S3E17 - So Many Zathri

Hello and welcome to, who Are You? It's a Babylon five watch cast by a couple of former strangers. Now friends who are continuing to get to know each other over one of their favorite shows from their childhood. Babylon. Five. I'm Laura,

And Aire.

and today we're gonna be playing our favorite game,

Ooh, plot poker. So what we have is we have a bunch of packs of the Babylon five collectible card game. we're currently working our way through the shadows set, which is the first expansion to that game. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna open up a bunch of cards and we're gonna go ahead and organize them into one of four piles. Characters problems, solutions, and twists. And then we're gonna take one from each of these after shuffling 'em up.

Everybody's favorite improv exercise, right?

Honestly, I'm a big fan of this segment,

Yeah. Well, Cards, they're very fun to open. I just want you to know that I've organized mine a little bit and I got these nifty boxes at vintage stock. They had previously been in a pile on this desk that you could not see, but it was very embarrassing and uh, now I have a system I'm very proud of myself.

have four rappers from four different sets of the game. That I use for the different subjects or the different topics and then I put my little piles in there. Have you opened anything fun yet? We're opening like 10 packs today, so it's a bunch of stuff to go through.

doing a bunch. I'm just going through my first one now. I have a lot of weird things it feels like.

Yeah, I got a William Morgan Clark.

what a good character get.

I think I'm gonna put him in the problems actually,

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He is a big problem, isn't he?

now that we've got like more than the couple of characters that came in the initial set, I've been trying to put characters in the problems and solutions

I got in this first pack, I have the most interesting card, I think to me is telekinesis. I'm like, is telekinesis a problem, solution, or a twist?

it could be any of the three. I mean, in the, in the episode, it's a twist.

That's true.

Ooh. I got the the actual shadow attack on Babel on five from the distress signal from last episode.

Oh, how funny. That's a good screen grab.

It is.

Oh, I got another Z.

Oh, which Atheros?

This is Atheros with the apostrophe at the end.

Okay. I have Atheros with the apostrophe in the middle.

Oh, oh. I had two Atheros in one pack and this is between the A and the T is the apostrophe, so it's sort of the middle. Yeah.

The So Ari

I have to resist the urge to put every single Z atheros into my character pile.

put 'em in your problems pile. Well put 'em in your solutions pile.

one in my solutions pile. Yeah,

yeah. Oh, here we go. Corrupted Destiny and it has kar choking out Lando. That's fun.

Oh,

Ooh, slow poison with refa on the card. I'm gonna put that in my solutions pile.

I was gonna say that can be a problem or a solution or a twist. So many of these are very flexible. Have we used Brother Theo yet? I know one of us has gotten Brother Theo

I actually just also drew brother Theo. I have him in my solutions pile, but I don't think he's been played yet. Open packs reminds me of my childhood and also feels a little bit like gambling. Oh, it's my favorite card bureaucracy, all right, well, let's uh, let's get our episode together here.

Okay. Here goes nothing, a plot. He's going to start with Maryanne Kramer. Do you remember Maryanne Kramer?

I do not remember Maryanne Kramer. Is she I s n?

reporter. Yeah, so it's gonna be an I S N episode

Okay.

we're gonna have Maryanne Kramer and Marion Kramer. Is on Babylon five. She is tracking down some vicious rumors about our command staff and their activities on Babylon five.

Okay.

of course, you know, because I s n is involved, maybe maybe the truth is being manipulated a little bit. Maybe these vicious rumors are being manipul. And our solution is that the command staff actually has to go on a rescue mission and they make the risky decision to bring Issn along to see how they really operate. show themselves, try to uh, make themselves look good.

Mm-hmm.

We go on this rescue mission. But unfortunately it backfires on us. Issn has their spin. Doctors manipulate the editing. Of the episode and all it ends up doing is sewing more unrest back home.

Okay.

so what's the b plot happening at the same time? We've got this i s n

While Mary. Comes to the station. So does Emperor Carta.

Oh no

and

things we can manipulate.

he's here because there's been a problem with Lord Maari.

Lord Maari.

Maari. So that's the upgraded Alando card.

Okay, so he's, he's in the inner circle.

Yeah. M per cor taja. There's something with Malar that he's gotta settle and he leaves Centura Prime to do it. So he comes to Seeland and there is a fleet of centara ships as well.

Okay. Are they involved in our rescue mission?

It's a colonial fleet. So this fleet comes in Their question throughout the episode is, are they going to be taking Malawi away? Are they loyal to Malawi? Who are these people loyal to? Because there's always kind of an underpinning of who actually runs the military with the Centara. So we don't really know.

Mm-hmm.

But what ends up happening is there's some unforeseen incentives. So the fleet comes in, they don't side with anyone. And Carta is just kind of. Oh, delightful. And is kinda weird, but is all like, oh, I'll just take this fleet back home with me. And now Malawi is kind of like the, he, he gets the incentive of having this fleet, knowing that they're not going to like capture him, but also that the emperor is not super pissed at him.

Hmm. You don't want Carta super pissed at you for sure. We're gonna find that out very soon, I think.

All right. So how do you rate this episode

Hmm. I don't know if we've ever rated our own episodes badly.

I think we're about to

Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say, I feel like this doesn't do a lot to move any plot forward for us. Emperor Carta is always fun to observe. Um, But I think I'd, I'd give this one about a two.

Yeah. It feels kind of weird. It doesn't really feel like it's doing much another I s N thing, but it doesn't work out for them. We've seen that Cartha Coming to the station I think is new, but I'm not really feeling it.

Yeah.

they can't all be winners.

We did our best

But what is a winner is season three episode 17, episode without blots part two. Uh, It's War without End. We get a last time on. I don't know that we've gotten one of these in babble on five.

Yeah, it's, if it has, it's been a minute.

Yeah. So we get caught up and then we open on Cent. Tori Prime Sheridan learns how far ahead he is in the timeline. 17 years since the war started.

Yeah. Orlando's very kind to set that scene for us cuz you were left wondering at the end of the last episode, and if you didn't, Immediately watch the next episode because we're in streaming land. Uh, you've been wondering for a moment.

Yep. And it's also like he even like teases us, like, he's not gonna tell us for a minute, it'd be very j m s.

Mm-hmm.

It'll just be all like, oh, well we're at the year, hour, month, day of y, the end of your life. Of course, you know when that is

Yeah.

rude.

Londo is very antagonistic. I think we see some more of that CGI burning footage. get to watch. Yeah. It really makes you wonder what has happened in between all this time. I think that's what really works for me about this whole flash forward plot is I love the mystery. I want to know what happens. I want to know so bad. How did we get here from there?

Yep. And so after this, we cut back over to Babylon four. and it's totally not just redressed Babylon five CNC They change the colors of the lights and then also they film it from different camera angles.

Mm-hmm.

So every time we see it, normally when we're in c and c it's very kinda like top down or eye level right here. It's all looking up. I thought it was a very interesting choice, like the cameras are in the control pit looking up, like there's a big walkway there, but that's just where like core wind sits and stuff is where the camera is this time and we see it later. It's like through the exit doors, like in the very back.

Yeah, I, I feel like everything about their Babylon four sets looks very cheap.

It's all just babble on five sets. A hundred percent. Like we see the zocalo later and stuff, but it's just empty.

Yeah. And we've, if we've had to slap something on it, it's kind of green and yellow instead of blue and purple.

Mm-hmm. and it's got the B four logo. which someone was complaining on the internet, looked like a three, but it's a B with a four wedged into it, so it kinda looks like a backwards three if you kind of look at it weird, but it's totally just B four

Yeah. I definitely feel like everything that they put together for this was a little bit cheaper. I understand why, cuz we spent a lot of money on that war room That looks real nice. So we gotta we gotta pull it back somewhere. I get it. The c n C has detected the explosion that was out in our last episode out in space when the Warp Corps blew.

Mm-hmm.

They are looking for saboteurs. They are concerned that there's somebody nearby who wants to blow up this station as well. Hey, I didn't ask you in the last episode

Yeah.

and I meant to,

Okay.

cuz we know that bad things happen to babylon's one through three, two as well. two was a bad choice of words for that. Do we think that there could have been shadow involvement in those bad things happening in one through three as well?

No,

Okay.

is definitive. This is from jms. Cuz someone asked this exact question on Usenet

Okay. Because it's sort of out there, right? Like I'm not crazy for wondering.

So he says that the shadows didn't recognize Babylon four until it was completed.

Okay, so they didn't have any bad feels about one through three.

One through three did get far enough through the building process to be noticed

Okay.

because they were destroyed very, very early on, well, partially destroyed. They were made inoperable to the point where they had to start over a chunk. Most of Babylon four, like a, at least a third of Babylon. Four is actually Babylon. Three is actually Babylon. Two, like they reused decent chunks of the station to rebuild, and only Babylon four was so completely lost that they had to start from scratch with a new design for Babylon. Five.

Okay. Yeah. That's true because it became so unstuck in time.

Yeah.

Okay. Okay. I, I'm with that. I just wondered when we were talking about it.

No, no, it's a good question. It's just one that happened to be already answered.

Yeah.

So anyways, Krantz is sending out some security guards to find the saboteur and Ivanova gets caught in a hallway to theme like Marcus is gonna let this happen.

Yeah. We know Marcus didn't go anywhere. Like he's got a VOT of his back. We know how he

Yeah, he's gone when the guards show up and then jumps out of the ceiling and takes 'em out and ivanna's just like, how did you know they were gonna attack? He's like, I didn't. It just would've been the worst possible time. So I prepared for that contingency

Yeah, I realized as if Vva was getting caught, I was like, oh, you know, the uniform change is a bad thing right here because if she was wearing an Earth Force uniform, they would at least be confused for a second. Right? But she's not in any earth force garb, and so they're immediately. Popping to saboteur rather than surprise. Inspection.

Mm-hmm. Sheridan jumps back and forth. The plan is about to go off and then Sheridan jumps back and is there. and we get some details about the future.

Mm-hmm.

They have

details, right? Uhhuh.

and their first kiss for Sheridan

Yep. Yep. I made sure to point that out to my husband. I was like, this, this is the first kiss.

Yeah, for one of them.

Right? Right. And it's a very uh, intimate first kiss. You would say

Yeah. Well I feel like of the two Deln is gonna be the one who gives the reserved first kiss and she's like, this is my husband. We're about to die. It's make out time.

It's very cute. I couldn't help but smile. Yeah, so he, he had been unstuck for a moment and Zs has seen him. So Zaris now knows, like sums up. Gotta do something about this. But he's Sheridan's still primarily in Centura Prime right now. Like that is where he's at. So we've got a son. We've got passionate Kiss. And then Dylan also says some like really sad stuff

Yeah.

his, his future is full of pain and grief. Yikes.

Yep. But it's not all bad. They created something that will live for a thousand years. They have a son named David.

Mm-hmm.

While this is going on, the plan to fake a whole breach works. So our crew on Babylon four has bought themselves some space and some time, But Sheridan and Dalen are summoned Tolando again.

very drunk. Wado

He is drunker than me at a Kesha concert.

Is he maybe The kind of non-functional that one gets when they have too much weed and watch cats.

He is definitely more functional than I was then.

That's, that's where my mind went. I was like, Hmm, He has a reason for being so drunk that he elucidates to Sheridan and Lynn.

Yes. He introduces us to his Keep. This weird little eye thing on his shoulder.

This thing is so creepy. I was fascinated by this thing. Yeah. I wanted to know more. I wanted to know how the hell we got here. I wanted to know what this is, where it came from.

Mm-hmm.

It's one of those things that it's, this show sets it up so nicely. You know, there's gonna be this big deal later, but you don't know how you got there. Everything about what happens to Sonari Prime in these 17 years is fascinating for me.

we will see these keepers again. But this one has uh, lost, it's, it's slowly gaining a tolerance for.

Yeah,

Lando notes, so there's not a lot of time here, but they have some time, Free from the keeper. Controlling Lando, like a puppeteer

He tells them he did not want to be a big asshole earlier. Basically, he really does believe that Sheridan and Dalen are the best hope he has for Sonari

Prophecy Watch. So the prophecy is don't kill the one who is already dead.

Mm.

And given this episode, don't kill the one who is already dead. I think we can put emphasis on some different words there.

Uhhuh.

Now we know that this is both Sheridan and Dalen by the end of this episode are both considered the one,

Yeah.

Could tie in there.

Mm-hmm. We don't wanna kill them. Maybe perhaps and Alando certainly doesn't.

Yeah. He gives them his bug out bag, and he's like, there's a car waiting out back. And then Kar comes out of the shadows and Lando asked Kar to kill him.

Yeah. He, he knows that the keeper's not gonna stay asleep long enough. Yeah.

The line here. Oh,

Aw

Uh, so Kar starts to choke Lando to kill him, and Land's Keeper Awakens, and they choke each other to death, just like Lando knew they would.

Yeah. We've seen this before. We have seen these two choking each other to death. I wanted to say one more thing about this scene too. You know, sometimes in our remastered versions of older shows, you get these scenes where we have the old makeup, you know, you know, the makeup that we cake it on and add some wrinkles

The The Old's makeup. Yes.

The old's makeup and sometimes it looks very bad. Uh, One show I'm thinking of, and of course this is a much older show, but like I Claudias, I don't know if you've watched much of that. Um,

not offhand.

yeah, it I highly recommend. Very interesting, especially you are a history buff Roman history. Oh, well I don't know if it's streaming anywhere. Actually. I'll have to look that up. It's gotta be right. It was one of those that my dad bought the box set when I was a assert, you know, maybe in my twenties. And we wound up watching it while I was home from college and I was just fascinated. But the old makeup, not very good. Pretty bad actually, cuz there are some characters that age through the.

Okay.

have to cake it on. I was really impressed with how well this old makeup made it through that remaster.

Yeah.

I don't think londo looks terrible. I think it's all very believable. The way we've graded dalen out. Not bad, not bad at all. We didn't put any on Sheridan because this is unstuck in time. Sheridan. This is not supposed to look like old Sheridan. I thought that was a nice.

he he does get a little bit older, like they grade up his hair a bunch.

yeah, but we didn't cake anything on his face, I don't

No. Also Lando is much older than either well, at least than Sheridan. Uh, The Mbar, it's hard to say.

Yeah. But Londo definitely, you know, we've aged him up quite a bit.

Yeah. Lando is like 80, I think during our current timeline of Babylon five, like he's 70 or eighties. He's, he's older, so

And we've added 17 years onto

yeah,

Yeah.

17 years. as emperor for a chunk too. And we saw what eight did to Obama. So

I was about to say the same thing.

he looked so youthful back then.

Yep. So I just wanted to give them props. I think it was very well done. It held up just fine in the remaster.

Mm-hmm.

good for them.

One last prophecy watch here. is this Lando embracing his greatest fear, which was his last chance to set everything right?

Yeah, I I don't know. So she said, what was the exact line

Yeah. He would have to face his greatest fear right Before his death, or at the moment of his death. You would have to face his greatest fear,

mm-hmm. Yeah. So what is Land's greatest fear? Is it Kar? Is it facing what he did to the nans? Is it facing What's happened to Sonari Prime?

all of these apply,

Yeah,

so,

could be a lot of things ,because I, I don't know if I, if I had visions of my death, right, and my death was this person who was gonna strangle me, and I met that person, you know, 20 years before they were gonna strangle me. I might be low-key, afraid of them for 20 years Dylan know. You know that Sheridan is going to get pulled back right from his timeline. So one thing that she does before he is pulled away is she begs him not to go to Zaha.

Yep. Once again with the, not going to Zaha Doom.

Mm-hmm. first. Kosh.

Mm-hmm.

Now Dalen,

Now the implication here is that he has gone to Saha

Uhhuh

and Kashas pretty clear about what was gonna happen if he goes to Saha dom.

Yeah. So how is he here? If he's gone? Hmm.

it's a mystery. For another five episodes,

Yep. Yep.

look, it's the name of the episode is Za Doom. All right, I'm not giving away too much here

No, you're really not. Like if you, if you've looked ahead of

If you accidentally scrolled one bar too far down on the list of episodes,

Yeah. Zha Doom is gonna come up. We, but we also get veer wandering into the throne room where

He claims the

and Lando. Yeah.

ceremonial emperor necklace just grabs that shit.

Is that how he becomes emperor? I'm not clear on how this entire, I get a new Emperor

I, I think there's more to it than that, but he definitely is just like, oh,

Yeah, we're just being reminded of that last prophecy that one of you will become emperor after the other one is dead. Well, he's dead guys.

Yep. Marcus and Ivanova unload while Atheros builds the suit from Babylon squared to catch Sheridan Drifting through time.

Yeah. Marcus thinks this is just insane.

Yeah. And also just reminds us a little bit about Valin. They, they're talking a little bit about Valin over here. Uh, Marcus and Ivanova just very randomly like, oh, I wonder if we'll get to. Vain. That'd be fun. I'm barring up. Or abar, huh? This totally isn't relevant to the episode. Let's just talk about it very randomly.

Yeah. Right.

the most out of place thing in this whole three part parter. I feel it's absurd to me.

At least it's Marcus who's bringing it up, cuz he has like a, the knowledge to do so. But he's literally the old, well, Dalen has the knowledge to do so, but she's got the tact to not bring it up.

Mm-hmm. Sheridan gets caught in the suit.

Hey Z's, mad thing worked.

Yeah, we see it like electrify and then get inflated. I wanted to be there when they did this. This is fun,

That is a fun effect. I love practical stuff.

after this Sheridan and Sinclair set up the equipment on the main power core to stabilize the station in time to allow it to move

We have a little talkie talk first to say what they're gonna do. And Dalen rushes up to Sheridan

Mm.

and he's, he's a little awkward here. Do you, did you catch that? Because he's just been like, Face mauled by future Dylan

Mm-hmm.

And uh, they're not there yet in this part of the time Stream It's very fun to watch.

They go, they set off all the equipment and then Krantz turns up the power core thus setting off the equipment prematurely, and they end up two years in our characters' past four years in bevel and force's future. And the events of Babylon squared begin to play out.

Yeah. Stupid krants. Why did you have to do that? It can never be as easy as you want it to be,

Yep. Well, something had to go wrong for the station to show up ahead of time.

Yep.

During this Sheridan gets shocked and the suit malfunctions or something, and he's now shifting through time again.

Yeah, boo.

Dalen has one of those little time shifts to the.

Ah-huh.

she's watching Sheridan sleep and then breaks his snow globe

huh? Yeah. I don't think This is too far in the future.

it is not too far in the future, and I won't I won't ruin it, but people on Usenet recognized this actress's voice and knew what episode she was guest starring in, and were like, well, it has to be this person. This is the only character. It would make sense for that person to.

That's funny.

So this was like totally ruined on the internet. The scene was like almost immediately

yeah. Welcome to the internet

Uh, when Sheridan is notably aged

Oh, nope, nope, nope, nope,

Sinclair is notably aged when he returns. I haven't made that mistake since season two.

Hey, we did a really great job in the last episode,

we did. He explains the same would've happened to Garabaldi if he had been on board.

Yeah. That's why we can't have garibaldi.

Mm-hmm. And we're full on back to the future too. Now with the events of Babylon squared happening in the same time as this episode.

I love these kind of episodes where we're weaving in stuff from another episode. Uh, Probably the most notable and successfully done is the um, I believe it's trials and tribulations.

yes.

in D. Space nine

The most famous going back and doing this kind of a thing. This is not any of that. There's no adding characters to old scenes. If it is an old scene, it is an old scene. They didn't reshoot anything. They didn't have to.

Yeah.

most of the time was actually spent like color correcting and getting the new stuff to look like it fit in.

I am a little disappointed, and this is nothing with the episode, just the technology at the time that the season one Babylon squared snippets really don't look as good. At least they didn't on my tv.

don't, no.

Yeah, that that is disappointing and that's one of those things that you, again, kind of really hope that the Babylon five reboot will pull off and then, no, it doesn't have to do this exact episode, but I would love to. Do this kind of thing at some point with the technology that we have today, like weave some of this old stuff into new stuff and it will look much better.

Yep. We'll see how it goes with the, if, when, if we get the reboot at this point. I don't know that I want them to redo this.

No, I wouldn't want them to redo this No,

I think this is too perfect. I don't think you fuck with this.

I think that JMS and a team could write a story that does the same kind of thing that would get our hearts like, oh yes, I remember this sort of storytelling and I loved it, and I, I'm really excited about it. And then they could technically pull it off a little bit better and that would feel so good

Yeah.

that I, I believe in that wholeheartedly.

Uh, Z Atheros gets caught to commercial and we get some of these Babylon squared scenes cut in going forward. Z Atheros saves the one. giving them the fixed anchor

Mm-hmm.

we find out that Dalen. Yeah. Traded spots with Sheridan.

She took the suit, she gave him her anchor, so he is good. The suit maybe not as good. We don't quite know.

Yeah. And we don't really get much of that. We don't really see a whole lot with what she's going through besides her one. Flash forward,

Yeah, very curious. I, I would love to know so the major is talking to pass Sinclair in one of our scenes. Giving him that whole rundown that we saw in Babylon squared. They start their evacuation and as they're evacuating c n c, this is, this is one of the new

Mm-hmm.

Ivanova slips in to do some of other, some of her work.

Yep. She sit slips in to reconfigure the engines to make the time travel go smoother. And then uh, we see uh, Riss get left under the pipe and then yep. But this time we see him get saved by.

the suit. I can't ever, at this point in my notes, I was writing the suit because it's like we're not supposed to know really who's

Well she takes the helmet off real quick here. I think this is when the reveal is. But we see her like sneak out of the ship and go up to where Sinclair is. So I thought it was pretty well telegraphed.

Yeah, yeah.

In space Sinclair sees himself. and he tries to warn Garabaldi real quick.

Oh, this is sad, isn't it?

Yeah. This could really fuck with the timeline. This is a bad idea. But he knows his best friend is gonna get shot in the back in like three episodes

Yeah. It's very vague. Like watch your back, but also very specific

Yes. And so, but the message doesn't get. and has he comments on when he gets back on it happens. Just how I remembered it.

Mm-hmm.

he was not able to change the past, the little bit that he wanted to, even though he knows he's not supposed to.

I mean, it feels good to try, but you're really not supposed to do that. My dude. We meet all, we, we, all of our characters meet up. Marcus is our cookie and is puzzled out. that somebody's gotta go back with this thing. It's not automated.

Yeah. This is a one way trip.

yeah, he tries to.

Very noble.

Mm-hmm.

He's always the one to volunteer for the noble sacrifice, but Sinclair reveals that he's the one who sent the letters from 900 years ago. It will be him. It was always him. It has to be him.

And he would also die if he tried to go back to regular time because of the unstuck and the not having an anchor the first time he came through and. Yeah. So he says, I've gotta do this. I would die. You will not die. You will be fine. Uh, and it was always me,

Atheros reveals the one is actually the three. The one who was the one who is, and the one who will be. this twist when I was like, 14. Blew my mind.

Yeah.

This was the dopest shit. But I, I still, I love it a lot as an adult, but it does feel a little like, Hmm,

It feels a little like college philosophy 1 0 1, where you're like, whoa, and everything is so deep in philosophy 1 0 1

Yeah.

And then uh, you start moving on

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I did have a moment. I made my husband pause the show and I pointed at him and I said, you are the one who was, and I pointed at our. And I said, you are the one who is. And I pointed at my stomach and the baby and I said, you are the one who will be And I made myself laugh. I don't think anybody else laughed, but I laughed. So the one who was, is Sinclair,

Yes,

the one who is, is Dylan and the one who will be, is she.

Yes. And we can, do you wanna break this down a bit

Yeah, sure.

so we know very shortly the biggest twist of the series, Sinclair's Valin.

Yeah.

We'll talk about that a bunch in a minute, but that very obviously places him as the one who was

Yes. That was in the past firmly.

I think this is about the Earthman Barr War and the Gray Council and stuff.

okay.

because you'd think Sheridan is the one who is, because he's our main character, but his story. Not really even starting until this war is moving. You know, he will be the one who is soon, his time is coming. So that, that's how I read it at least, is it's not necessarily this exact moment, but Dalen is definitely in the terms of like galactic importance has a much more. uh, Storied history than Sheridan at this point?

Yeah. Yeah. And the menari in general, were kind of, I don't wanna say top dogs, it's

Oh, no, they're top. I mean, outside of like the Volans and the, the other old ones. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, like the, the most historied, the most technologically advanced really. Maybe things are stagnant there or moving slow, and then the humans are kind of coming

Mm-hmm.

fast,

Yeah.

might be a little derailed by this. Shadow thing,

I think it derailed a couple of times, but that's, that's, that's all for the future. For now.

that's, that's human nature.

Yep.

That's how we be.

So Dylan and Sheridan. leave Sinclair and Zs on the station. Len has a look here that's just like, okay, well I know you're going back. I know who this letter is from, right? She doesn't say it, but like the full weight of like the realization hits her before anyone else and when she explains it to everyone in a couple of scenes, but just like imagine if the Pope found out that. Their best friend of their thirties was Jesus

Yeah. Okay. That's a good uh, good metaphor.

Like I'm, I mean, she's one of the, the highest religious leaders. So it's, I think it's pretty, and he's, you know, they're basically their myth figure in a lot of ways. So it's just, it's just like the mind blowing of just like, whoa, It's so good. The white star makes it out of the temporal rift, and Dalen lifts the veil for the rest of us and the crew as Sinclair uses the device to transform into a imbar.

Yeah, so the, about the device, did she give him the device? Did he leave the device for himself

the device came with Atheros and it's from Epsilon.

Oh,

and then Dalen gets it a thousand years later.

Okay. Yeah. So that's, that's where the cocoon stuff comes from.

so this device is made sometime after the old shadow war, before it bef we don't know how it gets. To, like, Zs gets it right. So Zs is the holder of it for who knows how long. He brings it to Sheridan. No, he brings it to Sinclair. Sinclair uses it a thousand years ago. Gives it to the Gray Council. The Gray Council has it for a thousand years and then Dalen gets it.

God. Time is hard. time. Travel episodes be hard. She also gives us the score that, you know, it seems like sending Sinclair back in time caused the soul's problem. You remember the soul's problem that menari souls being born in humans.

Yeah. This is the moment that joins their species. Destiny.

yeah, we get some soul hunter flashbacks here, which did not see that one coming.

Yeah. The soul hunter told uh, Sinclair that the Imbar were using him to get their great leader

Yeah.

that episode. They doesn't out, they don't show that clip, but that's the line from that episode.

Mm-hmm. No. I think they show that clip. They're using you.

They, yeah, we get the They're using you but not the, what they're using him for. Uh, We get naroon telling him, he look, talks like a imbar.

Yeah, we got some good season one, not just Babylon squared, but we got another couple of episodes from season one. Really giving Michael O'Hare a good sendoff. I think, you know, it's, it's trying to call back to how much we loved him as a captain or commander.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Some Mbar come on board Babylon, four a thousand years ago, and he's all like, sup, I'm Valin. Here are two VLANs out of their suits. Just to further just make you shit yourself,

Yeah. to further validate me as an important person. a couple of angels. I think that's uh, a valid tradition from our own human history.

Yeah, It's so good. And like we mentioned before one of these two volans is the guy we see on Mbar at the start of this, the closed circle.

Yeah.

This is the best twist in the history of sci-fi tv. Fight me. I'm not gonna wait for you to ask me. I'm gonna shout it Babble on five out of five.

Yeah. These two episodes, I just love it. It's some of the best writing in general. We gushed on it last time, but let's gush on it

It's so good. It's so well done. It's fucking perfect. These episodes are great. I fucking love it.

Yeah.

honestly, listener, if you have something negative to say about this episode, I, I really want to hear it because I, maybe it's just nostalgia glasses that I got on right now. You know, maybe it's the bourbon, I don't know, but I can't find anything wrong with these two episodes. They're fucking great. And so if there's a legitimate complaint, I want to hear it and I wanna talk about it, but I don't have anything against these.

I, I will say that when Aaron and I were talking about this episode he did say the first part he wasn't impressed with at first because it didn't. For a first time watcher like himself, he didn't feel like things made sense. You, you really have to watch part two in order to bring it all home. And it was much more enjoyable once we got to part two. But

As a first time watcher, how did the Valin thing go over?

We didn't get to talk about that part very much. I will have to. ask, like if he saw it coming. I don't think he saw it coming. Like I think he would've said something about that. You know when there's an obvious twist, you tend to say, well, that was dumb. That was obvious.

can't fucking wait for some of our friends in the leagues, league of nine aligned podcasts to get to these episodes.

Yeah.

I want to hear Grace 17 freak out about this twist. I want to hear Babylon five for the first time, freak out about this twist.

Yeah.

I'm really looking forward to those episodes, but they are. years off for them because they're release schedule and where they're at in the show right now. So we've got a while to wait for those, but I'm gonna look forward to

I feel like our discord because our, some of our Discord listeners are also listening to the non-line podcasts, and I feel like some of them have said that grade 17 has called some interesting twists like that they saw coming. I don't know if this part has been part of it. I'm sure on our discord they will let us know if how that goes Yes. Babylon. Five outta five solid. How do you follow up an episode like this?

I do not have fond memories of the next episode,

Really?

But it's also been a while, so we'll see. We've got season three episode 18, walk about. Sheridan uses a powerful new tool against the shadows. Franklin undertakes a strange mission.

Yeah, I remember the Franklin plot. Obviously I feel like that's the A plot since it's got the name right,

It's listed like a b plot, but I do believe it is the A plot.

Correct. Yeah. So I'm interested to see how we feel about that after going through this journey.

Yeah, I, I haven't watched ahead yet. So we'll see how I feel about it. But just thinking about it, I don't remember this episode fondly, so if I'm wrong or not, if I change my mind, I've done it a bunch this whole time.

Yeah. Same.

we'll see how it goes. Just like we'll see how Jeremy Siegel's new January album on Spotify goes cuz I haven't had a chance to listen to it because we're recording these back to back. But you can go ahead and find nuclear Jaguar on Spotify or you can find more at Jeremy's music at jeremy Siegel 40 two.bandcamp.com. Thank you so much for our theme song, we really appreciate it Jeremy.

And if you're looking for more interesting artwork, you should check out Angry Duck Time Machine on Instagram Who did our podcast artwork?

Thank you, Aaron for editing our podcast, ensuring that it comes out on time. We appreciate all of the work you put in behind the scenes.

Definitely. And thank you to you, the listener for being here. And if you have thoughts, we've already put out a call for thoughts, you can send them to who are you, B five gmail.com or you can find us on Facebook or you join our discord and we'll have a thoughtful conversation about your thoughts

Yeah, we should probably start soliciting for season three feedback soon. Uh, Because it's, it's that time and we are working very far ahead of ourselves right now. We should probably get on socials and start asking for that, cuz we're probably gonna record that episode in like three weeks.

Yeah. Yeah, we'll do

And we're, we're way ahead right now, so. All right.

Well, we'll see you next time Bye.

Bye.