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I said come in! posted:We just had like one episode that was about that janitor in season 5. I really liked that one. I just got to By Any Means Necessary, and Eduardo Delvientos would have been a great reoccurring character
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Feb 9, 2024 04:53
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Eighties ZomCom posted:From Parliament of Dreams I have rewatched this show about 10 times. Never noticed.
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Feb 9, 2024 14:16
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When did the worker caste get conceived/introduced? Pretty sure on at least one or two occasions early on the Minbari are described (and I'm pretty sure at least one of those is by Delenn) as being religious or warrior caste.
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Feb 9, 2024 18:37
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IIRC Worker Caste doesn't get mentioned until the second season, I would not be surprised if they were introduced because JMS decided to have Minbari society based on 3s for the Delenn, Sheridan, and Sinclair time travel shenanigans after Sinclair left. It's not really clear what the castes are or how many Minbari are in them (Religious caste builds and crews their own fleet, for example), so 'generic ship worker' could have been intended as Religious or Warrior caste originally.
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Feb 9, 2024 20:17
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My assumption, and probably an incorrect one because I really dont know that there is anything that supports this, is that all Minbari are put into one of the three castes. Although I don't know that this really makes sense. Like who handles the farming, and their version of Starbucks? Who distributes the boba tea? The Minbari porn? Does that have its own caste?
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Feb 9, 2024 21:17
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I feel like the implication (or it may even be outright explicit), especially when Delenn reforms the Grey Council, is that basically every Minbari that's not explicitly Religious or Warrior caste is Worker caste.
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Feb 9, 2024 21:21
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:When did the worker caste get conceived/introduced? Pretty sure on at least one or two occasions early on the Minbari are described (and I'm pretty sure at least one of those is by Delenn) as being religious or warrior caste. She says something along the lines of when the Religious and Warrior Castes agree on something terrible things happen. But there hasn't been any explicit mention of the caste system so far in my watch through.
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Feb 10, 2024 01:15
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:When did the worker caste get conceived/introduced? Pretty sure on at least one or two occasions early on the Minbari are described (and I'm pretty sure at least one of those is by Delenn) as being religious or warrior caste. The first mention of the phrase "worker caste" on the Lurker's Guide is on the page for All Alone in the Night.
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Feb 10, 2024 01:47
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Yeah, I think it's safe to say that all Minbari are in one of the three castes, but how they're divided up is not clear. Are they 1/3 1/3 1/3 of the population, or is it like 10% 10% 80% with workers as the bulk, or some other ratio? What do people in each of the castes do, are their jobs that are only done by one? We see explicitly that "Being in the military" doesn't mean you're in the warrior caste, the religious caste is shown to have their own full combat ships and ground troops (all crewed by religious caste). Are all buildings constructed by the worker caste, or do the religious and warrior caste have their own architects? Do they each have their own police, or does one caste run that? Who builds warships and general spaceships? Are telepaths all in the religious caste, or are their military and worker telepaths that Delenn didn't mention to the girl running from Psi Corps? Really all we have is that there are three castes, and that each caste gets 1/3 of the supreme council vote at the start, but beyond that it's really vague, and the most simple explanation (religious caste runs temples and religious education, warrior military, worker most of the rest) is explicitly contradicted by the show.
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Feb 10, 2024 02:18
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:Are they 1/3 1/3 1/3 of the population When Delenn reforms the Council with the new 2/5/2 split this is explicitly said not to be the case and that the Religious and Warrior castes are both minorities that yield outsized power.
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Feb 10, 2024 02:24
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:When did the worker caste get conceived/introduced? Pretty sure on at least one or two occasions early on the Minbari are described (and I'm pretty sure at least one of those is by Delenn) as being religious or warrior caste.
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Feb 10, 2024 02:28
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delenn says in season 1 i think that minbari society is made up of two castes, warrior and religious and i think the explanation given over the years is that she was lying (lol, minbari don't...) or otherwise deliberately leaving them out (what a jerk!!)
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Feb 10, 2024 03:58
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It's made of two castes that matter
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Feb 10, 2024 05:48
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Q_res posted:When Delenn reforms the Council with the new 2/5/2 split this is explicitly said not to be the case and that the Religious and Warrior castes are both minorities that yield outsized power. Also In The Beginning, there's a scene where Londo is being asked about the Minbari and one of the generals ask if it's true a third of their population is in the military and Londo tries to correct them by saying that they have a warrior caste but gets ignored.
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Feb 10, 2024 07:15
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it's probably as simple that the episode grail where delenn says it wasn't written by jms. i think there's a few season 1 episodes like that (war prayer, legacies) where it's not clear if the non-joe writer just didn't know the facts of the universe or if things changed when sinclair left the show.
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Feb 10, 2024 11:05
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:We see explicitly that "Being in the military" doesn't mean you're in the warrior caste, the religious caste is shown to have their own full combat ships and ground troops (all crewed by religious caste). Are all buildings constructed by the worker caste, or do the religious and warrior caste have their own architects? Do they each have their own police, or does one caste run that? Who builds warships and general spaceships? Are telepaths all in the religious caste, or are their military and worker telepaths that Delenn didn't mention to the girl running from Psi Corps? The religious caste having a fleet built and a military was a major part of the civil war, they're not supposed to do that. And the worker caste build everything: "When our two sides fight, they are the ones caught in the middle, forgotten, until it is their time to serve, to build, to die. They build the temples we pray in, the ships you fight in."
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Feb 10, 2024 15:47
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mossyfisk posted:The religious caste having a fleet built and a military was a major part of the civil war, they're not supposed to do that. And the worker caste build everything: I think you're confusing two things. In Severed Dreams, Delenn says "Between the Worker Caste and the Religious Caste, we control two thirds of our forces." And I think it's either later in the third season, or in the fourth season, the Warrior Caste concern is that the Religious Caste built and crewed the White Star fleet without their knowledge or consent.
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Feb 11, 2024 01:45
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What episode do they say that the religious caste was not supposed to have any ships (or where are you getting that)? I don't recall the religious caste having warships as ever being called a problem, and like Milkfred pointed out the religious and worker caste controlling their own forces is treated as something normal. The warrior caste gets pissed about the White Star fleet specifically, but the religious and worker caste manning ships isn't (AFAIR) mentioned as a problem, just the secret development. The "When our two sides fight..." bit is from a political speech pointed at flattering the worker caste, I don't think it's a statement of fact. I interpret that as more like the way American politicians talk about how small farmers are producing the food that feeds the US and the world and preserve important values, even though food production is really mostly huge agri-business concerns that only value profit. I see that line as being similar to when Bill Clinton (president for most of B5's run) said in a speech "Our farm communities feed our Nation and much of the world. They also nourish the values on which our country was born and which have led us now for over 220 years, hard work and faith and family, devotion to community and to the land. We simply can't flourish if we let our rural roots shrivel and decline." - it's extreme hyperbole designed to flatter the group you're talking about, not a statement of fact.
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Feb 11, 2024 23:46
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:What episode do they say that the religious caste was not supposed to have any ships (or where are you getting that)? I don't recall the religious caste having warships as ever being called a problem, and like Milkfred pointed out the religious and worker caste controlling their own forces is treated as something normal. The warrior caste gets pissed about the White Star fleet specifically, but the religious and worker caste manning ships isn't (AFAIR) mentioned as a problem, just the secret development. It's not just the White Star fleet but also the Rangers, which in the last Shadow War had been made up only of Warrior Caste Minbari. Gray 17 is Missing posted:Delenn: "You chose not to act. Someone had to." (Bolding mine) Back in the CompuServe days JMS answered a similar question about whether only the Warrior Caste had warships: JMS posted:Each caste populates the ships in their jurisdiction with their own people. Which is why those on the Minbari warships that came in, which we'll see shortly, are religious caste, no warriors among them...but even the religious caste is well trained in combat, as part of their education in temple. We've seen some of this already in Lennier's abilities in a fight. fan posted:Does this mean that there are Warrior and Worker Caste Minbari doing Religious duties in the temples and Warrior and Religious Caste Minbari doing Worker Caste duties as well? JMS posted:No, those aspects are kept absolutely separate and caste-specific. It's only when you get into the warships that, by tradition, some Warrior Caste have been involved with the others, mainly as a courtesy. Lemniscate Blue fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 00:08
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I've always assumed the religious caste was probably also responsible for scientific research, .etc.
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Feb 12, 2024 01:28
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Small White Dragon posted:I've always assumed the religious caste was probably also responsible for scientific research, .etc. I always assumed that the Worker caste did anything notable or valuable in Minbari society while the other two castes were slapping dicks.
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Feb 12, 2024 08:16
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I would expect there to be a lot of latitude to interpret a lot of various tasks to be religious or somehow in the assistance of war.
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Feb 12, 2024 14:57
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SlothfulCobra posted:I would expect there to be a lot of latitude to interpret a lot of various tasks to be religious or somehow in the assistance of war. Now I'm imagining the grey council as like half halachic assembly, half union contract negotiation where they spend weeks hashing out the exact caste-appropriate hand position each caste can use while holding a power drill
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Feb 12, 2024 15:03
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My head cannon is that they're started with just the military as warrior caste and just the church as religious caste, but 'today' it's something like 40-60% worker caste, rest split between religious and military, and most pieces of the economy are spread around with a fig leaf of being related to the ideals of the caste. That's what I'd use if I was running an RPG set in the B5 world, but I'd also try not to look too closely at it. If the Warrior and religious castes are really small, then the Minbari government is really messed up in terms of representing what its population wants and Delenn's reform for changing the Grey Council to 5-2-2 is better than 3-3-3 but still is hilariously bad at conforming to what the Minbari people want. Small White Dragon posted:I've always assumed the religious caste was probably also responsible for scientific research, .etc. Scientific research that leads to better starship drives, sensors, armor, and weapons? Sounds like a job for the military caste to me, why would we let those head-in-the-clouds fools handle something that important to fighting wars! That's the problem with trying to divvy up who does what, there's almost always a justification for putting a given activity into any or all of the three castes.
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Feb 12, 2024 16:27
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Small White Dragon posted:I've always assumed the religious caste was probably also responsible for scientific research, .etc. Deathwalker was held by a subgroup of the warrior caste, and she was completing medical research. I’d guess all three castes have their own research programs which are supposedly operating in cooperation. The show implies that the caste system led to plenty of leadership struggles before Valen. The show-current tensions may be partly a matter of Shadow influence, but most likely are related to reaching the end of Valen’s prophetic knowledge and to Earth and then Delenn creating leadership vaccuums. The warrior caste also got really mad about how the Earth-Minbari War ended. We never see direct evidence of Shadow meddling, but the attempt to assassinate a Vorlon in The Gathering implies either that, or an extremist Minbari group attempting to prevent Valen’s prophecies from coming true. It probably doesn’t make much difference. The central conflict seems to be that the warrior caste see the religious caste’s “the prophecies are coming to pass” as a power grab and discovering they built a huge fleet of Vorlon-Minbari hybrid ships was the last straw.
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Feb 12, 2024 16:37
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:My head cannon is that they're started with just the military as warrior caste and just the church as religious caste, but 'today' it's something like 40-60% worker caste, rest split between religious and military, and most pieces of the economy are spread around with a fig leaf of being related to the ideals of the caste. That's what I'd use if I was running an RPG set in the B5 world, but I'd also try not to look too closely at it. If the Warrior and religious castes are really small, then the Minbari government is really messed up in terms of representing what its population wants and Delenn's reform for changing the Grey Council to 5-2-2 is better than 3-3-3 but still is hilariously bad at conforming to what the Minbari people want. It's not that bad, because it's a balance of power. If the Worker caste want something, they can get it whatever the others think. If the Religious and Warrior castes disagree, then the decision is entirely in the hands of the Workers. And on those rare occasions when the Religious and Warrior castes agree, they still have a small brake on them by having to win the support of at least one Worker - although those circumstances would probably see unanimity on the Council, as it would be one of those moments that Delenn described as the Minbari moving together as a whole. At the same time, though, it doesn't completely deprive the Religious and Warrior castes of a voice as it would if it were a 7-1-1 division. And the Workers might be able to do what they want if they move in unison, but with even one dissenter the other two castes can block it.
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Feb 12, 2024 16:39
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Eighties ZomCom posted:
Barista caste
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Feb 13, 2024 20:00
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What I'm saying is that if the warrior and religious castes are tiny minorities (like 90-5-5 or 80-10-10) like some postulate rather than the 20-30% I'm head-cannoning, then them having 2/9 votes means they're extremely over-represented. Also if they're actually just 'the church' and 'the military', putting those groups in such control over the general civil government and of foreign policy is a little hard to swallow as a good idea. The Minbari are presented as an advanced race closer to being able to evolve to pass beyond the rim and we are, while the Narn and Centauri are so broken they never will, but I have a hard time swallowing as more advanced a government that is a mix of theocracy and a military Junta, even if they back down a little from having those two institutions in control. Also I don't see anything like a balance of power in the Grey Council. All you need to pass major changes is 5 votes - we've seen that 'select the leader', 'remove someone from the council', 'change the division of the council', and 'embark on a war of extermination against another species' all are done with 5/9 votes, and those aren't exactly small decisions. With so few members, it's pretty easy to have one or two outside of the 'norm', so it wouldn't be that hard to get 3 workers who want something at odds with what most of the Minbari want. Those 3 workers can then vote in whatever new legislation they want (including removing and adding members to the grey council) by offering either religious or warrior caste something extreme but narrow that their caste wants to secure their votes. And what they offer could go as far as 'start a war to conquer, force-convert, or exterminate this other race' or 'take one of the seats from the other caste and give it to you so the council is now 5-3-1'. I really think that Delenn's change is a stopgap measure to end the immediate damage of the civil war, but with the end of traditions (like the 3-3-3 split) in the long run the Minbari government will need to choose to change radically to something more stable, or it will end up changed into something favoring the first radical faction that decides to exploit the setup for their own gain.
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Feb 14, 2024 00:06
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Yeah this has always been an odd trope I've seen in a lot of scifi and fantasy. Where the super advanced/evolved/wise race ends up being some sort of caste based nightmare dictatorship. But its often passed off as this deeply harmonious society that doesn't even need democracy because there's just so much harmony you see.
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Feb 14, 2024 01:39
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I don't think that's how you're meant to view the Minbari.
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Feb 14, 2024 01:57
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ultrafilter posted:I don't think that's how you're meant to view the Minbari. They decide to destroy an entire race because someone shot them by accident
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Feb 14, 2024 02:02
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Wisest of all Minbari: An unknown alien race approaches. We should open our gun ports and point them at them. As a sign of respect.
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Feb 14, 2024 02:08
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that wasn't their wise guy, that was the captain, one of their proud warrior dipshits
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Feb 14, 2024 02:27
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Yeah the wisest Minbari only immediately called for genocide after one person died.
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Feb 14, 2024 07:45
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I've always suspected, based on what we see of the Warrior caste, that if the war hadn't been such a one-sided slaughter they wouldn't have viewed it as this holy and unstoppable endeavor.
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Feb 14, 2024 08:08
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Kibayasu posted:Yeah the wisest Minbari only immediately called for genocide after one person died. I wouldn't exactly call Delenn wise at that point. It was like letting the intern make a major business decision after the boss dropped dead, and the Warriors went along with it because the dead boss was the one member of the Religious caste who they respected as much as their own.
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Feb 14, 2024 08:30
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Jedit posted:I wouldn't exactly call Delenn wise at that point. It was like letting the intern make a major business decision after the boss dropped dead, and the Warriors went along with it because the dead boss was the one member of the Religious caste who they respected as much as their own. And she wasn't exactly emotionally stable at the time, what with grieving over the corpse of her beloved mentor and all.
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Feb 14, 2024 08:34
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I like to wonder if John and Delenn ever talked about the war. Did Delenn ever tell him she cast the deciding vote?
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Feb 14, 2024 10:34
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Does Delenn at any point explain to John what happened to her in that fog chamber experience? Her decision towards the war would be bound to be brought up then. But it seemed like Delenn was pretty quiet about her political experiences with John? I'm probably just forgetting some scenes here.
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Feb 14, 2024 17:57
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John Wick of Dogs posted:Wisest of all Minbari: An unknown alien race approaches. We should open our gun ports and point them at them. As a sign of respect. Looking back at that in context of the entire show it almost seems like the Warrior caste were just bored and wanted to start some poo poo given how eagerly they hopped onto the crying proclamation of the most junior member and ran with it without even thinking. Dukhart, a huge figure, one of their most important voices, sees the gunport stuff and immediately freaks out because he knows how it looks, meaning the higher level warrior caste should know the same. Seriously, the most advanced race in the galaxy (Vorlons don't count) who spearheaded the last greatest war in the entire galaxy to protect the freedom of all races then decides to genocide the gently caress out of was basically babies with sharp sticks compared to the Minbari. pentyne fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Feb 14, 2024 |
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Feb 14, 2024 18:07
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