No Surrender, No Retreat | For the Second Time

] The year is: 2026

[1:54] Whatever we are going to talk about all of it. And so this is your one and only and final spoiler warning. If you haven't watched the show for yourself for the first time, go join our first time. Watch be unspoiled and then catch back up with us here. When you have gotten through the series yourself for the first time this week, Brent, we are watching no surrender, no retreat. The first time that we watched this incredible series, we played a game where we predicted what the next episode was going to be about based on the title alone. What did, well, actually I'll tell you what mine was first. Cause I got pretty specific in mine once again. Okay.

[2:32] You know, we're going to go out and just like Sheridan laid out last time. We're going to go after the colonies. We're going to do the whole thing. But I said, I hope what happens is like they come out over Proxima three. And one of the ships out there is the Hyperion commanded by captain pierce that's the one from voice voice in the wilderness okay and turns out sheridan and pierce because that was with sinclair sheridan wasn't around so sheridan and pierce have a history like they were buddies went to the academy together something like that and they have to face off and it's the first time sheridan's like, dude dude come come on come on and gets pierce to be like his first defector coming over so basically sheridan like getting building his own army of earth people like getting them to basically mutiny against the president yeah mutiny against the president slash not mutiny against the earth constitution.

[3:25] Sort of thing yeah fair enough what did you predict i basically said this is exactly what sheridan said it would be he'd laid it right out at the end of the episode he's like we're gonna start with the colonies and then we're going to go to Mars and then we're going to get earth. I also said it was going to take seven episodes to do. And that's basically what we're going to run the rest of the season with is how I felt like this was going to go. And so we'll start at the colonies. Proxima three is a good one to start with. However, many other colonies are out there. We'll go basically colony to colony. In my mind, it's like one episode per colony until we eventually hit Mars. Maybe Mars becomes a two-parter and then earth is maybe, uh, maybe, uh, you know, another two-parter or something like that. But, Uh, for the most part, it's just, it's the long march to earth for the civil war, pretty much exactly what he told us to do. Just not seven episodes. Right. Yeah. And no two parters have been said, we're going to put two of the biggest things into one. That's later. We'll, we'll get to that. Right. Well, I mean, okay. Because we know intersections in real time is coming. Yeah. Just pretty soon. Right. Like, like four episodes away or something like that. Is it possible that that's – it's a top three episode of the series, right? It's like so many others.

[4:37] I'm not wrong though. As long as you don't count Sleeping in Light because that one is sort of a thing unto itself. And as long as you don't count whatever and then we don't – yes, this is the top three. It's, I mean, just what a freaking, and who could have seen that one coming? Yeah. You know, my theory here, point being, my theory was far more simplistic. And I'm much more of a fan of the way JMS laid it out. I think especially given the constraints he was working under. He probably would have wanted it to be a long stretch. And here we are. Well, what do you say we go and look at what we thought about it the first time around? Yeah, let's do that. previously on Babylon 5 for the first time no surrender no retreat whatever happened to that David Corwin guy we got him back but dude something's up with him did you see the look he was giving to other people around the room he's planning a mutiny from within or something the, little bit with Franklin and Sheridan wants him to get the telepaths ready for something I had a theory a while ago that earth has a shadow ship and so maybe Sheridan knows this and he wants to get some telepaths ready to take him down or something. It was kind of cool when they were doing the battle planning, though Sheridan said the thing. He did the thing. No surrender. No retreat. That's the thing. You did it. Literally, my note is, hey, he said the thing. It's mine, too. He said the thing.

[6:03] You had Captain Jellicoe there who was going to fulfill his mission no matter what. Mackie, you know, old buddy, he's like, hey, listen, these guys are Earth's jurisdiction and we're just here. And Sheridan just says, dude, that's BS.

[6:15] And he calls everybody out on it. We'll call them the Clark loyalists or whatever, are pretty small in number. And for the most part, you just have a lot of soldiers that are just kind of just doing their thing. They're following orders. And I love the line. He's like, listen, if you follow an illegal order, then you are an accomplice for war crimes. I thought this was such a great angle of just the ethics of. Of combat and to be able to leverage that with the guy you learned it from, the magic in this episode is Londo and Jakar so they start talking and Londo catches himself right how quickly we fall into familiar patterns but this was like peak enlightened and wise, Londo with incredible self-awareness he's finally learned maybe too little too late but he's finally finally got it He's come back to himself. The one thing I was really disappointed that Londo never did, and it wouldn't have done any good in the moment, but Londo never looked at Jakar and said, I'm sorry. Jakar would have sloughed it off. Jakar might have even punched him if he'd said it. He should have said it. Needs to be said. But did you catch when he said that he got the Centauri to throw their support in? He specifically said to support Sheridan. I had a little Michael Garibaldi here on my shoulder saying, did you hear that? They're following sheridan what's wrong with following sheridan jeff it's a cult of personality or he's actually the guy yeah but.

[7:43] Well i think there's always a problem when you're like declaring your loyalty to a person yeah and that's kind of what they do they're like yeah sheridan, we're here for you earth has a shadow ship that was my theory and they do that's, where we get the new destroyer class no well they don't have the shadow ship but they have shadow technology shadow tech but they don't have like they don't have their own actual like shadow ship they're going to stick somebody this isn't like, the x301 or whatever right in stargate we're like hey we're just going to co-opt it and put like our our own pilots in there i remember thinking though in, i think my prediction for endgame involved clark on a shadow ship yeah like i stick i stick to that yeah yeah.

[8:24] That that would have been kind of cool honestly but also i understand why jms wouldn't have wanted to go that route. I just want to lay this out at the beginning because I'm sure we're to dive into it. Mirrors to society, messages we look for. When did we first record that episode, Jeff? The one we just watched? Yeah. Two years ago? About two years ago. Three years ago? Yeah. How would we have known back then that the conversation about people following illegal orders would actually be a conversation happening today? How? Let me ask you this. How did a guy who wrote that 30 years ago know that that would be a relevant conversation when two guys decided to finally watch his TV show for the first and second times. Or this is just history, and history repeats itself. Because this has been a relevant conversation throughout the decades. For a long time, and even if history doesn't repeat itself, it certainly does rhyme. Kudos to you for predicting the long night, very long night of Wando Malari. Thank you, thank you, and Ben shouts it out. In retrospect, we know that the sorry was being held until then for a more powerful moment. And that it was. There is actually a reason. And this is actually probably an okay place to talk about this. Jameis actually talks about this.

[9:43] Somebody had asked him talking about the Londo and Jakar stuff. Okay. And we were clearly responding to the Londo and Jakar stuff when we said that. They said the Londo and Jakar stuff was nifty. And Jameis goes, yeah, he's struggling toward redemption, meaning Londo. He's struggling toward redemption as best as he can. What did he say? The redemption of Lando Malari. Anyway, he's like, he's making a real effort, which is important because if he's going to end up with a keeper, which we know because we saw that back in War Without End, it's best if we feel for him, which you can't if he's a bad guy. 100%. So we have to get him redeemed so that when he winds up with the keeper, we're all like, what a man, what a guy. And it's jms dude joe.

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