|
The Grey Council was tied, and Delenn had the final vote. That means that there were four votes before her, so somebody else on top of the warrior caste also voted to kill the humans. The warriors should have known better, but the Minbari had been extremely insular for most of the last millennium, so to them their own customs were more important than deferring to some inferior unknown. Dukhat was the weird one for wanting to open relations when they had been ignoring the galaxy at large since the Shadow War (and presumably some period where they established their sphere of influence). The Centauri barely knew anything about the Minbari, and they were the greatest power in the galaxy over the last century. I think there's the implication that the Minbari hushed up a lot about the Shadow War for fear of the great enemy that was still out there and prophecyzed to return. Presumably the less advanced races that they worked with back then lost their integrity and connection with the past so the data on the Shadow War was more fuzzy. The whole thing with being able to tell that gunports were open but not noticing that they were unpowered never really sat right with me, and the visual design of the Minbari warships certainly doesn't assist with that. But the dramatic purposes of engineering a misunderstanding is valid enough that I don't really worry much about it.
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2024 18:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 18, 2024 04:02 |
|
|
How did the Centauri ever survive first contact with Minbari
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2024 18:50
|
|
|
The Minbari did not honor them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2024 20:23
|
|
|
You think during a fit of passion Delenn shouts "Valens name!" Like a human might shout "Oh God!" And Sheridan is always a little miffed because like. Valen is a guy he knows.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2024 21:23
|
|
|
Milkfred E. Moore posted:I like to wonder if John and Delenn ever talked about the war. Did Delenn ever tell him she cast the deciding vote? IIRC JMS said at some point she would never tell him.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2024 22:35
|
|
|
John Wick of Dogs posted:You think during a fit of passion Delenn shouts "Valens name!" Like a human might shout "Oh God!" And Sheridan is always a little miffed because like. Valen is a guy he knows. “Woo hoo”
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2024 23:28
|
|
|
Given that the Religious caste tried to revive the Rangers shortly prior to that first (official) contact with humans and the Warrior caste didn't seem to like that, I have to suspect that there was a certain predisposition among a subset of the Warrior caste to look for an excuse to start something. Additionally, "Deathwalker" was sheltered by the Wind Swords for "many years." It seems plausible that arrangement started at the end of the Dilgar War, prior to first contact, and that the Warrior caste knew more about the humans than Dukat did. But we know that humanity, not just the Minbari, will eventually "ascend," and I think it's hard to make a case that the Minbari, even after the Earth-Minbari War, are worse than human beings are over the course of the series and afterward.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2024 00:35
|
|
|
The reboot should have a Grey Council that requires members to recuse themselves from deciding whether to avenge their mentor while covered in his blood.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2024 01:06
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:The whole thing with being able to tell that gunports were open but not noticing that they were unpowered never really sat right with me, and the visual design of the Minbari warships certainly doesn't assist with that. But the dramatic purposes of engineering a misunderstanding is valid enough that I don't really worry much about it. In some piece of secondary material, I think the B5 Wars rule book, the explanation for not discerning that the weapons were unpowered was that the Minbari active sensor sweep was powerful enough to interfere with the EA ships' sensors and even caused some minor damage to them so they thought they were under attack.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2024 05:20
|
|
|
Yup that all basically happens in In the Beginning.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2024 05:49
|
|
|
Midjack posted:In some piece of secondary material, I think the B5 Wars rule book, the explanation for not discerning that the weapons were unpowered was that the Minbari active sensor sweep was powerful enough to interfere with the EA ships' sensors and even caused some minor damage to them so they thought they were under attack. The best way to think of it is as naval combat, and specifically submarine combat. The EA ship got hit with a massive radar ping, then the unknown vessel deployed weapons and made sure it was obvious that they had done so.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2024 09:47
|
|
|
I've gotten to TKO in my watch through. It's...fine I guess? The B plot with Susan dealing with the death of her father really helps it. Also there's something about the lumpy alien's speech about how humans don't respect their traditions and beliefs and how they're infesting their home worlds or whatever doesn't sit right with me. Maybe it's because there's a bunch of Centauri in the background nodding in approval of the speech, which is kind of funny given what we know of them and what they did to the Narn among others.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2024 11:40
|
|
|
Eighties ZomCom posted:I've gotten to TKO in my watch through. It's...fine I guess? The B plot with Susan dealing with the death of her father really helps it. That's v much the accepted rating.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2024 12:20
|
|
|
Eighties ZomCom posted:I've gotten to TKO in my watch through. It's...fine I guess? The B plot with Susan dealing with the death of her father really helps it. Yeah, TKO sets up a human-vs-alien dynamic that doesn't really exist anywhere else in the show and doesn't make much sense given everything else seems to indicate that Earth actually has better relations with the minor worlds than most of the other great powers. I chose to believe the whole thing is actually an elaborate scam and the boxing aliens are just being belligerent to stop anyone looking too closely an their 'ancient tradition'. "We're not betting on a blood sport, it's a holy ritual of our people! And, um, of all these other species too!" "Wait, Mu-Tai? As in Muay Thai? That's just Thai boxing, that's not a religious ritual-" "oh crap, these are the guys we stole this sport from originally EVERYONE COME LOOK AT THE INTOLERANT HUMAN!"
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2024 12:28
|
|
|
Obviously aliens WERE racist against humans but the human defeating the champion in TKO cured their racism like how Rocky defeating Ivan Drago ended the cold war
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2024 12:36
|
|
|
Angry Salami posted:Yeah, TKO sets up a human-vs-alien dynamic that doesn't really exist anywhere else in the show and doesn't make much sense given everything else seems to indicate that Earth actually has better relations with the minor worlds than most of the other great powers. There's also actually a canon reason why everyone is speaking English on Babylon 5, no magic Universal Translator involved (save a few specific cases where it's an actual device or program running); It's a neutral language that isn't rooted in any of the existing major powers who have done heinous things to one-another and various minor worlds over the years. And over time it's just become the default trade language as a result.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2024 12:54
|
|
|
Neddy Seagoon posted:There's also actually a canon reason why everyone is speaking English on Babylon 5, no magic Universal Translator involved (save a few specific cases where it's an actual device or program running); It's a neutral language that isn't rooted in any of the existing major powers who have done heinous things to one-another and various minor worlds over the years. And over time it's just become the default trade language as a result. Also as Delenn puts it: only humans could have built Babylon 5 for everyone. Any other race would have built it just for themselves. But humans love getting out there and meeting people so it's open doors and bring your credits. That's why English is the lingua franca.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2024 14:12
|
|
|
John Wick of Dogs posted:Obviously aliens WERE racist against humans but the human defeating the champion in TKO cured their racism like how Rocky defeating Ivan Drago ended the cold war Well the Mutado grandmaster did have a legit reason to turn Walker down, since he was being a dick to everyone, but even then he couched it in "no humans allowed".
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2024 14:15
|
|
|
Angry Salami posted:Yeah, TKO sets up a human-vs-alien dynamic that doesn't really exist anywhere else in the show and doesn't make much sense given everything else seems to indicate that Earth actually has better relations with the minor worlds than most of the other great powers. There is a touch of it in The War Prayer, specifically at the end of the episode where G'kar and the Minbari talk about how they can't understand just how racist all humans are, not like it was a specific group of humans or humanity didn't experience a near extinction level event in the recent past that might make them more xenophobic or anything.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2024 14:21
|
|
|
Watching Grail now and it's there that Lennier says that there's only two castes, followed by Delenn saying that terrible things happen when they agree on something. So I guess the concept of worker caste wasn't introduced then, which leads to the question of who the orange and grey Minbari are.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2024 22:26
|
|
|
Eighties ZomCom posted:Watching Grail now and it's there that Lennier says that there's only two castes, followed by Delenn saying that terrible things happen when they agree on something. So I guess the concept of worker caste wasn't introduced then, which leads to the question of who the orange and grey Minbari are. It wasn't written by JMS, Christy Marx just got something wrong that wasn't caught
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2024 23:12
|
|
|
Angry Salami posted:Yeah, TKO sets up a human-vs-alien dynamic that doesn't really exist anywhere else in the show and doesn't make much sense given everything else seems to indicate that Earth actually has better relations with the minor worlds than most of the other great powers. "You don't take our traditions seriously" seems like a reasonable complaint considering how brash humans got after the Dilgar War. Though frankly, given how much racism gets directed by humans at other humans, it'd be surprising not to see some of that among the aliens, though you'd expect less of it on the station than on their own planets for obvious reasons. TKO is actually technically impressive, but in ways that nobody's going to appreciate. Alien gets hit repeatedly in the prosthetic make-up and bleeds alien blood is really hard to pull off and TKO mostly manages it at the level that you're not even thinking about that. The plot and performances do suffer a bit in exchange, though. Also one of the best pieces of throw-away foreshadowing in the series in that episode.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2024 00:24
|
|
|
Watching A Voice in the Wilderness and I noticed that they're drinking out of those non-spill cups. Just another thing DS9 stole from B5 
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2024 23:42
|
|
|
Narsham posted:But we know that humanity, not just the Minbari, will eventually "ascend," and I think it's hard to make a case that the Minbari, even after the Earth-Minbari War, are worse than human beings are over the course of the series and afterward. I think it's hard to make a case that they're better, depending on your values system. Minbari explicitly reject the idea of having a secular, civilian government while Earth embraces it. Minbari practice genocide over fairly minor incidents, humans don't (the Dilgar were forced back to their home planet, but there's no indication that Earthforce was planning to wipe them out or caused their sun to explode). While the Minbari are technologically ahead of humans 'now', humans embrace more and different kinds of advance, while Minbari seem to be stagnant and limit themselves to things the Vorlons have done (they explicitly reject studying Shadow technology to learn how it works). Baronjutter posted: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. One reason is that it's a lot easier for storytelling purposes. If you have a dictator or small council, you can show them making decisions and deals on the screen or page, but you can't do that with a 100-person senate or 650-member parliament, you'd use up all of your time or page count just trying to introduce them, much less show them interacting. Earth in B5 has a senate that likely has hundreds of members and The Centauri also have a senate that's presumably large, but we mostly just see one of them at a time and they mention how the rest voted, it's only the tiny Grey Council that has all of its members onscreen at once doing something.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2024 03:03
|
|
|
Pantaloon Pontiff posted:I think it's hard to make a case that they're better, depending on your values system. Minbari explicitly reject the idea of having a secular, civilian government while Earth embraces it. Minbari practice genocide over fairly minor incidents, humans don't (the Dilgar were forced back to their home planet, but there's no indication that Earthforce was planning to wipe them out or caused their sun to explode). While the Minbari are technologically ahead of humans 'now', humans embrace more and different kinds of advance, while Minbari seem to be stagnant and limit themselves to things the Vorlons have done (they explicitly reject studying Shadow technology to learn how it works). To be fair, the Minbari were taught by the Vorlons not to touch Shadow technology and have had a thousand years to learn the lesson. Not to mention that Shadow tech works through personality sequestration and it would only take one person to gently caress around and join the Finding Out caste for the Minbari to understand why you don't want to study it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2024 09:35
|
|
|
I don't see how that works in the Minbari's favor - you don't want to touch hydroflouric acid with your hand, but it is incredibly useful in making medicines and computer chips (among other things). Learning how the shadows manage their organic technology and how they navigate hyperspace is good general knowledge, and if there's something fundamentally dangerous (as opposed to 'not Vorlon') about the way Shadows do things it would be better to understand why than to just go 'has spines like shadow stuff, must destroy'. The shadows do some things that we don't see anyone else do like have their ships fade into and out of hyperspace rather than using a gate, and I think knowing how to do that (or understanding what's dangerous about it) is something humans would manage but Minbari not. "These people put traps on the things they made, therefore we shouldn't try to understand how they made these things" does not seem like the mindset that leads to greater advancement to me. The fact that the Minbari have been unquestioningly following the Vorlons and treating them as gods for a thousand years while humans met the Vorlons with immediate suspicion, try learn as much as possible about both Vorlon and Shadow tech when they encountered it, and try to get as much help from both as possible while remaining independent gives humans a lot of points in my book.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2024 17:16
|
|
|
I wonder if the Shadow jump technology has an equivalent to The Bonehead Maneuver
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2024 17:34
|
|
|
One could argue that the Minbari refusal to explore the use of Shadow technology is one of the things that makes them "worthy" of transcending. Just as their beliefs about the soul mean that they're not going to cooperate with Soul Hunters or experiment on the souls in their possession, their beliefs about the Shadows prevent most of them from working with Shadow technology (it's unclear whether an extremist group like the Windswords would have been so fastidious, and of course, we know of at least one religious caste member willing to work with the Drahk). These are questions that come up in the real world, too, whether we're talking about the unwillingness of some people to have anything to do with stem cell research or its fruits because of their beliefs about when human life begins, or the discovery of "scientific research" conducted by Nazis in concentration camps. The latter case's ethical considerations are a bit more clear, but there's arguments to be made for refusing to use that research or for deploying it ("the suffering and death already happened, so why not use it to save lives?"). The question of whether these "scientists" were conducting genuine research or whether it doesn't deserve employment because of flaws in methodology and not in morality may also arise in a discussion; certainly, the USA had no problem employing scientists whose work was founded upon the labor and deaths of the enslaved, but Mengele wasn't one of them. Given the eventual Vorlon willingness to destroy entirely planets to "cut out" even the slightest bit of Shadow contamination, for a Vorlon-influenced culture like the Minbari, a zero-tolerance policy would be the logical and rational course and "understanding" Shadow technology a potential death-sentence for the entire population. We see this manifest on-screen in "And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place," when Delenn drags John away from the war-room because he thinks that trying to think like his enemy is a good idea. That the Minbari approach may not be objectively correct doesn't say that a more "pragmatic" approach is any better. "Believers" lands that message with consequences on full display.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2024 19:34
|
|
|
The Shadows transcended and went beyond the rim with Lorien, just like the Vorlons, so I don't buy that there's something fundamentally 'unworthy' or tainted about shadow technology. A key point in the show is that neither the Vorlons nor Shadows were morally superior to the other and that both were horrible examples to follow, and the fact that the Minbari refuse to accept this lesson and continue to follow Vorlon practice is a significant mark against them in my book. The fact that Minbari reject the idea of attempting to understand the world and instead follow dogma handed down from Vorlons (who were shown to be as bad as the Shadows) like Delenn did in "And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place" is another mark against them in my book. EDIT: And if you're making an analogy between 'using shadow tech' and 'using Nazi research', then the same analogy applies between 'using Vorlon tech' and 'using Nazi research'. Both were fine with things like taking people and reprogramming their brains into tools, and the guys who started blowing up whole planets, killing millions to billions of innocent people, certainly don't get to claim the moral high ground. Pantaloon Pontiff fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Feb 17, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2024 19:57
|
|
|
The Vorlons may have bootstrapped the Minbari back a thousand years ago, but it was with stuff fairly basic to them. They're nowhere near Vorlon-level, they don't really have any of their bioengineering technology beyond Valen's artifacts. To most evidence, it seems like Minbari society was fairly stagnant between the first Shadow War and the second. I don't know if any B5 EU material talks about the Minbari ascending later, but I think they'd need a lot to start their society developing again. Philosophically I think it would've been nice if there was more demonstration of the flaws of stagnance and the issues with the Vorlons' principles rather than just the Vorlons being bad because they started blowing up planets. It seems like something that may have been elaborated on if season 4 hadn't been cut short. I guess the later Minbari civil war and the telepath insurrection demonstrate some of the flaws of the Vorlons, but by then it was kinda too late.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2024 22:10
|
|
|
ultrafilter posted:I don't think that's how you're meant to view the Minbari. Well, there are two responses to that. The first is that looking at the parts of a science fiction society from a critical perspective is a valid way to approach it. I think part of the enjoyment in SF that touches on social structures is examining them and seeing if the author pulled off what they think they puled off. The second is that I'm not sure the 'you're meant' is true just on the basis of what JMS intended. The Vorlons were intended to look like the wise but mysterious so-much-more-advanced-they're gods race who we should emulate at the start, but that facade was clearly meant to fall off as we saw more interaction with them and to be completely torn down once they decided to start blowing up whole planets because they're annoyed with the Shadows. I think the Minbari were supposed to take the trope of the much more advanced race, give that impression at the start, but also not live up to it. They're presented as being a thousand years more advanced technologically and incredibly wise. But they don't show it - in terms of government their wise leaders start a genocidal war for no good reason and their government falls apart as soon as they have major stress (first radically changing, then breaking into civil war). Their society comes off as very refined at first, but later the religious caste seems very stifling and the warrior caste very xenophobic and hostile, and they're not good at fixing basic psych issues - Lennier really needed some therapy. Their advanced tech doesn't seem that far above everyone else - humans are catching up to them, and surpass them in some areas (humans make ships with biological components). They don't have as much of a hostile stance towards telepaths as humans, but also don't seem to have any of the more advanced stuff that psi-corps is trying to develop and don't seem to have done much with it but give telepaths something to do. I didn't catch all of this on my original viewing, but I definitely got the impression that the Minbari were not all they were cracked up to be even without delving into it very deeply.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2024 18:26
|
|
|
Pantaloon Pontiff posted:The Shadows transcended and went beyond the rim with Lorien, just like the Vorlons, so I don't buy that there's something fundamentally 'unworthy' or tainted about shadow technology. The Minbari believed that there was and refused to use it. Humanity reverse engineers Shadow-tech and continues doing so in Crusade. The show doesn't depict that as laudable, either, but Galen isn't presented as a monster despite being a techno-mage. It's mainly the manner in which that research gets conducted (covert, not necessarily using volunteers, outright illegal experiments) which renders it bad. All that said, it's unclear whether ethical or moral "purity" is the main differentiation factor between which species "ascend" and which don't. Nor is it clear that you can replace those words with "worthiness" and explain why some species go beyond the rim and some don't. I don't especially want to debate with the ideas you formed in your head independently of what the show tells us. The criteria Lorien provides at the end of "Into the Fire" is simply this: Lorien posted:If your race survives, if you do not kill yourselves, I look forward to the day when your people join us beyond the rim.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2024 20:09
|
|
|
Watching The Quality of Mercy, and if it wasn't obvious that B5 drew inspiration from Lord of the Rings before now, it should be be now, with Lennier referring to his 117th year as eleventy seventh year. Though I thought Minbari only live around 150 years so maybe this gets dropped later.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2024 23:16
|
|
|
Eighties ZomCom posted:Watching The Quality of Mercy, and if it wasn't obvious that B5 drew inspiration from Lord of the Rings before now, it should be be now, with Lennier referring to his 117th year as eleventy seventh year. Though I thought Minbari only live around 150 years so maybe this gets dropped later. I think Minbari math is base 11, and that eleventy seventh would be 11+7, so 18years old.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 00:36
|
|
|
Narsham posted:All that said, it's unclear whether ethical or moral "purity" is the main differentiation factor between which species "ascend" and which don't. Nor is it clear that you can replace those words with "worthiness" and explain why some species go beyond the rim and some don't. I'm stupid and naive, but I took that Lorien quote to mean that eventually every race who survives will join them beyond the Rim. The entire reason
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 05:28
|
|
|
Rappaport posted:I'm stupid and naive, but I took that Lorien quote to mean that eventually every race who survives will join them beyond the Rim. That's exactly it. There are only two ways that it can go: stagnation or progression. A race that stagnates will ultimately die or destroy itself; a race that does not will eventually reach the point of transcendence.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 10:15
|
|
|
Rappaport posted:I'm stupid and naive, but I took that Lorien quote to mean that eventually every race who survives will join them beyond the Rim. The entire reason Yes. PP's the one assuming that there's some sort of virtue associated with getting to go "beyond the rim" as a species; I'm suggesting that the show doesn't establish that, but acknowledging that it's unclear whether some form of merit can be associated with a species not destroying itself. You just can't make that argument directly.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 19:43
|
|
|
Just got to Sheridan first episode, he's more of a goober then I remember
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 19:51
|
|
|
John Wick of Dogs posted:Just got to Sheridan first episode, he's more of a goober then I remember He's deliberately playing up the gooberness
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 19:58
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 18, 2024 04:02 |
|
|
It's very relatable. He's like "gently caress yeah they got oranges here!"
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 20:12
|
|