Hello and welcome to Who Are You, A Babylon five watch cast hosted by two former strangers. Now, friends who have gotten to know each other while we're watching a favorite show from their childhood, Babylon. Five. I'm Jafa.
And I'm Laura.
And today, Laura, I'm gonna ask you, who do you want to pl? Did we, we didn't have a clever for this, did
No, we didn't, but I thought you were on your way
on my way, it was half in my head, and then I realized it had never been a thing before. Who,
but you should do it.
who do you want to play? Fan recasting here for the theoretical reboot, which we still have no news on as of. We're talking Dr. Franklin today, since we're talking Walkabout is very Dr. Franklin centric episode. We thought it would be a good episode to do our re casting of Dr. Franklin. Do we want to quickly go over everyone that we've fan cast so far?
Yeah, do go ahead and share that.
Okay. I'll say the name, who I casted, and then you say who? Yuk fan casted.
Okay.
And we'll just run through the list real quick. Yeah. Pull up the list if you don't have it in front of you.
Okay.
So Marcus, I had Henry, Ian Cusick.
And I had David 10
Zach Allen. I was feeling Grant Gustin,
and I was feeling fortune fester
uh, Londo. Michael Fastbender.
and I had Mark Addie
Kar. James McEvoy.
or Keith David.
Sinclair. I was thinking Christopher Jackson from Ham.
and I was thinking Donald Glover
Talia, Judy Greer,
and I had Amy Adams
and for Garabaldi, I suggested Bob Odenkirk.
and I had Tig Notaro.
Yeah. That's such good
Yeah. So now we're looking at Franklin, right? I wanted to ask you first, before we cast new people, thinking about our original doctor that we had on the show, Dr.
Dr. Kyle? Yeah.
So especially this episode got me really thinking about Dr. Kyle.
Mm-hmm.
and how much different do you feel like this plot and I, I mean not necessarily just the walkabout plot, but like the whole addiction plot. Would be
I don't think we get
Seka.
Yeah.
You don't think we get it at
I don't think, I don't think this happens at all with that character with Dr. Kyle. In fact, Dr. Kyle probably wouldn't be on the senior staff.
Yeah.
I would go as far as to say that Franklin is kind of boisterous and his inhabit of inserting himself in situations
Yeah, that's true.
and that's led to his prominence in the senior staff in doing things. Dr. Kyle was a bit more back in the cut, I feel.
you think he stayed in his lane
Yeah. I don't think he gets involved in war meetings and stuff. I think he just is worried about metal app.
Yeah. I think you could do this plot with Dr. Kyle, but it would be a lot different. Like it is more, you know, driven by. and we'd see Dr. Franklin working hard at Med Lab, but I've pictured Dr. Kyle or you know, Johnny Seka playing Dr. Kyle working differently
Yeah, for sure.
Not so much like the medicinal head stroking and all that, like maybe a little more serious, like you said, a little less inserting yourself into other situations
Mm-hmm.
maybe you didn't totally need to be in
Yeah. I think believers as an episode doesn't happen with Dr. Kyle.
Mm. Yeah. He's, he's definitely more mature
Mm-hmm.
and you get a different response to those parents. A different level of empathy.
you get someone who just read the whole fucking file at the start,
Yeah.
avoid the whole thing.
that level of cockiness, I think you could do a stems addiction storyline with him, but it's gonna be totally different and.
Yeah.
Going to react to Gar Baldi differently.
Mm.
He's, he's certainly not going to do some of the antics in this episode, I think. But yeah, I've, I definitely felt, as I was thinking about recasting, I was like, I kind of just wanted to see what this show would've been with that, with a different doctor almost,
Mm-hmm.
you know, with a little bit less of that ego that Franklin brings to the table.
I do think in the reboot we get not a different doctor, like an entirely different character but I do think in the reboot that we don't get the kind of creeper side of Franklin that we see a lot of,
Yeah
um, that's very rooted in the nineties. And what was acceptable then
Yep.
compared to.
more than one creeper doctor character in different franchises all over
And so I've just completely strick all of that from the fan cast. Any of any of those cooper moments in my ideal reboot in the reboot, I hope we get, knock on wood, none of that is there, so I'm not going to cast to it. Um, And if I was, it would be a completely different pick than the one I'm going for
Sure.
probably. But when I think Dr. Franklin, I need someone who can pull off the, the acting caliber of I am so stubborn, I will win.
Mm-hmm.
also they still have to be fallible. They have to be able to act losing
Mm-hmm.
and I need someone who can shout technobabble loudly
Yeah, that's very important on any sci-fi show. Yes.
And then as we see through the STEM addiction, I need someone who can portray someone just a little unhinged.
Uhhuh.
We need someone who can get a little crazy with it and still maintain credibility. And for that, keeping all of that in mind, I'm fan casting. Squa Martin Green for Dr. Franklin most famously. Yep. Some Star Trek alum for sure. Current running. But uh, Michael Burnham from Star Trek Discovery definitely has the ability to pull all those things off. And another character in her history who actually leads pretty heavily into it is Rhonda from New Girl.
Okay.
If you, I just f I literally today finished watching New Girl for the first time.
Fresh on your mind then
Yeah, for sure it is. But her character is a super prankster type in that show to the point of like getting married as a prank, signing divorce papers with disappearing ink, like shit is hilarious. But also way too much and a lot of that I could see just like her, her big smile where she's just like, gotcha. It'd be perfect, I think for this unhinged kind of doctor.
Yeah, I can totally see that too. I like that. And I like it when we flip stuff around a little bit
Mm-hmm.
some of our characters. I chose kind of thinking on, I need someone who has a little bit of gravitas, you know, because we're doctor and doctors are serious sometimes, you know, we gotta have serious doctor, but also Franklin gets some jokey moments. E everybody in the show gets some jokes. We get bits and stuff. And I wanted somebody that I've was thinking about for serious moments and serious doctor stuff, but also make some jokes, make some good jokes at me. And so I chose Camille Na Gianni.
Okay.
So we got, you know, a lot of comedy chops in there. We have Silicon Valley. The, the first place I ever, I think consciously observed Camille's work was on adventure time as primo. Primo's a very funny character.
I have not watched much Adventure time.
it's pretty good. I mean, I've watched it because I have a child in my life
Oh yeah.
wind up watching a lot of cartoons. And I think actually I picked another Adventure Time actor. I was feeling very uh, similar vibes. When I was talking about Keith, David, well Camille, I re, I remember his voice being very distinct as primo. And then I kept seeing him everywhere. I kept seeing him in other stuff cuz he's got like a huge imdb. And I was like, yeah, I could see him in those serious moments, but also like playing pranks, like you said, play a prank on Gu Baldy or something.
I, I really think that he could bring that into the role, but probably also a high dollar actor,
Yeah. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna worry about that
We can't worry about price on this casting guys.
it's, that's what we're doing it for fun. Because we don't know every unna undesigned not on a major TV show actor in the world that these people are actually going to be so
So that's, that's what I was thinking.
Okay, well, there's a bit of thinking and a bit of self-reflection in today's episode, season three, episode 18. Walk about.
I'm just gonna come right out and say it. I thought this was a different episode.
Yeah.
I think I conflated this episode and another episode in my mind.
Okay.
And the way I had it conflated, it was more interesting.
The way you're saying, well, obviously it would be a future episode because if it was one we'd already watched so I won't ask for spoilers, but I am curious.
Yeah, I think it's not too far away, actually.
Okay
I, I had envisioned it being a little bit different in the plot, so I was a little let down in certain parts,
fair
But how do we open this one up?
We open on Alando bitching to Garabaldi about a narn cruiser coming to help defend B five. Notably, this is not at a council meeting, like Lando has no one to complain to except Garabaldi. That's all he's got left. That is his one contact on the station. He doesn't even feel comfortable going to Sheridan. There is no counsel for him to go to. He can't go to any of the other ambassadors. He has to go complain to the chief of security,
Who is not impressed?
right?
he's, he's got a short fuse with this.
Mm-hmm.
and you know, it kind of feels a little exploitive by Londo. You know how they had the relationship a little bit earlier in the show that they could actually sit together and have a drink. And Londo tried really hard to be gear ball's friend. But now he's kind of stepping on those toes, overstepping his boundaries.
for sure. After this we move over to me lab Alita has arrived back on the station and she's asking about Kash. We get Dr. Hobbs, who's still filling in, in med lab,
She's back.
Who's just like, I cannot answer your questions. Like, it's not even like a, I'm keeping secrets or respecting, like HIPAA law space, hipaa but I just cannot physically, I do not know the answers to these questions you're asking.
Yeah, we just don't know enough about Volans and we didn't have much VO left, I don't think, to examine.
None probably.
I wanted to make a note here about lead's, costuming.
Mm.
I noticed that her very impeccably tailored suit has a very like collared look to it.
Yeah.
Did you notice this?
It's hiding those gills.
Yeah, well I think it, part of it is, you know, we need to hide some gills, but also that Uh, she's property now, right?
Yeah.
Roland's property essentially.
Yes. And we we've seen how they handle humans in their care, the humans that they decide to care for and how they treat them. So it's not, not great news.
to her actual situation. I was like, oh, I didn't, that's not something I would've cut when I was younger,
Yeah, for sure. The new Lon Ambassador ship arrives while Sheridan is out on a walk.
he's on a, a walkabout, if you will,
This is the stupidest fucking thing. This might be the stupidest thing in this episode, and this episode has a bunch of stupid shit in it.
I, I will turn to my husband and I said do we need to be really talking about Sheridan's adrenaline addiction in this episode?
right?
the uh, the background story.
Just need one more. Hit that sweet, sweet adrenaline.
Yeah.
Well, he'll get another one in this episode, but it's not the one he is hoping for.
Yeah. We, he just needs to feel that space around him in order to feel alive. Needs to look a war on ship right in the eyes as it comes
Yeah. The vo ship is starting to dock and then like pops out and then like the ship effectively says, hi. Some writing appears on the ship. Don't know what it says. Jms did not say what it says.
The greatest mystery I wish I knew. I like the color on this ship. It's distinct from
The reddish purpleish kind of thing. Yeah.
Old Kasha ship was very green
Mm-hmm.
and I like that the rolon ships are all kinds of different shades of something. It makes them feel more organic.
It does. We go to theme here when we get back uh, Kar is having Swedish meatballs for dinner and notes that every culture has their own version of meatball.
Yeah.
I read a ridiculous post online about this.
Oh, do tell
Someone posits that the reason every culture, every space, faring culture that everyone's encountered has some form of meatball is because the volans spread them across the galaxy when they were interfering with the races.
Okay. All right.
their younger stages of development. Like they, they left, it was like they, when they came to Earth, they didn't just leave Tele Pass and they didn't just take Jack the Ripper. They also gave us Swedish meatballs, and it is a lon delicacy that they wanted all the other races to be able to prepare for them or something like it. It is this whole thing, it's completely unhinged. It's the, the, the craziest fan theory I've Probably ever read.
I was a little disappointed that it wasn't a dumpling reference because you know, like every Culture on Earth has
has a dumpling.
Yeah.
I think that was a thing that was like talked about in like the news and stuff after this show had aired. Because I also was like, wasn't this line about dumplings? So I looked into that too. and all the posts I could find about every culture on earth has some form of dumpling, and it's just like every, that was all from like 12 ye 15 years ago that I could find
Uhhuh it. It was a big thing for a while. People talked about it. Yeah. Yeah. oh, I'm gonna head Cannon. That That came from this scene.
fair enough. Yeah.
Yeah. So they're discussing their ships.
Or lack thereof.
Yeah, so it sounds like from Nicole, who's our cruiser captain,
Mm-hmm.
his assessment is that there's like 10 ships of any sort of size left. They're not all war cruisers. Some of them are other things. This War Cruiser is still functional, but you know, kind of limping along. We have to repair it with other stuff.
Mm.
And Nicole is ready to strike back with these 10 ships, though, even though we don't have much, he's ready to just
Just get out there and get it done.
Yeah,
By that, I mean, get blown up by the cent, Tori.
right. Yeah. I guess,
Yeah.
a surprising amount of restraint from our boy Ja car. really showing
he is changed. Yeah. After this the new Lon Ambassador, who's the silent type, comes on board the station.
Yeah.
Uh, So I use his actual name throughout my notes. We do not find out his actual name. It's not said aloud in televised B five but in all the alternate media his name is confirmed as Che.
oh, wow. I did not know this.
This is the same dude who was on Mim Bar, the closed circle.
Okay.
that was him and Kash hanging out back with Valin forever ago, a thousand years ago.
Okay. I did not catch that.
and, uh, we will see these, those two together in the Movie that's coming up in the beginning, which is the prequel movie that came out between seasons four and five. Ksh and Chesh are hanging out in a scene or two in that movie as well.
Wow.
So it's kind of like these are the two volans that have been dealing with the younger races. That's just like their job
Wow. That's crazy.
like over a thousand years. Yeah.
Yeah. I was gonna say about Kosh Point oh Here, that
That's
you get it, you like
That's good. Yeah.
He really kind of reminds me this, this, you know, costume piece, the encounter suit, the shape for some reason really reminded me of Crow from Mystery Science Theater. And so I was having a little trouble,
Yeah, I can see that.
him seriously. At First I was like, and Crow.
It definitely feels a little bit more sinister, the like giant shoulder pads, like this is a final fantasy villain and I'm about to go beat up God. Like that's, that's the vibe I get from this.
Yeah. And the like, darkness of it. The purple-ish bluish darkness compared to our very, like Earth Tony Kosh that we had. Definitely feels a little more sinister.
Mm-hmm. Franklin is hanging out down below in the brown sector marketplace. After this.
Yeah. He looks remarkably well.
I have a gripe with this episode right about here
Okay.
cuz Garabaldi catches up with him and he's all like, oh, how'd you find me? He's like, you're using your credit card, dumb ass. Which is fair, right? But that should not be the answer. The answer should be a slight pan over to Marcus who's been following him the entire time.
Like Marcus is all over, down below and knows all these
We've seen him in this market a number of times. Him hanging out in this area of the ship has been the central part of many plots this season. No less than I think three off the top of my head. And he's just gone. When Franklin goes and hangs out down there, he's not even in this episode. Like if you couldn't get the actor or something, or if there's something else going on, I get it.
But his absence from this episode, not only in the hunting down of Franklin, but also being there for him, they've had bro adventures and it feels like they're trying to like, and it's not like him and Garabaldi don't have a working relationship, but that's all they have. And it starts to feel like they're shoving something else in there when it should be. Logically. To me, I feel like almost all of this stuff with Garibaldi, it should be Marcus.
Yeah. Okay. I could see that.
one of my many gripes with this episode.
yeah, my, my gripe that I had here was like, gosh, he's awfully like chipper and fine for someone who is supposedly
Mm-hmm.
his addiction, like, and we don't see, you know, I understand that, you know, maybe you don't go through withdrawals right away. Or maybe he's still
Well it has been some time because he left Med Lab before all the Babylon four stuff and everything,
Uhhuh
so you know, it's been episodes. I assumed he was through his withdrawals at this point and was more interested in the soul searching required to deal with addiction.
I don't think this show skips that though. Right? That's a big thing to skip
don't remember. Does if there is more of this after this episode of this plot line? I do not remember it.
I think. I think something else is coming. I maybe, maybe my memory's just adding things in. I don't know. I think something else has gotta be coming. But you can't skip that. You can't skip the withdrawals in a addiction story
and it should be the first thing you know.
And it should be the first thing. And he's just awful chipper out here looking for himself
Talking about being a foundationalist, Harry Selden, psychos history, the whole deal.
Yeah. Yeah. That was the other thing about this um, foundationalist like idea that he brings up here. the, I think it would, would've been different if you have Dr. Kyle in here. It would've felt different anyway, like the, the idea of walkabout. He's, you know, referencing like aboriginal tribes and stuff and, I don't know, it just felt very like western appropriation, a little bit.
So there is a bit about Foundationalism that jms talked about on the use nets that I read. So the idea of it is this is a religion that springs up after alien life is discovered.
Yeah. Because that's gonna rock everybody's world.
Yeah. So this is a very recent religion and it's kind of an attempt at just like, I mean there there are a handful of religions that are like this like the, the Church of Universal Life and stuff where it's just like there's a ton of religions. all of them are right in their own ways and in any ways they conflict don't actually matter because at their core, at their foundation, they are the same.
Uhhuh.
And so it is about taking that and saying, okay, well what is the foundational belief of all life on earth? You know, and then saying, well, this culture expresses it this way, this culture expresses it this way. And kind of just picking and choosing whatever works for you as an individual
Mm-hmm.
out of all of the religious beliefs that exist.
It reminds me of Unitarians
Yeah. So yeah, it's just kind of like doing what works for you and embracing that as, as your belief structure. So it's, there's definitely, I mean, whenever you have someone who is not of a culture, Taking the thing that they like from that other culture. That's, that's literally the definition of appropriation. So I'm, I'm not saying that it is right, because it's his belief, but rather I'm saying their entire belief system is based upon it through the acknowledgement that everyone is correct.
So it's not necessarily like a colonial kind of appropriation, which is very different. I would say that it's, at the very least a respectful app appropriation. And even if that's not the vibe we get from Franklin, to be perfectly honest, he's very bad at giving off the respectful vibe when he does anything.
Yeah. Yeah.
But as a religious, as like a religious belief set, that's the intention.
Yeah. I, I think it reads a little weird now that, you know, we're 30 years out from when the show aired and you, you kinda look at it, you're like, eh, this reads a little funny. It wouldn't read as funny, I think with Johnny second in that role. But,
I think if Franklin being so bluntly disrespectful to everyone wasn't such a core part of his character, that this wouldn't feel the way it does.
yeah. If we hadn't had believers before this, maybe it doesn't feel so weird, but, so what, we didn't even talk about what the idea of Walkabout was. You wanna tell me what the idea is?
Uh, So Franklin Says he's gonna go for a walk and he's gonna walk and walk and keep walking until eventually he meta physically meets himself. He, and then when this happens, Then he can have a conversation with himself to determine who he is.
Right.
So that is, that is the plan here for his, his trip down below is to go until he has to question who he is, to the point where he can examine himself and determine the person that he actually is outside of, I run Med Lab, this is my job.
Yeah. And this is what I'm thinking that we're actually gonna get later if I haven't just built it up in my brain, is we're actually going to get Franklin Duke in it out with himself.
Oh, I might be remembering that. Or I might be remembering a fight scene with him on Mars. That's down the road. Spoilers.
don't know.
Oh.
I, I feel Like there's something still coming. I, I don't think we're done with this plot yet. I know you said you think you're feeling like it's over. I don't think it's
Yeah. He doesn't go back to MetaLab at the end, so there's gotta be more.
Yeah.
Duh,
So if you were wanting to see Franklin talking to himself, I think it might be still gonna happen. Guys. at this point, you were like, yeah, I love this idea. Stay tuned. But we go back to Purple Kosh. And he's like investigating the crime scene,
Yeah. He scans around and he sees the energy left behind from Kashi's murder. He sees like the outline of Morden and a couple of shadows and Kash,
Yeah.
and then Alito arrives.
Yeah. And he forced chokes her for not being there.
He is rude as fuck.
Yeah.
I didn't think of it as force choking. I thought of it as. Well, that's like where the gills are. Like we've seen, like when she was doing this stuff with Kosh, we've seen energy flowing out of those, right? So I thought it was just a like, well, this is just like how they do things. And it was just like hurting her where her gills are, because that's like the vo on connection in part of her more so than him, like trying to restrict her oxygen to choke her.
Yeah. He's yanking her chain.
oh, he's a dick.
Yeah,
They, they're a dick They use male gendered pronouns for him in the show. But a lot of the stuff after stops that
Uh Huh
So it's, it's an interesting uh, I think that the, definitely in the remake, they're gonna be gender neutral. The volans like
remake their they right. All of the Vos.
have to be. Yeah. Anyways Chesh searches Lida for a piece of Kash that May had been left in her and doesn't find it.
Mm-hmm.
So she's like a failure and her boss is dead and her new boss sucks.
Yeah. She's getting the worst of all worlds because she really liked her old boss.
They had a thing. It was a weird thing, but they had, they had a way that they worked.
yeah. Sheridan meets with Leeta and kind of asks how she's doing with this new ambassador. And during their conversation, she hears old kashas voice. Interesting. Put a pin in that one.
Yeah, save that. Let's throw that in the back of your mind. Can we talk about what a Dick Sheridan here is here?
always
He only invited her to be all like, Hey, so I'm planning this suicide mission and I want you to come on it.
Yeah.
Because Especially at this point As we'll see later when he pitches this mission, he'st a hundred percent intending this to be a suicide mission.
Yeah. He's, he's planning like he's not gonna come back.
Yeah. And so, hey, I invited you up here for some small talk and also to see if you were interested in dying with me. What an ass
Yeah.
for 20 minutes that you can ask her to die with you. Just, ugh,
I'm so sorry. Your good friend died and your new boss is a big jerk. Would you like to go do something totally reckless with me because I have this need to feel alive? like, oh man,
cut
my guy.
Yeah, it's just, it's all bad. We cut over to Franklin listening to K J M S in a club down below.
Yeah.
wrote both the songs in this
Oh, did he?
he did, but he can't write music. And so there's an anecdote of him, like he writes the lyrics and he comes up with a melody, but like looking at sheet music, it is just Latin. Like, it just makes no sense. His brain can't comprehend it. And so he gets someone and tries to like poorly hum them. The tune
Okay. This all tracks.
ropes in some poor musical artist to actually do the work of writing the other half of the song. Right? More than half, if we're being perfectly honest. If you've done any songwriting, the lyrics are less than half of a song,
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah.
so mm-hmm.
Oh, yeah. This scene started and my, my cringe reflex just went like to maximum,
Yep. Yep. So we have onstage Caitlin, who is our singer, played by Erica Gimple,
Mm-hmm.
has a ton of acting credits.
Really? This is one guest star for some reason I didn't think to look up. Tell me about her.
Let's see, she'll, she is still acting like her big break was playing Colo on the TV show fame, which I've never seen an episode of.
Okay.
Uh, 19 episodes of er, 45 of the Profiler, nine of Veronica Mars, all kinds of stuff in between, all over the place. Going up to the recent Mayfair Witches Show, which I think is like wrapping up. Its first season this weekend.
wow. That's still working. All right.
Yep. As, as of recording. I think it ends this Weekend. Maybe, maybe it ended last weekend. I haven't watched it yet, but I intend to.
I mean, she's a real talented person. Like she's a very good singer. She's very pretty really, really great actress in this episode. I can see why she's got a lot of, you know, working credits.
over in the war room, Sheridan tells him his plan to go on the suicide mission to check for weaknesses, and everyone in the room is like, you're, you're a fucking idiot. What are you doing
Mm-hmm.
Ja car's? Like, no, we'll send one of our 10 ships. Like, damn it, don't do this alone.
Well, and and everyone points out that as far as they know, Litta is a P five, right? I don't think Litta is a P five anymore. Right?
no. Not for a long time.
You don't go hang out with the Volans for Year plus
Yeah. She shuts. Has she shut ster down? Have we seen that?
I, I don't know if we've seen them interact yet,
Okay. Doesn't matter
Yeah. The point is she's more dangerous than they think,
for sure. Um, They may not be aware, but yeah.
We don't know if exactly what we need. We know that Ster was on our ship and we know he's a P 12, right?
And the P 12 made them go running.
Yeah.
So someone lesser can probably at the very least, do a little something. And we don't know the p ratings of the mbar that we see later in this episode as well.
Yeah. They don't really use p ratings to talk about alien telepaths
No. The mbar aren't a dick measuring race
Solid point. Yeah. So yeah, basically they Want lead to try to jam this ship on the white star with a KET skeleton crew.
Yeah. And everyone's just like, no, well, we'll send other ships. He's like, really? Cuz I'm feeling a suicide mission. They're just like, just wait a call up. Couple episodes, you'll be fine.
Yeah. Yeah. .Dylann is gonna send a Imbar cruiser with other Menari telepath solid plan.
Yes. Backup Telepaths.
on it either. I don't think she
No, she's not on the ship. Uh, Nor should she be, Nor should Sheridan
Yeah.
has, has like the de facto leader of the army of light right now.
Yeah. You don't need to send all of your leaders into one battle.
Like sending a tactician and a military leader into a battle. Yeah, sure. Sending them on a scouting mission, an intelligence gathering, scouting mission, like no.
Yeah. But Kar does commit the cruiser conditionally, I guess else. So we find out
Back in the club. Franklin commits a cardinal sin of being single. Don't flirt with anyone who is at work. Just don't do it.
Yeah.
It's never a good idea. Never.
Mm-hmm. Especially anybody who's working for tips,
Right. Especially,
band has a jar out. Right. You know, they're getting something from the club, like they're getting
Yeah. They get a cut of some variety. Yeah. You don't wanna, you don't wanna do that
Yeah. He's definitely trying to pick her up and it is gross. I wrote you in my notes a lot, Oh and I, the other thing I wrote you about was apparently moms are still saying that, that you should marry a doctor. You need to find a nice doctor to marry honey. like, Ew. Where centuries in the future, and mom is there still saying, Moms
some things never change. Moms
Uh, But she's interested. She's interested in a doctor for some reason.
Yeah, she, she flirts back for totally normal reasons and not for any ulterior motive whatsoever.
right? Just gross. I felt gross.
it's so gross. Uh, Kar talks to the nan captain who straight up Ivan Dro goes the situation.
yeah,
If he dies, he dies.
I bet the nans have all seen all of the Rockies. Right?
I hope so.
They feel like a people who would
cultural exchange. Yeah. Like, you know what movie you're gonna like,
Yeah. He won't go. He's, uh, refusing to go on this mission and uh, Sheridan's gonna be on his own. And that's where We cut to
Mm-hmm. .The trap is set while Franklin hangs out with his hippie friend who is totally reading his Aura.
Yeah. She keeps looking at him through her
Mm-hmm. ,I'll find your soul. I've been around people this stoned before.
yeah.
uh, Garabaldi runs in and gives Jaar hell for the Narn, leaving Sheridan High Dry.
Yeah. Garrett Baldy is very bold here.
This whole episode, he doesn't do a lot, but what he does is yell
yeah, that's, yeah, that's very on, on track for Gar
Yeah. Acab.
I, I kind of felt like he wasn't being so super fair. I mean, I don't know, I guess I wasn't totally clear on Ja car's place in the universe specifically, like mini sort of Naar hierarchy. But I guess if he is really the last remaining leader, then maybe he does have the authority to make the Captain Nicole go anyway. Uh, but part of me was like, man, it's, it's not his ship. Like Nicole said, no, there's no military chain of command anymore necessarily.
And in things I don't say very often, Garibaldi is right here. This is the, this is the Narn cruiser that the station saved from the cent. Tori. Like they gotta go there Is, there is a debt to be paid here by this
did agree to defend the station.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, they're submitting themselves a little bit in a way to Sheridan
Yeah.
that. So, yeah, I guess he's got a solid point. And Kars gonna sit on this for a minute and think about it.
Yep. Franklin who we should remember is the son of a five star general went to private schools. Dude did not grow up in any form of poverty. Gets all classes in shitty about sleeping with someone poorer than him.
He is really judgey about her lifestyle.
He is a piece of shit here.
yeah. He gives her shit for drinking too much. This woman he just met who is a singer in down below, have the same resources. And I don't remember if it's in the scene or a different scene, but he is like, you, you're too good to be here or something. And it's like, come on dude, don't
not how it works.
Right.
Poverty cycles. Do they not teach poverty cycles
Yeah.
Earth anymore, or Probably not on earth during the time of this? With Clark, there's no poverty on earth. Anyone who's poor wants to be poor. There is no poverty. The Oh, oh, it makes me so angry.
Yeah. And then of course she, she kind of pitches a little bit for, well, I just, I
Yeah. Can you hook me up with And some Ambien? Just want some Ambien.
yeah,
Don't worry about it.
I mean, you got laid, so like butter my bread.
right? Yeah. Lord knows he's not considerate enough to make sure she finished. Oh, I said it. Internet I said it and I mean it. Duh.
So we cut to, uh, leada and Sheridan discussing their nerves in hyperspace.
Mm-hmm.
And she wants to know a little more, more from Sheridan about how he knew that Kasha.
Yeah. That was weird how you knew Kasha died. You shouldn't have known that.
Yeah, he tells her the whole thing. You know, I, I was having a dream about my dad or something, and then woke up and knew he was gone.
Yeah.
and uh, we start to see like something dawning on her face, like she's, she's getting it, but at the same time, linear is finally detected some shadows.
Yep. The shadow ship arrives and Lida goes fetal screaming when she tries to enter its mind.
Yeah. It's not an instant victory situation. Or, or even the same thing as with ster where the ship sensed him and ran.
Nope. She is not having a good time. And when Sheridan goes to like help her up and check on her when they touch, she sees Kashi's death in his mind.
Mm-hmm.
And this is what gives her the focus and the anger to turn around and come back at this shadow ship
Yeah. This makes me, you, you saying that she was angry. Makes me realize that when we saw Bester approaching these shadows, he was also angry. He was angry about something else. He was angry about the treatment of his fellow Telepaths. But he had already some spark and some fire. So I wonder if that's part of why. It was a different situation at first when the ship approached.
Anytime in this show, we see a telepath reach the apex of their power. It is through a strong emotional state, and that is not a quit coincidence.
Yeah. I think that the book kind of did that a little bit too.
Hmm.
Now that we're talking about it.
Yeah.
we gotta read that second book, man.
yeah, so she focuses here. I have a small theory here and this is something I read online, but I think the reason she reacts the way that she does cuz it kind of, the presence of the shadow ship almost kind of instantly impacts her because it's not even like she's interacting with it. It's, she notices it and loses her shit. And the horror of it all and like the, we will later get a description of what it is like when a telepath enters a shadow ship's mind
Mm,
it is, A pleasant experience as one would imagine. But I think she is particularly sensitive to it because of her contact with Volans. She's kind of already used to opening herself up in ways that most telepaths probably aren't to the mind of an elder race because of her previous contact. And so I think when she reaches out to these shadow ships, they are much more easily able to kind of fuck with her back compared to any other telepath.
Yeah. They get soft underbelly versus hard scales, like they get right in there into the meats.
Yeah,
I could see that.
because we don't even see like the mbar, telepaths like blink a couple of times,
Yeah.
you know,
they, they have a strained look on their face maybe.
Yeah. But it is not nearly the same. And I don't think that is. Stoic Mbar. I think that is her.
She's different.
She's different. Yeah.
Yeah. Because as she's got her strong emotion, she starts attacking the ship. We see that she's like bleeding from her eyes, which is always a horrifying vision. Right. Nobody wants to think about that from their
nope.
The white star fires at the ship. They, in order to fire harder, have to take the jump engines offline. Oh, no.
it takes 'em 20 minutes to turn back on, but they are able to destroy the ship.
Yeah. It like crumples up like a dead bug, like just, We cut back to the station and Franklin's new girlfriend is going through his stuff.
Yeah. Rays' wallet.
Yeah.
and then uh, LE's like, Hey, I'm gonna wait 10 of the 20 minutes that I had to tell you. But by the way, they sent off a distress signal.
Yes.
like, bitch, they could have been running. You can't be like that.
should have been the first thing out of her mouth. Really? Yeah.
You can't just drop that. Oh, you gotta, oh, they could've just been flying in another direction for 10 whole ass minutes.
yeah, like even if it's not gonna do much, you gotta at least try.
Yeah. Like if, even if you pass out, like if you're about to pass out and you got time for two words before you're out, those are your just stress call. Like that's what you say on your way down.
They're coming like, you know, they'll get the point
Yeah. Get it
and it's not just one ship that's been called, there's at least four in the area. Yep.
four come outta jump immediately and the white star now starts to run the Mbar cruiser comes outta jump with its three Telepaths, which stops three of the shadow ships. But a fourth is Undeterred the Nan
serendipitous that. We had three
right? Yeah. The Nan Cruiser jumps in, saves the day. Fires on the shadow ship as Lida kind of tries to hold it a little bit. And then the combined forces destroy the second shadow ship and with two shadow ships down, the other three are just like peace,
Yeah. And the crucially, the Narn ship that comes in, Kar is not on board that ship. He is another ship. And he's brought a bunch of friends with him.
Yeah. The army of light rolls up.
yeah, two or three types I think that we see in here.
Most of the ships that were probably defending the station.
yeah, somebody better get back there real quick. but yeah, he's got, he's got everybody. And now the shadows kind of. Have a little more evidence of who is standing with Sheridan. So that's gonna be interesting. But Lida also hears Kosh
Mm-hmm. Here's Kosh again. It's
and saying, my favorite line
uh, back in Caitlin's quarters, she passes out drugs in hand
Yeah.
as Franklin takes her to me lab. Dr. Hobbs is handling the situation just fine, as Franklin LCI is misinformed about everything.
Yeah. He's completely misread this situation. He thought he had an overdose on his hands.
And we get our nineties drugs are bad moment. The big twist. She's not an addict like you would expect out of a storyline in the nineties where she'll die from her drug overdose. She actually needs these pills and was in such pain that it caused her to collapse. The only high she needs is singing. Tasha Ya would be so proud.
she can't afford these pills anymore. Dr. Hobbs tells us that she's, she's outta money. So,
Yeah. And they, we've confirmed, once again, they have not figured out socialized medicine in 200 years, which just, fuck, we haven't now guys, come on. We could, we could. It's so easy. We could just, we could just do the thing.
just like this close. We got so close and then
I mean, real talk. The, the, the real problem is that we'd be gutting something like 15% of our economy by doing it. That's the thing that no one wants to talk about.
Yeah.
That, that, that's why, because too many, too many rich people are gonna not be rich anymore.
Yeah.
So we can't do it because this is America,
We have whole companies built around being a middle man.
God.
But anyway, yeah, she apologizes for stealing his identity in order to buy her desperately
Mm-hmm.
medicine. And as Franklin is leaving, presumably to go back on his walkabout cuz he grabs his walkabout bag, He asks his fellow colleagues in med lab to just give her
yeah. Just whatever pills she needs, just give them to her.
yeah.
Like, well, why don't you do that for everyone? Only the ones that you sleep with. Oh, okay.
bad. Look, my dude, Oh boy.
uh, the white star gets back to Babylon five and Lida tells, uh, what'd you say? Kosh point. Oh, that's, that's so good. I tried for five minutes to think of a good one and I couldn't think of one. So
Well, you got like actual lore history to bring to
Yeah. But that, that was my backup plan. I wanted a joke. I just didn't come up with a good one. I really like Kosh point. Oh.
gosh, 0.0, there it is.
Thank you for being funny, Laura.
Well, it doesn't happen often, so don't rely
That's not true. That's not true at all.
hey.
Lida tells Kosh 0.0 that Sheridan might have the piece of Kosh that they're looking for,
Mm-hmm. Yep.
And we get some more radio K J M S to credits. All right. Well, Laura, I feel like we've both expressed our displeasure at this episode, but, but we're at the point of our show where we need to numerically rate, that's not a word where we need to numerically rate the episode On a scale of Babylon's one to Babylon five,
Well, you know, I'm not a fan of this one. I don't think I'm gonna give it the lowest rating. I don't think I'm gonna give it a one because I do Oh, wow. I liked the lore parts of it,
mm-hmm.
we're exploring the, the telepath thing. And I'm a sucker for the stuff with figuring out what happened with Old Kosh. So I give it a two for those parts. But all of the Frankl stuff just brings nothing to the, my table.
They could have done so much more beside a nineties drugs or bad riff. And you know what, maybe the, she needed the pills actually and wasn't an addict, you know, in 1995, that might have been a revolutionary twist
Mm-hmm. Yeah. It
whatever this aired. It probably was but it just feels boring to be perfectly honest. And I don't know if that is through the modern lens. If I would've felt the same in the nineties, if I would've been like, oh, they subverted that trope. It's all like you subverted that trope in the weakest possible way.
Mm-hmm.
It is not often. Like, it usually takes me like an hour and a half, two hours to get through an episode. And I think I've said this maybe about one or two other episodes before too. Sometimes I just gotta pause and go do something else to come back and write more notes about an episode. And this was one of those, I did my notes over two days for this episode.
Yeah. I could see
I mean, part of it was I did have an internet outage for four hours at home when I started, but I, I was able to spin that into something a lot more positive than this episode. So I got a lot of work done on Admiral Harper's Spice Rack. I, uh, I completely redid all of the networking in my house. Changed the location of like my modems and everything, did up my network cabinet.
You're like, well, it's down anyway,
Yeah, exactly. I I cleaned up all the cabling in my entertainment center, which I hadn't done. Everything was just still just kind of like hanging out from when I had moved in. So I like cord wrapped and painted to match my wall and stuff and did the whole
Yeah. Think about this episode at
nope. And then when the internet came back on, I watched New Girl
Yeah. You're like,
because I couldn't come back to this episode. This episode is trash. And it's not even a fuck this episode. Trash. It's just trash. Because the fuck this episode at least is making me feel something, whether or not I want to feel it. This is just nothing. This is blase. This, this episode is the jar of mayonnaise of Babylon five, five.
and I really hate the trope that, you know, it did show up a lot back then. It still shows up now of like, oh, we're gonna use this woman to teach this man this thing, this woman in her tragic life and her tragic story. And she's just there to
She's poor. She does drugs,
Yeah. She's just there to provide some character development for the male. And I, I hate that. It's just
It's fucking
like, there's lots of men who feel like women are just here for their character development because this is the kind of media that they consume for a long time.
Uh, yeah. I used to know people like that. They've all been removed from my life.
right.
Ugh.
always, always good to do a little curating, prune, prune that,
But speaking of people we know,
Uhhuh
next episode,
Ooh.
season three, episode 19, grace 17 is missing. We've got a guest coming on
Yeah.
Grace 17, the podcast. Uh, We've, we've reached out to our friends in the League of Non-Aligned podcast. and gray Seventeen's gonna be on in a couple weeks. We're gonna have Yum Yum podcast on uh, for shadow Dancing is the episode they'll be on with us for. And then we've got a couple week break and like our season recap stuff, so we're not gonna have anyone on for there. We're gonna hit season four and Ben's gonna be joining us for an episode.
To help hopefully fingers cross, knock on wood be the unofficial launch of his and I News podcast,
Yay.
we had our first real serious sit down for uh, on Wednesday start recording and getting that ready to go.
Awesome.
be cool. And then, and we'll see. I dunno if you are if you are a Babylon five podcaster and you're listening to this episode and you wanna join us for an episode, just reach out. We'd love to have you trying to mix it up a little bit. Have a little fun. Especially this, this whole set of episodes coming up here is also great.
So if, if, you know, I haven't reached out to everyone because a lot of you are first have our first time watcher podcasts and you're not where we are, so I can't, I can't ask you to help with that. We don't wanna ruin it. We don't want you to watch ahead like that. But yeah, that's what's going on. So that's cool. Gray 17 is missing next week. Dalen agrees to lead the Rangers, but Mark must protect her from a deadly threat. Garibaldi investigates a secret station level.
Hmm. I love a good mystery. I can't wait.
If this is the episode I'm thinking of, it's a lot of fun. And I like this episode.
yeah. Yeah.
But it's been a little while, but we'll talk about it more next week think we're just getting one person from grade 17, but I'm not a hundred percent on that right now. So
We'll find out when we get there.
yeah, de details are ambiguous because they are currently ambiguous, but we're working out that stuff soon. So,
Yeah.
but thank you for listening. Thank you Jeremy Siegel for our lovely theme music. Really appreciate you. I've, I just sent you a Facebook friend request so I can ask you to make the theme song for the other podcast,
Awesome. Yay. We love more work for Jeremy.
We do love more work for Jeremy, and you could find more of Jeremy's work at Jeremy Siegel 40 two.bandcamp.com
and thank you to Angry Duck Time Machine on Instagram for our podcast.
mm-hmm thanks to you for listening. Go ahead and throw us an email. Who are you? B five gmail.com. You join our Discord community where we'll talk about stuff all the time. Everyone just put in their quiz results from a number of weeks ago when you heard that. That's when we're recording this now. So that was fun to see everyone sharing their quiz results with us. Oh, and thank you, Aaron for editing our podcast. I, I didn't forget you.
We could never forget you,
All right, well, we'll see you next week. Internet.
All right. Bye.