Welcome to Show #113!

Jeffrey secretly traverses the back hallways of VH-1 in search of quiet place to chat with us, and Tim has questions about the B5 action figures, seeing as how he came across a rare Ivanova variant and didn’t know it until we told him. But he opened it, alas.

Jeffrey also thinks that all of the female action figures on that run all had the exact same faces, so we’re sure someone will investigate. Summer never collected the action figures, and instead focused on the trading cards.

(kudos to Brad for the funny sound effects)

Deep Geeking: Tim and Summer discuss “The Summoning”. There are many levels summoning going on in this episode, so the title is more apropos than initially apparent.

Discussion: Tim asks Jeffrey about the long tracking shot at the opening of this episode, and about how the sets were built to allow for longer shots to be made, and whether or not the crew had fun wrapping Jerry Doyle in a massive amounts of clingwrap. Could it have been the Snackman supplying the cling wrap?

Summer minions: wiki, joomla.

Second Life Info: FarPoint Media’s castle is at http://slurl.com/secondlife/beraudes/203/151/49.

Babylon 5 Information Gathering: If you know of a dead or abandoned B5 related website that may be in need of a new home, let Summer know! Maybe we can mirror it here or house it on a sister site.

Promo: Chris the Fixed Kitty’s Plea for Help
Promo: Tale Chasing: For writers and readers of Urban Fantasy

 

 Babylon Podcast: Show #113 [56:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2224)

As a quick refresher, in “A Spider in the Web” a friend of Talia
Winters comes to Babylon 5 to negotiate a deal to help Mars become
more self-sufficient when a man calling out “Free Mars!” murders him
before her eyes. Here’s the Lurker’s Guide page for this episode.
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/guide/028.html

Here are some sample questions we have lined up just as an example:

- Was Bureau 13 originally meant to be a regularly seen organization
like the Psi Corps?

- Amanda Carter’s grandfather was John Carter, a reference to the
series of books set on Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Was it your idea
to include that?

- This the second script of yours to feature cyber-organics; first the
Vicar in “DeathWalker” and the Lazarus Project in this one. Is the
idea of cybernetics and human interface something that interests you?

IMPORTANT NOTE: You can email as many questions as you like.
Deadline: Wednesday, May 28
Please forward to our Editor, Jan Schroeder
JanMSchroeder-@-gmail.com

A review from Cannes about Changeling, which was written by JMS, directed (and scored) by Clint Eastwood, and starring Angelina Jolie, Jeffrey Donovan and John Malkovich:

Eastwood’s “Changeling” a Jolie tour de force
By Kirk Honeycutt

CANNES (Hollywood Reporter) - For only the second time in his filmmaking career, Clint Eastwood settles on a heroine for his latest celebration of the loner who bucks the system.

Like Hilary Swank’s boxer in “Million Dollar Baby,” Angelina Jolie’s single mother, Christine Collins, takes every punch thrown at her in “Changeling,” and comes back fighting. Her combat is not in a boxing ring — where fighting is supposed to take place — but rather in a corrupt police department, psychiatric ward and the court of justice where she demands to know one thing: What happened to her son?

A true story that is as incredible as it is compelling, Eastwood’s competition entry brushes away the romantic notion of a more innocent time to reveal a Los Angeles circa 1928 awash in corruption and steeped in a culture that treats women as hysterical and unreliable beings when they challenge male wisdom.

Read the entire article…

Welcome to Show #112!

Jeffrey returns from Hawaii to tease us all about his Vorlon tan, and Tim revels in the fact that he and Bruce Boxleitner share a birthdate. Tim also recounts what he saw at the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas, and got to see firsthand the Borg Invasion scenario that George Johnsen worked on.

Jeffrey also lets us know what show he’s working on now: Celebrity Rehab on VH-1. So whenever he’s not able to join us on Wednesdays, know that he’s working on Season 2 of this series, and it really is something that’s aiming to help.

Deep Geeking: Tim and Summer contemplate the mysteries and metaphors in “Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?” For a long time… this is a good one.

Listener Feedback: Tim passes on a question from George Brickner: “What does Summer need her minions to do?” First, Summer needs a vacation and some rest, then she’ll need help with wiki setup, and Joomla configuration.

If it matters, Summer would love to see a script book or three solely about “Crusade”. Just sayin’.

Second Life Info: FarPoint Media’s castle is at http://slurl.com/secondlife/beraudes/203/151/49.

Babylon 5 Information Gathering: If you know of a dead or abandoned B5 related website that may be in need of a new home, let Summer know! Maybe we can mirror it here or house it on a sister site.

Promo: 7th Son: Obsidian
Promo: 2008 Parsec Awards: Nominations Open until June 15th!

 

 Babylon Podcast: Show #112 [1:02:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2400)

Pete in Cincinnati spotted something on eBay:

If either of you are still looking for “Summoning Light” by Jeanne Cavelos, you might check ebay.

There’s a hardcover version of the whole trilogy up for auction. No bids yet, 99 cent minimum, 3.50 to ship. Ends on May 21st.

The Passing of the Techno-Mages by Jeanne Cavelos

I found the auction after I decided to try to pick up the novels but before I found them all at Half Price Books.

Feel free to pass this along to others if you don’t want to bid on it.

Thus, I pass it on to you guys.

I’ve never seen a hardcover omnibus collection of these before… if anyone out there knows where these came from, let me know. I’ll do some digging myself later.

After officially announcing the 14-volume series end date of May 31, 2008 we received more than a few letters from fans upset that we were not keeping a promise.

They pointed out that the original FAQ on the website stated that the volumes would be available for 90 days after the release of volume 14. Since Volume 14 was released on March 28, our May 31 end date did not fulfill on the 90 day promise.

For this reason we have re-scheduled the end of the series for June 30, 2008. This is the absolute final day of sale for any of the volumes in the 14-volume series.

Note: the autographed volume 15 offer is also good through June 30, 2008.

Complete sets can be ordered from Cafe Press

BABYLON 5 SCRIPTS: OTHER VOICES - VOLUME 1

To complete the collection, a set called “Other Voices” will be announced next week. First volume includes B5 scripts by Larry DiTillio, D.C. Fontana, David Gerold, Christy Marx and Marc Scott Zicree.

Past News: Adam “Mojo” Liebowitz blogs about B5

Adam is posting his memories about Babylon 5 in a new ongoing blog. In his first entry he talks about, and has pictures of the central corridor being built.

Future News: Bruce Boxleitner to be on Heroes.

TV Guide reports that Bruce will have a recurring role on the upcoming season of NBC’s hit show Heroes.

The complete and somewhat limited article appears here.

Welcome to Show #111!

Jeffrey’s happy, preparing to celebrate Kosho de Mayo, and giddy about the Dodgers winning big. Because Jeff’s heading out to Hawaii, talk wandered over to his appearance on the show in a Hawaiian shirt and overalls.

Community Project: Find the Hawaiian shirts worn on the show. We need to make a list.

JMS will be attending Cannes Film Festival, to screen Changeling, and is all sorts of busy writing other feature film scripts. Could JMS be writing the screenplay for Lensman? Summer is intrigued about the prospect of a movie about Rising Stars.

Listener Feedback: Feedbackapalooza! It’s a word that’s sticking now.

Mick comments on the baseball talk in both Babylon 5 and Star Trek: in B5, baseball is still alive, and in Star Trek the sport is long dead, but in DS9 baseball is back and strong. How’d that happen? Mick also points out other similarities between B5 and DS9. Gary wants to know what screen credits Jeffrey has where he can be seen sans encounter suit, and asks again about the Mayport story. Should there be a warning label for the George Johnsen interview? We can’t help it if you laugh out loud and distract your co-workers.

One vote submitted for a SciFi AllStars baseball team… and a question on whether Marcus could play baseball extrapolated from his skill with a Minbari fighting pike. Bethany from OK comments on “And The Rock Cried Out…” and on the one B5 episode to show someone new to the series. Eli thinks we missed a point in talking about “Z’ha’dum”, the hypocrisy/irony of Justin’s statements to Sheridan. Scott from the Gigcast proudly announces that he’s rented Season 1 Disc 1 and is about to dive into the series for the first time.

Theory: Zima is the modern replacement to the never-endingly regifted fruitcake. That’s the real reason why Zima exists in the 24th century… it kept getting passed on. Edmund adds some info from the Technomage trilogy to explain what happened during the White Star assault on Z’ha’dum (Galen did it). This leads to a discussion about what was going on on Z’ha’dum, if there was sleeping, or if it was a trap, or something else.

Non-sequitur: Pixar, Disney, wha?

Emails: Kurt from St George drops by the studio! Warlord adds commentary from JMS about the sacrifice of the White Star, taken from the back of one of the cards in the second series of trading cards. Aristotle wonders about how to direct new listeners to special podcast episodes first. Emily wonders about matching up Romo Lampkin vs Mr Morden. Jeffrey S wonders why human telepaths need to be on a line of sight when the Minbari telepaths could interfere with the Shadow ships from safely in the depths of their ships.

Gene from Greenville wonders what we’d want from what might be your last care package from home. Bill points out what he thinks is the worst plot hole in “Grey 17 is Missing”. Kate from Chicagoland wonders what Kosh’s personal effects may have been.

Second Life Info: FarPoint Media’s castle is at http://slurl.com/secondlife/beraudes/203/151/49.

Babylon 5 Information Gathering: If you know of a dead or abandoned B5 related website that may be in need of a new home, let Summer know! Maybe we can mirror it here or house it on a sister site.

Promo: Obscure 80s: Big Hair Bash Against Cancer
Promo: Shallow Thoughts

 

 Babylon Podcast: Show #111 [59:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2688)

There will not be a Babylon Podcast live feed or recording tonight.

Sorry for the short notice, but we’ll try to make it up to y’all next week.

Welcome to Show #110!

When the boys are away, the girls will rule the geekdom. Or just play harder.

Deep Geeking: Summer welcomes Cat (SciFi Ranter Girl from the Lipstick Aliens), graphics designer and huge B5 fan (and long-time FarPoint Media chat room denizen) Cat Hulberg, and Susie the Southern Geek (host of How to Grow Your Geek) to come onboard and Deep Geek on “The Hour of the Wolf”, the Season 4 premiere episode.

Here you have the women in John Sheridan’s life going through various stages of denial, grief and bargaining, in an attempt to find out for sure what happened to him at Z’ha’dum, and by the end of the episode, there’s still no closure in dealing with what happened, nor any new insight into knowing what did happen.

The girls geek on.

Second Life Info: FarPoint Media’s castle is at http://slurl.com/secondlife/beraudes/203/151/49.

Babylon 5 Information Gathering: If you know of a dead or abandoned B5 related website that may be in need of a new home, let Summer know! Maybe we can mirror it here or house it on a sister site.

Promo: The Scapecast
Promo: How to Grow Your Geek

 

 Babylon Podcast: Show #110 [40:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2492)