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Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: “The Illusion of Truth” A team of ISN reporters arrives at the station wanting to do a story about Babylon 5… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on October 27, 2025 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “The Illusion of Truth”Written by J. Michael StraczynskiDirected by Stephen FurstSeason 4, Episode 8Production episode 408Original air date: February 17, 1997 It was the dawn of the third age… Ivanova finds Sheridan alone in the war room, which isn’t really needed anymore, since the Shadow War is over. Sheridan is concerned about the likelihood of a war against President Clark. He’s also concerned about his father. They’d managed to stay in touch since breaking off from Earth, but he hasn’t heard anything from the old man in a while, and the last message he did get was that strangers were asking around town about him. In customs, a new arrival named Dan Randall refuses to allow his luggage to be inspected. Allan forces the issue, only to discover that the luggage contains recording equipment and Randall is a reporter for ISN. Franklin reports to Sheridan that they have to shuffle around the telepaths in the cryo units, as some of them are malfunctioning. Sheridan authorizes it, then visits Randall, who is currently in custody for traveling under false papers. Randall insists that, if he and his people had said who they really were, they’d have been turned away. But Sheridan says they have an open-door policy, and everyone’s allowed on the station—the equipment, though, is a different matter. ISN is a propaganda machine for Clark, and they won’t assist in that. Randall puts his cards on the table: he’s here to do a piece on B5. Yes, it’s supposed to be a hit piece, but Randall wants to try to get some of the truth out there. He claims that he’s one of several ISN employees who are trying to work from within to at least get some truth out. Garibaldi has started up a business as a finder: locating items that have gone missing in the chaos of the Shadow War. We see him with a client who is trying to convince him that a statue is a family heirloom with sentimental value, but Garibaldi knows full well that it’s a Drazi religious icon and that his client probably stowed some valuables in there before having to abandon his home and he wants the stuff back. After they negotiate a new price and the client buggers off, Lennier joins Garibaldi to ask how he is doing and why he resigned. Garibaldi expresses mostly polite frustration at how many people are asking him that. Sheridan then interrupts, accompanied by Randall. Sheridan wants Lennier to show Randall and his cameras around the station. After Lennier goes off with the reporter, Sheridan and Garibaldi exchange awkward glances. Lennier takes Randall around, answering questions about things like who pays for ship repairs. The floating camera also repeatedly baps Lennier on the head, to his annoyance. For reasons passing understanding, Lennier takes Randall to downbelow. While there, they encounter Franklin wheeling away a patient. The doctor also takes a call regarding cryo units. Mollari complains to Sheridan about the temperature in his quarters. The ISN cameras capture that discussion. Randall interviews Sheridan and Delenn, who are very obviously a couple, and they discuss that some. At one point, Randall asks if there are misgivings about their relationship, and Sheridan says nobody will be able to stop what they’ve begun. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Randall’s last interview is with Garibaldi, who resists at first, but eventually lets it all hang out, including his serious misgivings about Sheridan. Some time later, Sheridan, Ivanova, and Delenn meet in Sheridan’s office to watch Randall’s report. ISN starts with some news, including that Earth has mostly taken back Mars, and also that a writer has confessed to the Senate’s committee investigating anti-Earth activities that he has worked against Earth’s interests, and he also names three other creative people whom he claims has done likewise. Said writer has very obviously been tortured and is speaking under duress. We then start Randall’s report. Contrary to his assertions to Sheridan at the top of the episode, this is a pure hit piece, with footage reedited and interview questions changed to make B5 look as bad as possible. Using the footage of downbelow, Randall claims that all the civilian humans on B5 live like that, and that some are taken for experimentation. Using the footage of Lennier showing Randall around downbelow and Mollari rebuking Sheridan, Randall claims that the senior staff on B5 in general and Sheridan in particular are completely beholden to alien influence. An “expert,” Dr. William Indiri, claims that this is an example of Helsinki Syndrome (a misuse of Stockholm Syndrome, though it’s possible the syndrome’s name changes over the next couple centuries, though it can also be evidence that Indiri is incompetent). Randall was also able to sneak into the cryo chambers and see that there are people there, whose names aren’t on any manifest for the station. Randall theorizes that these are where the humans are being taken for experimentation. (These are, of course, the telepaths that the Shadows modified.) The conclusion of Randall’s report expresses sympathy for Sheridan’s apparent illness and hope that he can be rescued and healed away from alien influence. Get the hell out of our galaxy! The one useful thing that comes out of Randall’s report is an offhand mention that Sheridan’s father is missing and the family farm has been burned to the ground, which gives Sheridan more information about his father’s fate than he had before Randall’s arrival. The household god of frustration. Garibaldi has a flashback to his imprisonment, one we haven’t seen before, where he’s tied to a chair and being told repeatedly, “You work for no one but us.” If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Randall also theorizes that Delenn’s transformation was done at Sheridan’s behest to make the notion of human/alien hybrids more palatable to humans. In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Mollari’s quarters are apparently having environmental issues, as he complains that it’s so cold that he fears his arms will turn to ice and fall off. Sheridan wry reply is that there are other limbs of Mollari’s that he’d rather see fall off… Looking ahead. Garibaldi’s animus toward Sheridan will continue to be an issue over the next several episodes. Welcome aboard. Jeff Griggs is perfectly skeevy as Randall and Henry Darrow is hilariously unimpressive as Indiri. Alison Higgins is back from “Ship of Tears” as the Clark-friendly ISN anchor; she’ll be back in “The Face of the Enemy.” Trivial matters. This is the first of five episodes in the franchise directed by Stephen Furst. It was only his second time in the director’s chair. After co-writing and co-starring in the 1993 kids martial arts film Magic Kid, he returned to not only co-write and co-star in 1994’s Magic Kid II, he also directed the sequel. Furst continued to direct—his last project before his death in 2017 was to direct the science fiction web series Cozmo’s, which starred B5 co-star Claudia Christian, as well as Star Trek’sRobert Picardo, Ethan Phillips, and Aron Eisenberg. The scene of Lee Parks naming fellow alien sympathizers (Adrian Mostel, Beth Trumbo, and Carleton Jarrico) is a tribute to four people who were blacklisted from working in Hollywood after being named during the hearings held by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s: Larry Parks, Zero Mostel, Dalton Trumbo, and Paul Jarrico. The “This Year in History” segment on ISN (which really should be called “This Day in History,” but whatever) includes Yuri Gagarin’s successful orbiting of Earth in 1961, “North American” President Bill Clinton creating a Commission on the Future in 1999 (which didn’t happen), the foundation for a lunar colony being laid in 2018 (which really didn’t happen, heavy sigh), and the creation of the Psi Corps in 2161. Gagarin’s name was misspelled on the original broadcast, but that was fixed in reruns and on home video and streaming. The echoes of all of our conversations. “Commander, did you threaten to grab ahold of this man by the collar and throw him out an airlock?” “Yes, I did.” “I am shocked! Shocked and dismayed! I’d remind you that we are short on supplies here. We can’t afford to take perfectly good clothing and throw it out into space. Always take the jacket off first—I’ve told you that before. Sorry, she meant to say, ‘Stripped naked and thrown out an airlock.’ I apologize for any confusion this may have caused.” —Sheridan and Ivanova making it clear to Randall how unwanted he is. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Our job is to report the news, not to make it or guide it.” This is almost a great episode. It’s kept from greatness by a bunch of small things. It’s not enough to make this a bad episode, and it is in fact quite a good one, but I find myself frustrated, because it should’ve been so much more. The first problem is a casting one. Jeff Griggs is just too dang sleazy to be in any way convincing as the embedded crusader he paints himself as in the early part of the episode. He’s very effective as a propagandist during the report that takes up the back half of the episode, but he’s so aggressively insincere early on that I find it impossible to credit that anybody on B5 took him seriously. (The show did a much better job of casting a similar role in “And Now for a Word.”) The second is that our heroes are remarkably stupid here. I don’t mean in allowing Randall to do his interviews. Allowing him to do the report was absolutely the right thing to do. If Randall was lying and was really going to do a hatchet job, well, that was going to happen regardless of Sheridan and the gang’s level of cooperation. And if he was telling the truth about trying to get at the truth (ahem), then cooperating can only help. No, it’s how they went about it, starting with having Lennier be his tour guide. If you’re trying to hedge against this turning into a propaganda piece for the isolationist anti-alien EarthGov, then don’t have a non-human be the guide to the station, and especially don’t do an interview sitting next to your Minbari girlfriend. Sheridan said to Ivanova before the broadcast that they were all careful to make simple declarative sentences that couldn’t be taken out of context, but that wasn’t even remotely true, starting with Sheridan and Delenn actually saying phrases like, “Anything that gets in the way disappears” (in the passive voice!) and “If they don’t understand we will make them understand” and my favorite, “There is no force in the galaxy that can stop what we have done here together. Nothing will be able to stop us.” I mean, for fuck’s sake, why not just wear a sign saying, “TAKE THIS OUT OF CONTEXT PLEASE!” On top of that, what possible reason would you have to let Randall get anywhere near downbelow? Even if Randall was sympathetic, there is no way, none, to make downbelow look good and about a billion ways to make it look awful, as we saw. And that’s the problem with the episode: it stacks the deck, puts words in Sheridan and Delenn’s mouths in particular that are slightly awkward but necessary to make it easy for Randall to edit them into something that sounds awful. Other parts of the report work much better. For example, the stuff with the cryochambers is something they couldn’t have predicted being a problem. (Hey look, Bester finds a way to screw with the crew again!) And Garibaldi’s anti-Sheridan tirade was also probably a big surprise to our heroes, and which is part of an ongoing issue that will continue throughout the next dozen episodes or so. Director Stephen Furst deserves significant credit here, as the whole episode is beautifully lensed, from the foreshadowing still shots of bits the ISN cameras caught to the news report itself. It’s expertly filmed, and it’s not a surprise that Furst would come back to direct four more episodes. Next week: “Atonement”[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “The Illusion of Truth” appeared first on Reactor.

In this special bonus episode for Halloween, Adam and Will have quick and easy chat about a show that barely exists, What A Dummy from 1990 starring a young, Stephen Dorff. What do you get CONTINUE READING... The post Remember That Show? Ep. 40.5: What A Dummy (1990) appeared first on The Retro Network.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Argentine President Javier Milei scored a major win in the nation’s elections Sunday, doubling his party’s share of Congress on the heels of a multibillion-dollar economic bailout deal from the Trump administration. Milei’s Freedom Advances party is set to double their share in the Argentinian Congress, earning a mandate for his massive free-market reforms and the veto power to defend them, after his coalition secured more than a third of seats in both chambers. Milei has been in talks with President Donald Trump and the administration to obtain a mammoth $40 billion bailout to relieve his nation’s mounting financial pressures. “BIG WIN in Argentina for Javier Milei, a wonderful Trump Endorsed Candidate!” Trump said on Truth Social Monday morning. “He’s making us all look good. Congratulations Javier!” Milei embarked on a massive campaign after his election in 2023 to gut government programs and slash regulations to bring the nation’s economy out of stagnation and runaway inflation. However, the treasury is running dry, and with mounting payments on debt looming, Argentina reached out to secure a bailout from the U.S. While inflation in Argentina remains high, the rate has fallen from over 130% in 2023 to 41.3% in 2025, according to International Monetary Fund statistics. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is strongly encouraging Argentina to cut its economic ties with China in light of the generous payout, people familiar with the conversations told The Wall Street Journal. “The United States supports Argentina’s efforts to stabilize its economy and President [Milei]’s ambitious reform agenda,” the State Department said on X Monday. “We continue to work with Argentina to foster consensus and implement sustainable reforms to deliver long-term economic stability and prosperity for its people.” Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Milei Scores Major Election Win in Argentina on Heels of Massive Trump Bailout appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. More people than ever are turning away from Google’s tightly controlled ecosystem in favor of independent, privacy-focused tools. That growing change makes the recent blocking of Immich, one of the most respected self-hosted photo management platforms, look especially bad for Google. More: Ditching Google: Practical Self-Hosted Replacements Immich has earned a reputation as a simple, powerful alternative to Google Photos, letting users store and organize images on their own servers without surrendering data to a corporation. Yet despite being an open-source project with a transparent codebase, Google’s Safe Browsing system abruptly labeled Immich’s .immich.cloud sites as dangerous, locking out both users and developers behind a red “deceptive site” warning screen. Safe Browsing is designed to protect people from malicious links and scams, but in this case, the automated system effectively crippled a legitimate privacy-respecting service. Many users, unaware of how to bypass the warning, were left assuming the site was unsafe. Even the Immich team found themselves struggling to access their own tools. For a company that markets itself as a champion of security and trust, this episode paints a poor picture. It raises uncomfortable questions about how much power Google’s automated filters wield over the open web and whether smaller, independent projects that promote user control are being unfairly swept aside. Related: The Easiest Photo Self-Hosting Exit Ramp from Big Cloud After the initial flagging, the Immich team submitted a full review, clarifying that the flagged pages were their own internal test environments and not phishing sites. Google briefly lifted the block, only to reinstate it days later, this time blacklisting the entire domain. The developers have now migrated their preview systems to a new domain, immich.build, in an effort to avoid further disruption. This problem extends well beyond Immich. Other open-source platforms like Jellyfin, Nextcloud, and YunoHost have faced similar treatment. Each case highlights the risk of allowing one corporate filter to decide what the public can safely view. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Google Mislabels Immich, a Rising Self-Hosted Google Photos Alternative, as Dangerous appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Biometric verification is becoming a defining feature of how payments are made, as financial institutions work to link identity directly to every transaction. Reflecting that trend, Visa has partnered with Proof, a digital identity platform. More: JPMorgan To Roll Out Controversial Biometric Payments The collaboration merges Proof’s identity technology with Visa’s global network, aiming to bring the same level of “trust” to online commerce that EMV chips provided for physical cards. “Trusted digital identity is the next frontier for enabling secure commerce,” says Daniel Sanford, senior VP of Global Products and Initiatives at Visa. “We’re connecting Visa’s global network and payments innovations with Proof’s platform to fundamentally transform how identity is used in all types of transactions.” Proof’s system verifies users by combining biometrics, cryptographic signatures, and AI-driven fraud detection before a payment is processed. Its Certify product acts as a reusable identity credential, described as the “EMV chip for digital identity.” CEO and Founder Pat Kinsel says Certify can stop deepfakes, impersonation, and account takeovers while supporting account recovery. He adds that the cryptographic protections within Certify cannot be forged by generative AI. The broader movement toward biometric-linked payments is a growing technological and social development. Financial institutions, technology firms, and governments are aligning around the idea that anonymity online is an obstacle to security and compliance. The idea driving this change is that verified digital identities can reduce fraud, prevent money laundering, and make global commerce more efficient. The same systems that provide convenience and protection also consolidate greater control over personal data. This change reaches beyond banking. Biometric and digital ID systems are being connected to healthcare access, air travel, and social media verification in some regions. Together, these initiatives are creating a global framework where each interaction, such as purchasing goods, transferring funds, or signing in, can be permanently linked to a verified identity. Supporters view this as a necessary step toward a safer digital economy, but it will reduce one of the central freedoms of the internet: the ability to act, speak, or transact without constant observation. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Visa Launches Biometric Digital Identity Initiative For Payments appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Burying the Lede

The Easiest Government Shutdown to End Has Become a Quagmire