was digging what they were doing in the show and then due to a subsequent episode that negates everything that happened there, because that's obviously not, it kind of makes me hate that episode.

Like I retroactively hate walk about a l a lot more now because of this episode. And I liked this episode.

Jeff: Well, cuz it's, you're right. Cause I mean, and you, I think it was you who stepped through the, the metaphor and that one so beautifully where that was him and they worked, you know, and mirrored his experience and he got to do those things and that was very artistic and it was well done and we're like, we were high on it.

And then this was really well done. Like Franklin one and Franklin two, like that was, that was good. I wasn't a fan of him doing the whole get up you piece of garbage. Can you just grab one more wrong bra? Pre-modern era toxic masculinity. I have some fun stories when we talk about it with my toxic self-talk that I still use to this day, but it was that, but whatever.

Right? Like

Brent: It just reminded me of my old football coach that I loved

Jeff: Totally like that.

Brent: which is old toxic masculinity. I don't, I, I, I, I don't know that I wanna say the word toxic, but it, it is that old, like just hard-nosed old

Jeff: I kept waiting for him to be like, be a

Brent: Right,

Jeff: Get up. You know? Like he was, he was right

Brent: Right, right.

Jeff: I'm glad he didn't, but.

Brent: So the other thing, and this, this bothered me, this bothered me a lot. How does Babylon five have any earth civilian tourists on board if we can't get regular news out to the group who's giving them a passport to go to Babylon five from Earth? Much more than that. Who's taking a self-guided walking tour with a map, with descriptions on it of the, of the cies, part of the station

Who's doing that? Um, like edges. Uh, oh my gosh. It was, uh, um, now the whole part with Marcus and Ivanova and the thing with the shadow ships and the, the, that was in many ways, I think the comic relief of the episode. I thought it was fine. The Space War was really cool to watch. . Um, I thought, I thought the whole dalen thing was really, really sweet.

The whole mbar culture of how they do things also was creepy as hell, you know? And I loved the callback to the, to the, uh, war without end vision. Um, turns out that was just like a couple weeks away from happening, not years down the road. And Jeff, do you know when we saw that girl in, in the vision? Do you know who I thought it was? I honestly thought it was another Dylan. Now, you had mentioned po, potentially a daughter, but I, in my, in the back of my head, I was thinking it's another Dylan. She just saw herself come through. Yeah. Maybe it's the old Dalen pre transformer or something like that. Like, or, or maybe I, I just, I didn't know who it was, like the idea that it was Anna was like, uh, and I did, I did happen to look it up.

That was Melissa Gilbert's voice. In that episode, you know, which in production world, they very much could have had this episode filmed and shot and then just pulled that, that clip back over there. I don't know if they necessarily brought her in just for that one particular show. So, um, like overall, this was an episode where I genuinely liked all of the individual pieces.

But Jeff, I will say I, I do think that this is an episode. Folks, I want you to hear me. I liked this episode. I think this is an episode where the individual parts worked better than the whole of the episode did. Together the individual parts of the episode are greater than the whole of the episode, if that makes sense.

Jeff: It does because I think I love this episode, but also it, like, my note here was there were parts of this episode that were really hard to track that were happening. Like, it, it feels like, I dunno if anybody out here, we've talked about what kind of music people liked before and I, and I love those conversations, but there's a, uh, Prague metal kind of super band called Sons of Apollo, and uh, it's got Mike Portnoy on the drums.

That's why I'm really into it. But I don't know, like five, six years ago. They released a record called, um, psychotic Symphony. And the first track on that record is, uh, it's so fun. It's, uh, God of the Sun. I love playing it on the drums. It's so challenging. It's so great. But I watched an interview where they were talking about how they wrote it, and they said that like, it was literally just a collection of riffs that was about 10 minutes long.

And they sent it over like, Hey, let's, let's, uh, work, you know, workshop this and get it down into a song. And they're like, no, dude. Throw us more riffs and let's just cut these rifts together. So there's like seven different songs, like individual ideas for songs that they string together. Now these guys are galaxy class musicians.

I mean, they're incredible, so they make it work. But if you're, I'd say if you're not accustomed to Prague music, progressive rock or progressive metal, it's probably pretty dis disjointed and, and jarring. This. Was Sons of Apollo does Babylon five, where it's like, hey, these are great rifts, these are awesome ideas, but the connective tissue doesn't quite connect, I dunno.

But it's still pretty great. I, um, I am just, you know, for, for the record,

I know there's a lot of questions out there on my prediction for Anna Sheridan. I am gonna hold off on a public statement or any, uh, and answering any questions until next week because literally all we know right now is it's, uh, someone saying they're Anna

Brent: It's just someone saying, yeah, we don't actually know that it is Anna. Right.

Jeff: yeah, reason to believe it is cause that's what I've been saying, you know, for, for a long time now.

But I mean, what do I know? I'm too biased to even see the good in Dr. Franklin that I said that I saw. So what do I know about. No, this was great. This was, this was, this was a good episode. A good penalty. I'm excited. Like this did its job. It got me excited to see what's gonna happen in next week's episode.

Brent: Well, let's go watch next week's episode. This episode's done. Let's go.

Jeff: Right? Yeah,

Brent: Probably not.

Jeff: we talked about the stuff. There you

Brent: There you go. . Um, so let's talk about the opening of the episode.

Jeff: Okay.

Brent: Delan and Lanier are in the council chambers trying to convince the League of Noad worlds to continue to send their their ships now. , frankly, I thought we had this settled several episodes back when Sheridan brought 'em all in and everything like that.

Jeff: Kar rounded him all up and brought him to

Brent: Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. Like, I mean, you know, there there's an old vision statement that I know Jeff that says vision leaks, you gotta, maybe that's what it is. Like you gotta keep re getting 'em to re-up all the time. I don't know. But um, they, they, it was a really interesting argument where they said, you gotta tell us what's going on.

Well, we can't. Well then how are we gonna do this if you don't trust us enough to know what's going on? Well, we can't because that could expose what's really happening. And Dylan appeals to, have we ever lied to you have, wouldn't we proven ourselves trustworthy then Trust us now. And they're like, I'm probably gonna need a little more than that.

And you know what? I think the league had a point.

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: think they had a very good point. If you don't trust us enough, yes, you're right. The, the i the idea of trust in and of itself is that there is risk that this person could betray you, but if you don't trust us enough to tell us what's going on, why should we put our entire home world at risk by sending these things out to you that you apparently don't even trust us with?

And you know what this reminded me of? This reminded me of beer from last episode and the way Yolanda was using him and did not trust veer enough to tell him what was really going on, completely used him. And veer was like, no, I'm not down for this at all. I

Jeff: think the difference, I, I, I think I, I didn't put that together. I think it's great, but I think the difference, and maybe like the difference matters here was Veer has every reason to not trust Lando. You know, time and time again. He's, he's. Cut 'em off or done something to him. Whereas Deln was right, like this was an interesting scene because both parties were right.

You know, you're asking us to basically sacrifice our home world in exchange for this one last ditch gambit that we don't understand and you're not telling us about. We need more. Totally makes sense. But then dylann's like, when have we steered you wrong? Right? Like we've, we've fought through on every single promise that we've had and, and, and she even like, if you don't trust us enough to do this, leave go.

Like, cuz we're not, we're not gonna get there. You know, which is a power move. But it was, they were both right. You know, and I think Lanier tried to help too, but I think , I think in him trying to help, it almost made it worse where he was like, oh, but no, it's cool. It's cool. We also have some really cool other things that we also can't tell you about.

Um, but uh, but it's good to be fine cuz we have these things that, I mean, come on, just trust us. Please, please. But to me, in that scene, what really hit me was Dalen looked very weak and desperate. She didn't look like the leader of the Rangers, like she was like, come on guys, come on.

Brent: I thought she looked physically tired, which in keeping with last episode and everything that's been going on, it made sense to me. Um, I didn't think weak in terms of, um, I don't know if political power is the right phrase to use with what you're saying there, but I, I get what you're saying. I just passed it off as being tired, but it, that does make you look weak.

Jeff: it does, if, if I were a league representative and I'm sitting there and we're talking and we're debating and she's comes at us with, just let me finish. At that point, I'm done listening. Like you are, I mean, you're 12 years old. Like there's no cogent argument. You don't have control of what's going on.

You've, you've completely lost control of it. I think I, I like the outcome of how, how everything came and even where that one drowsy dude, you know, stayed to, to say that we're we're on board. I liked the outcome, but the execution of this didn't do any favors.

Brent: So a another spot that I really loved it happened relatively early in the, in the episode is the whole thing with Gar Baldy. In the conversation that he had with, was it Veer or Lanier? Who, who was he talking to about, uh, uh, he was talking about Franklin being gone.

Jeff: Are you talking to Zach?

Brent: Oh, it was Zach. That's right, that's right.

I another, the guy who's supposed to join the, the spinoff, right. The, the sidekick spinoff. Right. Uh, I knew it was a sidekick. I just want

Jeff: One of them. One of 'em. Was it

Brent: is one of them. Yeah. Yeah. Well, definitely not nata because she's fake dead right now. Um, or maybe real dead and fake alive,

Jeff: I think real dead. All the way. All the way dead.

Brent: with that unless that other girl comes back to play the part I'm, I'm cool with it.

Jeff: Yeah. She can stay with her.

Brent: Um, but Gu Baldy is doing something that I have seen so many times. Gar Baldy was the guy who tried to step in and help Steven Gar. Baldy was the guy who got him to, to realize where he is. And he Franklin hasn't come around yet and Gu Baldi is sitting there going, couldn't I have done more? Should I have followed him?

An interesting line, sometimes people walk away because they want to be alone, but sometimes cuz they wanna see if you'll follow them into hell. That's a garbage statement by the

Jeff: Uhhuh.

Brent: Like that is that you're totally trying to justify what you're saying. When I first heard it, I was like, actually that's kind of a neat little statement.

The more I've thought about it over the last couple days, I was like, no, that is, that is complete and total bunk.

Jeff: if it's true and that person is le walking away to see if you follow 'em into hell, that's not a person you want to follow. That is passive

Brent: you need to let them go. That you need to let them go cuz they got some stuff they gotta work out

Jeff: Yeah. They need to walk

Brent: Exactly. Um, but he, he, here's the thing and I loved that, that Garabaldi got to this solution so quickly with the help of his good dear friend Zachary. Um, That you can't be held responsible for other people's actions.

Garabaldi did what he needed to do. Steven was the one who had to make the choice of, of where he was gonna go from there. And Garabaldi was not responsible for what happened from there. And it's not on him. Steven is responsible for Steven's choices and actions, not gu Baldy. And, uh, like he, he really came to a spot where it seemed like he just sort of let himself off the hook for all of that.

But I also appreciated the fact that he, he loves and, and his dear friend so much that it does bother him that he's not back yet.

Jeff: It's the thing he's gotta work through. It was excellent leadership. Cause to me like that's the secret to leadership is understanding that we don't, you can't make anyone do anything.

Brent: Right.

Jeff: You can create environments, you can influence, you can say you know, whatever, but people are gonna make their own choices every time.

And all you can do is be like, even if you're not okay with their choice, you kinda gotta be cuz it's their choice to make. I thought it was fascinating and cool that it was Garabaldi and Zach having the conversation because to peel it back a layer, it's Jerry Doyle and Jeff Conaway. Who are both people who have been in and out of recovery their whole life, even at this point, you know?

And arguably were lost as a result of, you know, trying to battle, battle their diseases. And I felt then that scene, and it hit me more the second time than it did the first time. But just how much of them as humans, as actors, you know, people was in that scene right there. Because I guarantee they've had that person, you know, Jerry has had a garabaldi before and they, and, and, and Jeff has been a gualt, you know what I mean?

Like they, both sides. That was so, it to me, I, I always get hesitant in television when they start talking about addiction because, I mean, here we are in 2023, almost 2024, you know, and we're still figuring this stuff out. And so in the nineties it's like, oh gosh, but this was great. And I think having people who were there and have lived have that lived experience added.

Added a level of credibility that was really important to me.

Brent: And I think it just, it gave them something as actors to draw on

Jeff: Oh,

Brent: wouldn't have otherwise had, you know, um, so yeah, I, I, I had forgotten about Jeff Conway. I'm always aware of Jar Doyle whenever we get into these scenes. Uh, and, and you're right, they have had times when they're Steven and they've had times when they're gar Baldi, because I gotta tell you, uh, the, the quickest person who can spot an addict is another addict,

Jeff: A hundred percent.

Brent: know?

And especially, and an addict who's in recovery wants to help all of his friends. because if he can get recovery and they can get recovery, then my own recovery not only can be a real thing, but can stay a real thing. And that's important to anyone who, who's in recovery and living, living that life. By the way, if you guys are out there and you do need any help, uh, please, uh, find the help and get the help you need.

There is, uh, absolutely no shame in that and, uh, there are nearly every community has great recovery programs out there. Just reach out.

Jeff: Yeah, I'm, it, it, one of the things I'm most proud of in my professional career is being able to have, from an administrative standpoint, I mean, I'll own that, but I was able to really support the, the, the peer support programs that we've stood up in the state of Oregon. That, that I, I'm really proud of that like, it makes a real difference for people and, um, oh, I helped in a small way, but just being able to have done that, uh, means, means, it means a lot to me to have done that.

So, yes, please, it helps out there.

Brent: Jeff, before we get too far off on the other stuff, I wanna dive into the Franklin stuff, just a, just a tad more if we may. Um, okay. One, just a complete side note, when he got knifed, that's not a knife, this is a knife, and that thug sucker went into his gullet. My first words were, is he leaving the show?

Jeff: Same, same.

Brent: really thought like he was out of the show at that point and, and I was like, you know, we've heard about how JMS has written, um, uh, trap doors for all the characters.

And I was like, was Franklin's trap door to be killed? I mean, Talia had a pretty cool trap door until we got Yeah, she was dissect. Oh, , you know, oh my God. Oh, Jeff, I'm still so mad about that. I still want evil Talia. I still want evil Talia. And I want,

Jeff: time for her to come in. They're recruiting all these telepaths and she shows

Brent: I want, I want evil Talia to descend upon latent telepath of Vava and do something like I, I, that's the, that's the story I need anyway. Um, but I want to dive into the, to the conversation that the two Franklins had. And, and here's what he called him out on it, and I, I, I'm not gonna say this verbatim, but Franklin says, look, you use work to run away from your personal life.

Then you use stems to run away from work, and now you are running away from everything. And I was like, that is,

Jeff: Profound.

Brent: yeah. And fascinating as an analysis of his character. And I kind of want to go back to the beginning. Maybe we'll do this on Babylon five for the second time, but I wanna watch this from Franklin because here's what I don't remember.

Was Franklin always using stems, like even from when we first met him? Or did he just start using stems over the course of the show?

Jeff: I think it was new. In fact, in the quality of mercy. Um, Dr. Julie, what was it? I forget her name.

Brent: the old lady. Yeah,

Jeff: hooked up to the machine. That was her thing. She got dis uh, you know, had a license revoked for using stems. And I, and I could be making this up because yes, I'm biased and I can't see the good in Franklin, but I think he even like judged her like, well, you can't use stems.

Like, who are you to do that? And I think that we saw him, you know, we saw him start doing it, and I think that was supposed to have more impact when it's like, oh my gosh, he's really slipping.

Brent: I don't like, at this point, I just feel like he's always been doing the stems since we show, since we, we first met him. But I want to go back and I wanna see, like, I want to track this thread. With him. Maybe it actually even has, it can recolor the episode Groose where we met his father.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: know what I mean? Like, I'm, I'm kind of interested to go back and you know that, because you know what I don't do very well, apparently, Jeff, is, I don't do character studies

Jeff: At

Brent: at, at all. I don't, I don't do character studies. No, not at all. So, uh, you know, maybe I'll, maybe I'll take some people's advice and go start doing character studies out there.

Jeff: But they, I thought it was neat where they brought up the old stuff, right? They brought up the fact that he, um, hitchhiked around on, on cruisers, the fact that he trashed his notes on Minbar biology,

Brent: didn't Did you remember that? I didn't remember that one at all. Was that new information? Yeah.

Jeff: Yep. Yeah. We, they talked about when he was given his hit Yeah. Hitchhiked around on cruisers.

I became an expert on minbar biology and when I understood they were gonna use my research to hurt people, I destroyed it.

Brent: Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff: So this is all stuff, and it was, and then they even referenced the groose where they're like, you couldn't be a soldier like your dad. So, so you, so you ran away into one of the like most difficult other jobs you could ever possibly do, but apparently in his family, like, you know, if you're not a double PhD, you're garbage.

So he is still lived up to some expectations, but,

Brent: You know, it makes me wonder is, is Franklin, is he an MD or is he a do

Jeff: oh, yeah.

Brent: and no, no shade to the dos out there, but like,

Jeff: but it's different.

Brent: it is different and it can, and and they both have different connotations among different people. So,

Jeff: And what does that even look like, you know, in the 23rd

Brent: People out there are Googling what is a, do, just, just Google it. You, we, we don't have to discuss it here.

Um, but anyway, that was really the Franklin stuff, that, that, that conversation.

Jeff: I like, I really appreciate what you said in your opening thoughts where it's like he was our voice

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: in that, you know, Franklin two or, you know, ghost Franklin, just like all the, literally all the things we've been saying. He's just like, dude, stop.

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: Just stop

Brent: And so you're gonna go back. I want to go back. I want to do it again, which was a not my favorite writing line. That's that's not, you know,

Jeff: there. There were some, there were some real holes in the writing in this, but there weren't a lot of holes in the acting.

Brent: Right. And there wasn't, and there wasn't holes in the intent of what was coming across either. Yeah.

Jeff: And I think, I think Richard Bigs did an incredible job acting against himself. I'm curious, like the, the mechanics, did they have a stand in, you know, for the scenes or, or how, you know, what was the

Brent: you know, the one thing I did notice, and we, you know, I'm watching the remastered versions and stuff, is when they went to the split screen, it was way more out of focus and way more fuzzy than any of the other screens. And it didn't, it didn't look good. Like, I felt like I could see the composite, uh, out on the edit and, you know, listen, on an SDT V in the nineties, it would've been just,

Jeff: The scene where Stabbed Franklin was starting to climb that ladder and Ghost Franklin was leaning on the rung on the composite. The rungs didn't quite line up and so like Ghost Franklin just looked off in the, and it was, and it is the same exactly that, where it's just like, this would've been fine on an old tv, but on this, I can't stop looking at it and it's really distracting me.

Brent: right?

Jeff: but the acting, oh, I've said it many times. Richard Bigs is in a, I'm consistently blown away by what he brings to Franklin.

Brent: absolutely. Um, Jeff, I'm not sure what all to really go into. There's the rude woman who's being offensive, walking around as a parent, whatever. Um, Marcus is completely hitting on a vva. Well, I think we said, was it last week? Like, did they just drop that whole storyline? Well, now they brought it back up.

I did like his point. He's like, you know, I could teach you Mbar. He's like, ah, that would take like a year. I just don't have time. And his, his question, I, I thought it was a really neat question. Well, how old are you gonna be in a year if you don't learn Mbar? And she goes the same age. Like, so get on it.

Just do it. Like

Jeff: There's a cool theme between this and the war without end episodes of time. Right. And how like time impacts us. And Zora said it best, right? He's like, time is infinite.

Brent: our

Jeff: Or finite, you know, it's just how we use that infinite resource. And this was a really great example of that where it's just like, just if you wanna do it, just do it.

Go, go. I felt bad though, for Marcus, cuz I think, I think that he knows one way or another that like he and Nirvana is not gonna happen. And you know, she's, she's in love with, with pieces that are in a Petri dish now somewhere in, in a Cycore facility. And, you know, that's, that's fine. It's, that's good for

Brent: I hope, I hope Ivanova can make, can, can get over that. Like, I, I, I'm okay with Ivanova and Marcus getting together cuz that's a, that's a neat couple too.

Jeff: it'd be cool. I'd be happy. I don't, but I feel like in that moment, like when he, because like he's like, I'm gonna, I'm, I'm, I got a line, I got a line I'm gonna use on ya, but I'm gonna shoot in Minbar so I can say that I said it, but also I don't have to put myself out there.

Brent: totally lied to her, by the way. Um,

Jeff: but what a beautiful lie, right?

My words are inadequate to the burden of my heart.

Brent: Which poet did J must lift that line from?

Jeff: know. Well, cause I wanna go back to like 17 year old Jeff and be like, just say that my words are inadequate and doors open. Dude. She'll be staring at your face all night while you sleep. It'll be amazing.

Brent: You wanna what? What's the name of that guy that had, uh, oh, Cicero. You want a Cicero, the

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Inadequate. Just, that's the word Jeff say

Brent: Right, right. Um, uh, then, then there's just the com, the comedic part of Ivanova trying to take. Trying to go sleep. She can't

Jeff: the second she

Brent: She fl she flattens the bed, which I'm like, I wonder if Sheridan knew that he could do that when he was trying to sleep on those things.

but,

Jeff: it's an inversion

Brent: oh well, I, I a hundred per, I was like, dude, a lot of people pay money for inversion tables and she just got one for free.

Jeff: We have

Brent: Oh, I know you do. Yeah,

Jeff: amazing.

Brent: yeah. Yeah. We had one for a long time that we got from a friend. They just gave it to us. Stood in our attic for years and years and years and we left it last time we moved like whoever, whoever bought our house, we gifted the inversion table cuz we're like, we're never using this thing.

Jeff: It's hard to move. Those things are hard, but it's funny. Yeah. She gets comfortable. Oh, okay. I've got it figured out. Ivan. Up to the bridge. To the bridge

Brent: Right,

Jeff: And it was great. You know what, what I love, I love when the military stuff is done, right and done well, and that was one of those moments, she didn't be like, oh, she up and ran right away.

She knew what was up.

Brent: Yeah. Um, And, and I, I loved that she was just like, you know what? I'm just gonna grab all the pillows and make myself mo own little bed. Like as a, as a 1990s latchkey kid who has just grown up with, you know what, forget it. I'll take care of it myself. I'm just gonna, I'll do it my way. It's fine. I loved that Ivanova spot, like, look fine.

I'm gonna do it my way. Forget about it. Um, and so there was that, uh, the space battle stuff was cool.

Jeff: it was Okay. I, I've got some questions

Brent: Like about the little sha, the little tiny shadow ships that we've never seen before,

Jeff: We, I feel like we have seen a couple, like there's the, there's the big, not those, but I'm saying there's like the big ones, what do we call 'em? The battle crabs or whatever. And then there's the littler ones that we've seen a couple of times that are like, I don't know, fighter size or whatever, but there were like these real little

Brent: It was like shuttle pod thing. Yeah, yeah,

Jeff: didn't, I mean, we saw it at the end, but in the battle they were

Brent: yeah.

Jeff: Yeah, it was kind of, I, I, I felt like,

Brent: they were scout ships or something, right?

Jeff: yeah, or something like that. I don't know. But, but it also makes sense. I mean, look at all the different ships, even the menari have, you know, so why, why wouldn't the shadows have a bunch?

I was very underwhelmed

Brent: so, I'm sorry, Jeff. It's the, it's the shadow ships of the line. That's what we need,

Jeff: Yeah. Is that a book? Is that a thing? Sh It is. It's all black pages though. You can't read it. And once you shine a light on it to read it, shadows go away. And so you can't actually see it. We should publish that book. There it is. But I was,

Brent: It's just a, it's just a book of blank pages. Well, every time you put the light on it, that goes, shadows go away. It's there though. You gotta look at it in the dark.

Jeff: Yeah. You just can't see it. I was, I was underwhelmed by the impact of the Telepaths. Like I felt like that was gonna be a game changer. And we watched that a one-to-one ratio between the menari and the ships, and they crushed them. And in this one, like, eh,

Brent: Yeah. It's, I mean, it didn't feel like one was outnumbering the other, it didn't feel like there was twice as many shadow ships as there were White Star Fleet Battalion League of non Allied World people. Um, it just, it felt like a space, honestly. It just felt like a space battle where one side was a little stronger than the other, and, you

Jeff: And then out of nowhere, out of nowhere, it's done. And the army of light wins. Like, I felt like the end was just like, oh, oh, we won.

Brent: light. Wow. I haven't, I forgot about that phrase. They, they haven't drilled, like they said that one phrase and you're like, okay, that's so cheesy, but cool. And then like, they haven't really come back to it a lot.

Jeff: Yeah, I, I, I just wanna call 'em the Babylon five forces, like, cuz they're under the banner of Babylon five. And that sounds cooler than Army of

Brent: The, the BFFs, they're the BFFs, That's a T-shirt, Jeff. That's a T-shirt. Wff.

Jeff: We're gonna defeat them with the power of friendship.

Brent: forever.

Jeff: forever.

Brent: Oh,

Jeff: But that all led. Uh, right to Marcus, not Marcus, but Sheridan, Ivanova and Dalen kind of debriefing what's gonna happen next, and Sheridan's like, oh, by the way, I had this vision. Do you have one of those dream interpretation books that we can?

Brent: So,

Jeff: when you get stung by a bee in a dream? What does that mean?

Let's look that

Brent: Okay. So one, the interpretations of these visions were incredibly iffy, but the big takeaway I got out of that and is as similar as these visions seem to be to Cisco, talking to the prophets. they are not the same thing. This is not Sheridan getting a vision from the gods out there. These are, and they clearly stated it.

Kosh gave me these things in my head. That's what it, it's coming from Kosh. And I was like, like that completely. The, the line that I put of those two things, kind of like, eh, it was a little, little, little close. Completely separated. Those, and I know people out there are clacking on the CLE keyboards right now.

No, no, no, no, no. Say save your breath. Uh,

Jeff: But cause what we know about the Volans, we, we watched them go in and manipulate Kar. We, we've heard about Manip, we saw what's his face, uh, Jack the Ripper, you know, that they used

Brent: Should have had King Arthur in the right way, but they messed up on that

Jeff: Yeah. He couldn't, they

Brent: The one bad episode of season three, Jeff,

Jeff: That literally, literally

Brent: might be the only actual bad episode of season.

Jeff: But in the end it was just like, oh, okay, so this is, this is a bolon, kosh manipulation, like everything else that we've seen, but we're just not gonna call it that. And, and I think to me, with my, my problem, like you said, the interpretations were iffy. And I think they even said them in iffy ways

Brent: Hmm,

Jeff: like, you know, uh, do you know who I am?

And it's like, well, yeah, I'm, I'm a, I'm a telepath. Okay, next. Like,

Brent: Oh, and then there was this image of me in a Cycore thing. Well, now we're working with ster, so that makes sense.

Jeff: that that's why you were in a psych cop. What?

Brent: right. The one that got me, the one that got me more than anything else was the, you are the hand. You are the hand. It's like, well, there's also this other one that says you have two hands and they're equal and opposite, and there's the man in between.

So the man in between is your equal and opposite. No, no, I'm sorry. There's another vision out there of, I see a great hand reaching out across the universe and we see a hand and you go, Sheridan is the hand, that's where like when you, when you went to, well, there's an equal and opposite hand, and that's what the man in between is.

And that's what it meant to say. You are the like, what,

Jeff: what I felt like I wanted to be like, Hey, hey Dalen, I want you to, here's what I want you to do. I want you to pause this conversation. Go talk to Lanier. Because Lanier was able to piece together a logic puzzle that told Sheridan about Naroon coming to kill you without ever telling Sheridan that Naroon was coming to linear needs to have this conversation with you.

You are not up to the task.

Brent: right. You're, you're emotionally compromised right now.

Jeff: Yeah. That whole thing just, it felt, uh, it felt forced. It felt drawn out, and I don't, I don't understand outside of saying there's this equal and opposite Sheridan outside of that, I'm like, what was, what was the

Brent: Well, so here, here's my theory on that, and this honestly brings up my final thoughts on this episode. This was foreshadowing of Anna. Anna is Sheridan's equal and opposite. And you know, she's gonna be around, I guess now through, you know, season four, season, whatever is left of this war, of, of the shadows.

Um, and, and it's pretty clear to me at least I would think that, you know, here's Sheridan leading the army of light and it's gonna be Anna, not Morden. Anna leading the army of darkness against each other and they're as former husband and wife. They are equals but opposites of each.

Jeff: you thought Kramer versus Kramer was bad. Sheridan versus Sheridan takes down the whole galaxy Wow. I liked that. I, I hadn't even considered that. I figured like, I'm like man in between, I literally was. Was the P cop Sheridan in the vision? Not a ster thing, but like, there's literally an evil doppelganger version of Sheridan over on the, like waiting at Zaha Do I'm like in a pod, you know, or whatever.

Like that was, I like, I like the Anna thought

Brent: So the one thing they still haven't explained though, is why does everybody have birds on their shoulders?

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: They, they didn't, they didn't explain that. What? Oh, did you figure this out? What is it?

Jeff: what if they're keepers?

Brent: Oh, but

Jeff: like,

Brent: vision from, but these are visions from Kosh.

Jeff: Uhhuh.

Brent: visions from Kosh, like,

Jeff: warnings.

Brent: um,

Jeff: Baldy and Ivanova are gonna get keeper. And

Brent: Oh no. What if no, no, no, no, no. Flip it around. Flip it around. Flip it around. So you got the keepers that are taking on the bad guys. What if the birds are like the good keepers? Like they're the vo, like the sp Oh, there, here's your Catholic thing. The spirit of the dove in the form of a dove descending upon you.

Garabaldi had a literal dove of, Ava, had a raven. You know, like, like what if it's, it's the positive version of that.

Jeff: Wow. Oh man, who am I? Well, you are a force of light. That's who you are. Like, let's bring that out and do those things. Oh yeah. Because I think they were even on the same shoulder as lawns The keeper was on. I think

Brent: I think they're on opposites.

Jeff: now

Brent: I'm, I'm, I'm putting it into my head right now and I'm pretty sure Londo was on his right and for a Donovan Garibaldi, the bird was on the left.

Jeff: that supports

Brent: Ooh. Little, little devil and angel on each side. Oh my gosh.

Jeff: I love it. Well, Brett, I think we've reached that point of our conversation where we're gonna boil this all down. We're gonna see if this episode had any of that star Treky quality to it. If it has a great moral message, if it's holding up a mirror to society or any of those things that great art and sci-fi tends to do, I'm gonna do that.

By rating this on a scale of zero to five Deltas as to just how star Treky this episode was, you have the responsibility of rating this on a scale of zero to five star theories as to how much we liked it and how Babylon five the episode was. I'm gonna go first and I'm gonna be honest. I have, I've got some stuff here, but not a whole lot.

And I think to me, the Franklin conversation with Franklin was through and through the message in this episode. There are a couple other pieces that we talked about in there, but what I loved about their conversation was what Ghost Franklin essentially said was, Stephen, for your whole life you have lacked self-awareness your whole life and you've reacted to things and made life altering decisions based on you running away from things that you don't have the the courage or the self-awareness to actually see.

Okay, cool. Like that's, that's awesome. But then they added to it and they're like, get up. Climb that ladder. Go. And if you want this, go do the things you have to do to do it. Because Brent, the cool thing about life, like the amazing thing is we're not stuck. We can change, we can get better. We can also get worse, but we can change.

And all he needs is self-awareness for that. And if you don't have the self-awareness, have the trust to listen to someone who will be honest with you and tell you those things. Franklin had had people telling him this. He had Garabaldi, his friend saying, dude, look in the mirror. Look at what you're doing.

And he wasn't hearing it, but when he heard it from him, when he had that inner voice, Tell him a thing. You can't argue with yourself, right? I mean, you can and probably do quite a bit, but in the end you're like, wow, I'm right about this. It's incredible and I think it's one of the superpowers we as humans have is that ability to adapt and that ability to grow in that ability to change.

As a father, I often look at my daughter, right? And I want great things for her. She is eight years old, , right? I barely remember things from when I was eight years old. If I look back at myself, the person I was when I was eight, the person I was when I was 18, 28, 38, 48, those are all different people. I changed.

I grew, and that's a good thing if you're not growing, if you're not changing. In fact, I think it was Spock who said that our ability to change is the thing that truly makes us great. He had a better way of saying it. I don't remember it off the top of my head, but that, that that awareness and that ability to change is what makes us amazing.

Loved the message. It was a huge part of this episode. I'm gonna give this one three Deltas Based on that, what are you thinking for star furries?

Brent: Well, uh, you know, star Fury is there, there's two aspects to it, really. How much did we enjoy the episode and, and how Babylon five, this episode is kind of what we say. I want, I wanna tackle those separately and then maybe do a little c compositing here. Um, how, how much did we enjoy this episode? I, I'm gonna go back to what we said at the beginning.

I think this was a good episode, but the individual parts were far greater than this episode as a whole, which actually knocks the enjoyment of the episode down. Like, and like, hear me folks. We liked the episode, but as a whole, it wasn't as strong as the individual pieces. And that pulls the whole thing down a little bit.

So I'm actually on that basis alone. This one is gonna get three star furries. That's not a bad rating. That's, that's a, that's a very Midland, not a bad episode. I will watch this episode anytime I see it. Come on tv. I'm not you, I'm not gonna change the channel. I'll watch it. But I think the, the, the Franklin piece was super strong.

The space battle piece with Ivanova and Marcus was really strong. Guerra Baldy, uh, was, was really strong. The Dalin and Sheridan. , um, you know, advancing that piece, those concepts all together in one episode, that's really disjointed, you know what I mean? Um, but Jeff, if as far as how Babylon five, if you'll, if you'll permit me and you can tell me no, but if you'll permit me, I actually want to jump back, jump back to your Deltas because you, you talk about the Franklin piece and that certainly is where the message lies. Everything you said Star Trek wouldn't do it that way though.

Jeff: Oh no,

Brent: Babylon five would do it this way. And Jeff, if, if you'll permit me, I'll give this three star furries. But I would actually like to take your Delta. How many Deltas did you say?

Jeff: three.

Brent: I wanna take your three Deltas and I wanna change those to Delta Furies, because I think everything you said is absolutely right, but I will addendum to that.

It was done in a very Babylon five way. And it's a, those are, I, I want to give those just some delta furries as they are.

Jeff: I think that makes a lot of sense. I love that. And it kind of composites the enjoyment and the message because I mean, we're really, we're really hitting this in, in, in a, in a way, I think we're, I think we're landing in a place, I'll just say that where I think that we have under come to come to, we've come to underst.

That despite what many people in the community have said, Babylon five is replete with Star Trek messages that overflowing with Star Trek messages. There are people out there who have told us that looking at this, uh, series through a Star Trek lens is negatively impacting our enjoyment. I say no. I think it's enhancing and many peoples in the community, but we've come to understand.

I think we're coming to understand that I'm gonna wrestle with this a little bit. Um, not here now, cuz you don't wanna listen to me talk out loud about this, think out loud about this. But yeah, there's the message. But Babylon five is its own thing and it does this, it, it imparts these messages in a very strong and unique way.

Brent: Yep. Yep.

Jeff: Cool. Hey, you're not done though. Hope you haven't punched out. Cause now you have a, a near what, what's going, what is becoming. You now have what is becoming a near impossible task. We like in last season, are developing the definitive, objectively correct ranking of all the episodes in this season, in the third season, a season that we just earlier said has had only one bad episode so far.

Brent, you need to rank this bad boy. Our current top five war without end part two, war without end part one, severed dreams, point of no return, and then ship of tears. Brent, where does shadow dancing go?

Brent: Okay. So the dividing line of this episode, of this season, sorry, I'm looking at the overall ranking. The dividing line of this season to me goes all the way down to where we have, uh, the, the top five and then we have messages from earth, the rock cri out, no hiding place, interludes and examinations, then passing through Gue, passing through Gue, you and I have said was the, that is the episode that defined this season set this season on its ear.

And the season is sort of revolved around the many of these themes that we found out of passing through Gase. So that kind of, that's my immediate line right there. The next episode is Gray 17 is missing, which I will remind people. We will revisit this. We will have a chance to adjust this quite a bit.

Um, and then we have matters of honor, voices of authority, which that was the episode with Chicky in it, uh, dust to dust about the drugs and sick transit veer, and then walk about and day in the strife and convictions and exogenesis, which I thought was a great episode. That's the one with the bug, uh, ceremonies of light and dark, which I didn't really understand, but it was there.

And then, that one episode we don't talk about. Um, all good episodes. I don't think this one cracks passing through Guest Enemy to me. I like, again, I like the individual pieces, putting them together and viewing it as a whole. It just didn't work for me on that level. Uh, so I, I'm not placing it up there, but I do think that this is objectively better than Gray 17 is missing.

So I'm gonna place this between passing through Guest Enemy and Grace 17. This is our new number 10. This is a top 10 people want to yell at me. Guys, this is a top 10 episode. Top 10 might be top 11 by the time we're done with next week

Jeff: Yeah. You, uh, I, I'm not gonna lie, you're gonna, you're gonna, there are people that are have just like, their, their brains literally have exploded.

Brent: oh, I, oh, the, the, the messages that we've got in comments and stuff since grade 17 and missing are, are frankly hilarious and a bit disturbing.

Jeff: a little bit, but yeah, I think, I think you literally just took kind of like the accelerant that was laid down by people's feelings on that, and you just boom, dropped a match. Wow. Well, um, I

Brent: Listen, I just wanna say Grace seven as of as of next week, grace 17 will officially be in the bottom half of the season.

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: I'm just, I'm just assuming that the season finale is gonna be one of the top rated episodes. Just making a guess.

Jeff: wouldn't that be wild if we're just like season finale. Worst, worst episode ever. Like

Brent: James, where are you thinking

Jeff: in real time, we could watch our subscriber and follower accounts drop off. Just be like, they're like, Nope. See you

Brent: there's no hope for you after this one, guys. Sorry.

Jeff: Well, Brent, that's it for Shadow Dancing. Next week we're watching the season three finale. It is appropriately named. I'm gonna assume based on everything we've seen so far, Zaha Doom. . That's what we know about it. We know what we've watched in three seasons and the title of this episode. We haven't looked ahead.

We haven't read any synopsis, we haven't looked at thumbnails anything. And the fun game, we love playing here on Babylon five for the first time is guessing what the next episode will be based on the title alone. Brent, what do you think Zaha Doom is gonna be all about?

Brent: Well, uh, honestly, Jeff, um, I, I don't want to pre, I never wanna put on errors when we, when we come here, just we'll own right where we are. This is a title that you and I both noticed several weeks ago.

Jeff: Yes,

Brent: you, you, we try not to look at the upcoming titles and different things like that, but sometimes things just jump out at you and stick in your memory and us.

Jeff: to, we have to plan some things and it was getting to the end of the season literally here. I brought up the titles of episodes. So yeah, we've had a little, little

Brent: E exactly. And so, you know, you and I talked a little bit off microphone about like, hey, uh, the, the, did you see the final episode title? Yeah. It's a, so I've been thinking about it for a couple of weeks now. So I, I'd say that just to say, this is not me coming up with us off the fly, right?

There's one message that we keep hearing about and, and we've heard about it a little bit since we've known this, uh, and we've heard it, I don't know, Jeff, three, four, maybe five times. Now. There is something about Sheridan going to Zaha Doom or not going to Zaha Doom. And in this one we're gonna figure out what that's all about.

Um, I think Anna has come back. She clearly was that thing that launched out of the shadow ship and has come in and she's shadow lady right now. She is going to tempt John to go, and Dalen is gonna be sitting there saying, don't go, don't go, don't go. Um, I think there's the piece inside of Sher, the, the piece of Kosh that is now inside of Sheridan who is actually gonna make him go. Sheridan is gonna feel like he has this protection because of Kosh. You know what I mean? Like, like, uh, cuz because when Kosh was saying, uh, if you go to Zaha, you'll die. I, my my interpretation of that was, if you go to Zaha, you'll die if I don't go with you. Well, now that Kosh is inside him, Kasha is gonna go.

So now it's time for him to go to Zaha Doom. Right. But Dalen is just like, I don't think Dylann's ever gonna understand this move and the, the sacrifice that they talked about being made and all of this stuff. Jeff, this is also the season finale of season three. JMS is writing this whole narrative arc.

We're at this climax. We're get, we're getting ready to, to, to slide down the, the backside of it. Narratively speaking. Do you know what happens at this point in the story?

Jeff: It all falls

Brent: The worst thing possible. The worst thing possible is what happens at this particular point in the story, because then this is how they have to overcome it in, in, in the end, right?

This is where the following action comes into place, right? So, um, I, you know, I I I compared it to, uh, I think last week, um, Han Solo going into Carbonite, right? And Dumble door falling off the tower. And I guess there's another one I had. Um, I mean, it's just, it's, it, it's, it's Moana deciding to go back.

She's gonna quit her journey and go back home. It's it getting that dis like it's, it's that moment. Um, Sheridan's gonna get captured. Sheridan. Sheridan's gonna be out of the game for a while. Stuff's, stuff's gonna happen with Sheridan. And this one by going to Zha. And I, I, yeah. I don't know what, I just, this is a, this is bad stuff is getting ready to happen. That's all I'm gonna say. Bad stuff is happening and it's Sheridan fighting.

Whether or not to go back to Zha, what do you think?

Jeff: What do you want, John? What do you want? I, I, I think we line up on a couple things, but I think that Anna modernized, Anna is going to, like, she'll be pressuring him to go to Zaha Doom, but she's gonna do it by asking what he wants, and he's going to, you know, I want the shadow threat destroyed. I want these things, I want peace, I want all this stuff.

And then she's like, they'd come to Zaha do, like, I'll do it. Like, she's not gonna lure him like in a, you know, like do it or die kind of a thing. It's gonna be like, come on, what? We're gonna help you do all this stuff. We're gonna go. But I think, um, I think that Kashi's gonna be right. And I think that this one is gonna have, it's gonna end on two fronts.

And front number one is gonna be, I think Sheridan is going to die, but I don't necessarily think he's gonna die in the way we think we've had, um, a concept. That has dropped in a handful of times and they basically did an episode that we said was the basis for the theme of this whole season. It's passing through Yosemite based on the death of personality.

And so I think that we might see something more, uh, metaphorical as a death for Sheridan. But I I, but I agree he's gonna be out of the game for a while. Like this is gonna take him off the board for some time and this is gonna be the best of both worlds moment at the end. This isn't a two-parter, from what I understand.

It's not Zaha do part one and then Season four picks up a Zaha do part two. I don't know

Brent: so this is, so, this is not a, a best of both worlds. Part one and two, we're gonna ruin your summer type situation.

Jeff: I think it is gonna be that. I think it is gonna be, but I think, but I think it's because what we, what we've seen in, uh, the, the season finales is they end and then they just kind of pick up with another episode, you know, in, in the, in the season opener. I think though the fire moment of this is gonna be, people don't know what's up with Sheridan necessarily.

Maybe he's fallen out of comms or something, but they're gonna be doing business as usual and all of a sudden, like 40 shadow ships are gonna pop outta nowhere, surround Babylon five, and then it's gonna fade to black. And we're gonna see Doug Douglas Netter's name pop up on the screen and we're gonna be like, what?

Brent: And you know, the part of that that's gonna suck the most, Jeff, is we don't get to press play and go on to the next episode because next, the, the week after next week is the season three wrap up. We don't get to go to season four till after that. We cannot out wa we're, we're, people are asking, we are not allowed to watch season four episode one until after we do our season three.

Jeff: Correct. And in fact I wanna, I wanna shout out our, our incredible support and good friend Mia who, uh, you get to know if you're on our Patreon Discord, discord. But a while ago, Mia provided me with the instrumental music for the intros to season three and season four,

Brent: We get a new, we get a new music. Oh, I'm excited. I'm excited to hear new music. Okay,

Jeff: but I, I don't have to go look for that.

So I'm not gonna have any sort of tease any sort of idea that I had a little bit of coming into season three, cause I had to find, so yeah, Nia Nias got her

Brent: Nias the best. She's cool.

Jeff: But, um, we're gonna find out next week. Zaha Doom is all about. Thank you everyone so much for joining us. If you haven't already, please follow or subscribe wherever you're listening or watching us and leave.

A review, not just because we love it. We absolutely love it when you leave reviews, but we're doing a giveaway in two weeks. Two weeks time, look at a review. We're gonna pull it out. We're gonna give away two star theories, and all you gotta do to make that happen, to get your chance for it is leave us a review.

So, Brent, until next time. Yeah, man. What's up?

Brent: Okay, let's go. I'm, I'm wanting to go watch this episode. Let's go. Just

Jeff: Let's do it. Peace, victory. Long life.