Thomas and Frank look back on the first film from a future "Star Wars" writer and the TV movie that launched a beloved sci-fi series.
First, Thomas reviews "Babylon 5: The Gathering" (1993). Then, Frank reviews "The Cutting Edge" (1992).
It's the Season 1 finale of Meet Your Double Feature, and it starts right now!
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Meet Your Double Feature is a double-blind movie review podcast hosted by brothers Thomas and Frank. Thomas is an event producer and broadcaster from Chicago. Frank is an independent filmmaker living in Los Angeles.
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For full episodes, written reviews and more, visit our website at https://www.MeetYourDoubleFeature.com/
For more information on where to watch "Nate and Moriah in Venice" (which Frank co-produced!), visit https://www.sardonicmp.com/
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Music for tonight's show licensed through Soundstripe
"The Shakedown" by Dresden, The Flamingo
"Soul Tonic" by Cast of Characters
"Sophistikitty" by Cast of Characters
(00:00) Intro
(00:51) Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993)
(51:53) The Cutting Edge (1992)
(01:26:49) Final Scores and Wrap-Up
(01:37:21) Outro
00:00:10
Tonight on Meet Your Double Feature, when an alien
00:00:13
ambassador is attacked aboard a human space station, Commander
00:00:17
Jeffrey Sinclair and his crew are tasked with finding the
00:00:20
culprits. Mystery abounds in Babylon 5,
00:00:24
The Gathering. Then, when an injury ends his
00:00:27
hockey career, Doug Dorsey returns to the ice as the new
00:00:31
partner. For a temperamental figure
00:00:33
skater, love is in the air, in the cutting edge.
00:00:37
It's the Season 1 finale of Meet Your Double Feature, and it
00:00:41
starts right now. Hello and welcome to Meet Your
00:00:52
Double Feature. My name is Thomas, joined as
00:00:54
always by my brother Frank. Frank, how's it going?
00:00:56
Excited to be here. Excited to be here.
00:00:59
Frank's excited. I'm excited, and with good
00:01:01
reason. Frank, tonight is our Season 1
00:01:03
finale here on Meet Your Double feature.
00:01:05
That's awesome, right? Woo.
00:01:07
Yeah, that's very woo. Just a.
00:01:09
Lone quiet woo in the back of the room.
00:01:13
That's how exciting it is. That's how exciting it is.
00:01:16
Yes, we have done 12 episodes, including this one covering our
00:01:19
favorite forgotten 90s films that we've never actually seen
00:01:22
and think might actually be good.
00:01:24
And this is going to be the the climax of all of that.
00:01:27
We are going to review 2 films on the show tonight.
00:01:29
Frank and I each selected one for the other to review that
00:01:31
neither of us had previously seen.
00:01:33
We're going to find out who gave the better blind pick for
00:01:35
tonight's episode and take a look at the overall season 1
00:01:39
totals. So, Frank, we're going to have
00:01:40
both an episode winner and the Season 1 winner by the end of
00:01:43
this episode. Oh yeah, I'm not optimistic
00:01:48
about. No, I'll be honest, I'm pretty
00:01:49
sure you're not going to win. That's fair.
00:01:54
That's fair. But hey, we'll see.
00:01:55
We'll see. We'll.
00:01:56
See, it could be a massive turn around.
00:01:58
We don't actually know. Essentially, we've been keeping
00:01:59
track of the relative scores out of 10 for each movie and putting
00:02:02
that into the season 1 totals. And we were so neck and neck up
00:02:06
until the one right before this. So I think coming into our
00:02:09
finale, I'm six points ahead. So unless we have a total blow
00:02:12
out tonight, I think you might be you might be stuck watching
00:02:15
all those prophecy movies like we talked about previous.
00:02:18
Oh man, that's. The reality that is really
00:02:23
sinking in. We'll have more on that and what
00:02:26
our programming slate is going to look like in the coming weeks
00:02:28
at the end of the episode. But for now, we've got one more
00:02:31
standard format episode of Meet Your Double feature to get
00:02:33
through. And Frank, I think I'm kicking
00:02:35
us off tonight with the film that you asked me to talk about,
00:02:38
1993's television film slash TV show pilot Babylon 5 The
00:02:45
Gathering. What, what, what?
00:02:48
What was this? What are you?
00:02:49
What are you doing? What is this?
00:02:51
I mean, you just said it isn't that cool.
00:02:55
Isn't that so cool? Though.
00:02:57
Like, come on, it's it's a pilot, but it's a movie like.
00:03:03
But it's a movie. But it's on the TV.
00:03:05
But it's on the TV. Is that even allowed?
00:03:07
Can they do that? It's not allowed.
00:03:11
Well, we allowed it. I think there was a rules
00:03:12
conversation at the end of our last episode about this, but we
00:03:15
did in fact allow it. What was your reasoning?
00:03:17
I know you gave one when we spoke two weeks ago, but just to
00:03:20
refresh everybody, what what led you to select this one for our
00:03:23
Season 1 finale? I had recently, I, I, we've, I'm
00:03:30
sure it's come up several times already on the podcast, but you
00:03:32
and I both love Star Trek Deep Space 9.
00:03:34
And I had recently finished that series for the first time.
00:03:39
And then I was on Reddit looking at other sci-fi shows and
00:03:43
someone mentioned Babylon 5 as sort of a show that was in a
00:03:47
similar vein to Deep Space 9. And so I was like, oh, that's,
00:03:51
that's interesting. I'll, I'll kind of check this
00:03:53
out. And then I saw that people were
00:03:55
saying it had a similar premise to that show.
00:03:58
So I was like, OK, this, this looks cool.
00:04:01
And then I saw that they had, I think several movies actually.
00:04:04
They had like the that initial pilot film.
00:04:07
And then throughout the series, there was a couple more.
00:04:10
And so I was thinking about watching it myself, to be
00:04:12
honest. But then I was like, well, I
00:04:13
mean, this came out in the 90s. This would be, I feel like a
00:04:16
strong closer for the season. So that's why I sent it over to
00:04:20
you. Absolutely.
00:04:21
I mean, it does make sense. Deep Space 9's like my favorite
00:04:24
show ever, recently biased included that I'm still watching
00:04:27
it for the first time too. But it's so funny that that is
00:04:30
the connection that you had going in.
00:04:32
I want to say that when we talked about this at the end of
00:04:35
episode 11, I don't know if I misheard you or if this is how
00:04:38
you phrased it, But when I was watching the movie Babylon Five,
00:04:41
I was under the impression that this show had been accused of
00:04:43
ripping off Deep Space 9 like that it would come after and had
00:04:47
been considered like some sort of like knock off version of it.
00:04:51
And so I watched the whole movie under that context.
00:04:53
And the whole time I was like, yeah, it's really similar, like
00:04:57
really similar starting point for these two stories, only to
00:05:00
discover afterwards that the opposite is true, and that it is
00:05:03
widely accepted that Deep Space 9 lifted its premise from
00:05:07
Babylon 5. No way.
00:05:09
See, I didn't. I didn't.
00:05:10
That was not the impression that I tried to give was that it was
00:05:14
like an imitator in any way, and I certainly didn't know that the
00:05:17
opposite was true. Well, this is interesting
00:05:19
because obviously we're this is a movie show, not ATV show show.
00:05:23
But I do need to contextualize this a little bit before getting
00:05:27
into a Babylon 5. The gathering is, you know, in
00:05:29
isolation. So just for context for anybody
00:05:32
who cares, which I hope is the people listening, Babylon 5 was
00:05:37
created by one guy. His name is like J Michael
00:05:40
Stravinsky. I think off hand, he was
00:05:43
pitching Babylon 5 as like a multi season TV show starting in
00:05:48
like the late 80s, early 90s that he'd already sort of mapped
00:05:51
out like the entire story. It wasn't really going to be an
00:05:54
episodic program. It was more of like a continuous
00:05:56
serial storyline that he wanted to tell over multiple seasons of
00:05:59
television. And he was shopping it at
00:06:01
various networks, including Paramount to own Star Trek.
00:06:04
And they didn't pick it up. But then a couple of years
00:06:07
later, right around the same time that this Babylon 5 movie
00:06:09
was being produced, they were looking to make a new Star Trek
00:06:12
spin off. And it is never been 100%
00:06:15
confirmed what happened, but I think it is widely accepted that
00:06:18
somebody somewhere in that creative process ended up
00:06:21
lifting some ideas from this pitch they'd seen for Babylon 5
00:06:24
and sort of integrated them into the premise for Deep Space 9.
00:06:27
Because they're like they start and basically the exact same
00:06:30
place. Wow.
00:06:31
I think that happens unfortunately quite often where
00:06:35
there's a pitch and then they're like, yeah, we don't like that
00:06:38
at all. And then they go and make the
00:06:39
exact same thing. Like, absolutely.
00:06:42
I mean, we talked about the movie Cutthroat Island in our
00:06:44
last episode, which was pitched as like a potential way to adapt
00:06:48
Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean ride into a movie,
00:06:51
which Disney turned down. And then a couple years later
00:06:53
they just made Pirates of the Caribbean.
00:06:54
So like versions of that story have happened in many contexts.
00:06:57
But I do think that it led to some animosity of between fans
00:07:00
of both series. Like some people seem to think
00:07:03
that Deep Space 9 is just like an A-Z RIP off of Babylon 5 and
00:07:06
that it's like a sort of disingenuous show.
00:07:08
But like no one of the none of the creatives involved believe
00:07:11
that. They both take place on a
00:07:15
stationary space station that serves as like a trading outpost
00:07:20
and wayport for various alien races in one big Galaxy.
00:07:24
Most of the earlier Star Trek series were about like a ship
00:07:27
exploring new planets, whereas this was like, let's set it on
00:07:30
one location and have people come to us.
00:07:32
And that is the starting point for both Babylon 5 and Deep
00:07:36
Space 9, but it really goes in different directions past that
00:07:39
point. It's mostly in this pilot movie
00:07:42
that you had me watch and maybe the original pilot for Deep
00:07:45
Space Night, where you might see like, yeah, these are really
00:07:47
kind of starting in a similar place, which is just kind of
00:07:50
bizarre for me to go back and watch now.
00:07:53
Yeah, I mean, I like that premise a lot though, because
00:07:57
I've seen it in other we we mentioned like the Mass Effect
00:08:00
game series before. And I know like the Citadel in
00:08:03
that universe also has like a very similar function.
00:08:07
And I just like that. I feel like it's just such a
00:08:08
fun. I love things that are like a
00:08:10
bottle setting. And I feel like while not
00:08:14
exactly that, those shows, Deep Space 9 of Babylon 5 seem to
00:08:19
sort of encapsulate that idea. Absolutely.
00:08:22
And I do think that for the rightful grief that maybe the
00:08:26
Star Trek producers were given for lifting the ideas from this
00:08:29
unused pitch for Babylon 5, you could also argue that even some
00:08:33
of the inversions in the story of Babylon Five are a response
00:08:36
to the then popular Star Trek series that have been running
00:08:39
for 30 years before that point. Like that premise is interesting
00:08:42
in part because it inverts the usual premise of a sci-fi TV
00:08:45
series. So inspiration is one thing.
00:08:48
And I do think that as both TV shows went on, they were their
00:08:52
own thing, to the point where I believe I read that like in
00:08:55
order to sort of quell any beef between the fan bases.
00:08:59
Gene Roddenberry's wife We actually appears on an episode
00:09:02
of Babylon 5 at some .0. Really.
00:09:05
Oh, that's cool. Yeah, Gene.
00:09:06
Roddenberry, the creator of like, the original 60s Star
00:09:08
Trek. He'd already passed at this
00:09:10
point, but his wife was still, like, very much part of that fan
00:09:13
community. Of course, they all knew who she
00:09:14
was. And so she makes a guest
00:09:15
appearance on an episode of Babylon 5.
00:09:17
And somebody who is a series regular on Babylon 5 has like a
00:09:22
brief appearance on an episode of Deep Space 9.
00:09:24
That same actor. Wow, that's OK.
00:09:26
See, I like that. I, I, you know, I remember
00:09:28
growing up. Yeah, exactly.
00:09:30
Like, I just, I feel like that's such an interesting thing when
00:09:35
there's like, rivalries between fan communities because like,
00:09:39
I've always had this perception, like, especially when I was
00:09:42
younger, that it's like you, you can either be a Star Wars fan or
00:09:45
a Star Trek fan. You can't be both.
00:09:46
It's like they're at odds with each other.
00:09:49
And so, yeah, when I was younger, I was like, I like Star
00:09:51
Wars. I guess I'm not allowed to watch
00:09:53
Star Trek. Can't go.
00:09:54
Anywhere near it, I'll be excommunicated.
00:09:56
Yeah, which is so silly, but I mean, you know, I guess people
00:10:00
get really passionate about this stuff.
00:10:02
Well, especially. Because it always happens
00:10:03
between like properties that are already extremely similar.
00:10:07
Like I could understand if you're like a Star Wars fan and
00:10:09
you don't like John Wayne Westerns, but to be like, hey,
00:10:11
you like this thing, What about that?
00:10:13
But slightly different. And it's like, never.
00:10:15
I'll never go near it. You can't fool me, I will.
00:10:18
Go watch John Wayne Westerns because that won't infringe on
00:10:21
my Star Wars. I hate it, Yeah.
00:10:25
Anyway, I wanted to get that all out in front because I know
00:10:27
that, Frank, for you and I, the connections to Star Trek are
00:10:29
interesting. Part of the reason that this
00:10:31
confusion, by the way, between these two TV shows got so
00:10:33
complicated is that the movie you just asked me to watch,
00:10:36
Babylon 5 The Gathering, was a pilot that aired about a month
00:10:40
after Deep Space 9 premiered on television.
00:10:43
So they started almost the exact same time.
00:10:45
But then the Babylon 5 Series proper, like Season 1 episode 1,
00:10:49
didn't air for another year, so by that point Deep Space 9 was
00:10:52
established enough that even the creator of Babylon 5 was where
00:10:55
he'd be seen as having made a RIP off.
00:10:57
So there's an understandable confusion if you were just
00:10:59
trying to, like, follow television news at that time.
00:11:02
Yeah. And I feel like, you know, it
00:11:04
might have potentially helped both series because in an effort
00:11:09
to differentiate themselves from each other, it might have pushed
00:11:12
them in different creative directions.
00:11:15
So, you know, who's to say? But I could see, you know, just
00:11:18
trying to flip that into a positive.
00:11:20
Listen, if we ever get into any sort of like side series or
00:11:24
additional content from our channel, it might be something
00:11:27
like a deep dive into series like this one.
00:11:29
But I just wanted to front load the whole Star Trek comparison
00:11:33
thing. Because after this point, I want
00:11:34
to try to focus on what Babylon 5 is doing just as a movie.
00:11:37
Because somebody listening to this might not have the same
00:11:40
connections to Star Trek or anything else.
00:11:42
Maybe they just want to know if it's a good sci-fi movie, you
00:11:44
know? Yeah.
00:11:45
So was it? What do you?
00:11:49
Think, let's find out. So Babylon 5 is interesting.
00:11:52
I had to recontextualize the whole thing because once I
00:11:54
finished watching it, I found out it had come first.
00:11:57
So I can't get, I can't knock points off for it being
00:11:59
derivative because it made the whole thing up.
00:12:01
It's an interesting series or interesting film that obviously
00:12:08
is the pilot to ATV show, if that makes sense.
00:12:10
Like the whole thing, production value wise, scope wise, is
00:12:14
trying to tell a complete story but has the same feel as like a
00:12:19
two-part episode of ATV show. And at the end of the movie they
00:12:24
give you like a narrative hook that's supposed to carry into
00:12:26
the series proper. So that's a very interesting
00:12:30
lens to look at this from because it's not trying to be a
00:12:33
complete idea. It is supposed to essentially be
00:12:35
a hype machine that gives you a little taste of what this like
00:12:38
universe is about, but is ultimately just supposed to get
00:12:41
you excited for what's going to come next.
00:12:43
But does it still have like a satisfying beginning, middle,
00:12:46
end story it? Does it tells a very Star Trek
00:12:50
esque science fiction drama story which is the part where I
00:12:55
think if you are a fan of other Star Trek series you would like
00:12:57
this Babylon Five film. It's not sci-fi action.
00:13:02
It is very limited in its like actual Violet conflict and
00:13:06
action sequences. It is more that classic, like
00:13:08
science fiction drama that's really heavy on dialogue and
00:13:11
kind of like hammed up performances and political
00:13:14
intrigue. Ultimately, this one is about
00:13:17
like a murder mystery, although I guess it's more like an
00:13:19
attempted murder mystery. And I guess in order to really
00:13:22
tell the story, I have to explain the lore of Babylon 5,
00:13:25
which I'll be honest, is hard to do.
00:13:28
Oh yeah. I mean, you could give us a
00:13:30
slightly abridged version just. Like, I'll try to explain the
00:13:34
parts that are relevant for the story that they're telling here,
00:13:37
but it's been a while since I tried to just step into a brand
00:13:40
new sci-fi Canon, not already knowing how many of it works.
00:13:44
And that is probably one of the most abrasive types of media to
00:13:48
get into. Like, I already know what Star
00:13:50
Wars is because I've been watching it since I was a child.
00:13:52
I know the rough pop culture imprint of Star Trek enough that
00:13:56
when I started watching it, I was like, yeah, Vulcans,
00:13:59
phasers, whatever. But whatever they whatever.
00:14:03
They're up to Spock. I don't know.
00:14:05
But to step into a new space that is trying to both tell one
00:14:09
story while also introduce you to the entire concept of what
00:14:14
it's about, It's a tall order. And I do think that Babylon 5
00:14:17
does a decent job by not going overboard.
00:14:21
Essentially, as I mentioned, the premise of the story starts the
00:14:24
same way that Star Trek series does.
00:14:26
It's about the, like, military crew, mostly humans from Earth,
00:14:30
operating a space station that is like at a static point in
00:14:33
space, serving as like a trading outpost for various alien races.
00:14:37
There's, I think in the film, 5 main alien groups and they're
00:14:43
represented in this particular story by the ambassadors from
00:14:47
each world that are meeting aboard Babylon 5 for some sort
00:14:51
of ceremony or meeting at the beginning of the story.
00:14:54
So they tried to do a good job of being like, you just need to
00:14:56
meet one alien from each race, and that's all you really need
00:15:00
to understand for this story. But they're there as
00:15:02
representatives for the fact that, like, these are the races
00:15:04
that we're going to be telling the whole story through.
00:15:07
Yeah, I mean this, this might sound totally uninteresting to
00:15:11
some people, but I'm absolutely hooked by this.
00:15:13
I know it's. Dense novel.
00:15:16
Ask science fiction storytelling.
00:15:17
Like if you watch any sort of sci-fi thing that's more modern,
00:15:21
I feel like we've gotten away from this kind of storytelling
00:15:23
and it's much more leading with action, traditional kind of
00:15:27
Hollywood pacing. This is like, no, this is
00:15:29
entirely dialogue driven and just explaining things that
00:15:33
happened instead of showing them, which is like, I think I'm
00:15:37
a total turn off to some people. But if you're like kind of a
00:15:40
hardcore sci-fi person, I'm sure you would like it because it's
00:15:44
delivered pretty effectively. Sorry, just real quick, just to
00:15:47
argue for the flip side of that because that that paints it
00:15:50
pretty negatively. But I I feel like the strength
00:15:52
that that creates in both Star Trek and it sounds like in in
00:15:56
this as well is like you get like amazing like character
00:16:01
actor performances and like really strong dialogue and
00:16:06
intriguing drama. Like, that's what you're trading
00:16:11
all of that like action and kind of like bombastic set pieces
00:16:15
for. Yeah.
00:16:16
And so if that's what you're interested in, and then I feel
00:16:19
like these are the types of things that definitely scratch
00:16:22
that itch, no. Absolutely.
00:16:23
Like I know that you and I both find this stuff fascinating
00:16:25
because again, it isn't like an awesome stage for like fun
00:16:30
acting and like theater of the mind type stuff.
00:16:32
Like, the budgets on these series are always small enough
00:16:35
that you have to kind of like, tell things instead of showing
00:16:38
them, which is the opposite of usual storytelling logic.
00:16:42
But at the same time, everything you are seeing on screen is so
00:16:46
alien and fascinating and unique that that's kind of the
00:16:49
counterbalance. Like, if this was all regular
00:16:51
human characters, you might be a little more disengaged from it.
00:16:54
But the fact that some of the people involved are these, like,
00:16:56
crazy alien designs and different cultures, and you have
00:17:00
to learn about, it's very rewarding.
00:17:02
But it's like you have to focus on it to get anything out of it.
00:17:07
Yes, totally, You have to be. This is not the kind of like the
00:17:11
second screen experience type viewing.
00:17:13
Like if you're on your phone and trying to watch this, you're
00:17:16
going to miss all of it. That's a great point.
00:17:18
I think if we brought my wife in here, she would give her second
00:17:21
screen review because she was reading webtoons while this was
00:17:24
on. I don't think she'd be able to
00:17:26
tell you anything that happened. But it's like if you do watch it
00:17:29
and you are you're interested in this, I can already say the
00:17:32
Babylon 5 is worth checking out if you haven't already.
00:17:35
That's that's like my top down thing.
00:17:36
It's just another sci-fi series and can't really get enough of
00:17:40
those. Yeah, yeah.
00:17:42
I mean, there's, like I said, I I found this looking for similar
00:17:45
series and there's a lot, I mean, you and I have watched
00:17:47
like the Battlestar Galactica reboot, which I was also a big
00:17:51
fan of, Yeah. Absolutely.
00:17:53
I think if you're a fan of any of that stuff, you would enjoy
00:17:54
Babylon 5, and I bet a lot of people have already seen it.
00:17:57
But for us, it was a blind spot, which made it fun to go back and
00:17:59
revisit as like a completely new concept.
00:18:04
But man, I'm trying not to remember all of these, like new
00:18:06
character names and the names of the alien races and events and
00:18:10
they're all I feel. Like you don't, we don't need
00:18:12
all of that, but if it's, you know, if you feel it's relevant
00:18:15
to I'm. Going to try to paint the
00:18:17
picture of what the movie is telling you about so that it
00:18:20
makes more sense. Because ultimately this is like
00:18:21
a dense mystery at the heart of the story you're being told, and
00:18:25
I don't want people to be totally lost by it.
00:18:27
So I'll do my best. Essentially, there's five races
00:18:30
you need to keep track of. There's the humans from Earth,
00:18:32
basically just Starfleet from Star Trek.
00:18:34
I said I'd stop talk about Star Trek, but I've completely
00:18:36
failed. It's essentially the humans from
00:18:38
Earth. There is a race called the
00:18:41
Mumbari who to characterize them.
00:18:44
The Mumbari were like the oldest and most technologically
00:18:49
advanced and most powerful of the alien races that you're
00:18:52
going to meet in the story. And the most important piece of
00:18:54
lore for about them is that at one point in time in the past,
00:18:58
they were at war with Earth. And we're seemingly poised to
00:19:01
win and, like, take over the Earth because they had superior
00:19:05
technology. But for some unknown reason,
00:19:08
they, like, surrendered right before the war was about to end
00:19:11
in their favor. And the movie doesn't exactly
00:19:13
explain why that's part of that big hook they're trying to sell
00:19:16
you on for this series. Like, what happened?
00:19:18
What does it have to do with our main human character, which I'll
00:19:21
get into? And like, what does that mean
00:19:23
about like the political power structure in this world?
00:19:27
That's a good hook. That's a that's a really good
00:19:29
hook. It's a good.
00:19:30
Hook because they deliver it sparingly throughout the main
00:19:34
story that this Babylon 5 movie is telling you.
00:19:36
Ultimately, it doesn't play a huge role in what you're seeing
00:19:39
on screen right now. All you're really told is that
00:19:42
there was a massive battle going on, kind of like the hell a lot
00:19:46
of wars have like a famous battle that were like the most
00:19:48
casualties suffered by both sides.
00:19:50
So there was this famous battle on Earth toward the end of the
00:19:53
war. Our main character, the
00:19:54
commander of Babylon 5, was involved in it as a soldier.
00:19:59
But he, to his recollection was like all my men were being
00:20:04
killed around me. I was about to die as well.
00:20:06
Something happened, I blacked out. 24 hours passed and then I
00:20:09
was told the war was over and we won.
00:20:11
So like. There's like Bilbo, it's like.
00:20:14
Bilbo Baggins, Yeah, where he gets the rock on the head and
00:20:17
misses the whole thing. So yeah, like that's like the
00:20:19
larger story hook. It's like, well, what's going on
00:20:21
with that? So that means that those two
00:20:23
races, I'm sure have a lot to talk about in the rest of the
00:20:25
story, but very little of that comes to play in this movie.
00:20:30
Instead, we're focusing on the 5 alien races, all of their
00:20:34
ambassadors, and the last one who is set to arrive is poisoned
00:20:39
and nearly killed. And they spend the whole movie
00:20:41
trying to figure out who tried to kill this person and whether
00:20:44
or not they can save them. That's what the movie's about.
00:20:47
Oh wait, they were, you said, poisoned and almost killed.
00:20:50
Yes. So there's 5 alien races.
00:20:52
There's the two I just talked about, the humans and the
00:20:54
Mabari. There's also three others, one
00:20:57
of which nobody has ever met any of their representatives in
00:21:00
person. They don't know what this alien
00:21:02
race looks like. They've just had communications
00:21:03
with them. So it's a big deal that this
00:21:06
meeting is happening on Babylon 5, the space station, because
00:21:08
they're like, OK, great, we're going to have an ambassador from
00:21:11
the Vorlon race and we'll finally meet one.
00:21:14
But the Vorland ambassador steps foot on Babylon 5 and
00:21:17
immediately almost dies. Just like that instant they get
00:21:20
on board, they're they find them dying on the ground and they're
00:21:23
like, OK, I guess the Vorland ambassador is dead.
00:21:27
Maybe. Maybe that's just the way they
00:21:28
are. They're like, oh, this is,
00:21:30
that's just their culture. They just show up to new places
00:21:32
and then die. They send.
00:21:34
Ambassadors to important meetings to just keel over
00:21:36
before the before it can begin. You don't know them.
00:21:40
Like, yeah, let them be. We don't.
00:21:42
Know leave them be. Yeah, it'd be rude to interrupt.
00:21:44
Exactly. So.
00:21:46
That's the core of this story. The Vorlans are like a
00:21:50
mysterious race. The person that you're seeing is
00:21:52
inside this giant, like, suit of armor.
00:21:56
So like, you're not really seeing what they look like.
00:21:58
And you have this ongoing thing where this Vorlan ambassador is
00:22:02
in a coma. The other characters aboard
00:22:04
Babylon Five are trying to like, keep the peace fall.
00:22:06
So figuring out who tried to do this, who wants them dead.
00:22:09
And it's just kind of like that classic sci-fi thing of like
00:22:11
there's a bunch of little plots and threads and you're not sure
00:22:14
how they all connect. And then it all ramps up as the
00:22:16
story finally concludes. And I really, I can't think of
00:22:19
much else to talk about other than to just kind of walk
00:22:21
through the mystery as the movie presents it.
00:22:23
Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll just ask upfront, like, 'cause I like
00:22:27
murder mystery stuff, generally speaking.
00:22:30
I think we maybe got into this a little bit when we were talking
00:22:32
about Sleepy Hollow, but there difficult to land sometimes.
00:22:38
I feel like this one hopefully has enough other things going on
00:22:42
with this setting to like, I guess elevate that and make it
00:22:46
interesting. But I guess I'll I'll let you
00:22:48
tell us. Absolutely.
00:22:50
I do think that the strongest thing I could say about this
00:22:53
story in the movie is that it is a compelling enough mystery
00:22:56
that's not super predictable, but also not like confusing and
00:23:00
stupid. You know, like they didn't do
00:23:01
anything overly complicated to like, throw you off the trail as
00:23:04
the viewer. Instead, it's just like
00:23:06
something's going on with like a shapeshifter.
00:23:09
Maybe there's people being killed on board the space
00:23:11
station. We don't know who the actual
00:23:13
killer is. And as we get into, by the time
00:23:16
like the second act begins, the prime suspect in the attempted
00:23:20
murder is actually your main character, like the commander of
00:23:23
the space station. So your space station crew,
00:23:29
again, if you've watched Deep Space 9, this is going to sound
00:23:31
like 1 to one with like the cast of that.
00:23:32
But you have like your main commander guy, his name's Jeff.
00:23:35
He's the guy in charge. There's also a woman who is like
00:23:38
the head of their command center, like their operation
00:23:41
center named Laurel. And then you have a security
00:23:44
chief who's investigating the crime.
00:23:46
And then there's a doctor. Those are like your 4 main
00:23:49
people who work on Babylon 5. Yeah, it's one to one with the
00:23:53
cast of Deep Space. Literally.
00:23:55
Exactly the same. And then you also have the side
00:24:01
characters in the story are the ambassadors for the other alien
00:24:04
races. So there's one ambassador who's
00:24:06
a woman from the moon, Bari, who again, or that alien race that
00:24:09
could have destroyed Earth and chose not to.
00:24:11
She has like a friendship with Captain Jeff.
00:24:14
And so they have like a dynamic throughout that story where
00:24:16
she's feeding him information. There's also the classic Star
00:24:20
Trek theatrical British sounding alien guy, if that makes sense.
00:24:24
He's one of the other ambassadors, yeah.
00:24:26
Totally, totally. Just.
00:24:28
I think this actor actually playing the character's name is
00:24:31
Jakar. And I think the actor who plays
00:24:33
Jakar even had a recurring role in like, Star Trek Next
00:24:35
Generation. So just plucked straight out of
00:24:38
that kind of crop of actors who are like, super classically
00:24:41
trained. And then they just put him in
00:24:43
silly makeup and costumes and have him talk about space wars
00:24:46
and it's awesome. It's so great because it, it is
00:24:48
so theatrical. So I, I, I think that's
00:24:52
something else that like, I guess if I was trying to sell
00:24:55
someone who might be interested in these types of shows or
00:24:57
movies, it would be that, that it's like, if you, if you love
00:25:01
that kind of like big theatrical, like more classical,
00:25:06
like you said, acting style, but with like great prosthetics and
00:25:11
costuming and stuff like that. Like it's, it's, it's all very
00:25:14
theatre and, and I think people would appreciate that if that's
00:25:17
the type of thing they're into. Absolutely.
00:25:19
And Jakar gives a great performance.
00:25:20
As soon as the movie started, it was rolling the credits over the
00:25:23
first scene. And it was saying like, so and
00:25:25
so as this so and so as this character.
00:25:27
And I saw like, yadda, yadda, actor as Jakar and just said out
00:25:30
loud to my wife, I was like, I'm putting all my stocks in on
00:25:32
Jakar. I don't know who that is, but
00:25:34
that's a funny name. I'm going to be a big Jakar
00:25:36
head, which was funny because he turned out to be an antagonist
00:25:39
and was just kind of like a jerk.
00:25:41
And I was like, ah. Jakar Jakar all these names are
00:25:44
so funny like what did you say the the name of the 1 alien
00:25:49
species was the? I think it's the Munbar.
00:25:52
Ah, Christ, I got to look it up. There's there's somebody
00:25:56
listening right now who has seen Babylon Five, who is like,
00:26:00
you're mispronouncing this so badly.
00:26:02
Well, that. That was going to be my point
00:26:03
though, like you could literally just be making these up and I
00:26:06
wouldn't know because they're just nonsense sci-fi names.
00:26:09
So I don't expect, Oh yeah, give a Siri, I think.
00:26:13
It's the the minbari or the Moonbari.
00:26:16
I wrote it like 3 different ways in my notes.
00:26:19
OK, well, just keep changing it. Mix it up, just keep changing
00:26:21
it. The Klingons, if you will.
00:26:24
Yeah. Anyway, Jakar's race is called
00:26:29
the Narn. Like NARN?
00:26:32
Narn. Narn.
00:26:33
That's a bit of a weak name. You can always judge sci-fi or
00:26:36
fantasy by how good it's proper nouns are.
00:26:38
You know, just like names for people and places.
00:26:40
And Narn. Pretty weak, yeah.
00:26:42
Jakar's good though. Jakar's.
00:26:43
Good. Jakar's a good name.
00:26:44
And then the final alien race, who you only really see through
00:26:48
the lens of their ambassador. I think they just call them like
00:26:52
the Alpha Centauri people or something, the Centauri
00:26:56
Republic. OK, that's cool.
00:26:59
That's a good one. That's a good.
00:27:00
One, I'd say that overall proper knowledge in Babylon 5 quite
00:27:04
good. Nice.
00:27:05
Yeah, Like that, that's honestly that that is like a hinge that
00:27:10
good sci-fi like can kind of go up or down on like like you
00:27:14
said, because if they have bad just silly sounding names like
00:27:17
Wookies and Ewoks and. Jedi Misa think they could do
00:27:24
better. Misa thinks so too, yeah.
00:27:31
Anyway, good proper knowledge, but I know it if you've not seen
00:27:35
it, and this is all going to sound like just word garbled
00:27:37
nonsense, but essentially there's five main characters.
00:27:39
There's the ambassadors and then the rest of the crew of the
00:27:42
Babylon 5 space station in order to characterize the Centauri
00:27:46
Republic ambassador. If you want like a shorthand,
00:27:49
just think like the Penguin from Batman.
00:27:54
Wait, but like. Imagine like the Penguin from
00:27:57
Batman but like a sci-fi version who is kind of like a sad
00:28:01
alcoholic. Who are you describing right
00:28:04
now? Which character is this?
00:28:04
This is the. Ambassador from the Centauri
00:28:06
Republic. This is the guy that keeled
00:28:08
over. No, that was the Vorlan
00:28:10
ambassador. Obviously, that was the Vorlan
00:28:12
ambassador. OK, I'm just picturing like a
00:28:15
dead Penguin on the ground now, no?
00:28:16
No, Penguin's fine. Penguin's fine.
00:28:19
I don't remember the character's name but he is like more of a
00:28:23
frequent visitor to Babylon 5. Like he has you're not going to
00:28:27
believe this. He's like this CD deal making
00:28:30
guy who hangs out in a bar all the time and has like a
00:28:33
friendship slash rivalry with the security chief.
00:28:39
Sounds like a different show but his character is funny because
00:28:45
his race in the context of like the lore of RAW, this entire
00:28:49
Republic used to be like a really powerful alien empire but
00:28:52
due to some circumstances no longer is.
00:28:55
And he expresses it as like we essentially have to grovel to
00:28:58
like the people from earth now it's like resources and like
00:29:01
business deals and stuff. So his whole character is like a
00:29:04
once great race who's left with nothing now but like stories of
00:29:08
their prime and is kind of just floundering in the present.
00:29:11
OK. All right, so but, and this is
00:29:14
the guy, I I still don't understand how he's like the
00:29:17
Penguin in his appearance. Of his.
00:29:19
Characterization 00 like he looks like the Penguin.
00:29:23
Like, he has like some gnarled teeth and like, is kind of just
00:29:26
this somewhat rotund guy. And he look, you know, if you
00:29:29
saw the show, you would understand.
00:29:31
He looks like if you sent the Penguin into outer space.
00:29:34
OK. Got it.
00:29:35
All right, I thought that. Would be more helpful because it
00:29:37
would simplify it. I think I've complicated things
00:29:39
even further. Yeah, No, it's fine.
00:29:42
It's fine. I'm waiting.
00:29:43
I'm with it. So those.
00:29:44
Are your 5 alien races? Let's recap.
00:29:47
We have the humans. We have the humans.
00:29:50
Normal people. Mumbari, they're the strongest.
00:29:52
Satari Republic used to be good, now they kind of stink.
00:29:55
Jakar's people, The Narn, we don't really know much about
00:29:57
them, we just know Jakar. And then the last one is the
00:30:00
mysterious Vorlans, who we just met.
00:30:02
We just saw their ambassador and now he's almost dead.
00:30:05
OK, cool. Easy, easy.
00:30:06
Peasy and then Jabba the Hutt shows up.
00:30:08
No Jabba the Hutt. So right away we have this
00:30:13
dynamic where it's like, well, who had the motive to try to
00:30:15
kill the ambassador from the new planet?
00:30:17
Obviously like it's a sci-fi drama like anyone you've seen
00:30:21
previous. There's like a political angle,
00:30:23
like who would stand to benefit from disrupting what is probably
00:30:26
some sort of like, I think peace talks or strength building, like
00:30:29
bond building, meeting between all these alien races.
00:30:32
Somebody's trying to sabotage it.
00:30:33
They tried to get this person killed who done it.
00:30:36
You know, it's a classic mystery.
00:30:37
And right off the bat, I mean, I say right off the bat, once the
00:30:40
mystery gets going, one of the first things you learn is that
00:30:43
one of the few people without an alibi is the main character of
00:30:46
Commander Jeff. Jazzy.
00:30:48
Jeff Jazzy Jeff, because you see that from his perspective, he's
00:30:52
in an elevator and the elevator stops working while he's on his
00:30:55
way to meet the ambassador, which delays him enough that he
00:30:57
misses the attempted murder. But then later the security
00:30:59
chief is like, there's no record of that malfunction.
00:31:02
Are we sure this wasn't you? And then as it goes on, we have
00:31:05
a character with like telepathic power show up who like straight
00:31:09
up says that she saw him commit the crime.
00:31:12
Like she saw this Commander Jeff try to kill the ambassador.
00:31:15
So right away, your main character, who we just met and
00:31:18
sorry, your prime suspect in a murderer.
00:31:21
I don't like him. Yeah, that's kind of like one of
00:31:23
my beefs with the framework of this TV movie is that it seems
00:31:28
like a very understandable premise.
00:31:30
Your main character is put in a situation where it seems like
00:31:34
he's guilty, and there's no obvious logical way to prove
00:31:36
that he is not guilty because it's a science fiction show and,
00:31:39
you know, it's going to be some kind of more complicated scheme,
00:31:42
and the viewer has to try to think about what that could be.
00:31:44
And that's what makes it ultimately satisfying.
00:31:46
But during like the whole second-half of the movie,
00:31:49
Commander Jeff, it's the prime and only suspect in this
00:31:52
attempted murder. And he's never like restrained
00:31:55
in any way. He just like, walks around the
00:31:57
ship like normal trying to solve the mystery.
00:31:59
And the whole time I'm like, Jeff, you're the prime suspect.
00:32:02
Like you can't just, you can't just he's.
00:32:05
Like, we're going to get this guy, let's go find him.
00:32:08
He's sharing. Evidence with the crew and like
00:32:10
they're telling him like their new leads.
00:32:12
And the whole time I was like, listen, if this was like Season
00:32:15
4, episode 5 and Captain Picard was accused of murdering
00:32:19
somebody, and as a viewer, I know obviously he didn't do
00:32:21
that, then you could play with this like, of course, everybody
00:32:24
trusts the captain. But we just met the captain and
00:32:27
he's already been accused of a crime.
00:32:29
And we're supposed to just take it at face value that like,
00:32:31
well, of course he didn't do it well.
00:32:33
Yeah. I also feel like exactly like
00:32:35
you said, if this was like later into the series, that would also
00:32:39
be framed in a way where it's like the captain would still be
00:32:43
detained, but he would use his relationship with the other
00:32:45
characters to prove his innocence because they support
00:32:48
him. You know it still, it still
00:32:50
wouldn't be him going around solving the case.
00:32:52
So that is kind of a poor structural frames.
00:32:55
No sense because they're trying to tell this angle in the story
00:32:58
where Captain Jeff, all of his crew were like, obviously
00:33:01
Captain, Commander, Lord Overseer Jeff didn't do this.
00:33:06
But we don't know that necessarily as the viewer beyond
00:33:09
them just telling us it probably wasn't him.
00:33:11
And there's never a scene where like he has to voluntarily go
00:33:14
into like the holding cells aboard the space station and
00:33:17
then he has to like trust in his crew to prove his innocence.
00:33:20
He's just wandering about freely.
00:33:21
Just like, let me muddle with some evidence while I'm at it.
00:33:26
So that's odd. It is odd.
00:33:29
Because do they do anything to explain around that?
00:33:34
Like to give any like justification as to why he is
00:33:37
allowed to do that. Not really.
00:33:39
Like, there's a scene, the reveal that the telepath thinks
00:33:42
he committed the crime is like the lead into a commercial break
00:33:45
because, again, it's aired on TV.
00:33:47
And when we come back, there's like Commander Jeff is talking
00:33:50
to essentially Star Freight Command who is saying like, you
00:33:52
know, Jeff, I think we have to relieve you as the head of the
00:33:57
investigation now that you're the prime suspect.
00:34:00
I think, I guess, I guess you're no longer the lead detective
00:34:04
when you probably killed that guy.
00:34:06
And it's just like the crew. Is like, man, that's bogus.
00:34:09
And the whole time I'm like, that's not bogus.
00:34:11
That's a totally national response.
00:34:14
Why isn't everybody on board with this?
00:34:16
How is the angle not like, don't worry, Cathy, we know it wasn't
00:34:19
you, but we got to follow procedures.
00:34:20
People in Babylon 5 do not give a crap about procedures.
00:34:25
Captain Jeff is like, there's nothing in the rules that says a
00:34:27
dog can't play basketball. And they're like, wait, that
00:34:30
doesn't, No, that doesn't. And he's just moved on and
00:34:32
they're. Like actually Jeff, there's like
00:34:34
a lot of new rule books now. There is a whole one about dogs
00:34:36
and basketball and he's like dad that used to work used.
00:34:39
To work back home. Not in space, not in.
00:34:42
Space I This reminds me, so Babylon 5, the movie The
00:34:46
gathering, the show has a fairly competent plot, but that really
00:34:52
bugged me. The fact that Captain Jeff is
00:34:53
the prime suspect and they just let him parade around freely
00:34:56
solving the crime as he sees fit.
00:34:58
And there's a much smaller beat that I found super strange where
00:35:02
we get a scene between two of the people who work on Babylon
00:35:04
5. It's our doctor, Doctor Ben and
00:35:07
the like, head of OPS who's named Laurel.
00:35:10
We have not had any time to learn about either of these
00:35:13
characters because the movie's going and there's other stuff to
00:35:15
talk about. So when our first, like,
00:35:17
downbeat scene, Laurel is in her quarters, you know, she's not
00:35:21
working. She's just hanging out drinking
00:35:22
coffee. And she has this conversation
00:35:24
with the doctor where she offers him coffee, and he's like, wow,
00:35:27
how did you get this? I didn't know that we had access
00:35:30
to coffee because unlike Star Trek, in Babylon 5, they
00:35:32
actually have to grow their food.
00:35:34
So it's like a whole thing of like, well, we're supposed to
00:35:36
reserve space aboard the space station only to grow necessary,
00:35:39
like, fruits and vegetables and produce.
00:35:42
But we learned that Laurel paid somebody off or just convinced
00:35:46
somebody to let her have a small little area where they grow
00:35:48
coffee beans, even though that's against, like, fleet
00:35:50
regulations, You know what I mean?
00:35:53
Sure. So what's your complaint here?
00:35:55
So the complaint is that's how the scene opens.
00:35:58
This is our first time learning anything about this character.
00:36:00
And she's like, don't worry. I kind of, like, schmoozed with
00:36:03
the people running the hydroponics area, and I let them
00:36:05
grow. I let them have some coffee
00:36:07
beans and then had them grow them for me.
00:36:09
And then, like, the very next thing she talks about in that
00:36:12
scene is this back story dump where she's explaining how in
00:36:16
her previous job working on Mars, she was like a terrible
00:36:19
employee because she knew that the whole system was corrupt and
00:36:21
she did a bad job. And that apparently Captain Jeff
00:36:26
came along and, like, whisked her away to come work on Babylon
00:36:29
5 and was like, you know, I really think you have something
00:36:32
in you to be great, but you got to try harder and you got to do
00:36:35
things by the book and try to change the system from the
00:36:37
inside. And so she says out loud to the
00:36:39
doctor, like, I haven't broken a rule in a long time now, Ben.
00:36:43
And I was like, we just talked about you and your illegal
00:36:46
coffee beans. It's the only thing we know.
00:36:50
She just like I, I haven't broken any rules and it just
00:36:52
takes like a long sip of her coffee like she's holding.
00:36:56
The coffee while she's saying I haven't broken the rule in a
00:36:58
long time. And it's so weird because
00:37:01
ultimately that's a, that scene is about them deciding whether
00:37:05
or not to do some illegal stuff to like probe into the mind of
00:37:08
this unconscious ambassador because they're still trying to
00:37:10
solve the murder attempt. So they're like, well, if we
00:37:12
could get inside his mind with his telepath, maybe we could
00:37:15
find out what happened. And then they're like, well, but
00:37:17
that's illegal. We're not supposed to be able to
00:37:18
do that. And so she's sitting there like,
00:37:20
I haven't broken a rule in a long time.
00:37:21
Drinks illegal coffee bean crop. Like that's insane.
00:37:25
It would be like if you opened a scene in a movie of a guy just
00:37:28
like shooting half court basketball shots and making like
00:37:31
four or five in a row. And that's the first thing you
00:37:33
ever see him do. And then he turns to another
00:37:35
character and he's like, I haven't played basketball in a
00:37:37
long time. It's like, what are you talking
00:37:40
about? Listen man, time moves
00:37:42
differently in space. Like it's just like that.
00:37:45
Was 4 to 5 seconds ago. I was over there.
00:37:47
I was a different. Person.
00:37:49
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I I wasn't supposed.
00:37:51
Maybe it was supposed to be a tongue in cheek line?
00:37:53
Maybe. It was supposed to be tongue in
00:37:55
cheek, but it didn't land and it made no sense and it was a very
00:37:58
jarring like scripting issue in a movie that otherwise made
00:38:01
total sense. Yeah, I mean, I, I hear your,
00:38:05
your complaint will be filed with the board with the.
00:38:08
Board and then she'll ignore it because she's a rule breaker.
00:38:14
Are those two characters a couple?
00:38:15
That was going to be my my question when you mentioned that
00:38:17
they were spending time together and it was the first time we saw
00:38:20
them. No, the only like romantic
00:38:22
pairing you get is that Captain Jeff has a girlfriend who is a
00:38:27
freighter ship captain that comes and goes from the station
00:38:30
periodically and they never get to spend enough time together.
00:38:33
You gotta be kidding me. Yep, Yep.
00:38:35
That's more deep space 9 comparison.
00:38:37
I think our favorite show ripped off this other show.
00:38:44
Shut it down. Shut it.
00:38:45
Down. We can't let this go out.
00:38:46
Yeah. We can't let.
00:38:48
People know we can't let people hear about this.
00:38:50
I'm sorry, Paramount. My bad.
00:38:53
My bad. My bad.
00:38:54
I'm sure you haven't done anything wrong either.
00:38:56
Paramount Pictures. We got to shut down Google.
00:39:02
We got to shut down a lot of stuff, yeah.
00:39:03
Paramount's like I haven't broken a rule in a long time.
00:39:07
Just like smashing bags of money under their desk.
00:39:11
Anyway to answer your question, no the doctor and the OPS
00:39:17
commander lady are not a pair. We just have the captain has a
00:39:21
girlfriend who's like a side character that doesn't work on
00:39:23
Babylon Five. I will say also, you were
00:39:26
talking about performances like this is a great canvas for
00:39:31
classically trained actors to just like, flaunt these
00:39:34
interesting characters. And I would say that overall,
00:39:37
the performances on like your average Star Trek show in the
00:39:40
90s ranged from like good to great to amazing.
00:39:43
Whereas in this Babylon 5 movie, it's like acceptable to bad.
00:39:46
Like some of the performances are really bad.
00:39:49
Well, I, I in the small amount of research I did like when
00:39:53
picking this film, I believe there is, I don't know how
00:39:56
significant or how many people it is, but I think there's some
00:39:59
of the main roles are recast when the series actually begins
00:40:02
or, or just new characters are introduced.
00:40:05
Interesting. So that could be the case.
00:40:07
I will say that the the rule breaking coffee drinker Laurel
00:40:12
is giving a horrendous performance.
00:40:14
Like her line reads are so wooden that it's like an insult
00:40:19
to trees. OK.
00:40:25
Like it's so jarring because they'll have these people in
00:40:28
here like Commander Jeff, he's doing fine.
00:40:30
Like he's just doing like super normal, kind of like I'm in
00:40:34
charge around here, main character guy energy.
00:40:36
And then we'll just cut to her in the OPS room struggling to
00:40:38
articulate these lines or deliver them in in even remotely
00:40:41
convincing way. It's just distractingly bad from
00:40:45
this one particular character on the main cast.
00:40:48
That's well, yeah, that's brutal.
00:40:50
I mean, does she have a lot of screen time?
00:40:51
Is she important to the the story of this this, I almost
00:40:55
said first episode, which I guess that's kind of what it is.
00:40:57
But to this TV movie? Not really.
00:41:00
I I'm sure she would have been if she stuck around for the
00:41:02
series and maybe it gets better. Like I'm not going to judge the
00:41:05
actor. I don't know what their
00:41:06
capability is, but just this performance that was captured
00:41:09
was terrible. And like, the security chief guy
00:41:12
also kind of gave a mixed performance.
00:41:14
You know, Jakar was really good. The main guy was good.
00:41:16
I just was surprised that a couple of these performances
00:41:19
were so weak. Because I feel like if that
00:41:21
doesn't hold up, like the whole facade of the show can come
00:41:23
down. Like if you put on an episode of
00:41:25
Star Trek where nobody's a good actor, you don't have a show
00:41:27
anymore. Yeah, I feel like one of the the
00:41:29
big advantages, I guess if you want to call it, could be the
00:41:35
directing, could be the writing. But like the a lot of those,
00:41:38
like character actors that they bring onto Star Trek seem to
00:41:41
really understand the material in a way that regardless of like
00:41:46
the specifics of what they're talking about, like clearly
00:41:48
they're talking about nonsense like alien creatures and worlds
00:41:52
and stuff. But they make it sound so
00:41:55
believable because they find the almost Shakespearean esque, like
00:42:00
storytelling underneath, if that makes sense.
00:42:03
You know, it's like. Shakespeare.
00:42:05
Shakespearean is the perfect word for how they typically play
00:42:07
it in in the better versions of this, yes.
00:42:10
Because it's, it's, you know, again, great sci-fi at its core
00:42:13
is reflective of our human experiences.
00:42:18
And so I find I find that like that's one of the big advantages
00:42:21
of this type of sci-fi is like, you know, you're changing the
00:42:25
specifics around and, and put placing it in these sort of
00:42:28
distant locales and stuff, but it's all still very human
00:42:33
experiences that you can relate to.
00:42:35
And I feel like the actors that really deliver the best
00:42:39
material, despite being in silly prosthetics and stuff like that,
00:42:43
are the ones that really get that.
00:42:45
And I don't know if that comes with having a like, a
00:42:47
relationship with like the writing or possibly the director
00:42:51
guiding them that way, but I could easily see how that could
00:42:56
slip off in the other direction. And people are like, well, the
00:42:59
Jakars are, you know, whatever. They're they're taking the
00:43:04
hobbits to Isengard. What it?
00:43:05
What is the last? Exactly, Yeah.
00:43:08
Yeah, Line, I do think that that is a point against Babylon 5.
00:43:13
Again, a lot of people really like to show.
00:43:14
I'm sure the larger story being told is interesting and then
00:43:17
there's probably a lot of strength to it.
00:43:18
But what you get in Babylon 5, The Gathering is a perfectly
00:43:22
competent sci-fi mystery that resolves in an interesting way
00:43:27
and does create a hook leading into the main series.
00:43:30
But it doesn't really have what the best episodes of Star Trek
00:43:35
have. They'll talk about Star Trek,
00:43:36
what the best episodes of Star Trek have, which is like
00:43:39
interesting thematic language underneath individual stories.
00:43:44
Like Star Trek is often episodic and serial, like they're telling
00:43:48
a larger story, but they'll do individual little stories within
00:43:50
it that often speak to these like grandiose themes because
00:43:54
that's what sci-fi is well suited for.
00:43:56
And even like the pilot of Deep Space 9 tackle some really
00:43:59
interesting concepts around like humans relationship to time.
00:44:03
And there's this fun allegory where he's the human captain's
00:44:06
like trying to explain to an alien why baseball's
00:44:08
interesting, but the alien experiences time like all at
00:44:12
once. They don't have a concept of
00:44:13
linear time. And he has to explain.
00:44:15
He's like, no, you don't understand.
00:44:16
Like it's in that moment where you throw the ball and you're
00:44:20
waiting for it to reach the batter and you can't say for
00:44:22
certain if they're going to hit it or not.
00:44:24
Like that's where the human experience lives and it's just
00:44:27
compelling. It just asks a lot of big
00:44:29
questions and often doesn't even answer them definitively.
00:44:32
Babylon 5, not a lot of that, not a lot of like big questions,
00:44:37
big picture. It it it's really concerned with
00:44:40
its actual basic level plot above all else, I think.
00:44:44
Yeah, which, you know, I do wonder how much of that, like,
00:44:49
it would be interesting to see where the series goes from there
00:44:51
because this, you know, being a pilot, I could kind of see them
00:44:55
having to, you know, they have a short amount of time to pitch
00:44:58
this as a thing people are going to want to watch.
00:45:00
So I could see them feeling like if they went too niche or too
00:45:04
far into that direction because like, you know, Deep Space 9,
00:45:08
one of the big advantages of that show was that it was coming
00:45:11
off the heels of Star Trek The Next Generation, which was a
00:45:14
hugely popular show that was still on at the time.
00:45:17
So like, even if Deep Space 9 like failed, that the network
00:45:21
still had Next Generation airing.
00:45:23
So they could sort of take more risks like right off the bat
00:45:29
basically. And right off the bat,
00:45:33
parentheses, baseball. I was also going to say that
00:45:38
Star Trek benefits from having established lore.
00:45:41
People tuning in to watch Steve. Space 9 would be like, yeah,
00:45:43
Klingon Starfleet. You don't need to explain that
00:45:45
to me. Whereas Babylon 5 is
00:45:46
disadvantaged in that it has to tell the story well, telling you
00:45:49
where the story is happening and who all the pieces are.
00:45:52
I mean, even this review I had to spend like 30 minutes just
00:45:54
explaining who's here. Yeah, yeah.
00:45:58
Do you like that I tricked you into making our season finale
00:46:00
episode all about Star Trek? Yeah, I.
00:46:02
Noticed that. I noticed we were talking about
00:46:04
Star Trek the whole time and I feel bad so people haven't seen
00:46:07
it. But frankly, if you've listened
00:46:10
to us talk about Babylon 5 for this song, go watch Star Trek.
00:46:14
That's the recommendation at the end.
00:46:16
Like it makes it hard to put this movie in a box by itself.
00:46:21
Like as a film made to launch a new sci-fi series, I would say
00:46:25
it's reasonably effective. Like it's good, interesting
00:46:28
storytelling that would hook a viewer the same way that a Star
00:46:31
Trek would. The shortcomings are that it
00:46:33
lacks that kind of upper level dialogue and just general
00:46:39
scripting that makes it feel really like grandiose and kind
00:46:42
of bombastic in a way. I think what I've read is that
00:46:45
Babylon 5 is a darker story than any of the Star Trek series and
00:46:48
is a little bit more grounded and it's science fiction.
00:46:51
Like it doesn't have that utopic optimistic undertone.
00:46:54
It's very miserable to the point of almost being dystopian, and
00:46:58
that's fine, but I would have liked to see this movie sell me
00:47:02
on the mission statement for the whole series somatically, and
00:47:06
instead it's really just like, we have so much plot.
00:47:09
Please listen to all of our plots so that you'll know what
00:47:11
we're talking about when the Penguin comes back.
00:47:15
To bet, we got. To get to bet, we got.
00:47:17
To get to bet, yeah, that's ultimately what it's about.
00:47:20
And it's about family, you know? Vin Diesel's going to drive by
00:47:26
and he's but you know, 'cause even that the way you described
00:47:30
it just now, that sounds interesting to me, 'cause like,
00:47:33
you know, Deep Space 9 already exists, so I can go watch that.
00:47:37
I the idea of a darker version of that that goes in a different
00:47:42
tonal direction. That's to me a stronger pitch.
00:47:45
And it sounds like you said this movie doesn't get into that so
00:47:48
much. No, 'cause the movie's not that
00:47:51
dark. It's very by the numbers, It's
00:47:53
trying to like give you a tour of everything, but it doesn't
00:47:58
have enough time. And I, it arguably could have
00:48:00
made time even in like a 90 minute story to give you more of
00:48:05
a focused appeal for like, this is what makes our show
00:48:07
different. This is where it's going.
00:48:08
But like, here's why you're going to want to stick around.
00:48:11
Because I feel like if I was just like watching TV in 1993
00:48:14
and that came on, I'd be like, yeah, that was cool.
00:48:16
But I don't think I'd be like, I have to make sure I'm ready in a
00:48:19
year when the series. That's also tough.
00:48:22
Yeah, That is, I wonder what the sort of behind the scenes
00:48:25
production elements were that, like, necessitated it.
00:48:28
Like, maybe they were still shopping it around for that
00:48:30
whole time, But that's a long gap in between a pilot TV movie
00:48:35
and then, like, like, how many people saw that and then also
00:48:39
saw like, the first episode of the show a year later?
00:48:41
You know, there probably wasn't a lot of overlap, not to
00:48:44
mention. Does the first episode of the
00:48:45
show just have to recap everything from that movie
00:48:48
because it's so much later and a lot of that lore was like
00:48:51
significant to what was going to be coming up next?
00:48:54
That I don't know. The movie ends up falling in a
00:48:56
weird place. It like it was made too early
00:48:59
relative to when the series launched and was made in like a
00:49:02
bubble, But it spent a lot of its time trying to tell you,
00:49:05
like, there's more coming up after this.
00:49:07
And I think those elements kind of conflicted and it left the
00:49:09
movie feeling a little bit aimless, even though on paper it
00:49:12
was pretty well done. Yeah.
00:49:14
It also brings up the question of like, given the time period
00:49:16
when that was released, if you missed the movie and we're
00:49:20
watching the series and wanted to go back and watch the TV
00:49:23
movie, like what resources would you even have?
00:49:25
Like unless they like released you know like Avhs version that
00:49:30
you could go rent from the video store I.
00:49:32
Guess you could go down to your Blockbuster Video and.
00:49:35
But what did they have even released a physical like, or was
00:49:37
it, did it just air on TV? You know, because it was a, it
00:49:40
was a made for TV movie. So I don't know how often they
00:49:42
they did that, you know, like made physical copies of made for
00:49:45
TV movies like in the 90s. Grandpa, how did people watch
00:49:49
the TV before? Because I have those questions
00:49:52
all the time and we were around for like the last 10 years of
00:49:55
that, but I can't recall it anymore.
00:49:57
Like the idea that it's like, AH is my favorite show.
00:50:01
I have to be in in front of this TV Wednesday at 7:00 every week
00:50:05
for nine months or else I'm going to miss it.
00:50:09
Yeah, yeah. I feel like TiVo was.
00:50:11
We never had TiVo. We did not.
00:50:13
Have a TiVo. That that was probably a big
00:50:15
innovation at the time so that you could watch your shows at a
00:50:18
later time, but then you still had to set it up to record the
00:50:21
right shows. I think like I, I definitely
00:50:23
remember being a kid and being like, if I don't get home from
00:50:26
school in time, I'm going to miss my shows and then my night
00:50:30
is ruined, which makes it. Sound like you're 85 years old,
00:50:33
right? They're like, I got to get home
00:50:35
or I'll miss my stories. Yes.
00:50:38
Yes, except it was like Batman. Yeah.
00:50:41
Exactly. I got to say, Batman Beyond.
00:50:43
What are you talking about? Yeah.
00:50:44
So Babylon 5, the Gathering, the movie, The show, the game is
00:50:50
really weird. Like it.
00:50:51
It feels out of place in its own franchise's history.
00:50:57
And I do think it's pretty good. I would certainly not recommend
00:51:00
against it for people who like this kind of storytelling.
00:51:03
But it's such an anomaly that like, I can't easily, I'm going
00:51:07
to have to rank this out of 10 later and that's going to drive
00:51:09
me up a wall because I just don't know how.
00:51:11
Well, good luck out there. Good luck, Yeah.
00:51:17
I mean, I guess we'll catch up on that thought in a bit.
00:51:21
For now, we're going to head to our intermission and then when
00:51:24
we come back, Frank, you'll have an entirely different movie to
00:51:26
talk about. Although spoiler, it somehow
00:51:29
does connect all the way back to Star Wars, so we'll see how that
00:51:32
works out. Oh, OK, I didn't know that, but
00:51:36
I told. You what you'll tell.
00:51:37
Us. Oh, yes, you did.
00:51:39
I'm sorry, You're right. Yeah, I get.
00:51:41
It. I get it.
00:51:42
I'm with you, he. Gets it.
00:51:43
He works here anyway, soon after intermission for the cutting
00:51:47
edge. All right, coming back from the
00:51:57
other side of the intermission, Frank, we just spent 50 odd
00:52:01
minutes talking about a sci-fi story that's going to be very
00:52:03
hard for anyone to understand. Let's turn things over now to
00:52:06
something a lot more straightforward, 1992's romance
00:52:09
sports movie The Cutting Edge. Yes, this will be far easier to
00:52:15
follow. And that's a pretty good
00:52:17
description of what it is. That's actually here in my notes
00:52:19
that it's somewhere between a sports movie and a like Hallmark
00:52:26
movie. Got it.
00:52:28
That makes sense. I do know because I don't
00:52:31
remember if I gave the full explanation when I first
00:52:33
introduced the movie at the end of our last episode.
00:52:36
But I was looking up Cutthroat Island, which you asked me to
00:52:39
watch, and I was on tube because I knew it was streaming there.
00:52:42
And I typed in CU and all these movies popped up.
00:52:44
They were called The Cutting Edge.
00:52:45
And I was like, well, what is that?
00:52:46
Why is it? What are all these Cutting Edge
00:52:47
movies? I think that this movie was
00:52:50
successful enough in the early 90s to warrant.
00:52:54
I don't think any of them are direct sequels, but it's like a
00:52:57
name that's been held on to. So every now and again they'll
00:53:00
make a similar movie and just call it The Cutting Edge.
00:53:03
But I don't think any of them are connected.
00:53:05
You're wrong. They are this.
00:53:08
Is cinematic Universe. At least the second one I I I
00:53:13
did see that similar to The Prophecy, this did spawn a
00:53:16
series of films. No video games.
00:53:19
I was on the lookout for cutting edge video games, but was there
00:53:23
a. Babel on five game.
00:53:24
That's a great. Question.
00:53:25
That's true. We can look into that later.
00:53:27
But yeah, there was like, I think two or three films that
00:53:31
came after this one. And I did read a little bit of
00:53:34
trivia that the two lead actors from this one sort of made a
00:53:38
deal with each other that they wouldn't do a sequel unless the
00:53:42
other person agreed to do it too.
00:53:44
Interesting. And I believe there was it.
00:53:48
Again, take this all with a grain of salt, this is just
00:53:51
stuff I read online apparently pulled from interviews or
00:53:55
whatever. But one of the leads more Kelly
00:53:59
said that she was offered a role for the sequel, but the amount
00:54:04
she was being offered was like insultingly low and so she
00:54:06
turned it down. Makes sense and so then the
00:54:10
sequel is like about the daughter of the two lead
00:54:15
characters from this movie, but the two lead actors from this
00:54:18
movie do not return and then I don't know where the series goes
00:54:21
from there in terms of the other sequels and how connected they
00:54:24
are to this one. At least the first one is
00:54:27
supposed to be a continuation, so we.
00:54:29
Might we might get into cutting edge Tokyo Drift territory where
00:54:32
it's like similar but totally different cast well.
00:54:36
Also, Speaking of Tokyo Drift, this like the only other thing I
00:54:42
read about that first sequel is this film takes place in 1992
00:54:47
because it's like very specifically because they're
00:54:49
they're competing at like the 1992 Olympics.
00:54:52
And when they made the sequel, it's about the the daughter of
00:54:55
the two lead characters. But they had to change the year
00:55:00
of the Olympics that they supposedly competed in in this
00:55:03
first movie to like the 1984 Olympics so that they could cast
00:55:07
an older actress as the daughter.
00:55:09
Like so. They like retconned that in the
00:55:13
sequel. Oh yeah, they they retconned
00:55:16
which Olympics it was. That's funny.
00:55:18
Yeah, exactly. I I thought that was silly too.
00:55:22
So because you know, again, from what I read, I don't know if
00:55:26
this one performed that well initially upon release but has
00:55:29
formed sort of a cult following. People do like this movie.
00:55:34
Certain circles have found it later and appreciated it.
00:55:37
OK. OK, that's good to know.
00:55:39
I assume something must have happened.
00:55:40
There must have been a reason why the name had value enough
00:55:43
that it's been. I think there was a cutting edge
00:55:45
movie as recently as like the Twenty 10s.
00:55:48
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:55:49
So they definitely, they definitely kept it going, which
00:55:52
is kind of, I don't know. Again, it's similar to prophecy.
00:55:55
It's like, how did such a relatively unknown movie have
00:55:59
such a lasting legacy? I guess I I did see a bit of
00:56:05
trivia as well that I thought was funny that like there's ATV
00:56:09
show airing now. I think it's just called Ghost.
00:56:13
Maybe you've heard of it, maybe people listening and heard of
00:56:15
it. Is it?
00:56:16
Called ghosts, plural. Isn't that a show?
00:56:19
It might be. Ghosts.
00:56:20
Sorry. Yeah, I think, I think it's,
00:56:21
it's possibly Ghosts. And I guess one of the
00:56:24
characters on that show like frequently references this
00:56:28
movie. Oh.
00:56:30
Interesting. Yeah, So it so it has that kind
00:56:34
of like, I don't know, like sort of modern pop culture imprint.
00:56:38
And but I feel like the joke there is that he's sort of
00:56:41
referencing A lesser known movie as like his favorite movie.
00:56:46
I also have a small personal connection to that show because
00:56:48
I, one of the lead actors on that show, went to the same
00:56:52
college as me and we actually acted in a short film together.
00:56:58
So it's. One of my hosts you were in a
00:57:01
short film for school with one of the lead actors from ghosts.
00:57:05
Yeah, correct. How has this never come up in
00:57:08
casual conversation? You just hold on to this.
00:57:11
I don't know. I don't know.
00:57:12
It's it wasn't, it was, it was a project outside of it was
00:57:18
someone I met like in my film program.
00:57:21
And then he was shooting a short film like outside of school.
00:57:24
And I may have mentioned this to you because this is, this is
00:57:28
just a personal gripe I have, but I have like I have an IMDb
00:57:32
page that has like my production credits on there, you know, and
00:57:35
it's mostly like camera and lighting stuff because that's
00:57:38
what I've done primarily on set. But if you find my IMDb page,
00:57:43
the first thing listed is actor. It says like actor and then like
00:57:51
camera and electrical and I, I like, have tried to edit that
00:57:55
because I'm like, I'm not an actor.
00:57:58
I, I quote UN quote acted in a couple of like short films when
00:58:01
I was in college. Just, you know, the similar
00:58:03
thing. Just it's just very student film
00:58:07
level stuff. And I've tried to get them
00:58:09
removed from my IMDb, but IMDb support is very much against
00:58:15
that. They're just like, no, that
00:58:17
they're like, we believe these are real credits.
00:58:19
We're not taking this off. You're done.
00:58:20
Is done. You're an actor.
00:58:22
Now put the camera down. Get in front of it.
00:58:25
Yeah, exactly. But yeah, one of those credits,
00:58:28
one of those like 2 acting credits that are listed first on
00:58:31
my IMDb page, One of them is a short film that I did with and
00:58:35
one of the other actors in that is one of the lead actors on the
00:58:37
TV show Ghosts. That's pretty funny that someone
00:58:40
could look up. They could look up ghosts, look
00:58:42
at that person's IMDb, click through to something they did
00:58:45
much earlier and see your name in there and be like, wow, who's
00:58:47
this actor? Who's this actor does a lot of
00:58:51
camera stuff. Looks like he's.
00:58:53
Producer photography. Wow, Really, really gave it up.
00:58:58
Yeah, yeah. Gave up that.
00:58:59
So yeah, that was funny that you recommended this movie and then
00:59:03
in a very roundabout way I had a sort of connection to it because
00:59:06
they reference it on that show. Everything about Cutting Edge is
00:59:09
funny to me for reasons outside of what the movie is.
00:59:11
The reason I picked it, in addition to why there's so many
00:59:15
of them, was that this first one is the first script writing
00:59:18
credit on a feature film for Tony Gilroy, who much more
00:59:22
recently made the hit Star Wars spin off Andor.
00:59:26
Which is this like super dense political drama about like how?
00:59:32
Like how fascist empires come down.
00:59:35
And it's such a far throw from sports ice skating movie that I
00:59:40
was like, how? What?
00:59:43
Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, this was his very first
00:59:46
writing credit for a feature film.
00:59:48
And I mean, yeah, I guess and or ties into kind of the previous,
00:59:52
you know, sci-fi series that we were talking about because that
00:59:54
is an excellent, like sci-fi, like even if you don't like Star
00:59:59
Wars, that's just a really great show, especially the second
01:00:02
season. I think I've recommended that to
01:00:04
you. Yeah.
01:00:05
I'm in the middle of it. Oh good.
01:00:07
Yeah, OK. Great.
01:00:08
Pretty good. Pretty good.
01:00:10
Pretty good. Pretty timely.
01:00:11
Timely sci-fi pretty. Good.
01:00:13
As we all know, Andor is set aboard a space station that is a
01:00:17
waypoint for various alien races.
01:00:21
Weird. Weird how that keeps happening
01:00:23
deep. Space Andor.
01:00:27
But I I did want to point out that he was also the writer of
01:00:31
the Bourne Identity trilogy, which I'm also a big fan of.
01:00:35
Tony Gilroy wrote those. Yeah, Yeah, he wrote the the
01:00:39
first three. Those are the.
01:00:41
Good ones. Those are the good ones.
01:00:43
I think he wrote the 4th one as well.
01:00:45
I don't. There might be 5 movies in that
01:00:46
franchise now. I don't even know there's.
01:00:47
Five, and I think they're even working on another one.
01:00:49
They lost me when they killed off Julia Stiles.
01:00:52
Spoilers. People are going to be so mad.
01:00:56
They're like, man, I was part way through Bourne Supremacy.
01:00:59
I was part way through. Jason Austin to.
01:01:01
Listen to this. Yeah.
01:01:02
Jason Bourne 5 Anyway, so what's what's cutting edge about?
01:01:08
Who cares? No.
01:01:10
Seriously, both movies this week.
01:01:12
It's like, hey, you know what? I want to talk about anything
01:01:14
except what happens in the movie.
01:01:17
No, I will say this, I feel like this was a good one to end this
01:01:22
first season on, given the theme of our first season, you know,
01:01:27
of forgotten 90s movies because, like, this is literally a note I
01:01:30
have written down that this just feels like a movie, you know?
01:01:35
Yeah. Like, I'm like, oh, OK, yes.
01:01:38
This is really just a standard, like, especially 90s filmmaking
01:01:45
going on here. And I cannot say that about
01:01:47
every movie we've watched. Like, some have veered off that
01:01:51
course in a good way and, you know, in terms of, like,
01:01:54
creative decisions. Some have gone the opposite
01:01:55
direction and like, needed to be more like a movie than they
01:01:59
actually felt like. This one is like, straight down
01:02:04
the middle. And I can see why it has a cult
01:02:07
following too, because it's like, unique in its blandness
01:02:14
almost. That makes sense, you know.
01:02:17
Sometimes you want a safe movie. That totally makes sense to me.
01:02:20
Sometimes you want something like inoffensive but also not
01:02:23
challenging totally. Totally like if you want, you
01:02:27
know, like I said, it's it's like a combination.
01:02:29
It has that sports movie element, but also the kind of
01:02:32
ROM com element too. So like, if you're in the mood
01:02:34
for either or both of those things, then this is going to be
01:02:38
you will not be disappointed by this.
01:02:41
And a lot of that is because, like the two leads are great.
01:02:46
They have great chemistry, which is really important for this
01:02:50
type of film. You know, I specifically want to
01:02:53
talk about the lead actress, Moira Kelly.
01:02:59
I believe I'm pronouncing that right, Gloron.
01:03:01
Empire, Kelly. Right, exactly.
01:03:06
Speaking of names, the two lead characters, they're they're
01:03:08
played by Mora Kelly and DB Sweeney, but they're the I like
01:03:13
their character names. They're it's Kate Mosley and
01:03:15
Doug Dorsey. Doug.
01:03:18
Dorsey. Yes, yes.
01:03:20
And he's, you know, he's a hockey player.
01:03:22
And that sounds like a hockey player named Doug Dorsey.
01:03:25
It kind of sounds like his name is just like Doug Dumb Guy,
01:03:28
which I think is probably what they're going for.
01:03:30
Dude totally, and he looks like it too.
01:03:32
Like if you like he looks like this guy he but in a good way.
01:03:36
Again, he has in a. Good way he looks like a stupid
01:03:40
man. Yes, yes, he's, you know, he's
01:03:43
like a handsome guy, but he has like a really like thick neck
01:03:48
and he just has that like sports guy look too.
01:03:53
And he's, you know, he's kind of the fish out of water in this
01:03:55
story because the basic premise is he is a hockey player, she is
01:04:02
an ice skater. He was.
01:04:03
A skater boy. Wow, that was actually the same
01:04:10
time. You get it, You get it.
01:04:15
So, yeah, so he is, he gets hurt.
01:04:20
He's he was playing. He's like a college hockey
01:04:22
player who was set to have like a big career.
01:04:25
He gets hurt playing in the Olympics and then he can't play
01:04:28
hockey anymore. She like is competing at the
01:04:33
they, they meet each other for the first time at the first
01:04:35
Olympics. They're competing at where
01:04:36
they're competing in these different sports.
01:04:39
You know, she fails in her Olympic journey at that one
01:04:43
because she is at odds with her figure skating partner.
01:04:47
And so her coaches and her dad are trying to find a partner for
01:04:53
her to skate at the next Olympics with.
01:04:55
And they find this guy, Doug Dorsey, who was this very
01:04:59
promising hockey player who can't play hockey anymore.
01:05:01
And they're like, but he's great on the ice.
01:05:03
And so they're like, that's The Odd Couple pairing of these two.
01:05:06
It's a good. Hook sounds like a.
01:05:08
It is sounds like a really short book with big fonts.
01:05:12
You know, just like something you can for if you're really
01:05:14
fast and pictures and colors. Yes, yeah, And and her dad.
01:05:23
I want to mention him, too. He's played by Terry O'quinn,
01:05:26
who is John Locke from Lost. So we have a Lost OK alum in
01:05:31
here. Frank likes Lost.
01:05:33
I don't think that's come up before.
01:05:34
Frank really likes Lost. He always tries to get me to
01:05:36
watch Lost. I won't do it.
01:05:38
You should lost is good that was really.
01:05:44
Funny. You really should watch it, but
01:05:48
it's just it's just funny as as a lost super fan, you know his
01:05:52
his daughter's name in this again is Kate Mosley and Kate is
01:05:55
another main character on lost. So he's always been around and
01:05:57
saying Kate's all. Connected, it's all.
01:06:00
More interesting things. Yeah, Lost is really good.
01:06:04
We should talk about that now, actually.
01:06:05
That's a good point, but no, this is like, yes, this is this
01:06:09
is a perfectly fine movie. I was getting to the point
01:06:13
earlier. I wanted to talk about more
01:06:14
Kelly because like, like the film starts and I think I
01:06:20
mentioned this when I was talking about, you know, no
01:06:22
escape when I was talking about the actor and that that I was
01:06:25
just like so heavily associating him with another role.
01:06:28
But right when she starts talking, her voice is so
01:06:31
distinctive. And it's because I think, as you
01:06:34
mentioned already, she's Nala from Lion King.
01:06:38
Oh yeah, yeah. Animated and I mean, she has,
01:06:41
she just has an amazing voice. It's almost like even when
01:06:45
you're watching her on screen, it almost looks like that's not
01:06:48
the voice that should be coming out of her body, if that makes
01:06:51
sense, No. Absolutely.
01:06:51
It's just like a really like strong voice.
01:06:54
Yeah, totally, totally. But it's great, you know, and
01:06:57
she, she gives a great performance and and so does DB
01:07:00
Sweeney as Doug. Doug, dumb guy.
01:07:03
OK, so there, that's a classic set up.
01:07:06
How how far into the movie do we reach the point where it's like,
01:07:09
you have to help me be an ice skater?
01:07:10
Do we have to spend like a whole act of him like not wanting to
01:07:12
do it? It's.
01:07:14
Very much like that's the first act is, you know, he's very
01:07:17
upset that he can't play hockey anymore and he is back home
01:07:23
working, like in a warehouse, you know, and very upset about
01:07:27
his life and still obsessed with hockey.
01:07:29
And, like, then her coach finds him and he's like, this is the
01:07:35
last offer you're going to get, You know, if you want to skate
01:07:37
anymore, like, you should come try this.
01:07:39
And obviously, at first, he's very, like, hesitant.
01:07:42
It is. It's very much like, plenty of
01:07:45
things have done this. But the example that was coming
01:07:47
to mind for me was High School Musical and like, Oh, yeah,
01:07:50
yeah. Yeah, it was.
01:07:51
It was very much AI don't dance type moment.
01:07:55
But then you know, again, when we're like in the middle of the
01:07:58
movie, he's back home. He's and he's talking to like
01:08:02
his family and friends. And at at first he kind of lied
01:08:06
to them about what he went off to do while he's out of town.
01:08:08
They're like, oh, you know, you're back doing, you know,
01:08:10
playing hockey or whatever. And he's like, no, I'm a figure
01:08:14
skater. Oh.
01:08:15
My goodness, strike the pose. You're.
01:08:18
Right, right. And they're like, they're like
01:08:21
for no reason. It's like, you know, it's a
01:08:23
small town energy. So they're like you're what
01:08:25
you're a figure skater man. And he's like, I like it, you
01:08:30
know, so. It's, yeah, classic.
01:08:34
You know, that's not what a real man does.
01:08:36
Kind of storytelling, which is again, very 90s.
01:08:39
Yes, yes. And I do feel like they added a
01:08:42
lot of scenes they like went out of their way like throughout the
01:08:46
whole movie to make it kind of clear what a ladies man this
01:08:51
character is. And I feel like they did
01:08:54
specifically do that because it's the 90s and he's in a very
01:08:59
like as a figure skater, he's in this sort of like non
01:09:02
traditionally masculine role. So like they were.
01:09:06
Trying to So they're trying to assure the audience that this
01:09:08
guy's not gay. Is that like the?
01:09:10
Basically, yes, yes, there is so much like the first scene you've
01:09:15
seen him in, see him in, he's hooking up with somebody else
01:09:18
like, you know, at the Olympics and he's like running out of the
01:09:21
room because he's late for the game or whatever.
01:09:23
And then there's just several scenes where he's interacting
01:09:26
with all these different women picturing.
01:09:27
Of just like hurrying to get his stuff on.
01:09:29
He's like, sorry, women that I slept with because I'm straight.
01:09:32
I got to go. Like it's just like.
01:09:34
Literally that's it. That's the scene.
01:09:36
He he literally there's the dialogue is he doesn't remember
01:09:39
her name. He keeps saying he's like, oh, I
01:09:41
got to go Stacy. And then she's like Stacy, who's
01:09:43
Stacy? And he's like, oh, sorry, Kate.
01:09:45
Like, you know, he just keeps getting the name wrong.
01:09:47
I sleep. With women, because I am a
01:09:49
heterosexual man. Yeah, yeah, it's just like
01:09:53
tattooed on his forehead. Like dumb guy, super straight,
01:09:57
like straight. Yeah, that's his business card.
01:10:01
That's kind of funny. I feel like that'd be more
01:10:03
necessary if the movie was not because it's a romance between
01:10:06
the two leads, right? He ends up with this woman
01:10:08
anyway. You'd think that would be
01:10:10
enough. Right.
01:10:11
Exactly. Yeah, it was.
01:10:13
It's like, it's unnecessary, but it felt pointed enough that to
01:10:17
me that's why they were doing it.
01:10:20
You know, Like, I don't know if that was Tony, Tony Gilroy in
01:10:23
his script or if, like, when they were making the film, the
01:10:26
studios were like, no, we got to let audiences know a dumb guy
01:10:30
loves women. Yeah.
01:10:32
Because otherwise the women in the audience will think he can't
01:10:34
fall in love with this woman. And so that then they'll get
01:10:38
bored and they'll leave. They'll leave the movie.
01:10:40
They'll. Walk out in protest.
01:10:42
Walk. Out.
01:10:43
And then Tony Gilroy is like, what if there was a Droid and he
01:10:46
was like, sad, but like a cute little Droid?
01:10:52
But as I was saying, though, those the two leads have a great
01:10:54
chemistry. They they have very much the
01:10:57
like, you know, they're at odds with each other.
01:11:01
They're they're such opposites. They're arguing all the time,
01:11:04
but they're falling in love over the course of the movie.
01:11:07
You know, it's it's very by the numbers in that way.
01:11:10
And as I was saying, like that really hinges on the chemistry
01:11:16
between them and these two really have that.
01:11:19
They both give really good performances in that way and
01:11:22
like understand their characters and that makes it fun.
01:11:25
It's like not a slog to get through.
01:11:27
There's lots of fun. Like, there's at least three
01:11:32
like training montages set to like, pop music you know you've
01:11:36
got. To have that, that's like,
01:11:37
that's part of that puzzle every time, yes.
01:11:40
Exactly like this is this is almost like something AI could
01:11:45
spit out. It's so funny like in terms of
01:11:50
like, but just to reiterate that that's not a point against it
01:11:53
because it does that well, it's like the good version of of
01:11:57
that. The cinematography is great.
01:11:59
Oh, see there you. Go.
01:12:00
I wouldn't have assumed that. Yeah, I feel.
01:12:02
Like it's worth pointing out because so many of the scenes
01:12:04
are like, you get a lot of like stunt double work.
01:12:10
These two leads did both have to learn to skate for this film.
01:12:15
But obviously for some of the more complex skating sequences,
01:12:19
it's stunt work, you know? And so the the lighting is
01:12:23
really good in a way that it's it's shot very wide and in a way
01:12:28
that's going to obscure the faces of of the stunt actors,
01:12:31
but like still looks very visually appealing and has a
01:12:36
distinct sort of style to it. You know, it's it's not it's not
01:12:40
that like washed out over saturated Hallmark look.
01:12:43
It, it has the feel of one of those types of movies, but with,
01:12:47
you know, very contrasty lighting.
01:12:50
So it so it it sets the tone visually that way in a way that
01:12:53
I like. So, so yeah, I believe the GPS
01:12:56
name on this was Elliot Davis, so shout out to them.
01:13:00
For that, see, Frank really appreciates good cinematography
01:13:03
because he, as an actor, really benefits actor.
01:13:09
When I auditioned for the Cutting Edge, they said you're
01:13:11
nine years old, you can't be here.
01:13:16
I thought that was rude. I thought.
01:13:17
I thought that was. Rude.
01:13:18
They didn't give me a chance. We and Moira could have had good
01:13:22
chemistry too. We don't know.
01:13:23
Yeah, Speaking of Moira and acting though, so she, as I
01:13:28
said, both the leads had to learn like neither of them had
01:13:31
any previous skating experience prior to filming this, but they
01:13:34
both learned to skate for because they had to be on the
01:13:36
ice for almost all their scenes in this movie.
01:13:38
There's a lot of them skating. But I was thinking while I was
01:13:41
watching it, you know, because she's the lead in this and she's
01:13:44
definitely had a successful careers.
01:13:46
Not to diminish that in any way, but I couldn't help but thinking
01:13:49
while watching this, like why she didn't have a bigger career
01:13:53
even, you know, because I went and looked at some of her
01:13:56
credits afterwards and it and it wasn't she didn't star in as
01:13:58
much as I would have assumed she had.
01:14:02
And an interesting tidbit I saw that may have contributed to
01:14:06
that. Not to speculate too much, but
01:14:08
she she was cast in a League of Our own, you know, with Geena
01:14:14
Davis, Tom Hanks. She was going to be one of the
01:14:17
leads in that movie, but she had to drop out because she got hurt
01:14:23
filming one of the skating scenes in this movie.
01:14:26
She was. Yeah, on the ice and like,
01:14:28
dislocated her shoulder or something like that, or her leg,
01:14:32
I can't remember. She she sustained an injury
01:14:35
while they were filming that sort of had to force them to
01:14:38
move their whole production schedule around.
01:14:40
So they had to like, film everything else.
01:14:43
And then like all of her skating scenes and most of her scenes of
01:14:46
the movie towards the end after she had recovered, but that
01:14:50
injury sort of forced her to drop out of that other movie.
01:14:52
And that was a much bigger film than this one was.
01:14:56
So that might have led to more roles for her possibly.
01:14:59
That's. Got to be, there's got to be a
01:15:01
term for that because that's such a common story for actors
01:15:04
like yourself. Is the like, is the like, I
01:15:09
couldn't be in this, in hindsight, much bigger deal
01:15:13
movie because I had to be doing this other movie that either
01:15:16
like nobody saw or wasn't any good.
01:15:18
Like it's such a funny irony when you look backwards to be
01:15:21
like, yeah, I could have been in the Matrix Reloaded, but I was
01:15:23
too busy making cutting edge for.
01:15:26
Yeah, I was going to be in Matrix Reloaded, but I was just,
01:15:30
I got hurt. I got hurt in the ice.
01:15:31
I wasn't skating. I just, I just fell.
01:15:33
I. Was like, I was just at the, I
01:15:39
was just at the rink after the audition with my mom.
01:15:41
And then because I was 9 and I fell down and they were like
01:15:44
I'll never be in Matrix Reloaded now.
01:15:46
I got a Boo Boo. I can't do that.
01:15:48
Boo Boo movies. In 10 years I won't be
01:15:50
recovering now. Won't be ready, Dang.
01:15:56
It that's funny, all right, cutting edge sounds fun.
01:15:59
And I'll be honest, I was hoping for that because when I pitched
01:16:01
it, I knew it had like a funny trivia angle behind it with with
01:16:04
the and or guy writing it. But I had the sense of like,
01:16:06
this is either going to be charming, straightforward 90s
01:16:09
movie, or like a super cheap, ugly mess.
01:16:14
And it sounds like it was the former.
01:16:15
Oh yeah, yeah, I could. I could see this like definitely
01:16:20
going in the other direction. So I was pleasantly surprised,
01:16:23
honestly, throughout, you know, it's, it was almost like in a
01:16:26
way, you know, you're kind of waiting for that other shoe to
01:16:29
drop where it does sort of fall off, but it doesn't, I mean,
01:16:32
it's consistent all the way through.
01:16:34
It has, you know, a satisfying conclusion.
01:16:38
You know, they they don't really have that big romantic get
01:16:42
together kiss till like the very end of the film.
01:16:46
There's more there's more fun trivia too, that I wanted to
01:16:48
point out. Like there's a lot of like the
01:16:51
real competitive, like Olympic skaters in the movie.
01:16:55
Like there's because of course it's a 90s movie.
01:16:59
They're like rival team near the end of the movie is the Russian
01:17:02
team. Oh no, got to compete the
01:17:05
Rooskies. Are back against.
01:17:07
The Rooskies are always back in the 90s.
01:17:10
Like not. Like now we have no problems
01:17:14
with them, No. Yeah.
01:17:15
This was a 90s problem exclusively the Roosky.
01:17:17
Government is a OK. Yep, we all had Boo boos in the
01:17:22
90s. All had Boo boos in the 90s.
01:17:26
That's so funny. Were they like, were they
01:17:28
playing it like Ivan Drago from Rocky?
01:17:29
Were like these Figure skaters like super like rigid?
01:17:32
Instead of being good at it, well, they were very lightly
01:17:35
featured. I mean, it was more like like
01:17:38
the idea of this team because you'd never really, they didn't
01:17:41
have any lines. I think you only saw like one
01:17:44
sort of like actual on ice performance from them.
01:17:48
But it was funny because I found out afterwards that the two
01:17:52
skaters playing the Ruskies, the Ruskie team, they were actually
01:17:56
a pair of Canadian Olympic skaters that did compete in the
01:18:00
1992 Olympics. Canadian brewskies, yeah.
01:18:04
Yeah, they took ninth place in the 1992 Olympics.
01:18:07
The real 1. The real one, see, now they
01:18:10
could have really fixed this whole thing if at the end of
01:18:13
Cutting Edge one, Doc Brown shows up and he's like, we have
01:18:16
to go back. It's about your kids.
01:18:18
We got to go to the 1984 Olympics.
01:18:22
It just, yeah, that's a whole scene they add on afterwards.
01:18:25
It's like, it's like George Lucas with Star Wars.
01:18:27
They they when he's constantly changing and adding visual
01:18:29
affections, it's like. A WAMP on the background cuz
01:18:33
they're on the ice. That would be awesome.
01:18:38
Yeah, it's. All kidding George on this.
01:18:40
It's George on the coming hold. Mr. George, we've got a great
01:18:45
opportunity here. Tony Gilroy wrote this.
01:18:47
You know him? Yeah, Yes.
01:18:49
You know, Tony, Big T, Big T, dumb, dumb guy.
01:18:54
But I did want to point out too, though, because the whole thing
01:18:58
is, you know, Mora Kelly's character, her dad, John Locke
01:19:02
from Lost, he's sort of the one pushing her to like, win gold at
01:19:09
the Olympics because that's like what their whole relationship is
01:19:12
based around because, like, her mom has passed away and like,
01:19:16
they don't have an emotional relationship.
01:19:18
So this is like sort of in place of that.
01:19:22
And it's very much like, this is your dream dad.
01:19:24
I didn't even want to skate. She's like I dislocated my
01:19:28
shoulder and like that's not the line why she's like I dislocated
01:19:31
my shoulder. It hurts.
01:19:33
It's going to be in the matrix this.
01:19:36
Is going to be in Matrix Reloaded.
01:19:39
Why aren't you auditioning for the first matrix now?
01:19:42
The second one reloaded. That's the one people like.
01:19:45
That's the. One people like I'm one of the
01:19:47
people in Zion I. Want to go to that dirty rave
01:19:53
and escape? Dirty rave got me, but anyway I.
01:20:05
Just want to point out that I I had to rewind the film at the
01:20:09
very end because I wanted, I wanted to double check this
01:20:11
because it's obviously it's very, it's heavily implied, but
01:20:15
spoilers for anyone who cares about the movie.
01:20:17
That's very basic. But you know, they like they
01:20:23
sort of they, they confess their love for each other before they
01:20:25
go out to skate their, you know, final performance.
01:20:29
And the the big thing is their coach.
01:20:33
You know, he, he has this like, yeah, it's like literally like a
01:20:37
band move. He's like, he's like, our only
01:20:40
way to beat the Rooskies is to do this like crazy move where
01:20:44
you, like, throw her around the ring and then toss her up in the
01:20:47
air. And she's like, that's illegal.
01:20:49
We can't do that. And he's like, we're gonna do
01:20:50
it. We're gonna.
01:20:52
Do it. I don't ever break the rules.
01:20:53
Drinks a legal coffee. And so like, you know, when
01:20:59
they're like at odds at each other and like the, you know,
01:21:02
third act, they're like, we're not going to do it.
01:21:04
We can't pull that move off. We haven't landed it once in
01:21:07
practice. But you know, then they confess
01:21:09
their love for each other and they go out on the ice and they
01:21:10
do. The crazy move is this.
01:21:13
OK is this movie like the inspiration for that Will
01:21:17
Ferrell comedy Blades of Glory? I know the one dude I.
01:21:20
Was thinking about that yeah, it feels very that feels very much
01:21:23
like a comedy version of this because there's.
01:21:25
A plot because that movie is like a 2000 comedy where it's
01:21:28
like Will Ferrell and another male figure skater trying to,
01:21:31
like, compete in a competition. And there's a bit in there about
01:21:34
the same thing where they're like, we're going to try this
01:21:36
banned move and they show what happened when someone tried it
01:21:38
before. It ends with the person, like,
01:21:39
dying on the ice. Like, yeah.
01:21:41
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what that was probably
01:21:44
This is probably the direct inspiration for that which
01:21:48
itself is not. A movie with a lot of imprint
01:21:50
beyond that sound bite of him saying like nobody knows what it
01:21:54
means. It gets the people going.
01:21:56
Yeah, it's provocative. Yeah.
01:21:57
Yeah. But no, I'm not.
01:21:59
I feel like people, more people know that movie than this one.
01:22:02
No. I.
01:22:02
Know, but it's like it's funny that probably when that was
01:22:05
made, it's like they were riffing on ice skating movies.
01:22:08
But how many of them could there even have been?
01:22:09
This is probably the biggest ice skating movie before that one.
01:22:13
Yeah, yeah, I, yeah. Again, I don't know what the
01:22:15
cultural impact of this movie was at the time because it's
01:22:18
sort of, you know, online it's discussed as sort of a cult
01:22:21
classic. So I don't know, maybe it was
01:22:24
kind of like ripped on at the time for having this like hockey
01:22:28
male figure skater guy. And like, that's why.
01:22:31
They used it for like comedy and something like Blades of Glory.
01:22:34
I don't know, but you know, does.
01:22:38
It certainly doesn't deserve any hate.
01:22:40
This is a very competent movie. Seems like a wholesome fun,
01:22:44
yeah? Totally.
01:22:45
But the point, the point I was trying to get to, which is just
01:22:48
just a gripe that I have, is they do the big trick, right?
01:22:53
They land it, the crowd starts cheering, and then the two of
01:22:57
them kiss on the ice. And then we're straight into
01:23:00
credits. And if you read the plot
01:23:04
synopsis of the film online, it says that they land the trick
01:23:10
Florida State and win the gold medal.
01:23:13
And then I went back and I rewatched the final scene and
01:23:14
I'm like, it doesn't show them win the gold medal.
01:23:16
You can say that all you want, but there's we didn't see the
01:23:20
scores. It does not say if they actually
01:23:24
won the gold medal or not. I think it's more so implied
01:23:26
that they they got the bigger prize of falling in love with
01:23:30
each other. And you can assume they won the
01:23:31
gold medal, but the film does not explicitly show you that
01:23:34
that is not in the text. If an earlier draft, was that
01:23:37
like the move was going to get them disqualified or something
01:23:40
like I don't think. It was supposed to be that
01:23:42
complicated. I think you're just supposed to
01:23:44
assume they won. I'm just being picky.
01:23:48
This is just a personal like technically if we're talking.
01:23:52
Star Wars we could put in the scene from the end of the
01:23:55
original Star Wars where they put the medals on the Wookie and
01:23:57
he goes and that's. That's Kate Moore, right?
01:24:01
Yeah. So how about we put the end of
01:24:03
the movie, we'll recut this, we'll do the well we need
01:24:06
George. We need to bring George in.
01:24:07
We need George. In to do his own Snyder Cut of
01:24:09
the Cutting Edge where he's going to show the end of the
01:24:12
movie and then show that scene from the end of the original
01:24:14
Star Wars and then show the Doc Brown scene that'll be touched
01:24:17
up with AI. So we'll just be him talking to
01:24:20
DB Sweeney and he's like my RT. We got to do something about
01:24:24
your kids and then that's the real end of the movie.
01:24:26
What? Was that voice that was Doc
01:24:28
Brown? Well, it's.
01:24:29
Supposed to be AI Doc Brown trying to.
01:24:32
I don't have a Doc Brown impression.
01:24:33
I know I'm the man of 1000 impressions and you're an actor,
01:24:35
but. You have an AI?
01:24:37
Yeah, exactly. We're both actors now.
01:24:39
You're a voice actor, but you have an AI Doc Brown impression,
01:24:41
but not a regular Doc Brown I. Don't know.
01:24:43
We're going to cut that whole bit.
01:24:44
No one will know. Interesting.
01:24:48
Interesting. OK, that went a lot shorter than
01:24:50
our A Conversation about Babylon 5, but it sounds like maybe
01:24:53
that's it. Yeah, I mean, unless you have
01:24:55
any other follow up that you were dying to know about cutting
01:24:59
edge would. My wife like it, should I have
01:25:01
her watch it? I think so.
01:25:04
OK. I mean, it's inoffensive.
01:25:08
It's fun and straightforward. It's just like, that's just a
01:25:13
nice movie. It's just, like I said,
01:25:15
quotation marks movie. That was my first note.
01:25:18
That's what it feels like. It's a real.
01:25:20
Movie that starts and ends and then gets out of your way.
01:25:22
Yeah, that works. Cuz I'll be honest, she wanted
01:25:25
to watch the movie when we found it.
01:25:26
But then I was like no, I have to save this for content.
01:25:31
For the show For the show, bringing George Lucas in and.
01:25:35
Mr. George to finish the show. All right.
01:25:39
Well, I'll be honest, it is here in Chicago at the time of
01:25:42
recording. We're in the middle of like a
01:25:44
big day long snowstorm. So I might have to watch the
01:25:47
cutting edge. Like I'm not going to have
01:25:49
anything else to do. This is.
01:25:50
A good cold movie. There's a lot of snow and ice
01:25:54
throughout the entirety of this movie and and part of it is set
01:25:57
in Chicago. They one of there's like a good
01:26:00
chunk in the middle where they one of the like qualifiers they
01:26:04
have to go to before getting into the 92 Olympics is in
01:26:08
Chicago, so. You know what's funny we're
01:26:11
about I don't know what this will be in the final edit.
01:26:13
We're like an hour 45. It's actually recording the
01:26:15
podcast today. I totally forgot to mention that
01:26:17
this is going out on Christmas Day.
01:26:20
Oh, so happy. Holidays.
01:26:22
If you watch the planet, you made it to the end of the whole
01:26:25
episode on the first day it came out.
01:26:27
Happy holidays. Yeah, in case you forgot, it's
01:26:30
Christmas. In case.
01:26:31
You forgot and you were too busy listening to your favorite
01:26:33
podcast. Make sure to go open your stuff
01:26:35
I guess. Or don't.
01:26:37
Just keep listening. Or don't.
01:26:38
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
01:26:39
Anyway, is that the end? Are we onto scoring?
01:26:43
Is. That the end.
01:26:51
OK, yeah, let's let's move into scoring.
01:26:53
So I guess I'll go first. Babylon 5, The Gathering, very
01:26:57
hard movie to put into a box as just one piece of art because
01:27:03
it's clearly just there to set up ATV show that aired a year
01:27:07
later and probably went through a bunch of changes.
01:27:09
And it's inextricably tied to another show that while that
01:27:13
show ripped off Babylon 5, they're still so similar and so
01:27:16
connected that I can't help but compare them.
01:27:18
So by itself, Babylon 5, the Gathering and much like you were
01:27:22
saying about cutting Edge, it's just like a straightforward good
01:27:25
time sci-fi drama. Like, if you like those kinds of
01:27:28
stories, I don't think you're going to have a lot of qualms
01:27:30
with this one. But it didn't blow me away.
01:27:33
The acting, I think, could have been a lot stronger.
01:27:36
I didn't get to it in the main part of the review, but the show
01:27:39
also looked pretty cheap. Like, this pilot didn't look
01:27:41
great. It had good makeup for the like,
01:27:45
you know, aliens and stuff. Like the costuming was pretty
01:27:48
bad. It didn't look especially nice.
01:27:50
So it's like a kind of a combination of ups and downs.
01:27:54
So I guess I'll give it. This felt elusive when the
01:27:57
season started, but I think once again this is a 7 out of 10.
01:28:00
Oh wow. That's that's higher than.
01:28:01
I thought you would go with this one because there's.
01:28:04
Got a lot wrong with it. Trajectory was lower, yeah.
01:28:07
There's not. There's not a lot I could say.
01:28:10
Again, if the question is, do you prefer Deep Space 9 or this
01:28:13
one? I don't care what Deep Space 9
01:28:15
ripped off. I like it a lot more.
01:28:16
I think it latched on to something even from the first
01:28:18
episode of that series that was more compelling.
01:28:21
But Babylon 5, The Gathering, perfectly good sci-fi movie, and
01:28:24
it's a type of science fiction that no longer exists.
01:28:28
You know, like the kind of dialogue heavy Shakespearean
01:28:32
bottle premise sci-fi drama. I would love to see more of that
01:28:35
in general. So I'm happy that more of it
01:28:36
exists. So yeah, 7 out of 10.
01:28:39
Cool. That's good.
01:28:40
All right. I'm glad you kind of liked it.
01:28:43
Cutting Edge 1515 out of 10. No, that's the end.
01:28:46
We got to cut away. We can't talk.
01:28:52
Sorry. Sorry.
01:28:53
No idea. TuneIn next season.
01:28:55
Yeah, I, I mean, I think I I got to go with a 5 out of 10 for
01:29:03
cutting edge. I feel like it really just
01:29:06
skated right up the middle. Skated.
01:29:08
Right up the middle. OK.
01:29:10
I was expecting higher for for cutting edge.
01:29:12
So I think we both surprised each other this time.
01:29:14
Yeah. Well, see, that's tough.
01:29:16
I mean, you do say that and and like maybe it, I don't know.
01:29:20
I don't know it. Yeah, scoring, it's so hard.
01:29:24
It's so hard at the end of the season.
01:29:25
And I still don't know how to really encapsulate like, this
01:29:29
metric into my review of something.
01:29:34
This is maybe 1. I did watch it just a couple
01:29:36
days ago. This might be 1 where when I get
01:29:38
farther away from it, I'll be like, yeah, cutting edge was one
01:29:39
of the better ones, but it just felt inoffensively bad.
01:29:46
It wasn't breaking new ground in any way, but it's not something
01:29:52
I would turn off. You know, if this came on TV in
01:29:55
the 90s, I would like you'd be. Like, hey, I'm nine years old.
01:29:58
I can't reach the remote anyway. Yeah, I.
01:30:00
Just fell in the ice. I'm recovering so I need
01:30:02
something to watch. Got my leg.
01:30:04
Got my leg all tied up in a big brace.
01:30:06
Got an ice back on my butt. I'm just trying to watch TV.
01:30:10
Yeah, yeah, exactly. If this came to me, I wouldn't
01:30:13
turn away, but I wouldn't go seek it out.
01:30:15
You know what I mean? If I reach.
01:30:16
Over to look for the remote. I'm going to fall off the bed
01:30:18
and get another Boo Boo. Yeah, it's dangerous out there,
01:30:21
man. It's winter ice there.
01:30:23
Ice. On the floor in here.
01:30:26
Yeah. I mean, that's what I said a
01:30:27
long time ago about The Jackal, that I gave that movie A5 out of
01:30:31
10 for the same reason. I was like, if it's on, it's not
01:30:34
ever bad enough to turn off, but if it's not on, it's not ever
01:30:38
interesting enough to start watching.
01:30:40
Exactly, yes. I wouldn't go seeking this out
01:30:43
per SE. I wouldn't mind watching it
01:30:46
again. But it's it's very, it just felt
01:30:50
really right up the middle. Absolutely.
01:30:53
And that's commendable. A5 is not bad, all right?
01:30:55
This is not like, of course, getting a paperback in school
01:30:58
where anything less than like a 70% is like you're the worst,
01:31:01
you fail. Fives are good, no?
01:31:04
Exactly. Yeah.
01:31:04
I mean, we've said it before, probably bears repeating at the
01:31:07
end of the season, but movies are impossibly difficult to
01:31:11
make. So if you can make anything
01:31:13
that's above a 0 out of 10, then that's amazing.
01:31:17
So this is it's very admirable to be a 5 out of 10.
01:31:22
Absolutely. So congratulations to the makers
01:31:25
of Cutting edge, the maker solo of Babylon 5, the gathering,
01:31:29
such a one man project that one. OK, well, let's take a look then
01:31:35
at the overall scores for this episode and then for season 1.
01:31:39
So, Frank, I will say you've won the episode.
01:31:43
Yeah. All right, let's end it there.
01:31:44
That seems like a good. Cut it right there.
01:31:46
That's a good point thing to. End on Mr. Lucas, please cut the
01:31:48
feet. So yours movie got a 7 out of 10
01:31:52
from me and mine got a 5 out of 10 from you.
01:31:53
So you're the winner of our last episode of season 1.
01:31:56
So congratulations. Yay.
01:31:58
Thank you. Thank you another.
01:31:59
Solitary woo from the back of the room woo.
01:32:02
Woo. I will say normally the person
01:32:05
who wins the episode gets to make the first pick going into
01:32:08
the next episode, but because this is the end of season 1,
01:32:10
there is actually no prize for winning.
01:32:13
However, Well, let's take a look now at cumulatively who had the
01:32:19
better blind movie recommendations throughout all
01:32:21
of season 1. And I will say it stayed pretty
01:32:24
close most of the time. I fell behind by like 6 or 7
01:32:27
total points really early on because I picked grifters and
01:32:30
grifters was terrible, but and then I got really far ahead and
01:32:33
then you pulled it back again. It was only in these last two
01:32:35
episodes that we split up again. So at the end of 12 Picks, the
01:32:39
movies that you recommended to me, Frank scored a cumulative 64
01:32:42
points, which is a pretty high average.
01:32:45
It's not bad. It's like a. 5 out of 10
01:32:47
average. Essentially it's.
01:32:48
Like a cutting edge average, Like a cutting.
01:32:50
Edge average Take it or leave it.
01:32:52
The movies that I recommended to you, you scored a cumulative 68
01:32:57
points, so I I guess I win the season. 68 to 64 was the 8:00
01:33:03
to. 64, pretty close. Pretty close.
01:33:06
Not bad. Not bad for a first go around,
01:33:09
not bad. I think there easily could have
01:33:11
been a scenario where it was like 105 to 10, you know, like
01:33:14
it's not always easy to judge a movie by its cover.
01:33:17
It's arguably a bad idea, but we did that 12 times.
01:33:22
That's that's the tag line for our show.
01:33:24
It's arguably a bad idea. We did that 12 times in a row.
01:33:28
It's been so much fun and I only say I win season one with some
01:33:33
hesitancy because we did decide a couple of weeks back after
01:33:38
reviewing the Prophecy that whoever didn't win season 1 has
01:33:43
to watch all 5 Prophecy movies. Did we say that?
01:33:47
We did. Say that, is there a record of
01:33:50
that? Edit.
01:33:51
Unless there's a George Lucas cut out there that removed it.
01:33:54
Yeah. So I will say, Frank, you
01:33:56
watched the first one because I gave you that one that's back in
01:33:58
Episode 8 or Halloween themed 1. And the prophecy was fascinating
01:34:02
and really, really strange. But there's four more.
01:34:05
And so I'm not going to put like a due date on this assignment,
01:34:09
but I'm going to need you to watch four more prophecy movies
01:34:12
and come back and talk about them.
01:34:14
Yeah, that might have to be its own episode.
01:34:17
Just 4 prophecy movies in a row. Yeah, it'll be the definitive
01:34:22
breakdown of the franchise, though, because I can't imagine
01:34:24
anybody else has taken the time to talk about all five.
01:34:28
Yeah. Yeah, it wouldn't see.
01:34:30
Oh man, it would have been better to make somebody watch on
01:34:33
the cutting edge movies. At least there's one less of
01:34:35
those that's. True, whoever wins watches
01:34:38
cutting it. Now we'll just have to hold on
01:34:39
to it. I think maybe next time we
01:34:41
should have a prize for winning and not a punishment for losing.
01:34:46
Since Spirit of the show. Yeah, arguably a bad idea.
01:34:53
All right? Yeah, I will.
01:34:55
Oh, gosh. Yeah, I will watch all the
01:34:58
prophecy movies and report back. I'll do my diligence.
01:35:02
Do your. Homework.
01:35:02
Happy holidays here. Some homework.
01:35:09
That's funny. All right, well, congratulations
01:35:11
on a fantastic season 1. I can't believe it was as close
01:35:14
as it was for the people listening.
01:35:17
We are at the end of our first season, but we're not going
01:35:20
anywhere. You're still going to have a new
01:35:21
episode from us in two weeks on Thursday.
01:35:24
We're just doing what I would call, I guess, like offseason
01:35:27
content. Does that make sense?
01:35:29
Makes sense to me so. In two weeks time, at our usual
01:35:32
Same Bat Time, Same Bat channel, we're going to have our Season 1
01:35:35
recap episode. So we're going to revisit all 24
01:35:39
films from the Forgotten 90s season of Meet Your Double
01:35:41
Feature and take a look at which ones maybe we feel differently
01:35:45
about now that it's been longer since we saw them.
01:35:48
I think we'll probably put them on like a rough leader board of
01:35:51
like, the best movies of the season and the worst.
01:35:53
And then at the end of that, Frank, we're going to figure out
01:35:56
live on the air what on earth the pitch is for Season 2.
01:36:01
Yeah, that'll. Be interesting that'll.
01:36:04
Because I think it's going to figure out.
01:36:05
What feels right? What?
01:36:06
Feels right because Forgotten 90s was a very funny premise.
01:36:09
You and I were both born in the 90s.
01:36:11
A lot of our, like, first movie exposure was stuff released in
01:36:14
that decade that we would watch on home video or something.
01:36:18
I was surprised to see you at Matrix Reloaded is, given your
01:36:20
age at the time, but that's fine, yeah.
01:36:22
It's true, though. It's true.
01:36:23
It's true. He's in the.
01:36:24
Background, he's in that dirty rave.
01:36:28
And so we're going to, we're going to try to pick something
01:36:31
new. I think that eventually, of
01:36:32
course, we're going to do like an 80s decade theme and maybe
01:36:36
like a 2000s decade theme, but I want to do something a little
01:36:38
more different in between. So TuneIn, in two weeks we're
01:36:41
going to revisit all 24 films. We'll give you the definitive
01:36:43
list of what is essentially the top underrated films of the 90s,
01:36:47
and then we'll figure out what on earth we're doing for Season
01:36:49
2. Yeah, it should be fun.
01:36:51
I will be probably excited probably.
01:36:54
Excited, Frank. Believe it or not, Frank's gonna
01:36:56
be there. I don't know if I don't think we
01:36:58
can confirm that. No way.
01:36:59
The actor. That's it.
01:37:05
That's the ending. That was funny.
01:37:09
All right. All right, thank you so much
01:37:25
again, everyone for listening to Season 1 of Meet Your Double
01:37:27
Feature. Whether this was your first
01:37:29
episode or you've caught all 12, we very much appreciate your
01:37:32
time. If you liked tonight's episode,
01:37:34
please like it, favorite it, share it, follow the channel,
01:37:37
all the things that people have been screaming at you to do on
01:37:39
the Internet for 20 years. And we will be back in two weeks
01:37:43
time with our next episode. In the interim, you can always
01:37:46
check out every episode of our show by going to our website
01:37:49
meetyourdoublefeature.com. Spelled in full just like the
01:37:52
name of the show. And then Frank, where can they
01:37:54
find us on social media? What are our platforms?
01:37:57
Good question. Just the.
01:37:59
Names and the platforms. This is a fun improv game we do
01:38:05
where I just ask Frank things about the show and he's caught
01:38:07
off guard. Yeah, I'm not paying attention.
01:38:11
Yeah, we're on Instagram at Meet your double feature, Blue Scott.
01:38:16
Yeah, Thank you. You can Blue Sky.
01:38:21
We're on Blue Sky at mydf pod, so it's abbreviated username on
01:38:26
there. You can always just search
01:38:26
hashtag, meet your double feature.
01:38:28
You'll find it. So again, website
01:38:30
meetyourdoublefeature.com. Follow us on Instagram, follow
01:38:32
us on Blue Sky. Check out our show on any of
01:38:34
your major podcast platforms and that'll do it for Season 1.
01:38:38
So we will see you in two weeks. Bye, bye I.
01:38:42
Knew it. I knew he was going to do the
01:38:43
bike. Coming up next, it's.
01:38:54
The. Season 1 recap.
01:38:56
Stay tuned for more, and thanks for listening to Meet Your
01:38:59
Double Feature.