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Eighties ZomCom posted:I do find it odd that if the Minbari traditionally greet everyone they meet with gun ports open, then why haven't, say the Centauri, encountered it in their rare and brief encounters with the Minbari? You would've thought that would be something that Londo would've mentioned when he was asked about the Minbari if he knew. It also comes as a surprise to Sheridan when a Minbari warship turns up in S2, even though it was the cause of the Earth-Minbari war. You'd think that by the time B5 was finished, 'Minbari sometimes approach with gun ports open, they're not planning to attack just because of it, FFS don't overreact when they do it' would be standard training for any Earthforce person who might ever be in command of a warship. In general though, I don't think Minbari actually greet everyone with gun ports open. Unless I'm misremembering, it's said to be a custom of the warrior caste specifically, which explains why it took Dukhat by surprise that they were going in with gun ports open in In the Beginning. I think the warrior caste is usually either fighting or intimidating any alien races that they meet with their ships, and they're so overwhelmingly superior to any potential opponent people are either intimidated into ignoring it or wiped out if they do (only the Centauri are really close to them in combat ability). The worker and religious castes don't have that custom, and are probably engaged in non-hostile contact with other civilizations vastly more often than the warrior caste. Since they have their own warships, they'd provide escorts for their own missions that needed an escorts. Pantaloon Pontiff fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Jul 7, 2023 |
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Jul 7, 2023 16:26
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"Valen, if the worker and religious castes get their own warships and weapons and presumably people to operate them, why do we need a warrior caste?" "Because if we call it the rear end in a top hat caste nobody will want to be in it." edit: I wonder how many times the Vorlons had to cycle Sinclair through the timeline before they figured out they'd get the results they wanted with a caste system. Gyrotica fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Jul 7, 2023 |
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Jul 7, 2023 16:30
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Nah, they don't just have one caste of assholes. One caste is the angry rear end in a top hat caste, one is the sanctimonious rear end in a top hat caste, one is the 'actually gets things done' caste.
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Jul 7, 2023 16:44
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Worker caste is probably full of assholes too, but we just don't see them.
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Jul 7, 2023 17:13
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ultrafilter posted:Worker caste is probably full of assholes too, but we just don't see them. Yea, but they're assholes you can bum a smoke from and probably sell weed.
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Jul 7, 2023 17:13
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ultrafilter posted:Worker caste is probably full of assholes too, but we just don't see them. You see a couple of them in the docker strikes episodes.
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Jul 7, 2023 18:57
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Eighties ZomCom posted:I do find it odd that if the Minbari traditionally greet everyone they meet with gun ports open, then why haven't, say the Centauri, encountered it in their rare and brief encounters with the Minbari? You would've thought that would be something that Londo would've mentioned when he was asked about the Minbari if he knew. Likely the Centauri did, on first meeting. When Londo talks to Lefcourt in In the Beginning, the main things he has to say is "if you do not bother them, they will not bother you" and "Minbari have no interest in alien affairs or alien business." He warns them off the attempt and says to send only one ship if they make it. He evidently hasn't been on a ship that met a Minbari ship, so there's no reason he'd be aware of the gun port open custom; there's no indication Lefcourt or Earthforce would have bothered to listen, either, as the whole affair reads like Earthforce throwing their weight around arrogantly after the Dilgar War concluded. Given what we know of where Crusade would have gone, it's worth wondering whether senior Earthforce officers were deliberately interested in poking the bear and deliberately set things up to make armed conflict more likely in the false belief they'd be able to win quickly. Londo wouldn't have known any of that. But he would have known the extent to which EA officers seemed to disbelieve what they were being told about the Minbari. Gyrotica posted:edit: I wonder how many times the Vorlons had to cycle Sinclair through the timeline before they figured out they'd get the results they wanted with a caste system. It sure looks like a bootstrap paradox: Sinclair knew all about Minbari culture thanks to his time as ambassador and Ranger One, and he then travels back in time and originates all these rituals and customs. Although it's possible some of these customs developed independently. In any event, he's guaranteed to "get it right" and the big surprise would be that he'd leave behind cultural changes that remained mostly stable for nearly 1000 years; the artificial structures of Minbari culture plus the heavy Vorlon influence might account for that. It is interesting to speculate that the Vorlons could have a somewhat different relationship with time, and perhaps Kosh in particular knew about certain things that hadn't happened yet in a precognitive sense. But most likely, Sinclair couldn't have changed history because it had already happened. I guess the animated movie might give us a better sense of that, though.
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Jul 7, 2023 19:24
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Chevy Slyme posted:That post is referring (I’m pretty sure) to a specific short story about far Oooh ooof yeah that is ultra dumb.
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Jul 7, 2023 20:08
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Eighties ZomCom posted:You see a couple of them in the docker strikes episodes. So they are cool yeah! I always assumed the worker caste is full of chill Mimbari that just smoke weed all day and build stuff. And the way Delene talks about them makes me pretend this is real canon.
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Jul 7, 2023 20:09
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edit Actually never mind, not a useful post by me
Rappaport fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Jul 7, 2023 |
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Jul 7, 2023 20:36
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Eighties ZomCom posted:You see a couple of them in the docker strikes episodes. Now I’m curious. Were they actually working on the docks alongside (gasp) other races?
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Jul 7, 2023 21:51
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Small White Dragon posted:Now I’m curious. Were they actually working on the docks alongside (gasp) other races? The only Minbari who understand solidarity.
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Jul 7, 2023 22:40
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I said come in! posted:So they are cool yeah! I always assumed the worker caste is full of chill Mimbari that just smoke weed all day and build stuff. And the way Delene talks about them makes me pretend this is real canon. I mean, Delenn said it's a terrible thing when the Religious and Warrior caste agree on something, she never said it was a problem if the Worker caste teams up with one of the others though. Edit: I bet the religious caste doesn't approve of the worker caste smoking weed, so they have an elaborate set of rituals made up so they can pretend like it's an important a religious function whenever religious caste are around. Pantaloon Pontiff fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jul 8, 2023 |
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Jul 8, 2023 01:15
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Gyrotica posted:"Valen, if the worker and religious castes get their own warships and weapons and presumably people to operate them, why do we need a warrior caste?" The other castes don't get their own warships and weapons - that's one reason why the White Stars - crewed by religious caste, was a Big Deal, and the Warrior caste didn't like it when they found out.
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Jul 8, 2023 15:03
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Each castes own's a third of the ships and weapons, but these are still usually all crewed by the warrior caste. That's why the religious caste crew of the White Star were such rookies at the time, and why it made sense to put an experienced human starship captain in charge.
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Jul 8, 2023 15:52
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Gyrotica posted:Look, it’s been a thousand years and they forgot the WD-40, whaddya gonna do? Need to use a penetrating oil like Kroil, WD-40 is the wrong tool for the job tbh. :MinbariColbert:
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Jul 8, 2023 17:01
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Just Another Lurker posted:Need to use a penetrating oil like Kroil, WD-40 is the wrong tool for the job tbh. :MinbariColbert: “Look buddy, I got a hundred jobs on the waitlist, there’s a civil war going on, and Nerid is out getting his head sharpened. You send me a work order that says “Get this fuckin’ Starfire Wheel working pronto” no ifs, ands or buts. It didn’t say nothin’ about it slidin’ open smooth as Valen’s behind. My guys got it done, you and your buddies got to play chicken with a muon gun, why you gotta bust my balls about a little grinding? You plannin’ on using it again anytime soon?”
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Jul 8, 2023 17:52
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:I mean, Delenn said it's a terrible thing when the Religious and Warrior caste agree on something, she never said it was a problem if the Worker caste teams up with one of the others though. I just choose to believe the worker caste is actually cool. I don't really feel like there is anything in the show that hints that they are bad like the religious and warrior caste are. It's why Delenn ultimately gives them three votes on the high council, where the others get only two each.
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Jul 8, 2023 21:05
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Five.
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Jul 8, 2023 21:24
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Gyrotica posted:“Look buddy, I got a hundred jobs on the waitlist, there’s a civil war going on, and Nerid is out getting his head sharpened. You send me a work order that says “Get this fuckin’ Starfire Wheel working pronto” no ifs, ands or buts. It didn’t say nothin’ about it slidin’ open smooth as Valen’s behind. My guys got it done, you and your buddies got to play chicken with a muon gun, why you gotta bust my balls about a little grinding? You plannin’ on using it again anytime soon?” We never had this kind of trouble when that Zathras fellow was handling maintenance. I bet Zathras is non-union labor. Joined in 2237, went back in time, over a thousand years late on his dues. Actually, I’m now wondering about the Zathras who was with Valen (Pathras?) and how his story went. I bet the otherwise-obsessive Valen-worshipping Minbari take on that was “Valen had this alien with him, he lived for over a hundred years with us, we don’t like to talk about it.”
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Jul 9, 2023 01:37
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Narsham posted:We never had this kind of trouble when that Zathras fellow was handling maintenance. No that was Zathras
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Jul 9, 2023 01:47
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I said come in! posted:It's why Delenn ultimately gives them five votes on the high council, where the others get only two each. I feel like this is going to lead to trouble eventually.
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Jul 9, 2023 02:50
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Small White Dragon posted:I feel like this is going to lead to trouble eventually. I think if there is a lesson to take from B5 it is that there will always be trouble eventually, given a long enough timeframe. Sometimes I think you just have to care about the now
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Jul 9, 2023 06:52
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Small White Dragon posted:I feel like this is going to lead to trouble eventually. I don't think the Grey Council style of government is one that can really function well under stress. From what we see, it has no constitutional or institutional checks on what it can do, just tradition that's ignored as soon things go out of the ordinary. It's not really clear how its members are selected, but it doesn't appear to be via general popular support like voting or by leaders of each caste picking their representatives (the warrior caste picked Delenn's replacement from the warrior caste). It doesn't seem to have much of a deliberation process (holding one quick vote to decide on a genocidal war) or requirement to consider intermediate options (Delenn's vote was the difference between 'don't declare war' and 'wipe them all out'). Delenn swapping 2 workers in place of a religious and warrior representative fixes the immediate problem of the religious and warrior castes focusing on their own agendas, but I think as soon as the now-dominant worker caste has an internal split the same shenanigans will happen. This is confusing since the Vorlons heavily influenced the Minbari government and claim to value order; the Grey Council seems like something the Shadows would love. It sits there looking wise and calm, inspiring confidence until something upsets the situation, then will start quickly making wild decisions on momentary whims with no sense of checks and balance once someone pokes the ant hill just a little bit. A temporary faction that shifts the balance of power to 5/9 (or 4/8 with one abstaining when replacing a missing member) can commit everyone to some kind of major war that they can't easily stop. I think the fundamental instability of the Minbari government is a sign of how far the Vorlons have fallen from the ideology they profess.
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Jul 9, 2023 16:48
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I honestly can't remember now, do any of the minimovies or the show discuss Vorlon societal order at all? We see two of them prominently; Kosh is nice (sort of) but doesn't really engage or tell anyone anything that's meaningful until after the fact (except JUMP, NOW! I guess), and the second one is mean and angry. The space elves are a ridiculous society, but I think it's implied that their internal stability is based on being aloof space elves who don't really interact with any other species. Their own problems are presumably suppressed because they seem to be a caricature of vaguely "eastern" cultures of tradition, so there can't really be any dissidents out of a culture of shame and, presumably, ostracizing or murder if necessary. Even if the Vorlons influence the Minbari in vague ways, I think it could be a fair read that they're being bred into a weapon of a race, since the whole point of Sheridan's big speech, and what Lorien says, is that both the Vorlons and Shadows have "lost their way", and the Vorlons are just as obsessed with the 1000-year interval wars rather than shepherding the younger races, whatever that originally meant. So it doesn't matter to the Vorlons that the Minbari are an insular, self-suppressing and extremely undemocratic race, just so long as they keep making better and better guns, and have an entire third of their society devoted to being warriors. Obviously the Shadow war is a huge destabilizing factor, but Babylon 5 itself is a novelty, the Babylon station project was begun as a new way of helping or even making all the space-faring species interact. And the story of the show is that each major species has their government collapse and reform in some way. Narn loses their war and gets orbital-bombed into smithereens, Londo, Refa and Vir change Centauri's ruler a couple of times, Earth has a civil war and so does Minbar. Londo declares that Centauri governance had to change because occupying Narn was a mistake, Earth's civil war is explicitly framed as being against a fascist regime with slogans of "Earth first" and "aliens out", and the large war also changes Minbari culture with things like training the Rangers. The story-telling of the show implies, IMO, that all of these types of governance are flawed in one way or another, because the show wants to tell us a story of conflict and change. Rappaport fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Jul 9, 2023 |
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Jul 9, 2023 19:23
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Rappaport posted:I honestly can't remember now, do any of the minimovies or the show discuss Vorlon societal order at all? No.
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Jul 9, 2023 21:49
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:I don't think the Grey Council style of government is one that can really function well under stress. From what we see, it has no constitutional or institutional checks on what it can do, just tradition that's ignored as soon things go out of the ordinary. It's not really clear how its members are selected, but it doesn't appear to be via general popular support like voting or by leaders of each caste picking their representatives (the warrior caste picked Delenn's replacement from the warrior caste). It doesn't seem to have much of a deliberation process (holding one quick vote to decide on a genocidal war) or requirement to consider intermediate options (Delenn's vote was the difference between 'don't declare war' and 'wipe them all out'). Delenn swapping 2 workers in place of a religious and warrior representative fixes the immediate problem of the religious and warrior castes focusing on their own agendas, but I think as soon as the now-dominant worker caste has an internal split the same shenanigans will happen. There’s plenty in Minbari culture that reflects Vorlon values: “Understanding is not required, only obedience” is something a Vorlon might say, for example. Caste determines identity except when you are “called” to do something else. Individual Minbari are supposed to bow to the will of the whole. As Delenn says about the Earth-Minbari War, they went mad together. That said, there’s plenty of hints that the Shadows had infiltrated Minbari society, taking advantage of the disaffection amongst the warrior caste over the surrender. A warrior caste tried to kill Kosh to ruin B5’s mission (or to get rid of Sinclair); the Windswords sheltered Deathwalker and supported her experiments, before unleashing her (whereupon the Vorlons intervened). Shakiri seems like the sort of leader the Vorlons would support but who would be easily subverted by the Shadows. The increasing wedge between Religious and Warrior castes led to Religious caste warships, the majority-Warrior caste Grey Council, and eventually, the complete breakdown of Minbari society (coming to a head only after Shadows and Vorlons left). One gathers that the stability of Minbari society was linked to their isolation. Once forced to deal with other races, that fundamental instability became obvious, though only over time. Consider both the general cultural stagnation and the principle the Minbari must lie to save another shame or embarrassment. How many internal problems went unaddressed because of that principle?
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Jul 9, 2023 23:45
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:Delenn swapping 2 workers in place of a religious and warrior representative fixes the immediate problem of the religious and warrior castes focusing on their own agendas, but I think as soon as the now-dominant worker caste has an internal split the same shenanigans will happen. Less than you'd think. If the Workers split on a subject then the majority will still win unless both the Warrior and Religious castes are convinced to agree with the minority. The Worker caste are also less likely to have an extreme agenda, and if they did then it would have to be one that did appeal to both the other castes - which doesn't seem likely.
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Jul 10, 2023 00:37
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Narsham posted:That said, there’s plenty of hints that the Shadows had infiltrated Minbari society, taking advantage of the disaffection amongst the warrior caste over the surrender. There's also that Religious Caste member who tried to ally with The Drakh. Not OFFICIALLY The Shadows, but basically their biggest set of minions. They were likely also trying to capitalize on the Minbari civil war to install a bunch of Minbari with Keepers like they did with The Centauri.
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Jul 10, 2023 01:10
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Rappaport posted:I honestly can't remember now, do any of the minimovies or the show discuss Vorlon societal order at all? We see two of them prominently; Kosh is nice (sort of) but doesn't really engage or tell anyone anything that's meaningful until after the fact (except JUMP, NOW! I guess), and the second one is mean and angry. Nope. All we really get is from JMS' various statements which is basically that Kosh is old for a Vorlon and represented a faction with a particular set of views, and Ulkesh (Kosh 2) represented a more prominent faction who gained power with the death of Kosh as they saw it as Kosh's methods failing. Vorlons apparently rarely die and the race as a a whole was symbolized as a woman in a block of ice, so, the general vibe is of a state that's exists in a form of stasis and even one death appeared to be pretty traumatizing. Also, doing a re-watch alongside a friend who is watching it for the first time. Seems like there's a goof in Midnight on the Firing Line. When Ragesh 3 is attacked by the Narn, G'Kar states that Ragesh 3 was actually a Narn colony before the Centauri conquered it, and this appears to be enough that the Minbari recognize it. But... as we'll learn later on in the series, and what JMS has stated in a few posts, the Narn were a primitive, agrarian people who didn't have space travel prior to the Centauri arrival.
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Jul 10, 2023 12:32
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It's not necessarily a goof, it just requires that the Narn colonized it pretty soon after overthrowing the Centauri occupation. Then the Centauri conquered Ragesh 3 before the Narn were equipped to stand up to them. It works, it just requires a fairly tight timeline for it to happen.
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Jul 10, 2023 13:11
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Q_res posted:It's not necessarily a goof, it just requires that the Narn colonized it pretty soon after overthrowing the Centauri occupation. Then the Centauri conquered Ragesh 3 before the Narn were equipped to stand up to them. The Narn are a major power and have their own seat on the Advisory Council. If they had just one world, or even only a couple, they'd be a member of the League instead. So it's known that they've done some rapid expansion in the 25 years preceding the show. When you expand rapidly, you can't always hold everything you grab. Odds are that Ragesh 3 was a Narn colony in the sense that the majority of the population was Narn when the occupation ended, but it was at the time one that the Centauri could recapture and did so to save a bit of face after losing Narn itself and a number of similar colony worlds. Think of it as Space Haiti, except the French came back in and took over again. E: checked the wiki. Apparently Londo's claim that the Centauri took the Narn with them to the stars was provably false and just his usual bombast. The Narn did have interstellar travel before the invasion, and probably had to reverse engineer Centauri tech afterwards because the Centauri would have destroyed all the homegrown Narn spaceships as a means of control. Jedit fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Jul 10, 2023 |
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Jul 10, 2023 13:37
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Jedit posted:The Narn are a major power and have their own seat on the Advisory Council. If they had just one world, or even only a couple, they'd be a member of the League instead. So it's known that they've done some rapid expansion in the 25 years preceding the show. When you expand rapidly, you can't always hold everything you grab. I'd just as easily assume Londo means the Centauri took enslaved Narn to other colonies
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Jul 10, 2023 13:57
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Looking back at it the fact that we never got any cultural information about the vorlon should have been a giant warning that they are also antagonists. Their part in the story is to be a problem for the characters to overcome not be characters themselves The fact that they used the mystery that the characters felt about them was some really good writing
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Jul 10, 2023 15:36
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Also, doing a re-watch alongside a friend who is watching it for the first time. Seems like there's a goof in Midnight on the Firing Line. When Ragesh 3 is attacked by the Narn, G'Kar states that Ragesh 3 was actually a Narn colony before the Centauri conquered it, and this appears to be enough that the Minbari recognize it. But... as we'll learn later on in the series, and what JMS has stated in a few posts, the Narn were a primitive, agrarian people who didn't have space travel prior to the Centauri arrival. Where did you get that they were *primitive*? I know that they describe themselves as a *peaceful*, agrarian people, but I don't recall hearing or reading the primitive part. I got the impression that the Narn were not militaristic or heavily industrialized and didn't put a lot of effort into doing much other than living their own lives, not that they lacked scientific advancement. This wiki entry that I found when double checking supports that: https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Narn_Regime
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Jul 11, 2023 19:52
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:Where did you get that they were *primitive*? I know that they describe themselves as a *peaceful*, agrarian people, but I don't recall hearing or reading the primitive part. Relatively primitive, I suppose is the better way of putting it. I'd need to hunt down JMS' postings on it, but he specified they were not spacefaring when the Centauri conquered them the first time and might've mentioned they were specifically pre-industrial. Londo says similarly in Season 2, but we can allow for that it's Londo (But what about the Narn usage of phrases like "they came to our world" which implies singular? And I think even G'Kar says they were specifically agrarian at some point prior to the Centauri arrival.) It also wouldn't be the first time in B5 where JMS has provided dates that don't fit with previously established ones. But the idea that Narns were taken to colonies like Ragesh 3 as slaves does tie it off neatly, although I'd still question why the Minbari would be the ones to legitimize the claim. While writing this post, I found two of them: "Given that the Narns were agrarian prior to the arrival of the Centauri, and were under their heel, and got most of their tech FROM the Centauri leftovers, no, they're not more advanced. It's a lot like the Russian situation, seemingly this tremendous power, but once you look deep, not as well off as they'd like you to think." "The Narn were not out in space prior to the Centauri arriving." Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Jul 13, 2023 |
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Jul 13, 2023 06:15
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:Where did you get that they were *primitive*? 
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Jul 13, 2023 10:30
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The Narn had space travel prior to the Centauri occupation and before the First Shadow War at that. It's all in the Book of G'Quan and location of the Shadow's homeworld plot. Without them having space travel, they wouldn't have been able to follow the Shadows.
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Jul 13, 2023 18:42
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my guess is there's a serious load bearing distinction between "space travel" and "practical ftl space travel" going on here
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Jul 13, 2023 19:56
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Didn’t the shadows wipe out all the narn telepaths? Might have pushed them back into a planet bound society
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Jul 13, 2023 20:01
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