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!

It is so mind blowing to me that JMS missed the perfect opportunity to make the ending of this episode an absolute classic!

For the First Time Episode - https://www.babylon5first.com/episode/lines-of-communication

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[1:55] Stop this video. Stop this podcast right now. Scroll up, catch our episode on this. The first time we did this run, that was completely spoiler free. We had no clue what was coming up. Do that, go through that. And then when you're on your own second watch, join us back here. so that being said spoiler alert, This week, Brent, we're watching an episode called Lines of Communication. When we watched this the first time, we played a game where we guessed what each episode was going to be. We didn't guess. We predicted. There's a little more to a prediction than a guess, right? Yes. Well, it involves crystal balls and being just vague enough to be almost right. To be the king, baby. Just like you. Like it says in the intro.

[2:35] There you go. But we would guess what each one was based on the title alone before we watched it. My prediction was that we were finally going to get some of that Garibaldi stuff. I said we were going to learn about the lines of communication connecting him to Psycor or whomever programmed him and start to dig into those Rammstein guys who we now know as Wade and his crew. So I thought this would be a very Garibaldi-focused episode. Remember what your prediction was? Yeah, I said, you know, the lines of communication have really been cut off between Earth and Babylon 5, as we saw with Sheridan last week, like trying to flip through all the channels and everything like that. Presumably the same thing is true of Mars.

[3:15] So and they're all being jammed is what we know. So this would be Babylon 5 and Mars starting to establish communications, getting away around the jam so they can open up lines of communication is what I said. I don't think that's anywhere close. Yeah, we took the title very literally on this one. I don't think that helps us out. Well, why wouldn't you? Because it's Babylon 5. It's JMS. Very good. We've seen a few of these. What do you say that we go back, do a little look-see at what we said about this one the first time around? I'm all for it. Previously on Babylon 5 for the first time, lines of communication. I found this one kind of dull. the individual parts were greater than the whole but then you've got franklin and marcus i love this together franklin has blossomed 100 buddy cop movie here with marcus.

[4:11] I'm here for those guys, like, just all day long. They're great. I love all of it. Number one. Thank you. She is going to give Liana Kimmer a run for her money in Worst Guest Actress in the entire series. I loved the scene where the White Star, they were, you know, doing the, what do you call it, skin dancing. All in one scene, Jeff. This went from Babylon 5 to Star Wars, and then it turns into Top Gun. Where he's going to hit the brakes to fly right by him. He flips around. He flips him the birds, splits the whole thing in half. So let's talk about the draw. This alien was awful. He's just standing there, and he's still moving weird and stuff, and the blurry effect, and it was bad. And he couldn't even talk for himself. Pharrell had to do all the talking. Yeah. Dylan's doing the math. Pharrell's immediate reaction is to point a gun, and his story has merit.

[5:10] Why was his first reaction to whip out a gun and not be like, hey, Dylan, let me tell you what's going on. Everything here is her fault. They broke up the great council and then she peaces out. If you're going to break something up, if you're going to take something out, you have to have something to fill in its spot. And because of this, Dylan is responsible for Mimbari culture fracturing. When you are a person with the power, when you're a person with the prestige that Delenn has, you do not get to be that ignorant anymore. You do not get to be that irresponsible.

[5:45] So we went from her being fully ostracized in Minbari society to her being able to come in and break up the Grey Council. And now her apparently being the only person who can come and bring order to Minbar. This is not a good look for Dylann. This is not a good positive Dylann episode. It's time for the redemption of Dylann of Minbar.

[6:08] We might be upsetting some people in this one, it sounds like. Are you upsetting yourself listening back to this one, Jeff? No, I'm actually not. I am not surprised at all that I wasn't a huge fan of this episode. Yeah. Because what do I remember about season four? It was great. Really great beginning, really great ending. There's the middle pieces of very meh episodes, but I understand why they're there. They're not bad. They're just not what everything else is, you know, and you understand that there's just this lull where things have to kind of get into place and do what they have to do so like i i can extend it a lot of grace because of that but yeah who's looking forward to a reaction right now all i know is i know people really love it when i get hypercritical of delin they're all about that they love listen it's it's the redemption of delin of mimbar right that's a phrase i don't think i ever said ever again after that episode and you know what i'm not sorry what say we dive into this thing so we maybe we see it very differently this time there you go well i will say this i i do think i'm going to eat some crow on this one yeah yeah whoever the girl is that plays number one is not even close to being the worst guest actor yeah up there with leon like not even she you're i don't know your name but.

[7:34] I was about to call her like sweetie or honey because that's how we do here in the south. Yeah, glad you didn't. But that's not good.

[7:40] Ma'am, is that any better? That's not really any better, is it? Mom. It's for you. Mom. Sorry. Anyway, if you're watching this, you're great. Like, you're just fine. Don't listen to me back then. In fact, if you're watching this, you should email us and let us know that you're watching it because you're number one. Katarina is really curious to see your crush she is well she has to go back and watch survivors for that farley or whatever his name is oh if i won this time i thought we're still on the liana camera thing no but uh i have a couple crushes i guess out of this show huh i guess farley is that his name pharrell for yeah that dude so what's about to happen is we're going to watch this episode right now we're going to bring it up you're going to join us and we're going to dive in brett and i will comment as the video is going if you're watching us on youtube it'll be edited it up like a reaction video the full and unedited version is available at our patreon page it's patreon.com slash bad nerds and to all of our audio listeners out there no worries we're not going to leave you out you're going to hear everything the whole kit and caboodle so jeff, now let's watch this episode let's open these lines of communication accessing file.

[9:01] He's just been taken in by the aliens we're gonna go get him we're gonna rescue him we're gonna bring him back and yeah he's gonna have to stand trial for the things he did but we're gonna you know we're gonna not blame him it's got minbari war syndrome i mean yeah everyone up back home turn him against us commander this is lost land to big bad wolf, respond i repeat do not respond so question was asked why did he feel the need to send a video message like just bandwidth and stuff like that and he's like at that point the difference between audio and video is fairly negligible and it's way easier to fake audio than it is to fake the video okay although in today's age of ai not so much i'd be like because it's a tv show yeah Yeah. So, you know, one of the conversations I think we may have had at some point, maybe not with this episode, but certainly one of the others and is what's it like for the people back on earth right now? You know what I mean? Like, are they, are they buying this? Are they, are they eating all this up? Are they for it? We know there's some level of resistance there, but like by and large, what's going on? I have no idea what that looks like. What does it look like to be on the inside of basically a fascist regime?