Babylon 5 For the First Time | The Face of the Enemy – episode 04×17

45 thoughts on “Babylon 5 For the First Time | The Face of the Enemy – episode 04×17”

• In the news literally today (Jan 17, 2024) as I am watching this podcast, we have word a newly engineered variant of COVID with 100% mortality (in rats, but still…) has been developed. Why are us humans so completely awful like this? There is no good reason to develop such a virus, only bad and evil reasons. I guess the trope of the evil genius scientist exists for a reason. Let's just hope we don't wipe ourselves out…

• JMS wrote for The Amazing Spider-man in the 2000s and is writing for Captain America right now.

• Booster, like Covid boosters?

• Rather than give you Joe's comics resume, I would say when you finish your first watch, read his autobiography Becoming Superman and the account of hus writing the 9-11 Spider-Man.

  Also his current run of Captain America is fantastic.

• Here is a question I need answered:

  There is a Babylon D20 tabletop RPG game, and in it you get a to design your character according to many different classes and races. If they were to start playing in a B5 tabletop campaign, which race would each, Brent & Jeff, want to play as?

  Does the very structural and spiritual nature of the Minbari appeal to them? Does one prefer the Narn people and their rich background? Do they like the Imperialistic feel of the Centauri empire for their character? Earth Alliance military? Psi Core? I'd be interested to find out what type of character they each would make…

• The shadows captured Garabaldi with the hopes of subverting him if they had to kill Sheridan. The replace him was referring to the Justin speech, which was why the shadows took him. He was one of the three people who could have stepped up if Sheridan was taken out. Bester stole Garibaldi from the shadows. The "replace him" stuff didn't have anything to do with Bester's motives. Bester decided to use him as a plant to just get all the information he could.

• This gets a thumbs up just for the Bloodhound Gang reference.

• Btw those cryoed telepaths were meant for shadow vessels to work for the shadows. So that’s why they’ve not been used.

• Telepaths was the only thing enabling them to kill any shadow ships. They might not have used many human ones, but there was many telepaths being used against the shadows. After they figured out a telepath can stunlock a shadow ship, they made sure to use it.

• Sheridan was treated abu graib/quantanamo bay style…
  So looks like future is not so diferent as how it is now or in the past.

• JMS wrote some great comics for his Joe's Comics offshoot. Definitely recommend Rising Stars, and Supreme Power.

• Surprised this is the first time the rise of Hitler has come up given that the whole thing is basically a "how fascism works" parable. I have also been watching for the first time and have been a bit shook at how many storylines seem to have direct analogues to today's political landscape across the world from the US to Palestine to the UK and other parts of Europe.

• jms did write for marvel's The Amazing Spider-Man, from 2001 to 2007. don't know if it effected the x men though.

• Brents superpower move has forced me to comment…for the first tiiime. That should be his pfp! 😂😂

• The first time that episode was shown on TV, the bar scene had a lot more strobing and the music was heavier . They had to cut it slightly to reduce the strobing for re runs

• Novacaine is atypical in how it works for me. Last time I had a filling, they had to give me a double dose and then another dose midway through because it wore off, and that's been my experience pretty much any time they use a numbing agent. My Dad is the same way, so I figure it's probably a genetic thing where we either metabolize it much faster than normal or it's just not as effective. Similarly, despite having lived in the Willamette Valley for 35 years, I have no allergies. (Though sometimes the pollen count gets into the thousands and at that point even people without allergies suffer.) I also have no reaction to poison ivy or poison oak. I haven't ever done enough pot or other drugs to know how those affect me, but I avoid painkillers and other pills religiously, and I know I have an alcohol addiction, so I no longer drink anything at all. Ever. (But when I did drink, I could drink everyone I know under the table all at once or in sequence and be fine. No hangovers either. It just doesn't affect me like a normal person.)

• Brent's prediction deserved more a 1984 buzz than a Star Trek buzz. Because that Star Trek episode totally rips off this novel.

• On the 'message' discussion – I much prefer the approach of B5 than the less directed version of shows like Star Trek and Quantum Leap. It's not far at all from those shows in terms of ideology, but to me it presents the ideas as things to think about, and less like this is absolutely what people should think. I love for example how Zack almost falls in to the fascist movement, I feel like most shows would have that be an obvious villain character, or a hero character trying to work undercover. If only real people were than simple…

• If you want to take a look at a current JMS comics project, he has recently been writing for Captain America… Oh, and the storyline involves the German American Bund from the 30s, so it's not without controversy!

• In regards to the film discussion, I'd like to see films give up trying to be TV. Film should be a great medium for short stories, they can do original things that live within their own duration. I know there is a marketing advantage to films that are attached to existing IPs (from adaptations to sequels/prequels to 'shared universes'), but there must be original thoughts and stories out there that just aren't getting their moment in the sun. People talk about 'superhero fatigue', but for me it's worse, I'm fatigued with franchises. I might catch the recent Bond or Mission Impossible films at some point but even those I'm struggling to motivate myself for.

• The thing about B5 was that it hired the best actor for the role, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. It didn't push diversity for diversity's sake, if the best actor happened to be black they'd be on the show, period. In fact, Richard Biggs once commented how much relief he felt that this was the first role in all his acting career where his race wasn't a factor in the plot, because all his previous acting roles were centered around the character being black. But Franklin was the station's doctor, not the station's black doctor. Likewise, Uhura was the ship's communications officer, not the ship's black communications officer. Their race was not a plot point, which sent the clear message that "in 200 years no one will give a crap about melanin anymore". That's what was revolutionary about both shows: not that they had black actors, but that the shows never made a big deal about it.

  What pisses people off about modern day casting is not that there is more diverse representation, but that it's being done randomly just to tick a box for virtue signalling purposes with no regards to whether it serves the story, and the story is taking a backseat role to checking the diversity boxes and suffers as a result. And the least said about blackfacing historical characters whose ethnic background is well-established (looking at you Netflix's Cleopatra) the better.

• In talking about the comparison with Sheridan and Passing Through Gethsemane, one has to remember that, thanks to War Without End, he knows that he'll still be alive in 17 years (20+, not so much).
  So, a lot can be attributed to his confidence that he'll weather anything between now and that point in his future.

• Bester was not "in" with the Shadows.

  The Shadows figured that if they killed Sheridan, there were only 3 people on Babylon 5 that had the necessary leadership skills to take command of a multi-species fleet to carry on the fight against them: Delenn, Ivanova, and Garibadi, and that because of his convoluted past, Garibaldi would be the one with the least mental fortitude to resist a mind wipe, and thus the easiest to turn. So they took him with the intent of wiping his mind and turning him into a puppet.

  But they used the Psi Corps to perform the mind wipe, which allowed Bester to hijack the process and use Garibaldi for his own goals instead of the Shadows'. So everything that happened with Garibaldi after he returned to B5 was NOT what the Shadows initially intended for him. Bester pulled a fast one on the Shadows and instead used Garibaldi for his own purposes.

• "I don't think JMS wrote any Marvel"

  Meanwhile, the guy literally has a cameo in the MCU Thor movie because he wrote the story that was adapted on screen…

• Getting Cheech(Brent) and Chong(Jeff) vibes from this episode.🪴

• As someone who is the opposite and has plenty of time but not enough of anything else… I would love MCU content literally every week.

  Actually, specifically What If? episodes every week since that show could theoretically go WAY out into the woods to do interesting stories with all kinds of charecters.

  Maybe Marvel just needs to have one show that does 26 episodes a year and call it "The Marvel Universe" and they could cover all the characters at various times and what they are up to, kind of like an anthology series. Get them away from worrying about what characters to make into shows and how successful they are.

• I've always taken Edgers pause to mean that he really sees himself as a good person and regrets what he has to do to the telepaths. They are taking over, and he has to have a way to stop them. Only at the end does he make the historical connection, and he realizes it is too late. He has a look of sorrow on his face at that moment.

• Club 65!!

• BTW, speaking of casting… I swear to G'Quon I read this somewhere and I've been unable to find it since, but I KNOW when Voyager debuted, I saw an article praising them for having "an African-American Vulcan on the bridge"………..

  Just think about that for a minute…

• Nobody cares that Mackie was black when this show aired. It’s only 30 years later, with everything being viewed through the lens of race and sexual preference, that people see the need to call attention to the fact that it’s a well regarded black doing his job.

• *65 HOW DOES BRENT NOT KNOW EFRAM ZIMBALIST JR.????!!!! ❤❤❤ Love you guys!

• Star Trek fans didn't like B5 because it specifically wasn't Star Trek. Early B5 fans did not have problems with skin color or sexual identity or orientation, so No.

• He wrote a thor comic which is the story they used for the first thor movie which JMS had a minor roll in

• JMS has written a few books but I don't know much about them… here's what I do know —

  COMICS –
  
  The Amazing Spider-Man
  
  Before Watchmen
  
  The Book of Lost Souls
  
  The Brave and the Bold
  
  Bullet Points
  
  Captain America (2023 and is still ongoing)
  
  Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future
  
  Dream Police
  
  Fantastic Four
  
  Midnight Nation
  
  The Resistance
  
  Rising Stars
  
  Silver Surfer
  
  Silver Surfer: Requiem
  
  Spider-Man: Back in Black
  
  Spider-Man: One More Day
  
  Spider-Man: The Other
  
  Strange: Beginnings and Endings
  
  Superman
  
  Superman: Earth One
  
  Superman: Grounded
  
  Supreme Power: Hyperion
  
  Terminator Salvation: The Final Battle
  
  Thor
  
  The Twelve
  
  Ultimate Power
  
  Wonder Woman

  He also wrote the movies – World War Z, Changeling, and was on the writing staff for the first Thor movie (as well as having a cameo as the guy who tries to lift the hammer at the beginning of the movie) and he co-created and wrote the Netflix series, Sense 8

  65!!

• There were 100% assholes in the use net days, as with every fandom ever, but I think that JMS being such a part of the community really helped reining in the shitheads, because when the figurative "god" of the show speaks, his word is the word.

• Sheridan made the most stupid decision he could have. Yes ties to his father but for him to risk everything on apromise from somebody who has been shown to be untrustworthy? Why didn't he send Marcus to check the story out?

• F off … you, Jeff, have NO CLUE what "woke" means … and if you dont see that woke is COMMUNISM … you are part of the reason why the West is going down the drain.

• fun about the comic books, JMS appeared in Thor trying to grab the hammer.

• So it's a little confusing. The Shadows targeted Garibaldi's fighter and captured it because they thought they could modify him for their purpose and after Sheridan was killed or converted, Delenn and Ivanova killed soon after,m Garibaldi would be the natural choice to lead the resistance against the Shadows, and having him on their side would be useful. The Shadows used Psi Corps, because the Humans were the only race to create a literal militarized organization like that and it was perfect for their needs. They tried to modify Garibaldi like they needed it, but Bester was able to do it the way HE needed it instead. After the Shadows were gone, Bester's little project was still around, so he used him for his own war against mundanes. The rest you know.

• Funnily enough the guy who played Edgars is of Jewish descent (more specifically russian Jewish descent), and he even participated in the liberation of Europe during WWII by the US forces (he was born in the US and was American), but he and his family renounced being Judean and he himself was Christian and made it a huge deal of his life. But his portrayal of Edgars being this basically nazi against telepaths was amazing.

• That song from the bar is here on youtube, just type in the search bar music and it will come up

• I think of Homo Superior as coming from David Bowie "Ziggy Stardust" album, but I learned it came from a 1935 novel.

• Fun Fact, JMS wrote the story for the first Thor movie, and even has a cameo.

• Regarding Garibaldi, Delenn or Ivonova taking Sheridan’s place I think that was specifically relating to filling the role of a nexus, that can bring the other races together instead of falling apart into chaos. From the Shadow’s point of view with their limited understanding of the lower races, this makes perfect sense.

  Regarding Bester’s view of the telepaths and evolution, it’s not clear to me that he knows that the Vorlon created telepathy on earth. He and most of humanity might think it emerged naturally.

  Regarding Jeff’s superpower, go watch “Defending your Life”. It’s an awesome fun movie. Saying it here is a tiny throwaway spoiler for the movie but if it gets you to watch it I hope it’s a worthwhile trade off.

  Club 65 all the way!

• The Vorlons seeded telepathy among all of the younger races with Humanity being the most recent one to get it. It was in one of the books that they explained that sentient beings can't evolve telepathy naturally due to it being a specialized tool while sentience requires general tool use to evolve.

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