Babylon 5 For the First Time | And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder 05x16 

During the 20th anniversary panel which had essentially the remaining cast members plus JMS, Tracy Scoggins (Lochley) gave a heartwarming tribute to her dear friend of 30 years Jeff Conway (who was dead by then). She emphasized that a lot of his problems stemmed from back pain accumulated over the years in his physically challenging performances on stage (he was also a dancer on Broadway). Also, she stressed that the man who was on Celebrity Rehab was not the Jeff Conway she knew or the Jeff Conway people should remember him as.

Brent, Jeff, regarding the Evidence, Vir himself said it: Even if the Narn could theoretically have access to a FEW junked Centauri warships, there's no way they could fake such a large and powerful force of new build warships. So at minimum the only reasonable conclusion from an outside observer is that a MAJOR part of the Centauri government and military has gone rogue, and it's absolutely right to hold a government accountable for actions on that scale. If you have an entire Carrier Battle Group tooling around the Indian ocean sinking foreign flagged merchant ahips, no country would accept "well you can't prove it was American sailors crewing that Nimitz-class and its escorts!"

Sheridan saying he will abide by whatever decision the world's make being terrible leadership strikes me as very similar to what happened in the UK over Brexit many years later. The government was against it but decided to hold the poll to shut people up, saying it would abide whatever the decision was, but then the decision they didn't want came back and they had to implement it knowing it would be a disaster.

*Delenn stares* Jeff: That really took this episode down a peg.

I think Lennier with the registry numbers is that these ships are in fact newly constructed ships, which is why they don't have the registry numbers for them on their system. These are all the new ships being made specifically for this chaos making

You know your drinking has gotten out of hand when it causes a full scale war.

Centauri government is modeled after Roman Empire. The emperor is essentially a dictator, and under him is the centaurum (aka the senate) who takes care of the every day stuff, and the prime minister is basically the leader of that. But the emperor can overrule anything they do if they so choose. Regent is basically temporary emperor, but while he is the regent he has exact same authority as the emperor.

Thank you, Brent, for calling Jeff out for his Delenn-bashing. That has always been the part of your podcast that I have liked the least.

I think you might be misunderstanding the way the alliance is set up. Unlike prior to the formation the collective races of the league had one vote between them as you mentioned. However now each race has their own separate vote so the can in theory outvote Sheridan. What we are seeing is Sheridans lack of experience in politics at this stage and so making mistakes.

why send Franklin to move Vir? Maybe because people watch security in situations like this but who watches the doctor?

I think it's interesting, G'Kar basically says by writing the extra chapters, he himself in the beginning misunderstood the message. Not that the message was wrong, just how he saw and articulated it.

I almost always agree with Jeff when he and Brent disagree, but today, Jeff's wrong about Mira Furlan's performance IMO. This was a great episode top to bottom. Edit: the auto-captioning from YT calls Garibaldi "Garrett Baldy" lmao.

So, im curious.....the button and all the other evidence is absolutely circumstantial and should not have led to the sanctions....and it DIDNT lead to sanctions......IT was Lenniers evidence that topped it off and led to the evidence coming before the alliance and sanctions finally being imposed. Lennier saw a centauri hub or launching point, with several centauri war ships ( not old ships or freight ships , but war ships ) sending and receiving messages and one centauri ship at that launching place destroying a freighter with civilians aboard . So its not one ship butvmany at a launching hub , sending and receiving coded messages , and an alien ship being destroyed right there. How come thats not enough evidence for the sanctions ? What would need to happen for you to agree with the decision?

You guys keep asking a lot of questions and are frustrated with what might or might not happen, and I'm just sitting here waiting until you finish the season... and the movies... and the books... and the comic books... and secret story... I cannot agree with Jeff that Mira Furlan's performance was bad. Mira Furlan in many ways play Delenn's character as herself, just like Garibaldi is basically Jerry Doyle on screen, Delenn many times is Mira Furlan. And she had to live through a lot of pain and frustration before coming onto the show, and several times when delivering lines she fueled that hurt person in her to give us the performance we see on screen. Delenn has done a lot of good and bad things, made terrible decisions, but this time she could not do anything to prevent this. It's a painful moment and she does a great job performing it. I think the thing about B5 for me is that I've always been immersed into it, I believe it is real (while watching it). I believe that these are real characters, real station, real galaxy, real wars and problems, and the set design and acting and even music help me see it as real or as real at can be. The King Arthur episode is one of those episodes that I really understood very well, because of the immersion into it and into Michael York's character. I could see how crazy he was, he was hurt, he was in pain, psychologically, physically, and the pain was felt interchangeably. And he wasn't fully cured yet, but he finally was able to see the difference between reality and fiction, and that's already a huge step. I love that episode a lot. Season 5 is difficult, the Byron stuff needs more backstory, more fleshing out, and we sadly didn't get that on this first watch, and can't confirm or deny if we get more information from the prequels or sequels, but we definitely needed more in this season to make it better, and sadly didn't, which is why a lot of people hate it (I appreciate what it tries to do). But the rest of season 5 is pretty phenomenal, and deserves a lot more love from the community.

Did Brent just find a loophole in the 'Time To Pay The Piper' segment scoring? If one gives a prediction of what 'will NOT" happen in the episode.... do they get points? "Time travelling dinosaurs will not show up and conquer Minbar" --- 100% score!

You gotta cut JMS some slack. For the first part of the season, he was depressed, stressed, and working his ass off in getting episode after episode out. It wasn’t until getting rid of Byron that his Mojo began to return. But trust us, he gets it back in spades. the ending of the season/series is as strong as the beginning of the season is weak.

The centuri ships is damming. Nobody else has those ships

Season 5 suffers a lot from Claudia Christian not being available.

The thing is, in the Byron episodes, you might need to have half of the episodes at times because the side plots and character stuff is good

“Blessed are the cheese makers?” Sorry, I’m on cold meds right now. They are making me loopy.

This is Zach Allen growing up, becoming Garibaldi's mentor, coming full circle.

1:25:37 So happy that you broke down the message of this episode in this way. Thank you, Brent!

You didn't believe us when we hinted at how bad the Byron was going to be... 🤣🤣😞

Why Franklin? probably because no one expects Franklin

40:00 I think some of what went wrong is down to Sheridan trying to run the Alliance like the B5 war room when the Alliance is too big to be run by just a couple of individuals. For good or ill, there's a reason nation states always have a corps of (theoretically) apolitical administrative staff (bureaucracy, civil service, court flunkeys, whatever you want to call them) who are there to make sure the people paid the big bucks wake up and go to meetings, field phone calls and act as point of contacts when someone is on the toilet or passed out drunk. To be fair to Sheridan (as Brett alluded to), the Alliance doesn't have its permanent home yet so they're still muddling through how the Alliance will work! Delenn's speech also reminds me of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot speech.

65! I really loved your discussion, and now I'm really looking forward to see how B5 for the second time will be

Really good job noticing the relation between the future in War Without End and this episode. I can't comment more on this until the season is over, but that was 2278, 16 years from season 5, three years before Sheridan's allotted lifespan runs out. That said, something you guys missed: The Centauri Republic declared war on the ISA FIRST. "The alliance has followed OUR declaration of hostilities with one of their own.". And at bare minimum minister smugington doesn't seem dismayed but actually seems actively pleased with the state of affairs. I will circle back to this point later.

Sending emails to Jeff reminds me of Home Improvement: "That's Tim Taylor, c/o Tool Time..."

Oh great! Thanks, Jeff . . . you did say that you'd agreed to react to your previous reactions during that last little rant, didn't you? 😀

Yes! IThis is a great episode. Yes, Delenn's speech at the end caps it all so well. 65! Be seeing you!

With regard to what the title of the next episode might make one think of, I'll submit: "Something was coming up behind them. What it was could not be seen: it was like a great shadow, in the middle of which was a dark form, of man-shape maybe, yet greater; and a power and terror seemed to be in it and to go before it. It came to the edge of the fire and the light faded as if a cloud had bent over it. Then with a rush it leaped across the fissure. The flames roared up to greet it, and wreathed about it; and a black smoke swirled in the air. Its streaming mane kindled, and blazed behind it. In its right hand was a blade like a stabbing tongue of fire; in its left it held a whip of many thongs."

Interesting information about the sermon on the mount. I'm going to look more into it.

Even in history, some regents have had more power than you would think

Sadly by this time in the series Conaway had started to relapse and Jerry's drinking was getting out of hand and so here is a scene of JMS using the characters to kinda address that. It is so unfortunate how both actors passed away due to their addictions and habits, it makes this story even more powerful.

About the Regent over Prime Minister thing.. this is what you can infer considering the series. The Centauri Republic is a Monarchy that is not 'constitutional' but rather is something closer to what would be a Western style 'Empire', either classic (Roman Empire) or medieval (Holy Roman Empire or the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire), where the authority of the Emperor is absolute in theory and mostly in practice, but he is advised by both a cabinet (the ministers) of some kind and from a legislative/consultive body (the Senate in the Roman Empire, the Imperial nobility in the HRE in the Diets for the HRE). This body in fact would not be elected but in the case of the Centari, the Centaurum, it seems would be the chosen representatives of selected noble houses that would pass some criteria (that we can't know the particulars about). In this case the cabinet of the Head of State (the Emperor) might or not have members of the Centaurum in its ranks. I thnk in this case Jeff and Matt's confusion is because in our own history the figure of a 'prime' minister of the head of state's cabinet emerges exactly because the authority of the monarchy has been eroded to the point the cabinet is taking functions of the monarch himself, and over his own authority (which happens in UK only when the legislative body has succesfully already eroded and even eliminated key powers from the King, and actually never happens in French or other monarchies until they turn constitutional in late XIXth century Europe). In this case, the Prime Minister would indeed supersede or at least contest the word of a Regent (and in fact, of an established Monarch) because his power comes from other sources than the monarch himself. Be it a much more powerful parliament or some direct link to the legal source of power (noble coalitiions, elections, etc.) stablished in Constitution or established practice. If we go to modern Prime Ministers, they either are the 'elected monarchs' in all but name (as in UK), or are the heads of the legislative body and still second but not dependent on the head of state (like in France, where you have a President). USA for instance has *nothing* close enough to a Prime Minister figure, for instance. Clearly, not in this case, where the Centauri Republic has managed to get a 'Prime Minister' possition with no source of power but the Monarch himself. And while it's clear the Centaurum is the one that has elected Londo as Prime Minister (iirc), it seems only because it's an extraordinary situation (Emperor dead with no appointed successor), and the Regent is elected in the same vein. The only previous example we see of a prime Minister, Malachai, is very much the creature of Emperor Turhan and not of the Centaurum, a majority of whom clearly opposes (and clearly he is murdered really easily because of this as soon as Turhan dies). We don't know who if any Carthagia had as his own Prime Minister, but the lack of one clearly supports this line of thought. Still, in this system, even when both Prime Minister and Regent have been elected by the Centaurum, the Prime Minister is the prime minister of *the regent* and depending on him, not the Prime Minister of the Centauri Republic or even the Prime Minister of the Centaurum. In this case not only he is completely defenseless of the Regent, who is efectively his direct boss, but the other ministers would very probably actually depend directly on the Regent too and not on the Prime Minister. Again, it's very unlikely a political system like the Centauri Republic would have a Prime Minister figure like that, but... well, you can't ask political detail to this degree in this kind of show. It's good enough as it is :D

In some points in ancient China being a "minister" was more about titles than actual tasks. There were grifters who collected the ministership of multiple states from multiple kings, being double and triple agents.

Not sure why the "button" bugs them so much when it's the Centauri equivalent to a cod piece pulled off of a royal guard uniform. If it's just a random guy, there's massive questions about how he got that uniform, and if it is a royal guard member, there's even more massive questions about who he's reporting to. The Centauri can't just say, 'it wasn't us' or 'it's a rogue group'; it's too big and too close to the upper echelons of the Centaurum if not the Emperor himself.

Hooray for Big Londo Energy!

You can't skip all of the telepath stuff as that's what got Garibaldi drinking.

Was Brent asking for a starship trooper format? "WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?"

I am taken back to my first comment early in Season 1. It was about JMS. It was that he had a BS and MS, and that neither of them was in English or writing. They were both in Phycology. He wanted to better understand the human condition, so he could better understand and write rich characters...warts and all.

I waited through the 40 seconds of dead air at the end but there was no after-credits scene 😂

Jeff broke the mic on that outro LOL

I could see the ascended person being a descendent of Sheridan....

The Alliance had already voted to hold off on action until the Advisory Council has gathered enough evidence, and in exchange for that vote, Sheridan and the Advisory Council agreed to present the evidence to them and do what they wanted. So the votes have already been taken.

In the same way as Francis Ford Coppola re-edited The Godfather pt 3, maybe B5 season 5 could be re-edited to make it "Babylon 5 Coda". Minimising the Byron plot, combining episodes where necessary, focussing on the good stuff (of which there is plenty). Maybe turning it all into 65-90 minute TV movie format, to smooth over the cuts.

The way the alliance is operating suggests to me that they started mostly on the assumption that people will act right based on a sense of honor rather than clearly defined laws. Now as to the lack of evidence against the Centauri - I hate to point it out, but the evidence presented was as good, I think maybe better, than the evidence the US used to attack Iraq after 9-11. This is real, this is how international affairs in the real world frequently play out. Historically, much of international affairs are based on circumstantial evidence rather than real proof.

65! FYI, this episode was directed by Mira Furlan's husband.

See, I get the impression that whatever quarters Vir is assigned to… he would not complain, as he still lacks the full confidence in himself to lead theCentauri on Babylon 5. is moving into that frame of mind, but it still takes time. And the fact that his race is once more at war, probably flustered him still.

I cannot wait for you guys get together with the other Podcaster

Jeff must have a truly charming personality to make up for that but of his.

But it is Sheridan’s first rodeo as a politician, not as a military commander. As a military commander, I imagine you have contingency plan upon contingency plan. A newbie politician? Probably not so much.

Will the new T-shirt be in green?

.... and on that day, The Great Maker met with The Great Bird of the Galaxy and they divided the galaxy between themselves, and they looked on it and saw it was good.

B5 was really screwed over by the threat of cancellation in S4. JMS did well to write a whole season last minute, particularly after having all his notes destroyed in a hotel. It’s a miracle really. The Lockley and Byron characters were just awful as was the whole telepath thing because it’s not something a TV show can do justice for. Sadly, JMS would be screwed over again by the studios for Crusade and Legend of the Rangers.

Think the telepath plots should have been reduced one level to improve the show A's to B's and B's to C's, also shift the focus away from TNT's model much like the season one-two fighter pilot. Should be an extra not a star role. The plot was needed but not as a focus point.

I think you guys went like 3 trej references over your limit this week.😮

1:08:16 The Bible gets retranslated all the time. It is one of the most insidiously confusing things to do. Because as languages are alive and vernacular is real, very subtle changes can make very big differences in interpretation. As a Catholic, I keep a copy in Latin around so that I can compare. If I could read Greek I would keep one of those around too. For cross-referencing.

I thought that the authoritative list of what books to include in the Bible was determined that the first council of nicaea

If the Centaury secession from the alliance is the equivalent to Brexit, then than makes Londo be Boris Johnson!

The Regent is Head of State. Apparently the Emperor of the Centauri still has actual political and military power, maybe the PM oversees domestic political matters?

How do we know the future can change? Babylon squared and war without end part one and two sort of proved that the future can’t be changed. Sinclair tried to warn Garibaldi about getting shot in the back… Didn’t work.… Anna Sheridan showing up unexpectedly turned out… Sheridan… Damn, I can’t say anything else. This no spoilers thing really sucks you know?

Londo being the patriot cannot see the obvious. Gkar tells him as much. War is inevitable sadly. Engineered by outsiders.

I don't think the Alliance was partraied as something to be rooting for in this one. Sharidan and his folks looked totally incompetent, and I think it was deliberate.

Ulkesh...not Kosh 2.0

On the subject of holy books that develop their theology on the way and correct themselves, the Christian Bible and the Hebrew scriptures don't really fall into that category, like Brent said, largely because of their multiple authorship. What you might be looking for as a real life parallel to the book of G'Kar might be the Quran, because that was written by one person over the course of time and, though I'm not terribly familiar with the tradition of its interpretation, I am vaguely aware that it does have a sort of chronological priority in how it is usually interpreted and applied.

"Put your face in the book." - Jesus

I see where Jeff's going with Mira Furlan's performance, at least in the council chamgers, but you'll have a hard time blaming it on the director; it was her husband. Actually, according to Lady Morella, Londo's becoming emperor was unavoidable. You're thinking of Lady Ladira, who said the future could change. They said they sent Franklin, because they wanted to move Vir quietly. A security team would get more notice. It's a weak excuse, but at least they tried. Franklin's testimony was clearly filler, and even for human biology very shoddy. You guys are crazy that Londo was right. He was dead wrong, and G'Kar called him out on it *in the episode* on it. For example, on Lennier's footage they clearly show the ships docked at a Centauri base, and it's clear that none of those ships can land, so the "we may have left them behind on Narn" excuse is absurd on its face. This episode showed that Londo hasn't "evolved" nearly as much as he'd like to tell himself. He was just in pride-hurt defensive mode, lashing out at anybody who attacks him or his people (right or wrong). He had one chance after seeing the attack footage, but immediately backslid. Londo acquiesces to the regent because the regent is acting in stead of the (non-existent) emperor. They are a full monarchy, not a presidential parliament like the UK. The emperor has almost unchecked power, which means the regent has that power. The prime minister is closer to vice president in our terms. To be fair, we don't know if the council decided on a blockade before calling Londo in. They explained why they kept Londo out of the loop, when the button first implicated the Centauri. If he knows something's up, he would have done whatever needed to get to the bottom of it, and that would just get him killed. Arresting G'Kar was... not exactly wrong, but pretty dumb. All they have to do is ensure that G'Kar doesn't have communication with the Alliance (easy enough to do in the Royal Palace), and he's harmless. Thessalonians is probably the best example of later clarification of writing, that would most closely match G'Kar's additional writing. Or, as Brent points out, we're missing at least two Corinthian letters; some think 2 Cor is actually two separate letters merged together. If you want something really interesting: how did G'Kar know which seat Londo booked? Vir must have told him... 65 I have no idea if you read these, or if I'm doing it too late, but a suggestion for you: Before you watch the final episode of the series, go back, and watch the last two minutes of Rising Star (Delenn's closing monologue). THEN watch the finale. That's how they were originally going to be ordered, before TNT's last-minute rescue of the show.

Still can't say why the telepath stuff was absolutely thematically necessary. Yet.

Definitely don't make a drinking game out of this episode triggered on the word "Podcast"....

Club 65!!

The issue of the book of G'Kar - first, I'd suggest that it is rather more like Buddhist scriptures than Christian scriptures in that rather than a collection of writing which are believed to be directly inspired/written by God, Narn scriptures are presented as philosophical writings of individual prophets. To me, this is an important distinction. The book of G'kar is not the "Word of God" - it is the word of G'Kar. Some religions do it like Christianity where the holy books are viewed as the direct word of God and others where they are the wisdom of great prophets. The second point is that cannon is not all written at one sitting. The Bible has books written by many people over a long period of times. In fact, this is why the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible are not the same - because the early Protestant church chose to use the Septuagint [done about 200 years before Christ] as the final defined set of books in the old testament whereas the Catholic church chose to use the those book which were recognised by the Jewish faith at the time of Christ, which included things like the Maccabees. So G'Kar wrote his book but had not finished and then he wrote more - some might choose to only include what was in the first publication while others choose to include everything that was intended by G'Kar to be included.

But I got a button😳...

"Can someone in jail become emperor?" - That is what Trump must be thinking right now.

Yeah, I didn't care for Byron either. I skip those on review.

Didn’t the council of Nicaea wipeout certain gospels because they were written by not canonically approved people in the hierarchy of the church. I.e., the gospel of Judas, the gospel of Mary Magdalene, etc.

Whats so special about "47"?

I'm with Jeff on this episode. I can see why the director did only this one episode of the show.

65. Are you okay? 😂

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65! Peace!

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