The Road Home

[0:00] Music.

[0:15] Babylon 5, for the first time. Welcome to Babylon 5, for the first time, not a Star Trek podcast. My name is Jeff Akin. And I'm Brent Allen.

[0:27] You know, Jeff and I are two veteran Star Trek podcasters who decided that we needed to correct a mistake. We didn't watch Babylon 5 back when it came out, and here we are 30 years later, revisiting, not revisiting, visiting this very old show to see how well they do something that you know we think all sci-fi shows should do and we were so captivated we fell so in love that we continued that journey with spinoff shows books and now the movies the final movie for the first time our note says for me to say and just like always we'll be searching for those messages but i'm going to change that up a little bit, Brent. For the last time, we're going to be searching for those messages, those mirrors to society that are held up, those things that science fiction can do better than almost anything else out there. Sci-fi does this, not just Star Trek, because it's not a Star Trek podcast. It never was, never will be. And so to keep us on track, we play The Rule of Three. It's a game we've played for pretty much ever, except in the last couple of years, we've limited this to just three references to Star Trek in total per episode. That's it. Three. One of those places. No substitutions. Exchanges are refunds. And Jeff, this may be the best thing that has come out of this particular episode. For the last time, what happens if we make one of those references?

[1:56] Also, was it the last time we didn't talk about the rule of three moving forward? We have. And behind the scenes, we decided to suspend it. we could bring it back though because we have that power well we'll see how we do how we behave it's true, I like validation of how we do, and I have validation of how we behave right here, Brent. Oh, yeah? How's that? Because we have a five-star review. Oh, yes. This is also from Podchaser, like last week. Vron says, I really enjoy the hosts guessing what's going to happen next time, both when it's so spot on it's eerie and also when it's off the mark because it's proof they haven't seen it before. Also, I'm now in the middle of season four. I had to review it, and I have to say thanks for the recap on Moments of Transition. Loved it. Is this the one I did the night before Christmas thing for the recap on? That's what I'm looking up. I think that it is. Okay. I remember liking the episode. I remember doing the recap like that. I don't remember what it's about. I have no recollection. No, I know what this one was. This is the one, this was the end of the Minbari Civil War where Dillon got into the star fire wheel and Naroon sacrificed himself.

[3:14] That was the one. That's what this one was. Good job, man. Look at you. Okay, here we go. Yep. It was the night before Christmas. Well, any night. And all through B5, not a creature was. Yep, this was the one. This was the one. Yep, yep. I remember that too. A little side note here. uh i i remember that because like for whatever reason like i just started doing the like the first verse of it and then like i was going to transition out of it real quickly yep you know because we recorded that around christmas time whatever year that was that that might have been last year actually i guess yeah uh from when we record this one now and it just kept going like it just kept like i like a stranger took my pen and just just because i and i hand wrote that i I remember handwriting that one, then I had to transcribe it over. It just didn't stop.

[4:04] I can keep going. I love, I love this review. I just have to say for that reason, like it's cool. It's timely. You know, as this, as this comes out, we're just off of the Christmas season. So that's fun. But also it's, this is a thing we had in a lot of our reviews of people really loving our prediction game. And so I just, in a really painful masochistic way, wanted to like remind us that we're about to talk about that for the last time here in a minute. Well, it is the last time, Jeff, you know, along with our rule of three, along with reviews.

[4:34] Another thing we like to do is to make those predictions where we guess what next week's episode is going to be about based on title alone. And this is the spot where for the last time, we revisit those predictions and see if we got it right. So, Jeff, what did you think the road home was going to be about? I said I thought the same. I took your prediction and co-opted it and said we're going to think the same thing. You did. This is going to be war without end, but spanning the entirety of Babylon five. Yeah, that's a, yeah, yeah, this is, it's going to be a fun jaunt through Babylon five. Somebody has gotten knocked out of time and we're going to see them at the various points in Babylon fives history, interacting with themselves or trying not to interact with themselves or alternate future, whatever. I don't know, like stuff. It'll be stuff. Yeah. Time stuff. Timey. Why me? Well, Jeff, I guess it's time to go find out. Yeah, let's go see what it is. You know, here's the thing. Like, since we hit go tonight, you and I have been slow playing this whole thing. We really are. I'm super eager to get into this movie because I really want, like, this is the only movie, this is the only Babylon 5 thing that was created during yours and my...

[5:52] Consciousness and awareness of this show i mean the reality is when you think about it this happened because we started watching babylon 5 like in some metaphysical quantum way we began watching this show and sharing it with all of you so this movie was then created well it's because we were really bad at our job of trying to tank the reboot but we got the reboot off and instead it got bumped to a movie right yeah so i mean sorry but also the checks did clear so there's that Yeah, that's pretty good. Thanks, Paramount. Appreciate it. I wonder if Paramount didn't pay us if they would have been able to keep Prodigy. Maybe. Prodigy's in a better place on Netflix. This is not a Star Trek podcast, Jeff. Dang it. Let's get in.

[6:34] That's old sections getting cut out. Maybe not. I don't know. Let's get into this episode where we're going to go watch this episode. Hey, listen, if you guys are joining us for the first time, great time to be joining us. Welcome. Every episode is somebody's first episode. What's getting ready to happen is Jeff and I are going to watch the movie Babylon 5, The Road Home, right now. Right now. If you're hanging out with us on YouTube, stick around because you're going to get to see Jeff and mine's reaction as we watch the video, the film, the movie, the thing. Yes. You're going to get to see our reaction as we watch the film. If you'd like to see the full unedited reaction, you can head over to our Patreon page, patreon.com slash Babylon 5 first. And if you're listening to us on a podcasting app, we are going to meet you in the future. Here in just a few seconds, we will have watched this movie, and then we're going to share our first-time reactions, and we're also going to talk about any of the messages that we uncovered. Brent, let's take the first step on the road home.

[7:34] Music.

[7:39] All right, Brent, we just watched the road home. We did. We are home. We made it through. What are your first thoughts on it? You know, Jeff, I was realizing in the middle of watching this that you and I, I don't know if this is an advantage or disadvantage. Okay. We are in a different place with this than the first ones, the fans who watched this during the P10 days, or even the ones who caught up in the intervening years. They waited years and years to get something. Babylon 5 goes offline.

[8:10] And occasionally you get a little movie here and there. You get this little blip of crusade. And that was kind of fun for, you know, the six months that it lasted. And then, you know, you get a pilot. We're going to try another pilot, see if we can't get another show. Okay, that doesn't work out. We're going to get this thing straight to DVD thing with Lost Tales. And that, oh, yeah, well, they're kind of screwing stuff around. So that's not going to work out. You know, is there going to be a reboot? Is there going to be this? Hey, we got this thing. Super huge anticipation which frankly jeff can only give everybody expectations of what they want to see and then jms is going to come in and he's not going to give them what they want because they have their expectations and he's going to put in the show that he does unable to meet everybody else's unspoken expectations and i imagine in in many ways this was probably fairly disappointing for a lot of fans. Okay. Just, just, just by that nature, like it's so hyped up. So whatever. So everything for it, ideas of what it could be and, and, and their idea, you know, what people would blame me for. Right. Yeah. It's not what you thought it was going to be. So you hate it. Yeah. So you didn't like it and you judged it, right? Like I can imagine that's the case. I hope that people were able to also set that aside when they saw what it was and be able to interact with it on, on its own terms for what it was. That being said, you and I just rolled right into this.

[9:34] Everything's fresh. It's a part of the deal. We knew that this was out there. We were watching Babylon five, a matter of an hour of hours ago, you know, relatively. Exactly. Exactly. So you and I don't have the anticipation for this film that they did. I didn't have time to build it up in my head. And for many, like I said, I can imagine this as a disappointment that said, from my perspective and my timeline, my reality, I enjoyed this. I enjoyed it a lot. Yeah. And ultimately, this felt like the perfect cap on the franchise as a whole for two guys who started 30 years too late and ran through the whole thing to let this be the punctuation mark at the end. This is not the sentence. You know what I mean? This is not the meat of what Babylon 5 was. This is the punctuation mark at the end. And it felt perfect to me. Was it this phenomenal, amazing film that's going to launch everything? No, it's not. Was it a fun romp through time?

[10:43] Yeah, but it was a little bit more than that, a little bit different than that. This was, I don't want to say letter to the fans, love letter to the fans. I always feel like it's kind of cheesy, but this was, it was good. It was perfect for what it was, and I thoroughly enjoyed this. How about you? that's really good perspective on it because i think yeah it would be i would take it much different if i hadn't seen anything new and you know over a decade you're coming about a love letter to the fans or something like that you know it's one of the things you and i've talked about with um that's not a reference we've talked about with star trek lower decks it is a love letter to the fans.

[11:24] And it's effective because it's not written by the people who, it's written by fans, you know, and it's not even a love letter to the fans. It's actually a love letter to the franchise. And I agree, that's not what this was by any means. But what I almost think it might have been was a love letter to himself.

[11:42] Ooh, okay. What you and I know, what you and I know, and we'll talk about here in a couple of weeks, having read Becoming Superman, is Joe Straczynski went through literal hell to make this thing happen. And that culminated right in a title card at the end of an episode that we watched a couple months ago. You know, hey, to those who didn't believe. Right, right. But there's so much more to it than that. I mean, he literally put his life on the line for this show, for this story to be told, and for it to come back and not be a fun romp through time, but in an examination of what he put out there, right? And not like a deep examination, but just like, hey, look at all this stuff that we created. Look at this massive universe with depth and lore and complexity and science fiction that I created. And it's amazing. And not only is it amazing on its own, but the ideas, the concepts, the characters, the characters that I created are strong enough that they can exist in any time, space, or place. I think this was, and not all in a negative way, but this was a self-congratulatory exploration by JMS of like, look what I did.

[13:06] And for you the people who enjoy this i want you to enjoy this with me it wasn't just him right he's like i did this and i'm so proud of myself and it's awesome and you are a part of this and i want to share it with you yeah overall it was okay right it's okay if i'm if i'm being super honest i mean i i mean never watch this again it's okay it's fun but it wasn't bad it wasn't whatever but But if I had waited over a decade to see something Babylon 5 and I saw this, I can 100% see where there'd be disappointment for people. That would make sense. But I also have to imagine it did really well because so many people wanted to see it. You know, soak in anything that you give us that's Babylon 5. I'll tell you one thing that this film absolutely proves to me is it's kind of your point. It proves that there are existing aspects of the Babylon 5 universe that we have not explored yet. And I don't just mean, oh, there's this crusade and what comes next? No, no, no, no. Within what we've already explored, where did that possible future go in that video that we saw of Anova? We saw it here. This was that story in some ways.

[14:17] I don't know that this was meant or designed to Kelvin timeline the Babylon 5 universe. I agree. You know what I mean? To set up an alternate future or alternate reality. So now we explore things in that reality without having to affect the prime universe. I don't know that it meant to do that because at the end we get Sheridan and Delenn. Delenn hasn't chrysalis. They haven't woken up the shadows, all that sort of stuff. You know, I don't know that that's what this was meant to do. I think in many ways, if I'm reading the tea leaves right, because this would have come out before the writer's strike, I think, or maybe right as the right, whatever. But Warners is interested in a reboot for Babylon 5 and bringing something back, regardless of your feelings of that. They've been interested in it. So I think in some ways there's a little bit of a, hey, do you still have an audience? Float the balloon. let's do something and see what your audience see if the audience is there and so that feels like that's what this is and whatever comes next is not going to come based off of this you know but it does set up some interesting possibilities for comic books other future animated stuff if you want to go down that rabbit hole you don't have to but if you want to you could it creates the mirror universe right and you know what here.

[15:40] We're making references here so I'll hit them, It creates that mirror universe. What we know is in the Star Trek world, in comic books, there's all these little mini-series of, you know, Voyager in the mirror universe and the Enterprise-D. And it's just fun. They don't mean anything. They're just fun. It's a place to tell a story. And it absolutely created that for those other things. But I think, like, on your point of more stories to be told within what exists, you and I have talked about a number of times and even here on this program that Babylon 5 is the story of Londo Malari. Right. What this postulates or presents is that it's the story of Sheridan and Delenn.

[16:20] So multiple times has that relationship pulled Sheridan out from the depths, the depths of Zaha Doom, the depths of this time thing. And the movie ended with the two of them together having zero romantic connection at all, just two coworkers, and with their relationship beginning to bud. It's like whatever the reality Sheridan and Dylan, you're talking about alternate Sheridan and Dylan. Yes. Yeah. Non-chrysalist Dylan, right? Non-goateed Sheridan. But yeah, it's like regardless of the reality, they are two forces that come together and those two forces together literally changed the galaxy. I have a criticism though. Okay. And you and I talked about this during the run of Babylon five and it really, I was thinking this the entire way through. Hmm. So Sheridan gets hit with these tacky on things. He starts flipping through time, right? He starts flipping through time, flipping through time. Love is the thing that brings you home. All of a sudden there's this thing that's chasing him and turns out it's Dylan that's chasing him. And she is what pulls him back in. Right. But still, after all this time, Dillon is shunted as Sheridan's wife.

[17:39] As she's still kind of off to the side as Sheridan's, like, she's almost in his shadow still a little bit. You know what I mean? Because remember, like, there was good, strong strength Dillon. But the further we got into things, the more Dillon just became Sheridan's wife. And it's still showed here that she's just Sheridan's wife. But she was the reason that he got brought home. She was the catalyst. She was going after. I don't want to diminish, diminish that. Thank you.

[18:15] I kept saying dictate or delineate. I was like, this is not the right words. I don't want to diminish that, but still like Dylan wasn't a part of the story. She wasn't a part of the adventure. She wasn't doing, you know, I, I mean, my God, Jeff, you know, there's one man who has ever destroyed a Minbari ship and he is behind me and you are before me. If you fear for your life, be somewhere else like, oh my God, that kind of Dylan, you know, the, oh my gosh, like that's, that's, I just want that Dylan. And it's going to be so hard because Mira has unfortunately passed me on the rim now. And, and I don't know that anybody's ever going to be able to replace or replicate that and move that forward. And that's okay but that if i had a mate not even a major if i had a criticism like.

[19:01] But but i think i i think that's a meta that's not a criticism of this movie like you said that's babylon five it was in the story of babylon five they even in the open they even basically said they were going to do this uh veteran of the shadow war and now interstellar alliance president john sheridan is accompanied by his wife who's also a veteran of the shadow war right and it's so disappointing you know she becomes president you know she does amazing things how about leader of the rangers naroon right until za was her that did that that being said let's talk about the film we actually got and so the one we could have got let's do that yes all right let's let's just run through it real quick um the voice acting all right and specifically the voice acting of our actors who have had to be recast. How did you think they do? Let's just run through it. How did you think the person who did Dillon did? I think she was okay. She captured the overall vibe. I felt that she had an overly affected accent, though. Like, that was a little distracting to me. How did you think she did? I thought she did great. For the idea of don't replicate her voice, just replicate the character, I I thought I thought that particular character did great. OK.

[20:15] What do you think of Franklin? He was fine. He was he was fine for the majority of what we got for Franklin. He was very old Franklin. So the fact that it would be different, you know, Richard Biggs just he had this this almost droning side to his voice. It was very commanding and very authoritative. And I don't know that we got that here, but all that could be mitigated by age and wisdom as he goes forward. So what do you think of Garibaldi?

[20:47] Garibaldi, my name was Lowry, was okay. Sounded like him some of the time. Didn't really get enough of him to even get a view into his character. How about Sinclair? I liked Sinclair a lot. This was my favorite Sinclair. Yeah. I liked the voice. I liked the animation. I liked the character. It, we were, I mean, we were very harsh on, unfortunately, Michael O'Hare, um, in the beginning of, of our view of this. But even once we were made aware of his, his struggles, I was very hard on the character of Sinclair.

[21:21] This is what that character was supposed to have been more commandy. Like I really like he just, yeah, this guy, we saw a war hero Sinclair in this movie who perhaps didn't have the PTSD or, or was it? Getting actively treated like he was yeah yeah let's see who else were we missing we had that that that um jacar jacar this was the worst one to me agreed strong agree the voice the voice was not anywhere close which is okay but just did not there was none of the gravitas that andreas would bring to to align a hundred percent and i what i feel like is that the voice actor affected gravitas in a way that it sounded put on and fake and emotionless. Like what Katsoulis brought was he like made things big and heavy and it spoke to like the core of your being. Right. This guy was reading lines as a voice actor. Now, I want to be fair. No one, no one is going to step in the shoes of Andreas Katsoulis and do it justice.

[22:30] You're not going to. so whoever that was that that was brave enough to do that exactly well maybe dumb enough because here's the thing i'm a voice actor and i'm like okay here's the parts uh okay so i already got sinclair cass so you've got jakar and londo yeah i'm out not gonna do it not even gonna try it well your only comfort is at least they're not gonna see my face exactly they may not know can i use a pseudonym in the credits because i don't want to be attached i'll take the paycheck, But that's about it. Yeah. I'm going by another stage name altogether.

[23:05] Just, I mean, just out of, out of respect, honestly, like there's no way I'm coming, I'm coming close. Then the one we didn't talk about who I think was the best of the voice acting was Zathras. He was okay, but I thought Zathras was better. Did you really? Zathras, I think was the best. Shared in literally ruining the joke. He's just stepped on the whole thing. But talk about not matching the voice, but matching the style, getting the character right. Nailed it. Perfectly. We talked a little bit during the recording, and so we'll do it here for posterity's sake, about the animation style. Yeah. You nailed it. You nailed it. You called it out. It's very late 80s. It feels hand-drawn, 2D-celled, very late 80s, which kind of makes sense. Right. Because JMS's animation days was back during the late 80s with He-Man, She-Ra, real Ghostbusters. Let's do a little thing really quick because you brought that up during the watch and it made total sense. But also earlier when we were on Minbar, I made the comment, I'm like, wow, this has strong She-Ra vibes.

[24:18] Did you see anything that would have had real Ghostbuster vibes or He-Man vibes? I'm wondering if maybe he peppered some things in like intentionally. I didn't notice anything, but now I kind of want to go back and look just to see. I think the eye that was chasing was to land through the whole thing. That's kind of real ghostbuster. No, I'll tell you that the, the dude that I called out is Johnny storm. Yeah. There was a group shot. Okay. For the audio folks out there, there was a group shot that Jeff and I stopped the image on. And we were kind of going around trying to pick out who was who there was one dude who was white as all get out with, uh, blonde hair i said he looks like johnny storm that guy right there looks like he could have been out of real ghostbusters one of the characters from real ghostbusters he had that kind of look to him i don't think anybody really had the the he-man body type or any aesthetic from that but.

[25:09] But yeah that was an interesting thought we saw a real different view of the shadow war in this you know i mean the the whole thing revolved around the shadows in the shadow war for quantum reasons but we talked about this also but we saw shadow foot soldiers on mass like a huge infantry of them uh which was a little uh it was a little um jarring agreed to me as as a viewer because it's not anything that we really got uh not on a field of battle we saw the shadows and kind of en masse, like running around Zaha Doom. Like we saw that. Right. We saw him with Mr. Morden. They went and beat up Kosh. But we never saw on a battlefield, in formation, perfect lines running forward with shields and almost the phalanx type thing. Like we never got that. And I never had that impression of the shadows, that that's how they operated, that they operate because the shadows always operated by getting other people to fight wars. They instigated it with others. They didn't necessarily always do it themselves, although they certainly went around stirring crap up, too. But so that that was a little jarring. But also, I get it. That makes sense. And we can we can do it here.

[26:27] Cost-effective measures it reminded me so in the very first mass effect game we get introduced to the reapers and i talked about the parallels between the shadows and the reapers on here before but they're really painted as this existential threat that like transcends our understanding of warfare and battles like they're gonna they're gonna attack us in a way that we can't even imagine fast forward to mass effect 3 and all of a sudden we have all these monsters and foot soldiers and stuff that are fighting ground battles on these different planets and it's a little jarring at first but then also you realize like you can't have an existential video game you know that's like fighting the concept you have to do something I feel like this is a similar thing in one in one hand it made sense in that like you're going to fight some conventional battles.

[27:15] There are these little shadow people that are shadows doing stuff but much like the Mass Effect three reapers demystified the mass effect one reapers i feel like knowing there's foot soldiers with like these acharidian shields from three below like they kind of demystified the shadows as well we learned a few things jeff yeah well like we we have because we've had this conversation i feel like we had this conversation more than once during the run of the show but we now know canonically the plural of zathras is zathri and that zathri are connected across time and space. That's a little weird. That's a whole lot of Zathri out there. Lots. That's a whole lot of them. With the great machine replicating them at an alarming rate, we should be worried. We made, I tracked them. We made eight time jumps. Okay. During the whole time. So the first time jump was to the future. What we learned was 23 years into the future with Dr. Franklin. That was the initiation of the drinking game called The Observer Affects the Observed, which, by the way, I'm wasted from that game. Oh, my God.

[28:28] Time number two, we went into season two of Babylon five on earth with Sheridan's dad, which we talked about it during the thing. He said the words to his dad.

[28:40] Yeah, finally. I love you, dad. I love you, dad. Say the words, folks. Say the words. And time jump number three, went to Zahadum, the Icarus. He saw the shadows awaken. And time four, just our first alternate timeline. We went to season one, Babylon five. we saw Babylon squared as if they did not go and get Babylon four and make all this stuff happen. But, but, but specifically with that in Babylon squared, we saw a video of a Bonava and, and we were just told it was a possible future. If X, Y, Z didn't happen. Well, it's not just a possible future. It's actually an alternate reality. And we went to that alternate reality. It's the whole, the multiverse concept, right? The, the, It's not a possible future. It's a future in a different place, time, space, all that stuff. Yeah. Time number five was when we saw Zathras. We were on Babylon 5 with Lockley, and they went down to the Great Machine. And six, six was a very alternate ending. This was on Earth with Londo and Ivanova when we lost the Shadow War. And they used a mass driver to throw a moon that in this reality was a quarter the size of Earth, not a sixth, and threw it into the planet. Yeah, that was brutal. And then the planet exploded. Which doesn't happen. Not usually. Time number seven was interesting. It wasn't necessarily a time or place. He just kind of went up to the rim.

[30:08] Yeah, that was very weird. It was very, we're in limbo. It felt Matrix Revelations, or was that the third one? Matrix three, when he talks to the architect. Yeah. Like you go to this weird in-between place, the architect tells you all the stuff that's going down. In this place that has happened to be in this like almost liminal space with jacar you know the manifestation of jacar uh telling him what was up in that time i did have i had a thought that i took down i'm curious what you think i get why they had it be jacar you know the relationship and you know if that was a katsulis doing that would have been amazing should that have been lorian yes that's exactly who that should have been and by the way he confirmed he confirmed for us that Jakar and Lita did reach the rim. Yes. They actually went beyond the rim.

[31:01] Saw what was going on out there. Yeah. Which means the, the car that we saw in the movie that shall not be named had been beyond the rim and back. There you go. Are there any of those time jumps you want to talk about or dive into at all? Not, not necessarily just because it was the story, but the one, the, I, there's an aspect of it. I do want to jump into the one where we went to the alternate season one, right? Where the, the shadows had come to Babylon five and we're, we're destroying everything. Um again we talked about this during the reaction for audio listeners i want to make sure we get it in here there was something very weird about that though that's right because this is an alternate timeline in season one in which the shadows come to babylon five correct and we we say season one i mean i don't know when that actually could have been sinclair could have stayed the commander in that reality of babylon five for a very long time but garibaldi had the short shorter hair so exactly And I think it was the year 2257, I think, when that happened. We know it was that because we saw it happen in season one, Babylon Squared. Like it took a real moment that we know to have happened. Right. But that moment that they saw in Babylon Squared could have been from a future.

[32:16] It could have been from the alternate timelines future. Okay. Yeah. Because I remember they had 10 days. Like it was 10 days. If we don't do something. Oh, you're right. Never mind. Okay. So take out what I just said. You're right. You're right. Right. So but but anyway, on that on that ship, Alita and Jakar show up all of a sudden. And this lead in Jakar were very clearly the leader in Jakar that went off at the end of season five to go gallivanting around the universe. Absolutely. Now, you can tell me they weren't, but that's who they were, which the only way that that makes sense is if that leader in Jakar were an alternate leader in Jakar who had come to this alternate time. We're also traveling through all the stuff. Or maybe that was our Lita and Jakar. Well, no, because then they're going to blow up. So they can't. But yeah, so it was an alternate Lita and Jakar from a third alternate timeline that had been pulled into this alternate timeline. And that's the only way that that makes sense. It was nice to see Lita still as a badass, though. Right. And that's the thing. That Lita that we saw was a post-Byron Lita.

[33:23] That's how we know that it's from there, because that's a post-Byron Lita. She had her bad A stuff going on. She had her confidence. She was cracking jokes about it. That was 100%. That was her. That she never had prior to that. I liked, well, also in that, Sinclair.

[33:39] We talked about how this was the best Sinclair we've ever seen. agreed yes.

[33:42] Absolutely and i think my favorite part about this sinclair was when he meets sheridan who's time hopping and he's like tell me who you are you've got 15 seconds or whatever and he's like i'm from an alternate timeline and we've got to get here and we've got it he goes that doesn't matter that doesn't matter because this is my timeline and this is real to this is my real real timeline your your timeline is the alternate timeline to me like that doesn't matter we've got to take care of this now and i i loved the decisiveness the the clarity like all of that i i loved that coming out of him for for sinclair yeah it makes me it makes me hungry for what could have been right to have that sinclair through season and we got glimpses absolutely we got glimpses of that but it would have been great to have that character through all of that but hey that timeline is just because how often have we seen a sci-fi episode where we interact with an alternate timeline and we're very okay letting that timeline get destroyed or letting that timeline get completely jacked up just for the sake of saving our own timeline and what this says is no no that timeline is just as valid and legitimate and deserving of protection as ours a lot of it and i won't go into detail because i know i don't want to give you any spoilers but like that comes up in season five of lower decks there's a point where they're like some of their you know another version of the cerritos comes up and like we have to save the prime universe like well we're the.

[35:10] Prime universe no i'm the prime universe back and.

[35:13] Forth and actually in a real way i'll just say much of the plot of this movie is also the plot of the fifth season of lower decks okay so.

[35:24] I'll just give you that piece without time i'm like episode two or three into lower decks i was kind of saving it so i could just binge it all once it once it came out so yeah when we got especially when we started figuring out the whole like uh you know the quantum realities of this and that the traveling through stuff was eventually going to lead to the destruction of everything i was just like i literally just watched this scene on lower decks like wow which came out after this by the way so just to be clear star trek ripping off babylon 5 yet again unimaginable unbelievable so.

[35:56] The story science of what of what forced this whole thing I found to be very interesting. So Sheridan, old Sheridan, having in his past become unstuck in time during the World War Without End incident, made him left him susceptible to tachyon energy. Yes. Would kind of screw around with him. As he gets older, he encounters this tachyon energy from the Minbari energy plant that just came online.

[36:21] And he gets knocked out of time. He gets unstuck in time now as an older man, but turns out because of the way all that works, that is actually the event that unstuck him in time during the war without end, which we never knew why that happened in the first place. And so what we what we have here, and I love this, what we have is an effect preceding a cause, which is something that Dr. Sam Carter talks about in Stargate quite a few times. Exactly you know uh but it's it's the effect preceding the cause i i i love that and again it goes to my whole thing that time is a closed sphere and all points are happening at the same time so i love that like that tracks with everything it does not that loop is not a paradox to me it works 100 of the time i love it love it and i gotta say you are famously anti-time travel stuff for all the things no i'm anti-changing time time travel stuff which is what time travel tv is all about i know you can't do it because it's be so boring like well we don't have to do anything because we can't change the past even if we tried so we were always here in every iteration of this so let's just see what happens that's why i think it's a big deal Especially when pseudo-Jakar or whatever was breaking stuff down, you were just like, yeah.

[37:47] Either yes, that makes sense, or that may not necessarily make sense, but there's nothing that disproves it. So, okay. It impressed you, and that's a big deal. Sure. I have a final note. Okay. Which is just...

[38:00] Possibly my favorite part of the whole movie yeah yeah because jeff what have i always said if you can make me laugh you've won me over and the best part was zathras and sheridan walking down the time and he's like yes you have to become unstuck in time and or lost in time and sheridan turns around and goes and lost and and zathras goes no no no even here copyright is a very big deal can't say lost in space this is so great that was such a great literally the only thing that would have made that better is if it was lanier who said that should saying the lost in space yeah yeah yeah that would be great that was that was it i mean we had to pause the video for a moment just to collect ourselves it was i don't know why that hit me as so funny i snorted I was laughing you started so bad I hope Jeff I hope that people who have seen this movie before now who just sort of rolled over that part and didn't really start didn't think it was that funny watched it.

[39:01] With us and now appreciate it on a whole new level I really hope they're like hey this movie is amazing actually it's so good right watching it with Jeff and Brent was so much better than watching it by myself anyway Jeff with that then I think we have reached the part where we do the thing we do the thing that you and i have done for a hundred let's hear 111 110 it was 110 plus how many movies seven movies seven so that's 117 plus 13 episodes of 130 crusade yeah 130 episodes so for 130 episodes for the 130th time jeff did you pull any messages out of the road home i think the big message is that we need to learn more about quantum physics no no no you know i pulled out a lot of little ones that are there and whatever but like this it had two messages and it had the two messages that i think are that pervade all science fiction the big one is why.

[40:05] Why, you know, and when you explore the why, when you're curious about the why of anything, that's where you get to the stuff. Like that's the big important thing. Right. And the other big message that we see so often in science fiction and so many other forms of storytelling is that destruction is easy. Hate is easy, but love is the most powerful force in the galaxy. Because all you need is love.

[40:38] Yeah, I mean, I think that was the whole point of this movie was love is what connects us to the things that are important to us and it's love is the thing that will bring us back to what's important to us. And I think now that I say that, I think that backs up my theory that this is JMS's love for what he created because he came back to it it brought him back it was his road home then i pulled out a couple other little ones perspective changes everything right when you talked about oh i grew taller than the corn even though the corn's taller than me now.

[41:17] It's early summer corn is what it was early summer corn you know if no one sees it if there's no meaning does it even actually exist right i think the the message they were trying to really hit us over the head with was, um, the observer affects the observed message received. I don't think that was a message. I think that was, uh, a scientific thing that got latched onto and we're going to build everything else off that one idea. However, we don't necessarily understand that idea correctly, but that's, I read this in an article and I thought it was pretty cool. I'm going to, I'm going to write a movie about it. Right. Right. Did you find any other messages or did you want to dive into any of those? Well, I had two and you kind of hit both of them, but I'll go with you. The perspective changes everything, which literally is what the rest of it was about. Like outside of I stopped looking once I got tall, but perspective changes everything. It's literally the observer affects the observed and it, you know, how, how that, how you, I don't, I don't even know. I don't know, but your perspective does change everything. I love the idea. He's getting himself lost just to prove that he could get out until he got tall and seared of the corn. And then he didn't have to get lost anymore. I don't have, I don't have to go through that silliness anymore because now I can, I've risen above it. But the biggest one, and, and I'll take, I want to take what you said about love and I just want to encapsulate it in terms of the film. Yeah. Love is the greatest anchor of all.

[42:45] Yes. Yes. And love transcends time and space. That's all I got. Oh, Brent, I love this part of the show we're about to dive into.

[42:56] And this part might exist in some form for us in an alternate reality or the future. We'll find out. But this is us creating the definitive ranking, the objectively correct ranking of all of the movies within the Babylon 5 proper. This is the final one, the eighth film for us. When you rank this, we will have created the definitive list. And I'm curious where you're going to put it. That is immutable, except for that one time we might mute it. Exactly. Whatever. But only we can mute it. Mutate it. Yeah. Mutable-ize it.

[43:29] Our top five, Brent, starting from number five, River of Souls. Third space in number four, A Call to Arms. In the beginning in the number two spot and a resounding number one from us from last week, The Lost Tales. Brent, you have the final duty here, the massive responsibility. Where does the road home land? It's so hard for me not to apply recency bias because I just had so much fun with this film. I enjoyed this film. But I think when I look at the thing, try to give, let this one stand on its own two feet, right? And how do the others stand on their own two feet? And I think Lost Tales is going to stay as number one. So does this become number two? Does it become number three? I do. I like this better than I did Call to Arms. Okay. So it's either going to be number two or number three. And in the beginning is going to fall to number three or stay at number two. And here's the thing. I compare this to in the beginning and what happened in, in the beginning, in the beginning, took us back and filled in a lot of question marks that we didn't know. It interacted with stuff that was already there and fleshed things out a lot more. And it did a little bit in the same thing that the road home did. We go back and we interact with, with where we were. Now, Road Home spent more time in alternate realities than it did in the prime reality, but still, I think in the beginning did it better.

[44:51] I think in the beginning was more satisfying. Does that make sense? Because it was within the canon of what happened. It didn't Kelvin the Babylon 5 universe the way that Road Home did. It just fleshed it out, made it bigger. And it stayed within the confines of established lore and established things. So to me, I'm going to say in the beginning, based on that alone, in the beginning is going to sit higher than Road Home. So this is going to be our new number three. And it's going to push Call to Arms down, third space down, and river of souls is gonna fall off the top five and that's okay what i find fascinating not about necessarily just the ranking but that number two and three in the beginning in the road home and then if we add that to our other season rankings that happened the most pivotal moment in all of babylon five was the trilogy of babylon squared war without end one and two because in the beginning.

[45:48] Happened in the space of war without end right there's this other stuff that was going on and then this was the piece that made so much of that happen and we saw babylon squared the other piece that is the pole in the tent we can sit here all day i'm talking about severed dreams you know and all the other incredible episodes out there but those three episodes are babylon five and i'm okay with that it's not a bad set of episodes nope well it's it just shows how rich they are that they can create this much more content, you know, connected to it. God, it was just brilliant. You know, Jeff, before we go, our friend Ben over in the chat, who's watching hello to our council chambers who are over there, he says this about this. And I think this will cap, we'll put a cap on this whole thing. Ivanova's line at the end, sorry for the delay.

[46:37] Life got in the way. Felt like JMS apologizing to the fans for how long it's taken to get this out. And to and I will continue that with what he what she said afterwards we're back online and we're here to stay yeah Jeff I know you don't want a Babylon 5 reboot I don't I don't know that we need a reboot but I know I want more Babylon 5 yeah I want more here and I want it to be here to stay and so whatever's going on in Hollywood whatever's going on in TV get your figured out and let's get get back to some good writing that jms has planned for this and let's let's make it happen let's do it that's my final word on babylon five let's do it i think it's that's it what would they say let's go let's go And Brent, let's go. Pass the road home. We're closing it out.

[47:33] And this is normally where we would play our game, guessing what's going to come up next week. But you know what? You know what I'm going to do? Let's do this. We play the game where we guess what the next episode is going to be about. Viewers, listeners, I want you to guess what's going to happen in next week's episode. because next week, we're going to wrap up the entirety of Babylon 5. We're going to talk about the episodes, the movies, the crusade, about all the stuff, the interconnectivities, and everything about it. We don't even know what we haven't talked about. We're going to talk about it yet, but all those things. So if you're on YouTube, make some comments down there. If you're listening to us on a podcasting app, there's a link in the show notes that lets you, I think it says you can text us or whatever. We also have an email there. We're also on the social media. But what do you think we're going to talk about? What do you think we're going to like? What do you think we're going to say we were wrong about or whatever? You get to guess this time around. What are the things that stood out to us the most? Because that's certainly what we're going to be diving into. I can't wait. I can't wait to read the things that you think we will talk about and what we'll think and do. It's going to be a lot of fun. And we'll get to do a lot of that right here next week. Brent, we're done here. We're done. Finito.

[48:51] This is where we always wrap up and I say thank you, but I honestly want to stop and just like there are a number of you. We just said 130 episodes, but then we had our wrap-ups and stuff like that. So let's just say 135 episodes and many of those well over an hour. So many of you have spent all of that time with us. Some from close to the beginning, some crammed it all into a couple of weeks and some superhuman feat. I don't have the words to express just how, oh, I'm getting emotional, how much it means to me that you all did that, you know? Yeah. Brent, we started this whole thing on a lark. It was just a dumb project. We were going to, like, let's, you know, hey, let's watch Babylon 5 and talk about it. Let's document. All we were trying to do is just let's document it. Let's document a journey. That's all we were trying to do. 110 episodes and we're out. Let's give ourselves an excuse to keep watching this thing because we got to show up and record every week. And then all of you showed up and, uh, it, it never, I am, I am going to cry. It never, it never stops blowing me away that we've met so many of you and that you're here with us as we watch this show and talk about it. And so just think, thank you. Thank you for being here with us through all of it. It literally means the world. We would not be here if it wasn't for you guys. Exactly. We wouldn't wait.

[50:15] We might not have made it 110 episodes if it wasn't for you guys. And, and we certainly wouldn't continue going if it wasn't for you guys. All of you on YouTube, all of you on the podcasting apps out there, all of you on Patreon. Yeah. We wouldn't be here. Jeff, so much life has happened in the last, what's it been now? Two and a half years, three years almost. Yeah. Almost three years. It'll be three years in May for us. Yeah. So, um, So much of life has happened. You guys have shared your lives with us. Jeff, think of all the emails we've gotten of people sharing deeply personal things. Yes. Literally marriages restored through not you and me, but just this thing. Babies born. Yes. People have passed and gone beyond the rim. My father being one of them, you know, like huge life changes happening. Entire construction. Right. Like neither you nor me nor our homes are the same as they were when we started. Oh, they're not. And we're all here together and we've done it together. And you know what? In the words of Ivanova, we're back online and we're here to stay.

[51:34] Music. I had a kind of funny thing, but I feel like that was the way to end it. That was, if we went and did the joke, it would be stupid. Can we do the joke for our Patreon folk? Totally. All right, here's what we would have done at the end. Jeff, we'll see you next week. Totally. These are the special features here. Yeah, this is the alternate ending. So we'll find out right here next week. Thank you all so much for joining us. It means the world to us. If you haven't already, please rate us, subscribe, do all that kind of stuff. And the most important thing you can possibly do that we love is share the show with somebody else. So until next time, we're going to get Jeff. Yeah. Brent, what's up? Hey, do you think this would have been better with Chris? Whoa, we, we cannot, we cannot say that here. Why not? It would be so dumb not to be able to talk about Chris. Whoa, dude. Even now, many issues with copyright. Oh, for crying out loud.

[51:36] I mean, we're not some deep space franchise. This station is about something.