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Yeah those are good thoughts.
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Nov 15, 2023 20:44
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:Justin didn't work all that well for me. He is implied to be Sheridan's peer pulling all kinds of strings, but we don't see him actively doing anything before this episode. To me, he just reads as the human mouthpiece to talk about the Shadows' philosophy, not as someone important in his own right or driving anything. I also agree that the 'searching for you' bit didn't hit for me, he shouldn't need to search since Sheridan's location is public and his buddy Morden has visited exactly where Sheridan is. I like the scene as a whole, but I don't think of Justin as a real character in his own right and I think he was supposed to be. The Shadows' philosophy does seem to fall apart if you look too closely at it (they want beings to develop strength through evolution, but when Sheridan evolves a stronger way to do things they object and stop it), but I think that's deliberate and part of showing how Shadows and Vorlons have lost their way. It's possible that the Shadows and Justin - and maybe even the Vorlons post-Kosh - think that Sheridan is Justin's counterpart in that sense, that he's a mouthpiece and figurehead for the Vorlons and their client species in the upcoming proxy war. But (perhaps thanks to Kosh's unorthodox tendencies and coaching) Sheridan is more of an independent factor than anyone planned, in a unique position to alter the entire course of the conflict and eventually bring it to an end.
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Nov 15, 2023 20:44
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:One piece I don't like about the whole Za'ha'dum sequence is that Sheridan sneaking in the backup PPG makes the shadows look bumbling and incompetent rather than Sheridan looking clever. I think the backup personal weapon bit to escape to the shaft would have worked better if he had acquired some sort of hard-to-detect gun in an earlier episode (maybe something a person snuck onto the station, or maybe Delenn/Kosh offered it) or if he brought something low-tech that wouldn't show up on an energy scan (like a modern firearm). The Shadows planning to betray him but not bothering with the basic scan B5 does on everyone who comes into the station makes them look bumbling and incompetent, I think spending a minute to have Sheridan use something other than a gun he wouldn't be able to sneak into the lower-tech, less-paranoid human station would have been better. On the other hand, a combination of having the leader of the "Light" in their lair and whatever is left of Anna Sheridan may have made the Shadows overconfident. F_Shit_Fitzgerald fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Nov 15, 2023 |
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Nov 15, 2023 21:57
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Lemniscate Blue posted:It's possible that the Shadows and Justin - and maybe even the Vorlons post-Kosh - think that Sheridan is Justin's counterpart in that sense, that he's a mouthpiece and figurehead for the Vorlons and their client species in the upcoming proxy war. But (perhaps thanks to Kosh's unorthodox tendencies and coaching) Sheridan is more of an independent factor than anyone planned, in a unique position to alter the entire course of the conflict and eventually bring it to an end. Sheridan did kick them both out of the galaxy so yea, I don't think he really is a counterpart in the way the shadows view it.
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Nov 15, 2023 22:04
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:or if he brought something low-tech that wouldn't show up on an energy scan (like a modern firearm). Such a missed opportunity to make the bad half of Gray 17 is Missing have any significance whatsoever.
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Nov 15, 2023 22:15
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Chevy Slyme posted:Such a missed opportunity to make the bad half of Gray 17 is Missing have any significance whatsoever. Not sure how he would have gotten the Zarg to cooperate, but I’d have watched it
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Nov 15, 2023 22:20
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:The Shadows' philosophy does seem to fall apart if you look too closely at it (they want beings to develop strength through evolution, but when Sheridan evolves a stronger way to do things they object and stop it), but I think that's deliberate and part of showing how Shadows and Vorlons have lost their way. Lemniscate Blue posted:It's possible that the Shadows and Justin - and maybe even the Vorlons post-Kosh - think that Sheridan is Justin's counterpart in that sense, that he's a mouthpiece and figurehead for the Vorlons and their client species in the upcoming proxy war. But (perhaps thanks to Kosh's unorthodox tendencies and coaching) Sheridan is more of an independent factor than anyone planned, in a unique position to alter the entire course of the conflict and eventually bring it to an end. I'm on board with both of these.
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Nov 15, 2023 22:29
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Chevy Slyme posted:Such a missed opportunity to make the bad half of Gray 17 is Missing have any significance whatsoever. I imagine jms going yup that would have been a good idea, it would have been really satisfying.
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Nov 15, 2023 22:30
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:One piece I don't like about the whole Za'ha'dum sequence is that Sheridan sneaking in the backup PPG makes the shadows look bumbling and incompetent rather than Sheridan looking clever. I think the backup personal weapon bit to escape to the shaft would have worked better if he had acquired some sort of hard-to-detect gun in an earlier episode (maybe something a person snuck onto the station, or maybe Delenn/Kosh offered it) or if he brought something low-tech that wouldn't show up on an energy scan (like a modern firearm). The Shadows planning to betray him but not bothering with the basic scan B5 does on everyone who comes into the station makes them look bumbling and incompetent. The Shadows didn't scan Sheridan for weapons because in person he was no threat with or without any weapon he could carry. He was alone, on their homeworld in their biggest city, and in a location where he couldn't reach anything important. He could kill a couple of their human tools - so what? They can always find more and by that point they didn't really need Justin or Morden anyway. He could kill a few Shadows, but the Shadows are a hive mind and it would be like killing two ants in the whole hill. They didn't ask Sheridan to hand over his gun because they were worried he'd use it; they did it because he would have been suspicious if they hadn't asked him. The Shadows being a hive mind is an interesting paradox, actually. They stand for Chaos but move in lockstep, while the Vorlons have more personal individuality yet stand for Order.
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Nov 16, 2023 03:23
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Chevy Slyme posted:Such a missed opportunity to make the bad half of Gray 17 is Missing have any significance whatsoever. Oh yeah, that would be a good place to throw it in. That was probably banging around in the back of my head but I didn't think of the connection when I posted. Jedit posted:He could kill a few Shadows, but the Shadows are a hive mind and it would be like killing two ants in the whole hill. They didn't ask Sheridan to hand over his gun because they were worried he'd use it; they did it because he would have been suspicious if they hadn't asked him. I don't recall anything in the series implying that the shadows have a hive mind at all, I've seen it in fan theories but AFAIK is unsupported in the main story beyond shadows looking somewhat ant-like. There's evidence that Vorlons have a degree of collective consciousness, but even they are still independent, they can just communicate and share memories. A hive mind doesn't fit with their philosophy at all like you said, and while we don't see shadows operate very often we do see that their ships operating alone can't tap into any kind of collective consciousness which seems a point against that. They do have the contradiction of wanting their servants to move in lockstep, so put humans into mind-bending spaceships and put keepers on important figures both of which force them to obey orders. Pantaloon Pontiff fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Nov 16, 2023 |
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Nov 16, 2023 03:52
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Jedit posted:The Shadows didn't scan Sheridan for weapons because in person he was no threat with or without any weapon he could carry. He was alone, on their homeworld in their biggest city, and in a location where he couldn't reach anything important. He could kill a couple of their human tools - so what? They can always find more and by that point they didn't really need Justin or Morden anyway. He could kill a few Shadows, but the Shadows are a hive mind and it would be like killing two ants in the whole hill. They didn't ask Sheridan to hand over his gun because they were worried he'd use it; they did it because he would have been suspicious if they hadn't asked him. It should be added that the Technomage Trilogy explains why the Shadows’ other defenses didn’t react during this episode. And taking Sheridan’s PPG may have been to prevent him from shooting himself. Honestly, it’s easy in the streaming era to forget the challenges in B5’s time. Z’ha’dum already involves three scenes to establish the undetectable nukes Sheridan takes with him. You either add two additional scenes (cutting what?) to establish his undetectable gun—which would really spoil the plan—or you establish it in a prior episode which might have aired two weeks or three months ago, meaning you need a “previously on” opening to re-establish it, which ruins the pacing at the start of the episode. “He hid an extra PPG” reads perfectly well, and they don’t do a whole-body search of Sheridan and seem patently unconcerned about how he’ll react to the offer, so you sacrifice pacing and tension to explain why the Shadows don’t search Sheridan when that explanation isn’t really necessary. Why doesn’t Ulkesh detect Kosh inside Sheridan? Why didn’t Clark have more infiltrators (or bombs) on B5? If you want to, you can poke holes in any work of fiction.
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Nov 16, 2023 05:38
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Narsham posted:Honestly, it’s easy in the streaming era to forget the challenges in B5’s time. Z’ha’dum already involves three scenes to establish the undetectable nukes Sheridan takes with him. You either add two additional scenes (cutting what?) to establish his undetectable gun—which would really spoil the plan—or you establish it in a prior episode which might have aired two weeks or three months ago, meaning you need a “previously on” opening to re-establish it, which ruins the pacing at the start of the episode. I noticed this during my original viewing during the VHS and airwaves era, it's got nothing to do with streaming. You don't need to add any additional scenes, just have him secure the alternate weapon instead of the PPG. A firearm doesn't really need to be established beforehand, but you could do so in Grey 17 is missing and turn that half of the episode into an arc-relevant story instead of pure filler. A high tech undetectable weapon would be established in a previous episode, but here you'd just show it instead of the PPG. You don't need a 'previously on' to show a character using something that's been around from an earlier episode, they didn't do one when Marcus killed himself with the alien healing device. I don't see how the pacing or tension would change if you swap one prop gun for a different one in the exact same scenes, but it covers the issue of 'why don't the Shadows have a simple security device that b5 does when they're much more advanced'. quote:Why doesn’t Ulkesh detect Kosh inside Sheridan? Why didn’t Clark have more infiltrators (or bombs) on B5? If you want to, you can poke holes in any work of fiction. Kosh didn't want Ulkesh to detect him, so he hid from Ulkesh. That's a really easy one. Clark didn't have more infiltrators or bombs on B5 because he was focused on Earth and expected Sheridan to remain loyal, so didn't waste effort pre-positioning lots of resources on B5. That Sheridan's record would lead Clark to expect him to be loyal is explicitly established early on when Sheridan takes command. EDIT: Also Clark had a reasonable contingency plan in place to seize Babylon 5 if Sheridan wasn't loyal, it was only the Minbari intervening to protect Starkiller Sheridan from Clark's ships that let it work, and that only happened because of Delenn's personal intervention. None of those is really similar to 'we see that Babylon 5 has the technology to easily spot energy weapons on anyone boarding, why don't the Shadows do the same on their home base'. Pantaloon Pontiff fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Nov 16, 2023 |
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Nov 16, 2023 07:51
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:Kosh didn't want Ulkesh to detect him, so he hid from Ulkesh. That's a really easy one. Clark didn't have more infiltrators or bombs on B5 because he was focused on Earth and expected Sheridan to remain loyal, so didn't waste effort pre-positioning lots of resources on B5. That Sheridan's record would lead Clark to expect him to be loyal is explicitly established early on when Sheridan takes command. EDIT: Also Clark had a reasonable contingency plan in place to seize Babylon 5 if Sheridan wasn't loyal, it was only the Minbari intervening to protect Starkiller Sheridan from Clark's ships that let it work, and that only happened because of Delenn's personal intervention. And that only happened because she and Sheridan were falling in love, which would have been about the last thing Clark would have expected. Heck, it was the last thing Sheridan expected. @Narsham - the Shadows probably weren't worried about Sheridan shooting himself, considering they were going to kill him if he didn't accept their offer.
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Nov 16, 2023 09:45
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Jedit posted:@Narsham - the Shadows probably weren't worried about Sheridan shooting himself, considering they were going to kill him if he didn't accept their offer. I didn't get the impression that they were going to kill him, I always thought their backup plan was to make him a puppet - Justin talking about the Shadow ship 'pilots' said something like "They do as they're told. And so will you." though I can't find the exact quote right now. I think their plan was to either hit him with something similar to what they use on the Shadow ship pilots or put a keeper on him and use the now-controlled version of him to subvert the alliance. Killing him would probably make him a martyr for everyone to rally around, but having him come back and appear OK but start inciting tensions between different factions, then break the Alliance at a key moment would give them a victory. It makes sense that he'd be able to get away if they wanted to take him alive - killing him would be quick and easy (whether he has a PPG or not), but they if they want to use him they would rather take him into custody. They wouldn't really be worried about him escaping since they cut off access to his only ship and he's alone, so take their time trying to get ahold of him without majorly damaging him. Pantaloon Pontiff fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Nov 16, 2023 |
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Nov 16, 2023 15:24
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Didn't they specifically say that they didn't want to kill him and make him a martyr?
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Nov 16, 2023 15:25
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ultrafilter posted:Didn't they specifically say that they didn't want to kill him and make him a martyr? Justin says it when Sheridan asks. He also says that if they do kill him someone else will take his place. But Justin says a lot of things, and he's evasive. When the Shadows come in after Sheridan refuses their offer, maybe they're going to drag him away, but it doesn't look like it. And "Anna" is still desperate to get him to change his mind, which wouldn't matter if the Shadows planned to change it for him.
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Nov 16, 2023 16:11
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That Anna is not the Anna that loves Sheridan, just a marionette with a constructed personality and a mission. She's not desperate to save his life, but to avoid failure. Presumably if he agrees she gets to stay with him, if he gets Keepered then she isn't needed to keep him in line and goes back into a Shadow ship. And they don't seem like the type to make sure that's a pleasant prospect.
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Nov 16, 2023 16:19
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Jedit posted:Justin says it when Sheridan asks. He also says that if they do kill him someone else will take his place. But Justin says a lot of things, and he's evasive. When the Shadows come in after Sheridan refuses their offer, maybe they're going to drag him away, but it doesn't look like it. And "Anna" is still desperate to get him to change his mind, which wouldn't matter if the Shadows planned to change it for him. If they aren't trying to take him into custody, why not just come in guns blazing or immediately return fire with their advanced weapons when he shoots? Their weapons are superior to human PPGs by a good margin (compare how quickly Kosh went down to shadow weapons vs Ulkesh to human weapons) and he's not armored, so he should just die. Sheridan being able to escape doesn't really make sense if they just want him dead, but if they want to capture him and think they have him cornered they can just take their time and wear him out. This is a place where the 'no stun settings' philosophy JMS has comes in handy, if they did have a stun setting for weapons there wouldn't be any tension here, and no reason for him to be injured but mobile at the balcony scene. NewAnna's job is pretty clearly to get him to change his mind, and the Shadows probably don't reward failure. I think she's a reconstructed personality sort of like but not actually the same as Original Recipe Anna, Sheridan points out that she's not the same. Like Lemniscate Blue said, if she fails NewAnna is going to become Generic Ship Component Anna again, which is either effectively death (they couldn't revive Original Recipe Anna) or extremely unpleasant.
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Nov 16, 2023 16:38
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Possibly newAnna may still have the idea of loving Sheridan in her head, since she still has all the same memories as oldAnna, although she may not be capable of previous levels of empathy.
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Nov 16, 2023 17:56
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:If they aren't trying to take him into custody, why not just come in guns blazing or immediately return fire with their advanced weapons when he shoots? Their weapons are superior to human PPGs by a good margin (compare how quickly Kosh went down to shadow weapons vs Ulkesh to human weapons) and he's not armored, so he should just die. Sheridan being able to escape doesn't really make sense if they just want him dead, but if they want to capture him and think they have him cornered they can just take their time and wear him out. This is a place where the 'no stun settings' philosophy JMS has comes in handy, if they did have a stun setting for weapons there wouldn't be any tension here, and no reason for him to be injured but mobile at the balcony scene. Did they use weapons to kill Kosh? I thought the Shadows simply tore him apart without him fighting back. Any road up: I'll cede the point that the Shadows didn't want to kill Sheridan. But I won't call them stupid for not searching him for a backup gun which ultimately did no more than buy him a few seconds, if that. Their real mistake was letting him keep his link.
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Nov 16, 2023 19:15
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Jedit posted:Did they use weapons to kill Kosh? I thought the Shadows simply tore him apart without him fighting back. "Without him fighting back" isn't said anywhere, and the amount of time that it takes them and the fact that Kosh is struggling to speak during the fight implies some level of resistance. While the fight between Kosh and the Shadows isn't explicitly shown, there is an energy surge and burnt pieces of armor. Servants of the shadows are shown using advanced weapons. Ulkesh is shown shrugging off human PPG fire. Whatever the shadows did to Kosh is significantly stronger than the fire human PPGs can dish out. If your theory is that Shadows don't have the weapons their subject races use and only tear things apart with their bare legs, which are more powerful than the weapons B5 security can muster, but also can be stopped by a human PPG when moving in to use those legs but not by anything a Vorlon can do, I think you're getting into silly theory territory. quote:Any road up: I'll cede the point that the Shadows didn't want to kill Sheridan. But I won't call them stupid for not searching him for a backup gun which ultimately did no more than buy him a few seconds, if that. Their real mistake was letting him keep his link. They didn't need to *search* him, they just needed to *scan* him, like Babylon 5 is shown to casually do to everyone who boards the station. If they don't care that he has a gun, then there is no reason to take his PPG and hand it to Morden. If they do care, then they should do the thing that much-lower-tech Babylon 5 does to all visitors without difficulty. This isn't a case of 'they didn't do a thing no one is ever shown to do', this is a case of 'they didn't do something that's shown to be routine for lower-tech people and would make a lot of sense to do here'. Letting him keep his link is explained in the Technomage trilogy, the planets defenses should have cut off the link, but they were down during the critical time because of issues with the being who's brain is forced to control the defenses.
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Nov 16, 2023 21:21
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:"Without him fighting back" isn't said anywhere, and the amount of time that it takes them and the fact that Kosh is struggling to speak during the fight implies some level of resistance. While the fight between Kosh and the Shadows isn't explicitly shown, there is an energy surge and burnt pieces of armor. Servants of the shadows are shown using advanced weapons. Ulkesh is shown shrugging off human PPG fire. Whatever the shadows did to Kosh is significantly stronger than the fire human PPGs can dish out. "Without him fighting back" is extremely hinted at in the dialogue, though, like when Kosh says that there will be a price to pay for his intervention in the war: He knows the Shadows are going to whack him. So I never got the sense that he was actively defending himself when Morden and the Shadows entered his quarters, but rather he had accepted his fate (which is why he appears to Sheridan as his dad). The burst of energy, I figure, is just what happens when a Vorlon gets ganked.
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Nov 16, 2023 21:54
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jms says:quote:Kosh fought and fought hard. And he did not go down easily...and one might say that yes, he did not go down alone...but not entirely in the way you're thinking.
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Nov 16, 2023 22:09
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Jedit posted:Justin says it when Sheridan asks. He also says that if they do kill him someone else will take his place. But Justin says a lot of things, and he's evasive. When the Shadows come in after Sheridan refuses their offer, maybe they're going to drag him away, but it doesn't look like it. And "Anna" is still desperate to get him to change his mind, which wouldn't matter if the Shadows planned to change it for him. I'm not sure Justin was really right about it either. Up until Sheridan showed up at the station again, things were looking really bleak; the alliance had largely fallen apart and Delenn was getting ready to lead a suicide charge of what remained right at Z'ha'dum. Doesn't seem like Sheridan was as effective as a martyr as he expected. (Although he certainly was during the Earth civil war; that scene I suppose you could argue that Justin wasn't accounting for a White Star with nuclear weapons slamming straight into the Shadow capital, but then I feel like until that happened the implied threat was that if Sheridan had ultimately refused to cooperate then they were going to destroy Babylon 5... which again seems like a pretty bleak place as I don't see the alliance surviving that blow either. Jedit posted:And that only happened because she and Sheridan were falling in love, which would have been about the last thing Clark would have expected. Heck, it was the last thing Sheridan expected. Ehhhhh I think the intervention would have happened without the romance angle, B5 was obviously a vital element for the Army of Light, and Sheridan was already a partner in the effort against the Shadows by that point. Letting Clark take B5 would have been a big blow for her interests regardless of Sheridan.
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Nov 17, 2023 01:40
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:I noticed this during my original viewing during the VHS and airwaves era, it's got nothing to do with streaming. I don't get your point: a show written for syndicated broadcast which JMS does not expect will be watched in one sitting, but week-to-week, can just show Sheridan strapping a special gun to his leg and assume everyone knows what that means? You'd also have to add Sheridan getting scanned. Which he isn't. No weapon he could conceal on his person concerns the Shadows, or they're being arrogant (we saw plenty of that with Kosh). Your change complicates a story to plug a problem that bothers you personally. And in fact, the alien healing device gets extensive coverage in Endgame, the episode which ends with Marcus saving Ivanova: FRANKLIN (log entry) "... at which point Captain Sheridan and I were able to revive Mr. Garibaldi after being shot in the back. Even this brief exposure, a few seconds apiece, confirms that the alien healing device is extremely dangerous. It should not be used again even for extreme measures until we can control it more precisely, or it will result in the..." Given that Sheridan straps a hold-out PPG to his leg, why don't you just assume it is shielded from detection as-is, if you don't need a line of dialogue to establish that? As you yourself pointed out, the Shadows' planetary defense system is down at this moment as explained in the Technomage trilogy. We see that the Eye can apparently mind-control humans and Minbari alike, so the Shadows have no reason to be concerned about what Sheridan gets up to; their defenses are just unexpectedly distracted at the right moment. Justin might reasonably not want to get shot and asks Morden to take the PPG as a precaution. Additionally, Sheridan has Kosh hiding inside him. The Shadows don't seem to know that, or they'd not let him set foot on the planet, given what Anna says: "The aliens believe they'll die if anything even remotely Vorlon touches Z'ha'dum." It's quite possible that Kosh can conceal Sheridan somewhat from the Shadows and help him make his brief escape. The show's not really interested in that, anyway, and the point of Sheridan's second blaster isn't that it's a crucial part of the story but that it shows he doesn't trust the Shadows at all.
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Nov 17, 2023 01:41
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An interestingly ambiguous statement, particularly in light of some things elsewhere on the page: quote:2. If Kosh did take out some Shadows, will more be sent to Morden as replacements? quote:Why didn't Kosh leave? So Kosh did fight, but he didn't kill any of his attackers and he had accepted that he was going to die. Putting it all together, it's clear Kosh wasn't fighting to defend himself. He was fighting to stay alive long enough to send Sheridan the message, and possibly to embed part of himself in Sheridan if he hadn't already done so. Farmer Crack-rear end posted:I suppose you could argue that Justin wasn't accounting for a White Star with nuclear weapons slamming straight into the Shadow capital, but then I feel like until that happened the implied threat was that if Sheridan had ultimately refused to cooperate then they were going to destroy Babylon 5... which again seems like a pretty bleak place as I don't see the alliance surviving that blow either. That wasn't an implied threat. Justin says they'll take away Sheridan's support mechanism, and at the same time a Shadow fleet arrives at B5, leaving only when the city is nuked. Jedit fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Nov 17, 2023 |
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Nov 17, 2023 01:45
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Narsham posted:You'd also have to add Sheridan getting scanned. Which he isn't. No weapon he could conceal on his person concerns the Shadows, or they're being arrogant (we saw plenty of that with Kosh). Your change complicates a story to plug a problem that bothers you personally. So your idea is that they're exactly concerned enough to take the PPG he openly carries away from him, but not worried if he actually has one in his possession. That seems like a weirdly calibrated level of concern vs unconcern to me. If they were just arrogant and unconcerned, they'd let him carry whatever gun. If they are concerned, they could take a simple security precaution that doesn't even need to be shown onscreen. It seems to me they'd either want him unarmed or not care if he's armed, not care just enough to take the obvious gun away but not enough to do a simple scan we've seen can be done quickly and unobtrusively with less tech than they have. I'm not sure how Sheridan using a different holdout gun than he did would complicate the story, since you can have all of the scenes play out the same way, just with a different prop. It's possible JMS could add dialogue if he wanted to, but visual storytelling works fine and 'why did Sheridan bring a firearm instead of a PPG' would be one of those things people would discuss endlessly on newsgroups. It also makes Sheridan look smart, since he'd be using his wits to defeat a superior opponent instead of just lucking into the Shadows having the precisely calibrated mixture of concern and arrogance needed for him to get the second PPG in. And if you use a firearm and put mention of Sheridan acquiring one into an earlier epsisode, you turn the Grey 17 is Missing's monster-of-the-week bit into an arc episode which is a huge plus I hadn't even thought of before posting here. Sounds like a lot of plusses with no actual downside to me. quote:Given that Sheridan straps a hold-out PPG to his leg, why don't you just assume it is shielded from detection as-is, if you don't need a line of dialogue to establish that? Because it's never been established that human PPGs can be made to be shielded from detection like that (much less shielded from whatever shadow tech can do) or that there are any on Babylon 5. The only ones we've seen bypass scanners IIRC are ones that are hidden in shielded containers, enter the station in a way that bypasses scanners, or are non-PPG-looking components with the power source seperate that can be assembled later (Londo's gun in his quarters). If it were easy to shield a human-level PPG ready for use and concealed on the person, it begs the question of why no one uses one in the many, many situations where such a thing would be useful.
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Nov 18, 2023 03:32
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Why would Zha'Ha'Dum have personal weapon scanners at all? The planet basically has the Space Eye of Sauron, so a hostile individual can't even get near the planet. How many thousands of years do you think it's been since someone hostile to the Shadows has stepped foot on that planet? 10, 20, 100 thousand? This is such a goofy thing to worry about...
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Nov 18, 2023 08:04
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Q_res posted:Why would Zha'Ha'Dum have personal weapon scanners at all? The planet basically has the Space Eye of Sauron, so a hostile individual can't even get near the planet. How many thousands of years do you think it's been since someone hostile to the Shadows has stepped foot on that planet? 10, 20, 100 thousand? Yeah I think we've gone round enough times on this one.
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Nov 18, 2023 08:10
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It's as worrisome as an unnoticed vent on a Death Star. 
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Nov 18, 2023 08:12
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An important thing with that whole situation is that the Shadows are treating Sheridan pretty sincerely, they're true believers when it comes to their philosophy and do want him with them rather than against them. There's numerous ways they could have acted more cautiously towards him but their best case scenario that day is him listening to their pitch and being convinced. They don't even have immediate reason for extra caution because for his part Sheridan outwardly appears to be dealing with them in good faith as well, they're caught completely by surprise when he eventually reveals he knows the truth about Anna
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Nov 18, 2023 08:55
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Maybe the Shadows have a thing for legs and feeling up Sheridan's gams for weapons would have sent them into a swoon.
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Nov 18, 2023 14:03
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I'm amusing myself by wondering if President Biden ever packs a subcompact in an ankle holster when he travels overseas.
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Nov 18, 2023 16:11
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How come Babylon 5 only has a handful of windows? Brown sector with the poors get windows to peak out of, but the ambassadors do not.
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Dec 3, 2023 04:35
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They'd be in the floor which isn't very handy, but the main reason is the station has multiple hull layers. The parts of the station intended for habitation are inside the inner hull. If you had a window you'd just be able to look into downbelow.
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Dec 3, 2023 04:48
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I was poking around and found some B5 concept art. https://imgur.com/gallery/mPBnL86 https://imgur.com/gallery/qZJI71H  
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Dec 3, 2023 05:47
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WHAT!!! That is so cool! I've never actually seen that art before.
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Dec 3, 2023 05:53
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That reminds me of the retro 50s version of DS9 from "Far Beyond The Stars".
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Dec 3, 2023 07:50
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SlothfulCobra posted:I was poking around and found some B5 concept art. I love the Barbarella-era aesthetic, but all I can see is this but thicc  And now I want Garibaldi having a pleasant banter with HAL instead of the friendly station AI 
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Dec 3, 2023 08:57
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| # ? May 18, 2024 01:34 |
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SlothfulCobra posted:I was poking around and found some B5 concept art. Here's the full version of the top picture including the original logo for the station and show:  The artist is Peter Ledger, who in 1994 became the first victim of the "Babylon Curse" when he was killed in a road accident aged just 49. It will come as no surprise to you that Ledger got his big break from George Lucas and Gary Kurtz, seeing as how the fighter ship in bottom left is basically Ralph McQuarrie's B-Wing from Return of the Jedi painted red. Jedit fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Dec 3, 2023 |
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Dec 3, 2023 11:51
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