History FanFic / AThinVeneer

* {{Understatement}}: When Sarek is talking with President Elizabeth Levy and she asks him what it's like living with a human, he acknowledges that it is fascinating and confesses, "My logic is uncertain when it comes to she who is my wife", prompting President Levy to privately muse that, regardless of the limited time she has spent with the Vulcan, even a blind man could see that Sarek loves his wife.

* WorthyOpponent: Several Klingons reveal that many among them consider Kirk to be this, calling him the "Great Enemy" and expressing both regret that he wasn't born into their Empire and they won't get to fight him with the peace treaty between the Federation and the Empire, and ecstatic that they get to fight alongside him with the outbreak of the Federation/Klingon-Minbari War.

* LightIsNotGood: The Minbari, and very definitely the Vorlons and the Aschen. For all of their preaching about being the Light against the Darkness, their attempted genocide of humanity, and their frequent talks later in the series about using biological weaponry, puts paid to any trace of their benevolence.

** The Aschen and the Minbari accuse the Shadows of being this for the Federation, even after the Shadows go on ISN and say that no, they have nothing to do with the Federation, and that they've signed a treaty of non-aggression with them.

** As time goes on, Minbari start to get upgrades from the Vorlons, which make battles much harder for the Federation, and the Minbari do learn from mistakes. So do their much stronger cousin, the Aschen... to the point where the longer the story goes, the fewer and farther between the curbstomps come.

* TheOnlyOneAllowedToKillYou: Once again, Kirk is in fine form in this story. Not in the sense that he wants to be the one to defeat the Minbari, but in the sense that yet ''another'' group of aliens wants him dead, and demands that ''they'' be the ones to tear off his head. Bonus points for the Klingons still being upset about the peace treaty because it means they won't get to fight "The Great Enemy" anymore.

** The title, "A Thin Veneer," also shows up several times, asking the question of exactly how "Civilized" each group in the war is. Are the Minbari, with their CrystalSpiresAndTogas technology, who have launched a genocidal war, civilized? Are the Federation, who for all their good points, still show signs of righteous rage towards old foes and the Minbari? Are the agressive Klingons? Are the Gorn?
* AwakeningTheSleepingGiant: The Minbari's murder of twenty five million beings from several major nations in a Pearl Harbor-style attack on a Federation colony brings the Federation, Klingons and Gorn into the Earth/Minbari War with a vengeance.

** Interestingly, the whole thing started as a joke- some "Wise Guy," at Starfleet Headquarters started labeling Gorn ship classes after Dinosaurs. When the Gorn found out, and found out the reverence that humans placed on "The large collections of bones in those old museums," they found it hilarious, but also took great pride in it. Now, they're almost certainly naming their ship classes to screw with Starfleet Intelligence.
* ExternalRetCon -- the Vorlons led the Dominion into the Dominion War. The Vorlons and the Dominion are for Order, and the Federation and its allies are sheer chaos just a wormhole away.
** Humorously, Tomalak, a Romulan officer who played a semi-major role in ''The Next Generation'', is shown to be the son of the Romulan Ambassador from ''Star Trek V.'' Made especially funny because (adult) Tomalak is played by the same actor as G'Kar.

* ForegoneConclusion: The events of this story are interspersed with occasional looks into the future of the ATV-verse, including [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Sisko]] and [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Picard.]] The war ends with the remnants of the Minbari Federation signing an agreement with the Federation/Klingon alliance, followed by close to a century of cold war with the Vorlons, who eventually lead the Dominion to war with the Federation and help along the Ciona Imperix in their attempt to dominate the Alpha Quadrant races in the name of order. Meanwhile, the Narn Regime and the Centauri Republics join the United Federation of Planets.
** Many consider the inevitable conflict between the United Federation of Planets and the Vorlon Empire to be this in favour of the Federation. True to the predictions of the Collaboration of Elder Races, the civilizations of the Alpha Quadrant continued to advance and expand at breakneck speeds which the Vorlon Empire frowned at, while the Vorlons themselves despite their manipulations and buildup are still largely stuck in the level of development a century before due to their stagnation. The war between them would likely be quite damaging on either sides, but the Vorlons are not likely to win this, and members of the Collaboration from the Medusans to even Q are working behind to scenes to head off issues like the Borg troubling the Federation in order to give them a clear run against the 'Orderlies'.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Alternate Universe Admiral [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Janeway]] from the Future warns of four separate threats: The Vorlons, "A race of cyborgs," "Aliens from another universe," and "A hostile government in the Gamma Quadrant." While Kirk and the others of the time ponder over who these enemies could possibly be, hindsight tells the audience that she's referring to (respectively) The Borg, either Species 8472 (AKA The Undine) or the Thirdspace Aliens, and the Dominion.
* TheFundamentalist: The Ashen, an offshoot of the Minbari which the Vorlon saved from Minbar during ancient times before they were annihilated by rival tribes, genetically enhanced and given advanced technology, and were told that they were the 'warriors of light' who exists, are all this by default, practically worshipping the Vorlons as gods and nearly all are willing to die to destroy the enemies of light (i.e. any alien culture the Vorlon deems too dangerous or potentially pawns of the Shadows). They are so fanatical in fact it unnerves their Minbari cousins and even the Vorlons, to the point they deem them too uncontrollable to be relied on, and this fanaticism causes as much harm as it contributed to the Minbari's cause.
* FusionFic: Between Babylon 5 and Star Trek. What made ''"A Thin Veneer"'' this instead of a crossover between parallel universes is that the Earth Alliance and the Babylon 5 setting actually exists in the same galaxy as the United Federation of Planets and Star Trek setting, albeit separated by 60,000 light-years of space. This was cited as possible result of astro/social-cultural engineering on a colossal scale by ancient Precursors even older and more powerful than the Vorlons and Shadows, possibly the same ones who also built the Hyperspace Tunnels which connected the two regions of the galaxy and even now still move, if not outright ''copy'', whole planets and their inhabitants through those transit ways. While the EA Humans and other B5-verse characters were completely bewildered and stupefied by this, Federation and other ST-verse characters merely reacted with mild surprise and curiosity, since Starfleet had encountered copies of the Solar System and astronomically displaced Human populations before, whether discovered by USS Enterprise and other ships, and had already started suspecting this by the time the Federation/Klingon-Minbari War began.
* HopeSpot: For a moment, with the surrender of the Minbari Federation by the Grey Council and the immediate ceasefire ending hostilities, the destruction of Minbar and most of the Minbari people by orbital bombardment from Starfleet may be averted. [[spoiler:Then tensions between the volatile Minbari and their fanatical Ashen brethren boiled over and a CivilWar erupts, which by the time it ended left civilization on Minbar levelled and 80% of the population killed in the brutal fighting and orbital bombardment]].
* [[GodsHandsAreTied First Ones' Hands Are Tied]]: The Vorlons WANT to intervene more with the Federation/Klingon-Minbari War, but are prevented from interfering by the First Ones of the Alpha Quadrant, leaving them unable to do more than to give what little techno-trinkets they could to the Minbari to even the odds a bit and sending their long-lost Ashen brethren to double their fleet size - neither of which are much help beyond delaying the inevitable. Meanwhile the Collaboration of Elder Races does not do much to support their charges, both because they don't need it and also because of their belief younger civilizations should grow and develop on their own with minimum interference and aid from their elders.
* GuileHero: Commodore Acaltha of Starfleet, full-stop. An imaginative, cunning, experienced and [[NecessarilyEvil occasionally]] [[UnscrupulousHero ruthless]] [[TheStrategist strategist]], Acaltha was able to use a brilliant combination of trickery, technology and tactics to defeat the Minbari despite often being outgunned and even outnumbered by the Minbari in multiple battles, seeking every fatal flaw of Minbari ships, doctrines and mentalities and squeezing every advantage out of them for all they are worth by anticipating how they would act or react and planning accordingly. Even General Chang of the Klingon Empire was impressed by him and his conduct of war, seeing him as one of the few Federation commanders actually worthy of his respect. As Acaltha explained to one of his subordinate commanders, war is like a 4D-chess game, and as with those games, it is paramount to be ahead of the enemy not just one step, or two steps, but every single step of the way.
* HalfHumanHybrid: Becomes a notable plot point -- between close racial interactions, progressive social views and advanced Federation technology, the Federation has many hybrids within their diverse populations and they are accepted and celebrated without prejudice or intolerance. To the much more insular, xenophobic and reactionary ''Babylon 5''-verse nations and cultures, however, this practice and tolerance is viewed with horror and disgust, contributing to the Minbari and even some Earthers perceiving the Federation as a "mongrel power" of depraved savages wielding technologies too advanced for their station whom they cannot surrender to or negotiate with. Some of the Minbari are so disgusted that one Alyt even outright declares that the Federation humans are ''worse'' than the Earther humans when he hears this from Kirk, and many keep fighting out of the misguided belief that defeat and surrender would result in the Federation spreading or even enforcing such practices upon them, diluting and degrading their gene pool and racial purity.
* HeelFaceDoorSlam: Alyt Aalaan is presented as a much more reasonable, cool-headed and competent commander among the Minbari who is neither arrogant nor narrow-minded as his colleagues, and might have eventually come to see the folly of the war and the Minbari's cause... then came the news that [[ArchEnemy the]] [[AbusivePrecursors Shadows]] are real and have made contact with the Federation at their space station in Becerra Alpha One, along with information concerning Alpha Quadrant ways of life such as tolerance for alien hybrids. The horrifying revelation of the Shadows' existence and his instinctive fear and ingrained cultural attitudes made him, like many other Minbari, to immediately double down on their support for the genocidal war, either out of the belief that the Shadows had or would corrupt the Federation or that they cannot have peace with such a 'degenerate' alien culture as the Federation. The 'Third Battle of Jericho' put an end to any hope of Aalaan pulling a HeelFaceTurn completely, with Alyt Aalaan being among the first casualties in the terrible battle which followed.

** Commodore Acaltha actively weaponizes this with calculated blows against Minbari morale and beliefs in his part of the offensive campaigns against the Minbari Federation proper, especially following the Minbari broadcast. His reasoning is that Minbari pride and fanaticism is preventing the Minbari from realizing their war is a lost cause and giving them strength to continue resisting, and so to undermine this and make the Minbari surrender faster, he aims to undermine it through things such as [[CurbstompBattle spectacular routs]] of Minbari forces and hacked broadcasts in order to demonstrate the allied forces' overwhelming technological and numerical superiority over the Minbari as well as their determination to use them, while spreading fear, doubt and uncertainty among Minbari military and civilian ranks to demoralize them and make them question their folly.
* HowUnscientific -- when the ship from Babylon 5's Earth realizes for the first time that the new ship has warp drive -- which is strictly forbidden by Babylon 5 physics, but which is the only way to explain the sensor readings.

* IDoNotOwn -- and neither does anyone else. Explicit permission is given for anyone to copy this story as long as they leave the credits. The credits mention many works, including all vs. of canonical Franchise/StarTrek extant at the time.

* {{Irony}}: The Federation notes that the Minbari accidentally killing the Clan Leader of one of the Gorn Homeworlds has more than a few similarities to how their war with humanity began- a tragic misunderstanding accidentally killing a highly culturally significant figure, and the nation-state of the cultural figure swearing revenge.

* LadyOfWar: A hilarious CallBack to ''Film/StarTrekIIITheSearchForSpock'', Uhura has become the captain of the USS Knowles, and the loud mouthed ensign from the transporter room who was more concerned with the [[CoolOldLady granny]] portion gets stepped on rather firmly when she reminds him of the [[TheCaptain badass]] part.
* LastStand: The Battle of Minbar, following the disastrous Minbari defeat at the Third Battle of Jericho, with the Minbari's realization that they simply cannot fight the Federation and Klingons even with the help of their Ashen brethren and decides to concentrate what remained of their military force at Minbar for a decisive battle, where they hope to either pull a win and cripple the Federation/Empire/Alliance forces and turn the war around, or go out fighting to the bitter end as a people. [[spoiler:The subsequent ceasefire with the Federation/Empire/Alliance and EnemyCivilWar between the Minbari and the Ashen [[UnderStatement complicated the plan somewhat]]]].
* LightIsNotGood: The Minbari, and very definitely the Vorlons and the Aschen. For all of their preaching about being the light against the Darkness, their attempted genocide of humanity, and their frequent talks later in the series about using biological weaponry put paid to any trace of their benevolence.
* LightningBruiser: One of the biggest advantages Starfleet and the Klingons have over the Minbari are the fact that thanks to their Warp Drives and Warp Coils, their starships can outfly and out-maneuver not just the Minbari but everyone else in the B5-verse in both interplanetary and interstellar space, which when combined with their durability via DeflectorShields and the firepower of their Phasers and Photon Torpedoes gives them strategic and tactical options and superiority which the Minbari and even the Ashen struggled to match. Minbari war-cruisers had been described as like 'arthritic tortoises' when compared to the Alpha Quadrant ships, while the Minbari thinks Federation and Klingon starships are like 'crazed insects in heat' when they move and attack with blistering speeds.

** The Minbari attitude toward their defeats. When they are winning their war of genocide and everyone's cowering in fear of their superiority, all's well in the universe, but when they are losing against an actual competent and technically superior opponent, it's somehow their enemies who are honourless cowards who don't fight fair. They had been compared to spoiled, bullying brats who had been doted on and pampered too long by their Vorlon benefactors at certain points. Later, the Minbari are shown up at this by the Ashen.
** The Vorlons themselves are this due to their obsession with order and control, reacting with petulant outrage and fury over any interference with their affairs and work by others, yet showing no hesitation in deeply messing with the younger races and civilizations under their influence on a cultural and even genetic level to forcefully 'guide' them, even if it results in disaster.
*** During the Third Battle of Jericho, the Vorlons, who are itching to help their Minbari subjects more and even enter the war on their side, deliberately attempted to provoke hostilities by jumping a ship in to stop Federation, Empire and Alliance forces from firing upon the Minbari being routed, then 'accidentally' decimated some of said forces by opening a jump-point into hyperspace right in midst of their ranks to depart, barely giving them enough warning and time to move. While they had hoped this would piss the combined allied forces enough to start a war between them while still looking like an innocent victim, the Vorlon crew and the Vorlon Empire had the audacity to be outraged when the Federation forces actually retaliated to the Vorlon's own blatant act of aggression by firing photon torpedoes right up the exhaust vents of their departing vessel and actually destroy it. Naturally, while Vorlons still feel like they are the wronged party in all this, none of the Alpha Quadrant 'First Ones' bought their paper-thin excuses and repeated their threat to enter the war on the Alpha Quadrant races' behalf if the Vorlons dared to escalate matters.

** A Starfleet commander wonders how far their morals have fallen when she almost destroys a refugee ship of telepaths wanting to escape the Psi-Corps' grasp. To be fair, they were acting very suspicious (because they didn't want to be sent back or treated as cannon fodder), but it still doesn't help matters.
** The Minbari leadership collectively have one [[MassOhCrap when they finally realized and accepted]] that the Federation are NOT just a wayward LostColony of Earthers, but a different interstellar civilization with hundreds of billions of Humans and other races who were completely unaware of the war they are waging against their B5-Verse counterparts, and are now ''[[ThisIsUnforgivable pissed off]] [[ThisMeansWar beyond comprehension]]'' for the Minbari massacring one of their colonies. They are less concerned about slaughtering innocents (A different Human [[FantasticRacism is still a Human]], and the other aliens are collateral) and even tried to justify how a war between them would had been inevitable anyway due to the severe CultureClash between them - what horrifies them more is that they just [[AwakeningTheSleepingGiant provoked an entire interstellar superpower]] ([[FromBadToWorse Actually]] [[BashBrothers two]], counting the [[ProudWarriorRace Klingon Empire]]) with enough firepower, resources and numbers to actually threaten Minbar into coming after them.
* MythologyGag: Sheridan, when he first appears, is surprised that he doesn't feel disgust at the idea of half-human hybrids in the Federation, or at humans mating with aliens. In the canon ''Babylon 5'' story, he eventually married and had children with Delenn, a Minbari.
** The Gorn call Kirk "Bamboo Warrior," for how he constructed a cannon with nothing but available materials and bamboo.
** An admiral is commenting to Kirk how "The Cardassians are a war waiting to happen," while Kirk brushes him off. The Cardassians ultimately do go to war with the Federation (a minor conflict for the Federation, considering the many ways that the Federation outmatch the Cardassian Empire, but still causing Federation casualties) and they were minor antagonists through later seasons of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', then major ones (active participants in the Dominion War) in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine''.

** One of the Narn dishes presented to the Federation ambassador is identical to Swedish Meatballs, which was a minor joke in Babylon 5: Every species, no matter what, comes up with a food that is identical to Swedish Meatballs.

** When the ''Excelsior'' arrives in orbit of Earth, the ship is battered by nuclear missiles as part of a panicked attempt at defence before they realise that it's an unfamiliar vessel, and when the barrage ceases to reveal that the ''Excelsior'' is undamaged, Sulu nonchalantly hails Earth to ask if they've finished firing and 'politely' request that they not attack his ship again.
** On a non-military level: When [[spoiler:Warmaster Jha'dur]] escaped Minbari custody and reached the Federation starbase Becerra Alpha One, she attempted to manipulate the Federation to give her asylum and even positions of power with promise of [[spoiler:revealing the secret of the life-extension serum she developed]]. Much to her frustration, she was having an audience with Ambassador Sarek, who stoically turned her offer down and informed her that the Federation, unlike the B5-verse powers, would ''never'' compromise their principles for the sake of immortality, having turned down similar offers in the past for the same reasons.
* NormalFishInATinyPond: Many Federation technologies are considered normal, even weak for the setting, but are very effective against the Minbari simply because ''they have had no exposure to these technologies.''

* RememberTheNewGuy: Commodore Acaltha and several other Starfleet characters in this story had never appeared in Star Trek canon, but are depicted as fellow classmates of Kirk and Spock in Starfleet Academy and known acquaintances with established reputations. In Acaltha's case, this is justified partly due to him leaving Starfleet after twenty years of service following an incident involving use of [[UnscrupulousHero questionable means]] to interrogate Orion slavers/pirates to find out where they took a kidnapped school of Federation children and had spent the next twenty years working in Federation Express, before he, his ship and every other starship with their crew which Federation Express has were '[[GotVolunteered volunteered]]' for the war effort and he was given back command for the duration of the conflict.

* ShoutOut: The Gorn battleship program is rumored to be called ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}.'' The names of two of the ships in the mini-fleet they bring include ''Mothra'' and ''Rodan,'' more Godzilla monsters.

** The Klingons' cloaked warships wreaked absolute havoc in convoy raiding and set-piece engagements against the Minbari, who have never encountered such unnatural technology before and had no way of defending against it. Later on, the Minbari found ways to detect them by crisscrossing space with tachyon beams, but this come with downside of presenting the Klingons with extra emissions their weapons could track and target.

* StealthPun: There's a presidential aide for the Earth Alliance whose name is "Hastur." His name is only mentioned three times.
* TheOnlyOneAllowedToKillYou: Once again, Kirk is in fine form in this story. Not in the sense that he wants to be the one to defeat the Minbari, but in the sense that yet ''another'' group of aliens wants him dead, and demands that ''they'' be the ones to tear off his head. Bonus points for the Klingons still being upset about the peace treaty because it means they won't get to fight "The Great Enemy."

* ToBeLawfulOrGood: Discussed by Valeris and Kirk. The two converse about whether their involvement in the Earth-Minbari War constituted a violation of the Prime Directive. Kirk eventually states that the Prime Directive was "Not written with a finger of flame on the walls, 'Thou Shall Not Butt In'", and that sometimes there are moral imperatives more important than the written law, something Kirk is very familiar with.
* {{Understatement}}: When Sarek is talking with President Elizabeth Levy and she asks him what it's like living with a human, he acknowledges that it is fascinating and confesses "My logic is uncertain when it comes to she who is my wife", prompting President Levy to privately muse that, regardless of the limited time she has spent with the Vulcan, even a blind man could see that Sarek loves his wife.
* UnscrupulousHero: Commodore Acaltha is depicted as having traits of this, as more details are revealed about his present reputation and past career in Starfleet. His use of questionable means to interrogate captured [[AssholeVictim Orion pirates]] over where they had taken a school of Federation children to be sold to slavery - namely, spacing one of them out of an airlock to force the rest to talk - allowed him to rescue the kidnapped children, but costed him his career (and he declared if necessary he would do it again). During the war he is fine with the Klingons working with him using their 'Mind-sifter' telepaths extract critical information from the Minbari (despite the high chances of insanity or death from the practice) against the objections of one of his captains, and is not above using every trick both clever and dirty he and his crew could think of to gain an advantage over and defeat his Minbari opponents, leaving the Minbari to believe the Andorian is no better than a [[{{Irony}} barbaric pirate scum]] of the worst sort, second only to Kirk.
* WeHaveBecomeComplacent: Throughout the fic many characters both within and outside Minbar had noted that a thousand years of technological supremacy and having no equals to watch out for or fight against had caused the Minbari to become complacent, leaving them completely wrong-footed when the even more advanced and battle-hardened Federation and the Klingons arrived to help the Earth Alliance and give them a fighting chance. Minbari commanders such as Alyt Sarhat and Shaka repeatedly found themselves falling into traps and to strategems created by cunning, experienced and imaginative commanders such as [[GuileHero Commodore]] [[TheStrategist Acaltha]] and getting their fleets decimated if not outright destroyed by technologically-superior forces despite outgunning and outnumbering the enemy by a considerable margin, while Minbari commanders such as Alyt Aalaan and Alyt Darcannon stand out among the Minbari for noticing and trying to remedy this and make them more dangerous opponents for the Alliance/Federation/Empire.
** Characters from the Alpha Quadrant are also aware of this possibility and remain vigilant to avoid falling into the same trap. At several points several Federation characters complain about how certain politicians back home - whom they derisively dubbed the 'Peace At Any Price' Party or PAAP-ers - wanted to effectively gut Starfleet with budget cuts and restrictions on weaponry as soon as the peace treaty with the Klingon Empire is concluded, and was only prevented from doing so by the outbreak of hostilities with the Minbari. Also, the only times the Minbari achieve any notable victories against the factions from Star Trek was when they left their guard down, from Klingon bloodlust and resulting carelessness in convoy raids and boarding actions resulting in ships and crews suffering preventable losses, to a whole Federation fleet being trapped between a planet and a Minbari fleet and getting wiped out late in the war. Also, part of the reason why Kirk was given back his admiral status was because out of all the commanders in Starfleet he was the only one with enough experience to qualify as an overall war leader, since while they had their SpaceColdWar with the Klingons and squabbles with the Romulans, they haven't had a serious conflict for quite a long while.
** The Vorlons are so obsessed with order and so superior to other races in their sector of space save for the Shadows they themselves, like the Minbari, are left stagnant and reactionary, barely advancing for millennia and believing they have nothing to fear from younger races. The Federation's ability to smash their chosen race the Minbari to bits, disrupt their plans and even [[spoiler:destroy one of their vessels at the tail-end of the 'Third Battle of Jericho']] left the Vorlons quite horrified and enraged, and it's noted that given a century or three the Federation is likely to match and even outpace the Vorlons (and the Shadows) in technological mastery, leaving them likely to lose the inevitable war between them.

* WorthyOpponent: Several Klingons reveal many among them consider Kirk to be this, calling him THE 'Great Enemy' and express both regret that he wasn't born in their empire and they won't get to fight him with the peace treaty between the Federation and the Empire, and ecstatic that they get to fight by his side with the outbreak of the Federation/Klingon-Minbari War.

* HalfHumanHybrid: Becomes a notable plot-point - Between close racial interactions, progressive social views and advanced Federation technology, the Federation has many hybrids within their diverse populations and they are accepted and celebrated without prejudice or intolerance. To the much more insular, xenophobic and reactionary B5-verse nations and cultures, however, this practice and tolerance is viewed with horror and disgust, contributing to the Minbari and even some Earthers to perceive the Federation as a 'mongrel power' of depraved savages wielding technologies too advanced for their station whom they cannot surrender or negotiate with. Some of the Minbari are so disgusted in fact one Alyt even outright declared the Federation Humans are ''worse'' than the Earther Humans when he heard this from Kirk, and many kept fighting out of the misguided belief that defeat and surrender would result in the Federation spreading or even enforcing such practices upon them, diluting and degrading their gene-pool and racial purity.

* EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs: The Federation classifies Gorn ships by Dinosaur name. The flagship of the Gorn group that arrives at ''Beccara Alpha One'' is a TyrannosaurusRex class dreadnought.

* TyrannosaurusRex: The Federation has labeled a Gorn dreadnought design as the ''Tyrannosaurus Rex''-class ship. The Gorn love it.

* ApeShallNeverKillApe: The Minbari adheres to the adage/rule that 'Minbari do not kill Minbari' for over a thousand years. Needless to say, at the tail end of the war both Satais Coplann and Caldroni were mortified when they learnt in their peace negotiations with Admiral Kirk that [[spoiler:there are Human DNA in the Minbari's racial gene-pool, which was responsible for their race's growing sterility, thanks to their Vorlons patrons' ancient genetic manipulations - Like in B5 canon they, and the Minbari as a whole watching the live broadcast of the surrender, were forced to confront the reality that they were in a way killing their own kin]]. And then shortly afterwards [[spoiler:CivilWar erupts between the Minbari and the Ashen over the issue of the surrender, and the fanatical Ashen's attempts to burn Minbar rather then let the Minbari surrender or let the Federation/Empire/Alliance forces occupy their ancient homeworld completely overturns the rule as the Minbari's rage over their brethren's atrocities against the Minbari explodes into a [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge bloody war of retribution]] against their own distant relatives]].

** [[spoiler:The Minbari-Ashen CivilWar which erupted shortly after the unconditional surrender and ceasefire between Minbar and the Federation/Empire/Alliance forces nearly led to a class 3a but stop short at a class 2, with more than 80% of Minbari population killed and most of their civilization on Minbar levelled within six hours]].

** General Order Twenty Four of Starfleet authorizes a ship or fleet to destroy the entire surface of a planet if the situation requires it, which Admiral Kirk invoked in response to the Minbari's ultimatum post-Battle of the Line to force the Earth Alliance to surrender and the Federation/Klingon forces to withdraw by threatening to destroy all of the Earth Alliance's colonies.

* ApocalypseHow: Class 3a to 6(Planetary levels) were attempted or occurred multiple times throughout the story, many of them by the Minbari in their attempts to exterminate Humanity via hundred megatone yield nuclear weapons, antiproton beam weapons and nerve agents.

** An admiral is commenting to Kirk how "The Cardassians are a war waiting to happen," while Kirk brushes him off. The Cardassians ultimately do were minor antagonists through later seasons of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', and major ones (active participants in the Dominion War) in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine''.

** An admiral is commenting to Kirk how "The Cardassians are a war waiting to happen," while Kirk brushes him off. The Cardassians were minor antagonists through later seasons of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', and major ones (active participants in the Dominion War) in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine''.

* BigGood: The Collaboration of Elder Races, consisting of races such as the Medusans, the Metrons, the Q Continuum, and other 'First Ones' of the Alpha Quadrant, who watched over the Alpha Quadrant races and civilizations and prohibited the likes of the Vorlorns and Shadows from interfering with their development, allowing them to grow and advance on their own accord. They had long looked upon the Vorlorns and Shadows' mucking about in the B5-verse region of space with disapproval, [[spoiler:especially the whole StableTimeLoop thing the Vorlorns had exploited to 'win' the argument against the Shadows no matter how many suffer and die in the process]], and it's implied and suspected by the Vorlorns that the Elders interfered with the Hyperspace Channel's operation to allow for the Earth Alliance refugee ship to reach the Alpha Quadrant, kickstarting the entire plot of 'A Thin Veneer' which irrevocably disrupted all the Vorlorns' plans and work.

** The thinness of the line between civilization and barbarism which all people and cultures walk. The Minbari were seen as an enlightened civilization in their region of space between their technological supremacy, their age and their contact with the Vorlorns, but their pride and passions could overwhelm their reason, and many races and civilization found themselves disillusioned when the Minbari completely flip their lid over the Earthers' accidental killing of Durkat (their greatest leader in generations) and responding with their genocidal war against the Earth Alliance. Meanwhile, the United Federation of Planets, for all their legitimate advancement, still struggles with the impulse to not use their technological supremacy to force other races and star nations to toe by their will or retaliate wrongs and aggression with overwhelming firepower, while the Klingons have to struggle with their cultural character as a ProudWarriorRace, which is growing to become a liability that left them unable to compete with the Federation and feared and hated by everyone with their martial and imperialistic ways. Even the elder races such as the Vorlorns and Metrons are not exempt from this, with the Vorlorns' faults being portrayed in full as making them little better than a race of AbusivePrecursors who are all too willing to dominate and destroy any younger race who deviate from ''their'' way of the universe, and the Metrons, while way better than the Vorlorns, are still willing to threaten to start a war on an unthinkable scale just to protect their charges in the Alpha Quadrant from Vorlorn interference. When and where do people and civilizations cross the line and how 'civilized' they truly are is a oft-repeated question throughout the story.
** OrderVersusChaos: Both the younger and elder races and civilizations of the Star Trek and Babylon 5 universes are compared and contrasted in this light. The 'Collaboration of Elder Races' such as the Metrons and the Medusans watching over the Alpha Quadrant embodies 'Chaos' with their hands-off approach to guiding younger civilization, refusing to interfere and mess with the development of younger races and letting them rise and fall on their own accord with occasional light input, while the Vorlorns in the B5-verse region of space embodies the 'Order' side of the divide with their hands-on approach, genetically and culturally manipulating whole races to achieve results they feel 'optimal'. Throughout the story Alpha Quadrant precursors and younger races' 'Chaotic' approach is portrayed in a much better light than the B5-verse younger and elder races' 'Order', giving them freedom and dynamism which allow them progress socially and technologically at rates which leave the B5-verse civilizations in the dust, while the borderline ControlFreak methods used by the Vorlorns left the B5-verse civilizations and even themselves reactionary and stagnant. That is not to say the answer is clear-cut: the Shadows' social-darwinist approach to growth of races and civilization (by promoting conflict everywhere to weed out the weak and empower the strong) is portrayed as doing more harm than good, something which [[HeelRealization they come to recognize]] themselves. Even so, the Alpha Quadrant's approach is ultimately shown to be more correct than that of the B5-verse's approach.

* ControlFreak: The Vorlorns manipulate extensively in the development and nature of the races in the space of their influence on a genetic and cultural level in order to 'win the argument' with the Shadows and react with almost petulant fury at their work being disrupted and their antics being looked down upon by other 'First Ones' who don't approve of their controlling methods. Those who criticize however have good reasons to do so as the Vorlorn's manipulations and forceful 'guidance' often do more harm than good, causing stagnation and insularity among the alien cultures at best and leading to devastation and extinction of whole civilizations and races at worst.

* DespairEventHorizon: Up until the Third Battle of Jericho, the Minbari still believed with Ashen and Vorlorn help, they might still be able to prevail against the Federation, the Klingon Empire and the Earth Alliance in spite of the heavy losses they had suffered. Even after losing THAT battle, they still believed that they could turn things around by concentrating all their remaining forces at Minbar and bleed out the enemy coalition with a 'decisive battle'. They however finally crossed it by the time of the 'Ceasefire', as it finally dawned upon all the Minbari people that they cannot win the war.

** The Minbari and even the Vorlorns themselves come to see the Ashen reinforcements as too wild, ruthless and fanatical for their tastes. That is saying something since the former is waging a war of genocide over the death of one Minbari and the latter are AbusivePrecursors who created the Ashen as weapons of war against the Shadows to begin with.

** Many consider the inevitable conflict between the United Federation of Planets and the Vorlorn Empire to be this in favour of the Federation. True to the predictions of the Collaboration of Elder Races, the civilizations of the Alpha Quadrant continued to advance and expand at breakneck speeds which the Vorlorn Empire frowned at, while the Vorlorns themselves despite their manipulations and buildup are still largely stuck in the level of development a century before due to their stagnation. The war between them would likely be quite damaging on either sides, but the Vorlorns are not likely to win this, and members of the Collaboration from the Medusans to even Q are working behind to scenes to head off issues like the Borg troubling the Federation in order to give them a clear run against the 'Orderlies'.

* TheFundamentalist: The Ashen, an offshoot of the Minbari which the Vorlorn saved from Minbar during ancient times before they were annihilated by rival tribes, genetically enhanced and given advanced technology, and were told that they were the 'warriors of light' who exists, are all this by default, practically worshipping the Vorlorns as gods and nearly all are willing to die to destroy the enemies of light (i.e. any alien culture the Vorlorn deems too dangerous or potentially pawns of the Shadows). They are so fanatical in fact it unnerves their Minbari cousins and even the Vorlorns, to the point they deem them too uncontrollable to be relied on, and this fanaticism causes as much harm as it contributed to the Minbari's cause.
* FusionFic: Between Babylon 5 and Star Trek. What made ''"A Thin Veneer"'' this instead of a crossover between parallel universes is that the Earth Alliance and the Babylon 5 setting actually exists in the same galaxy as the United Federation of Planets and Star Trek setting, albeit separated by 60,000 light-years of space. This was cited as possible result of astro/social-cultural engineering on a colossal scale by ancient Precursors even older and more powerful than the Vorlorns and Shadows, possibly the same ones who also built the Hyperspace Tunnels which connected the two regions of the galaxy and even now still move, if not outright ''copy'', whole planets and their inhabitants through those transit ways. While the EA Humans and other B5-verse characters were completely bewildered and stupefied by this, Federation and other ST-verse characters merely reacted with mild surprise and curiosity, since Starfleet had encountered copies of the Solar System and astronomically displaced Human populations before, whether discovered by USS Enterprise and other ships, and had already started suspecting this by the time the Federation/Klingon-Minbari War began.
* [[GodsHandsAreTied First Ones' Hands Are Tied]]: The Vorlorns WANT to intervene more with the Federation/Klingon-Minbari War, but are prevented from interfering by the First Ones of the Alpha Quadrant, leaving them unable to do more than to give what little techno-trinkets they could to the Minbari to even the odds a bit and sending their long-lost Ashen brethren to double their fleet size - neither of which are much help beyond delaying the inevitable. Meanwhile the Collaboration of Elder Races does not do much to support their charges, both because they don't need it and also because of their belief younger civilizations should grow and develop on their own with minimum interference and aid from their elders.

** The Minbari attitude toward their defeats. When they are winning their war of genocide and everyone's cowering in fear of their superiority, all's well in the universe, but when they are losing against an actual competent and technically superior opponent, it's somehow their enemies who are honourless cowards who don't fight fair. They had been compared to spoiled, bullying brats who had been doted on and pampered too long by their Vorlorn benefactors at certain points. Later, the Minbari are shown up at this by the Ashen.
** The Vorlorns themselves are this due to their obsession with order and control, reacting with petulant outrage and fury over any interference with their affairs and work by others, yet showing no hesitation in deeply messing with the younger races and civilizations under their influence on a cultural and even genetic level to forcefully 'guide' them, even if it results in disaster.
*** During the Third Battle of Jericho, the Vorlorns, who are itching to help their Minbari subjects more and even enter the war on their side, deliberately attempted to provoke hostilities by jumping a ship in to stop Federation, Empire and Alliance forces from firing upon the Minbari being routed, then 'accidentally' decimated some of said forces by opening a jump-point into hyperspace right in midst of their ranks to depart, barely giving them enough warning and time to move. While they had hoped this would piss the combined allied forces enough to start a war between them while still looking like an innocent victim, the Vorlorn crew and the Vorlorn Empire had the audacity to be outraged when the Federation forces actually retaliated to the Vorlorn's own blatant act of aggression by firing photon torpedoes right up the exhaust vents of their departing vessel and actually destroy it. Naturally, while Vorlorns still feel like they are the wronged party in all this, none of the Alpha Quadrant 'First Ones' bought their paper-thin excuses and repeated their threat to enter the war on the Alpha Quadrant races' behalf if the Vorlorns dared to escalate matters.

** The Vorlorns, as part of their help to the Minbari, later gave the Minbari an enormous controlled '[[https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Space_amoeba Space Amoeba]]' creature like the one Captain Kirk had encountered during his famous five-year expedition into space, which generates a ''fleet-sized'' cloaking field enabling a Minbari taskforce to sneak up on and ambush a Federation/Klingon fleet at the Jericho system.

** The Vorlorns are so obsessed with order and so superior to other races in their sector of space save for the Shadows they themselves, like the Minbari, are left stagnant and reactionary, barely advancing for millennia and believing they have nothing to fear from younger races. The Federation's ability to smash their chosen race the Minbari to bits, disrupt their plans and even [[spoiler:destroy one of their vessels at the tail-end of the 'Third Battle of Jericho']] left the Vorlorns quite horrified and enraged, and it's noted that given a century or three the Federation is likely to match and even outpace the Vorlorns (and the Shadows) in technological mastery, leaving them likely to lose the inevitable war between them.

* HalfHumanHybrid: Becomes a notable plot-point - Between close racial interactions, progressive social views and advanced Federation technology, the Federation has many hybrids within their diverse populations and they are accepted and celebrated without prejudice or intolerance. To the much more insular, xenophobic and reactionary B5-verse nations and cultures, however, this practice and tolerance is viewed with horror and disgust, contributing to the Minbari and even the Earthers to perceive the Federation as a 'mongrel power' of depraved savages wielding technologies too advanced for their station whom they cannot surrender or negotiate with. Some of the Minbari are so disgusted in fact one Alyt even outright declared the Federation Humans are ''worse'' than the Earther Humans when he heard this from Kirk, and many kept fighting out of the misguided belief that defeat and surrender would result in the Federation spreading or even enforcing such practices upon them, diluting and degrading their gene-pool and racial purity.

** General Chang of the Klingon Empire, the TokenEvilTeammate among the war-leaders of the Federation/Empire/Alliance coalition despises Kurge like other Klingons. Less that Kurge killed Kirk's son and being a despicable bastard in general, but more that Chang himself was foolish enough to pick [[StupidEvil an idiot]] like him to do the dity work of getting the Genesis Device.

** The thinness of the line between civilization and barbarism which all people and cultures walk. The Minbari were seen as an enlightened civilization in their region of space between their technological supremacy, their age and their contact with the Vorlorns, but their pride and passions could overwhelm their reason, and many races and civilization found themselves disillusioned when the Minbari completely flip their lid over the Earthers' accidental killing of Durkat (their greatest leader in generations) and responding with their genocidal war against the Earth Alliance. Meanwhile, the United Federation of Planets, for all their legitimate advancement, still struggles with the impulse to not use their overwhelming firepower and technological supremacy to force other races and star nations to toe by their will, while the Klingons had to struggle with their character as a ProudWarriorRace, which is growing to become a liability that left them unable to compete with the Federation and feared and hated by everyone with their martial and imperialistic ways. Even the elder races such as the Vorlorns and Metrons are not exempt from this, with the Vorlorns' faults being portrayed in full as making them little better than a race of AbusivePrecursors who are all too willing to dominate and destroy any younger race who deviate from ''their'' way of the universe, and the Metrons, while way better than the Vorlorns, are still willing to threaten to start a war on an unthinkable scale just to protect their charges in the Alpha Quadrant from Vorlorn interference. When and where do people and civilizations cross the line is a oft-repeated question throughout the story.

* MoralMyopia: The Minbari attitude toward their defeats.
** Later, the Minbari are shown up at this by the Aschen.

* GuileHero: Commodore Acaltha of Starfleet, full-stop. An imaginative, cunning and [[NecessarilyEvil occasionally]] [[UnscrupulousHero ruthless]] [[TheStrategist strategist]], Acaltha was able to use a brilliant combination of trickery, technology and tactics to defeat the Minbari despite often being outgunned and even outnumbered by the Minbari in multiple battles, seeking every fatal flaw of Minbari ships, doctrines and mentalities and squeezing every advantage out of them for all they are worth by anticipating how they would act or react and planning accordingly. Even General Chang of the Klingon Empire was impressed by him and his conduct of war, seeing him as one of the few Federation commanders actually worthy of his respect. As Acaltha explained to one of his subordinate commanders, war is like a 4D-chess game, and as with those games, it is paramount to be ahead of the enemy not just one step, or two steps, but every single step of the way.

* TheManBehindTheMan: The Vorlons are this to the Minbari and the Aschen.

** Commodore Acaltha's trap in the Berlin system includes an ElectronicWarfare attack the Minbari garrison force, complete with suddenly-blacked-out-then-returned computer displays being overrun with [[Film/IndependenceDay laughing]] [[HackedByAPirate skull-and-crossbones]].

* TheOnlyOneAllowedToKillYou: Once again, Kirk is in fine form in this story. Not in the sense that he wants to be the one to defeat the Minbari, but in the sense that yet ''another'' group of aliens wants him dead, and demands that ''they'' be the ones to tear of his head. Bonus points for the Klingons still being upset about the peace treaty because it means they won't get to fight "The Great Enemy."

** Characters from the Alpha Quadrant are also aware of this possibility and remain vigilant to avoid falling into the same trap. At several points several Federation characters complain about how certain politicians back home - whom they derisively dubbed the 'Peace At Any Price' Party or PAAPers - wanted to effectively gut Starfleet with budget cuts and restrictions on weaponry as soon as the peace treaty with the Klingon Empire is concluded, and was only prevented from doing so by the outbreak of hostilities with the Minbari. Also, the only times the Minbari achieve any notable victories against the factions from Star Trek was when they left their guard down, from Klingon bloodlust and resulting carelessness in convoy raids and boarding actions resulting in ships and crews suffering preventable losses, to a whole Federation fleet being trapped between a planet and a Minbari fleet and getting wiped out late in the war.

** The Minbari leadership collectively have one [[MassOhCrap when they finally realized and accepted]] that the Federation are NOT just a wayward LostColony of Earthers, but a different interstellar civilizations with hundreds of billions of Humans and other races who were completely unaware of the war they are waging against their B5-Verse counterparts, and are now ''[[ThisIsUnforgivable pissed off]] [[ThisMeansWar beyond comprehension]]'' for the Minbari massacring one of their colonies. They are less concerned about slaughtering innocents (A different Human [[FantasticRacism is still a Humans]], and the other aliens are collateral) and even tried to justify how a war between them would had been inevitable anyway due to the severe CultureClash between them - what horrifies them more is that they just [[AwakeningTheSleepingGiant provoked an entire interstellar superpower with enough firepower, resources and numbers]] to actually threaten Minbar into coming after them.

* [[EvenEvilHasStandards Even]] [[SufficientlyAdvancedAliens First Ones]] [[EvenEvilHasStandards Have Standards]]: None of the other "elder races," or "first ones," such as the Metrons, Medusans, Organians, or even Q like the Vorlons. The Shadows don't like them either, but they have a [[Series/BabylonFive history]] to back it up.
* EveryoneHasStandards: As part of the new Federation/Klingon alliance, Kor assures Kirk that he and other Klingons condemn Kurge's actions on Genesis and regret that Kirk lost his son in such a manner.

* GuileHero: Commodore Acaltha of Starfleet, full-stop. Imaginative, cunning and occasionally ruthless, Acaltha was able to use a brilliant combination of trickery, technology and tactics to defeat the Minbari despite often being outgunned and even outnumbered by the Minbari in multiple battles, seeking every fatal flaw of Minbari ships, doctrines and mentalities and squeezing every advantage out of them for all they are worth by anticipating how they would act or react and planning accordingly. Even General Chang of the Klingon Empire was impressed by him and his conduct of war, seeing him as one of the few Federation commanders actually worthy of his respect. As Acaltha explained to one of his subordinate commanders, war is like a 4D-chess game, and as with those games, it is paramount to be ahead of the enemy not just one step, or two steps, but every single step of the way.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: A Starfleet commander wonders how far their morals have fallen when she almost destroys a refugee ship of telepaths wanting to escape the Psi-Corps' grasp. To be fair, they were acting very suspicious (because they didn't want to be sent back or treated as cannon fodder), but it still doesn't help matters.

* NoSell: When the ''Excelsior'' arrives in orbit of Earth, the ship is battered by nuclear missiles as part of a panicked attempt at defence before they realise that it's an unfamiliar vessel, and when the barrage ceases to reveal that the ''Excelsior'' is undamaged, Sulu nonchalantly hails Earth to ask if they've finished firing and 'politely' request that they not attack his ship again.

* AlternateUniverse: An alternate universe [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Admiral Janeway]] [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot from the future]], ''Voyager,'' and a Minbari warship travel to the ATV universe to deliver a warning about the Vorlons and provide weapons and technology from over one hundred years in the future. This scares Kirk, as Starfleet has strict rules against this sort of thing, and if Janeway [[GodzillaThrehold is willing to break them]], things must had gotten ''very'' serious.

* AlternateUniverse: An alternate universe [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Admiral Janeway]] [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot from the future]], ''Voyager,'' and a Minbari warship travel to the ATV universe to deliver a warning about the Vorlons and provide weapons and technology from over one hundred years in the future. This scares Kirk, as Starfleet has strict rules against this sort of thing, and if Janeway is willing to break them, things must be ''very'' serious.

* CharacterDevelopment: Several on both sides of the war, but a notable example is a Minbari commander named Shaka. When he is first introduced, he is an arrogant, hotheaded bigot who is completely assured of the superiority of the Minbari and the barbarity of his opponents. After spending almost a month on the receiving end of Commander Acaltha's trolling and having the one sided battles rubbed in his face, he is still hotheaded, but starts to realize that the Federation may not be the barbarians that he had believed, and eventually [[spoiler: sacrifices his ship to protect Uhura's ship from the Ashen after a ceasefire is declared, partially to maintain the ceasefire, but also because he realized the Ashen were far more of a danger to his people than the Federation was. It was still an impulsive action spurred by anger, but not one fueled by his own arrogance.]]

** At one point, characters from the author's other series, "Universe of Change," briefly communicate with the Federation of that day.

* ForegoneConclusion: The events of this story are interspersed with occasional looks into the future of the ATV-verse, including [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Sisko]] and [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Picard.]] The war ends with the remnants of the Minbari Republic signing an agreement with the Federation/Klingon alliance, followed by close to a century of cold war with the Vorlons, who eventually lead the Dominion to war with the Federation and help along the Ciona Imperix in their attempt to dominate the Alpha Quadrant races in the name of order. Meanwhile, the Narn Regime and the Centauri Republics join the United Federation of Planets.

** OrderVersusChaos: Both the younger and elder races and civilizations of the Star Trek and Babylon 5 universes are compared and contrasted in this light. The 'Collaboration of Elder Races' such as the Metrons and the Medusans watching over the Alpha Quadrant embodies 'Chaos' with their hands-off approach to guiding younger civilization, refusing to interfere and mess with the development of younger races and letting them rise and fall on their own accord with occasional light input, while the Vorlorns in the B5-verse region of space embodies the 'Order' side of the divide with their hands-on approach, genetically and culturally manipulating whole races to achieve results they feel 'optimal'. Throughout the story Alpha Quadrant precursors and younger races' 'Chaotic' approach is portrayed in a much better light than the B5-verse elders, giving them freedom and dynamism which allow them progress socially and technologically at rates which leave the B5-verse civilizations in the dust, while the borderline ControlFreak methods used by the Vorlorns left the B5-verse civilizations and even themselves reactionary and stagnant. That is not to say the answer is clear-cut: the Shadows' social-darwinist approach to growth of races and civilization (by promoting conflict everywhere to weed out the weak and empower the strong) is portrayed as doing more harm than good, something which [[HeelRealization they come to recognize]] themselves. Even so, the Alpha Quadrant's approach is ultimately shown to be more correct than that of the B5-verse's approach.

** The thinness of the line between civilization and barbarism which all people and cultures walk. The Minbari were seen as an enlightened civilization in their region of space between their technological supremacy, their age and their contact with the Vorlorns, but their pride and passions could overwhelm their reason, and many races and civilization found themselves disillusioned when the Minbari completely flip their lid over the Earthers' accidental killing of Durkat (their greatest leader in generations) and responding with their genocidal war against the Earth Alliance. Meanwhile, the United Federation of Planets, for all their legitimate advancement, still struggles with the impulse to not use their overwhelming firepower and technological supremacy to force other races and star nations to toe by their will, while the Klingons had to struggle with their character as a ProudWarriorRace, which is growing to become a liability that left them unable to compete with the Federation and feared and hated by everyone with their martial and imperialistic ways. Even the elder races such as the Vorlorns and Metrons are not exempt from this, with the Vorlorns' faults being portrayed in full as making them little better than a race of AbusivePrecursor who are willing to dominate and destroy any younger race who deviate from their way of the universe, and the Metrons, while way better than the Vorlorns, are still willing to threaten to start a war on an unthinkable scale just to protect their charges in the Alpha Quadrant from Vorlorn interference. When and where do people and civilizations cross the line is a oft-repeated question throughout the story.