Hello and welcome to Who Are You? We're the Babylon 5 watch cast that's about to not be a Babylon 5 watch cast. This is my last time saying it. By a couple of former strangers who are now friends who got to know each other over one of their favorite shows from their childhood. Babylon 5. I'm Laura. I
And I'm Ja'far.
can't believe that's the last one for me. You get the next one. Yeah.
Yeah, I'll take the next one. I think I took the first one. I don't remember.
Yeah, maybe. I don't know. We've been as equitable as we could.
Yeah, we definitely tried to, to split it up a bit. Who do you, well, it would be whoever did the first, who are you? The other person would have done the intro because we always tried to trade it when it was a one of us centric intro, the other one would always bring us in.
That's right. Yeah.
so I just blew someone's mind. Someone's listened to all of this podcast and never caught
Not noticed it? No.
Right.
But then sometimes we have special one offs. You know, guests and weird things that we did. So,
there's, there's a lot of stuff in between. Um, we, we did try to be very equitable with it. Um, just like, I hope people tried to be equitable with their viewings of the Lost Tales.
Yeah. That's, so the last piece of artwork in this series is Babylon 5's The Lost Tales, at least as far as we're doing. We're not doing like all the, all of the books and
Now, if we, if we go back, um, it will be because there's something new or we set up a Patreon and wanted to read a book or something or talk about something else. This will be the last of our regularly scheduled Babylon 5 series coverage, universe coverage. And we will get super emotional about that next episode.
time. Not this time. Yeah.
recording the back to back. So I think we're we both came with a mindset thinking of a lot of that stuff. I know I've been thinking about what I would want to say and things. So I imagine we'll be kind of sappy because of that more so than a normal episode. Also, we're recording at a really weird time for us.
Mm hmm.
Your new student laissez faire lifestyle
Oh yeah, sure.
worked 40 something hours this week already, despite it being Thursday. I think I'm at like 43, 44 hours on the clock right now. I'm going to be taking a half day today. So it's the like middle of a day,
Yeah. So weird.
of the middle of the day of a work, a weekday. It's also Halloween today.
Oh yeah. Happy Halloween.
Halloween. Happy Diwali. We don't have a lot of subscribers in India, but very few listens from that country to our podcast, but happy Diwali. And then also it's a Samhain, obviously, cause it's Halloween. So a whole bunch of stuff. It's a fitting day to talk about this first Lost Tales.
Yeah, for sure. Very big spooky vibes in the first Lost Tales. I just want to say, up top. it's a lot of fun. That I had big Mandela effect problems with the Lost Tales. I don't know what I thought the Lost Tales was about, but this was not it.
All I remembered was Sheridan and Galen talking at the end.
Honestly, I didn't even remember Galen. I had like, in my head that there was some kind of Sheridan and Kosh situation, just like a turtle Kosh suit, like the beginning. I. I don't know what was going on in the old brain there. And I thought there were three of them, not two. I don't know
There originally was supposed to be three, and there are three people on the cover.
It's that. It's that did it to me, I'm sure.
Yeah, there was supposed to be one with Garibaldi that was gonna be much more effects intensive. Um, and they were all supposed to be like little 25 minute, 30 minute things. And then they cut the Garibaldi one and expanded these out to almost 45 minute episodes each,
Yeah.
but close. Um, okay. So we are in, we started at 2281. And we get the effects budget, the show wishes it had, we get this gorgeous shot of Babylon five exploding
For real. Yeah. Like the CGI in this, I thought, I don't know why, I thought the Lost Tales looked bad. Because That CGI was really good.
it's CGI is so much better than I remember in this. And I don't know if it's because we just watching crusade,
Yeah,
um, but that was a whole thing with this. Although there were people at the time complaining that the CGI was bad. I read a thread on midwinter that was a bunch of people complaining about the CGI of Lockley's quarters. That was a real set. There was not CGI involved in that.
Yeah. I mean, maybe it wasn't quite like her original quarters. I do feel like some of the set was just like slightly different that, you know, probably they didn't have the original, so they were just doing their best. But that didn't bother me. I think. The thing that made me think, oh, the CGI in Lost Tales is bad, is the green screening.
There's a ton of green screening.
That is not good.
The green screening is not great. Um, I have to think though, all the models, like if you, like when we talk about how CGI works from a modern standpoint, it's not great. And it would have been done in this method for this show for lost tales. I have to believe where it's, you have assets and you reuse them a bunch and stuff, right? So you build a very high detailed model of Babylon five, and then you can reuse it as much as you want. Right.
Sure. Mm
Stuff like that. Um, this is, I mean, this is how CGI was done in the movies at this point. I remember Star Trek 2009, there was a whole really good documentary on the DVD set about it, the Blu ray set, whatever it was. So a lot of this stuff hypothetically could still exist like the digital assets. Hopefully they weren't lost. They probably have been. Uh, But you could take something like this and just move everything over to a modern 3d rendering engine, like unreal five.
And all it would do is update how the lighting works and how a handful of the like interactions between objects work. And it would look like a modern TV show. No doubt.
Yeah.
It would look great. And even the green screening, they, I mean, that was the way you did these things at that time. Nowadays, you have those stages that are the green screen where it's rendering in the background for the actors to actually be able to look and interact and you're filming on it and stuff.
That would be so cool.
I can't, I have to imagine that style of production for this type of thing would have looked seamless. It would have looked great.
Yeah. Yeah. Those green screens had to be it that distracted me because they were so noticeably, like, not active.
The, like the cutting around the actors,
Yeah.
was like a little bit
like an edge. Mm hmm. Yeah. Just really distracting.
Especially at this time frame. Okay. So we 2281 station blows up. We rewind to 2271 to catch us up objects and rest. Objects in motion and the road home 2262 call the arms 2266 crusade 2267. So it's been four years since crusade. The drug plague has ended sometime in that timeframe.
Okay. Yeah.
Lando and Jakar kill each other. December 24th, 2278.
So that has not happened yet.
Correct. That is seven years in the future. Sheridan dies January 20th. 2281.
Yeah. And I think we specifically say that this is 10 years in, right? When we get to Sheridan's. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, that's why we, cause he dies when the station blows up because poetry,
Yes. Of
So, we're in that timeframe in between we're post crusade, we're pre all of the other future stuff that we've seen. So we're in this kind of like amorphous area and we start with a tale that takes place with Lockley and father Cassidy.
Did you wish this was Brother Theo?
wish this was Theo so bad. This would have been so good for Theo coming back to the, the show. And even the dialogues, very Theo esque Cassidy's dialogue. maybe, I mean, there's an argument to be made to not make it Theo because of the struggle that the priest has with his faith a little bit. I don't think that's something that that that'd be a harder time for me buying that from Theo, given all of our interactions with him. I feel like he's very, eh.
Does the thing, um, maybe to the detriment of the plot, because if there isn't that stall time that unluckily can't figure it out as it were, um,
yeah.
but man I want to like run through the synopsis of this for our listeners. Cause I'm guessing there's people, especially if you are a modern Babylon five watcher, this is like lost media. I have no idea how you watched this.
It is available on, um, Apple TV. Yeah.
Um, it's not on
have to pay for
things. Yeah.
Nobody's streaming this.
Well, you can't even like buy it on YouTube or like, uh, whatever it is now. It used to be Flickster, um, Voodoo. Right, so whole thing anyways it's difficult to watch. So I want to make sure we do a pretty good job of synopsis thing to plot because I'm guessing people haven't watched this in a long time if they have or they
Yeah. Or they have big Mandela problems like me.
Yeah, but I really want to talk about this chunk of this episode of
Yeah, sure.
first episode. So, uh, they're not titled in the, in the production, but the two names of these mini episodes are over here and over there.
Yeah. Voices in the dark over here and over there is what Wikipedia is showing me, but I don't think that was anywhere within the actual episode. Yeah.
but that that's what they're called. So, uh, we get a little little bit with Lockley meeting father Cassidy luckily got promoted. Colonel not captain
I did notice that. Good for her.
Lockley talks to the father in her quarters. After he lands, the father waxes poetic on the natural decline of faith when humanity went to the heavens and found them empty
Yeah. JMS is going through something and writing this one, right?
for sure. Like, I don't know. I I'm, I'm the, I'm the wrong person to ask this question. And I'm the wrong person to ask this question to, um, do people think heaven is like physically up?
Like, in space? Yeah. I, I, that feels kind of like maybe a, um, disingenuous read on religious people by an atheist?
Yeah, that's what it felt like to me. Like, I mean, I went to a Catholic school you know, for a bit, I've had some experience with the church and the religions. Um, I'm not like coming at this completely out of nowhere. I had always assumed, even as a very small child, heaven was metaphorically up and hell was metaphorically down, not physically, and that's, of course. Right?
Like that's science, like space, like I had never thought this is up for debate and then it's like, okay, is that just like a product of growing up post space age? Like now that we've, now that we've gone up and we've dug down, is this the natural consequence of that kind of thinking of living in a world where we, you know, space was achievable before I was born?
Yeah.
So is that just the zeitgeist has morphed this idea? I
Like when, when JMS was growing up, was that a very, very common assumption that heaven was in space? I don't know. I don't know. It didn't feel very, like, charitable.
It did not. No, it felt downright talking down to people of, of faith and,
Felt like, look at these stupid rubes.
right. Exactly. Like, well, once, once they got into space and found out heaven, wasn't just a period that we pierced through. It was only a matter of time for people to stop believing. It's just like, no one actually thought that right. Like, I'm sure there are people. I'm sure they're
Well, yes.
especially historically speaking, pre. Education times. I'm sure there were people that believed heaven was physically up and hell was physically down and that if you were to build a tall enough of a staircase, you could you could climb the stairway to heaven
I was gonna make that joke, god damn you.
lick. Oh, it's so good. You know, or if you were to dig deep enough, hypothetically, you'd reach hell. Like, I'm sure there are people that, that truly believe that with all their heart, but I don't think they were someone who was even remotely educated in a way that we would consider to be acceptable by modern standards. Um, and that's, and I'm not trying to fault anyone there either. Like, there's plenty of reasons to not have an education. I'm speaking with a ton of privilege.
I recognize that.
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. But
but generally speaking.
it did have a tone about it that felt a little like, okay.
Yeah, it was, I thought it was a bit much and, and I've gotten no skin in that game.
Yeah.
Lockley and the father share a great line about going to church via guilt or via faith. And they're not really being a distinction. I have had this conversation with friends who are more religious people. Uh, it's It's like, I don't know why I'm going to church anymore. And I feel like, dogma Kevin Smith movie. Also. Had a similar line, um, a little bit. I can see this sentiment and I dunno, like appreciate it, I guess. Um, I could, I can understand that moral quandary.
do you have, I mean, of the two of us, you're significantly more religious than I am.
Yeah. I don't know about like how far that goes. Like there's a spectrum of significance. Right. But,
Well, I it's, I I'm very on one side, so I
yeah. Okay. Sure. Sure. I don't know. I, I didn't grow up religious at all. So really like my mom is culturally Catholic. My dad was culturally Baptist, but neither of them were like super into it. And My like going to church came about in my college years and then has waxed and waned and it's currently in a wane. Like, cause everything is hard guys.
Yeah. Well, it's a, it's a time commitment and I mean, also, you know, faith, faith waxes and wanes belief and things just generally everything is that way. All every friendship of significance of real relationship of significance I've had in my life has had ups and downs. There's no reason for your relationship with a religious or spiritual side of yourself to be any different. Yeah. That makes sense to me.
And part of like my church attendance was just like having a community that I felt really cool about and I still respect that community. Um, it's just really hard for me to maintain. A community right now, like be in and a part of it. And I feel terrible about that. I feel like in a way you guys that I'm podcasting with are by the most community I have right now. And I'm really grateful for that. But you know, I just can't get on board with the whole.
Organizational church thing, the, the big thing, like, you know, this father is, is I don't know if, does it, they do say he's Catholic cause they refer he's going to go talk to the Holy Father, I think.
Yeah, they, they make an oblique reference to the Pope, assuming that that hasn't changed too much in another couple hundred years.
No one actually calls, says the word Catholic, but he's Catholic.
I mean, there could be a consolidation of faiths as
sure.
I mean, that's something that, you know, Empirically, as there are less people of certain denominations, it would make sense to kind of all fold in for the strength of the organization. Um, I get that.
Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the big organizations I have a lot less trust with, like, I don't know that I could ever fall on board that hard with a big organization that's, it's not really a community anymore then, you
Mm hmm.
It's a business. It's a, it's an institution. Uh, Just not my style.
Fair enough.
I don't know if that answered the question you originally asked.
Not really, but uh, the question wasn't about an answer. It was about having a conversation with you about your faith and in which case, mission accomplished, question answered.
All right. Good. Good. I don't feel like I can answer any questions anymore. Like you get into a PhD program and you're like, Oh, there are no answers anywhere. Whoops. I didn't want to know that.
Yeah. Uh, Just like our father might not want to know. What he was actually called there for uh, Lockley reports, strange smells sounds, and then asks him if he is authorized to perform an exorcism. And why the fuck do you not get that on the like letter of travel beforehand? Like, we need to send a priest to Babylon five to investigate something weird. And we need to send a priest to Babylon five to perform an exorcism are two different scales of things.
You can't be surprising someone with an exorcism. Exorcism.
I I'm on the one hand, like. It feels like you should lead with that, right? But on the other hand, it doesn't because then you don't get anybody because you led with that.
Mm hmm. Hold on.
Hot Catholic tips coming in, apparently.
Hot Catholic tips. The Pope needs to approve. Well, the Vatican does, hypothetically, the Pope brought to you by Beth.
It's his organization. That cheeky smile she gave, perfect. Yeah, hot news coming in. Yeah, I mean, I can see why you don't lead with that, too, if it's not a big thing. You don't get anybody, they're like, oh, no thanks.
Yep. We get introduced here to Nate Burke who very quickly plays his hand uh, we, there's mentioned of him being alone, magically covered in blood with no cuts and there was no DNA in the blood,
Mm, yeah, spooky.
He's also got the ability to mystically change the smell of the room from I'm guessing it's supposed to be brimstone. They don't really say, but he makes it smell like roses. It's 20 degrees colder. Also, Lockly says it's 74, which means that they're using fucking Fahrenheit on Babylon 5. I don't know if we caught that. That at any point during the series, if I've already made this ridiculous claim, why the fuck are they using Fahrenheit in space?
Man, I love my Fahrenheit scale, though. I don't care about the rest of the Imperial measurements, but Fahrenheit makes sense, god dang it. 30? 30 is not a lot of hots.
make sense. Zero and a hundred for freezing and boiling makes sense. Fahrenheit is a fucking wild card. Fahrenheit's insane.
no, no, no, no. So I understand the 0 and 100 for boiling. I get that. But 100 hots outside is a lot of hots. 30 hots outside is not a lot of hots.
if it got to a hundred outside, there'd be severe problems.
be unsustainable hots. Yeah.
Yeah. Unsustainable
hots. Even.
Um. Asmodeus reveals his name here and says that uh, they want to be exercised. Out in space, God had banished demons to space waiting for humanity to reach them to make them not forget about faith and God and stuff
Okay, so most of the talking from Berk Demon Asmodeus. At one point I looked at my watch and I was like, this has gone on too long.
it had it did
I was like,
could bloviate normally I'd say dude could pontificate but that's normally a normally a good word very bad word in this very particular instance.
I like Bloviate. That's, that's good.
Yeah.
And especially when you, you mentioned at the top of the show that these were originally planned to be shorter and then blown up a little bit. I was like, Oh, that's why I feel like it's gone on too long because it has. Yeah.
the Sheridan episode after this could have benefited from like another five minutes, you could have done some interesting stuff in those five minutes. You could have had some of Sheridan, the Prince interacting on the ship where he's all like, maybe he's Hitler. Maybe he isn't. And done some fun things with that because fun things with, we'll get to it. Anyways. At the elections next week. Anyways,
Maybe he's Hitler, maybe he isn't.
maybe he's healing. Maybe he isn't. Father Cassidy is not convinced. So Asmodeus like surrounds the station in a ring of fire.
Yeah. Good effect. I liked it.
his cell just transformed into a long hell way, a long hallway of hellfire,
A hell way, if you will. Yeah.
but it's an illusion. The hell way is actually what I call the 405 in Los Angeles. We get a, a posit though. Is there a lie in what Asmodeus is telling them? What is the lie? And most importantly, why the lie? Why though? It's if it's a demon, then why the lie seems pretty straightforward. But,
I don't think you need a why, actually.
yeah. As Modius and Cassidy then discuss the choice between sacrificing the soul of the possessed to just, like, let this dude be a demon forever in order to scare people into a religious further, or not Or exercising him, like, immediately, and giving the demon what it wants?
Yeah. Weird choices. Weird choices, all of them.
Weird choices that line up with my big problem with this episode as a whole.
I can't wait. Yeah.
We're, we're I don't have a lot of notes on either of these because there's so much fucking just wasted time that it's like, short of recapping every line of dialogue, there's not a whole lot to talk about with this episode in terms of the plot and actions.
Yeah. Lay out the rest of that plot for us though. And then we can critique it.
Lockley wakes up in the middle of the night, my notes say it's the hour of the wolf uh, well, Lockley starts to piece it together digging up Burke's trip, finds the logs and finds that the demon was like on the trip the whole time.
Mm hmm. Yeah. The, the crew on the freighter or liner that he was on were complaining about smells and temperatures. Yeah.
So they sedate Burke and go to talk to him. And Lockley uses this to basically solve. All of theology demons are real. Demons are bound to earth, not hell. That's where they were cast down to hell is earth.
Yeah. Maybe earth is hell. Yeah. Yeah.
The reckoning described at, as the end of the world in the Bible is the death of the sun and exercising the demon on Babylon five will allow the demon to escape the eventual flame out of the sun and the destruction of earth. Leading to an eternity in nothingness. So they're sending the demon back to earth to exercise it.
Yeah.
That's my notes. That's where this ends
I got like fundamental problems with The whole demon, and I think you do too, in that, like, if we even accept the premise that demons are real and we're sending him back to
Well, demons are canonically real in Babylon five now,
right, but if, if we accept the premise of this, why have they not tried in the like 200 years we've been in space? Before this to leave.
Good question.
But really thought more
And why is it a suddenly such a big problem now that luckily has to go and tell all of her commander and captain friends to watch out for demons trying to escape earth?
yeah. Um, and this show has been more of the like, thoughtful type about these things. And I would have expected more of a, like, Oh, this is a type of alien we've never encountered.
Can I can I improve this in five seconds for you?
Sure. Go ahead.
The dude is a, like, T4, T5, super low level telepath who escaped from a Psi Core facility.
Okay.
That's the only change.
Oh yeah. Okay. I see what you're stepping in. Yeah.
Is he a demon? Is this some leftover shit Bester was fucking with? Like, is he making you see things because he's got some weird variant telepath powers? Or is this actually happening? And leaving it very, very ambiguous.
Yeah.
like Babylon 5. This felt like an episode of The Outer Limits. Which I enjoy. It's a Twilight Zone episode. It has a place in science fiction for sure, just not in an established universe like this. There's a reason why those episodes are so one and done is because they want to present ideas that represent a fundamental change to how we view and experience the universe. Right, like reality is different than what you thought it was.
This is what it's actually going on and you can do that in a show like once,
Yeah.
right? You cannot keep doing it in a same established universe because at that point the universe is just a fun bag of mysteries, which is cool esque like I feel like that's something Andreas would have gone on about in a on a good little monologue is the word I'm looking for here. But that's not Babylon five per se, you know, we we've had our, this is what the universe is actually like, and that's the Vorlans and the shadows fucking with all of the races beforehand,
Mm hmm. And to that extent, I wanted this to be like a type of alien who had been related to the shadows or
A hundred percent makes so much sense.
Mm hmm.
Yep. He, he is a shadow sleeper agent that had contact with a ship or something, or some fucking bug crawled down his fucking throat and messed with his brain and gave him pyrokinesis,
Yeah. Yeah.
like something, anything besides demons are canonically real,
Yeah. It's just rough, especially to throw that into you. a one off several years after your series ended.
right? It's so fucking weird. Okay. So. We rate episodes of Babylon 5, if you only listen to our crusade coverage, we rate episodes of Babylon 5 on a scale of Babylon's 1 to 5. We haven't done this in a little while. I'm going to suggest we rate both of the separate episodes of Lost Tales as their own entities. On a scale of 5, Laura, how do you feel about this little mini episode?
I was so bored. This one, I loved seeing Lockley and I do even feel like she made like a funny reference to her eating habits on Babylon 5, which gave me a great chuckle. But damn, I was just so bored by this guy and
Yeah.
I, I have to give it like a one.
I will give it a 1 5, and the 5 is the episode, and the 1 is Lockley's like, whatever, I'll fuck up a demon
Yeah.
Like Lockley figures out demons are real and immediately goes and talks it down to its fucking face and says, you're not gonna win, I'm gonna win. That's a point for me.
Yeah. Can you imagine if the events that occurred between season four and season five hadn't and we still had Ivanova, her dealing with this demon, that'd be fun too.
That's interesting to be because Ivanova is a very interesting character. Religiously.
huh. Huh.
Um, Lockley is kind of like she, I mean, all we hear about it is in this episode. It's not an important part of her character. Uh, Ivanova's struggles with her faith are a important part of her character arc. So I would actually be much more interested in her dealing with this. Her and Theo. I don't know if it makes it better. I don't know if you can make it better. You can make it shorter, which is making it better. And I feel like adding Ivanova and Theo to this and definitely make it shorter.
Yeah.
Yeah. I did not remember this at all. I was like, what on earth is happening? And this guy is talking too long. That's the big impressions I had out of this one.
All right. Well, that was over here. It's time to go over there and talk about our next little. Mini episode we cut over to Mimbar Sheridan is getting a ride to Babylon five on the new Valen class cruiser, by the way, can we talk
great.
it looks so good. You remember Legend of the Rangers? That was the new Vaylin class cruiser that got, like, messed up. The ship that they didn't get? It had the same name.
The, the ugly thing.
yeah. Yeah, that ugliest sin box we saw off in the distance? That was, unless I'm mistaken, I believe it was
no, I think you're right.
cruiser.
I think I remember that. Hmm. What?
to the well. Uh, The ship was so poorly designed, they completely redid it. Yeah.
Yeah. They were like, oh wait, all of this is bad. Let's do a different one.
It is kind of like a space shark kind of thing.
Yes. I had like whale shark in my head. Like, which is nice because the Minbari are such like angelfish ships, the, the white stars. So
Yeah, I dig it.
Mm hmm. Same.
where the fuck is Delaine? Like, I, I know that you just don't get Mira, right?
Uh Huh.
Like, I, under, I, I, I know why Delaine is not in this, but like, how the fuck do you do this story without her, at the very least off camera, saying something like goodbye to him as he leaves.
Yeah,
Right? Just give me this much Delen. I don't need a lot. I can, I can hand wave everything. Get Mira on the phone. Get her to say her one line. Pay her 5, 000 and call it good. can't be that hard. So anyways, Sheridan's on his trip. He's in a conference room that he jokes about having to add chairs to.
okay. these chairs, I was just like, man, this is the set, I think, that got me thinking. There was no budget, and this was so, like, not, I don't want to say lazy, but these chairs, I was like, you, you just, like, pulled these out of the, the, WB offices, didn't you? Like
all of the Mimbari internal ship sets are either super elaborate or an excuse to not spend any money. There's no middle ground.
Mm hmm. Yep. Doesn't he make a reference to like, the grey council just flies around with no chairs? Standing forever?
They just stand for forever.
they're potato sacks, which you don't have to spend money on either.
Mm hmm. This reporter from ISN Chambers comes in. There's our Quintessential needlessly horny. The camera is on my boobs because the producer said it was a good idea.
Yeah That made me tired.
Yeah, it's real. Her breasts heaving energy.
Uh Huh. At least this person is of age. But, yeah. Exhausting.
Sheridan comments on the loss of who Londo was. He talks about how Londo used to be this, like this boisterous laugh incarnate and how that person is dead. Londo is still alive, but the person that Londo was is dead.
Yeah. We know why. We read the books.
There's talk of car back beyond the rim. This is after a Legend of the Rangers.
He, they, they mentioned that he's gone, gone again, beyond the rim.
yes. So he's, he's come back. He's gone again. That's because Andreas had passed away at this
And we make a reference to Dr. Franklin, went with him.
Yes Richard bigs. I talked about this there, but Richard bigs passed away during pre production of this movie.
Oh, wow.
going to be in the movie.
Oh, that makes me really sad now. Was,
yeah, this would have been
he going to be in?
Um, I assumed the part three Garibaldi.
third option? Okay. Yeah.
that they ended up scrapping.
I would have preferred him in the first one even. Like, doctor, we need you to look at this.
That also would have been interesting to
Yeah. Anyway.
Um,
so sad. R. I. P.
They jumped to quantum space, which seems solely to exist to get shared and out of an interview. Never mentioned again.
And to torture this poor reporter lady.
we've got some, we figured out how to use the glossy and blur effect in Photoshop, and we're just going to turn it up to, yeah, slap it all over. Exactly. Well said. After this Galen visits Sheridan in a dream, showing him New York and ruins. He says the city that never weeps. Man, that's some post 9 11 commentary.
Oh yeah, this would have been then, wouldn't it?
Yeah. I Look, sometimes Jabez does something very clever, and it hits real fuckin hard, it makes you think. And sometimes, he just fuckin whiffs. And for me, this line was just a huge fucking whiff. Like, I mean, no one bats a thousand, like And he's written some really, really thoughtful, good shit in his life. The City That Never Weeps. Five years after 9 11 or whatever? Even, even, even now? No. Like, can't do it, dude. Like, I'm not even from there.
Like, it just seems, it seems needlessly rude, disrespectful, and talking down to people. Like other parts of the world.
Like other parts of this one, yeah, yeah. And the Galen character often does seem a little pompous and dark downy, so.
Yeah.
Yeah, its delivery is not
when you're about to show an attack on New York. Like you're literally about to show New York getting blown up.
Uh Huh.
The city that never weeps. Fuck you.
Just fuck off with that a little bit.
Yeah. So he shows Sheridan the attack. he, they acknowledged their previous standing friendship from call to arms.
Yeah, which is easy to forget, like, I almost did.
Uh, I had to be all like, wait, when did they meet? Oh, that's right. Call to arms. And then I was reading the wiki Galen was with Sheridan on Zaha Doom in season four. Yeah. Yeah, Galen interacts with fucking uh, Lorian and stuff, whole deal. It's all in the book. We didn't read the passing of the techno mages. I think.
okay, because I was like, that definitely was never on
No, it was never on screen. It's in one of the books. I assume it's in because the passing of the techno mages is like all about Galen. They're Galen books. So I assume it's in there, but man, you know, that's a thing.
Galen feels kind of like a character that we're just going to retcon him in everywhere. Because he is magical and mystical, and we came up with this good idea, like, right there at the end to have him as a thing, and now we're just gonna put him everywhere.
I just really, it's like, it feels like everything after Season five is just about fucking techno majors. All of the books after season five, the only ones that aren't are the Cycore books. Everything else has techno majors all over. The fucking Centura Trilogy is a like solid, like it's 600 pages, I would say techno majors around at least 150 pages. Of this 600.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like. It was a cool idea. You had a fun thing in like a episode of Babylon five, we dug it. Techno mages are fun. I get it. Fucking. I don't want all this fucking techno mage bullshit, especially after a crusade. And we find out they're just the fucking one percenters.
Yeah.
just humans who had enough money and technology to just live for forever and do whatever the fuck they wanted. Fuck those guys. Fuck those baseless motherfuckers. I'm earning our explicit rating today.
I mean, why have it if you're not gonna use it? So.
That I think that's actually the fun of techno mages. I think they're a set
I meant the explicit rating,
Oh Oh yeah. Fair. Right. Got to, got to fucking earn it every once in a while. You can tell I've worked so much this week. I'm so
yeah, I think a part of it is like, maybe JMS felt a profound disappointment about not getting to explore the Technomage stuff farther in Crusade. And so we just kept shoehorning it, retconning it into Babylon 5 everywhere.
Yeah. It's a bit much all around and I just have my, my tolerance for it is so low at this point between the books, between crusade. Yeah. And now this, I'm so glad there's no fucking techno majors in Battlestar Galactica spoilers.
Galen's costume did look great. I liked his costume. Actually, the costumes in this one were both, were all great. Especially when we get our Centauri Prince. So did
his outfit's so cool.
did you catch his lineage?
Yeah, this is cart's son.
I did not realize Cartagena had children.
It's never brought up anywhere
Yeah. Yeah.
Even in this Suntory books. This, this character does not exist. This, this was made after those books.
Yeah, which feels weird.
So Ari here, he's gonna attack Earth in 30 years. He becomes emperor in 20 years. Now we did our math at the start of this episode. Veer becomes emperor in seven years, which means Veer is either ousted or killed after ruling the Centauri Republic for 13 years.
Yeah. Okay. I, could we believe that maybe he stepped down? That seems like a thing Veer could do.
That seems like a thing Veer would do a hundred percent. Um, but
Probably not if this guy succeeds him though. Like in, in the future iteration that Galen is saying where he's a warmongering, you know,
also Vintari's exact story and plot are that of Durla in the books. He builds a super big fleet in secret and then attacks all these places at the same time.
Hmm.
It's the exact same thing from the books.
It's the Centauri standard playbook. Yeah. They're working from.
Yeah, it didn't work, so they're gonna try it again 23 years later. Veer decommissions all the warships and then they just start building them all over again the second he steps down.
Yeah, in secret.
So yeah, Ventari comes aboard. I read that he's channeling big Cartagena energy. I think this actor, this kid, kills it.
Mm hmm. Yeah, no, I really liked him.
yeah, there's just enough not behind the eyes. Which is so difficult to do to make him truly terrifying.
Mm
I believe that this kid is a genocidal maniac. A hundred percent.
He's, he's got something dark that could grow inside him. Like he's, he's got a lot of resentments. He doesn't have a place to put them. He's he's feeling very powerless.
He just watched fight club on repeat for 72 hours.
Yeah. Yeah. This feels like that guy, doesn't it?
Yeah. Having just, I, I think I mentioned this in this court. I finished that podcast earlier today.
Yeah. I think you've talked about it on POD before, but what was the name again?
it's, I don't want to talk about fight club anymore
Yeah,
and it is fantastic.
A journey, I'm sure.
Yeah, it's really worth your time. Like, I would say that if you don't like fight club, it's a good podcast for you. If you're like, I don't want to listen to someone talk about fight club that long. Cause that fuck that movie
Yeah. This is the podcast for you. Yeah.
This isn't someone who loves fight club as a grown adult watching it because they think it's the best movie of all time. That is not the ride you're signing up for.
Yeah. No, I, I definitely thought that they picked a great actor for this. I even Googled him just before this, just to see like, did he go on and do anything? Nope.
That's a bummer.
Yeah, yeah, he must have just like pulled back completely, but he seemed to like do a few maybe in the 90s sort of teen heartthrobby kind of things and then was like, nah. Well, good for you, Keegan.
Luckily passes the idea of Sheridan writing in on a star fury. Like it's a good idea and not a giant security risk.
Especially without an EV suit.
without an Evie suit. Uh, He hasn't flown in one in a decade, they talk about him like riding in on the ship that he famously was like riding around in the Shadow Wars, a Starfury and not a white star like him coming in on a white star. That makes fucking sense.
For sure. Right.
get the hell out of our galaxy. It all happened on that bridge, right? All the big moments. He fucking nuked Zaha Doom with a white star. Like, I don't think we saw him in a Starfury outside of an excuse to keep his pilot bonus. This makes no sense to me. Except you've got a really good Starfury CGI model and you want to show it off and it's convenient for the plot to have him and the prince out alone in space. Um, we get a, a nod to Richard Bigg's passing here.
There's a really poignant moment with Bruce where he just like kind of stares a little bit off camera and is all like, we're going to really miss him. And it just sits there for a moment because that was super fucking real. And I'm glad that they were able to do that. Cause I'm sure that's, that's a moment, not just for the character, but also for the actor.
Yes. Very nice.
Galen explains his pot plot here put Vinatari in the star fury and then blow it up. It's really just, you know, it's a big plot to kill Vintari. Sheridan sees the war between earth and the Centauri in his dreams, when they arrive at Babylon five Sheridan gets luckily to deliver a second starfury and tells Intari the good news. They take them out Ventari. Talks of his dreams. He just really wants to make this as difficult for Sheridan as possible. And just be all like, is he Hitler?
I don't know the elections in a week. We'll find out. Uh,
I just closed on a house yesterday and I'm going to propose to my girlfriend.
no Sheridan recalls his conversations with Ventari and Galen. Kills his thrusters, prevents the power surge, spares Minotauri, and invites him to come live on Mimbar with him. And he's going to mentor the Prince so that he can learn kindness and peace.
Which is a bold move we know it worked for Veer really well, but Veer was also very well documented as not a normal Centauri.
Yeah.
Like all the other, all the other Centauri ambassadors that have been to Mimbar, like, hated it.
Yeah, there's no alcohol on the entire planet.
Right.
Even Galen's like, bro, you sure? And then Sheridan's like, fucking kill him in cold blood if I have to. It's just like, oh, okay, that's going to be easier for you when he's lived with your family for years, instead of now, where he's just a homicidal maniac. And also, you know, you're clearly so good at setting your ego and the job that you do aside, that I believe that you'd be willing to believe Cause you're going to die before this kid rises to power.
You know, this, you know, you've got 10 years left. You know, he becomes emperor in 20. This is, these are facts.
there's, like 50 percent of that time that you really have no control over.
Mm hmm. You're going to ask to lend a fucking kill this kid,
No, maybe you're, maybe his you know, I don't know how old the son is, 16, maybe your 16 year old son.
who just got controlled and by the fucking keeper.
Yeah. Yeah. That'll go well.
Mm hmm. Yep.
I guess he's probably like 20 when Sheridan dies, whatever.
Yeah. Luckily uh, greets them, takes the Prince to the party and Galen and Sheridan put the bow on the plot. And that's the end of this mini episode.
Do we want to hop to rating it or do we want to critique it? I, I liked this one better than the first one. Yeah.
I think this one had a lot more potential than the first one. This one asks a more interesting question. Um, because as Galen posits, it's all like, Hey, if you had the chance to kill Hitler when Hitler was a kid, would you do it? And that question kind Cannot be posited without foreknowledge, right? Cause the answer is obviously no, unless you know for certain what has already happened with Hitler, right?
Like you can't ask that of someone in 1925 without any knowledge of what's about to happen.
Mm hmm.
and so the necessity of that foreknowledge makes it a foregone conclusion. That is reality for us. So it's easy to say, yeah, if I had a time machine, yeah, give me the option. I'll go back and kill Hitler, whatever. I'll save all those people, right? It's still amorphous here,
Yeah.
And that's what makes that question actually interesting. I think Sheridan. Comes upon, I don't even want to say the right answer, but definitely the most Sheridan answer
Mm hmm. Yeah. He would think he could do this. Fits fits with the old patriarchal ego there. He's going to be a good dad since he had a crazy dad. Nurture over nature, guys.
for sure. there's also like a couple of like weird unspoken things about it too, where it's just like, do you really like how much damage How hurt is this kid already? How much damage has Vintari suffered living the life that he's had to live being the son of a madman? Why is he in line for the throne when there is no established line for the throne?
Because that would imply that, like, how did Lando and, like, Their entire like system here doesn't really make sense to me because when you get rid of Cartagena, I imagine his son would have fallen off the block. Also, why is his son never mentioned anywhere else? Because you would think if he was in line as a heir, that that would have been a whole thing.
Yeah.
There's also a
It should have come up.
That Cartagena is the nephew of Turin, the emperor that dies early in Babylon five. Did we know that beforehand?
I don't know if we
that and I could have
I do feel like there was talk early on. When all that was happening of like, Oh, we're going to prop up this crazy nephew or something for, for now, while we run the government. And then Cartagena turned out to actually be like a really bad man. I think so. I think I do remember something about that. Yeah.
my biggest problem with the lost tales in general, in which it is clearly written by someone who remembers 75 percent of their universe. And it's just scrambling and that hurts uh, that it's, it sucks because I know that, like, even with like wrote home, like, clearly, there is still good ideas for Babylon five in his mind. There's still a purpose to this universe. Um, but like this. Like, the Centauri books, like Crusade, like Call to Arms, like Third Space, like Reversals.
Everything outside of the main show only subtracts and it doesn't add.
Yeah. It, It doesn't feel as well thought out. We know he had like a great grand plan for everything. And some of this stuff just feels like tacked on like sticky notes. Well, what if this, what if that, like
Mm hmm.
instead of the way he meticulously designed a lot of the show proper.
Yeah. And it's so much of it just feels exactly like that. Sticky notes. That's a great, that's a great comparison. Um, it's just, it's stuff that's just tacked on that doesn't belong. It sucks because it does, it does, it does actively subtract from my genuine feelings of how great the show is.
I'm very distracted by, you know, we know we have the canon of the Centauri dream about their futures and such. and we know he's dreamed about being in the star fury, but how, how does Galen have this glimpse into the future? Like, is this a, replicatable technology,
I think he's just fucking with dreams like he do.
Okay.
And he's just leaning in. I don't know.
Yeah, like he's like he's able to observe people's dreams and he's seen Vintari's dreams So he's got to do something about it. Hmm Okay,
Yeah.
I really want to like Galen but he is almost a little too much You know, like when you create the wizard
Yeah,
they gotta have They got to have some weak spots. They can't be the all powerful wizard.
for sure. it's just he goes from someone who's like a conjurer of cheap tricks to Gandalf
Yeah.
very, very quickly. And it's kind of jarring in a not fun way. I don't know. It's, I don't mean anything against uh, Peter Woodward either, who does a great job with what he's
No, no, no. Yeah. He's, he's a fantastic wizard for
It's, it's just like, if I were playing D and D and someone rolled Galen at my table. And I know Ben's gonna do this to fuck with me for my next campaign, which is why I'm banning wizards on my next campaign right now. I would just be livid.
Yeah.
It's like, you can't know everything. part of what being A interesting character in a story is, is being fallible and
Yeah.
Galen's not even, even when Galen fucks up, he's instantly forgiven and
as happened in Crusade. And he's motivated by a one dimensional death of the female partner. And yeah, it's, you know, we all have limited time and the creators doing the best they can with what they got, I guess. We didn't rate it. We didn't actually put a rating on it.
No, we didn't. Uh, Two and a half.
Mm-Hmm. Yeah.
today. I don't know. It doesn't feel like a three. I feel like it could have been a three, but it's not
Yeah, I would, I'll join you on the two and a half step, like,
cut the useless reporter out of here who only is in this to be objectified
yeah,
to give Sheridan a joke. Yeah. And humiliate 100 percent humiliated. Cut all that out. Just have this be Sheridan's picking this kid up on the way to be five for the celebration. So that way you have the end the plots at B5 like you wanted to and give us more interactions with Sheridan and Ventari or start this farther back and show some shit with Ventari being treated like a piece of shit. Like I don't know if the story works as well if he's at all sympathetic.
If the, if that changes the nature of the question being asked. Um, so maybe, maybe that's not the route to go. Maybe you do stuff with him where you may raise more questions and make this a harder decision for Sheridan. But I think that would do a lot for this episode as opposed to fucking quantum space. Fuck off.
Yeah. This, man, I just realized that this vignette, or whatever we want to call it, this little lost tale, is like, oh, we're all just looking for a good dad. He just needs a good dad. And Sheridan's going to step up and be good dad once again.
Just the best dad, best stepdad. That's what, that's his goal. Universe's best stepdad. If he had a mug, that's what it would say.
Mm hmm.
Number one, president. That's his other mug, the land credit for him.
For sure.
doesn't understand Christmas, but she knows that it's important. Holy day. So she got him a mug that says Alliance's number one president.
Which is technically true, as he is the first.
De facto, the worst president they've ever had. So the election is next week. Anyways,
Anyways at least it looked nice. The CGI looked really nice. And the opening little theme song, I was like, aw,
those DVD credits. Yeah. The DVD menu. Yeah.
It was good though.
Yeah. It could have done with some characters, weirdly morphing into other characters for my taste, but that's just me
What is a DVD menu if it doesn't have the characters
Ryan, but besides the two of us,
We all love it. You know what?
I'm so tired. I don't want to do this.
You don't want to end this one?
I don't want to, because when we end this one, I'm going to go get water and then we're, we're going to start the next one and the next one's the last one, and that has emotional implications and
Ja'far's going to drank out this outro just so he doesn't have to have feelings.
men would literally host 149 episodes of podcasts rather than go to therapy anyways. All right. Well, next week we're coming back with that, our, our Babylon five retrospective hundred 50th episode. Sass tacular. I don't know. Spectacular. It doesn't seem right. Uh, So join us then for a celebration of Babylon five. In the sassiest way possible. We'll try to be nice to the show. I guess we, I mean, I do love the show, but we'll also be talking probably more about us and the podcast and stuff.
So that's next week. But until then. We got to say thank you to Jeremy Siegel. Thanks so much, Jeremy, for making our theme music. We appreciate the hell out of it. You can find more of Jeremy's work at Jeremy Siegel, 42. bandcamp. com. And I'm streaming services as nuclear Jaguar. Are you texting him right now to ask about the new theme?
No, no, I'm setting up a thing. So, also thank you to angry duck time machine on Instagram for our podcast artwork. And I'm currently sending Jaffer the new podcast artwork.
I'm going to see it. I'm going to, I'm covering up. I'm minimizing my other monitors so that I can't see it. I'm going to watch it in between episodes. I'll pull it up. I'll we'll do a live react on the next episode. I'll pull
Okay. The new podcast artwork is
artwork. Oh, I'm excited. I get to change my discord image.
Okay. Okay. And thanks, Aaron. Thanks a bunch.
Thank you so much.
We make
over editing this podcast at like episode 30 or whatever, it was a while ago, you've edited a whole lot of podcast, my dude, a whole lot of podcast. Like you've got credentials to get a job doing this if you want it and you're good at it. And we really appreciate that you take that time and that effort and that energy and put it into a podcast. Our silly hobby and everyone else's enjoyment. They all appreciate you too, Aaron. I'm going to speak on behalf of the audience.
Everyone really appreciates you making us not sound like shit.
and it boggles my mind that he willingly listens to my voice over and over and over again.
Well, he wants to listen to your voice. I don't know what he's doing. Listening to me. He signed on to listen to you. I'm the accessory
It's true, but you know, sometimes you, you don't want more of the thing, right?
I mean, we can both agree. It's better than listening to ourselves.
For sure. That's just the worst. Although it was pretty great on those two episodes of Crusade that we did. I did put up with myself because I
I had to hear how it came out. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll see you next time, internet. We'll see you next week.
Bye.
Bye.