S2E11 - Reality Sandwich

Hello, and welcome to who are you? It's a Babylon five, watch cast by a couple of friends. Who've gotten to know each other and are continuing to get to know each other over one of their favorite shows from their childhood. Babylon five. I am Laura.

And I'm just fair.

And today I get to ask a fair. Who are you?

Hoo. Hoo hoo. given next episode. Where will we. Uh, Taking our mid season movie break. And watching Tron, as we've talked about a couple of times already in pod.

Wow.

not a surprise to anyone. I thought I might talk a bit about my professional life. Because I happen to work in information technology.

just like Tron.

Just like Tron. Um, well, Tron is a program. So he is the thing that pisses me off at my job.

Oh, that makes sense though. Doesn't it.

Yeah. Well, actually, Given, what I actually do is manage a service desk. For people who are having problems with computers. But yeah, computers it's, it's, it's a fun story for me, I guess. Because when I was a kid, We got our first computer back in. 94. We got our first home computer. And I took to it and had a lot of fun. And I even, like, I made a website with my mom when I was like 10

that's cute.

learned to code HTML and stuff. and did the whole thing. We had like our own geo. The city's website back before. Uh, what you see is what you get, or was he wig? was a thing that you could just have, it was, you had to learn how to code. And lake notepad and then open it up in a browser. and I remember the internet before web browsers, because that was a whole thing too. I remember. Dialing in to my local library to reserve books and stuff.

Wow. I don't really remember the time before brown. Well, I don't remember internet before browsers. I remember a time before browsers. Right. But I don't think I, I personally ever got on the internet without a browser.

Yeah. So I did a bit of that, as a kid and, you know, I was always in like tech club and high school and. I was the guy who a teacher would be like, Hey, my computer's broken. We don't have an it person because this is. 19 98, 9 or 2002 or whatever you had happened to be in grade school. And just, we need someone to fix this computer hatred fare. Fix this computer. so like my entire family was convinced, this is what I was going to do for the rest of my life. Right.

Right. Great.

You know, Silicon valley, the.com boom, all this stuff, right. So I go to college. And I take about a. To a year, maybe a year and a half's worth of computers

Uh, huh.

And I have a super negative experience in a programming class that just completely turns me off from the entire program and department. And I had originally gone to school to major in information technology. And I was just like, no. No, this is, this is not for me. If this is the kind of people I'm going to have to deal with, I don't want to do this for a living.

Oh, that's unfortunate.

Right and also wrong clearly now in hindsight. Um, But at the time it felt like the right decision. And I don't regret anything because I would never would have gone and done economics. And now a lot of the stuff that I do for work. In particular, the like my fun time stuff. My, I don't have a meeting right now and I don't have something I need to be working on. So I get to pick projects to fill my time with sometimes. And when I do hit that time, it's almost always some kind of data analytics.

Yeah.

but it's funny because I ran from it for so long. and even then, like in other jobs, I was the guy who would fix the computer, you know, You know, most people, if you do not have a dedicated it department or your dedicated it department sucks, you probably have a coworker that you asked for

Right. You have that, that guy who knows at least to tell you how to Google it right. To get the right answer.

I was that guy for most of my previous roles in life.

I think it's funny that you said that your fun time stuff is the data analytics cause that's my fun time stuff at my job too. Like if I'm, if I'm done doing whatever financial reports I had to do. And I'd not having to manage cause you know, managing takes like God over half of your time. Right.

Oh, yeah.

And if I I'm like have a quiet moment, it's like, well, I'm just going to open up the analytics software and see what crazy stuff I can. Find out about all of our accounts and. That's the, the, the things that I do at work, those are the ones I'm most proud of.

For sure. No. I a hundred percent get it. Without getting into the minutia of it. I've written some. Power BI stuff. And other kinds of, Data analytic programs that are just really flipping cool.

I know the feeling. Yeah.

I think I'm really proud of some of my, formula in Excel that I've done over the years. I personally was very excited. For office 2019 and the introduction of the ifs statement. If you, if you are an Excel nerd and you aren't an old version of Excel and you haven't gotten to fuck with ifs yet. Oh, Oh, it's so good. No more nested. If then statements, it makes it so much easier. You're not looking for that missing parentheses. Oh, it's so good.

I do hate the parentheses.

But, yeah, so that's what I do for a living. I work with computers and I work with people who are having problems with computers.

Which is most of us really.

I mean, they kind of suck computers, not the people.

Um, it could be, it could be two things.

I will. Professionally speaking, I will not say the other. Um, Now there's a lot of real I've. I actually, Before I went over to the company I worked for now. I went over with the intention of moving into management, get based off my history. I have a decade of leadership experience elsewhere. But they didn't have an opening at first. So I actually took. The call center job. When I started.

I think I'm probably a regular with our core software company a little bit. There's there's a couple of them. There's one that one program we implemented. And every single time I've opened the case on this one particular program. It is the same guy. Who answers my questions and he's my favorite guy. Cause he's so fast.

Yeah.

But that's kind of unusual considering how big their company is, but.

Hmm.

It's a very particular program. So.

Well, I mean, they probably have certain people assigned to certain clients. That's not. Two out of the ordinary. Well, it is out of the ordinary. Is this episode of babble on five, made it.

Yay. I was like, how do we, how do we pivot? Where do we go?

got to find

You did it. Congrats. We get to open up on those wind chimes.

We have an up some wind chimes at season two, episode 11, all alone in the night. Which is of course aligned from the theme.

Very ominous. These ones that are connected to like the bigger story or the, Theme or the, what is it that cause each season has a title, like when they're connected to that, you know, it's an important episode.

For sure. We'll talk about that. There's a lot of episodes to get through. I have a whole soapbox about that particular thing in relation to this

Ooh, I can't wait to get there.

we rate the episode. but we opened up on DLN inner quarters. Talking to Lanier about her pending trip to meet with the gray council. Doting. She feels she's going to get removed from the council and possibly even her posting a B five.

Yeah, it's very sad.

Yeah. it's a bit of a reality sandwich. To quote, my dad. from Dylan.

Reality Sam. Oh, I just got It

It's time to eat your reality sandwich. Yeah. That dad would say that when you, when you fucked up and then had to own up to the consequences, because she hasn't really been very truthful with Lanier about how the great council feels about all this stuff. And so when she's all, like, I'm probably not going to be a tie anymore. He's all like, what are you talking about? That's news.

Yeah. It's an interesting look. she's going to go off and do this thing. On her own, But linear keeps telling her that she's not alone. He's there for. And he's, he's gonna be there.

Yeah, he'll, he's going to stick around. in CNC, Sheridan is literally begging to be kidnapped or blown

Good grief.

an unknown thing. Appearing making ships vanish. I'll go check it out myself. I got to keep my fly pay.

Yeah, mysteries on, on Babylon five that we got to go investigate and space. Generally not the safest thing.

No, there's not a strong track record of pilots making it back.

at both the, the Zeta squadron and alpha squadron are busy. So we're just going to take a couple of dudes and the captain who needs his flight pay. Out there to look for this. And of course, aging sees himself with the famous last words.

Yep. I mean, when Kiefer wasn't part of this flight crew, when he's been forced onto every flight crew in every scene possible, you knew they weren't going to make it.

oh, that's a good point.

This character we've been shoving down your throats.

Really.

there's pilots to humanize them a little bit. And he's the one time the captain's going to go out, he doesn't go with, and you're just like,

This would have been a good time for Kiefer. We could have put him in here somehow, except he was probably busy.

Honestly, you could probably, I don't know that it works the same, but if this, they had just done this episode with Kiefer in Sheridan's place. I might like keep her more as a character.

Oh, that's a good point too, because like he's already got this. Mystery storyline of like, he saw something out in hyperspace and if he went out and like got kidnapped, That would, that could be an interesting turn. Yeah. Hmm. But we have to have shared and then everything right now, he's just.

Yeah, he's too important. Got to, got to make sure everyone knows how important he

Yeah. So we cut to an unknown non fighter. That's in a struggle with an unknown ship. And it appears he's getting abducted to theme.

When we come back. Lanier is seeing Dylan off and tells her that he will be joining her in his, uh, little It's a what'd they call them. The little one Cedars.

Oh, I just, I just called it a flyer. Is it. Is it a flyer? I don't know. They look like little fish, all of them in Bari ships look like little fish of some sort. I think the okay. If the, um, If the warships. Our angel fish, obviously, right. They look like angel fish. maybe these are a little better fish. They're really cool. Little little betas. Whatever you call them.

so, uh, he's going to be joining her. Sheridan is getting ready to fly when Ivanova calls to be a lake. Hey, one of the joint chiefs is coming. Maybe you should've let me know next time.

Yeah. He's he's coming early though. So, Sheridan meant to do that. He meant to tell her.

Yeah, I'm just going to jump off station real quick while a general is coming to visit. No

Yeah, NBD.

Garibaldi and Franklin talks shit about marsh and baseball with a pilot who joins the escorts, who jump into hyperspace.

this is how we know that guy is going to die.

For sure. I give him some emotional stakes that, but doctor that bet on baseball.

Got to live and pay my 50 bucks or whatever.

Like really just like you can't hit a home run on earth, gravity. Fuck you. How is that not compensated like literally you would send an earth team to Mars and if they're actually playing in different gravity that your body has to acclimate to. That'd be a whole thing. Also the balls would fly so differently.

Yeah. I mean, physics is different with gravity.

Yeah. Well, I mean,

Well, physics isn't different, but you know what I mean? Like,

Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah.

I'm going to catch so much shit from my dad for that. Love you dad.

Does he listen to the podcast?

Yeah.

Okay.

Anyway. So speaking of cool physics, we get, we get a scene of the star fieries leaving and they do some of their cool tricks. You know, I think Sheridan. Turns himself around to look at his buddies and the station before he leaves. And, you know, that's just that cool, like.

There's some flippers and

Yeah. We don't really

Like battle. That's the thing. Battlestar Galactica. The reboot does so well, the ship Philippi's.

Yeah. I mean, cause.

we'll save that for when we're done with Babylon five. We'll talk about it a lot more in a couple of years, just hold

Battlestar podcast, 2025.

Is that when it will be

I don't know, I was just,

to check.

I was. just doing a number that sounded like my. Could be right.

Okay.

We'll see. We'll get more precise later.

I have. I know the release dates for every episode up until the season three episode one. Wouldn't be that hard to just figure it out. But that I'm not doing right now. That's Excel. Fun time. We're talking podcast. Uh, linear is sending Dylan some thoughts and prayers as she, uh, goes in to the, uh, Oh, is that, is that too

No,

Can we, can we not say that? I'm sorry.

That was pretty good.

It's like, okay. I can't go past you sending your thoughts and prayers. Totally the vibe.

And he still calls her. So Ty, which I thought was cute, you know, you're, you're the of my heart. Yeah.

Oh forever. It's a tie. He's actually going to get a tattooed. Um, Engraved in his bone. Richard is actually.

Not weird. At all.

So anyways, that ship from the open shows up. Blows up a ton of the star theories. Uh, they capture Sheraton, by force and move Jack to the tractor beam of men. And Ramirez is the only survivor still on a ship. And he knows he's not going to make it. There's already terminal amounts of radiation. He is dead. So he sets his autopilot and just tries to get back to the station while making sure that he leaves logs.

Yeah, so, you know, he's a good, Good fly buddy. But man. You hate to see

Yeah. I mean, when you introduce a character and then kill them five minutes later.

Yeah. When you had other characters you could have sent anyway. back in Babylon five. Ivana was waiting for general Haig. Uh, he gets off at space. Yeah, he gets off at space TSA. ask about Sheridan and She says, well, he went into to look into something. And another sector. He'll be back and general Haig. Of

Did you clock him by the way?

Well, he's that one guy that looks like. Like somebody in Russell Crowe. That was my joke. Last time. Cause he's been on before,

Oh, This is the second and final appearance on the

This is his final appearance.

Yeah, we never see him

What a shame.

But he is Admiral latent from DS.

Oh, yes. Yes.

He's in a number of episodes of DS. Uh, which I think I knew last time if it had, if I didn't bring it up, I think I recognized him, but what I, what I didn't recognize him as was overseer Veloce from enterprise. He's one of the Vulcan. Overseers of the NX. Oh one and enterprise and he's in like 15 episodes, enterprise.

I could see that his, Hairdo is very like Vulcan. It's that very like severe. Bangs. The. The forehead. Yeah, he could do that. All right. I'll buy it.

Well, we cut to the rent unknown alien ship. And a Sheraton is saran wrapped to his bunker. Like at summer camp.

I put saran. Saran wrap and cabbage leaves. It reminded me of both things.

That's fair. It is very kava G and not good cabbage either like old stretchy.

Yeah.

Not, not a fresh cabbage.

Yeah. So he starts name rank serial numbering. And does, I cannot remember, and we might have to scrub if you don't remember either. Does he ask, who are you? To the alien. Allianz.

Oh, I don't

In, in his little ranty. Ranting. I feel that the need to scrub to that, because I pointed out that he asks a couple of our other questions. That are important. So. Okay. Well, he's got to ask somebody who they are at some point. Anyway.

Dylan. Shows up and get stood up by the gray council.

Oh, yeah, no one she's she's all dressed and she's in her potato sack. Ready to talk to the council or is she in a potato sack? Yeah. Doesn't

She's in a potato sack. No one's there. Her friend appears to tell her they won't recognize her more than her appearance has changed. Hedren goes to explain. Look, the nine of us are stuck here. And our appointments are for life. We maintain a nice balance. Don't rock the boat too hard. Let, what needs to make its way to us, you know? Eh, just whatever it is, it's, you know, it's just the way I, for government, it was clearly designed by our richest minds long ago. It works.

Nice. Nice.

Oh, it gets worse.

I can't wait. I'm so excited. In CNC. The fighter has made it back through the jump gate. Hagan Ivanova can tell right away that something's wrong. It's it's alone. It's really badly damaged. they radio med labs that they're going to need to be ready to treat. Whoever is still inside.

back in captivity, Sheridan gets in a pipe fight with a drowsy. Who has some data, brain thing that he then impales himself on accident. The drowsy. Uh, he vanishes and then RN from earlier shows up with a sword.

Yeah. Like a machete.

Right. Uh, there's a little bit in the. seasoned guide about this. Because the NARKN was also the fight choreographer.

Oh, how funny.

apparently. there was a bit with Bruce box Lintner about him wanting to swing more wildly. Like he's all like, you wouldn't do it like that. You do it like this. It's like, no, I'm an untrained fighter. I would do it like this. You know, and like war himself, so ragged. That, when he got in his car at the end of the day, he literally couldn't lift his arms to the wheel to drive home.

Oh, man. And you just can't just call an Uber back then.

Yeah, it's fun stuff. Um, at MetaLab the pilot dies. Like we knew he was gonna. But we do find out about the captain's capture from the logs.

Yeah.

to the Supreme Gregg council. And Dylan is like, fuck. Y'all. And then the room shows up and dilemmas, very confused because you've put too many of the red warrior cows on the gray council, and now it's going to get imbalanced and it's going to get all fucky instead of being impartial, like it's supposed to be, and you're making the nine all political, which wasn't the intent that you all say you care so much about?

Yeah.

Because if you didn't know, by the way, uh, the rune, uh, the actor also voiced scar in the lion king.

I, you know, we probably talked about that last time, but it's still a surprise.

Yeah. I, I don't remember if we clocked it last time, but every time I see him. I'm going to check and be surprised again.

We just love our like British accent, bad guys in America.

We do.

We just, for some reason, it's like it's baked in our DNA. I don't know. It's so weird. Yeah. So religious cast only gets two members. Now. We've got. Where you're cast with four. Worker cast with three. Religious with too. So. That's it. Not quite balanced. Like some things. Yeah. on the cabbage ship. Sheridan's taken off the nones, Device. He starts to wake up. He's not dead. We find out. Share. Sheridan. Thanks. He broke some of his ribs. They don't have any food or water.

Yeah. They talk about it for a moment. And, they come to the conclusion that this is just a test for future invasion plans.

Yeah.

See, who's weak, who they can conquer easily.

Right. Sheridan's decides that his first obligation is to try to escape somehow. but the Narin passes back out on him.

meanwhile, Dylan catches up linear on what happened and he agrees to follow her back. Despite Dylan being like, no, uh, shit sucks. Like you probably don't want to do this. And he's just like, I'm going to do it.

Hm. I'm just going to commit career suicide with you. It's fine.

Yeah.

Like, uh, they, they said she can go back to Babylon five. They're fine with sidelining her out there. So linear's happy to go be sidelined with her. He thinks that, you know, he's going for the long play. He's going for the long game. Do you think this will work out?

Back and CNC the general and Ivanova discussed the situation. Not much more info, but it seems to be collecting single individuals from multiple races. And then the egg amend. Mom shows up to help their old captain. And it should be fast enough to catch up with whatever.

Yeah. nice to see the ship again. It's been a little

Yeah.

back in the prison. Sheridan's drifting off and he has one of these classic Babylon five. Spooky visions.

sequins.

We get Ivanova with like a bird on her shoulder. Shushing him. And asking him if she, if he knows who she is. Do you know who I am. We see Garibaldi and he's got a different bird. I think hers is like

Ivanova has a Raven and Garibaldi has a dove.

is. Not the bird I would associate with Garibaldi, but.

Well, I do say, I think long-term, it makes sense. Given their roles in the conflict to come.

Hm. I'll have to think on that one. Okay.

Yeah, I don't want to get it's super spoiler town, so I'm not going to get into it right now, but.

Yes, super spoiler town.

We can talk about it in the discord. Join our discord.

Somebody explained the dove to Laura. Garibaldi says that the man in between is searching for you, which I think I remember what that's a reference to. And we see Kosch. And he asked Kosch why are you here? So I know that at some point he asked, what do, what did these aliens want? So I think we get all three questions.

Yeah.

In a, manner of speaking into this episode. Sheridan wakes up. he sees the sword. And has a big brain moment. Realizing

It's like fucking, we're getting outta

We swords can be used for multiple things.

Yeah. It's true. I have a sword exclusively for opening champagne. its job.

Do you have one for levering open doors?

Honestly, I could use the Sam champagne sword. It's very thick.

Yeah.

Meanwhile Dylan on her way back. Gives us the story on the streets. are those who captured Sheridan and others. This is their Mo and the last time the embargo encountered them, they gave them the Vulcan. Hello. The Agamemnon, the fighters and the men Bari. Sorry, find them join in. And the captain and the non escape as the ship is destroyed.

I really like what Dylan gets to say about. you guys remember your time in our space? Yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna regret this. I love it when she gets to give threats, which happens a few times in this show. So.

It does. There's one in a number of episodes here. That's probably one of the best threats delivered. On TV.

Chef kiss. Yes.

Anyways, the captain in an iron escape as the ship has destroyed. Back on the station. Sheridan is in MetaLab and mourns the loss of the others and cautious waiting for him just to prove that that wasn't entirely a dream.

Yeah, he's spooky too. He's super spooky. He says you've always been here.

Yeah. Referring to his mind.

Yeah, so. We go back to Sheridan's quarters. I think with general Haig it's either his quarters or his office, but. Okay. Yeah. This casual time, he said this was a personal visit casual thing. so we cram a whole bunch of stuff into the last five minutes of this episode.

Yes, we do.

General Haig takes out some kind of jamming device so that they can talk freely. And Sheridan. Pretty angry about how long it's taken for someone to come debrief him. Like, we're pretty sure the timeline on this is six months, right? Six months

Yeah. Give or take.

He says all his staff can be trusted. And so Hague tells him, you know, that. Santiago knew how important this place was and this basically why he put Sheridan. As number two pick if something happened to Sinclair, because he would look like some sort of hard nose, military man to Clark. But he wouldn't actually be that. So Santiago was playing chess.

Yes. The general says Santiago's death was likely in assassination. Likely by Cycore, but they can't prove it yet. The conspiracy is real. Y'all.

Okay. Now we know who his sources.

Yeah, right.

'cause he talked about, he collects these secrets. He's getting them from general Haig.

Yeah. Sheridan agrees to fight, to save earth. And he decides to bring his senior staff in on it and brings them all to the quarters after the general leaves and tells them what's going on.

Yeah. He gets the jamming device from Hague. And, you know, they all kind of knew something was up what, since Garibaldi got shot in the back, in that whole thing.

Yeah.

so they're all in, Each one of them gets to say, yes, I want to be in on this. And we've got a mystery. End of episode.

So Laura, on a scale of Babylon, one to Babylon five, how'd you feel about this one?

It's not as clear for me as the last one. Like.

Yeah.

Grupos hit, hit all my emotional spots the way it was supposed to. And I enjoyed it a lot. this one, I guess I kind of got to go back to three territory. It's not Babylon five best. It's not Babylon. Five worst. It's a average solid middle of the road for me episode.

I would put it into three as well. And my rant here is that this feels like the first time Babylon five as swung for the fences and missed.

Yeah.

it's still a good episode. It's solid. It does what it needs to. but I mean the character, we don't get anything substantial. With any of the characters, despite a bunch of stuff happening to them. Like we get some place setting for future stuff with them. Ambari gray council. and the, the eventual, fracture in their culture, that's been building in the background that they've referred to a bunch.

Yeah.

Yeah.

really is.

And the whole plot was shared and being captured feels like it exists solely to have general HEG do something else besides not tell us what's going on. At the end of the episode.

Yeah. Yeah.

Um, you could have made that Keifer very easily and then had that be a test. Uh, of like Ivanova and stuff to see if the General's comfortable with bringing them in. Or something. It just, anything really like, it just feels like a miss to me. And. It's not that great of an episode for it.

Yeah, I think it was trying really hard to build. Building blocks that we're going to need later.

Yeah.

you know, as much as like the. The Strieber kind of Streep Stripe. our kind of spooky and, you know, Later, you can ask yourself, like, are they servants of shadows or VAR lawns or. Like, what, what, how do they fit in.

I don't think they show up again.

I don't know, It wasn't as compelling as some. Mysteries in Babylon five R to me, I do have a Funny scrub point that I forgot to bring up.

Yeah.

As they're leaving the ship. Okay there as.

the aliens look like? What the streets look like.

So, you know, The stream start spacing. Everybody. And Sheridan and the NAR and managed to like find an escape pod.

Yeah, there. Big graze. Right?

it's one of those

It's an alien costume from Halloween. USA.

And it's The same big gray guy that, abducted the guy in the, the episode with, you know, The legal system back in season one. Yeah, it's that same kind of gray. So it's very funny that they've. Definitely made a name for it, but how was he on Babylon five then? man.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's just one of

those are different gray aliens. Yeah.

So that's somewhere around the 35. Minute mark, because I can't find it exactly at this moment.

I know the seniors talking about. Honestly, I think the, uh, the ones that we saw earlier in court, I don't remember them being so distinctively tall, this one felt like he was played by Doug Jones.

Yeah, he was

He's a tall. boy.

Definitely. So, yeah.

All right.

episode.

Yeah. So next week, we're going to go ahead and review Tron. As part of our mid season movie break. After that we'll be back with season two, episode 12, acts of sacrifice. but I'll read the preview on that one for next episode.

Oh, yeah, we don't get to know right now what that's about.

No, you possibly couldn't Google it or look at HBO max or have seen the episode in the 20 years since its

You're not going to cause you're worried about Tron. All right.

thanks to Jeremy Siegel for our wonderful theme music, you can find more of his music at Jeremy Siegel. 40 two.bandcamp.com.

And thanks to angry deck time machine on Instagram for our podcast artwork. And Hey, if you want to reach out and give us your thoughts about the episode or. You know, Just general Babylon five thoughts. You can reach us at. Who are you before? At gmail.com.

Join our discord.

Yeah.

We'll see you next weekend or not.

Bye.