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. Or are you watching a favorite show from their childhood? Babylon 5. I'm Schafer.

And I'm Laura.

And we are in Crusade, still. We're crusading through Crusade.

Yeah. Episode three for us, right?

episode three for us,

Yeah. It's not three for the show, necessarily.

episode we're watching today is Appearances and Other Deceits. I believe it was the last episode produced? And the eighth episode in DVD order.

Okay.

Yeah.

Interesting.

it's our episode three. I think because of Uniform Continuity? But, there's a couple other things. But there's also shit in this episode that doesn't make sense. So, we'll talk about it though.

preferred order, right?

Yes.

Hmm. So this would have been number three. Interesting.

Yep.

have been, I suppose.

I mean, it's uh, I mean we'll talk about it at the end, but, I like it better the next episode.

Oh. Oh, interesting. Controversial take.

I don't think, is it? I don't know. Um, it's an okay episode. Did you catch who directed this one?

I did not. Wait. Wasn't one of these Stephen First, maybe?

This is Steven First,

Okay, it was this one. Gotcha. I watched him in a chunk of two, listener, So I did not remember details for one or the other.

Same. yeah, so we were originally going to do some recasting today and some alignment next week.

I don't think I'm prepared.

I don't think, I don't think I could be prepared. I don't think we spent enough time with these characters. Especially, this show is very siloed

Mm

in its character usage. it's like, okay, pick three out of the main cast and that's who you're getting this episode. Every episode kind of feels like that. Um, you get Gideon, and then you'll get the three characters who came in this week, and everyone else is a fucking ghost.

Yeah,

Speaking of which, Lockley is in the main credits and we haven't seen her.

that's true. And we've, we've at this point watched four episodes and we haven't seen Lockley yet.

a third of the episodes we've watched of this show and we have not seen Lockley who's in the

Oh, what a crime. And I found myself in the fourth episode, like asking my husband, wait, what is, what is the name of this woman? Like referring to the doctor? Cause I haven't

They don't say her

enough. Yeah. I haven't seen her enough. We haven't talked to her enough. Like. We haven't made her interesting enough in those conversations that I remember who she is at all.

I had to look it up.

Yeah, we did too. And then I felt embarrassed because I actually know someone by this name.

Are they also a doctor?

They are not a doctor. Yeah.

Well, you get a little bit of a pass then.

Yeah.

we had, we were originally going to do alignments and recasting uh, twice over Crusade each and break up the cast. Yeah, we'll just do it. once towards the back end, I think, is what the plan will be. And if we still feel like we don't know the characters well enough after eight or nine episodes, then I fuck it, I guess. I don't know.

Yeah, we'll do something else. We'll do a different song and dance.

Yeah, I uh, packed up all my Babylon 5 cards today.

Oh, why'd you pack them all up?

Well, I uh, so

you just put them away

yeah, I just put them away.

from, from using them for this show. Okay.

Well, it's like, I was keeping them along with a bunch of old cards from an old other card games in a giant, like, five siloed card box storage thing, right?

Yeah.

And I've been super into Star Wars Unlimited, which is a new card game from Fantasy Flight Games that the second set released yesterday as of recording.

Oh.

and I have been super into this game. Like, how many boxes do you think I bought yesterday? Heh heh heh. Because it's a number bigger than 5 and less than 10. So, I've spent a lot of the last 24 hours opening packs and organizing all those cards, and the card storage I was using for the first set that had come out a couple months ago was now insufficient. So I had to find something else. And I remembered that I had this thing with all my Babylon 5 cards, and a bunch of other card games in it. And so I packaged all of those up, put them in their own little separate boxes, nice and organized, and then I put them on a high shelf in my basement, where they will probably just live.

Yeah.

those cards will probably not get touched for, A long time, I imagine.

You're not just gonna sit around and play the Babylon five game

If I knew how.

Yeah. No kidding. Looks complicated.

did find a rule book, though.

Oh, the Psycorps rulebook! Look at that!

How many pages is this fucking thing? 72.

Oof.

And it's looking like this is a lot of rules. Like, of these 72, it's looking like 3 are bullshit at the end, 8 are a glossary, and are an index and prologue. So a solid 65, 66 pages of rules, give or take, to be able to play a game. Nah, bruh.

That's a lot. Yeah.

With Star Wars? Like, 8. And to be honest, you don't even need them all. But yeah, so that's what I've That's the uh, impetus for packing up those cards was all of my new Star Wars cards that I'm deeply in love with this game. It's very well made. Really liking it.

Good. Not 65 pages of rules.

No. No, actually, the game plays better than any other collectible card game I've ever touched. Any complaint I've ever made about a game like Magic is addressed either in the rules or the systems of the game.

Nice.

It's been a lot of fun. I highly recommend it. If you're a CCG nerd, Star Wars Unlimited, if you were on the fence, it's great. The second set's fun. It just dropped. Um, there's a ton of stuff to do with it. You can play for free on forcetable. net and you can get on the discord and geek out about that shit with me and I will talk about it All day. Um,

Get your very own Ja'far for a little bit.

Right, you just say something and I'll be like, I get to talk about it! Which, hey, we've only got a couple more of these until it's in person. While we're just vamping because we know that we're going to cover this episode in ten minutes.

Oh no, I, I have thoughts about this episode actually, for once.

okay. Well, why don't we save our talk about our pending trip, which we did a couple weeks ago, but it's very real right

Yeah, it's becoming imminent. Less

yeah, it is, it is less than two weeks. Er, no, no. So, yeah. It's like, it's like 15 or 16 days.

Yeah, yeah.

um, we'll talk more about that next week.

Okay, well let's talk an episode first.

And Other Deceits. We open on I couldn't get over how long this alien's fingers were.

yeah, this is some great costuming, right?

Just long, creepy fingers. What is it about super long fingers that are so creepy?

unsettling,

Is it Uncanny Valley stuff,

Maybe. Yeah, cause like, I know E. T. is supposed to actually be, like, cute, and we're all supposed to like E. T. because he's a good little alien boy. But I was very creeped out by E. T. when I was small. Like, I did not think he was cool. And he has the creepy fingers. He has the long, creepy, weird

long, creepy, glowy fingers. fingers. shouldn't glow.

He's a creepy puppet. Puppets are creepier than, than CGI, too.

I never liked E. T. as a kid.

Yeah, my son really did, though.

Yeah.

What a weirdo.

I also didn't like the Goonies.

I never saw the Goonies. I know.

I, there are so many people mad at us right now.

I know. We're just put put out our worst takes, but you know what? This is a Crusade episode, so no one's gonna listen.

It's true.

We could just say all the worst things. Yeah, creepy, creepy alien fingers and He's in this, like, darkly lit hallway of a weird alien ship and uh, just watching the Excalibur on some kind of little computer window.

Mm hmm. We cut over to the bridge of the Excalibur where we've got two suits from Earthdome doing a ride along.

Yeah, Gideon just hates this. He's doing the classic sci fi captain personal log bitching about politicians. Am I right?

Mm hmm. But yeah, this is great, because it's Mr. Wells. He's back.

Uh Huh, we remember Mr. Wells.

And of course, as previously mentioned, this is John Vickery, who is also Naroon.

Yeah, he's great. One of the great

great. Yeah. Oh, for sure. So it's great to get him back, and then he's with uh, Wayne Wilderson, who has a laundry list of credits as well.

Mm hmm.

I know we're supposed to hate these guys.

Right? But you

This, you? don't, no, they're so fun.

I love it. I told Aaron, like, at first, the first scene with Kevin, I was like, eh, whatever. Kevin is the, the not John Vickery gentleman. And A, Gary Cole has a real office space energy about him when he speaks to Kevin.

Mm

Just love it. It's delicious. And then every other scene with Kevin, I was just like, You know what? I need more Kevin. This show should have left him on there as like a foil to Gideon to come in and like poke him in the ribs when something's not going well. I just needed that.

It's so good. It's the best part of this episode.

Yep. Oh, but Mr. Wells. We need to remind everyone why we saw him in Babylon 5 before. Wasn't he spinning shit for the uh, Nightwatch? Wasn't that his whole game?

I think, yeah, he was definitely a spin guy.

Mm hmm.

Um, he was an ISN, yeah, I think he was Nightwatch, yeah.

Yeah, I think he was that, that governmental thing. Because he says something about he knows regime changes or something very slyly. And I was like, yeah, you were a Nightwatch bro and you're still around, huh?

The Ministry of Peace.

Yes, those

Frederick Lance Who was the guy who was, like, forming Nightwatch. so Gideon and Matheson ID the new ship here. It is a first contact scenario. Everyone on that ship is dead except one. I do not understand why they fuck with this ship. Yeah. I get so mad at, like, the next ten minutes, because I see a dead ship with one survivor, and I'm all like, Oh bro, plague, sorry. Like, virus, like, something destroyed your fucking ship, and I want nothing to do with it. I don't know if that makes me, like, a bad dude Star Trek captain. Um,

You're the, you're just, um, Todd Stashwick, blanking on his name.

I'm thinking Lorca, but that's from Discovery Season 1. He's actually a bad dude starship captain.

Yeah, you're a real Liam Shaw.

Yeah. You know what? Worse comparisons could be made. Um. It's uh, it's just like, why would you fuck with this? Right? And then, when they decide to fuck with it, it's The way they go about fucking with it also just drives me mad, right?

Well, you know, it wouldn't be unheard of for this to be disease, right? Like, we're out here crusading in the Excalibur because of disease. Like yeah, they should probably be a little more cognizant of these things as they're approaching anything

And, I mean, spoilers for next episode as well, but same shit. Like, oh, we found a thing that killed everyone? Well, maybe it's like the thing that's gonna kill everyone back home, so we should investigate. And it's all like, well, they clearly didn't solve for the fucking problem, y'all. You need to be finding worlds that are still around, and asking them if they've had any life threatening drug plagues that

sure, sure, like, if you just roll up on the one that's just all empty and drock plagued, like, what are you getting out of that that you can't really get at home, you know,

We have drug plague at home.

that needs to be a crusade shirt.

Just a meme, with Gideon's face over the dad in the car.

Yeah. Yeah.

Can we go to Drakplank? Oh

this is so, you know, as we're rolling up on this ship Kevin is just verklempt in the background about the colors of the ship behind him, just so upset. Kevin needs more pastels. I think that's what's wrong here.

yeah. it's too RGB, right? This is a serious mission, I don't care about your light up keyboards. nerds.

yeah. Agree. Uh, So we get the theme, we, we get back from theme and we hop in EVA suits. This is what Jaffer was uh, referring to when he was like, the way they go about this is absolutely

This is so fucking dumb. So one, we get a size of this ship, right? There's This ship is, like, at least, like, it's kind of, it's not squares, it's a bunch of circles. But, it seems to be taking up the space of, like, a grid of 4x4 Excaliburs. Which is a 2. 5 mile ship. Which would mean that this is a 12x12 mile ship. Without knowing how tall it is.

Yeah, sure.

This thing is fucking huge.

And we're just going to hop in suits and like swim over.

Right? Instead of fucking Starfuries, you've got Starfuries. We've seen them. It's in the fucking theme song.

We know they've got shuttles too, like, if you, if you're not worried about, like, guns and stuff, hop in some people movers, like, you have them, you went to a planet, we saw that. why do we need suits? Uh,

any, like, repair vehicles for the outside of their ship on their long distance explorer vessel? Nothing that can get out and fix a whole patch or something? Come

yeah, they need robots, you should be sending robots over.

Right. This is so dumb. We find out a bunch of stuff though. We see that the inside of the ship blew up. It looks like a lot of the crew killed each

Yeah, they were like fighting each other. We see the floating CGI corpses just like with their hands around each other's neck and stuff.

That doesn't make sense in the context of the plot.

I mean, I wrote it off as like, They, some of them got taken over by the personalities, but some of them didn't.

All they have to do is touch someone and they

yeah, you don't want to wring each other's necks

Yeah, the second you touch them, you become them and you stop fighting.

Okay, that is a solid point.

The only thing that would make sense for this for me, and this is me filling in a ton of blanks for a show and doing a bunch of mental legwork to make it okay. So I'm, we're just going to fucking rip open this plot right now. If you haven't watched this episode, listen, or we're not, this is not going to be chronological. I'm sorry. So we find out that these aliens are like, Many minds that are like spreading right

Mm hmm.

implication Is that there are a, a number of them that are distinct beings and you can inhabit the same body at the same time, which is why when they found the one, it was like the infinite mirror. And while the dudes were reaching for the one dude, it's like past their consciousness is up to be able to survive in the one body, hypothetically, if that's the case, and they're all actually individuals who sometimes hive mind, there might be a limited number of them

Right. Right.

they only had, you know, like Several hundred or something. Now that doesn't work with some of the stuff fucking well says later in the episode about taking over whole planets and colonizing and stuff, but it's just like, I don't know, it's just fucking dumb. It just, it seems like if you had just sat back for 30 seconds and looked at how this works, this is not the scene you would find. And it doesn't impact the plot at all, seeing them fighting each other, there's, they're like, oh, maybe it's a mutiny. Well, that doesn't make sense. And then they just move on. It's there for a line that has no bearing on the plot whatsoever.

Yeah. And we could have saved the CGI budget here, put it somewhere else, Right?

Mm

Oh, well, you could have put spears in their hands. Like, you could stab somebody from a distance

I mean, that's the zombie plan. Yeah. Stay,

Yeah, exactly.

feet away from me, please.

Stabby, stabby.

they're there for. so anyways, they pull this lone survivor into Med Lab

Yeah,

to try and save them. And they like, start dying very rapidly, even though they were totally stable, to get someone to run in, so that way we see the like, special effects of consciousness transference.

Yeah. Yeah. Janie, Janie is just too empathetic. She's presumably a nurse or maybe another doctor in med lab. Runs into the, the chamber like alien atmosphere chamber or whatever. And uh, starts trying to defib this alien, which another thing I was like, do we know that's gonna work? Do we know that's not going to make it worse? Slick.

Better than nothing, I guess? But, I mean, so, Defibrillator works by stimulating muscles, so if it's got a heart, you should, made of muscle, hypothetically a defibrillator would work on an alien, I would think. Assuming that their muscles work in any way similar to ours. That'd be

Yeah. Yeah. So maybe neutral, but,

yeah, in structure. Not necessarily in, like, anatomy. They don't need to be like red meat, white meat, kind of like, you know, they don't, we don't need to get that specific with it. I think as long as uh, electricity makes a muscle contract or whatever at the heart is using to pump, if it's not a muscle, if electricity causes contraction. Regardless, I'm done doing mental fucking gymnastics for you, Joe, and this episode. That's it. We hit the line. No math for you today.

for whatever reason, it doesn't work. And uh, the doctor tells Gideon she just can't figure out why he died. Like, it's almost like he did it on purpose, the little bastard. Yeah

the doctor Dr. Chambers here gives Janie some shit. Like, well, you're gonna have to do a full decontainment including, like, a body cavity thing?

that's clearly a punishment. I think Janie needs to go to HR.

Right. This is some, this is like some heavy kink shit. It's like, this is some really weird workplace dynamic kink shit and I am very uncomfortable.

hmm. And we're all trapped on a ship together. Things are gonna get weird.

I mean, not, not because of the body cavity search, to be clear. Uh, It's improper power dynamics that make me uncomfortable. I'm not gonna yuck anyone's yums.

Right. We're all about proper power dynamics here in the Who Are You Babylon 5

100%. Yeah, proper power dynamics is important in any relationship. Mm

The language guy whose name I also had a lot of trouble remembering, Max Eilerson, is lecturing his waiter about salt like an asshole.

God. He is a miserable excuse of a human being.

I feel like I say what a dick about this guy a lot.

Every episode. As you should. Multiple times an episode. Unless he's siloed out of it.

Yeah. I don't, we might've had one that he was siloed out, but yeah.

Yeah uh, the, the Technomage episode. I

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we were all better for it. I don't even know what he was doing in that scene besides lecturing about salt.

Yeah, he's, he's translating the language and he comes to the conclusion that there are two separate languages.

Ooh,

dun,

Why would we need that? Janie goes and touches some guy and transmits and gives him a ghost.

yeah, this is the worst game of tag ever.

yeah. She gives him some kind of orders in an alien language, and then keeps touching people back from commercial.

Right? Like this is an HR nightmare.

language guy sucks again, I wrote, so he must have done something else stupid.

So he figures it out. Like he cracks the code for the language. Because the captain would say ship the most, right? Totally. That makes sense. And from there he was able to figure out their entire language. Which, good for him.

Yeah, he's figured out that the spoken language and the written language on the ship, or the Yeah, the letters in the ship, like the, the consoles and stuff,

mhm.

common.

Yeah. Completely different languages. But he gets the captain's logs. And almost gets merc'd. A security guard totally saves his life by, like, jumping in front of a bullet, basically. To uh, let him get on the tram so he can call the captain just to be all like, Shit's fucked. Here's what's going on.

Oh, oh, you missed the most important

Oh, did

point of this episode, is at some point when all this is happening, Kevin decides he hates the uniforms, and that they have to go.

Oh, yeah. For sure.

Yes, this is very important. Oh, and he wants to take away Gideon's pockets, so Gideon's gonna know what it feels like to be a woman. Yay. Yay.

Cut up to the bridge where the captain and lieutenant use a space Roomba to check on some of the decks. Some are okay and some are not. And when they're using the floating camera on deck 9 wells, it's just like, Oh, hey, we're ready to discuss terms, y'all.

Yeah, I really liked the hover Roomba. That was pretty cool.

Yeah, I want one. I don't, actually. They're terrifying. Uh,

Diarrhea? Like, can you imagine if that Roomba was a hover Roomba? Uh Huh. Huh.

I've, I've kind of always wanted one because I thought they were cool, right? But I will tell you what the this episode airs after they get back, so I don't feel like I'm betraying anything here. The Curlies are out on a cruise right now. Benjamin from Last Time On and Gloryann from Cool Girls. And so I am going in house, like, I'm checking on their plants, watering stuff, right? And when I was watering plants there the other day, their Roomba was on. One, I opened the door and I thought empty house and I heard something running and I'm just all like, the fuck is that? Right, just like, I'm immediately in like, is someone in here? Like, what is going on? Cause something is, something is moving and operating around this house. And it's like, oh, it's the fucking Roomba. Right? So, and then, I'm like trying to like water the plants and I swear to fuck that thing was following me. I'm like trying not to step on their Roomba constantly.

Yeah. That's what it's like to have a Roomba

I, I have never gone from, Oh, that'd be cool! To, I never want one of these things in my fucking life so quickly. Yeah.

and it'll sense it alert to your app to be like, I'm stuck somewhere. And you're like, well, I'm at fucking work. So Yeah. So Gideon decides he is gonna go down there to talk. To the Sealed Off deck and believes he won't get got for some reason.

I mean, they weld it shut over there. Like they, they take an airlock and just

yeah,

down.

okay. I'm, I'm not, I'm not convinced.

That's fair.

Wells tells uh, Gideon all about how they don't have their own bodies and they just take over others, you know, they want to take over a world again, I guess they've taken over worlds before. I don't know why you do this though, like, in perpetuity, like, once you take over bodies on a world, can't you just, like, reproduce your own bodies? I don't know.

Yeah, it's I don't,

It's, it's hanging by a thread.

I don't have good answers and I'm not gonna work for them. Ha

Okay, but you know what? Kevin is all of us because he is just staring at Daniel Day Kim's cheekbones. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, we get a little bit of back and forth here. Um, On the bridge, and then Wells and Gideon talking. Gideon just like, rattles off the JMS greatest hits list. Uh, Just like, who are you, what do you want, where are we going, what's going on, all that shit real quick. So they're just like, drop us off on some planet, make us someone else's problem, Gideon isn't particularly interested in this,

No, no, he's too lawful. He's a lawful guy.

Yeah, but Kevin is like, figuring it out, man. He's all like, why, like, they, they were all outstretched to the one dude? And they were all still touching? He didn't think that was kinda weird?

See, we need Kevin. The show needs Kevin.

Problem solver.

So Gideon and Matheson ultimately strategize. They want to cut the aliens off and drop the temperature.

Yeah, the captain fucks with the thermostat and Wells handles it as well as most middle aged white dudes.

yeah. Just calls them up and straight up shoots a guy.

Right?

oh yeah?

violence.

Mm hmm. They like, you know. Touch, touch him, and then his little alien spirit moves out, and then they just shoot the crew member. So, they were thinking about that continuity. So he's gonna start killing more if Gideon doesn't comply with his needs. But Gideon is gonna pull a Janeway. He's ready to like, go in himself and self distract the whole ship as a backup plan. what

Mm hmm.

plan. Yeah, Gideon gets in his space suit because they can't get in through the suit, cause they gotta touch him. I guess they can go through clothes, but not whatever shielding is in the suit.

Sure.

Jafar's over it.

So over it. Yep. He tries to pass them a message by speaking in incorrect what's the word I'm looking for here?

it's like a code. I mean, he's just, mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Metaphor! Yeah.

there's that drop. Yeah. It's like he's, he's purposefully fucking up his Tamarian so that Max will get a message from that. Cause, cause Max is a genius. We know that because he's a jerk. So,

hmm. All geniuses are jerks.

verifiable, but not all jerks are geniuses. So he says, I think

yeah.

And,

Yeah, this

that those sound the same, but they are spelled different.

My subtitles helped a lot here.

Yeah.

a lot of the heavy lifting.

Truly.

They figured out they're gonna cut the oxygen out. To get everyone to kind of force their way around, I guess.

so, why could we figure out, like, why did we If we figured out we could cut off the air, why did we drop the temperature first? Like, this seems like an unnecessary step. Go straight to cut off the air. Jaffara's yawning, everyone. It is

It is, It is, almost 11 o'clock here.

Yeah, yeah. This is not just a commentary on this episode of

It is though, it is, I promise.

Heh heh

and the like 7 percent beer I'm drinking is starting to hit me a little bit. Anyways yeah, I mean, I stopped looking for logic in this episode. I think the only reason you would do it like this is because you needed time to put the dead not dead crewman in place. Because that seems to be the crux of the solution pending here. So they, they get a crewman in a space suit to survive but it's the crewman who was permanently brain damaged. Hours ago?

So we're The security guard that, like, jumped in front of Eilerson died. Like, he was killed.

They had him on life support. Yeah.

And somehow he's, he's the savior of us all because we put him in a space suit and they think that, oh, we're gonna hop into this one body and survive this decompression. whoops.

Yep, they can't move. They just end up trapped.

not functional. even

Mm hmm. I have so many problems with this. At first, I was all like, Oh, they just went into a dead body on accident before I realized what had actually

not completely dead. Yeah, there's some ethical things there, I feel like, that are a problem.

this is not what would happen in a Star Trek episode.

Yeah, but, to ramp up the drama just a tiny bit, as they're, like, spacing this deck, Or this alien, at least, or alien's presence, whatever, yeah. They start screaming inside the body that they know what Gideon is looking for and they could help him find it. And, too late, bye.

yep. Gets launched into space and then fucking blasted to hell.

Yeah, so screamings of a, a desperate Alien consciousness, or do you think they do kind of know about it and could help find it? Mm

They're kind of like Hive Mindy. So, I mean, if you've spent a ton of time invading a ton of worlds,

hmm.

like, this might be something you've come across.

Yeah, yeah, and we meld together. We all know about it. Yeah.

Yeah, you've been to a world where they solved for this problem and then you took it over instead. You know, checking in places where you should be, where there's people living.

Yeah.

Um,

Yeah, Gideon. No, it doesn't

I mean, I don't know. I don't really

hmm.

Like, it has no implication on the plot because they just get

Just

Mm hmm.

It makes it seem like, you know, Gideon is so good and pure that even though they offered him a reasonable deal, like, you know, we'll leave your guys alone, you just drop us off somewhere. Like, just uh, just make us somebody else's problem. Gideon wouldn't take that. And what makes us wonder, like, if Gideon had known. Would he have taken that? I don't know. I don't think he would have taken it, obviously, but

I think if it's something that you were going to offer in earnest, you would have offered it in earnest when you were trying to make the the good faith deal the first time.

yeah. Because it doesn't have, like, a cost to it. That's the thing. It's like, if it was going to cost them something, really, to offer it up, like, you should have offered it earlier.

Yeah, you could be like, take us to a planet, drop us off, by the way we know where a cure for the drach plague is, and we'll give you the coordinates of that world after we're safe and landed.

Yeah.

And then you find a shitty colony that no one cares about, and drop them off, and you end the series in the next episode. Because if you're going to go through the, the moral exercise of what you do to this poor brain dead person who has no agency, I

Mm hmm. Yeah. Is, is it a lot, a lot different than what you would do to a unknown, unexplored colony? Yeah.

mean, and you can at least warn the colony.

Yeah.

Be like, or, or drop them off, get the coordinates, just nuke the fucker from orbit.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. Super laser, you've got one.

Yeah, this is really horrifying about taking the brain dead body and using it this way. Like, you know, I don't know that we 100 percent really know what a person is experiencing when they're in that sort of state. Like.

I mean, I'm an organ donor.

Uh Huh.

And if they were an organ donor, I feel like that's close enough to volunteering for this. That's not terribly different. Um, but

I suppose if It could be like, you're in the space military now, you're all organ donors. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Uh it's just, it's just so weird. It's, it's just a weird choice to make. And I just hate it. I just hate it. Like, it's just, this, it's like, it kind of makes me rewatch the 90s Outer Limits show. Because the,

that.

because I feel like that show could have done something with this that was more thought provoking than just making me feel bad.

Yeah. There's just so many things that are just like Yeah. glossed over in this episode that really deserved more thought. Cause in Babylon five, they got more thought most of the time, not a hundred percent, but

But most of the time, I think that's the biggest issue with Crusade as a series so far.

Yeah. Oh, four,

three Three.

nailed it.

Yeah. Got it. We'll just wrap it up. We're gonna take a couple months off. We'll be back in November with Battlestar Galactica. We did it all. We fucking did it.

Mission accomplished.

Got it in three baby!

Speaking of things that are uncomfortable, Kevin presents the new uniforms and I thought they did. I thought they looked hideous at this point. I don't know. Maybe it'll grow on me, but I was like, Ooh,

I saw these things and had one thought in my mind.

yeah, I

Tell me I'm wrong. They look just like the Galaxy Quest unit. I don't know.

Hmm. What was, when did that come out? Did we have some spare uniforms in addition to those Starship Troopers helmets? Like we just need to repurpose some stuff. Like. Mm-Hmm.

around, I think Galaxy Quest came out in 99. So Crusade would have been right around then.

Well, yeah, we're just picking up their vibes.

Yeah. Greys Are really in this year.

yeah. Yeah. Max goes to see the doctor and is, you know, max kind of had like a little turn in the episode after the guy s the security guard sacrificed his life for him. Um, and you know, it has been mopey about like, that guy saved my life and. I hope that he would have wanted his body used that way. And the, the doctor basically calls him out on being a giant narcissist, which I enjoyed.

Yeah. He needs that being called out for being a giant narcissist. Yeah.

Yeah. And then we were reminded that yes, this whole thing is very sad that two people died because we end the episode on Gideon dictating a letter to Greenberg's mom and Arkham's dad. I hope I'm reading my notes correctly to the credits. Like they get names here after they're very dead because they were expendable up until now.

Yep. And that's, that's an episode. I gotta ask you, Laura, on a scale of one to four main guns firing, how do you feel about this episode?

Look, I know you, you seem to be pretty down on this episode, but I absolutely want more Kevin. And I'm giving this episode three of the main guns firing just because I want Kevin to show back up. I know he won't, but it would be so great if we just decided that we needed an onboard PR guy to like, make snappy jokes at Gideon all the time. amazing. Amazing.

No, no. I gave this episode a lot of shit. Uh, part of that, part of that is because it's late and I'm cranky. Uh, because I am, I am, just a grumpy old man

there's a lot to be cranky about in the world today.

Uh, But as far as like, episodes of Crusade go, this

huh.

the better ones.

Yeah, I thought it felt pretty like we tried to hang it all together pretty well. You and I picked those seams apart, but, you know, that's our job, right? We're media critics.

Oh no.

I absolutely do not identify as a media critic. I just thought it was funny. Well, you've gotten like media passes to shit and stuff. So I was like, guess we're legit, huh?

He, well, that's just because I don't want to pay for things.

I identify as a media critic when I want free.

I identify as a media critic to places that offer press badges and

Hehehehe.

Yeah, this wasn't bad. I definitely put this at a strong, you know, we'll say three. I had written two and a half. But Kevin is fun enough to boost this up to three. I, I concur three out of the four main guns firing for this

Splendid. Splendid. I hope Crusade can keep it up. Hehehe.

it can't. Speaking of which, next episode. We're gonna be skipping ahead two to follow this perfect JMS order or whatever that we chose. Um, we're going to watch episode 10, the memory. Uh, Galen warns Gideon not to explore a planet where the inhabitants were suddenly eradicated.

Hm. Again, we're going and looking for the dead people. Yeah.

We're, we're looking for the dead people. Um, I, I feel very, like we've both already watched the next episode cause we were planning on recording back to back before it got super late and I got a little buzzed.

Uh huh.

But we'll talk about it next episode.

Yes. It'll be fun. Until then, we have some thank yous to say. Ja'far, would you

We do. I will, of course. Thank you, Jeremy, Jeremy Siegel for our absolutely fantastic theme music. Thank you so much for putting that together for us. Really appreciate it. You can find more of Jeremy's work at JeremySiegel42. bandcamp. com on streaming services as Nuclear Jaguar. And then he's also been playing Savants lately. So if you see a show with them and you're in that area, go see him. Support live music. Fuck yeah.

Yeah, I bet he would be delighted as well. And thank you to Angry Duck Time Machine on Instagram for our podcast artwork.

Aaron, thanks so much for editing this podcast. I hope the drops I called for weren't too hard to find this time.

And thank you to you, the listener, for being here on the Crusade for Crusade.

We'll see you next week, Internet.

All right. Bye.