By The Audio Guide to Babylon 5
Conversations about the five-year saga
One or more of your co-hosts buck the Received Fan Wisdom about Grey 17, the Zarg, and Freddy Kreuger. One or more of your co-hosts vow to do a Phantom Edit of the episode. Find out who! (There is also...
Epic. Convoluted. “War Without End” answers questions from the dawn of the Third A…er, from the pilot movie and first episode, and sets up new questions for The One Who Will Be. We reach back into time and space, and...
Shannon, Chip and Hugo Award winner Erika take a leisurely saunter with Stephen Franklin down the dark alleys of Downbelow as he goes on “Walkabout” to find himself. Along the way they explore just why the heck they couldn’t remember...
Chaos! Loss! Destruction! So much awfulness happens to our poor characters in this episode, so of course Jason “Schadenfreude” Snell is back with us! (Also, he’s sitting in for Shannon, who was out sick for this one.) It’s the full meal...
Since the station’s secession from the Earth Alliance, it was inevitable that Our Intrepid Heroes’ relationship with perennial antagonist Bester would change. Did you see this coming, however? More to the point, did you expect that in the closing seconds...
It’s that lovable scamp Vir’s turn for a love story, and it’s also time for an exploration of the banality of evil and the horrors of genocide. Plus Ivanova gives sex advice and Delenn seasons flarn! You might think that...
We all find different ways to cope with hardship. David Macintyre grabs some chainmail and a prop sword and becomes King Arthur. Cheesy? A weird departure from the story arc? Thematically relevant and touching? What can you say about an...
After hype, hype and hype again about the Holy Trilogy and especially “Severed Dreams,” is it time for a sudden crash to earth? Or, in the midst of rapidly devolving Nightwatch members and the most insufferable spoken-word computer interface since...
“Why not? Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else.” Here to celebrate the greatest line in Babylon...
Poor Zack Allan. He just doesn’t know where to turn. Loyalty drives him to stick with Nightwatch, but he sure doesn’t know where to turn. Poor President Clark. A big scary alien ship destroyed his big scary alien ship, and...
Chicago Sun-Times technology columnist and renaissance geek Andy Ihnatko rejoins us as various stuff hits the fan. Shadow ships on Mars? Shadow ships on Ganymede? A desperate mission into the solar system? Things getting worse at Earthdome? Yeah. Stuff meets...
We read the comments. We know that many of you question the worth of “Exogenesis.” But perhaps there’s another perspective out there, perhaps shared by some of your co-hosts, revolving around the unlikely word, “pleasant.” Also, Chip makes the single...
Bester’s back! Just in time for a thrilling police procedural…er, no. Because the telepathic drug plot is just the means to an end: a wholly unexpected and powerful confrontation between Londo and G’Kar. Is the episode really All That? With...
In which Tiki Gods are real, not-Aragorn REALLY gets on Susan’s nerves, a PR consultant has extreme ideas about transparency and exposure, and an intercepted phone call brings the two major plot arcs of Babylon 5 crashing together. (Hey, do you...
From the Long Island Who convention on, well, Long Island: here’s the audio of Chip and Erika’s panel, “The Whovian Guide to Babylon 5.” Mild spoilers for the series are ahead as a roomful of Doctor Who and B5 fans...
This is possibly one of the best done-in-one episodes of B5: meaty, great sci-fi concept, cultural commentary, well directed and (mostly) acted, psychological drama, and a surprising amount of fodder for the spoiler section. And because someone dies horribly in...
This is the trail mix of Babylon 5 episodes: a little chunk of plot here, a chewy nugget of insight here, a scattering of tasty character development, and an A-plot that doesn’t really hold everything together. Which is why it’s a...
THESE ARE CHAOTIC TIMES, CAPTAIN! This is NYPD BLUE in Space, listeners! And it turned out better than we expected–although we were all looking forward to watching the famous Elevator Scene again…
New season! New ship! New title sequence! New characters! Babylon 5 takes an assured step forward as Captain Sheridan and Delenn take the fight to the Shadows, while Morden’s malign influence spreads to the capitals of Centauri Prime and…Earth. How...
The second season finale ends with a bang (alas, Centauri warship; alas, core shuttle) and a whimper (alas, kind of, Keffer). How does “The Fall of Night” do in wrapping up a season and whetting the appetite for season three?...
The Audio Guide to Babylon 5 welcomes Lynne and Michael Damian Thomas of Uncanny Magazine and numerous SF podcasts to talk about “Comes the Inquisitor”! As you might expect, the five of us go on at great length about whether a...
The Narn-Centauri war comes to a shocking end, Draal gets a makeover, and John Sheridan takes a shower. Pretty routine episode, if you ask me.
For a couple of years now, those of us who have seen the entire run of the series have waited for this moment: “What did Steven think of what happened to Talia Winters?” Sadly, Steven couldn’t join us for this...
Jason Snell rejoins us, which means we have a better than 50-50 chance of this being a really depressing episode. Many Markab died to bring you this podcast. Plus, in the spoiler section, Chip uses the words “arc,” “crucible” and...
So perhaps you’d like to know what a good chunk of this TV series is all about. RELEASE THE FLOODGATES. (Apologies for a few audio glitches in Shannon’s track.)
Well, we didn’t hate it. “Knives” is a return to the A-plot/B-plot style of which we saw so much in Season 1. Could either plot have carried an episode on its own? How stunningly effective was the Prime Time Entertainment...
We interrupt this program to bring you a show within a show! How novel! But does “And Now for a Word” hold up as a projection of future journalism? Does it advance the story arc? Is it a good introduction...
Sheridan’s framed for murder, Londo’s symbolically cast…in a bad light, Vir’s about to be cast from the station, a new Deep Space Franchise is born, and Lennier’s got family trouble. Just another typical day on Babylon 5!
Hunter, comma, Prey. Your humble hosts pretty much agree that this is not only a good episode, it’s the first episode of Babylon 5 that is purely arc-driven: it’s all about what came before and sets up what is to come. Let’s talk about...
The long-awaited Ivanova Dance edition of B5AG is here! Did anything else happen in this episode? As a matter of fact, quite a lot. Weep for G’Kar. Curse Londo. Snicker with Taq. Boom. Shubba-lubba. And, as always, don’t miss our spoiler...
This is possibly a first in Babylon 5 history: the B5AG crew cites Ross Perot in an otherwise serious critical analysis. Meanwhile, Captain Sheridan is all alone in the night, Delenn is all alone in the night, a pilot whose call...
Paul Winfield comes onto the station as General Richard Franklin (no relation to the Doctor Who actor, sorry) and brings 25,000 ground pounders with him as, one episode after the Narn-Centauri war began, our favorite space U.N. quickly takes on a...
In every story worth its salt, there’s at least one pivot point. We’ve already had a couple in Babylon 5. This one won a Hugo. That made it a perfect time for our Control Group, Steven Schapansky of Radio Free...
Does the love quadrangle drive your three co-hosts to delight or delirium? Talia is given a chance to escape her destiny with the Psi-Corps, but is her reunion with her ex a dream or a date with destruction? Don’t despair:...
It’s the most pivotal turning point (wait, that’s redundant) yet for Talia Winters, as an underground band of telepaths forces her to face the truth about PsiCorps. All this, a dinner date, Ivanova managing to somehow not kill her commanding...
Talia Winters…is back! San Diego…is a wasteland! John Sheridan is…a truther? (Absolutely not!) And there’s something sinister lurking within the station–an eponymous spider…in the web… (Note that we had some audio issues with this recording–not too bad, but a little...
Guest actor Dwight Schultz is more tortured than “Howlin'” in his turn as a former soldier grappling with ghosts in his head and an invisible stalker who likes to snack on human organs. Meanwhile, Dr. Franklin needs to revisit his...
Does Babylon 5 have a footwear agenda? Does Delenn need to pick up a copy of Leadership Lessons for the Newly Follicled? And how about that happy-go-lucky Captain Sheridan who has taken to gnawing his executive staff’s heads off? It’s just another...
The most bitter, vividly remembered conflict in all of Babylon 5 history is barely contained in “The Geometry of Shadows”! But in the cold light of reason, are the Drazi color wars actually entertaining or does the memory cheat? Plus, in Spoiler...
Revealed! The fate of G’Kar! Revealed! The fate of Delenn! Revealed! The fate of Garibaldi! Revealed! The fate of the Guy What Shot Garibaldi! Yeah, not much happens in this one.
For our first Extra edition of The Audio Guide to Babylon 5, Chip welcomes “Mojo,” senior computer animator during B5’s first three seasons and pilot, working with Ron Thornton’s Foundation Imaging. Be amazed at the raw processing power of the computers used...
“It’s the end. But the moment has been prepared for.” In this pop culture-poaching edition of B5AG (seriously, we apologize for the Scarecrow and Mrs. King theme) we bring The Incomparable‘s Jason Snell back for something of a regeneration story (OK, that’s...
The first-season finale is upon us! Joining Chip, Erika and Shannon to tackle “Chrysalis” in a bumper edition of The Audio Guide to Babylon 5 are B5 newcomer Steven Schapansky and longtime fan (and Adventures with the Wife in Space...
It’s the penultimate episode of Season 1, the calm before the storm, in which the worlds of the Minbari warrior caste and Earth’s Psi Corps collide in the presence of a human teenager. We’re talking “Legacies,” complete with an “I...
Erika, Shannon and Chip debate the finer points of mixed martial arts and wonder aloud what happens when you have an episode without a discernable “A” plot. Grab a Zima and sit back!
Danger, Will Robinson! OK, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s enjoy a nice little reunion between two Lost in Space veterans (except they never actually share the screen) and learn the “finer” parts of Centauri physiognomy (“finer”...
Just a little, inconsequential story about that predecessor station to B5 that disappeared without a trace, right? Presenting “Babylon Squared,” with all of the signs and portents it entails. And because you can’t do a podcast about “something squared” with...
It’s two, two B5 episodes for the price of one, as Erika, Shannon and the convalescing Chip tackle both parts of “A Voice in the Wilderness.” What did they think of the mystery of Epsilon 3? Did the Great Machine’s...
Erika and Shannon are joined once more by Steven Schapansky of Radio Free Skaro to talk about an episode in which all of Sinclair’s chickens come home to roost. If you were one of those fans who wondered how the...
Erika and Chip are on opposite ends of the spectrum. One only has eyes for David Warner. The other would prefer a date with a na’ka’leen feeder than to watch “Grail” again. How does Shannon hold it all together? And...