A Call to Arms

Jeff: Welcome to Babylon 5 for the first time, not a star Trek podcast. My name is Jeff Akin and I am the one who was,

Brent: And I'm Brent Allen and I am the one who will be.

Jeff: we're watching Babylon five for the first time for you. The one who is

Brent: That's right. Jeff and I are two veterans, star Trek podcasters who have just finished our initial run through Babylon five for the very first time. Now we're tackling the movies and this week we're watching a call to arms. And while we're doing that, we're doing the star Trek thing where we overanalyze everything and we try to look for messages that really just aren't there.

Jeff: sometimes they are other things that are here. Sometimes are really easy references to Star Trek for us to make. And we don't want to do that because Brent, this is not a Star Trek podcast. So to keep us from doing that, we play a game called the rule of three. This is a game that limits us to no more than three references to Star Trek per episode in total.

That's it. No substitutions, exchanges, or refund.

Brent: And Jeff, what happens if we make one of those references?

Jeff: You're going to hear this.

Brent: Well, we like those kinds of games. Another game that we like to play happens at the end of the show, where we make a prediction about what next week's episode, or in this case, movie is going to be about without ever actually having seen it or read descriptions or really tried to even look at thumbnails or anything like that.

All we're doing is going based off the title alone. Well, this is the part where we play a little game called.

Jeff: I don't have the drop.

Brent: It's time to pay the piper. Yeah, whatever. We're not, we said we weren't doing that for this, for

Jeff: We did. I don't like that drop. I didn't like

Brent: Okay, fine. Well, Hey, we need to change that part in the notes then it

Jeff: Oh, it's still the old one.

Brent: well, it actually is probably, yeah, it's changed. I'm just on autopilot

Jeff: There's that too, right? It's a,

Brent: Well, this is the part of the show where we revisit our prediction from last week and see just how close we were. So Jeff, what did you say? A call to arms was going to be about.

Jeff: I thought this was going to be the telepath war. We were going to have a call to arms over the whole thing. And while it got a mention in this movie, it was not about the telepath war. What did you think it was Brent?

Brent: I mustering of the new cast for crusade. Because we know that this is the lead in for the show crusade. And this is the, something's going to happen and they're going to have to gather all the members of the cast of crusade and bring them into the show. And this basically is going to be like the gathering, you know, where we, we assemble the team.

Yeah.

Jeff: Well, we'll find out if any of them are on the team when we get into Crusade.

Brent: Yes, we will.

Jeff: I suppose. Because, spoiler alert, some of the cool people in this one died during the movie. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, about cool ones or people dying or Crusade or any of this stuff, Brent, will you refresh the memories of me and all of the people watching or listening as to what A Call to Arms was about.

Brent: Okay. Well, first, let me just apologize for what is about to happen.

Have you ever had the feeling that you were being watched? You know, you sort of get those little hairs on the back of your neck standing up and you look around because you just know someone's there watching you. Well, apparently neither Michael Garibaldi or John Sheridan have ever felt that because they're totally being watched by some dark hooded, shadow lurking British speaking white guy, which totally means he's the bad guy of the film, right?

We'll come back to that in a moment. It's been five years. Since the ISA was founded and president Sheridan is looking to make good on his bid to upgrade the white star fleet with destroyer type vessels, using a combination of using a combination of Vorlon and Minbar technology made with earth funds and good old American know how, but it looks like Michael Garibaldi CEO of Edgar's Hampton Garibaldi industries based on Mars.

Has the contract they're meeting for Sheridan's first look at the new ship, the Excalibur while on his tour Sheridan with a spiffy new haircut straight out of 1999 gets, sorry,

Jeff: It's so true.

Brent: I saw you react out of the corner of my eye. I'm sorry. Gets a message from his VP who also happens to be I'm sorry.

Jeff: I just, my very first note.

Brent: Oh, yeah.

Jeff: Hey, Woodstock 99 is calling and wants their hair back.

Brent: Yeah. That

Jeff: Oh,

Brent: I'm going to start that in the middle of that sentence

Jeff: okay. Yeah.

Brent: know that I can read the first part of that without losing it again. So gets a message from his VP who also happens to be his main squeeze and his wife, Dylann will Sheridan like any smart man who will Sheridan like any smart man wants to take this one in his quarters.

But instead of it being a message from Dylann. It's just a big bunch of jumbled letters and words and colors and shapes. And hey, hey, hey, I, I recognize this. This is exactly what Bester used to activate the mind bleepery that he left in Garibaldi's head. Well, later that night, our Marcus Cole wannabe bad guy comes to Sheridan in his sleep.

Aha! I told you this was some sort of telepath thing. Except it's not. This guy, Galen, is a technomage. Yeah, techno mages are in this movie. All right. He was one that didn't go beyond the rim. Apparently. And he and his friends have just been hiding out. Galen has come to take Sheridan on a mind trip that would make Ebenezer Scrooge, Ebenezer Scrooge jealous.

Sheridan to Dalton 7. Dead world. One that was destroyed by a weapons test by an alien race who just so happens to return at that exact moment. They're actually there. Cutting short their visit. And with that, Sheridan wakes up. And it's still Christmas morning. Well, while all of that was happening way back on Babylon five, cause Hey, Hey, remember this place over here?

Well, a new person is coming onto the station, which totally means that's the bad guy, right? Only this one's a lady and she is knifed up. I mean, this girl's got some weapons on her. Her name is Doreena Nafil and she has just come aboard. She's looking for the thieves guild during her search. She gets knocked out and she wakes up on that same planet that Sheridan and Galen were just on.

She has a little freak out moment because right behind her is wait for it. Sheridan Doreena doesn't know. And doesn't care who he is. She lunges for him. And then he suddenly turns into a drock, but oh, wait, he's not Sheridan or a drock. It's Galen and he gives her a message about not throwing away her shot.

Oh, all right, Alexander Hamilton. Now, when Doreena comes to, she's found the Thieves Guild, the head of the guild, your classic smarmy, slick haired dude who wears shades and doors. Welcomes her into the guild after she she hulks out and breaks through the chains that they have her bound in well back on The Excalibur, they're just about to commence with a weapons test of their own.

You see they have two guns One is just like what they have on the current fleet of white stars The other is pretty much what they had on the Death Star and that one uses so much power that the ship is gonna be defenseless and nearly out of power for about 60 seconds while it recharges Galen returns to Sheridan and shows an Galen returns to Sheridan and shows in an Galen returns to Sheridan and shows him an image of Zaha Dom.

He tells Sheridan that Thera had been leaving Zaha dom and they're gearing up for war and they're coming for Earth. It's a revenge sort of thing for what happened with the shadow war, and Sheridan must now figure out how to stop them and make that happen. And with that, Galen's gone. Sheridan orders them to hightail it for Babylon 5.

Back on B5, Sheridan hooks up with Doreena, and the two bond over their Galen experiences. And soon, they meet a third person. Captain Anderson, commander of the EAS Cheron. The three, all having had visions of Galen dancing in their heads. begin to work together and they hijack the Excalibur and join up with Captain Jack Sparrow on the open seas as pirates.

Arrgh! Okay, not really, but not so fast because they actually commandeer another ship, the Victory, and the two ships head out for Dalton VII. There, they find a dead Drazi and they discover that the Drak have gotten their hands on some leftover shadow tech. Namely, the very efficiently named stuff that we have here in the Babylon 5 universe.

A planet killer. Just then, Drok ships, and a lot of them, are on approach for the planet. And that's when all hell begins to break loose. The tensions for this episode are as high as they've ever been. Space battles commence, betrayal is unveiled, and it's really exciting stuff! Except someone forgot to tell the person who's writing the score for this movie because yikes.

I'm sure we're going to discuss more of that later. But back to the story, the Victory and the Excalibur both escape in one piece, jumping into hyperspace, making their way for Earth. Sheridan contacts Captain Lockley to get her to send help as well, and when they arrive at Earth, they join up with a large fleet, all gathered around Earth.

And the Drok drop out of hyperspace, and there's a bunch of pew pew pew, with a sweet look at Kern's, I mean, Captain Anderson's family. He declares that today is a good day to die and sacrifices himself and the victory and all the people on it to destroy the Death Star or the Drok planet killer. And just as the Drok turn to hightail it and run out of there, they release a plague cloud of a biogenic disease into Earth's atmosphere and they boogie out.

And with that immediate threat now out of the way, It's time to turn our attention to this bio plague. It seems like it wasn't really made for the humans. So we're okay right now, but it looks like it's going to take, what do you say, Jeff, five years. That's a good run, right? Five years before the plague adapts to humans and begins to destroy all life on earth.

Well, President Sharon, President Sheridan, ever the great leader that he is, realizes that a cure must be out there somewhere. And we've got five years to find it. So, he assigns the Excalibur to be the ship to go and look for it, coolly setting up the plot of the next spin off series, which is clearly gonna run for exactly five years.

Jeff, what did you think of A Call to Arms? Mm hmm.

Jeff: I think I enjoyed your recap more than the movie. And I liked the movie. I, this was the first one of the movies since in the beginning that actually felt like a movie. Um, you know, the other ones, this had like cinematic pacing. Uh, the, the story was a movie kind of story, right? Like, like a lot of the stuff for the, when I watched it the second time, I realized like they have the video game kind of already built up, right?

Like, Protagonist has some weird, like, existential experience that leads on you to the mission to put your team together. You have to find the soldier, the thief, the scientist. Then you get your first boss fight. Yeah, and the mage. Yeah, um.

Brent: The cleric.

Jeff: Get that guy you do, but, uh, then you get your first boss fight. You can't win that one, right?

So you have to go away and then your mission changes to get people to believe you, and then the big final battle where everything comes together. So like, this was a video game. This is a movie here was arc whole thing was in there.

Brent: As I say, you just described the classic hero's tale.

Jeff: It's exactly what it is exactly. And I mean, just beat for beat it's a little paint by numbers ish and how it did it, but it still, I mean, it, Did

Brent: why it's a great story

Jeff: exactly.

Brent: It

Jeff: mean, it totally works. And I, and I think like, I feel like, especially last week in river, like it didn't really follow it. And if, or if it did, it just stretched it out over so long.

Whereas in this one, I didn't feel bored. Like there were periods of time that were longer than maybe should they, then they, there were periods of time that were maybe longer than they should have been, but. Not distractingly so like in third space and river of souls, but this was totally without a doubt a made for TV movie.

Like it reeked of that like not quite. Brand smell, you know, like, Oh, these are, these are great Oreos. Kinda, kinda.

Brent: you believe in that little aftertaste at the end?

Jeff: Just not quite right. Do you know, but it's like there was some weird, like the lighting was definitely TV grade lighting. The acting was not good. In this, like there was some pretty, there was some pretty bad acting by some pretty principle people in this story.

That was, uh, pretty off-putting for me at least. Um, there a lot of weird camera angles that happened and I was thinking about it. How have you ever, I'm, I'm sure you have, most people have ever seen a movie and read the book and the book was just better.

Brent: always, which is why, which is why, by the way, always watch the movie first. Cause you're just gonna be disappointed if you read the book first.

Jeff: Exactly.

Brent: Just watch the movie, enjoy that, and then go find out all the other stuff, the really cool stuff that happens in the book.

Jeff: I feel like this is a, I feel like this is a movie. The, the book would've been exponentially better. There were scenes I was watching where I'm like, this is a really cool idea. And there's some really good storytelling stuff happening here. But Oh my God, between the lighting, the effects, the acting and this stuff, I am completely distracted and out of it.

And especially thieves guild, that whole thieves guild thing. I was almost out at that point. I'm almost like, no, I can't. I just can't.

Brent: The only thing that that guy needed was a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Like he had the hair, he had the sunglasses, he was propped up on the thing with his leg up, he had the girls around him, he just needed the cigarette and it would have completed everything.

Jeff: If you can do this, hey, we can do this for you. Like, oh man, it was, ugh. But as I was watching it, I'm like, if I read the novelization of this scene, it would have been intense. The, I think the writing and the storytelling was really good, but It's not great execution. And then, and then there's the um, I don't know what to call it.

Is it music? The soundtrack? The sounds?

Brent: I was gonna say, in order to be music it actually has to be notes and a melody and

Jeff: Like have a meter and a key and some stuff and um, yeah,

Brent: this felt, you know what this one felt more like? And again, we'll dive into this and these are your thoughts, not mine. I'm sorry, but this one felt like, um, there's a difference between like classic art, impressionistic art and abstract art.

Jeff: hmm,

Brent: This was abstract music. Meaning

Jeff: okay, yeah.

Brent: wasn't like, it's just, let's put a little thing here and we'll throw that there.

And none of it's going to make sense, but you know, it's going to be beautiful.

Jeff: it's art. It's art.

Brent: but we're going to sell it for a crap ton of money and make some fools. I mean, have some people really get into,

Jeff: I, I absolutely respect the decision to try something new. I get that. You had five solid years and a couple of movies of just incredible music and shake it up. Try it. I totally respect that. I just hope that this was discussed in a lessons learned conversation after production, and we don't go back to this well, ever again.

Brent: Oh, Jeff, I got some bad news for you, buddy. This guy scores crusade.

Jeff: Are you, are you kidding me?

Brent: But I've also since found out after crusade gets done, he never scores anything else in his life.

Jeff: Okay. There's some justice. There's some justice that happens and that's just really not encouraging at all moving into that. Oh, what were your first thoughts on this one? But

Brent: Jeff, I hear what you're saying. I really do. This wasn't a movie. This was two episodes and it was two very different episodes. It didn't move like a movie to me. It didn't flow like a movie to me. It was slow and it was plotting, but in the way that great television is slow and plotting,

Jeff: Okay,

Brent: you know what I mean? Like, and I'm saying this as a positive for the thing.

Like this wasn't the movie that's just too, too, too, too, too Willie tightly compacted. This was a movie. This was a television episode that was taking its time. It was putting pieces in places. It was showing you different things. It was moving things around. I like you. I loved the story structure.

Jeff: mhm,

Brent: I can see JMS writing this.

Just going. This is a killer killer set of episodes. I want to put this on record. I'm going to say this right at the front. I liked this one a lot, but this to me. Was a tale of two episodes. The first half of this was awesome. I loved the first half. I was laughing. I was hurrying. I w I was yipping, you know, Galen, you talk about that in the, in the story structure, I've got this note, Galen serves as the profit.

You always get that profit character. That is the one who comes in. Tell us the hero, what's going on and sends them off on their mission. That's literally what he did. Hey, here's what's happening. Here's what the truck are doing. You got to go figure it out. Now I can't help you. Like that's literally what he did.

And I loved it. Once they got off or once they got out on the ship and they're off on the adventure. Then it turned into just this log. It's like it lost all of its energy in the second half, but it shouldn't have because in the second half, there were space battles and big explosions and there's dramatic tension and there's acting, and I thought it was decent acting, maybe not like the best, but it was a good TV acting young guy was fine.

But Holy cow. The whole back half was. It's just a snooze fest. And I really 100 percent Jeff blame the score.

Jeff: can

Brent: I blame the score because I can see what JMS was writing on paper. And like you, I applaud the, the attempt to go in a different direction than what had come before to set this apart from what had been before.

I applaud that, but it didn't work.

Jeff: did it not,

Brent: It just didn't work when a score is added to a film, it supplements everything. And for the most part, you don't even notice sometimes the score just overwhelms it overtakes me like, holy cow, this is scored so well, and it becomes like its own character, but most of the time, you just don't even notice what I noticed. Was the lack of an actual score. It was just sound noises. Just with just weird sound editing pieces. Also, I thought the first half did an excellent, excellent job of setting up the second half. It raised the stakes. It added complications. It was that typical tightly packed episode that JMS is so good at

Jeff: mhm,

Brent: the second half. The second episode, the part two, if you will, to me, Jeff, it felt like nine minutes of story spread out over 45 minutes,

Jeff: oh, okay,

Brent: but that's not unusual for two part episodes.

Think, think about most two part episodes. That second episode is all the pew, pew, pew, because everything got set up in the first half, right? The second half is usually the action packed portion of the show. And this one was no different. There was action and lots of it in the second half. And it was probably brilliant.

It just wasn't supported by a score in this experiment really highlights the importance of a score in a way that I haven't seen since a bonus feature and a portion of an old VeggieTales movie. And what they did in that, in that thing, I've got the, should I play it, Jeff? It won't matter for the audio people. They won't get it. Can I, can you give me four minutes?

Jeff: yeah, yeah,

Brent: Okay. I'm going to, I want, I'm going to show this because what this shows, this is going to be for our YouTube. Oh no, I can't do that because this is probably going to be copyrighted

Jeff: it totally

Brent: and it's going to knock us out.

So I'm not, so let me describe it. And what I'll do is I'm going to put a link to

Jeff: Oh yeah.

Brent: on our Twitter and Jeff, let's make sure, make a note. You're the, you're the person who does stuff. Let's put a link down in the show notes and Oh, can we even maybe like pop up a link like here on the screen for the

Jeff: Yeah, we can try.

Brent: But I will, we'll try to remember you're, you're my guy who remembers crap like that. I just come up with the ideas. You execute. Uh, I'm the prophet. You're the Sheridan. Uh, anyway, but what, what happens is it's just a bonus feature where they take this really intense part of the film where this dude's chilling in water and there's a big whale that's going to come by and eat him maybe possibly.

And it's, it's the tension of jaws, you know, duh, duh, duh. You know, it's, it's that kind of a tense situation. And what they did was they actually just removed the score and just showed it. And it's just, and literally it's just a dude like sitting in, in the water going, up?

Jeff: Just like,

Brent: And then they go back and they play it with the score and all of a sudden the tension and the dramatic elements and all of that is there.

And you would never really notice it. It just shows the importance of a score. It's a, it's a great side-by-side comparison of what happens, of how a great scene. Can be killed by the lack of a score in the end, Jeff, I was ready to gush all over this movie, but there's an old saying it's not how you start, it's how you finish and this movie started great, but it ended dog poop.

Jeff: Wow.

Brent: I'm ultimately turned off by this episode or by this movie. Because of how it ended. And that's really unfortunate because I really, really think JMS wrote a great film. And I think Janet Greek, who I think was the director directed a great film. It was just ruined, ruined. And I know Jeff, that there are so many people out there who are.

Agree with us because they've all talked about it and they've all our discord, our Patreon, the comments on YouTube from the Brent watches video. Every like, there's been a handful of people are like, actually, this one was ahead of its time. And yeah, you're wrong. I'm sorry. You're just,

Jeff: we're still not to that time, so we

Brent: we're not there yet.

We're not there yet, but I, you know, I have to lay there and just, I don't want to consume our entire conversation with just talking about how bad the score is. But I just want to, I can't get over how much this one ruined the film

Jeff: And I, and I think, 'cause I, I, I do want to get it, I don't wanna make the whole conversation that, but you, you and I are both, I'm, I'm a musician. You're a sound guy. Like our whole background is in. Audio of some kind and the the choices so it would I think they use the exact same synthesizer they used for season one of Star Trek, the next generation.

And for the original Battlestar Galactica, like it just had that like late seventies, mid eighties, like kind of weird sound to stuff. And what made it two choices made it the worst one was it was so upfront in the mix.

Brent: Hmm.

Jeff: it overpowered dialogue the the mix of the music itself was weird There were whole sections where the thing you heard was the hi hat And that was it and like some weird stuff happening underneath it.

Just it was sonically Sonically offensive is what it

Brent: Yes. That's what, like, it takes you out of it. You're like, what is this that I'm like, and there were parts of like, they, they muted the dialogue and just had this going

Jeff: that's the second thing.

Brent: it's like, what are you doing?

Jeff: They're in the middle of the big firefight and people are yelling orders and you see them yelling and stuff happening and explosions. And all you hear is, and

Brent: what I'm talking about. I'm going, that's like the, the, the musical version of abstract art, because it wasn't even really music. Yeah. It was just sounds and a lot of times it wasn't even sounds. It was just silence. And it's like, what is this?

Jeff: that's why I want to be clear in our conversation. I think we're saying the same thing. We didn't just not like this music. It is objectively. From a, from an audio and a film construction stamp. This is objectively bad.

Brent: Yes.

Jeff: There's nothing redeeming about this at all. And my, and I,

Brent: is not a disagreement of art that is subjective. No, this is, this, this is bad. Yeah.

Jeff: is, this is a gallery, an art gallery thing with my daughter's kindergarten sculpture plopped in there.

Brent: Yeah. Yeah, and you know what, Jeff, listen, let's, let's, there are people out there very few and far between But there are some people out there who are like actually this was a good score. And you know what? I'm glad that you enjoy stuff like this. I am glad but

Jeff: You're wrong.

Brent: You

Jeff: You're wrong. And it's great that you enjoyed it. That's awesome. You can totally enjoy that. That's fine. It's just not good.

Brent: Yeah, and it's it's it's It's not really a score like that's the thing like it's not a score.

It's not music. It's not it's just oh, no.

Jeff: we're going to go, I'm going to go too deep and I'm having, like,

Brent: going to piss off a

Jeff: stems and your everything, I don't think we are. I,

Brent: not. We're gonna piss off like six people here

Jeff: I

Brent: that's all there is. I don't even know that it's six.

Jeff: it's, and you know what, again, super glad you enjoyed it, but I think that's just a great overarching thing that there was just a fundamental one on one thing that ruined this overall.

Brent: Yeah,

Jeff: Now let's take that set that

Brent: you and I both

Jeff: it

Brent: see I'm sorry you and I both see the brilliance of what JMS put down on paper

Jeff: exactly. And that's what I want to get. That's what I want to jump into. So we acknowledge this move away. Let's talk about these story beats and some of the stuff that was, was great. And some of the stuff that was,

Brent: Yeah. And JMS, if you're watching this because I know you watch Jeff and Brent all the time, right? Um, you did great. Just let's just say you did great.

Jeff: you made one bad choice. You know, let this guy do the thing. And apparently continued that, but you know what? Maybe we get into crusade and maybe he's learned a

Brent: You know what? You know what? Think about what JMS has been doing for the last five years, though. He's he wrote every episode from the mid part of season two all the way to the end with the exception of one. And let his buddy Neil Gaiman do that one. And he's written all these movies and he's tried to get the the show was canceled and then it wasn't.

He closed up the show and then he had to reboot the show and had to recast some stuff. And he how long did it take him to get? And then he had the whole thing with Star Trek where they were trying to Put him down and he didn't, and he gave him the biggest middle finger throughout the course of the show, which was awesome.

JMS. I loved it. And

Jeff: he gets

Brent: off trying to do a spinoff show and, and, and reboot like a whole new thing with all the he's, you know what, at some point a brother just needs to sleep.

Jeff: Yeah, it'd be good. So he gets one. This is his one. It's fine. We'll give it a pass.

Brent: Right.

Jeff: What did you think of watch my pivot here? What did you think of the Excalibur? The victory, the new ships.

Brent: I'm not impressed. I also think I have a lot of trouble sometimes understanding the co the, the scope and size of a ship. Seeing it on a screen

Jeff: That makes sense.

Brent: like the white stars are always, are supposed to be much bigger than whatever they are. In my mind, I feel like this ship should be so much bigger than whatever.

Thing and it just it's like a tube with like just these like prongs and I'm like,

yeah now that being said I love the fact that we're on a ship All right. Um, that we're not like on a station. This is, this one is on a ship and it's doing stuff on the ship. I like that. It's kind of Battlestar galactic key. Like it's not fully complete or with Battlestar galactic. It's like, eh, some stuff's kind of breaking down and it's not really that advanced.

This one is like super advanced, but not quite there yet. Like we're not done. We, you're trying to take this out of the oven before it's actually done. So I, I love like some of those parts of it. I liked the, um, uh, The bridge area,

Jeff: Yeah, that was

Brent: it looks different than, than anything we've really seen on a starship before.

Um, and I'm really looking at you Star Trek, uh, which, you know, there's the captain's chair and then there's the two people in front and then there's a person standing behind them, which is great for placing a camera in front of a set and shooting the show, shooting the scene. Like, but this one looked very different.

People were organized in a different way. And I, I enjoyed that part of it a lot. How

Jeff: They outright, they outright said it and I felt it, but they followed a submarine design where it's all lined up instead of in a circle. I like that. They even called it out. We're not putting people in a circle. Like this, we're putting it in a line and that's a hundred percent how it is on the boat where you got the people diving and driving.

You got the officer of the deck with the periscope of the stuff. You got the navigator right behind and then along the sides are, you know, different stations that are happening. But it did, it gave that, it gave us space ship feel to the whole thing. Like I, I felt like we were in space when we were on those ships.

The look, I'm with you though, the look of 'em from the outside. If it sounds to me like Excalibur's gonna be the ship and crusade. Because he's made, Sheridan makes out the research ship at the end, and if that is the case, it's going to take a while for this design to grow on me.

Brent: Hopefully we just don't get a whole lot of external shots of the ship.

Jeff: Yeah,

Brent: We just keep them all internal.

Jeff: It'll be fine. It'll be fine. I actually even liked external, the best external shot of the ship is when it shoots the main gun. That's kind of cool.

Brent: right. Well, because there you can see those little things that are sticking out. Cause like, they're all like totally the way the desk startups.

Jeff: I even liked, though, how it, like, sucked the power out so much they were dead in the water. That's such a great storytelling tool.

Brent: Well, it, it gives you that Achilles heel type thing, you know, because this ship is going to be way overpowered except for that thing right there,

Jeff: Well, you're dead in the water for a minute.

Brent: So you can't just use it. You

Jeff: I loved,

Brent: judicious.

Jeff: I loved Drake in this Drake was the contractor that Garibaldi had on board and he kept saying things like, uh, he's like, yeah, so it puts us out for, for 60 seconds. So it's awesome. Also you'll be dead in the water and a lot can, a lot can happen in a minute he says.

And then it has that cool, um, adaptive whole plating that will just absorb and dissipate 80%. Yeah. Of the the shots that come on it and he says but that 20 percent can sure add up fast That's like this dude's great. I really liked him as a character.

Brent: He was, um, he was fine. I liked the character. I feel like if they would have had a different actor, that character could have gone through the roof.

Jeff: Mm.

Brent: Like, like a Willie Garrison, like kind of a, you know what I mean? Like, uh, uh, somebody like that, somebody who could really just come in and own that role and, uh, not just being a guy like right now, Drake to me was just a guy, he's a jag.

But you give, you give him somebody who can just really elevate that role, say the same lines, be the same character, but can, can turn that into a character. Oh, it's been great.

Jeff: I love that good. Well, even with the actor he just came across as that like middle management guy Who's caught between all the, like the reality and then the executives that don't understand reality. And I think that he was good for playing that is just real life. Like, this is what a real life person in that role looks like.

But I couldn't agree more. You put a Willie Garson in there or somebody like that, where it's just like, you get that almost, uh, almost desperate lapdog quality to someone. No, it's just a little bit where it's like, there's so much more to them. I think that would have been a lot

Brent: Well, I mean that person who, who's kind of in control or wants to be in control, but they are also kind of getting walked on a little bit, you know, but they, they've got to make stuff happen. And, you know, it's

Jeff: I think about the guy in, um, star in and or in Star Wars. Did you ever watch that? Did you ever watch and or the Star Wars

Brent: I have not, it's on the list, but I have yet to watch Andor.

Jeff: It's it's some of the best television that has come out in this time. It's just such a great series, but it's been a while since I've seen it, but there's that middle management dude in the Empire who actually loses his job and then tries to come back. But like That type of character where he's willing to do whatever and just almost has that stink of desperation of getting to the top sort of thing.

I also think that with a better actor in there, the end with him would have made a lot more sense,

Brent: With the betrayal reveal and all that when he did that. I was just like, of course, like really,

Jeff: but also it was so dumb. It was just dumb. Hey, what? I care about this. Thank you. President Sheridan for hiring me. Um, I I'm from Mars and that means so much to me. Oh, well, the drach gave me a better offer.

Brent: my, my note here is I never understood or liked the turn from Drake. I just, it just, I just didn't really make all that much sense. Like

Jeff: mean, you could draw, you could draw a whole thing of like, he's just anti earth because they're anti Mars, but like blow up the planet level. Yeah. Didn't make sense. Even a little bit, but the Excaliburs did bring us a, well, actually it was on a, on a regular destroyer ship, but we got a captain Anderson

Brent: Yeah. Let's talk about Kern

Jeff: Yeah. We, we've had some top tier guest actors in Babylon 5, right? We've had David Warner, uh, Michael York. I'm sure there have been others. Michael York, people tell me he's a top tier actor.

Brent: um, Superman lady, death

Jeff: Yeah, that's right.

Brent: you know?

Jeff: These,

Brent: Hey, and you know what? No, listen. And we've had some top tier main actors,

Jeff: Yeah, that's the big thing.

Brent: people that have, I mean, Bruce Boxleitner, Peter jurassic mirror for, I mean, we can literally name the entire cast. The whole, if you're on the DVD cover, except for that Keer guy in season two, you're, you're just, you're phenomenal.

Like the show gets good actors

Jeff: really good actors.

Brent: most of the time. Mm-Hmm?

Jeff: cases like Deathwalker, in cases like David Warner and Grail, you get these kind of corny ish characters that they elevate to a level that's incredible. Tony Todd is that actor. Captain Anderson is just your milquetoast, I'm a captain in the Earth Force, guy. Which is great.

But with what Tony Todd brings to that, like was incredible. There were a couple of scenes with him specifically with his family. And then at the end, his end that it like, those could have been pretty dumb, uh, with in the wrong hands, but they were great. I thought he did such a great job with them. Also captain Anderson.

It's the first captain of the, uh, SSV Normandy and mass effect one. So

Brent: Oh really?

Jeff: there's that too

Brent: Oh, there you go. Mm-Hmm.

Jeff: when he was talking, so he's talking to his family,

Brent: Mm-Hmm.

Jeff: And his wife and it's just the, the classic, Hey honey, you know, I'm going on a, you know, I can't wait to be home, whatever. And then the daughter comes up and she says, uh, daddy, I was having a scary dream and then kind of moved on. It's the monsters and that theme carried through to, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to kill the monsters for you.

I was so hoping. Though that she would be like, yeah, I had this dream. There's this guy in a black cloak on this planet of fire. And like, she was sucked into the whole thing too. Like that would have been awesome. And weird at the same

Brent: It'd be very weird. That one would not have made sense, but

Jeff: It would have been cool. Speaking of dudes in black cloaks.

Brent: let's talk about Galen,

Jeff: Yeah, what do

Brent: please. Let's I w I'm waiting, I'm waiting to get to Doreen and Galen. These are the two I'm like, yes,

Jeff: Yeah, um. The thing I know about science fiction is they draw from British theatre pretty heavily for their actors. Because they can say the words in, you know, clear ways and whatever, plus they're often desperate enough for a gig that they'll Go ahead and sign on with this whatever sci fi show I've never heard of.

I don't know if anyone ever told this guy he's not on stage. You do not have to enunciate and project every single thing that you say.

Brent: but Jeff, it worked so great with drawl. Number two,

Jeff: But, oh my god,

Brent: John shook judge. Is that who was John shook?

Jeff: That's another thing of an actor elevating it. He made it work by the way he carried it. This guy did not. I was so bothered by him.

Brent: So my, my note for him was Galen equals bad, dark Anakin. And what I mean by that is Anakin, after he's already turned to the dark side, but before he goes to Darth Vader, but not good and considering what Hayden Christensen gave us, that's saying something he just was not as good. He just wasn't as good, but for whatever reason, Jeff, and I can't explain it.

I kind of like Galen. Yeah.

Jeff: why he works for me. I'll tell you why. He's a techno mage.

Brent: Yes.

Jeff: what I mean? And one that's cool, but also, of course he's a little over the top. Of course he's what self important and whatever. I, I need to, uh, self confess that I have a little more context. Into some of this story. So we talked about this a little bit coming in, but, uh, I'm, uh, one of our incredible, uh, council chambers members on our patron on Trey bought us some books and he got me the legions of fire trilogy, the Centauri trilogy, and I'm in the second book right now, the armies of light and dark about halfway through.

And. It's basically telling a lot of the story around this. And so I got to read about Galen and how he was part of the operation that didn't, wasn't successful, that brought that planet killer and death cloud into play for the Drak. But he also was working with three initiates into the techno mages. So like there's still, even though the techno mages have left and gone beyond the rim, There's still a crew of them there.

They're still bringing people up through the system. But the theme of the techno mages is they're very effective, but also very mysterious and self important in how they come across. And so with that added context from the novel, here we are again, with the novel giving us the stuff we need, I can watch Galen.

It can bother me. I can be really annoyed by it. And it can make total sense at the same time.

Brent: Interesting. I see a thing. I don't know that I was that bothered by Galen as much as just, he just wasn't that like he was just a bad dark Anakin, but once I found out he was a techno mage, to be honest, it, all my criticisms of him disappeared because he's a techno mage,

Jeff: yourself King Arthur at this point and I'll be fine with

Brent: if you're a tech, yeah, Michael York could come on and tell me he's a techno mage and I'm suddenly for him, it all, like it all makes more sense that way. I like Galen. Yeah, I hope we see more of Galen. It like, assuming that this is like the pilot of Crusade,

Jeff: Mm hmm.

Brent: right? Or this is the intro or whatever. I'm hoping that we see some of these characters going forward. We see Galen, we see, well obviously we're not gonna see Anderson. Um, we see Doreena, we see Drake.

No, Drake's not gonna be there. Um,

Jeff: Yeah, there weren't a lot of other characters introduced.

Brent: I was gonna, because like, I don't think Bruce Boxleitner or Jerry Doyle are in Crusade a bunch. I Like

Jeff: They might make big guest appearances, I would, you know, maybe, to

Brent: but like who else, who else would there be? Drock

Jeff: Oh, that could be

Brent: that

Jeff: Although I think it was, was it Marshall Teague?

Brent: Oh no, no. Oh, what? The Drock

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: no way. Now Alexander.

Jeff: Wayne Alexander, that's the one. Yeah, it was Wayne Alexander again, which is cool. He was also the Drazi, I think. Yeah, Marshall Teague was Talon.

Brent: yes. And infection dude. So, um, like the thieves guild boss guy. Totally. Let's see him again. No, let's not. Let's not.

Jeff: No, that was the worst. It was so bad. I even think that Thieves Guild thing here. Let's pivot over to Darina the Thieves Guild thing It's just so stupid we do gambling petty theft, you know the little stuff that no one Why do you have a guild for that? That's dumb. Like we're basically just two bit punks who, uh, hang out together a lot.

And then in the end, Sheridan and Doreena have kind of have this relationship. The thing that's kind of working out a little bit. Garibaldi's like, Oh, she's in the thieves guild. She's bad news. Who cares?

Brent: You know, you know, it would have been great is if we discovered that the thieves guild guy's name was Fagan. You don't catch that

Jeff: No, I'm not following.

Brent: uh, so in, uh, Charles Dickens, Oliver twist, you had Fagan who was like the head thief guild guy who had all the kids that went out and did all the petty theft, like if his name was Fagan, and this is what these, I'm going to take 10 percent and this, that, and the other.

And she's like, Cool. No problem. Like, why? Why am I coming to you then?

Jeff: Right. Yeah. What do you, what we give you, you give me a place to live. That's the value. I can also get one of those myself. I think

Brent: did you think? What did you think about the idea that that Doreena getting into the Thieves Guild, like, she wanted herself to get caught. At least that's the way I read it was she was trying to get caught so she could get in front of the thieves guild dude and be like, Hey, I'm here. Can I work like, is that all that really was, was I'm here.

Can I work?

Jeff: that's what I got out of it. Like, this is another thing that I think in a, in a novel or written together, it would have been so much better where look how great and how effective, cause his whole thing was, can't be that good. We gotcha. So yeah, cause I wanted. To be caught

Brent: Yeah,

Jeff: this came across just like, well, look, I wanted to be caught.

If he was a little bit more context behind that, there's some more meat on the bone. That could have been a really

Brent: well, like, and like, she's like, she has the thing where like, she breaks the handcuffs or whatever that she's in. And I was like, I was sitting there thinking about it later. Um, you remember the scene when Lita did that?

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: And you realize like she could have broken out of those things at any moment and she just hung out in them for a while.

Like that was bad. Like she really could have busted out of those things anytime she wanted to.

Jeff: Yeah. Bust out of those walked out of the room, the, the, the prison chamber, everything.

Brent: but here's the thing. I never got the feeling from her though, that she was in control of everything at the same time. Like, I think we were like with Lita, it was, you know, she, They're coming to her. They're trying to dictate terms to her. They're doing whatever. And she's just going along with them. And when she does that, you realize like, no, she is on a different level than you guys.

And I never got the feeling that Dorina was on a different level than all the other folks,

Jeff: Not at all.

Brent: you know?

Jeff: Not until literally, yeah, I think, I think so too. I didn't get that to literally like her last scene. When it was when she was Alexander Hamilton. Then it's like, Oh, she is good. Took that long to get to anything. I think it's kind of neat that she might be the last of her kind.

Brent: Right.

Jeff: It's kind of a cool

Brent: That's I mean, that's a that's the sort of Like character thing, like, is she really the last of her kind? Maybe she is. Maybe she isn't. Maybe we'll find somebody like it. It just leaves the door open for so much potential storytelling.

Jeff: Over the next five years on crusade, there's so many opportunities for character development and stuff for her. It'll be great. That's

Brent: somebody who's there and is one of her There's probably gonna be a whole colony on the other side of the Delta quadrant of her people there and she's gonna stop there and that's where they're gonna drop her off and she's gonna be the new ambassador of the the IAS I say

Jeff: to bring Neelix into the conversation,

Brent: Dude he's one of the best characters. I don't care what anybody says.

Jeff: especially when he wasn't on the show anymore. I don't disagree. I used to, but I've, I've, I've learned to see him differently. But, but yeah, at the end, like one of the very last scenes of the whole movie was Doreena. And I think it was Galen walking, um, out of, out of the, The terminal and I'm Babylon five

Brent: Mm

Jeff: and I read that as there's our plant for crusade like that's those are the people who are going to continue

Brent: hmm is Doreena and Galen

Jeff: if that I'm not sure it was Galen because he actually had like hair.

He had like the ring like, like, like it was not, not freshly shaven hair on his head. So I was like, isn't it? We didn't, there were no other techno mages we saw in person, so it has to be him.

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: They just kind of looked weird.

Brent: Yeah. So, I have a note here and I remember thinking this. Um, and it says this bad guy following pirate lady who is Doreena. Uh, which I don't know if this was Galen or if this was somebody else like right as she's getting captured to go into the thieves guild, but it says bad guy following pirate lady totally looked like Pete Wentz from Fallout boy. I absolutely thought that's who that was for a minute when he came on screen, I was like, whoa.

Jeff: Yeah, I think that was the, uh, Thieves Guild guy. That's so true though.

Brent: You know what I'm saying? Like that makes sense. That tracks to you

Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. You can totally see it. This, this, this movie's very much of its time. When it comes to just the looks of people, like, very much so. So we get the Drakk. We saw more of the Drakk in this than we did in Pretty much all of Babylon five proper,

Brent: Mm-Hmm.

Jeff: all their ships and stuff. It was,

Brent: Well, no, the, so, the, the Dr. We saw, um,

no, go ahead. Go ahead.

Jeff: I'm looking for my note where I left off.

Brent: Sorry.

Jeff: It's all right, but yeah, so we got to see more of them. I don't understand necessarily the motivation so much. I, I, I didn't, when I watched the movie that they're playing this whole long game on Centauri prime. Like one of the things he says to Londo is. You know, we have a lot of patients will wait a very long time and this is going to take a long time.

We have a lot of work to do. So five years into that, they're just going to go blow up Earth. Like out of nowhere, it's almost, I don't know, it didn't line up necessarily with what I thought their strategy was. In the book, Armies of Light and Dark and the Legions of Fire, what we learn, is they blame 100 percent for the shadows leaving.

They blame Sheridan and Delenn, those two people. It's not the Alliance, anything like that. So they had a plan to take out the humans in the Minbari. They had a death cloud they were going to take and blow up Earth. And the plague, the plague was designed for Minbari. And it was supposed to get deployed on Minbar.

So that's the whole, Hey, it's not really suited for us, but over five years, it'll adapt and grow and change. And it will work for us. But basically they were like, well, shoot, we can't blow up earth. So we'll just take our best shot over here, which I also found to be a really weird decision. Why not just fly off to Minbar and kill the Minbari?

You've got your stuff there. don't know. Stuff didn't quite line up for me with their motivation.

Brent: It feels like there's just stuff in their world that we don't know. That's making them go do it right now.

Jeff: Instead of playing that long game that was supposed to be the cool thing, you know, or whatever. I don't

Brent: right, right.

Jeff: Yeah, because I mean, let's just play it out. I'm Sheridan and what I know from War Without End is there's still stuff going on on Centauri Prime in 17 years at the time. Five years later, now this, so twelve years, no, eleven years to War Without End, cause it's season five and then into that, plus five.

Eleven years for War Without End. The Drok actually show up. I go defeat the Drok, or at least drive them away. I'm probably going to start doing some math and go to Centauri Prime and start trying to figure some stuff out. Although they're not really welcome because the Centauri hate them and stuff like that.

But honestly, for what a great episode War Without End is, it just doesn't, there's so much stuff that Sheridan saw that he just seems to have conveniently forgotten and not applied. And this is just another one of those things.

Brent: So, you know, we had that same sort of criticism during potentially sleeping in light or something like, and not, not really a criticism, but just a, Hey, doesn't he know that this is the thing? Doesn't he know like because he experienced it and there were some comments on on YouTube and probably in discord and patreon and stuff that were like, yeah, think how crazy that time was for him. He's he's not necessarily pulling all of those details back.

Jeff: don't know if I buy that. myself in the future. Looking at my wife right before I'm supposed to die and her telling me that our son is okay. I think I'm going to remember some

Brent: all you, but that's all you get is our son's okay.

Jeff: Yeah. But then you also get, yeah. And you get all the stuff around you going on that you see. I'm going, I'm going to remember.

That's not a, uh, that's not a Franklin and Jakar and Sheridan going off on a one off mission to a planet to meet a Minbari that could be forgotten. That's like, Oh my God, I was in the future. I saw some stuff like, and then to just conveniently forgot all of it.

Brent: But then, you know what I'm also thinking when I get back is, yeah, but there is also this lady over here who said that that's only one possible future and there could be all these others. So how do I know that that's actually going to happen? I don't really know.

Jeff: She said that to Sinclair. She never said that to Sheridan.

Brent: well, but there's other people. No, no lady Morella. I know she said that to a Londo and stuff, but still, you know, I'm I'm

Jeff: And share

Brent: Sheridan has come across somebody who has said that it's

Jeff: and he's a conspiracy theory guy. He actively, at least in one episode, he was, and so he

Brent: Boy they talk about stuff that they just dropped It's like what he needs to be a conspiracy guy for this one episode. Okay And we're never coming back to that again

Jeff: absolutely loved in that final battle. And I got to be clear. The, I hated that final battle scene. So because of the, what we talked about taking that away, there were some really cool things. I loved the entire sequence of captain Anderson being like, here's the deal, man, you got to blast your gun.

I'll cover you. All come around, all blast it. And then, you know, kind of like trying to play with the time thing. And then he's like, Nope, ramming speed. And his crew did not even hesitate. Ramming speed. I like, they were just in it. They all knew what was going on. That was such a beautiful moment. And just to know how, like they took that whole sequence of Sheridan being like, here's what we got to shoot.

And Doreena being like, no, and here's why. Cause it's out. I'm actually good at the things I do. There's just no reason for you to have known that coming up to this point. But, but I am so shoot at this thing. I love that they missed how often do they miss, you know, in a thing they miss and then, and then.

You know, Kern comes in with just like, I got this, we just going to blow the whole thing up and he did and it was amazing. I love that whole thing. If you added the right soundtrack to that or even a mediocre soundtrack to that, that would have probably been one of my best favorite scenes in all Babylon 5 so far.

I loved it

Brent: See here's the thing jeff and and again, I don't mean to dip back into this whole deal They're not going to do this, but if they were, I 100 percent guarantee you, if they were to rescore this film, keep everything else exactly the same, rescore this film and do it properly. This film elevates a hundred percent.

I mean, this film ever elevates David Werner style elevation. Like, It would go through the roof because I'm telling you, Jeff, this was a fantastic movie from start to finish.

Jeff: We have an incredible community across all of our various venues and places. There's someone I'm talking to you. You know, you're about to get talked to you as soon as Brent said that Do that somebody to or if you send me if someone out there has the video Without music on it. I'll Rescore it. I'll do it.

Like I think it's not the whole movie. That's a big thing, but that scene Somebody send me that scene or rescore that scene and I'll make sure, like, the world knows the work that you did. Because it needs to happen.

Brent: Yep. Yep. I agree.

Jeff: I think it's time, Brent, to ask the big question.

Brent: Mm.

Jeff: we enjoyed this movie. We hated one big part of it, but enjoyed a lot of it overall. But through The sounds and the cacophony of what we had to listen to for all of this. Did you happen to catch any dialogue or story whatsoever that had any of those sci fi messages in them?

The things that show us we might be better humans, hold up a mirror to society. Any of those things we look at. What, Brent, did you find? And, after you described that to us, what rating between 0 and 5 white stars? Do you give this with zero being no message at all and not Babylon 5e delivered in any way, and five being amazingly delivered and messaged?

Okay.

Brent: And I'm always trepidatious about when I rate an episode of Babylon five the way I'm about to rate this one. Because it always results in email after email, comment after comment of folks telling me I'm wrong.

And you know what? I'm happy to be wrong with stuff like this. Because this is just my first watch. Most of you folks out there, you've seen this multiple times before, and you've had lots of time to think about it and dwell on it. And I bet you guys honestly are far more qualified to come in and, and be able to state a message.

You've also listened to JMS and other people speak about it. You're far more qualified to come in and state the actual message of what's going on than either Jeff or I are here. We're just giving you what we pick up on. On a first watch, there were two lines that I did not have down in the message section. They were in my regular notes section, but we didn't get to them, but I feel like they could be something. And I want to jump into that. Um, one, I, I want to say that it was, was it Kara Baldy? It was somebody who turned around and looked at Sheridan and, and talking like all the mess that they're going through.

And like, can you imagine if this was all just for a test? my thought was, yeah, I saw it comes the inquisitor.

Jeff: Oh yeah.

Brent: you're going for is just for a test to see if you're right. Is there a message in that? No, not really. Cause I'm not even sure that that's what that meant. I just, in my head went, yeah, I saw it comes the inquisitor.

There's also this great line that I want to say Galen said it. I didn't write it down, but he said this. If a dream comes true, then what of our nightmares? Great line to think about. Great line to mull over, but you know what? It's not Jeff. It's not a message.

Jeff: not.

Brent: It's not a message. And I found no messages in this and you know what?

That's okay. Because not everything has to have some big moral message to it. Not everything has to tell us how we're going to be better human beings to one another or, or hold up mirrors to society. Like, like they just don't, sometimes you could just have an episode of television. Or a movie of television, you know,

Jeff: parter of television.

Brent: a two part of television or where one's really great and the other is not, or whatever, that's what this was.

That's what this was to me, Jeff. If you want to stump for anything, go for it because I am rating this right now at zero white stars. None, none folks chill out. I'm going to talk about that and just say, Jeff, do you want to stump for anything? I'll give you an opportunity.

Jeff: No, um, I, you know, so on my notes and you can see my notes and Brent's notes on our Patreon. But, uh, when, so we alternate each week, who does the recap and the white stars and then who does the part we're about to go into. So on a week like this where I'm not doing the message, if I observe anything, I'll just plop a couple notes in there, just, you know, whatever you have not, I have nothing in this one.

The most I had was, wow, Captain Anderson's a great dad. There you go. got nothing.

Brent: So. That being said, I just want to remind everybody, listen, as you guys are firing up your keyboards for the comments to tell me how wrong I am and to send us emails and tell me how great this really was, I just want to remind you guys. That our white star rating one is purely subjective and it does in no way, shape or form.

Does it, does it talk about or dictate our enjoyment of the episode or how good we think the episode was? It purely talks about what kind of messages were hidden in it and, and how was it being delivered in its own unique way? That's all it is. Jeff, you get the much better task. Of taking this and placing it in our 100 percent completely accurate ranking of the movies of Babylon five, and you get to rate it.

No, I'm sorry. You get to rank it. I'm really curious to see where you put this episode because there, there is an argument that this episode could be really, really high in the ranking. There is an equally strong argument for this episode being really, really low. In the ranking, um, Jeff, our current ranking as it sits right now, I, Jeff, I don't have it in front of me.

Do you have it?

Jeff: You should. It's in the notes, but I

Brent: Is it in the notes? I was just, I was just scrolling through it and I don't see it. Hold on. Welcome to the, to the behind the scenes folks.

Jeff: It's under the white text that says comments back and forth. So it should stand out top of the second page, I think, or middle of the second page.

Brent: oh, there it is. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's not in white. It's an orange on

Jeff: Well, there's white and then your line we color

Brent: see. I see. Oh, there it is. Okay, great. Nope. Yep. Absolutely right there. Okay, cool. In the note, look at you,

Jeff: it's almost like we planned it or something, you know,

Brent: This is, you know, it's cause we get, we get going and I get on autopilot and I, I stopped following along the note

Jeff: Uh huh.

Brent: like, cause I'm just on autopilot. All right, let's come back.

So Jeff, our current top five is our number four. Well, actually this is, this is the number five

Jeff: It is.

Brent: So this will be in the top five of the films, but currently our number four movie is the gathering. Our number three was river of souls from last week. Number two is in the beginning. And number one is third space.

I will remind folks that this 100 percent complete accurate. Immutable ranking is only mutable when we get to the end of the, uh, the, the series recaps, Jeff, where do you place this one on the ranking?

Jeff: So I actually, I had a, had a question on that piece on the mutability of the list.

Brent: Yes.

Jeff: Are we going to change the movie ranking in this? Cause we're not doing a movies wrap up and I don't necessarily want to change lists for the series wrap up.

Brent: Yeah.

Jeff: So I make the motion if I wanted to mute, mute, mute, mute, if I wanted to the list right now. I would like to propose mutate. There you go. Let's mutate. I'd like to propose that we allow a mutation of the list in this moment. And because I think in a moment, a decision was made that upon reflection, uh, might need to be changed. I Brent would like to propose swapping in the beginning and third space making in the beginning of number one.

Brent: I second that proposition.

Jeff: thank God. Okay.

Brent: All agreed. Say, I, I,

Jeff: all opposed say nay. None seen. The motion passes. Alright, while I rank this, will you change that on the list so we're aware? So, okay. I am going to, I have, I know where I'm going to put this one, but I need to talk through it a little bit because it could be, okay, I'm going to split the difference between it being as high as it could be in as low as it could be.

And it's the, it's the sound, it's the soundtrack. It's the. It's the score to this thing. I, I wanted to make this the new number two. I cannot with that, but I also cannot make this the number five because it is infinitely better than the gathering. It is better than river of souls. So I am going to put an asterisk on this one and make it our

Brent: So I'm going to ask the question. Cause I see where you're going to put this. Are you really going to sit there and tell me? Score notwithstanding, this, or that third space altogether, take, take the whole thing into account. Third space was better than this film.

Jeff: Yeah. Score the score to me drags it below third space.

Brent: Okay. Fair enough.

Jeff: So it will be our new number three. Yeah.

Brent: to me to ask the question.

Jeff: It should be, it should be our number two and possibly our number one.

Brent: I completely disagree.

Jeff: Really?

Brent: Yes,

Jeff: What do you think?

Brent: it should definitely be our new number one.

Jeff: Really?

Brent: Yes, this, this was a great movie, Jeff.

Jeff: It was

Brent: the beginning was really good. This was a great movie And if it if it was supported by a score that would have elevated it or just given us something Jeff, there's, there's no doubt in my mind that I would sit there and go, I would watch this over in the beginning every single time.

Jeff: in the beginning plays on our nostalgia, pulls on our nostalgia strings quite a bit, right? It goes back, it revisits some things. It's an introduction to the series. Get ready to type again, by the way. Uh, the thing that I think does elevate a call to arms, it's not, I'm not making this our number one. I, it would be a crime against humanity.

If I did that with the score that it has, it's going to be the number two above third space and here's why. Because yes, it's an amazing movie. It's awesome. It has a Cardinal sin that hurts it horribly. And I do want an asterisk next to that ranking to say like, all that means all that we'll probably forget that in the future, but this is the first movie we've watched.

That moves us forward.

Brent: Yeah, because third space was effectively an episode that happened somewhere in the middle of season four. Didn't really affect anything going forward. It was just a self contained story. River of souls was

Jeff: What it was

Brent: appendix a to the, to the end of the story, like

Jeff: like, oh, and, and also this thing happened.

Brent: Yeah. Oh, here's the script from the cutting room floor that we never had time to do that.

Yeah, let's do that.

Jeff: This actually is this take

Brent: good. I enjoyed, I enjoyed third space. I want to say that I enjoyed third space. I

Jeff: Absolutely. Absolutely. It never deserved its number one, but it deserved to be in the top two. Absolutely. But yeah, call the arms, take stuff that we learned in the past that happened and progressed it forward and is going to move forward into a, uh,

Brent: I will, I will tell you, despite the score, you know, we're called the arms really, really succeeds in making me want to watch crusade

Jeff: agreed.

Brent: to sit back and go. Oh, so crusade is going to be about trying to find this cure to this earth plague, and presumably we're going to be on a ship bouncing around from place to place, not on a station. I'm in for that show.

Jeff: Yeah, I am

Brent: am in for that show.

Jeff: I'm going to check it out like it's going to be amazing and the cool thing about that brand is we get to do that next week. We have gotten through these movies. There's a few more, but we're going to take a hiatus because this moves us directly into crusade. So next week we're watching war zone for the first time. We don't know anything about like we know there's going to be a plague and it's going to be five seasons long. Apparently. And, uh, so we know the title of the first episode is war zone. Brent, what do you think it's going to be about?

Brent: This one feels easy to me. The drug plague has just hit earth. I think we pick up days, weeks, a really short time span from the end of this. All right. Uh, panic is spreading across the earth. People are losing their minds at what's about to happen. And I think earth has pretty much turned into a war zone because everybody's freaking

Jeff: Oh,

Brent: Um, I think there's this new crew that, and this, this will, I don't know. I don't know that we can rightly call a call to arms, the pilot of crusade,

Jeff: It's like

Brent: I don't think we know who our characters are. I don't think we know who our cast is for crusade. You know, so this will be a new crew has to come in and solve the problem before earth annihilates itself with over the next several years. And I think that's, what's going on. Panic is spreading earth. They're self destructing and it's, this is the, the gather the crew, put them on the ship, presumably the Excalibur and send them out. And I don't, I truly don't know. If any of like, is Lockley going to be around? Is Sheridan going to be around? Is Garibaldi going to be around?

I don't think Ivanova is going to be around. Like, are we going to see any of our known people or is this an entirely new group of folks? I don't know. I think Galen and Doreena potentially could really, like we talked about that out in the shot, they potentially could come back, but I think that's, it's got to be the pilot.

It's got to do that thing. How about you, Jeff?

Jeff: I like that a lot. Actually. It makes, it makes a whole lot of sense. Uh, I agree. This is going to be a very short amount of time. Afterwards, I think that Bruce Box Lightner, I think Sheridan is going to be in this one because I think he's basically going to send like, here's your captain. He's going to introduce us to the captain and send, he's going to be there for sending the Excalibur out on its, uh, On its voyage out into the galaxy to find the thing.

I really saw warzone as more of Their first adventure, so we're gonna meet the characters They're gonna come on to the ship and meet them as they're on the ship and then they're gonna run into some sort of a conflict on a planet Of some kind that pulls them into a warzone so we get that conflict That, oh look, they're effective and the ship can do this stuff and whatever kind of a thing.

So, very similar to yours, except my warzone's on another planet, your warzone is on Earth.

Brent: I would be very mad Jeff if this show turned into a Voyager type episode type series Meaning what was Voyager all about

Jeff: Gettin home.

Brent: getting home, but what did they do?

Jeff: They flew around

Brent: at every little planet. They talk to people. They little side quest. They helped them solve their problem here and help them solve that.

You know what? You have an a one emergency happening back home. You don't have time to solve other people's problems right now. And you know what? This isn't Star Trek. You need to get on with your mission. And not be about everybody else's stuff because you just don't have time.

Jeff: it's open world video game, though. You go to the place to do the thing, but to do the thing, you gotta take care of this thing. So I think there are gonna be those Planet of the Weak side quest episodes, because they need to get there to get the thing. Mm hmm.

Brent: You just described discovery.

Jeff: Oh my God. Yeah. You know what I'm discovering?

Speaking of discovery, everything is just open World video game anymore, . That's just all it's,

Brent: that's how we make TV these days.

Jeff: Well, we will find out what crusade and war zone are all about right here. Next week, thank you so much for joining us through our journey through the first set of movies on this. We appreciate it so much.

If you would, and you haven't before, please leave us a rating and a review wherever you're watching us or listening to us. And the most important thing, the thing that would truly mean the world to us, is please share this show 5 or needs to capture it for Yes, what's up, Brent? What's uh, yeah,

Brent: to go faster. Go faster.

Jeff: This is

Brent: Be faster.

Jeff: as I can go.

Brent: Need you to go faster.

Jeff: This is as faster as I go.

Brent: Dude. Get the hell out of here.