Latest / LAST BEST HOPE: A Babylon 5 Podcast for Our Uncertain Age / #17 – Hello Old Friend (THE COMING OF SHADOWS)

Transcript

#17 – Hello Old Friend (THE COMING OF SHADOWS) · LAST BEST HOPE: A Babylon 5 Podcast for Our Uncertain Age

• 0:19
  JOSHUA B: I think I actually wanna do a proper introduction for this one.
• 0:21
  JOSHUA B: So we're gonna be covering the Hugo Award-winning "The Coming of Shadows" from Season 2.
• 0:26
  JOSHUA B: But before we get into the discussion, John, did you realize that we actually have gotten some nice reviews and ratings from some listeners of ours?
• 0:36
  JOHN W: I am honored that people like to listen to our rants, musings, and conversations.
• 0:41
  JOSHUA B: A couple of them actually had some bits of feedback that I'd love to address right here at the top.
• 0:46
  JOSHUA B: The first one comes from Justine, who said, "I love the content of these podcasts.
• 0:49
  JOSHUA B: It would be really helpful if you explained a bit more who you are. Are you history or politics professors?
• 0:55
  JOSHUA B: You need to do a proper intro to each episode explaining what the goal of the show is and explaining each time what it is you are doing and who you are." It never really crossed my mind that somebody might care to know my background or yours 'cause, you know, we're just a couple of nobodies who are talking about a sci-fi show from the '90s that hardly anyone remembers.
• 1:14
  JOSHUA B: But I then quickly realized that it makes a lot of sense. You know, we say a lot of things, we express a lot of opinions, and the way that I weigh people's opinions is by, you know, knowing something about where they're coming from. So I think it might be a good idea if we give a little bit of background in terms of who we are and what we do and our histories and all that.
• 1:33
  JOSHUA B: So if you wouldn't mind answering that question however you see fit
• 1:37
  JOHN W: So would you say you're asking who am I?
• 1:39
  JOSHUA B: Oh, wow.
• 1:40
  JOHN W: Sorry, that—
• 1:42
  JOSHUA B: No, I am. Who are you? Yeah. Yeah, no, it's true. It's true. We should ask ourselves those questions.
• 1:48
  JOHN W: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:49
  JOSHUA B: Point.
• 1:49
  JOHN W: We should do an entire episode: who are you? What do you want?
• 1:53
  JOSHUA B: Why are you here? Where are you—
• 1:54
  JOHN W: Where are you going? That could be the entire title of the episode too. But that's an interesting question.
• 1:57
  JOHN W: So, like, what is the background? I mean, I think that for the most part, we are just here sort of you know, having fun bloviating about what we know about "Babylon 5" and all kinds of random things.
• 2:06
  JOHN W: My background, at the bachelor’s level, is political science and economics, then taking detours into tech, as well as a master’s in information science and librarianship. So, all those things have kind of intersected, but I've long had a passion that I've kept going since my college days for political theory and history, and where those two really intersect.
• 2:30
  JOHN W: And on an amateur level, you know, a history buff when I can be, combined with my just, you know, insane level of nerdiness in part because of this show. So I like bringing that component and then the understanding of where political science intersects, or politics in general intersects with science fiction and where it doesn't.
• 2:50
  JOHN W: And the episode we're gonna discuss today, I mean, I wrote a paper—
• 2:55
  JOSHUA B: You did. I'm glad you're bringing this—
• 2:56
  JOHN W: I wrote a paper on this very episode because this episode was— JMS published the script for this in a book on scriptwriting—writing screenplays.
• 3:07
  JOHN W: And that meant that I had access to this.
• 3:11
  JOHN W: Because it was in print in a book, I could use it. And that was that was really cool.
• 3:15
  JOHN W: And I think it even opened up the mind of that teacher, I think to what that was.
• 3:20
  JOHN W: Because I think now that we're well into the 21st century, I think there is a recognition that,
• 3:25
  JOHN W: I guess what we sort of call prestige TV, but I consider this show one of maybe the origin of prestige TV in my own experience.
• 3:32
  JOHN W: It is literature. It is. And this show is literature and because of that you know, if you let yourself see it that way, then all of a sudden you can start going really deep into it and having a ton of fun with it as well.
• 3:44
  JOHN W: Again, probably the first TV show that quite did this to me, and it was the conversations you and
• 3:49
  JOHN W: I were having, "Hey is there more happening here? Like, the story's building. I think there's more going on."
• 3:54
  JOHN W: And we were dumbfounded; we’d never seen it happen before in a TV show.
• 3:58
  JOSHUA B: Completely. And this was one of those episodes
• 4:01
  JOHN W: Yeah
• 4:02
  JOSHUA B: My background: I studied film, and I work in the industry, as they say, in film and television in Los Angeles.
• 4:10
  JOSHUA B: So, I come at this professionally more from a media, cinema sort of a background. But like you,
• 4:18
  JOSHUA B: I have always had an interest in history and politics.
• 4:22
  JOSHUA B: I obviously also have a lifelong love and preoccupation with science fiction and therefore also science to a degree, and also technology of course, which, In the past few years, has made for some, interesting internal conflicts, Given the way technology is advancing and the specific context and the specific people who are advancing it, I find very bad. I'm also very quick to check myself because I wanna make sure that my thoughts and feelings and reactions these days is not you know, the old man yelling at a cloud or screaming at kids to get off his lawn. It's a little of that, but it's more because I think it's several orders of magnitude more profound and overtly I'll say dangerous.
• 5:14
  JOSHUA B: I was gonna say evil, but I'm gonna say dangerous than I thought it was in the past.
• 5:22
  JOSHUA B: And it's very hard for me to get excited about new products, new software, new gadgets because it all sort of represents this unchecked belief in technological supremacy and in hierarchy and in a very in my estimation anti-humanist view of the world. You know, I feel like a lot of these things are happening.
• 5:45
  JOSHUA B: A lot of these political, social, and technological projects are sort of intertwined now, and they're happening to create a vision of the world that has very little regard for the quality of life and the value the individual humans who are actually living in the world now.
• 6:06
  JOSHUA B: And that's very hard for my young enthusiastic self to grapple with. And it's interesting too because I feel like, Babylon 5 was a part of that optimistic vision of the role of technology you know, assisting in the advancement or the evolution of the human race. I think after B5 they were all mostly cautionary tales about how the future would be horrible because of technology.
• 6:36
  JOSHUA B: But, Babylon 5 still has that very you know, 1950s, 1960s golden age of science fiction view of how technology would raise all of us up
• 6:47
  JOHN W: Or at least that it could. And the problems is when that, whenever it failed was a failure of not the technology, but the people, civilization or otherwise. the Shadows and Vorlons are incredibly advanced and represent very different ideas, but it wasn't the technology that made them what they were in terms of are they good or are they bad.
• 7:07
  JOHN W: Couple years later, you have the revival or the redo of "Battlestar Galactica," which is, you know, all about a cautionary tale, and it's always about going, "Oh, we gotta go back," and ultimately the show ends with wiping out all their technology. You know? So I would even say "Babylon 5" was optimistic that technology wasn't the decline.
• 7:23
  JOHN W: You think of the Techno-mages, you know, what you could accomplish as a Techno-mage.
• 7:26
  JOHN W: Now, that didn't mean that was gonna solve everyone's problems. They knew that in fact, their advanced understanding was itself, people weren't ready for it, and you can't go to the
• 7:34
  JOHN W: Vorlon home world for a million years, you know, things like that.
• 7:38
  JOHN W: So there was baked into it the idea that there are technologies that are beyond us for a reason, but we will get there. So it's still optimistic, but it might be you know, like a responsible optimism or a slower optimism you know, compared to maybe "Star Trek." But it wasn't saying that because of technology, our future is under enormous threat, you know.
• 7:59
  JOHN W: So we, yeah we sit here today with these random numbers being thrown out at us, 10%, 15%, whatever it is, chance that AI will cause the end of the human species, or that AGI and AGSI will cause the end of our existence. And that's something that and without getting too into the weeds on that, is not something that we experienced growing up.
• 8:18
  JOHN W: And that's where it's interesting to come to this show for us. Everything you were you were saying.
• 8:22
  JOHN W: We grew up in a in a specific era. Everyone does, whether they realize it or not.
• 8:27
  JOHN W: Like, your generation isn't what makes you. Everybody's sort of talk about the war of the generations, you know?
• 8:32
  JOHN W: But the time you grow up in means that you're going to you're gonna have experiences that another generation's gonna have differently. You know, our grandparents saw the world go from you know, a world dominated… The only way you could get from England to the US was a steamship, to jet planes and the Concorde getting you there in two hours, two, a couple hours.
• 8:53
  JOHN W: You know? That is… I'm trying to imagine what that was like to start off with the Titanic on one end and a Concorde in the middle of your life or your early old age to the birth, very birth of the internet.
• 9:07
  JOHN W: That's huge. What we experienced was is really centered around the creation of the internet Always on devices, all, you know, you know, instant communication.
• 9:16
  JOHN W: And then we were full-fledged adults when the mobile device revolution came into effect alongside social media.
• 9:23
  JOHN W: And I think that from society's standpoint, instant communication anywhere and everywhere, whether it's person to person or posting your views, combined with social media has led to a huge change of how we experience life.
• 9:39
  JOHN W: Now throw onto that where we're going with AI, and oh boy, like, Our experiences we got to experience an analog world, an advanced but still analog world. And it's so interesting being able to say, "Yes I know what that was like. I know what this is like. I can bridge the gap between the two."
• 9:57
  JOHN W: You know? I and I really— I'm very curious what it is like to have not known anything different, that from the age of five on social media was a presence in your life.
• 10:07
  JOHN W: Things that these shows did not touch on because that wasn't invented yet.
• 10:11
  JOHN W: And conceptually it is fascinating to me that "Star Trek," "Babylon 5," same, you know, even "Star Wars," things like that, you know, all, all the different science fiction major shows that you can think about and movies, You know, they would talk about artificial life forms.
• 10:26
  JOHN W: You know, you have Data, you'd have the Cylons, whatever. But general everyday use of AI was a rare thing.
• 10:32
  JOHN W: And preceding AI, social media. You know, oh, maybe you had a message board or you had this.
• 10:38
  JOHN W: There was no concept of oh, there's this version of you that you're constantly putting out there that's you but not you.
• 10:45
  JOHN W: And there was some science fiction about that and readers I'm sure could, or listeners here could give us countless examples, but they were mostly in novels, short stories.
• 10:52
  JOHN W: It wasn't in the culture writ large as much. But again, plenty of science fiction, but not the dominant science fiction.
• 10:58
  JOHN W: So it wasn't in our consciousness every day that, "Oh, this is something that could happen."
• 11:03
  JOHN W: Seeing that is really interesting. So when we get to reflect on "Babylon 5" now besides, you know, our own interests and especially that's, that's something really interesting is my is like you get to come at it from the film perspective. You're training, writing in film, editing film, you know, those types of things.
• 11:21
  JOHN W: Like you see the film structure. I see it, you know, as almost more of an academic way and a personal way and just a fun way to talk about it. But the show never imagined these things.
• 11:33
  JOHN W: On the flip side, JMS was right there at the dawn of all this personally.
• 11:38
  JOHN W: He didn't put it much in the show, but there he was, 1995, AOL message boards, chat rooms, and everything else, one of the first writers, and you've discussed this before, accessible to us directly, and we would all know what he was thinking.
• 11:53
  JOHN W: And now we have here in front of me, I have "The Lurker’s Guide," you know, created in the 1990s with all this commentary
• 11:59
  JOSHUA B: Early 1990s, I wanna
• 12:01
  JOHN W: 1990s. And the site still looks, they kept it like the early 1990s. But we get these things that you wouldn't get.
• 12:08
  JOHN W: The idea of an artist, a writer being able to communicate directly with their mass audience interactively is something that you did not have before.
• 12:17
  JOHN W: But also individually we do that, and that shapes things. I mean, no one was talking about social media in "Babylon 5," and we've discussed how ISN was a very unidirectional, you know, sort of dominant single source for the news. And it's wild to think about how we get to interact with this show now, how we get to think about it, but what a different world we live in now than 30 years ago.
• 12:39
  JOSHUA B: You know what's incredibly interesting is that, you know, genres themselves are kind of a product of their time.
• 12:46
  JOSHUA B: Science fiction certainly if you go all the way back to Mary Shelley and "Frankenstein," science fiction, came out of this anxiety about the Industrial Revolution and science and how our machines and our knowledge were fundamentally changing what it meant to even be alive? All the way through specific subgenres like the space opera you know, the Star Treks and the Star Warses and the Babylon 5s come out of you know, again the 1960s where Science had won us the Second World War.
• 13:20
  JOSHUA B: Technology progressed in the domestic sphere. We had all these conveniences. It was, you know, making life easier. And then we landed a man on the moon, and all of those advances were, large, scale industrial endeavors. Either literally the size of the machines or the sheer number of them.
• 13:40
  JOSHUA B: There was an assumption that the future of humanity was in space because then that's where it looked like we were going.
• 13:49
  JOSHUA B: And it's super interesting because all of these shows could only imagine the large infrastructural utopian uses of technology. How huge are the rockets? How, How fast will we travel?
• 14:01
  JOSHUA B: And this is also why I don't think the space opera specifically reimaginings of those classic space operas like Star Trek in particular, I don't think it's a good fit for the now.
• 14:13
  JOSHUA B: Not because they aren't creative or have anything to say, but fundamentally in their conception, it's about a world that is unlike the one that we actually live in. Which is ironically,
• 14:25
  JOSHUA B: I think one of the reasons the Battlestar Galactica reboot was so successful because it wasn't about that we were in space. But they made it about something else that was very relevant, continues to be super, super relevant.
• 14:40
  JOHN W: It's a particular kind of advancement that the writers of science fiction 30 years ago imagined would still be an onerous undertaking, would require huge resources. Yeah, so, so occasionally it'll be a problem.
• 14:51
  JOHN W: It's every day for us. And that's the that's like, I think better minds than ours have done really good deep dives into what, what really breaks down to the science fiction of the 20th century, second half of the 20th century, was based on the assumption that we would advance energy production and capacity so enormously that's what would create, you know, warp drive, phasers, faster than light travel, whatever it would be.
• 15:15
  JOHN W: And "Babylon 5" is the same sort of concept, that we're gonna have these jump gates, we're gonna have massive amounts of energy, we can harness grand engineering accomplishments like the station of Babylon 5. And they all just sort of assumed that computer technology, information technology would actually be sort of plodding along.
• 15:34
  JOHN W: Not much more advanced than subservient. Would remain subservient. And what we've seen is no no, that's gone way that's gone like a runaway train, faster and out of our control at the same time, while our engineering capabilities have increased, but nowhere near to the degree that we expected.
• 15:52
  JOHN W: So, you know, there we don't have giant space stations. We don't have jetpacks, you know?
• 15:56
  JOHN W: There are things we just don't have. And what do we do that? So when Babylon 5 says yes, they're gonna create the fake Sheridan, and, you know, obviously that requires a massive, you know, like agents of a government to do it with enormous resources and a whole lot of prediction and, because otherwise they'd be just doing it all the time.
• 16:12
  JOHN W: We don't always get it right. And now seeing that with our hindsight of 30 years, but having lived that 30 years ago is a really interesting thing. I'm very grateful we get to do that.
• 16:23
  JOHN W: The fears of AI it does play out in the show a little bit. Shadow technology, telepaths integrated as CPU cores of the Shadow ships which there is always a lot of talk about, like, how much AI gets, you know, intermingled with you know, cybernetically with us and for our purposes.
• 16:38
  JOHN W: But the nature of that is very different than… You talk about incentive structures, and "Babylon 5" is written around the idea that many of our incentives are still the same 150, 200 years from now, and we're figuring out how to work with that and evolve past it. Sheridan winning the Shadow war is learning beyond our own program, learning beyond what shaped us, which is heavily—
• 17:00
  JOHN W: This is the this is my economics coming in.
• 17:03
  JOHN W: Economics is all about incentives. What does a human being do when they're given a set of incentives?
• 17:09
  JOHN W: And economists sort of do that. And for listeners, by the way, economics is bullshit.
• 17:14
  JOHN W: It is completely bullshit. It's great, it's important, but it's important bullshit.
• 17:18
  JOHN W: It's a lot of assumptions with like, a pop psychology underlying thing, and they obsess over incentive structures.
• 17:24
  JOHN W: But that is really important in understanding how things unfold. And the incentives behind AI are completely messed up right now. It's, it, we're… I, and I always say this to people, that we are creating AI in the economic and sociological backdrop of the late 19th century.
• 17:41
  JOHN W: And we're still using words like communism, capitalism, and socialism invented hundreds of years ago by minds that could not even conceive where we're at and we're acting like that's where human knowledge about economics and society ended.
• 17:54
  JOHN W: And they're, by the way, they're mostly wrong. Adam Smith, brilliant guy, hundreds of years ago would not want us to be, like, limited to one cool book from hundreds of years ago.
• 18:01
  JOHN W: And the same would be true whether you're talking about Marx or anybody else.
• 18:05
  JOHN W: And we still have people, like, at our adherence to that.
• 18:08
  JOHN W: And like, well, like, no, it's an interesting historical study. Why haven't we come up with new isms to understand this?
• 18:15
  JOHN W: Because we're still human beings, but we have this dramatically different context that we're operating in new incentives, same shitty incentives in many ways. And if AI is being created around the incentives of capitalism, the incentive of profit which is a very short-term incentive base.
• 18:31
  JOHN W: We talk about what are your quarterly returns? That's an incentive. Optimize your behavior to get the returns within three months, not six months, not 12 months, not 12 years, three months.
• 18:41
  JOHN W: That changes your behavior. So if you're creating something as powerful as AI with short-term views and not looking to the long term, and remember, the stock market does not allow you to think about the long term.
• 18:54
  JOHN W: Quarterly reports don't let you think that way. So the way we created an economy may in fact not be compatible with long-term survival. It's not that AI guarantees we won't survive, it's that, well, if you're gonna create that, nuclear weapons are a more tangible, nuclear technology more specifically, is a more tangible item here.
• 19:13
  JOHN W: You can create energy through nuclear power, enormous energy, and do amazing things, and we sort of went away from that because we got spooked, but it's it's amazing what you can do with nuclear fission.
• 19:23
  JOHN W: You can also create these incredibly destructive weapons that could also end life on Earth as we know it.
• 19:29
  JOHN W: Both those things are true. It's about, well, what are the political structures globally that are leading to us wanting to use them for weapons versus energy, you know, that make that.
• 19:38
  JOHN W: It's not that the nuclear science is evil or is guaranteed to destroy the human race.
• 19:43
  JOHN W: It's how we operate around it and decide what those incentives are, what our structures are around it, and what we're gonna do with it.
• 19:51
  JOHN W: And that's where I'm not entirely optimistic about human survival only because I look at the way we've come really close. JMS refers to in his commentary to the Cuban Missile Crisis, even in referring to The Coming of Shadows. And that's because we're always on the precipice of nuclear annihilation, whether we realize it in our daily lives or not.
• 20:10
  JOHN W: AI makes it much more accessible, and I wonder what a show like "Babylon 5" would've been like if it had that element add into it. Would it have even been possible to tell the story I think it needed to be what it was.
• 20:25
  JOSHUA B: One of the things that I actually lament about the B5 reboot that he wrote a pilot for at the behest of Warner Brothers a couple of years ago is that, JMS, he is a man of his time but he is one of those people, one of those minds who I think his understanding more or less has He kept up with the evolution of the world since he came of age and formed his opinions.
• 20:48
  JOSHUA B: So I think he knows for Babylon 5 to be relevant today, it would have to incorporate,
• 20:55
  JOSHUA B: Elements and themes that weren't part of the original show.
• 21:00
  JOHN W: I, I think that's the that's why we're able to do what we do is that as we begin to dive deeper into "Coming of Shadows," again, there's a lot of allegory, a lot of references, I mean, a lot of relevance to what's happening in the world today. And I think this episode actually brings a lot of relevance in a very nuanced way to the way we talk about conflicts between cultures and countries.
• 21:21
  JOHN W: I mean, the Middle East and the Narn and the Centauri that's a big allegory for that episode in so many ways that can be incredibly illuminating. But if it was meant to be directly relevant one-to-one, it would lose its potency. If it was to be like, "Hey, let me, you know, make this point to you exclusively under that context," it doesn't always get there with the same story.
• 21:42
  JOHN W: And if you have to use different techniques to tell it that are a little bit more on the nose you lose that.
• 21:47
  JOHN W: And the same I think is true for the science of many of these shows. And I would be afraid of like, well, how do you make… Now that we're sort of in the thick of it, "Babylon 5" was released in '95, well, '93, and then, you know, it goes through, what, '98.
• 22:00
  JOHN W: I feel like because it was dealing with topics that became much more potent to us now it would be almost seen as a rehashing
• 22:09
  JOSHUA B: Mm-hmm
• 22:10
  JOHN W: As opposed to a it's not a foretelling as much as it's an exploration of these topics, and a historical analog to the time around World War II. So yeah, I don't know what it would be like for him to actually reboot the series unless it was something very different, and not specifically "Babylon 5," that universe, something else maybe.
• 22:27
  JOHN W: But it's hard to do that exact thing because we're, we're in the thick of it, so what does that mean for that kind of storytelling?
• 22:34
  JOSHUA B: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, "The Coming of Shadows." John, I'm curious when we were discussing what episode we might wanna cover, you were the one who invoked "The Coming of Shadows" and I thought it was a great idea 'cause, you know, it's one of those pillars of the series that always appears on best episodes list and obviously it's, a Hugo Award-winning episode along with "Severed Dreams" which we covered already.
• 22:55
  JOSHUA B: But was there any, particular reason, why you thought of "Coming of Shadows" or you just sort of felt like, "Yeah
• 23:01
  JOSHUA B: It's time"?
• 23:01
  JOHN W: So there are two reasons, right? What you said there was my second reason, that it was time.
• 23:05
  JOHN W: I felt like we were sort of like waiting to do this one because this is such a brilliant episode, and we already… As I already said before, like getting to write a paper on it, you know, having read the script years ago and then being able to follow up with it now, like this is a big thing.
• 23:19
  JOHN W: But I felt like we were keeping it as like the best dessert that you wanna save, save until the end.
• 23:24
  JOHN W: But then if you wait too long then you forget that it's there in the refrigerator, and then it goes bad.
• 23:29
  JOHN W: I'm not speaking from life experience. I'm absolutely speaking from life experience.
• 23:33
  JOHN W: And then as I was thinking about, you know, what episode do we think, you know, sort of has some relevance for today?
• 23:39
  JOHN W: Because that is our general… That's what we try to do with this podcast.
• 23:42
  JOHN W: We try to find the episodes that are not only relevant conceptually to what we've been talking here, but what we're recording. What does it seem to touch with in real time?
• 23:51
  JOHN W: We've had some real astonishing lineups especially if you think of like the first half 2025 events that really did seem to line up, particularly with seasons one and two, some of the events in there.
• 24:02
  JOHN W: This one really hit me out of the blue. I was like, "Wait a second." Because of what we've been seeing is the increased tensions in the Middle East, the increased tensions globally between great powers and the great powers having proxy wars, everything else you know, and obviously when the war in Iran began.
• 24:20
  JOHN W: So this episode, I think, dovetails on that on so many different levels.
• 24:25
  JOHN W: Real comparisons can be made between what's happening in the Middle East, specifically Israel and the Palestinians, and the way this episode frames the conflict between the Narn and Centauri.
• 24:36
  JOHN W: We've sort of discussed that the Narn are being aggressive in present time, season one, right out of the gate.
• 24:42
  JOHN W: But you're given an added context to their history.
• 24:45
  JOHN W: The Narn were invaded, conquered, brutally oppressed, You almost are looking at it, but wait the
• 24:52
  JOHN W: Narn are militarily aggressive. They're expansionary at this point. They are clearly provoking the Centauri.
• 24:59
  JOHN W: And the back and forth and back and forth is so perfectly encapsulated in this episode.
• 25:02
  JOHN W: And I know people are gonna reject and say, "Well, how does, how's, how is it the Middle East?"
• 25:05
  JOHN W: Because everybody, when describing the Middle East, when describing what's going on there, you'll very often hear, "Well, it's complex. It's nuanced." Well, that's what this episode does.
• 25:13
  JOHN W: This episode addresses the idea without saying you specifically have to be on one side or the other, except the side of I, I guess what this episode's side is, it's in the angle of looking at something with a sense of tragic loss of opportunity, loss of possibility, loss of peace.
• 25:30
  JOHN W: And when you start off, it's in perspective of the Centauri emperor, Emperor Turhan.
• 25:36
  JOHN W: And he's trying to extend an olive branch. He's trying to apologize to the Narn for the horrors of the past and perhaps set the two on a new course.
• 25:49
  JOHN W: Now, this is after season one. This is after the provocations of the Narn.
• 25:52
  JOHN W: This is after the Narn have become more expansionist. But this emperor is looking at it from the perspective of all the… He even says, "All the blood, all the lost opportunities."
• 26:01
  JOHN W: And here it seems like he's never made a choice in his entire life.
• 26:05
  JOHN W: He's done what was expected, and now this is his last opportunity to do something.
• 26:09
  JOHN W: And that just has such a ring of the peace process of the 1990s, where you had leaders, you had prime ministers, whether it was Yitzhak Rabin, whether it was, you know, coming together at Camp David and trying for something. And something that I find has this enormous parallel is that was not necessarily popular universally amongst the populations, whether it was Arafat at the time.
• 26:29
  JOHN W: Again, there are so many comparisons to be made, I think you could draw between G'Kar and Arafat at different points.
• 26:35
  JOHN W: G'Kar goes off on his own and becomes a much different character in the end.
• 26:40
  JOHN W: But the idea of a fighter, arguably a terrorist, at different times. And again, this episode,
• 26:47
  JOHN W: G'Kar is planning on assassinating the Centauri emperor.
• 26:51
  JOHN W: That was the intent. But the emperor wanted to reach out, and there's Lord Refa and Londo conspiring against this emperor, not knowing what he was going to do, but already viewing him as too weak, already trying to set up in their own scheme, "We need to make the Centauri great again and go out and conquer," and, you know, they were gonna plan food shortages to weaken the support of the emperor internally, hurt their own people so that their own court intrigue could proceed and that their people could take over.
• 27:19
  JOHN W: It's wild and insane to see the efforts to try to bring peace to the galaxy were thwarted by political machinations on both sides, that it wasn't— And this is not to be confused with both-sides-ism.
• 27:32
  JOHN W: It's just saying that there are people always on both sides who are threatened by the idea of rapprochement, of a peace, of working out a compromise.
• 27:43
  JOHN W: And Lord Refa is that. It's like, "What the hell is he after?" He wants to go to war, and Londo provides the Shadows to do it. It's so fucking tragic. Because you're just watching this episode, and you're saying, "Well, okay, he's not perfect, but the emperor is trying to do this last thing before he knows he's gonna die."
• 27:59
  JOHN W: And then why does this continue? Because Londo, being the supreme asshole that he is at this point in the show, and that's what he is, and this is something that I, I got viscerally angry re-watching this episode
• 28:12
  JOSHUA B: Yeah.
• 28:13
  JOHN W: It's such a disappointment, and you ask yourself, so yeah, there, there are parallels.
• 28:17
  JOHN W: In the 1990s, the peace process starts, the Oslo peace process and everything else starts, and it looks hopeful to the world. We're growing up, and the another important thing is that's happening as the show is airing.
• 28:28
  JOHN W: As the show is airing, that peace process is starting, and there's this great hope, this great sense of maybe we're going to come to an agreement that will allow peace in that region of the world for the first time in I don't even know And Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated.
• 28:44
  JOHN W: By one of his own people. The way that the emperor is being conspired against by his own people.
• 28:51
  JOHN W: If he hadn't died of health it still would've happened. It— Something would've happened.
• 28:54
  JOHN W: Like, his own people were going to do this.
• 28:57
  JOHN W: They were dead set on continuing the bloodshed for their own, in this case, for the Centauri, it's for their grandiosity. And that's where, again, comparisons start to diverge.
• 29:06
  JOHN W: But it was their own people. And what was G'Kar gonna do? You're left wondering, well, who, who's gonna advocate for the future? Who's gonna advocate, for peace? You have Sheridan you have Babylon 5 there.
• 29:18
  JOHN W: But the two characters, G'Kar and Londo, were both actually working for the same purpose, and that was to destroy any hope of peace, and that's why I feel like it's such a similarity, not because I wanna get into, the politics of specifically what's happened in the Middle East.
• 29:35
  JOHN W: But when you look at how it continues over and over again, you have various sides and machinations going on.
• 29:41
  JOHN W: You have outside powers.
• 29:43
  JOHN W: You have the United States. You have Iran. You have all kinds of… But at the end of the day, there are people on the inside sabotaging the possibility of peace, whether it's the 1990s, whether it's today.
• 29:53
  JOHN W: And that's where what I don't understand in the real world and have to look at fiction like this.
• 29:59
  JOHN W: Why would you do that? Well, Lord Refa gives us insight into that. So does Londo.
• 30:04
  JOHN W: They're not enlightened. They're not doing it just out of a sense of you know, "Oh we're doing the right thing."
• 30:10
  JOHN W: They're doing it out of a selfish need for power And that's a real thing. And you could talk about, well, this side did this first, this side did this first. And in the structures of power are always these kinds of people manipulating for their own gains, and they would see millions and millions of people die for their own power.
• 30:28
  JOHN W: And if you just stop for a moment and say, ' This needs to end,' and you try to be Emperor Turhan, how many people does it require like that?"
• 30:37
  JOHN W: I guess that's my question in this episode. It… Or is it ever enough?
• 30:42
  JOSHUA B: I was thinking when you said, you know, you're lamenting the idea that it's just these handful of people on the inside, on both sides who are for either selfish reasons or myopic reasons are dead set against rapprochement and seeing the end of the conflict.
• 30:58
  JOSHUA B: It reminds me of Star Trek VI actually, you know, which is famously about the wall coming down in space and how the Klingons and Starfleet end up conspiring with each other to prevent the peace conference from succeeding because neither of them can survive the idea of the end of the war the end of hostilities.
• 31:19
  JOSHUA B: So yes, that is frustrating and lamentable, but, by the same token, you know, with the caveat that it didn't actually work in this particular example, but With Emperor Turhan's plan to visit Babylon 5 in territory and apologize for the crimes of the past to the Narn you know, that was all him.
• 31:42
  JOSHUA B: He was one man you know, having a very introspective, reflective moment on the eve of his own impending death.
• 31:49
  JOSHUA B: And he, completely on his own made a choice, made a decision that he was going to not follow the script.
• 31:58
  JOSHUA B: He was not going to do what was expected of him. And, you know, granted, he's the emperor.
• 32:04
  JOSHUA B: He's a powerful figure. He isn't just some regular citizen on the streets of Centauri Prime But even though he failed when G'Kar finds out what his plan was
• 32:15
  JOHN W: Mm-hmm.
• 32:16
  JOSHUA B: That alone, I think shocks him out of his complacency because he realizes it never even crossed his mind that anything other than threats and intimidation were going to come out of this Centauri emperor's mouth.
• 32:32
  JOSHUA B: That was just not something that would ever enter into his thinking. We even know Turhan's plans are ultimately not only thwarted but by the end of the episode the Narn and the Centauri are at war.
• 32:46
  JOSHUA B: I think this is the beginning of G'Kar's transformation into someone who's able to rise above sort of the ground level conflict and takes you know, something of a broader, or dare I say, more enlightened view of not only the conflict, but also what's required.
• 33:03
  JOSHUA B: Because the thing that Turhan says in this episode, the emperor says or I actually think Franklin says it's relayed through Franklin when he's delivering the emperor's message to G'Kar.
• 33:15
  JOSHUA B: The idea that nothing can change. Until someone is willing to say, "I'm sorry." and from what you said earlier, it really Seems to me that one of the main issues is that it is a very hard thing to I don't even know really the word. It's not like, prostrate yourself, but be the one to lay down your arms and maybe eat some shit for a while from the other side and your side, to be the quote, unquote bigger man and say You know what?
• 33:49
  JOSHUA B: We gotta do something else here. Like, I'm sorry for my role in this
• 33:53
  JOSHUA B: Certainly you know, when you're locked in a centuries-long conflict you don't ever want to be the one who who blinks first. And I think that pride is really what it is, and I think that is why Londo, you know, in "The Gathering," in the pilot Londo has that line, you know, "My God, man we're a tourist attraction."
• 34:13
  JOSHUA B: I think he's so used to mourning the loss of power and prestige and pining for things to go back to the way they were.
• 34:22
  JOSHUA B: When he finally is presented with an opportunity to make that happen, almost literally on a silver platter, he can't help himself. Because he's so used to wanting this and he's not gonna let the opportunity go.
• 34:36
  JOSHUA B: He's gonna sublimate whatever empathy or whatever I'm gonna use the word humanity he has to make sure that he doesn't miss this opportunity to get what he wants.
• 34:48
  JOSHUA B: And I don't know if that's something all of us can literally relate to but I think we all recognize that potential within all of us. Like when we have the temptation, when we are given the opportunity to get what we have always wanted, that may, change who we are and how we operate however briefly I don't know
• 35:11
  JOHN W: Yeah, that's— I, you know, I try to… I'm gonna confess, when I was rewatching this,
• 35:15
  JOHN W: I had such anger at at Londo, and here we're like coldly dissecting him in a way, you know, like with everything you just said, and I wanna just lash out and say, "No, but it was just wrong.
• 35:27
  JOHN W: It was wrong." And then I have to step back and realize that this is how so many people, maybe even most people, I I don't know, but so many people will operate. I think there's, you know, th-there's the old saying, Lord Acton, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
• 35:42
  JOHN W: We're all sort of familiar with that.
• 35:45
  JOHN W: Now, for all his faults, Frank Herbert, who I have many issues with had an interesting counter to that, which I've thought about a lot lately. Says, "Perhaps it's not just that power corrupts or only the power corrupts," But that power is magnetic to the corruptible." And I think there's something to that.
• 36:01
  JOHN W: I think that power corrupts, but I think that it also accelerates the process because we always say, "Well, Why aren't the best people in charge? Why aren't people with high moral values?"
• 36:11
  JOHN W: And we always say, "Ugh, the people who are least likely to seek out power would in fact be the best in charge."
• 36:18
  JOHN W: And so, well, that, I think that's… This is the reason, is that the nature of power, the nature of a political court looking at the Centauri royal court, is magnetic to the people whose ambition and personalities are compatible with the royal court. And, I'm gonna get real wonky on this one.
• 36:36
  JOHN W: Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor, known as the you know, the last great philosopher emperor of the Roman Empire has a saying that translates from Latin, "Even in a palace, a man can live well."
• 36:49
  JOHN W: Now, a couple of those words sometimes get mistranslated or misunderstood. He also meant, "Even at court, a man can live well." But it sort of took on the meaning, "Even in a palace, a man can live well." People say, "Well, obviously, if you're in a palace, you're living really well," right?
• 37:03
  JOHN W: Now, this was a man largely focused on you know, a philosophical pursuit of morality, service to the gods, et cetera.
• 37:09
  JOHN W: So "Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius, a brilliant book. They link to "Babylon 5" because what does
• 37:14
  JOHN W: Ranger One, Jeffrey Sinclair, make all of the Rangers read? "The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius."
• 37:19
  JOHN W: So it links directly back to "Babylon 5." And this episode is the first introduction of Jeffrey
• 37:25
  JOHN W: Sinclair in his new role as Ranger One as he reveals to Michael and Delenn in this very episode.
• 37:32
  JOHN W: It's important. That's, that's an important other part of this episode. So Marcus Aurelius says that.
• 37:37
  JOHN W: He's not saying that you're not gonna live nicely or lavishly in the palace or in the court.
• 37:43
  JOHN W: It's that it is possible for somebody to maintain a high moral status even in the royal court.
• 37:50
  JOHN W: And what he's trying to communicate is how difficult that is, and maybe uncommon that is, but it is nonetheless possible and something that should be pursued. Londo was not that person.
• 38:01
  JOHN W: Londo was not. And maybe… I've not read on JMS commenting on this specifically.
• 38:06
  JOHN W: All I know is that the meditations… This is also something else. I think this is not canon in the TV show.
• 38:13
  JOHN W: The meditations of the Marcus Relies are mentioned in the book, the
• 38:18
  JOHN W: Novel
• 38:19
  JOSHUA B: To Dream in the City of Sorrows?
• 38:21
  JOHN W: "The City of Stars," brilliant, very cool book, giving you much more giving you what happens on Minbar, the creation of the Rangers, and Jeffrey Sinclair's journey through that, including more about what happens to him when he goes back in time.
• 38:36
  JOHN W: A fun read, a good read. If you can get your hands on it I totally recommend that book.
• 38:40
  JOSHUA B: And also, If I'm not mistaken the ultimate fate of Catherine Sakai, who
• 38:45
  JOSHUA B: The last time we saw her was the last time we saw Sinclair in "Chrysalis," and they had just gotten engaged
• 38:51
  JOSHUA B: To be married. So, you know, we learn what ultimately happened to Sinclair but you know, in the show at least we never learn what happened to his fiancée. But I do believe that is covered somewhat extensively in the book. It's a good book
• 39:04
  JOHN W: It's really good
• 39:05
  JOHN W: Oh, God. I can say honestly, the reason I read "The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," was because they were mentioned in that book.
• 39:12
  JOHN W: And that's also coming on the heels of the movie "Gladiator,"
• 39:15
  JOHN W: Features Richard Harris brilliantly portraying Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
• 39:18
  JOHN W: They take a different idea on it in that movie than actually happens in reality. And this is, this is an interesting historical fact about emperors and the way people do things at the end of their lives, is that you had this man who was really focused on his philosophy and piety.
• 39:39
  JOHN W: And unlike the movie "Gladiator," where he wants to make Russell Crowe's fictional character the protector of Rome and save it from his unworthy son, Commodus, as far as we can tell in the historical record,
• 39:52
  JOHN W: Aurelius went against his beliefs, and he was a adopted son and an adopted emperor. It was not hereditary.
• 39:58
  JOHN W: He went against his own philosophy in the end and ensured that his son by blood, because of inheritance, because of blood, would in fact become emperor despite misgivings about his character and knowing that he was not living up to the grand philosophies of Marcus Aurelius.
• 40:16
  JOHN W: So there's a man vaunted, and we have his writings, amazing thinker, amazing philosopher, amazing moralist, who from what we can piece together, very likely could not execute on those morals at the very end.
• 40:28
  JOHN W: His own vanity, his own pride, his own obsession with lineage probably took over, and he makes an unworthy man, Commodus, the emperor, instead of choosing somebody that was not of blood, like as he was chosen to be emperor.
• 40:42
  JOHN W: And that blows my mind, and I'm thinking, "Well, that's how fragile we as human beings are."
• 40:46
  JOHN W: Emperor Turhan in this show is physically fragile at this point, but for his entire life, he went along with what he was told and arguably carried out the same policies, though in a diminished Centauri, that were still, you know, portraying the Centauri as, "Well, we were doing the right thing when we invaded Narn," et cetera, et cetera.
• 41:04
  JOHN W: And that he wasn't doing it wasn't till the end of his life that he inverted and tried to do something better.
• 41:11
  JOSHUA B: Yeah. You know, first of all, that's really interesting. I didn't know that, scholarly thinking about you know, the actions and the motivations of Marcus Aurelius. But while you were describing that,
• 41:21
  JOSHUA B: I was thinking to myself, well, most, or I don't know about most, but many fathers would certainly be willing to compromise their own values and beliefs when it comes to the benefit of their children.
• 41:33
  JOSHUA B: Know, that's one of the I feel like I don't wanna say blind spots or Achilles heels because it makes it seem like just a weakness but that parental love and concern for a child and wanting to ensure that you have set them up for success to be able to live a good life when you're no longer there to protect them is a motivating factor.
• 41:56
  JOSHUA B: But something else that, I also didn't make the connection with Marcus Aurelius and the end of life meditation of Emperor Turhan. Turhan has a line he's talking to Prime Minister Malachi.
• 42:08
  JOSHUA B: He says, like, "You know, at the end of your life, all of the riches and the material things and the glory and the avarice or whatever, it doesn't matter the way that it used to when you're about to die and you start to think about what actually matters and you want to do something."
• 42:26
  JOSHUA B: I forget the specific line, the literal line that he says, but I remember thinking yeah, you know, that's probably true for a lot of people. But then I thought about our current president, who's you know, an example of the complete opposite response. It seems like all he cares about is wealth and acquisition and glory and all of the superficial trappings of power.
• 42:49
  JOSHUA B: And I just thought that was quite striking because when Turhan says that, especially the first time I heard it when I was all of 11 or 12 years old far removed from the state of mind that a man at the end of their life is in. But the sentiment reads as probably true.
• 43:06
  JOSHUA B: It, feels in the ballpark of right even to me as a kid. It is so striking and shocking to see, such a flagrant example of the antithesis of that sentiment, so central in our world right now.
• 43:22
  JOSHUA B: It's it's not necessarily true."
• 43:25
  JOHN W: Yeah. I mean, he had an entire life. And while we almost feel for a fond, like a fond fatherly grandfatherly figure in Turhan atrocities were happening in his reign. Can't be a simple whitewashing of the man.
• 43:37
  JOHN W: But to see the way he talks about it or hear the way he talks about it and this is where JMS's writing comes to full front. When Turhan says, you know, So much has been lost, so much forgotten, so much pain, so much blood. And for what, I wonder? The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us.
• 43:59
  JOHN W: And our lives slip away moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
• 44:02
  JOHN W: But there's still time to seize that one last fragile moment, to choose something better, to make a difference, as you say, and he intended to just do that. And while fate may have robbed him of that chance to a degree, I like how you pointed out it didn't.
• 44:17
  JOHN W: G'Kar heard that. G'Kar knew. And because G'Kar knew It began his transformation to complete that process.
• 44:25
  JOHN W: What Emperor Turhan began was completed by Citizen G'Kar refusing to become the leader of the Narn, but inspiring them to transcend the horrors of their past. And it's easy to tell somebody, "Get over the past.
• 44:43
  JOHN W: That's the past. As bad as it was, you know, you have to move on and make peace."
• 44:48
  JOHN W: This show instead shows you the journey of G'Kar So you see him from beginning to probably three other phases of his life. It's not an easy journey. It's not a trite journey.
• 44:58
  JOHN W: It's not something where it's just like, "Okay, forgive somebody."
• 45:02
  JOHN W: It's walking through fire and realizing the things that matter. And as we already discussed on their episode, as he has his first revelation, though inspired by a Vorlon that we rise and fall together, that we must sacrifice ourselves for another, not against one another, not to win, not to avenge somebody.
• 45:23
  JOHN W: That doesn't Come easy. It doesn't come just from a simple conversation.
• 45:25
  JOHN W: It doesn't come just because you want somebody to think that way. So I love that we get to see that in G'Kar.
• 45:31
  JOHN W: So, so I will… So for all my sadness about the tragedy of this episode and that the emperor doesn't get to do it, in one sense, he didn't deserve it.
• 45:39
  JOHN W: He didn't deserve that kind of redemption in his lifetime because he didn't act that for a lifetime.
• 45:45
  JOHN W: It was only those breaths at the end. So it still means something, but he doesn't get to have that.
• 45:51
  JOHN W: And he dies tragically because among the last words to him are from a Vorlon. He says, "How does this end?"
• 45:58
  JOHN W: And Kosh being Kosh and doing a Kosh just says, "In fire."
• 46:03
  JOHN W: But that's not the only end., The episode doesn't end with Londo. It doesn't end with G'Kar.
• 46:09
  JOHN W: It doesn't end with even that brilliant council meeting where you find out that the Narn have declared war.
• 46:16
  JOHN W: It's, "Hello, Old friend," the message from Sinclair to Delenn already having been delivered to Michael Garibaldi.
• 46:21
  JOHN W: And what that's doing, linking back to the first message, is that's the message of hope.
• 46:27
  JOHN W: That's the message of the work has only begun.
• 46:30
  JOSHUA B: Ja
• 46:30
  JOHN W: And this stuff might be happening, and it looks so dark. It is The Coming of Shadows.
• 46:35
  JOHN W: It is now a shadow over everything. the Shadows are ascendant. The Narn and the Centauri are at war.
• 46:41
  JOHN W: The Earth Alliance is already plagued by internal conspiracies at this point, and the rise of President Clark.
• 46:47
  JOHN W: And here you have, "Hello, old friend," bringing back in the character of Jeffrey Sinclair, giving a little cameo to Michael O'Hare and telling us there are people who are trying, even if they're a small group, to get us through this and to build a better world.
• 47:03
  JOHN W: And so this episode does end with great hope, and that's, I mean, it makes complete sense why that's the last line
• 47:09
  JOSHUA B: Yeah. No, I agree with that. I had a couple of thoughts. First of all, I really, love your reading about how
• 47:16
  JOSHUA B: You know, Turhan in the end wasn't a failure, but he didn't necessarily
• 47:21
  JOSHUA B: Deserved to see the consequences that his actions had because that's not how he lived his life.
• 47:27
  JOSHUA B: But through G'Kar in particular sort of the role his choice had in G'Kar's transformation and eventual enlightenment, the fruit that would, lead to… I really appreciate that reading.
• 47:39
  JOSHUA B: And interestingly Too, you know, you're talking about power corrupting or at the very least perhaps another way of framing it is attracting the corruptible. And what happens when G'Kar is handed all the power he could ever have he turns it down. He runs away. He denies it because he knows nothing good can come of that for his soul and, for his people. And also in that context, it also makes it interesting how Sheridan, he accepts the power when he's handed it.
• 48:14
  JOSHUA B: I don't know that's necessarily a conscious or intentional counterexample on JMS's part.
• 48:20
  JOSHUA B: But that is interesting. And it's also interesting, and I think the show says this, that Sheridan is not necessarily a great political leader. Broadly speaking he was you know, more helpful than harmful. But I don't think that the show says he had risen to his full potential in that phase of his life.
• 48:38
  JOHN W: Mm-hmm. He Has political instincts to a degree, enough that stops him from getting into too much trouble, and not enough political instincts that he gets bogged down by it. He's still idealistic.
• 48:49
  JOHN W: He's still also, you know, he comes from a more military background, of course, but he's more philosophical.
• 48:56
  JOHN W: He's more like his father, a diplomat, than he is a politician. He's a diplomat military individual more so than a political operator. Delenn has that experience, Grey Council everything else.
• 49:06
  JOHN W: She… And she learns how, from a very Minbari way, how to wrangle and manipulate and do all the political things that the Alliance, the later then formed Alliance needs.
• 49:17
  JOHN W: I, I love that. Like, everybody has their strength and has to learn to do that.
• 49:21
  JOHN W: So Sheridan doesn't offer everything to everybody which is a good thing because that would just a fanciful character.
• 49:26
  JOHN W: But his instincts he's idealistic in this episode. He's just sort of wildly hopeful, you know?
• 49:31
  JOHN W: This is an opportunity he thinks for G'Kar. And he even, this is one of my last notes I wanted to make was at the council meeting after, the emperor dies and the Centauri have struck via the Shadows.
• 49:42
  JOHN W: Before you hear from G'Kar Sheridan is saying, "We're gonna put observers on the colony that the Centauri have annexed."
• 49:49
  JOHN W: I am willing to bet that was an entire bluff, because I don't imagine that the President Clark-run EarthGov, which by this point in the season two we already know is getting real fascist is particularly interested… And he even says, you know, "We're not interested in another war," using that as leverage.
• 50:05
  JOHN W: He was playing poker there, which is his strength, you know. And he gets Londo to back down and in that scene you realize just how brutal and just how racist the Centauri are.
• 50:16
  JOHN W: I think that's the appropriate word, though I suppose if we're going to edit this episode and the depending on how the algorithms wanna go, is it racist or speciesist?
• 50:27
  JOHN W: It's speciesist but I think they know, use the words almost interchangeably in contexts like this.
• 50:32
  JOHN W: And they were going to… They were using euphemisms for enslaving the Narn. Even Delenn says, "Work camps." "Oh, no, we'll just put them to you know, proper use. We're not monsters."
• 50:44
  JOHN W: You know, we know what the Centauri were doing, and we know that they were going back to what happened 100 years ago.
• 50:49
  JOHN W: It was gonna be brutal and oppressive, and later in season three, all of that comes to fruition.
• 50:54
  JOHN W: It's, a deliberate point that this is how close we are sort of from slipping into barbarism at any given point, The Centauri seem to have gotten at least somewhat past that, and here they are about to enslave somebody. If not for the bluff of Sheridan they would have enslaved a quarter million Narns right then and there. And, And again, I was always shocked the idea that, oh, they're gonna take… They're gonna annex that colony, and they're not even gonna let the people go back to Narn until Sheridan pulled that trick. And Londo is just, like, going full steam with that.
• 51:22
  JOHN W: And you say, "Oh, well, Londo," you know, "Oh, it's like in the end he redeems himself."
• 51:26
  JOHN W: No, Londo redeems himself the way that Turhan redeems himself, which is why he doesn't get to experience any of it in the end. He has to die horribly.
• 51:34
  JOHN W: We later find out it's not because G'Kar is necessarily pissed at him, it's that this is their deal.
• 51:39
  JOHN W: The only way is Londo's death with the Keepers and all that other stuff.
• 51:43
  JOHN W: That's a cool evolution of the story, but the point is nonetheless, Londo is a war criminal of the highest order.
• 51:50
  JOSHUA B: Absolutely
• 51:51
  JOHN W: He is the orchestrator of events that led to genocide and said nothing when genocide is occurring against the Narn, when their the mass drivers are bombarding the Narn homeworld. That's who he is.
• 52:01
  JOHN W: And that's something real hard to that I was thinking about when going over this episode, is that Londo, the functional narrator of this show from beginning to end, and, or bookends I should say, is a horrific war criminal. And how… I don't know how to sit with that. I don't know what to do with that.
• 52:18
  JOHN W: Because yes, he redeems himself by saving his people in the end and arguably saving the galaxy at a few points.
• 52:24
  JOHN W: But it's like, what kind of person is this? And I don't know how to answer that except to say he is a horrible person, for all the nuance and everything else.
• 52:34
  JOHN W: It's something I sit with and I'm so conflicted about. And going back to this episode is really uncomfortable with all that because you wanna, you wanna say it's Lord Refa who's the bad guy and
• 52:45
  JOHN W: Londo is just so corrupted.
• 52:47
  JOHN W: No, no, No, this is Londo.
• 52:49
  JOSHUA B: This whole situation is of his making. It's like he's the one who suggested… He told Refa, "Well, what if we did this?" And He Didn't have to
• 52:58
  JOHN W: You didn't have to do any of
• 52:59
  JOSHUA B: Didn't have to do anything. Which by the way, Lord Refa, I was gonna say this when we covered And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place. Lord Refa, I think, for my money, is the only other Centauri who works as a Centauri the way that Londo sort of works as a Centauri, and by that I mean like, the vaguely Eastern European, vaguely Roman, like
• 53:20
  JOSHUA B: Sort of whatever. Like he's the only other one who's
• 53:24
  JOHN W: Aesthetically—
• 53:25
  JOHN W: Centauri
• 53:26
  JOSHUA B: Yes, exactly. Refa's The only one who's Playing it the way Londo is.
• 53:31
  JOSHUA B: Every other Centauri on the show is sort of like, I get the impression they don't quite know what a Centauri
• 53:37
  JOHN W: There are actors who put on the funny headpiece and are like, "All right, I'm gonna try to figure this one
• 53:42
  JOSHUA B: Yeah, it's like I got nothing.
• 53:43
  JOHN W: Oh and speaking of that, here's one of my last points about this. You were talking some about earlier about the pride, and then we're talking about, you know, the president, then Trump.
• 53:51
  JOHN W: He's a Centauri, first of all. That pride, that vanity, and fucking hair. There we go.
• 53:57
  JOSHUA B: Oh, that is The hair.
• 53:59
  JOHN W: Yes, that's exactly where I'm going because… And how Turhan, he's asked by the prince, "Well, what about, like, your wig?" Because, he's a bald man. He says, "the time has passed that maybe women have it right and it's time for me to get past my pride and all that other stuff."
• 54:12
  JOHN W: And I'm like, oh my God, that is so true is you have this man whose hair looks so silly in real life, but he's obsessed with it and talks about how great his hair is. And I'm like, you're a Centauri.
• 54:22
  JOHN W: You're obsessed with your weird hair getup when you're losing it, and it just looks silly.
• 54:26
  JOHN W: And this emperor was like, "Listen, I can't let my hair look cool and stand up like the rest of the Centauri anymore, but I'm not gonna try.
• 54:33
  JOHN W: I'm not gonna bullshit everybody about it and make them see something." And then the funny thing is that then you get Cartagia a season and a half later, who's trying out something new with shorter hair but who's just as vain, and I'm just realizing it's that Barron Trump.
• 54:45
  JOHN W: But, you know, we'll see. We don't know.
• 54:47
  JOHN W: Maybe. But that's pure conjecture on my part. But that's… It's just so funny that vanity, and just element of being that extra is so, is so funny to me. And the way he wields and deals and everything is about do I win at this and do you lose? The Centauri, the scheming of the court is very much like that.
• 55:06
  JOHN W: There isn't… There, there's no idea of let me do this. And they give they give some nods to like, "Oh, we do this for the Centauri people." But, you know, it's the same lip service you get from that.
• 55:16
  JOHN W: So, you know, that's my last point
• 55:18
  JOSHUA B: Oh
• 55:19
  JOHN W: Of real world
• 55:20
  JOHN W: Real world comparison.
• 55:22
  JOSHUA B: You blew my mind with that. Like I can't believe I missed that. But yeah really well done.
• 55:27
  JOSHUA B: I'm not gonna be able to stop thinking about that for probably ever at this point.
• 55:32
  JOSHUA B: Two final questions I had that are kind of inconsequential.
• 55:36
  JOSHUA B: But why do you think Kosh showed up I mean, literally, I guess just show his face to the emperor.
• 55:42
  JOSHUA B: You know, what do you think his intention was in doing that?
• 55:46
  JOHN W: I mean, a part of me wants to say it's— has a story MacGuffin a little bit.
• 55:52
  JOHN W: I think that's, that's the biggest part of it. But I have a vague memory of that actually being commented on in the book on screenwriting. So I'll have to I
• 56:00
  JOSHUA B: Oh, interesting.
• 56:01
  JOHN W: I think there was, I think there was a reason for that as for why Kosh is willing to appear there at the very end, seemingly to change nothing
• 56:12
  JOSHUA B: Nothing
• 56:13
  JOHN W: In an outcome.
• 56:14
  JOHN W: Because I, yeah, I have the same view. Like, well, Kosh isn't known for just kinda like hanging out for like, "Hey, I wanna make an appearance." But on a Lurker's Guide, there was some you know, speculation on whether or not it's because Kosh knew how things had to end or you know, was it just that I, I don't think Kosh was doing it an I told you so.
• 56:34
  JOSHUA B: No.
• 56:35
  JOHN W: Because Kosh says that before Emperor Turhan dies and before he speaks to Londo, maybe that's another connection through is that, you know, it's a very subtle nudge that will make its way through
• 56:46
  JOSHUA B: Yeah, my thing is, from like a screenwriting standpoint it signals that something huge has shifted.
• 56:53
  JOHN W: Mm-hmm.
• 56:54
  JOSHUA B: The Vorlon shows up. And from a more, I guess, poetic sort of a standpoint, it's sort of like,
• 57:00
  JOSHUA B: Kosh knew the tragedy was unfolding.
• 57:03
  JOSHUA B: And I think once it was all set in motion, he was just you know, "I will just say hi to this." agent of change or whatever
• 57:12
  JOHN W: What if Kosh was checking in on the telepaths?
• 57:14
  JOSHUA B: That could be. Well, so, so another thought I had, and I do not believe this for a second but the idea that like did he have something to do with the emperor's heart attack happening when it happened?
• 57:25
  JOSHUA B: I don't think for a second that's true because it doesn't make any sense. And it's not necessary.
• 57:29
  JOSHUA B: He's already, he's in ill health, so it's like, it's just, you know
• 57:32
  JOHN W: He didn't expect, he Didn't expect to see the Prime Minister again. He knew this was probably a one-way trip for him
• 57:37
  JOSHUA B: Yeah, And it's almost more poignant or believable it's not because of manipulation of higher forces.
• 57:42
  JOSHUA B: It's like, nope, it's just one of those things, and he waited too long. The timing was just you know, just bad luck. And The importance of using your power before you run out of time You know, there's not always a later, I can make up for it later, because that doesn't really work out for anyone, especially in this show. My last question was, do you remember watching this the first viewing how you reacted when you saw Sinclair again? 'Cause I don't remember for me personally
• 58:11
  JOHN W: Oh I remember that. I was obsessed. I was obsessed. I was freaking out that Sinclair was back.
• 58:17
  JOHN W: And that line, "Hello, old friend," has become, like, part of my personal lexicon.
• 58:22
  JOSHUA B: Same.
• 58:22
  JOHN W: I
• 58:23
  JOHN W: I was so, like, giddy, I think was the only word. "Oh my God, he's back. Oh, there's stuff happening."
• 58:28
  JOHN W: And this was, again, as the show was building to this grand story, something that we've discussed so many times here, like, that we hadn't seen before.
• 58:35
  JOHN W: So that was one of those moments where it was like, "Oh, okay, something's more coming."
• 58:39
  JOHN W: There's a whole other, like, subplot occurring, and we're getting one of my favorite characters back even for that.
• 58:44
  JOHN W: And it was touching in its way. The way that message addresses Michael Garibaldi, you know, showing that their relationship because that had been in season one, is that Garibaldi had his back, and now he's being asked to trust him again.
• 58:55
  JOHN W: You know, that something bigger is coming. It was very cool, very well done.
• 58:59
  JOHN W: I thought I was… And I always remembered, "Oh, his hair's longer. What's up with that?"
• 59:04
  JOSHUA B: No, I remember that too.
• 59:05
  JOHN W: But I was so glad to see him. I was hoping for more. And then when we do get the two-parter in season three,
• 59:10
  JOHN W: I was very glad, especially now in the hindsight of knowing what happened with Michael O'Hare.
• 59:14
  JOHN W: I was so glad they got to do this with him.
• 59:16
  JOSHUA B: Yeah. The really cool thing about it is that like, you know, you've already mourned the loss and sort of moved on.
• 59:21
  JOSHUA B: But then JMS is sort of like, "Nope, he's still here. I haven't forgotten."
• 59:25
  JOSHUA B: Really makes you feel like there's a plan here and when something happens, it means something, and it won't just be forgotten later.
• 59:32
  JOSHUA B: But yeah, that's The Coming of Shadows. It's a momentous one. Feel like I could probably go on and on about it, but that's all for us this time. We will speak to you on the next episode.
• 59:44
  JOSHUA B: I think maybe we have one more in us for 2026, but, we'll see how it goes.
• 59:50
  JOSHUA B: We are lastbesthopeb5 on all social media that we're on and as always, we leave you with the idea that sometimes peace is just another word for surrender.