Babylon 5

Double post, but I have had it up to here with Kosh and Delenn not telling anyone else about the threat of the Shadows while acting like they know better than everyone else.

The Vorlons are not the big good they initially seem to be, it is an intentional thing.

The Drakh were living on Zha'ha'dum so you have to wonder if they were the first race to "pass" the Shadows tests.

But the Drakh want to rule, they don't want to uplift through Social Darwinism.

Were they living there? Because there's no indication they were in hibernation or anything and people would maybe notice if the planet had two different cultures going on.

Sheridan should be angrier. If I found out there had been invisible murder bugs on the station for years and two ambassadors knew about them and said nothing I'd consider them accessories. Talk about a security risk.

IMO, if I was Sheridan, I would have assumed that Kosh had actually told me, but I didn’t understand what he meant.

With Delenn, it’s the question of if they actually were present the whole time. The only confirmations of their presence are when Morden shows up, they don’t seem to be there otherwise.

It'd be academic coz like... not like you'd have the capacity to do anything about it.

Plus the Vorlon's whole hat is "Deciding whats good for you and you're allowed to know". See Deathwalker. And the Minbarri are basically the Vorlon's assistants.

Ehh before the end of the series we find PPG fire works pretty well on them.

Sheridan is able to find them after flicking through different television frequencies for a couple of seconds, like Hell nothing could be done about them.

This feels like a common thing in sci-fi; Picard should have been livid with Guinan, Stargate Command should have told the Ancients to fuck off every chance they got.

Edited by Mullon on Mar 26th 2024 at 7:42:14 AM

Yeah, the Drakh are all seen leaving Zha'Ha'Dum and are the ones who blow the planet up.

Ehh before the end of the series we find PPG fire works pretty well on them.

On the vorlon sure. On the living ship inside the hangar who may have an opinion on the topic? Not as much.

To be fair, fucking off is exactly what the Ancients did, and it's why they suck. I dont know why you'd want them to do it more, it's the root cause of all the problems

Doesnt mean they lived there, only they had access to it and got there first to loot the place.

Like, the pizza delivery guy is seen leaving my place, he doesnt live there.

Edited by Ghilz on Mar 25th 2024 at 6:29:45 AM

Oops, I misinterpreted and thought we were talking about Mr Mordin's shadow escort.

The thing with the Ancients (and this is way more pronounced in Atlantis) is that the plague that wiped them out in the Milky Way seems to have moved slowly enough that they like...turned everything off or locked it and the easily accessible stuff all got pillaged really quickly. Like, it's a thing in SG-1 that all the millions of years old Ancient tech is really hard to use and the only exception requires sticking your face in a thing sticking out of a wall. Which...yeah, O'Neill did that, but he's O'Neill. Everything else requires a ton of work to get it to react at all, and whoever built that would assume that anyone who could use it (because ATA gene) would be an Ancient who would know what it was.

In the Pegasus Galaxy, the Ancients withdrew from most of it very quickly due to the Wraith, so stuff like the microdrone facility or the power generator thing kind of get a pass (like, if the designer was offworld when the Wraith moved in, it's not like they could go back), but the sheer amount of crap in Atlantis itself that is super dangerous and was just left turned on, sometimes not even needing the ATA gene to access it, points to the later generation Ancients being really negligent in a lot of really direct ways. This is not helped by stuff like their game of real life Civilization.

When you put everything together though, what you get is that the Ancients got smarter and smarter and more and more eccentric as time went on. The Destiny era Ancients had an issue with not writing everything down, but generally not having a big problem with insane experiments, the Milky Way Era ancients (as in, the ones who built stuff like the time loop machine and the Dakara Superweapon) were super advanced and powerful but, as evidenced by how they apparently got along fine with the Nox and Asgard, weren't arrogant dipshits, and the Atlantis era Ancients (a few ten thousand years ago) were the ones where getting increasingly close to ascension got them going more and more eccentric and unable to recognize the problems until they either ascended (and left everything turned on) or returned to Earth to quietly die out.

Interestingly, it's kind of implied the Ancients in the Pegasus galaxy never actually talked to the Asgard. Hermiod doesn't seem to know anything about the Wraith and the Asgard have zero (formal) presence in that galaxy, so it kinda looks like the Asgard never bothered to pay attention to anything but Ida and the Milky Way, which means the Asgard never interacted with the really arrogant dipshit flavour of Ancient. Also note that the rogue Asgard that are present in the Pegasus Galaxy also, explicitly, hid from everyone their whole time there, including from the Ancients.

EDIT: Oh god, I forgot what thread I was in, ignore me.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 25th 2024 at 8:10:10 AM

It's kind of funny, because one of the Babylon 5 podcasts I listen to is doing a Stargate SG 1 watchthrough currently.

I didn't know Stephen Furst was in his late 30s, I thought he was in his early 20s.

His breakout role was a frat comedy called Animal House in 1978. His Babylon 5 role came 16 years later.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 26th 2024 at 9:31:55 AM

In my eye that somewhat re-contextualizes Vir and Londo's relationship, which I thought was vaguely parental. It ends up Peter Jurasik was just four years older.

Characters aren't always as old as their actors.

Edited by kkhohoho on Mar 26th 2024 at 10:53:09 AM

You're gonna tell me Wayne Alexander isnt a few billion years old?

Yeah, Vir is clearly supposed to be significantly younger than Londo, especially since Peter Jurasik clearly has some aging makeup and Londo is very obviously written to be noticeably older than 43 (Jurasik's age at the start of the show). He's super old looking 25 years later, and Vir is the Emperor after him for apparently quite some time. So yeah, Stephen Furst is playing a lot younger than his real age and Peter Jurasik was playing a lot older.

The fact im 3 years off from Peter Jurasik at the start of B5 physically hurt me.

I'm currently that age. How do you think my bones feel?

So that's what Kosh looks like.

About as subtle as a brick to the face.

Kinda the point.

"Double post, but I have had it up to here with Kosh and Delenn not telling anyone else about the threat of the Shadows while acting like they know better than everyone else."

1) They didn't think telling everyone without having sufficient evidence would accomplish anything, 2) making the younger species overtly aware would induce the Shadows to begin moving openly instead of covertly, and 3) they were afraid some of the species would side with the Shadows if anyone actually explained their ideological stances.

And, of course, 4) no one on B5 is exactly what they appear to be, and who's a hero and who's a villain isn't clear or even constant.

Edit to add:

"The Drakh were living on Zha'ha'dum so you have to wonder if they were the first race to "pass" the Shadows tests."

Word of God is that the Drakh are to the Shadows as the Minbari are to the Vorlons: an attempt at partial uplifting / guiding of a species directly. In both cases, the Elder Ones failed to get what they wanted. The Minbari rejected the Vorlons' demands for obedience and order, rebelled against them, and actually killed several, if at the cost of the lives of every Minbari in space and the destruction of the technological society the Vorlons had given them. Meanwhile the Drakh became useful servitors, but fell into that role so completely that they had no desire to become more than that, which the Shadows hated. They wanted successors who in time would follow the Shadows, not content servants.

Edited by Melendwyr on Mar 27th 2024 at 4:17:55 AM