Join veteran Star Trek, and now Babylon 5 podcasters, Brent Allen and Jeff Akin as they dive into Babylon 5 for a second time! They revisit each episode with fresh insights and deeper analysis, reflecting on their first-time reactions. Perfect for First Ones and people new to the series, this journey offers a deeper connection to the world of Babylon 5!

Did we really tie this episode directly to pro wrestling and love languages???

For the First Time Episode - https://www.babylon5first.com/episode/the-exercise-of-vital-powers

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[2:12] In the franchise, whether it was in-universe, out-of-universe, something we heard at a convention or something JMS said on an interview sometime, or maybe something one of the actors or production people said gave us a little behind-the-scenes, explored the universe a little bit more. It's all fair game for Jeff and I to talk about. So for those of you who have not seen this show for the first time for yourselves, we beg you, please stop. Go join our first watch, which is completely spoiler free. And when you get done with that, come back and join us here because this is your one only and final spoiler warning. Go, go away. Why are you still here? Go, go. I'm excited about this episode, Brent, because I haven't been to the gym yet today. And I think this is going to count because it's the exercise of vital powers. Wow.

[3:11] Well, see, say that one to your trainer. Let's see how that comes back to you. Yeah, how that works. So I watched an episode of TV called The Exercise. It was called Exercise. I don't know how you get closer than that. When we watched this one the first time, we played a game where we predicted what each episode was going to be about based on the title alone. That was a fun game. It was fun. And in some ways, we could do that right now. I know. Be like, is this going to be this? What was that episode? I don't remember. what did you though brent predict this one was going to be about i said um that, okay there's a couple things going on in this one so you remember how the last episode was all about freeing proxima right, going to proxima three we're going to get it out of out of uh you know the hands of clark and they had a few people defect and come over and other people who decided to do some different stuff well, i said that this would continue that mission only it's not just the next colony it'd be like the next two or three colonies, almost like montage, because we were told there's a lot of colonies out there, right? So we're going to be doing that. But as that's happening, this episode would actually be more political than space battle. Okay. Because the last one was visually stunning, right? But this would deal with Sheridan dealing with the defecting captains and commanders as he's trying to forge this new rebel alliance. Yeah.

[4:36] Um, I said it would, it would be, uh, Oh, I, and I made a S a specific call. I don't know if this came true or not. I really don't remember. So I'm interested to find out. I said, Sheridan was going to make a call or do something that wasn't going to go so well for him. And it would cause those other commanders to start questioning him much in the same way that Garibaldi is questioning him. It's going to be a test of Sheridan's leadership ability. And ultimately he is going to win them over. And then this is ultimately what happens, you know, to help him win the big battle in the end as they press forward towards Mars and Earth. What did you predict? I think that's one of the things I was waiting for in the first time was that, like a defector to have been like, oh, that's. Or the defector to defect. Yeah, sort of thing. So that makes sense. My prediction was I thought the Earth was going to bring the fight to Babylon 5, you know. So we went to Proxima 3, they were going to come and attack and we were going to see some of that. But we'd also get Garibaldi and Edgars, and specifically just kind of a spiral of Garibaldi getting more frustrated with everything and just getting, you know, becoming evil Garibaldi. Well, that's what we predicted. I don't fully remember exactly what happened in this episode.

[5:55] And I'm not sure that you do. And I don't really remember exactly what we thought of this episode. So why don't we take a look and just remind ourselves really quickly of not only what happened, but exactly what you and I said about this the first time around. Let's do exactly that, please. Previously on Babylon 5 for the first time. The exercise of vital powers. This episode feels like it is episode two of a seven part story, which isn't a bad thing. It just makes this episode really hard to judge on its own merit. I'm not going to have much to say. Spoiler alert. We've talked a lot about the prescience of JMS's writing in this series. It felt like this episode was literally written at us today. Let's talk about the telepaths and Lita and stuff first. Franklin's struggling. Zach just is like, it's all right, dude, you'll figure it out. You always do. I hope that everyone has the opportunity in their lives to work with a Zach. When she looked into his mind, she heard the shadows. Here's what I appreciated. This was so much better than pain.

[6:58] The actor for the guy was great. And she's like, let's go to sleep. And he's down. I was just like, oh, my God. Franklin had a point. He's being asked to do the absolute impossible. I need to know what that is. Franklin was right. And we got a lot of Garibaldi in this episode. A lot of Garibaldi. I was really glad for it. We'll give the caveat his mind has been messed with. Does Garibaldi have a legit point? Does Sheridan have some sort of Messiah complex? I haven't gotten that impression from Sheridan. What I have gotten from him, is that he believes he's the only person who knows what needs to be done.

[7:36] Maybe he does have all the answers. As long as he's doing it by himself, while he's out physically leading these fleets, wow, that's a lot of risk he's taken. In the absence of information, we're going to tell our own stories. And what we know about Garibaldi is he's never going to tell a good story. Eggers, not Bester. I know. The perspective that he brought to the conversation, but also just how dramatically out of touch with reality he was. He made a comment in there where he says only a fool turns away from absolute power. Actually a lot of people turn away from absolute power because we actually watched Jakar do it. In the interest of promoting humanity's best interests, he puts no value in human life. Sheridan is screwing up the timetable so what happens to him is collateral damage. The telepaths that they had to kill, they're collateral damage. Garibaldi is going to be collateral damage. Okay, Garibaldi just handed over Sheridan's dad. Can I punch him in the throat now? Garibaldi? Yeah, you want to punch him in the throat? You're right to. Yeah. Don't you mess with Rance Howard. Right? National treasure. Right?

[8:51] Uh, Jeff, this stands in a little bit of stark contrast to what you were saying about Sheridan in our last episode. Oh, yeah, it really, I thought the same thing. No Messiah complex for Sheridan. I saw the look on your face when you said that. You're like, really? I said that? Yeah. I, uh, I've seen it for a while now, pretty much this whole season.

[9:11] Yeah. But you're looking at it through sleeping in light eyes, not well, Jeff, that was our first time around, man. Let's do our second time around. Let's do our second time. Ooh. You ready for this? I don't know. I don't know. I still like Garibaldi, even though I don't like Garibaldi. Right. Like, you know, I don't know that I want to do this, man. You know.

[9:33] Season one, for the first time, I said Garibaldi was my favorite character. You did. And that was the last time he was my favorite character. I'll just say that. Yeah. Well, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to bring up the episode and we're going to watch it. We can talk about it while it's going on. You know, make comments or whatever, all that kind of stuff. I think, though, for YouTube, we're going to want to edit it up, like, reaction video style. Weird idea. You can tell me no, but we could probably take the unedited version and post that on our Patreon page. That's at patreon.com slash bad nerds. If you want to check it out and see if we decided to do that. I think that's a good idea because, you know, sometimes there's just context that gets edited out. Mm-hmm.