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 5 for the first time. For you, the one who is,
Brent: We are two veteran Star Trek podcasters who have never seen this show before, and we took it upon ourselves to watch this show, but to help the conversation. Along to guide the conversation, we decided to apply those skills. We've learned to Star Trek podcasters here to Babylon five, and we are looking for the important messages that Babylon five is delivering in its own unique way.
Jeff: It's really the Babylon five messages that we're looking for. Used to be the Star Trek messages. Now it's the Babylon five messages. And this isn't a Star Trek podcast, and so we play a game called The Rule of Three. That game limits us to no more than three references to Star Trek per episode. Hits three.
One of those plate, no substitutions, exchanges or refund
Brent: Yes. And just to be clear, that is three references total, not each. And if we make one of those references, the sound you're gonna hear is
Jeff: Gotta love it.
Brent: Yeah, because as we say, while we are definitely not a Star Trek podcast, because it's in the title, those references are bound to slip in or. Be jammed in however you wanna look at it. And this is just part of the game we play to have fun while we record. You know what else we do to have fun while we record Jeff.
Jeff: What's up?
Brent: Well, at the end of the show, we take a chance to predict what next week's episode is gonna be going to be about based on title alone. This is the spot of the show, Jeff, where we look back at last week and try to see how right we were. And it is time to
Jeff: Time to pay the piper.
Brent: Yes. Time to pay the piper. Jeff, what did you say? This episode in the Kingdom of the Blind was going to be about, and we'll talk about how close you were.
Jeff: This is gonna be the first shots fired in the Telepath war. Byron's gonna go public with his manifesto and the demands that will start drawing the battle lines.
Brent: I'm gonna give you 40% on this one. Because if you say first shots, the whole thing where they're going and getting people's, uh, secrets and then holding that, like to extort them over the whole deal, there wasn't really a manifesto, but there was definitely demands. Um, so yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you, you were, you were in that vein.
I'm gonna give it to you. 40%.
Jeff: Nice. What'd you think?
Brent: Well, I said that it was definitely time to get back to the Telepaths. I said Byron would be solidifying and consolidating his power and the Kingdom of the blind was sort of a metaphor for the Telepath group. Uh, but mostly the episode would just be about him gathering power, bringing more and more telepaths to the station and the Babylon five authorities are gonna regret allowing them to stay in the first place.
Jeff: I think I'm in the same 40% ish range cuz he definitely was, I wouldn't say gathering his forces, but bolstering them. And, uh, the station leadership is definitely regretting, uh, their decision on this one. Not bad.
Brent: Well, Jeff, uh, that's what we thought the episode was gonna be about, but for the folks who are listening at home who maybe didn't watch this episode before listening to us, or maybe they've never seen the episode ever, why don't you take a few moments and tell us what the episode was actually about.
Jeff: Citizen G'Kar become orator. G'Kar has now become servant G'Kar, leaning all in into his role as Lao's bodyguard because we are finally on Cent Prime. And while the war is over, the NAS have been liberated and cartage has been killed. Things really aren't all that different at the Royal Court. Everybody's still racist.
Everybody's still racist as ever, and intrigue is the name of the game. Some pompous minister even offers Jaar. The guard that whipped him for Cartage. Jaar was the bigger man though, and released the guard. But all of this to say that things are no bueno back home for Lando, and they honestly aren't so good back on Babylon five either.
Unknown ships are attacking alliance shipping lanes with military precision. Not Rangers. Not rangers. What the not Raiders. Mind you, they're blowing ships up cargo and all. No survivors, no witnesses. We hear a lot of heman and hawing from Delan and Sheridan on this, knowing that the Alliance worlds will be upset when they hear about it, but we don't really get any of that.
Just their gnashing of teeth and a very clear power differential between Earth and Minbar and the other alliance worlds. Now, what's shocking about these attacks that we learned at the end of this episode is that it's centara ships doing the attacking, but how could this possibly happen? I mean, Centara are still focused on their hubris and their racism, plus they have the strong leadership of their regent emperor, or do they seems he's been drinking a lot and he was a teetotaler.
When Lando last saw him, he wanders the halls mumbling and even asked a guard to kill him. This one time, after some palace intrigue, Londo finally meets with him face to face. He's hard to understand speaking almost in riddle and half statements, but ultimately I think he's trying to tell Londo that they like him and think he has a lot in common with them.
Soon he'll understand, but until then, he should live life to the fullest, cuz pretty soon he won't be able to. On his way to that meeting. A minister tried to kill him, but some alien that I don't think we've ever seen before somehow stops the knife and hurles it at that minister killing him. And after Londo leaves the regent, there's another alien that we haven't seen before.
This one makes that key controller thing that we know is on the regent that we saw, I don't know, a thousand years ago or something like that, makes that thing wrap around and choke him. It looks like Lao's got some dark days in front of him, and he seems to know it as he decides that he and Jaar are heading back to Babylon five on the first transport outta here.
Hopefully things are going well on Babylon five though. You see our buddy Byron, he's stringing together some well questionable logic to justify the ultimatum. He's about to drop on the alliance. Give us our own home world, or we're gonna share all of your secrets. Just as Sheridan is considering actually making the deal, some of the telepaths decide to show them they mean business and they attack some drowsy, Byron and the Tes that are choosing to stick around, seal themselves in their little chamber.
Well, Zach gets on a loudspeaker giving them one last chance to be reasonable, turn themselves in. I don't think that's gonna happen though. Cause Byron tells Lita that he's gonna have to ask something really big of her to get them through this. Brent, what did you see in the Kingdom of the Blind?
Brent: Jeff, this was an episode that. Sent me through a range of emotions.
Jeff: Yeah.
Brent: The first emotion was apathy that entire cold open where Garibaldis in here, like the Raiders are coming in and doing whatever. It's like, I don't care, whatever. They, they tried to build it up as if that was gonna be the big thing. Yeah, they didn't really hardly ever come back to that at all.
Like, that wasn't the big dun dun, dun. Let's go to opening credits moment that it needed to be like. That was a side conversation at best. Could have put in any spot in the middle of the episode. Uh, Byron pissed me off. That was my next emotion. You're just pissed off. Um, we'll talk about this a little bit more later.
Every single one of the prepositions that he was using were wrong, which made his entire logical flow incorrect and wrong.
And then I got disappointed. I was disappointed into Lynn. When she started buying into it and kind of co-signing it,
and then I understood, but I kind of got mad at Sheridan for his response to the whole thing, because again, we'll talk about this more in detail in a few minutes, but there was a spot of me where it's like, yeah, Byron's completely wrong about everything. However, what would be so bad with actually just saying you could fix the whole thing by just going, you know what, if that's really what you want, it actually kind of makes sense.
The request does, let's help you get it. Let's work through the proper channels and actually help you get it because it makes sense. We should do that rather than just shutting it down. So, oh, you're, you're too far outta line. Byron was, Byron was out of line when he said, I'm not gonna talk about the thing I said I was gonna talk about.
That's when he was outta line, not for what he actually said. Anyway, uh, so there was those emotions and then there was the Lando stuff and the emotions for the Lando stuff were, this is compelling, this is the storyline I want to see, this is where I want to go. And my God, I really, really hope that this is not leading us towards what we saw in the war without end.
Because what we've known since signs importance is the future is not set in stone. The future can be changed. And I, I desperately don't wanna see Londo drunk with an eyeball on his neck, although I'm sure that's where it's going. Telling Sheridan of how bad he is and blaming stuff and, and just doing that to get him out and then sacrificing himself at ja Car's hands and they choke each other out.
Like, I hope, I want that to not be where this is going. Range of emotions, Jeff. Ranges of emotions, but really, if every episode was just about londo and the sari from now on, I'd be great with that and just jettison the whole Byron thing cuz it just, I, I just hate it at this point. How about you
Jeff: I loved that this was almost a direct. Answer to our conversation two weeks ago. Right. Jaar
Brent: as if last week's episode should have been viewed, not last week,
Jeff: yeah. Yeah. There's, there's a little bit that justifies the viewing order thing. We're not gonna talk about viewing order, but we talked about who pays. Right. And Jaar doesn't want punish the guard who whipped him. Not anybody, because those deserving of punishment are already dead. I, I loved that we got an answer to a thing we spent a lot of time talking about.
Like you, I loved the stuff on Centara Prime. It felt, it, it felt like we were watching Babylon five again.
Brent: Yeah. The stuff that, the stuff that was not happening on Babylon five felt more Babylon five than the stuff that was happening on Babylon five.
Jeff: Totally. To
totally.
Brent: Geez.
Jeff: But these are the threads that they left laying around back in the fourth season that we've been waiting this whole time for them to pick up. We know that the Regent has this controller guy on him. We're pretty sure Londo is gonna have it too. We know that the dark minions based on war without end, right?
We know they're gonna lay waste to the scent, to the planet. We're seeing the seeds get sown for that. But just like you said, and again, in war without end signs and Portent, war without end, they showed us that the future can be changed. We saw a future Babylon five getting blowed up back in season one, and then in season three we saw Vava, you know, freaking out and the station about to blow.
We saw all that happen and none of it happened. So there's hope. There's hope. What I am excited about though, is last season we saw the drop and that was humiliating to even sit and watch when that happened. And now we have two other groups, so maybe we never have to see that again. But we're getting those dark minions and the allies of the shadows, like, I don't know.
It's, it's exciting and it's cool. I just like you, I hated the Byron and the Sheridan and Alliance stuff. I, I was watching this scene, a couple scenes with Sheridan and my thought was, and oh man, I don't know if I wanna, I wrote it, I dunno if I wanna say it. I feel like the writing has dropped off precipitously in this series, like low hanging fruit, lowest common denominator, just tropey writing.
And for me, the coup degrass, the moment where I was just like, Ugh, are they even trying anymore? Was when Sheridan sat there and he said word for word what President Chenko said. I did it the wrong way, the inconvenient way, really. We're not even gonna allude to the, the callback to the president and him.
We're just going to word for word say it. Ah. I felt so weak. So weak.
Brent: Jeff, I did not pull this clip in because I would've pulled this as a clip in if I'd known you were gonna say that. I didn't even make a note in my notes. I'm full disclosure. We are recording this about an hour after I watched the episode
Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.
Brent: like this is back to back. I've, I've only ever seen the episode once. I just watched it. It's the way the week's going for me. I haven't even edited the Brent Watches video yet, so this part might not even make it into the YouTube version.
So it's very possible. The only people who have seen this part are the people who have seen this on YouTube or on on Patreon, who get the unedited behind the scenes version. I said the same thing
Jeff: Really?
Brent: I did because I was like, this feels like a sin to say, but is JMS even trying
Jeff: Yeah.
Brent: right now? It doesn't feel like he's even trying with this whole thing.
Like some of the writing, some of the, some of the stuff has just been so bad and I, I feel dirty saying that because we hold JMS in such high regard,
Jeff: Yeah. Four seasons of brilliance. I mean brilliance and, and I haven't had the words and it was the moment those words came out of his mouth where it just hit me. And I'm just like, exactly. Is he even trying, are we just phoning this in?
Brent: Yeah. It, it just doesn't, I, I don't know what to make of the whole thing. Like I really, I, I, the only thing is, is he's trying to put the pieces in place, move the chess pieces around so that he can deliver this big punch in the back end of season five. That's what I'm hoping for.
Jeff: Yeah, it's
Brent: My hope feels like it's getting dashed on the rocks as each day goes by.
Jeff: dwindling fast. We're almost halfway through the season.
Brent: Yeah, I know.
Jeff: But I think, you
Brent: there's a lot of season left. That's a lot of season left, but still, I'm, I'm with you.
Jeff: I think, and I had this in, in my notes here cause we can kind of pivot from this into the conversation, but it's more on just this weak, this weak writing. Cuz I think he had this idea. Of the Telepath war and what it was gonna be. And I think it involved a group of telepaths coming to Babylon five one in a home world looking for some sort of a retribution.
I think those core fundamental story pieces were there for him. But I don't know if it was the timing.
Brent: Can I, can I finish that statement for you? But once he started flushing it out, it just didn't work. He had the idea, sounded really good. Once he started flushing it out, it was just like, yeah, it just really even makes sense.
Jeff: doesn't make sense at all.
Brent: make sense.
Jeff: But he was pot committed at that point. You know, he talked about it in the fourth season. It was two, like two of the segments in deconstruction of falling Stars were around this decision to bring the Telepaths on board. So I gotta keep moving with it, but I just. Just breaking the whole thing down.
VLANs created telepaths over centuries of genetic manipulation to fight their war. Even though some telepaths evolved naturally, Byron says that they, his people wouldn't be telepaths, even though some evolved naturally, but they wouldn't be telepaths except for the Vons. Um, it was the von genetic manipulation that caused human telepaths to be hunted and caged and controlled.
Hmm, that's not how I remember it. And now that the war's over, they're left abandoned. So they need to run away and have their own home world. It doesn't like nothing in that holds up at all in any way. He contradicted himself in his own logic thing, and then he is like, so we are gonna go threaten them.
We're gonna lie to them. We're not gonna have any violence and the rest of the telepaths are like the hell, we ain't.
Brent: Right,
Jeff: We got clubs over here and everything. Ah, it's, it's, it's ridiculous. I, yeah. I'm just, I'm, so, I, I'm done with this telepath thing.
Brent: and what really disappointed me was when Delin was like, yeah, they did do this and they did create this for our war, and they were created. I'm like, no, no, no. Okay, stop. Let's, let's talk about what the tele has really are, and this is true of every situation out there. Let's just assume they're all partly created by the Voor lawn. You know what the telepaths are? They're not a species unto themselves. The human telepaths are humans. The voor lawns gave humans who were going to be a target of eventually of the shadows. A means to defend themselves. That's what happened. Not to go fight their war and be canon fodder and all that crap.
No, no, no, no, no. That's not what this was. This was, uh, they seeded these telepaths through the galaxy because it's not that they were fighting against the vor, the, the shadows. Remember what the whole conflict was between the shadows and the VLANs, which maybe we should give Byron a little bit of credit here.
Jeff Byron doesn't know what the whole VLAN shadow thing was really all about
Jeff: That's fair.
Brent: because what the VLAN shadow thing, it was about how they wanted to help the other races develop. It wasn't we're fighting just because we're pissed off at each other. It's, they both had a similar mission and just two different ideas of how to make it happen. And was one really more right than the other? That's, that's what their, their whole deal was. And Byron doesn't know, know that, he doesn't understand that
Jeff: But Delen does, like you were saying, Delen does understand that.
Brent: that, that is why I'm so disappointed in her.
Jeff: And I think what the fall of night taught us through Sheridan Lorianne was, uh, this was their, this wasn't our war. This was their war. They'd been fighting over millennia and pulling people into, and it was Sheridan having the leadership to say, We're not playing ball anymore like it was, it was never our war, but now it is.
Or it was. And so like len's reasoning falls apart on this too. She was, she was in the space. Like she was there in that thing, telling them to take a hike and go fight your own war and leave us. We're not playing anymore. She and Sheridan were doing that. But then here, well, yeah, maybe. No, maybe No, not at all.
Brent: I, I think we're saying the same thing. We're just using different words that sound like they're saying the opposite pieces.
Jeff: Oh, I'm agreeing with you with what I'm saying. That Delen
was as mad as I am at Byron. I can, I, I didn't think of it. I can totally subscribe to what you're saying. He only knows the propaganda that he's been fed or the stuff he's heard on this side. Delen knows it all.
Brent: yeah. But, but I mean, what I'm saying, even, even with the shadows and the war lines and their whole war and what that was about, it really wasn't a war. It was how each side wanted to help people in the universe, uh,
Jeff: Evolve, grow.
Brent: That's, that's all it was. And they just had two different nights. They eventually got into a fight and they'd had several fights before, but it's because the people were the ones who were responding back.
The, the VLANs came in and helped the people fight. The borderlines didn't do the fighting as often, as much as they helped the people learn how to fight. Like to me, that's more of an equivalent of, um, hey, these people are coming in to raid us and do something that we don't think is, or these people are gonna go raid these other people over here, so we're gonna go teach them how to fight.
We're gonna prepare them how to fight. We're gonna, we're gonna equip them and give them the weapons that they need in order to make that fight over there. That, that's more of what I feel like the fight has been over the millennia and eventually the VLAN just flipped their lid and said, fine, we're gonna go fight ourselves.
And then we got that whole thing and, you know, the end of the age or whatever.
Jeff: Yeah, I think, I think it would've been better literally in the fall of night. There could have been one scene, one single scene in that episode over a season ago that would've lent a little bit of this. Show us a group of telepaths, ideally a multiracial group, so Minbar, maybe some sari and, but mostly menari and humans in there.
Show them like in a room on a white star. And doing tele telepathy and watch one or two shadow ships crumple, but then like watch them bleed from their eyes and noses and drop down. You know, like show that they sacrificed themselves in that conflict in some way. But what we know literally is shared and went out and did a test with Lita investor and they said, wow, we have a secret weapon.
And that was the end of the story. So like the really what Byron's mad about isn't even fighting someone else's war. It's being used in one test scenario and then being held at bay.
Brent: Mm-hmm. And then we use the other ones for the Earth Civil War to in the Civil War. But again, even with that, those telepaths were humans.
Jeff: Yeah.
Brent: They're, they're just genetically modified humans. You're still a human. It's still your civil war. The, the, the shadows and the lon are still coming for you. Like, it's, it's not like you are just ants in the, in the game being, which I know is what Sheridan was trying to say.
Like, like that's what it became in the end. That's not what it was unt until the end with, with all that. So I just, yeah, the, the whole thing's awful. Now here's the thing. If Byron would've come in and actually worked this on the other level, right? Hey, we're humans. We do this, but we were genetically modified.
We have been gen or, and some of us evolved naturally. But whatever, uh, things aren't working out for us on earth. Earth life sucks on earth as a telepath because we're hunted down, Sitecore, all that sort of stuff. And we have a different set of needs. They have a different way of living. They, how much they have to shut down of themselves.
They talk about this just to walk around day to day. Right? And they have no other place to go. Like, so they want their own home world so they can go and live life as they need to without having to do all of that. They have a different set of needs that they're gonna have a different culture. They're gonna have a different set of laws that govern what they're allowed to do and not allowed to do.
And, you know, who needs to be the people to, to create, foster, and enforce all of that themselves.
Jeff: Yeah,
Brent: So the idea that they get their own home world actually makes a lot of sense. Like their request is not out of bounds,
Jeff: no.
Brent: you know? Uh, to, to, and that's, and that's where I get disappointed at Sheridan in all of this.
Like this is, this is out of, out of line. Coming in here and asking for, well, yeah, it is out of line. You should have been shut down the moment you said, I'm not talking about the thing I said I was gonna talk about. Okay then we're, we're stopping you right now because we don't have, this is not how we do this, and you're not gonna just come in here and take this over.
But they let him speak anyway. And that's really where Sheridan should have been. Like even after Delin said her stupid thing that she said, Sheridan should have just been like, you know what? They are doing it the wrong way. Quote the Earth president, interim Earth president. Is she still the pre, is she still interim at this point?
Do we know?
Jeff: no
Brent: We dunno. Yeah. See again, lost storylines that they weren't focusing on anyway. Just sit back and say, this is where Sheridan could have been the bigger man. This is where like, this is where the message could have come from humanity, of like, listen, you're doing this in just absolutely the wrong way, but you do have a point.
Let's actually, you know how we can fix, you know how we can fix this, Byron, instead of doing it the way that you're wanting to do it, let's actually work on it. Let's agree that this is something that should happen. Let's begin to work through these phases. There's apparently all these worlds out there that are are uninhabited, that
Jeff: Go to Zaha Doom. Go, go live on Zaha Doom.
Brent: dooms blowing up right now.
Jeff: That's still a rock. Go there, you know?
Brent: out there, right? Yeah. But I mean, but they said there, there are these worlds out there that have little value to the thing. Now, do you just walk, Hey, listen, you got this world here. Doesn't mean anything to you, so we're just gonna go live there. You can't just do that, but you can begin those negotiations with folks and say, Hey, we're gonna carve out this space and we're gonna allow them to be there, you know?
Do you, do you a agree to do that? Hey, by the way, do you know why Washington DC is shaped the way it's shaped?
Jeff: Huh.
Brent: Have you ever looked at it? If you go look at it like, like half of the sides are like real straight lines, and then the other half isn't straight lines. Because apparently what had happened was it was supposed to be shaped like a diamond and only Maryland gave up the portion of their land to be the diamond, and Virginia said, Nope.
And so the squiggly line is like the river, like that's why Washington DC because it should have actually been this other side of Virginia, but they renegged on their part of the deal. Apparently. Apparently that's what happened. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's, it seems true to me. But my point being, you go to these worlds and, and you say, Hey, let's, let's find a place where we can put these guys and just let them be.
Give them their space, let them be, Hey Telepath, you guys want to go do this, so we're gonna have to buy this for you. You know? Okay, well listen. Um, maybe we come in to help out with that. You guys figure that out. Like this is all part of it. But let's, the point is, let's get you the thing you want because it make sense. And by the way, life sucks for you at home with Cycore and all that kind of stuff. And we don't want, frankly, we don't want you around any E either, because it's kind of dangerous having you around.
Jeff: Yeah. And, and, and, and to be fair, right, you don't want to set alpha five them where you just dump 'em and leave them, but you go dump 'em and you make them a part of your greater
Brent: Society.
Jeff: Yep. Interstellar alliance. You, I don't know if it's sovereignty. I don't know what it is, but you make 'em part of the thing, but let 'em go live their thing.
Brent: And let 'em be a part of the greater thing. I, I said in the Brent Watches video, don't let 'em into the alliance. But that's just cause I was kinda pissed off at him. But no, you let 'em into the, let the value, that diversity that they have, and by the way, you can then, for earth anyway, you can put it, Hey, listen, when you guys come here, here are the rules. Can't be reading people's minds. You can't do this, you can't do that. We're gonna have ambassadors here, we're gonna have this. But over there you can guys go live. Whatever your rules are over there.
Jeff: Do your thing. I gotta hit, I gotta hit this real quick.
Brent: all
Jeff: Sorry. That that's on my thing.
Brent: this makes all the sense in the world to me, you know? But no Byron's gotta go in there and be all like you owe us
Jeff: Well, there, there were multiple, and I'm gonna talk about this honestly in the wrap up for it, but there were multiple opportunities for Byron and Sheridan both to stop and say a thing and everything could have gone differently on this one. And they, they both failed time and time again.
Brent: Yeah, I have, I have one last thought on the whole Byron thing, and then I'm ready to be done with him. Um,
well, two, I guess two, uh, Byron's trying to be like Gandhi and he's really bad at it.
Jeff: So bad.
Brent: He's so bad at it. He says that, he says this one line he is like, the longer it takes for them to reach us, the more chance we have to negotiate. Dude, Byron's not trying to even negotiate in the first place. He's trying to extort.
He's trying to
Jeff: had an ultimatum and he's pushed him up against a wall and no, they're not gonna be easy to negotiate. There's no public sentiment that's gonna go your way. You have painted yourself as the enemy, period.
Brent: You just killed yourself. Killed any chance that you had of actually a diplomatic solution to this. Um, also, I never, ever in my life needed to see Byron's nipple.
Jeff: No.
Brent: I'm sorry. I just, I just didn't need, okay, here's what I was really gonna say. Um, Byron talks about being grown in a laboratory and, and, or he has that, that idea.
I don't think he said those exact words, but, you know, we were modified, we were changed, we wouldn't be here, and this and that, that, um, there's a phrase I say, I think I've said it on the show before, maybe not, but if not, I'm gonna bring it back cuz it reminds me here. Byron's being offended. He's choosing offense.
And here's the thing, a fence is chosen a hundred percent of the time.
Jeff: Yep.
Brent: Think about it. A fence is chosen. It never just happens to you. You never just go, oh, where'd that come from? I got offended. No, you hear something, you think about it, you go, wait, what? Hmm. Oh, I am offended. You thought about it, you rolled it through your head, and you made a choice to be offended. If you make a choice to be offended, you can also make the choice to not be offended. Byron is choosing offense here. He's picking it and it's, it's leading to, honestly, a really bad decision that should doom any chance of actually accomplishing the goal that he wants to accomplish.
Jeff: He's choosing opposition. Right. And, oh man, this is, this is, this is probably a really bad, I know this is a bad example for a lot of our, uh, viewers and listeners out there, but it's, but it, it's so on the nose and I think about all of the union negotiations that have gone on in the last year that have not gone well.
And there's some of them that have not gone well because, well, you know, management or whatever, legislators or whomever the deciding bodies are, are, are just not showing up and playing ball board of directors, whatever. Like there's a, most of them are, are that, but there's a handful where the union and the management sides actually want the same things.
It's just negotiating out the details of it. And one of the two sides, if not both of them decide, Hey, instead of coming together and talking about this and working through it, we're going to oppose this, this, uh, you know, proposal that's been made. We're going to fight. When we fight, we win. Like, that's a chant I've heard over and over.
I heard it with my employers. They, they were outside our state capitol. When we fight, we win. And it's like, I. Hmm. No. Uh, when you fight, someone loses and the other person, eh, doesn't lose. No one's necessarily winning. What if we worked together? What if, what if you to your, like, I love your, the, the, the example or what if instead of choosing a fence, you chose collaboration?
Brent: Yep.
Jeff: It's a choice.
Brent: Yep.
Jeff: Yeah. Oh, lot of
Brent: this, this, this is where the Star Trek message is needed, is here. This is, this is the message that needs to be delivered. This is why we need Star Trek and what Star Trek teaches us, which is we're gonna work together to make this happen
Jeff: Yeah. And spoiler alert, we are gonna talk about this in the Babylon five message part of this episode. Some. So, but from a different perspective.
Brent: There you go. I like it.
Jeff: I don't have a lot on the attacks thing.
Brent: Um, I, I, I, I'm sorry. One, one more thing on the attacks thing.
Jeff: The, uh, the attacks on the alliance shipping lanes.
Brent: It mattered. Nothing. It, it mattered absolutely nothing. I, I, before you go to that though, uh, I have a Sheridan note.
Jeff: Mm.
Brent: Uh, you know what Sheridan's big mistake was in this episode? It wasn't to allow the, the colony to exist on Babylon five, which is what everybody, oh, we sh never should have let them come.
Never should. That wasn't his mistake. You know what his mistake was? Was to withdraw his protection.
Jeff: You think?
Brent: I think that was a bad mistake on his part. He brought them here, he gave them protection, and without consulting, without warning, without anything, he just says, Nope, I'm gonna withdraw. Go get 'em. And that's not okay.
And that is the thing that's going to push the telepaths, those telepaths to violence
Jeff: Yeah.
Brent: is because now they're actually being hunted. You told us we were gonna be safe here and now we're not. And now we actually have to fight back. That's gonna be the thing that draws, uh, draws this telepath war and pushes this telepath war to that.
It's not that. I think Sheridan actually did the exact right thing by allowing them to be on the station. To, to, maybe his reasoning was off. Were were, Hey, wouldn't it be nice to have them on our side when stuff erupts with ster and sco? Sure.
Jeff: But here's the thing. He let 'em on, on board with that justification and then did nothing to foster them being on their side. They were othered immediately. They were sent to the grossest part of the station. They weren't, I mean, it is just, they were, it was not a good situation from go. And I'm gonna take this conversation, slap a pin in it, because this is exactly where my white stars conversation goes.
Um, is to this point that we hit right
Brent: Cause for, forgive me if I'm wrong, and stop me if this is where you're also going. Didn't Byron, in the tele passe when, listen, we're gonna earn our keep here. They, they brother heed it. Right, right. Yeah. We're gonna earn our keep, we're gonna do all this kind of stuff and well, that whole piece just got dropped.
All right.
Jeff: even got the piece, Hey, these Telepaths have been working with you Garibaldi. They've been great. They've been giving us value this whole time. These two that have been working for you. Yeah. We'll, we'll get to, we'll get to all that here shortly.
Brent: Talk about Londo.
Jeff: I think the only thing I want to hit on the shipping lanes attacks,
Brent: Oh yeah, that thing. Sorry.
Jeff: and it's not even about the shipping lanes attacks, it's about how the alliance works.
So you've got Earth and Minbar
Brent: Mm-hmm.
Jeff: and then everyone else. I don't get that. How is this different than the league? The league you had your big five, your big six with the war lawns, and then everybody else. Now you've got two. It's, it's, they get the reports and I get that she's in Tza, so she's gonna get the reports.
He's president, so he's gonna see things. But why was it Garibaldi in the room and not a Hayak or a Brachii or a VRE or somebody else? Like why are they the controllers of all things? I feel like this alliance thing is just a dressed up, gussied up version of the league, but with one central leader.
Brent: Well, I, I, frankly, Jeff, I think this goes back to what you were saying earlier about the laziness of the writing, because this is not what the Alliance was supposed to be at the end of season four,
Jeff: Nope.
Brent: but now we've gotta go in and do some stuff and, you know, I, I, I, I regret saying that word. I don't think it's laziness.
It might be, I don't think JMS is coming in here, being lazy about what he's doing. I think, I don't know if he's just distracted at this point. Like, I, I, I gotta imagine that it sucks to like, Hey, I've, I've pushed all my pieces together. I've pushed, I've pushed everything into the pot for the end of season four, and hey, now we get a chance to do some other stuff and, oh crap, he's gotta restart it.
At this point. He's had nine episodes. He's had nine episodes to restart it and, and really kick it down the line. And I, and I know what people are saying out there. Well, he has kicked it down. You, no, it's not, we're still kind of
Jeff: if I was, I mean,
Brent: to make it compelling, like, no, you, you said it the other day, Jeff, do what you did with the Ari Civil War.
As soon as you realize that the the telepath thing isn't working, give it an episode, wrap it up and let's move on to another storyline, cuz the Lando one is the beast.
Jeff: it's so good. And it started out so awesome with just Jaar. Just reveling in the racism?
Brent: Jeff, let me ask you a question. Do you think that's the part of the episode that JMS actually had fun writing
Jeff: I think so.
Brent: the rest of it wasn't like
Jeff: You know, you know what? I know episodes like the last couple. We've seen this in the comments episodes, like the King Arthur one. Like we didn't have fun recording those episodes and people didn't really have fun watching them. We didn't bring the energy for some of those, and we haven't in the last couple weeks.
I don't. I think that's what happened here. JMS brought the energy to these scenes and they were. Great. They were, the writing had punch that was
Brent: Walked in Londa, walking into the court with Jaar on his side, and everybody's like, oh, you brought your own entertainments. Let's do something where we put him in chains and a cell, and Lao's like, no, he's my bodyguard. Whoa.
Jeff: and Jaar. Jaar just lean and I mean, he, I, I felt like he, he, that whole flight, the whole like transport ride over, he's just like, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna say, this
Brent: he asked that dude what time dinner was, it was so good. The dude, the dude playing the Regent Rizzi, or whatever his name is, I mean, he was a hoot to watch just in the two times that we saw him before now. But I mean, drunk Rizzi is the best. Rizzi like, you know, like, like he is so good at playing this crazy psychopathic, makes no sense.
Kind of a guy like, you know who he reminds me of a little bit. Do you know who Emo Phillips was?
Jeff: Oh, yeah, yeah. The, oh,
Brent: It's a hundred percent. Who he reminds me of is Emo Phillips. If you guys don't know who Emo Phillips, he's a comedian. Uh, that was mostly in, I think the seventies and eighties, a little bit through the nineties.
Um, go, go check out his stuff. It's very weird. It's very off-putting, but when you understand what's really going on, it's hilarious.
Jeff: But yeah, with, uh, I, the Regent Verini Risi are the exo Yeah, they're the exogenesis aliens. So still a Babylon five
Brent: really Whoa. Okay, Verini. Thank you. Okay, thank you.
Jeff: But the,
Brent: Everybody can delete your comments now. We got it. We corrected it. Go ahead.
Jeff: fine. I let I let him run for a sec, but no, I, he was, he was so great cuz he was so, he had that tortured feeling, you know, and I, what I loved about these scenes is that we know what's up and no one else does.
And but, but I think, again, like if I had not watched Babylon five until it was on t n t and I popped in at this moment, I know something's up. He kept, he kept messing with his shoulder a little bit. He kept looking around the hole. If it, if it was my decision, you would never be hurt and no one would ever kill you.
If it was my decision, bam,
Brent: But it's not.
Jeff: oh, he just, oh, it was just that. A guy who has clearly been pushed over the edge and won't, like, he's falling, but they're not, it's not letting him hit. You know, he's just, ah, when am I gonna die? Please, please. And it's not happening is excellent.
Brent: Mm-hmm.
Jeff: The, uh, minister guy who tried to kill Londo,
Brent: The old guy.
Jeff: the old guy,
Brent: Yeah.
Jeff: I'm guessing he's the guy who probably tried to blow up his ship couple episodes ago.
Brent: Uh, sure, sure. He, I mean, he's came out. I've got designs. I've got plans. I set my first two notes of the show. Londo just does not want to be here walking into that. And then Londo is getting shivved. Everything about from, from the, the, the dude who was making fun of Jaar to the old dude you were just talking about, like, these guys are gonna kill Lando.
They're a thousand percent gonna try to kill Lando. Like, why would you ever want this job? And now, you know what? We were right. And it turns out they both tried to kill Lando as they showed us later in the show.
Jeff: Yeah,
Brent: You know, they were both a part of it. I was a little shocked to see Londo go through the, I was expecting that was the drop, right?
Jeff: I don't think
Brent: That killed the dude that killed Jono.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Brent: By the way, I like Jono. I wish we would've got a lot more Jono.
Jeff: Same my note. Exactly. Jano. Jano, who I really liked, gives laundry the skin and gets killed it. Uh, Regent has to watch, then it gets set to set up to look like an Epstein. I'm, I mean, a suicide. But yeah, he was, he was great and I loved, he even had the cent eyebrows. He was a very reasonable guy. I loved how they introduced that whole concept of lying about logistics and stuff through him. Like, that's a good dude right there.
Brent: yeah. And why lie about the logistics? Like why turn all these things top secret that it's just, nor what are they up to to even make that happen? I don't understand why they would even do that.
Jeff: if I look ahead, 17, is it 17 years to war without end? What we know is there's gonna be fire and explosions and starvation and sickness and all this stuff. So the dark minions are diverting supplies somewhere else and not getting them to the home world.
Brent: Yeah, that makes sense. And so they, they gotta cover that up. And in order to keep their guy in, in power, Hey, by the way, you know who their guy is, your guy's Londo. They really like Londo. He's one of them. He
Jeff: Yeah, yeah,
Brent: he's like them. And I'm like, maybe you don't know Londo, or maybe you really do. What do you think about your car? Oh, what?
Jeff: I just, but, but yeah, you asked if I thought that was the rock and I feel like we saw two different aliens. We saw the one who telekinesis the knife, I guess, or something.
Brent: See that's what I thought the drop were. Like the, the ones who came outta the shadows and killed Jono that we didn't actually see. And then the, the guy who came outta the shadow to save Londo and flipped the knife around and, and go back. I thought that was the drop.
Jeff: Cause the Drake had that weird movie Fay thing and couldn't quite grab onto things when they were on, uh, on the, on the white star. This guy that was standing there looked pretty stable. He looked pretty. Badass, but I didn't get the DRock vibe. I got like assassin suit sort of a thing. And then there was the guy, we got the face in the dark that, uh, Verini was like, I didn't tell them
Brent: I thought that was the same guy.
Jeff: really?
Brent: I thought all of that was the same. You know, you just, you like, first we didn't see him and then we got a little bit of a further away and then we got like a closeup on him and it was all the same person that's.
Jeff: the one that did the knife thing had some sort of a mask or a suit or something on, but it could be the same guy in there. But I, I, I'm confused. I'll just say this now and please do not answer this question. It'll get answered for us. But we've heard in, in, uh, in Rising Star and then, and then in, uh, again, in deconstruction of following stars, we heard about the Drake War, so the DRock or a thing again, but.
I remember the jock being very different last season than they were. If this is them, they look very different, which frankly is fine. Cuz that was terrible.
Brent: Uh, so Jaar, let's talk about jaar on, on Sari, uh, centar, sari, prime,
Jeff: Sari Prime
Brent: sari, whatever it is. Talk to me about your response to him and the whip and the dude who's gonna kill him, or, or, Dude. Yeah. Uh, and his whole thing about the hand and the heart and all that sort of stuff.
Jeff: was so, it was beautiful. It was poetic. I feel like it was written at us based on our conversation two weeks ago. Just, I, I mean, how, how amazing is that, right? Hey, could I, yeah, I could whip the heck out of this guy might feel kind of good, even he didn't do it. It wasn't him. The guy who did, it's dead, just gone, you know?
And so what, what, what do we do? And then he gets right in dude's face. I even wrote this one down. Everyone knows the true source of pain is neither the hand nor the heart. It is the mouth. Is it not meed? Oh. And we, and we saw that, that's what we saw that we're seeing with Verini and the, the dark minions.
They're causing this pain on Centara. And it's because of the things he's saying that that's happening. We're seeing it with Byron, we're seeing it with Sheridan Delen. The things they are saying are causing all this pain and strife and, and more importantly, the things they are not saying is causing all of this pain in this strife.
I thought, I thought that was just brilliant and I felt like j m s. Through the time warp that we share, um, heard us two weeks ago and says, I'll answer your question for you. I gotcha.
Brent: Um, I'm with you that, again, this is the part that it felt like JMS was really paying attention to. other part was just. It's just annoying.
Jeff: I wonder too if he had this, when, when he wrote that scene, Jaar getting whipped, if he already had this scene in the very long night of Lado, malaria and this scene in his head, like he knew this was gonna lead to those two moments.
Brent: I'll tell you my favorite part of the entire episode. It was a really tiny part, but I loved it. This is one of those parts people would've complained about me missing and I didn't miss it. Right after Jaar does that whole hand and heart and all mouth and all that kind of
Jeff: I know where you're going.
Brent: he's leaving. He walks out the room, he looks over at one of the Sari babes and goes, and she likes it.
Jeff: She's there for it.
Brent: She's thousand percent there for it. Okay. Rewind the clock for me, Jeff. We talked, we talked a couple weeks ago about seeing Jaar come out in his pajamas and he didn't have the robe and the chest pieces and all that, which we saw several times in the first season or two. Right?
Jeff: Yeah,
Brent: Wasn't it always a group of Sari women leaving his, his quarters?
Jeff: it was,
Brent: It wasn't Narn women, it was Sari women,
Jeff: Yeah. We thought that one of them, well, and we know at least one of Lao's wives was, uh, was included in some of that,
Brent: Yeah. So Jaar Jaar is all about those six spots, man and Jaar buddy. And she was falling for it. I, it was so funny.
Jeff: It was
Brent: The look she gave the dude she was standing next to. Oh my gosh.
Jeff: He looks at her, she looks at, oh, it was so great. That whole scene was amazing.
Brent: I have a legitimate major complaint about this episode though.
Jeff: Okay.
Brent: Londo Prime Minister, soon to be emperor, has returned to Sari Prime. He is in the palace. Do you know who's not in the palace and who should be in the palace?
Jeff: Would that be ve Coto?
Brent: Nope. Although I did Miss Vere. I did note Vere wasn't in this vere's, kind of taken this whole stance that that Lanier is why isn't veer there, but whatever.
No Av,
Jeff: Oh,
Brent: AV is the Empress now or whatever, right? Wife of the empress, whatever. She should be there. We've, we've seen this whole thing about the wives of the Emperor and, and all the, that they follow him around and the, the, all that sort of stuff. Where's Mav? I need some Jane Carr back on this show.
Jeff: That would be great. Well, maybe she's on her way. Maybe that was at the end when Londo was laying in his little house on the prairie bed and Jaar was laying on the floor covered in drapes or something, a throw pillow and curtains. And he's like, I don't want to be here anymore, because he felt a disturbance in the force.
And that disturbance Is Tim off making her way to the palace?
Brent: Is that Pestilence? Death, famine. Well, Jeff, I think we have arrived at that spot where it is time to boil this all down and see what messages Babylon five is trying to deliver to us, if any. To be honest with you, uh, Jeff, you're gonna do that this week. You get to rate this episode on a scale of zero to five white stars as far as how strong that message is, how good that message is, how uniquely Babylon five is that message.
What do you got for us this week, Jeff?
Jeff: We've talked about a lot of this and so I, I might, I may end up keeping this short cause we've already had a bunch of this discussion, but there's a theme emerging here in the fifth season. I think that's a thing we really caught in season three with passing through Gethsemane. There's a real theme.
Season four had its theme. Season five is, is coming up with this theme, and that is who pays the price and how is justice served when the perpetrator is long gone? And maybe it's just the last couple episodes, but it seems to be getting hit on the head. Pretty hard. We got it with the VOR lawns. You know, Byron has to make the VLANs pay.
We have to, the, the shadows or the dark minions of the shadows now want to make Sari pay. Um, they wanted to, you know, make the guard that whipped Jaar pay and all of these things. I think that this is gonna be a big theme that comes through. But the real message in this one we talked about was that communication or absence of communication.
But nothing came of that in this episode. There it was. This is what did come from this episode, though. Escalation leads to escalation.
Brent: Mm.
Jeff: Byron went from zero to 60 in a heartbeat. And for our non United States friends, those of you who use the metric system, uh, zero to 115 kilometers per hour. I don't know the math, but uh, We just say zero to 60 miles per hour, it's a thing.
But he went in a heartbeat from like, Hey, you know, we're
Brent: I, I think for the record, Jeff, I think the phrasing would still be zero to a hundred in three seconds or something like that. I think. I think it still works. You just change the
Jeff: The number, and it probably would be a number, like a hundred that makes sense that it is the metric system.
Brent: Hey, when you number, you're officially going fast.
Jeff: yeah, this is, this is the line. And getting to that, that number is a big deal. But he went from like, Hey, let's come on board and have a colony here so we can get a home world. You know, that'd be cool to, we're taking these suckers down and sharing their secrets and we're gonna burn this whole thing up.
We're gonna lock ourselves in and hunger strike like in a heartbeat. But what happens in situations like that? Is the people you're going against often feel they have no choice. That was a theme we talked about in the third season, right? There was no choice, but you always, you always have a choice is the the point.
But they feel they have no choice and they have to escalate in reaction to that escalation. Byron, not communicating with Sheridan, with Delen, with Zack at the end. Zack's right there begging them to come out and talk to him. Not doing those things. Put Sheridan in a position where he felt he had no choice but for him to escalate as well.
Byron's actions are just as responsible for Sheridan choosing to pull the protection as Sheridan choosing to pull the protection. They got each other so ramped up. They created this situation. There were opportunities. Early on for Sheridan, like you said, when Byron did his thing to just say, Hey, this is very interesting.
Let's go off of the record and let's go have a conversation about this. Let's talk about what this looks like. See what we can do for you. I have questions. Something. Byron had an opportunity when he was down there and they were like, we're gonna go beat these suckers up. We got clubs and everything. The minute they didn't listen to him and walked out, he could have been like, boop, boop, boop, boop.
Hey, Zach got some telepaths out to get these people. Can you get there and protect him and make sure they don't do anything stupid? I'm being a good citizen of Babylon five and showing that I'm truly nonviolent. He had a chance to open up and say no, but they never did. They never did, and then they started making assumptions, right?
You had Sheridan who was in the moment. He's like, gosh, maybe it does make sense. You know? I mean, we gotta get 'em up here. We gotta detain them. We gotta somehow control this situation because it's escalated to such a point so we can have a conversation about maybe giving them their home world. And then it's like, Nope, we're going all in.
The point is when you don't communicate with each other, bad things happen. I think about breaking bad. Did you ever watch Breaking Bad?
Brent: Um, yes.
Jeff: I hated it.
Brent: I never finished it, but yes, I've watched it. It was one of those shows I could never watch more than two episodes at a single time before I had to get up and just go like, clear my mind. It was such a heavy epi episode and I just got to a spot where like, I can't keep putting myself through this.
And I know it's fantastic. I've, everything I've heard about, it's some of the best TV ever. I just, yeah, I knocked off somewhere in season two, somewhere around
Jeff: Okay. Yeah. We finished it. We powered through it was it? That's the thing. It was beautiful. It was great. Amazingly constructed. The acting was world-class, but the whole thing, everything in it happened because Walter White refused to tell Skylar, his wife what was happening. One conversation would've saved countless lives in that situation, would've saved him getting gunned down at the end of the series.
But he just couldn't have the conversation. Couldn't say it because escalation leads to escalation until someone has the courage to stop and say, whoa, let's talk about this. How many times in our relationships do we have this happen? Right. Where. Going along and things are fine, and then this happens. And so instead of talking about it, you come back with this and instead of talking about that, they come back with this and then with this, and then the next thing you know, everything's falling apart and blowing up.
When all that had to happen at one point was for someone to say, whoa, I'm feeling this right now, and I'd like to talk about it, but we just don't do it. I think this is such a powerful message in this one that led to, I mean, it, it's gonna lead to the telepath war. It's, it's going to, it's gonna be horrible.
What happens? Um, I'm gonna give this one because I think this was wildly intentional and I think it's powerful, but I also don't think it's done. I think this was the introduction of it. I'm gonna give this one, three white stars.
Brent: If you had gone any higher, I would fight you over it,
Jeff: Yeah. I, I wouldn't have gone any higher.
Brent: You didn't. So I'm gonna let it be. Not that I actually have any say in the white stars this week at all. Like, I, I just don't, that's, that's the rules. I don't make 'em up. I just follow, actually, yeah, we do make them up, but whatever.
Jeff: Well, we have a lot of rules and we do have that whole thing. You don't get to push back on the white stars. And today I'm not gonna get to push back on your big responsibility coming up cuz we are developing the definitive ranking absolutely objectively, scientifically tested, incorrect ranking of all the episodes of the fifth season of Babylon five and our top five.
Currently there is the very long night of Londo malaria in the top spot, no compromises, learning curve, a view from the gallery, and then day of the dead. Brent, this is your responsibility this week. Where are you ranking in the Kingdom of the Blind.
Brent: Um, It's not gonna crack one, two, or three. Cause I liked one, two or three. One, two, and three. Like, for, for as much as we talk about season five and we're getting kind of given season five, a bunch of crap that it totally deserves. Uh, numbers one, two, and three. Long night of Lado malaria. No compromises in Learning Curve.
Were good episodes. I liked these episodes, so we're not, we're not gonna break that. I think this is in the top five, I think. Uh, so really, I'm looking, do I put it at view from the gallery or Day of the Dead? I'm just looking at these. Uh, yeah. Day of the Dead was so good. I, I had so much to say. You know?
Jeff: it also had a lot that it didn't say.
Brent: It did. It really did. Um, but that one, it was the whole thing with the Hayek and the Hayek dough and all of that. I, I, I personally love that one a whole lot view from the gallery was an episode that I said was fine, but we just didn't need it. But it was fine. It was a good episode. Um hmm. You know, Jeff, I actually, I take that back. I don't think this is gonna crack our top five. This one is gonna slide in right for me, right underneath, uh, day of the Dead. It's, it's, it, it's right there. It's kind of, it's kind of a, on the bubble, but I think given the episodes we have there, I, I'm gonna wanna watch Day of the Dead before I watch this one again.
And uh, yeah. But definitely, I'm gonna watch this one before I watch Peron of Animals,
Jeff: Well, it makes sense to me. It reminds me of a Dr. Mario sort of a thing, right? If you remember, Dr. Mario was a Tetris knockoff, and you had to have the pills and the colors match up. So you have to have the bottom half of this episode, which are the telepaths match up to another Telepath episode, which is gonna put it well outside the top five.
Brent: There you.
Jeff: there you go.
Brent: There you go.
Jeff: Well, Brent, that's it for the kingdom of the. Well, Brent, that's it for in the Kingdom of the Blind. Next week, we're watching a tragedy of Telepaths for the first time.
Brent: You serious?
Jeff: Yeah, more Telepaths.
Brent: What? Oh my word.
Jeff: Never seen these episodes before. We only know the title and you can tell right there that's the, the first Brent has heard it.
We don't look at thumbnails or anything, and the fun game we like to play is guessing the next episode. What's gonna happen in it based on the title alone. So Brent, a Tragedy of Telepaths, what does it hold for us?
Brent: You know what I'm, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go out on a limb here.
Jeff: Okay?
Brent: The, uh, the telepaths have locked themselves in the down below area. Like they're, they're in their, their little thing, their siege, siege bunker, right? Um, we saw them do that. I think they're down there. I think, uh, Sheridan or Babylon, five or whoever, they reach out and ster arrives on the station to try to break it up, to try to get in there, to try to be the guy.
Um, and I think this, I, Jeff, this is a tragedy of telepath. I'm hoping, I'm hoping beyond hope. This is the end of the Telepath war that they come in, they all die. The whole, the whole lot of them die. And I'm only hoping that because that would be the end of the war, and I'm hoping, and then it, it becomes, uh, it, it ramps up to this whole like cyco versus these guys where they're trying to do whatever.
And, and it's just like, and it's one of the, it's like the Alamo, like, it's not even really a fight at all, like at all. So that's what I'm going with.
Jeff: We're pretty darn close on this one.
Brent: Okay.
Jeff: So I think that, well, first off, I, I hear tragedy of Telepaths and I think like, murder of Crows, you know, or something like that. Like, ooh, is this a, you know, a number of Telepaths coming together?
Brent: Oh
Jeff: that's like, it's gonna be, but what's the number, you know?
But I, I have the, almost the same outcome, except I think
Brent: group Lions
Jeff: pride of Lions,
right?
Brent: fish. A school, what do you call a group of telepaths? A tragedy.
Jeff: Uhhuh.
But I think that this things are gonna start getting outta hand. Uh, you know, Byron and his crew are gonna be making more noise and whatever, and Lockley specifically, cuz we established that Lockley investor on pretty good terms. And so she's gonna call up and be like, Hey, remember those telepaths are there, they're ready, they're ready for you.
We got 'em.
Brent: Oh, cause they're supposed to. Yeah, it's like supposed to be like so many days,
Jeff: Yep.
Brent: Oh, I didn't even think about, I thought Sheridan, Colin, Colin, uh, ster. But yeah, Lockley makes way more sense than Sheridan,
Jeff: Yeah. That makes, that's why they established the relationship I think is so she could make a friendly call. And I think the fun Babylon five spin on all of this, and I'm here for it, is Bester and Psycore are gonna be the good guys in, uh, in this whole thing.
Brent: except I, I, but I see this, I, this is called the War of the Telepaths. I really almost see this as not actually like, it's a war. It's called a war, but it's not really a war. This is gonna be a shellacking. And all. I mean, what was that episode where jms killed a kid?
Jeff: Which
one?
Brent: a telepath kid in, in that down below it.
No. The one where they remember they all locked themselves into it was the mark cap where they locked themselves into the room, and then Lanier and Delin were the only two literally left standing.
Jeff: Yeah. Confessions and limitations. I was gonna say, he kills a kid at least once a season, it seems.
Brent: oh my gosh. It's going to be that level of destruction of the Telepaths, and I'm only rejoicing because that means it's the end of Byron.
Jeff: Yeah,
I sure hope it is. And we're gonna find out next week. Thank you everybody so much for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you're watching or listening. Leave us a review and, uh, share this podcast. You know, let people know about this show. Somebody who loves Babylon five already, somebody who's about to fall in love with it.
Let 'em know there's this great show called Babylon five for the first time. The share button is right there on whatever app you're using from YouTube to Apple to good pods and everything in between. So, Brent, until next time.
Brent: Hey Jeff.
Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. What's up?
Brent: Um, I did actually have a couple more notes on Byron, can I get them in real quick?
Jeff: Nope, we're getting the hell outta here.
