Signs and Portents

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

Brent: I'm Brent Allen and I've been outta circulation for a while.

Jeff: you find anything

Brent: Yeah. The show called Babylon five have been watching it for the very first time. Jeff and I are two star Trek, podcasting veterans who are watching Babylon five for the first time. We're searching for star Trek, like messages, trying to decide if we should have watched this one sooner, maybe trying to watch it.

Like your little girl was asking about there, Jeff.

Jeff: Oh yeah. I think I shared before my daughter, uh, sat down next to me watching one of these episodes and she's like, oh, you're watching Lama on five. I was like, wow. But then the other night when we were watching that other show, uh, that, Hey, we haven't started the game yet. So I can say it that other show star Trek, she sits down and she says, so is Babylon five, just star Trek with different uniforms.

Brent: that's what we're trying to decide here. And so far, the answer is sort of,

Jeff: Sort of

Brent: sort of sometimes, right, right. And sometimes that other show with different uniforms, isn't even that other show with different uniforms. And so that's what we're doing here. Folks. We are trying to look and see, does this show have it start we're we're applying the filter.

Jeff. That's what it is. We're applying that filter. We've gained to star Trek, podcasters to Babylon five, to see what the show really is all about. And what does it really mean? And what does it really say to us? Even 30 years later?

Jeff: just referenced our game. We watch a lot of star Trek, Brent and I, we have whole podcast dedicated to it, but this is not one of them. So to keep us on task, we each get only three star Trek references starting now until the point that we actually, you know, compare this show to the messages in, in that other.

Brent: Mm, Jeff it's time for one of my favorite parts of the show,

Jeff: Yeah, I love this

Brent: reviews, comments, stuff, where people talk back to us. And we like to talk back to you guys, cuz go figure Jeff. And I like to talk, Jeff you're out there scouring the internet for emails, comments, tweets, all that sort of stuff. Do we have anything good come in this week?

Jeff: We Brent have a five star review. Oh yes. That's right on apple.

Brent: What was that?

Jeff: that was Kar. Kar is excited that we've got a five star

Brent: I love it.

Jeff: Percy's owner went to apple podcasts, left five stars and said, I love B five. It is great to have a review from completely unspoiled reviewers. The fact that you hosts are well versed in star Trek is just icing on the cake.

I look forward to more from you.

Brent: Percy, we look forward to more conversations with you. Thank you for leaving us a review, a rating, and all that jazz. You are awesome.

Jeff: That is the for sure way to have us share your message here on the podcast. Go to apple podcast, go to podcast chaser. We get immediately notified of those reviews. If you go to audible or somewhere else, just take a screenshot. Hit us up on Twitter at Babylon first, or send us an email through our website, Babylon five.com.

The number five, the word first.com. And we'll share it here. speaking of our Twitter at Babylon first Barad door at John's Brin on Twitter says as a long time viewer of Trek, I've been meaning to get into Babylon five. So imagine my surprise when I just today discover this podcast. About to give it a listen after I watch the gathering.

So welcome Barad door. So happy to have you on our first time journey with us.

Brent: Hey, Beardo same Z. And by the way, Bera door. Isn't that the name of one of the towers of Lord of the rings?

Jeff: I think it might

Brent: Yeah. Cool. I

Jeff: it's almost, it's almost one of the people in nights of the old Republic too. It's BDO

Brent: Bauer door is, wait, wait, wait, is it Samans tower or is it sours tower? I think it's sours

Jeff: sure it's SAR. Do you think it's Saron

Brent: sours. It's Bower door

Jeff: it has literally been. So when the Lord of the rings movies came out, I was managing movie theaters, cuz I'm not a, I'm not a young person anymore, but uh, that's the last time I really had exposure to tos world and uh, yeah, might have to, might have to dive back.

Brent: When movie theaters opened back up after the pandemic, you could get into movie theaters and be like the only people there,

Jeff: That's the

Brent: know, and they were like, because. Hollywood, wasn't putting out new releases. The local movie theater started playing old movies and they did, uh, Lord of the rings trilogy.

So my wife and I got to go re-watch the whole trilogy in the movie theater once again. And it was private screening, like all three times. It was awesome

Jeff: That's

Brent: by the way. I'm

Jeff: we turn to the,

Brent: It was SOS, uh, tower not so Mons. Yeah.

Jeff: nice job. When we turn to the king came out, we did that. So you could come in, watch fellowship, then two towers. Then at midnight, we did return to the king. It was like a 12

Brent: that's a long day.

Jeff: endeavor. Yeah. And I tell you, you go in to clean the theater after a day like that.

There's a certain smell, little muskiness in there. On YouTube, YouTube, if you're not, if you're listening to us on any of the podcasting apps out there, thank you so much for checking this out. But over on YouTube, you get a whole different experience. First and foremost, you get to see our amazing vistas on your video screen. It's pretty great. But beyond that, this doesn't sound like a selling point, but believe me, it is, we don't edit that video.

Like there it is. So you're gonna see, uh, tangents that we go off on. You're gonna see, mess me, mess up a, a bunch.

Brent: see me

Jeff: all that up. Yep. I get to clean all that up and make it sound great when you're listening, but on YouTube, it's a lot of fun. Well,

Brent: Well, you, you know, again, I'm, I'm interrupting. Uh, you know what I like to call YouTube YouTube is the show about the show.

Jeff: Oh, oh.

Brent: It's like, it's like, it's a whole different show about this show and how we not Babylon five about this show Babylon five for the first time and how the show gets made.

And it's awesome.

Jeff: it's a show about the show. That's about the show Babylon five, I think.

Brent: math on that works.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Hey, one of our great YouTube viewers out there, Paul Walter left a comment. I'm gonna read just part of it here starts out. He says back to B five. I love mind war mainly just for the tidbits. It gives about Cyco. I bumped up against the effects too.

When I watched, uh, when I first watched it back in the odds, I feel like you start forgiving the effects more when you get more involved in the show, but I really, really love the B plot leading to that great speech from Jaar. And this was from obviously our video for mind war.

Brent: sorry. Who, who was it that sent in this, this

Jeff: I was, uh, Paul

Brent: All right, Paul, first of all, thank you for your comment. Thank you for bringing up a topic that I fully agree with you on. After watching the show for a while, you start for giving those, those, uh, really bad effects. And some of the bad acting and a lot of the bad script writing because it doesn't matter anymore.

I mean, Jeff and I are two star Trek, podcasting veterans. We're very familiar with bad acting and bad effects over painfully over a show that we love and we know how awesome they can be at the same time. Uh, and we know what it's really all about that being said, when you are running a podcast and you're doing a review of the show, 30 years down the line, a part of that is pointing out the stuff that doesn't hold up.

And honestly, Jeff, I think that's the thing that answers our, our final question at the end of every episode, which is, should we have watched it sooner? The answer is, yeah, we should have watched it before we realize it sucked. And I mean all that other stuff.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. The acting, all that stuff. But honestly though, Brent, I mean, you and I were around when this first came out. I don't think this held up when it first came out either. I mean, this was, it was, it was pioneering, it was groundbreaking CG wasn't happening at this level yet, but I think there was a reason it wasn't happening at this level yet.

Brent: I, uh, I wasn't watching sci-fi that much back then, but I do remember watching shows like home improvement and noting like their hairstyles and their clothing styles and going, this is never gonna feel old. This is never gonna feel old. And then you go back and watch it now. And you're like, oh my gosh, this feels so old.

So I imagine that that really could be the same thing with a lot of the sci-fi. Oh man, this looks so good. This is so great. And then you go back later and you go, no, it does not. So I don't know. That was just my experience.

Jeff: I think that's a good response. Well, thank you so much, everybody for interacting and commenting. I love the communities that are growing and thank you for welcoming us into your communities. It's great to be able to interact with all of you. You know what else is great though? Brent, the fun games that we play on this podcast and what we do have a

Brent: Which one are we going into

Jeff: we gotta share our guesses from last week.

So we don't look. Yeah, we don't look ahead. And, uh, we, we don't know. . Hi, YouTube. Hi, this is a special, special scene just for you as Brent realizes he doesn't remember what he gets last week.

Brent: now?

Jeff: So we're gonna play another little game just for you, YouTube, where Jeff pulls that up.

Brent: I, I forget, I think this, this game was my idea and I never, I, oh my gosh. I do not remember what I said. I cuz I, I, I wimped out last.

Jeff: I think it was week before

Brent: Well, that, that's what I mean, like, like I wimped out and was like, yeah, this show could be about anything it's and you're like, you're not allowed to do that this week. So

Jeff: All right. So last week, what was last week by any means necessary. Okay. So let me

Brent: did

Jeff: open

Brent: What did Brent say?

Jeff: up quick at time.

Brent: Hey, anybody who can comment before Jeff pulls it up? You get 10 bonus points.

Jeff: Oh, wow. I

Brent: you 10

Jeff: those

Brent: Centry dues. What now?

Jeff: ducks. I

Brent: Ducks. Yeah, I like dig dues. Do you watch bluey there, Jeff?

Jeff: I gotta kill the mix minus. So don't talk when I come in here pro uh,

Brent: Cause then I'll hear myself back.

Jeff: it's really annoying when that happens.

Brent: Yes. This is what it sounds like to

Jeff: Sounds like to me there. Oh, there it is. All right, here you go. Jen, that heavily foreshadows something. So I'm gonna say that this episode, this one is gonna focus on the ambassadors.

I don't think this is a home guard one. I don't think this is necessarily Sycor. I don't think this is earth related. I think this is you got it. No.

Brent: play the

Jeff: Oh, keep it going. Is something to do with the Mumbar the sent like, like I've been wondering is the whole Sentara Narn thing somehow connected to the earth Mumbar war.

Like, is there some sort of a connection we haven't put together yet? And I wonder if there's like, that's where this is gonna go is we're gonna see these, these main ambassadors something's gonna happen. That's going to foreshadow, I guess, where we're going in seasons 2, 3, 4, and five. Uh, and this is gonna be like the, what, what do you, what do you call that?

The narrative hook. Okay. Yeah. Of the show. Like, it'll be that kind of a deal. What actually happens. Uh, yeah, I'm gonna go with somehow the nassari, uh, deal is also wrapped up in the earth. Uh Mumbar war conflict. And by the way, the, the. Kosh his people, what are they called? The VLAN VLANs. They're like masterminding the whole thing.

Cause I, I still think they're like above everybody. They're playing 3d chess while everybody's still out, out kind of playing checkers. I'll tell you why. I love that.

Brent: I'm good. Thank you. There

Jeff: You're welcome. Look at that. We can go back now. You just gotta remember where I was. Well, I'll just start over from the, we're gonna play a game

Brent: you go.

Jeff: now.

Brent: Now you guys get to watch Brent pretend like he's reacting for the first time.

Jeff: Yeah. I love it. So great. Well, it's that game that we love to play where we guess what this episode we share, what we guess last week with this episode was gonna be about. So, um, I guessed that this was gonna just shine a little more light on the Sinclair Menari war, like that 24 hour period that, uh, that Sinclair doesn't know what happens or starting to learn more of what, what did I say?

I think I said something like. Will find out Delen will know that Sinclair knows what Delen knows, and then everyone will know. That's what I thought this one was gonna be about. What about you?

Brent: well, hold on now, you weren't wrong.

Jeff: I know

Brent: wrong. Like, I mean, now granted it was, it was, I don't even know if it was a B plot. It was the C plot or something like that, but

Jeff: It was 18 seconds of this episode, but it was a

Brent: But it was a piece of it, a very direct, uh, Sinclair recruiting Garabaldi to figure out more of what's going on with, uh, with the whole deal.

And what did we find out ultimately with that? If I remember. Is that it was the Mumbar who put Sinclair in charge of the station after that whole situation. So, uh, that's one more piece of the puzzle. All right. Uh, so I guess for me, what did I say? I said something to the effect of this one was gonna be about the ambassadors.

So check, cuz it certainly was more about the ambassadors than it was about, uh, home guard or Cy anybody like that. Um, I said that it was gonna show a Aari Narn war connection to the Mumbar earth war. I'm gonna put a, not sure yet next to that one. Right.

Jeff: Oh, maybe a little, maybe

Brent: it still could happen. It didn't disprove it at all.

Um, but I said that this was going to be the narrative hook of the whole show and that this would foreshadow where we're going in future seasons.

Jeff: mm-hmm

Brent: And given the fact that the dude went around going, what do you want, what do you want, what do you want? And he let, he made everybody voice what they wanted. I've got to believe that's a, this is going to be a big piece that plays out over the next bunch of seasons. And that this actually is the narrative hook of the show as a whole, cuz we know that JMS had the whole thing in mind, right. Beginning, middle, and end. So, uh, that's I'm gonna, I'm gonna go with nailed it.

Sorta

Jeff: yeah.

Brent: we'll see like

Jeff: Yeah. We both got partial credit on

Brent: right, right. Like this will be one of those we'll look back in a, like a hundred episodes from now and go, Hey, I was right. Or I was not at all. We'll figure it out. Uh, but with that, Jeff. Let's actually discuss what this week's episode was about. Let's get into it, signs, importance, tense for those that may have not watched this episode in a while, or those who haven't watched the show at all anyway, but you're just listening to us because you like the sound of our voices, or if you're on YouTube, you like the way we look, uh, Jeff, remind us what this episode was about.

Precisely.

Jeff: a Ben Jesuit from David Lynch's dune comes onto the station. You know, some stuff is about to go down and go down. It does we meet Morden and not the Solarian from mass effect. Somebody shrouded an even more mystery than he is. Morden is from the rim and is on a mission to meet with all the ambassadors except.

Sinclair. And he's here to ask them one teeny tiny little simple innocuous question. What do you want? There's no big surprises in the answers, but Len and KSH clearly know a lot more about this guy than anybody else does. Sinclair isn't left out though. His plate runeth over. He talks to Garabaldi about his realizations and the stress he's having about his missing 24 hours with the Menari and asks him to do his magic and learn what he can.

He wants him to, to launch an investigation and what Garabaldi learns. It's pretty huge. Not only did the Menari only agree to be a part of Babylon, five of the project itself on the condition that they got final say on who the station commander was, but they rejected a long. Long list of admirals and other big shots until they got to Sinclair.

So why? Well, nobody knows yet, including GU Baldy, Sinclair's also dealing with a growing Raider threat. They're hitting ships further and further out, further than they should be able to do. So now you remember that Ben Jesuit, that I mentioned, well, she's actually a Sentara prophet, Andre lady Laira and she's traveling with Lord KIRO.

Who's a big shot among the Centara. He and the Sentara government had lawn find a lost artifact, the eye, which is a cultural icon and carries a lot of political power lawn is supposed to deliver that to KIRO and KIRO is supposed to deliver that to the emperor. But KIRO has plans of his own

lady Laira has overcome with visions. The moment she steps foot on the station, she sees death. Pain destruction, pain and pain. She also claims to have seen Lord Kiros death as far back as like his first birthday, he's apparently gonna be killed by the shadows, but kiro's plans are thwarted. Some guy that we've seen slinking around the station the whole time holds the Sinta delegation hostage and leads them to their ship, Sinclair and security intercept them.

And they let the hostage taker take KIRO and the eye to the ship with a plan to go cut them off and Ivanova are tracking down this Raider threat in a very well orchestrated attack. Their command and control ship creates its own jump gate. Cuz apparently that can happen right outside the station and launches an attack on the station itself. We get an epic 90 CG space battle where they destroy most of the Raider ships, but the CNC ship is able to not only.

Get away through its own jump gate, but they're able to get away with Lord KIRO. And the eye KIRO has been working with the Raiders the whole time. His plan for the eye is unth thwarted until that is Raider guy, betrays him and locks him up. He's not only gonna sell the eye, but ransom KIRO two thwarted again, but then Raider guys plans are thwarted.

They come out of the jump gate and a big old black blob is waiting for 'em blast them out. The sky, everyone dies and the eye is lost to oblivion or was it somehow Mor got his hands on. It delivers it to lawn who had basically given up on his career. Now he's feeling good. He's got his career in check and honestly might have even saved his life.

The episode ends with Laira doing a mind meld with Sinclair, showing him the possible future where Babylon five is destroyed. what did you think? Signs and port

Brent: That dirty Roten hero. I knew it can never trust him. Whenever you see that actor playing somebody, unless he's playing a suicidal member of the Q continuum. He's no good. He's just no good. He's a bad dude. He's a bad dude. He's always gonna be a bad dude. That's just how he rolls. Uh, I had one statement as an opening thought here, and it was this, this feels like it is a super important game shifting episode for the show. It's, it's exactly what I said, you know, in my thing last week, which frankly, I forgot about it until we went into the thing for tonight.

Um, but it just, it had that feeling about it. Like everything felt like it wasn't, this wasn't just a, a, a plot line or a storyline. That's gonna be resolved by the end of this episode. You know what I mean? Like this one felt like it's gonna be around first for a while. So, um, I overall enjoyed this episode, actually.

I think I enjoyed this episode a lot, but, uh, well, we'll, we'll get into the, into the messages and stuff a little bit later. Um, but yeah, there are a few things that jumped out to me. We'll get into that in a minute, but before I do that, Jeff, tell me what you thought of this episode, watching it for the first time.

Jeff: this is the 13th episode. So, you know, just to make it easy, we'll say the 13th hour. And I feel like the first 12 hours of this were basically just the prologue, like this is, this is the actual first episode. Of the series. That's what I, I felt, I, I don't wanna say a reset button. Like it wasn't as extreme as a reset button by any means, but I feel like it was like, Hey, so we've been building this stuff up and connecting you with characters and introducing you to some concepts.

Here's the actual story now. Oh, also, also there's this, like, I don't know, black blob thing with Morden attached to it.

Brent: Mm-hmm

Jeff: This felt, this literally felt to me like chapter one, that was, that was my big note. So much happened. This is the beginning of the story.

Brent: know what other story does that? People don't believe me. People love to make fun of it and I'm gonna get I'm gonna, people are gonna make fun of me when they hear me say this and I don't care. I'm gonna say it anyway. It's one of my favorite movie franchises of all time. It's, it's a movie franchise that you have to forget every law of physics that, you know, actually exists, pop some popcorn munch on it while you're eating it and just have a good time.

I am of course talking about the fast and the furious franchise in the last movie where they went to outer space.

Jeff: Did they really

Brent: Yeah. Sorry. Spoiler alert. They went, it was in the previews. Jeff. went to outer space. Listen guys, people it's one of the top grossing franchises of all time, for a reason, you guys make fun of all you want.

It's a fantastic series. The, the, the themes that they get in, like you watch that with a critical eye, as a star Trek, podcaster, Jeff, there's some deep stuff in the fast and furious franchise.

Jeff: have family there's

Brent: It's all about it. That's, that's the biggest thing, you know, what do you do for family? When people come in and out when people betray you or you think that they're betraying you, but they're not, or whatever it is, what do you do with all of that, that movie franchise, the storyline that it told, if you go back and you really watch it, it didn't get started till movie four.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: makes numbers one, two, and three really feel more like prologue. Oh, it's not been about racing since the third movie. Yeah, you're right. Cuz that's not actually what the movie franchise is really about. That's all prequel stuff. This real show is here. Relate that back to this. I think I, you put exactly what I said in much better words.

I think we're in full agreement on this. This is a game changing episode. This is a game shifting episode. You're saying this is chapter one. Everything else. Uh, everything else was prequel up to this point. And I agree with you. I agree with you. Uh, Jeff, let's walk through the episode a little bit though.

Jeff: Yeah. I, I just have to say, I, I really want to dive into this fast and furious thing. I'm not gonna do it, but

Brent: look, look for that other podcast. We do

Jeff: right. You know, the fast and furious those, but no, but I mean, I just, I have to say, I had no idea. They went to outer space, but Friday the 13th followed that that was a really, you know, Jason X and they, they took Jason to space.

Why shouldn't fast and furious follow the same model. Right? It's a winning one.

Brent: FA and PSRO furious. Did it in exactly the way you would completely predict they, they strapped a rocket to the top of a, of a race car and shot it off in outer space. they drove, they drove the car through outer space. When the rocket strapped on it,

Jeff: why not? Why

Brent: I said, you have to forget every law of physics you've ever known.

Just have a good time munch from popcorn while you're eating it. But it's really, there's some deep stuff. It's a good, it's just a good fun watch. Don't take it too seriously.

Jeff: Yeah, but just to tie a bow on it, Brent Allen just said, babble on five is the fast and the furious. So there you go.

Brent: When VIN diesel shows up in this show, you'll know what I'm talking about, man. You know what I'm talking about?

Jeff: But yes, let's dive into this episode.

Brent: All right. Um, I'm just gonna say this out loud.

Jeff: whole

Brent: I have never once in my life ever described morning breath as tasting like old carpet.

Jeff: scene was incredible. Everything about it. And again, because it's a VVA,

Brent: Right.

Jeff: gonna take anything and ES and elevate the whole.

Brent: who wakes up in the morning? Beautiful

Jeff: But with carpet breath,

Brent: with carpet breath, but she's like, I mean, they, they did, they didn't mess up her hair. She still had makeup on, you know, I like Uhhuh. She,

Jeff: breath, because, because she probably, before she goes to bed, she gets ready because you never know when an emergency's gonna happen and she's gotta roll outta bed into her uniform and get right to

Brent: There you go. she's going through, do you want me to read the, the station logs while you were asleep? No. Yeah. Like she tell she does, she does to her Alexa, what I do to mine, you know, like I give you some smart as smart Alec response and, uh, like Alexa doesn't understand it. she's like, okay, fine.

Just give it to me.

Jeff: work. But just do it. But I think it was interesting too, when, uh, Sinclair kind of rises her in when she gets up to C and see, and she's like, oh, it's just hard for me to wake up when it's still dark. It's like, well, it's always dark in space, but part of me wonders, like, is this gonna be a thing for her?

You know? I mean, she's been pretty Mmm. The kind of,

kind of a beyond approach in a lot of ways as a professional and like, is this kind of the first chip in her armor where like she's really having to get well? Oh my gosh. So here's what we know now we know that she hates waking up and getting started. We know she's illegally growing coffee. Does that turn into, I don't know, just does that turn into something at some point?

Brent: She's got her own thing. She's got her own thing. She does whatever she wants on the station. And she bullies people around because she's a VMA

Jeff: Because she can, she can do it.

Brent: She's awesome. All right. Uh, dude, walking through the bay at the beginning, like this is the rule on Babylon five, right? Like that's the bad guy now.

I don't know if Mor actually is a bad guy by the end of this. Like I really don't know. He feels like it.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: He really feels like it, but I don't know. But you know, coming in, like that's gonna be your guy throughout the course of the episode. You gotta keep an eye on

Jeff: I wonder if that keeps happening. Right. Do they ever get wised to that and come with a different way of doing it? But I mean, they, not only they bring him in, you're like, okay, I've been trained. This is the guy, but then they give you that little bit of shade with like, well, your identical cards, pretty out date.

And he's like, you know, it's been a while been around. Did you find anything? Oh, just takes off. Yeah. It's like,

Brent: Yeah, I did hell

Jeff: I'm out. But I just, I. I have a lot of questions about that guy. And I'm not, I mean, I can ask him, we're not gonna get answers for a long time, but

Brent: what are they?

Jeff: yeah. How he avoids KSH right. The first time he sees him, he ducks away.

Then the second time KSH is like, they're not for you that and begs him off Thelen Thelen freaks out. And then her, and then you called this and her triangle starts showing Uhhuh all of

a sudden she turns into a 12 year old boy in middle school. Who's asked to come to the board and, and explain his work. And she's like, I can't, my triangle is showing did.

Brent: Jeff. This is a family friendly show, buddy.

Jeff: I just said triangle, it's gonna be fine. It's gonna

Brent: all the parents out there know exactly what Jeff's talking about. And all the kids are like, what's he talking about mom? What's he talking about? Yeah, go ask your dad, kid. Um, you're right. You know what, but she says an interesting line in that moment. She says they're here. Like he walks out. She goes they're here. So this begs a bigger question. Who is they?

Jeff: And were they gonna be coming all along? Right. Cause I almost got the impression that she was like, I mean, she didn't say this, but I got the impression of they're already here, like, or they're here now. And like, so was this an expected thing, maybe, you know, your theory around the Lon specifically kind of being masterminds, you know, puppet, masters above everything and the Menari on the side, kind of being ahead of everything.

Are they maybe preparing. All the other, you know, species for some sort of a reckoning, and this is where it starts. And she's like, oh my God, they're here. It's starting.

Brent: is it, is this related to what the Mumbar learned from Sinclair when they put the hole in his mind, and then they pulled back, who are they? What is, what is like, cuz this guy's obviously human, right?

Jeff: He looks

Brent: He looks human. I mean, we're at least supposed to, he we're, we're supposed to believe that he's human,

Jeff: think

Brent: but, but something about him made that thing, like she lost control. So, so that's something I guess we learned a little bit was they've got this glowy triangle thing in their head that it's not a tattoo. It's not makeup. She's using to cover it up. It's it's like bioluminescent and she lost control over the, the, like she couldn't turn it off.

Jeff: it's literally her kelp and threat ganglia. Right. When Saru feels danger, he has the little ganglia that pop out. It's it's. I mean, maybe it's not that that's sure what it looked like to me. And she felt it too. Cuz she was talking and she had a phys, like it came up and she had a physical reaction and she's like, no, no.

Brent: Yeah. They're here. They,

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: she she's figured something out. I mean, it's it. Or is this guy a silo?

Jeff: yeah.

Brent: Is he a silo? Like, is he, he looks like human, but maybe he's he's actually artificial or, oh my gosh, what commander O and all those people were doing, trying to open up the sky

Jeff: Yes.

Brent: the AI in to come.

And yes, that's totally a star Trek reference. Go ahead and buzz me. Uh, you know, it's that idea. Oh, oh, is this Babylon five and battle star Galgon star Trek, all like they're all in the same universe and they're converging.

Jeff: What I wonder too, there have been earlier instances where mass effect the video game series has directly mirrored stuff in Babylon five is the, the, so the big overarching threat mass effect, or these reapers, these big BL black lobby, black synthetic beans that come through and they wipe out or all organic life every 50,000 years, was this the inspiration for the reapers in mass effect and Morden is their sovereign, right?

He's their, their, the one who

Brent: actually an AI, right? He's a, he's a whatever kind of Reaper Stargate goes into that a little bit as well with the rates in Stargate Atlantas, uh, and some other things. So that, I mean that that's, that's very much a sci-fi trope,

Jeff: Mm-hmm

Brent: Jeff, and with. Babylon five being one of the very early sci-fi shows out there, because I mean, prior to Babylon five, you had a little bit of star Trek.

That's not a reference. That's a fact you had Dr. Who, mean

Jeff: well, then you have like your buck Rogers and you're lost in space, but your little

Brent: Galactica, you know, but this is where those things really start taking off. And we've seen, we've seen that idea a handful of times throughout a lot of sci-fi of what you just said of this ancient race comes through every so often and wipes everybody out and starts over or something of that nature,

Jeff: Yeah. And is that this cuz like in, in mass effect they leave a couple, they leave the, what they call lesser developed, uh, species to kinda read, read, start the cycle were the Menari and VLAN, the lesser developed species that were left last time. And so they're ahead of the

Brent: Oh yeah.

Jeff: And so now they're being like, hello, look at us, you know, please, you know, we're, we're gonna beat it this time, but now, but now there's questions.

If they'll I was interested though in how her reaction was clearly afraid, like she was clearly scared of what was happening, whereas KSH KSH was trying to manage them. He's like, no, no, they are not yours. And tried to shut 'em down and, and Mor

Brent: gonna have to go back and watch S's, uh, response to that, cuz I'm I don't remember what you're talking about right now, but I'll go back and watch it.

Jeff: yeah, do cuz he was, he, I feel like he was pretty firm with him and I think the fact that. Mor ran and hid from him

Brent: Mm-hmm

Jeff: Like he wanted to make sure he hit all the ambassadors before KSH was gonna be last, like that had to happen. And then KSH tried to shut him down.

Brent: Jeff, I'm gonna make you do a little bit more editing.

Jeff: Right.

Brent: I'm gonna, and I'm

Jeff: I I'm already, I'm already in it. Like this is clearly gonna be

Brent: I'm go. I'm gonna, I'm gonna say this fully right here in full scope of the YouTube folks. You know, it'd be really cool and this would require so much more work on our park. So I don't know if we're ever gonna do it, but if there were certain scenes that we actually could pull the clip from

Jeff: I can do

Brent: and have it, like, you know what, like to reference certain, you know, that's all under fair use.

Right. Cause we're reviewing the whole thing, so

Jeff: Totally. So I do that for star fleet leadership academy, but I won't lie. It adds good chunk of work and it won't be, well, I could almost do it on the fly. We could pause. I could find it. and do a thing. I, and, uh, maybe I just do some of it in post, but

Brent: see. Anyway, uh, well, but I mean, I'm even thinking like here in the, of

Jeff: yeah.

Right here.

Brent: in the video, like the video too, not just the

Jeff: Oh,

Brent: later, I'm talking about, you know, uh, clipping it in and

Jeff: Now you're asking me to like invest in, in equipment

Brent: gonna have to yeah. So you we'd have to anyway. So star YouTube, what?

Jeff: no, I think it's possible, right. Because literal, literally I could pull up my other computer, have it as another participant on here and just bring it up as a thing. Like maybe

Brent: Yeah. And that's another screen and then you, you go edit it together anyway. Sorry, YouTube. This is Jeff and I creating a show as we go.

Jeff: we go.

Brent: And, uh, you guys comment down below and let us know if you would like that. Cause this show's for y'all and for us, but it's mostly for y'all. So let us

Jeff: and frankly, let me, lemme just call out the, uh, let me call out. Big black lobby thing in the room, if you like that. And it's super cool. And we just talked about how that might take extra equipment and definitely will take extra time. What would you think if we launched a Patreon or something like that?

Maybe may cuz right now we're doing this out, literally outta the love and goodness of our hearts, let us know,

Brent: I always, I always say podcasting and video. YouTubeing it's free to watch. It's free to listen to. It's never free to create.

Jeff: Sure. Isn't but I do love making it and I'm totally

Brent: Absolutely. And I'm happy to do it. Absolutely.

Jeff: All right. Now's see if you can transition back into the audio.

Brent: I, I completely interrupted you. So you were the one talking, so you

Jeff: yeah, I don't remember what I, I don't remember what I said. Yeah,

Brent: This is why I, I should write that down before I interrupt you. Um, we were talking about, you were talking about Kosh

Jeff: yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think, I think we kind of, I think, I think we wrapped

Brent: he said he is gonna do that. Hey, so I had this as a note, I said, dude is totally gonna kill KSH

Jeff: really? Oh.

Brent: the way it came across to me.

Jeff: Especially the way when he tucked away. And he was like, kinda it's like, he was, he was like scoping him a little bit.

Brent: Yeah. I was like, he's gonna kill this guy. That's that's what I thought of when I saw him kinda doing his thing, doing his thing. Um, so I had this guy confused for most of the. I, uh, to be fair. I watched this episode twice. We see a guy coming through the cargo bay. Who's being kind of shady as he comes in a couple of scenes later, we see a dude randomly walk into a bar and meet lawn and hand him a box.

I thought it was the same guy. The first time I watched it. And then later we see this guy tailing, uh, you know, subject was on the move. I found him, I got eyes on this, that guy. Right.

Jeff: Yep.

Brent: And now he was blonde hair haired or something of that nature.

Jeff: Little shaggy.

Brent: hair. Yeah. A little SHA here.

Absolutely not the same person to me watching it for the very first time did, I was like, who is this guy? And what is he doing? I thought all of those people were the same guy. Again. I watched it a second time realized they're all different. But did you track that? Because I , like, I really thought they were all the same and it had me so confused.

The first time I watched it.

Jeff: I had a similar journey. Second time. It made a lot more sense, you know, cuz I knew who people were, but the first time when they started, um, I think they were, they were trailing KIRO and the first time he was like, you know, six to one, we've got subjects on the move, whatever. Oh no, it was LDO with the eye coming through and I, so I again thought it was, and I'm like, oh it's Morden.

And then when Morden ends. Intercepting lawn to ask his question, I thought there he's gonna kill lawn. Like he's gonna try and kill him and steal this thing. So I, I really made up this whole separate storyline in my head about basically somebody trying to kill lawn and steal the eye that sort of turned out, you know, not the kill lawn part, but yeah, I found it very confusing and I don't know that it was that those people looked very similar or that they just didn't do a lot to differentiate them,

Brent: yeah. Well cuz they, they all were playing mysterious person. We've never seen before slinking around, you know, so.

Jeff: yeah. Yeah. It was just odd. I think,

I think that the guy he bought the eye from.

Brent: mm-hmm

Jeff: Like there in that, that first scene, they even played him weird. Right. And the, you know, like what'd you have to do to get this. Yep. And then there's a whole conversation about how they paid him enough to buy a small planet. And he's like, well, you, you don't wanna know what we're gonna do with this.

And, and then, uh, yeah, how'd you, you don't wanna know how, so it's like, oh, is this dark mysterious guy that stuff's going on with? But apparently not. Apparently he's just here to do a transaction

Brent: mm-hmm

Jeff: apparently

Brent: so let let's talk about, so there's the dude, who's just there to do a transaction. It was the only scene that he popped up in. We didn't see him for the rest of the episode. We've never seen him before. Okay. So he's just a guy, who's a, a merchant, a dark, a black market merchant, right?

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: You were getting ready to press the button cuz you thought I was gonna make a reference.

I saw you. I saw you doing it. I saw you doing it. Um, But the other guys. Okay. And I just wanna make sure I got this right.

Jeff: okay.

Brent: So the guys that were, that were tailing 'em six to one, I've got eyes on whatever those guys were, the Raiders on the state, like, like you had Raiders drawing people away.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: these guys were also part of the Raiders, the pirates or whatever.

Uh, and they're different from the dude asking everybody what he wants. They're different from Morden.

Jeff: totally separate. Not they, they don't cross paths in any

Brent: right. So the Raiders that are out there are humans,

Jeff: Yes. At least that we

Brent: it's off earth humans out there doing stuff. So do they does, uh, earth or, and by extension Sinclair and the Babylon five guys, do they feel a responsibility for going out and like, are these guys the mock key of, Babylon five.

Jeff: Maybe. Yeah.

Brent: oh, you're Federation citizens. We gotta go get you. You're doing bad stuff.

Jeff: It's such a good question because I, when I think about what they're doing, they're pirates, right? They're trying to intercept cargo ships headed to babble on five, but we've, we haven't seen a lot of 'em, but every single one we've seen is human. So is there some sort of schism that happened in humanity and on earth where they're doing this?

Is, are there other Raiders that are alien? I think what, what this episode showed for me though, is that the Raiders, aren't just a group of, you know, criminals out doing stuff. They are very well organized. They're financed. They have long term planning.

Brent: They have ships that create their own jump points

Jeff: yeah. And to

Brent: or they have a ship that does,

Jeff: Yeah. Well, they had,

Brent: or I was gonna say, at least we should, because, so here's the other question? Did they all go? Boom. Are the Raiders all gone now?

Jeff: Well, I think all of them on that ship, the guy, Raider guy was talking about how they, you know, from the selling the eye and ransom and KIRO, they were gonna be able to buy two or three more of these big. So they, there are clearly more Raiders out there if they're gonna, you know, staff up two or three more commanding control ships out there.

So maybe this is just a small group going out to finance the next big project, sort of a thing.

Brent: so who blew 'em up?

Jeff: That's the

Brent: Was it KSH I put down KSH or the dude who wants

Jeff: The Morden guy. I don't know. They showed, we saw S's ship in this one and it reminded me of the light ship in the first Tron with kinda like the big open. Um, like sail almost in the like reverse sale in the background that came in the big black lobby thing that came through and we saw the other war on ship when it blew up.

Um, uh, death Walker, when it blew death Walker up, we saw this didn't look at all like a VO on ship. It didn't look like anything I'd seen before. And it just very menacing. It looked huge.

Brent: Yeah, it looked new. It looked like something we've not seen before. Uh, but while we're talking about, uh, spaceships, I'm, I'm gonna change topics on this. All right. I got two, two thoughts on these things. One, I realized in watching this episode, I'm not really entirely sure where these cargo bays are.

Now. We just had a whole episode dedicated to cargo bays or docking bays or whatever. I'm not really sure where they are on the station or how big they are or how many of these things they have. So somebody out there in comments, you guys know don't spoil anything, but let me know, like, you know, like I'm trying to figure out how these things work because what they're flying into looks huge.

Jeff: Yeah. And it was just a few episodes ago where it might have even been, um, the last episode was the first time we actually, it might even be this episode now that I think about it. Yeah. It was this episode that we actually saw the whole station before this we'd just kinda see that ball rotating piece and then little sections, like, we'd see the, you know, the windshield where Ava stands.

We'd see the thing this time, they backed up to a point where the first time I was watching it, I thought the Tari had a different, big ship. They were doing stuff on and they were showing. And then finally I realized, oh no, no, there's that little round ball tip on the thing. We've only been seen a small portion of Babylon fire this whole time.

Brent: Yeah. Here's the other thing it's finally happened to me, Jeff, I want to know more about these star theories for the first time. Like I looked at these ships and they didn't look stupid to

Jeff: They're kind of cool.

Brent: like up to this point to be Frank, the, the star furries have looked dumb. They've looked like little toy matchbox.

Like these things are not powerful. These things aren't whatever. In this episode, for whatever reason of VVA. Goes and takes off. She's gotta re-certify her flight path stuff again, or whatever. Uh, whatever she's doing, she's flying off. I was like, I wanna know, I wanna know more about these star figures.

They look kind of neat. They look kind of cool, man. Uh, they kind of got that X wing, that star wars, X wing feel to 'em a little bit. Did you, did you see 'em like, did they did the, the X like raise and, and lower at some point? I think I saw it. I wasn't entirely sure, but I think I saw it do it.

Jeff: Well, I think I noticed at first in the, and in I noticed at first in and the sky full of stars, but like their maneuverability is really great. The gun, like the weapons placement is cool. Like the design is great, except for one to me, glaring design error. And that is. What is the very foremost thing, the frontest thing in those star, those star theories, the pilot, like there's literally this glass in the pilot and they're the most forward thing.

Like, we're gonna talk about the X-Wing design that pilot sits almost all the way back in there. So when they're shooting blast and whatever them getting hits, pretty unlikely getting a direct shot through your windshield seems pretty likely on the star theory. I wonder though what it feels like to launch.

I love the

Brent: oh, that's so cool.

Jeff: points down. I, I wanna know what that feels like. Totally.

Brent: That's a dude. That's a roller coaster right

Jeff: Totally.

Brent: That's a roller coaster. I have, um, I've seen that before. I know that we've seen that on babble on five before, but like I say, for the first time though, I'm now interested. Maybe, maybe I've gotten past the bad effects and I'm like, okay, now I wanna find out more about it.

Or maybe they retooled the model. Maybe they redid something in the CG. I don't know what it was, but for whatever reason, like I'm, I'm coming in guys. That's what I'm saying. Like I'm, I'm digging the show right now. As, as we get into.

Jeff: I'll have to share. Maybe we'll have to share this comment for off of you two, I'll just share a piece of it, but the team that does the effects for Babylon five at this point, go on. I gotta make sure I've got enough references for this. Okay. they go on?

Brent: have one

Jeff: I, yeah, I know. And I, I think I'm gonna be

Brent: two

Jeff: but they go on to do the effects for deep space nine during the dominion war.

So those incredible space battles that happen in deep space nine is the same crew that's doing Babylon five that we're watching right now.

Brent: Right. But that's the same crew five years earlier because we didn't get those incredible space battles in DS nine until like mid to late nineties,

Jeff: Yeah. It was like

Brent: 98. Right. Um, maybe even like 99, we're still in like 94. So we're a, a couple, your, you know, what else is happening in this time? Toy story is being made.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: significant because that was the first, fully computer animated film to ever come out. And once they did that, man, like that took the lid off of CG animation and what they could do with it, because it was just a handful of years later, we got Gollum and the motion captured. I mean, you remember how cool Gollum looked, speaking of Lord of the rings, two Lord of the rings references in one show, like he looked awesome and you're like, I can't even tell a difference between him and the guy standing there.

Usually you can, you couldn't then anyway, um, Jeff, I've got two more sets of topics I want to talk about. I don't know about you. One of 'em revolves around the actual main story of the I and, and KIRO and lawn and that whole deal. And dude asking, what do you want? And then the other one has to do with Sinclair and Gar Baldy. Where do you want to go first? Or if you have a whole other third topic, you wanna talk about

Jeff: I got a third one, but it's a little smaller, but I, I wanna talk about the centar and so why don't you kick it off talking about the I in that piece,

Brent: So, um, the eye of what, what was it?

Jeff: the I,

Brent: The eye, just the eye. Hello, McGuffin. This is gonna be the thing that moves the plot forward. Um, okay. Weirdo lady, skeezy, dude, walking in, let's talk about hair for just a moment.

Jeff: yes. This is exactly what I wanted to talk

Brent: did not have the princess tale

Jeff: Yeah. Not

Brent: at all. Like, is there a certain age that women lose that or something?

And then the other one was the dude I don't, I, this might have just been makeup might have been effects, might have been whatever, but you know, lawn's hair. And most of the, the, this cent entirety that we've seen so far, they get their hair and it sort of SWOS back a little bit. This dudes was standing straight up, I mean, straight up and like, do you get, do you get that the more up it is?

Is that more lordly or something, or,

Jeff: or just how big it is. I was thinking about our old buddy veer, who we haven't seen in 16 years, but, uh, since he claimed to be an ambassador

Brent: But he still has his name in the credits

Jeff: he does. Yeah. Still getting the pay. That's great. But he has just this little tiny, like BR almost as if like I were to mess up the hair. That's not where my bald spot is.

And like that's VE and then lawn's got woosh this big, like peacock thing going on and then KIRO comes on and he is like, yeah, I'll see your peacock and double it. And it's huge sticking straight up. And it's massive. So is, is there status of some kind, exactly. Is there a status tied to your hair?

Brent: I think there is. I think there is. And, and like, I don't know that direction of the hair has anything to do with this is probably Brent just picking up on stupid crap right now. But like, this is, this is this the first Lord we've met. So I think it's conceivable that there's something about how the hair goes, but I'm a hundred percent with you on size.

Size of the crown is, is a, a very much a status symbol.

Jeff: And maybe it's opposite for women. Right? So lady lair is a big shot, so she has nothing. Whereas the, you know, um, uh, what was her name? Madeira, who we met in born to the purple, had that long top, not cuz well, you know, she's a slave.

Brent: Right. So they come in, they give them this eye, this eye apparently was lost or stolen during the Narn thing. Or some, some it's been lost for a long time and it's a major symbol, but if I'm tracking the story, right, it was owned by a particular family yet, somehow it's the represented representation of a particular emperor, but the family is not the emperor or the emperor was not part of the family or like, I, I don't know exactly what all it is, but they wanted to get this thing back

Jeff: yeah, I track, I track this like, and I mean, I know it's not familiar for you, but maybe this will be familiar enough, but I track it in terms of Doune where there's different houses that go across. And just in this case, through whatever mechanism there is, it sounds like. For KIRO, the mechanism is gonna be, you know, ground swell support and having the eye, but who the, the ruling house, the emperor or the ruling house can change.

But it just so happens that the emperor during the time of the eye was part of Kiros house and was wildly popular. And it became kind of a sign of Centara dominance to the point that he thinks if he walks on the planet today with the eye, they'll put him right into the emperor's throne.

Brent: you say dune? I think game of Thrones.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yep.

Brent: They're the Laers kill 'em all. Anyway. Um, there is a really poignant moment between these two, between KIRO and lawn. We've we've seen lawn much lament the fate of the sari multiple times now.

Jeff: But he does it in this episode when he is talking to

Brent: yeah. And what was it Morden? He does when he is talking to Morden, but KIRO asks him this question, where did it all go wrong?

Where did we lose it? Or where did we lose it? All right. Um, and Rondo just goes, I don't know. I don't know, like that felt like such an important moment, uh, for the character and, and just a, a solidifying moment of just like defining who they feel like they've lost something. They were the big sneeze in the galaxy, or at least they felt they were, I, my guess is the Mumbar and the, and the bolon were kind of like, yeah, you're

Jeff: Good for you. Yeah.

Brent: yeah.

Oh, you're good. You're special. Go ahead. But they really, they really thought they were, and now they're not. And was it right? Was it not right? Whatever, they're very much lamenting that, that loss and to, I guess, then go back to the whole idea of what do you want, what do you want? And, and we walk through the, what the different answers were by the different ambassadors?

Cause I feel like that's probably important. Let's start with lawn since we're talking about him, when he's lawn said, uh, I want everything back the way it used to be.

Jeff: Yeah. He says, I wanna see the Tari stretch forth their hand again and command the stars. I want a rebirth of glory, a Renaissance of power. I want to stop running through my life. Like a man late for an appointment, afraid to look back or look forward, goes on and on. But basically he wants to be on top.

Brent: Yeah. So then Jaar, he went and talked to Jaar.

Jeff: yeah, Ja cars got deep, real at the very end, but it starts out

Brent: he is seething.

Jeff: And it starts out

Brent: Seething. Yeah.

Jeff: He says, uh, I want to, I want to suck the marrow from their bones and grind their skulls to powder, tear down their cities, blacken their sky. So their ground with salt to completely and utterly erase them.

But then he goes on to say, as long as my home planet is safe, then all will be fine. Like it came down to just keeping the home world safe. I thought that was really, really deep.

Brent: right. So then he goes to KSH or he tried to go to KSH I guess.

Jeff: Well, he went to cash. He hid from KSH, but he went to Len next.

Brent: okay. Fair and Dalen freaked out. We talked about that a little bit, had a full on freak out moment, right? um, did she ever actually answer the question? I don't think she did. Yeah, but that's where she, she left him going, Hey, they're here. They're here.

Jeff: And then KA, just shut 'em down. These are, people are not

Brent: What does that mean? These people are not for you speculate with me. Jeff.

Jeff: So I think it goes back to your theory on the Lon kind of being the puppet masters and maybe the Menari being there as well. But it's about, who's gonna con who gets to control the fate of the galaxy really, you know, who gets to be on top.

And I think the Lon have a very long game that they're playing here for complete galactic or universal dominance on this. But these, these Morden people have, they're probably the biggest barrier to that. And so like cautious coming to be like, no, we've put in the. We've been here doing this stuff. You do not get to swoop in here and take the, take all this.

Brent: mm-hmm

Jeff: I mean, what do you, what do you

Brent: Well, what, what I find interesting is is that what K said was these people are not for you, as you say, right? Like, what's he trying to do with these people? Is he trying to collect them? Is he a part of this shadows thing? Remember that? What what's her face was like, the shadows are here to get you right. Like it, oh, is that, is that what it is? The shadows? What, what are the shadows are these two again, I go back to that question.

Are they actually earthlings? Do they just look like earthlings? Like what's their deal? And I think we're supposed to be questioning all of that. Like, are these guys really the big, bad of the series and the Lon and the Mumbar are trying to protect everybody? Like I,

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: what are they doing? Like this is, this has to, I think be the. Question that you come out of this episode with

Jeff: Yeah. Like maybe here we go. Maybe the sign is that the VLAN and the minbar are shepherding, protecting, preparing something, all these other species. The portent is that there are these shadows out there who can just sweep in and wipe it all away.

Brent: mm-hmm

Jeff: So is it gonna be Lon Manari through Babylon five, bringing everyone together versus the sh the Morden, the shadows, I guess.

Cause I think if we connect the dots on lady, Laira that big bla thing that blew blew up the Raider ship was the shadow.

Brent: Oh,

Jeff: Because she said that Lord KIRO would be killed by the shadows and that's what happened and they sure looked shadowy.

Brent: right. I wanna find out what the shadows are. Stupid. No spoilers. Everybody we'll find out in our own

Jeff: Well, I think it's fair. I think this would be fair if they are, if the shadow don't tell us if Morton is a shadow, don't, don't give it that away. But if that big black ship that blew up the thing and killed Lord KIRO, was that a shadow? You can tell us that. Yeah. That's I think that's fair.

Brent: yeah,

Jeff: think that that's definitely the big question.

I think go back to the sentar really quick. Just the last question I had with them. How much stinking money do these people have? Right? I mean, they pay enough for a small planet to get the eye. KIRO is giving the Raiders enough money. They can buy this massive ship that can make its. Jump gates. We see lawn just, uh, you know, the, the, the ducks he was throwing around, uh, for GU Baldy in, um, in survivors, like how much money, if, if they're a crumbling empire.

Right. Which were kind of been led to believe. I don't see them throwing cash around the way that, that we've been seeing them do this whole time.

Brent: Or they're just printing their own cash,

Jeff: There's that? Yeah.

Brent: you know? All right. I have a theory

Jeff: Okay.

Brent: while you've been talking. I have a theory because to go on with the Mumbar or not the Mbar, I'm sorry. The Tari dude comes in at the end with the eye and just hands it to him. And lawn's like, let me buy you a drink. Let me buy you a whole barrel full of drinks.

And he is like, like the voice don't contact be ambassador. We'll contact you when it's time. Okay. I'm putting something together. The shadows are gonna kill KIRO. Is he a part of the shadows? KSH says these people are not for you. Is he trying or is he, is he like a, a whoa, Sloan agent Sloan? Is he trying to recruit all these people into the shadows? Right. Like, he's trying to record, like, is, is, is he testing them or something to see if they're like, the shadows is some sort of an organization instead of like weird AI. like what you're saying? Like, what if it's just some weird organization, you know? And that's where Costco goes. Do you know, these people are not for you.

They're not gonna go into your organization. And, and

Jeff: I think it might go deeper than that because I think what we've, I mean, this has taken some stuff out a couple steps, but Manari have a secret, well, a potential secret agent that they're developing in Sinclair. Some reason they want him there. They put a hole in his mind, all of the 24 hours.

So Menari have Sinclair KSH went and did that whole horrible, painful thing with the vicar to get blackmail material for Talia. Who's got the in with Cyco and earth. So now KSH has Talia are the shadows now or Morden trying to have the sentar and have lawn. So basically all of the major players in Babylon five are either a shadow puppet for someone, or are a puppet for someone else. Right.

Yeah. It gets deep.

Brent: I, so I, I feel like we've done this almost every episode for the last couple weeks. Are the shadows, the big, bad of the show, you know,

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: or are the shadows connected to Sycor?

Jeff: I think that's a, I think that's, I don't think this is a show that's gonna have a singular big, bad. I think this is a show that's gonna have a very, very tangled web and yeah. And yeah, there might be kind of a, you know, a queen spider or something on the web kind of pulling, pulling stuff

Brent: Oh, I hope not. Oh, I hope not.

Jeff: Yeah. We don't, I, I have a great reference that I cannot use. And, but, but you know, if you happen to have, you know, some sort of a hive mind of some sort, and then all of a sudden had one that can, yeah. If that were to happen and babble on five, it'd be terrible.

Brent: just like in the movie indoors game,

Jeff: Okay. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. I like that.

Brent: or pick any sci-fi show that does hive mind stuff, cuz it all kind of works the same way. Yeah. Jeff. So this episode introduced us to what is potentially a very huge character for this show. And I am just delighting so much right now and the fact that our listeners out there and our folks on YouTube are squirming in their seat. Over what you and I have been saying for the last 10 minutes, and you're not allowed to say guys, don't tell us, please, for the love of all. That's good. And holy don't tell us if we're right. Don't tell us if we're wrong. Don't tell us if we're on the right track. Just go. I can't say anything. Please know, spoilers whatsoever.

Jeff

Jeff: Hold on. I just wanna trigger everybody really quick. You know what, Brent, I don't think this episode's really gonna mean much of anything. It's probably just a throw away.

Brent: I don't think anybody believes you at all.

Jeff: Can we talk about, oh, go ahead.

Brent: I was gonna ask, do you have anything else about this episode? Do you wanna talk before we wrap it up?

Jeff: We have to talk about the greatest scene in, I don't know, maybe all television ever of all time waiting for the elevator. You've got lawn standing here. You've got Kar standing here and you've got just this poor guy stuck in the middle of him.

Brent: Yes. Yes.

Jeff: that was incredible. That was so good. And that poor guy. So I don't think,

Brent: wanna go to work y'all I just wanna get

Jeff: it's just looking uncomfortable. It's it? Literally, I'm just like, Hey, if you ever wonder what a non-speaking. Looks like and can be used to watch this scene. And he does a great job where he is just like, oh, this is uncomfortable.

They're getting bigger. They're getting louder. They're crunching him in. It's just, uh, it's such a great scene, but there was one line in there that blew my mind where Ja car says you can kiss my pouch.

Brent: Yeah. I noticed that. What is that? Are they like kangaroo marsupials or what's the deal?

Jeff: somebody gave a little spoiler in the comments, shame, shame. Yeah. And

Brent: Are you gonna spoil

Jeff: no, no, this,

Brent: I don't, I might have missed this one. Go ahead.

Jeff: but they just said that, uh, Ja, car's not a reptile.

They're not lizards. The Narn are marsupials.

Brent: I said it they're marsupials like a kangaroo. Oh, really? Marsupials, Uhhuh

Jeff: But, uh, yeah, so I I'm, and on one hand, I'm like, uh, when he said it, I was like, oh, they told me the answer, but also I'm like, if I was watching this for the first time, completely unspoiled, I would've paused that. REW it and been what kiss my kiss.

My huh. I dunno. I just love that it escalated to that level and this is how we're gonna learn what the Narn really are. Is Jaar just being mad enough to,

Brent: my pouch.

Jeff: and just Jaar have a pouch. I don't know how marsupials work is that a male or female thing? I I'm sure we'll find out

Brent: All right. So, oh, I guess, I guess two more things. So Mbar putting Sinclair in charge. I don't know if there's much to talk about, but just to note, they passed on everybody and put him in charge.

Jeff: shots too. Like admirals and people with a lot of, a lot of, you know, clout.

Brent: Sinclair was way down on the list. Hmm.

Jeff: I loved Aldis cause Sinclair was like, I probably wasn't very high up and Aldi's like yet. No, not at all.

Brent: Right, right. This shadow, you know what the shadows thing feels like? How many references do I have left

Jeff: I think

Brent: I have one. Okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna use it. This feels like that episode of deep space nine, quart goes to the gamma quadrant and he's talking to somebody like, look, if you wanna do business in the gamma quadrant, you gotta do business with the dominion.

Oh, let's find out what that's all about. And that's the only word that they said in that entire episode is the very first time we ever heard the word dominion in the run of the show. Is this the very first time we've heard the word shadow? In the run of the show. I think it is now they said it a couple of more times in this particular episode, but not a ton. I wonder if this is that like introduction of that, of that idea. And here's the thing, uh, lady, what's her name?

Jeff: lost track there it's mm-hmm mm-hmm it is a hundred percent. Yeah. Laira. Yep.

Brent: Laira I wanted to say Lavinia, but that's a character from another, uh, story that I'm involved in. Um, lady Laira says at the end, well, she says she saw the shadows, the shadows coming, she saw the end of everything, but she says at the end, the future isn't set in stone.

We make the future, which is huge because Jeff, it is now that time let's boil it down. Let's talk about it. What are your closing comments? Let's bring that star Trek message. Do not even the star Trek message just apply. That lens, apply that filter of hope of tomorrow. Holding up a mirror to society, something, uh, analyze this show for us.

How many deltas you got and should we have watched it sooner? Jeff,

Jeff: I'm gonna throw this one. I'm gonna throw this one to you to go first. Cuz I've got some thoughts on it, but I want to, I want to hear your, uh, your thoughts first.

Brent: Great. Your thoughts are probably better than

Jeff: I don't know

Brent: are

Jeff: that.

Brent: mine are this. I honestly didn't pick up a whole lot because I was so absorbed in everything else going on with this show. This show had so much happening to it. The best one I can probably come with is what we just finished on. Was this future isn't set in stone.

I mean, this was the lesson of back to the future. The future's what you make of it. Um, I feel like we've probably seen that in star Trek a couple of times. I know we've seen it in Stargate. I know we've seen it in battle star gala. Laia I know we've seen it in pick a show. The future's what it's not set in stone.

Nothing's etched forever, you know? Uh, so is that really a, a message maybe, maybe not how star Trek is this episode? I give it, uh, I mean, I, gosh, in terms of, in terms of the, like the message in the, in all that sort of stuff, it's like a two, but you change a few characters on this and you throw it in. And this very much feels like a star Trek episode to me in many ways, you know, like it, yes, this feels like a very star Trek episode.

So I'm gonna give it two deltas with a little hashtag by could be a good star Trek episode too, though.

Jeff: Wow. Okay.

Brent: That's my thought.

Jeff: So I, I don't know that

Brent: Tell me where I'm wrong.

Jeff: yeah. I don't know. Mine are gonna be any better. I, I, I feel like this episode until the last two minutes had no star Trek in it whatsoever.

Brent: We've had a few episodes like that on Babylon five.

Jeff: But just kind of, if the last second kind of comes in and, and saves it. And I think that the star Trek that it had in it was, was aspirational at best is aspirational star Trek being aspirational.

And it was literally that message. You just said that we get to decide our own future. I recently had an episode on my star Trek podcast, our fleet leadership academy come out on, um, enterprises, season two finale, expanse. That episode's important for a lot of reasons. But one that I talk about a lot is when to Paul, uh, who's Vulcan de decides to defy Vulcan high command, and she wants to stay on enterprise, even though they want her to go back to Vulcan.

One decision that she makes right there. One little choice sets the entire series on a different path. You know, I mean, all sorts of things happen because she chooses to stay. There are other episodes of star Trek. That are very similar. I won't give away anything here, but the series, the season finale of strange new worlds focuses on how a choice.

One minor choice can have, have major impacts when Laira does the mind meld thing and shows Sinclair the destruction of Babylon five. And she says, this could be, this is one of many possible futures. That again, and we're making a lot of references to other franchises on here, but that rings of Doune and the prescient that Paul tradies, muah de shows.

And then Lito's second as the God emperor, where they see just endless possibilities and they try to steer society and the world and the universe on a direction to what they see as the best possible future. They can see them all the star Trek message in all of this is that the choices we make matter, they matter. That's the message. And that's a big message to me.

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: I feel like I had to pull that message out of it though. And it wasn't at all apparent it wasn't really a part of the episode. I am giving this a reluctant single Delta because of that one message that our choices matter, which is huge, but I had to work to get that message.

Brent: Yeah. It wasn't, it wasn't Bunky over the head as some are.

Jeff: Yeah. Well, Brent, that's it. We, we just did signs and importance. Oh

Brent: This was a thick episode. Jeff, this might be a little bit of a longer episode than normal, uh, even when you edit it out, but, uh,

Jeff: Yeah, we've gone pretty, we've gone pretty long. And I feel like there's a lot of stuff left on the table. Right. And so be sure to, if you're on YouTube, hit us in the comments. If you're.

Hit us on Twitter. Even if you are on Twitter at Babylon first, we're happy to talk more and more about this. The things we missed, please. Oh my goodness, please. Don't don't spoil. Don't

Brent: Just tell us how much you're squirming.

Jeff: Yeah, just,

Brent: Just tell us how much you're squirming or tell us how much you're laughing at us right now. Like whatever it is, but don't tell us what's up.

Jeff: yeah, please. Don't but Brent, next week here again, we don't, we don't want spoilers from you. We don't want spoilers from looking ahead. So when we look at the next episode, we look at the title and nothing else. Brent, the next episode is called TKO based on that and that alone. What do you think this one's gonna be about?

Brent: TKO technical knockout. Uh, oh gosh. If this is, if this is Chikota boxing and a dream, this show just this, this show just took like six steps forward out of this past episode, that one would make it go eight steps

Jeff: Easily. Yeah.

Brent: easily. Uh, what at TKO TKO? Uh, I feel like this is going to be a not very consequential episode, like a, like a P cleanser type of an episode.

Like after this big, heavy one, that's got a lot of stuff in it. I feel like this one's gotta be a lot more fun. We might look back and like, this is a fun episode. It'll be a favorite episode, just cause of how fun it is, but that's probably about the length of what it'll be, what it actually is. I can't think of anything other than boxing right now, honestly. So

Jeff: well, it's not far from my guess Jaar and lawn. Finally go at it. That's what I think it's gonna happen. And when lawn drops for the third time, a little dude with a mustache is gonna come out and say,

Brent: 10 points for the punch out

Jeff: Yeah, right. No, honestly, I think, uh, what I want, I'll tell you what I want it to be, but I know it won't be this. I want it to be about like some sort of like underground combat sports thing and maybe Sinclair Gar, or even Ivanova like have to go, you know, into some pan tournament or

Brent: Oh, and this and VIN diesel shows

Jeff: Here it is.

Brent: the fast and the furious reference, right? Like, like the rock shows up in Voyager, like VIN diesel shows up and he's like the champion and Ivan's gotta go put him in his

Jeff: Yeah. That'd be fun, but no, this, so here's my official guess for real. I said, you know what? I, I think that we're gonna get our drug episode. We were talking about drugs here a little while ago, and there's some rough drug that just hit the, hit the station at some variation of the dust or the spice or whatever it is.

And the street name is TKO, I think Gar Baldi is gonna get roofied with it. He's gonna be out for most of the episode and it's gonna be about, you know, the, some, this will be some way of hitting, you know, the dangers of drugs on Babylon

Brent: his addiction coming back into play?

Jeff: think so.

Brent: Oh, that would make like, I don't, I hate to say that would make me feel better. Like it's not that I want Gar Baldy to be this large addict, you know, go back and hear that episode that we did a couple, uh, couple shows ago, but I would, I don't want them to just drop that either.

Like

Jeff: Yeah. No, I think it'd be good storytelling. It'd be disappointing right. From a character thing, but it'd be good storytelling.

Brent: yeah,

Jeff: Oh, well, we're gonna find out next week. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm gonna do that again. I just bumped my microphone. well, I guess we're gonna find out next week. Thank you so much for joining us.

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Brent: Jeff Jeff. Jeff. Jeff. Hey, listen. I'm I know I keep interrupting you. I've done it all up so long. I'm so sorry, but I've been listening back to some stuff. This whole ending part like that whole spiel you just gave, it's getting old. It hasn't been updated in a while.

Jeff: want me to be fair. I mean, I've been kind of outta circulation for a while.

Brent: Huh? Well, you got anything interesting.

Jeff: You know, I do

Brent: Don't you dare.

Jeff: live long and prosper.

Brent: swear. I will grind your skull to powder. I will blacken your sky sun. I will sew your ground with salt. If you complete that sentence, one more time.

Jeff: And prosper. Oh yes.