Just watched these two so will get in a post while they are fresh in my head.

Exogenisis

First off I was just going to remark in general about the shuttle pilot apparently doing a terrible Sean Connery impersonation, then I remembered, in your podcast for "A Day in the Strife" you called the argumentative freighter captain "Shouty Zardoz". This is a freight shuttle, It's him. he's now immersed in the character and seems more affable for it.Sadly it probably means he's sitting in the cockpit wearing a gaint orange nappy.

Anyway, diversions aside I liked the way this episode seems to be a standard Body-Snatchers episode but with a nice twist that in fact it's a species surviving through symbiosis rather than parasites. More Toc'Ra than Gua'Uld (Hope my Stargate spellings are correct) Duncan's speech gets a bit Roy Batty, I was expecting him to talk about attack ships burning at Tanhuser gate. However it gives us our first dose of Marcus/Franklyn and their interplay and banter is great, even if Marcus' escape plot hinges on a particularly thick guard. The B plot is quite fun, but with a dark edge, yes its comedy Corwin bumbling through a romantic misunderstanding, but there is this element of how hard it is for our conspirators to trust earth force personell, similar to the situation Garibaldi must be facing with Zach.

Messages from Earth. Top Stuff. We have the situation with Nightwatch building to a head, with Zach genuinely torn, a nice comparison between him and swotty kissup security woman, Zach still questions while she's definitely "On Message". As for teh main plot, one of the things B5 did really well was to keep the Shadows as a proper danger, despite Sherridan now having taken down two of them both times it has been through strategy and thought rather than mere brute force. Something Voyager should have thought of when they encountered the Borg, every time the Borg appeared they looked less threatening because ships that could take out a federation fleet seemed to have trouble with one small ship. The Effects people really earn their money this ep, the SHadow ship breaking out of the Dome, the Aggermemnon seen through the Jovian atmosphere, beautiful. And we also get a couple of fun Marcus and Ivanova scenes. In fact its been a good couple of episodes for Marcus.

Anyway, all kicking off now. We're running into a fantastic run of episodes. Yay

I've been waiting for you to get to this episode because I had always been puzzled as to why G'Kar didn't suss that it was Kosh and not G'Lan in his vision / telepathic link to Mollari. I thought G'Kar would have seen Kosh as G'Lan when he saved Sheridan in The Fall Of Night.

Of course you made the point that very few people actually knew it was Kosh. Only Delenn saw him come out of his encounter suit. The other assembled ambassadors would not make the connection between the relevant mythological figure that they saw and Kosh.

I know seems clear now but I've watched B 5 dozens of times and not made the connection. Thanks for pointing it out.

Ian

Couldn't fit this into a tweet! re the amount of time between Br malcolm's sentencing & DoP, I assumed it was a sign of the corruption of the Clark administration, rushing through "justice" to reduce the prison population

PieMan70 said:



That is brilliant! I had been wondering for years why that pilot was doing a bad Sean Connery impression. However, the mental picture you've just brought into being is absolutely revolting.

Love this episode because...

Sheridan & Delenn!

Squeeeeeee!



I could say much more about this awesome episode, but I'm sure Matt and Gillian have covered it with their usual thoroughness. The only other thing I'll say is that, if you can watch this episode without immediately popping in the next two or twenty, you have far more self-control than I have. (Nearing the end of Season 4 for the umpty-umpth time.)

Ivanina wrote:


It is isn't it. Then again I managed to sit through the actual film Zardoz so the mental image is only as bad as the reality.

It's definitely nice to see Corwin getting some major character development this season. He's certainly a more interesting background/supporting character than he-who-must-not-be-named. I don't know much about military rankings but his promotion from Lt. JG to full lieutenant reminds me a bit of another sci-fi franchise, the Gundam novels, where low-ranked officers were the only ones left alive to command a ship and a Lt. JG Brite Noa had to step in as a ship commander, but that's a bit off-topic of course. Did I hear Ivanova right: did Lt. David Corwin receive his first name in this episode?



I love the expanded characterization Marcus exhibits in this episode. Between Marcus twisting Garibaldi's words -- "Can I quote you on that?" -- to get Franklin to help him, and taking advantage of Franklin's security clearance to rush into his friend's quarters -- "You can't, but I don't have that problem!" -- I can't get enough of it! Marcus and Franklin together also have great chemistry for an entertaining team-up relationship. Can't wait to see more of that.

The symbiotic alien race strikes me as another very Star Trekky plot, reminding me that Babylon 5 used the existing framework of episodic sci-fi television to hold up it's innovative plot-arc. No complaints here, but the fact is definitely more noticeable these days now that we've had some very gripping plot-arc television shows with zero random-story-of-the-week trappings. I think TV today has shows like B5 to thank for paving the way for what we have today.

Corwin's bumbling to figure out if Ivanova's advances are romantic in nature are funny, but the fact that this leads to Ivanova assuming the roses were from Marcus, and that Ivanova's response of "Keep 'em!" could only be interpreted by Marcus as the roses were from Ivanova herself... this is comedic gold! Especially considering Ivanova supposedly has no actual interest in Marcus, but this little happenstance communicates the exact opposite message through no fault of her own. I've laughed out loud hysterically at that last exchange, both times I've seen this episode.

Time-stamp time! According to G'Kar, this episode starts 2 weeks after S3E6 "Dust to Dust", and in 6 weeks G'Kar will be released from his 8-week G'Karceration. I don't know where that puts it in relation to the beginning of 2260 however.

After Corwin's plot last episode, here is the continuation of Zack's similar loyalty plot. The two are interesting to compare. On a side note, do I remember correctly that Mr. Nightwatch listed EMAILS as one of the forms of communication they're allowed to monitor? If email is still in use in 2260, carried by some interstellar communication network, I will geek out indeed :-D

The line is dropped that it's a 2-day hyperspace jump to get to Earth space. I'd pay attention to this to see if the show sticks to the rule in the future. I like seeing Sheridan in civies for once, not only because he dresses pretty cool, but also because this symbolizes the fact that they are taking the White Star into Earth space to directly oppose the interests of the Earth Alliance.

I've read some internet discussion trying to estimate the thrust capabilities of the ships involved in this episode by the distance covered between the moon Ganymede and Jupiter's atmosphere in a matter of seconds. While I appreciate this type of speculation, it reminds me that I assume there is always some sort of time-lapse in every scene of a TV show. This accounts for some time-frames that don't match up or flashbacks that seem slower or faster in the memory of a character. Given that Sheridan was gone for 4 days according to that Night Watch guy, the chase scene to Jupiter has room to have taken a couple of hours perhaps, making the ships a little less ridiculously fast. I wonder if the scene could plausibly be considered in this way.

This episode gives the viewers our first clue about the operation of the Shadow vessels: they are piloted by beings, and I think it was specifically human beings. I'm not sure if I remember that correctly from the episode though.

Voices of Authority

This one remind me a bit of A Day in the Strife as it's short on actual incident but it just gently nudges the plot along and provides a slice of life aboard the station. The new political advisor was wonderfully bitchy and, as you mention that JMS is an Anglophile I reckon he must have seen Yes, Minister at some point. The scenes with Julie and Sheridan reminded me so much of that. It's a shame he was recalled at the end as she seems to provide nothing more than exposition and an update on Earthgov and this feeling of things happening on other worlds with only visitors to fill you in gives you the viewer the experience of living aboard a station in deep space. I love the term 'EarthGov' by the way, very buzzwordy and futuristic considering the time we live in it feels like a phrase for the Internet age.

Ivanova's plotline was wonderful too; her interaction with Draal and the way she childishly baits the Old Ones. At least we know what happened to the Wood King from the Doctor Who Christmas special now too. Oh, and G'Kar seems to have pinched the Sixth Doctor's coat and dyed it brown. There could be a farce played out with Ivanova's hologram popping up everywhere and I loved the cheeky Star Trek reference. Poor Zack Allen though, it seems that signing up for NightWatch means more than he thought it would do and it all gets a bit fascistic in the end. Look like he's got to go back to the B5 branch of Suits You as well.

Dust to Dust

Good to see Bester back and his partnership with Garibaldi was marvellous. What a shame he took the injection though and the crew didn't have to have their Minbari stalkers follow them around for the rest of the episode. It's good to see Vir back as well and I'm sure that Stephen Furst has been mimicking some of Bill Mumy's mannerisms to appear more influenced by the Minbari. It wasn't hard to see where the episode was going once Bester explained the marvellous concept of the dust and we saw G'Kar but it was still a very enjoyable episode with a great performance from Katsulas. Since this was a Psi-Corp episode couldn't we have seen Lyta though?

Quick bit of feedback from the last podcast (well worth the wait) Firstly I think all governments should use nightwatch as a sign their going too far. Teresa May should have sat down and said "Wait, did Nightwatch do this? Oh, they didn't go this far, probably a bad idea then" Its not much but sacry that our own govt is already going further than B5s fictional evil government.

Also, Matt's idea of an episode where Draal stalks Garibaldi with holographic cartoon characters is ace. We should have got that instead of "Gray 17 is Missing"

Now, Science. I'm not a scientist (Railway Engineer) but I know some Physicists. As my spelling for that is iffy I didn't ask them about your science question. Still despite my ropey understanding of Physics and my poor ability to convey information, I thought I'd have a go at explaining. If any proper scientists read this and say "Nope, that's partially or entirely wrong" please say. I won't be offended and might learn something.

Gravity is kind of like when you lie down on a matress, it dips in and smaller objects (fruit, biscuits, a lighter sleeping partner) roll towards you, take that to indenting in 3 dimensions and that's gravity.

Now, a stellar body, such as a planet creates a gravity well and items nearby are drawn in. The white Star and the shadow ship are descending through the atmosphere, assuming they're not using engines to increase their rate of descent (Like flying a plane at the ground) they will accelerate at the same rate. However at the point of turning mass and inertia come into play. Using the bowling ball/feather example, both will be accelerating at the same rate, but its easier to stop the feather than it is the bowling ball. To escape the gravity both ships need thrust to overcome their descent speed and then begin an ascent. The White Star has less mass and so will require less thrust to change direction, than the shadow vessel. Finally, what kills the ship isn't gravity, its pressure. Jupiter is a gas giant, basically much like coming down a big hill on earth the atmospheric pressure increases, only on jupiter this is enough to eventually crush the probes we've sent in so far, so the shadow vessel took longer to change direction and drifted to crush depth, at which point it is exactly like a submarine being crushed but crushed by atmospheric pressure rather than water pressure.

Hope that's not a confusing babble of rubbish, and I hope its correct and following Brian Cox on Twitter wasn't pointless. Must get watching the next two episodes, they are corkers.