Hello and welcome to Who Are You? This is the Babylon 5 Watchcast hosted by two former strangers. Now friends who've gotten to know each other while we're watching a favorite show from their childhood. I'm Jafar

And I'm Laura.

and it's been a while.

It has been a while, and I was just thinking, it's, we're gonna have to change up that intro soon.

I almost, I stopped like that. That pause was not a dramatic pause. That was a, Oh my God, I'm going to say this two more times. Pause.

Man, two more times? Really? That's it?

have lost tales and we have our recap. I think that's it.

Man, Ja'far goes on vacation, and the show's over.

Right. Is this an anniversary up? Holy shit.

Yeah. Yeah. This is crazy.

We did it two years. Holy shit.

two years, or is it three?

to 24, three years anniversary. Fuck! We've been recording this podcast for three years.

Yeah.

Oh my fucking god. Oh wow, okay. Wow. Time needs to slow the fuck down. It has been

It does.

We will We, I mean, it'll probably be a little bit more appropriate to wax poetic on this in two episodes.

Yeah, for sure.

we have an episode dedicated to that exact thing.

Yeah. Yeah.

in acknowledgement of the anniversary is worthwhile.

Yeah. Yeah. We decided we were going to make this a sort of a mini PowerPoint episode, except there's no. PowerPoint for you guys out there, listener. I'm so sorry,

Well, I also just didn't make one, so there's no PowerPoint for you either. Laura.

that's right. But you're going to do it PowerPoint style, right? I'm going to give you a little, like, there's my drink.

Nice. yeah, I uh, I spent the last two hours on a technical call and no, no, no, not, not work related. Uh, the, uh, the fan project that I'm helping do dev work for database planning for future data set stuff is, is very engaging and super fun. But I was drinking beers during that. And uh, now I have a glass of Groitka, which is a sour cherry liqueur that I

that sounds nice.

Prague and then carried with me. And I do mean carried like a child in my arms from Prague through Amsterdam, back home into the United States on the tail end of my trip, I was gone in Europe for three weeks. Um, which was awesome. I had a great time.

awesome.

I posted a ton of pictures on the Facebook. Um, I should post some pictures in the discord for

The choicest

The choices ones. I, I had to give a little like presentation at work about my trip. I have a, I have a team meeting every other week with all the people who work in data at the company and they wanted to fill it out and I was the most recent person to go on vacation. So,

Yeah.

Everyone on the team is super introverted, but me and, and my, my direct boss, everyone else is very introverted. And so everyone will go on these vacations. They're like, here's a picture of my sister's wedding that I spent three weeks in India for and stuff. You know, it's just like a picture. And so I rolled up with like a slideshow. Um, it's like, I think I brought like 30 or 40 pictures of the 500. Some that I took,

that's the way to go.

yeah, yeah. I'll put some in the discord. I've got, I got some set aside. it was a lovely trip on which I read the trilogy, the Centauri trilogy, which is what we're supposed to talk about today. I could not find a good synopsis for these books online.

Yeah.

a shame because I didn't take notes.

Yeah. We were struggling with. The other one's a little bit too, I think, that there's not a lot of synopses out there. There's not a lot of chatter about these books. Somebody needs to get on that.

There was a thread on the gray 17 Facebook about these books the other day

Oh, really?

a lot of people over there really liked them, which is why I'm not afraid to say, because there's not a lot of overlap in our viewership. I did not like these books.

Oh, no! So, listener, listener, I will spoil. for you that I am a PhD student and I have only read the things that I absolutely have to read and not even all of those in the last few weeks. Um, so I did not get to read these books again. I have read these books a long time ago, but I remembered liking them.

So I have a couple of issues with a couple of things.

Okay. Yeah,

Overall, they're not bad. Peter David is a really good job of capturing Lando's voice

for

a hundred percent. That's the, that is the highlight of the books, all three. If you want nothing else, but more Lando in your life, these books will deliver it to you in spades.

I think that might be part of why they are beloved over on that thread in Grace 17 is people love Londo and they miss Londo. Which, yeah, Wando's not necessarily a good guy, but oh well, he's

He does suffer a great deal in these books.

That's true. I do remember that. And I, so I did read part of the first one just many, many weeks ago before I started the PhD program.

The first two chapters of the first book are the best two chapters of any of the books.

Oh no.

Like the first, there's a prologue and chapter one of the book and the prologue is Lando acquiring the keeper told from the point of view of the keeper. then chapter one is Lando acquiring the keeper from the point of view of Lando.

Yes.

two chapters in the books, hands down, not even a question.

it's that episode where, where it happens in the show, like that's the moment we're at. It's not like we're starting at something, you know, not in Babylon five, just, you know, very, adjacent. It is that moment in Babylon 5.

So I'm going to give you a quick little like overview of some stuff that happens in these books.

Okay.

Um, we have a crusade character reoccurring.

But it's not Lockley, right?

have no, they're actually reoccurring. Uh, We have a minor character, a minor beloved character from Babylon five die.

Oh, no

we have the term her breasts heaving applied to a 14 year old

no, no. so in the first book, Londo sort of adopts a orphan of the uh, Alliance attack or whatever. And her name is Senna, I think.

Senna. We actually see her. She's in the Gathering movie.

That's right. She's got the children.

got the children who are Jado's kids. Yeah. Urza Jado's kids, which is the guy Lando kills in the sword fight and season one or two,

Mm hmm.

they're like his grandkids. Those are the kids that are running around the palace.

Yeah, is Senna one of his children,

Senna is the daughter of Lord Rifa.

Oh, that's right. That's right. Okay. so he has some guilt there and adopts her.

So yeah, that's pretty early on in the books. The books are

Yikes! Please don't leave breasts on 14 year

I remember reading that and just setting the book down and just being all like, is this book going to ruin my vacation? And the answer was no. Um, and the next time that character was overtly and needlessly sexualized, she was at least like probably 17 or 18. It's a little murky on the timeframes.

Yeah.

to be fair, she might not have been 14 at that point in the book, because the book's all like it covers this many years and you don't

And you don't know where you're at.

so she might've been. Sixteen when that happened,

Mm hmm.

great. I literally, it's just like, she's described as like a child for most of this book. And then just out of nowhere, there was literally like she's running down a hallway and it's literally her breasts heaving. And I'm just all like, I can't get that out of my head. Why is that

A child is panting,

Yeah. It's disgusting. I was so upset. Okay. So, Lando, right. It's all told in this framing device, which is very like the end of Lord of the Rings, but spread out throughout the books. Um, which is, it's the memoirs of Emperor Lando Mallari collected and notarized by Emperor Vir Kodo. And then it's. Earth edition and everything's put in earth time, which

Uh, yeah.

a nice touch.

You need to do that. Yeah.

Um, that was fun. There's a lots of little fun stuff in these books, admittedly. Um,

of Lord of the Rings, today is also October the 24th.

yes, it is. It was 10 AM. It's almost 10 PM as of

Speaking of this particular problem.

Yeah so like these books do a very good job of capturing the characters that we know, taking them through things really good job with their voices books do a very bad job of having a plot that I give a fuck about.

Oh no.

so Lando gets his keeper, right? Adopts Senna and he's got this guard, who's named Durla, right? Who's like a pain in the ass. And Durla is very quickly promoted to minister of internal affairs

Yeah. The,

at the behest of the

him pliable.

And so we find out that Durla's childhood sweetheart is Lando's ex wife, Mariel.

Oh no. Yeah,

We, we see Mariel and T'moth are both major players in these books. Um, no D'gar, not in the books at all. She's referenced a couple of times. Um, just like, Lando talks about how his wives were three of the horsemen of the apocalypse. This is like a conversation Durla has with another Centauri minister without Lando present at some point and makes the joke that Lando was war. Like just like the fun part of that was that it was unspoken. Okay. There's lots of stuff like that where it's just all like, Oh, that's a fun reference to the show. But also by referencing that part of the show, you're just fan servicing me. And I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in a plot. Which I didn't really get. So Durla gets promoted to minister of internal affairs and proceeds to just fuck up all kinds of stuff. Um, he's got his own agenda and he is effectively the main villain of the story for all three books. Um, he eventually becomes Lando's prime minister. Um, he keeps getting promoted. He's very xenophobic. And leans in a lot with that. He's got like this buddy who starts this religion, like this religious fervor on Centauri Prime. That's also a very isolationist. Centauri's are the best. Everyone else sucks. We're made in the image of the great maker. Everyone else blows trunks.

It's the fascist playbook. Mm

hundred percent. It's the fascist playbook. And the, I think my problem with these books, putting it in that frame is that they don't do as good or as subtle a job as the show did, which I mean, there's a lot more runway in seasons of TV compared to three novels.

sure. Yeah.

Also like he's already the emperor, like they're not exactly a not fascist society. Like Lando can just have people killed whenever he wants. And everyone just has to deal with that. Um, which is like the only power he has, he signs off on laws and he threatens to kill people. It's like the only stuff Lando ever does politically with the position of emperor. so yeah, we get all that. Durla manipulated by the Drakh uh, starts digging on this super distant planet where a bunch of the miners end up dying, it ends up being a, like, shadow gateway. It, it sounded very third spacey, but it led to like a pocket of like shadow stuff instead of third space stuff.

Yeah. Instead of even worse space villain, unknowable horror.

Um, and they end up like veer is guided by these two, well, these three, but one of them dies very early techno major initiates.

Oh, okay.

full Technomages, right? They're like little baby Technomages, and they're in this like little Technomage cabal learning to do their Technomage stuff. So they're not like, I am Gandalf, like Galen gets sometimes. We do find out that they all report to Galen though. And Galen is a reoccurring character in these books.

oh, I was kind of hoping for a second that you were going to say Doreena was one of the initiates and I was going to be like, yeah.

fun. This takes place before all of that though, because the WEP, the planet killer that the drug used to attack earth is uncovered through this Centauri dugout gateway that they dig out for the truck. And there were three planet killers and this like shadow thing that built the planet killers.

Oh,

Galen destroys all of it, but a planet killer, just himself. Yeah, yeah, just like spell of destructions. You shall not passes it.

but no, I mean like, did he kill all of them on, except did he leave one on purpose or,

no, it got away before he could do the thing. And he's like with bumbling Veer for all of this. Veer hangs out with Technomages for like a solid 20 percent of these books.

That's what this spinoff should have been.

You know, like you say that, but you didn't read these books. And it's mostly Technomages being cryptic and Veer complaining about them being cryptic, and then them calling him a bumbling idiot, and he's all like, well I'm alive, fuck off, you need me. And a lot of that is just like It's fun for the first 10 pages,

Yeah. You can't do that for the whole

and then it's Tom Clancy describing drapes in an, in an embassy in Rainbow Six all over again, where it's just like, why are we continuing to do this?

Yeah.

and it's just, they keep coming back, their main characters, these Technomage initiates, they just keep showing up. They save fear's life like 20 times.

Well, Veer's a man whose life needs saving a

Yeah. but we find out that the Drak had planned on using the virus to kill the Mimbari.

Oh, interesting. Plot twist.

So when they destroy the planet killer, the plan was to blow up earth with the planet killer and then send after all the, all the Alliance fleet was there dealing with the planet killer to spend, send the virus ships to Minbar and fuck Minbar.

So then they just like aborted when the planet killer is uh, destroyed and to go ahead and just dump the virus ships

Yeah, well, they're already there and we're going to kill the humans because John Sheridan's people were the target earth needed to be punished. John Sheridan needed to be punished for pushing the shadows away because he's the one who told them to get the hell out of their galaxy.

Uh Huh. Right.

yeah. Um, so we learned all that stuff. Galen's around a ton. That's most of book one. Where's book two pick

So what is, what is uh, Marielle's deal in the first book? Like, I had gotten to the point where she, like, shows up

she,

her purpose?

shows up, as a spy, right. And. And so she works for the new spy, the, the Centauri KGB or whatever, right?

Yeah, Yeah, I remember so Durla ropes her in and he uses his like, um, what was the young Nazis group?

are the Hitler youth

Yeah, that's it. They're basically the Hitler youth of Centauri Prime. He uses one of his his

at one point, Garibaldi shows up and straight up calls them the Hitler

He's like in case you couldn't tell These are the Hitler youth

by the by.

We probably didn't need that Peter David, I think we still I still

I mean, you say that,

Some people don't. I know.

lack the reasoning to follow along what's very obvious.

That's true. But she's like destitute. Her divorce from Londo has left her like super broke. She's like contemplating ending her own life, I think, when this kid shows up and she decides to play

Yep. So she becomes a spy. Um, she ends up getting into a relationship with Veer. Yeah.

Oh, no, not, poor Vier, no. He's already had the bad Nazi lady relationship.

straight up using him and his position as ambassador on Babylon 5, but then. Galen interferes and uses the 14 words to make someone love you to make her love Veer undyingly and Veer is tortured with this because he knows that the relationship was a facade at this point and that he was being used and so he like kind of out of bitterness is like, well, you've been using me, so I guess I'm going to use you and then like the weight of what he has done to her because she's just brainwashed to love him uncontrollably. Now,

Oh, no. Vier!

It's super grody. Like, I mean, it's, it is super grody and it's written super grody. Like it's not a thing where it's all like, Oh, and now Vier's using her and turnabout is fair play. That is not how it's written. Listener. It is written where Vier is filled with guilt over. Brainwashing this person to love him and all of the consequences of that. Um, they stopped being physically intimate because of it, because it feels rapey to him as it

Uh Huh.

Um,

Did he use the words on her, or Galen used the

Galen used the words on her to make him love her to make her love him.

Yeah, all of it is bad though.

Yes. It's terrible. Yeah. Um, so much show that she completely loses all agency as a character throughout the rest of the novels.

go figure.

Right? So another reason to hate these books.

Yeah.

and it's like, she ends up, like Veer ends up persuading her to go marry Durla. Like, they set up this thing where, yeah, no, the face you're making is the correct face. Um, he's all like, you need to go spy on Durla for me and get close to him so you're gonna be married to him. And she's all like, whatever you need, Veer. I know that you'll come back and save me one day. Right? And all this shit. And he like has a card game with Durla where he bets her and, and loses on purpose. Yeah.

chance to do something. Peter David and you did none of it.

Yeah. So while all this is going on there Durla is like building up the Centauri military, which is a big no, no from the Alliance, right? They're not happy about it. And so they send Garibaldi, Jakar.

Oh yeah. That'll that's a good idea. That'll work. Okay.

And Lou Welch.

What?

So Lou

Oh, well, it's just the one who's going to die.

a hundred percent Lou Welch dies. Um, so Lou Welch at some point goes and becomes a private investigator, graduate of the Garibaldi home school security school, a hundred percent. Taught him everything he knows. I put a little quote about it on the discord, I believe. Um, and at some point Lou Welch found a chameleon suit, which is the thing that lets you be invisible, right? It was in an episode in like season three or season four, whatever. Um, so he has one of these for some reason

Cool.

is using it as a private investigator, right? And so. Yeah, so they're on Centauri Prime, he's like, spying on the Hitler Youth, and there's like a Drak in the room who recognizes what the fuck is going on, turns off the chameleon field. Well, just like standing there as a human, a bunch of bunks like Hitler youth elders. They're all like 17 or 18 and they beat him to death. Like one of the dudes who's like Londo's guard or whatever, just snaps his fucking neck. Right. Veer ends up killing that dude as revenge for Garibaldi uh, because there's a whole set of, there's like a reoccurring thing is all like, there's all this shit in Centauri Prime and Veer's all like, I'm going to tell you Garibaldi and you can tell Sheridan, but you guys have to promise. Not to fuck with this and let the Centauri handle the Centauri problem. And they're like, well, you're building up this giant military, or you've got this Hitler youth program, or you're, you're really raising the Xeno uh, xenophobic culture, like there's all this stuff you you're going to handle it. He's just like, trust me. And it's like veers machinations the entire time as he's being guided by techno mages. eventually founding the legions of fire, which is like a Centauri revolution. That ends up purging all of the drach from Centauri prime. They just kill all the drach, just straight up genocide those fuckers. And uh,

Who genocides the genocider?

yeah, Veer apparently Veer does.

Huh. Huh.

Yeah. And it's like the whole books. Um,

the legions of fire is the name of the trilogy.

That's the main thing that happens with Veer and Lando. Um, Veer and Senna end up becoming a thing. Mariel kills Durla by committing suicide and throwing them both out of a window.

Hmm.

Um,

Okay.

there's a bunch of stuff like all of this is all happening around the same time as it the third book is all. About the gathering, right? Not the gathering. It's uh, in the beginning, right? So Lando's the old man, right? The night he dies with Jakar. That's the third book.

Yeah. Tell me, does the, um,

we, we get an

the urn.

We get ex, we find out what happens with the urn. We find out what, why Delen and Sheridan are on Sari Prime. We find out what happens after, and we get a resolution on all of it tied up in a nice little bow.

Wow.

So the urn does have a keeper in it. The urn does break open and join with David and.

Oh, wow.

so the keeper has been like whispering to him since he was a child, right? Since before he was born, basically, it's been telepathically bonding with him. And so when it shows up, he like resists for like a second, but then he's not like, Oh, but you're like the thing from my dreams. That's going to help me. And it's been guiding me and is my protector, right? Okay, cool. Yeah. I'm, I'm a 16 year old boy and I've been super sheltered by my parents on min bar my whole life.

And I'm special.

I'm so some fucking chosen one, y'all.

Yeah. So this is the thing that's going to help me be more special. Okay. Yeah.

So he accepts the keeper. He like beats the shit out of a guard, like a ranger, hijacks a shuttle and goes to Centauri Prime

Good idea.

because the Drak have promised Durla that they'll deliver him the son of Sheridan, right?

So that's, that's how they wind up there, surely, right? They're going to rescue

Yeah. So they go to rescue him. Durla like sends them a message where it's all like, you'll come alone. If you ever want to see your son again, and it's like whole set up to like kill them very publicly on Centauri prime. And then also they've been building this massive fleet that's bigger than all of the ships, the Alliance has combined for some reason that they've managed to build in secret over 20

In hiding. Right. Yeah.

And they have like a fully trained army and everything, and they're going to attack. Like 80 percent of the Alliance homeworld at the same time.

Wow. After we, you know, how many years has it been since they wiped out like, uh, 40?

like 12, 14, maybe, maybe it's 20 years by the end of this book. I don't know. Well, it can't be 20 years cause Sheridan dies. So.

right, right,

he has 20 years from the start of season four. So, and it starts during crusade, which is four or five years. So it's like maybe 15 years.

I mean, I guess the Centauri probably still had some colonies and stuff. I was thinking, you know, we wiped out 40 percent of their whole civilization or something, but that's probably not true. They might, they might've wiped out like 40 percent of Centauri prime, but there were probably colonies and shit, but still, it does seem a bit over ambitious. Doesn't it?

for sure.

Where did we get all the resources for these new ships?

Yeah. It's secret colonies. They, they do a lot of like attacking like worlds that are protectorates of. Interstellar powers, but not anything that anyone cares about for resources. They do a little bit of that stuff in the background. They talk about it sometimes like, Oh, we attacked this world. Oh, we did this thing. Oh, we got these resources. And it's all to build this giant fleet of ships. so they're going to kill John and Dillon publicly as they launched this giant attack, right? With John Sheridan's giant hands. And Dylan's weird face on the cover of that book.

Ja'far has beef with the cover,

It's the worst art of the two of them that exists that I've seen.

Mm.

sure there's something somewhere anyways. So they show up, there's all this stuff they're captured. We get the time jumping, all of that. Right. Um, we learned that the keeper is another direct spawn of that. Scott. David is the same one that's got. Londo,

Oh, from the Drak, whatever his name

uh, Shikari or something.

Yeah.

and Jakar do their thing. They both die killing each other. Veer has the giant revolution. They kill all the Drakk. there's like a little bit of a military coup. And so they don't attack everyone. Uh, Ja'an, Delenn, and David all escape, but they have to drug David. To stop him from doing keeper shit.

Yeah. How are we gonna get that keeper off?

This is all, this all comes a bit after. Um, so the big revolution happens. Veer is the emperor. He's hanging out with Senna and well, he's going to be the emperor. I don't, when Lando dies. Right.

Yeah. I know he's gonna be the emperor, but part of me was just like,

They don't

that can't be an idiot, right?

a,

Hehehe. Yeah. Yeah. Hehehe.

and so all that stuff that we know happens, John, David and Dylan escape, they go back to Minbar with David Franklin comes out to be David's doctor and they're all like, well, we can't get rid of this thing. It will just keep growing back. It's the same thing that we saw from the keeper in season, whatever, when they found one on that dude, right?

Oh,

There was the whole thing before where they set them

Uh huh.

Earlier, it's just like, it's integrated into his body. We can't do anything. It's like, well, maybe if we kill the drug that spawned it, he'll be fun. That might help, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So that, that drock did not get killed in

that truck did not get killed and that truck comes to threaten veer and veers. I'll like, bitch, place your hand and Garibaldi pops out of the closet and shoots the truck dead. Yep. Garibaldi's

had no idea Garibaldi was there. A man who probably like projects every single thought he has super hard.

Notable, canonically susceptible to telepath bullshit, Michael Garibaldi

Right.

from the telepathic alien 100 percent

In the closet.

in the closet.

The lead line closet, I hope. Oh,

It'd be an aluminum, he's wearing an aluminum hat.

course, of

He gets hair plugs at one point in these books. Laughs.

he really?

They make a joke about it. Yeah, about how he had hair, hair work done.

they just can't stop taking shots at him.

No. And so they kill the, the drach that spawned it and then David's just fine. The keeper just like crawls up and falls off of them.

yeah, they're just all connected to the drach that lives and if the drach dies, then they all die. Okay.

Yeah.

I don't know how telepathy works. Telepathy and like parasitism?

Mm hmm. But yeah that's effectively the books.

Hmm. I remember really liking these when I was younger.

when you read them, if you really like Lando, they're great. Cause you just get fun Lando quotes a whole bunch. It's just Lando being Lando ing all over the place.

Yeah. And I can't claim that I was like the most sophisticated reader in the world at, you know, 13 or whatever this was.

well, I mean, some of it is like you were young. Some of it is. Looking at things through the modern lens as opposed to the lens of 25 years ago.

Yeah, I'm, I would not have clocked a 14 year old heaving her breasts the same way for sure.

it hits different. You know, they're books.

It sounds like a, it could be a fun romp if you're really immersed in the Babylon 5 universe and you want more Babylon 5 like super bad. Mm

mean, if I had to choose between watching crusade again or reading these books again, I'd do neither, but

I'd probably read the books.

I might read the techno mage books, but

I really want to read the Technomage books, but I feel like those are the hardest to find, right?

I've got the trilogy.

Do you really?

Yeah. It was in that giant pile of books that I found I

Oh, I remember that picture.

of the Babylon five books. I'm missing

googling them. I

two of the like movie transcripts and of the numbered books. I'm missing one, seven and eight, but I have the rest of the Babylon five books. Either in compilation or individual form.

feel like I might have actually read these. These covers look really familiar. Like maybe the library had them when I was a kid, but I have no idea what the content is. But it looks like maybe Morden is on the cover of the first one.

So I don't know anything about them. I want, I do want to read if I read any of them, I'm going to read uh, to dream in the city of sorrows for sure. Which is the Catherine Sakai training to be a Ranger book written by James's ex wife.

Yeah.

It's like the one that's still Canon. All right. Well, yeah, those are the books. They were okay.

Yeah.

I mean, I'd read them over literary critic Bester again. You

Yeah. That was what I was going to ask is like, how does it compare to the Psycore trilogy?

know, I, I don't remember how I felt about it at the time and I'd have to go back and listen to our episode, but I remember not hating the second psych or book.

I remember enjoying the first one a lot and that like, it was neat to have all that table setting that we never got. From Babylon 5 about like, how did the telepaths happen? You know, there were just sort of references and this was like in the trenches of it. And I enjoyed the kind of quote unquote twist ending of, you know, ending on Bester's birth. I thought that was fun.

Okay. Yeah, no, it was fun. Yeah, I liked a lot of that stuff.

I'm curious how people rank these series. Like if they,

I think the Centauri trilogy is just widely considered to be the best,

Yeah,

is wild to me, but

It's the Lando. It's the nostalgia for Lando and you, I'm sure you read the whole thing. I was anyway in Peter jurassic's voice the whole time.

yeah. A hundred percent.

Yeah, even fear. I was pretty strong on that.

The viewers, I mean, it's veers voice. My problem is not veers voice. It's veers plot

Yeah.

why they got to do veer linear dirty.

Yeah.

That's what it felt like. It felt linear dirty to me.

yeah, just the whole involvement at all of Mary L with beer because he kind of had a hint. At least Lando had warned him like, She's, she's no good. Like, he seems too smart for that by the end of Babylon

But he fucks up, I guess. And he really fucks up. He fucks up by getting involved with her in the first place. And then it just gets worse. Every interaction.

Just like, how deep can we dig this

Yeah, it doesn't feel good. Um, like it and it doesn't feel good. So I feel confident in saying that, that it's just not good. Um, compared to like, at the end of the books, he's like, He's got to be like 45, 50, right. Given 20 years after the end of the show

Which makes the whole thing with Senna a little weird

that's exactly what I was about to talk about because Santa's like 20 at the end of those books. Right.

Yeah, if she's 14 when she's found in the first one, she can't be that much

Yeah. If, if the entire things take place, well, I guess if they take place over 15 years, which I don't think is the case, I think it's at most 10,

Yeah, but if it is, even if it is 15, like, Veer's gotta

double her age.

Yeah. yeah,

But I mean, I don't know. Centauri culture brains develop at different speeds. They're aliens. I'm trying not to be super judgmental, been judging them by icky human standards, but by human standards, it's fucking icky.

it's, it's not my favorite, no,

no, it's not.

especially because she is found in such a vulnerable place, too, an orphan, alone,

do a really good job of like, that is not why she gets with Veer. Like that's all very, very separated. She meets Veer when she's young, a couple of times when he comes to visit Londo, but he's not like, it is not grooming at all.

Yeah, but she's still a child when she meets him and he is still a grown ass man. But it also was not anything like, you know, Londo has been painted womanizer many, many times,

Yes. And is, Oh, we didn't even talk about Timoff.

Oh, yeah, tell me about T Muff.

At one point she like shows up at the palace and it's just all like, Hey, you're clearly fucked and I am your wife. So I'm coming to visit to see what's going on. And they end up like genuinely falling in love. Yeah. Londo, Londo dies, regretting having had to have been cruel to her. He like fakes a thing. Where she's trying to kill him so that she gets sent away. So that way the keepers doesn't get her because the Draka are going to kill her ass. So he like exiles her to save her

Yeah, she's too smart. She's too smart to be around

a hundred percent. They want to get rid of her immediately. And he's all like, the problem will resolve itself. Right? Like we hate each other. And then it flash forwards a year and she's been living in the palace the whole time. And they're like actually a couple.

hmm.

So he has to, you know, Get rid of her before she finds out the truth, but she knew the whole time because she's not a fucking idiot. And Londo's a fucking idiot. And

She doesn't know the truth about the, like, alien on his shoulder,

she is, she might not know the exact details, but it is hinted that she was aware that he was being controlled in a way deeper than like blackmail,

Yeah,

um, he ends up calling her. At like his 11th hour. Like he knows he doesn't have long left. Like he's everything is clearly coming to a head. He calls her just be like, Hey, um, I'm calling to apologize. Right? But before he can say anything, she interrupts. It's like, so I guess you've heard the news. I've got terminal cancer and I'm dying in three months. Fuck you. Lando. And it's just like super bitter towards him. Has he like tries to apologize, but to be honest, he doesn't deserve it. The chance to apologize to her. And so he doesn't really get a chance to, but they kind of like half do it. Um, and she ends up dying like moments after him, she like survives long enough to have outlived him, but

feels very like something they would have like hinted at in the episode with T Mob about like, I'm going to live just long enough to see you die or something. That's a very fitting thing.

Yeah.

it is sad. Londo's whole deal is sad. I mean, I know that we see him do horrific genocidal things,

Mm hmm.

but he started out a lovable oaf and became something else.

Yeah.

I don't know. Londo's hard.

Yeah. I mean, Peter Jurassic does a really good job of making him a fun relatable character, despite being a homicidal genocidal maniac. So good job, Peter.

It's just a lesson about don't get obsessed with the way things were.

Yeah.

Like, fuck the way things were.

You want to make Centauri prime great again? Uh,

Yeah,

when was Centauri prime? Great. Just

yeah.

want to know exactly what you're talking about, please.

Yeah, solid points.

Hey, this airs before election day. Listener.

It does.

So I'm going to urge you to vote. I'm going to urge you to vote regardless, because participating in democracy is important to maintaining democracy. And I think everyone wants to maintain democracy. If you don't want to retain democracy, and you've listened to 148 episodes of this podcast, let me be the first to tell you to fuck off.

That's a weird thing to do. Why are you so weird?

are you here? Vic just doxed me on discord. So I guess I'm fucked now. Um, no, go vote for real. Um, if you aren't sure about. A certain candidate, I implore you to do actual research. And when I say that, I don't mean looking at one fucking website. That's telling you how to think and feel, because remember the news media is not invested in informing you. They're invested in retaining you. Have I told you about the new website I've been using to, I post about this on Facebook a couple of days ago. You might've seen it.

Oh, no, I don't think I saw it though. Tell me,

I I've been using a website called ground news. It's just ground. news. com. And what they do is they aggregate all of the articles relating to a news event. So you get a very brief. Incredibly fact based overview of what the thing is and what is happening. And then on the, underneath that, they put all of the news outlets that are reporting on it. They put links to those articles so that you can read what people are actually saying about it. And also all the news outlets are ranked based off of left and right media bias. So you can see who, what side is reporting what. And what site is notably not reporting what,

oh, this is interesting, especially, you know, if you heard about this one, listener, I saw it today that some mail in ballots were specifically targeted and damaged after somebody set them on fire in a Democratic county in Arizona. Um, You hadn't heard about that yet? Oh, yeah, it's so cool. The little slider bar at the bottom

but yeah, the Democrats are famous for their voter fraud guys.

The, the slider bar at the bottom shows that this has been reported by left and center, not so much the red,

Yeah. It's crazy how that happens. Right.

Yeah.

So. If you, if you're not sure how to vote, do your research, learn about your candidates, you owe it to yourself to be an informed voter listener.

Mm hmm.

Um, and if you are a listener and you support fascism, I still think you should vote, even if I completely disagree with you and I don't know why you're here, but voting is important.

Yeah. It's, it's weird that you're here. You should probably

It's so fucking weird. You should probably leave, please leave.

Ah, well, next time. We're going to watch The Lost Tales,

Yeah, we got to watch the lost tales. I'm so sorry.

I suspect that that will be an interesting episode. If I can summon any of that up from my memory, it is nothing but disappointment.

It's like 45 minutes long. I think it's, I don't remember it being particularly long.

No, no, it's like, if I remember right, it's three short stories in a show, and it was very disappointing.

It's time to go. It's time to go to bed. It's 10 30. I'm still jet lagged. I've been up at like five every day at the latest, just no alarm. Just. Up at three, up at four every day.

that's rough.

hoping that this drinking gets me a good night's rest tonight.

I hope so.

Fingers crossed, just like my fingers are crossed. Everyone's going to go listen to the music of Jeremy Siegel. Cause Jeremy, he did our theme music. Has he? Done the new music

I, I need to talk to him about it because I sort of did and then I sort of forgot him.

because you've got like not a lot of

We were, we were taking a little break in between, right?

Yeah. We're going to take a little break in between. I

good.

think Jeremy, if you're listening, I think you've got until I would say December 3rd, the

I think,

latest.

I think Jeremy does listen to this show cause he's a real mensch and he he listens even

often, even though he doesn't

though I never watched it.

yeah, he listens to the show. So, you know, Jeremy yeah. Thank you so much. so much. You're a mensch. JeremySiegel42. Bandcamp. com where he's the only Jeremy Siegel that makes music and then on streaming services is Nuclear Jaguar. Thanks so much.

And, hey, guess what? I did talk to Angry Duck Time Machine at at Instagram

You sent me a little, you sent me a little teaser that they had done. Is it done done?

I, it's almost done done. They were, so Angry Duck Time Machine is adding the title stuff for us this time. Last time I, I threw it in Canva, you guys, and I made it and it was fine, I guess, but a real artist is doing it this time. And I'm so excited. You're putting the title on.

Thanks. Angry Duck Time Machine. Do you think Angry Duck Time Machine has ever listened to this podcast?

I don't think so. No,

not. No.

that's okay.

Still a mensch.

But thanks so much. And they're on Instagram, if you need to find them.

We got a little silly towards the end, I trust your judgment on everything. Thank you so much for editing this podcast and also having listened to the unshot scripts now. Good fucking job. A fucking plus.

I, I, you know, we both have this thing where we don't necessarily love to listen to our own voices, but I could not stop myself. I had to. I was

really enjoyed both the script readings despite having to listen to my own voice. And that's a testament to your work, thank you so much, Aaron.

And thanks so much, listener, for being here. I hope that you enjoyed the coverage of these books and finding out some of the mysteries that got left by Babylon 5. And uh, if you haven't read the books, you know, go get them, check them out. Uh,

Very least read the first two chapters of the first one. Worth your time. They're very good.

a bomb. Yeah. So if you want to throw in any more thoughts about Babylon 5 Get them in fast. Send them in through the discord or whorub5 at gmail. com and uh, you know So we're going to be heading on to Battlestar Galactica. I suppose if you have something you want to share about that, remember that I haven't seen it yet.

No

there's something,

on the discord

no spoilies on the discord friends.

rule for battle for Battlestar Galactica. No spoilies on the discord. Um, we might have a, like we had for Babylon five, we had a spoiler channel that will likely become the BSG I'll, I'll do a little bit of work on the discord and clean up some of the channels and we'll have Babylon five chats. Remain because we still love the show and we still want to talk about it. We just have talked about everything. So, and we're not doing Babylon five for the second time. So

That's a different podcast. Bye.

All right. Listener. Thanks so much. We'll see you next week.