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 first time for you, the one who is,
Brent: Steph and I are two veteran Star Trek podcasters that are searching for important messages, mirrors to society, hope that we're gonna have a better future. Deep moral learnings and teachings, those sorts of things. Things we used to look for in Star Trek. We're now looking for those types of things here in Babylon five, but we're looking for how Babylon five is also doing it in its own unique way.
Jeff: Things we like to call Babylon. Five messages. That's what we're looking for. What we're not looking for are Star Trek references. Because they can be abound for us in any sci-fi that we watch. Because you and I, we've watched a lot of Star Trek in our day. So to keep us talking about Babylon five and maybe other really cool sci-fi properties as well, we play the rule of three.
This is a game that limits us to no more than three references to Star Trek per episode. That's it. Three. One of those no substitutions exchanges are refund
Brent: And if we make one of those references, Jeff, the folks will hear,
Jeff: one of their favorite sounds.
Brent: gives me warm, fuzzy, tingly every time I hear it. Jeff. Oh yes. Now listen along with our rule of three, there is another game that we like to play at the end of the show where we try to guess what next week's episode is gonna be about based on title alone. Well, this is the spot where we play a
Jeff: Time to pay the piper. Oh.
Brent: Oh, messed you up. Lemme
Jeff: We play. Oop,
Brent: I told, Hey, listen, you guys get the behind the scenes. This is where everything gets messed up. Uh, Jeff thought that I was pausing to get the cue. I was pausing to take a breath.
Jeff: not allowed to do that. We don't have time for breathing here. Come
Brent: I, well, I just, I just took a drink and like my mouth was like, still like half full of drink.
I was like, all right. Anyway, uh, let's here, well this is the spot of the show where we play part two to that game. We title this game.
Jeff: Time to pay the piper.
Brent: This is where we revisit our prediction from last week to see how close we were. Jeff, what did you say? Today's episode, movements of Fire and Shadow was gonna be about,
Jeff: The episode that we, the viewer, get the dark minions revealed to us, likely through Londo and we near the beginning of the end, huge war and the beginnings of the dissolution of the Interstellar Alliance.
Brent: not quite, not quite The dissolution of the Interstellar Align. May, I mean, everybody's kind of going off like, I dunno, I don't know if this is a good Southern phrase. I don't know. I, I don't know if this hits family friendly or not. Uh, we have a phrase called Half Cocked.
Jeff: Oh,
Brent: Everyone's just going off. I think it's a chicken reference more than anything.
I. If it's not, I'm gonna go with it. It's a chicken reference. Uh, you know, just everybody's kind of, kind of getting crazy and doing their own stuff. But no drop, no minions, uh, nothing, nothing along those lines. So 40%.
Jeff: Yeah. Sounds good about you.
Brent: Uh, basically I said the same thing. I said, the war's raging on the alliance is broken.
The rocker coming out into the open. Um, and Lando finds out all about them.
Jeff: I'm gonna say, I don't know, 40%.
Brent: Yeah, that sounds like a really good, that sounds good to me, Jeff. Well, uh, that was yours and Mine's guess. Uh, so there, there's what we guessed, but then there's what actually happened and. You know, I, I know the rule sometimes is, is if if it doesn't go according to the way we predicted, then we didn't like it.
So, Jeff, as we, as we start to look at how much we didn't like this episode, why don't you remind folks now just how wrong J m Ss was with how he actually wrote this show?
Jeff: Feel like I'm really set up for a fall on that
Brent: For, for the record, I'm being incredibly facetious. This was an amazing episode and, uh, yeah, go Jeff.
Jeff: Hey, like slash ss there. Okay. They're blowing up the jump gates. Yeah. Like that is seriously actually happening. The Ari r, as we later learn sending cruisers that apparently don't have any people on them to open jump gates inside of jump gates. It's unbelievable and totally against the agreed upon rules of civilized warfare.
Sheridan is telling a brand new addition to the crew. Captain Lockley is her name. Oh, wait, no, nevermind. Yeah, we know. We know who this person is. Yeah. So Sheridan tells her all about this and that he's given the order for white stars to fire on Centauri ships that are engaged in combat, but that's not
Brent: did just outta curiosity, this, this Captain Lockley person did, did, did you pick up on anything between her and Sheridan?
Jeff: full tension.
Brent: Well, you think there's any history there between the two of them at all?
Jeff: I didn't get that at all. It was a zero chemistry between them. Anyway.
Brent: Just, okay. Just wanted to check, but felt the same thing
Jeff: Got some thoughts there actually, but I don't know if we'll get to 'em in the conversation, but, uh,
Brent: Sorry, I interrupted your recap. Please, please go.
Jeff: It's very, it's a very good point. So we're talking about war crimes right now. Veer tells Franklin and Lita that the drowsy, drowsy aren't returning our dead bodies to us.
The centara they've been playing Paul, they've been returning all the dead bodies from everybody else to, to their appropriate worlds. He asked them to go to the Droy home world to see what's up. And Holy Lando mal do they stumble onto some stuff. Turns out the drowsy aren't giving the bodies back 'cause there ain't no bodies, nope.
Just some leftover shadow tech that leader recognizes that lets them remotely control ships. This explains a mystery. Sheridan's been trying to get to the bottom of. What is the sari strategy here? The sari been outta character with their tactics. Basically, they've got an offense and a defense offense randomly attacks ships while the defense is protecting sari bases and other important locations.
And now we know why. Shadow remote controls for the attacks, sari, normal ships for the defense. Now, wouldn't it be great if this were the end of the war crime section of the recap? Well, it is not. The drows are disgusted with the human response or non-response to the sari, and they want to go right to the heart of the Republic Sari Prime, and they convinced the nars to join in.
They're gonna blast the whole thing, civilians and all discovering it A little late, Sheridan gets a fleet of white stars and the chase is on. But no Delaine and no Lanier in the little fleet to help. Seeing that they need more white stars and more powerful ones because apparently the Centara are putting up more of a fight than the shadows did.
Well, Sheridan asked Delen to ask the gray council to partner with Earth to develop a destroyer class white star, which sounds pretty cool, and it totally makes me wonder where Ivanova and her new badass ship has been through all of this. But they're on the way to the GR Council to pitch the idea, and they get intercepted in hyperspace.
Couple sari ships bear down them, bear down on them and blow 'em up. But not all the way up. Only mostly blow up. Lanier and Delen are live stranded in hyperspace, but things don't look good for 'em. As the rogue attack force approaches, sari Prime, Londo and Jaar have been sitting in their prison cell. As they banter and londo goes to sleep, a bright light knocks them both out Longo's abducted and we see those alien stripe looking guys again.
I think they must clearly be dark minions as well. They do an abduction style surgery on Londo and then plop him back in his cell. It's totally oblivious. It's kind of a bad dream. Then thanks to a disgusting throw up by Jaar. Londo gets out of the cell and the regent comes to meet with him and he's full of all kinds of good news.
Let's see, a regent guy will be dead in the morning and he's looking forward to that. Uh, they have told him a lot of things They will reveal themselves tolando soon enough. You know, a lot of scary cryptic stuff that we, the viewer kind of understand, but honestly just freaks Lando out. Then he drops one last piece before staring peacefully at the sky and the oncoming onslaught from the drowsy and the narn.
You see, he ordered the defense force to leave the planet, and he turned off the planetary defense systems. If Sheridan and his fleet don't get there soon, it's going to be a complete bloodbath. Now, Brent, I gotta know, how did you first react to movements of fire and
Brent: No, no, no, no, no. You, you are not leaving. That right there,
Jeff: That's where the
Brent: that is not where the episode ended.
Jeff: Oh yeah. It's totally where it just stops. Pew, pew, pew.
Brent: no. Yes. That's the part you miss. It's not, if Sheridan and them don't get there, it's gonna be a blood bath. No, no, no. It is crap coming out of the weapons, ports of these ships that are now in, uh, orbit of Sari Prime.
Jeff: It is totally Knights of the old Republic firing on terrorists. And a matter of fact, when I was taking notes on this, my daughter was watching it with me and she said, dad, this is like your video game. Yeah. Look, you pay more attention to my video games than you do this
Brent: do more than one video game. Uh, I'm still working through mass effect right now, Jeff.
Jeff: It's just one scene. One scene. You don't gotta, you don't
gotta
Brent: enough, fair enough. Um, okay. Um, you know, Jeff, we, we have talked on this show before, maybe not extensively, but definitely more than once, about the idea of subverting expectations.
And you know that that's a cool storytelling device to go in and subvert people's expectations, to set them up for something and then do something completely different. It's fun, it's edgy, it's, it's all those sorts of things. And it is something that if done too often is annoying and obnoxious and entirely uninteresting because that's not the way good storytelling often works.
It, it becomes less interesting the more it happens. It it like
Jeff: becomes the expect, it becomes the expectation to subvert the expectation, so you're not actually subverting
Brent: exactly. Exactly. Uh, some things need to be done just sparingly, not all the time. Uh, this is an episode that has set up our expectations and is fulfilling them one by one. And it's so good. Here's my exact note. Holy cow.
This is good tv. So good. This is exactly what I've wanted coming outta the last two episodes, even if I didn't get the prediction exactly right. Go figure. Uh, it just keeps getting better and this shows no signs of slowing down, especially with the last shot of the episode that you somehow managed to leave out of your recap.
My gosh. During the course of this episode, just as the crew went through a journey of discovery, I also went on that journey with them. Phenomenal. It's just, it's, it's so, so good when you're along the ru for the ride with the crew from thinking that the men, that the Sari ministers are evil and full of it.
And you guys sort of floated this idea that came to fruition in this, in this episode of No, they're actually really innocent, like. They, they really are just in a defensive posture. As smarmy as they seem, they're actually innocent in all of this. They have set things up in this episode, or I'm sorry, they have set things up for the last couple of seasons that are now coming to fruition.
And it looks like Jeff, despite what I have predicted over the last couple of weeks, we are indeed on the path toward the future of what we saw in war without End of Menari, bur or not Menari of Sari burning of, um, Londo having the keeper on his shoulder. That looks like that's about ready to come to pass.
Longo's gonna be emperor. I don't know where Jaar loses his eye again, but we know he is the one eye is gone. Uh, veer is nastier and snarkier as he could, as. All of this happened, so while I predicted otherwise, I'm not mad about it at all because you did better than what I actually predicted. It's good tv.
How about you, Jeff?
Jeff: Here we go, right? Like, this is it. This is season three. This is season four. Those big ramp up moments all over again. I was totally engaged and locked in every single step of the episode, there's a thing that Babylon five does, and we've talked about this like, yeah, here we, we are so many episodes in.
We've talked about all of the things. We just get to reference what we talked about before. But like, what, what do, what do they call those, these big episodes? The, the wham episodes.
Brent: WHAM episodes. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jeff: a lot of these wham episodes, like they take a two hour cinematic film, pack it into 44 minutes and make it feel like it's half an hour.
Brent: Yeah.
Jeff: It's, it's like this episode came to an end and the way it ended, like it just stopped. Like, this reminds me of War Without End, where in part one you're like, okay, they're gonna start, oh, the credits we're at the end. This builds up and they start blasting and credits were, oh my gosh, how, how? It's only, we we're only what?
20 minutes? Oh my God. No, it's really done.
Brent: yeah. Do you really could have, if you threw a part one at the beginning of this episode, like on the title of this episode, something, something, part one or part two or whatever, um, this is the, like, where it ended here is exactly where you would expect a two-parter, a multi-part arc to end in an episode.
Jeff: This is a mid-season finale, right? Like this is the whole
Brent: Uh, Joe, this could be a season finale. If you, I mean, knowing you're coming back the next season, right? Like, this is the season finale cliffhanger. Like this is you, this is Riker standing on the bridge looking at Lodos going Mr. Wharf. Fire, and you see worst finger coming down on the button before it hits it.
That's what this is. Yeah.
Jeff: a hundred
Brent: Only we don't have to wait all summer.
Jeff: Yeah. I love the pacing, I loved the big stuff. I mean, it's big stuff all over the place. Nothing in this episode was minor. It's fantastic. I loved it. Uh, when they showed the drowsy and the narn ships blasting away at Sari Prime, I thought, like I felt that centuries of oppressive sari rule. Know when they were that big dominant race, and in that moment, like they were getting that release, they had to sit mostly on the sidelines during the Sari Narin war.
And in that moment they came in, the narin, all that built up angst, you know, back, back in season four when they're like, Jaar, take command. Let's go and get 'em. Let's shut these guys down. He is like, no, no, we're, that's not the answer. You know, we're better than that now. They're like, no, no, we're not. We're gonna get that petty revenge and it's gonna feel good.
Uh, it felt like a, it was a long time coming, you know, for, for the drowsy and the nar. Yeah. This was, this was a great episode. This was, this was fantastic.
Brent: So a a couple of, um, little pieces to this, especially in the opening. Um, we see at the beginning a lot of, you know, people are taking out their frustration on Sari, they're being murdered. 'cause this starts that voiceover by Lockley right? Whom hasn't been around for the last eight episodes, like, forgot she was actually a part of the cast.
So, you know.
Jeff: Like she literally started talking and I was like, oh, like, that's
Brent: Yeah. It, it's always interesting to me when a show Jettisons a cast member, especially like right before the final season, and they feel the need to replace that cast member with somebody new. Like you can just let that person go.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Brent: Now, in this case, you can't promote Sheridan to president, leave a Vva and have anyone else step in to be the captain of Babylon Five.
'cause Corwin's not gonna do
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Brent: And there's, you know, Garibaldi iss not doing it and Zach's not doing it. So you, I like, I get it. You have to bring that person in. We could literally, like, we could literally never see Lockley at all outside of the first episode and just know that the captain is doing what they're like, they could become a new background character.
Jeff: Every now and again, four or five times over the whole season, just be like, oh, well check in with Captain. Oh, here's the captain, blah, blah,
blah. Okay,
Brent: We happen to go up to c n C.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Brent: That's, I mean, it's, it's the same level as Corrin, frankly.
Jeff: Yeah.
Brent: You know what I mean? Like, and it'd be fine. And that's that. Listen, Tracy s Goggins, I think is her name. Um, fantastic, fantastic, uh, uh, person, I'm sure, great actress. All, all the accolades that go along with that. I gotta imagine it is super tough as an actor to come in to a, to an established show knowing you are there for one year 'cause you're about to get canceled
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Brent: and you're having to fill in these shoes.
And, and I don't know, maybe that's actually really exciting as an actor,
Jeff: It could be.
Brent: you know, like, I, I don't know. I'm, I'm not in those shoes anyway. Uh, get back to what I was saying. Um, Tari are, are getting killed. I will reference everybody back to the conversation I had about this last week. I'm not gonna do that, but I'm gonna ask this question, Jeff.
Why are there any tari on Babylon five right now?
Jeff: For real.
Brent: Something like this happens, you withdraw from the alliance, you know, bad stuff's happening. You know what your government does. You issue a, a statement to all of your civilians living in that country that you're now about to be having issues with. Y'all need to get out.
Jeff: Yep.
Brent: You got two weeks. 'cause after that we can't come get you. You need to get out.
Jeff: whole infrastructure, right, to make that happen. And usually, a lot of times the the hosting company for the comp company, The hosting country will actually oftentimes help with that. Hey, this is coming. Let's get your people through the embassy and get 'em outta here. Let's do that.
And like,
Brent: 'cause we don't want your people dying. 'cause our people are gonna go crazy over this. Like, we don't want that. You know? Uh, but yeah, they, they should have recalled all their citizens and gotten them out. Like this is whatever. Um, I'll also say, uh, Sheridan is walking around at two o'clock in the morning to handling all this business and he is still perfectly coughed.
Jeff: Right.
Brent: I'm gonna tell you, I don't look that good at two o'clock in the morning, Jeff. I don't look that good at two o'clock in the afternoon to be frank with you. Like. Heaven.
Jeff: don't have much hair, but like, you get me at the end of the day. I, I, I, I'm not looking Sheridan level, that's for
Brent: Bruce Vox Heider's Got it going on, man.
Jeff: He's got that Vidal Sasoon moose in there. It's like long hold or whatever. Yeah,
Brent: Uh, uh, here's a, here's a question. Um, very early in the, on, very early on in the episode, Sheridan is, is in his quarters having a conversation with Delen. And he is like, I gotta ask you to go back to Minbar and talk to these great counsel. And he is like, I, I need to ask you to do this thing that I don't really wanna ask you to do.
And she's like, Hey, listen, if it's about those little things you got for me to wear, uh, I'm, I'm not saying no, I just think they look silly. And he is like, no, no, no. That's Jeff. Just a reminder, this is a family friendly show.
Jeff: Yep. Of course, of
Brent: Uh, as much as you can say, what do you think he got her to wear?
Jeff: Tassels.
Brent: Thousand percent what I thought too.
Jeff: So you put these on and then you move like this and it's like, you're like, you're an old airplane. It's a lot of fun.
Brent: Yes, yes, yes. Um,
Jeff: it's terrible.
Brent: ask your parents, uh, they hang off the side of your bike candles. Yes.
Jeff: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what they do. That's what they do.
Brent: Yes. Uh,
Jeff: But it was interesting that whole conversation around white stars, 'cause at, at first, at first my thought was, hey, we've seen a lot of these, you know, a good chunk of them get blown up. It makes sense that they might need more. But that whole like need for a bigger one, a destroyer class one had two thoughts.
One, I. What I kind of covered in the, in the recap, like, these are more power, these are more trouble for you than the shadow ships. Were like, Hmm, that seems a little weird. And the second thing it reminded me took me back to the rush song. Here I go. It's been a while since I've been able to pull a rush song in.
But, um, rush Song, off their power windows record called The Manhattan Project. In fact, a year ago they made a movie, um, about this rush song called Oppenheimer. Um, because actually it's not about the rush song, but I like to pretend it, it's, it's the same story, right? It's the, the story of the atomic bomb.
And, and it talks about, uh, and the rush song is a line, you know, build the best big stick to turn the winning trick. And it's just this, you know, starts out in the earliest days of mankind where you start with a club and then you get a rock, and then you sharpen the rock and then it grows and grows till you get these weapons of intense, massive killing, destruction.
Brent: Right.
Jeff: And Sheridan for all he professes, you know, of like, let's talk, let's come together. Let's be better. Even Sheridan wants a bigger stick.
Brent: Well, we can, I can, I can speak softly, but I still need the big stick.
Jeff: yeah. Okay. Teddy, I mean, you, you do, but do you,
do. you? Yeah.
Brent: So Veer comes to Lita and to Franklin about this request of, Hey, they're not delivering our bodies back. I've never thought about that as a wartime thing that like, there's this sort of, I guess just, Hey, we're gonna go to war, but you know, I'm gonna help you get your bodies back. I remember when I was living in South Korea a bunch of years ago, um, it was, it was South Korea's version of the movie Saving Private Ryan.
Okay. Not, not the same story at all, but it was that level of like, it's hyper realistic. It's very long, it's very epic. Shows the drudges of war kind of a thing. Um, the name of the movie was called Teki. I teki, I highly, highly recommend this film. It's phenomenal to tale about two brothers, uh, who get conscripted into the war and one who, uh, learns that if he becomes a war hero, he can send his brother home.
And so he goes on all these high risk antics to try to become a war hero, to send his brother home, right? Uh, but that story opens and kind of closes around revisiting a battlefield and finding the remains of various soldiers who had never been returned home, you know? Um, so good movie relates to that only in this particular way. So they're there talking and, and Franklin's like, okay, fine, we can go talk to him. We can do this. And Lee's like, I got all this stuff I need to do. And I'm just sitting here thinking, she came so prepared that her bank account card was in her bra,
Jeff: Yeah.
Brent: just. You know, like, I'm walking in, I'm getting money, I'm gonna stick it right here.
'cause this time's coming. And she sat there and bided her time until she could whip that sucker out.
Jeff: She played it perfect and vere walked right into it. All right, so we're good. And she's like, oh, no, no, no. We're, we are not, we're not good. And the coones on her, right. Just, I mean, to be ready and just be like, oh, how, yeah. Half a mill
Brent: Yeah. I, but Vere's response to that was, I could do 400,000, but five. I'm like, dude, at that point, like I could do a hundred but five like that. I could understand you already could do four, but five's gonna be an issue. Like, come on dude. Come on.
Jeff: That's arguing over like, I can't do five grand for Yeah. It's just, it's ridiculous. How about, how about 49.95, like, I got that.
Brent: Right,
Jeff: Go borrow five bucks.
Brent: right.
Jeff: Do it. Come on, man.
Brent: get you, we'll get you, it'll be fine.
Jeff: I, I really related with Franklin though. I, I like the scene a lot. 'cause Franklin was me in this of just like, why am I here?
Like, what, what is, and Veer did a great job explaining, I thought that it made a ton of sense.
Brent: yeah, yeah. Aaron Mercy, can we, can we just say this for all the crap we have given Franklin over the course of this show? Franklin actually has been a really good dude
Jeff: Yeah.
Brent: for a while now.
Jeff: Well, really ever since walk about part two, uh, which should have been the only version, which is shadow dancing, which should have been the only episode that touched that. But
Brent: But, but I mean, Jeff, like truly through season four and kind of up until now, like Franklin's just sort of been there or he's been very peripheral. I know he had that little stuff with Marcus where he'd go out and they'd kind of do the buddy cop thing for a while, but it was like, Like showing Franklin, like coming to get veer and being the guy who takes him away, like Franklin Franklin's kind of, I, I like this new Franklin and I'm glad that it started with walk about part two.
Jeff: Yeah. Which should have been the only walkabout. Yeah. But no, he was great. And this, and even in this episode, I mean, they, they made, they, they used him. He was the butt of some jokes, but it's 'cause he was the man in this situation. Right. Like, when they get to the drowsy home world, why don't you just ask somebody for directions?
Really? We're gonna do that joke, but
Brent: Although I, I gotta tell you, that is a stereotype that I've 1000% fulfill.
Jeff: Oh, a hundred percent.
Brent: I a thousand percent fulfill that stereotype. Like, I'll own it. That is me. I'm like, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. We'll pull over and get some directions here just except I'm pretty sure it's right over there.
Jeff: Yeah. I, I got this, I got
this. We're so close. I, I liked it when they got to the Dro Drowsy home world, though I think they did a better job with it than they did when Garibaldi was on there. Like, it was just kind of cool. It's like, oh, look, they're reusing the same sets. That's pretty cool. But the way they misted them, you know, like it just looked gross and hot and
Brent: Yeah.
Jeff: I thought they did a really good job creating the environment this time around.
Brent: A thousand person. Agree. I again, I would like to read you my exact note.
Jeff: Okay.
Brent: It's the same hotel. Garibaldi stayed at a k a. We aren't building a new set, we're just reusing the old one.
Jeff: Yep. Yeah,
but
Brent: when they got out there at like, I don't think it was just the same hotel they stayed at with Garibaldi, they had the same room. Yeah.
Jeff: And, and that room must have some sort of like, I don't know, beacon or whatever on for, Hey, attack here, here's the balcony, jump here.
Brent: it's where the hotel puts its foreign guests, you know, uh, foreign dignitaries. Let's, let's extend this balcony out. So it has a real nice landing pad for folks
Jeff: Yeah. Make it real convenient. Let's make this work.
Brent: yeah. Uh, well, I was gonna say, let's, let's talk about this storyline while we're here, uh, between Lita and, and Franklin, they go out, they, they get the guy and they're like, tell us what you did with all the bodies.
And then Lita starts going, you didn't. And they're not telling us what's going on and what's going on. And, and all of a sudden, and it all comes down to the idea, the ships that have been attacking have been empty.
Jeff: Yeah.
Brent: They've been drone controlled using ancient shadow weapons, which did you hear the shadow screech outta the little football looking thing? What do you think about that, Jeff? Like,
Jeff: I. So they, I, they open the door, right? So they get the doctor, he happens to hold a ba, a gun to his back the whole way. And no one, even though the streets are crowded, no one seems to care, but they open that door and they, like, they have that moment where we just see them and their reaction.
We don't see what they're seeing. And I was like, there's probably just a sea of these drop and other aliens there. And they're like, oh my God. But no, it was these weird blobs, you know? And then they're like, no, we've got this. I'm just like, oh my God. It just, it, it brings up so much. I think, um, like the shadow fighter ships, the little, the little blobby fighter ships that we saw back in season four, it, it just, it, it all makes so much sense now.
You know, they had these, probably had these little remote control things on 'em and how terrifying.
Brent: And it, and it, it really hearken back I thought to, I mean, Jeff, it's, it's this time of year there's a great football reference, which I love that they're making football references in the future still.
Jeff: Yeah,
Brent: Um, talking about they're running, it's like they have two different teams running. There's an offense and a defensive team running, you know, which I thought was a real great way to separate those two concepts to again, go back to as smarmy as the Defen Defense Minute or seems.
Defense Minister seems, he's telling the truth that as far as he's concerned, it's all defense.
Jeff: Well, and let's ride this, let's ride this American football metaphor. So you've got this, uh, defense minister who is your defensive coordinator. You've got the minions and servants that are, maybe there's a dude, or maybe they're together, they're your offensive coordinator. Regents the head coach, and he doesn't let the OC and DC talk.
They totally separate offices on different ends of the, the, you know, the, the locker room. They don't talk, they don't even know they're there, and he's keeping all the plays going, right?
Brent: Let me, let me translate, uh, for the folks out there who aren't, uh, sports folks, um,
Jeff: generous of you.
Brent: Yes. Uh, you, you have the defensive minister. He's the sports ball. Sports ball. Sports ball, and then you have the DRock and the minions and stuff. And he's the sports ball. Sports ball. Sports ball. And then there's the region who's the head sports ball.
Sports ball. And he doesn't let the sports ball talk to the sports ball.
Jeff: Exactly.
Brent: Everybody on the same page.
Jeff: think we're, I think we, I think we got it now. It's well done. Good translation.
Brent: good for, for the, for the record folks. I'm not making fun of anybody out there. That is a long time podcasting joke from many podcasts to go for me, so
Jeff: But also to back up a little bit, I gotta point out what a mass, so I talked about Lita and her kajon is, now I gotta talk about her just being a straight up badass.
Brent: yeah,
Jeff: So they're in that hotel room, right? And they get jumped and she just looks at dude, she's like, oh, and he shoots himself in the face. I, I don't know that I remember
Brent: I was so glad, Jeff, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I was so glad that she didn't just look at him and go pain.
Jeff: Were you glad?
Brent: remember when they used to have to do that? Pain. Ah,
Jeff: She did. And she did that too. It
Brent: that's what she did. But she didn't say it. She just used her eyes and was like, yes. That's how you do it,
Jeff: She's so, she's so next level now at this point. And it's gonna be like, it's wild. 'cause if I remember right, I think it was in Phoenix Rising, uh, had Byron on one side and Bester and Sheridan on the other side, and dude was like, I'm gonna get you. And Byron and his tragedy of Telepaths all joined to get that guy, not to shoot himself, but to stand down, Lita on her own in a fraction of the time, got a dude to shoot himself.
Like I, I don't know what's coming for her, but dude,
Brent: Dude, Lita Lita is turning into potentially Jeff, the biggest villain of Babylon five here in the closing chapters.
Jeff: Dark
Brent: The most dangerous villain, like the shadows are, I almost kinda want to see Lita versus the shadows, like Lon souped up telepath lady. Let's go.
Jeff: Yeah. Put 'em together, see what happens.
Brent: Yeah. Especially now that her, like she, it almost seems like she's coming into her powers because like you remember when she first went up against the Varlands, like she was doing a thing, she was pretty powerful, but then she starts bleeding from the nose.
Like, I don't think she'd even be bleeding from the nose at this point,
Jeff: No, and I think part of it's acceptance, right? I think she had to break through, uh, break through her conditioning, you know, from Cycore and everything, and let that go. And God, I, I hate, I'm gonna say this, but like, and I, I'm gonna stand by what I said. I think it was last week or the week before that we didn't really need, Byron.
To get us here like her, they've been so inconsistent with her character. Everything would be fine, but also the Byron storyline helps create that mechanism where she brokered conditioning
Brent: have no problems with the Byron storyline for a three episode arc.
Jeff: tops.
Brent: You know what I mean? Like, like three episodes and it's done. And then focus on this and don't make it the main plot line. Keep it a b plot at the time,
Jeff: over on the side and it's happening, and Lita has these questions and he elevates her and then they die. Great. Okay. Let's move on and let Lita go do her stuff.
Brent: And I mean, it's, it's, you're doing the lead of what, what Jason Ironheart did to Talia.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Brent: What Jason iHeart, uh, is, as you remember, was supposed to do for Lita. 'cause it was supposed to be Lita the whole time. You know? It's, it's kind of like, I mean, well, we'll talk about that later, I'm sure.
Anyway. Uh, yeah. His badass dude, that I mean,
Jeff: time. Big time.
So they're talking about going to Sheridan and, uh, his whole piece. So he's really trying to get down to this strategy. The strategy we were just talking about, you know, that they, they uncovered, but at the time they don't get it. I, I was confused in that it was just over a season ago that they defeated the shadows.
And from the later half of the second season, up through the middle of the fourth season, this was the exact strategy that the shadows used.
Brent: What do you mean?
Jeff: with it. Stay in the back, let the throw, throw mud so that the, the league worlds at the time fight each other like. It's the exact same thing. And I, I, and, and in a way I felt sorry for Sheridan.
I guess that, like how does he not see this? It just happened and it's the exact same thing as he's so blinded by his dream of the alliance that he can't see what's right in front of his face.
Brent: And you would think that Sheridan, above all, would know the tactics of the, of, of the shadows and the Vons. 'cause he spent all that time with Lori and discussing the history of what all that looked like. Like he would be able to, to recognize it for what it is when he sees it.
Jeff: And beyond that, he saw that, uh, there was stuff going on with Sari in the somewhat near future. He was there and he didn't know all the details, but he knew there was stuff going on with them. So, Intimate knowledge of the shadows and how they work in their strategy. A little bit of future knowledge that, hey, there's gonna be weird stuff going on with the Sari, but here in the moment he's like, Hey, war mongering drowsy.
Who's wearing your Napoleonic General's outfit? what do you, what do you think the strategy is here? What do you, what do you think?
Brent: That's a fair point. Jeff hadn't thought about that yet. That's a fair point.
Jeff: just bothered me a little bit. But yeah, that whole scene with, uh, the ri, uh, Natak, I think his name was the
Brent: Not a Toth
Jeff: Na Talk Talk.
Brent: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeff: I wonder if they're related. No, that's right. They picked their names. So that means they probably came from the same belief system.
Brent: you go.
Jeff: But, uh, like Na talk seemed pretty reasonable at first in the whole thing.
But the Drowsy General and that Bri Curri guy, like my note here is they are just jingoistic shut-ins that kind of deserve what's happening to them.
Brent: Well, I, I mean, I said right here, there's no way that the drowsy be cur and na are going to follow Sheridan's orders. There're definitely he's gonna say there's no strike. And they're like, yeah, okay. They're gonna go strike. That's exactly what they did.
Jeff: it's a, it's a, it's a horse I've beaten to death and will continue to, but it's again, just looking at the alliance and I think it strengthens your, your thing last week with the articles of Confederation in the United States, but it's like, what, what leverage do you even have share? You gave them the technology, that was how you lured 'em in.
Brent: Yep.
Jeff: What do you got? There's no reason for them to stick around at this point.
Brent: So Delin has to go off to, to Minbar to try to convince the great council to do this thing. Uh, her and Lanier and a bunch of other people on a white star go getting a little scuffle when they're just two mere jumps away from being at Minbar. And somehow out of the entire scuffle, only Lan and Delin survive.
Jeff: It seems to be it standing in the place where Ivanova got rocked, right. Standing in that same spot They are. Okay. Different, different impact, but
Brent: Mm-hmm. Uh, delin said though, she was talking to Sheridan, she's like, oh, we'll be there in 48 hours your time. And here's my question. Are hours different on the White Star than they are on Babylon five? Like, do we not all sort of keep the same clock, like whatever, like, you know what I mean? Like
Jeff: They bring it up a lot. I'll be there in seven standard minutes. Oh, that will be in eight standard hours. It's like if they're standard, you don't have to say standard.
Brent: Yeah.
Jeff: It's like here in the United States we have these really delicious nuts. We call them Brazil nuts. You know where I'm going. Right. In Brazil, they're just nuts.
You don't have to say the same, you know it's, yeah.
Brent: Exactly. Uh, so yeah, Dylan and, and, uh, Lanier are in trouble.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Brent: We haven't gotten to, uh, to Minbar just yet. Uh,
Jeff: for Lanier to recommend entering a meditative state to reduce the amount of, because that's the thing they beat. They beat that horse to death. And no callback. No callback
Brent: Yes, they did. Um, now with that, Sheridan jumps into a, a white star and he heads out himself because
Jeff: He's the only one that can go stop the DRA and narran. So 30%, I think it was Garibaldi said 30% of the DRA and NARN fleets just took off. And they do the math and Sheridan's the only one that can do it. Sheridan, I'm really struck by just, and I don't know if it's because of his time with Lorianne or just who he is or whatever, but he's at a different place than the entire rest of the galaxy.
Like he believes they can fight a clean war, you know, and do things right and avoid fighting, compromise talk, do those things. And everybody else is like, no, we got big guns and we're gonna go shoot those guns. Like why wouldn't we do that? So he's gotta take off and take off and do it. But my other thought outside of Sheridan was, where'd the DRA and Narn get all these ships?
Where'd the Ari get all these ships? Aren't we, aren't we on the back end of a massive intergalactic conflict yet? Seems like everybody's fine.
Brent: good. We're good. Yeah. Yeah. I, that wasn't where I thought you were gonna go with that whole conversation. That's, I kept waiting for it because what I noticed was Garibaldi iss like, yeah, this is happening. 30% of the, oh, by the way, John, you need to know something. Delin ship is missing. Like, no, he does not need to know that right now, in that moment, that
Jeff: not at
Brent: the worst thing you can tell him.
Right now.
Jeff: Or you lead with that, right? You don't, you don't, you don't slide that in. Hey, here's some important news. Oh, by the way, by the way,
Brent: Your, your wife is missing on a mission you sent her out on.
Jeff: yeah. You might not care, but you know, just heads up. It's like, oh, also you center. With a guy that, you know, has got some issues going on and stuff, but I mean, they're missing, I doubt there's anything weird going on, but just, you know, heads up.
Brent: I didn't even think about that to be honest with you, Jeff.
Jeff: Oh
Brent: my gosh. Uh, you wanna talk about Lando and Kar?
Jeff: yeah, yeah. And Longo's.
Brent: Solando is in prison willingly. I didn't realize he was there willingly last week, so Yeah, that's neat. Um, I guess,
Jeff: Good friendship, good support.
Brent: yeah.
Jeff: And he's got a plan, Brent, he's got a plan. The people
Brent: My people will rise up when they find out their Prime Minister aren't in prison without, and Kar iss like, oh yeah, how long is that's gonna take? Three days? There's no more than three days Kar iss like, okay.
Jeff: at what boys? Literally just like, oh, sorry, I thought, I thought I heard an uprising happening out there. I just, it's like,
Brent: I do like how jaar though, like he moved from the bed over to like the Rock.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Brent: Like he, like he still let Londo kinda have the nice thing, you know?
Jeff: It takes shifts, right? They're like, you know, you can we'll share, we'll share this really comfortable slab, uh, while we sit on this other less comfortable looking slab.
Brent: And so Jaar, or I'm sorry, not Jaar. Londo gets abducted by aliens and you see that. At first I thought that it was, um, Uh, the, the drop had come to get Londo to put the, the, the eyeball thing on him. But then it was, it was, it was clearly to me Sari hands that were grabbing
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Brent: And then we saw it was the stripe looking.
I can hear people out there. It's not the stride, stripe or something different. Okay, fine. Whatever. Whatever they
Jeff: look like 'em. Yeah. They look like this
Brent: they had that, they had that Roswell alien look to them. Um, and their fingers were all long and spindly and stuff.
Jeff: Those fingers. Got a lot of uncomfortable screen time.
Brent: Absolutely, they did. Uh, there's, there's one shot, Jeff, where, uh, where the camera's looking down at Londo, his hair's right here. And you have like those fingers just in his hair, like petting his hair. Like, it's like, whatcha doing to his hair? Man, stop that. That's weird.
Jeff: This is weird.
Brent: but here, here's my question, Jeff.
We have seen this viewpoint a lot in Babylon. Five over five seasons. Of somebody on a table looking up and here's people staring over top of them, and it has frequently been Roswell esque aliens looking down, whether it was the Stripe or these guys or somebody else, or the Ree
Jeff: Bree.
Brent: one of them like, it, it's been the, because I remember like, it was Sheridan in the, in the, the lon ship that happened to him once.
And uh, I feel like there were, they did it with Cycorps at one point as well. All this sort of stuff. Um, here's my, here's my question, legit question that I need. I need someone to ask j m s for us, or I, you know what, we'll soon be able to interact with him. I might ask him on Twitter myself, was he ever abducted by aliens?
Jeff: Wow. He's working through some stuff.
Brent: like this seems to be a thing for him.
Jeff: It really is. 'cause I mean like I immediately went back to ship of tears when, you know, they showed like, you know them operating on the. The blips that that went away. It's the exact same scene, but you're right. Like with the strip, it was like little, um, arms that were coming out of the ceiling and then the Cycore thing with Bester and then even back with Talia and then the racing, uh, not route racing Mars, but the, uh, Mars first guy.
The si. Yeah. Like this is a scene. They pull up a lot. Yeah. I think he might be therapy himself through his abduction on this show.
Brent: that's where, that's where the whole idea came. Oh dude, Jeff, maybe this is all happening out there. Like, like j m s has been abducted. He's seen it and he's bringing it back and, and he's turning it into a hit television show. The government really knows what's going on, but there're allowing to hit television show to exist for plausible deniability,
Jeff: Well then when I show up and I'm like, these
aliens,
Brent: crazy guy.
Jeff: I show up. I say, these aliens came and took me. And they're like, Babylon. Five geek. Those are free. Just shut shut. Go back to your whole nerd. Just stop. Like, no. They took me and they, they showed me all this stuff. They're these dudes with big hair that are gonna come on, nerd.
Stop. Stop. I like this conspiracy theory a lot better than the ones that have been coming out the last
Brent: I'm, I'm just really glad that, that we didn't get a show that has like x in the title, like Babylon five Extreme or something like
Jeff: It was a nineties show. I mean, I'm sure it was pitched at some point.
Brent: Anyway, uh, here's my last question on this whole piece. What did they put in Longo's mouth? That was
Jeff: I, I
Brent: a bug, right?
Jeff: it was the, the controller, the keeper. I think it has to
Brent: the, the little eyeball guy.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Brent: That's what it looked like to me. But I was, I was like, ah.
Jeff: Yeah, it's like they did, they did some stuff to like prep his body and then they put the little thing over him and put that big old thing. And so I think, and, and I think too, like, um, there was time, right?
And I think that at the, at the end the regent was kind of saying, you know, you, you don't waste your free hours and things. So like, it's gotta, it has to attach and grow and gestate. So he has like, I don't know, 14 hours or whatever until, until it takes off. But that was, that was a hard scene to watch, especially when he kinda woke up and was like, what's like, I can't really move.
What's going on? Oh God, that's gross.
Brent: and then Jaar does his thing to get Londo out of the, out of the prison cell. That was gross. It was hilarious. Londo comes out, my eyes were burning.
Jeff: It's not even the smell, it's my eyes. I wonder if like there's a marsupial, like is that a thing that marsupials do or was they just like, Hey, this will be funny to make Jaar throw
Brent: Somebody's making this comment right here. So Jeff, last week you had a problem with Jcar kind of being the, the, the jokey joke jokers of stuff, and I think they continued that this week. I don't have a problem. Did you still have a problem with it this week?
Jeff: I think it worked better in this one. I think the tone was different in this one. Especially between him and Londo.
Brent: See, I think, I think it was just a continuation of where we've been, and I loved it. I loved every, every bit
Jeff: I think, I don't think it was as ever outta character for Jaar, like we've seen this for him. I just, I, it is just the intensity of last week's episode. It, it felt like a feeble attempt to like, Release some of that tension. It didn't work. But in this one, I think it's really clear that the Lando Jaar relationship is about to dramatically change.
And so I think they really had to like hit us with, with these relationship points.
Brent: Jeff, I got one more thing and I, I hate to bring up old stuff, but after five seasons, I have finally come up with the definitive proof and I'm, I'm going to agree with folks. I'm gonna side with them out there, folks, save your keyboard strokes, 'cause I'm with you. I got you. Babylon. Five 1000%. I'm sorry.
Not Babylon. Five Star Trek. 1000% ripped off Babylon five.
Jeff: It's a bold statement.
Brent: Yes. Because Sheridan gets to the white star. They're doing their stuff and it's, it's go time and Sheridan turns around and his, his go phrase is, hit it. Here all these years later, strange new world's, captain Pike, his go phrase is, hit it totally ripped off.
Sue the pants off of Star Trek, j m s. You will win. Absolutely. They're ripping off all your stuff, man.
Jeff: Plain as day.
Brent: Babylon. Babylon. Five had it 20 years earlier, man.
Jeff: I, I'm only laughing because one, it's funny. That's funny. But second had the exact same thought. Not that they ripped him off so much with the, but like you, you can watch my reaction and you, I'm just literally just like, that's Pike's thing. This Pike. Watch Babylon five. Does Babylon five exist in Star Trek?
Brent: from from now on. Every time I watch Strange New Worlds and Pikes says so I'm like, that's Sheridan's thing.
Jeff: Can't take that. It's thieving paramount.
Brent: Give it back. Uh, Jeff. Well, I, I do think that we have, oh, no. Oh, oh, oh. He is got something. Okay.
Jeff: got two things that are just, just some really, uh, awesome, uh, stylistic things that they did near the end of this episode. One was at the very end, um, Londo, right? He come, comes running out, you know, looking, He's out on the thing looking incredible callback. There had been a couple callbacks.
There was the one a couple episodes ago where he went out and all the Sari cruisers are taking off and that was a callback to the shadow ships going. This one when he comes out and he, he's looking up and all the jump, the jump points are opening up. That was a great callback to when the VOR lawns came and we're gonna like, just really great, uh, imagery down to, um, you know, the, the destruction that was on at this time and stuff.
It was beautiful. Other one, Jaar is in a cell by himself and he is jotting away in his little journal and there's this streak of light that's coming down across the wall. A lot of people, we, we really, we hammered a lot of our Christian faith last week. I'll just touch on this one. There's a very famous painting of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane where he's praying to God.
He's saying, you know, father, you know, if you can pass this cup onto somebody else, please, I don't want to do this. But it's very similar where he's, you know, he's in this prayerful position and there's this like ray of light coming down at an angle like that scene I feel was just lifted from that painting and it was really well
Brent: Jeff. Jeff, if I may ask and, and, and, um. Because I'm, I'm genuinely curious and, and I wanna talk to you folks out there for just a second. Uh, Jeff's right, we spent a lot of time last week, uh, discussing, uh, pieces of, of Christian faith and, and where Jeff and I both come from, uh, in, in that background. Uh, Jeff called back to something that, for me was a whole lifetime ago
Jeff: Yeah.
Brent: that I've talked about in a long time, uh, last week.
But over the course of five seasons, we've talked a lot about the Christian imagery and Christian, uh, things that are here. And a lot of that it occurs to me, Jeff May just be colored. We may be seeing it through that lens because that is our lens that we have to own and we own that bias. Here's what I'd love to do.
If there is, uh, anybody out there who is of a different faith and, and I'm specifically speaking to people of faith, like if, if, if, if you are, uh, a Muslim. Um, or even if the Jewish faith, I know we've talked about that a little bit, or I don't know, maybe Hindu, maybe any, any other faith out there. If you have seen examples of your faith in Babylon five, I would love to know where that is because I, I just sit back and assume that j m s growing up in Western culture, his, he pulls a lot of Christian imagery specifically, and maybe he's actually pulling other imagery that I'm just not aware of.
And so I'd love to know if, if you have found imagery that reflects your own faith or maybe a faith you're familiar with, um, write in and let us know. I'm, I'm genuinely curious to know if there's other imagery that I'm just missing, uh, because of my own ignorance.
Jeff: I love that. That's a great question.
Brent: Well with that then Jeff, uh, we have reached the part of the show where it is time to boil it all down and see if this episode has any of those deep moral messages to it. Maybe it's holding up a mirror to society. Is it giving us hope that we could be better in the future? All that stuff that sci-fi in general is really good at doing.
And we're also gonna talk about how it has delivered it in a Babylon five way. Jeff, you're gonna do that by rating this episode on a scale of zero to five white stars to see how strong that message is and just how Babylon five it was delivered. So Jeff, what do you got for us this week?
Jeff: So this isn't necessarily the theme of the episode. I'll start, start with that. Not necessarily, but it's, this episode did a lot of work to build on a theme that I think is really emerging in this season and kind of in the series. Overall, I've been really critical, even today on the Interstellar Alliance and I'm gonna continue to be, um, I don't think it's, uh, has executed the way it was, it was meant to be, but it has turned out to be a great storytelling device to show us like the, the temptation, the draw of history and tradition.
Brent: Yep.
Jeff: Sheridan and the Alliance as an idea. The, the idea of the alliance. It's trying to move beyond petty squabbling wars to from, uh, de Lens's line last week, moving past wars over lines on a map, things like that. Like let's all just come together. Let's focus on a common cause. Let's, let's have our shared values, but history, tradition, and very importantly, generational and societal trauma.
Not to mention our norms and expectations around us. They're not gonna let some people, arguably, most people get on board with those ideas. Those people see things like this as a loss, right? The drowsy general outright said this, we must. Have our revenge. He was fired up and passionate. Why? Why do you need your revenge?
When has revenge ever solved anything? When have you taken revenge and been like, okay, now I'm good. Feel better. Mission accomplished this? I'm so glad I did this. This goes all the way back to midnight on the firing line when the concept came up over Rags three and Ghislaine just like, just hit it, right?
You do it and then you do it, and then you do it, and then you do it. Everything escalates and no one ever actually wins To move forward, to actually progress, to move to the ideals that the alliance professes, frankly, to move to the future that Star Trek has tried to show us as possible. Like it's the thing we say as we open this up, right, that there's hope for a better future.
For that to happen, we have to let go of this stupid little petty stuff. As long as we have people like the drowsy hanging around, looking for their revenge, not playing by the rules, not caring about the cause or the values, like just being in it for themselves. As long as that's happening, we're not gonna grow and there will continue to be war, famine, pestilence, and needless death.
I'll quote the Brachii guy when uh, asked why they weren't working together. Like, this was amazing. Why aren't you guys working together to do this? And he says, well, we are in our own independent and sovereign ways. Like, wow, it's just shortsighted. It is juvenile. And it's why to this day right now, we have wars being fought across the globe.
It wasn't necessarily the message of this episode, but it was strongly represented. It's a thing that's come up. I think this is a core theme of Babylon five that was expressed beautifully in this episode. So I'm giving this one four white stars.
Brent: Fair enough. I literally, in my note here, I have the revenge thing of exactly what you're talking about there. Uh, that, that whole piece. Uh, I, I love Lin's message though. If I could just also point this out. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not stumping for any more than what you just gave it. I think that's a very fair rating.
Uh, but, uh, Sheridan's asking her to go do something and, you know, it's, it's, he wants it to wait till, see there's no risk. And she's like, it is impossible to live lives with unnecessary risk.
Jeff: yeah,
Brent: Like that's, that's just part of life. We're going to put things at risk. It's, you have to put it out there.
Jeff: You, you cross the street,
Brent: yep.
Famous co famous coach. I said, I always loved what he said. No risk, no biscuit. It's, it's good, good life, life piece to live by. And, uh, he went and won a Super Bowl with it, with my favorite team.
Jeff: Well look at that.
Brent: There you go. There you go. Uh, I like it, Jeff. I like it.
Jeff: Cool. Well you get the fun part of this one. I am very anxious to see how you handle it because we're creating the definitive list, the rank of all the episodes of the fifth season of Babylon five. Brent gets to do that. Our current, uh, for this episode, he gets to do that for our current top five. We have in the top spot the very long night of Lando Mal, a new number two, and all my dreams torn as sunder.
Number three is no compromises learning curve in the fourth spot and rounding it out, we've got the ragged edge. So Brent, I am eager, just as our listeners and viewers are, where are you putting movements of fire and shadow?
Brent: Jeff re remind me. I, I said, no Compromises is my favorite season opener of the series. I've said that, and I'm gonna stand by that. I, I'm not reneging on that whatsoever. However, really the question to me comes is, is this better than no compromises? I'm gonna say, yes, it is. Is it better than, uh, a torn asunder?
All my dreams torn asunder. And here's the thing. I think all my dreams torn asunder had a much stronger core of its message when we came all the way down to Delin, looking at that candle, and just had this amazing exposition at the end and, and was phenomenal. Uh, my, my phrase from last week was, this is a phenomenal episode of tv.
My phrase from this week is, this is good tv.
Jeff: Oh.
Brent: I'm going to leave all my dreams. Torn us under at number two, but this is our new number three, Jeff, on the ranking. I. That being said, I very much see last week and this week as us. It's a part one, part two type situation is very much where I see these. So I just think last week was a little bit stronger, both really, really good.
Jeff: Love it. It's a good spot. And that's it for movements of Fire and Shadow. Next week we're watching what might be part three in this trilogy, the Fall of Sari Prime.
Brent: It better be part three where this one ended,
Jeff: Right. It'd be really
Brent: or maybe part four to be honest with you, Jeff, but you know, whatever,
Jeff: Yeah. Wouldn't it be upsetting though if this one was just like, Hey, so this thing just happened.
All these ships started blasting, but let's go check in with President Chenko and Earth.
Brent: it opens on the backside of the battle. Like, I want to see the battle. Come on guys. Like it should open with previously haw on Babylon five is how it needs to open.
Jeff: Right. And, and, and then out of that, into Pew, pew, pew,
Brent: yeah,
Jeff: just yeah. Come out fire. And it's gonna be called again, the Fall of Sari Prime. The game we love to play and the people love to play along with us, is our prediction game. We only know the title. We don't know anything else about this episode, and we guess what that episode is gonna be about.
So, Brett, what do you think is gonna happen in the fall of Sari Prime?
Brent: some Tar Prime is being attacked. I think that's a given. Uh, I think this is action. I think this is pew, pew, pew. Um, I think that the drowsy and the buri and the narn are gonna land on Sari Prime to capture and take it. It's again, part of the fall of Sari Prime and they're basically gonna try to take over the whole planet.
But here's where I think it's gonna turn. They are gonna be fighting amongst themselves over who actually gets to control Sari Prime, each one thinking they have a claim. The Narn obviously for what they've been going through, the drowsy, because they seem to think that they're being offended at every step and turn.
And the Kerri, because they seem to play being keeping up with the Joneses, they can't let the drowsy be better than them. So they want, they want control. So, um, I think that's what we're gonna wind up with is Tari Prime is, is fallen, and they're really no longer a player on the board. It's the NAR and the Queria and the drowsy.
A k a, they, they represent the rest of the alliance at this point, right? The broken alliance. Uh, and here's the deal, and this is where the, oh, I, I love this. I love this. I love this, Jeff. Here we go. Sheridan is now, who now knows that the Centara government was not at fault for these shipping lane attacks.
Right. He now knows this. Like this is a, this is an unjust, uh, thing. He's gonna have to come to the rescue of Sari Prime in order to save the alliance. Like he's, he's gotta flip, flip sides here because he, he, the guy who so unwisely pronounced judgment based on really bad, quote unquote proof, uh, now has to come clean up his mess. 'cause honestly, Sheridan's responsible for this in many
Jeff: agree. Yeah.
Brent: that's my thought. What about you, Jeff? That
Jeff: The fall of Ary Prime, right? Like, I mean, I think I, I think we're close. Um, what I think is gonna happen though, we're gonna open up a bunch of blasting, really great space battle stuff. Um, Sheridan's gonna show up and do an ultimatum to stop the assault that's going on. While that's happening. Londo is gonna be named Emperor and he's just going to, he's gonna be the one that turns, I think he's gonna order a full assault.
Don't even worry about defending bases. Let's just full court press. We're attacking the alliance. Longo's gonna go. Um, 'cause I think
Brent: Is that, is that Londo doing it or is that the keeper? Doing
Jeff: that's the keeper. Control. The controller is gonna come out. He's going to come up as Emperor, and then he's just gonna start full on Napoleon.
Brent: Here's a question and, and I don't, I don't know that I was ever clear on this. When we saw the keeper from war without End, is the keeper controlling londo, like controlling his body like a symbio and, and like longo's, like buried, his conscious is buried deep within, and it's only when he gets him drunk that Londo can reemerge.
Is that the,
Jeff: I think so.
Brent: what it is?
Jeff: I think it's that, or it's, um, like a punishment device maybe, you know, or something like he gets his orders and maybe the orders come from the, the little controller guy, and then if he tries to not follow them and because it's in his neural system or whatever, he doesn't even start to do the wrong thing.
Like he has the thought of doing the wrong thing and it blasts him or something.
Brent: Mm.
Jeff: So he is gotta get drunk to numb it. But I think it is basically londo in the backseat watching everything happen.
Brent: Kind of like a Gould, something of the host survives.
Jeff: there's still a piece there. Well, I'm excited. We're gonna find out what happens here next week. Thank you everybody for joining us.
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Brent: Hey, Jeff.
Jeff: Yeah. What's up
Brent: Uh, so I need to ask you to do something that frankly I really don't want to ask you to do.
Jeff: dude? If this is about those, uh, those little, little things I told you, man, I am never going to wear those. Like, I appreciate the gift. It's very thoughtful and generous of you, but from my perspective, it just kind of looks silly.
Brent: Yeah, Jeff? Um, I wasn't the one who gave you those. You bought those yourself, pal.
Jeff: Dude, shut up. Get the hell out of here.
