War Without End Part 1

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

Brent: And I'm Brent Allen and I'm also watching Babbel on Five. Well, this might be for the 47th time because you don't know how many times I've been bouncing around through time watching this episode. Jeff and I are two veterans, star Trek podcasters watching Babbel on five for the first time. Jeff, are we.

Are we Babylon? Five podcasters yet?

Jeff: We, I, I, we are Babylon five podcasters, but apparently we're not veteran Babylon five podcasters

Brent: All right, so Jeff and I are two veteran Star Trek podcasters and Babylon five podcasters watching Babylon five for the very first time. And in this, we are taking our skills as Veteran Star Trek podcasters and inserting it into our Babylon five podcasting deal to look for morals, messages, hope of the future, that sort of stuff about this series, and trying to decide how it's doing it A little bit different than the way Star Trek did it?

Jeff: While we are Star Trek podcasters veteran Star Trek podcasters, this is the Babylon five podcast. So to keep us honest, we play the rule of three. That means each.

Brent: Jeff. Sorry buddy. No, this is not the Babylon five podcast. This is.

Jeff: it's the Babylon five for the first time podcast.

Brent: not a Star Trek podcast is what this podcast is.

Jeff: correct. It is not a Star Trek podcast. Not even a little bit, maybe a little bit because we can each make up to three references to Star Trek in each episode, but that's it. Three, those no substitutions exchanges are refund.

Brent: Hey, Jeff.

Jeff: We have a five star rubies. Yes. This one is on pod chaser

Brent: chaser.

Jeff: Yeah, it's been a long time since we've gotten a pod chaser one.

It's pretty cool. But CT 29 0 4 says, it took me several episodes to warm to the hosts of this podcast, but eventually their enthusiasm and in, but eventually their enthusiasm and insight won me over as a B five fan who's watched the show through at least four times. I'm loving the chance to vicariously watch it with fresh.

The predictions and theories on what's coming up next are alternately, hilariously off kilter and breathtakingly accurate, and I particularly enjoy hearing them get to know the characters I've been in love with for years writing this when they're about halfway through season two, so a third of the way through the whole show.

Very much looking, very much looking to, very much looking forward to the remaining two thirds. They didn't say very much looking forward, so it was really throwing me off. So I added editorial, so sorry,

Brent: Um, okay. First of all, CT 29 0 4. You have wrote this in a long time ago because if you wrote this when we were in the middle of season two, like Good Night , uh, Jeff, I dunno what the backlog is, but holy cow, I know you only do like two of these in episode, you know, but

Jeff: Also, I think we, I mean, and you've seen the numbers. We have a lot of new listeners joining all the time and so I think maybe someone's just working their way through. I hope they're not doing, who's that one dude a while ago who literally like found us on a Friday and then wrote us a review on Monday?

It caught all the way

Brent: no, Jeff, that, who's the like dozen people who've sent us messages saying that, which is crazy. You guys that do that, you are awesome. And what is wrong with you,

Jeff: I know.

Brent: No.

Jeff: We're cool guys, man. We are too. We don't, too wild than crazy

Brent: Hey, my good dear friend, Jeffy over there,

Jeff: it's a lot of hours

Brent: lot of hours with us, but, uh, CT 29 0 4. Thank you so much for coming in and glad you warmed up to us.

Um, you know, Jeff, much like the show has an arc that people have to go through to get to the end, I think, uh, the podcast here and you and I have an arc that we are on ourselves that is, um, matching but separate. It is on the same trajectory, but it's its own distinct arc that we are taking along the path.

Jeff: Parallel and

Brent: I like it. I like it. Thank you. CT 29 4.

Jeff: Hey Brent.

Brent: Hey, Jeff.

Jeff: We have another five star review. Oh yes. This one from our old friends at Apple Podcasts. This one's from Guard Badger and Guard Badger. Such a cool name guard, Badger Honey. Badger Guard, Badger.

Brent: It sounds like, uh, this was a character on, uh, the old Disney Ride Splash Mountain before it got shut down.

Jeff: Yeah. Guard Badger fits well. Guard Badger says Fantastic show. Well worth a listen. Really enjoying listening to this podcast. The presenters are easy to listen to. Their insights are really interesting. So interesting to hear someone watch for the first time with their breadth of experience with other sci-fi.

As an original watcher in the nineties, having watched through a number of times and having consumed loads of additional content on the show, I love, I was surprised how many interesting threads they bring up. Well worth a listen if you're a B five fan or a soon to be B five fan.

Brent: I dig it. You know, Jeff, I, we hear this a lot. We hear the, they're bringing up all these threads. They're making us look at things we've never seen before or never thought before. That's not yours. And mine's experience because our experience is this experience where we think about that sort of stuff all the way through.

And that's gotta be cool to like go back to something that you've, that you know and you love and you feel like you're intimately acquainted with, but to get to see it through. Eyes or just seeds, something new about it that you didn't, and I think it just makes you appreciate the piece of art more than you already did.

And I hope that's what we're doing for folks out there is helping them, particularly the old people who've been watching the show for a long time, uh, helping them appreciate Babylon five in a new way.

Jeff: You just call our community old. I feel like. I feel like you did

Brent: Um,

Jeff: people. Those old people that are the same age as

Brent: I was gonna say, we should have watched this show when it was back on the p 10 days. Like we were very much there and aware and old enough to do that and not as young Lipa Snap is. Oh no, we were in high school, so

Jeff: yeah. Those were, those were days, those were certainly days,

Brent: Yes. Jeff actually might have been out of high school for some of that.

Jeff: uh, for a lot of this. By the time this was going on, I was, uh, proudly serving my country.

Brent: go. Oh, see. So you couldn't have, cuz you were in a tube

Jeff: I was, I was un, I was underwater. We didn't get cable like we watched an alarm here this old date. It, we watched an alarming amount of VHS tapes that we would trade out when we'd get into port, cuz it's how it was

Brent: There you go. Well, Jeff, uh, you know, I can only imagine the things that you guys did while you were, uh, underwater. The, the games that you would have to play to pass time and, uh, make things happen. We like to play games here on Babylon five for the first time, along with the rule of three, which is one of the games we like to play.

Uh, another game we like to play is trying to make each other laugh at very opportune times. that, uh, hey, if you're just listening to the audio show, you really gotta go check out the YouTube show, because that's where the real magic happens. And you guys get, uh, to see Jeff over there looking about as red as the background that we have, which again, you're listening to the audio feed, so you have no idea how red that is.

But, uh, also another game that we play is when we get to the end of the. We like to guess what next week's episode is gonna be based on title alone. Never having seen the thumbnail, never reading a description. That really wouldn't be accurate even way, even if we did. And now is the time, Jeff, where we revisit what we said last week.

This week was gonna be about, and see just how accurate or inaccurate we were. Jeff, do you remember what you said? War without end part one was gonna be. And how close.

Jeff: So I, I remember what I said and I said one thing that has semblance of truth in this one, and that's that there were minbar in it. Um, I thought this was gonna be about the earth minbar war, and that was gonna be the war without end that kept going. Naroon was gonna come in, try and arrest Alen, and uh, everything would be built to set up the warrior cast ally with the shadows.

I was completely and totally way off. Hey, Brent. Why, why don't you go ahead and just tell us, you know, I don't know, like how close you kind of got to this impossible shot in the

Brent: Do, do I, do I need to? A shot in the dark. Jeff. This episode was anything but a shot in the dark. This, if you are paying attention to the sh look, people get, make, make fun of me for not paying attention to the show. If you are paying attention to what's going on, Jeff, I called this episode during the season two wrap up, maybe in the middle of an episode.

Like, like I said, I made the prediction, I don't remember when it was. It was a long time ago where I said that the shadow wars throughout history, the one with the first ones, the one a thousand years ago with Jaquan, the one we're getting ready to have right now, that it's all the same war, and that Babylon five was bouncing through time, fighting all of these wars at the same time.

And this is the episode that I was waiting for, for it to come true. And when I heard the words war without End, it immediately triggered that to me. This is a war that has been going on throughout all time, and this is a war where it is all happening at the same time. That's what I said that this was gonna be.

Uh, I said that this was gonna be, um, uh, Babylon four. I said, um, I, now, I did say this, this is too early in the, in the show. For the shadow war to come to a conclusion. So in, in a two-parter, we're not ending this war. So this to me is where we understand, like we get all the expedition, exposition, dump of everything that's happening, which we absolutely got in this episode.

We're gonna start like the mission. It's all here, like cautious at the beginning as he was caution three at the beginning of this one going. And so it begins, uh, and we're gonna be bouncing around throughout time. In my head, Jeff, I, the way I thought it was gonna start was it was gonna start with somebody finding an ancient statue of Sheridan.

You know what I mean? Uh, it turns out we started with an ancient letter that had somebody else's name on it. We'll get there real quick. In fact. Why don't you remind the folks at home and who are listening out there or not at home, maybe they're in their car, on their way to work, wherever they find themselves exactly what this episode was about, and just how close Brent was to making this prediction.

Jeff: For my recap, I just, uh, I just took your notes for your prediction. I'm just gonna read, basically hits the

Brent: I will say this. I didn't get everything right. This is, I did not nail every single little aspect of this, but tell us just how close I got there, Jeff.

Jeff: well, Brent Babylon five. Babylon five is gonna blow up, and it sounds like Ivanova is gonna be the last one left alive. She's sending out a futile distress signal and ensuring a complete record is kept as we learn that this has not yet happened. A series of readings and this distress signal are coming from Sector 14.

Now, of course, everybody knows Sector 14, right? I mean, that's the one with all the tack on stuff that was going on because of Babylon. Four being that he's the one who knows the area best. Garabaldi heads out to investigate. Sheridan is doing his job, hanging out in the war room, talking to Marcus and others about the shadows, and that ever since the Volans got involved, they have been far too quiet.

Too quiet. In fact, they're sure that when the shadows come back, they're gonna come back and force their strategic gets interrupted though by Dalen, who received a weird letter from the past. She's not the only one conveniently letting himself into the war room. On his own ambassador, Jeffrey Sinclair introduces himself to Captain Sheridan.

He also received a letter from 900 years ago, addressed specifically to him in some pretty sweet looking handwriting. Dalen explains that they have to get to the white star right now. Why now? Because of the letters from then. But what do the letters from then have to do with now? Not a lot, except that that's gonna make some stuff happen later.

Exasperated Sheridan asks, when will then be now? To which Sinclair responds Soon. Garabaldi has learned that attack on signal from Epsilon three. Powered by Draw is opening the time Rift. From there, he sees that in eight days time, the shadows will attack Babylon. Five, destroying it, fulfilling the vision of Lady Ladera in signs importance and Sinclair's vision in Babylon.

Squared on the white star. Dalen gathers everyone for a PowerPoint presentation. Thousand years ago, the shadows nearly won the war. After they destroyed the menari sort of kind of version of Babylon five, like the central command base. Without that, their forces were a mess until a new central command base mysteriously just showed up and that command base Babylon.

Four. The whole time we all thought Babylon four was often the future somewhere. Nope, it was in the past and it was helping win that shadow war. Well de Lens's PowerPoint continues. A fusion bomb is launched at Babylon four. A fusion bomb is launched at Babylon four this time, like six years ago from now.

Like in the time the show is happening now, when Babylon four was first constructed six years ago before the in the show, now the shadows were wise to it, but as s, but a ship swos in and destroys the bomb and not just any ship but the white star. Now we get to the last part of the Bill and Ted movie where they set all this stuff up to make the things in the past happen so they can survive to the future, which is now You still following everything here?

All right, good. Well, luckily they're not gonna have to go it alone. A ship from Epsilon three joins them and has the time Travel supplies they're going to need because time travel supplies are a thing. They have on Epsilon three, but wow, they are heavy. It is really hard to move them around. If only we had someone who could move this stuff around for us.

Oh, we do. It's Zs. Yes, Zs is back, but this is Z Atheros from before Babylon squared. So he doesn't know anyone and is in awe of both Sinclair, who smoothly paves over the potential plot hole there and Sheridan for reasons that are yet unknown. Zs is happy to, or well resigned to help move stuff around. He shows the in our future, which is Zss past, but Babylon Fives present.

The Rolling Stones are still ubiquitous as he flips a classic and says, please let me be your beast of burden. They fly through the rift just in time into the past. Hoping to make it back to the future, but as they do their thing and blow up the fusion bomb, Sheridan gets, well, honestly, I'm, I'm not really sure what actually happened to him, but his time anchor gets all busted up and he ends up in his own body, like, I don't know, 15, maybe 20 years into the future.

The, the now where the show is happening, future, not the then future that they're in, but in this one, Londo is the emperor of Sonari. Looks like he's about to execute Sheridan, who he blames for the carnage on Sonari Prime.

Well, this is all happening in the now time. Garibaldi finds out. Sinclair came to the station. He cracks the passcode to open a message from him, and that message is a heartfelt token of friendship and a sad goodbye. Sinclair isn't entertaining any illusions about returning from this mission. In the six years time. In the six years ago time, the white star capitalizes on the E M P pulse from the fusion bomb and boards Babylon four undetected. They're gonna install some of the Epsilon three stuff so the station could hop around time like it's gonna need to do. They get their gear in order. They split into teams.

Sinclair and Dalen turned to head down a corridor. And Brent, what were your reactions to war without End part.

Brent: Jeff, I loved this episode. This is great tv. This is, this is TV at its finest happening right before our eyes. So it was so good. It was from start to finish. Every scene, every second of it. Nothing in this episode was wasted. Um, so many threads are coming together. You know, I don't know that they answered a ton of questions.

They certainly left a few new questions, and I've got some new questions coming out of this one, but, This is where everything really feels like it's paying off, like everybody who's been telling us. And so it begins before this moment. You went too early, folks. This feels like where it's really beginning now.

I don't know what the end of this looks like. Maybe it really did start a long time ago. I don't know, but oh my gosh, this is great. I'm not even excited because I was so correct about this episode. Um, but I j this. Oh, Jeff, it was good. It was good. It was so good to see Michael O'Hare again. I was legitimately excited and I said this in the Brent Watches video, and I feel like I'm losing all of my trek cred when I say this.

I was excited. I was more excited to see Michael O'Hare than I ever was to see Denise Crosby come back into Star Trek next generation. Any episode, you know what? And you, but you know, what it did feel like is when I saw Leonard Nemoy pop up in Next Generation. He's like, there's Spock. He's like, there's Sinclair.

Please trek. God's forgive me for comparing Michael O' here to Leonard Nemoy, please Babylon five Gods Forgive me for making that sound way worse than, I mean, for it to sound. it was just so, it was so good to see him, you know? And I did not expect to see him. O of all the things that I did anticipate, I did not anticipate seeing Sinclair come out in this one.

I, I, I didn't know if we were ever gonna see him again. You know, coming off the, the one little video chat that we had from him. Um,

Jeff: they set it up really well. Like they named him Ranger one, right. At one point, Hey, ranger one said this thing, and like in that moment, I think we both kind of resigned ourselves to like, oh, he's gonna be a call sign. That gets brought up from time to time. Okay. And then, yeah, but then he shows up and it's like, oh yes,

Brent: Exactly, exactly,

Jeff: like this.

Oh yes.

Brent: Absolutely. It is. Absolutely. So it was, it was just so good to see him. And, um, two quick things that I noted from his reappearance into this, that, and, and I'll let you talk Jeff. Um, when he steps onto the bridge and he's meeting Sheridan for the first time, or at least within the show, he's meeting him for the first time and he looks around and he goes, I like what you've done.

Uh, I really love what you've done, or whatever, whatever he says there. To me, that moment did not feel like it was a conversation between Sinclair and Sheridan, but that it was between Michael O'Hare and Bruce Box litner of like saying, Hey, You stepped in here and took care of this, and I, I, I'm really happy to see what you've done with this.

You've, you've stepped in and led this really well, and I'm, I'm just tickled to death to see that you've taken care of my ship, of my show. That, that, you know, cause, because we know Michael, uh, when Michael left, it wasn't because he wanted to, it was, he was just trying to save the show and he had to go. He, he couldn't stay for personal reasons.

Um, so to, to see him like, kind of like, Hey, good job, man. Like I, this is what I was hoping for to see. I just, it was, it was a, uh, a heartwarming moment to me. I don't know if that's actually what it meant or not, but, uh, I, I certainly did love that moment. But then there's the other moment where, uh, Sheridan just so happens to take this blast that gets directed at his little time keeper thingy.

Jeff: Thing.

Brent: he, and he gets shot off into a whole other thing. And I'm like, that moment right there is because you had to get Sheridan out of the way so that Sinclair could jump into the captain's seat for that one last hurrah so he can go be the captain once again, you know, before, and I don't know if we're ever gonna see Sinclair again after next week's episode.

I assume we'll see him in next week's episode, but I don't know if we'll ever see him again. This might be the end of his story. I don't know. Um, I don't, yeah, I don't know. I, I have no idea where this is going, but, uh, it does, it did kind of feel like that to me. Like, uh, let's give him an excuse to be back in the captain's seat.

What did you think, Jeff?

Jeff: I'm just gonna read my note on, these are all my opening thoughts. I loved it. I loved almost every absolutely little tiny thing about this episode. It was so good. And I think to your point on Michael O'Hare coming in, we talked about when he showed up in, I forget which episode it was that he, that he showed up in on the little screen thing, but we were both like, oh, I could just, it felt so good to, to see, you know, to see him in here.

Wow. It was great to see him like acting and interacting with people. And there was a part of me, a part of me that was like, I wanna see him in Garabaldi hook up. I wanna see him in Kar go, you know, toe to toe. But I love how they like a little bit of him in Ivanova, but that moment, like I, I've got notes on it too on here, like that moment between him and Sheridan in the war room, like, A lot of times when there's a leadership change somewhere, leader one moves on and leader two comes in and there's, you know, never the two shall meet or whatever.

But whenever they do and there is that face-to-face, there's that weird kind of awkward cuz either one of them is doing better than the other one did, or one of 'em is not doing quite as, you know, there's always something like awkward about it and there was none of that between them. It was just like, Hey, I saw you back in the Mars thing way back.

It's good to see you again. And hey, people say cool things about you. I hear cool things too. It was a, it was almost some people in the comments have, have shared with us that Bruce Box Leitner was not embraced by the fandom immediately. And I feel like this in a way was like the official passing of the torch where it's like,

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: Sinclair said it's cool.

O'Hare said it's cool. J m s through proxy said it's cool, right? So like, get on, get on board for the whole thing. But no, this was, this was awesome. This was a fun episode. It, it brought back so many great things. We loved Babylon Squared Back in the first season, we freaked out, I think we talked for like 48 minutes when Draw mentioned Z's name in the second, you know what I mean?

Oh my God. He said, Zs, what's that about? Let's go. And then when they sh he showed up and it was the, the, and the scene he showed up in just that, like his face in there with the tacky on stuff going. It was just like, r boom, Zs is here, and here we go. This is, this is gonna be wild.

Brent: I really wonder what it takes for that actor to get into Atheros mode

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: it off. So, I mean, he, he just slipped right back into that, into that Atheros uh, Atheros deal. But, oh my gosh, this was, this was something, uh, Jeff, I don't even know how to go through this episode.

Jeff: I struggled with my notes. You know, I think one thing, , I was thinking about this a while ago, how we like, as our show has gone on, I mean here we are in what, like our 63rd episode or something like that of this thing and then doing the Brent watches and all the videos we do on our Patreon and stuff, just how much our format and stuff has evolved yet.

We still end up going close to two hours a whole lot cuz there's a lot to talk about in these things. But like my notes used to be, and you can see our notes, if you go to our Patreon, we, we'd pa copy and paste those up on there, but they were, you know, a couple bullet points here and there. Or they were a stream of consciousness thing.

And frankly the last season and a half I've had 'em, like this storyline, this whatever. I just have like this sequential run through cuz this was literally the telling of a.

Brent: It was, yeah. Yeah. There was no a plot, B plot, anything like that. It was just,

Jeff: If there was any alo B plot, there was the stuff that was going on and there was garabaldi, like garabaldi was treated a little bit, his histor, a little separately, but tied right in to to to it completely.

Brent: let's start with Garabaldi and get that knocked out then. Uh, so Garabaldi, um, basically something's happening out in Sector 14, which is where Babylon four used to be. And he went out there with Sinclair way back then. And so now he's there. So he goes out to go check it out and he goes, oh, hey look, here's this transmission.

I'm gonna watch Babylon five, blow up a few. And then he gets like freezed out of the, out of the mission.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Um, outside of the emotional impact, do you, do you feel like there's another reason why Gu Baldi is getting, why he got, had to be left behind? Because it's very unusual to leave somebody behind like that on a

Jeff: I think well, well, Sinclair talked about it a little bit. I think there's more to it than what Sinclair said in the message. Cuz he was like, basically Sinclair's like, I'm not coming back from this mission and if you came with me, you wouldn't come back either. Which then made me think, oh, but you can bring Ivanova and you can bring No, I get it.

Because when he tells them to cut tail and run, they will, Garabaldi won't, he's gonna stick with she into the bitter end and or with Sinclair. And Sinclair knows that. But I think there's more to it. I think there's a plan for Garabaldi that, uh, there's, there's more for him to pick up on that we'll see in the next episode.

But I have, I've got a not great theory about garabaldi. So they went through great pains to talk about, um, the great damage, the great harm that could happen if you get unstuck in time. Um, what do they call it? Time distortion. Right? The time distortion can, can really mess you up. I think Garabaldi is gonna go after Sinclair and not have the time anchor or anyone knowing that he went after him and we're gonna have a series coming out of this of like Garabaldi being way me.

In fact, I think this will be the payoff to the confession. Confessions get, not confessions, but the ceremonies of light and dark where he's like, I don't wanna lose control of my emotions.

Brent: Oh.

Jeff: time distortion is gonna break him and make that happen. So we'll get a couple episodes working through that.

Brent: Interesting. I'll be interested to see if you're right. I didn't have that on my radar at all. So

Jeff: What did you think of, uh, him trying to figure out the passcode? I enjoyed that

Brent: it it, it really felt like that scene in Lord of the Rings, when they're sitting outside the minds of Moya trying to figure out the riddle, like, speak friend and enter . You know, like, what is the password? Oh yeah, it's this right here. And of course the password that was ultimately, uh, chosen, which was Hello old friend, made absolutely the most sense in the world.

I loved that he didn't just come up with it like right away. Like it, he took some time to, um, to figure it out. But, uh,

Jeff: he even did the fastener zip from ba I think that was from Babylon squared,

Brent: right. You had peekaboo. I heard p Kaaboo get thrown in there. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I just, I loved that he still left Garabaldi a message,

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: you know, because I mean, if I remember right, Sinclair and Garabaldi had history prior to Babylon five.

Like Sinclair brought Gu Baldi with him.

Jeff: specifically. And it was like his last chance, like he was out after the Mars stuff with, uh, the Leon camera and, you know, being Uncle Mike and all, he was gonna be on his way out, but Sinclair gave him a.

Brent: right. So Jeff, I guess we'll see what happens with Gu Baldy in the next episode or next episodes. Uh, however that works because you d again, you don't just leave somebody behind unless either like the actor broke his leg and couldn't go do the thing. Right. Or there's a narrative reason other than. I just didn't want you to go to keep here from killing yourself, because otherwise he's on babble on five and he's gonna die.

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: Like station's gonna blow up. This whole thing doesn't.

Jeff: somebody's gotta be there when the station blows, like it's gonna be you.

Brent: right. Um, hey, I wanna talk about that, that message coming in from Ivanova, from the alternate universe.

Jeff: Yeah. Let's do that.

Brent: Okay. This might have been the biggest problem I had with the whole episode.

So much of this episode and the way they're setting this up is things, things are happening where we're bouncing through time and turns out we were the ones doing it the whole time. So let's go do those things so that we make sure that we do those things in time, which it's that Bill and Ted, it's that Harry Potter in the prisoner of Azkaban cyclical.

We are our own causality loop making things happen, which is. Time travel theory that I personally ascribe to, uh, if alternate universes exist, that's fine. I just don't think there's much travel in between them. But this hole that allowed the white star to go six years into the past also opened a hole into alternate timelines to where we saw a vava honesty on a station eight days hence getting blowed up.

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: Right. Uh, by the way, she also mentioned this is Earth Alliance Station Babylon five. Yet when we saw her, she was wearing the independent Babylon five uniform. I don't know what's going on there, , if that was just a mistake.

Jeff: haven't been, we've been clearly not Earth Alliance for many episodes now, for many months. Really in the timeline.

Brent: right.

Jeff: That was, that was, there was a lot. Oh, and I know you got more on it, but there was just a lot that was not, didn't, it didn't line up. Th this whole distress signal just, it, it didn't fit.

Brent: It, it honestly, it felt like just a narrative way to pull them out to Sector 14. And it di it didn't have anything of

Jeff: Well, it created the threat, right? Because there's the whole, we have to go back in time and do these things, and you're like, yeah, sure. I mean, whatever. I guess we do. But now it's like, no, we have to. Cause if we don't, in a Beatles song worth of time, it's all gonna blow up and we're gonna die. But if we go back and do this, then that doesn't happen.

So, so, okay,

Brent: the Beatles reference though, Jeff

Jeff: thanks. Thanks. Got the Beatles in this one. Rolling Stones. And we're only, you know, we're only like halfway through this one, so

Brent: I like it. So they go do that. Um, and that's kinda, I guess the garabaldi and that's the whole garabaldi sits down there and watches it like five times or just saw Battle on five destroyed like five times in a row. I keep hoping they're

Jeff: he hoping something was gonna be different? Like, if I keep watching this, maybe it'll change.

Brent: right. Now that's the one thing I don't think.

I don't think these alternate universes are gonna start to merge or people are gonna bleed through and come into one at least. I hope they're not the, oh, here's a question. The, the vision that Sinclair has of Garabaldi and himself, by the way, on Babylon five, that's from the alternate future, right? Or the alternate universe?

Not from this universe's.

Jeff: Yeah. Cause I think that is happening at the exact same time. Ivanova is up in c n c doing her, um, her distress

Brent: Yeah. And

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: it, I mean, it's already changed if Sinclair's not there.

Jeff: Mm-hmm. exactly.

Brent: So that's cl I'm just

Jeff: But, but Sinclair is there is the thing, because he came to Babylon, so like it lines up that he's there. What doesn't line up is how much more hair Garib Baldi had in that, uh, flashback scene.

That's

Brent: well, you know what also doesn't line up is how much more Harris Sinclair has now because he is very qued.

Jeff: Very voluminous.

Brent: Yeah. Compared and when, and it looked that way, but then when you saw the flashbacks with, with Sinclair, you're like, oh my gosh. He is, you know, this has been a few years, but man, that dude needs a haircut,

Jeff: Got a new barber or, or lost the old one. But on the, on Ivan was distress Call. before we, when I think we, we talked to the, the YouTube crowd about this before we officially started the podcast, but when this episode came out, when it aired, I was on a submarine serving in the US Navy. So I know a little bit, I know one little hitch worth of about like how the military and stuff like that works.

And what I know is that we ran drill after drill after training, after drill all the time so that when the stuff actually went down, we would keep our cool and do the things we needed to do. Ivanova is the first officer of Babylon five. She's a commander in Earth force. She's seen action, she's done everything.

This was entirely out of character for Susan Ivanova and for a commander in the military. I think this was a super bad look for Ivanova. I get it. She was panicked. She was freaked out, but also she's literally trained her entire adult life for this and. I mean, it was, this was, it was not a good scene. It was not a good look at all for

Brent: Yeah, I, again, the only thing I can say about this particular deal, uh, first of all, I think this was the worst part of the whole show,

Jeff: Yes, I agree. I agree. Like by a long

Brent: Yeah. By a long shot. Um, it was a narrative thing, McGuffin, or whatever you wanna call it, to make everything else go. You know, it was just like, you had to give me something, so this is what they did.

And make it feel like it was a threat, but it just, again, alternate universes, alternate timelines, the ability to go change it before it happens makes, it takes all the teeth out of anything like that. So you, you immediately watch that and you're like, yeah, but that's not what's gonna happen. So whatever.

Um, can we move on?

Jeff: I just had one more observation on it, and then we can move on and, and this one, I don't know, maybe this is just me sitting on a high horse and wondering things, but I have to ask if that was Garra, Baldy, if that was Sheridan, if they had a man in that role, would they have had them play that? So like, would they have it just, it really played to me, like the direction in that one was freak out, go, everyone's dying.

Like really just trying to do that whole like, oh my gosh, I'm a woman and I can't control my emotions in a tough time. Like, it really hit me like that. And I was like, I bet if Garabaldi was the dude in C N c, they wouldn't have him going. I haven't, they'd have him yelling, they'd have him screaming, but he'd be trying to solve problems and trying to get stuff together.

And I don't know, just an observation question will never be answered, but. I did not like this scene. Okay, now we can move on.

Brent: I wanna go to Minbar

Jeff: Yeah, let's do

Brent: because there's a lot just from that little scene right at the very beginning. First of all, did you ever play, uh, legend of Zelda? Breath of the Wild?

Jeff: I actually never

Brent: You have not

Jeff: like the only Zelda game I have not

Brent: Okay. You need to fix that

Jeff: Yeah, I own it. It's on my switch. I've just never sat

Brent: What the heck is wrong with you?

Jeff: we're recording this podcast . That's like,

Brent: Fair enough.

Okay. Uh, regardless, we, you can even look up pictures of it. Okay. You've played other Zelda titles before. Okay. One of the, the races of people within the Zelda, the high rule world is called the Zora. Do you know who the Zora are? The water folk? They're the fish folk. Minbar looks like Zora's domain from Zelda.

Breath of the Wild. Swear up and down. It like when you go play Breath of the Wild, especially when you get to where the dam is and all of that sort of stuff. It looks like what we just saw here on Minbar.

Jeff: It reminded me of Shira and like, uh, the, uh, the Crystal Castle or whatever that they, I forget what it was called, like where Light Hope is and stuff. Yeah, same, like same vibe. Yeah.

Brent: see that. I see that. Uh, so we get Sinclair walking through and they come in and they call him Inza

Jeff: Or in Tila depending on who's reading from the, uh, the script in til za if you're Marcus in Tila, if you're Raton or

Brent: Yeah, yeah.

Jeff: guy's name was. Yeah.

Brent: Um, so something immediately jumps out to me about this name probably because I was watching it in subtitles and I kept seeing it in subtitles. All right. Intel Za, the way it's spelled in subtitles. E N T I L, apostrophe z H a.

Jeff: Kind of like Zaha.

Brent: Exactly. Now, I don't speak Mumbar, but I'm wondering is there a connection between these two words until Zah and Zaha?

Jeff: I had, I I, I had the same question.

Brent: I, nobody answered that question. Please do not put the inter, if you put it down there, please go delete it right now.

Jeff: If you see someone who put it attack

Brent: yeah, exactly.

Jeff: shut 'em

Brent: Say no, don't do that. We will find out in the course of time. But I am wondering if they, uh, they're gonna do that. So he opens up the box. There's his name written in his, I I think that's gotta be his own hand.

Jeff: I think so

Brent: It 100% looks like his own hand because it, like, we saw the, the letter to Dalen on and it was written in the same handwriting and we saw, um, we, I remember the letter to Garabaldi. That, that, or some, some, I, I, we've seen that handwriting before. It,

Jeff: Okay.

Brent: Michael O'Hara's handwriting is effectively, is what it looks like.

Um,

Jeff: It's great handwriting. I loved it. It looked, it looks super

Brent: Yeah, super clear. Um, so there's, uh, there's the letter. I don't know what all it said except for maybe you're not coming back from this. He walks

Jeff: my huge, can I drop my huge theory

Brent: Yes.

Jeff: on that? Because later on in the episode, um, he's talking to Len in Minbar right after Sheridan goes away and she's upset and he's like, look, it's cool. I know what happens and trying to settle her down. And that was the moment. I'm like, he wrote the letters like, for sure, cuz he knows what happens.

So last week, Last week I said, there's no way that Sinclair could be valin. I was wrong. Cuz he's got the minbar soul and he was a minbar, not a minbar, not a minbar. You know who else is that? Sinclair in Tila is a Minbar, not of Minbar, who is writing not only instructions on a letter to go to him and Dalen, but also authoring the instructions for it in holy texts from a thousand years ago.

I am now more convinced than ever that Sinclair is Valin reborn

Brent: Oh, you think he's Valin reborn?

Jeff: the soul or him, or maybe, no, he is him going back in time. Yeah, he is va. Yeah, he is

Brent: that's why he's not coming back. It's not that he's going out and dying. He's going back in time and he's just gonna stay.

Jeff: Yeah. He's gonna be the religious

Brent: the guy, like, that's where

Jeff: so that means

Brent: when the war is over, like,

Jeff: That means Valin and Jaquan. Right. The two, two of the biggest like military or religious figures that are out there existed at the same time in the same war, and one of them was Sinclair.

Brent: Is Sheridan Jaquan

Jeff: Oh my God. Could you, could you imagine? Oh, that'd be huge.

Brent: not born of.

Jeff: Because Zs was like, what did he say? He looked at shared. He is like, I Zs excited to see you for other reasons.

Brent: which is, that's a look. I said this episode did not answer too many questions, but it opened up new ones and that's one, that one leads right into the, why did Kosh have to sacrifice himself for Sheridan? What did Dylan mean when she said, you know, he's gotta be the one that gets saved? There's something about Sheridan for sure.

Jeff, I'm with you. I, when you said Sheridan was Valin, I wasn't feeling that one. But when you say Sinclair is Valin, because Sinclair goes back in time and he becomes the guy who causes all of this and completes that loop. I'm digging, I'm picking up everything you're putting down on that one son. I am with you till the end ride or die on that theory that Sinclair is Valin.

Jeff: Is Valin.

Brent: awesome. Oh, I

Jeff: why he is growing his hair out. He wants to look like a religious figure, so he is gotta get that, that big, that

Brent: And I mean, and especially since he's not mbar, like he's just gonna come in and kind of like rule over the mbar cast. That means he's setting up the great council for what it is he's doing. Oh my gosh. Ugh.

Jeff: he's, he's start Yeah. Valin started the Gray Council.

Brent: Yeah,

Jeff: He was the first, you know, and Oh

Brent: Uh, hey, and you know what, Jeff, that actu that makes sense of, of one of my notes here that I did not have.

Okay. I gotta talk about Kosh three,

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: the Kosh on Minbar. Like that, that wasn't the new Kosh. That was a different Kosh, right? A

Jeff: It was so well spoken. Like when it spoke it was clear, understandable. It didn't have that weird pause. Totally. This is a, uh oh, what's the word I'm looking for? Totally. This is a lon that's gone native on Minbar, who could speak the language and

Brent: exactly. So I'm, I call 'em Kosh three

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: Right, because they're all Kosh. Right.

Jeff: exactly. We're all Kosh.

Brent: But he says this line, uh, to the, the dude Reon or whatever his name was, he says, Sinclair is returning to the beginning. And my note was, what does that mean? What is he returning to the beginning? Now I'm thinking in the moment I'm thinking like all the way back to the first ones.

Jeff: Oh, okay.

Brent: That's what I was thinking in the moment. But if he's turning back to become Valin,

Jeff: The beginning of Minbar society. Really like modern Minbar society.

Brent: that's where he's returning to so that he can start this whole process all over again. You know what I mean? And oh my, oh my gosh, Jeff, what does this mean for the prophecy that Delin was like, oh yeah, this has to be us and about us and by Val's name, I'm gonna go become human, part human, or whatever.

Jeff: Well, cuz you think about it, right? Cuz when Sinclair goes back Yeah. He knows all these things. He knows that the souls were moving over from minbar to, to humans. He knew that they could chrysalis themselves into some hybrid of some kind. He had all the answers and he went back and planted the question.

Brent: set it all up and made it, made it happen. I mean, oh my gosh. It's, it's, uh, there we go. Um, I, I will note one thing. So we get into Dylan. Uh, she's in the dark and she does that whole, I am the gray standing between the candle and the light. And he is here. And then I look over the shoulder and I see like everything in her quarters, which, first of all, she has light saber on her

Jeff: Yeah, I know

Brent: But she also has an a, an in-room open bar, which looks phenomenal. And you look at some of that glassware, Jeff, I am promising. She must shop at the same bottle store as Clark.

Jeff: You know what I think it is? I think it's the exact same set as Lawn's Room, and they just didn't clear off his bar and they just turned off lights to try and

Brent: There you go. There you go. Jeff, I'm I, oh, I'm all for Sinclair being vain, and that's the whole thing. Oh my gosh. Oh, I didn't even think about that one.

Jeff: I'm gonna be so excited about that one. I called that so long ago and like, and, and I, and lit, I, I I got so excited

Brent: you didn't say it was Sinclair. You said it was Sheridan.

Jeff: No, I said, I've said forever at

Brent: You said Sinclair, that it was

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Okay.

Jeff: Because that was the whole, like, he, he's got this, the minbar soul and whatever, but I thought it was like the soul of vain that had come into Sinclair and it was just last week where I'm like, I give up.

Like it's not, I'm gonna let that one go and then it's, I'm like, no, it's totally what's gonna happen.

Brent: Okay. Uh, so let's go back to our favorite character. Um, two Z Actresses.

Jeff: Yes. Or

Brent: Z actresses.

Jeff: at least two of them. And they refer to themselves as z Like, you know. Oh, Zaris. Like, like I think they were both calling themselves

Brent: Oh, were they? Oh, I missed that part. Nice. Okay. Uh, but anyway, uh, so Zs is back. I loved and hated at the same time how they went back and explained away when Z Atheros saw Sinclair in Babylon squared and went, brother. Oh no, you're not the one, not the one, not the one

old Sinclair. And by that I mean New Sinclair Sinclair. And today he meets Z Atheros and says, you're gonna see me, but it's not me as I am now. So you have to pretend not to see, not to know me.

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: it reinterprets that whole scene from Babylon squared as him first going, oh, it's you. Oh wait, I'm supposed to pretend like I don't know you.

So now you're not the one. Not the one, not the one. I love that they wrote that back into the story. What I hate about it is how they wrote it back into the story, because it was so much cooler to me. When Z Atheros looks at she, uh, not Sharon, I'm sorry, Sinclair and goes, Hey, it's you. Oh no, you're not the one.

And what he meant by that was, you are not the one yet.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: see you. I know who you are. You are the, Nope, you're not him yet. It's gonna

Jeff: thing hasn't

Brent: yeah. Something hasn't changed in you yet. You are not him yet. That was way cooler than, uh oh. You're, oh wait, you told me to pretend like I don't know you. Like I hate that one, but I love that they went back and rewrote it like, and gave you the reason for it too.

Jeff: I lo I I, I agree. The other way of looking at it is so much better, but I thought that it was so consistent with Z Atheros, cuz there was a whole line of stuff of like draw's given me a list of things I can't say and I'm not, and that's, and that's one of the things, it's one of the things I can't say, so let's forget I said it and you know, just like all these instructions that he's given and so it lines up, this was another thing and where he almost messes up, right?

Like, oh, it's, nope, I, I, I may not know why, I might not understand what you told me, but I will do the thing that you told me. So you're not the

Brent: we have confirmed, we have absolutely unequivocally confirmed. Sinclair is the one.

Jeff: Yes.

Brent: He is the.

Jeff: Period. Yep.

Brent: Also, man, I feel like I should have a buzzer for these references in today's episode. Uh, I know why we love Z Atheros so much because Zs is Hagrid.

Jeff: He really is, isn't he? Nope. Nope. Shouldn't have said that. Shouldn't have said that.

Brent: Right, right. Uh, you know, um, your beast a burden. I'll just kind of go do what I gotta do. I don't really

Jeff: got it. I'll go do the thing here. I'll, I'll give you a little bit of wisdom that you might not take very seriously. And then Yeah, he totally is.

Brent: Saying, just saying, uh, we're so, we're speculating what's still left out there. Question unanswered. Now. Why is Atheros pleased to meet Sheridan?

Jeff: Yeah. For Reasons Unknown or, or something like that. He says.

Brent: Loved it.

Jeff: We did learn though where Atheros is from.

Brent: I missed this.

Jeff: so, apparently he's from Detroit because Atheros can't have anything nice The, the dude's so hard on himself. Like, I just felt so bad for him. Right. You know, uh, Atheros can't have anything nice. Oh, Atheros have very sad life. Well, he'll, probably a very sad death. At least a symmetry. Like,

Brent: You just went into your Orlando voice there, bud.

Jeff: I did. I, that's a, I don't do voices. That's a thing. I just, you probably know that having watched all these episodes with us, I don't, I can do Londo.

That's what I

Brent: So there's a moment when, um, I think it's Sinclair and Sheridan are sitting on the bridge of the white star or whatever, and, uh, they start naming off all these great pairs throughout, throughout history. And, and when he goes, uh, uh, Lois and Clarke, or, I'm sorry, uh, Lewis and Clarke, and I forget who else he said, and then he goes, Lucy and Ethel.

Jeff: Yeah. . I thought that was great.

Brent: Okay. First of all, the words he said were Lewis and Clark, the great explorers of the Northwest Passage.

Jeff: I know them well up here in the northwest. Like it's a, we have Lewis and Clark College just down

Brent: There you go. The subtitles on my viewing said Lois and Clark

Jeff: Yep.

Brent: both work

Jeff: Yeah, totally. I saw the subtitle. I thought to myself, I'm like, is, is, was Lois and Clark a Warner Brothers thing? Like I started like, are, are they dropping like cross property thing

Brent: I, yeah. WB is, is uh, DC Right? There you go. I like it. But then Lucy and Ethel, and I thought that was an interesting idea. Oh, I guess I'm gonna burn my third one right here. It's okay. Um, one of the things about Lucy Lucille Ball is she is the person who saved and got Star Trek off the ground.

Jeff: Yep.

Brent: Right. Like she, like just in history, they were, they were not gonna pick up the pilot and she stopped and said, actually have 'em redo the pilot because I kind of like this idea.

And they bought the pilot after the second shot. Right. Um, the idea that one of them represents Lucy and the other one represents Ethel. It like one represents Star Trek, the other one represents something else altogether. You've got like, there's a little bit of like, Hey, star Trek babbel on five. Like, we can come together, we can, we can do a thing.

Right. I liked it.

Jeff: I just pictured them eating chocolates like as fast as they could . I'm like, I could see that happen.

Brent: Benjamin.

Jeff: I like them together though. Like I thought they worked really well together. It's too bad we won't see more because something flashed Sheridan in the face and then as anchors somehow. But

Brent: Well, let's talk about that. Sheridan gets blasted apparently to the future,

Jeff: yeah.

Brent: right? And we see Old Emperor Lawn pissed off. Jeff, this the future in a closed timeline or is this a possible alternate future?

Jeff: I gotta believe it's a possible al at, at this point, everything we've seen is a possible alternate future.

Brent: Yeah,

Jeff: You know? And, and it's hard because like, like, yeah, okay, so Sheridan wins that's what I heard. Right. You know, Hey, you, you got rid of the shadows, but you didn't because it's not necessarily gonna happen.

You know? So

Brent: you take all the, as soon as you, as soon as you introduce this, doesn't have to be the future. You take all the teeth out of it and you, and you Yeah. You, you don't commit to it. Um,

Jeff: I wanted desperately to not bring the effects into our conversation today, cuz there's a lot of story that went on and some of the effects in this one we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're good. We're good. This scene lost me. Where Londo is furious. He's gonna execute Sheridan because, because they've come to Ravage Sonari Prime, they show Sonari Prime and there's like two little fires and I'm just like, put some water on it, dude.

Like, what? What are you so mad about? Like, it, it was so underwhelming when they showed that piece. But I heard a thing that Londo said that we've never, I don't think we've ever heard before, but the shadows, dark servants came to Sonari Prime.

Brent: He said more than that, Jeff. He said they're minions. And dark servants were left after the shadows were defeated. Also, also, Dalin Dalin, Jeff in her briefing, her movie briefing, talking about when Babylon four first came online and that nuclear fission bomb is heading towards it. Okay, this is when the shadows are still asleep.

What did she say? She said, the shadows, allies, the allies of the shadows, not the shadows. The allies of the shadows brought this bomb, and then Londo turns around and talks about their minions and their dark servants, and this feels more than just Morden to me,

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: and this to me, Jeff, this is the biggest question I have coming out of this episode.

Is, who are these people that I don't think we've ever heard about?

Jeff: So here's my thought I got. And it's so high level, it's ridiculous. But it has to cost so much money to do shadow scenes, right? They're a hundred percent cgi and then to do the battles with them or whatever they're, whether it was, whether this is the first time we've heard it, we've heard it before, but they've created this concept of a dark servant so that they can put some people in alien makeup and make that be the bad guys that are on week to week.

Cuz I mean, we know that Babylon five was put together on, you know, tiny budget and they can't do a whole shadow war for another season the way it is. So I think, I think this is a way to be like, no, we're gonna, we're gonna make some aliens, you know, be the servants and now we can have, we can have actual fights and stuff

Brent: Yeah. Because this is going to come up over the course of the next season. Cause there's no way that this is ending by next episode.

Jeff: No,

Brent: there's no way. But yeah, Jeff, to me that is the clear number one question is who are these people and what do they have? Because that's what he says. He says, the shadows were to, yeah, you defeated the shadows, but you forgot about these folks over here

Jeff: Didn't clean up your

Brent: left them to rot and I got pissed off at you and I'm mad.

And Lando is bad all the way to the end. There is no redemption for him. And I'm not saying, I'm not saying that he is so guilty that he irredeemable, I am saying, turns out he doesn't get redeemed. And that breaks my heart, Jeff,

Jeff: But it's an alternate future. Right? You know,

Brent: leaves some hope for my heart because it takes all the teeth out of the future when you do that.

Jeff: yeah. For a dude to sit there and I mean, he and Sheridan are, I don't wanna say they're buddies, you know, but they've got a relationship and for him to literally sit there while fours send tar, know, soldiers who just beating him to a pulp and then, and then tell 'em to his. I'm gonna do what I should have done a long time ago.

Put you outta my misery. Whoa. Whoa.

Brent: listen, there's gonna be a lot more of that, of that in the second episode, and I can't wait to see where that goes because something's gotta happen there. And I'm, I'm super excited to see, uh, what happens with that. Um, Jeff, the only thing I have left is just the actual plan. The actual deal. So way back when the oper, the Mbar operational base got obliterated, and so we needed a new place and they went and stole Babylon four to be the operational base.

Now I said Babylon four is b Flipping through time through all the different war pieces. I don't know that that's the, the. That might be where I missed a little bit of this whole story, but it, it's blipping back to become the new operational center of the war from a thousand years ago. Right. And Sheridan's the guy taking it back.

Not Sheridan, I'm sorry. Sinclair's the guy taking it back and they gotta go steal it. We're on a heist. Suddenly it turned into a heist film.

Jeff: Yeah. Like that's how it ended was like, let's get our gear, here's the plan. Let's all split up and do our, do our things so that we can go.

Brent: Are we, ha are we happy with this being the answer to what was going on with Babylon for?

Jeff: I think so. It's not,

Brent: This is great.

Jeff: all what I expected at all. But it's also like, this is super, like it's creative, unexpected. Yeah. And, and, and, and, and in a, in a world of time travel, it makes sense,

Brent: Have you not watched sci-fi before?

Jeff: right?

Brent: No. I fully, again, I expected it to be a little bit broader, but I'm okay with it being contained to this, to this one deal,

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: you know? Um, and, and if this story, a war without end is actually more about making sure that that war happens a thousand years ago, so we can continue on.

And this isn't the start of some big inter galactic bringing everybody together. I'm cool with that, but I do love that this is, we're we're bringing these pieces together and, uh, you know, they, they gotta go steal the ship and find out what happens. And listen, you know what we haven't seen yet, Jeff? We haven't seen Sinclair in the Marty McFly Back to the future suit, right?

Um, we don't know. We've left Sheridan in the. In jail with Lando about to be executed.

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: Uh, we've got Gar Baldi back on the station, which in eight days time is about to be obliterated. Um, we've got questions about who are these allies of the shadows? Who are the minions and the dark servants of the shadows?

It's not Morden, right? It's something

Jeff: Mor wouldn't be, morden's not gonna go set fires and you know what I mean? Like, he's a person manipulator. He's not

Brent: Is he morden's a zombie? Right?

Jeff: I don't think so. I think that he's someone who like swore allegiance, just like Anna Sheridan

Brent: Oh,

Jeff: swore

Brent: zombies. Those zombies, like, like those, those side people that we saw frozen zombies. Anyway, um, Jeff, that's the episode, man.

Jeff: Do you, so I, because I know that people are gonna comment on this, the scar that sh that, uh, Sinclair

Brent: Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jeff: So I wanna check my thinking cuz I think he had that, I think that was Future Sinclair in Babylon squared had that.

Brent: Yeah. And we were like, whoa, what do you get the scar from? Oh, that'd be cool to find out. a training scar from his days as a ranger,

Jeff: Yeah. Something like that maybe. Yeah.

Brent: Didn't really

Jeff: And then I think the other thing I have is, so Sinclair, I was pretty, I pretty, we were not the kindest, you know, to his leadership and management. I'll talk about that in our wrap up as well. But, um, he was always kind of a dude, right? Like blue collar guy who kind of fell into some stuff, is kind of how he presented.

Did you buy the whole, like, now he's super, Mr. Cryptic and all the Rangers have inside jokes about him kind of thing. Like, did that connect for you?

Brent: Yes it did. Yes it did. Because he, um, I, I don't know if it's just the Mbar soul taking over more, which I don't think is a thing. Um, Sinclair was always a more, um, inward thought processed type of a person. Like from the gathering. He was not a wordy person. He was not a, a boisterous guy. He was not Sheridan. Right? Like he, he was, he was very reserved in what he said and what he did. He was very deliberate with the things that he did and the things he said.

So to take him and drop him for however many years in Minbar of all places where he can go get some zen, you know, monastery time and turn into this big ranger guy like, I don't think that that's like just who he was from day one, but for him to have grown into that. Yeah, I, I, I buy it. How about you?

Jeff: I, I, I did kind of, but, but I think what you said really helped put it into words better for me. Cuz I think the other thing too that I was thinking about when you were talking, when he was like an introspective kind of a quiet guy, he was raised and studied under Jesuits, like that was a big part of his character.

Right. You know, and we talked a lot about, in, in other episodes what that, what that entails. And so I think it really is that whole, like he got plopped in the middle. We saw the impact a couple of weeks or months on Men Bar had on Veer and he was back and forth between there and Babylon five Sheridan's been, or Sinclair's been in Deep for what, two years or something like that, you know?

So Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, I, I, I bought it like I got it sort of, but like you saying, that really helped, like Yeah, okay. Yeah, that totally. Because at first when Marcus was saying his thing, I'm like, yeah, no, it was not an inside joke with the Rangers. Like, but yeah, I could totally see it being that, that makes a lot more sense now. but I think Brent, have reached that part of the

Brent: We, we have, but Jeff, you have a few remaining. Can I borrow a reference?

Jeff: You may,

Brent: Okay. So, um, completely out of everything else, Lanier talking about the ship, the white star. Oh, she's good. , organic technology, blah, blah, blah.

Jeff: I bet you're about to steal the one I actually have written on my notes, so go

Brent: so they're shooting the thing and all of a sudden it's just like, Nope, nope, I've got, nope, I've got a personal shield. Suddenly the white star is a Borg vessel.

Jeff: Exactly. They've adapted.

Brent: You've. The shadows need to rotate their modulator frequencies. Go ahead, Jeff. Get to that point, man.

Jeff: Well, it makes sense though. The, the vlan are everywhere. They have assimilated every species in the universe and now at this point they're coming in and seeding all the religions for the next set. So, yeah. Totally makes sense. That's good thinking, Brent, we've reached that part of the show where we boil this all down.

We see if it has any of that sci-fi message, that star treky quality to it, like a deep moral message. Maybe it's holding up a mirror to society or giving us some sort of hope that we could be better in the future. I'm gonna do that by rating this episode on a scale of zero to five Deltas, and you, Brent, are gonna rate this on an on a scale of zero to five star theories as to how much we liked this episode and just how Babylon five it was.

So I'm gonna go first and I felt like there were kind of two themes that really stood out to me on this one. The idea of trust.

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: And then the idea of having the right person in the right place, doing the right job, what Dalen shares about all the past stuff or whatever. She, she started off by asking Sheridan, do you trust me? Because if he didn't like this would just be like, all right, nice little padded room for you over here, sweetheart. Let's just, let's just move you into that. But by connecting, by building relationships, by talking, right? The thing we talk about on here a lot, it forms the trust necessary to share critical information.

Now, there's a lot of stuff that, like if Delen just was some rando that came on board, like no one would've even listened to her, let alone moved forward to try. But because they have trust, they end up going back in time, six years to, you know, give it their best shot. The thing here though is that Sheridan.

Despite trusting her, still needed more info. He still needed to verify, like what she was saying. He wasn't willing to leap without that and he wasn't wrong to do that. What it showed me, like the message here, we could talk a lot about trust and how that's a very great sci-fi and Star Trek theme, but we don't always often see the next step.

And this showed us that next step trust gets you to the table, right? You still have to back up your stuff and be ready to deliver. And that's what Dalen was. She had hers ducks in a row, she had her story, she had the pitch ready and utilized that trust to get there to deliver it. And I think that that's is a great next kind of step on a Star Trek message we've talked about here on this show a couple of times, but I look at Sinclair and he, we just, we just talked about he's different and I think he's different for the better.

In the first season. Like I said, I was really, really hard on him as a manager and as a leader, but that's because he wasn't prepared for being in the position that he was in. And he, and, and frankly, he wasn't really cut out for the job, you know, I mean, tried whatever. Albert Einstein. Yeah.

Brent: fair to that point, cause I know people are clacking on their keyboards right now. He was meant to not be cut out for the job. That's, that's how the role was written. But you're right. He was not cut out for the job that was on purpose. We understand. I just want y'all to know.

We understand.

Jeff: Yeah. And it's not a, this isn't a dis on him at all. This is just a fact,

Brent: he was written. Sure. Go ahead.

Jeff: yeah. Well, Albert Einstein is attributed, he didn't say this, but he is attributed as saying that everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it'll live its whole life believing that it's. Sinclair as commander of Babylon five was a fish trying to climb a tree or maybe not climb a tree. Maybe something a little less extreme as that, but just wasn't really set up for it. But doing something like that, he's doing now as ranger one, as in Tila, like now he's connected to a higher purpose. He's got the relationships he needs now he's a fish that's swimming, right?

He, uh, I love the line. He's the arrow loosed from the bow. No hesitation, no doubts. We have to work individually to find where we belong and we also have to felt, help others do that. And I think this, this is the message in this one. When we are where we're supposed to be and we're doing what we're supposed to do, amazing things happen all the time.

All the time. This isn't, well sometimes if you can do the right thing, when you can line up your personal mission with your actions and what you do, there's literally nothing in the world in the universe that can stop you from doing it. We saw that in Star Trek with Kirk when he became admiral, right in the motion picture Star Trek two.

He was an admiral and he was the wrong guy for that job. He was mad, he was depressed. It was awful, right? He gets demoted to captain and now he's out rocking it, doing stuff all over again. He was being in the right role. These are moments in a super plot heavy, very much an episode that rides on the character development that we've enjoyed for two and a half seasons, two and three quarter seasons almost, and they're great moments. Like I had to dig, I had to pull out some of my Star Fleet Leadership Academy skills to get these messages out of it. So I and I, before I give the Delta rating, I just wanna make it crystal clear, right? That like Deltas aren't a rating of the episode and how good it was. There are great Star Trek episodes that don't get high deltas.

I'm imagining this is gonna get a high star fury rating. Probably a high ranking. It's not getting a lot of deltas. I'm giving it one and a half.

Brent: Yeah. This was an episode. That was story, story, story, story, story, story, story. We're not trying to tell you any messages.

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: Story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story, story. If you pull a message out of it, it's cuz you're looking for it,

Jeff: exactly. Because you have a podcast that is meant specifically to analyze a show for messages.

Brent: I, I'm with you on that. I loved the line that Sinclair said, you referenced it where he said like a, like an arrow loose from the bow. I'm flying straight, I'm flying fast. Like the whole point of that to me, and that this would've been the one I would've drilled on, on if I was doing Deltas. It would've been that, it would've been the, he's spent so much time not knowing where to go or what to be, and hesitating Sinclair had been hesitating and now he knows exactly what he's supposed to do, and he can move forward in confidence, he can move forward in power.

He can do what he has to do to go forward. And when you can put yourself in that sort of a position, And just know what you're supposed to be doing. I like how you said it to do what you are meant to be doing. You know, cuz not everybody's supposed to be in that leadership position over there. Like be where you are supposed to be.

Know

Jeff: And that's not a bad thing. It doesn't mean you're not good, right. It just means that that role isn't for you. That's it.

Brent: Frankly, Jordy probably ought not ever really be a captain.

Jeff: Exactly. Exactly.

Brent: it's not just necessarily his best spot. And that's, that's okay. Now I know he does eventually become one, but whatever,

Jeff: But Jordy's a great example, right? Cuz he started out doing, he was at the con right in the first season and then, and he was probably fine, competent, whatever is all right. But then he became chief engineer and if you remove all of the like, weird brahm stuff out of it there, he was an incredible

Brent: He was,

Jeff: He's great, awesome captain. I'm with you. That guy shouldn't be leading a, a

Brent: he's just not there, you know,

Jeff: no. And that's not a

Brent: into that. Exactly. Exactly. Another example, miles O'Brien. Miles O'Brien was, uh, he was a non-Com officer. At what point should he go, go, go get commissioned and be like, be an officer, be a guy. No, he doesn't need to do that. That's not his deal. You know, it's just not where he needs to be.

We can think of a thousand other examples of it, but hey, we're also Star Trek guys. So, uh, but as far as Star Furies, this is not a Star Trek podcast. Jeff, did you know that?

Jeff: what, seriously, we should put that, we should put that in the name if it's not a star. Oh

Brent: I mean, we're, we're back. We're podcasting about Battle on Five now, Jeff, um, so I'm gonna talk about Star furries. Star furries is kind of a two-fold idea. Does it take the Star Trek message and do it in a uniquely Babylon five way, in a way that Star Trek never would've done. Or just how much did we like this episode? As you mentioned, there's not really much on the message side for it to even do something in a Babylon five kind of a way.

So really this Star Fury rating is mostly on how much did we enjoy this episode, Jeff? This was damn good tv. This was a damn good episode. Five star Furies the whole way. I'd give it six if I had an angry run scepter from N F L today, I or, or, or whatever that is. Good morning football. I would give that to this episode.

This was a great episode. Up and down star furries all the way five of them. It's got it. And I love this episode. And please can we wrap this up so I can go watch the next hang.

Jeff: I know seriously. Well, listen, I cannot wait for this next part because just like we did last season,

Brent: it's the first episode. Just forget it. This is, this is

Jeff: number one.

Brent: This is the new number one. We're getting there. This is the fir. This is the best episode of the whole damn season right now. This is the new number one, better than Severed Dreams. Although that was an awesome episode too.

Jeff: It was great

Brent: is the, this is a better episode.

Jeff: Boom. There it is. Can't argue with it. Wouldn't argue. Anyway, that's it for war Without End part one. Next week we,

Brent: Jeff. Jeff. Oh, do it.

Jeff: Yep. What? And that is, For war without End part one next week. What?

Brent: Stop it. Next week is roll without in part two. And what more without in part two is gonna be, is more of this, it's more of this, it's more of this. Let's go.

Jeff: can I drop? I have an unpopular opinion. I think that next week I just have to do this. I'm sorry. I have to do it. I think that next week we're gonna be almost in the same spot that we were when this started. Oh, they're not gonna attack like before World War without N part one, like two frames before the episode starts.

That's where this is gonna start, where it's just like, yep, everything's fine. Shadows haven't attacked in a while. Wonder what the big deal is with that. Literally, we just got a ton of context added in. This is gonna be an action heavy episode that just tells cool stories and wrap stuff up and gives us context moving forward, but

Brent: are you telling

Jeff: we're resetting.

Brent: button?

Jeff: I think it is, it's a, it's a reset button that was necessary just like at the end of Bill and Ted's, where they had to go back and put the keys behind the desk and put the trash can in the thing. It's necessary, but I think when we get back through this next one, we're just gonna be like, oh,

Brent: I'm, I'm gonna challenge you though, that's not a reset button. A reset button is when you get to the end and you press it and then everything that just happened didn't happen like a year without hell, right?

Jeff: Our year of hell. Yeah.

Brent: Yeah. Like, or a year with hell. Yeah. That's what I like when you get to the end and just the whole thing doesn't happen.

Right. Uh, but I'm, I'm feeling ya that you're right. I think we're gonna get back to it and this is where we're gonna be. And off onto whatever new, you know, unknown future. This is in front of us.

Jeff: But we're gonna find out right here next week. Thank you all so much for joining us for our incredible discussion of this incredible episode. If you haven't already, please subscribe or follow wherever you're listening or watching, and leave us a review. We will read it right here on the podcast, Brent, until next time.

Brent: Hey Jeff.

Jeff: Yeah. What's up, man?

Brent: Listen, I'm going to need you. To edit out me yelling at you quite a bit, you know, just kind of from earlier in the show. If you could do that for me.

Jeff: What?

Brent: You, where I was, you, you, you understand what I'm saying? Right? Like, just, just edit some, you understand.

Jeff: Yes? Yeah. Uh, no. No. Jeff, no. Understand. Jeff does not do understandings. No. Jeff does. Doings. Doings, but not, not understandings.

Brent: just do closing out the show. Okay.

Jeff: Peace, and the long life.