Join Laura and Xhafer, two internet strangers as they get to know each other while making jokes about one of their favorite TV shows from their childhood, Babylon 5.

Laura and Xhafer are joined by guest, Scott, host of the Grey 17 Podcast to discuss...uh...*checks notes* Babylon 5, Season 3 Episode 19: Grey 17 Is Missing. Go figure.

You can find more of Grey 17 Podcast on your favorite pod catcher, Youtube, or Twitter @Grey17Podcast.

Hello and welcome to Who Are You?

This is a Babble on five Watch cast hosted by two former strangers now friends who

have gotten to know each other while re-watching one of their favorite shows

from their childhood Babble on five.

I'm Jafa

And I'm Laura

Hi, I'm Scott.

Scott.

Hi Scott.

Scott from Grace 17 is here with us today, and that means

Scott, today we get to ask you.

Who are you?

Well, I've been trying to figure that out for nearly 40 years, but thanks

for making me answer the question.

Uh, You know, when I, you look at my LinkedIn page, it says, father,

volunteerism, expert, community organizer, podcaster, and all around, busy guy.

So I think that pretty much covers it.

But for this case, I as of last week, I have been a Babylon five fan for 30

years and now host Grace 17 Babylon five podcast where we have a bunch of

newbies and also first ones we like to call ourselves those who have watched

the entire show watching together.

And it is really fun to frustrate my newbies because they can only watch,

watch one episode at a time and I have them ask questions and give

predictions and then I tell 'em to leave before I answer 'em all for them.

So it's great.

Yeah, it's gonna be quite the experience for them when they

finish and they go back and listen.

I'm sure.

Oh yeah, I've told 'em all they're gonna, they're gonna hate listen the

whole show again cuz the section that they couldn't hear the first time.

And I'm looking forward to all of the the text messages and the phone calls

about how much of a jerk I was for two and a half years, making them wait.

It was great.

Yeah.

I'm sure that will be a lot of fun.

I know we've got some overlap in our listenership as well, so

some people in our discord are commenting about when your newbies

get their predictions right or wrong.

We'll see those come in from time to time.

I just joined your discord, so I'm looking forward to seeing that.

Yeah.

If you scroll there's a handful you'll see.

From both you and the the Babylon five for the first time.

Guys, sometimes their predictions make it into our discord too.

Their predictions are interesting to say the least.

So I'm doing the napkin math if you are almost 40 ish.

Then you were probably about the same age as Jafa and I when

you watched it the first time.

Yeah, I was born in 1983, so I watched it when I

was the ripe old age of nine.

Mm-hmm.

Jafa heard this when we did our League of Not Lion Podcasts, but I

actually found Babylon five because I was watching another show on the Primetime

Entertainment Network, which was Time Tracks cuz I was a big Quantum Leap fan.

So I was like, Ooh, it's Quantum Leap with Cops.

And so I was watching that and then they had a trailer for the gathering.

I was like, oh, well I like Star Trek.

Let's do this too.

Yeah,

Star Trek is the gateway drug for a lot of things, isn't it?

It is, it

for sure.

And Quantum Leap.

In my case

True, true

have you, have you watched the Quantum Leap reboot?

I have, and you know what?

I enjoy it.

Here's

That's not a, you didn't say Yes.

So,

yeah.

This is a, this is a whole, like, other podcast we could have.

But what I like about it is, one, it's not a reboot, it's a continuation.

And actually, if you're a Quantum Leap fan Ernie Hudson, and this is

not a spoiler, it's like in the third episode they tell you this, Ernie

Hudson is playing a character that Sam leapt into in the original show.

And so he talks about how he lost time and so forth and so on.

And I also like it because unlike the original show where it was Sam and Al

the whole time, and you really never got, you know, the, the, the nineties

people, this, the show splits its time between what's happening in the past and

what's happening with Project Quantum Leap, which is why Ernie Hudson's

actually a fairly big part of it.

So I'm, I'm enjoying it and I'm just hoping sooner or later

they, you know, bring back Sam.

But Scott Bakula says he's not gonna be in the show.

I think he's lying.

So we'll see what happens.

I'm sure you hand Scott Bakula a big enough bucket of money

Yeah, it's all about the dump truck of money, isn't it?

It's like like the M C U when Robert Downey Jr.

Said, I'm done with Ironman.

Oh, here's a dump truck of money.

Okay, cool.

Yeah.

I guess I'll be back.

Where is this quantum Leap reboot at?

I'm

It is on b nbc.

It actually is a network show still

whoa.

you, you can, you can watch it on Peacock.

Okay.

Okay,

I think they have, I think they, they have six episodes left this season

and they ordered a second season.

So it's getting at least enough people watching it to where

it's gonna get a second season.

All right,

So welcome to this Quantum Leap podcast.

I'm glad you guys have

Yeah, put it on the to-do . List.

We're all very busy, but we might find the time.

Well, speaking of people who lost time, we have something

lost in today's episode,

sure do.

We've got season three, episode 19.

It was a good segue.

Grace 17 is missing the, the namesake for your podcast,

I know my guys still have not seen, my newbies haven't seen Grace 17

is missing because we're in season two.

So it's uh, the one joke I had was we named it the podcast because as you'll

find out, I have thoughts about this episode, but when I named this podcast,

I recruited the, the newbies, which are all friends of mine . From mostly college.

And I said, and welcome to the team, we'll meet on, we'll meet on Gray 17.

And Jesse, who's one of our newbies, went on Google and searched Gray 17

because she thought it was some kind of messaging app that she didn't have.

And so she was confused.

She's like, well, you're gonna message me on that.

I gotta download it.

I'm like, no, Jesse, no, it's okay.

You've got another two years before you, you watch this treasure

of an episode, so you're fine

Yeah.

Two years.

You'll get the joke then.

a slow burn.

It is

this episode is kind of infamously on most people's

top five worst episode list.

It, it's that, that list for most people is Grail tko believers,

and a late delivery from Avalon.

Along with this episode is what I saw.

I, I take umbridge with a number of those.

what we, we ha I have thoughts on that list alone.

Yeah.

I like most of those episodes.

I love Grail.

GRAIL's.

Great.

jinx.

So I, for some when I did my show on Grail and we actually interviewed Tom Booker

and he's, he's a, he's just a class act.

But, for some reason, again, as Laura asked, you know, I was nine,

maybe just Ripley 10 when Grail came out, and I just, I attached

myself to Jinx o I don't know why.

So that character's really important to me.

Yeah, he's got a, a childlike aspect that's probably appealing

Mm-hmm.

you're a certain age.

Yeah, I get

Yeah.

39 year old.

Same idea.

Childlike.

It's fun.

So most of these episodes I kind of dreaded before recording for

this most recent rewatch because I didn't have fond memories of them.

And then in the more critical, more analytical podcast rewatch

where I'm sitting there, I'm taking notes, I'm reading, I'm analyzing.

I . Grew to really like most of these episode.

and I felt the same way at the start of this one where I'm

like, Ugh, do I want to, Ugh.

Okay, we'll watch it.

I'm just wondering if I was alone at that particular thought.

Mm-hmm.

. Well,

you dread this before?

I don't wanna know how you feel about it after.

After this rewatch.

We'll get to it when we get to rating the episode, but before you sat down to

watch this episode, were you dreading it?

I'll, I'll share my thoughts first.

I remembered this episode through my, my childlike lens.

You know, probably watching it at nine or 10 or whatever.

And I remembered it being very spooky and being very intimidated by this episode.

Yeah.

The

I, I remembered it as something that was going to be very creepy, and

then when I watched it I was like, oh, , why was I scared of this episode?

Yeah.

It was my experience.

I had completely forgot about Robert England.

how can you forget about Robert England, sir?

I for, well, I mean not like as a person, like I remember

that he existed, but like I forgot that he was in this episode.

Yeah, that's true.

Is creepy.

Yeah.

for, for me, I mean, it's obvious that I have a special

place in my heart for Gray 17.

So I wasn't really dreading it, but the one thing that's weird for me is since

we've been recording our show, I have made it to where I, I'm watching with

the newbies, and the last time I binged Babylon five was I, it was pre pandemic.

It was probably 2019.

So I haven't watched seasons 2, 3, 4, and five in nearly four years.

And so it's really weird to me jumping into Gray 17 is missing because I'm

like, oh look, they're wearing the army of light uniforms and stuff.

This is different . It's weird.

Yeah.

definitely a, a certain point in time in the . Show.

I just want to know where the budget from McGrath went.

Yeah.

Well, we open on the aforementioned army of light,

. Recruiting Telepaths when someone, I can only describe as if Dane Cook,

where John Edwards comes through the line to try and cold read Zach

Yeah.

In a world where telepaths are real, how many people do you really get

trying to do the psychic grift anymore?

Like, I understand this guy wants a job, but

That line was pretty long.

I'm not, I'm questioning the zis telepath abilities.

Who's like second in line or third in line?

Yeah,

we don't, we don't get much about drowsy telepaths, do we?

No, not much.

for me.

This is just telegraphing the humor you're gonna get with this episode.

And if you don't laugh at this joke, oh man, , it's gonna be a long ride for you

We cut over to Sheridan's office to discuss recruitment with Ivan when

they remember that, oh yeah, there's a ton of telepaths that owe us a salad.

We should probably figure that out.

I'm sure this won't have long-term repercussions for the story

Yeah.

It's too bad we shut that thing down, you know, back in season

two,

Two.

early season two, early.

Mm-hmm.

could have had a nice supply here.

I, that was the other thing I was thinking, you know, we have

a, an underground railroad that we have to get these telepaths

away from Cycore in season two.

Right.

And yet in the hallway when Zach is interviewing people, there's this big long

line and it's not like it's all drowsy.

You

know, there's a lot of humans.

there's a lot of humans in that line.

How did they get there?

Did the, you know,

Becher's not doing his job.

Yep.

Buster's just slacking.

Don't be fives out of his jurisdiction.

Now after this we cut over to our maintenance worker, Tom

Berry, an actor of some renowned

Really

his bit part here.

He's Michael Jordan's dad in Space Jam.

Just off the.

is true.

This is true.

He has hundred something other acting credits.

He's been all over the place, but space Jam,

Mm-hmm.

so.

definitely that guy.

Character actor.

He's like, oh, I recognize that guy from something.

he's been all over, but he gets got to theme.

Scott, I have a question for you.

The answer is 42.

That's a weird answer to the question.

Are you a theme skipper?

Am I a theme?

Skipper.

Yeah.

Well, I don't know what app you're

Oh, oh, oh.

I get what you're

asking

the theme?

I get what you're asking me.

I usually do, however, because I am still knee-deep in season two and actually

season three has a really good one.

I did.

I did watch it.

I did

that is my follow up is what's your favorite of the B five themes?

I'm a big fan of the music and I think season four has

the best March theme, you know?

But in terms of the narrative, I like season five because

you get all of our characters.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

I also like the Yvanova one.

You know, it was our last best hope for peace.

It failed.

But I like the one where it was, it was a time of, you know, strife.

It was a time of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I like the, I like that narrative.

yeah.

I, I like the narratives too.

I think that that part just gets better and better throughout the whole show.

Mm-hmm.

for sure.

Over at the Hall of Justice.

Dalen and Ruthin are talking about Sinclair.

While Lanier goes through his shit, , like, here's his stuff.

Here's his Battle of the Line award.

Here's this ranger pin.

It all fits in this one box.

So I was wondering to myself why the Sinclair Aviation that was on his

wall in season one isn't in that box, but if you go on eBay right this second.

Yeah.

Okay.

If you go on eBay, the original prop.

is up for about eight grand, so somebody stole it out of his

quarters and is now selling on eBay.

Yeah.

I almost bought it and then a friend got me the one for my

wall there as a compromise.

But I am strongly considering using that and getting a chunk of sheet

metal and recreating the prop.

I like that.

I like that.

You can make some money off Etsy on that sucker.

Yeah.

Also, I want to make one of the giant wooden shields,

Oh, I will, I will, I will uh, pay you to make two

Okay.

I am not currently accepting woodworking commissions because I'm, I'm on

my last project of the, my last batch of woodworking commissions.

But when those open up again, I'll make sure I let you know.

Excellent.

Well, speaking of going through people's stuff Michael

Garibaldi also has an antique gun that his grandmother carried

Mm-hmm.

Boston police officer, I believe he said.

Yep.

This begs the question, was his dad also a graduate of Homeschool Security Club

Oh God.

Hmm.

It's, it's a homeschooled tradition in the Garabaldi family.

Yeah.

I was losing my damn mind here.

Like, I guess having the gun isn't so bad.

We later find out he also has bullets for it, which is, Crazy, but we'll

get to that when we get there.

I will say nine times out of 10.

And then Jerry Doyle is really doing a lot of work here for his future

talk show audience, talking about this gun, the way he describes it.

But he does at least have good trigger discipline.

His finger is never actually on the trigger of the firearm.

And as someone who worked at a gun range in high school, like that's something

I'm always looking for when they've got guns in TV shows his trigger discipline.

Jerry Doyle has it.

So I will make a note of appreciation for that at the very least.

Yeah.

Very important.

he gets a lead at the title story and he goes to investigate

the missing maintenance worker.

After this Ivanova apparently missed the day of middle school where they

taught everyone the word incognito as she finds Franklin going through

STEM withdrawals, just walking around . Down below in her full uniform.

Yeah.

Every time Gu Baldi goes into down below, he puts on like the brown jacket,

you know, the like Bombery jacket.

Very casual, the nineties button up with the weird geometric pattern on it.

Mm-hmm.

But Ivanova doesn't have time for any of that.

I, I gotta apologize for last episode, everybody.

I criticized last episode very hard for not projecting

any uh, Franklin withdrawals.

And here he explains to us that it's a delayed reaction.

So in Walkabout, where he's having no reaction at all to

being no longer on stems, , it's all here in Grace 17 apparently.

Thank you j m s for this throwaway line.

If nothing else in this episode, thank you for this throwaway line.

This is the kind of thing that I normally bitch about at the end of an episode

where it's all like this one line could have handled so many plot issues,

and we actually got it this time, so

Yeah.

So he just made me eat my words

Franklin tells Ivanova where the telepath backups are, so long

as they stop checking up on him.

Every other episode, his stash is hidden in a folder named Harriet.

I always use the save game folder in my documents, hidden in

plain sight, but each their own.

Now everyone's taking notes.

It's okay.

When I wanna break into his computer, I just go to the save game files.

Got it.

Just stay out of tax documents.

That's pretty dangerous.

Garabaldi talks to the maintenance supervisor and learns

of gray seventeens missing floor.

There are only 29 floors in gray sector, despite there being 30

on the, uh, official registry,

Yeah.

On the blueprints we drew 30, but when we built this thing, we just kind of forgot

Somebody just kind of

miscounted.

right.

To the surprise of no one listening to this podcast, I did look at diagrams

of the station at this point to go, well, the station is like built in

sections, so if there's 30 in the one next to it, there'd have to be thir.

Like, it's not like you just shrink, but the station actually

does shrink at gray sector.

It's towards the back before you get the spit that doesn't spin which

is zero Gravity Manufacturing area.

Oh

Uh, as I learned from reading schematics

now that's the thing that I wanna see in the reboot is I

wanna see zero G manufacturing.

Give me that

Here.

Here.

Sure.

Okay.

Your schematics goofed up or whatever.

Some guy actually made the gray 17 sign, cuz it's on both decks

and put it next to the elevator.

So, It's one thing to say, oh, we just, you know, it was never

open to the public to another.

Like, well, we just labeled both of 'em Gray 17, and then shut that one down.

I'm like, jms, you didn't put much time into this one, did you?

I would've so preferred if he had asked for Gray 17 and

then just got dropped on Gray.

18.

Mm-hmm.

And that's the way it probably should have been.

Like, you know, when you go to a hotel in the United States, most

hotels don't have a floor 13.

It goes from 12 to 14, so that would've made more sense.

Instead it's like, eh, we just built this floor and then forgot about it.

really the episode title Gray 17 is missing is

Misleading cuz it's not missing.

It's right there.

It happens to be Gray 18, but it is there.

Uh, A better episode title.

It's not as catchy, but maybe Hear me out.

There are two gray seventeens, but we only have one because of a labeling issue.

Is

about we just call it the one with Naroon and Robert England,

that works?

the one with Freddie and.

Yeah,

Yep.

Sheridan affirms Tolen that she is the one who should take over for Anza.

Congratulating her as, uh, she tells him that she wants a

ceremony to take place at Babylon.

Five to make the knowledge of the Rangers more public.

Sheridan then steps out stage right as Naroon walks on stage left immediately.

And I gotta say Naro Go's full conspiracy theory guy here, but he's

not saying anything that's wrong.

Hmm.

You know, Len did disband the gray council.

She did start military built up in the religious cast and not, that's

traditionally a warrior cast duty.

And now she's making a play to control a branch of the.

Oh,

Right.

But it's not the way it sounds.

Jafa.

Yeah, I know it's because we know dalen.

But this isn't as crazy as, you know.

Jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams.

This is, this is actual kind of grounded a little bit and it almost made me a little

bit more sympathetic to Naroon here,

Yeah.

This is some

legitimate grievance from his point of view.

Until he beats the shit outta Marcus later, and then that all goes away.

But for a minute.

See, Naro is one of my favorite characters, so I, I love the arc that

Naroon goes on from being asshole.

You hate

to asshole, who is okay.

I like that.

He's still an asshole, but he's okay.

Yeah.

I was thinking about that arc with other characters and how you could

explore that a little further than we did in the nineties.

Like the nineties didn't have as much of that sort of you had

clear defined roles for everybody.

You know, this person was supposed to be the action hero and this person

was supposed to be the damsel in this.

And I feel like this show explores a little bit more of the subtleties

of people than some other shows.

Also, can we just give a shout out to Dylan real quick for the strength of

character for when Naroon quotes vain at her about how things are supposed to be

like, bitch, don't quote vain to me.

I have passed the bong to vain.

Don't, don't come with that shit.

I'll have, you know, vain and I got married.

It was great.

Right?

Dylan denies ambition like we expect her to.

And Naro tells us that zealots should never run the military, which,

Hmm.

And then Lanier shows up as Naroon makes Dalen feel like Commissioner Gordon,

He does, he does pull a Batman here, doesn't he?

right?

He just vanishes just straight up Garabaldi is counting the

floors while Lanier is like, this motherfucker is gonna kill you.

Dalen denies it immediately.

It's all like, Mbar don't kill Mbar.

It's all like, no, no.

He's made it clear.

He's not going to just say harsher words to you,

One of my favorite linear lines ever.

By the way, I love that line.

Bill Moony plays that so well.

He's like, I'm pretty sure we've moved past harsh words.

Yeah.

She's forgetting that.

When you go through the, the cocoon, are you really still mbar to some?

I'm sure there's a chunk of the mbar population that would easily

roll that out as an excuse for not breaking the mbar on mbar violence.

Yeah.

This one is not really mbar, so it's

fine.

yeah.

The lens, like snitches get stitches linear.

You can't tell nobody.

Guerra Baldi finds gray 17 and then finds the real gray.

17.

Mm-hmm.

It is a mess.

We've already described it a little.

There's the two gray 17 signs.

Everything is just, Strung about clearly station maintenance has not spent any

time here in the last couple of years.

It, I, I wonder how it got this bad, to be perfectly honest.

Well, I mean, I guess the, the zark and there's a couple humans, but like, this

looks like it has been under siege.

This looks like it's a shelled road in Warren.

Like this is not a pretty place.

It's very foggy.

did you notice too when he was doing the, his elevator count

that Grays one through 16 were like pristinely clean, even for gray sector,

and then when he goes down to Gray 17 B, it's got some trash and stuff so

it.

Once we get past, like Gray 16, do we just like stop carrying?

Do the maintenance guys skip out on those?

I'm, I'm not entirely sure what's going on.

Yeah, they get to 16 and it's like, oh, shift's over.

Gotta go

Or the czar eats them one of the two.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lanier after this goes to Marcus, since Dalen insisted this

was an internal affair, and Marcus is a ranger, so it stays internal.

Oh, wait, no, no.

That's not his excuse.

No linear must do more mental gymnastics than that.

Since Marcus is not in the chain of command, he hasn't technically broken

the promise and Marcus might not tell.

So technically it's okay.

This is, it's it's, it's right there.

Lanier, he's a arranger to the lens, said it's an internal affair that she

doesn't want to involve outsiders.

You can tell Marcus, your conscious is clear.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Marcus is a great line in here about Lanier going to a

martial artist who specializes in philosophy for his mental gymnastics.

Yeah, it's true.

sorry.

As somebody again who is on season two, seeing Marcus just makes me smile.

I'm a big Marcus fan.

I know and not, I know not everyone is.

I, I love Marcus to death.

I love him

He gets some of the best lines and he has great delivery.

Like you can't not love it.

It's gotta be the biggest character upgrade in

the history of sci-fi television

from Warren Keefer.

Yeah.

to

Marcus.

facial hair alone.

Well, the difference is JMS actually wanted to write one of them

and didn't wanna write the other one.

Yeah,

Linear lays it all out for Marcus Del is in trouble.

And if anyone uses violence to preemptively stop violence, more

violence won't follow by having a non mbar challenged Arun, no

mbar on Mbar violence will follow.

Linear is worried about a mbar civil war breaking out.

Yeah.

I think rightfully so.

Yeah.

I mean, can you imagine if a leading Republican and a leading

Democrat fought to the death

It.

It's happened in the United States Congress a couple times, not this century.

Yeah, it's been a long time, but

when people say we we're, we're tribalistic.

Now I'm like, people used to beat each other with canes on the house floor.

yeah.

Yeah.

Someone was killed in the Senate.

, someone was literally beat to death in the Senate Chamber L we forget.

So Garabaldi is investigating here and.

He sees this creepy fucking doll

Okay.

This is why I thought this episode was genuinely scary as a child.

It's this puppet right here.

straight from Showbiz Pizza to Grace 17.

Here we are.

Yeah.

I mean, in a five nights at Freddie Post, five nights at

Freddie World, this doll is scarier.

Admittedly,

You are not supposed to be here.

this would've been when child's play only existed for laughs compared

to now where dolls can be scary again.

We've got, was it the contouring?

What's the one with the dolls?

There's Annabelle.

Is that it?

I'm not a horror guy.

I can't help you.

I do, I do love the fact that now that we have gray seventeens missing that we've

had both Chucky and Freddy on Babylon.

Five,

Hmm.

Mm.

All right.

Yeah,

so Garibaldi gets darted.

There's a little bit here with the imbar in between, and then we come back

and he wakes up and his link is gone.

His PPG is gone, and Robert England comes in and his first speech

here is actually really good.

I mean, he speechies really well throughout the whole thing.

It's the question of like, what is he saying?

, at some points,

it doesn't go off the rails too hard

J m s actually brought this up on the use nets back in the day.

And I, I love how he, speaking of mental gymnastics, here's how j m s explains

Jeremiah uh, he basically says, the Jeremiah thread was one of those things

that looks great on paper, but when you get it into camera, I don't know.

It's one of those weirdnesses that happens in television sometimes.

You've got to uh, you got what you think is an average script, and it just

roars to life on camera, and sometimes it looks like a great one . On paper.

But in real life, eh, I'm happy with all the other stuff in the episode,

but the Jeremiah thread didn't come off as I sh as it should have.

I'm like, uh, jms, did you really think it was great on paper?

Did

Yeah.

The, the, the speech about, you know, all the Carl Sagan stuff.

I, I can get behind that, but it only really worked for Carl Sagan.

You know, we are the universe trying to understand itself, the whole,

Mm.

what was the name of that show?

Cosmos.

Thank you.

a personal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Same.

mean uh, Robert England does a really good job, I wanna

say, as being a creepy person.

He comes off very creepy.

He's a really good actor.

Yeah.

I mean, everyone knows him as you know, nightmare in Elm Street, but what I

know him from being the eighties sci-fi kid is he was one of the visitors in V

I always remember him playing that.

God.

I love V

yeah.

Vi the miniseries is an amazing miniseries and everyone should go check it out

because probably most people haven't,

Real Talk.

Scott.

If you wanna do a V podcast, I'm

here for it.

Okay.

Yeah, we should.

We should actually, we'll talk about it on Twitter later, but

we should actually do that.

I'm in

Yeah.

.Okay.

I'm even a fan of vi the final battle now the series.

Did you like the remake?

I only watched the first episode and I was one of those.

It was cranky Scott Times where I was like, this is not the original.

I'm done

Yeah.

Yeah.

But that was like 20 years ago, so I may be willing to give it another shot.

We'll, we'll maybe save it for our future podcast, cuz legit, we

should do v I would've loved to do a V

You know where to find me, sir.

Yep.

Even if it's just the like limited run and we only do it for

like 20 episodes or something.

I'm here for it.

I like this idea.

So back to Babylon five

So Dylan and Sheridan are talking in between shuttles and we

learn a bit about len's parents.

Her mom's monk but her dad died of a broken heart, padme style.

Yeah.

I know I'm the used net guy, but somebody actually asked jms.

So what happened to Deen's father?

And JMS responded, and I quote, he croaked.

Mm-hmm.

That's all we got.

Yeah.

His broken heart is not over.

Her mother though, his broken heart is over the Earthman Barr war.

Right.

I

think so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

he's existentially sad rather than just like my partner is gone.

Yeah.

Cuz I mean, Dalene goes out of her way when Sheridan even says, I'm sorry.

He is like, no, my mom going into whatever she went into is a point of honor.

I mean, we miss her.

But that was great for the family.

Yeah.

She does tell a very touching story about knowing as a child,

the, the moment she accepted that her dad was going to one day die,

and how that was a moment for both of them that the father knowing

and, and then the child knowing, and it totally didn't make me cry.

Shut up.

You're crying

I, I forgot that line.

And as a dad of three kids, I've been there, especially with my 12 year old

that I've, I've, I've had that moment where, dad put me on your shoulders,

man, I can't, honey, you're, you're, you're, you've gotten too big.

I can't Oh, oh, gut punch.

And my son is on the smaller side for his age group, and I've been

able to carry him a lot longer than

other parents could carry their kids.

And then when I got pregnant and I'm gonna have a baby, like can't do it at

all anymore, and I was like, this is it.

That's it.

It's

you're never gonna have that back.

It's, it's a, it's a, ugh.

Oh, yep.

No, I, I felt that line.

I felt that line

Jeremiah goes off a bit more here before Marcus confronts Darro.

They both studied the staff under Deron which is notable because in the

novels there is another named character who does study the Imbar fighting

staff under Darron, and he guesses.

Scott, do you know, did you read this one?

I have not read the novels, believe it or not.

Oh no,

I know.

I've

I don't think I've read this novel.

Catherine

is

Sai

Oh, really?

Went to Ranger school at the same time as Marcus.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

Okay.

Yeah.

I wi, I wikipediaed all the novels because, you know, I felt like I had

to have some kind of understanding.

So I do know Catherine like, goes back in time to hang out

with Jeffrey at the end, so,

Yeah, so that's To Dream in the City of Sorrows is the name of this novel.

It was actually written by j S's wife and it is a novel that he's gone out

of his way to consider Cannon when a handful of other novels, most of the other

novels have been stricken from Cannon.

well.

I mean, you can't kick your wife's work out of the cannon like

Well, and the relationship he has with his wife is, you know, I mean,

they're, they're divorced now, but he, even in his autobiography he says

like, they are the best of friends.

And he made a promise to her when they both, you know, f found steady employment

because for years when they were married, they were living paycheck to paycheck.

And he told her when he got the murder, she wrote GI gig that he's

like you will never have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck again.

And when he got a mutual divorce with her, he said, I'm gonna live by that.

So he still supports her, not that she doesn't work herself,

but he still supports her.

So there's a loyalty there.

Yeah.

That's really

Yep.

Yeah.

Catherine Sakai after season one, Dalen sets her up with Sheridan.

She goes to ranger school.

She goes on a mission and dies on that mission.

Kind of, it's a weird shadow device thing that she sabotages and it

destroys an area of space and you don't really know what happens.

Sinclair hangs out with Kash and is just like, Hey, will I ever see her again?

And Ksh is like, maybe.

And then at the end of the novel there is a letter from Valin that is found

in the wreckage of Babylon four that confirms that somehow that device also

took her back in time and they were able to live out their life together.

Which, which raises questions, and I know this has nothing to do with

grade 17 is missing, but I, you know, we, we, we were, we're led to assume,

That the reason why the tri Luminary glows for Dylan and others is because

they have Valin slash Sinclair dna.

So how many people did Sinclair get with before Catherine showed back up?

I think you're thinking about it wrong.

I think they used the device to . Also turn Catherine.

uh, see, there you go.

Okay.

See, I'm not thinking inside the tri luminary box.

I got it.

Yeah.

There's no confirmation on that at all.

only, you just get that one kind of weird reference.

It's like he doesn't even say her name.

It's like she made it back.

Somehow she join, was able to join me in the past, you know, and we

were able to have our lives together.

That's like all it says, very kind of obliquely, but that

would be my expectation is that she would uh, also be Anyways, the ceremony

begins as Marcus fights naroon.

Garibaldi destroys the sets for fun.

Rude Marcus gets a good trip in under Naroon.

But Nrun has his number.

He just needs to know why he would do this.

We get a bunch of really fun shots in here that are very impractical with

the melee fighting where there looks like they're almost striking the.

, that's because they were striking the person behind the camera.

Uh, The director of this episode was the director of

photography for the entire series.

He's also the guy in space, TSA that Lanier lies to and says he's got that

he's dying of that sudden disease.

Oh yeah.

That guy.

He's the director of photography for the entire series.

He has m more credits on episodes than JMS does.

Writing credits for Babylon five,

Doug.

Yeah.

You know, and I'm glad you brought up him John Flynn, because you can

always tell when it's in John Flynn episode because the lighting's better.

Like, you know, we joked about the part where Ivanova goes down, down below,

but that lighting was like cinema, cinema cinema cinematic lighting.

It just, it looked good.

You can definitely see it.

DP did it.

Yeah, for sure.

And so John Flynn actually shot these scenes.

and was yelling at Marcus to hit the actor, obviously to hit him, you know,

and he actually ended up injuring himself while filming these scenes.

That's commitment to a bit.

Mm-hmm.

no broken ribs though.

Uh, Which Naroon does not have that issue.

Has he Breaks three of Marcus's ribs.

again, Naru being the asshole.

You love to love.

I've just broken two of your ribs.

Oops.

Three

Meanwhile, Jeremiah gets his riffraff on

as they're talking al to hear something and Jeremiah tells us it's a za,

dun,

Yeah.

the perfect predator.

We've never heard mentioned.

The most deadly alien in the sector sectors are not that

large in Babylon five , but

this

you know, like when they have like the boa constrictors

down in Florida, people buy 'em as pets and then let 'em go.

It's like, did somebody buy a baby's arg and then decide, oh, it's gotten too

big for my quarters, I gotta let it go.

Yeah.

The Babylon five equivalent of Siegfried and Roy had one.

awkward.

I feel like the Naline feeder was better set up than this Sarg

It

actually looked

percent

Oh Yeah, Yeah, that's

and it didn't look great.

that's another one of JM S's things he put out there.

Back in the day.

He actually said that I want to go to everyone's house and

apologize for how the zark looked.

It was not what I intended.

Yeah.

So there's that quote from the Usenet, and then there's another one

from the season guide about the zag which was, I should have learned my

lesson about rubber suit monsters.

I finally learned it with the zag.

Arg

Yeah.

would infection have been also been a rubber suit?

Monster?

for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shitty mega man.

Yeah.

I, but you know what?

At least with infection, they like the makeup they did on that one.

Like took time.

You could see they cared.

They were on a very low budget, but this one is just like, Hey, we went

over to Spirit Halloween and got a lizard costume and stuck him in it.

Yep.

And some Freddy

gloves.

It looked like

Well, I, I think that was homage to Freddie.

I absolutely think that was meant to be there.

Right before we meet this, uh, za Naroon does roll in and

seeds any claim calling Dalen Anza.

Yeah.

Sudden turn.

Naroon is a good asshole.

Yeah.

Garabaldi steam vents.

The Zark, as he casually pulls out a pocket full of bullets, and I'm just like,

I'm so mad, I'm so mad at this scene.

One, why are the bullets in your pocket and not in the case with the gun?

Was the intention to keep them separate?

And if the intention was to keep them separate, why did you have the bullets

in the gun in the same location?

Because earlier in this episode, you're like, oh yeah, we don't use

real guns in space because they just blow through the fucking hole.

And it's like, why do you have these two things anywhere near each other?

I can understand having them both,

but having them

See, I was, look, I was looking forward to this moment because you had

earlier said he, he'd practiced good trigger control and everything else.

I'm like, oh, let's talk about the bullets.

Let's do

let's talk about the bullets, because he loads them six deep into a

pipe, which then fires them one at a time

Yeah.

through steam somehow setting off.

Well, he does say he is like, either this is gonna

kill it or us one of the two

I mean, Yeah.

It would do neither because the steam would just warm up the

bullets a bit, even if it was very hot.

You're still playing moisture to gun powder.

You have to have some pressure behind it.

Right.

He needs to, there needed to be some way to cut off the

steam and then, I don't know,

It's the, there's no way it could, if he had put one it at a time,

you might have been able to tell me that it was the pressure launching a bullet.

But that is not, these bullets are being fired.

There is an explosion.

The gunpowder is going off.

Yeah, so the fact that they all fire individually and separately.

Now, reality, even if the steam had the weight, . Even if it could

have worked, even if it wasn't, you tell you it's not water vapor, it's

sulfur vapor and it's supercharged.

And it's electrified or something that would make it explode, right?

It's gonna fire the back bullet first because that's where it all is.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, it's so dumb.

I'm so mad.

I hate it so much.

It is the worst part of this episode for me.

This is the part where I had to pause, get up and walk away.

And that's saying a lot with this episode that

that's the worst part for you.

it is.

Yeah.

I have had episodes where it takes me two, three hours to get

through the episode with notes, right?

Just like I have to stop.

I've gotta do something cuz I'm sitting here analyzing something

that I hate or it's boring.

That was not the case.

I only need to get up the once with this episode before we get to our rating.

I will give it at least that.

Yeah, so Lanier goes to find Marcus after we've shot the Zark.

He's in bad shape.

He is Lanier gets real with Dalen here.

This is a lesson you need to learn.

When you lead a military population, people will die.

This is your job now as Ranger one is to send people to their

death to save more lives.

And Dalen, being someone who is driven at saving life at all costs

is gonna have a real hard time with that and Linear knows that.

Naroon pops in tell Marcus that the battle to the death was fulfilled for a part of

Naroon that was born out of hate, did die.

And then Marcus sass him about it.

yeah.

I love this

Yeah.

This is classic Marcus.

This is the stuff I love.

in classic Naroon.

This is great for both of them.

This is why I can't hate this episode.

I mean, I jokingly say this is the worst episode of Babylon five ever, and

that's why I named my podcast after it.

But really, I can't hate this episode because three-fourths

of the episode is really good.

All the Dylan Nero Marcus stuff really good.

It's just the Grace 17 shit that sucks.

Well, we've got, let's just garabaldi gets the correct amount of

shit for effectively failing to prevent an assassination attempt to credits,

Yep.

Mm-hmm.

and then we're there.

That's the end of the episode.

So, Scott, you're just talking about it.

On a scale of Babylon's one to five, how do you rank this episode?

First, I would rank it higher if we cut that scene

going just a little bit longer.

And Sheridan would've decked the shit outta Michael for

putting his feet on his desk

that that would've made it an extra point.

This absolutely because of the B plot, or I guess it's a plot cuz it's, the

title of the episode is, in my opinion, the worst episode of Babylon five.

That being said, only the B plot or alo, whatever you wanna say.

So I'm gonna give it a two a dose.

Yeah.

I, I also give it a two, same kind of reasons.

Part of it is that I remembered this being really spooky and really scary,

and then when Jeremiah just starts babbling, I was like, oh, wait, , no.

This, this episode?

Yeah.

I was like, Nope, nope.

I thought this was a good one.

I thought it was really intense.

It is not, and this is not just an effects thing.

Sometimes it, the things I remembered is really intense.

They don't look as intense now because we're used to

better special effects, right?

We're used to something that looks better.

Creepy.

Puppet is still creepy.

The rest of it, not that, not great.

What if the

za was the puppet?

Like it started walking around and like that's what eats the cult members.

yeah,

that.

I'm here for that.

I'd watch that episode a hundred percent.

This episode for me, honestly, it is not the worst episode of Babylon five.

I think Walkabout is the worst episode than this.

Well that's cuz you just watched it.

It's,

it's

true.

fresh.

in your mind.

Yeah.

fresh in my mind.

I'm gonna go ahead and put this at a 2.5 out of five.

Ooh, breaking out the

I'm breaking out the decimals.

Well, it is controversial.

One point to Naroon, one point to Marcus, and a half point to Linear,

and that's where I'm sitting.

And that's it.

Honestly, it's.

The A plot is B movie so bad it's entertaining.

And I was entertained by just about every minute of this episode when

I wasn't so furious at gun physics that I had to stand up and walk away.

Besides that, everything with this episode, was it the very least

entertaining, even if it wasn't good.

I, I think there's a version of this story that you could do

with the A plot Gray 17 is missing.

That would be really, Spooky and entertaining and like very engaging.

I think that you could reboot this better somehow,

think that JMS has been rebooting this episode in his head long before he

dreamed of a Babylon five reboot, and that if the reboot does happen and they

do this episode, There, there will be a version of this episode that is the

scariest fucking thing you have ever seen.

It is gonna be a, it is gonna be a fucking masterpiece because he has spent 20, 30

years obsessing over how to make this better because he hates this episode.

He, he hates this episode, but it was one of his ideas that he's been, he

would want, he wanted to do for years.

He's like, I really want to do this episode.

And he decided, okay, if I don't do it right now, I'm gonna move into

the shadow war uh, and all of that.

So I gotta, I gotta do it now.

So this is the last chance I'm gonna get before we really get crazy.

So I gotta put it in there.

So he was excited for this episode and the idea, I love the idea here though,

I mean, like one of the things that people ask to this day, 30 years later

is how does the layout of B five work?

So maybe one of your first episodes of the reboot

is this episode and it's like we'll start talking about decks

and the makeup of the station.

can see this.

honestly, in H B O Max Prestige television version

of this, I'm here for it.

With the With the budget?

Yeah, for sure.

All the F machines you ever wanted.

Just as long as they get the bullet science right, you'll be fine.

Right.

fucking they better.

Oh,

that will be first on the list, I'm sure , but if we can bring back the

creepy puppet, the exact creepy puppet,

This the same puppet.

That would be delightful.

Agreed.

you know, somebody stole that from set.

Somebody had to have stolen that.

You don't let that go to the dumpster.

Somebody has that puppet.

hope that they didn't just neglect it for 30 years and that it's

like in a glass case in someone's house.

I will say though, Warner Brothers was extremely

hardcore about stealing props.

We, we, we chatted with Peter Juris and he begged to be able to take any

prop and Warner Brothers made him fill out like requests and memo form,

and then they finally denied him.

So he just stole something.

But I mean, so , they

I hope, I hope he has the coat.

I hope he's got one of the coats.

He claims he wasn't able to get a coat, he was

Y yeah.

Okay.

Yep.

Not Lee, the goddess

a shelf.

though, a different God.

Oh, but that's the one that matters.

And somebody stole this Sinclair Aviation thing.

So that, again, I did throw out as we were recording on Twitter, if anyone wants

to get that for my birthday, it's up.

I'm totally gonna recreate that because that Sinclair Aircraft sign,

you can get just that little bit of it

Mm-hmm.

Amazon for like 20 bucks.

look, because it, it used to be a company, right?

Sinclair was a real

company.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're a real company, not based out of England.

They're ba Yes.

Sinclair Oil.

They're based out of Texas.

They make aircraft as well.

Yep.

Alright, so next week we've got season two episode 20, and the

Rock cried out, no hiding place.

Is

do over,

do you wanna change the

I, I want, I want to not be on this one.

And beyond Rock Cried out.

Can I do that Because man, I, I feel like I got gypped on episodes.

I asked you

I know, I know,

You shouldn't have made it.

Your namesake, man.

I know

Yeah.

If your podcast was in the Rock, cried out no hiding place.

I'm

saying

Life choices now.

I can't

believe we're already there.

I know right.

Orlando uses Kar and Veer in a deadly scheme to gain power

in the Centuri Royal Court.

Sharid.

Decipher a key shadow strategy.

That's our episode description.

It is very underwhelming for what happens in this episode.

I'm so excited.

One of the best scenes in tv, in my opinion, is in this next episode.

I can't wait.

Listener uh, you'll probably think, Hey, that, that title sounds familiar.

It does.

Mm-hmm.

You definitely will not thump this episode.

Ha ha.

All right.

Well, Scott, thanks for joining us.

Uh, uh this was a pleasure.

Thank you for setting up the League of Not Aligned podcasts for the

record.

That's so much

Um, it is a lot of fun.

I really appreciate it.

It's, it's a great forum.

I always have a lot of fun doing those.

So, why don't you tell us about Gray 17 a little bit.

Where can we find your podcast?

Yeah.

Well, let's start out with the league though.

So League and Nine Online podcast.

We've got you guys, we've got Grace 17 and several others.

We've done two shows so far.

One talked about the reboot a lot, and the second one we just put out

dealt with the 30th anniversary.

So I would recommend first you check out that one because there's some great

Babylon five podcasts out there, and it's really fun to hear 'em all chat together.

And actually we've got a waiting list of people who want to be on the third one.

I think when the uh, when the Babylon five Secret project gets released,

we'll have to get back together and chat about that, which will

be July.

Honestly, now that you're newbies the, because there's

so many newbie podcasts right

now that it's difficult to talk about stuff, I would've loved to do either

character recaps once you guys are all past certain characters and we could

talk about characters for an hour.

Or if you wanted to do big season get togethers with all

the watch along podcasts, once

you guys are caught up,

Yes.

that as well.

That'd be a lot of

See, we're, we're making lists here.

You're gonna, you're killing more of my nights is what you're doing and I like

it.

Uh,

And then for us, we are Gray 17 podcast.

You can find us on all your podcast apps of choice as well as on YouTube.

And as we've kind of already mentioned, I've got a large group of 10 hosts

and it's, I swear it's not as crazy as it sounds where we have quite a

few newbies watching B five for the first time, including some newbies who

have never even watched sci-fi before.

So I love it because we get to see Babylon five through fresh eyes.

And then for those who have watched B five like myself way too much, we

do stick around after the credits and we talk spoilers as well too.

So you can get a little bit of both.

And again you can find us on any podcast app as well as YouTube.

And we're in season two right now, so it's getting crazy.

We just recorded acts of sacrifice last night,

Ooh.

Yeah, that's a good one.

And by a good one, I mean, we had feelings about that episode.

have no doubt.

It's got one of my favorite characters and uh, he returns down the road,

so I don't even know if he's, has he shown, has Telon shown up for you guys

yet again, I can't remember anymore.

Um,

with the sword.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's got one of my favorite characters, Telon, who's played by

Marshall Teague, and so every time Telon shows up, I'm a happy camper.

Yeah.

Thank you to Jeremy Siegel for our lovely theme music.

You can find more of Jeremy Siegel's work at Jeremy Siegel 40 two.bandcamp.com.

And then also Jeremy's doing the album a month thing and we're recording right now.

It's the end of February, so be sure to hop on Spotify.

And do you remember,

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nuclear Jaguar and

thank you.

Nuclear Jaguar.

Awesome.

I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm going to do that very shortly.

Thank you to Angry Deck Time Machine on Instagram

for our podcast artwork.

Thank you to Aaron for editing our podcast.

We really appreciate your contribution and the time you put in in making sure that we

actually have a podcast that gets to air

And Aaron, I apologize in advance cuz you're gonna have to edit

more because of me than ever before.

I'm sure

Oh, no, don't, don't think it that you caused anything.

Just trust

No, this is, this is actually pretty low edit episode for us, probably

Yeah.

And finally, thanks to everyone who listens to our podcast,

we appreciate the shit outta you.

If you like the podcast, you wanna give us a review, we'll read it eventually.

We're bad at that.

We're bad at social media too, but we're on there.

The Twitter I check like maybe every other day.

Our Facebook we're a little bit more active on.

But the big place is the Twitter, or not the twi fuck, the Twitter, fuck Elon Musk.

The big place is the Discord where our community is interacting and

talking on a normal daily basis about all kinds of random stuff.

And then also our email.

Who are you?

B five gmail.com.

We are probably already recorded our season recap

episode by the time this airs.

So I think this one airs at the end of March.

So yeah.

Oops.

It's too late to send us your thoughts on season three, but we really appreciate it.

Anyways, , we'll read your letter in a next mail bag segment.

Oh, that's it.

Have a good night internet.