By Jonathan Klotz
| Published 37 seconds ago

Babylon 5 isn’t a sci-fi comedy; it’s a sci-fi epic, but the carefully crafted story is filled with small moments of comedy that cut the tension, usually thanks to Londo.  Tucked away in the Season 1 episode, “Grail,” is an amazing joke that directly pokes fun at alien abductions.

It has no impact on the rest of the episode and serves only to introduce the station’s judge, but a man suing the Vree, modeled after the famous “Grey Aliens,” for abducting his great-grandfather, is the kind of offbeat humor that sci-fi fans love.

Suing Over Alien Abductions

As soon as “Grail” returns from the title sequence, viewers are dropped into the courtroom of Ombuds Wellington (Jim Norton), listening to Flinn (John Flinn, the episode’s director of photography and he directed multiple episodes, including “Grey 17 is Missing”) argue that his great-grandfather was abducted by the Vree for two days, and then, no one believed him, he couldn’t get a job and a he lost everything. That’s why Flinn is suing for damages. The Vree’s response is to draw a picture. Obviously frustrated, Wellington wonders why he always gets these cases. 

The Vree are one of the most annoying races in the world of Babylon 5, thanks to their religious devotion to a Trickster God, justifying their prankster behavior. Turns out, that’s why they would abduct humans; they found it funny. We never find out if Flinn won his case against the Vree or not, but the thought that in the future, when humans are living alongside aliens, someone would sue over alien abduction is the type of absurdity no one expected from the war-torn political series. 

The Search For The Holy Grail

Flinn’s court case is the early high point of “Grail” which spends most of its runtime on Jinxo (Tom Booker), a station mechanic in debt to the gangster Deuce. Desperate to get out of debt, he picks the pocket of Aldous Gajic (David Warner), a strange man who came to the station as part of his quest for the Holy Grail. The two find themselves bonding after Gajic takes the downtrodden worker under his wing in lieu of banishment for thievery, with Gajic explaining that a dying man restored his will to live by passing on the quest for the Holy Grail to him. 

In case you’re wondering, Sinclair (Michael O’Hare) doesn’t take the quest for the Holy Grail seriously, but Delenn (Mira Furlan), part of the Minbari religious caste, respects Gajic for being a truth-seeker. It’s an interesting character moment for both of them in an episode that’s otherwise completely devoid of the main cast. The way humans and Minbari view religion is very different, and it’s hard for any human to understand why it’s so important to Delenn, though, as viewers know, Sinclair would go on to understand the Minbari better than they knew themselves. 

Great Shows Are Allowed To Have Bad Episodes

“Grail” sidelines the main cast to focus on Gajic, Jinxo, and Deuce, culminating in a firefight within the sub-basements between the gangsters and a security squad after a monster disguised as Ambassador Kosh is revealed as the source of the mindwipe murders. It wouldn’t be the last time that Babylon 5 would focus on side characters, but Season 5’s “A View From The Gallery” is one of the best of the series, while “Grail” is a dull slog. 

Babylon 5 is still one of the best sci-fi shows ever made, even if it has some uneven episodes. The saga of Gajic and Jinxo was a one-and-done story, and now, the episode is still best remembered for the brief, 60-second joke about suing little grey aliens. It’s short, it’s hilarious, it fits within the world, and it’s the type of gag Star Wars would never make.

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Blueface
Grabs Zendaya’s Throat, Nuzzles Kylie’s Neck …
Of Museum Wax Figures

Published
February 13, 2026
12:21 PM PST
|
Updated
February 13, 2026
12:52 PM PST

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 19 seconds ago

As someone who writes extensively about Starfleet Academy, I frequently find myself in the trenches of fan spaces, ranging from r/startrek on Reddit to Star Trek S**tposting on Facebook. As you might expect, these spaces are filled with those who are passionate about all things Trek, and they love to swap memes while sharing their love for Gene Roddenberry’s seminal sci-fi franchise. But there’s trouble in paradise whenever someone breaks the one, unspoken rule: “never say anything bad about NuTrek.”

Such posts are likely to get removed altogether, especially on Reddit, where the Paramount astroturfers tirelessly work to remove any and call criticism. But when a criticism does make it through, the critic faces a deluge of hatred from Star Trek fanboys who act like a critique of their favorite show is nothing less than a deep, personal insult. Because of this, I think franchise fans of every quadrant need to accept a blunt truth: IDIC includes people who disagree with you. 

Where It All Started

My most tinfoil-hat Star Trek conspiracy theory is that this problem goes back to the earliest days of Star Trek: Discovery. At that time, many YouTubers realized they could hit the click lottery by going all-in on criticizing the new show. For example, Nerdrotic led the charge in criticizing the show as forcing diversity down viewers’ throats (often to the detriment of the story), and that Star Trek had suddenly gone woke.

Channels like Midnight’s Edge echoed the wokeness claims and similarly griped about Star Trek: Discovery’s perceived identity politics. It didn’t take fans long to strike back, pointing out that Trek has literally been diverse from the very beginning (just look at that Original Series cast).

Eventually, those earlier criticisms were used by moderators to make sure nobody was allowed to criticize NuTrek in any way without being canceled by their fellow fans. 

Criticism Of NuTrek Is Now Completely Forbidden

While the aforementioned YouTube channels made some salient points about Discovery, some fans understandably seized on parts of their opinions they felt missed the mark. The primary things that made this new Star Trek show “diverse” were, seemingly, the Black female main character and a supporting cast that includes two gay men. Therefore, such criticisms were condemned by the Reddit-style fan community as being both sexist and homophobic.

However, Discovery fanboys soon began to use those earlier critiques to silence all opposition to their new favorite show. If someone disliked Michael Burnham’s character for more legitimate reasons (like her being written as a Mary Sue with plot armor as thick and obvious as transparent aluminum), they were dismissed as just another bigot who had a problem with a strong, Black, female character. If someone said they thought Stamets and Culber could have had better chemistry, they were denigrated as a homophobe who just couldn’t handle Trek’s first openly gay couple.

Unfortunately, this foundational aspect of NuTrek discourse continues to this day with Starfleet Academy. If you criticize Jay’den (the stuttering soft boy Klingon pacifist) for being a poorly written member of his warrior race, you will be labeled as an old sexist who just can’t appreciate this alien’s slow burn journey of gay self-discovery. If you criticize SAM (the happy-go-lucky hologram with the literal mind of a child) for being a walking meme, you’ll be labeled as someone who hates Black women (and probably autistic people).

Forgetting The Franchise’s Most Important Rule

Do some members of the Star Trek fandom still make racist, sexist, and homophobic comments about Starfleet Academy and other shows? Of course, and they need to be called out by a comment section that sets their phasers to “kill.” But it’s important to remember that not every criticism of NuTrek is a coded dogwhistle; sometimes, people just have a difference of opinion, and somebody not liking something that you love is not a personal attack on you or your tastes.

All of this had me pondering the most important rule in all of Star Trek: IDIC, which stands for “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.” NuTrek is often praised for adhering to this more than earlier shows, and its diversity is part of what those problematic YouTubers freaked out about when Discovery premiered. Obviously, diversity is a good thing, and shows like Starfleet Academy deserve full credit for giving us the kinds of characters that we wouldn’t have previously seen headlining a Star Trek show.

IDIC Includes People Who Don’t Like Your Favorite Show

However, diversity of thought and opinion is also part of IDIC, and this has always been baked into Star Trek’s DNA: we see McCoy and Spock argue over the different cultural perspectives of humans and Vulcans in The Original Series, for example. In The Next Generation, Worf’s stories constantly forced characters like Picard to consider the wildly different (yet no less relevant) perspective of the Klingons. Meanwhile, Deep Space Nine used the Ferengi Quark to constantly contrast the Federation’s hippie, humanistic values with naked faith in the power of free market capitalism.

In a perfect world, the Star Trek fandom would more readily embrace this basic concept of IDIC: not everyone in the fandom is going to agree with everything you say. The person criticizing the childish humor of Starfleet Academy isn’t someone who hates the franchise or hates you for liking the show; he’s just somebody who wishes NuTrek wasn’t resorting to d*ck and fart jokes to make audiences laugh. Similarly, the people complaining about the nonstop slang and vulgarity of these young characters aren’t just old and out of touch; they just remember when you could show Star Trek to your kids without cringing and reaching for the remote. 

Fans Need To Stop With Friendly Fire

Not every Trek is for every fan, and disliking Starfleet Academy is no more inherently problematic than disliking Enterprise or the Kelvinverse. But it’s important to remember that the vast majority of fans criticizing this new show are doing so from a place of love because they want Star Trek to succeed. By assuming that every critic is a bigot, fanboys shut down any chance for genuine discourse while making Paramount think that nothing about their new show (the one that’s already fallen out of the Top 10 streaming charts on Paramount+) needs to be changed.

Simply put, this mentality goes against the entire IDIC philosophy of Star Trek and will ultimately doom the franchise in a sad attempt to pretend that NuTrek is absolutely perfect. If we can’t argue in good faith about the things we love about Trek, then there will soon be no new Trek to love. But if the fandom can finally drop all the culture war garbage (including painting all critics as fascists to the right of Colonel Green) and have a reasonable discourse, we might have something that seemingly disappeared decades ago. Namely, a Star Trek show that most fans are actually excited to watch each week!

By Robert Scucci
| Published 25 seconds ago

I’ve been running into a lot of unintended movie pairings lately, and 2025’s Ballad of a Small Player makes for the perfect companion piece to 2019’s Adam Sandler-starring Uncut Gems. In this film, Brendan Reilly’s (Colin Farrell) behavior mirrors the same kind of anxiety-inducing gambling spiral that Sandler’s Howard Ratner faces. Instead of sports betting, we’re in Macau throwing hands at baccarat, with equally disastrous results.

Ballad of a Small Player holds its own thanks to its supernatural undercurrent, implying that streaks of bad luck and the acts of desperation that follow are manifestations of hungry ghosts who insatiably feed on greed and opulence. These ghosts operate with no regard for the collateral damage left in the wake of the increasingly reckless decisions made by their human counterparts, making the whole thing feel like the kind of waking nightmare you’d expect after losing hundreds of thousands of dollars and still refusing to give up chasing the high of winning big.

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

Chronic gamblers often cling to their own set of superstitions to trigger a hot streak. Brendan Reilly, for example, won’t play baccarat without his lucky yellow gloves, even though he’s already lost nearly seven figures he either embezzled from his clients back in the UK or racked up from loan sharks in Macau while posing as Lord Doyle, a wealthy aristocrat who always has his sights set on the finer things in life.

Bouncing between penthouse suites, stuffing his face with five-star cuisine, and washing it down with expensive champagne, Brendan finds himself in a tight spot when his debtors, and the casinos they’re associated with, catch wise to his game. They refer to him as the white ghost, a supernatural entity fueled by greed and desire. His habits finally catch up with him when UK investigator Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton) tracks him down, demanding he return the hundreds of thousands of dollars he has stolen, not knowing that his present financial standing is far worse than she could ever possibly imagine.

Brendan has a different idea for navigating his increasingly dire situation, one that involves his fledgling relationship with credit broker Dao Ming (Fala Chen) and the recent trauma she endured when one of her clients committed suicide after failing to repay his debts. Unable to function without the rush of his next big score, Brendan grows increasingly hedonistic, incapable of breaking the cycle that will either land him in jail or send him to an early grave.

An Exceedingly Stylish Downward Spiral

Colin Farrell’s portrayal of a desperate man who does not know when to stop mirrors Sandler’s performance in Uncut Gems while staying firmly in its own lane. It is the same personality type in a wildly different setting. Uncut Gems thrives on New York City grit, while Ballad of a Small Player luxuriates in penthouse suites, colorful casino floors, and elaborate Chinese architecture.

What truly separates the two films is how greed’s appetite is literalized through consumption in Ballad of a Small Player. Brendan is not just hungry for his next big win. He is trying to fill the bottomless pit that is his soul with rich food, the finest spirits, and whatever excess he can grab. When he is up, he cannot pump the brakes. When he crashes, his desperation becomes a force of nature because quitting is never an option in his mind. He believes the world is there for his taking, never fully grasping how far he’s fallen off the edge.

To bear witness to one man’s slow descent as his excessive habits drain the light from his eyes, you can stream Ballad of a Small Player on Netflix. If you want to keep the anxiety going, Uncut Gems is waiting on Max.

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The female chef who alleges she was assaulted by Stefon Diggs has shared a statement as he enters a not guilty plea.

RELATED: Yikes! Stefon Diggs’ Lawyer And New England Patriots Respond To His Strangulation Charges

Female Chef For Stefon Diggs Shares Statement On Alleged Assault

On Friday, February 13, the woman, who has not been identified in news reports, took to Instagram to share a message with the public. Furthermore, she wrote that she is writing to address the “false information that has been shared publicly.”

Additionally, she stated that she is a “professional chef” with 10 years of professional experience, and her “reputation” and “integrity” matter deeply to her. Claims that she engaged in “settlement discussions” with Digg, she says, are “untrue.” And she noted that she “never sought money” from him. Furthermore, she stated that she would “never” make false claims about domestic violence because she knows the allegations are serious and damaging.

“I did not seek public attention and reported this matter through the proper legal channels. This is an active criminal matter, and I will continue to respect the legal process,” she added by noting that she will not engage with “rumors” or “personal attacks.”

Instead, she noted that she is focused on “healing,” her work, and “moving forward with integrity” while trusting the legal process.

Social Media Reacts

Social media users weighed in on the female chef’s statements in TSR’s comment section. Many noted that Stefon Diggs appears to be taking back-to-back L’s with the loss of the Super Bowl and this criminal case.

Stefon Diggs Enters Not Guilty Plea In Alleged Assault Against Female Chef

Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that Stefon Diggs entered a not guilty plea to the strangulation and assault charges on Friday, February 13. His arraignment reportedly went down at the Dedham District Court in Massachusetts. Additionally, he was ordered to reappear in court on April 1.

Per the outlet, the chef alleges that on December 2, 2025, she confronted Diggs over money he allegedly owed her for her services. In turn, he allegedly smacked her in the face. And he allegedly tried to choke her by wrapping his elbow around her neck. Per PEOPLE, the chef reported the assault to police on December 16, 2025.

The Guardian adds that Diggs has denied the claims, and the New England Patriots have expressed their support for him.

RELATED: Stefon Diggs Breaks His Silence Following Strangulation Allegations From Former Private Chef (VIDEOS)

Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem
Logistics Company CEO Steps Down …
After Epstein Link Revealed

Published
February 13, 2026
11:44 AM PST

James Van Der Beek‘s close friend is describing his family’s “urgent” need for money after his death.

“I’m just so happy and grateful that so many people feel moved in their hearts the way that those of us close feel,” designer Erin Fetherston told ExtraTV on Thursday, February 12, as the actor’s family raised more than $2 million in donations via GoFundMe. “There is a sincere and urgent need here for the family. They have really been through it, and I just want to thank everyone on their behalf who has given and who may feel inspired to give.”

Following his battle with stage III colorectal cancer, James’ wife, Kimberly Van Der Beek, and loved ones are struggling to stay afloat.

“These are six children who are facing life without a father,” Fetherston, 44, added. “Their amazing mother Kimberly has been a devoted wife and mom. She’s had six children and been public about losing babies along the way. She has been in the space of motherhood and supporting James all of these years. Now, she’s really left to pick up the pieces.”

Fetherston continued: “By supporting them, you’re helping them just maintain some stability in their life after going through a terribly challenging, painful, and heartbreaking journey that has ended in the loss of their father.”

Kimberly, 43, shared kids Olivia, 14, Joshua, 13, Annabel, 11, Emilia, 8, Gwendolyn, 6, and Jeremiah, 3, with James. The couple, who got married in 2010, previously revealed that Kimberly suffered five pregnancy losses.

In November 2024, James announced his stage III colorectal cancer diagnosis, writing via Instagram, “I’ve been privately dealing with this diagnosis and have been taking steps to resolve it, with the support of my incredible family. There’s reason for optimism, and I’m feeling good.”

James was candid about his efforts to raise money for his treatment, which included selling memorabilia from his roles on Variety Blues and Dawson’s Creek. Fetherston told ExtraTV that James wasn’t able to work for the past two years.

“They tried everything to save his life,” she said. “And it’s just so hard that he’s gone now and also to be facing after already losing such a tremendous parent is nothing that I want to see them go through.”

Fetherston offered insight into her final moments with James, who died Wednesday, February 11, at age 48.

Related: How James Van Der Beek Dealt With Financial Stress of Cancer Diagnosis

James Van Der Beek dealt with significant financial strain before his death from stage III colorectal cancer at age 48 in February 2026. The former Dawson’s Creek actor and his wife, Kimberly Van Der Beek, shared six children — daughters Olivia, Annabel, Emilia and Gwendolyn and sons Joshua and Jeremiah — so they were forced […]

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“We all really held faith for a positive, miraculous outcome until the very end. James and Kimberly maintained such positivity through this journey, such high consciousness, always holding for a miracle, doing everything they could, trying everything,” she shared. “I mean, James, he put so much effort with all his strength to do this, and he did it with such grace, with a smile, still taking time to ask, ‘How are you doing? What can I do for you?’ I just did not imagine that this could happen.”

Fetherston expressed gratitude for the time she spent with James before his death, adding, “I had the chance to do that and say goodbye and see him. And even at the end, you know, I said to Kimberly, like, ‘He’s still beautiful.’ After everything he’s been through, he’s still emanating his love.”

Seeing such a “beautiful community” rally around James was meaningful for Fetherston.

“I think he really felt supported by all the love and the people who were able to be there at the end,” she continued. “He was just absolutely his authentic self until the very end — including people, making everyone a family, helping us all connect to one another.”

She concluded: “He leaves behind this incredible legacy of the most beautiful, kind family, and the most beautiful family of friends that would have never found one another had it not been for James and Kimberly and their open-hearted, generous way of living.”

Kimberly revealed on Wednesday that friends set up the GoFundMe for her family, sharing the link to donate via her Instagram Story “with gratitude and a broken heart.” Derek Hough, Zoe Saldaña and Steven Spielberg were among the A-list contributors.

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