[0:00] Hey, listen, I just want to tell everybody out there, um, I am not in my normal recording space. I am not as isolated as I normally am. So if you hear extraneous sounds or taps on tables or things like that, I've done my best. I've done my best to isolate all of those things, but it could come through. If it does, we're just going to keep rocking and we'll eventually be back in our normal space where none of that happens. So what is to be gained by fighting? Maybe nothing, Maybe a lot. I'd like to be the one to make that decision.
[0:29] Music. The name of the podcast. Babylon 5. For the first time. Welcome to Babylon 5 for the first time, not a Star Trek podcast. My name is Jeff Akin. And I'm Brent Allen. You know, Jeff and I are two veteran Star Trek podcasting nerds that a few years ago decided to get together and watch Babylon 5 for the very first time. And we fell so much in love with the show that we said, we're not just stopping at 110 episodes. Oh no, we're going to continue that journey. And now we are continuing that journey with Crusade for the first time. And just like always, we're going to be searching for the deep hidden messages that we find in the series. But don't worry, they're not going to be Star Trek messages. They're going to be sci-fi messages because this is not a Star Trek podcast. And to reinforce that, we're going to keep our long-running game of the rule of three up and alive. That limits us to no more than three references to Star Trek per episode. That's it. Three. Uno, dos, tres. No substitutions. Exchanges a refund. And if we make one of those references, you're going to hear this. Hey, Brent. Hey, Jeff. We have a five-star review.
[0:33] I want you to know that this thing just made a very large dent in my ship. The year is 2024.
[1:52] Yes. This is another one off of Audible. Audible in the house. On Audible, Wobagger says... Wobagger. I just want you to be ready for this one. Put the head inflation device down, because this one might... Get us a little bit. Uh-oh. You've got me worried. Bump the ego a little bit. Woe Bagger says, Jeff and Brent are some of the best hosts out there. Ha!
[2:21] Good reactions and insights make them a must follow. It's been a blast listening to them go on the ride of Babylon 5, and the second time around should be just as fun. Woe Bagger, I can't comment anymore because you just said it all. Perfectly. i will say this honestly jeff i i gotta tell you it has been uh intentionally so we have not been re-watching babylon 5 and it's it's getting to the spot where there's been enough separation from the end of the show i'm really ready to jump back into babylon 5 and and this has been great i'm not trying to rush through this but i'm really itching to get back into babylon 5 for the second time which is going to be a whole new show but i think you guys are going to find stuff in it that we never found in the first run. So it is hard. You know, we, I watch crusade on the same streaming platform that I watched Babylon five. And we're also on our Patreon. We're doing a reaction to another series that I also watch on that same platform. So Babylon five is like sitting there every time I log on to do that. And I'm always just like, I mean, how would it hurt to watch one? I was at the other day. Like I, I had some time downtime. I was like, I want to watch an episode of Babylon five. I need to save it. Yep.
[3:35] I need to save it. So it's hard to do it. Absolutely. You know what else is hard to do? Jeff, what's that? Make predictions and, and see the future. Now you and I are time travelers, so it's a little bit less hard for us, but sometimes we haven't visited there yet. Now, if you don't know what I'm talking about, what I mean is at the end of every episode, Jeff and I predict what we think the next week's episode is going to be about. Never having seen the episode before, never watching trailers or looking at thumbnails or reading descriptions. All we get is the title and title alone. Well, this is the part of the show where we revisit our predictions from last week and see what we thought this week was going to be about. So, Jeff, you got it first. what did you think this one the path of sorrows was going to be about i thought that they were going to go to a planet that might have something that they need but to get it they were going to have to walk a path and along that path they would face their inner demons and their sorrows really similar to the never-ending story where they saw their true true selves and brent i think i got pretty darn close on this one we got a planet that had something they thought they might need. They didn't have to walk a path, but they had to face an inner sorrow or demon. I don't know, Jeff. I want to, I want to, um, push back on that a little bit. Yeah.
[4:56] Galen very clearly said in order to enter, you have to walk the, or enter through the path of sorrows. Yeah, that's fair. And they did. They literally walked a path. They, when the door opened, they walked a path. They did walk the path. Okay, fair. I'll take it. What did you think it was going to be? Well, I said that this was going to be like the Stargate episode, uh, fair game. I misspoke, not fair game. I meant the gamekeeper, the amazing episode with Dwight Schultz, which is where they would have to relive like some past traumatic moments. That is the only thing I could come up with, with path of sorrows. And that's literally what they were going through. And this one was reliving past, past, uh, what you call it. We just didn't have the gamekeeper to ruin the episode for us. Oh, it wasn't that bad.
[5:42] Well jeff that's what you thought that's what i thought however we know that there are friends out there who either have never watched crusade before they're just hanging out with us which if that's the case welcome you guys are amazing Or maybe they watched Crusade, but they did it like way back when it first aired and they're like, eh, it never really completed. So they haven't done a rewatch anytime since or soon. Why don't you take a moment and remind the folks out there exactly what the Path of Sorrows was truly about? Well, the team stands at the gates of Mordor and they can't figure out how to get inside. Maybe not Mordor so much as the Houses of Healing, because this is supposed to be a healing place. and we're left to assume that they're hoping to find something that'll move them closer to a cure for the plague.
[6:25] Galen isn't a fan of assuming though and takes matters into his own hands. He berates Doreena to the point of tears and then rubs one of them on the wall opening the door. I sure hope he apologized to her later. It was pretty harsh. Once inside they find a single small room holding a giant crystal ball with a guild navigator inside or maybe it's the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland? Well, either way, it's a mystery, so they take it up to the Excalibur. From here, we dive into some backstory. We see Gideon get stranded by the Cerberus and picked up by Galen. Then we see him win Jombie. We finally see how he gets the apocalypse box. He got it from Blinken, who is incredibly overjoyed to be free of that never ending Mechalekahai garbage.
[7:13] Matheson gives us a peek at the telepath war. He went from Psycor faithful to collaborator in about 47 seconds flat. Then he let the rebels blow up the facility he was in, but now he gets to leave his dream of flying through space with Earth Force. The Caterpillar forgives the two of them and they really appreciate it. In fact, they both get some of the best sleep they've gotten in years. Doesn't go that way for Galen though. Galen was betrayed by some of his buddies and then he held some lady friend that he was deeply in love with in his arms as she died. He didn't take the forgiveness so well, storming to the bullet trains to ride 120 miles per hour to nowhere. Gideon decides to send the alien ball back to its super tiny room in a super giant castle for whomever else might need it while on their travels. Brent, how was your walk down the path of sorrows? You know, Jeff, I understand just from comments over this last week that I've seen and people in our discord community and all of that, that this episode seems to be a fairly highly thought of episode. This is a favorite episode of the series for a lot of people. I want to acknowledge that straight up front because Jeff, I've got some bad news for you, man. Yeah. This is going to be one of those weeks. Brent was not a fan of this episode. Buckle up. Here we go. You can send all emails to Jeff at Babylon five first dot com.
[8:41] Listen, I'm just not one of them. I felt like this episode dragged on and on.
[8:54] I can see the makings of a great episode here. I really can. Exploring people's past, their inner motives, finding out what makes them tick, you know, the little factoids about their history, which I tend to find really fascinating and really fun. But in the end, I'm just not really entirely sure that the characters grew or changed from their encounters with this smoke globe guy. I know they told us they did, but they didn't show us that they did. And what I mean by that is, uh, Gideon goes through his whole experience. And then at the end just turns around and walks out. Matheson turns around and walks out. There's no, there's nothing there. And then we're just like, Oh yeah, I slept really good last night. Like that's all we got. And I was just like, I don't, eh, you know, typically when you get this kind of an episode, you expect your characters to go through some momentous change. Think Dylan, when she did the dream walking, her own smoke dream thing, right? Or Londo, when he had his very long night or Jakar, when he got really high, you know what I mean? And met his dad.
[10:02] It's just, this episode did not do it for me. Interesting facts here and there. There was some like, oh, that's what he was Oh, now we see that. Okay, that's cool. But in the end, it's a big meh. And for me, honestly, Jeff, I hate to say this. This is probably a hard skip for me on future rewatches. How about you? Wow. Yeah. You know, I think bringing up the long night, very long night, Alondo Malari is perfect. This felt like a very contrived version of that episode. I think my chief complaint with this is just the concept of this alien.
[10:39] We don't know what it's there for. Don't know why it does its thing. Just here's a plot device so that we can give you backstory. It's almost like they're in the writer's room and they're like, we need to know more about our characters and start showing some of the things, I think especially with Gideon's story that we're going to get, we need to start laying some of the groundwork. In fact, for Gideon specifically, I felt like this was his and the sky full of stars where we had all these questions about Sinclair and then finally that showed us everything that happened up to a point. We've had these questions with Gideon and now we have some real answers and we have a narrative behind that. So I liked that, but I think the whole thing was just like, how are we going to tell this story? How are we going to find a reason to go back and do these things that said this might honestly be my favorite episode of the series so far you're one of those people i loved i loved this episode did you so much oh my god really yes yeah all right.
[11:36] I felt, um, I never felt bored. Really? Even on the second, even on the second watch through, like I was just like, when I was taking notes, I didn't feel bored at all. In fact, I stopped taking notes cause I was watching the show. We talked, was it last week about great idea? Not the best actors to pull stuff off. Not the problem this time. Like they, they talked about the best three actors in the cast. Oh yeah. Yeah. And let them do stuff like really get in and go. Yeah. I was, I don't know. I was just, I was really impressed with this and I don't know, we might've seen the entirety of the telepath war that one scene. That's all you're going to get is that for the telepath war. It's about it. But also on top of everything, you know, last week guest stars, it couldn't carry the water to the guest stars this week. Oh my gosh.
[12:29] So, so incredible, right? Like I just, I love them. And and they have like roots in great sci-fi and i don't know i just i loved i loved this episode i even i even made the comment at one point that you know i bet uh but brent's glad he's the one ranking this one and not me you know here's the thing and like i said i really i want to fully acknowledge that i know i'm in the minority on this one but i can't be untrue to how i experienced or felt about this show oh absolutely this was probably one of jms's favorite episodes this one felt like a jms episode more than a lot of the other ones have have if it did okay it felt like a jms episode in very early season one of babel and five really yeah yeah i just i just didn't i i didn't it i didn't connect with it and maybe there's something wrong with me look i wasn't i wasn't distracted by the episode i wasn't just or by stuff going on i wasn't watching it while falling asleep. I just, I don't know. We'll jump into this whole thing as we go through this. So let's start at the very beginning, which is a very good place to start.
[13:45] A very good place to start thank you thank you for picking that up i appreciate that oh yeah so this is a place of healing they say completely is the meeting place from torment of tantalus and stargate oh yeah yeah good call but they're trying to figure out how to go in they've been there for 12 hours he says 12 hours 40 some odd languages or whatever that he's he's been able to finally decipher and they're like they what's the phrase like you have to enter freely through the path of sorrows yeah jeff you called it the gates of of mordor my friend you're absolutely wrong these were the gates to the minds of moria oh okay elvish language above the door speak friend and enter enter freely through the path of sorrows it just i'm surprised galen didn't make arena cry and then just take her face and rub it on the door itself here she was already all bruised up so right yeah right no problem we know that jms likes his lord of the rings we know he likes inserting the references i mean jeff it even looked like it did in the movie and the movie wouldn't have come out for another couple years right exactly yeah a couple years out i don't know when did this episode come out do we know maybe oh one so it might have been close they It might have been close then. Might have been real close, but I mean, it even looked like the entrance to the gates of Moria.
[15:08] What did you think? What did you think when Galen just starts attacking Doreena and going after that? At first, I thought that it might have been part of like that techno mage training that she's been wanting. Like it's part of the breaking her down sort of thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, but then as soon as like he pushed and started, I'm like, oh, okay. Got it. Got it. Got to get the for reals tear. We've seen this before, which like on that point, like I'm going to play both sides of this because I don't, I don't fully disagree with you. Like, like I said, so much of this is contrived and that was like just a bunch of tropes to get us to the point of, oh, I need tears, not just tears, but real tears.
[15:45] Yeah. You know? Yeah. So it kind of made sense to me pretty quickly. Yeah. I think I caught it pretty, pretty quick of, of what he was doing. I don't necessarily know that I knew exactly why, but I knew he was doing it on purpose. You know, I, I didn't until she cried, I didn't get the, Oh, he's trying to make her cry. Like, but I was like, he's doing this on purpose. He he's done something. What did you think when he like flips open a little fireball in his hand and just shoots it over to, to Eilerson and then later like opens up his jacket and just comes flying back in. I was just upset he didn't hit Eilerson with it.
[16:22] I have two notes in succession. One is just Eilerson. Ugh. And then the other one is, God, I've missed Galen. Right. We haven't seen Galen in a few episodes, have we? It's been a couple weeks, and immediately it was just like, oh, thank you. I'm glad he's here. Feels good. I think I said in last week's thing, like, man, we haven't seen Doreena or Galen in a few weeks. And, well, here they are. Here they are. so they walk in and there's the big snow globe thing and on the inside is something that looked like a discarded pockmeraw suit a used discarded right like this is this is after they took the makeup off an actor and this is what was left over is is kind of really i really thought it was like a pockmeraw at first i was like what in the although people who watch uh who've only watched crusade not watch babylon 5 wouldn't even know what a pockmeraw is i'm sure they would they'd literally show one almost completely naked. Oh, that's right. That's right. So they wouldn't know. They wouldn't have a different view of it. When I saw that thing, it made me... See if you get this one. All I thought was... Tobey, tobey. Am I not turtly enough for the turtle club?
[17:33] I got to tell you, that snow globe, though, and this might have actually been a little bit later in the episode, but it showed a shied shot.
[17:41] A side shot and you could just see that seam right down the middle i was like i feel like that would be a solid piece of glass if this was real i literally made that comment in my reaction just like oh yeah not good not good so we're just gonna take this thing back up to our ship just we're here put it on the ship let's take it like really there is a living thing inside of there that doesn't appear to be in distress and you've done what you've had a telepathic communication where it's like well i don't even remember what he said to gideon but like we're taking it with us like the thing didn't even resist at all it was like okay cool he was just excited to do his thing wherever it was going to be but it was one of those moments of just like if this was almost any other sci-fi series it either would have happened there in the castle or there would been a whole side story of is it okay to move this thing in this case it should have been that should have been a question nobody questioned that at all should we even move this i just say this whole thing with walls that go 50 feet into the ground is built for this one sphere and they're just like yeah let's just take it yeah do you think there's a reason it's here in the first place yeah i want to jump forward just a little bit though because there's this thing with galen where he's talking to it a little bit later in the episode.
[19:05] And he's like, did you think I know what you are? I've read all the text. You feed on the emotions of others because you have none. And the thing's response was, do you really believe all that you read or something like that?
[19:19] So my question to you, what is this thing? What is this alien? What's its purpose? What's its deal? Who put it there? Is it really just feeding on the emotions of others? And if it is, is it really even a bad thing? What do you think? Do you ever see the, is it an FX show called, uh, what we do in shadows or something like that? It's a vampire. I did not, but okay. It's freaking brilliant. Uh, I know I'm getting the title. I'm butchering the title, but it's such a brilliant show. It's these vampires from, you know, like hundreds and thousand years ago that are now living in Jersey, New Jersey and like trying to be, trying to still be vampires. But one of them is an energy vampire. Um, And his whole thing is like he goes and gets a job in an office and he's the guy who's like, hey, you're working hard or hardly working.
[20:06] You know, all the things that in life you're just like, oh, my God, stop. And he feeds. Like there's a whole episode where he learns how to be an Internet troll and he's on like making comments. He's like, I can feed off the energy of hundreds of people at a time just by type this thing up. It's great. So that's my first thought. I'm like, oh, are we going to take like a sci-fi route? No, not at all. And we just left it in the dust. I think literally this is a, this is a thing that exists to forgive people, an oracle, a something of that type. So here's my question. This may be, and you can stop me when I ask you this question, if we want to get into it a little bit later in the next segment, how is it that this thing, this being offers forgiveness, can offer forgiveness? Isn't that wild? Yeah. We'll talk about that some later. Although what I'll say is, but I think it's okay to say like, it's only part of the thing I was going to talk about, but it's a therapist. Dude is just a therapist. Imagine going to a therapist and instead of them saying, tell me about this thing, they just pull it from your brain and you experience it. And then you're feeling things. And then in, in current society and medical practice, the therapist is like, that was good work. That was good work. Here's some tools for your toolbox. But this one is just like, yeah, it feels bad. Doesn't it? Well, I forgive you because the question that we'll ask later on is, does it really matter where forgiveness comes from?
[21:31] Well, it feels like something we should say for later in the segment. So I won't dive into that, but it's, it, it is, it might be one of the things that's causing me to get so hung up on this episode outside of the very unclear forgiveness part of it, but whatever. The thing with newer TV is we have to explain everything, right?
[21:51] Here's the origin story for this and why blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You go back to original series, Star Trek, you go back to Buck Rogers, you go back to, you know, just old sci-fi. There's not a reason, just there's the thing and they do the thing and they take off. And there's a lot of old Twilight Zone too, you know? And so it's like, this felt like that. I had that desire of like, what is it? Why is it here? who put it here? What's the purpose? Is it connected to something? And then I was just like, yeah, it's just a thing of the week. This is just an episode of site. This is just sci-fi. So let's ask this question. Have you ever gotten the feeling that Gideon or Matheson or Galen has been carrying around some big baggage of guilt that's been hampering them or weighing them down or preventing them from living their true lives or, or, or something of that nature? Has that yeah a little bit you have you have really so matheson not so much with matheson i just got the impression that there is a story there he's dropped those little hints of like whoa we're not going to do that or else we'll end up with the new psycor and then there was the time where he read braytac's mind and knew that he was going to die and he had that like freak out in his quarters but i can do this and i can't and what's the what i have this huge dilemma and so it's like he's got some stuff back there.
[23:12] Gideon, absolutely. They've had the story now through a couple of episodes of I won't leave anyone behind. I'm going to go back at all costs for whatever. And we've gotten little hints of this Cerberus storyline enough where it's like, again, that's why I had to call it his and the sky full of stars. This is that mystery that's causing him now to act some way. And Galen, oh hell yeah that guy has a massive volume of some stuff that's going on in his life that he is deeply deeply repressing okay he just has that bubbling fury and anger all the time just under the surface like right there and just kind of comes out from time to time but i will say i will say like at the end of gideon's thing he's like he's all upset you know he's like well so now what are you gonna do blackmail me you know this stuff what's the big deal and it's just like i I forgive you.".
[24:06] What was there to forgive in that story? Like, is it that the dude got hit by a car that he had nothing to do with? Well, no. So my, my interpretation of Gideon and Matheson, okay. And I wrote this down. Okay. So let's, let's have this. Cause we'll, we'll go, let's.
[24:24] We'll dive into each one of these, these three deals. Okay. Yeah. But real quick, when i watched that and i and i made this note like what each one's thing was gideon what did gideon have to be guilty over be uh survivor guilt survivor's guilt right that's what i had survivor's guilt okay what matheson have to feel guilty about blowing up his psych building okay um and and his his role in that you're right galen didn't really seem to have much to be uh guilty about but what galen really needed was to forgive himself no no no he himself needed to forgive he needed to forgive god or the universe whatever you want to call it which i love they use interchangeably i really appreciated that he needed that uh well yeah yeah uh and i i think that's that it there's a needs forgiveness needs forgiveness and this could be a message that i'm just now thinking of i didn't have it written down the need to forgive or the the necessity of forgiving is just as important for the cleansing and the healing of the soul as being forgiven i'd go so far as to say it's even more cleansing than being forgiven.
[25:39] But like i said that's getting a little bit far ahead of ourselves let's dive into the memories let's let's let's talk about it you just want to take them in order getting in matheson galen all right do it that way so gideon goes through and first of all we see the dude from battlestar galactica right he pops in um i don't even remember his name from battlestar galactica who was it he no i don't think there was anybody from that was the commander guy wasn't it was it i didn't the commander guy on the ship who was looking all young he was like the first officer guy for edward james olmos in in battle star galactica salt those tie that was uh yeah yeah saw saw tie or whatever his name was it i i'm pretty sure i could be wrong pretty sure literally going to look yeah that's fine i'm probably wrong but that's who i thought it was that that's where my mind went because i did at first go like wait don't we know this guy have we was he that guy that that fought sheridan like commanded the thing at the end and then we saw him in in the beginning and i was like no he can't because he very clearly blew up but regardless um so we see him and and gideon comes in clearly this is a memory oh great we're going into memories and he's he just comes in full tactical gear has his gun raised to the sky right yeah finger on the trigger not off to the side and i thought i was like oh they de-aged him like they made him look younger here cool you need to go out in an eva suit and check out some damage to the ship.
[27:06] No problem they put him in the eva suit they shoot him out into space and all of a sudden he looks.
[27:10] Exactly the same like we've seen him now however many years later i'm like yeah no the de-aging piece didn't work on you there when he when he popped in onto the bridge i was just like.
[27:22] Like the helmet seemed a little bit too big and i'm just like i want this series of like goofy Gideon trying to fit in as a secure hey hey guys hey I'm here I'm here sorry it's a little late right but the XO that we saw was an actor named Daniel Guzman who was not in anything other than Crusade and Beverly Hills 90210 that we would have known no really no, I refuse to believe that. Okay, fine. Yeah, there were some incredible big time. Oh, wait, no. Captain Ross was who it was. Patrick Saint-Esprit? Saint-Esprit? He was in The Hunger Games. Oh. That's what I see the big thing is. The Hunger Games? Sons of Anarchy. He was a regular on Sons of Anarchy, it looks like. All right. All right. Yeah, not a BSG dude. Okay, whatever. I stand corrected.
[28:12] Thanks, Internet. Right. So he goes out and Gideon has, okay, first of all, the EVA suit. Were they just short on budget for this week when they designed that costume? That thing looked like it was straight up out of Captain Proton, man. I wanted to believe that it was an intentional homage to Star Trek, the original series, like with the blue, yellow, and red, like connector lines and stuff. Yeah, it was, the helmet was awful. Everything about that thing. I swear i saw the helmet shaking just like the one that he was wearing on the on the bridge of the thing maybe gary coladis has an oddly shaped head maybe that's the thing maybe maybe uh but ensign gideon who looks remarkably like captain gideon well what's interesting though with that like i did the math from so he's he's out floating floating around in space and he watches the Techno mages fly away. That happened in season two of Babylon five. Oh, we're going to talk about this. Oh, I'm having, go ahead, please, please. So then we go to the end of Babylon five and then this is five years later. So in eight years, we go from goofy Ensign Gideon to captain of the Excalibur grizzled first contact expert.
[29:30] Yeah. To captain Gideon. And this is not his first command either. Nope. it might not even be his second command it's been it's been he's been around the block quite a bit the timeline on this just doesn't work for me okay let's do this one too matheson matheson is in sidecore during the telepath war sometime in the intervening five years between uh the end of season five and crusade and all of a sudden he's the lieutenant commander first officer so this is the thing with matheson he's a lieutenant just a lieutenant because if he was a lieutenant commander they call lieutenant commanders commander they call him lieutenant all the time and he's xo i don't get it now being a lieutenant in that time totally makes makes sense but xo maybe that's only because gideon made the demand but it's weird they didn't give him the rank bump.
[30:22] One person on our Patreon commented and said, maybe this isn't Matheson's first stint in Earth Force.
[30:34] That he was in Earth Force, came out of Earth Force to join PsyCorp because of PsyAbilities coming forward or something like that.
[30:42] And when he came back, he just didn't lose his rank and continued with that rank. Because he did talk about my dream was always to be an earth force and they don't let telepass in earth force so it could have been that could have been the story behind it was maybe his power showed up while he was serving and they're like nope but either way to be xo of the excalibur and being a lieutenant that's a little ridiculous i could also see them giving him rank based on his psych core experience that would be the other thing i would think it's almost like being an eagle scout and then enlisting i think eagle scout started an e2 instead of an e1 oh do they i think it used to be that way at least wasn't there a thing where and this is strictly america um like after when when we had the revolutionary war people who were certain officers in the british army were automatically that officer in the american army i remember i think so like came over like that or or something i don't know if you watch our reactions to timeless on patreon you'll know what my history of my knowledge of the history of the american revolution is very lacking you and i are very opposite jeff well you literally live there or so like you get to go to those places it's pretty cool i literally lived in those places it's very true very true so um definitely neat to hear that to get the connections of clark's presidency and and those certain things that definitely nice to have those kind of.
[32:04] Connecting points well he was floating out in space though so we've seen this we've seen that moment a couple of times and the first time we saw it he's floating we see some of the ships and he's saying don't leave don't leave and at first i was like he doesn't want the techno mages to leave but then to be like no literally like that's his last hope for life he doesn't know who they are it's literally you're on a life raft in the middle of the ocean and the yacht just keeps going and doesn't see you just oh that was dark so we got how he and galen meet cool see that like that's the thing this is this is everything that i saw here like oh he's the ensign okay cool oh this is how he gets left behind by the cerberus okay cool oh he's feeling survivors okay cool oh he gets picked up by this weird alien thing uh-oh is he about to get poked and prodded oh no oh, it's Galen. Oh, this is how he meets Galen. And they have a relationship. Cool. Oh, this is how he gets the apocalypse box. It's called an apocalypse box. Sure it is. Okay, cool. And then he turns around and walks out of the room. Pretty much.
[33:12] I just, I wonder, did you get the impression that the ship that blew up the Cerberus was a shadow ship? I did, but it looked weird. It looked way off did not look like a shadow ship and i still i mean the the the laser beam that it shot out totally shadow weaponry that it had the the thing but it wasn't like a you know what it looked like because you remember how like the shadow ships look like a crab called them the battle crabs right this thing have you ever seen i know you have you ever seen beetlejuice oh yeah do you remember the sculpture that delia's stepmom katherine o'hare had that yeah like it trapped or against the roof, the side of the house, that sculpture, it looked like one of those. Absolutely. Yeah. That's so great. That's a perfect description. Not quite a shadow ship. It made me think of like a shadow teddy bear. Like if it was like a little stuffy that a shadow would have that also has a laser on it. I did love that they had Mark Blankfield as the guy who had the Apocalypse Box before. He's just a great character actor. I don't think I recognized him. He was in Robin Hood Men of Tights is where most people would recognize him from. He was Blinken in that. And then he's been in, I mean, so much. He's been just one of those guys who's been in so much. Mostly like in the 80s and early 90s sort of a thing. But it was funny because he was older, a little thicker than he was before. Just healthier, I guess he looked. but he was so perfect for that role of just like you win.
[34:40] You know, it wasn't over the top crazy. Okay. Maybe this is just the fact that Brent doesn't play a whole lot of poker, but he, his question was, will you take collateral? Now in my world, collateral is you're going to give me a loan. And if I can't pay back the loan, this is what you get to keep not will you just let me put this in as part of the bet it was just a weird it was a weird way to say it well it's collateral because if you win you're just loaning it to the pot essentially, with the hope that you're gonna win and then it just comes back i guess i guess except in his case i don't think he wanted to win well i was gonna say he let he went through all of that with a two pair he was trying to lose and and when i first saw the two pair i was like really Really? He bet all that on a two pair? No way. And then later I was like, oh, he did that on purpose. Okay. Got it. That makes sense. I will say I love that deck of cards. Oh yeah. It looks so cool. Like a little lightning bolts almost. Yeah. I did. I did like that. He was laughing to, to just be brave of it. And then he's, and then he's telling Gideon, he's like, I'm free. I'm finally free.
[35:52] It made me so angry that we're not good. Cause that's, that was the seed of a story for Gideon where he was going to get hooked on the box or something like that. Like he was going to have his poker moment and we'll never get to see that. I'm okay with that because I got to tell you this apocalypse box, box this apocalypse box feels to me like something and i'm probably way off base i'm probably way wrong about this but still it feels to me like this is something that not even jms fully understood what it was when he started writing it yeah it does and it just feels like if he would have kept going with the show it would have been something that he would have jettisoned from the show really early and just would have left it like bureau 13 now i understand why he had to get rid of that one The whole thing of San Diego being destroyed. What are the other things that just got left? I feel like this would have been one of those things. He, I don't think he, it doesn't feel to me like he truly knew what this thing was, what its history was, how it's going to, to like it's, Hey, we haven't used a buzz yet.
[36:59] It's the temporal cold war. We're going to have this thing, but we don't really know where it's going or what we're going to do with it or, or what's what I think he knew exactly what it was. You do. I know I'm wrong. I'm probably wrong because like the way he set this story up with it being, I mean, why tell the story of how he got it in this way, unless there was somewhere to go with it. Also, we've seen it what twice before and it has spoken to him and it can't really understand it, but it has a, it has a very Vorlon feel to it's speaking. And so I think he, like it's going to be something tied to first ones in some way and probably evil and all this stuff. I think he had a full story arc planned for that thing. You're probably right. I will fully admit that. It just didn't feel like this was a fully fleshed out thing to me in the moment. Well, imagine if we watch the first season of Babylon 5, there's a hole in your mind, and then we never saw in the sky full of stars because they canceled the series. We'd be like, well, that was a dumb idea they kept bringing up for no reason.
[38:04] Turns out it was brilliant. But even if they didn't cancel the series and they kept going, and they're just gonna drop it or they're or they're gonna wrap it up into a really dumb way like i don't know some nazi time hopping thing it's the way it usually goes with sci-fi but i figured it'd be the thing of gideon going crazy and then galen or dorina have to save him and pull him from the brink or something but have to do something yeah so matheson does his thing yeah and did you catch like the actor that we the guest actor we got in this one it was soval it's the It was so full, which makes all the sense of the world because Vulcans are telepaths.
[38:43] Exactly and we don't that's not a reference that's an actor that's what it's a guest star we don't have to buzz it what what is his name in real life is that he's also a gary gary graham i think gary graham there it is yep yeah he so perfect for this like the minute it was him like awesome it's him and then i'm like of course he's a psychop like absolutely he oh he's perfect for that uh i had a moment where i was like oh wait so is this set during the telepath war like of course it is okay got it and that's when i started doing the math on what wait this would have just been like three years ago maybe four like really but what what we saw though i just want to clarify what we saw was the end of the telepath war that's how the telepath war ended we blew up psychor, dunsky sure maybe i i don't even know that that was psychor like they kept talking about going off to syria playing them which is the base we know about them so i don't know i don't even know where this base was for sure. If it was, if it's the place that we saw in, you know, Bester's sitcom episode, I have no idea. I want to read my note exactly as I wrote it when I saw this scene. Oh, look, Matheson is discovering that the core is bad. Oh, please tell me that he becomes the inside man and is responsible for bringing down the entire core and ending the telepath war. And, and did it literally, he flipped like a pancake so fast. It was just like, hey these people are actually dead he's like oh my gosh they are dead let me blow this place up.
[40:11] What and he's driving the little thing as they're getting away and he's just like oh my gosh what have i done i think it was a big missed opportunity with the rebel telepath that he was interacting with do you remember i can't remember her name and i don't remember the no no i'm going back even further even further season one season one there was that like a little kid the little kid you're talking about the kid that's like 16 year old right the one they sent to minbar and you know we're going to protect her Ivanova you know tried to save her speaking of a thread that we never picked up again ever, But yeah, it would have been so cool if it was her just to tie it, you know, through you can have anybody be the actor for it. Well, you know who it was supposed to be, don't you?
[40:51] It was supposed to be Pat Tallman. Really? Supposed to be Lita? Yeah, it was supposed to be Lita, but like she wasn't available or something like that. You know, I feel like that would have made more sense. Yeah, it was supposed to be Lita. Because she could have telepathed, you know, him and then like, oh yeah, you're right. I do get it. Or something. Somehow been. Yeah. Again, I read the comments. That's which I got to tell you, Jeff, it's so much more fun not having to skim comments and like avoid them for spoiler reasons and like not really know if it's a spoiler or not. So you just sort of skip over it all together anyway. When he's in there, they're talking to that, that rebel, that rebel scum. I'm like, how are they not monitoring the prison cells? Like they can just talk about this, right? This is psych or for God's sake. Really? Well, I'm also sitting there and like, okay, so he's not giving her the medicine. I understand Matheson's a really powerful telepath right like he's like a p12 I think he's supposed to be like a p12 like he's supposed to be a pretty powerful dude I guess nobody's picking up on the fact that he's being duplicitous here surrounded by telepaths.
[41:52] Bester isn't picking up on being somebody but also I'm sorry his whole job is to go in there and and give her an injection once a day or however often he's supposed to do that.
[42:03] No alcohol swab no cotton ball no band-aid just leaving her with track marks and bleeding at the end of every time really he had the he had the cotton ball to kind of wipe because he wiped the little stuff he spittled on her arm but it's just yeah no no sanitation going on i was like wow dude wow his his was by far the weakest of the stories yeah my my thing was okay so we're shown all of this about matheson so what and that and that's my question has he come to some new understanding of himself was he seeking absolution in his role no he walked in got his memory probed and then bounced there's nothing and and like give me something give give me make it matter more than just i slept really good last night 20 minutes later in the episode And then that's it. Gideon, I think, I think, I think Gideon moved. I think there was movement for Gideon in that, in a therapeutic sense, right? Of this thing that's holding me in. Oh yeah. This thing that's holding me in a place where I can't move forward. I can't do things like. Okay. I've dealt, I've moved, I've moved forward. I've addressed that the whole, and especially the piece of the survivor's guilt where he's like, yeah, it's not, it's not my fault. Like I had nothing to do with this. It's okay. I think there, but we didn't see it obviously in this, but I think again, just in the narrative arc, it was there with Matheson. Like my only note was, well, I guess that was the telepath war.
[43:30] We got that and granted i've been very curious about matheson and his telepath background and whatever it's interesting to have seen it's not gonna make this won't make a difference for me in his story moving forward honestly i think i felt the same way about gideon's really as well i didn't it's just not gonna matter for me i just understood him so much more with when he was hanging out there by himself watching the ship get blowed up and then watching the techno mages just go on with it i don't know just did you know those were techno mages when they flew over in this i did because we saw it in war zone i think it was war zone when they showed it and he talked about watching the techno and it look and we've seen galen's ship i don't remember that i honestly don't remember oh really yeah i don't remember that scene i do so you you talk about how you felt like getting galen really had a moment here again this is the disparity between you and i watching this episode. I actually felt like Galen, and this may be because of how I understood his story. Galen didn't get forgiveness. Galen wasn't even seeking forgiveness. Galen was pissed and mad at a God that he says he doesn't believe in, yet he's still mad at him or the universe, whatever it is you want to call it, for killing his girlfriend. Because if she's dead, then that That means that this entity somehow said that she deserved to die, which there's a lot of fallacy in that presumption, which I don't know how much we need to go into.
[44:56] But he comes out of the end of that unmoved, just like the first two guys. And then we get to the end of the episode and he receives this message, right? And the girl told him like, if I can, if it's real, I'll find a way to come to you and send you a message and you'll know that I was right the whole time. And you know, you can forgive God or whatever, whatever she said. Well, that's what happens. And Galen reads the message, has his moment where he considers it. He thinks about it, mumbles, it's impossible, mumbles. And then he decides he makes an active decision to crumple the paper up and disregard it all the way around. And he makes the decision to not forgive this entity or being that he does not believe in and to continue to carry on to the bitterness, which binds him up. Yeah.
[45:46] Not that he was healed. He chose to stay in his. You know what he did, Jeff? he chose to live here to keep living right here that's what he chose in this moment in this time we'll talk about that a little bit more too in a little bit because it's and i think that was the point of his story was to show the other side of everything when and i liked the way they did it from a cinematic standpoint just a like a mechanics he's heading on back onto that bullet train and at the same time gideon's talking about you know sometimes it's harder to forgive than it is to just try and fix the thing but when you try and fix the mistake we make more mistakes that just make things worse and then we keep cycling around and you never break out of the cycle and you just go around in the ground and there's no way out showing galen in that train when he says that and it's just to me it just showed so much of that fire that lives within galen galen's not your comedy relief techno mage guy who says stuff no this guy this guy's the guy who will burn the universe and smile the whole time. Like that guy lives inside of him. That was, I'm sorry, to that point, my last note that I took here was in the end, Galen chooses anger and bitterness. He chose the dark side.
[47:03] I had a really hard time with the writing for his girlfriend. Dearest Galen, I had planned one day to make a tapestry for you. I had a really hard time with the girlfriend, period. All the way around like they had so little chemistry that when he went in to kiss her i could see the disgust on his face wow like he's like.
[47:28] It wasn't good but she had one line that i loved and she's like maybe one day you'll forgive god for his decisions i'm sure it will greatly relieve him.
[47:38] Oh galen i need his forgiveness i think there was a piece on this storyline that echoed what we watched last last week where david williams would rather have five years with his fiancee with his love and then die then forever and not have her again she said a thing that echoed that in a way where he was so he was so upset like i'm gonna lose you i found you and you're amazing i'm you and she's like i'm so thankful for the time we've had it's amazing we met in our our paths crossed i'll be forever thankful for this and just that way of looking at it i think she was the david williams of this episode of like yeah i would rather have had this undisclosed amount of time with you and then go then then never to have had it before it was very romantic i thought the whole idea of going nowhere and it's him and galen and matheson in the bullet train i would love like a whole storyline of those two just philosophy and back and forth on each other methicent has incredible wisdom for his experience and we've seen it play a number of times galen has a really unique perspective on it and just in this little moment where they were taking an idea back and forth i thought that was great well jeff um unless you have anything else i think we're at that spot of the episode where it's time that we boil this all down we see if this episode has any of those sci-fi messages we talk about so often here at the channel?
[49:04] Do they have deep moral messages? Is it holding up a mirror to society? Is it giving us hope that we can be better in the future? Or does it tell us how we can be better people to each other?
[49:14] And how much is this delivering its message in its own unique way? It's a unique crusade way. So Jeff, I'll ask you, what messages did you find here? Although we've started discussing them already. What messages did you find here in the path of sorrows? It would have been hard to not discuss them because, honestly, there was very little to this episode other than the message. Right? This is what I'm saying. Sorry.
[49:40] I love that. I love episodes that are just about the message, though. You know what? I think I feel. I'm sorry. I think I feel about this episode the way most people feel about TKO. Really? I do. But you remember how much I liked TKO? Like, I'm with you on TKO. It's not the best episode of the whole show, but I think it's a very good episode because of what it did. this one just didn't do the thing that TKO did for me. I don't know. I'm way in the minority on this one. Just, I know it. I'm going to own, and I wrote a bunch on, on, on my message. I'll read it here in a minute, but I want to own up front. I think why it resonated for me so much is it's the, it was the right episode at the right time for me.
[50:20] Oh yeah. Yeah. I can see that. Yeah. I'm not going to go into things. You're very aware of the things I'm going to, I do have a little bit. I'll talk about, but this stuff, what my life has been lately and forgiveness has been a very, very in front of me thing on a daily basis. And so like, I think it, and I'm, you know, I, I'm in therapy on a, you know, and, uh, not here we go, but there was a while ago, not too long ago, I was seeing four therapists every week. Like it was a, I'm down, I'm down to one and it's great and amazing. Uh, cause you make progress, but like, to me, just everything that was fun scheduling around, by the way, it was, it was great. And I need like, that was right. Hey, you know what? No, but seriously, I'm proud of you for doing the work. I really am. Thanks. Like I got, I got a front row seat to watch that and I'm really proud of you for the work you did. Thank you. I'm actually tearing up from that. Thank you. It was a lot. But, uh, but yeah, so I think I want to own the, like, it's, I don't think this is an objectively great episode. I think it's just for Jeff at this moment when he was watching this, it was perfect. So like, I mean the message, I mean, it is forgiveness. That's it. Um, forgiveness and the need for us to get things off of our chest, to share things, to, uh, to get in. Like I said, this is just, this episode basically is a resounding endorsement and commercial for good therapy.
[51:40] Yeah. What's interesting about this alien is that he had nothing to do with any of the situations, but he was the one to offer forgiveness and in offering for the forgiveness, even though he had nothing to do with it, still impacted each person. For Gideon and Matheson, they slept well, right? That was great. But it caused Galen to double down on his hatred and his anger because this person had the gall and the audacity to forgive him for this. I think that the, I talked about a minute ago, that dichotomy between Galen and Matheson or Gideon and Matheson working and for Galen, him just getting upset. Like, that's important to know about forgiveness because while forgiveness is magical, it's not magic. It doesn't just fix everything. It is amazing. It's awesome and it's powerful, but on its own, it's just a thing. It's just a thing. From my personal journey that I've talked about here, I know that forgiveness is a daily, hourly, minutely decision that is made. It's not a you're forgiven and all is good, right? It's something that you have to make all the time.
[52:56] Forgiveness in itself is a decision. It's a decision to let go of resentment and to stop giving energy and life to someone or something that has hurt you. To not focus on it forever and all of the time. Just to let it go. That's what forgiveness is.
[53:13] Letting go, though, takes so much work. It's not just a, it's all good.
[53:18] Galen had not done the work. He had not opened himself up. He wasn't in a place where he was ready to stop giving his energy to this hurt, wherever it was pointed at. Whereas Gideon and Matheson were at a point where they were able to do it. On my reaction video, I talked about this, but I follow and read a number of the Catholic mystics out there. Thomas Merton, Father Richard Rohr, and a lot of others. But I think it was Richard Rohr made a comment on a podcast a while ago that we all heard that God is love right and I think that's a statement people of most faiths could go yeah yeah God is love but Father Rohr said God is forgiveness like forgiveness itself just in this Babylon 5 world that we've been in for so long let's look at the impacts of forgiveness right Gideon and Matheson slept well that was awesome but we had brother Edward and passing through Gethsemane that was so big it set the tone for all of season three we referenced that episode more than probably almost any other episode in the series the there's Londo and Jakar and everything that happened there which was actually the story of the entire series the whole thing absolutely the point of Babylon 5 was a story of love and forgiveness and asking for it and admitting that you were wrong Just all of those, you know, humility and all of those things.
[54:44] Forgiveness ultimately is the literal action of loving somebody. This is too bad this episode used a corny contrived plot device to get there.
[54:55] But it spent time on the danger and the reasoning behind not forgiving as well. Gideon said it in that thing we talked about a minute ago. It's easier to not forgive or expect forgiveness. Can I read that? I actually wrote the quote down. Can I read it? Oh yeah, please do. Please do. It says it's easier not to want forgiveness or to expect it. You just keep trying to fix the mistake so we don't have to ask. So we don't have to ask. But you wind up trying so hard to atone for one set of mistakes. You overcompensate and make new ones, and you can never break out of the cycle, and you just keep going around and around, and there's no way out. I want to ask you, oh, viewer, oh, listener. What are you doing? I'm sorry, I thought you were talking about me from there. And you too, Brett.
[55:41] Ask you too. I ask myself this too all the time. What am I spinning? Where's my cycle? Where am I not stopping and letting go? because it sucks. It's not a good cycle to be in. Galen doesn't want to be in that cycle. It's not a place he wants to be. I want to share a thing that I've heard. I heard and it's helped me a lot through my journey, but it's about forgiveness and how to approach it for people because here's the thing about forgiveness.
[56:13] Oftentimes the person who you need forgiveness from or that you need to forgive is someone you will never talk to again. That person physically is no longer in your life and you're still giving them energy and life to this thing that existed in a different time. So as you said earlier, you're living back in Wolf 359 when Jennifer was dying instead of living now. You're living when your girlfriend died from one of your friends betraying you, but somehow it's God's fault that that happened. He's still there that you have to you have to be able to forgive to get out of that cycle forgiveness is not endorsing a thing forgiveness is not saying that a thing was okay it's saying i'm not going to give it energy anymore in a phrase that i heard that's been helpful for me and you can adapt for yourself but it was and even for myself i've said this to the um the mental and emotional image of the person for whom I demand, demand forgiveness from, but also to myself because in the whole thing, there's places I need to forgive myself. But the phrase is I can see that what you were doing might have worked for you at the time, but it never ever worked for me. It's that simple. And with Galen, if I'm talking, if he's talking to the universe, um.
[57:40] At that time, that might have worked for you. It does not work for me. Boom. And from there, you can open yourself up and do the work and begin to forgive. You know, we're not doing ratings anymore, Brent. But if we were, I would give this five whatevers.
[57:55] Because I think it was a singular message. I think the message was delivered with clarity. And it explored both sides of the message. As to, was it in a super crusade kind of way? No. it was in a very generic sci-fi kind of way. We just happened to get some backstory with it as well. I appreciate you going there, you know, and, and saying things cause you, you have had your own journey through this. As you mentioned, this is not the first time we've talked about forgiveness here on this show. We've talked about it at some length multiple times. So I don't want to necessarily rehash all of those things. Every time we talk about this though, we always get lots of comments and lots of emails. And some of them are very, very, very angry. And I think of Gideon's quote here. I think of Galen, but I think of Gideon's quote, it's easier to not want forgiveness or to expect it. You just keep trying to fix the mistakes. So you don't have to ask. I am a proponent of, now this is me, different people have different takes. It's fine, but I, I find this pretty ubiquitous and I, this sounds so arrogant when I say this and it's going to sound arrogant. So prep yourself for the emails, Jeff. I usually find I'm right. When, when everything boils down, I usually kind of go back to, yeah, I was kind of right. There is this, this, you say that there's no magic in forgiveness and, and you're right. Yeah. It is magical. It is not magic. Yeah.
[59:21] Exactly. Exactly. It does not undo the harm that has been done. Right. You, you say that, that it's, I'm no longer going to give energy to it. You know, the way I, the way I define it is, it's, I'm no longer going to hold that person on the hook for what it did. I'm going, I'm going to, and they don't have to physically be in your face for you to do that. They don't have to physically come and say, I'm sorry, will you forgive me? They don't have to do that for you to issue forgiveness. But I will still go back to the piece of when you know, you have wronged someone, when you are carrying this guilt for you to go ask for forgiveness is Gideon. We just Let's keep trying to fix it so we don't have to ask because you know what? Asking for forgiveness is scary and it's hard and it's admitting stuff that frankly, we'd rather not admit. So we just want to fix it. We know that it's wrong. And there's so many comments that we get from that of, well, it's not the other person and it's wrong.
[1:00:22] Yeah. Yes, you're right. Yeah. And all you, we have control over is what we do and how we handle it. And there, it is scary. It is, it is awkward. It is weird. It is not comfortable. And there is so much freedom to be had. There are so many good nights of sleeping to be able to receive and grant forgiveness. And Jeff, I love what you said. I love, love, love what you said. It is not a one-time thing. Granting forgiveness, what makes granting forgiveness so hard, and honestly, even living in having received forgiveness, is that you have to keep doing it. You have to continue. Every time you think about that person, you have to go, no, I've forgiven them. Nope, I'm not going to hold that against them any longer. I'm not going to bring that up anymore. I'm not, that is, this is no longer an issue between me and them. Um, you know, now I want to, I do want to clarify and you, you said this, sometimes it's not safe to be in the presence of those who've harmed you. Right. And, and we want to, we want to acknowledge that you make sure you're safe, but forgiveness is still there to be issued and to be received. Jeff, I love what you said.
[1:01:35] I may not have enjoyed this episode, but I would wholeheartedly agree with you. This is a five, whatever, uh, episode as far as that goes respond to some what you said that is brilliant and correct but also get in front of what some people may be thinking babylon 5 answered that question of asking for forgiveness and it did it in a beautiful way i was i think it was in the shadow of zahadum when um dylan sat down with jakar and was like so bro yeah here's what happened and then she's like i hope you can forgive me and he looked at her he's like no i'm not there and that's okay that is okay there's nothing wrong with the Len asking and there was nothing wrong with your car saying he wasn't ready but he didn't say never he said I will never forgive you he said no I'm not ready to do that did didn't he actually say I I may be ready someday but I'm not ready today or something like that I feel like he said something like that yeah it was a great great response but I'm glad you brought that up because I'd forgotten about that I'm so glad you brought that up because that's absolutely right it was beautifully done it's it's okay to not be there but I would encourage you as I'm gonna look right into the camera. As your friend, as somebody who actually cares about you, even if I don't know you, trust me, I do care about you. It's okay to not be there. Be on the journey. Be on the road. Do the work to get there because you don't want to live here. You don't want to stay here in this space.
[1:02:56] Otherwise you wind up like Galen bitter and mean and angry and not free or worse. You know, I, I'm not going to go into detail on this, but literally if it wasn't for my work and being able to forgive, we wouldn't be here right now having this show. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. And again, I reiterate, I'm so proud of you and the work you've done. Thank you. Well, speaking of being proud of you, right? I'm proud of you because you.
[1:03:19] Now I'm going to be proud of you. You get that. We're going to lighten things up a little more and have a little bit of fun. And we're going to create the 100% correct, objectively, undeniably correct ranking of the entire series of Crusade. You get to do that, my friend. And our current top five. In number five, we have Each Night I Dream of Home. In number four, Appearances and Other Deceits. Three is Warzone. Two, The Needs of Earth. And number one is The Long Road. Brent, will The Path of Sorrows crack the top five? Jeff, I'm going to do something. I don't know that we've ever done on this show in any form whatsoever. We've done a lot of stuff with the rankings. And you're probably going to tell me that I'm wrong and you'll be able to name exactly the last time we did this. Here's the thing. I'm not going to rank this. You are. What? This episode meant so much to you and had such an impact on you. I am going to seed the ranking to you. And we've never done that before. No, we haven't. Before. I thought so. I feel like it's, I feel like it's, I appreciate it. I also feel like it's a cop out. No it's not a cop-out no because here's the thing if you were to leave this to me this would be um this would be like.
[1:04:29] Number seven or eight really and i and i don't think i don't think it's fair because i know i'm in the minority i know that there while there are some out there who agree with me because i've seen the comments the majority of people this is a favorite episode this is and people connect with this episode in a way that i just don't this is not an episode i connect with it is unfair for me to do the ranking on this well i am if anything the paragon of fairness so what i'm going to do right down the middle, no emotions whatsoever at all, complete and total objectivity here. That's all that we're dealing with. Because for me, if I was just straight up ranking this, this would be number two on the thing, but it's got a lot of faults. It's I I've used the word contrived, I think 16 times, but it's the best word I can think of to describe the episode. And you're right. We know that they changed either because we tell our own story. I have my own head canon that fills in the blanks or because they told us, which is literally the worst way to do it. And so it's going to be a number four. Um, it's still definitely way up there. I just want to acknowledge that, uh, it is what it is and it hit me when it hit me. There you go. I appreciate that. Thanks for the seating of that. I appreciate that. And Brent with that, we're done with the path of sorrows. That's it. Yeah, I know. I got a second.
[1:05:54] Next week, we're going to be watching an episode called ruling from the tomb for the first time. Like you said earlier, we've never seen these episodes, looked at thumbnails or previews or anything of any kind. We just know the title. Brent, what do you think is going to happen next week in Ruling from the Tomb? Jeff, we're going to get a great crossover next week. Are you thinking Stargate crossover? Oh, absolutely. This is absolutely. This is, here's what we're going to learn is that Babylon 5 is in the same universe as Stargate. Totally. That's what we're going to learn. And they're going to find a literal tomb and there's going to be a gold or some other god-like thing there that from the grave is like there's inscriptions on the wall or they're still being able to communicate with the spirit something of that nature i it's going to be like that we're ruling from the tomb this is this is a i mean there's a it wouldn't shock me if there's a hole-on sarcophagus and this thing is trapped inside like a jail or something and yeah ruling from the tomb it can be a sarcophagus big ring on the wall behind it absolutely absolutely how about you my first thought 100 was stargate i'm just like isn't that wild how just the word tomb can just all of a sudden conjure that oh and you know who it's gonna be hathor oh your favorite.
[1:07:15] She's dead she did she did i uh i i'm god we're really close on a lot of our predictions on this one what i figured it was going to be is this is going to be an original series star trek episode where they go to a planet and they're going to be there's some old god that's actually been dead forever and like you said there's inscriptions and some books and they're following the rules and gideon is going to kirk the civilization out of it basically and they're going to end up not getting the thing that they need because of that i love that you have time to think about this way before i do you have time too you have the list this time oh it's true but i haven't looked at.
[1:07:54] So we did babble on five for all of you there i was the only one with the the run the run sheet of everything i mean i could pull it up i knew where it was i just didn't yeah for the sake of the show yeah i had a little time which is pretty wild when you think about our records um in predictions it's like i had time to think and was still that far off but this time like because we had to have a whole discussion around which order are we going to use and so we actually have a master sheet that we we run off of so can't fully fully take the credit there so brent we're gonna find out what ruling from the tomb is all about next week thank you everyone for joining us thanks for sharing this moment with both of us i appreciate it don't forget to subscribe wherever you're watching listening rating review do all this stuff right you know all those things the thing i like to really just be jeff can i can i can i pause you right here because i haven't i haven't asked for our listeners out there oh yeah yeah here's what i'd love you know i i kind of mentioned earlier, we tend to get a lot of emails and a lot of comments and stuff. And a lot of times it's folks who are mad at something that I said, probably because they don't want to ask or they're just very much discriminating. Here's what I want to know is if you have a story of forgiveness or you're in a spot where you know forgiveness needs to be issued or received, you're just not there yet. Here's what I want you to know. First of all, Jeff and I are on your side.
[1:09:15] We would love to hear your story. If you want it to just stay private between us, we have some, sometimes this happens, people email it and just say, Hey, keep this confidential just between us. Uh, we can do that. Um, but we would love to know where you are and, and what's going on. Um, just to see, I would love to have you guys do that. Email us at Babylon five first at gmail.com or go to Babylon five first.com. And we have a contact form there. There it is. Sorry. I interrupted your flow, but totally fine. I was going off the flow anyway. And if you share those, which I'm, people have shared through our journey, some amazing stuff, amazing things with us. And most we've held in confidence, but if you want it shared, let us know. We won't share it in the next week or two just because of our scheduling, but we will share it before we get to the end of crusade. So, uh, yeah, so do that. Send us some emails. That'd be cool. We're going to wrap up right now. So until next time, Hey Jeff. Oh yeah, Brent, what's up? I'm interrupting you yet again, but I just, listen, I'm in my son's room. I looked over and i found this this weird ball thing check it out yeah whatever you do man do not look at that oh oh come on come on jeff look don't look into it don't don't put it back put it back, where are you going i don't know.
[1:10:40] No jeff no this is stargate.
[1:10:50] We haven't even recorded an episode of stargate and i don't know how long i know it's like two weeks way too long like we're we yeah.
