Latest / LAST BEST HOPE: A Babylon 5 Podcast for Our Uncertain Age / #11 – Good, Kind, and Decent (THE DECONSTRUCTION OF FALLING STARS)

Transcript

#11 – Good, Kind, and Decent (THE DECONSTRUCTION OF FALLING STARS) · LAST BEST HOPE: A Babylon 5 Podcast for Our Uncertain Age

• 0:01
  JOSH: Back in the halcyon 1990s, a syndicated sci fi TV series warned us that it indeed can happen here.
• 0:08
  JOHN: In this podcast, we use Babylon 5 to talk through our current political moment and attempt to process, understand, and perhaps find hope.
• 0:19
  JOSH: Yeah, I forgot about the microphone. Yeah, but you were saying that you watched it many times.
• 0:26
  JOHN: Watched it when we first started doing the podcast and ended up in my rotation because I ended up watching a lot of episodes in the spring. And it's an episode that I go back to regularly in my rotations. It's so interesting. And what I'm going to say when we really get into it is that I had a lot of strong opinions when I first watched it, good and bad. But it's funny to go back.
• 0:45
  JOSH: Yeah, completely. This was one of those episodes for me also that had a pretty lasting impact. The idea that, you know, you could have this crazy installment outside of the story of the show, commenting on the story of the show was really influential on me. And JMS was always really good about that. He played with the format. So one thing I noticed, the director of this episode was Stephen first, who also played Veer, and he directed three episodes of Babylon 5, and all three of them were these gonzo format ones. Like the first one he directed was the Illusion of Truth, which was another episode that we were considering this week. So that's like a weird format in that the second half of it takes on the form of an in universe TV news special. And then the third episode he directed was the Korra's mother, the Korra's father from season five, which is supposed to be an episode of Babylon 5, as if Babylon 5 were a show about the Psicorps from the point of view of the Psicorps. I don't know if this was intentional or if it was just sort of luck of the draw, but Stephen Furst ended up directing just episodes of Babylon 5 that were not normal perspectives. I was always doing something funky.
• 2:02
  JOHN: That's something I really love about diving deep into it, is that you have so many production details and things you did not. You know, all these things go beyond behind the scenes. It's not just. Well, people go in. They do the same thing every day. It's very predictable. You make a show, you go home, you know, and realizing Stephen first died years ago, too.
• 2:22
  JOSH: Yeah, 2017. He was young. You know, they talk about the B5 curse, and obviously, you know, you don't want to make light or joke around in a way that's disrespectful. But sometimes it really does feel like there is a curse around the show. So many of the actors on this show died pretty young. It's staggering actually. I mean like you look at some of these cast photos and you look at, you know, who isn't with us anymore and it's pretty sobering. It's upsetting for a show that's like not that old.
• 2:50
  JOHN: I mean, not. I mean it's interesting to think of like where we started watching shows was around the 25th anniversary of Star Trek and now this is, this is, we're past 30 years for this show and that's when we started losing some of the original cast. But of course we still have William Shatner with us.
• 3:06
  JOSH: Yes, it was like 93 or whatever.
• 3:09
  JOHN: Walter Conant obviously is on this show as well. I'm very grateful they are all around.
• 3:15
  JOSH: Yeah, no, I think about that also. It's like in the early 90s, which was certainly for me the beginning of my sci fi fandom, you know. Yeah, Star Trek was 25, 30 years old. Like I remember watching the 30th anniversary special on TV in 1996 and being like, wow, 30 years B5 is there now. It's just strange to think about how long ago I thought that was then versus now, which like, for various reasons doesn't feel that long ago.
• 3:45
  JOHN: Our own perception of time. There are days in that 30 years feels like, oh yeah, that makes sense. But not so much in my own life. It makes sense. When I start looking at the world and the changes in the world. If I think of, you know, 66 to 96 and now 96 to 20, almost 26. Wow. I mean it is a different world in many ways. You can see the different cultural eras, different technologies emerging. So yeah, that makes sense to me that it's been 30 years, but when I feel it I'm like, oh, 1996 was like five, 10 years ago. Like, I mean it's back there but it's not that far away. And then you realize all the things that have happened. I mean, I don't know about you, but the last 10 or 15 years are the ones that really went quickly.
• 4:31
  JOSH: Yeah, completely. And also with the disappearance of the monoculture, for better and for worse, we don't have these like shared cultural seasons anymore, really.
• 4:42
  JOHN: No, no, we had to watch Babylon 5 or record it, but you would tune in to a show and that following week you discuss it with people. That hasn't happened to me in quite a while with a sci fi, with any TV show, to say nothing of A sci fi show. It. I'll get a message from somebody. Hey, have you watched the new show? This? Have you watched that? And maybe I. Maybe you haven't, but it's not synchronous, right? And it's really hard to have the shared experience and awe. That is something I remember. We all made a point of watching. I forget who was there, but some of us watched it Sleeping in Light together. And then we rewatched it one time. I think it was the summer after it aired, which I guess would have been 90.
• 5:25
  JOSH: Summer of 99 then. 99, yeah, because it aired in November of 98. I remember where I was. I had the flu, so I was home and I remember, oh, wow, the tears were flowing and it only made my congestion that much, of course, very emotional.
• 5:40
  JOHN: Oh, I. I cried at that episode. And the interesting thing about that is that going into discussing deconstruction of Falling Stars for viewers who don't remember, Sleeping Light was filmed as the finale of the show at the end of season four. Wrapped up, done, and TNT comes in and sort of a last minute deal saves the show for a fifth season. And of course, having watched Sleeping In Light, you say, oh, yeah, of course, JS couldn't have allowed that to have been aired because that is the end of the show. You cannot go on after that to have another season of the show be like, just kidding, that is the end of the show. Both thematically, but in a. Emotionally, I cried the same way. Just. It was incredibly powerful. So in a really interesting trick that I don't know if I've ever seen done anywhere else, TNT decided to say, well, we authorize, whatever it is, 22 episodes. We'll let you use one of those to air at the end of your fourth season. And. And then you take Sleeping In Light and put it at the end of hours. And Jamis must have made that requirement because again, it would not have worked. It's not something you can fudge. Sleeping In Light has to be the end of the show. Could not be the end of season four if you end up in season five. So maybe that was part of it, but very unorthodox, very uncommon to see something like that happen. And this episode we get works really well as a finale in between the seasons to give us a sense of, you know, where things go, you know, well in the future. A little preview of the difficulty of the Telepath war coming up, but it was also completely out of time. Literally out of time. So it really worked. So I appreciate the episode, but I'll say. When I first saw it, I didn't like this episode.
• 7:19
  JOSH: Really.
• 7:20
  JOHN: It goes into a couple different things of when you're watching a show, first, your mind state matters, where you are, emotionally where you are. Have you had a bad day? You know, did you just get cut off in traffic and you're really angry and you sat down. You're just like, you know, that's going to affect the way a show comes in. And I remember not being in the best headspace watching this episode for the first time. I was in college. I don't know what, but I just wasn't in a great mood and watching the episode. It was. The second part of the episode is that the episode is jarring and at times uncomfortable. And that's something that for me at that age, shows that were uncomfortable, especially with characters that I love. I had a difficult time really getting to that kind of episode. We've talked about other podcasts. Star Trek Generations had that effect on me where it was so jarring and so traumatic for what the storyline was of that that I could not process or appreciate the really good parts of the movie. And the same applied to this. Going back and re watching it. This is one of my favorite episodes. It's so good. But you're going to go into it get. You're going to get angry watching this episode because they're doing exactly what the title says they are deconstructing the characters that we have come to know and love and also bond with. That's the thing about a good show. You end up caring about the characters but bonding. You feel like you're sort of a family with them. That's how I felt about Star Trek. That's how I feel about this. You know, you never met them, but, you know, like, oh, but they're sort of family in a. In an interesting kind of way. So then to see the characters being put through the meat grinder of perception, if that's the right word for this, and future Generations having very different takes. It's also how I get very uncomfortable. I'm very absolutist in my own life. I sometimes have to work on this. Is that when I've seen something and I know this is the way it is, I get very upset when somebody has a completely. Not just different perspective, but it's factually wrong. And this show is literally. This episode is about. They don't know the facts. We've watched a hundred episodes with these characters. We're meant to literally be watching the truth, if you will. Like, we're there with them experiencing it. And to have these people in the future analyzing it and getting it wrong, I'm just like, oh, this is so bad. No, you can't be doing that.
• 9:42
  JOSH: Well, that's sort of the magic trick of this episode, right? Because we have seen it all happen and we were there with them to then see this sort of telescoping perspective, this telescopic perspective. You know, the opening segment is in the immediate aftermath of the events that we've just seen. And it's sort of a news panel show and the panel of experts are prognosticating. And then we jump a hundred years later, and it's like an academic context where, you know, they're saying, you know, history says that it's like this, but that was actually just PR and like, you know, intentional myth making. And they actually weren't so great things would have happened with or without them, blah, blah, blah. What's interesting about all that stuff is that that all resonates because that's real. That's the perspective that we see when we're watching the news and when we're, you know, reading a book about history or in some academic setting discussing events. So the fact that we are watching that familiar performance but for the first time we know what happened, we were there, that allows us to see very clearly how these things work, you know, and how maybe they fall short of the truth. You know, recently there was a new Ken Burns documentary about the American Revolution. And I'm a sucker for a good Ken Burns documentary. So I was watching it, and you have all of these historians and biographers and all of these experts who are speaking so authoritatively about who these people were, what motivated them, what they were thinking. And it's like, yeah, but how do you know that? You don't actually know that. You know, having watched this episode, it really makes you realize, like, there is no way to know even now. Like, we're living through events, but we are watching the news. Like, we don't know what's going on in the mind of, like, Donald Trump, for example. Like, we have no idea what forces are actually at work here. So it's interesting because that historical deconstruction, if you will, some of it's not wrong because you can only really see certain things after the fact with some perspective. Like, I think one of the historians, the gist of what she's saying is not incorrect. The idea that Sheridan and Delenn became symbolic figureheads, that was a permission structure for others to take action which is exactly what we were saying a few weeks ago. And not only that, that's also what Sheridan and Delenn believe themselves. They were like, there's something immodest about all this. It's like it wasn't us, it was all of us together.
• 12:29
  JOHN: Yeah.
• 12:30
  JOSH: And then these academics are like, it's sort of a reaction to the hagiography, the myth making. And they sort of go to the other extreme where, you know, they're these horrible power hungry megalomaniacs. Like that's the only other alternative. Not that the truth is somewhere in.
• 12:47
  JOHN: The middle or, you know, they were going full on comes the Inquisitor. Which again, we know, like, oh, they've been through this. You know, this is what we're talking about here in Act 2, which I think this is the meat of the episode for me is Act 2, the Academics. The hundred year anniversary of the Interstellar Alliance. Academics, including the really annoying one, he's a professor from nyu, by the way, they cite nyu. I was like, oh, they're really going in hard for the realism here. And they are, you're right, it's somewhere in the middle. But they. There's a presumptiveness to it that assumes all things in history operate a certain way and that the individual doesn't matter everything, you know. And you're right, one of the professors was saying, like they are vessels to which people poured their hopes and dreams, you know, and that these characters really become avatars for something rather than the actual thing. But going back when the shadow representative is trying to get him on Zahadum, saying, you're like a Nexus. I always thought of him as Albert Einstein with a hair and everything. And he says, you're like a Nexus point. You move and the universe tends to move with you. So it wasn't the execution of power as if by my will I shall have the universe move this way. It's that people, figures, groups, can a different point become Nexus points. And it lasts for only a period of time. But the way you move things tend to go with you like that. That's a really nuanced description of what Sheridan, Delen, everyone involved in this is. And it's something that, that the academics in this episode I don't think could wrap their heads around because it's not clearly defined, you know, does it mean that everybody followed? No. Does it mean who would follow? And you can't easily quantify what that means. It's easier just to say they mean nothing. That's a more binary proposition. They don't mean anything or they mean everything. No, you're right, it's in the middle. It's that they. Things tend to move in their direction. And what I found really interesting was that you have these characters and obviously they're written as main characters for a show we're watching and where the audience begin to see so they're going to be the center of actions. But the other day I came across a post that a friend made about different genre, different show that I linked into this the moment you proposed this episode. And I. And of course, it's the famous Lord of the Rings. It's about towards the end, when most people forget the ending is the hero ostensibly fails at the last moment. After three books or three movies, depending on how you watched it or read it, your hero has made it all this far, through horrors and trials unimaginable, and at the very last moment puts the ring on instead of destroying it. And most people, for convenience sake, forget that or just sort of goes into the background. The profound importance of that moment was that no mortal person, human, hobbit, whatever, could withstand that. It wasn't a failing, it wasn't a moral failing. It was that. That is simply too much. But the quality of what they did before their mercy being true to themselves, their ideals and their internal goodness, as imperfect as they were allowed. Another character there, Gollum, incredibly flawed, to carry out ultimately, what through his own greed, what destroys the ring and saves the world. That's a hero's journey that we're not used to. I thought there's similarity to that here. They didn't make it that Sheridan and crew were these perfect people who made every decision, right? They weakened and they fell and they owned it. You couldn't have had the Garibald Baldi storyline. You look at him. The reason why we still like him as a character is not because he succeeded. He caused disaster after disaster due to both being manipulated and his own foibles, but his inherent decency somehow carried through to where he was a great character. And then going into Act 3 of this, he is the virtual representation of himself that sort of saves the day there through the nature that he was programmed with, of being suspicious and everything else. And it really may be one of the. Yeah, these weren't your traditional hero archetypes who have all the strength in the universe. They always make the right decision and they just can power through any adversity. These characters stumbled and broke and at times ended up on their knees, at times ended up in conflict with each Other what one knew, you are wrong. And they had to be brought back to, you know, back to the best of them. And that's one of the most interesting parts about this is that a real hero that we can understand is going to be profoundly human and not this amazing archetype. So for that, I can understand the academics not wanting Sheridan or Dynalin to be these godlike figures. Like they're not to themselves, they're not to anybody else. But cultures and histor, you know. And the natural feeling of history wants to put people on that pedestal, you know that they must have been something more. There must have been something special about these figures that made them more than everybody else. Well, no, they were nexus points. They were in the right place at the right time. We got lucky in the sense that they were generally good people trying to do the best with what they could. And at many points in history, that's not the case. You don't end up with people who have the best of intentions. And then it goes a different way. And you can see the other characters that are introduced, other captains even within Earthforce, you see. Well, each one of them made different decisions under President Clark. And if any one of them had been on the station how different history would have been. Now, were they awful people? Was Captain Lockley, was going to come in after this episode, one episode later, the new commander, new Captain of Babylon 5, we then learn, was on the other side of this. Now, what would have happened if she had been appointed there three years early? Would she have led them to a grand alliance which she would have been a very competent, decent Captain of Babylon 5. But none of that would have happened because it's sort of. You get a person who wants the best stumbles along the way but happens to be sort of the right person in the right place. And that's what the historians have real trouble dealing with is the idea that maybe it is a bit of luck that these right people were there. Not because they were special, but it's just sort of who they were. And the other part that sort of gets me is the episode titles deconstruction. And this part in Act 2 is the ultimate academic deconstruction under the concept, I think, of postmodernism. It really. They are like the representation of academic postmodernist thought. And this is filmed, you know, in the late 90s when that's certainly at its almost peak of influence. And you could just tell how JMS wanted to rip that apart. He didn't like that because these characters did not gain. You know, you don't feel sympathetic for the academics. After Delan comes in and rips him apart. That is something that I felt like, oh, he has opinions. JMS has opinions on this and he is putting them first and foremost and I'm there for it.
• 19:58
  JOSH: Yeah. Not only that, one of the academics tries to get the last word in after Delenn sort of has a mic drop and she turns and shames him into silence. Because it's sort of like really like you learned nothing from what I just said. You know, it is interesting too, Delenn coming in and saying you guys don't know what you're talking about and you're not interested in knowing anything. But something I can tell you for sure is that the only thing you have to know is that John Sheridan was good, kind and decent. And I think what is interesting there is that, you know, I think we have a tendency to forget that historical figures are humans who are complicated, even contradictory. And I think not just academics, but I think people in general like to reduce historical figures to simplified sort of ciphers for library. Uh, this guy was the honest one and this guy was the crazy one. And this guy was the strategy guy. And this one, like, so that you can reduce complex events and the interaction of all of these variables and personalities and agendas and motivations to kind of wrap your head around it, to kind of reduce everything into these very simplistic shapes that will fit together to form the picture you want. Which is interesting too, because I think to contrast the second act of the academics with the following one, there is a conscious, intentional attempt to fabricate history. I do think that the intention of the academics is to try to find the truth, though their methods and ideas are sort of flawed.
• 21:47
  JOHN: The biggest difficulty with academia, which leads the general population to look askew sometimes towards academia rightfully and wrongfully. And I think that skepticism is overwrought. But institutionally speaking, when somebody makes their name as a PhD for something, they've done it for something that they've clearly defined and they've used a methodology that's been clearly defined. So anything that opposes that becomes a very personal opposition. So in. It's very difficult to say, go up to the ideal of saying, well, everything is supposed to be for open inquiry and rigorous methodology of examining and doing that. And these characters, these academic characters in this embody sort of the stereotype of, well, they have not only pre existing. It's not that they have a pre existing perspective as much as they have a pre existing framework. Academic framework which they have to apply to everything because, well, that's how their department does it. That is a currently in vogue way of thinking about things. That must be the truth. Well, five, ten years later, there's going to be a new way of thinking that's in vogue, that's going to be different. But they're very much locked in and nothing else can be the case. But it would also be a challenge to their position to do so. So it's really hard to have a really open, genuine discussion about that when to, you know, the word agenda comes out. People use that as this very pejorative term. No, there are agendas there. It's like, well, this is my discipline. This is the way I study XYZ departments ideas whether it's economics, psychology, whatever it is. And they're limited by that so profoundly. As the viewer, we get to be magic. We get to be magic audience that knows and has seen things that they could never have seen and understood. And again, you're just sitting there like, no, that's not what it is. So when Delenn comes in, like you mentioned, I'm practically like, you know, clapping that. Oh, my God, thanks. She's going to set the record straight. And what you quoted her saying was the most devastating thing that could have been said because she simply. She didn't try to debate academic jargon or go into intellectual knots. She said he was a good and decent man, period. Doesn't have to justify every single decision he made, rightly or wrongly. It's that the important part of this is that just as a person, he tried his best. He messed up at different points. He certainly had his weak points. But overall he was a good man. And that's something that, again, is hard to parse. There are people who really aren't. They're still human. They're not entirely evil. But there are people whose motives are incredibly different. They are far more self serving. And that's the distinction to make is that the people who ended up at the top of Babylon 5 were not. And those who were incredibly self serving thinking of early Jakkar and certainly Londo had incredibly difficult journeys to go through to become different versions of themselves. And not every character did. People ask sometimes, so how did Mr. Morton become so evil? Chances are he was just a regular guy, you know, out on the Interplanetary Expeditions mission. He was probably excited to get a good payday. Didn't have a particularly strong or bad moral center which made him ideal for manipulation of the shadows. And then the really Tragic part was Sheridan's wife. There she is, Anna. Sheridan comes back and you can say, well, it must have been the fact that she was put in one of the Shadow ships, but she seemed to go so hook line and sinker into the Shadow ideas. And you wonder, but this is the guy that he was partners with because she was also human, slightly different person, probably a great good person beforehand, but just different enough that she was an ideal representative of the Shadows. And how do you quantify that? Super easily. How do you predict that beforehand? And yes, you get to write the show of being like, well, this is how it happened. But the characters are so fleshed out and so well thought at and so challenged that they don't feel like they are just two dimensional good guy characters. So yeah, when Delenn leaves him with that final line, you do not wish to know anything. You wish only to speak like. Well, we love to speak here. I mean, you and I, we love to talk about this show. But these characters are the worst representation that they only want to hear their own voices and to see her even they have questions, sure. But they want them to work. They want it to work out for their pre existing viewpoints. So yeah, I ended up with this act of the show. I was so angry, you know, just like, how dare they do this? How dare they, you know, take the people we, we know and cast them in this light. But yeah, what do you. What is history going to do with anybody today who's of note? They're not going to get them. Right. You could try best you can, but you know, no one's going to know who the leaders of our world today really are because you pointed out we barely know who they are ourselves. We know broad strokes, we know some things. So that's something really interesting. It's funny, jumped right into Act 2 because I think that's the. Really though there's so many more in this. I mean this episode just has so much going for it. But it starts off much closer. Was, was it 10 years after the.
• 26:49
  JOSH: First segment is in the immediate aftermath.
• 26:52
  JOHN: Oh, that's right. It's 2262.
• 26:54
  JOSH: Right? It's 2262. And no. Yeah, I'm glad that you brought up that for a segment because these two segments, the first half of the show, the panel of experts, you know, on cable news, essentially, and the academic panel, these are the two that are most familiar to all of us because we see this all the time. The first act probably is the most familiar because we see this nonstop. It's Three talking heads in the little boxes on the screen sort of casting judgment and blame and trying to hopelessly prognosticate about what's in store. And there was one thing about this that struck me. Watching it now versus 25, 30 years ago. First of all, this whole segment feels even more realistic to me now than then. There was just something about the way that they were speaking about things and the idea that the annoying guy, the guy who worked for the Clark administration or was at least part of the party that he was a member of. Right. You know, who now has some egg on his face because the head of his party tried to scorch the Earth and, and was deposed. And, you know, we're moving on from that. But yet he still believes what he believes, right?
• 28:10
  JOHN: Yeah.
• 28:11
  JOSH: And what he says, he's not entirely wrong. He's just coming at it from the perspective of, I'm not in love with this guy Sheridan. So I am going to voice the alternative potential viewpoint because I'm not going to give Sheridan a break or the benefit of the doubt like the other panelists are because the other ones already agree with him broadly. He did not. But I remember thinking when I was a kid, well, a kid, I don't know how old I was. I guess I was 14 or 15 when this was on. So, yeah, so a kid. I found this guy such an over the top caricature that I almost didn't believe it. I was like, how can he still be playing for the other team when we just all saw what, what happened? And now I think he's perhaps the most realistic member of that panel.
• 29:08
  JOHN: That is something I had not thought about with that. Brilliant. You're right, he's realistic. And the cognitive dissonance when he said, like, oh, yeah, we'll just talk about like scorched earth, you know, we'll move on from that. That is a such a real phenomenon, again, is very hard to quantify. It's very hard to understand that it is something that is not only dissonant, it's very human. And you're sitting there like, okay, so this person was on the wrong side, but he's still being somewhat respected, somewhat listened to because, you know, millions of people on Earth must have supported him. I mean, Henry Ellis is one of those characters that, you know, you and I look at and we're like, oh, this guy, this guy. But he's so representative of how a ton of people in the Earth alliance and Earthdom must feel because they didn't really think that Clark was going to be that bad. And how could they live themselves if they could accept that the guy who was going to go scorch to Earth was their guy? And again, this is a similar comparison to Nazi Germany. Millions of Germans could not reconcile that the guy they voted for in 33 and supported for a decade after that created the concentration camps and holocaust. Like that's the reality of it. But even in decades later, when people were interviewed, they would challenge the very validity of that notion because they'd be like, oh, I didn't even know that happened. Did it really happen? I couldn't imagine that. And they couldn't really live with themselves for that. But nor did they believe that it was a problem because that's not what they thought they voted for. That's not what they thought they were supporting from their nationalist standpoint. Even though it really was at. As they watch their neighbors getting taken away and everything else. But it's a very common experience. So here you have this character, Henry Ellis. Yeah, to him, it's just, well, he went too far. Turns out he was crazy. But maybe the things that, you know, he was talking about, otherwise, I still go for. And as a result, he's going to be incredibly skeptical of Sheridan because Sheridan was on the other team. But also, Sheridan represents a profoundly different worldview which is one that you can cobble together disparate groups in a peaceful manner and build something over time. As difficult as it is, the Clark regime embodies, you know, what we've discussed many times before. It embodies Earth First. That's the language used throughout the show, is Earth First. Why can't we just. When we do the media episodes, that's a big part of it. The various senators generally say, well, why can't we just focus on the problems back at home first? Why are we funding this Babylon 5 station when there's so much that needs to be done back on Earth? That is the Clark Party. That is their belief is that you cannot be looking outside. You have to just care about yourself, your own people. And that's what we see today. The new. The new national security viewpoint as released by the Trump administration is literally that screws over Europe completely. Says we're not there to be a global anything. We're there to have our own little sphere of influence over here in the Western Hemisphere. Screw everybody else. Unless it directly. And the text is unless it directly influences our interests. But that is the viewpoint of a lot of people. And it has been at various points in our history leading up until World War II incredibly isolationist. If it doesn't concern us directly or our money, we don't care. Europe falls apart completely goes in the Second World War. It takes being attacked for the Japanese before the US enters that war. It is not something uncommon in our own history. It makes complete sense for to endure in the Earth Alliance. So this guy has a perspective that's incredibly real seeming because he is real for us today. I'm glad he turns out to be wrong about the Alliance. But isn't it interesting that he's still given such. Such a platform and seeming impromptu of respect or social acceptability? So clearly on Earth, they. They're not purging Clark supporters. They may say, you lost, you were wrong, but the nature of that was not to exile the other side entirely. And that probably leads to some other interesting conflicts in the future history of the Earth Alliance. And then Ellis makes his final sort of comment there asking the question, and he's not wrong. He says, will Sheridan have to resort to force to keep this vision going? And that question is answered in the fifth season and in later stories about the alliance that yes, there will be times when force is used and, you know, will that be for disaster? Ultimately, yeah, this was a good. This was a good part. It's a little bit quicker than the rest of the episode and it doesn't always like, seem as exciting as what happens after Act 2, but it's really. It's something that we don't get very often in any TV shows. Imagine watching TV show and then getting on the meta level, the thoughts of people in that world on what you just watched. I can't think of anything else that I've really had that experience with. Can you?
• 34:03
  JOSH: No, I really can't. But one of the reasons why I think this episode is effective and works, you know, because it does have like sort of a finale. Ish. Or at the very least like postscript sort of a feeling. One of the reasons that it works where it is is because there's another season after this and the show is saying that more stuff happens. That's important. Right. So the same way that you were saying that, you know, the hero's arc of Frodo is not one that we're used to seeing. The arc of this show is working in a similar way in that what would normally be sort of the finale of the story of the show which we just saw is not the end. And actually Sheridan lives long enough, quote unquote, in season five. Arguably, he's fallen a little bit from the pedestal where he ends up, right now he's, you know, the hero returning home. He was just elevated to be the president of the galaxy. And then in season five, it's about how being a leader and trying to keep the alliance together and playing politics is not the same job. And arguably he's not as good at that job as he was at the previous job.
• 35:24
  JOHN: That's very, that's very true.
• 35:26
  JOSH: So to be like, oh, you think that this is the finale? You think that this is the end of the story? Well, actually it's not. In the third segment, the 500 year segment is, I think, the thing that people had the most trouble with the, the idea that 500 years after the events of this show, it all happens again. Essentially the, the Earth becomes a fascist state and there's a civil war again. And it's on some level, it's very easy to look at that and be like, okay, well then the story we just watched was all for nothing. You know, if it's just going to happen again. And that's a view that I was not unsympathetic to at the time, but now it seems super, super important in some ways. I think that this segment is actually optimistic that it took 500 years because, you know, in our real world.
• 36:15
  JOHN: Oh, that's dark.
• 36:16
  JOSH: No, it's true. It's true because in the real world I think it took us about 70, because, you know, really it's the lived memory of what that was and the fight to defeat it. Once that fades, it seems to come back.
• 36:31
  JOHN: It's every time and more so with the news of the past few weeks. We are living through this again with that national security was the assessment of the strategy, I think is what it was called. It's very clear that the direct intention of this current administration is to undermine and eliminate all the forms of global cooperation that were taking place before, certainly undermining the US's NATO alliance status, our allyship with Europe. The criticism of Europe being largely on this idea of multiculturalism, that we can't be allied with Europe because they are becoming far too multicultural and everything else while wanting to cozy up towards Russia, China and India, who all themselves are, or leaning heavily authoritarian in the case of India. It's a really interesting phenomenon. But the allegory here is that if the Interstellar alliance is a stronger version of a UN, and that is the point that Act 3, 500 years in the future, it seems that on Earth, there's huge divisions at that point that are turning a lot of the population against the ISA enough to foment a large conflict over it. So you're right. 500 years before there was a challenge within Earth to go against the Interstellar Alliance. And that's not to say we don't know what the state of the ISA is at that point. Is it more flawed? Is it somewhat corrupted at that point in history? We don't. That was too much for the show to really detail about. But it's reasonable to assume that there were some valid grievances but that it went to the extent of well, it's time to destroy that institution. We're living that out right now. The administration also was leaked yesterday, the day before they're trying to advocate us interfering to break up the European Union. I believe they want Italy, Austria, Poland and Hungary to leave the eu. That our administration is saying that even though that was leaked, that is the policy. That's madness. But you look at that impulse now. So it is divide up the more liberal leaning institutions to weaken them and instead have a three region series of more autocratic spheres. Basically all the Americas for the us, all of Asia for China and Europe will be dominated by Russia. It's a fascinating view that I thought you could only write in a novel. If I imagine this 10 years ago, to say nothing of when this show aired in the 1990s when it was all about Fukushima's idea, the end of history, US is undeniable dominance over the world and never ending hegemony. And we're seeing how that goes. I think the irony for us is that it's not coming from an outside force. This is coming from the inside. It is forces within this country that are saying, yeah, we don't want to do that for, for valid reasons on the left and the right, I guess. But to actually abdicate it rather than have a separate power oppose us and fight us for it, we're just giving up on it. And I still struggle to completely understand that. But I do think back and I do think back to the way that Earth alliance was operating in this is that they were withdrawn. They were less interested in the finale of season two, which we've discussed where they sign, you know, and non aggression pact with the Centauri. It wasn't because Earth was going to do anything. They opposite, they didn't want to do anything. They wanted to benefit from some trade here and there and then just focus on what was happening inside the Earth alliance, nothing else. It's an incredibly myopic small view of existence, but it's very common. And that's what we're seeing now, it's not imaginable to me because I'm thinking along the storylines of, well, wouldn't you want the Interstellar Alliance? And a quick note on what some of the comments are on this is that it seems in 500 years in the future that there's a struggle for. I think they mentioned like a struggle for resources happening on Earth or within the Earth Alliance. And that's interesting because we're used to Star Trek where despite all the, you know, enemies that they face, whether it's going to be the Klingons or the Borg or whatever, the Federation largely maintains its status as a post scarcity civilization. Nobody lacks for anything. That's not a motivation for it to cause problems in the Federation. That's never proposed as being a reality for humans. In the timeline of Babylon 5, we're completely existing within a scarcity mindset and world at that point. Things are still scarce, resources are still scarce. Maybe the Minbari have more, but even that's unclear. I doubt the Vorlons have any problem with that. They were able to manufacture a giant fleet in a matter of a year. But when you're still existing within scarcity, all the same old problems will manifest. And JMS never had any intention of writing a post scarcity world. That sort of idea was what Star Trek was about. So naturally the conflict emerges. People start pinning blame. Oh, it must be the isa. I think back on Brexit, oh, well, if we only weren't part of the eu, we'd have money to fund the National Health Service. Now we are nine years out of when Brexit was initiated. And guess how well the National Health Service is funded? Oh, worse than ever. Worse than ever. Despite not having to send a penny over to the European Union anymore. Those arguments never work in reality, but they really do work to convince people that's the reality. And so when you now start this act of the show with somebody who is, you know, basically using a holodeck to try to recreate these images of the Babylon 5 cast and crew to be villains is absolutely fascinating to me. At the time, I didn't understand why it would be so relevant in the future. And then you realize, oh, this is the ultimate propaganda tool. Turn these characters, turn these people into historical fascists to justify you being fascists, but from the opposite point of view, really strange. And that's how I think of like, well, how can you justify atrocities that you are committing? Frame the other side as atrocious and then you can do the bad Things as well. So now they recreate through creating what I'll call in modern terms sort of like these simulated AIs of Sheridan, Delenn, Garibaldi, you know, and everybody else. And they did it too good. I love that. That was. JMS's hook, was that they did it just as good. As we mentioned early in the episode, that it was Garibaldi who was programmed with all the personality traits tweaked to be more of what obviously this guy Daniel wanted them to be but he couldn't help but snoop. And as a result, Garibaldi figures out what's really going on, that they are simulations, that they are these people. And he completely derails what Daniel is trying to do and releases the information to whatever other side is involved in this conflict on Earth that the first Strike attack is about to happen. And as a side note there, Daniel's wearing a pin or an insignia. Honestly, that is incredibly and deliberately reminiscent of the SS of the two. Lightning bolt, SS symbol. Like, it's meant to be that it's meant to, like. Jamis is not trying to be subtle. He's being subtle with a capital B. It's right there in your face. You know, the. These characters were meant to be that you don't have to think too hard about, like, well, maybe they are. No, they are. They absolutely are. And the result of this scene of these simulations playing out of seeing the horrible acts and the executions that were overseen by Sheridan the horrific medical stuff done by Franklin, all of that. Oh, it's really hard to watch. Even though, you know, it's not real.
• 43:53
  JOSH: Yeah. I mean, first off, that speech that they make Sheridan give once again, like, I thought 30 years ago, you know, maybe it was a little cartoonish and overtly villainous for it to be believable within this world. But. But I was watching it just earlier and I was like, this sounds like something Stephen Miller would say.
• 44:14
  JOHN: Yeah, it sounds very close, though not in style to what Trump says, but you're right, it's much closer to the way that Stephen Miller actually talks when he's doing these media moments. He's quite literally, you know, close to the figures of the Third Reich and. Yeah. Oh, God, wasn't it great to be innocent 30 years ago and think that this would never happen again? Yeah.
• 44:39
  JOSH: I mean, maybe that was the folly of it, all, right. To think that it can't happen here. Like, we even still had warnings like this and still thought that, you know, we were smarter than the House or whatever.
• 44:51
  JOHN: But wouldn't you love to ask JMS if he thought back then that this was a likelihood for us. And I'm sure you can parse that from a lot. From his amazing comments throughout the years, I get the sense that he did expect it.
• 45:04
  JOSH: Yeah, I think he was hopeful that it wouldn't happen, but I think he was aware of how much more possible it was or how much closer we were to that reality than people generally believed. You know, myself included. Certainly if we ever have an opportunity to ask him a single question, I think that's the question that we would have to ask him. Like write it down. No, completely.
• 45:28
  JOHN: But.
• 45:28
  JOSH: But yeah. There is something about this segment that is really unnerving beyond like the fascist politics of it all, which is this idea of resurrecting in a digital form these personalities of historical figures and then puppeteering them like marionettes against their will to say and do things that would horrify the real iterations of them. And I think the implication is that to preserve the reality or the verisimilitude of the simulations, I think that they do have that self awareness like while it's happening, like they see how they are being manipulated and this idea that like not to get too far down this road, but it does remind me of this kind of facile belief or even faith that a lot of people in Silicon Valley seem to have that at the end of the day all of us are just reducible to information. And if you can copy the information, that copy is just as alive and conscious and self aware and valid as the biological entity. This idea that we're all just information. So once we have computers that are fast enough and large enough to copy and contain and run these programs, essentially, you know, again, I think it's a very myopic, reductivist way of thinking about it. But a lot of powerful and influential people actually believe this. So that said, if you have that in your mind, then the, this is actually the nightmare scenario of that you can resurrect someone against their will.
• 47:00
  JOHN: Yeah.
• 47:00
  JOSH: In a situation of your design and make them do whatever you want. That is a terrifying black mirror sort of a proposition that I think like you can't really undersell how horrifying that is.
• 47:14
  JOHN: Do you know there's there, there's an author out there who I'm reading in this moment right now who really brilliantly is portraying this in Banks the culture series book 9 called Surface Detail, in which there's an afterlife that civilizations across the galaxy have created VR afterlives. Now he's writing this in the aughts at this point late ought to. And it still seems ahead of its time that civilizations create an afterlife and they transcribe one's consciousness. But that word is very important. Transcribe. You're duplicating information. Is it continuous, you know, or is it just really a copy? At which point it's not really an afterlife, it's an after copy. And how civilizations go to extremes to actually create their own notions of heaven and hells. So you can actually be condemned theoretically to a hell of a VR because somebody else imposes it upon you because of their beliefs. Wild stuff. But it's still. Is it a copy? Is it the real. But yeah, you could bring somebody into that against their will and make them exist. And apparently in these civilizations, as they're sort of sight, is that in many cases, after years or decades or centuries, the consciousnesses are clamoring to. To. For permanent death, for true death. And they're granted it. Once the civilization figure out, oh, this is maybe not the best idea. It's a wild idea that you would in theory be able to resurrect somebody from the idea that there, there, there's no continuity. So they're not resurrecting. Even if they have all the information, even if they could get a mental scan of Sheridan, Delenna and everybody else, it's not going to. They didn't have that. So it is just reduced the information we know, which from the previous act, a hundred years in the future we know is woefully incomplete.
• 48:51
  JOSH: Right. Well, even then, it's like, you know, essentially what they've created is like a large language model version of these personalities. And in that sense, I think it is quite delicious or ironic the way that, you know, Garibaldi can't help but behave. The way Garibaldi behaves. And the downfall of what's the character's name who's running all this?
• 49:13
  JOHN: Daniel.
• 49:14
  JOSH: Right. Daniel's downfall is something that now that we have interacted for a couple of years with these quote unquote AI Chatbots might be familiar to, I think a lot of people where he can't help but be curious and the AI tells him exactly what he wants to hear, Right?
• 49:33
  JOHN: Yep.
• 49:34
  JOSH: Which I noticed this time because, you know, that's sort of, I think if you read any critiques about ChatGPT and other LLMs, which one of the critiques is that, you know, it's a product, it wants to please you, so it sometimes may alight certain facts or realities just to Tell you what you want to hear so you'll keep the interaction going, which is exactly what happens here.
• 49:59
  JOHN: Yes, yes.
• 50:00
  JOSH: Which I thought was funny. Yeah.
• 50:01
  JOHN: And I doubt that J Mouse is trying to be a tech prognosticator here.
• 50:05
  JOSH: No, I don't think so at all.
• 50:06
  JOHN: Well, this makes sense from a writer's perspective, from understanding technology as it seems to be evolving, for it to be so weirdly applicable in this exact moment. And we came into this podcast more about the politics and the global situation, and then we're like, oh, yeah, this is really apropos at least this part of the show, because the rest of Babylon 5 doesn't spend too much time on the questions of AI. It's used as McGuffin. There are different things. There's the great machine that interfaces with a human core. Shadowships use a human core as their cpu. All these different version. But they don't spend too much time on the idea of a intelligent self aware machine. This being essentially CHAT GPT, only slightly more advanced. I mean, if even that. I mean, I think you. I think we could almost do what they're. What Daniel's doing this episode we can do now. We need better video technology. That's about the only thing make Sora a little bit better. But other than that, creating the personalities, creating a Sheridan and Garibaldi, that would sound to our ear accurate. Well, all you would have to do is tell ChatGPT to, you know, process all the scripts of the episodes and then spit out new content for this. And it would feel just real enough that it's like, well, yeah, that's the way Garibaldi speaks. That's the way it is. Is it really real? That's the major question. But how it traps us in that loop of like, oh, it gets itself into that, of creating a Garibaldi, that's suspicious. But as a viewer back watching this episode, I never was under the idea that, well, they were real. When he says, rest easy, my friends, that was a very sentimental moment. But I wasn't in my mind being like, oh, these are the resurrected souls and beings and consciousnesses of these characters. It was. They're close approximations and oh yeah, Garibaldi's being Garibaldi. And then he really wants to put, you know, to rest this idea. I like that. But I didn't confuse myself with it. I didn't confuse it with being real. Today people are really confusing what they're seeing come up on these AI large language models with real things and it's having profound effects. And Negative effects on people's psychology.
• 52:14
  JOSH: I want to share something that is a little strange. I may cut this out of the episode, but what you just described, I actually experimented with. And I tried to create a Captain Kirk chatbot. So I fed it not every single episode, but like I hit all of the key ones, some of the original series episodes, obviously all the movies. And I gave it the memory Alpha entry on Captain Kirk. And then like I had to tweak it because it was like, well, that's not how Kirk would sound or he would never say that or blah, blah. I was pleasantly surprised that it's actually much, much harder to make it sound right.
• 52:48
  JOHN: There's a reason why the character of Daniel is wearing like a white scientist coat and why he's walking around like, you know, with the analysis he is. The amount of work it does require to get it right and the human input to get it right. For us, the AIs don't care when they're interacting with each other, but for us, and that it becomes almost an art form. Deep Space Nine had a similar use of this idea and technology. When they're trying to fake a, a meeting of the, of the levels to which they had to go to both create a believable forgery in terms of the technology, the imprints, everything else, but also, you know, a near artist level technician who can create a believable holographic simulation. That's the reason why when we watch AI, it's not just a tech making something look like Uncanny Valley. Our brains do a lot more than we recognize and can even have even fully explored. There's a reason why we see something. We're like, that's slightly off. When we see some, something trying to approximate a person, it can be close enough that we don't care. So we may say, yeah, that's fine, our brains may say, that's good enough for me. But we'll still know. And sometimes we will get really uncomfortable like, yeah, that's just not really good. So I can imagine there being like a market for the people, the Daniels, whatever, who would be able to really get it right and the amount of tweaking and effort it requires. And then I imagine that him broadcasting this is sort of in line with how propaganda is used. It doesn't have to be 100% believable. It has to be enough to reinforce the pre existing biases of those who it's being shown to. But it can't be. As a result, you can't have uncanny value. You can't have something that's going to kick your brain out of reality. Even if you don't think this is what these people said, the vibe, the aesthetic, the nature of Wuthering has to be enough that your brain just goes along and says, yeah, but that looks like Sheridan, that talks like Sheridan. And nothing stands out to me as being off or jumps out. Like, oh, they got that part wrong.
• 54:44
  JOSH: What's really interesting is that to go back to the Deep Space nine example, the episode in the Pale moonlight, initially, the forgery does not work. It's a fake, right? Exactly. It's a.
• 54:55
  JOHN: Exactly.
• 54:56
  JOSH: But Garak, the simple tailor, knows it won't. So he stages an assassination of the Romulan who discovered it was a forgery. And then what's left over, the data rod of the forgery is so damaged, but what survives will look genuine because it's damaged. So I think you're exactly right. Like, you just have to get it as close as you can and then if you sort of layer on top of that, if you sort of scuff it up or obscure it. So because of the lack of fidelity, you circumvent the argument about authenticity.
• 55:32
  JOHN: Yep. And then have it come from the right source, which is, oh, this was the ambassador from. You know, was traveling with this. Like, it all starts to come together and make sense. And in that episode, it seems pretty clear that Garak attended this from the very beginning, that he's leading Sisko along the breadcrumb trail of cross, creating this forgery knowing that exactly as you just framed everything brilliantly, that it wasn't just the data rod that mattered, it was the entire circumstance around it, from it being scuffed and damaged to. To, like, who had it and them being assassinated to now. Now it works. You needed every last part. And you certainly would not have gotten them on board with that plan from the beginning, but he was thinking ten steps ahead, like. Like a super spy and super manipulator would. And it made that again, that was one of the best written episodes, both from the intensity perspective, but also that, like, layered approach to that. And that leaves you with, like, yeah, this is how the notion of trying to. How do you convince people of things? And 500 years in the future, like, why would they need to do this? Well, the same things are relevant, but also, is it just enough, like, for the world of 500 years from now, with Earth, is that just enough to make it work? And then what you just said about, you know, with it being blown up and the assassination of the Romulan Ambassador well, that's why Garibaldi's message is more believable, I wonder, because Garibaldi hacks in while he's chatgpting up Daniel and then says, well, okay, and now I've just recorded everything and I just broadcast it to the other side. And the other side would be more than willing to believe that this happened now. And so as a result, the first strike gets reversed. The missiles are coming in to even this location, and the end of the scene is him saying, rest easy. And the bright explosions. I mean, I love how there are parallels here, but also how it goes back to the playbooks of this is how propaganda works. This is how you manipulate information and how it is absolutely happening today. Today somebody can release an AI video of anybody. I've seen ones of Trump where it's meant to be, you know, humorous or insulting depictions of him. They're quite believable overall. And as they get better, they're more believable. But the question is, so why do some people believe one video is real and not? That's the art form involved in that. And so a character like Daniel is figuring out what do I have to do to sell this to my side.
• 57:57
  JOSH: Right, Exactly. And that's something that I don't think a lot of people are taking into consideration. It's not just how technically proficient the forgery is made or the AI rendering is made. It's also. So you just said, why do some believe this one and not this one? It's because you want this one to.
• 58:13
  JOHN: Be real and who released it? Do you have trust in the person who released it? So now you put your confidence in that. There's so many levels to how something takes place. Today there are more photos being released. I don't know what they are, but I saw the headline more Epstein photos and that whole thing, what would have absolutely had people going absolutely wild if it was for their side three or four years ago on the more QAnon side of like, oh, you know, I'm going to get these evil Democrats are clearly running these rings across the planet to see that it's their own guy. Well, well, that must be fake or just as valid for these people as it no longer matters.
• 58:54
  JOSH: Right?
• 58:55
  JOHN: And that's also the art of propaganda is you have to find out how do you get something out there that will matter to people. So my impression was always this was a simulation meant be transmitted to whatever side that Daniel was on, not the other side. It was meant for his own people to consume, to say, yep, we're about to do. The first strike we're about to do is totally justified. We're the good guys and leave it at that.
• 59:17
  JOSH: I'm reminded of when Ivanova was plugged into the Great Machine and she found the smoking gun that President Clark was behind the assassination and how that still wasn't enough. Right.
• 59:30
  JOHN: Yeah, we discussed that. Yeah.
• 59:32
  JOSH: They were questioning its validity and there were questions about where did this come from? What are the motives of the people?
• 59:39
  JOHN: So ask the question, where did it come from?
• 59:41
  JOSH: And also the fact that they couldn't say where it came from. You could imagine on another show or, like, a more simplistic version of this where, like, once that video clip is out there, I mean, that's the end of the story. It's like, okay, you know, the truth is out of.
• 59:55
  JOHN: Credits roll like, oh, we got the video out there. Problem solved. Yeah.
• 59:58
  JOSH: Right. But it's not about finding the truth. It's convincing people.
• 1:00:03
  JOHN: Oh, my God. This episode has so much more than I imagined.
• 1:00:06
  JOSH: It's so dense. You know, one thing I was thinking briefly before we move on to the, I guess, myth and religion segment. In that first segment, you said something about how, you know, because Henry Ellis is there. It's clear that his side or the members of Clark's party were not purged and they were welcomed into polite society or reintroduced in polite society again. I wonder. You can imagine all of the conspiracy theories about how Clark actually died, right? And, like, well, he didn't turn the planetary defense grid on Earth itself. Why would he do that? Like, that's crazy. I think for some, that was obviously a turning point where they were like.
• 1:00:45
  JOHN: Okay, just more misinformation, that.
• 1:00:49
  JOSH: Right. But all the people who weren't there you could see somebody like a Henry Ellis being like, how do we even know that's really what happened? Like, you know, these people, they'll say anything to justify what Sheridan did. Right?
• 1:01:00
  JOHN: Right.
• 1:01:01
  JOSH: When you plant the seed of doubt the viewpoint that, well, that's not what actually happened becomes a valid belief to hold.
• 1:01:10
  JOHN: Yeah.
• 1:01:10
  JOSH: And you can't ostracize or purge someone if they have a belief that's valid to hold.
• 1:01:15
  JOHN: That itself is a really interesting question because it goes back into, like, obviously, what's the nature of trust? Truth? The postmodernist deconstruction of these falling stars. Like, how do you create something that is believable? What should you believe? How can you believe it? Why should you believe it? Everything else. But, you know, we only tend to survive peaceably when we agree On a common framework of reality, these things exist. And we have a small population to this day that doubt the planet is round. I mean, and they are absolute about it now. It's a small fraction right now, but the flower of society is real and it has thousands of. They're adamant that this isn't. But we could really only function if 99.99% of us accept the planet as round and operate on the physical laws that dictate such when it's in question, you know, that's when it's trickier. And sometimes I think you can give up too much. I think what you just said about Ellis is interesting. Like, that side is let back into polite society. The president of the Russian Consortium, when she becomes the de facto representative of Earth after Clark. And she's basically talking about, like, how the only way we're going to get through this is to be peaceable, magnanimous to both sides, et cetera. And before we go into Act 4, just. I'll try to make this as quick as possible. That always struck me with, like, how Ellis comes out often. This as the mistake we made after the Civil War, after Reconstruction. And this is something that between some really interesting shows on Netflix, other things, if you want to check them out. The Death by Lightning is a cool little mini series about a president that no one really knows about. Garfield, what the Reconstruction era was like. It's not what wasn't taught very much to me in AP US History and how important it was that for a brief time there was through force of arms, the Union army from the federal government was imposing a new world on the South. It was imposing equality. It was imposing the new amendments that were passed. Amendments were only passed as a condition of being readmitted to the Union. And you had. Actually, if you watch as many series on Netflix, you see that in 1881, there is a black senator from the state of Mississippi duly elected. Now, the force part was a Union government enforcing the rules that said people are free to vote, people are free to speak, and you cannot intimidate somebody for being black or a freed slave. Now, after Reconstruction ends and the Jim Crow era begins, as the radical Republicans saw their influence wane, they were. They were the abolitionists of that era. You saw the complete readmittance of all of the plantation owners into polite society as if nothing had ever happened. Well, we must go for the better angels of our nature, as Lincoln would say, and reconcile. But that reconciliation without context or accountability, without going to the vicious extent, was the balance point. We didn't hit. I mean, Lincoln has assassinated. Johnson comes in. The whole history lesson is fascinating of how the reconstruction works and then fails. And it became this notion of like, oh, but we just completely accept that the war's over. We have new rules, and you know what? We're not going to bother to really enforce them. We're going to withdraw the Union army. We don't want to be seen as carpetbaggers anymore. Let's just let it all go. Well, after that one senator, I believe his name was Bruce K. Blanch, something to that effect. I'll get the name for you. There was not another black senator in the US Senate for 100 years after from the north or South. So you don't want peace under the force of gun. Of a gun. But what happened was the north lost its moral center. It became more convenient to worry about the economics, putting the war behind us and just, you know, who cares? I can just make more money doing it this way. We just want a life. We don't have to deal with this anymore. And what happened was it all came back. All the things that were that we lost half a million lives for on both sides in the Civil War came back. By the end of the 19th century under Jim Crow, got worse in many ways, except for the actual existence of slavery. And we are still to this day, under our current regime, fighting that battle. The whole thing of being anti DEI and everything else is the same battle. At the end of the 19th century. It is taking us backwards to a point where it is okay to look at these other groups and say, yeah, they're not equal. Look at the way it was like, well, these people, we're going to revoke their citizenship now. We're going to somehow find a way to nullify the 14th Amendment. All these things are because we too quickly say, yeah, but they just had a different point of view. No, I don't think that Ellis should be in jail, but he's given the sense of respect and acknowledgement as if nothing happened under Clark. Nothing that it's just cool. Yep, the guy did all these heinous things and going to challenge them or not. But you know what? We will treat you as if you are normal. There is the line of like, well, you were and you were on that side. Like, that's why what you say. But it wasn't a tearing in to the extent of saying, have you no decency? Like, where is your critique of Clark? Even if you agree with the principles of the party, Maybe it's more conservative or liberal, whatever it is, in their view, but there was no accountability held on a social level for somebody who was advocating for what was an incredibly oppressive authoritarian regime in our own history. That was done in Germany. In Germany, the Nazi party was outlawed by its constitution and statute. And the very notion that we would say, well, that's not free speech, well, they balanced it out pretty well in West Germany and eventually they reunited Germany and now they're weakening because it's becoming more acceptable with the AfD to allow for Nazi rhetoric to make its way back into the mainstream. So what's that line between how you manage all this? I don't think it's about a government imposed rule, but I think it is about the social rules that say we don't let you back with a sense of respect, like, you can do whatever you want, you're completely free. But that doesn't compel me to say, oh, but yeah, you're fine. And you know what, you just had a different point of view. I completely think that there's equal validity to that. It's saying, no, I'm still going to oppose you. I'm still going to stand up for that and I'll call you out respectfully and in that context. But in this, no one was calling Ellis out. They were just saying, well, you were part of the clock regime that lost. Like, no, he, he was part of a regime that committed heinous acts. How do you reconcile that? But even me saying this uploads a can of worms to oppress if it's taken the wrong way.
• 1:07:29
  JOSH: Well, that's why I think this ends up happening, because you don't want to become an oppressor, give the appearance of that. And that's, you know, why you do get things like, I think CNN does this particularly shamelessly where they include panelists who represent the extreme, ludicrous, fantastical views of the quote, unquote, other side. For the sake of not only appearing fair and even handed, as if they don't have an ideological point of view or a moral point of view, they're sort of neutral in every, on every level, but also because they need to put on a good show. So you want to have that person saying insane things. You can have the righteous indignation, you know, having it out on TV so there's something to watch. So, yeah, so the incentive structure is weird because everything you just described, we just went through some version of this. In 2020 and 2021, there were no consequences for anybody who worked in the Trump administration.
• 1:08:33
  JOHN: No, there were consequences only for the people who outright participated in the January 6th insurrection.
• 1:08:40
  JOSH: And even then.
• 1:08:41
  JOHN: And even then it was. They certainly didn't go after the big kahuna when it came to that. You know, they were so slow to go after Trump and his in the immediate lieutenants there that it never ended up coming to fruition. They went after the low hanging fruit. They went after, you know, a Viking guy. They went after all these other people, but not many people of consequence. And that's part of it, because when people talk about the elite, they always get it. I always think people get the term wrong. The elite is people with power who acknowledge other people with power, regardless of ideology, regardless of anything else. And the thing is, it's seen as sort of uncivil to go after, you know, somebody who has a similar powered position. The Senate is notorious for that, which is why senators are always on these programs in Babylon for senators always like, oh, but it's decorum and this and the leeway they give to somebody who could be doing something outrageous. And again, it's not about centering them by law, it's about centering them personally, saying, sir, this is not acceptable. Now maybe that works or doesn't, but no one says that anymore. Oh, but we have to maintain decorum. Well, without that, how would we have gotten past the McCarthy era? It took one person, finally, as the final break in the damage, to say, have you no decency, sir, to a sitting US Senator and to rip into him in a whole long speech. And finally people went, oh, yeah, no, he's being really indecent. But it was years before a single person was willing to stand up to McCarthy and say, hey, jackass, what the hell are you doing? No one would do that. And not just because they were afraid of being called a communist. It's because they were afraid that they might be called out one day because, oh, power doesn't call out power. A fellow senator never calls out a fellow senator. An elite never calls out an elite. A reporter never calls out another reporter. This would have been an instance where in an ideal world, in my view, somebody would have said, hey, Ellis, you were carrying water for a guy that did. Even if you don't believe this part, like, here's what we do know and here's what you advocated for. So where's your accountability for that? And that's what we sort of miss in, in that dialogue. And again, maybe that's why it's cyclical and maybe why this is written to be so cyclical that you start off 100 years, 10 years at that point, then 100 years, then 500 years, and then it all goes to shit and we have to start all over again.
• 1:10:52
  JOSH: You know, it's funny, JMS says in the JMS Speaks section on page for this episode on the Lurker's Guide, you know, someone says basically that, like, why is Henry Ellis on this show? And JMS Explains it. He's like, well, you know, if you look at speechwriters in the Soviet Union, after the fall of the Soviet Union, these people were reintroduced into polite society and still held similar positions. But then at the very end, he says, the problem is some people don't hold grudges for nearly long enough.
• 1:11:21
  JOHN: Oh, wow. Okay. But he was thinking this the entire time. I love this.
• 1:11:27
  JOSH: Yeah. The problem with most people is that they don't hold a grudge near long enough.
• 1:11:31
  JOHN: Yeah, I guess that's, you know, what Jamis said in that one sentence, What I just took 10 minutes to say. That's why he's a writer. That's why he's a writer. You know, that's it. That's what it is. It's. Yeah, yeah. And that. And there you go. That was why reconstruction failed. Everybody forgot and was like, yeah. Now let's just go back.
• 1:11:48
  JOSH: Arguably, that's why we are living through a second Trump administration.
• 1:11:53
  JOHN: That's a really good point.
• 1:11:54
  JOSH: And as we have discussed many times and will continue to, the ramifications for the world will be far reaching and long lasting. So, you know, I wish that the people who were in positions of power held a grudge.
• 1:12:10
  JOHN: I mean, it's an interesting notion because we've always been taught that the grudges are what lead to unending conflicts, which I think in one sense, they are. But to hear this from him is that. No, there's a truth to it, which is, I guess put. Put more civilly is those who remember history. If you don't remember history, make that at least part of the grudge. I mean, I think you have to do that so you don't get caught, you know, again locked in the same cycle. You have to remember this happened. How do we stop it from happening again to this day? That is the. That is, you know, what people refer to. You know, never forget the Nazis and the Holocaust, because it would happen again. You hold that grudge, if not against the living people, you hold against the ideas that led to the camps. And when you forget. And you're right. So now we have modern day, a different example, but the same cycle repeating itself of like People who shifted their vote in 2024 from 2020 because they were pissed off about the economy, they were pissed off at Biden for whatever reason, but they forgot what these are. People who are now outright suffering and being like, oh, God, how is this happening? Especially in the case of people who are getting caught up in these sweeps, you know. Well, you knew what he did in the first time when he was under control, when he, when the institutional checks and balances were still strong. And the fact that you could have such a goldfish memory about it is no surprise to me. But it's depressing. It wasn't a surprise to everyone, but it was a surprise to just enough people to be like, yeah, well, you know, maybe it makes sense to try it again.
• 1:13:43
  JOSH: Well, I agree with you, but I also don't think it's goldfish memory. I think they were also taking cues from the people in charge. And you heard a lot of people say, well, if he really is guilty of those things, then he would be in jail.
• 1:13:57
  JOHN: Right? Bingo. And you had the attorney general there, Merrick Garland, you know, saying that, oh, well, I just want to cross all my I's and t's. What he really wanted from everything that I've read in, you know, long form journalism, was he really didn't want to go after Trump. He didn't. And not out of a legalistic sense. It was, for him, it was a moral sense. You don't go after a previous president, which in general I agree with from the standpoint of you don't go after them politically. But the lack of accountability, which is part of the history of this country, yes, there was an incredible lack of accountability when it came to previous presidents. There was a lack of accountability for Nixon in more recent history, you know, all into this idea of, again, decorum. Well, what it really is, it's power acquiescent to powers, powerful people saying, well, listen, if, if this other guy with power is held accountable, then one day maybe I'm going to be held accountable for my shit. And that's the last thing they want. So that. So generally speaking, the last people who are going to enforce a rule against the previous president are going to be people who are in power because they know it could be turned on them if they're pulling shenanigans. And we're sort of locked into that at some point. Accountability is most powerful when it is social, not criminal. As much as you need the criminal aspect, no one was held socially accountable. There should have been a continued effort to deliberately expose the Reality of what had happened and not let people forget to say, hey, these people advocated for these things, they did these horrible things and you suffered because of them. And let's make that not acceptable in polite society anymore. Instead, all those people were invited right back into all the clubs, all the councils and all the meetings in the centers of power. And that's. I don't know. I don't know how you deal with that nature of power. How do you change the way that people want to do that on that level? I don't know. You know, that's something else to think about. Like, did the show ever deal with, you know, the solution to that? Because obviously what happens next as well, we didn't get it right. We went cyclical so hard that that flash that ends Act 3 turns out to be a near apocalyptic event.
• 1:16:03
  JOSH: Though, as they do say at the beginning of the second segment, they talk about the Hundred Year Peace.
• 1:16:08
  JOHN: Yes, right.
• 1:16:08
  JOSH: So that's pretty good.
• 1:16:10
  JOHN: Yeah, like pretty good.
• 1:16:12
  JOSH: And that's a real thing. Like that's the idea that you could, through some political action or through being victorious in some conflict. The idea that that would create peace forever. It's crazy.
• 1:16:25
  JOHN: It's crazy into the next part as well as the very end of the episode, which I can't wait to get to, because that's what really, you know, that's what gives the meat of like the fanboying out. Yeah, for me. But when you start in Act 4 and you realize, you think like, well, what has happened here? Why are we in medieval Europe now? And you realize that you were in a monastery with a monk who's weirdly talking to a camera at first that's hidden away, you realize, oh, we really fucked up. Like, we really fucked this up. That conflict caused by those two sides, the 500 year mark, was so devastating, it brought the planet Earth back to a pre medieval era. And I, you know, you see what is a really brilliant story and a fun. This for me is the most fun part of the show to watch of this episode is you're in this monastery and there's a monk questions faith about things. And then you, as it unfolds, you realize what they're talking about is a faith on earth built around the characters of Babylon 5 as these sort of like saint like characters. You're like, oh, this is getting kind of weird. And it goes and goes, but then you realize what's happening and the jump sort of the end. Realizing that Brother Alwyn is a ranger sets up something that blows my mind and first, the quick shout out to the actor who plays him, who is I think is hilarious in the role and brilliant in it. Roy Brocksmith, who sadly died all the way back in 2001, was known for some horror movies and some usually like out there, strange roles before. He's great with his high sort of voice and everything in this role. How frustrated he is with his younger monk being like, yes, yes, okay, fine. What's your crisis of faith this time? Let's talk it out. I mean, it's very entertaining to watch this scene unfold, but it's also really heartfelt, really debates again, JMS as an atheist writer, really exploring the nature of faith and what it means to a human being and why it is important and what its limitations are. This scene is really good and how the reveal is that Brother Alwyn is in fact a Ranger. He's on Le Shock that there he is and he's requesting at the very end. Oh yes, we're ready for the next level of things. Can you have some gasoline? You know, just end up somewhere near the monastery so you can start working the internal combustion engine. And that's when you realize that the Rangers are reconstructing Earth. But they must have taken a very specific approach to it because one would think, okay, well if Earth blew itself up and there. And I think that in other commentary and other things about this, it's the implication is the Earth alliance didn't blow themselves up necessarily there. There seemed to be other Earth colonies out there, other parts, many humans out there. But Earth specifically was nuked back into the Stone Age. And as opposed to just riding in there on white horses, the Rangers and the Interstellar alliance didn't come in to rebuild them and say, here you go, here's everything back. Just try to get it right this time. They said, that's not going to work. The same cycles repeat themselves. People will resent us. They'll do the same shit all over again. So they sort of let them on their own. Earth is on its own to rebuild from a pre industrial, pre Dark Ages society. But the Rangers are covertly helping it along, maybe accelerating it, but trying to get it right this time. That is a fascinating idea to me.
• 1:19:43
  JOSH: Sort of like Voron almost.
• 1:19:44
  JOHN: It's very much like Voron. It's very much like. And again, here I am. I love weaving things in. It's like reading that book series. I can't stop talking about the culture series the way they are. The anti Federation and constantly intervene, but usually on very subtle levels, very manipulative. Levels. The Rangers are doing that here. They're doing so with. Obviously they have a very long term plan because it's been 500 years. They've been going very slowly. They're not jumping ahead of themselves here. They're being very disciplined about it. I mean, imagine the temptation to say, yes, we're going to just reintroduce all the antibiotics. We're going to reintroduce all the technology that really saves lives. But they know that these people, this, our future selves, got it wrong so badly that you can't risk it again. You have to shape it from the beginning. So maybe the Sheridan myth there, you know, I'm uncomfortable with that. Like the illuminated. The illuminated Bible that is effectively the mythos of what happened on Babylon 5. I'm like, Ooh, I don't know if I agree with this. Like, what does this mean for the people of Earth?
• 1:20:42
  JOSH: Completely. Because once again, you can see the magic trick. And now it's on another timescale where we know that these mythological religious figures and their illuminations were just people.
• 1:20:55
  JOHN: Yeah.
• 1:20:56
  JOSH: Problems who, who did things and struggled and success was not guaranteed. You know, it's interesting, you say JMS is an atheist. He is. But I think what he's reminding us once again is that try to keep that in mind. These myths, these figures who we canonize were flesh and blood people. It's so interesting too, because I think when JMS is talking about faith, like, my perspective on this scene from his, from his perspective is what you can have faith in is that regardless of the details, regardless how it happened at the end of the day, have faith that people like this existed before, they exist now, and they will exist again. Good, kind and decent who are trying to do the right thing. And that's something you can have faith in. Yeah, maybe.
• 1:21:48
  JOHN: And, and Jamison talking about this episode in the Lurker's Guide, like, this is his thing. He says faith manages. This concept and idea of faith is very important to me, even if it's not in a specific deity. It's about going up against the naysayers, the mean spiritedness of those who say it can't be done only because of a mean spirit, you know, which is what the Ellis character going back to him sort of has. And that's all of Babylon 5. You don't always get it right. But those who try to make things better, eventually maybe it'll happen, you know, and you'll prove those naysayers wrong. So here we are. Like the naysayers seem to have won. Earth has been blasted back to the Stone Age. But here the Rangers are trying again, all over again. They have a different thing. And yes, they are arguably, to use the word, they are manipulating the situation on Earth. They're trying to get it right this time. And that's what Brother Allen says, but this time we'll do it right. Maybe there were some, maybe there were previous attempts in that previous 500 years that didn't go so well. We don't, you know, that that would be an interesting story to explore as well. But. So here we go and he ends it. And it's Char. His ending there is charming, you know, with the way he sort of signs off, you know, Brother Allen, you know, Ranger, you know, signing off. And you see him like looking at the Ranger outfit, you're like, wait, that's the Rangers that Earth will get. It will come. Earth will be rebuilt. There is hope. And it will get there. And the uncomfortable part is that, wait, we just spent five years, or in our case four years watching these stories. We thought we won. We thought it all was going to work out, the fairy tale ending as it is, to find out that, well, it's not that simple. We do go, we have. Because you said 100 years apiece. But then for it all to fall apart again felt like a betrayal. Watching this as a 20 year old, you know. Oh God, I didn't say that out loud, did I? And it wasn't a betrayal. It was one of the most truthful things that could have been done that. No, unfortunately we did get good work out of it. And some mean spirited people turned it around the other way for a while, but then it did. So again, we did rebuild. There is a future. Even if it takes, as Brother Alwin says, another thousand years, they will rebuild the Earth. And that leads us to the sort of shocking ending of the episode, which is you have full opportunity to fanboy out like that.
• 1:24:05
  JOSH: Yeah, I mean, why do we turn into Vorlons? I don't. It's super cool. We've spoken about this before. But there's this idea that in a million years we will ascend, become beings of pure energy, very similar to the Vorlons. And then at the end of this episode, our sun goes nova. Exactly what Sinclair was talking about in the first episode. And we take custody of the Vorlon homeworld, New Earth. I'm very interested why JMS has that happen. What is he trying to say with that? Because it is interesting too. Like he alludes to lots of things in this episode. Some for events that would happen the very next season. Some for stories that he thought he might one day be able to tell but never got around to for one reason or another. He talks about the Telepath War. He talks about Sheridan and Delenn's son. He makes allusions to all of these things in. From the perspective of it having happened already. And we know that he knows what all of those mean.
• 1:25:02
  JOHN: Yeah.
• 1:25:03
  JOSH: So why in a million years. Because our sun is not supposed to go nova in a million years.
• 1:25:07
  JOHN: Right.
• 1:25:08
  JOSH: Why are we leaving Earth and why are we going to the Vorlon homeworld? Like, why can't we just be Vorlons on Earth? Right.
• 1:25:15
  JOHN: You know, I think in one sense it's because JMS wanted a good bookend. He says in his own comments. He says, you know, like. And what you brilliantly put in a couple episodes ago was about, you know, Sinclair's, you know, is asked, you know, why are we out here? And he says, well, you asked the 10 different scientists, etc. They all agree the sun's gonna go out at some point. You know, probably billions of years. And so he bookends it. He bookends the whole show. There was critique that it was depressing. And while JMA says the very first episode. Well, very first episode as filmed is where he says that not the very first episode as aired to be a nitpicker. So for him, it's an author's. It's an author's bookend. And well, well done to that. There are a number of reasons I can see that making sense. That part of that 500 year conflict or the cycles that go through is the idea that maybe we did something to our son that shortened its lifespan in order to harness energy. But we did it a stupid way.
• 1:26:09
  JOSH: Oh, I like that.
• 1:26:10
  JOHN: That's. That to me is a very believable notion. I think it's less. I think it's less likely that it was an opponent that took out the sun than it was. This was just a consequence and that now we're ready to move on to the Vorlon homeworld. As Kosh makes that reference. Do not go to the Vorlon homeworld after they're gone. You won't be ready for a million years. And then there's. Who is the transcendent character in the first season?
• 1:26:36
  JOSH: Jason Ironheart.
• 1:26:37
  JOHN: Jason Ironheart. I was about to say Jeremy Irons. Mike different. And, you know, he says, I'll see you in a million years. So he's setting up this idea of In a million years, we get to this next level or this other level and it's a celebration because it's a celebration of New Earth. This is an optimistic, positive thing. We've gotten there. We survived a million years into the future as a species transcending to something else now. And we got through all of this. It. And, man, we were shaky at different points, but we did it. And I thought that was such a great end point because arguably, that's the end of the series. Sleeping In Light is the end of the story of Babylon 5. The end of the series is that point.
• 1:27:25
  JOSH: That's true. That's a good way to put it.
• 1:27:27
  JOHN: And, man, it was. It's so cool when you see the human who is looking at all this footage that makes up this episode turn into a ball of light and then pop into what is very clearly a humanized version of a Vorlon encountersuit. You're like, oh, wait. Oh, wait. Like, it's just cool. That's what it is. And you get to really have. You know, just like, I was basking in that from that part of the episode. It's like, oh, man, I wonder what the Vorlon homeworld is like. Do we. You know, and the big question is, like, how much do we learn from the Voron Shadow conflict? You hope that this time around, the heirs to the Vorlons, they get it closer to right this time and again. You don't expect perfection, but maybe they've learned something.
• 1:28:13
  JOSH: Yeah, I mean, that's why, ultimately, I think this is optimistic. Because it's like, yes, we will fall and stumble and make some huge mistakes. We'll. We'll blow ourselves back to the Stone Age along the way. But in the end, we will become Vorlons. We will get there. And I think it is also like, something. I think one of the characters in this show says it. But there's a thing that JMS has characters say several times and the phrasing is what has always made it stand out. But the idea is important. This show's about hope and the possibility of hope and surrendering yourself to the possibility of hope. And ultimately, I think that's the point that JMS is making. Like, there is always hope. I don't even know if the Rangers that we see and the monks in this fourth segment, I don't even know if they're ultimately successful. And I don't know that it even matters. Because the point is, there's always hope that someone will be trying. And again, I think it's very much JMS's perspective that success isn't guaranteed. It is still up to the individuals to do the right thing, to make the right choices. But there is hope that someone will be trying and that someone will succeed.
• 1:29:28
  JOHN: You know, if you read JMS's autobiography from a purely rationalist perspective, none of this should have been possible. No, the making of this show his very career and for him to say faith manages is an incredibly powerful statement because you read that in context of Zoroba biography and it's a person who, oh, man, has one hell of a journey, stumbles, foibles, everything. But that. The. It's not even that he's unwavering. It's that there is a faith and when it's broken, somebody else has faith and helps continue to the next level. That's sort of the brilliance of that notion and that not everyone makes it. He says himself, like. And this is obviously, this is his fictional future. But I've always. I always wanted to ask him more about what he said about this episode because. Because somebody asked him on AOL or whatever it was back then, what about the other races? He goes, well, the Minbari, they get there eventually. The Narnima, Centauri do not. They don't die out, but they just don't hit that level of first one. I think he calls it first oneishness. And that sort of sets me like, again, like, it's optimistic they survive, but they're maybe they're not able to get out of the cycle. Yeah, certain things. And that they are locked into that cycle within the show. TIFF season shows the cycle of the Centauri going right back to where they were again and then having to break out of it again and then veer in the future books helping them break out of it again. Like, it's an interesting idea. And yes, it is a little bit human centric to say that, you know, humans make it the Man Bari make it. Others make it to sort of a first one level. But not everybody will. And not every human, obviously. All the humans that die 500 years in the future don't make it. They don't get.
• 1:31:00
  JOSH: And that also goes all the way back to the first episode. I think the first episode aired. I think that this is at midnight on the firing line. Sinclair, he goes to Kosh and he asks if he'll show up to a council session. And Kosh says something to the effect of, like, they are a dead species. And Sinclair says, who, the Narn or the Centauri? And Kosh says, yes, yes, so. So all the way back then, whatever this notion of where every one will end up in a million years, JMS was seeding that from episode one. It's wild, it's crazy.
• 1:31:35
  JOHN: I've never encountered it with another show. I've never encountered that level of completeness of an idea. Authors do that regularly with books, series and everything else. To do it in television, or in a more modern sense, to do it with streaming is a herculean task. It's really amazing. And you're dissuaded from doing it, certainly by studios, but I really respect that. He had this framework, he had these notions set and knew how to write, knew how to pivot when necessary as well, and built in the trapdoors and was adaptable himself. But I appreciate it because it's a complete work. It's a complete thing that again, you usually only get from a well developed novel or novel series. And we get to experience that in this and now go back and realize that it's there. And I think there might be some other shows that with showrunners that can do that. I suspect most of them are adaptations of a book series. Game of Thrones, again, going back to that fascinating example of where that really worked well for about five seasons. Then they actually went further than the written material because it was incomplete. Still incomplete, by the way, 14 years later. No new books in 14 years. You know what the showrunners for Home. I have a lot of critiques, but without being cruel about it, they weren't up to the task. Very few, if anybody, could have been up to that task. Martin himself, the author of that series, wasn't up to completing his own book series. JMS completed this before necessarily filming it, if not in every little detail. But you're right, things like that. You quote it like the Naran and Satora, they are dead races. Yes, that's something you don't come up with just spur in the moment. You may come up with it like, oh, I can't put this line in. It fits my framework. But that framework pre existed. He had this. And it's absolutely wonderful to get to experience that. I think that's why we enjoyed the show so much. Even watching it first round, we didn't understand this level of detail about it. And it's where the debate always, you know, when we got into those debates back in those days with the Star Trek fandom that was absolutely opposed to it. You know, Star Trek is wonderful for what it is, but it was never designed to be this. It was purely Episodic. You might build a mythology and reference back to it on occasion, but it was never this. And this was the first time I ever experienced that on television. And I hope to again one day. Yeah.
• 1:33:53
  JOSH: And that's why no other show could do an episode like this. Because literally, it was like a last minute. Oh, my God, I have to write a new finale for this season. What do I do? And he was like, oh, well, I know what happens in the Babylon 5 universe. As he says, a million years in either direction. I'll just write that. And it's so good. A very final thing before we wrap up is that this episode is so weighty and so affecting, but it's a bare bones episode. It's a bottle show. The segments that you were talking about, the academics that like, really affected you, is literally three actors sitting at a table against a black curtain. And the fact that you can be telling the story about the ultimate fate of the human race in a million years with three actors at a table and a curtain and standing sets that already exist. Like, it is incredible that this show works as well as it does. And because the ideas are so grand, you don't even realize how cheap this episode is.
• 1:34:49
  JOHN: It's really cheap.
• 1:34:51
  JOSH: It's great. It's great. But in the first segment, the news anchor, he invokes the word selah, which is a word that appears in the Old Testament that means to pause and reflect between passages. So this is almost certainly our final episode of our first year doing this podcast. This is episode 11. We started in March, so I think 11 episodes in nine months is pretty good. And as we approach the end of the year here and the start of a new year, I was just wondering if you had any thoughts about doing this show so far or things that we've experienced in the. In 2025 or just, I mean, just anything at all. Some closing reflections on 2025 and doing this.
• 1:35:33
  JOHN: You know, the year is both worse and better than I expected it to be. Both those things are true. Having this show helped me make sense of a lot of things, especially in the first part of 2025, to process what was happening in the country, in the world, without it being the sort of typical media spiral of being addicted to your screen and just doom scrolling. This, you know, this gave us an opportunity to really examine things using the lens of this 1990s sci fi show, to really have some amazing conversations in depth analysis, go to some personal spaces with it. I found it very comforting in that regard. And it really, I think it Helped keep me balanced and it gave me perspective and a bit of an internal peace even as things continue to get more difficult. And I think they're only going to get more difficult leaving with an episode like this. When I see that phrase as it was written by JMS and his commentary, faith manages, I think, brings me there. No guarantees, no promises, but that somehow there is something in life. The idea that when you hold true and try to be the best of yourself, try, you won't always be that by any measure, when you just try, sometimes things really do work out. And that's what I'm hopeful for in the future. Is that like as bad as things could get and I think are sort of likely to get, especially for people who aren't us release for the people who are really in the more dangerous crosshairs of this administration and of the population at large right now. So I don't want to be Pollyanna about this, that it withdraws that or minimizes that suffering. I do think there is some hope and I think continuing to talk, continuing to examine and question ourselves and maybe for anybody who's listening to say, yeah, maybe there is hope, maybe there is by continuing that process of self questioning, exploration and having that just enough faith also in situations and humanity at large, yeah, maybe we get to the other side of that maybe. And just maybe it's in the timeframe of the show, you know, that it takes only a couple seasons to get there for our lifetime. You know, that's really what I'm hoping out of the future with no delusions that we're on a TV schedule. But yeah, we got it. We have an interesting couple years ahead of us to see what other comparisons make. But this has been really helpful for framing what is happening and keeping it from going out into the abyss of hopelessness.
• 1:38:03
  JOSH: Very well said. Yeah, I would echo everything that you just said. And yeah, like this show has been really helpful. Personally. It's been just delightful to have a reason to come with you and have these conversations about this show which I know is so important and so really foundational for both of us. I mean this is really a treat. And like, yeah, like we always end up having conversations and teasing things out of these episodes that I never anticipated. And it's so. It's a bright spot in a dark year swallowed in fire but not in darkness is another line that Vorlon had which is just so is such a wonderful turn of phrase. I love that. And yeah, I agree with you. I think things are going to get worse and I do want to reiterate, you know, we are privileged enough to be safer than most, and that's. I think we incur a certain amount of responsibility to do what we can to stand up and do the right thing. And it's not always clear exactly the best way to do that, but I think you're right. Like, just try. Try to be good, kind and decent, no matter what else is going on. If that's your North Star. You know, as Jakkar said in another episode, when you approach the universe with good intentions, you will be rewarded, but just not always in the way you expect.
• 1:39:16
  JOHN: Yes, right. There's another one of those quotes in this show. Wow.
• 1:39:21
  JOSH: I love how you ended on the concept of faith manages. I'm going to end on the note of some people don't hold grudges for nearly long enough.
• 1:39:28
  JOHN: Yeah.
• 1:39:29
  JOSH: And yeah, that's 2025. Next year. I definitely want to have some guests. I think we might start a Patreon potentially and do fun stuff. I was thinking, like, as a Patreon, maybe we should watch the original version of the Gathering and do an episode on that as like a Patreon exclusive. I think that'd be fun. Now that this show is not sort of a theoretical thing that maybe will happen, it's become very important for me to make sure it keeps going. So we're going to try and expand a little bit in. In 2026 and beyond. But John, thank you so much for being on this journey with me because I needed it. I need it.
• 1:40:06
  JOHN: I did too. Well, hey, you're the Nexus that started this, so I'm grateful. I'm grateful to be part of it.
• 1:40:11
  JOSH: No, it's, it's. I feel very lucky. So, yeah, we're Last Best hope B5 on whatever social media. That's our handle. And we want to leave you with the idea that sometimes peace is just another word for surrender. What a super sized episode this turned out to be.
• 1:40:28
  JOHN: Yeah.