Visitors From Down the Street

[0:00] So what is to be gained by fighting? Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot. I'd like to be the one to make that decision.

[0:06] Music. The year is 2024. The name of the podcast, 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. Jeff and I are two veteran Star Trek nerds who decided to watch Babylon 5 30 years too late. And when we did so, we fell in love with the series so much that we've decided to continue it with movies and books. And now, specifically, with Crusade for the first time. And just like always, we're going to be searching for those deep hidden messages, those sci-fi messages that are held within this series. because, Brent, this is not a Star Trek podcast. No. We used to call these Star Trek references, right? But it's not a Star Trek podcast, and to keep us on our toes for that, we play our long-running game called The Rule of Three, which is a game that limits us to no more than three references to Star Trek per episode. That's it. Three. One of those places. No substitutions. Extensions are refunds. And if we make one of those references, Jeff, you're going to hear this.

[0:10] I want you to know that this thing just made a very large dent in my ship.

[1:23] I don't think Star Trek is the series we need to worry about making references about in this one? Probably, well, sure. We'll get to that. Hey, Brent. Hey, Jeff. We have a four-star review. Yay? Cool. We'll take them all. We take all of them. That's for sure. We take them all the time. We'll read it. And this one is from Apple Podcasts. Darth Kalis says. Darth Kalis. Wow. Mixing your franchises there. Okay. So it's Darth Kalis on a Babylon 5 show. Well, the Dark Lord says... The longer I listen, the worse it gets. Be prepared for a lot of, well, actuallys. It's a couple of typical Berman Braga Trek fans. They think their non-Roddenberry Trek is the only Trek. Every criticism they level at this show could be leveled at the Bermanverse times 10. Can't handle TOS, but Harry Potter? Ew. Okay. Thanks for the four-star review, Darth Kalis. they're a person who's on the dark side. Maybe for them, the longer they listen, the worse it gets is actually a good thing. Right? It's kind of like on, you can't do that on television. It's like an opposite day. Because it is a four-star review. I mean, if they hated it as much as it sounds like to us, this would be like way lower. So they still gave us four stars. It's all right. High praise from the Dark Lord. Thanks. Thanks for the review.

[2:52] We'll read them. You send them in, we'll read them. You know, one thing they're all right about, I don't know if I could say this as as blanket as they do but every criticism they level at the show could be leveled at the berman verse times 10 every criticism we level at any sci-fi show could be leveled at any of the star treks times 10 and we've done that as star trek podcasters right many many times we'll be consistent with that too yeah for sure well jeff uh you know we like to read reviews even even Listen, it's a four-star review.

[3:27] My mind's a little blown right now. We like to read reviews. We like to play our game, The Rule of Three. We like to do another thing where we get to the end of the show and we guess what the next week's episode is going to be about based on title alone, having never seen it, never looked at thumbnails, never read show descriptions. Well, this is the part where we come back and we try to think about what we said last week that this week was going to be about and see how well we did. So, Jeff, what did you say this week visitors from down the street was going to be about? And how close were you? Ultimately, I thought it was going to be a Matheson telepath episode, but I thought it was going to be like this telepath virus that came and did kind of like the Twilight Zone thing of the monsters are due on Maple Street sort of piece. I will say that we did get some Matheson and we did get some telepath stuff in this one, but that was far from the point of the episode. What did you think it was going to be about? Well, I said that this was going to be a comedy episode. We're going to get a crossover for some Babylon five characters. Maybe we'd actually get to meet Lockley in this one since she's in the opening credits. We still haven't seen her. Maybe we'll see one of the other, you know, Lanier Garibaldi, one of those, those kind of guys, but, you know, kind of that offbeat and, and kind of quirky sort of show, whatever. I got offbeat. I don't know that I'd say it's a comedy. Quirky, for sure.

[4:49] Crossover from another show, kinda, I guess. Not really. You know, yeah. So, I think I was aiming in the right direction. I just completely missed the target. That's fair. That sounds about right. Well, Jeff, for those who may not have actually seen this episode, because it has occurred to us on more than one occasion that there are people who've never actually watched Crusade, and they could really be listening to us never having seen the episode. Totally cool. We get it. Or maybe people haven't seen it since it originally aired or it's been a while. Why don't you remind the folks out there, Jeff, what this episode was actually about? Well, it's a normal routine day, tooling through space, picking up a distress call, picking up a broken down shuttle, helping out the aliens. And wait, are those aliens wearing suits? Yeah, they sure are. and they even speak English. And almost everything they say is about the conspiracy theory that humans have been visiting their planet for centuries.

[5:46] They've apparently created agencies in the government to conceal all their activities. It's really the alien conspiracies that we have here now, but with an UNO reverse card getting played on us. But this conspiracy theory comes with receipts. Foxter Connie has drawings, pictures of blimps. They uh the government calls those pictures swamp gases sound familiar they even have a picture of mount rushmore or six grandfathers gideon is listening he recognizes the cover-ups are the same ones that we've heard but he's not quite buying it it doesn't add up but he does agree to look it all over but before he makes any kind of a decision, Special Agent Kendar comes on board. He wants Durkani and Lyssa, and he wants to execute them.

[6:34] Gideon pulls everybody together, and it does not go well. Durkani pulls a gun out of Kendar's holster and takes him hostage. Security teams go looking for him and finally corner them in the bullet train tube. They arrest him, send him back to their ships. After the first two leave, Kendar bond villain monologues and explains that they've been fostering this conspiracy for about 200 years. It's brought peace. It's ended their civil wars. He talks about his love for pizza and ice cream, and then he lights up a smoke and heads out. Gideon seeds their planet with copies of the Interstellar Encyclopedia and the true story of what happened. I'm pretty sure that'll absolutely put all the conspiracy theory stuff to rest. Because, Brent, the truth is out there. What were your first thoughts when you watched visitors from down the street? You know, I said in my prediction that this was going to be a comedy episode for that sort of offbeat break from the norm. And like I said, while it wasn't a comedy, it definitely was offbeat. It was definitely a break from the norm. Overall, I found this episode enjoyable, even if a bit forgettable. I would definitely watch it again, but probably only while doing laundry. Now, all of that said, I want to go ahead and just sort of preempt something if I could here, Jeff. Okay. Because I've got a lot of comments about it from the Brent Watches video that went out on YouTube this week and even on Patreon.

[8:00] I understand, and we'll just say this right up front, this show was almost a parody of X-Files, another great 90s sci-fi show. Here's the thing for me, Jeff, and I don't know if this is true for you. There's a reason I didn't watch Babylon 5 back in the 90s when it first came out. Because in the 90s, I wasn't watching much TV, period, including sci-fi. I didn't come to sci-fi until I was in my 20s in the 2000s. So I missed a lot of that early Star Trek. I missed a lot of the really early Star Trek, but I missed a lot of that. I missed X-Files. I missed Babylon 5. I've missed Sea Quest. I've missed all those. I never saw them.

[8:48] To this day, I still haven't seen X-Files. That is a new show to me. So all the references in this show that call back to X-Files, they're just going to go over my head, guys. I haven't seen it yet. Please save the click clacks and try to tell me off and ask me how I could forget it because I just don't have a frame of reference, which is why I go back to my original opening thought of. I i enjoyed this episode even if i found it forgettable because i i don't have those connection points to make it really stand out to me how about you jeff i watched the x files as it came out the uh the guitar player in my band had a uh well i mean he thought it was pretty healthy but he had a bit of a obsession with jillian anderson who played you know uh dana played a scully on there so that's where my mind always goes whenever i think x files is him and.

[9:39] The posters and the wallpaper on his computer he had but uh it was an okay show like so i think i shared in some conversations this week that i watched x files as it came out i liked it i was never into it necessarily and i went back and tried to re-watch it i don't know four or five years ago and i don't feel like it aged very well i tapped out before the first season before i even got through the first season yeah but it was very much a series of its time you know and so i think And that was an interesting time in a lot of ways. But, you know, same. I enjoyed the episode. It was interesting to me that it was a total throwaway. Like, they didn't even mention the plague in this one at all. And my understanding is that when the 13 episodes were written, they had no idea that they'd been canceled yet. Somewhere between writing and filming or something like that is when all that went down. So 22-episode seasons, you're not necessarily doing this hyper-serialized arc like they did in Babylon 5. So you're going to get some of these throwaway episodes. And we got the stuff in it that you get in those. We got a little bit of insight into Matheson. We got some stuff about Gideon. We got some stuff that they thought was hilarious but was just so gross.

[10:58] Yeah, this was an episode. This was an episode. If it was anything, I feel like JMS was just trying to do two things in this. He was trying to say, hey, X-Files, X-Files. Oh, and screw you, Star Trek and the Prime Directive.

[11:13] Oh, we'll definitely talk about that. I am sure. I am sure. Yeah. Jeff, if I could kick this off, I want to start with maybe at least the more superficial piece of it. I want to start talking about the makeup, the fish faces. I didn't even catch the name of their alien race.

[11:30] I'm just going to call them the fish faces. I found it really jarring in this episode coming off of the wonderful, fantastic makeup that we saw in Babylon 5, particularly with Jakar. But we saw it with so many of the full face made up characters where you could see like the makeup moved with their face so easily and you could see the emotions and you didn't see the lines. You really couldn't tell where the prosthetics began and the actor's skin stopped. You just couldn't do it. This makeup in this episode, it was very stiff, it seemed like to me. I could see, and I understand they were trying to mask it with the tentacles or whatever, but around the eyes and around the mouth, it looked like a mask where they had left the jaw open. So that the jaw could keep moving, but the rest of the face was just still. And with these fish, and I know there's literally nothing they could have done about this, just limits. As soon as they open their mouth, their lips, the inside of their mouths are pink as all get out, and their teeth are all white, and it is just a human's mouth. And it just did not blend with the makeup at all. It didn't.

[12:57] Really stood out and i just found it real jarring through the whole episode watching this thing that i was like man i i appreciated the flashback scenes that were in black and white for almost that for almost that purpose once you took the color out of the equation they didn't look that bad it still looked like spirit halloween store you know quality but taking the color out of us but this the fact that around the mouths it was still mostly like white yeah and then like that green and then the actor who played lissa just looked so uncomfortable in all that like she couldn't talk you know very smoothly and it was just yeah it was it was uh it was off putting very much so i will say that on my second watch on my notes i was specifically looking for some x-files things and noticed that her little hair tentacle things were remarkably more red than either Kendar's or Dracani's. So it's like, okay, so they're making her the Scully. I see that. I did notice the red. Of course, I didn't have the references to X-Files to be able to make that connection at all, but I did notice they were red. Speaking of the superficial stuff, what did you think about the poop bee story? Here was my note, Jeff, and I need you to get ready for your little sensor button there. The s*** pipe burst. Ewww.

[14:22] Ew, that, that was, that was my whole note about that. It was, it was gross. It sound, the sound was everything it needed to be. The thing that I took out of it, like to make this, oh, there's a legitimate thing. We forget that ship was a prototype. Right. So of course all the fittings aren't perfect and everything. It's just super unfortunate. It was that one. But I loved the fact though, that getting was just like, do you smell that? And no one can smell it until Kendar goes by and it's just like, Hey, do you guys smell that?

[14:51] Ha ha ha well done well done right so just to get it out of the way i did capture those the x-file references i got and i'm sure there are more out there i you know i'm the references are out there but uh the episode starts with we're here in the eridani sector it's this date and it's this time that's how x-files started each episode okay there was an episode of x-files that did an inverse of this so we got in the flashback we got the alien who was a human under the alien mask who then was an alien under the human mask and they and in real life was a human under that alien under that mask yeah it was ah who had the red tentacles uh near the end uh kendar says the true or a dirkhani's her.

[15:38] Say the truth is the truth is out and then kendar cuts him off with of fashion but the truth is out there was the tagline for the series and then when he lights up the cigarette uh the kind of a one of the main mysterious characters throughout most of the series was the cigarette smoking man never had a name he just smoked and so it's a thing so there's the references to x files now we can talk about the rest of the episode fair enough i hate to say i don't know that i have a ton to say about the episode i've got a lot to say about how it ended but like there a lot of it was more just kind of noting like what was going on that i think had i caught all the references and and been been in that like uh like i was like oh so now we're in a black and white film noir okay whatever i oh oh here's this um we got a little bit more about the telepath war like at least some confirmation on that and you know what we saw on this episode for the very first time?

[16:37] Matheson using his telepathic abilities. Exactly. We have yet to have seen that, and now we have seen that. But we get in here that the PsyCore is done for whatever happened.

[16:49] In those books we haven't read yet whatever happened the psycor is done he says following the regs following the regs are all that stands between us and the creation of a new psycor i had a lot of questions about that though i found that i mean it makes sense psycor was bad right like that's a thing that we we saw very clearly even was we're told time and time again that they were they were bad but what do they do with the telepaths now like are they just out there am i I just, you know, Ivanova can just not have to worry about Psycor ever finding her, just whatever. Do they have to register? Is there any sort of anything? But my big question was, in the cool uniforms they had, he had a Psycor badge on his shoulder. And on these new ones, he has a Psycor logo on his stat bar. Does he? Interesting. If the Psycor was bad, right, and it was an awful thing for the telepaths, wouldn't slapping him with this symbol like be a slap in the face unless they redefined what it meant, you know, and we, we've seen that we've seen where people, uh, where something that is a negative gets redefined into something that is, that is actually a positive. Unfortunately, we've usually seen it go the other way around. Something that's a positive getting redefined in something that's a negative looking at you swastika. I don't, I don't, I don't know what the actual name of that is. That's not German sounding. Yeah.

[18:12] I know it's flipped around and turned it an angle. And it used to be a really great thing that was everywhere. Like it was used in a lot of places in the world. It meant what? Like fortune or good luck. Fortune life. Yeah. Yeah. Like it was, it was something good, but not now. Yeah. It certainly got twisted. So I will say this. I had, I had two experiences. You and I have actually already discussed one of these. Well, I think we might've discussed it with our council chambers earlier. There were two characters in this that were under the full face makeup that It made me sit back and go, wait, is this that other actor that played in Babylon 5? The first one was whatever the main guy's name was. I forget his name. Dracani. Dracani. I was like, I swore Jeff for the first 10, 15 minutes of the episode. I was like, this is the guy that plays Byron. Like, I was just, is this Byron? And it took everything within me not to like IMDB it or Wikipedia it or something to try to find out. And I still haven't gone back and looked. But I think ultimately I decided it's not Rob, Robin Downey Atkinson or something like that. Something like that. I always, I always forget his name. I get it mixed up with Rowan Atkinson, which is not the same at all. Right. Right. So it's, it's not him. Now, this other one, I don't know if it's him or not. The guy that played, uh, ancient Kendar, his voice was so affected. He said, it's a remarkable ship.

[19:41] You know who he sounded like to me? Hmm. The guy who did Soul Hunter. I thought the same thing. Did you? I didn't like, I was going through just thinking to myself, who was this guy in Babylon 5? Yeah. Like, he had to have been somebody in it, but I don't recognize the actor's name from anything. So he might have been back in B5, but when I went and saw the cat, I'm like, I don't recognize that name. And to be clear, we're talking about Soul Hunter from, like, episode two of the series, not Soul Hunter from the film A Call to Arms that was played by Martin Sheen. Correct. We're talking about the ooh, da, go, be, yeah, that guy. That guy. But he was, that voice, you did a great job. That was a good impression. Wow. Did they really put, we had many wars. Civil wars. No. We had many wars.

[20:35] Civil wars. Everything was like drawn way out. Episode would have been 38 minutes if he just spoke at a regular cadence. Yeah. I feel like, Brent, this was an excellent Gideon episode. Yeah he stood out really well there was the he and matheson had some good and back back and forth and he's like how do we get into this mess active mercy well remind me never to do that again right right i'm gonna have that embroidered somewhere but i also liked how like he was just great with this whole thing this whole conspiracy lands in his lap he hears the guy out like he listens he's gonna trust but verify sort of a thing he even gives kendar the chance you know let's tell me your stuff what's what's going on and then he's like no we're done and at the end was just like yeah let's let's launch the stuff tell him everything tell him that uh this is all whatever and and let's get out of here we're done yeah i i very much uh i very much i i liked this from gideon uh he and i want to say it was matheson they were having a conversation about whether or not, he was going to be the one to go down there. Very, very Riker Picard type of a conversation.

[21:52] And I love that he, he pulled out captain's prerogative. There's no sense of danger. There's no whatever. So this is captain's prerogative. I'm going like he, he just pulled the card out and I was like, I love that you said that. And I was like, I really like this idea of captain's prerogative on that, on, on that particular level. So I appreciated that. It was funny though. Cause he's like, there's no danger. It's probably going to be fine. And then literally an entire platoon of Marines head in with their guns pointed straight at it. Like, Oh my gosh, what's good. And then there's just these two little people and they're like, Oh my gosh, we got to see kind of a new side of the Excalibur in this one. We spent a lot of time in the, I'm going to call it the subway tube. I didn't catch what they called it. Well, first of all, and I feel like I've said this before, I'm going to say it again. Every time I see that subway set, I just expect to see Bester and Garibaldi sitting in there. The car specifically, right? But we saw the tube. We spent a lot of time in the tube. Obviously, we had the poop pipe going on. But there's this whole ending scene where people are rappelling down ropes.

[23:01] Like tack team type stuff. Like where are you coming from but they had you know and even to the ending joke of him sitting there with his legs up in the T and feeling the wind as he goes by yeah although he did talk about the you know he likes to feel the ebb and the flow of the wind I think I prefer to feel wind to flow not ebb like I don't want the wind pulling away from me I just want this just this right here what did you think.

[23:30] Of that scene with him all you know vacationed up and feet kicked back drinking his iced tea man i mean that's how i live my life dude that's i i've just never done it like that in a subway before but i was sitting there it's like it the thing that can't be that relaxing is the noise the sound that has to echo through there maybe you know but he likes feeling the wind okay like hey man glass of tea you know what i was mostly concerned about in that particular shot how much sugar is in that tea is he just drinking it like is it just straight iced tea unsweetened does he have any lemon in it is it actually sweetened iced tea is it so sweetened that he has tea with the sugar like i'm i'm a southern guy and that's that's how we make our iced tea you know what i mean got your sweet tea oh yeah baby oh yeah you know so i i was really like was it lipton was it some other like where where do you get the tea from have a hard enough time getting coffee where yeah how do you get tea right i was interested by the whole scene when he was talking about the wind with matheson like he was intense about that whole thing and i was like this is the thing you're gonna get super intense about but then i thought dude the captain of you know this big ship he's probably been with earth force for 20 years yeah 20 years on spaceships yeah i totally would get that missing the wind has got to be a very real thing i promise you one thing about it though Jeff with as big of a deal as he made it about this like as his thing we're never going to hear about it again.

[24:59] And if this show went a full five seasons, we still would never have heard about it again. Gideon and wind is to Sinclair to Sheridan and conspiracy theories. You're picking up exactly what I'm laying down there, my friend. Absolutely. Well, you said when you were heading into this, that we're going to talk quite a bit about the last little bit of this episode when he seated and peppered the planet surface. Want to dive into that? Yeah.

[25:26] So, well, I mean, I think first we need to talk about what the culture was doing and have that conversation. So let's rewind that and go. So they were having there were a culture that was bent on civil war and destroying each other. And the leaders came together and like, listen, if we can give our people effectively a common enemy, we can get them to unite and we'll settle down these these civil wars. Somehow i think you said it and i i didn't write it down somehow they picked earth they found out about earth and they picked these earthlings it was totally random they were picking up signals from other worlds and we'll do this one which is like do you remember the movie galaxy quest oh yeah it's like what would have happened there except they didn't like feed into it you You know, like totally. So so they they start perpetuating these ideas of alien invasions incurring from these weird Earth looking people to the point that it actually takes over their culture. They start dressing like us and they start building their stuff like us and they start talking like us. And it literally takes over the whole dang culture, but it's keeping the peace there.

[26:40] Now, they're not really a space faring civilization yet. Right. Or not outside of their solar system, I guess. Exactly. So they're still very much contained with where they are. And they talk about they had a long history of suspicion and paranoia, and it led to all sorts of wars, to which my mind went, that's the Romulans. We've seen that. Oh, yeah. You're just describing the Romulans.

[27:04] But they gave people a common enemy, and they just were able to blame everything on the aliens. The outsiders. Now, my question there immediately was, so what happens when the people advance to a point where they can go out beyond their solar system and actually start meeting real earthlings if they think that these guys are what they are? Now, that's the context of where we are. Gideon goes, screw that. I don't like being used. And he just goes and bombards their planet and all these different pieces with, hey, here's the real truth of what's going on. And my response when I saw that, my immediate response without even really thinking about it was, he can't do that. He does not have the right to do this. That is, he is interfering in their culture and what's going on there. And I know that they don't have a prime directive. And this, to your point, if he's just given them, that's JMS, given the middle finger to the prime directive. I get it. Well, it was, it was explicit, right? Matheson says, some will say you're interfering in other cultures. And Gideon says, screw them. Yeah. Just dead. There's no like perceived middle finger. It's straight up.

[28:11] He's saying that. And that being said, while I agree with, while I, I understand. And I even to some point agree with what Gideon was saying, listen, the truth will out the, the, what's he say? He says, if you let the truth back in the room, the truth can take care of itself. But in doing so, he, this is going to reignite civil wars. This is going to like, this is going to turn people in a not great way. And I get it. There's this this sci fi thing of like, listen, it's, you know, people aren't going to like it, but it's going to lead to the better deal. It's going to lead to the better idea. And I don't know that that's the truth. I don't know that I don't know that that's how that actually works. What he did was he just set off effectively a figurative atom bomb on that world where they could actually blow themselves up because of this. And they weren't ready to hear that yet exactly it doesn't affect us it doesn't affect humanity at all to let them have issues with us i get where he was coming from like.

[29:19] Exactly what you said someday they're going to run into us and they can't think we're this thing yeah but i totally agree that was my snarky comment at the end of the recap it's like yeah this is totally gonna take care of the conspiracy things because they they're gonna kill them they're it's literally going to lead to a massive uprising although i can't i can't say that Gideon was wrong for saying he doesn't want earth to be blamed for something that we didn't do. And he doesn't like being manipulated. Nobody likes being manipulated. No earthling likes being manipulated. No earthling likes being used. You try that with us and we're going to push back. I get it. I get it. But I still don't think he should have done it. And I do not think that putting the truth out there is actually going to help this culture. And in fact, I think he literally could be destroying the culture. And if they do, that's on themselves because they shouldn't be doing that. I do think that if he wants to break up the conspiracy, and I think it's a good thing to break up the conspiracy. The best way he can do that is through more diplomatic means. Actually go land on the planet. Avoid starting a war. Understand that you're walking in. They're going to be guns blazing on you as soon as you show up. You've got to calm that down and show them that you're not the enemy. But guess what, guys? There's this whole galaxy out there full of a lot of folks, and some of them aren't so good. Let's talk about the Shadows and the Vorlons and the Drog.

[30:43] In my note, I say they should institute some sort of a prime directive. Maybe they should, maybe they shouldn't. That might be going a bridge too far. But here, I just, Jeff, I really, I think Gideon is wrong to do this. But I understand it. But I think he's wrong. But I understand it. But I think he's wrong. It's like he was wrong and it was the thing to do and it was wrong. Yeah. I agree on almost everything. I think that them landing would have been more catastrophic than what he did. Imagine right now as we're talking the ufo lands on the lawn of the white house and they're like it's cool we're no one is going to believe that that's not well and let me clarify i don't mean the excalibur crew land on the planet i mean you've got people on earth who are qualified to do first contact stuff the right way and to make those incremental introductions as they go like.

[31:37] Whatever that that diplomatic process is that allows that to happen Gideon and the crew don't need to land on the planet let's let's be clear about that yeah that's that's not good but I think too like Kendar showed us how that would play out because as soon as he was in the room with Dracani and Alyssa he started speaking in their language like hey this worked out exactly how we planned I told these guys to come out and get you and so I think like at this point in where they are, any actual interaction with humans would be catastrophic for them. Like absolutely disaster, absolute disaster.

[32:12] If this was a different, uh, uh sci-fi series that apparently we only like sections of and not all of they would have some probe set up and some protocol of hey when they reach this point let's make sure we're there to kind of put these things in place or whatever and i and but i do think it has to be something along those lines of gideon going back to earth force and saying so here's this thing over here we need to do a flyby like every year or so and just make see where they're at and then start slowly seeding things in but yeah him dropping stuff on there was huge hugely bad that that being said jeff and if this is our third reference then this needs to be our third reference all right can we just say as longtime veteran star trek podcasters jeff the prime directive is full of flaws and gets broken constantly when it serves the plot of the episode absolutely like it is not a perfect thing by any stretch of the imagination.

[33:11] So I understand there's a lot of flaws with the prime directive and how that goes. I get it. And I'm with you on that. And that's why I hesitate saying they need to introduce a prime directive. But this needs to be something that's handled more than just hey, let's drop a bunch of truth bombs all over the place and let it be whatever it is. But it's the truth. You know, the truth. There's an interesting thing, Jeff. Mm hmm. When is it not so helpful to have the full truth come out? Are there times in life when you should not actually know the truth?

[33:47] Absolutely. As an executive in a very large company, that's a big part of my job determining, hey, does this need to go out to what level? How much of it needs to go? And it's not that we're trying to hide anything by any means. what happens is if we were to share absolutely everything that happened people would lose their minds they focus all this attention to this thing over here that doesn't matter yeah like here's this information we have and it really shines a light on this thing here but it's not important and we need to be over here in the meantime we'll handle this it's not a big thing and so sharing that's not it's not that it's it's not about being transparent or deceiving or anything it's just it's not helpful to share everything and i'll make it even more simple are we straight up honest with our kids all the time tooth fairy santa claus i'm saying that quietly because i lied to my daughter and she's right down the hole i don't know what you're talking about lying dude well actually your santa claus thing is uh matter of fact like i don't know how much more we have to talk about this one if you want to take some time i love i love what you say this is not to talk about the santa claus thing we should we should do that sometime so here's the deal here's santa claus is real I know because I'm him that's it right there, And so are you. Yeah. And you, every, you, every debate. Okay. Sorry.

[35:05] The idea of Santa Claus is no, he's not a red. He's not a person. He's a spirit. He's a, he's a, any parent, anyone who is up late at night on a Christmas Eve, wrapping presents and setting stuff out. That's Santa. That's what Santa Claus is. Like that is the spirit of Santa Claus throughout the whole deal. So, you know, the, the whole red dude and reindeer and all that, That's just what we tell children to give them a picture of what that is so that they then can be introduced to what it is to be, to have and embody the spirit of Santa Claus or the Christmas spirit, as you will, themselves and to become a Santa Claus. Like, yeah. Anyway, that's the very, very short version of all that. Where are we going with that? Oh, yeah. The whole truth is just not helpful. And, you know, and here's the thing, and I heard, I heard somebody and this was an issue where it was a child talking to, well, it was an adult child talking to their parent about the ideas of introducing little kids to the nitty gritty of human reproduction. Oh, okay. Mm hmm.

[36:08] And and the I don't I forget exactly how it goes, but basically it was like, hey, well, do me a favor. Go go pick up that suitcase over there. The really heavy suitcase. You know, and the kid would walk over and would struggle to carry it or whatever. And and, you know, the the parent would be like, hey, listen, that particular that thing right there is too heavy for you to carry right now. One day you'll be able to carry that just fine. But for right now, it's a little too heavy. So I'm not going to ask you to carry that information is like that. You know, truth can be like that. It's just a little too heavy. You'll get there. You're just not there yet. And so I need to carry it for you. I wouldn't be loving you if I tried to make you carry that right now. I like that. And that's what, that's what happened here. Gideon was not loving the people of this world by dropping those truth bombs all over the place. No, he wasn't. And I think to take that analogy and move it, because I think there's more to it than that, right? Like I was talking about, sometimes it's, I don't need you to pick that suitcase up. I need you to move that box over there. Like, they're different things. And I think both of those apply with Gideon. There wasn't the whole, you're not ready for this. And also, at this point, it just wasn't helpful for them to know all of this.

[37:24] It felt like he was simply just doing it out of spite and vengeance. Maybe not vengeance, but certainly out of spite. It just pissed him off. You know, he didn't like being used or manipulated, which we get. And he took the time to make sure everybody knew about it. So with that, Jeff, you know, this is typically the point where I'd be like, OK, so we've reached that part of the show where we boil it all down and see if this episode has any of those deep moral messages to it, holding up a mirror to society, giving us hope things can be better in the future. Does it tell us how to be better human beings to one another? And how is it doing that in its own unique crusade slash Babylon five type way? I think we just did that, though. So, Jeff, I'll let you, I was going to say, I'm going to turn this over to you to kind of do that or anything else and kind of put a capstone on this part of the conversation, because I think we've been having this conversation just a little bit over the last couple of minutes. We absolutely have. And I just have a handful of extra little, I'm going to add a little bit to some of those things. One, I just wanted to add the flavor on the nothing brings people together like a common enemy. We talked about that pretty extensively back during Babylon 5. Sheridan was able to unite a whole bunch of people because we had the shadows.

[38:33] Right? And we were going to go after them. Or then he was able to, you know, eventually united. They were going to unite against the Centauri at the end and everything like that. But there was that middle time when there wasn't a common enemy where he was trying to build the Interstellar Alliance. And he was having a really hard time bringing people together. And so I feel like that approach of finding a common enemy is like a cheat code to bringing people together. And it's one that we see happen right now. As we record this, Brent, we're a week out from our next set of elections that are going to happen. And so my YouTube ads, my text messages, my whatever is flooded with two groups trying to unite me against two different common enemies, essentially. And it's just like, come on. Like, it doesn't work for this race. It doesn't work for this race of which we are a part either.

[39:35] With the conspiracy theory part, I was really struck by Durkhani because I loved that he was questioning everything. And I think we should always question everything. But he was so locked into his own preconceived notions that even though he was questioning everything, it didn't matter what the answer was. He'd already decided that. Second ago, I was talking about this election that's coming up. Question everything. Question the candidates, question whatever, and don't be so locked into your own preconceived notions one way or the other that the answer that's not what you want to hear is wrong. Because that's the quote-unquote discourse I tend to have with the people in my life of, hey, this person said this. Well, I don't know. I mean, did you ever see it from this perspective? Well, no, and you're an evil person and a horrible bigot and should be beaten up and shunned and whatever because you're even asking that question. No, I'm just asking the question. Like, I'm just trying to see this stuff.

[40:33] We've become so locked into our own bubbles that we can't even imagine the possibility of something outside of that durkhani couldn't even imagine that gideon and crew weren't evil and like the moment when he were in the brig and he looks at lista and he's like did you see his eyes he honestly doesn't believe there's anything going on here but instead of taking that and going so maybe we can connect with them and learn stuff he said so their government is lying to them too about all of this like it just went the worst possible direction which which that could be true.

[41:08] Either could be true, but it's just interesting that that's the direction he went, though. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to throw you off. It's just their government could be like, well, you know. We know a little bit about their government. They are lying to us. Our government could be lying to us. Absolutely. But I think with him also, and this is back to Gideon's approach on, you know, peppering the planet with everything. There was the line, I think it was Kendar said, but a conspiracy needs true believers to keep it alive.

[41:42] True believers come from a lack of other information, right? When I become so locked in my bubble that I won't hear any other information or no other information is provided to me, then I become a true believer. Gideon had an opportunity with Dr. Connie and Lissa to sit down and say, listen, everything that you've been shown, told, and whatever, not real. And I want to be clear, too, they left before Kendar told them the whole story. But even based on the stuff they had back and forth, he could have been, no, that's not what we do. 200 years ago, we couldn't even physically get here. We weren't able to. Like, everything you're hearing isn't true. Let me tell you about us. Let me talk about some of the cool stuff that we're doing in the galaxy, who we really are. Give him information to the contrary. Not the whole planet, but this true believer conspiracy theorist sit down and say, yes, we are real. No your government doesn't know us and here's the real story and i can show you receipts here's the interstellar encyclopedia here's this here's this and yeah you might be so locked into your bubble that you're going to be like well you just made all that up so this that and the other but offer the information that's going to be less hurtful than throwing everything down on the planet's surface and i think kind of the the overarching episode of the end and we we interrogated it quite a bit already so i won't dive in much more but the idea that you can let the truth back into the room and the truth can take care of itself.

[43:11] Yes. And it can cause a lot of damage in the meantime. There is, it's difficult and I, and I'm going to take a risk in saying this, but it's important that you speak your truth, that you have your truth.

[43:27] You speak truth to your, you know, to power. All the, all those things are true and it can be done in a way that is not helpful that closes you and others off to other truths right i said i talked about in my job i work for a large company billion couple billion dollar budget like do quite a bit and we use a term when it comes to budget of one version of the truth because we have multiple versions of our budgetary truth depending on what slice of the pie you're trying to get is it about our head count is it about you know are you but what part of this are we trying to get it's all true it's a different version of it and so i think i just want to kind of put out there that truth truth is subjective oftentimes and that needs to be kept in mind that it can't just be dropped here's the tag on the whole thing it can't just be dropped on a person a community or a planet that.

[44:25] And expected to work itself out right this had a lot of messages in it despite being all that it was but i think it's time now for us to lighten things up a little bit have a little more fun you get to lead us on that trail because we are creating the absolutely objectively there is no one version of the truth this is the truth this is an objective truth The ranking of the entire series of Crusade. You get to rank visitors from down the street. Our current top five, I'll start in position number five, is Racing the Night.

[45:03] Number four, we have Appearances and Other Deceits. Three is Warzone. Number two is The Needs of Earth. And our number one episode is The Long Road. Brent, where do visitors land in this list? Jeff, what is number six on the list right now? Number six, Memory of War. Is number six. Yep. I have no memory of that war because. I didn't either.

[45:27] So this is an episode that I think you have to ask the question is how much did I like it? And how much did I like it in comparison to some of these other episodes? And I think I might make a few people upset with this one. And that's okay. Here's like this is not coming close to touching long road needs of earth war zone. But then I look at appearances and other deceits. I look at racing the night. I look at memory of war. Well, this is way better than memory of war. What about racing the night though? And then appearances and other deceits. Like, like where, where are we in that realm? And I think back to racing the night and racing the night was kind of one of those episodes where I just remember kind of being left with, I didn't not like it. You know, I just remember being left with sort of a WTF moment at the end. Like, what was that? I know a lot of people really like racing the night. There were several people like, this is my favorite episode of the series. Cool. But is racing the night better or worse than this episode, Visitors from Down the Street? And that's really hard to say. So I'm left with kind of applying my litmus test at this point. Which episode would I like to watch again first?

[46:42] Honestly, I'd rather watch this episode. Jeff, this is our new number five. It's going to push Racing the Night out of our top five. I did have fun with this episode. I will tell you, I did have fun with it. I liked Racing the Night. Yeah. I mean, I was even questioning if it went above appearances and other deceits when I did my ranking. But I don't disagree. This was a fun episode to watch. This episode to me ultimately is my indictment against modern day TV. With modern day tv 8 10 13 episode seasons we don't get stuff like this yeah and stuff like this is fun it's fun yeah it's fun and you know what if i had had any sort of connection to x files i probably would have liked this episode a whole lot more than i did so but i did i enjoyed the episode i thought it was you know i'm sorry fish people in three-piece suits yeah that's awesome how do you not like that right right you know the poop pipe burst in the in the subway like it's good i enjoyed it the sound engineering in that scene alone keeps this in the top five.

[47:44] That is a feat brett that's gonna do it for visitors from down the street next week we're watching an episode called each night i dream of home for the first time this series has some very long episode titles yeah, who i mean like literally by between me starting to say the episode title and finishing it brent had a chance to go and see what the synopsis of the episode was because we haven't looked these up before at all this is the game we like to play our prediction game we're gonna guess what it's going to be based on title alone so brent what did you read about each night i dream of home well i didn't read anything but i will tell you i have i have reached a point with my predictions that i'm going to continue to make this prediction until it happens jeff because it It has to like by the numbers. It has to happen sooner rather than later. All right. Here's my prediction. This is the episode where we see Lockley. Okay. And I'm going to continue to make that the prediction until we see Lockley. But I think this is an episode where we see Lockley each night. I dream of home. People are getting homesick, Jeff. They're getting homesick. So it's time to swing by Babylon five for a little taste to home. It is still an earth force under earth force control, a little shore leave.

[48:57] Little whatever each night i dream at home we're gonna see lockley and are they gonna pick lockley up and take them with her to you know give her reason to be in the opening credits or is she is is is tracy scoggins like the drew barrymore of the scream films you know what i mean when i say like drew barrymore was all of in all of six minutes of those films and she gets top billing over the whole franchise she spent more time in the promotional materials than she did in the film itself so is tracy scoggins that for crusade that'd be a sweet deal maybe so yeah that's what i say this is where we meet lockley babylon five people are homesick that's what i got what about you jeff i had the exact same prediction, Exactly the same, but I'm going to go ahead and just to differentiate us a little bit, I'm going to add a twist because when you were talking about Lockley, what came to mind for me was every night I dream of home, day of the dead, Zoe.

[49:53] Maybe part of Lockley coming on, everyone's homesick, and so is she. And she's remembering that time that she got to have a conversation with her best friend. Are you sure it was the best friend? Yeah, they were best friends. Okay. that's why her password is zoe is dead okay what you don't think they were i think it might have been a little bit more than just best friends just saying oh okay yeah i don't necessarily disagree with that at all just wasn't good her bestest friend bestest of best friends either way we'll find out right here next week thank you everybody so much for joining us we really appreciate it when you hang out with us and listen to us talk about this uh this old sci-fi tv show that didn't get the time in the sun that it should have gotten, please don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, wherever you watch your videos, leave us a rating and a review, do all that stuff. But the one thing I am going to specifically ask you to do that will mean everything in the world is please share this podcast, share this YouTube channel with anybody out there who has any love for science fiction whatsoever. This is a series they should be watching. So until next time, we're going to go ahead and wrap this. Hey, Jeff. Yeah. What's up? Do you smell that? I don't know. It must be in the building. I don't know. It's probably in the outflow system. Yeah. Well, maybe it'll just flow back out. Or maybe it'll come up through the can and grab you by the nugs. Keep climbing. Keep climbing.

[51:22] Where are you going? I don't know.