Babylon 5 Discussion: Special Poll Edition!

Yeah I'll have to put down my full thoughts later when I have more time, but this is certainly... different from what we have.

I have the Starfury model kit but I didn't get around to putting it together.



I didn't manage to get the space station.

I'm conflicted about this. On the one hand, I prefer the version of the story we got in the show. On the other hand, and I know I'm in the minority with this opinion,  I always preferred Sinclair to Sheridan as the lead. This is not to say that I dislike Sheridan. On the contrary, the first time I watched the show I thought he brought something fresh to the character that was absent with Sinclair. Now, however, I find myself appreciating Sinclair more with each subsequent viewing. Sinclair had an air of a sage, battle-worn leader who from the beginning showed doubts toward both the alien diplomats as well as his own leaders. Sheridan, on the other hand, was introduced as a wholesome, somewhat smarmy, orange-loving energizer bunny . I believe this is precisely what made Sheridan better suitable for and a lot more compelling to follow through the B5 independence arc. Sinclair was already teetering around that point from the beginning--he was just waiting for something to push him in either direction, but Sheridan had yet to arrive at that point.
My mind keeps bouncing between Sinclair and Sheridan. Take for example the conversation between Sheridan and Elric in which Sheridan is like a wide-eyed child whose mind is being blown by the technomage's revelations. If Sinclair had been in Sheridan's place I'm sure the same encounter would've felt more like a conversation between equals--a confirmation of something Sinclair had already felt. I'm not quite sure if the difference is solely in the actors' performances or if the writing actually changed to accommodate the tone of Sheridan's personality. Either way, I prefer Sinclair but at the same time I can't imagine certain parts of the story without Sheridan.

It took a while but Sinclair eventually grew on me. Plus "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" was excellent. And I even got the comics that covered some of what happened when Valen first came thru with B4.

In Valen's Name,

babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/In_Valen%27s_Name,_Part_1#.231:_In_Valen.27s_Name

But that alternate storyline, I find some aspects really interesting, esp the differences about Earth vs Everyone.

www.midwinter.com/lurk/lurker.html
www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html

This site brings back memories....

I love season 3.

Regarding the Psi Corps, that's an easy question for Bester to answer: telepaths aren't expendable and can't be wasted on the front lines. With respect to Minbari telepaths, however, that seems to be a very good question that I don't have any good answer to. I'd like to think that Dukhat and the Grey Council would've had some telepaths with them, or perhaps he thought that having the Vorlons along would be sufficient? It's also possible that Dukhat (and almost certainly the Vorlons) knew what was going to happen and what was at stake, so allowed events to unfold as they did without making use of Minbari telepaths.

Speculative fun. 

I was talking more about telepath reactions to the war after the fact. We see Sinclair torn up about it and there's plenty of hints of how other people are affected by it, from fear to awe (after all there had to be some thing for Clark to twist into the so called "Minbari War Syndrome"). But these reactions are exclusively by mundanes. No telepath ever comments on it. Or indeed on relations with aliens in general. Telepaths seem to be weirdly set apart from that. Apart from "it's kind of weird to scan alien minds" we never really hear what they think about other races, or even telepaths of other races. At best we get "amused then annoyed" from Bester when he walks in on the Minbari telepaths. We get two dimensional plots and issues about how humans and aliens differ or how telepaths and normals differ but never a three dimensional one incorporating all three.

But we can talk about the war itself too. You're right, telepaths wouldn't be on the front lines, but they'd have to do something. The Minbari were going to wipe out all humans not just normals. The Psi Corps would've had to deal with that somehow.

As for Dukhat, I'm sure they did have telepaths aboard. At the Battle of the Line when after they test Sinclair they have telepaths brought in to erase his memories. It's possible they could've brought them onboard from another ship but what purpose could they have served on that ship that they couldn't serve on the Grey Council's ship? Ergo I conclude the Grey Council does have telepaths on hand aboard their ship. And while the Vorlons would make them redundant in terms of their abilities, they were keeping themselves hidden and would never serve that purpose anyway, especially for a lesser species.

Did Dukhat have to die and the Earth-Minbari War have to happen to propel Sinclair towards his destiny though? I suspect the question is more philosophical than anything.

Right, but I'm thinking from the Minbari side, Minbari telepaths work together to strengthen their powers and when doing so they don't need line of sight apparently- think about when they were jamming Shadow vessels. We saw them lying down in a secluded room and still getting the job done.

Again, humans distrust and fear their telepaths so they'd never use them even if they could. But Minbari don't have that problem. So if they were going to try a first contact, it'd make sense to use their telepaths to at least get a feel for how the other side was reacting, before actual communication can begin. If the Minbari had felt the humans tension and fear they might've backed up or at least stopped and reconsidered. Of course you could probably just point to the warrior caste's arrogance for going ahead with the approach before even informing Dukhat. Still though, if using telepaths was standard procedure the warriors should've done it anyway. So why wasn't it standard?

We do though, because when they test it with Lyta she has to concentrate, hard, and the first time nearly knocks her out. And since she's been enhanced by the Vorlons at that point if it were a passive thing, having her onboard would mean the Shadow vessel drops dead of its own accord. Not to mention that the Shadows could never use telepaths in their own ships if that were the case.

Clearly that didn't happen and Vorlons are lot more subtle than that.

Again I don't think Minbari telepaths are necessarily stronger individually. But they have been shown to work together to strengthen their powers and they don't have to do it by touching either the way the Underground telepaths do in Season 2. So yeah I would think it should've been SOP to have a group of them on board, ready to scan for threats or help out in these types of situations.

I don't think that was the intention. Telepaths disrupt Shadow vessels because Shadow vessels use living beings as their cores. They probably just freeze that person's mind or transmit pain like they would with any other individual. It's simple and it makes sense. Moreso than having to come up with another nebulous "antiShadow" energy.

A bunch of telepaths linked can be stronger than an individual. This is seen with both the Underground telepaths and the Minbari telepaths resisting Bester. Now we don't know how those Minbari telepaths would be rated (I would assume they're comparable to humans) but the fact that they can combine their powers to amplify them and Minbari regularly do is what leads me to believe they should be able to be used for a first contact situation like that.

This setting would make for an interesting RPG/MMO/Turn Based Strat. Pretty much anything really. Maybe one day.