A Geek History of Time - Episode 134 - Babylon 5 Part I

Episode Date: November 20, 2021

I'm not here to poke holes and suspended this belief. Anyway, they see some weird shit they decide to make a baby. Now, Muckin' Merchant. Who gives a fuck? Oh my god, which is a trickle, baby. You know what it's called? Well, you know, I really like it here. It's kind of nice and it's not as cold as Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or Muckin' or M So yeah sure I do for him a settle if I'm a peasant boy who's right soared out of the stone. Yeah, I'm able to

Open people up. You will yeah any time I hit them with it, right? Yeah, so my cleave landing will make me a cavalier It was thought it was empty headed. It was like being trash. It was really good and gruey. Because cannibalism and murder, we'll go back just a little bit, and build walls to keep out the rat heads. And it's a little bit of a ground tunnel. A thorough intent doesn't exist.

Some people stand up quite a bit. Some people stay seeing the white spots. That just... This is a geek history of time. Where we connect an artery to the real world, my name is Ed Blalock. I'm a middle school history teacher with a side of English here in Northern California and at the risk of dating when we're recording this, I'm

very much looking forward to this weekend because my parents are coming up to visit and we're going to get to take them with us when we take our little boy trick-or-treating. Yeah that will definitely date the podcast. Yes but he's gonna be a dinosaur this year which he's very excited about and yeah I'm just I'm looking forward to seeing my parents getting a thrill out of seeing him being so excited. So I'm very, very happy they're coming up.

So that's what I have going on and who's her or you? I'm Damien Hermony. I am a Latin and drama teacher up here in Northern California. And since you've already dated this, I'll tell you my kids Given that the plague has been ravaging the land for two years and people have sog scene fifth to Ignore all of the needs of humanity. You can't quite trust who you're getting candy from so I bought candy for home And I've got a bowl to stick outside on a table Yeah, and my I, well my kids, I had them write what do you call it, stupid jokes based on Halloween and they're trick-or-treating this year with masks

on of course, but they will be handing out dumb jokes and not accepting candy. Okay, we're gonna be tricking not treating. Okay, yeah, they'll have candy when we get home. It'll be okay. So that's that is the plan and I will date this one more little bit across the AP wire today sometime in the early afternoon came the news and in fact the FDA has improved have has approved the 5211 shot. So we're getting that much closer. So we're getting that much closer. Praise every celestial power. Yep. Like, like, I'm happy enough to hear that,

that I'm not even going to like engage in my teamism. Mm-hmm. Which, you know, as a Catholic, you know that stuff. Yeah, I mean, that's literally your brand. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Yeah. So, very know that stuff. Yeah, I mean, that's literally your brand. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So very cool. Yeah, so exciting news. But next time we won't date it.

So the next episode may will be four months from now and no one will possibly know. Yeah, no, there will be no hint. None whatsoever. None. We'll leave Easter eggs, but not hints. There you go. Oh, nicely done. I like it.

So, I got a question for you. Yeah. And this is going to, this might seem kind of random, but what do you think in terms of narrative, in terms of plot lines, in terms of, I'm even going to go so far as to say general writing quality. Okay. What do you think was the best track series? Um, okay, so series or which one contained the best episodes? over over the course of the series was the consistently best narrative.

Okay, so not characters, so we're not dealing with archetypical stuff. We're talking. Okay, yeah, I mean, there's kind of like blue character development in that, but but you're still talking overall narrative. You're not saying. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah I'm not saying like because like like not which one of them had the best character. That's obviously Ensen Kim but you're saying

But you're saying which one? You're saying which one Was the best narrative overall? You're saying which one was the best narrative overall? Overall. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm going to qualify that by saying that TNG was a collection of bottle episodes with a minimal plot that, and character development.

You have archetypes in a bottle. And that was wonderful and led to the best episode I've ever seen or episodes even. I would say top 10 episodes, at least seven of them are TNG. That said, overall plot, overall narrative per your question would have to be deep space nine. Okay. And see, I was expecting it to either be DS9 or Voyager and probably DS9. Voyager was the best idea, but it was all the archetypes, but in pastel, so it didn't work. It's now with less charisma. It was the wish version.

Oh, that hurts. It's true. It's not wrong. No, it's a damn shame. It's true. It's not it's not wrong. No, I'm not hard to say. It's a damn shame. It's a painful truth. But at the same time, we're leaving out discovery with or not discovery enterprise with Dr. Flux, which was hands down my favorite doctor. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I yeah, I can totally I can totally see that. Yeah. Okay, so I ask that question. Because of course the big, the big way in which DS9

departed from everything else that had come before in Trek and the way that it still kind of stands out in comparison to everything else that's been tracked since, is it was the first track series to involve a real multi-season overarching storyline. Yep. Okay, the Dominion War. I have a theories to why, but I also don't wanna stomp on your toes. So I'm gonna let you go.

So tell me when you want my theory. Okay, well, in a minute. In a moment, I'm gonna want to hear your thesis here in a second because it may dovetail with mine. Okay. But I'll just say it's firm. I'll just be like, yeah, that was what I had to say too. Okay, all right. Well, now I'm, we'll get to it. Sure, sure. So, so it was, it introduced the idea of an overarching plot line, or an overarching, you know, story with, with genuine long-term character development, people having a genuine arc. It was also, of course, the first time that we saw people in Starfleet, really not getting along with each other.

Yeah. And it really meaningful way and how genuine personal conflicts. I would even say go so far as to say unreconsisable differences on a moral level. Yes. Yeah. Because the canon prior to that had been, well, it's the far future. We've all evolved past that, because Roddenberry being bizarre, cuckoo lander, utopianist, anyway, I'm opinionating, but...

Oh, pining. Oh, pining. I like opinionating, but you know, uh, oh, oh, oh, pining. But I like opinionating to anyway, well, it's because, yeah, and Irishman doesn't find a pine tree. So I can understand they might find, however, the things that work in machinery, because the Scots came over there and drafted some of them. So opinioning would make sense, but opinioning there would make no sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's where you get

the phrase, Oh, for Christ, Christ, because that's the, that was one of the first bishops of Ireland. He would move diagonally and say, Oh, for Christ's sake. And they'd be like, why are you telling this your name, father? So, okay. Yeah. Nice. Thank you. Completely derailed my train of thought. So it's also why Baroque was like the 13th 13th Irish president Barack Obama. Yeah. Oh, Obama. Okay, so The the what I'm trying to get to here is So so DS9 started in 93. Yeah At the exact same time. Oh, and any other big thing that was different was the setting of DS9 started in 93. Yeah. At the exact same time, oh, and the other big thing

that was different was the setting of DS9. Yes, which is why I love the turn of phrase you had earlier about how it stands out and how it was a huge departure because pay that off. Yeah, yeah, because it's on a space station, right, as a gentleman, that stands. Right, but also is it in one place or floats, but is also, right, is in gentlemen, that stands. Right. But also is it in parts or floats, but it is also, yes, is a departure and other people

depart from it. It's, it reminded me of inherent the wind where he said, perhaps you have moved far away by standing still. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Nice. All right. So, so, yes, nice.

Instead of, instead of following the paragrenations of, you know, a starship across the galaxy, we have a station where we don't have the luxury of getting away from what happened last week. That's right. Or each or you can't go on away missions that much. It's like, no, I'm pissed off at you and I have to see you on the next shift. Yeah. Yeah. You're, you're, no, you're fucked. They're, they're, they're literally on a star base. Yeah. Basically. Yeah. Um, and

so now the reason I bring all of this up is because DS9, of course, started in January of 93. Yes. And in February of 93, there's another iconic, I think, seminal, very important. And to me, much beloved and much beloved of a great many science fiction fans. There was another series that had a remarkable number of parallels to DS9, and that is Babylon 5. So both series are remarkably similar, as we've had conversations about this in the past, and you've goaded me because I'm a huge battle on fan,

Babylon 5 fanboy. And you know, the thing is what I'm, what I'm going to say here is, yes, they, they happened almost like like this, this is more an example of deep impact and Armageddon happening in the same year. I was going to bring up that exact comparison. Yeah. Yeah. Lateral thinking.

They both read the same book. Yeah. They both read the same book. They were both living, they were both swimming in the same water, breathing the same air. And the thing is, I think my thesis, and now you can tell me whether you're on the same lines or not, My thesis is that we're talking about 1993, we're talking about the very beginning of the Clinton era and the nature

of the way the world had changed in a very short period of time, changed the identity of or didn't even really actually change the identity of mainstream dominant culture America, but it left mainstream dominant culture America wondering who we were in the face of a world that was very rapidly changing. And so that led to this really dramatic kind of departure and specifically in the case of Babylon 5, because the thing is the assertion I'm gonna make here might piss off some Trek fans. But DS9 was seminal for Trek in a bunch of ways that we just talked about.

But the Dominion War was not an idea that Greg Barrett, the other guys behind the series, like had in mind from the moment they sat down and started writing it. They said, I want to do something very different with Trek. J. Michael Strzinski, JMS, started out with a five season long, no, no, this is going to be a novel in the form of a TV series. And I know how the story is going to go. And I have it all planned out and so from day one from the from the moment He started developing individual scripts and Screenplays he he had an arc in mind and so it was intended to be

not a bottle episode show And if you watch bab five there there really are not any real bottle episodes. There are ones that you can look at, and the scale of the scope of the story is very localized or relatively small. But there's always a place they fit inside the greater arc of the story. If that makes sense. They're always part of the grand narrative arc.

And so that's a claim that, you know, Bab 5 fans make is that it's the first science fiction TV show to involve this kind of long arc plot right out of the gate. And my, again, my assertion is this was, this was a brand new kind of idea that actually made Bab5 kind of hard to pitch because studio executives want everything to be anybody can jump in at any moment and start and watch an episode of the show and not have to worry about like knowing what happened before or any of that kind of stuff. And now we're in an age where the medium has changed. And I think Bab5 and DS9, DS9 more so because it was a bigger property attached to the Trek universe, which is a much bigger thing in the media ecosystem.

But I think they both paved the way for the kind of storytelling that we're seeing now and that we kind of take for granted. You know, I think without Bab 5, I don't know if the overarching like a lore episodes of X-Files would have been as doable or that they would have been able to get away with having the lore arc for X-Files,

which also had a whole bunch of monster of the week episodes, don't get me wrong, but you kind of see what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. So now, what was your sense? Yeah, I could tell from your reaction that we went in different directions on this. What were you planning on saying? We were braided together for a bit of it, though.

So I also think that it was as or many things a product of its time. However, I think not having seen Babylon five at all. I think both are indicative of an America centric hegemony. Hegemony. Hegemony. Heic existence, because while the Clinton presidency was getting underway and we didn't quite know what that would lead to or entail, it was in fact a break from the Cold War. And it was a break from the Cold War in which America had ostensibly won. And the feeling in 1993 was in fact that that exact feeling. We had one,

what is this brave new world in tail with us at the top as being the sole power. Now I think having a space station in the middle of nowhere in DS9 guarding something important is very much a metaphor for that. I also think, however, that given the the hegemoni was a thin veil, again, very America centric, but if you really look at what's going on in the world, the whole place is, is, is there's spot fires going off everywhere, which I do think that the producers were trying to point out in DS9. I don't know about Bab5, but I assume that there are factions of people fighting each other, but I do know that in DS9, you had a just recently liberated by their own efforts,

former refugee population, fighting against their former military suzerains. And all of the unstable, that is the subplot in Bab 5. Okay. And all of the instability that comes from, oh shit, now we're equals with the people we used to oppress. And oh shit, now we're equals with the people we used to resist. And oh shit, now we're equals what the people we used to resist. And oh shit, we can't just go killing each other now.

That instability. What do we do? Right. Like how do we normalize relations? That instability is kind of a stand-in for the rest of the world. So you could focus on Kiko starting a school. You could focus on nurse ratchet or you could focus on everything that's going on with all of these

refugees. So I also think though that the reason that DS9 was such a departure was because it was a space station, which means the plot always has to come to it always, which means you have characters has to come to it, always, which means you have characters that will develop, you have a plot arc as a result moving through the space station. So in many ways, things in the 90s were happening to America, in American eyes. And so, again, that's a subconscious analogy. That's a subconscious analogy. I had not considered,

but I think that's profound. Then in the 90s, things were happening to us in our mind. Because I guarantee I'm to you, speaking Haiti would be like, no, y'all happened to us again. You happen to us one more time. Yeah. So, You haven't asked one more time. Yeah. One more. So, Saddam Hussein definitely would not argue with it. Right. Happened to us.

Anybody were there were sanctions. You know, there's a lot of America stumbling in and, you know, doing dumb things. Missile strikes on Somalia. Right. You're not. Yeah. And then what happened? They killed 19 of our guys. What happened? Oh my God. Yeah. And then and then what happened they killed 19 of our guys. What happened? You know,

what? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, you know, yeah. And also also just real quick, because DS9 does it's area 34 thing or whatever group it was, like group 32. I forget exactly what, but you had sector 30 something geek timers let us know. But you had that internal rotting instability. And at the same time, you had Timothy McVeigh, Waco. You had the first bombing of the World Trade Center. Um, yeah, truck bomb. So you had like lots of internal stuff. If you looked, it was all there still,

but it was really easy to just focus on, oh hey, they've got Wharf, you know? Yeah, yeah. And oh hey, they have a travel mug, like for Rectocino. So it was easy to look just at the gauze, but you could easily pull up the gauze and see a whole bunch of stuff. And find a whole festering onion underneath it. Pull the bandage and, oh my god, how did you implant an onion in this thing? Yeah. And so I think what's interesting is,

I think what's interesting is, and I think it says a lot about the showrunners and the writers. DS9 was very close to overtly political. I'm going to take this thing from the headlines and I'm going to write an episode about this. Oh yeah. And Bab Five was not ever that on the nose. And I mean, I'll get into like the themes that Strazinski was really clearly kind of aiming for. But I want to talk a little bit about, you know, why I love the show so much before I get into too much of all that. The first thing is Bab5, I think, has some of, if not the best character writing in space opera, at the very least space opera, if not all of science fiction. And two of the prime examples of the character writing on the show are London Malari played by Peter Jurassic, the late Peter Jurassic who sadly is no longer with us. London Malari is the cynical, deeply world-weary, very sarcastic, semi-alcoholic, and deeply, deeply,

deeply patriotic, ambassador of the Centauri Empire. He is this wonderfully flawed character who, Jurassic just injects so much charisma and so much life and the internal life into him. Earlier when we were when we were sound testing the mics, you'll remember you said, you know, say words like you always do and my mouth was, my dear Mr. Garibaldi. Oh, it's funny. I thought you were quoting from like a period piece of like some sort of continental Europe spy thing. Oh, no, no.

I'm quoting London Moulari because because the Centauri Empire was very much modeled on the Russian Empire. And so when Peter Jurassic read the character background that described, he developed this very arch, I mean, almost cheeseball accent for Lando, that just there was so much going on in every word that came out of his mouth. There was this expressiveness going on. And the thing is, I know that from what I'm saying right now, if you haven't read,

here, heard the series or series, you're just thinking, okay, well, you know, we did a funny voice. What the fuck? But the thing is, Malari starts out the series being, like, you look at him and you're like, oh, okay, clearly you're a bad guy. Like, like, obviously you're the representative of the decadent empire. And like you're always doing this, you know,

Byzantine scheming and you're up to no good, and you're always, and you're mean to your secretary of your Cotto, who's another amazing, amazing character. But then you have moments with Lando where he realized why it is he's acting the way he is. And his whole motivation is that he is a deeply damaged, deeply disappointed idealist who wants the best for his people, who wants to see his empire, his homeland, you know,

flourish and, and, you know, regain, regain its greatness. and regain its greatness. And he's not, he has not developed enough empathy at the beginning of the series to understand how bad that is for everybody else. Okay. And for the sake of he makes terrible decisions, he makes a lot of very bad decisions. With for him, what are the best of reasons?

And you find out that like he actually deeply cares about a veer and he wants to try to protect veer from the Byzantine scheming and machinations of the imperial court back home and you know and and and we get because of because of the overall writing and because of his role in the story, he winds up becoming he goes from being kind of a semi comedic bad guy to being kind of a tragic figure who you really sympathize with and really care about by the end of the series and his his opposite number is jacar

portrayed by the lamented late Andreas Katsulis. It's one of the onedest things about Babylon 5 is so many of these actors did such wonderful work and they're no longer with us. And Jakar, first of all, is much more visibly alien to us based on his makeup than Lando. He has kind of a patterned reptilian kind of look to him and a lot of prosthetics Lando looks like an alien because he's got a funny hair coming up. Got a funny hair. Do right

But otherwise he looks most and he's got kind of pointy teeth But mostly otherwise he looks human. Mm-hmm. Jucar Has you know red contacts in and he's got you know more more kind of pronounced prosthetics on and he looks more alien. And he is the earnest, honorable, and really, really, really angry, gnarne, ambassador. And at the very beginning of the series, along with a whole bunch of other background conflicts, the gnarns have just won their independence from the Centauri Empire. They got their homeworld back. And so Jicarr and Lando are blood enemies. They hate each other. And by the end of the series, though, it would be too much to say they wind up becoming friends, but they wind up becoming

enemies who deeply, deeply respect one another. They wind up having a relationship that's like, no, no, our interests are diametrically opposed, but I know you. And I know that on, like everything, but this one thing I can trust your word. Okay. You know, sure. And spoiler alert, I mean, series, you know, hasn't been on the air and, you know, 20 plus years. So it's not really that much of a spoiler.

But at the end of the series, Jacquard winds up killing Malari. But he winds up doing it essentially because Malari tells him to. And there's space opera, there's space opera backstory in ancient aliens and all kinds of stuff and things going on in the background there. But they wind up being, again, the best of enemies, as it were. And that's an arc that they pay for over the course of the series. It's not just this, you know, suddenly we respect each other. It's, no, no, over the course of everything that happens, they wind up having to work together because there are bigger threats.

They wind up actually being in situations where they have to deal with one another and get to know one another. And so, again, even though their interests are often opposed, and in some cases, diametrically opposed, they have a respect for one another, that they earn over the course of the entire series. And that's two of the characters on the show. And like then there's DeLen, who is the Mimin Barri ambassador, who is a high priestess and a mystic

because this is definitely space operand. We have kind of high tech magic going on. And she has her own story arc. The doctor of the station winds up having his whole own arc where he develops a drug addiction over the course of the series and has to get clean. The chief of security is at the beginning of the series a recovering alcoholic who winds up getting thinking he's doing the right thing, thinking he's being loyal to earth. He winds up getting suborned and turned against his friends, which then causes him to lose this position to set a security and go back on the bottle and then wind up saving everybody.

But he and everybody else can't forgive him, but he can't forgive himself. Okay. I mean, and the thing is they are at the time, because again, DS9 was was starting at the same time as this. And I don't think DS9 committed as much to this. The theme you're seeing here is these are all damaged people. These are all folks who who have noble characteristics, and they also are like all of us. They are deeply flawed.

Right. And like DS9, I don't know, I mean, Cisco certainly had to make some grim decisions. He was lived with the results of those. He was an inherently good man though. He was a tragic person dealing with when you first see him, still deeply traumatized by the loss of the love of his life. But he was not a flawed man. He had an obstacle. And I think that's kind of true about, I'm trying to think of any characters that were actually flawed. And I don't even think your main antagonists

were particularly flawed so much as they, they had obstacles and they just, some of them chose evil, you know, but I don't think that that was necessarily a flaw of Ki-win. I don't think, you know, she wasn't, because a flaw tells me, like you said, an alcoholic who can't forgive himself, but everyone else forgives. There's like an internal struggle, whereas Kai Wynne's struggle was, it wasn't really a struggle. There wasn't much of a conscience to struggle against.

It was, she'd already, and I don't mean that as like, you know, she didn't have a conscience. She absolutely did. But she centered herself as being the thing, doing the right thing. And same thing, quite honestly, with Goldacott. He was driven entirely by his ego, but I don't think that that was particularly flawed. I think the closest you come to that is Garrick, but he's just more complex than he is flawed. Yeah. So, yeah, which is very Star Trek. I mean, they have archetypical, some would call that wooden and not unfairly sometimes, but they have archetypical characters. And DS9 took those archetypes and they were like, oh, we're going to do more than one color to this archetype.

We're going to, we're going to shade the edges. Yeah. We're going to add, we're gonna do more than one color to this archetype. We're gonna shade the edges. Yeah. We're gonna add some depth. We're gonna do a little chiro-scuro here. We're gonna work on some shading. Yeah, and maybe add a touch of a contrasting color right here. But yeah, and then.

It seems to me like the characters you're describing are Genuinely like you could root for one and feel bad about it and you could root against one and feel bad about that too Yeah, and you could watch one who you knew was going to make a bad decision like you knew You know, I know I know for a fact that you're going to agree a fact that you're going to agree to make a deal with Morden. And I know you shouldn't, and I'm going to get into who Morden is here in a minute. But you're going to make a deal because you want it so bad and you're going to know it's a bad decision and you're going to do it anyway. And I'm going to feel really bad for you even though I kind of hate you for doing it.

Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, I'm really, really hoping that you're going to do the right thing. And you do the right thing, and that's awesome, but then you have to pay a really critical consequence for doing the right thing and that's awesome, but then you have to pay a really critical consequence for doing the right thing. And that sucks. And that's going to push you two episodes from now to wind up doing a stupid thing. Whereas Cisco had the episode that you love. And I like it too, where he recounts the whole thing, where he kills the Romulan ambassador and keeps them from coming in on the side of the dominion. And Garrick says basically like, yeah, you

averted tragedy and all it cost was a Romulan ambassador's life and the self-respect of one captain. I'd call that a pretty good price to pay. You don't really see Cisco drinking himself into a stupor afterwards. You don't see him not being able to move on from that decision because ultimately he didn't fail in some way. He certainly, you know, he, the ends just fight the means and he was uncomfortable with it. Um, but he hated, and he hated the fact. Yeah, but he didn't hate himself. Yeah. And I think that's a very important difference. Same thing was when he sent Jennifer off to jail, like he sent her to prison for like, do these seasons. And it was like, okay, no, he had to do what he had to do.

Like there was very much a very clear moral compass for I think every character, including Quark. Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah. You know, so it just, yeah. As I'm, yeah, no, I don't think you need to qualify it all definitely for quark. It was it was a blue and orange moral compass. Right. And I mean, same thing with uh with with brunt, like I'm trying to, you know, brunt FCA, uh, I cannot think

of a single character who had any extended screen time whatsoever who was not or who was a failure at all. Even Alexander shitty cling on that he was had redemption. Like they all yeah yeah there's not a single one. Galron and Galron, Kiwin and Goldicot all were, they made the wrong decision, but never did they think that it was the wrong decision. Oh, no. Yeah. And the thing is, and the thing is there are characters like that on Babylon 5, but the difference between the Babylon 5 moral universe and the Star Trek,

moral universe is those people who make the wrong decision think they're in the right and don't have any doubt about it at all are unequivocally monsters in JMS's universe. Okay. Because, you know, it's, yeah, he has a much more, he has a much bigger interest in moral ambiguity of not, not of the, well, you know, is he a good guy? Is he a bad guy? We don't know. But of the, okay, I see everybody sees themselves as the good guy is a bad guy. We don't know. But of the, okay, I see everybody sees themselves as the good guy. But they're going to wind up failing themselves. Right. Because we all do, you know. Yeah.

And so, I mean, just the character arcs and the complexity and the, again, the moral complexity of the characters is incredible. And the, yeah, so the cast of characters is huge. Number one, I've only talked about a couple of them. I'm going to wind up talking about more of them as we go on, but it has a vast cast of characters because it is epic space opera. So you kind of have to. And it truly was an ensemble show. Bruce Boxlitener's character Sheridan is the kind of, you know, he's the Kirk figure.

Okay. But, and he winds up, you know, kind of being, being the, he fulfills the role of being kind of the chosen one of the overall arc kind of at a couple of places. But every other character has their moments and no no character even ones who only show up They wind up having parts to play in the story that resonate for seasons afterward Because you as the viewer you get attached to them sure and the other characters as the viewer you get attached to them. Sure.

And the other characters all have a relationship with them of one kind or another. And so when something happens to one of them, we see the effects of that over a long period of time. And that brings me to the next thing. I love about the show. There's the scale of it. When Strazinski sat down to write Babylon 5, he was uniting two ideas that he'd had in his head for a while.

One of them was, you know what, I'm gonna do a show on a star base on a space station rather than, you know, being on the ship that's traveling around doing all that. Everybody's done that. I'm gonna do one on a space station. He, you know, had kind of had that germ of an idea floating around in his head for a while. And then he had this other idea for an epic science fiction series about an interstellar war between multiple races all being manipulated by older ancient alien races. And he said, you know what? I think I can figure out how to tie these two things together and do both at once. And that's when he sat down and started writing Babylon 5. Nice. And so what that means is the scale of the show is simultaneously very small. Because we're all stuck in a, you know,

I don't know how much you know, mile long tubular space station. And at the same time, it's vastly epic because there's this huge titanic war going on between the war lines and the shadows, spoiler alert. And they're manipulating all the younger races to do the fighting in it. And so, you know, we have this, this, you know, vast, epic kind of scale. And what that means is, from episode to episode, you have this wonderful ability for the stakes to stay high. Without everything always having to be about the end of the universe, because we're on a space station.

Everybody is literally cheek to jowl with everybody else, and so the issues that security is having with a particular group of refugees who are stuck in a transport bay are going to affect everybody. Right. And so we can focus on how Garibaldi, who is your hard-bitten PI character, essentially transported into space, how is he going to navigate solving this problem and finding out, you know, solving the murder mystery? And the stakes of that are just as high as, you know, is Sheridan going to succeed in, you know, convincing the onvoys from, you know, fill in the name of alien race to join the effort to fight against the shadow fleets.

Like, you know, one of them has this huge grand scale. The other one is this very, very small personal story, but the emotional stakes are just as high. Right, right. And, and so that, because you've heard me, you know, bitch and man about, you know, particularly supernatural, like being the example of this, like, okay, well now we gotta get bigger. Like, we can't, you know, to in order for the stakes to stay high, we gotta go bigger, we gotta go,

but no, you don't have to go bigger. Make me care about the characters and the stakes will be just as high. And the series did that brilliantly, while juxtaposing these huge, Tolkien-esque space battles with, again, drama aboard the station. And then, along with that, kind of the third thing for me that really, that really makes me a huge fan of Babylon 5 is the tone of the show. Because again, there's this wonderful juxtaposition of very every day, kind of humdrum, you

know, daily life kind of stuff between characters that still has, again, emotional stakes because we care about these people. And then every so often, and it got more common as the seasons went on and the outside battles got bigger and bigger, you wind up having a moment where things get very seriously epic, very fast, and the dialogue matches that. So there are two quotes I'm going to give here. There are two of my favorite kind of examples of this. Jamis later on went on to write for comic books and you can tell when he's writing because the dialogue gets this way. It's sometimes amazing and it's often amazing and occasionally a little bit in army, but so there's this moment I'm now forgetting

I'm blanking on which season it is, but the station, which is ostensibly an earth force space station has seceded from earth governance because earth's government has been taken over by an authoritarian dictator and Sheridan and the earth force folks who follow him have said, you know, fuck you Antifa forever. No and they've seceded well earth force ships Warp essentially come through come through the gate into firing range of the station.

And D'Len, as the Minbarian ambassador, who also happens to be a member of the Minbarian ruling council, is a board, a Minbarian battle cruiser. When these Earth Force ships show up, D'Len gets on the calm and says to them, this is Ambassador D'Len of the Minbari Battle on five is under our protection with draw or be destroyed. Earthforce Officer responds, negative. We have authority here.

Do not force us to engage your ship. D'Len's response, why not? Only one human captain has ever survived a battle with men barry fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else. else. And then one by one the earth force ships fold out. Nice. And I'll get to the background of how exactly she's telling the truth there in a minute. And now I got to talk to you about Mr. Morden. So in from from the very beginning of the series, we have these two enigmatic figures on the station. One of them is Ambassador Kosh of the Vorillons. Everybody knows the Vorillons are this incredibly ancient race.

Nobody knows very much about them. They're terribly enigmatic. And Kosh is always wearing what he refers to as an encounter suit. So he looks like a robot. Okay. But like he's wearing an atmosphere, he's wearing a suit. Right, right.

He's wearing his own atmosphere. Right. And what you wind up finding out, again, spoiler alert, shows over 20 years old, is that he wears the encounter suit because the vorelons are at least partially energy beings. Okay.

And when he's not wearing the encounter suit, because the Vorlons are at least partially energy beings. And when he's not wearing the encounter suit, everybody who looks at him sees something different. The humans looking at him see an angel. The other alien races who see him see their version of essentially an angel, and Lando Mallari refuses to tell anyone what it was he saw. Okay.

Which is a wonderful character moment like we don't talk about that on Centauri. And so that's the Vorillon Ambassador. Well, at the beginning of the series, you all have heard me no mention the shadows several times. At the beginning of the series, the shadows aren't there. But there is a human gentleman in a very slick suit named Mr. Morton who's going around approaching everybody and asking them, what do you want? And it's very clear he talks about the people he works for, his benefactors. And he says they can help you, they can give you whatever it is you want. You just have to make a deal. And it's very interesting. He's a very Luciferian figure.

It's kind of kind of amazing. So, Morden is going around trying to get everybody to make a deal. Kosh meanwhile always asks everybody, at some point in a conversation with everybody, Kosh looks at him with his one glowing red robotic look and eye and says in his synthesized voice, who are you? And that's the thematic kind of pair of questions. So Mordon goes up to Vir Kato, who is the long-suffering assistant under ambassador to Malari.

And Vir looks at him, Mordon says, what about you, Vir? What do you want? Vir looks him right to the eye and says, I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next 10 generations that some Pike as a warning to the next 10 generations that some do high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this. Can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden? Which is this wonderful moment for Veer's we see him as being this kind of shlubby, picked on kind of character in this moment.

It's like no, no, fuck you. It's an amazing moment. Spoiler alert, he does actually get to do exactly that in like five seasons later. He actually gets. So they pay it off. Precisely that. And everybody, they totally pay it off. And everybody watching the show, like when it was, when it was coming out, you know, one week at a time, that was, I cannot

tell you what a payoff that was. It was amazing. And, and so just with, with, with all of these things that I'm talking about, this is to me one of the most, if not the most, consistently best written science fiction shows ever. I've already mentioned it was a truly an ensemble story. Sinclair is the first commander of the station, the actor wound up having medical problems he had to leave. And then Boxlider came over and took over the station as Commander Sheridan. They were the commanding character,

but everybody had their own arc. All of the stories were emotionally compelling and it's just wonderful, wonderful stuff. Now, a little bit of background on what the universe of bad five looks like, so kind of to give a little context for anybody who hasn't watched the show. People who have watched the show are nodding along with me like oh yeah, yeah, no, I know what you're talking about.

Oh yeah, it's a great moment, but for everybody else. So at the very beginning of the series, Earth and a mmbari have just ended a war. And the mmbari are thousands of years more technologically advanced than humanity is. Okay. Humanity has figured out faster than light travel using gates. And they have, you know, energy weapons.

The standard side arm of security personnel is kind of a plasma pistol kind of thing called a PBG pulse projection gun. And earth battleships are armed with huge jiggle-watt lasers. Laser cannon. But earth ships look have this very distinct blocky square. We built a skyscraper on its side in space, kind of look, and gravity aboard human starships is rotational. So when they go into battle, there'll be, when they show up in system, there'll be a whole system,

a whole section of the ship that's rotating. Okay. And when they get ready to go into battle, they lock that into place, and everybody aboard a human ship has to strap in. All of the other alien races have artificial gravity figured out. Okay, so we're kind of the barbarians on the block. And so that's and and Mimbari ships are consistently faster.

Their weapons are more accurate. There's like there's no there's no competition, but we wound up getting into a war with them because there was a diplomatic misunderstanding and one of our ships encountered a membership, the membership opened all of its gun ports, which our guys didn't understand was a gesture of look. This is how we are armed, but we are not powering up our weapons. So, you know, we mean you know harm. And the crew of the human ship saw that thought they were under attack immediately opened fire, essentially, ambushing the ming-bari by the steaks of the rest of the galaxy, ambushing

the ming-bari, destroying the ship. And then ming-bari went, okay, fine, we're just going to wipe you the fuck out. Right. And on the verge of the Mimbari overrunning earth, they essentially surrendered. Like on the verge of winning the war, the Mimbari said, okay, wars over, we're going to, we're going to go home now. We're fucking off peace. And there was no explanation and one of the central mysteries for at least half of the first season. I think all of the first I think it's a plot point. I want to say the plot point is kind of resolved at the end of season one. You kind of figure out what it is. But for the whole first season, there's this mystery of like, okay, the Mimbari soldier cast, like want to kill all of us, like all the fucking time. They, they,

they, you know, they remember they, they like have almost this racial memory of, of the destruction of the ship, the one ship that started the whole order. They are furious at us and they all want to kill us. But the priest cast, which is the highest ranking cast in the Embarry Society has them all on a very tight leash and won't let them. Okay. Why? Like they could have, they were winning.

They were about to win. Right. And suddenly they just said, nope, nope, we're done. And I mean, the explanation winds up being space magic. It turns out that human souls and mumbari souls are identical. And so, on a spiritual level, we're the same species. And so, the Mumbari Priest Council kept this a secret from literally everybody, including their own soldier cast, because like the theological ramifications of it were too much for them

to figure out how to deal with, but they said, we can't keep killing them. And so they stopped the war. Okay. So that's humans in memory. Then I've already mentioned the gnarons in the centauri, having their back and forth. And then in the background behind all of that,

there are a whole bunch of other lesser or smaller non-human races, you see all the time mingling in the starbase for somebody else aboard the station. And they all, of course, they all have their kind of different interests and conflicts. And then the the Vorlons and the Shadows predate any and all other civilizations that you see on the show. And they were part of an earlier wave of civilizations that achieved essentially a higher level of consciousness and ascended to another kind of existence. Okay. And the other species all, you know, tuddled off to the fifth dimension or whatever.

And the, and the, the warlons and the shadows stayed behind to shepherd other races along. The younger races. And the warlons want to see everyone cooperate and work together and come to solutions and evolve together peacefully. On the other side, the shadows believe in nature, red, and tooth, and claw being the main force behind evolution. And so they want to see strife and they want to see conflict because the strongest are going to advance. Okay. Let's get this evolution. And so we have nurturing and order on one side and chaos and repacious destruction on the other. And so, thematically, that's kind of the big story of what's going on in the galaxy.

In the background of Earth Force, we have, first of all, in the very first season, the president of the Earth Federation dies under mysterious circumstances and we start thinking he might have somehow been assassinated. And the guy who takes over for him starts a little bit by little bit doing stuff that looks more and more and more fashy. And so we have this encroaching xenophobia because we just lost a war against an alien race and human supremacy. We don't want to deal with all the rest of them. They don't really want to have a bad fight out there, but it's already been built. So there's this xenophobic authoritarian government on Earth, eventually after the shadow

war, once that gets resolved, then the forces of Bab 5 and the not fascist earth force people then have to turn around and defeat the fascist forces on earth in a civil war before the end of the series. And so those are the big overerching themes and story arcs and I'm simplifying a lot. I know other one, five fans are going to listen to this like you're totally leaving outside core, which I'm not totally leaving outside core because now I'm bringing it up. The humanity is in the process of actually evolving into like the next step right before ascension, which is more and more humans are becoming are exhibiting psychic ability, telepaths, empaths, psychokinetics, all that kind of stuff. Okay.

And psychore is the organization on earth that trains young psychics. Basically, when you exhibit psychic powers sometime around puberty, psychore shows up at your door. And they say, this is all really terrifying to you. You're hearing everybody else's thoughts in your head. You don't know how to block them out. We're here to help and they take you off to a school and they train you and it's like the X-Men.

Okay. Only we find out that it's like the X-Men if Charles Xavier were enslaving all of his students. So it's like the... What is that process called? It was in the Ottoman Empire, there would take Serbian boys. Janissaries.

Janissaries, okay, I was right, that was the right term. So it's more like that. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, Walter Coney plays Alfred Bester, the, you're not Alfred Bester. I know the last name is Bester. I gotta double check the first name, because Alfred Bester was the, the, or not Alfred Bester. I know the last name is Bester. I got to double check the, the first name because Alfred Bester was the science fiction author that the character was named for. But anyway, he, he plays the head of psychore. So, so check of, much older plays one of the most evil sociopathic, mother fucking bad guys you've ever seen in your life. Okay, and he does it chillingly well. And yeah, and again, Bester is a horrible, horrible villain. But it's

Trasinski manages to do a really good job of writing him in a way that like I totally understand why he thinks he's doing the right thing. And he's totally not morally conflicted about any of it. So he's a goddamn monster. And so there's a whole other, that's another one of the major, major arcs kind of involved in the series is then figuring out, you know, what to do about psych or so those, those are the themes. That's what I love about the series. That's kind of an overview of the universe. So I think now is probably going to be a good place to pause. Sure for we pick up with their episode on this.

Because now having, having said all of that about the show I want to come back in our next episode Back to my analysis and my thesis and in order to do that we're gonna have to talk about In 1992 and 93 when the series was first being like really put to paper in earnest and then filmed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So based on what we have talked about so far, what do you think? I'm maybe not going to ask you what you have cleaned. Yeah, because that was a lot of water from a fire of hose.

Um, yeah. I mean, quite frankly, it was too complex for me to be able to follow not having watched it Because there's so many names of things I have zero context for Yeah, so which which is fine. There's there's plenty of folks out there that have that have watched it We're like yeah, no, we're following along. I will say this though. I do think that it's interesting the different approaches you and I take because I almost always end up front loading all the history of the thing before talking about the thing. And I'm really digging the talking about the thing first.

And then I'll get the history. Good. Because it's just number one, it's a different approach than I take, and I'm excited to see, because the next part coming up is the history. I know that part, so then I'll start to be able to like connect it to the things that you've said.

And I'll be like, oh, that's what you meant when you were talking about this guy doing this thing. I also find it interesting that you've got alcoholics. Is Babylon 5 in the future or is it in a different galaxy from us? And I know that there's humans and stuff like that, but is it in a difference? Yeah, it is in our future. Okay, it is a future. Okay, it is a future.

Okay, it is a future. Okay, it is a future. Okay, it is a future. Okay, it is a future. Okay, it is a future. Okay, it is a future. Okay, it is a future. Okay, it is you 23rd 22 47 off the top of my head. I think it's the year Okay 23rd century. Okay, so I do think it's interesting that we we did manage to find some way to do gravity in space By spinning shit that that that's been a trope for movies dealing with humans going into space from the 90s forward, actually, now the thing about it and probably from before, but we still took alcoholism with us.

It's decidedly not a Rod and Barry joint. No, yeah. And I mean, my biggest, my own biggest takeaway about Bab5 is there is a very intense level of grounded humanity to it. Like one of the things to try to do space operative but get some more of the technical scientific issues right. Okay.

But a big thing about the show that makes me as much of a famous I am is Star Wars is high fantasy in space. Nobody ever actually goes to the bathroom. There's no, you know, it's, it's, you know, elves and wizardry and all that. And I love that immensely. Star Trek is what if the future was designed by Apple? Yeah, you know, and it's, and everything is beautiful

and sleek and, and the people are all pretty and they get along. And like you said, the characters have obstacles, but they're never flawed. Right. And I really appreciate Strasinski's approach to, no, no, they're all flawed. We're humans.

Doesn't matter where we go, we're gonna be humans. And this is part of human nature. And so to me, there's a level of emotional resonance for Babylon 5 that star trek never had for me. Sure. Yeah. That makes sense. And I don't mean that like as a dig against Trek, because I know that the utopian kind of nature of it and the aspirational nature of it is something

that means an awful lot to an awful lot of people in that form. But it never hit for me the same way that seeing the characters of battle on 5 struggle with themselves. Like really resonated with me. It was like, oh, okay, I'm a fuck up too. So like, I understand that. So I mean, that's my biggest.

So let me ask you this. The name Babylon 5, is it the fifth of something or is it the fifth or is it just? Oh shit, Yeah. Okay. So there were originally a number of Babylon stations that were built. Okay. So it's a type of station and they were a sequential number and this is the only one left from a war. Yes. Okay. Well, the rest of the war destroyed in the war. They had mysterious things happen to them. It gets revealed later on.

But yeah, and I'll get into, I'll talk about that in the next episode because it's an interesting juxtaposition to trek. And they're all called response to Rodbury. OK. And they're all called Babylon's. Is this because they're all called response to Rod Berry. Okay, and they're all called Babylon's. Is this because they're enormous trading, they're designed to be huge trading hubs

or because they love the color blue? Oh, okay, so it's very cosmopolitan, it's very much, okay, got it, got it. Cool, okay. Well, what's your reading lately? What am I reading lately? Student work, God help me. Oh.

And for the last several days, everything I could scrounge up to try to get facts down for writing this podcast. So actually, but I will say, in the moments where I've had time to read anything I have been actually reading creepypostas on no sleep on Reddit. What are creepypostas? Okay, well, the short explanation is they are short spooky stories that are intended to try to go viral in one way or

another. Oh, okay. So one one page stories of like, yeah, sometimes they wind up going for longer, sometimes they turn into series and every year, like an idiot, I wind up going to the other thing I've been reading is I wind up going to Jezebel.com, the pop culture politics website, the fence bent. I wind up going to Jezebel.com and every year they have a scary story contest and one of their stipulations is it has to be true or you at least have to present it as though it is something that happened. And then at the end of the month around Halloween, close to Halloween, they wind up posting the top 10 ones that got the most votes from readers. Every year I know that it's going to give me trouble falling asleep and it's going to

make my overactive imagination act up, but I still, it's schmuckbait. I still wind up going and reading them because some of them are wonderfully evocative and really well put together. So yeah, that's that's what I've been reading when I've when I've had moments to to read for entertainment. How about you? You know, actually this week I just finished reading a wonderful play actually this week I just finished reading a wonderful play and the author's name is escaping me right now and as soon as I said that I lost the title of the title. And it won the Pulitzer. It hate one that happens.

Yeah, it won the Pulitzer too. So I won't share that apparently because I did no reason for people to play 20 questions. I started reading Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, though? Okay. By Edward Albee. Yeah. And so, because I finished reading Twilight a little bit ago, Twilight being the play, not sparkly vampires.

Yeah. But I finished reading Twilight. I did do an episode about that at some point. Sure. But that was really fun or not fun. That was really a good place. So now I've started reading who's afraid of his new wolf. So I can't tell you if you're recommended yet or not. But yeah, that's that's what I've been reading. The bits of it, I've never actually read the whole thing. And I've never actually watched the whole film, but the parts of it that I've seen look exhausting. That is a really good way to put it so far.

Like, and I'm only like two, two, I'm not even into the second act. And I don't even know what the structure is. I don't know if it's a five or a three or a one But it's yeah, it's it's quite something. Okay. It's heavy. It's very heavy yet. Well, yeah, so yeah So that's that's what I've got going on Cool well, where can people find you on the social media? I can be found on the social media at EH Blaylock on Twitter and at Mr. Blaylock on Twitter and at Mr. Blaylock on TikTok and Instagram. And where could they

find you, sir? You can find me at Da Harmony, two Hs in the middle, at both Insta and the Twitter. So those are good places to find me. You could also find me every Tuesday night or not every. The first Tuesday of every month until both of my kids get all their shots. every the first Tuesday of every month until both my kids get all their shots. But the first Tuesday of every month you can find me online at twitch.tv forward slash capital puns as capital punishment has entered into its fifth year. So, all right, okay, we've done it for five years. Yeah, it's in its sixth year. Come check that out, 8.30pm PST. Yes.

Very cool. Collectively. Of course, collectively we can be found on Twitter at Geek History time. And we can be found on our website at a Geek History of Time. And additionally, we can be found on Twitch, not, well, not Twitch, Stitcher. Stitcher, Spotify, and the Apple podcast store. And so a thing I've noticed about that by the way, if you recently subscribed, it doesn't let you go back to all the episodes. And you know, we have done a number of Star Wars

episodes. For instance, my app only lets me go back to episode 34. But if you go back to episodes 99 to 100, you get to the episode on Cardassian jurisprudence. If you episodes 93 94 it's a send up or I don't know it's send up take down analysis of the original series and Jean Rodden Barry's penis. And his inability to maintain control of it. Or his use of it to control people around him. In episode three, we covered the Enterprise and 9.11, and in episode 75 through 77, we did a Deep Space Nine watch along. So, those are the places that you could find

more Star Trek content from our podcast. So, yes. All right, very cool. Well, but you can go to our website, like you said, gtstreetime.com. And you can actually scroll all the way to the bottom and find any of those episodes as well as many, many others. So we encourage you. Yes, please do.

Yeah, please do. And also when you do find us on any of those excellent podcast applications, please make sure to subscribe, number one. And number two, give us a review. Give us the five stars that you know we have earned, because we very much appreciate it. And on that note, for Geek History of Time, I'm Debian Harmony.

And I'm Ed Blalock. And until next time, really think about who are you?