Becoming Superman

[0:00] Music.

[0:28] Welcome to Babylon 5 for the first time. My name is Jeff Akin. And I'm Brent Allen. You know, Jeff and I, a long time ago, I guess we still are sort of, are two veteran Star Trek podcasting nerds that decided to watch Babylon 5, well, for the first time. And we fell in love with it so much that we just couldn't stop. We were only going to do 110 episodes, and we said, Nay, nay, let's keep going. And today, Jeff, this is, is this the final episode of Babylon five for the first time? It is like there's cause next week, the second time starts.

[1:07] Exactly. But is this actually the first time? Because last week was the series.

[1:12] The entire series wrap up. Is this a no man's land episode or. So I feel like we did a series wrap up. This is like the meta series wrap up.

[1:22] Right, right. this is like the epilogue or whatever the i like the meta series wrap up that's cool that's cool and coin that term there you go there you go anyway we are we are continuing the journey and we're putting a capstone on it before we start our rewatch of everything by reading or in my case listening to jms's autobiography becoming superman for the first time we are and we're gonna have a little bit of a different format than usual there's going to be no rule of three brent we're not talking about no format to this this is completely a unique type of show come on there's a format to this thing we're working with a professional here there's headings that's a format that's all you need right we got bullet points yeah what more do you need i mean that's all you know we'll just riff on it from there which actually i think generally works because brent yes we have a five-star review oh yes so it's off pod chaser oj mcgann says an excellent podcast about an excellent series highly entertaining and highly recommended the rapport between the hosts is great and the production is top notch if you are in any way a fan of b5 listen to this podcast it's truly like watching it all for the first time.

[2:45] Hey, Jeff, you know what? What's that? You and I are highly entertaining and highly recommended. We are. That's pretty phenomenal. Right? Thanks, OG McGann. McGann. McGann. Thanks, OG McGann. Oh, OJ. I'm sorry. OJ McGann. I like to think that we have a pretty good rapport, Jeff. I do too. I like to think that. And I like to think that our production is top notch. I like to think that. You know, listen, we try to put money back into the show and improve things and make things better. And here we are. Always room to get a little better, right? Yes. Listen, we haven't arrived yet. We'll keep moving pretty dang close, but, uh.

[3:28] Wow. Anyway, uh, thank you. Thank you. Oh, Jim again. So with that, Jeff, um, like, like we said, we're, we're reading or we have read becoming Superman, the autobiography of J Michael Straczynski or Joseph Michael Straczynski could have just been Joe Straczynski or Joe M. I mean, we'll talk about that actually. Joey Mike, Joey Mike. Oh, I like that. What's up, Joey Mike? You just sounded like the intro to Netflix. That's actually how I live. I just had the residuals from hitting that forum. I like it. I like it. So we've never done anything like this before, Jeff. And this is typically the part of the show where we would recap what happened. We're not going to recap the whole book. Listen, if you haven't already, go read the book. And if you're like me, get the audio book, which Peter Jurisic does a fantastic job. Incredible. And I got to tell you, in my head now, JMS's voice is Peter Jurisic's voice. You know, like it really is.

[4:35] But go get the book. There's no way. That book was 16 hours for me to listen to. It's not a short book. Almost 500 pages. Like, look at all this. Yeah. There's a lot going on here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was, it was, but it's a great read.

[4:51] It's, it's truly a captivating read. Like I would have, I would have started reading this and I'm not like, I don't tend to like blast through books. This is one I would have blasted through. I really would have, but that doesn't mean we're not going to do our, for the first time thing.

[5:08] Exactly. Like we'll talk about our observations or ahas, stuff like that. I think we should talk about the things that connect directly to Babylon five that we read in there that we can see. Direct connections to. And we'll do that for the first time thing. We will talk about the messages that we found in the book. Do you mean the sci-fi messages that we found? Sci-fi messages. Although these are just messages. This book is not sci-fi. These are just life messages, man. Life messages. Non-fiction right here. Yeah, it sure is. And Jeff, we are going to answer, I'm insisting on this one. We were in our prep for this and i said this has to be something that we do in this show what i love about what we're going to do is we we are so famous we are in famous for developing the definitive and objectively correct rankings of all of the seasons and all of the episodes of babylon five we're going to continue that tradition here no no not not of ranking but of the objectively definitively correct answer oh yes this will be definitive and objective and it is in regards to an infamous question of did star trek rip off babylon 5 or not we are going to finally.

[6:32] Definitively answer that question tonight right here right here yes so brent we read this thing I listened to the audio book as well, and then I got the actual book itself. Nerd. You're a nerd. Do you know how hard it was to get my hands on this thing? No, you need to tell this story because this was so good. So we're doing, like, we do preparation, right? So I'm taking notes, and I can't do it on the audio book. I'm just, like, having a hard time scrolling around. I'm like, I got to get my hands on this book. My local library doesn't have it. And if you don't use your local library, please let me encourage you to do so. Libraries are an amazing place but didn't have uh didn't have this so i was like ah shoot let me find a bookstore that has it nobody had it nobody had it so i ended up do i say that i won't say the name of the you what you went to a big major retailer that is uh it's it's you know what it is, it's narns and boba.

[7:36] Narns and bobles narns and boba tea, something so i ended up going there and so we have a couple of those here in the portland area by the way i'm sorry i'm sorry if you are a representative of narns and boba tea uh if you would like for us to actually reinsert the actual name uh you can send a check to us and we'd be more than happy to do that very happy to do so, So I found one copy. It's a copy that said, one of the stores said there's a copy in stock. So I'm like, let's go. And luckily it's a place I love shopping anyway. So we head down, I go up and I'm like, where, where are the autobiographies? Like this is a bookstore. Shouldn't there, well, there's no autobiography section. I'll check sci-fi, nothing there. God, I don't know where it's going to be. Oh, excuse me, person that works here. Where are your autobiographies? Well, it depends on which one you're looking for, which I mean, just world according to Jeff here, not a good way to organize your bookstore of course no one did ask me but i asked this person and they so i said they said which one are you looking for i said well it's from j michael straczynski becoming superman and she's like huh never heard of that let me pull that up and look she scoffed at you yeah i can feel the judgment like it's just like this physical palpable judgment from her and i'm like god like i was gonna buy you a boba tea even like now that's off the table.

[8:54] She writes it down. She goes, stand by. I'll be right back. Well, she didn't say stand by because that's the thing I would say as a nerd. She said, I'll be right back. Stay here. So I'm hanging out and like five minutes go by, like a long time. I thought for sure that she had forgotten me. She comes back. She's holding the book and she says, this here is the only copy in all of our stores in the entire state of Oregon. There you go. It was meant to be. The universe conspired together, brought its stardust together to put that book into your hands, Mr. Stardust. It did. And I couldn't be more grateful because it helped me really see some other stuff in the book that I may not have pulled out when going through the audio book. But I know I had some thoughts going through it, but I'm curious, like, what were your just observations? Did you have any big ahas or anything like that when you were listening through? I don't know that I would say any, like, ahas, but there were certainly some pieces of his story. And I just, I'm going to pick out a few, just some highlights that really stood out to me. One, I loved his story of how he was taking extra classes in college and he shouldn't have been. And he just like. He did what he needed to do to make it happen. Like he snuck into this class over here. He snuck into the administration office and changed something. He doctored up the records and everything. Yeah. Yeah.

[10:09] Here's the thing. When I was in college, I took the same load that he did. Really? And I didn't think it was that hard to be honest with you. Like it was, I did. I, I took, I took 21, 22, 19. And then my, my, my last like couple of semesters, I had like 11, like 11, 13 credits. Like wow because i didn't have anything else like i'd done it all already but also like to that point you are a person with multiple degrees that is true yeah like yes yes and more on the way as it were but i just i i love i i loved how he went through that personally just related to it and there were times i have to i have to tell you there were times where i had to, pull a little shenanigans and not let the left hand know what the right hand was doing to make things work out. And by the time people figured it out, I was already there and they were like, well, too much paperwork to back out of it at this point. Yeah. You're already there and you're doing fine. So, but don't do it again. Okay. Sure. I tell you one of my, one of my favorite parts though.

[11:14] Was talking about how he came up with the name, like his, his byline name, the J Michael Straczynski. Cause he doesn't go by J. He doesn't go by Michael. He's Joe. That's what he is he's joe like why why not go with joe strasinski or joe whatever maybe he does what i do and i'll just go with joe michael right or joseph michael right like j michael and it just boiled down to a very simple it's balanced that way yeah it just visually looks better that way i'm like i like that i i get that i dig that i dig that so i love i love his story about faking the master's diploma you know like full-on faking the whole damn thing for his dad and no photoshop like this was hardcore like this dude this was uh leonardo dicaprio in um.

[12:02] That frank abagnale movie uh where he was the the connor the the check forger guy he played against tom hanks i forget the name of that movie catch me if you can it was him and catch me if you can like in the hotel room with the bathtub like taking the stickers off toys and putting them on the checks and all that sort of stuff like oh my gosh there were some really messed up things though oh yeah you i don't think we can get out of here without talking about, just how messed up it was there's there is a moment where he's talking about his wife and i don't remember if they were married at the time or if it was after they had separated but she just looks at him one day and she's just like your family and he's like yeah i know and i'm sitting here as a reader at that point going yeah you what are you guys doing um to just the the craziness of stuff that happened with his grandma. And I mean, obviously his dad, his dad was just something awful to the point that he tried suing him. If you don't retract what you're saying. And then when he finally got him, Oh no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just, you know, like really, really. But the, the one that really stood out to me, uh, and I remember I was in, I was in a Dick sporting goods, which is funny because the one that stood out to me was in talking. Yeah, it is. Ha ha ha. Where he's talking about getting a vasectomy and i'm in a dick sporting goods in the ball section.

[13:30] I was just like oh my god but it was it was like for him it was an active responsibility but it was ultimately a big f you to his dad exactly that's what the whole thing was was just a big no to his dad and he got the kind like way back when and it is not reversible at all like and he's probably really okay with that so i imagine so it probably worked out so you know.

[13:58] The only other things i can really bring up are stuff that are gonna talk about the rest of the rest of our conversation tonight so oh i i do want to bring up one thing and this is very personal very very personal to me considering how much flack i took for this we even got angry emails about this jeff you had a new name because of this i did and i i kept it i still have it it's mine but i just want to mark it down and you guys can go listen to the audio version hour 11 minute 33 three some odd seconds in there peter jurassic himself pronounces the name ivanova who's a chuckle nugget now peter there you go chucks jeff those are some of mine how about how about you what are some of your more general observations about the whole thing i you know i just had so much ignorance about what his history was you know i think i think i generally you know we knew just from conversations that his childhood was horrible and he got caught up in weird religious stuff and and honestly like that was i was expecting more weird with the religious stuff like really with the religion what i really got out of it was he got popped into the jesus movement and all the stuff that went on with that can if if i may dive into that um we heard a lot of people talk about how he got caught up with a cult using.

[15:22] Very specifically the word cult and i'm sure on some level according to some textbook definition what he was involved in probably meets the criteria of cult maybe but what it really just sounds as you just said just the jesus it just sounded like any typical mega church where a pastor has a moral failure a major moral failure but the the idea of living in a a community the community house and stuff and And I mean, it seems harsh, but the whole like, yeah, if you if you make money, you give it to the whole to the collective. Yeah. And that's a part of what it means to live here. If you're going to live here, nobody's forcing your hand here. This is completely voluntary. And I'm curious, Jeff, if JMS himself calls that a cult.

[16:13] Or is that just something that readers have said over time? Because it certainly comes off like that. But I don't know that it really – I don't think we're talking David Koresh here. Well, I think the two thoughts I have there is like that communal living happens today. Sure. Where we live in community. My money goes to the community. If I want to go date someone, if I want to go get a job, if I want to something, I clear it through the community because it's not about me. It's about we. And I don't know, a substantial percentage of the time, people who with weird stuff end up in charge and make it all super weird. That's what happens. Because it turns out people are fallible and jacked up people. It's like, who knew? Who knew? right personally and i don't want to go into deep detail into i think i've talked about it a little bit before but i actually did grow up in a cult like a for real hidden behind closed doors don't talk to certain people and like weird stuff cult that uh that i got out of uh quite quite a long time ago but some of my family is still a part of and i can tell you what i read in this book, not what I experienced and my stuff wasn't David Koreshi we weren't gonna you know we weren't waiting for Hale Bop and we weren't wearing Nikes or drinking Kool-Aid or anything like that but it was just some really weird twisting.

[17:41] Of Christian faith and what that meant for us as people and how we lived our lives so yeah, I feel weird saying I was let down by the religious history in this thing. But I think I was expecting more. But that was totally outweighed by, like, oh, my freaking goodness. I can't believe his grandparents, his parents. Right. It was such a small part of, like, all the crap he went through. Oh, my God. Like, it was mind-blowing to me. But there's so much more that I just didn't know. I knew that he had written. This was my understanding going in. He had written some comics.

[18:18] I had no idea that, like, he owned Superman. He owned Spider-Man. Like, I had no clue that those things had happened. The movie Changeling. Like, I'm literally reading the whole thing about it. I'm like, is he talking? Is this that Angelina Jolie movie? What? That was him? No idea. And he'd had that on his plate for, what, 30, 40 years before he actually did it? I had no clue. But one thing that did stand out to me that we know and we've talked about are the relationships that he formed with the people he worked with. And the two, the stories that really stood out for me were Harlan Ellison and Andreas Katsoulis. The Harlan Ellison relationship was so much more than I had ever imagined it was. And that's really covered in the epilogue where he talks about where like he wanted Harlan to read it and he didn't get to read, you know, the last run and how that impacted him as a person. And it was pretty, I don't know, interesting to me just that like this whole little consulting producer line on Babylon 5. Oh, it's Harlan Ellison. It's that guy. But holy, like that was such a moment to be able for him to do that was just huge. I had no idea.

[19:33] But Andres Katsoulis, he talks about how he died. Yeah. And I tell you what, man, like we're all going to go. It happens to all of us. If I can go out like he did.

[19:45] Oh my goodness. That dude died like a champ. Dude. He went out the way John Sheridan went out and sleeping in light. Right? Yeah. Like he called his friends together. They had a little party. I mean, and like, yeah, that's great. But if, if I didn't know better, I would think that he had passed prior to them, uh, shooting, sleeping in light and that jms wrote that based on how andreas katsulas uh handled his final hours absolutely i didn't put that together but it makes total sense because that's exactly how it went down but it but that was filmed like what 20 years prior to him to him passing so not so much i wonder if he was like like his for 20 years he's like well man one day i'm gonna go and if i'm healthy enough i'm totally gonna do this dude i that's when when my time comes i would that would be just phenomenal hey here it is here's where we are let's get all our friends go let's have a big dinner and then everybody go back to your rooms and i'll slip out in the morning here we go yeah i thought that was cool it was a neat and it's neat how he told it there's just that overall theme and we had some awareness around this but just what the people he's worked with means mean to him and how he shows up for them but to share those stories with uh.

[20:59] And Cotsillus and Ellison, I thought I really liked those parts of the book. But you just kind of alluded to it. Like some of these things, this one didn't end up in Babylon 5 from a thing that was related. But some stuff, obviously, from the book really clearly made it into Babylon 5.

[21:17] Do you have any of those you want to talk about? Well, I mean, I think that's the thing. And I guess this kind of is the transition there. Because what you realize, knowing Babylon 5, the way that we now know Babylon 5, and then hearing JMS's story and knowing how intimately JMS was involved in the creation and writing of Babylon 5, Babylon 5 was his opus. That was his magnum opus, magnus opus, whatever it was. That was his definitive, I'm putting everything into this. this is me on TV in, in so many ways. Right. I have to tell you if, if I ever get the opportunity to meet JMS at a con or in a place where they're doing Q and A's and I go up to do these kinds of Q and A's, I've got to imagine these are the kinds of questions he would much rather have people ask, you know? Um, and, and I don't know what all I, I, I guess he probably gets the same questions almost every time he goes out, like wherever he goes, you know, what happened here? What happened there? What's going on? Is this ever going to happen? And these are, I think some of these connections are like, hey, when this thing happened in your life, was that over here? And here's a great example. I'll lead off with this one. And Jeff, if we could on this, let's just bounce back and forth on these. Yeah. Because I've got a list. I'm sure you've got a list.

[22:42] But so he tells the story of how his mom goes to the hospital. And when she comes home from the hospital, her dad like is, or his dad is like, Hey, your mom's, your mom's been sick. Your mom's whatever she's medicated. She's, she's whatever. And I'm thinking the whole time did that, deal, inspire the backstory with Ivanova's mom. Oh, and where Ivanova, you know, her mom was medicated by Psycor and was just kind of drugged out.

[23:16] And, you know, she, you know, she, she, she loved her mom. Uh, you know, JMS certainly had his own relationship with his mom, but so it's his mom. Like, I, I wonder, did that care? Was that a tie over, you know, uh, to, to place that, that particular piece of the story in. I love that. I think what's neat about it too is, you know, one of the things that we do in modern therapy with trauma is, you know, you go back to the memory and you retell the story, you know, sometimes with psilocybin or ketamine and sometimes other less hallucinogenic stuff. But I wonder if he almost did that. We're like, because the mom came back and was drugged and numbed and whatever and trigger warning going to talk about self-harm. So skip ahead if you don't but i wonder if he was like she would have been better off if she just did what i'm going to rewrite this with ivanov's mom and have her you know take her own life because i feel like that would have been better almost therapeutic for him yeah i think the thing that stood out really clearly to me was all of the specifically night watch stuff and his dad and the Nazis.

[24:24] Oh, I didn't put those two together. Yeah, that's great. I was surprised. I don't know if surprised is the right word, but it was alarming to me just how deeply embedded into Nazism his family was. And I didn't do that math, right? Because I think... In our more modern view of history, we don't think of any one Russian being at all, you know, they were the enemies of the Nazis. But there's so much overlap and stuff in there. And I felt like a lot of that was him telling that story. The whole idea of PsyCorp, but not just PsyCorp, the President Clark regime. You know, we talk a lot about fascists. You know, Sheridan at one point even says fascist star us, you know, and in all of the this the night watch and all that kind of stuff for JMS to be as intimately connected with with that, seeing that in his family and having to live in it and his dad even making him play dress up at one point where this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like, you know, and he says, salute and hold your hand up and the Nazi salute and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, he's just like, uh, whatever, you know, like, I think one of the other pieces I picked up on, uh, well, I, let me stick with the Ivanova theme for just a moment. Okay. Uh, later he talks about writing, uh, real ghostbusters and in the second season.

[25:53] They, They they they hired a consultant to come in and basically wanted to change everything. And he wanted to basically tame down.

[26:03] He wanted to just do with Janine Milnitz and make her just this soft, gushy, blub of a character where they had really built her up to be this just sort of.

[26:16] Badass like way way more cool than what she was in the movies you know maybe even what we saw a little bit of her in in the new new films i wonder how much of that inspired the character of takashima and avonava specifically because those both being that for that female first officer like both of them are pretty badass you know i avonava is my favorite character in the whole show for a reason And it's because she, you know, she looks like Ivanova is God. Just kidding.

[26:45] Like, you know, I will listen to Ivanova. If I want to do anything that Ivanova doesn't say to do, I will not do it. Like whatever that whole spiel is. Like, you know, I wonder how much of that carried over for him from Janine into his writing of Ivanova. Yeah, I like that. I thought that, you know, I think throughout when we were watching Crusade, I talked about near the end how Max Eilerson was kind of an avatar of his because, you know, in that last episode that we watched of his, there was some stuff that we pulled out of the book. But I think there's a lot of those pieces where he literally puts himself into the show. And I think that when Jakar got jailed and started writing the book of Jakar, Jakar became him. Writing became his escape, his solace, his solitude, his everything. And uh and that's so much of the story once jms discovered writing that was his home you know wherever he was that's where he was safe and he was uh powerful and he wrote that i feel like he wrote that directly into the character of jakar it was transformative i think in ways for jms as he learned more about himself and really dove into himself and was able to write more honest and vulnerable things and we saw that mirrored in jakar's story as well even like when dude was questioning him but back here you said this and now you're saying this and jakar's like yeah.

[28:10] Because things change and we learn more. That's what so much of JMS's stuff has been. Speaking of his writing, talk about impacting how he wrote Babylon 5. Because we know that he got right in the middle of season 2 and was just like, I'm going to take over all of that writing responsibilities. He did every episode from there on out except for that one nail game and episode in season 5.

[28:33] And from what we've learned, what you and I have heard, or at least I know what I've heard, I don't know how much you've heard, of how the production worked on Babylon five. They kept good hours. They went home for dinner at night. They didn't play over on the weekends. They didn't have overtime. They didn't run 16, 17, 18, 20 hour days. They didn't, they didn't do all that stuff like it, but it was a machine. They, and they had to crank these things out. And it's one man who, you know, I think he said in the book at one point he'd in any given time, he's working on like four or five episodes all at the same time, which is nuts. But to speak to that work ethic, he goes back to his time as a journalist at the Daily Aztec, I believe was the name of the paper.

[29:21] And his whole thing was just get the damn thing done. Just get it done and have it in. Just get it done. Whatever it takes for you to get it done, just get it done uh which by the way is such like a gen x type of attitude with stuff you know like dude just just get out of my way let me i'll take care of it it's fine i got it i'm gonna get it done i'll just take it really is one of the i need my kid to get that attitude like just get it done you don't need everybody to help you and you have a couple generations that could use that but that's just old man aiken talking so get off my lawn uh but anyway i that had to have impacted how he not Not just Babylon 5, it's how he's written everything since then, but specifically Babylon 5. And how he approached that. I loved how he talked about that where people, he's like, I, people told me that I, you know, I shouldn't have done that. Like you can't do that. But I did because I didn't know you couldn't do it. Right. It would have been nice to have known that. One thing that I pulled out that this is, it's little or whatever, but I couldn't get out of my head when he was in college, he worked with a guy named Norman Corwin quite a bit. Norman Corwin was a real influence in his early days. He got blacklisted in the, you know, the whole McCarthyism stuff and whatever. But our favorite dude on the bridge, David Corwin, like, was that his little homage for him? There you go. Very nice pull. I didn't even catch that. Nice pull.

[30:48] Oh, speaking of his writing piece, one of the things that I've, I, I would like to say that I have picked this up from JMS and I have been like, I really appreciate this. He gave me these words and it, it pisses me off when writers don't use this, but he talked about playing fair with the audience. Yes. And he learned that from Jerry Taylor when they were doing murder, she wrote. And I love that that came specifically from Jerry Taylor, who also was an executive producer, showrunner, writer and creator of another sci-fi show that we all know and love. But we're not talking about that because this isn't that show. This is all about becoming Superman and JMS. But I love that he got that...

[31:31] We learned the origin of that for him, but also the person that gave that to him in being in Jerry Taylor. It was really neat, just their entire experience together. I really had a lot of interest in the murder she wrote, a period of time for him. I always felt like, oh, that was one of the jobs he had, that Jake and the Fat Man, whatever. But it was so formative, I think, for him in a lot of ways that just showed him the dirty side of how TV works and was really able to show like it was an opportunity for him to really angle into show running, you know, where he's like, you're an author and you should show up this way and we're going to change the show and this is how we're going to do it. But I just found it really the development for him in that show. And I was also fascinated that apparently Angela Lansbury's got a dirty side to her. You know, here's the thing, though. Not so much. Well, I love the way that JMS handled that whole situation in his autobiography. Because he's like, look, she comes into season seven. I think it was season seven. And she's Angela effing Lansbury. She is the show. She knows that she's the show. and she wants more control of the show. I think that is normal for anyone who's in that sort of a situation. And I really feel like JMS, when he was writing it, as turns out, it didn't work out very well. It was not a good move. Let's just say that. Taking it away from JMS was not a good move.

[33:00] Cornering him into this little thing was not what they really wanted to do. But he really spoke very respectfully of Angela and her family in that. I was like, I get what they were doing. I shouldn't have done it, but I get what they were doing and I can't blame them for doing it.

[33:15] Also, it was just a bad move on her part because that show could have gone way more seasons. Had so much more to it. Yeah. One of the last ones that I had, and I don't want to talk too much about it because it kind of transitions into the messages piece, but this was such a theme for both his life and for Babylon 5. But every time you get beat down, just get back up. Yeah. Well, I mean, Sheridan specifically said that. You can knock me down however many times. All I have to do is get up one more time. One more time, then you can knock me down. I feel like that whole intersections in real time really was in a big way that time that he basically got beat to death. Yeah. On the streets because he refused to die. And then he was able to tell that story with Sheridan where I refuse to stop and to give up into everything you're saying. But he wasn't fighting back. He was just taking the beating.

[34:09] And getting back up and getting back up and let's go for more beating and you'll eventually stop like and i'll still be here that's what jms did right you know i got beat down i almost died i'm never gonna find those guys there's never gonna be justice in the sense of like me catching them and seeing them get punished but you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna turn this into a story i'm gonna, I'm going to tell it to the world and I'm going to entertain people with it and hopefully educate them too. He was two inches taller when he stood up from that one. There you go. I think one of the things that kind of stood out to me, you know, we talk a lot of times about how 90s sci-fi.

[34:48] Specifically that other show, and this show now really set the stage for the modernized serialized television that we get. Yeah. But really this Babylon five would not have been serialized had it not been for what he did with captain power. That's right. Yeah. Like that was a much smaller microcosm of what he had going on, but because he was able to do it there, he's like, I can take this and actually do a whole thing with this. So, you know, one wouldn't have existed without the other, which I think is, is pretty phenomenal listening to that. I had so much of his career is just, you know, I did this thing, which built and led to this thing, which built and led to this thing a bunch of years ago. And this is completely off topic, but it relates and I'll bring it back in just a moment. I did a watch through of all like all the Marvel movies and not just the MCU, but like the old X-Men and the old Spider-Man and the, you know, like those old movies, like from the 90s all the way up through the through the MCU. And I didn't realize Kevin Feige has been involved in these films for a very long time. Really?

[36:00] Mm-hmm. And by the time he got to the point of being an executive producer or whatever on that, now he wasn't the top guy, but he's a part of it. They started doing those end credit scenes that the MCU is so famous for. And they actually started that back in the X-Men films and stuff. And you can see how those little seeds made way for what, once he became the guy in charge of the MCU, like this is the hallmark. This is the calling card of what a Kevin Feige ran studio does. Huh? Kind of the same thing. Like you can see the, these pieces falling into place that when JMS finally gets his hands on battle on five to be able to run it the way he wants to run it. Here's all like, here's where these pieces are coming from.

[36:46] It's very interesting to me. It is. Yeah. Um, one of the things now this, I don't know why this struck me as news, but this is him specifically talking about Babylon five. He intentionally set up for the people at the beginning of the show who were good and the people who are beginning to were bad that basically they'd flip places by the end of the show. Yeah.

[37:05] And he intentionally, well, let me, let me back that up. Do you remember when we first started watching the gathering? Yeah. And we're looking at this monstrous, evil Jakar, who clearly, this is the warrior alien. And, I mean, these are the Klingons of the show. Like, this is going to be the bad guy. Like, these are the, that's who this is. They're just, blech. Yeah, and then you have Londo is just this sort of almost buffoon of the whole thing. He actually intentionally set us up to believe that Jakar was a bad guy. Not not just this is where they're going to start but like no i'm going to set you up to truly believe this and string you along with this not here's just an episode and actually this is how he is the whole time like no he set us up to believe that that's where he was going to go like yeah i was like oh you bastard how dare you be brilliant and do this almost flawlessly right um i i had i had two more uh just out of this if if okay okay but this these last two actually are kind of go to go hand in hand um jared jerry doyle in regards to him and everything that happened with him and obviously jeff conway as well garibaldi what did not just happen to be a recovering alcoholic as a character oh yeah jms wrote that into garibaldi's backstory because of jerry.

[38:30] Doyle and the idea that what he was doing with that was jerry doyle wasn't a guy who necessarily was in recovery like we had just assumed like he was an active alcoholic i guess during this time if i understood the story right that's what i got out of it yeah and and jms would write these things to force jerry doyle to have these words come out of his mouth it's like he was writing at jerry doyle yeah yeah exactly oh you know what i love about that though what's that is the uh it was a fifth season episode i forget which one but where garibaldi and zach are having the addiction talk to each other that reframes that whole scene we commented on it when it happened it was remarkable with these two people but like that was fully intentional for him to be like here, Yeah, you two that are in trouble, say these things to each other. Go. It's like he's literally, and it's so great about that. It made great TV, but he made great TV in the attempt to improve the lives of the people he was working with. Oh, that's beautiful. And he did it. And, like, you really get the sense, at least hearing his side of the story, he wasn't doing it judgmentally. No. He was doing it from a place of love and care. He wanted to help. But the other thing about that, and you and I talked about this when it happened, that little moment at the very end of the show, I think it was maybe in Objects at Rest.

[39:57] Maybe, I don't think it was Sleeping in Light. It wasn't Sleeping in Light. It was Objects at Rest. Maybe Objects in Motion.

[40:03] Garibaldi is leaving, and the last thing he does as he's leaving the station is he reaches over and he takes a little shot glass. I remember that. And you and I are like, whoa, what was all that? That was Jerry Doyle in an unscripted moment, kind of giving JMS an FU for all of these things that he put into the script for him over the five years.

[40:23] Like, wow. And they left it in the show. They left it in. He's just like, cool. Which I think just speaks to the altruism in which he did everything. It's like, yeah, I'm not going to drive the point home. Like, I'd put the words in your mouth and I showed you this stuff hoping to help you. Apparently, I didn't. So, fine. I got mine in. You can get yours in. You know, I teach my kid all the time, like, listen. It's great. You want to help your friends. You want to help them be where they're supposed to be. Like you're on the ball field and somebody is not doing what they're supposed to be doing. It's great. You want to help them. You're also not the coach. So tell them one time. And then if they don't do it, that's on them, but you can't keep badgering them to, to, to do what you're trying to do here. So what else did you have? Well, I I'm done and Jeff, I want to do something we don't normally do. Okay. Because this, this is such a good insight. We have our council chambers with us tonight. Um, who are watching and, uh, our friend Dylan, uh, yes, that is her name had an observation. We have to talk about it right now. Okay. Okay. I'm, I'm going to pot it up. The part that, that, uh, Dylan says the part that got me was his dad, meaning JMS, his dad beating him and him refusing to cry out. And you cannot watch your car getting whipped without seeing JMS in his place. And even more so when it happens to Lando. Wow.

[41:43] Phenomenal insight there, Dylan. Phenomenal. I literally have goosebumps from it. Like, that's just, yeah, that's so powerful. Yeah. I just, I mean, talk about stuff from his life working its way into Babylon 5. And I love that, too, because that was an act of defiance for him to do that. It was the one silent thing he could do to be like, you know, you won't beat me down. But that was done in him, right? That was a private in him thing to feel good, and he was able to express that. You know what I mean? It's just magical, and able to show it in a way, in a story, in one, I'll say, one of the most powerful scenes in all of Babylon 5. Both Jakar and Londo's versions that happened. He was able to turn that. Horrifying experience into this two powerful moments in the series that's amazing yeah yeah great great insight from it's almost an opportunity for him to almost pat himself on the back like like hey joe yeah joe what's up i'm really proud of you for that thing you did way back when you were a kid and awful stuff was happening to you oh thanks it was really hard to do and it took a lot of courage on my part yeah joe i see that i'm gonna put it in my show so it's messages time yeah You want to do messages first or you want to answer the question? I think we answered the question to go. We go out on that. Okay, great. I love it. I love it. Yeah, messages. Oh, my gosh. Okay, listen.

[43:11] JMS, if you're watching this or you're listening to this. We're sorry.

[43:16] Yeah. Please feel free to write us and tell us how completely far off we are on this. However, I can't speak to Jeff. I don't know. I haven't looked at his notes. Everything I have here is what you wrote.

[43:29] So, yes, these are, um, I mean, there's so much more about his life that we could dive into, but we'd be here for weeks if that was the case.

[43:40] So yeah, these messages, Jeff, gosh, these messages, and some of these are just, Hey, here's this message. And here's this message. And like, there's not like a thread. This is not a sermon that is neatly put together with three points in a poem. Like, this is just the things pulled together from his life. So i i'm gonna agree and disagree and it's a thing we kind of talked about a little bit but i think there's that stuff that are this here here but i think there is the put together, sermon as it were is it about the becoming superman title it's a it's it's actually a thing that bounces into the show like it's an echo of here's the thing that made it into the show that literally is the the play-by-play of this book oh for the message but we can get to that after we talk about all the boom, boom, boom, boom stuff that came up. By the way, just because we're not going to comment on this at any other point, and I think we'd be remiss to not. His whole couching his entire story and the idea of what it meant to become Superman was brilliant of how he put his life journey together.

[44:45] And the way, like, I just, I don't want to dive into that, but just acknowledge, like, phenomenal. Like, really, really good stuff. This is the storytelling prowess of that. I'm not a super, I'm not a great comic book guy. Like I don't read a ton of comic books. It made me go get his Superman earth one. Um, so it's called Superman earth one series and, and read through it like so good. So good.

[45:12] You want to go first? What are some of the messages you pulled out there, Jeff? Well, there's a little one that I got out of the book. It's from one of the pictures that was really powerful for me, but just the idea that from small beginnings, truly wonderful things can grow. And in there he had the check from the first thing he ever sold for $15, and then he had a picture of the first million-dollar check that he got. If there's any message that plays through, it really is that whole, like, stick to it. If you're doing the thing that is your thing, keep doing your thing. I love, I thought it was great. Yeah. So his, the words he uses there, uh, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm pulling it out there, cause I had this one written down, stick to your art, hold fast to what you believe is true and honest and just, and things generally work out in the end. But when they don't, that knowledge can be a cold comfort. Like, but just, just hold fast to it. Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah. I love that. I love that. But this one comes from his, I got one. It comes from his story about the real Ghostbusters and deciding whether or not he wants to take on that project. And he asked this question, what if I fail? So what if I fail? What's the worst that could happen? Yes, it will be embarrassing if you fail, but risking, here it is, risking failure is necessary. So embrace the nightmare and get this goddamn thing up and on the rails. Yes.

[46:37] I love that. That is, this might be a reason why I connect with JMS because this is a personal life philosophy that I'm, Like, and I remember where I got mine from. I told you the story before about the zip line. Yes. Yeah. So short for folks who haven't heard it, there was a time. Brent's a big guy. You should not put me up on a string and say, go flying down this string. Okay. You just shouldn't do it. But some folks did that one day and I'm sitting up there on a time. I'm at a camp, a bunch of kids and everything. And I was like their counselor and I'm just, I'm freaked out at my gourd and I'm like, I'm going to do it. And they're like, no, you're going to be perfectly safe. It's fine. I'm like, no. And I remember sitting there and I, I had a moment of clarity where I said, okay, if I jump off this, what's the worst that's going to happen? The thing could snap. And it's not that I would fall and die because then I'm dead. That's fine. I'm, I'm good. I know what, I know where I'm going. It's good. It's that I would be a paraplegic. That was my greatest fear that I would live, but I would be a paraplegic for the rest of my life. And then I had this thought. So that happens. What does that change about me as a person?

[47:42] Nothing. Okay, let's go. like it's that just yes the worst that could happen and yes it will be embarrassing and yeah there's some bad stuff but that's a part of it like let's embrace it let's just go get the damn thing done you know and you you loved you that zipline was fun you enjoyed it right like it was great what i really loved and because i will never be able to do this again in the rest of my life where they put the, the, the harness on me was, is a little lower, which made me naturally top heavy. So, but the pivot point was lower for me. So when I went down, I wound up flipping upside down like Spider-Man. And so I'm flying down the zip line upside down. And I put my feet on the, the, the, the rope that was holding me to the thing. And I went down like Spider-Man because, you know, not because I was trying to be cool, but like gravity just did its thing. And I was trying to look cool despite gravity. I love it, it's so cool. Yeah, it was so much fun. I went like a couple more times and I should never do that again because, But yeah, and you would have never done that. Right. One of the things is almost similar, but, you know, stick to your values.

[48:55] He encapsulated this in terms of Superman, right? You know, Superman would go to extreme lengths to not kill somebody or not, you know, stop someone from getting hurt. But he also talked about where he did that, you know, in the times that that seem innocuous to someone who doesn't necessarily understand Hollywood and those things. But when they made the changes to real Ghostbusters or they made changes to other shows, and he's like, you know what? I can't do this. I'm out. I'm out of here. Or when he stood up for other people, be it actors on the show or whatever. But he was never afraid to put himself at risk to help others because that was what he believed in. That's what was important to him. But the really cool message from this was just, yeah, stick to your values. What matters to you? which ties well with the failure thing. I'm going to stick to my values, which means I'm going to fail. Right. And what's the worst that could happen?

[49:50] Worst case, I stuck to my values and I've got my integrity. It's not too bad. I love this. And this kind of goes back to the college class one, but also work and everything else in his life. Never let people tell you that you can't do it. Okay. So I can't do it. Let's find out. Yeah. Let's try. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're wrong. I don't know, but I'm not going to let you tell me, you know, Well, I think that pairs great with him writing, you know, holding the record in the Writer's Guild of America of most consecutive episodes written with Babylon 5 where he's like, yeah, I didn't know you couldn't do this. So I just did it. Yeah, I was too stupid to know that it couldn't be done. And when you think about that, like how many things in our lives have we not done because someone told us we couldn't? It's sad, really, you know? And I mean, yeah, he got carpal tunnel syndrome and spent time in the hospital and his family life fell apart and everything, but he did the thing.

[50:44] He did it. I don't know. I would almost argue that his family life improved. Ultimately it did. But in the moment, like. It was hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fair. It exposed the things to be improved. There you go. Yeah. I love how his relationship with his now ex-wife turned out. Same. time talk about hope for a future and that things you know what i mean like that is that is and and he he is still keeping his promises to her just taking care of her yeah like listen i'm not gonna be married to you we're not you need to be free to go do that whole thing over there but i made you a promise and i still care about you dare say i still love you and i'm gonna keep that promise that's that that's so so much respect for the man right there so much respect and again max eilerson in that last episode oh my god oh my god yes yes i still hate that max eilerson is his avatar but he is, That recolors that whole episode for me now, just in this moment right here.

[51:48] But you said a thing just now, though, that I think was great. Because in that marriage, Catherine, is that her name? His wife? Something like that, yeah. You know, like their relationship has been interesting from go. You know, like he talked for a while. He's like, well, I guess we might as well get married because we kind of are. You know, it's like, well, let's just do this. But when he went to her and asked for the separation, it wasn't a fight. There was no whatever. She's like, yeah, I see that too. Let's talk about it like adults and let's do this thing. And, you know, they've maintained such a great relationship. But the thing you said that stood out was that pressure cooker of him doing Babylon 5 really exposed a lot of those problems. And I think for people whose relationships have ended or changed, you know, as they've gone, you can look at those moments of like, that sucks and I'm so mad at that person because of this. But the reality is that thing just exposed what was already wrong in the first place, already there. And the path is often painful. But where you end up is where it's a better place to be. It just happens that with JMS and Catherine, they were wildly respectful and loving to each other through all of that, which is amazing. Well said, Jeff. Well said. I think a lot of it ties to one of the other messages I got. Yeah. Take care of your mental health. Yeah. Depression, other untreated and undiagnosed things not only can cause health issues for you, but have intergenerational impacts.

[53:17] His mom tried to kill him because she was horribly depressed. And not only was it not acknowledged or treated, but was just exacerbated every single day by that person that might be his dad. So take care of yourself. I got one. And this is kind of along those same lines of what I said about, uh, you know, risk the failure and go do this thing uh find what you're afraid of and do that thing just do it just do it find what you're afraid of and go do it like that's how you that's how you get over it you know i've got a couple here and they kind of all fit together in a similar category so if i can kind of just kind of go through these if you don't mind yeah but these are all basically lessons he learned particularly from his father about how to treat other people how to be a better human being to others, right?

[54:08] But he says this, he says on his dad, he's like, like Dent, my father blamed outside circumstances for what he became. Whereas I learned, or whereas I leaned into the idea that we can choose another path. Let me say that again. We can choose another path. Every time he said, I have no choice, they made a choice. They just didn't want to admit it. You know, Jeff, I don't think i've often talked about my biological father here um he uh he was a man who without going into too terribly much he was a guy who was always a victim and i i i read a lot of jms's father into my own father okay on that aspect my biological father was not abusive he was not he was not JMS's dad. Okay. I want to make that clear, but this added to the driving force behind a lot of them, those two men were very similar. It just played out in very different ways, but there's a, there's a lot that I saw there, but for me, there is a lot of the reason why I think I am the way I am is because of who he was and how he's been that I don't, I don't play the victim stuff doesn't happen to me. I happen to it.

[55:28] That's that's my whole tattoo is about that whole thing. Like, you know what I mean? So I just, I love that. I leaned into the idea. We can choose another path, not because of that. And then he goes on to say, he says, you can break the cycle by refusing to do to others. What was done to you? Boom. You know, okay, let's take this whole thing and reword it just a little bit, somewhat more familiar, uh, due to others, what you want them to do to you. Don't do to others what others have done to you. Do to them what you want them to do to you, not what they have already done to you. What's so wild about that, we talked in a recent episode about if you want to change other people, you have to first change yourself, and that's where that comes from. But another thing we've talked about a lot is the difference between justice and vengeance and how a modern interpretation of justice is vengeance. When really, Brett, I think doing that...

[56:27] In the face of someone doing awful things to you and you doing good things back, not doing what they – that's justice, right? It's not doing back to them what they did because that's what our justice system does now. Oh, you hurt that person? Okay, we're going to hurt you. That doesn't help. That hasn't – how's that worked out for us? So you're exactly right. Do to them as you would want done to you regardless of what they've done. And you don't have permission to go be a certain way because that's how other people have been to you. There's a great phrase, and I love this.

[57:02] Great phrase. This is a very apropos descriptive phrase of how humanity tends to be. It's hurt people hurt people. Yeah. People who have been hurt hurt other people. Hurt people hurt people. And you can choose not to continue that. What I love about that too, because what neither of us is saying is lay back and take it, you know, and I think JMS's story with his dad is that where he ultimately showed up and, you know.

[57:35] Left and did the whole thing and whatever. But he was a hurt person who saw he was a hurt person who wanted to hurt someone because he was a hurt person and in a Herculean feat chose not to. Yeah. And that changed the path for his entire family. All right. One more that's in this vein. All right. He says this. You don't have to become what you've experienced. You could have chosen another way. To say that I have no choice is the worst kind of cowardice because you think it gives you license to hurt other people and then hide behind your past where you think no one can touch you. Well, I feel like he put those words to an effect in Lady Morella when she was talking to with Londo and Veer. People who say they have no choice are weak people defending decisions they've already made. And here's the thing. Think about that. He wrote that for Lady Morella back in 1995, four, something like that. He wrote Becoming Superman in 2017, 17, 18, something like that, published in 19, I think it was.

[58:44] He's carried that one with him a long time. That's a good one. I had one that's really a riff on that also, where he just said, we have no control over who beats us up or knocks us down or the obstacles that stand between us and our dreams, but we have absolute control over how we choose to respond. Yes. Yes. Say to the kids all the time. I'm referencing my kids a lot here, but you know what? Because I feel like sitting, sitting and reading this book was like listening to my dad or at least the guy that I would have wanted to be. No. You know who it was? You know who it was? It's like sitting and listening to my rabbi. Oh, okay. Okay. You know, you were TKO. I was like, man, I want a rabbi. I want a guy who's going to interfere in my life. I want a guy who's going to come by and tell me what's what, you know, like.

[59:29] Rabbi Straczynski. Right. Right. Like this is, uh, no, I, I love that. Yeah. Listen, the only person you can, the only thing that you can control is yourself. You can't control all the other stuff. You can only control you. So control you. Stop letting other people affect you like that. I don't know. I don't know how to tell you not to like, just don't. Okay. I've got one more. And again, this is, this is two separate ones that are very much the exact same thing. So let me read them both. And we talk about them if you don't mind. Okay. And, and this, frankly, Jeff, this is the one that to me encapsulates everything. And it encapsulates the entirety of Babylon five, which is why I saved this one for my last one. We are better together than we are apart.

[1:00:13] Despite our divergent cultures, we are more alike than we are different can we please somebody go put that on a plaque and stick it up in the halls of congress please i don't know about all the other countries out there but i know in our own damn country right here my god can we please put that on our walls we are more alike than we are different we are better together than we are apart and he says this and oh my god oh i hope he crafted this i took i hope this took him forever to craft it he didn't roll this off Despite being factionalized, tribalized, and marginalized within an inch of our lives, there is something in the human spirit that longs for connection, for connectivity. What's the phrase, Jeff? We had it for our entire season five intro. Humans build communities. Our strength is diversity. Now get the hell out of our galaxy.

[1:01:10] But my god jeff i mean that that if when you boil all of babylon five down we're better together than we are apart and despite constantly being sworn apart we just want to be together i pulled that quote for the opening for this episode from one of the interviews he did because he literally in the interview said this is the message i want to share everything i have done is this we are better together than we are apart. We are better than we think, and we're nobler than we know. Hope for the future, being better human beings, and frankly, a mirror to society. The man hits all three of our litmus tests on this one. He was doing Star Trek messages before they were Star Trek. You said the word. You said it.

[1:01:55] So I had one about listening to your inner voice and put yourself out of your comfort zone and all that stuff. But before we came on mic, we talked about a little monologue that occurred near the end of the series that really encapsulated this whole book. Right. So picture, if you will, seen tired, eager on the cusp of change. John Sheridan sitting in a dark room saying into a recorder. So I give you what little wisdom I have says that Delenn is the greatest ally you will ever have or depths of courage and compassion are unmatched but here we get to the great stuff if you ever have any doubt talk to her she will never judge you she will only love you and he goes on to say from time to time you will make mistakes they're inevitable sometimes those mistakes will be huge What matters is that you learn from them. There's nothing wrong with falling down so long as you end up just two inches taller when you pick yourself up off the floor. At times, you may end up far away from home. You may not be sure where you belong anymore.

[1:03:09] Home is always there. Because home is not a place. It's wherever your passion takes you. As you continue on your path, you will lose some friends and gain new ones. Process is painful but often necessary they'll change and you'll change because life is change from time to time they must find their own way and that way may not be yours enjoy them for what they are and remember them for what they were there's not much left.

[1:03:39] Except, I believe, I really do believe that sooner or later, no matter what happens, things do work out. Oh, we have hard times. We suffer. We lose loved ones. That road is never easy. It was never meant to be easy. Here it is. But in the long run, if you stay true to what you believe, things do work out. Always be willing to fight for what you believe in. It doesn't matter if a thousand people agree with you or one person agrees with you. It doesn't matter if you stand completely alone. Fight for what you believe. Which brings me to the first piece of advice my dad ever gave me, and now I'm giving it to you. Never, never start a fight, but always finish it. Brent, that is becoming Superman.

[1:04:31] Jeff, stop me if you've heard this one before. let's rewind all the way back to when we did our episode on objects at rest which this speech comes from you know jeff i feel like this whole speech that sheridan delivers at the end of the show is all of what jms has been trying to say through all of babylon five encapsulated in a three minute monologue literally what it is literally and i'm sorry i didn't jump in on the never start a fight and always I paused I heard you do it and I was like oh like it right as I did it you started I was like oh shoot I missed it I missed it sorry we have our council chambers with us here they get to join us for our recordings it's a thing that they get to do and uh they're sharing some of their messages that they pulled out of the book is it cool can we pull some of those up now yeah let's do that yeah let's let's do that I like this one from Fabio I like all of them but I just saw this one right is right, even if no one is doing it. And wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it.

[1:05:32] And Fabio continues with another one. If it can't, if it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth. Yes. Yeah. I love it. From Katerina, singular truth in the singular rule must be kind to one another. Absolutely. Because as Dylan says, we are one. Actually, Jakar said that. And Fabio has one more. Fear is the mind killer. Depression is the mind filler. Not in a good way. It's the little death that passes through me. Good stuff, guys. You know, Jeff, this is why, you know, we have our complete definitive...

[1:06:09] Everything that we do here but there are still things that other people find that you and i don't exactly you know although we are complete and definitive we are complete and definitive but you know the extra stuff is nice it's helpful no good good hey council chambers you guys, that's that's why we love having you guys here you rock so brent we've been doing this for two and over two and a half years has been our journey through babylon five not wild that's yeah we spent this time analyzing its messages like we did and we never compared it to star trek because this is not a star trek podcast right never has been never was but the fact that we've done those analyses and that we've never compared it to star trek it uniquely qualifies us to definitively answer the ages old question brent did star trek rip off babylon 5 you know admittedly when you and i I first started this show.

[1:07:04] I'm speaking for me. I'm not speaking for you here. A big reason why I wanted to watch this show was because I heard that they, that, that my beloved Star Trek ripped off this other show. That couldn't be true. Not my show. So let's go see if they really did or not. And you and I came in and we watched with a very skeptical eyes to whether or not our beloved show ever ripped it off. But JMS had a lot to say on the topic. He did. In his book and i think over time i've seen some other interviews have heard his side of things heard where things are here's where i say we are okay here's where i say we are lots of clarity on whether or not deep space nine ripped off babylon five my answer is no star trek did not rip off babylon five okay paramount ripped off babylon five and they did so trying to train trying to tank another new network and they pulled these pieces in and they they fed this to the show creators and in as far as star trek's role i think the furthest it might have got was the very top knowing what we know about rick berman the guy who was in charge of star trek back in the 90s it wouldn't shock me if he knew dude was a piece of work yeah we understand i I don't know him, but I would understand that. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. It did. Was Michael Piller, who was also the creator of one of the co-creators of, of deep space nine. Was he aware as well?

[1:08:31] Gosh, Michael Piller was such a good guy. I really hope not.

[1:08:34] You know what I mean? Like he was such a good guy. Um, yeah, But I could see them being aware of it. But the people who actually were running Deep Space Nine, Ira Stephen Bear, Ronald D. Moore, all of those folks, Robert Hewitt Wolf, they were not.

[1:08:51] They got notes from the studio that were fed to them. I still stand by, I think there were pot shots they were taking at each other. Hey, oh, you're, I think, pulling the name of Dukat and making that the villain of the show when he was this venerated character over here, like that seems very intentional to me.

[1:09:14] Taking the name of Lita, who's supposed to be this, you know, the telepath and, you know, a girl on her own journey and turning her into a prostitute effectively. Like, I feel like there might've been some of that, those things, but outside of that, just the basic structure. But I really, I think more than anything else, it was meant to tank the show. It was meant, they did it to, nobody else can stand on our ground. We own sci-fi. We own space.

[1:09:46] And I think they were really trying to tank the show. And yeah, I think that is guilty as charged to Paramount. Okay. What do you think? My first thought was we have to, and you touched on it, we have to define what Star Trek is.

[1:10:01] You know and is it the suits is it the writers is it the show is it the whatever and and i agree paramount biocom cbs you know whatever iteration it's been in over the years um 100 they ripped it off um i think no question but i think the star trek itself did not you know that the creators of the show the things like that and i think i think the motivation was more around the network than it was the show specifically here's this upstart you know thing oh you can bring a bunch of warner brother's stuff together and we'll show you you happen to have a thing that is our wheelhouse and so we'll crush it but you know i think some of the arguments we hear frequently are the ones you brought up right ducat and he's the villain and lita this well i i don't agree necessarily lita wasn't in it from go like it wasn't until i think like the second or third season until lita showed up well but she was in the character bible and stuff right i don't know that she was no okay I don't know. She might have been, but if I remember right, she was a later introduction to the show. Okay. And then with Dukat, 100%, the studio was like, hey, here's the names you're going to use. And then they took it and ran because there is no compared Dukat in B5 and Dukat in DS9 are not even almost the same people. Jeff, Jeff, no, no, no. In Deep Space Nine, it's Dukat.

[1:11:23] In Babylon 5, it's Dukat. It's Dukat. Completely different. It's completely different. Not the same. It's like Dukat and Dukat. Totally different.

[1:11:35] But yeah, absolutely, there may have been little pot shots back and forth. I would almost put more of those pot shots on Babylon 5, at least more blatantly. You know, what is this? Some deep space stations? Dude, those are great. Every single one of those. As a Star Trek guy, I co-sign every single one of those things. This is hilarious. They were great. You're about to go where everybody's gone before, which was, which was awesome. But yeah, I think definitively Star Trek did not rip off Babylon five Paramount by comm CBS did. Do you, so here, let's, let's note down just a few of these was Paramount already looking.

[1:12:11] It's like, had they already decided to do a space station as the next show and this came up or did they go, Hey, we've got this guy over here wanting to do a space station show. Star Trek. Should you now do a space station show? i was at a convention when was this it was in the midnight no i was still in high school so it was the early 90s so maybe it was it was in production i think i think it was like at a point yeah because i was i was like a junior or senior i remember going with my marina surtees was there yeah and, they were talking about this new show that was in production and they were excited that it was going to be on a space station so i don't know it was it was i'm thinking it must have been 91 or 92 that this happened. So I think they'd had the idea for the spinoff and had the idea to do something different, but I don't know that. I mean, they were looking for a spinoff. Okay, well, what can you do that's different now? It makes sense to go to a space station at that point. It's a space station or a colony. Those are the two choices. The idea of a female first officer. So, I mean, yes, but also, like, is that so unbelievable that, like, because here's the thing that DS9 did, that B-5 did, they had an alien female first officer. So I don't know. And maybe this is just totally my ignorance and naivete to say like, I mean, it was a huge deal to have a female first officer, but it was such a big deal to have the idea and to do it. This is the show that made a black man the commander of the station. Babylon 5 didn't do that. Okay.

[1:13:38] Commander of the station being a religious. I mean, Sheridan wasn't really a religious icon. Well, and when Babylon 5, the Bible stuff, Sinclair was the commander and he wasn't ever going to be a religious thing. Like they had a whole different arc for Sinclair. Well, wasn't he? I mean, he was always going to go back and be Valen, right? He was going to have a tie to Valen, not necessarily that he was going to be that be him. But that's something I have you done it. I haven't I haven't done the here's what would have happened if Michael Herr was able to stay with the show. And have you done that dive in yet? I haven't done that. Someone someone sent a thing to me that I read. I stopped reading, but read part of it. But it had something to do with underpopulation of Minbari and basically Delenn and Sinclair having to somehow come together to be like, well, we have to come together to the Chrysalis thing and bring people together as part of the way to keep the Minbari race alive. But I missed a lot because I started to read them like, I don't want to know any of this. Shapeshifter? They got the one changeling net thing in, and then Babylon 5 just dropped it. And Changeling, that's a piece of technology that Star Trek had done before with, you know, like, oh, I'm going to make myself look different compared to an alien. It's an actual shapeshifter.

[1:14:56] But I get the feeling that the shapeshifting thing was supposed to be way more involved in Babylon 5. And it just got dropped because of what Star Trek was doing. Maybe it got dropped because it wasn't the best idea, like the gravity ring. Let's hear what are there other because because here's what we're agreed on. By the end, Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine were two wildly disparate shows. One thing I will say, I 100% think it was ripped off, was the Bureau 13 stuff. Oh, you do? Because that came well before Section 31 was a thought or whatever. And I will never forget watching that episode, and they said Bureau 13. I'm like, oh, shoot. Oh, shoot. Oh, my God. Right, right. Right, I remember that. That was pretty blatant, but... Yeah, so definitively, Star Trek did not rip off Babylon 5. Paramount did. Jerks, white jerk dudes in suits ripped off Babylon 5. I'm with that. There it is. That's our definitive answer.

[1:15:57] Objectively correct. Brent, that's it for Becoming Superman. We're done? We're done. What? So next week, this is where we talk about what we're doing next week, and we used to make predictions or whatever. No prediction here. Brent, next week begins Babylon 5 for the second time. We've been waiting months for this moment. No, years, Jeff. We've been talking about Babylon 5 for the second time for a year, multiple at this point. We started talking about it in the late third season, I think. Oh, I think it was earlier than that. Do you really? You have a better memory about that stuff than I do, but I think it was earlier than that. But it's been a long time. We've been waiting for this, but it starts next week. I'm so excited. It's here. It's here. It's here. Let's go. When you all tune in next week, you are going to get to experience our second viewing of the gathering. So that's going to come out. And then after that, we'll be into the series, Midnight on the Firing Line, on and on and on.

[1:16:53] And what's different, Jeff, let's just say it right here. For people who are like, why am I going to watch you? Why am I going to join you guys for a second watch of the show? What's different this time than what we were doing for the first watch? I think what's super unique with babylon 5 is everyone gets two first time viewings that are entirely different you get the first time that we just experienced of oh my gosh what is this and holy crud blah blah oh londo was this and now londo's that we get all that what we get now is the viewing of oh i know what that's going to be oh they just said this thing which is going to be this it's like it's going to be an entirely different experience.

[1:17:30] For you and me and for everyone with us, because now for the people that have watched this show, you know, eight, nine, 47 times, they're like, oh, here's this. Here's this is going to come up with this. We get to rediscover those seeds that were dropped, those things that we've forgotten and soul hunter and the long dark and all those things like. And I think we should fairly say in Jeff, this is Brent writing for everything else, but we're going to do it live right here. We need to make sure that we say in every single episode, this is a spoiler warning because as part of our discussion, we, by nature, we have to be able to talk about what comes before and what comes after. Yeah. Like this will be a thing to everyone who helped keep Jeff and I spoiler free through the first watch. You guys are heroes. You're champions of this whole thing. Cause it was so hard, so hard. And you guys, you, You guys policed yourselves for us, for our sake.

[1:18:27] Phenomenal, phenomenal. Guess what, guys? We don't have to do that anymore. We don't have to do that anymore. Lids off. Yeah, yeah, lids off. So we want it all. We want it all. So I'm so excited for the second time, Jeff. Me too, because it's going to happen right here next week, and we'll see you here with The Gathering. Thank you for joining us on our very first discussion of a book on this program, something wild and new. If you enjoyed this, please give it a thumbs up, a star, a rating, a review, whatever it is that it happens to be that your app of your choice lets you do. But now, today, this moment is the time to please share this show with a friend of yours who has watched Babylon 5 again and wants to experience it for the second time for the first time. Or if you didn't enjoy this, share it with an enemy who you want to force to listen to Brent and I talk about a show they hate and don't care about either way. We love it when you share the show. So until next week, we're going to wrap this bad boy. Yeah. Brent, what's up, Jeff? I have a question. Okay. Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight? Dude, that's a, that's, that's Batman, Jeff, all this time. Didn't you know? Didn't I know what? I'm Batman.

[1:19:41] Music.