Babylon 5 Discussion: Special Poll Edition!

Interesting points. I think you're right on the money for what the average telepath would do.

Psi Corps itself though, I think that's a different story. I was thinking the other day that they might actually try to profit from the war. Since the more extreme of them believe a war with mundanes is inevitable, aliens wiping out most of humanity would do their job for them. The only question is how to avoid destruction themselves? A possible answer: the Narn (or maybe the Centauri). We know the Narn are mighty thirsty for getting their hands on some telepath genes again. And the Centauri would really rather not have anything strengthening the Narn. So there might be a sweet spot of negotiation there. Oh sure they'd have to work for aliens for a bit. But Psi Corps is nothing if not subversive. Eventually they might even reach out to the Minbari. Since they consider themselves evolved relative to mundanes they'd play the "we would never react with such violence like savage monkeys" card and we know most Minbari would still be kind of guilty over the whole thing. If Psi Corps could convince them they're different the Minbari might even be suckered into protecting them as a way of atoning for their genocide.

I could easily see the Corps come out on top of even this. It'd be a hell of a "what if?"

I think if you're spacefaring you don't really have much of a choice. The Shadows will mess with you and the Vorlons will try and get you on their side. And yeah the other First Ones were there as well. I've always wondered why they cared and why they always fought for the Vorlons' side- Ivanova's reverse psychology trick on the Walkers was cute but I give it a pass on Rule of Cool, not on what should actually happen with an advanced/transcendent race.  But if we accept they could be swayed, how come no one ever tried (or succeeded) to get them to fight for the Shadows?

I think the point of the Last Shadow War was that both sides have gone too far. But the series itself still kind of gives it to the Vorlons in the end via Deconstruction of Falling Stars, where humanity (and I think Word of God says Minbari as well) basically become the new Vorlons. It might've been interesting if they made a more neutral restart of the cycles with the Centauri becoming the next Shadows.

Well given the Minbari were actually present themselves in the last war, I think they'd have first hand knowledge on whether the other First Ones were there or not.

And was it Lorien who actually convinced them to come out? Ivanova got the Walkers by herself. Lorien pointed her to where the others were but I don't think we see who did the talking.

Anyway, I'd still expect the Shadows to call them out on favoritism. As I've noted before, almost every major escalation we know of it's always the Vorlon side pushing the envelope and in some cases, I'd say flat out breaking the rules of engagement. I mean, yeah the Shadows are still dicks, but come on! If you have to screw with people's heads and time itself to win an argument, maybe your argument's not that good

And yet, the Shadows left the majority of the Narn population alive. Would the Vorlons have been as restrained in their place? Remember them wiping out all traces of "Shadow influence"? Had it not been for Coriana 6, they would've totally Death Star'd Centauri Prime because of one person. Granted, that one person was responsible for catalyzing the whole current war, but still...

Which a) only came out in response to the Vorlon planet killers and they never deployed themselves, to our knowledge (though yeah, it is "totally them").

Hell I bet even

Finished B5 rewatch. Onward to Crusade. SiL still gets me, even all these years later...

Yea, on one hand, I want more but on the other....sometimes its not best to milk something. Would still play the crap out of a B5 CRPG though.

OMG, I just watched The Lost Tales - Voices in the Dark. link

To be honest, this is one of the best. I did not even know it existed.

I wish this kind of writing was there for silly Meda game. Most silly me.

akots- Yeah it was pretty good. The only thing I didn't like about it was the "quantum space" thing. Another "higher" level of hyperspace? Remember what happened the last time someone tried that?



But the interaction between Galen and Sheridan was awesome.

nanotm: You got it, it was the White Star (and later the White Star Fleet). Minbari and Vorlon ships were sweet, so obviously their baby would be too.

Gotta give it up for the Shadow vessels too though. They were everything they needed to be.

Cool. My issue with it was mostly because it seemed so out of place/a needless one up over the show proper. Plus I'm very suspicious of the lore around it. We see Vorlons still using hyperspace regularly in the show. Why don't they use "quantum space"? And if you're saying they didn't have it but the Alliance invents it well then I call major shenanigans.

I would say they're definitely in a hurry in season 4. And why bother "folding hyperspace" to hide their fleet if they had access to quantum space and could just get wherever they were going twice as fast as anybody else?

Another issue: the Vorlons and Shadows were supposed to be evenly matched. And despite their differences in how they jumped, both used hyperspace. Even if you ignore the Vorlons not using quantum space because they were seemingly complacent/preferring to act through intermediaries, there is no such excuse for the Shadows not phasing in and out of quantum space to get their stuff done. Which of course breaks several things:

-the pilot dude from season 2 catching footage of the Shadow vessel to prove they're out there.
-Sheridan outrunning and later destroying a Shadow vessel with a jump gate
-The Psi Corps intercepting the Shadow vessel carrying Garibaldi
-the Shadows using hyperspace at all, not just for efficiency, but given it's property of enhancing telepaths, they should steer well clear, if they had an alternative.

Finally, as First Ones and given their characterization, the Vorlons can be assumed to be basically unchanged for thousands, if not millions of years. So if they discovered quantum space before Thirdspace, that still means they were using their organic ships (the Vorlon ships seen in flashbacks in Thirdspace are not that different from modern Vorlon ships, if at all) while doing. Which throws the compatibility hypothesis into doubt. And let's not even get into how the Alliance could've found a whole new way of travel from Vorlon tech when Vorlon space is still closed to them for a million years. And speaking of a million years, doesn't the ascended human at the end of Deconstruction of Falling Stars jump out of the Sol system via regular hyperspace?

Sorry, I love the special otherwise and I do wish JMS had gotten the rest of the stories he had planned for that series out. But quantum space doesn't seem very thought out compared to the rest of the series. Then again, the other part of that special featured a supposedly actual demon. And somebody actually approved the Legend of the Rangers pilot that thankfully went no further So quality and consistency was sadly on the decline, Crusade notwithstanding.

Eh, I think we agree there wasn't much forethought put into it (coolness of quantum mechanics aside) so for my part, I'd rather ignore it, particularly since it shows up nowhere else. Just like "oh noes these guys are totally worse than the Shadows" silly nonsense villain+1 Rangers pulled.

Also punch, punch, kick to shoot spaceships... It's not what they were on, it's what they should've been on.

Not even G'Kar could save that mess.