The Corps Is Mother, The Corps Is Father

Transcript

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

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

Jeff: and we're watching Babylon five for the very first time. For you, the one who is,

Brent: Jeff and I are two veteran Star Trek podcasters, searching for the important messages. We're taking that thing we do in Star Trek, we're applying it to Babylon five, looking for the important messages that Babylon five is trying to deliver in its own unique way.

Jeff: Very clear emphasis on Babylon five messages, right? Not a Star Trek podcast, not Star Trek messages. We are even gonna go so far to make sure you understand that, that we're gonna limit the amount of Star Trek references we can even make during this episode. We do that by playing the rule of three A game that limits us to no more than three references to Star Trek per episode.

That's it. Three one of those plays. No substitutions. Exchanges a refund.

Brent: And if we make those references.

Jeff: You're gonna hear this

Brent: Yeah, because we are not a Star Trek podcast, Jeff. We say this every week. It's literally in the title of our show.

Jeff: and to this day, we get reviews that say is the Star Trek, just to Star Trek podcast. It's like it's read the thing.

Brent: You guys are stuck in Star Trek. I'm like, this is not a Star Trek

Jeff: Listen to the first 28 seconds of the episode. We tell you,

Brent: Jeff, this is episode 105 for us. That that's when you, that's when you count, uh, the, the season recaps and all that sort of the, the, the wrap up shows and stuff. This is season, this is a hundred episode 105. We've set it for 105 episodes.

Jeff: they say? Repetition is the key to acceptance. So, you know,

Brent: We'll get

Jeff: pretty soon, eight, nine more episodes, we'll get it. We'll

Brent: Oh man. Oh man. Well, you know what? Along with our game, the rule of three, there is another game that we like to play at the end of the show where we try to guess what's up next. Jeff, you know, something that makes me laugh, and we've certainly seen no shortage of it here in season five, given how down we've been on season five. When things are going good in this show, people say like, we get reviews all the time. My favorite part of the show is where you try to guess what next week's show is, and you're either amazingly accurate or you're hilariously wrong. Like, that's good. When the shows have kind of been a little iffy kind like they hear and we're like, yeah, I don't really know.

Uh, the, the comments we get are, you should stop doing the predictions and just let the show be what it is and just have no expectations

Jeff: Just let it be. Just let it be, man.

Brent: Right. Uh, anyway, we, we will never listen to that second one because part of our whole thing here is to make that prediction. We do that at the end of the show.

We take a look at the title only for the next week and just play a game where we try to guess what the show's gonna be about. Well, this is the spot, this is the game where we call,

Jeff: Time to pay the piper.

Brent: and this is where we revisit that prediction from last week and see just how right or wrong we were. Jeff, what did you think?

T C I M. T C I F was all about

Jeff: This one is a rollercoaster ride for me. I'll tell you what.

Brent: rollercoaster ride.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Really?

Jeff: Well, it was a rollercoaster ride for me because, uh, my prediction ultimately was that the whole episode was gonna be from the point of view of ster showing a day in the life of a guy doing psyop stuff. Whoa.

Brent: dude.

Jeff: And then the other part of the rollercoaster where I was like, Nope, this is gonna be focused on Kara Baldy coming after him.

He's gonna come and he's gonna get his revenge. He's throwing back the afterburner whiskey to get rid of that neural block. Um, so yeah, that's what, uh, that's what I thought this was gonna be.

Brent: I'm giving you 51% credit because you got the point of view, like nailed it. Um, what actually happened in the episode had nothing to do with that, but from the point of view, and I'm gonna give you just a slight bit over halfway, so you got mostly correct,

Jeff: Yeah. Literally when it was happening, I'm just like, this is, oh my God, this is happening. I can't believe it. What did, uh, what did you think this was gonna be?

Brent: Well, I too thought it was gonna be ster. I said Ster was gonna come to Babylon five, and he was gonna be taking up Byron's flag of trying to get all the Telepaths, their own home world. Uh, but then I really liked what you said, so I sort of tagged onto that and said, it's, it's gonna be from the viewpoint of Sitecore, but it's gonna be like a news channel coming in, kind of like a now for a word or an illusions of truth, uh, kind of a documentary.

And that didn't happen at all. So

Jeff: Yeah, I'm gonna give you a solid 33.3

Brent: that is generous.

Jeff: is, but you know, I mean, really, honestly, getting it from the Sitecore perspective, it's a pretty big thing. It's

Brent: I said

Jeff: thing to grab. And you did say best. Yeah.

Brent: ster. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Jeff, uh, for the folks at home who maybe haven't seen this episode in a really long time and didn't watch it before coming to listen to us, or maybe like us, they're brand new to the show, but they never actually stopped to watch this episode before listening to us.

In which case, Welcome to the show. Uh, Jeff, why don't you tell everybody at home what this show, uh, what this episode was actually about?

Jeff: We get comfy cause Here we go. It's a day in the life of our good dear friend, Alfred Ster. He's working with some new interns, P twelves, that are excited to be working with their hero, but their beautiful day gets interrupted when a psyop is found killed. And the suspected killer, Jonathan Harris, heads out on the lamb.

Ster takes this hard. One of the core families been killed and was killed by his student, and if that weren't enough, this guy was also being trained to be a mind shredder. He can confuse and disrupt other telepaths and rip apart the minds of Mundanes. One of the interns is especially into ster, and she makes a solid go at spending the night with him, but his heart still belongs to his scle, Carolyn Sanderson.

It's refreshing to see a dude so loyal to his mistress. In no surprise to you or me, this Harris guy has gone to Babylon five. He's gambling, trying to raise funds to take off and hide from Sitecore forever. He's doing pretty well for himself and might have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for him, killing all of those people.

But the question becomes, Was it him? Did he actually kill these people? See ster in the intern, find these weird notes of his all in different handwriting using different names, little more sleuthing, and they find that Mr. Harris has multiple personalities and fascinatingly, these personalities have different P ratings.

They eventually chase him down along with a normal named Bryce that's been helping him out with the reluctant help of Zach and Babylon five Security. Cuz it turns out that sometimes killing people on the station is frowned upon. Sometimes Bester ster and the intern load him up to take him to the hidden Psycore mothership in hyperspace.

But along the way, the intern takes an important pivotal step towards becoming a PS cop. She spaces the mundane dude out in into hyperspace. Ster notes the occasion. It's the first normal she's taken out and he is so proud. Brent, did this one shred your mind or was it maybe a little more mundane?

Brent: You know what? I think just shredded my mind, Jeff was how short that recap was.

Jeff: don't think I missed anything,

Brent: I It was all there buddy. It was all there. Um, Jeff, I'm going to sort of steal a speech from a fellow named Ken Ray. Do you know who Ken Ray is? Jeff?

Jeff: Ken. Mission

Brent: Yeah. He was, he was on Mission Log, uh, before Norm got there. Uh, shout out to Norm.

Norm who listens to the show. He's a big fan. Uh, hello Norm. Um,

Jeff: friend. Norman

Brent: norm is amazing. He really is. He's so cool. Uh, but Ken, I remember when they got to the end of, um, next Generation. And they're going through the last handful of episodes of Season seven and Next Generation. And I, I remember him being incredibly miffed saying something to this effect.

And I'm now going to apply this to Babylon. Five.

Jeff: Okay.

Brent: We have nine hours left with this crew. Nine stories. That's it. And at this point, every single one of these stories is making me wonder, why this episode, why this one right now? How is this gonna connect? How is this gonna point us towards the end? What is this gonna do for us After watching this episode, Jeff, I have no idea what this one is doing.

I have no idea how this connects. I ha I can't, I can't see it. This feels like a one-off episode. It would've been fantastic back in season two. See, maybe even, I mean, God, this would've been like one of the best episodes of season one if it was on in season one. You know, explaining who Cycore is, showing us this whole piece of Cycore, right?

Uh, maybe even a season three. I think by the time it's season four, season five, we're just a little late on this episode.

What is this episode telling us about SCO that we need to know, like right now? So I have to ask the question as a first time watcher, I don't know what's coming up, right? Is the telepath war truly over or is this setting us up for something else? Honestly, what we got with Byron, I was thinking about this like, like the, the thing we got with Byron in that whole deal is not something that felt so significant and so earth shattering.

I. That it should echo through centuries later, like we saw in deconstruction of a falling Star or something like that. Um, so in this episode, to me, this whole episode can be summed up in this phrase. This was neat. I I liked this episode, don't get me wrong. I, I had a, this was an enjoyable 45 minutes, but why?

And I, I, I can't see it right now. I hope I see it within the next nine episodes because every second is precious at this point to me. And I need to know, I, I, this, I can't just have this be a one-off episode anymore, and it, I'm almost scared that that's what it's gonna be. You know, like, like what, what is this setting us up for with ster in, in the next coming episodes?

Right? How about you, Jeff? Would you, what, what, what do you, what were your overall impressions of this episode?

Jeff: Well, I feel like I, I need to disclose to everyone that, like I write out my opening thoughts. You know, if you go onto our Patreon, you can see that it's in my notes, like I write 'em and oftentimes I read 'em. Oftentimes I'll just kind of just go off of them. I wanna specifically read my opening thoughts right now, because I don't want anyone to think that we compared notes ahead of time.

Brent: Okay.

Jeff: I honestly really enjoyed this episode of television as a look into Psycore and the Sy Cops. It was really cool. We talked about it last week, how the show isn't afraid to tweak with its format and this, this worked really well. I'm glad the only regulars that we saw were Franklin and Zach. Those are people that, uh, anybody walking onto the station could realistically run into.

Didn't feel forced or anything, but I also can't help feeling. So what, okay, we know a little more about Telepaths and their culture, but is this context that's really gonna hit. Add to the next nine episodes. This felt like a bonus episode. It was fun, it was enjoyable. But at this point in the season in the series, can they really afford to take a detour like this?

Like this is, it's been a long time since I've made a wheel, a time reference. But this is Robert Jordan, literally, and I'm not exaggerating, taking 40 pages to describe the tree that sits next to a door. Like,

Brent: 40 pages to describe a tree.

Jeff: Yeah. I mean, it's beautiful. It's an incredible scene. Like his, his imagery is, its, it's, he's, he's an incredible author, but it's like, move on, dude.

Tell the story. You have a massive, like 14 book story you're trying to tell here. Just tell the story. Maybe make it eight books.

Brent: I mean, I got, I got pissed off at, at uh, what, what's it, Nathaniel Hawthorne for spending an entire chapter describing a door at the beginning, I think it was Scarlet Letter, it might have been the House of Seven Gables, but I think it might have been Scarlet Letter. But he spent the whole first chapter just describing a door and, and I'm sitting there like, like cuz back in the day, like with, in his time as a writer, you got paid per word.

Jeff: Oh,

Brent: just fluffed their words.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: I don't think Robert Jordan has that same,

Jeff: no,

Brent: excuse for 40 pages on a tree.

Jeff: Yeah. I mean, it's just, it is a lot. It's so much. It's beautiful. It's great. Just like this episode, and I think, you know, you said this and it bears repeating. I, I liked this, I enjoyed this episode, but I just, I don't know, it's just like really, really, like we're at Z nine, Z minus nine at this point.

You know? It's like, wow.

Brent: Yeah. Where, where are we going with this? And, and that is the question. Here's the thing, like JMS has conditioned us at this point to expect the over the, the, the long running arc. Now, we know that even within the longrun arc, there are a couple of one-off episodes, maybe several, one-off episodes here and there throughout the series.

In each season they just exist. But overall, they still connect. And sometimes you get a world building and sometimes you, at Z minus nine, that's not time for world building,

Jeff: No.

Brent: you know? Uh, I get he had to re like, he shut the whole production down and then had to ramp it back up. Like, but what are we doing?

And I, I, I hope. I'm holding my breath, Jeff. I, I'm, I'm holding on to hope that this is gonna pay off in, in a handful of episodes because I don't see it right now. And I mean, I mean like, because I have to guess it's ster. I have, you know, Sters got to be Is he the big bad of the end of the season here?

Like, we know

Jeff: gotta be the crux. He's gotta be like the focal point of something with this at this

Brent: Right. Cause you know what's still unresolved, the whole thing with Gar Baldy that you said, like, that's still very unresolved. Um, his whole thing with, with his girlfriend, they, they mentioned Carol, I think was her name.

Jeff: Carolyn Sanderson.

Brent: Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, he, he referenced her, I don't think he called her by name, but he referenced her in this episode.

Um, you know, we, we didn't get any of our main cast on Babylon five except for Zach and Dr. Franklin like, Some, some things. Why? Why are we just now learning that telepaths have multiple personalities and those multiple personalities can have different sigh ratings? That's a neat thing to know.

Jeff: is. That's deep, deep world building stuff. Like to your point, season one, season two, world building stuff. Now I think, I think there are three things that came outta this episode that could have a payoff. There's all the ster stuff. Like I think right now they have just went all in on like, Sters gonna be the dude.

He's a hero among the PS cops. You know, this is, this is it. So Sters gonna be our guy on the Telepath war thing. Lead is gonna work in there somehow, or you know, whatever. So we got that. I think introducing the concept of the mind shredder.

Brent: That's so cool, dude. Imagine this write up next to like within a a, a season a season's breadth of the Jason Ironheart episode. You got him and then you got mind shredder. Like, whoa, we, cuz we, cuz we know, we know from early on Scor was working, trying to breed and get higher Telepaths and higher telepaths, and now we're gonna turn them into mind shredders.

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: But you know, it, the, you know, who make the best villains are the people who are the heroes of their own story. Ster and seco are the heroes of the, you, you watch this episode and you go, these guys are normal. These guys are good. I understand where these guys coming from. That's season two, season three.

You know, like, like I, it just, and I hate to, I hate to keep going back and referencing that because you know what, this is a season five episode. This is where we are. The placement is what? The placement

Jeff: I'll tell you the third thing though, I think is what puts it in the fifth season, and that was when they were doing the whole scan block, counter scan exercise, and the interns were watching it. When Nikki, I forget her name I think, but she was Nikki in 9 0 2 10. Um, when Nikki's watching them do the, the exercise the way they did the graphic, did that ring any bells for you?

Brent: I wasn't paying. Uh, no. Yes, I was paying attention, but no. Wait, what are you

Jeff: Well, it was so dude doing the scan had like, it was a total shadow thing. It was dark,

Brent: No.

Jeff: tentacles that was going. And then other dude who was blocking had this like ice thing around him and

Brent: Like the war did.

Jeff: exactly.

Brent: Did he really?

Jeff: it was a total shadow versus vor lawn, like tentacle versus ice battle going on. So I think what this is meant, like ster number one, mind shredders introduced and they're using shadow stuff and maybe even VLAN stuff to augment their PSYOPs at this point.

So they're kind of creating these supersized soldiers to move into the telepath. That's my guess. This. It also could have just been, Hey, here's a cool graphic we

Brent: You know, you know, like, I don't think they went down that path, but you know what, that could serve as like this episode, this episode could serve as a backdoor pilot for a Babylon five spinoff.

Jeff: Right? Yeah.

Brent: That just never happened, you know? Uh, I mean, that would be, you know, we're gonna follow, we're gonna follow with SCOs and we're gonna catch this.

It's gonna be the anti-heroes and stuff. Um, I didn't catch that girl's name. I, I didn't catch her character name. I did 100% catch her partner's character's

Jeff: Yeah. This was pretty on the nose,

Brent: Chin Jado, Jado Sulu.

Jeff: Uhhuh with ster right there, and

Brent: That's, that's just fun to me. You know,

Jeff: I don't, I'm not gonna buzz you because the show made the

Brent: yeah. Yeah. That's the show's reference, not me at all. Yeah. Yeah. Abs, absolutely. Um, but also, speaking of names, Jeff, you know, here comes, here comes ster. He's just walking through and, and his boss is doing whatever. And I just, I have to wonder if like, like Alster just walks around playing this song. I just gotta wonder like he's al he's just al's up. What's up?

Jeff: you just got us blocked on YouTube.

Brent: No, no, that was less than 10 seconds. That was less than 10 seconds. I will refute that in every single way.

Jeff: And it's a total fair use. We're using it to comment on this, like that's the definition.

Brent: A thousand percent. Uh, it is transformative in its work.

Jeff: Did you notice what they did in the opening credits?

Brent: I did not watch the opening credits. I hit the skip intro. What happened in the opening credits? Jeff?

Jeff: So they used the Syco logo instead of the Babylon five logo. Then it came like, you know, it comes out Babylon five. And then all the people they used the Psycore, the S, and

Brent: They really?

Jeff: at the end of the credits where they have the, what I think is ridiculous graffiti on the back of the station with Jss name, they replaced that with the Babylon five, uh, symbol there.

So they tweet, tweet the logos around a little bit.

Brent: Interesting. Okay. Okay. Kind of that. Now, okay, here's, here's, here's the first buzz, Jeff, cuz these aren't individual buzzes. These are team buzzes. Now here's the first buzz, kind of like in enterprise, when they did the mirror universe and they redid the entire opening intro for the mirror universe group.

Jeff: And those were,

Brent: I should go back and watch that. That's,

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: that's neat.

Jeff: it was pretty fun. I, uh, yeah, I caught it, especially on the, on, on my, yeah. Second watch, I was like, oh,

Brent: Cause now, Jeff, just for the sake of, of the people who watch your videos, um, I, I'm, I'm going to beg with you and plead with you while this one case it paid off for you. For the most part, use the skip intro button, buddy.

Jeff: I usually do, I, I, I started doing that some time to time, but I also like to have people know that they know, they know. I like to have fun with the intro.

Brent: Jeff. Jeff. Ha. Listen, if you guys don't know what Jeff's talking about when he says having fun with the intro, you need to go check it out on Patreon. I'm not gonna say what it is.

Jeff: Me either. Me either.

Brent: you gotta go check it out. So,

Jeff: I have a good time with it.

Brent: um, okay. So I think we've been pretty clear about our general thoughts on this episode.

That this episode doesn't make any sense and why is it happening right here? Why it there? That being said, let's, let's dispense with that conversation. Let's talk about things we learned within this episode. Some things that came out that actually are really neat to know. Um, I think this is more checking boxes off right now.

Um, p twelves have to be able to block a deep scan for an hour because the longest deep span deep scan can go is 45 minutes before their brain explodes.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Okay. I love this idea, even maybe Jeff from a leadership or a management standpoint of, uh, as cuz as a tech guy, one of the things that I do into all of the systems that I go in and build is I build in redundancy. If I get hired for a gig and they say we need 10 microphones, I'm bringing 13. Cuz I, I know something's gonna happen. I just, I need extra redundancy. If I need to record something, I'm recording it in two places, you know, like I built, so the idea that they've, they only have to actually clear 45 minutes, but we're gonna make you do it for an extra 15 just in case.

Jeff: I think it's great. It's the old saying, what is it? Two is one and one is none. You know, like, like with recordings, like you and I both, we have this and we record it here locally just in case. So if anything ever happens, we don't have to come in and try and pretend that we're doing this again cuz we have two.

So we're good. But if we only have one and that one fails, we have nothing.

Brent: I think we actually have three cuz you record yours. I record mine and then our software here records this one. So we actually, we have three if something really goes wrong. Um, Jeff, here's a question for you. How close of attention do you pay to those expiration dates on the jugs of milk in the grocery store.

Jeff: I'm pretty, pretty close

Brent: Okay. At how far past the, that date do you allow that milk to stay in your fridge

Jeff: Three days?

Brent: and then it's done no matter what. Even if you open it up, sniff it, give it a taste, and it's fine. You still three days and you're done.

Jeff: yeah. Cause if I sniff it and it's past the date, my mind is gonna tell me it smells bad.

Brent: Interesting. Interesting. Because those dates, those dates are, are, you know, uh, what, what we so eloquently say down here in the south, uh, they're c y i c y a dates for the, for the grocery store. That's like cover your, mm-hmm. Uh, cuz they, they can't sell spoil. No you don't. You know, you gotta back it up. Did you know when you go to Disney World, Jeff, here's a little behind the scenes for you.

When you go to Disney World, they got a time posted. Here's your wait time. That wait time is between five and 10 minutes longer than what they're actually anticipating you to wait.

Jeff: So it's always a pleasant surprise.

Brent: Supposed to be. That's the idea. Now, I have certainly been in line at Disney World, and it winds up being longer than the posted wait time.

That has happened more than one occasion, but for the most part, uh, I I, and honestly, there have been times, and I see this at Universal too, where the time is almost in half because they'll u well, they'll use the wait time to deter people from coming onto the attraction

Jeff: ah, okay. Okay.

Brent: So, uh, yeah. Anyway,

Jeff: Yeah, I noted that, uh, not every P 12 becomes a psyop. I felt like that's what we'd been taught through this, but they actually have to pass the training, go through an internship program, pass the training. I'm kind of curious what happens to the ones that don't pass the training.

Brent: Well, they leave Cycore and commit suicide, however many percents of the time

Jeff: 40, 42 0.5% of the

Brent: there, it's would've been better if it was 47% of the time.

Jeff: much better.

Brent: Oh, dang. That's,

Jeff: It's a good one though. That was, that was well spent.

Brent: was a good one. All right. Here's the thing. Here's my question. When I saw that, do those people commit suicide because of the drugs they now have to be on because they left the core? Or is it for, I mean, the implication is, is they're, they're committing suicide because life is so awful outside of the core, but is it more like an ivana's mom type situation?

Jeff: I think it's worse than that because like for I, I, the, the impression I got is it wasn't necessarily like Ivana's mom, it wasn't people who refused to join the core. These are people who were core and these are blips people who've run away. And the guy even said, I used to be a blip and now I'm all kinds of better.

I think that what they do is when they go out, they send the bloodhound gangs or the psych cops after 'em and they end up killing the blip. They list it as a suicide

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: cuz they don't kill family. Right. Your family, I'm not gonna kill you, but sometimes family does this and so we're gonna sadly list it as that.

The other, you know, 56.5% or whatever, they come back. They come back. So either you come back or you're a suicide.

Brent: Mm. Ster had a line in this episode that made me go all the way back to Ship of Tears in season three. Was that the episode where we met his girlfriend? Well, she was hooked up to the computer. Okay. Um, what I remember from that episode is, uh, one, one of the things I remember from that episode is Ster was, um, he was doing something, she called out his name and whatever, and like he almost got attacked.

And his whole thing was she had no reason to attack me. Why would she attack what's going on with me? Why? Of course she would attack you, but why would she attack me? Like it was even in the midst of all that, everything was about ster and, and and what, what was the episode with him and Talio when the other telepaths were like coming after him?

Jeff: you have the Underground Railroad

Brent: That one? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And he, and he was like, he's like, oh, I'm safe. Oh, well, I'm, oh, I'm sure Talia got outta here. They were really just after me. Like it was all about ster. Okay. Preface that. Here's the line. Ster says right at the beginning of this episode, I think it was right at the end of the cold open, he says, as much as it might offend their sense of personality, not everything is about Babylon five.

That's coming from ster.

Jeff: On the show titled Babylon five,

Brent: Right, right. I

Jeff: like you said, he's the main character in his own

Brent: but everything's about ster. Like, um, can, can I, can I, can I say something that's probably considered anathema?

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Wouldn't be the first time, so go for it.

Brent: I think I, I think Walter Koenig's performance here was a little wooden in many places as ster, and I don't know if that, I don't know if that's his acting or if that's ster as a character being portrayed.

Jeff: I think it's Bester because he's always been a little wooden.

Brent: Yeah. And but like, okay. Admittedly the only other role I've ever seen Walter Kane again is Checkov in Star Trek.

Jeff: Has he done anything else? I mean,

Brent: I'm sure he has, I don't know. He is not this wooden as ovv in Star Trek.

Jeff: well, cuz he never has to say anything. He's got four lines over the

Brent: All he has to do keep up with the gun. Right.

Jeff: Right?

Brent: Where are the nuclear vessels? Okay, I think we've hit our three max. Jeff.

Jeff: I was, I was gonna let it fly at first, but, uh,

Brent: Yeah. Well

Jeff: I actually, okay,

Brent: it's so, it's so hard when it's the guy, like he's the guy and it's like the only other thing he's done, or at least that we know him for.

Jeff: So I'm looking at his IMDB right now. He's got 76. Oh my God. He's got two things coming up. Good for him. He's still working so. Star Trek this. Star Trek. This Star Trek. Oh, he did a lot of those like fan videos that a lot of those were pretty high quality, but he's in a lot of those. Uh, then things related to Star Trek.

So like it's a, he's got the Futu Ramus. Yeah. Um,

Brent: It's, it's basically, it's been this,

Jeff: it's been Star Trek and Babylon

Brent: it's really been this. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff: the Real Ghostbusters.

Brent: What did you do in real Ghostbusters?

Jeff: He was a Vladimir Pave Maximov.

Brent: Of course Paval is, is in that name. Okay. Um, Can, let's just talk about Bester. There's a few things about Bester. I noted out of this episode one, the couch in his quarters looks incredibly uncomfortable to be in his quarters,

Jeff: Yeah. I

Brent: that that couch looks like it belongs in the lobby of some office building somewhere.

Not, I'm gonna go home and relax. You know, in that scene where, where girls like throwing yourself at him and like, dude, she is way too young for you, pal.

Jeff: That was a little creepy. That was a little good for him, by the way. Good for

Brent: yeah. What, how'd you think about the way Bester handled that?

Jeff: Thought that was very gentle. Especially when he said, and hey, there's no reason to feel bad because nothing happened,

Brent: Did he read her mind to think that, to, to realize that she was thinking something embarrassed and he headed that off?

Jeff: so let's, okay, let's, let's do this. There's nothing but PSYOPs here. Why are they talking? They literally in mind War brought that up. Oh, you, you normals, you talk to each other. That's right. That's so inefficient.

Brent: Right.

Jeff: I mean, I get it. It's a TV show. It'd be the same as us doing this podcast. Just the, actually, the way we are, we're doing it telepathically.

I've just been able to download our neural

Brent: Are the voices are actually AI generated from our neural patterns, is what

Jeff: Yeah, so you're welcome. You know, it's kind of, I had to work kinda hard to make it

Brent: Imagine you're watching the entire, the entire show just in subtitles. You know that they, that they had to put on. Yeah, it, listen, I think that's one of those things you just have to sit back and go, they really couldn't have done the episode any other way, if that was

Jeff: I'm feeling the fact we just hit our three references because like it's, it's just like, yeah. I'm not even gonna, I'm not even gonna get go cuz, but it'd be perfect.

Brent: fair enough. See guys, this is the difference between Jeff and Brent. Jeff is a rule follower.

Jeff: I am,

Brent: Brent is not always.

Jeff: but no, I, I, I don't know that he did. I think that was, I think that was social grace that Ster had. I also think it was a lot of narcissism and hubris where he is like, of course you're hitting on me now. I didn't, uh, acquiesce to your seductions. So literally nothing happened here. Don't tell anyone anything happened here because it did not,

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: Mount Ster is a, you know, not everybody gets to ride Space Mountain Baby.

Woo.

Brent: with the lights on. Um, okay, so let's fast forward to the end of the episode. They're in the shuttle. They've got, they've got the two dudes behind them, and, and dude and checker are sitting in the front seats and she's like, I'm gonna get home and I'm gonna give you a massage and I'm gonna do this.

And finally she's like, can I can, can I? And he's like, okay, fine. I'm gonna let you like do it. And she takes off that belt buckle. Jeff, I swear she was about to do something to him that was not safe for work. Like, you cannot put this on network tv. Do. Oh, she spaced the mundane. That's what she actually did, but I Thousand percent thought like

Jeff: Also, can we talk about the fact that literally spacing a human being in the throes of hyperspace is more socially acceptable and network TV than rot? Like really?

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: Or would they call it? Would they call it hyper? I don't know. That's, that was, that was dark though. That was dark.

Brent: and he looks at her and what's he say? He's like, oh, there's just hope for you after all. Or maybe you belong in Syco after all. Like,

Jeff: Yeah. It's like, wow. You're gonna make it, you're gonna make it kid or something. But I was thinking also that whole time, I'm like, you have a mind shredder sitting behind you and you're trusting a sedative. That's pretty gutsy.

Brent: So, uh, captain, captain Sai guy puts ster on the case. Why? Because the victim was a student of his and he thought ster would like to see a little vengeance. And I wrote down, shouldn't that be a reason to not put him on the case? Like, cuz now it's personal, it's not your job. Like,

Jeff: Yeah. Had to remind us that Cycore is evil.

Brent: yes, yes. And I, I get it guys. Listen, stay, save your keystrokes out there. I understand that they don't play by the same rules in the future that we play by now. I get it, but. That's not rules now versus rules then that's just good management.

Jeff: It's ethics is what that is.

Brent: right. Um, okay, we gotta talk about something that we've never talked about before on this show.

And I swear, Jeff, if you tell me that we have talked about this before, I'm gonna reach through the computer and punch you in the face. This is not a Zaha Doom thing all over again. Okay.

Jeff: see. We'll see. I'm,

Brent: Well keep your fist up there cuz that's what I wanna talk about Sters hand. My question is, is, is there something wrong with Walter Koenig's hand or is this ster? Because it was incredibly obvious in this episode that he was not using that one hand. I, I don't, I think it was his left hand and everything was in his right hand and he, he was awkwardly doing stuff and he kept the glove on his hand the entire time.

And his, his hand was clenched like a fist. The entire time. Now, that being said, over the course of the five Seasons, we've been watching this show, Jeff, whenever we've seen besties come on, there's always been somebody in the comments who go, did you notice his hand? Did you notice his? And yes, I, I kind of know.

But in this episode, it was so glaringly obvious that I have to talk about it. Is there, what is the deal with the hand in this, in this show with ster?

Jeff: So if we, so I, we've, we've never talked about this because, you know, I've seen the same thing in the comments. You're right. Every single time, and we've gotten the story from multiple people, but to this point, I never really noticed it didn't.

Brent: Like I, I noticed, but it wasn't like anything that really just jumped off the screen to me. Now, uh, is this, I mean, is this an actor's choice or is there something wrong with the actor's hand?

Jeff: So I, I think from what I understand, if we, if the community is correct, I think they are, because multiple people have said this multiple times, it's an acting choice. Walter Kig made the choice to do this. But what I'm guessing, because I felt like they really shined a light on it in this episode. I mean, especially the scene where, uh, God, was it one he used with the intern?

I forget what, but, but he didn't have a glove on his right hand, but his left hand was gloved and kind of like, he was kind of like cradling it a little bit and I was, that's like, it really stood out. What I wonder is if like they're, they're shining a light on the Achilles heel. There is a story behind it.

It's a thing Lita or Len or somebody else is gonna get wind of, and that's how Sters gonna go down in the big fight.

Brent: it's probably something that, like there's a Babylon five novel out there that gives you the origin story of the hand.

Jeff: Well, there is, I know there's a Cycore trilogy. No, I don't if it's about the hand, but I know there, there's a, a novel, it's, it's considered Cannon is my understanding. There's a, the Sitecore trilogy. I have no idea what it's about outside of its Sitecore. Maybe it is the story of investor's hand.

Brent: Whole. So it was just about his hands. The

Jeff: Well, if Robert Jordan was writing, it could be three books about somebody's hand.

Brent: um, okay. That, that's all I really ha Oh, here's one thing about ster that is interesting. It is interesting that Bera does sometimes honor protocol for as much as Bera just bowls through stuff. It's like, I'm, I'm awesome and I'm gonna do whatever I want. was one spot where they were on Babylon five, and he, he says to the intern, he goes, what protocol is that?

We gotta get Babylon five security to open this door for us. And there's one down the hall. So I'm gonna go get him like

Jeff: I loved that moment. I loved

Brent: protocol. Go ahead Jeff, talk about

Jeff: he, he always does, like, this goes back to my whole thing of like, the bad guys here are Sheridan and Ivanova and Garibaldi, who never gave dude a chance because he came on looking for Jason Ironheart in the beginning, and they immediately decided they hated him. He followed the rules, he checked in, he called security when he needed to.

He stayed in contact. Ster follows the rules. He might make glib comments about it, and he might do it in a way, but he does, he's just doing his job in doing it the way that he's supposed to do it.

Brent: So observation about Cycore things are very family with Cycore and Sters talked about this a bit throughout his time on, on the show, over the course of the series, but we really saw. Behind the scenes, like the impetus, like I, this is where I really, really wish we would've gotten this episode back in season two and really got a good look at how Cycore operates and would've been able to under like, I really would've appreciated understanding Ster back then the way that I now understand him after watching this episode.

Jeff: It would've added color to Talia and all the stuff she went through with her arranged husband and all this stuff. Understanding this whole culture. Yeah, totally.

Brent: everything was family. This, this is a family issue. We keep this in the family. No, we're not gonna involve the outside folks. This is us. We take care of ourselves. This is us. Now that could lead a bit into perhaps your, I don't know what your messages are for later in the, the episode, but this is, this episode really highlights, and particularly that last scene we talked about a few minutes ago where she spaced the guy, this us verse them mentality.

That Sitecore maintains is there's us and then there's all the mundanes and it's us and then them. And that's how you keep wedges drawn between people when you draw these us versus them lines based, particularly on stuff you can't control, you know? Um,

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: so

Jeff: Yeah. Do you buy investor's story that he gave to the intern that his parents were killed when he was a month old and was brought into the core? At that point and literally raised in the core,

Brent: I, I do, because I'm gonna throw something out that I don't, I don't, uh, I don't know if you're gonna agree with this or not, Jeff.

Jeff: okay?

Brent: Uh, you know how the Minbar always talk about the fact that they don't lie, but they absolutely do,

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: like all the time. I don't think investor really lies that often. I think be when ster comes in and ster speaks, he speaks truth.

Now it may, it may be pointed, it may be lacking details, there may be omissions, but I don't, I don't know that ster truly ever, and somebody's typing right now saying, oh no, in this episode, this is, but I don't know that ster ever truly outright lies. So like, because what was, what was the one, oh, when, when we found out that they dissected Talia?

And the question that a lot of people in the comments were saying was, did they really dissect Talia or did he just throw that out there knowing that it would make everybody be very emotional and make them easier to scan? And I was kind of like both.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: I don't think it's one or the other. Like I think it's, he did it knowing what it would do, but he also did it cuz it's the truth.

Jeff: You just, I just had a thought with the whole Talia thing, the dissection and her other personality, multiple personalities, different P levels. This is a very rare thing. I don't have a fully baked idea in my head, but it makes me wonder about Talia and how she had this whole other personality. Was it stronger than her not as strong as her?

Did it lose the gifts that Jason Ironheart gave to her? Like where did those things live and what impact did the research, we'll say, research they did on Talia have on stuff like the mind shredding stuff and anything coming out here. I wonder if that's part of the through line

Brent: So,

Jeff: cuz we had, we, we, we've touched on um, we've touched on personality stuff all the way back to the Mars first guy who was a cyber A space zombie.

And then Talia and like this is, this multiple personality or controlled personality thing is popping up a lot.

Brent: here, here's an interesting, I just, we'll, since we're here and we'll talk about it now, um, let's trace that, that story thread, because one of the things you and I are understanding as we get closer is there are just some story threads that seemed really, really important at the time that have turned out not to be at all completely dropped.

When the show first began, we had Le Alexander,

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: and that was in the pilot. We know that they wanted to bring back Leeda Alexander, or they wanted to bring back Pat Tolman, but she was busy with something else. She couldn't come back. So they went and they cast Andrea, whatever her name was,

Jeff: Talia, we'll call her Talia. Yeah.

Brent: and so they, they gave the role to Talia.

Uh, something happened with Talia where she wanted to leave the show, and so they wrote her off the show. That's why she left. It wasn't a, Hey, we're gonna make her character better, or anything like that, and they were able to turn around and get Lita to come back. Okay. Lita became the one who went out on the shadow ships or on the white stars and did this whole psychic thing.

So I've got to imagine that had Lita stayed the way that Jms had originally intended her to, uh, she would've been the recipient of Iron Hearts, uh, giftings. And those would've been the powers that she would've used to defeat the shadows way later on. Like, I gotta imagine that was Plan A

Jeff: but instead they plopped the Vons in for Lita

Brent: once. Well, well, no. What they did was they plopped Talia in and gave Talia lead's power planning on Talia being the one to go through to the shadows, like she became Plan B, but then she left the show and, oh, hey, we got Lida back. So they came up with a different reason to give Lida extra powers. Well, now she's plopped in with the VLANs because they couldn't use the Jason.

And so the plan for that Jason Ironheart thread. I think got short circuited by Talia leaving the show. And that, that thread, I think was the, I'm guessing, I have no idea. No, I guys, I have not read Lurkers Guide. I haven't read jm, I haven't watched all the interviews with jms. I'm, this just makes all the sense of the world to me that this, the, that was the original plan.

It got short circuited when, when Pat Tolman couldn't come back Trapdoor, no problem. We'll just give it to, to Talia. But then Talia left. Oh crap. Well, now here's Plan C, actually, but it does, it made all that Jason Ironheart stuff just go away and not really matter in the, in the end scope, although I think it was supposed to.

Um, so, uh, okay. I, I, oh, um, hey, here's a question. What, what is on the hump of the back of the Pock Mara? What is that? Do we know? I don't think I've ever noticed a hump on the back of the Pock Mara, but I haven't watched them that closely. So

Jeff: I don't, to me, like, that's almost my biggest question outta this whole episode. I, I have to

Brent: Yeah. Like what, what is that's, that's not really a hump or, or something. I, I don't

Jeff: you know, you know what we're never gonna find out.

Brent: I hope we don't, I hope we don't. I hope it's just one of those, like ongoing,

Jeff: if JMS is awesome, like, if he is awesome, he's gonna bring this up at least one or two more times. Just like, yeah. Because, you know, in their hump, no. Like, just tease us with it a little bit and never give it to

Brent: Yep. Yep. Okay. Here's my last note that I have, Jeff and whatever. Um, we've already mentioned this just a little bit, but I just have to bring it up. The mind shredder, first of all, that sounds like a kick ass band name,

Jeff: Right.

Brent: you know what I mean? We're the mind shredders, you know.

Jeff: I bet they exist. They might even be listening. If you are, hit us in the comments.

Brent: so watching what he, when we actually got to see what he did, made the dude's eyes bleed and his brain explode and all that sort of stuff, right?

When we saw that that was such a better way for a person with psychic ability to completely f up somebody than sitting there going pain, pain, pain, like, you know, it was, I was like, that's what you should be doing with your psychic people. That right there.

Jeff: Push 'em to the edge. Yeah. My last note I have is just around, uh, we learned that they have these motherships that just exist in hyperspace. They never leave. They're secret. And that's where they launch all of their missions out of. And I thought that was an interesting piece. My question, wouldn't all these blips that ran away, like Byron, who was a psyop, wouldn't they know about these motherships?

Eh, I'm sure we'll find out coming up soon.

Brent: Well, Jeff, with that right there, I think we have reached a part of the episode where it is time to do the Star Trek thing that we do, where we boil the whole episode down and we look at the messages, the morals, the meanings, the mirrors to society, the hope for a better future. What is Babylon five trying to tell us?

What is j m s trying to tell us through the story of. T C I M. T C I F. Jeff, it falls on you to have that discussion this week, and you're gonna cap it off by rating this episode on a scale of zero to five white stars as to how strong that message was and how best it was delivered in a Babylon five way.

Jeff: Perspective is everything. The B five people, a lot of viewers, a lot of people watching or listening to this right now see ster as a villain. The Syop, at least the syop, maybe all of Syco and maybe more see him as a hero and a legend. There's a case made in this episode for compassion and empathy.

Brent: Hmm.

Jeff: We live in a world today where you either agree with me or you are wrong, period.

Full stop, no in between. And if you are wrong, you are often so wrong that you are automatically evil and you are the villain. Now, ster Sters apparently been with the core since he was a month old. He's literally been programmed his entire life. He's been rewarded and reinforced to think and behave in a certain way, and the people around him all have similar stories.

They have this big echo chamber and in their bubble, they are truly doing what they believe is right now. This doesn't make what they're doing right. If we look at them with empathy, if we look at them with compassion instead of a binary, you don't agree with me or you do agree with me, good or evil lens, compassion and empathy starts to change things a lot.

Bester is the natural result of his trauma. Imagine if instead of painting him as a villain and being jerks to him all the time, the people on Babylon five listened to him engaged in conversation and dialogue. Maybe they even worked to acknowledge his trauma and show him a different perspective. Wow.

But instead, they like many of us, validate what they already believe and what they think. PSYOPs and Psycore told that Mundanes are simple. They hate telepaths. So what does Zach do? Zach goes out of his way to say that he hates Telepaths. He validates that belief. We have people today that think this group of people is evil.

They're wrong, and this other group, they think that that group is hateful. So what do we do? Well, we hate them back, or we assault them with messages, telling them they're evil and wrong. Ultimately, we validate the awful things about us that they already think. It honestly kind of freaks me out to say this and put this out here, Brent, but generations of people validating the core's, beliefs and fears has made a war with them inevitable. So who are we today in 2024 or whenever you're listening to this? Who are we going out of our way to make war with inevitable as well? Talk with the intent to listen, to hear, have compassion. Try to understand, not necessarily agree, but see and understand where the other person is coming from. Find a place to connect You do that and you can do what Delen and Jaar say in our episode.

Open, right? You can build community, you can come together. You don't do those things. Well, my guess is the next few episodes of this series are gonna show us what happens when you don't do those things. Now, all of that said that was 99.9% me making stuff up that I saw in this episode and was inspired by and couldn't help.

But see, I don't think that was the intended message of this episode whatsoever. I'm gonna give this one, one

Brent: Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. I wanna stump and see if this doesn't help you. If you don't mind,

Jeff: Yeah, do it. Do

Brent: you, you still get the final say in what it is. But I, I would like to, to throw something, I, I talked about the us versus them mentality. We have talked about us versus them on this show, even here in season five, quite a bit.

So I don't wanna rehash all of that other than just to say the simple truth. When you take people's humanity away, when you build an us versus them mentality, it makes it easy to hate them. Ok? There was a moment in this episode where Ster is talking to the interns and they talked about, why don't we help the mundanes, and why don't we do this?

Why are we only going after ourselves? And, and he's, he's talking about the mundanes. He's talking about the normals. You and me, Jeff. And he says, um, he says, Why should anyone value their lives when they just spend all the time killing each other when they don't even value their own lives? Why should we value their life?

That's a great question. And what he says, you know that when you have a psychic person, you're part of the family, you're, you're one of us, right? Just by virtue, there's nothing you did by virtue of being psychic, of being a telepath. You are here, you're one of us, and when you don't want to be one of us, it's easy to sit back and say they'll get what they deserve.

When they go out there, he's like, but that person, by virtue of their tele telepathy, they're still special. Ster said, and it's never easy, but they're still part of our family. We should still go help them, even if they're getting what they deserve. And I sat back and I thought, That's the way it should be with humanity is even when that person doesn't want to act right by virtue of their humanity, they're still a person.

And we should still love them. We should still honor them. We should still respect them because of their humanity

and treat them with such dignity and respect when people do stuff that they ought not do. And I'm thinking specifically people that, that commit crimes and, and get thrown in jail. And I know people be, oh, well, what if a person did this? Do you still listen? Uh, that's a whole different type of a conversation.

All right. Those are extreme examples. In general, we should love, honor and respect people just on the basis of their humanity, not because of anything they did, just because of who they are. I thought it was, I thought it was a very clear, interesting message and it's, it's kind of like. If Sitecore is a microcosm of humanity as a whole, uh, that's what humanity should look like in a very weird way.

Jeff: What I love about that is part of what we do when we rate these episodes for white stars. Is this kind of ephemeral? Did they do it in a Babylon five way? Right. And one of the things that we've learned about Babylon five on this journey, we've been on 105 some odd episodes, 105 episodes,

Brent: Right?

Jeff: But one of the things we've learned is Babylon five doesn't dress up as silver platter.

Put a bunch of ornamentation on there and hand you the message. Right? Babylon five expects you to do some work to, to get this out of it. And that's what you, you really demonstrated was it's easy on surface to look at everything you just described and be like, oh my gosh, ster is ho horrible. What an awful person.

The core perpetuates all these things, but the Babylon five delivery of this is flipping it around and looking at it in that bigger piece of Yeah, that's what they're doing. What if we all did that with this bigger signifier? You know, like what's one thing, like so many of the divisions that we have, As you've said a couple times this episode are things outside of our control or the way we are born or the situation we are born into.

You know, a situation we're all born into in a way we're all born. That's pretty darn common amongst all of us. We're all human.

Brent: Yep.

Jeff: Bingo. Like that's the thing. That's good. Stump. I'm gonna add two white stars. I'm gonna call this one a three white star episode after that.

Brent: I don't know that I gone that high, but Wow. Cool.

Jeff: I'm, at first I was thinking two, but then I was like, what a Babylon, five way of doing that.

Like to really push it that far. So yeah. I'm gonna give this one three. Now, I don't know if I'm gonna get a chance to stump on this next one. We're gonna see what you do. But another thing that we do here on Babylon five four, the first time is we have the unenviable task. I mean, this is, it's a Herculean effort. Seriously that we have undertaken on behalf of all of you in the community, but for you, we are developing the absolute 100% definitive, objectively correct ranking of all the episodes in the fifth season of Babylon five.

If you're keeping score, our current top five has in the top spot the very long night of Lado Malari, no compromises. And number three is learning curve. Our new number four, the ragged edge, and rounding out the top five A view from the gallery. Brent, where do you put T C I M? T C I F? It's almost easier just to say the chorus is mother of the chorus

Brent: It almost is easier. Uh, here's the deal. You and I both said this statement. I enjoyed this episode. I don't understand it right here, but I liked the episode. So this one is going to immediately slot into the, I liked it category. Uh, which the bottom, the, like, the top of that for us is a tragedy of Telepaths.

That's where we said, and that's, that's our current number seven. That's where we said these shows are crap. Like, we're tired of these shows. The one that I have above that is Day of the Dead. Now that's the one where, um, Madrid came back to tell Len he is gonna betray all the Rangers and a bunch of other stuff happened and we liked that episode.

The one above that is a view from the gallery and that was the one with the two guys that we also liked. The question is, is where does this one fit to me? Then around Day of the Dead, do we like this better than Day of the Dead or do we like it a little bit less than Day of the Dead? And as an, I want to take this really as an episode of television cuz I don't know where this is leading.

And I can't judge this in the context of the entire season. I've gotta judge it just as a 45 minute episode. I think I enjoyed this one more than I did Day of the Dead, but I really liked, I liked the concept of Day of the Dead. That was a cool, we're gonna buy a part of the station. These things are gonna happen.

Weird stuff's gonna happen. We're gonna meet our, our, our past folks. Um, so to me, put these two episodes in a bag. Shake the bag up, reach your hand in. I think you're gonna come out with Day of the Dead first. But I mean, tagging onto it, hanging on to its heel is the Chorus's mother of the Chorus's father.

So I'm plaing slotting this in at our new number seven spot. Uh, but I mean, I wouldn't fight you over it being number six.

Jeff: Well, this is the first time I'm gonna hype our season five, uh, wrap up that we're gonna do here in 10 weeks. From now, because I think this one has the potential of being like the geometry of shadows of the second season. We're on its first view and we're like, I don't get it. Like had some cool stuff I don't understand.

We might look back on this one and be like, oh, it's so brilliant. Oh my God, it set these things up. It was so great. We don't know that yet.

Well, Brent, that's it for the Core's mother. The core is father. Next week we're gonna watch meditations on the Abyss for the first time. This is the game, Brent, that you mentioned earlier in this episode that we love playing and that our listeners and viewers, our community also has a really good time with.

This is where we try to guess what the next episode is gonna be based on the title alone. We don't look at thumbnails, we avoid descriptions or synopses or anything like that. So the next one is meditations on the Abyss. What do you think that's gonna be about? Brent?

Brent: All right. I'm gonna have to talk this one out a little bit. You say the word abyss. You know what comes to my mind when I think of abyss? Monsters. That's what lives in the abyss.

Jeff: I was gonna say liquid oxygen, but that might be too deep of a cut for some people.

Brent: Wow. Wow. Uh, no, I'm thinking, uh, wow. I caught that reference. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Um, I think monsters, when I think of the abyss and when I think of monsters in terms of Babylon five, I'm thinking the Drake, I'm thinking the minions of the shadows that we know are still lurking out there, that somewhere here in the next nine hours, Supposedly this is gonna be a thing because we believe they're the ones actually behind the shipping line stuff.

That's been a big thing for the last bunch of episodes. So I think this one is going to be all where we really, like, we learn all about the rock in the Minions, and we figure out all of that. Like, who are the bad guys that got left behind when the shadows and VLANs left? Like, we're gonna finally really learn what all this is and what they're doing.

That's what I think. How about you?

Jeff: Well, I just wanna say I like that too, because I think it'd be really easy to think of Zaha Doom as an abyss right now after it's been destroyed and flattened out. So yeah, it's meditating on what came

Brent: Except it's been blow up real good,

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: but still.

Jeff: I'm, I'm stuck in the world of Telepaths for this one. I think this is gonna be the flip side.

We got to see ster. Cause I'll tell you what, what I see like kind of the chart, the charting I see of the Telepath war and considering there are nine episodes left, I don't know how they're gonna fit this and the drop stuff and everything in. I don't, I don't get it. But

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: we're gonna have ster versus Lita and then at some point, everyone else.

Right. But I think there's gonna be an initial reckoning.

Brent: you think it's a bester versus Lita because, okay. Can we, can we, I'm sorry. Can we do this just for for a second? We got, we got nine episodes left. Okay. Here are the threads that you and I are hanging onto right now. Garibaldi investor have a thing going

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: Lita is out there doing something with the Telepaths right now.

Presumably there's could be a bester thing there. There's the rock and the little eyeball dudes and Londo still has to become, become emperor. Does he wind up take, does do we go down the path that we saw in the future with war Without In part two?

Jeff: I think so. I think that is the.

Brent: so we gotta see, you know, are, are we, well that was 20 years in the future, so are we gonna get some sort of like, destruction of Sari Prime and Londo becoming, becoming a minion, a slave to these guys?

We gotta see Jaar losing that eye with the sash over his eyeball again and getting grizzled and, and, and now we know Jaar is a religious leader, so how does that whole thing fit in? And we've gotta, and Veer is gonna be emperor one day. I think that's gonna be like, the very end is, is what we're gonna see with Vera.

But like, so we've, we've got these, we've got this telepath thing still happening. There's the personal thing with Garibaldi. There's the thing with the Alliance, but there's also this whole piece with Londo and Jaar and the drop like, and we got nine episodes left, Jeff. I think something's getting dropped.

Jeff: I, so I, well, yeah, I think, I think so. I think it's got to, but I think, I think the telepath thing is gonna be wrapped up within three episodes. I think they're gonna have to minbar Civil War, the whole thing, and we're gonna get it tight. That's gonna include the Garibaldi investor stuff. So I don't think it'll be three in a row.

They're gonna intercut some of the Cent and the Jaar and the, the Dar, the Drake and Minion stuff. But I think then we're gonna get three of those. We're gonna get five that pull in some of that other stuff, right? The,

Brent: Right.

Jeff: the stuff that leads to war without End part two. And then the finale is gonna be like an overarching, you know, here's everything.

So I think we've got eight episodes to move the threads we have. And then that final episode to wrap the entire series.

Brent: That was already filmed at the end of last season.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. So, but all these threads were set up right in that season, so it can all play together we'll, we'll, we'll see, uh, we'll see what happens. But we're gonna find out specifically about meditations on the abyss right here next week. Thank you everybody so much for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you're listening.

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So until next

Brent: Hey Jeff,

Jeff: Yeah, man, what's up?

Brent: so 105 episodes in,

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: I have a confession to make.

Jeff: Okay.

Brent: My name is not Brent.

Jeff: Okay. Uh, okay. I'll put, what is it?

Brent: My name is Napoleon.

Jeff: Sure, why not? And I guess probably the next thing you're gonna tell me that, uh, that God told you that right.

Brent: Nah, dude, we, we left Ivanova back in season four.