#10 – Drunk, With the Rest of the Aliens (INFECTION)

[00:00:19] **JOSH**: I thought that we might introduce a new feature on the show since we're moving into shows that are not one-to-one mapable onto current events of just like a voice of the resistance, like, check-in segment at the beginning or with, like, today's headlines and, you know, what'ss happened recently that's on our minds. That we may or may not see parallels to Babylon 5, the episode that about to discuss specifically or just in general. So today the day that we're recording this, November 7th, 2025, I'm thinking about election day on Tuesday. \

[00:00:52] **JOHN**: Um, That's definitely on my mind. It's been a whirlwind of a couple days. I'd gone on election day, I'd voted I'd done my thing, but I wasn't focusing on it at all after that because I didn't wanna uh, didn't wanna repeat of last year where I ended up becoming addicted to Doritos. I sat there election night last year, eating my junk food, saying like, well, if it doesn't go well, I'll treat myself. And that treat myself became a four month duration where I realized the sheer amount I went through of the extra nacho cheese uh, flavor was not good for my body. So I had to make a change. So this year I was just like, all right, let's um, let's take it easy. I saw some friends didn't do anything crazy, but I was like, yeah, what's gonna happen? And then as the night went on, I said, this is interesting. Okay, this is good. what came to mind was that polls seemed to be woefully inadequate these days in every direction. So it doesn't matter whether it is a one party's trailing or leading, that seems to flip the next time. the polls just seem to be unable to capture what the sentiment is. And I could probably go on a whole podcast about my theories on that. But seeing the results that I did and how relatively unexpected they were outside of the result in New York new, new New York was expected, though, not a sure shot to a hundred percent but it was, you know, it was a reasonable outcome. But what ended up happening, which surprised me, was the other elections. Virginia. Jersey, which were both expected to be much closer than they were. So the sense I got was that people are beginning to decide they need a voice again. To, to voice their displeasure, which is a very strong phenomenon in a democracy. The problem with that is that I think the last election was also very much that is that people's dislike of what's happening in the present will lead them to vote for whoever's not there, without necessarily understand the consequence of the choices they have. That's at least my sort of armchair quarterbacking of, of elections. Off years tend to be a little more based on who has the enthusiasm, and I saw so much enthusia, I saw so much enthusiasm in New York for Mamdani. I haven't seen this level of enthusiasm for mayoral election in my lifetime. In New York City, I can't, I mean, there's never, you can go back to the nineties when there was some enthusiasm for Giuliani, you know, sort of pre crazy years. But nobody was out there enthusiastic for him. And I'm trying to think of another mayor since who, people have been like, yeah, this is the one I wanna go out and vote for. And who also engendered such a massive negative response on the other side. So what I don't wanna, I don't wanna put anything out there that's gonna be too hopeful, but if we're looking for a metaphor for of large, substantial entities that would stand up to what we have discussed here as the rising tide of fascism, New York City sort of makes sense on that because it could be a metaphorical Babylon 5, but this is way early to even hope for that. But could it go that way? What I am seeing in a parallel, which I think is really interesting, is that like him or not, Mamdani is a figure now in the media, and he's being, he's loved by many of his supporters. There's a lot of hope being poured into him, whether he can live up to that or not. And he's reviled by the other side. They're obsessed with these absolutely false narratives about who and what he is. And I don't even wanna justify the horrific things that went into that, but the media was in that and so was the Cuomo campaign and creating literal AI, fictitious versions of Mamdani to try to scare voters. Now, it was, you know, they said, oh, this is, you know, the, this is AI. It was in the bottom left of the screen, I think. But it's wild to think that a major candidate on the Democratic side, ostensibly a Democrats side would do something like that. But it got me thinking about how Sheridan is portrayed in the media. And that's worth discussing in future episodes, that they take not only bits outta context, they take things that are even in context, manipulate them, or even if there's something that's just outright generally popular, they will just denounce it, and anything and everything he says. And I think the same is true of AOC is that, again, you don't have to agree or disagree with her. The way that she's been portrayed is fundamentally inaccurate as to the person who she really is and the things she really says. So that's worth exploring is this idea that you're not having a real debate of ideas. You're not saying, I believe this, Hey, I believe this. Let's throw it out to the voters to see who they support more. It's literally misrepresenting entirely and creating this fiction, fictional version of your opponent so that you can win. they had to do that to Sheridan. So I see that as a huge parallel. I don't want that to be the comparison that he's, that figure. I'm saying that same techniques are being deployed.

[00:05:22] **JOSH**: You know, that's really interesting. Maybe next week why don't we do the illusion of truth next so we can talk about, how Sheridan is portrayed, and you're exactly right, like the AOC comparison is exactly the same thing that I thought. And there are two things that are kind of hard to deny that they have in common. One which I have seen more firsthand evidence of is just, I think it's an age thing. almost the entirety of the like, wacky, vitriolic, completely inaccurate things that I have heard people say about Mamdani and also AOC comes from people older than Gen X, let's say.

[00:06:01] **JOSH**: And I think because the things that they're saying, especially the idea that, you know, Mamdani openly identifies as a democratic socialist. And I think that the education system in this country, the media in the post-war period did such a thorough job Demonizing anything that's smacked of socialism, much less communism. it's so ingrained. It's like a, it's like a Pavlovian response. you know, it's like a very emotional, knee jerk, visceral reaction that I don't people can really even articulate. I think that has a lot to do with it. And I think for our cohort, know, we kind of grew up in the hangover of that, the very tail end of that. But also, you know, the 1980s. The Soviet Union the whole framing of the ideological global struggle for civilization was like represented by a country that was clearly on the decline, sort of, buffoonish. That was never a very serious threat in my mind growing up in any real way that I understood, beyond the slogans, beyond the jokes, beyond the stereotypes. And then, you grow up and, you know, nine 11 happens and Iraq happens, and 2008 happens. Obama happens. Trump happens. the experience of the you know, hegemonic liberal, capitalist democratic order that you know, won the global struggle for human civilization in 1991. you start to see the the fractures, the space between what they say it is and what you're witnessing on the ground and how it's actually operating and how, how people are actually living. So I think the younger you are, the less afraid you are of certain labels or certain ideologies. People young people in particular who trouble seeing a prosperous future ahead of them or how to attain it are kind of like, well, this system is not working for me or anyone that I know. What else is out there?

[00:08:05] **JOHN**: Right which explains why the younger generations are so much more open things. I mean, it is the fact that we generational memories Carry over the same intensity. And that's for good and Ill, so people forget what we fought against in the second World War in this country, but they also forget. So people say, oh, but they forget how bad socialism is. I'm like, well, here's my answer to that. Que here's my answer to that statement is that very simply, if you, if you look at what the left, even the far left is asking for and is promoting it's something forgotten. They're promoting nothing that is further or crazier than what a standard New Deal Democrat was proposing and supporting 90 years ago. believe I read a statistic that for 70 years only few exceptions the Democrats held the House of Representatives for most of the 20, late for the 20th century. And the reason for that was the inertia that they carried through with on the New Deal policies. Very popular, and we're not looking at perfect or this is the way it has to be exclusively, but they worked for a lot of what they intended on doing. And they also gave a sense that, you know, that even if you weren't going to aspire to the elite rungs or have the luck to, to get there, that you weren't gonna end up just in a ditch, which is why it was called the New Deal. It was a new deal compared to really what we're facing now is like, hey we're now going back to pre New Deal. Before there was a deal where there are no guarantees, everything is chaotic and crazy. So I think that when we see this sort of longing for that again, and it, maybe it's called Democratic socialism, maybe it's called this, it's because generally became something we forgot in this country. We forgot what the New deal was, and more importantly, we forgot what was coming after as Roosevelt was dying. The Fair Deal. I mean Google that is fascinating. And Truman trying to implement pieces of that early versions of Medicare including desegregating, the military, all of these things that today would be viewed as, oh my God, that's so far that, so far left. And it was the mainstream of what won us the second World War and did largely unify society here again, with a caveat mostly along racial lines, because that was still a big component of society back then was racism at every level, but the general policies weren't far out there. So it, it's just ironic that on the right, they're doing the same thing, but they're not outta this world either because Nazis were in Madison Square Garden, the level of support for Germany before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was astonishingly high in this country. So it's like both sides are recovering a bit of that, or I guess either they've forgotten it or they're recovering it. Who knows how You could put it either way, probably, but it's really strange to see that manifesting and if people were educated about their own history that, hey, both these things already happened. I wonder where we would be in that case. I mean, stories like Babylon 5 are literally based on what happened. New tellings trying to get new insights, but also explore, you know, the reemerging patterns and the show that we're discussing here is what JMS puts forward, is that the pattern of authoritarianism and fascism. And that descent in the darkness doesn't go away because we go into space. It actually just goes, operates on a bigger scale and. That's why he wrote in so many parallels. And I think that's, that is realistically what we face now. You look at the way corporations operate and that's gonna, you know, that goes right into this episode. Is it feels like the sci-fi of the eighties and the nineties that's sort of dystopian corporate rule future. We thought we were gonna get around that or something better would happen. And here we are at the beginning of that. So memory is a weird, really fickle thing. And I like the idea that the younger generations are exploring new things. I'm just very worried about those who are going. Full on fascist. I mean, full on Nazi or full on comparable to that. You know, people who I shall not name to platform them here are gaining major entrance into right wing blogosphere and media outlets while being outright Nazis tells you something. And that's why, again, you're watching this show, we're watching it in the mid nineties, and they're making references to go back to your BUN meeting, you know, for the night watch officers who are wearing armbands and are obviously meant to be the brown shirts followed by the Nazis and everything around that. And you're watching so Well that's, but that wouldn't happen again. That's just, that's silly. I really I would like to dive into uh, more about what JMS thinks about, was thinking back then about how much of a cautionary tale this was compared to some other authors who. Didn't think it would actually happen. I mean, Margaret Atwood is a great example where she didn't think her book was in any way prophetic. She, She says, this is a work of fiction based on the cultural tendencies I've observed in the American population from my perspective as a Canadian. And she actually sort of made a quasi apology for that saying, whoa, I really didn't expect this to actually happen. I'm sorry I downplayed the reality of it.

[00:13:03] **JOSH**: Well, you know, you said a few interesting things that I want to I wanna magnify a little bit. First of all, I should say the episode that we're gonna be talking about is season one, episode four, Infection. Which, if you're a Babylon 5 fan, I think there are, two episodes that I can think of that are pretty much universally recognized by Babylon 5 fans and JMS himself as um, not good. One of those we are covering today, Infection. The other one is Grey 17 is Missing, which we will absolutely get to in due course.. um, I've been bringing up Infection to do for a while because, I don't know, I'm just really curious about what we'll see when we subject it to this microscope lens that we have been watching the show through. And watching it yesterday. I very quickly realized there's a lot here. And something that you said about how you know, what the show is saying is that when we go into space we bring all of that history and human nature with us. It just happens on a grander scale. And for some context, so Infection was the first episode of the series Proper to be produced after The Gathering the pilot movie. so in a lot of ways, even though it was aired as episode four this is in a lot of ways the first episode of Babylon 5. and it lays out a lot of foundations for ideas that are central to the overall story of the show. the end of the episode there's a scene between Franklin and Ivanova where I forget exactly the line but he talks about like, the growing antia sentiment back home on earth. And whether this you know, radicalized fanatical genetic purity monster that. They just defeated in the episode was a preview of, what was in store for them. then the very next scene the ISN interviewer. She asks Sinclair like, what are we doing here? why is Babylon 5 worthwhile? And he makes the opposite case. so essentially in the last closing five minutes of the show, you have JMS saying History, the ugly parts of our history will repeat itself or will try to repeat itself. And right after that the closing statement of this very first episode of Babylon 5 that he's writing is saying why it's worth it, why the struggle is worth it. And I thought that was very, very, interesting. It stood out to me in a way that, I don't know, it would've stood out years ago. And yeah, I mean, so many things in this episode which again, is a bad episode and not without reason. I understand. Like I was reading one of JMS's commentaries on this episode and he talks about how every sci-fi TV show at one point or another has its man in a rubber suit episode. And that's more or less what this was the like, plot quote unquote is the weakest. Facet of this whole episode beyond the plot, everything that it's setting up in the background narratively what it's setting up in the world of the show what it's setting up thematically is really rich. And Uh, You said you really want to dive into like what JMS was thinking in terms of how he viewed the likelihood or the social political forces at play that would make a descent into fascism more or less likely. And what this exploration that you and I. Doing right now into the show has made me realize in a way that I never really, like, really internalized or really saw, was how fundamental the descent to fascism narrative really is to this whole series. like, it's not something that's incidental or it's like, the story because, a cool idea and like, Star Trek would never go there and like, you know, what if we do this? Like these are concerns that he felt very strongly about and were really foundational to his whole idea and concept of this five year. Sci-Fi story arc.

[00:16:59] **JOHN**: It does, watching it for the first time in many years... It was not an episode I'd gone back and revisited in the past. And I think for all the reasons we've already said, revisiting it with the intention of discussing it and with the, with the intention of looking at the episode, not just watching it for the sake of watching it. I got all the things you just said. I got all the all the breadcrumbs that he put in that episode. I'm like, oh, now, of course, I would not have picked up on that at all watching it the first time, because when we watched this show the first time, we didn't even know that this was an ongoing story of a show. We didn't know that. JMS deliberately snuck that in. He didn't let, the studios didn't know that was his plan. He marketed it like Star Trek, episodic wagon, train of the star type stars type thing with a darker hue to it. So this was the first time we where, yeah those little bits are being layered in there for use later. And it actually pulls off really, really well. Knowing that this was the first episode filmed also helps me get through that because I'm like, oh, well it's weird if you go in episodes 1, 2, 3 and then this, where you're like, why are the characters more wooden? Why do they not seem to like be the same as they were before? Oh, because this was their first time outta the gate. It had been almost a year since the pilot had been filmed, and there were a number of cast changes. There was definitely a style change, a vibe change. So they were getting into that. So now I can forgive that and look at it the way I look at other prequels. I can look at it and say, oh, they're getting their feet into their roles. It's cool to see how that happens. But yeah, as a viewer, you'd be like, what? This is just sort of like, you know, mediocre sci-fi, whatever. You're right, man in a rubber suit type thing. And JMS himself said he didn't want it to be about the man in the rubber suit, but obviously that's what happens. He wanted it to be about the type of people who would build that type of weapon, not about the weapon itself. But. It can be forgiven because yeah, this was the first time he is writing his own show and trying to trying to do this and then later succeeds, so well. So I can forgive a lot in the episode. And so overall, I sort of enjoy it for what it is. But again, taking it from that perspective, this is not an episode I recommend to anybody as like, here's a, you wanna go have a fun time with science fiction, in particular, JMS's writing in Babylon 5, no, you don't show them this, but Mars perspective. Very cool. This is a really useful and that end line of Sinclair where he says you know, yes, we have to go out to the stars because scientists never agree on anything except that the sun will go out at some point, whether it's 10,000 or, you know, a billion years, it's going to go out. And if we don't go out there, all of this was for nothing. And he says, and I and I distinctly remember. Feeling that because this is a play on other quotes that have come, you know, Carl Sagan and others, and when he says this, when that happens, it won't just take us, it'll take Marilyn Monroe, lasu Einstein, Maputo Body, Holly Aristophanes, all of this. All of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars. And that's like JMS, like manifesting in the show. You're like, oh, okay. This is where the rest of the show comes in and the sort of grand style of writing. But even back then, I remember that sticking out to me and I for the life of me. I didn't remember that it was in this episode. I could have sworn it was in a different episode that he said that because I didn't associate anything particularly deep with this episode. But here we go. Let's get into it. This episode had a lot that he put into it. When it starts off and yeah it's, it's a little rough because, you know, don't really know what's happening or why, but. You know, it's just a, oh, somebody's coming in on customs, on the station. Station looks great, by the way. I mean, even this is the first episode filmed. They had the look down and they didn't change it for four years. They had actually mastered that part going right into this episode. The uniforms and, you know, the corridors the lighting, everything came together for what we knew as Babylon 5. But I'm there watching it and rewatching it, and I see when Nelson who later becomes the man in the rubber suit takes out the security officer who's doing customs. And so he seems to know or whatever, and, you know, gets a little suspicious. And I'm looking at this, I'm saying, could they have chosen any more of a typical eighties, nineties looking bad guy? And then I'm like, no, they couldn't have, they actually could not have chosen somebody more appropriate. 'cause where did the actor Marshall Teague, like, what is he known for? 1989 Roadhouse. He's the villain and Roadhouse opposite Patrick Swayze. That is definitively that era of TVs and movie like that over the top corny eighties. Like bad guy thug, you know, the hair every way he looked. And it was just hilarious. And then you'll, he goes on, he's, yes, he's in this and, and he take, he takes on later characters in the show. He's, Ta'Lon.

[00:21:31] **JOSH**: Yeah. Right.

[00:21:33] **JOHN**: So he takes on this very, you know, the, the Narn warrior monk archetype and does really well with it. But in this, I was like, this is so classic for that, and it's like he's chewing the scenery with his, like villainy, but pretending not to be a villain, you know?

[00:21:48] **JOSH**: And on the other end of the spectrum, the other guest star David McCallum who

[00:21:52] **JOHN**: Yeah,

[00:21:53] **JOSH**: Nailed this, like, so something that I realized. Because, yes, this is first episode produced. it kind of feels a little uncanny valley a little bit because you're like, yes, this is Babylon 5, but it's also like proto Babylon

[00:22:06] **JOSH**: And something that I realized actually later on was none of the ambassadors are in this episode. No G'Kar, no Londo, no Delenn. So, so one huge component, arguably half of what makes this show so compelling is not even in this particular episode. And I remember particularly in season one not all of the actors were contracted for all 22 episodes. So, You would have episodes where certain characters wouldn't appear, which makes sense because it's supposed to be a city in space. So, you know, they wouldn't all have a notable storyline happening every single week. but like, normally, you have Londo, but no Delenn. Or you have Delenn and Londo, but no G'Kar. To not have the entire ambassadorial wing say nothing of their assistants, because that's something else that happened later on. you don't have, Delenn in this episode, but you have Lennier, you don't have Londo, you have Vir. But that was something that as soon as I realized, I was like, oh, well that explains a lot. Why it's sort of felt like more. Star Trek in a way, like, the point of view is 100% from the Earth military characters. It's not about the internal politics of the Minbari or the Centauri. It's like, here's Earth, here's the alien of the week. He's blowing up our ship, so we have to blow him up first. And I had another thought Oh, yeah no, no. David McCallum, who American viewers may recognize, from his last notable role I think was in NCIS, on CBS he's a really fantastic actor. He was on the Man from Uncle he was on this amazing British sci-fi show called Sapphire and Steel, which like, there was not anything on TV like it then, and there certainly isn't now. It's like a very moody, very strange kind of supernatural show where like, they don't explain anything but like the, mood of it is. So, yeah. Well anyway, then he was also memorably for some, he was in this very famous episode of the Outer Limits called the sixth finger, where he basically evolves into, the next stage of human evolution. And the photo of him in all of the makeup is like one of the handful of iconic images that you still see from that show. So anyway, the point of all this is to say that he really had gravitas that he brought into the show, like the way he's able to say all of these lines with such believability about this alien technology and like this corporation you've never heard of and all of this stuff. It's a lot of exposition, it's a lot of, um. techno babble, but he sells it like you believe. He is this guy. And I have to say the guest star on a TV show. sometimes the guest star of the week is not up to snuff as we say. but Here, like he's a guest star that is really carrying a lot of this episode in an episode where we don't have G'Kar, we don't have Londo, we don't have Delenn. It's sort of like the Gravitic void is filled by him in this episode.

[00:25:00] **JOHN**: Yeah. He know he does that really well. And it's funny because he, again, like he was making all the rounds in 1993. Right as this is airing, he's in an opposite in an episode of Seaquest, you know, which

[00:25:12] **JOSH**: Oh, really?

[00:25:13] **JOHN**: The same year for, so for those who are watching the show, back then you'd know that this was the age and all these shows, 1993 was this golden age for sci-fi

[00:25:22] **JOSH**: memories of that.

[00:25:23] **JOHN**: You have Deep Space Nine, you have Quest, you have all these other like alien sci-fi shows coming out. most of 'em did not make it past one or two seasons. But it was a great couple of years, at least, you know, that we had this. And Babylon 5 stood the test of time and lasted, so I'm glad that glad he got to get all his uh, roles in before nailing that a multi-decade NCIS uh, career. But he had, he did have the gravity for it, and he was, a villain in a way that I didn't think of when I was watching the show originally. I thought he was just like, all right, he's just doing his thing. And ooh, you see the disappointment you see the disappointment in Dr. Franklin to his old mentor. And again, it was okay, were they trying to copy Captain Picard here? Because it's like, oh, archeology. And he was his best student in archeology. And I'm like, this is the same time this is the this has to be the same year that the two-parter episode in Next Gen where Picard,

[00:26:14] **JOSH**: wasn't a two-parter.

[00:26:16] **JOHN**: wasn't a two parter. You're right. It was a one parter.

[00:26:18] **JOSH**: No, it was a one, it was a single episode. ,

[00:26:20] **JOHN**: I think of the other two quarter of that season. You're right, The card going off and doing his own thing.

[00:26:25] **JOHN**: It's when he is under undercover now. The, but it was just so funny that the same thing was taking place where it's like, oh, archeologist professor comes back to the, one of the lead cast members of a sci-fi show come off and, and, and do things with me. Both with very different intentions to that. But this was sort of funny. I'm like, yeah, I guess these tropes go around. But I guess that's why I also must have like grafted on the memory that oh, he was a good guy. He was one of the victims of the man machine, of the ecar. And nope, he was a villain in the most important sense. and, uh, what was David McCallum's character's name again?

[00:27:00] **JOSH**: Vance Hendricks.

[00:27:01] **JOHN**: Hendricks. And what got me was that he, first, he's just able to Dr. Vance Hendricks, you're right, so casually lie to his student and friend. One assumes that casualness, that ease of which it comes and then always have an ex an explanation. Most people have encountered people like that in their own lives, and that is somebody who's profoundly dangerous because they get right under the radar. And you'd think, okay, well he's a, a doctor, a PhD of archeology, you know, a good guy. I had students who were inspired by him and turns out, no, he's just literally in it to become fabulously wealthy. Doing something that is not only like against the rules. You know, you can debate that back and forth. He sort of tries to make it out like that. Well, you know, we're not taking shortcuts by raiding these archeological sites and using their technology. We're just accelerating progress and this is the right thing to do. Oh, but you're putting people at risk. Oh, well, you know, it's for the greater good. It's for, you know, we're gonna get these things out there. It's gonna be really important. Oh no, it was for Interplanetary Expeditions and he was playing his own game to hold it back from them to become obscenely wealthy. And that's what he talks about at the end of the episode or the end of his arc. It's like, can you imagine what you would do with that amount of money? And the truth is, most people, probably, almost any of us tempted with that much money would do some pretty life endangering things and not their own life. And that and that's why he's such a accessible villain, especially for that era of tv, is that he's just the, he's the evil capitalist, gone crazy, you know? And he talks about it in such a, again, a casual way that he can dismiss. Any concern you have is, don't you see how awesome it would be if we just make a ton of money,

[00:28:39] **JOSH**: You know what's interesting too is that, well, a few things like, when I was watching the episode in my head, I was like, okay, so this episode is about ideological and genetic purity and why that's impossible. And why going down that road is not only horrible for everyone else, it's also folly for yourself because you will up destroying yourself. but that's actually not the only thing this episode is about. It's also like you're just saying, the motivation for the villain here is greed. It's about money.

[00:29:07] **JOHN**: plain.

[00:29:08] **JOSH**: Which, you know, is interesting. It's not, necessarily a motivation that you would find on like, say Star Trek, outside of the Rege, but that's usually plate for laughs. between that and, you know, again, laying all of this groundwork, he talks about IPX interplanetary expeditions. These, mega corporations that are players in the Babylon 5 universe. So it's not a moneyless society that is motivated by some higher calling about exploration. It's like, you know, you have a corporations raiding extinct civilizations for technology that they can exploit and sell. And, There was a weird connection there. Something that I thought of with the ostensible main villain, man in the rubber suit. What was his name again? I don't remember.

[00:29:53] **JOHN**: The character

[00:29:54] **JOSH**: Uh,

[00:29:54] **JOHN**: Nelson Drake. But then he, is the weapon. But he becomes, he

[00:29:57] **JOSH**: He has like the personality matrix of its creator. Yeah. Right, right. So, but anyway, the man in the rubber suit, he um, I just completely blanked on what I was saying. What was I saying?

[00:30:05] **JOHN**: ostensibly the villain is supposed to be the man in the rubber suit, when in fact,

[00:30:09] **JOSH**: in fact it's the greedy David McCallum character. the thing that I thought when they introduced this idea of organic technology that merges with a human host to turn the person into a weapon the first thing that I thought of was Neuralink,

[00:30:26] **JOHN**: Hmm.

[00:30:26] **JOSH**: And then I realized there is some crossover here between like an Elon Musk figure who is part of this broader. Silicon Valley transhumanist thing where, you know, they see humanity's future as a future where we no longer exist as biological entities purely, but as digital consciousnesses merged with machines that carry us into space. And we take over the universe and like try to, I don't know, reverse entropy or something.

[00:31:01] **JOHN**: Well, instead, it becomes about becoming a, a weapon, which you see not only with Neuralink and Musk's own dabbles, in that you see that better represented in companies like Palantir which is, which is the other major one of today to look at where it is about using these kinds of technologies for weapons use they're the ones creating Skynet and the Terminator effectively is them. And Dr. Vance Hendricks goes through that same. Process himself, because he starts off trying to convince Dr. Franklin to be involved in this, under that idea, which I'm sure he also believes. These aren't oppositional beliefs, nor is it oppositional. When Musk talks about them, he starts off with a sales pitch of like, it's like, look at this amazing organic technology. We can't do this on earth. We haven't cracked the code. The Vorlons, have them inbar look like they've done it. What do we, what are we doing here? And look at the potential here and knowing that he's talking to a doctor. It's like the medical applications, everything else. It's meant to point out, yes, there are some of those applications as well, and then the revelation is, oh, it's not a scanner. You know, this is not a medical device. It's not anything like that. This is a weapon. This was developed as a weapon. Again, technology can go in any of those routes. And what is the logical consequence of that? And why does that parallel to greed? where does that go into it? And then the big thing, which you've alluded to a few times, which is the sort of, the second half big chunk, which happens in the later half of the episode, is the notion of species, racial ideological, religious purity, and why this weapon was created in the first place. and why all that does ride together in the same cart. The greed the corporate influence, the idealization warped by the promise of massive profit all put into something that is ultimately used. And even in world, our world today is used for the sake of ideological obsession which we see in these. Tech oligarch figures, they have all those qualities. They have these absolute ideological obsessions. Check out again of the two companies we've just mentioned, check out their leaders, check out their ideological obsessions. And I'm going, I'm talking about beyond politics. I'm talking about their quasi-religious obsessions, which put sci-fi to shame in terms of their almost fantastical obsessions. And that's all put in here. I, I don't know if JMS was trying to literally get everything possible through that. This was just what's always on his mind. So these elements bleed through and come into the story. But it's really neat to see in the context of a later show, because the show deals with this idea of what happens when you have regular people. Operating from the premise of greed and just, Hey, you do things because they're advantageous to you not seeing where the end is. And then that machine itself, that weapon itself, that Nelson merges with and becomes part of is itself just the logical conclusion. Of course, what happens you take the CCAs, not to be confused in my head with the Ians who were from Star Trek, keep on trying to separate that out, but the cca who were themselves victims they had been invaded, I think they said like 12 times or something by other alien invaders and they're part of the galaxy. And so they developed a technology to defend themselves. Now, what's interesting is that, again, you can take that notion by itself and have a fine story. Oh, it's a defense mechanism programmed poorly and it went crazy. He didn't stop there with this. He didn't wanna stop with the idea. That's completely reasonable in a sci-fi context that oh you created a weapon that got outta your control. The reason it got out of control is the more compelling part of the episode. they talk about the high priests of their society, you know, trying to figure out what does it mean to be a pure a Karin and debating it, and then encoding that into a machine, and then that encoding programming, never finding a fully pure, a ka and wiping them all out as a result. Yeah, that's, he's literally discussing they used the term, oh, that's what the arians did back when, so there we are. Back to that. It's literally first filmed episode of Babylon 5 is referring to the Arian obsession of the Nazis. Like, there you go. We're talking about it from filmed episode one. Episode four of season one. You know, that's what the show is, is about. It's about looking at that era through the lens of the future. So yeah, we're talking about Nazis in 1993 in the first episode here. And that was something that jumped out not only yesterday, but saying yeah that the absolute insanity of that pursuit and where it leads one in the end, and yeah, it's a guy in a rubber suit blasting things with an arm cannon of electricity. But the

[00:35:33] **JOSH**: Something kind of charming about it though.

[00:35:35] **JOHN**: yeah. Yes. It's like a throwback to like that good old sci-fi that doesn't, you know, have to try too hard, but also sort of works, but can touch on the bigger issues. No, so it was really interesting. And then, you know, Michael O'Hare chewing the scenery, Yelling at the personality imprint of the suit. Like you see what you did? Look at Nelson's memories. It's a dead world. You did this. You did this, and like realizing it and shutting down and taking it off. Yeah.

[00:35:57] **JOSH**: yeah. He definitely went to the Captain Kirk school of talking a computer to death. It's sort of what, it's sort of what that reminded me of, like, The Doctor talking uh, doic into self-destructing

[00:36:11] **JOSH**: No. Yeah, like, there was this long exposition scene where Franklin was explaining the backstory essentially to Sinclair while Sinclair is you know, suiting up and on his way to

[00:36:21] **JOHN**: Yeah. I only have a in Gray.

[00:36:23] **JOSH**: 17. Yeah. so, but actually to the director's credit the way he shot it was actually very nice. He they walked through a lot of different looking locations and the lighting was actually very stark. And he was utilizing the space. so I was actually like, he's trying he's trying to make it work. But uh, Franklin had some lines that really hit me in the context of and everything that we've been living through yeah, the ones who were responsible for programming this weapon on a Carra seven, Franklin said they were religious fanatics and military extremists, and he said they programmed it according to ideology, not science.

[00:37:05] **JOHN**: Yep. Yep.

[00:37:07] **JOSH**: that phrasing those words post COVID you know, RFK, like trying to outlaw vaccines or whatever he's doing is like really more salient to me right now than I think it ever was. The idea that it's like, well, here's the world we want and we have a machine that can help us make the world we have more like the world we want. So let's not worry about the facts. Let's program it according to what we believe, and then You know, what ends up happening is their machine was like, well, what you believe is impossible. So, just have to dismantle your entire civilization in an attempt realize your insane ideology. And yeah, you know, it was interesting Sinclair's Michael O'Hara's performance in that whole sequence. You know, you can chalk up to adrenaline and as Garibaldi points out later you know. This is sort of the kind of situation where Sinclair really comes alive. He sort of lives for these moments where his life is on the line. No pun intended. But yeah, like I was thinking from the perspective of 1993 when they filmed this episode, like what was Michael O'Hare Because you know, today, given everything that we see going on in the world, very close to home, I could see an actor playing a scene like that and really getting into it. Because it sort of hits home a little bit I'm not saying that, everyone would've shared this perspective in 1993 but in, the early nineties for like a straight white man, that whole idea of racial purity and all that was something that happened in the past. so I was just wondering because he is really fiery in that whole monologue. I was like, what is he drawing on? Like, how is he, getting himself to that place?

[00:38:58] **JOHN**: I think it speaks a lot to the 1990s though. And I try not to look back too much through those tinted glasses. it feels like from my recollection and experience in 1990s is that there is this. Idea that we're not there yet, but we're certainly past the idea of where we think of racism as being acceptable.

[00:39:19] **JOSH**: Sure.

[00:39:19] **JOHN**: So there's a duality of, oh, there are plenty of racist people out there. There's plenty of racism in the world and in the things, but it's just no longer acceptable. So we generally, we wouldn't promote that in TV show. We wouldn't promote you know, the idea that these things are okay. Are there still plenty of racial stereotypes? Yes. Are there's plenty of problematic things, yes. But it wasn't viewed as anything that was insurmountable and it was a foregone conclusion that we were heading in one direction, even if we weren't there yet. And I think that's what the nineties are. Oh, we're not there yet, but we know where we're going. What happened more recently? You know, the recent decade was, or decade, two decades, is we started reversing course in reaction to. The sense that we're already there. Maybe it, it was a bit of the reaction to people being very much policing of language, but it was because the assumption got dropped at some point that we were just gonna continue going that direction. The resentment built up, well, why do we have to go in that direction? I don't think people the, the same level were challenging that this is where it's gonna go even if we're not there. As we began to approach that. And I'll say this, once we had a black president with President Obama in 2008, things really seemed to reverse course, and the dialogue shifted back to, well, why isn't it acceptable to stop or reverse course? Why do I have to think of this way anymore? Can't I just go back? You know, wasn't there some benefit to the past? So the nineties, or, you know, I can't remember any TV in the nineties that was. Anything short of what we might call proto woke,

[00:40:48] **JOSH**: Sure. Yeah.

[00:40:49] **JOHN**: Even the cartoons of the eighties it's something very different from now. So an actor thinking about, well, where am I right now? It was sort of the default. It would almost be a default indignation of like, well, why are you doing it this way? Why would you, you know, order yourself out. But what's in this show and what's in JMS's writing is it's not a forgone conclusion that's where we're going. We're not just going to a more peaceful future. Post racism, post conflict and post more important hierarchy and friend verse foe obsessions, which is what the right wing, for many reasons. And that term is very important to them based on their own obsessions with fascist ideology. They need friends and foes. They need to know who the foes are, identify them, create them if need be, and. That's where this show goes towards the end. I mean, the episode I should say is Franklin's saying like, I'm wondering if what we just saw is a preview of things to come and make specific and explicit reference to Earth first groups isolationism growing and growing. So, so he's saying like, oh yeah, that is a big thing happened. And then you get the hint of that from the reporter again. You put the pieces together, it's there. JMS comments on it later. Yes, it's there. This isn't overstepping. The reporter is coming from a standpoint that we're familiar with in our time, which is, you know, the people back home and are asking about space these days. What are we doing out here? The isolationism is growing and the resentment of other people and this idea, which is again very tied to a capitalist in space idea. Why are we paying for this station? She's outright says, shouldn't we be taking care of the problems we have back home first? Well, okay, that's, we've all heard that before. We're hearing that every day now. and it's also one of the, those disingenuous statements when somebody says to you, I don't wanna help those people abroad or over there because we need to focus on helping people here. You can guarantee 99 out of a hundred times, they will absolutely not help anybody here. and it is such a straw man argument and is so deceptive. And in, and what their actual goals are. Sure. Close Babylon 5. Is anyone's life gonna improve in EarthDome? No. That's the argument that's made. So when you hear that today and people say, oh, well if we just cut off foreign aid, if we just cut off worrying about all these other people, well, you cut off worrying about people who don't deserve SNAP benefits. They don't deserve this. Everything else is gonna get better. No, it won't. But more people will suffer and your society will continue to destabilize. And I think that this, that's something that was still very present in the nineties. That, that, that's an onward, you know, thing like as far as you can go back is we don't, you know, we don't wanna look to, to the outside for anything. We don't want to, we don't want to help the non US and Babylon 5 is at the center of that conflict of who do we help?

[00:43:32] **JOSH**: Yeah, it's really true. You just made me think of Mamdani again. Something that I've been hearing a lot of people say, like, you know, well-meaning liberals even talking about him and his policies, like, free buses and the universal childcare and all that, and they say, How are you gonna pay for it? And I wanna be like, when they talk about hiring, you know, another 5,000 uniform police officers in the city, is your first thought, how are we gonna pay for it? I don't think so.

[00:43:57] **JOHN**: None of those well-meaning people, as you said, not a single one of them asked that question of Andrew Cuomo. In terms of the 5,000 cops, it's your perspective. It's it's everything else. And it, it is very possible that those policies either can't get passed or don't work out as well as intended. I think the big difference that

[00:44:17] **JOSH**: shows where your priorities are.

[00:44:19] **JOHN**: it bingo, bingo, it shows your priority is what your orientation is towards. What am I most concerned with? Am I concerned with the wellbeing of everybody? Am I concerned with the wellbeing of some and that's, that, that's not ignoring what is the number one poll issue for New Yorkers, which is public safety, no doubt. And that's gonna be in a city, no matter how much the crime has fallen since the, it, its peak in the 1990s. There's nothing in the 1990s. Crime was at its peak when the show was aired. New York City was probably at its worst in the last 40, 50 years. And we weren't thinking about it every day like that. So you're not gonna ignore that. But isn't it interesting that when you're talking about, oh, public safety or anything else there's no question as to, oh, well we'll just find the money once there's a will to, to do it. Say, well, isn't that same will going to be there on, on the national level, we can afford tens of thousands of new ice enforcers with 50 to a hundred thousand dollars bonuses, salaries of a hundred thousand dollars. And you're like, so we can't afford 10,000 teachers like that.

[00:45:20] **JOSH**: yeah, and I mean, it's interesting too because police are like, how do we protect the law abiding citizens from the law breakers who are committing crimes and how do we mete out consequences for committing those crimes? On the other end, it's saying, well, if we make life a little easier, services more accessible life more affordable, maybe fewer will resort to crime.

[00:45:44] **JOHN**: Yeah. The logical extension of that is what we're seeing today, and it, again, we've seen it from the center left all the way to the right, which is the criminalization of homelessness.

[00:45:54] **JOSH**: Yeah it,

[00:45:54] **JOHN**: It, which is it's absurd from just based on simple, logical premises. So you take people who either have lost everything through any number of means from mental health to simply a health crisis that bankrupted them, which again, only country in the developed world where you can go bankrupt from a, a health crisis for your medical expenses specifically, and say, okay, well those things happened. They're homeless. Oh, they're gonna be arrested for existing now.

[00:46:22] **JOSH**: Yes. Right. it's so stark because unless you can justify your existence and figure out on your own how to pay your own way, then a criminal. And we would rather. Have you here?

[00:46:37] **JOHN**: Right. You either have to go somewhere else or not exist. It's very stark. And this is a question that Babylon 5 deliberately did not address in terms of like, oh, well, how does that contrast to a post scarcity world? There's no real discussion. Yeah. There are more advanced species maybe of a bit of that than Minbari don't seem to have the same worries, but they certainly have the same cultural breakdown that the rest of the show and that Earth Alliance experiences in their own civil war in the fourth season. So maybe you have a bit of that with the Vorlons and the Shadows and some of the other ancient ones who just sort of float around that they don't have those problems. But that's not the concern of the show, but it's about addressing what we are when we're trapped in this world of, okay, so how are you gonna treat people? How are you gonna orient yourself towards that? And that's where the idea of, you know, we, we take Delenn's approach towards everybody and the building of a great alliance of all these disparate alien species, what that is in comparison to this continued inward looking idea and why the very Clark regime we've discussed so many times in the show is obsessed with the language of law and order, the language of law and order not the actual application per se, they're just brutally imposing their will, but they use the language of law and order as if it is a proxy for morality. It's a proxy for what's righteous and right. Even though they get to define it and redefine it and give their cronies a pass at every single occasion, which was where this episode ends, who shows up at the very end of the episode? Two random security officers. they Garibaldi or somebody else's, you don't know, but they were under orders from Earth Force Defense, which I think that was later sort of Narn renamed some of those things. But the bio weapons division to take the Ikaran artifacts so Earth will now have their own biotech to study, which sets up, you know, yes, they're involved in the shadows later, but it sets up their bio research that they're not only looking for, but they actually get it by season four. And they outfit their own battlecruisers with the uh, Was it the war? No. With Warlock class, or was one of the other classes of uh,

[00:48:32] **JOSH**: Right, right. The ones that um,

[00:48:34] **JOHN**: had the shadow skins on them basically. And the shadow spines, you know, so, so they're looking at this and that sort of ruthless notion. So it's a bio weapons division. It's not going into how can we use this for the betterment of people. It's why we gotta defend against those scary aliens. Sure. You know? But. If that's gonna be your orientation, your focus of what you're gonna do with technology, what you're gonna do with people, where's it gonna end up? Oh, definitely somewhere closer to the shadows. Something where you are inviting conflict for the sake of conflict. And again, that the core arc of this show, the shadows, the Vorlons, is conflict versus in theory cooperation. The Vorlons lose their idea. It becomes less about cooperation than it does about becoming stagnant and just not fighting.

[00:49:18] **JOSH**: Yeah. And also for them it becomes about the game that the shadows and Vorlons have been playing over millennia has become about the persistence of the game,

[00:49:28] **JOSH**: so when you see that like in the Vorlons, like it becomes personal for them. Like they're almost just as interested if not more interested in winning against the shadows than they are shepherding the younger races. Like it's about their standing with the shadows and the score and this conflict.

[00:49:49] **JOHN**: There we go.

[00:49:50] **JOSH**: we just had a, technical malfunction, a bit of an interruption, and we're back. Now, I'm not sure I'm never sure if I want to acknowledge that in the episode itself if people care

[00:49:58] **JOHN**: just a hard cut to like gonna the next thing.

[00:50:01] **JOHN**: I have a couple last points on this episode. Where, Where were you at?

[00:50:05] **JOSH**: uh, again, I remembered not loving this episode that much and I knew its reputation one thing that really struck me is the degree to which it is , so well constructed in terms of seeding all of these major plot lines and major elements of the world that would factor in later. And yet, when you were watching this in 1994. You would see none of it. And it made me wonder, you know, given where we are now in the end of 2025 in the United States I wonder what maybe were happening that we Disregarded or didn't take seriously or didn't see the relevance of that led us to this moment, You know, I think broadly speaking the idea that like what happens on the internet is not real life. Like that is clearly no longer true. Like the internet is real life and real life is the internet. I think that the cesspools on the internet that breed the most. Vial viruses and infections can jump from virtual world and spread into the real world much more quickly and easily than I think we thought was possible. I think the other thing too is probably just like the rise of social media.

[00:51:23] **JOHN**: You know, the, the, the show parallels some of that in its discussion, not in its production. JMS starts is one of the first major television producers, writers, directors, et cetera, to have a direct. Interaction with legions of fans outside of conventions. He, there, he was on the a OL message boards and then later you know, even active on Twitter, all kind, you know, every platform until about 10 years. N Now on Patreon, which is much more gated because to quote Cory Doctorow, the entire thing, internet, all these components, the social media got enshittified. But he was there as a pioneer discussing this show with details and details for these casts, I always have the Lurkers Guide up at the very least to look at those things that he said and all those back and forths on the message boards. It's amazing. You don't have that for other shows now. He's, he'd taken a little bit far. I don't know if you heard about recently, there's a website b five books.com, which had I only recently learned about, they just closed their doors. They had published tons of books and works on Babylon 5 in collaboration with JMS. And a lot of his commentary, updated commentary, you got some of them very nice. I did not nab them before they closed, sadly. So, I will have to rely on the goodwill of others to get those.

[00:52:35] **JOSH**: The only thing I have are the script volumes. I have a handful of the other things, ultimately those interested me less than um, the. JMS is commentaries and the scripts themselves. And then I also have the other voices volumes. That's the same format. It's a collection of the scripts primarily from season one and season two that were written by writers other than JMS.

[00:52:55] **JOHN**: That makes sense. I mean, that's the best of it. But it is sad to see the end of an era for something like that. So, I mean, there are just so many extraordinary resources and things for fans. It's absolutely wild. And I think that you know, knowing that, and seeing how he took advantage of social media of the internet, especially at its inception. And how that's changed and how he's pulled back from it is a direct mirror to what we're seeing now. You're right. It wasn't just out there in the ether out there in cyberspace. It's had such a profound effect on us. And all these shows. Babylon 5 included, had computers very much in service to us, and they were really just extensions of what we imagined computers would be in the eighties and nineties. It's a different, we're in a different future. we may not be integrating with 'em on the neurological level with Neuralink yet. That's coming at some point, but they're integrated to our lives in countless ways, and they're influencing us and warping us in ways we never anticipated. So would there have been episodes about that? Oh, definitely. there are alleg to it here and there. You can probably create, but. It's a scary thing that I think the warnings that the show contained weren't because it was saying this is gonna happen tomorrow, but it might happen the day after tomorrow. And we're there now. We're there now We're, we're seeing the nativism, you know, Earth First, we gotta focus on our own authoritarianism. The suspicion cast everywhere. I mean, people are so incredibly suspicious. And this episode is weird in that sense that the vibe you get from that reporter is one of such skepticism

[00:54:25] **JOSH**: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:27] **JOHN**: Of one and 500 to one, yes. Babylon 5, 1 through 4 were destroyed. Well, four vanished into another time as we know, but why, is there this constant push pull tension in human beings of let's go try to accomplish amazing thing. Oh no. We shouldn't do anything like that. We have to look completely inward. These elections this past week are literally those two forces manifesting and conflicting. Let's try to reach out. Let's try to do something. Let's try to be incredibly inclusive and progress. And the others saying, oh no, we don't do anything like that. We have to completely turn around and look inwards and we need to find out who our enemies are and punish them. I think the scariest thing is for people who need that is when they're told there isn't an enemy at this moment. So you create one. At this point in the show, yes, we know in hindsight the shadows are beginning to wake up now. Ironically because of Interplanetary Expeditions, the shell corporation, front company, for weapons, bio research corporations that work with EarthDome, that it's interplanetary Expeditions that wakes the shadows up. Like

[00:55:33] **JOSH**: That's a good point. That, that yeah, I don't remember exactly, but later on in the show, uh, doesn't Delenn say something to the effect of they're returning sooner than we thought, and we don't have time to prepare like that is because of these same forces, this um, you know, profit motive plundering for secrets that they can exploit.

[00:55:52] **JOHN**: Yeah,

[00:55:53] **JOSH**: It's because of IPX.

[00:55:54] **JOHN**: It's because of IPX and their really dodgy ways of doing things. And it's and Anna Sheridan got sold on, on, on the vision that they were promoting, which was the positive, oh, look at progress while being incredibly cynical on the backend for profits. So there she was, You know, and as a result, she herself became corrupted by the Shadows in a horrific way. Wow. There's a lot there. What? You know, you have to wonder, w was that just one of the throwaway lines that this is gonna be IPX? No, no. Knowing the shows we know it. I think that was designed to be, yep. Here's the first time we mentioned IPX, and then as it comes out, there it is, there is Mr. Morden and Anna Sheridan. It all comes together. But you're right that that's the scariest part is that the shadows were going to come back, but it is because of the companies that they came back quicker.

[00:56:39] **JOSH**: I was reading JMS's commentary in volume one of the scripts they published And he was saying, the technology of that Ikarran weapon that merges with Nelson. know, you see the parallels between how that operates and how we learned the shadow vessels also operate. And he was saying if you view the shadow vessels as like. The Air Force or the Navy, that weapon is the infantry. And he was saying that that was absolutely shadow technology left over from the last war. So, the intention I think in his mind was there, the idea that. You know, he really is seeding things for very specific reasons.

[00:57:18] **JOSH**: not Even just thematically to get you used to the idea that like, there's organic technology it can merge with human hosts to create a weapon. It's literally the same technology that. They will be facing later. I thought that was very interesting. other thing too, you were talking about the sort of antagonistic stance of the reporter that read very realistically to me in terms of, You can tell what a reporter personally believes when they're in an interview and they're playing devil's advocate, like how well they play it. And from how she came off. sort of antagonistically asking these loaded questions you're like, oh, so this is what people on earth are seeing in the news that sort of, tenor of conversation That question of should we even be out there? Why are we doing this? Is always kind of informing everything that they see. And JMS also said in his commentary, he knew the role, he wanted the media to play in the Earth's Civil War arc. And in order to do that he had to establish ISN in the background first. And this was a way to do that. you know, which is. Something also very distinct from Star Trek. We get a little of it later in Deep Space Nine with the Federation News Service. But the, I, there's no sense that like, Picard and Riker, like, you know, waking up and reading the morning newspaper on their view screens. So this idea that how reality is mediated through the media, mediated through the media, how it's negotiated through the, the lens of how the media reports on things is front and center in this show. And once again, speaks to. His motivation wasn't just, I have this certain vision That's a little more grounded, so to speak than Star Trek. So, I will have the media in this universe, and it's also. As showcased in this episode. a very effective, tool for exposition. It's not just that he knew that this show was actually about how a democracy, descends into authoritarianism and how the media is a part of that. And in order to tell the story of the media's role in that, he had to set up ISN now. So that's what he was thinking at the beginning of the show, which again, my understanding of what the show was in his mind. Has changed since we've started watching it through this lens.

[00:59:43] **JOHN**: Isn't that interesting? the stuff we're finding along through this, I think that's why I went back and was able to watch this episode and see it, see the extra levels that writers put into it. Even if by their own admission it was their least, favorite. I think he said he wished the episode would just disappear. Yeah. See, I think it's charming. I think seeing just how wooden the actors are and how they don't really know yet how to interact with each other is kind of funny. I will say this, I like Garibaldi in this episode. I think he's the standout and I think he's the most he's closest to his character, but it's fun to see him before his fall. Really well before his fall. I think that, here's my, here's my judgment on Garibaldi too. This is another random thing, but the way he had two falls, there's the season four and then another one in season five. I was like, are you done with him yet? You're telling the same story. That's why season five doesn't really work for me on a whole host of levels,

[01:00:38] **JOSH**: Well, they're connected.

[01:00:39] **JOHN**: they are connected. They are connected. It felt very like, I don't know, kicking him while he is down.

[01:00:46] **JOSH**: so that's so interesting though because the reason you become susceptible to some sort of an addiction like that is because you are, you know, self-medicating your way through The trauma of some traumatic experience or situation. So, for me, that actually plays very realistically in a very similar way to the revelation from The Deconstruction of Falling Stars, that in 500 years we go through all this again. he's depicting he's showing us the natural. Tendencies of human psychology and human group psychology. And yeah, I think for me, like the idea that he would go through what he went through in season four, that it's not something he would snap out of.

[01:01:29] **JOSH**: He would have to go, he would've to fall even farther. From there, but to your point, yeah, you're right. That's a bummer. Like that sucks and it's not pleasant to

[01:01:39] **JOHN**: It's It's not. And, And if you like the character, you don't wanna see it happen over and over again because. I really like this version of Garibaldi, like this part of his character arc and maybe, you know what I mean? And look at it. He also like, his hair looked great, you know? He made the most of what he was beginning to lose. He really had this funny, it was very like, that was up to this episode, said everybody aged fast and got weathered looking. By season four, they all physically transformed in ways that like, yes, whenever you watch a show, go back to Star Trek and Next Gen everybody looks, you know, super young. I mean Riker, for example, super young. And then he becomes like. You know, but there, there's something about this show where the characters really do age except for Ivanova. Ivanova literally never ages. She is amazing. She just looks like this fierce commander, the entire series. But you know, you see Garibaldi, you see Franklin goes through it. And physically transforms. Sheridan, I mean, he transforms twice and maybe it's just the haircuts, but still, like he goes through different versions of himself season to season. And it makes me wonder what would we have gotten from Sinclair? Because Sinclair has two hairstyles in this episode. He has his normal like, well, coifed, tall hair and then that messy wet hair when he's going into it in the battlefield. And this was the episode where you wondered had Michael O'Hare been with a show, was the P ts D storyline gonna focus more in Sinclair because they got a lot of that in the first season, no doubt. But that's, they're starting. What was a story that is still hard to tell in modern times. And it was approached. Wow. I'm like, wow, this seems so familiar. It was so familiar in that sense of. Garibaldi comes in to try to talk to him about this, that was one that was the beginning of great character moments of the show. if you remember this is, you know, remembering this is the first episode filmed. This is their first time trying to see, well, how do these characters interact with each other? What is their personal relationship? And when Sinclair stops and says, you know, are you done? Have you said enough? And then Garibaldi, you know, stands up as government says, listen I heard what you said. Or says something to that effect. He says, and I don't have an answer for you, and I think I should. That's who you start seeing, that these characters are meant to be very three dimensional. They're meant to be. Relatable in all the good and bad. And it's also I, I, I thought he was gonna start talking about the Battle of the Line. But Garibaldi sets it up really well with, like, this is what happened when people who went through the war, they found definition, they found themselves in that moment of crisis, and it gave them meaning. And now, 10 years after, the only way to recreate that is to put oneself into harm at every situation imaginable. And then of course, that's setting up for just a few episodes later when Sinclair is gonna start reaching out to Garibaldi to say, Hey, I need some help here, but I also, there's something real that happened. I have this missing 24 hours in the Battle of the Line, can you start investigating it? So even these subtle moments were the buildup. And I just, I appreciate that so much. Rewatching it.

[01:04:38] **JOSH**: um, And it's also really great I think we've spoken about this before, the way JMS is able to really meld the larger story and the personal story, it's

[01:04:48] **JOHN**: Mm-hmm.

[01:04:48] **JOSH**: you brought up the missing 24 hours when you hear about it, it's like, oh, like, that's like a plot mystery thing. But. Framing it in this way that you just described it, it's like, yeah, but that comes out of this real PTSD experience that he had from seeing a lot of combat in this horrific war, in that traumatizing experience of losing his whole squad in the Battle of the Line. And it comes out through these these character moments. I also think it's really. Sweet. Maybe a little unusual for the time. I mean, even potentially, but this is an example of a really nurturing male friendship that I don't think you see depicted in TV a lot. Ironically in The Gathering, we had a very similar scene between Sinclair and his girlfriend Carolyn Sykes where he talks about his experience in the war and the Battle of the Line and all that stuff. That's kind of dynamic you expect to see know, the male lead is only vulnerable with the female lead when they're quote unquote allowed to be vulnerable. But Sinclair's relationship with Garibaldi is actually, very well-rounded. I'm almost a little disappointed we didn't get to see it fully realized. Because obviously Sinclair Michael O'Hare leave the show at the end of the season. So, that is, that's infection. I think we had a lot to chew on in this episode.

[01:06:06] **JOHN**: We, we got through a long slog. we had to do work for this one, but it was actually worth it and I appreciate you uh, putting it up there in the queue because there's. There's a lot there for it. Again, wouldn't suggest this for an intro to Babylon 5 as an episode, but go back and rewatch it if you're looking to reconnect with the original era of Babylon 5, that early production time, and see the value in what you may not have seen back in 1993. Wow.

[01:06:30] **JOSH**: The show also has one of my favorite lines that I didn't know was in this episode toward the end Ivanova says, you need me, I'll be over there getting drunk with the rest of the aliens. And with that yeah, I think next week let's let's try the illusion of truth.

[01:06:45] **JOHN**: I think that we have a lot to say. interesting episode to do right now.

[01:06:47] **JOSH**: Well, we hope you enjoyed this conversation and as always, we are lastbesthopeb5.com and lastbesthopeb5 at Gmail. Reach out, let us know if there's an episode or topic that you would like to hear us discuss or if you just have any feedback. And we leave you with the idea that sometimes peace is just another word for surrender.