Crusade - You are the producer

[Admiral2]

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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You mean like the one it already had

Yeah, see? Forgot that...

[hyzmarca]

Honestly, the whole searching for a cure premise is stupid. You don't randomly fly around to planets of the week and hope to stumble across a cure to an engineered plague. You go after the guys who made it. The chances of stumbling across something useful on a random planet of the week are so low you're better off buying lottery tickets. Instead, hit Drakh research stations. Capture their scientists.
If you're going to keep the plague premise, at least drop the planet of the week bullshit and make it about raids against Drakh holdings.

[Sindatur]

hyzmarca wrote:

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Honestly, the whole searching for a cure premise is stupid. You don't randomly fly around to planets of the week and hope to stumble across a cure to an engineered plague. You go after the guys who made it. The chances of stumbling across something useful on a random planet of the week are so low you're better off buying lottery tickets. Instead, hit Drakh research stations. Capture their scientists.
If you're going to keep the plague premise, at least drop the planet of the week bullshit and make it about raids against Drakh holdings.

You do realize they weren't really just going to random planets right? They were being fed information by Alliance members and the Rangers, and the planets they were visiting had been selected as possibilities of previously being hit with the Virus

[Jan]

Sindatur wrote:

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You do realize they weren't really just going to random planets right? They were being fed information by Alliance members and the Rangers, and the planets they were visiting had been selected as possibilities of previously being hit with the Virus

Why would anybody think that the Excalibur's mission was the only angle being pursued to find a cure? Of course there was research being done all over the place. Of course there were military people involved looking to capture Drakh for interrogation. But you also have to remember that while the audience knew where the Drakh were based (Centauri Prime), neither Earth or the Alliance had that information.

And the whole searching for a cure thing was to make TNT happy, anyway. See what JMS had to deal with?

Jan

[JoeD80]

Just happened to watch "Each Night I Dream if Home" today. It dealt explicitly with doing research on Earth by infecting a volunteer. The random planets concept was tied into the box that Gideon kept asking for advice. That was certainly going to be developed more in season two. Also, the Shadows are the one who made the virus. Kind of tough to go after a race that no longer is around.

[OmahaStar]

JoeD80 wrote:

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Just happened to watch "Each Night I Dream if Home" today. It dealt explicitly with doing research on Earth by infecting a volunteer. The random planets concept was tied into the box that Gideon kept asking for advice. That was certainly going to be developed more in season two. Also, the Shadows are the one who made the virus. Kind of tough to go after a race that no longer is around.

Yep. They call it the Drakh plague/virus, because they're the ones who used it, but the Drakh never understood how it worked. If they did, they would have been able to alter the virus to work faster on Humans. That was covered in A Call to Arms.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Apocalypse Box was a Vorlon, wasn't it?

[Sindatur]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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The Apocalypse Box was a Vorlon, wasn't it?

We don't know, but, it used Gideon's voice.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I suppose it would fit better if the box had been a Shadow. It supposedly lies a lot. And tends to get people killed.

[Jolaris]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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I suppose it would fit better if the box had been a Shadow. It supposedly lies a lot. And tends to get people killed.

Well... Considering that the Vorlons were as bad as the Shadows in the end and probably lied more, the Shadows were more upfront about what they wanted weren't they, I would say it could go either way...

I mean, the Shadows never said they were the good guys. The Vorlons, well pretending to be angels could be constituted a lie.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ The Vorlons stood for order, and the Shadows were all about chaos. So that's why I view the former as good and the latter as evil. I'm funny that way.

[Jan]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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^ The Vorlons stood for order, and the Shadows were all about chaos. So that's why I view the former as good and the latter as evil. I'm funny that way.

They were both about manipulating others to do what they wanted. The Vorlons decided what they would or wouldn't 'allow' (remember how they murdered Deathwalker?), kidnapped and created telepaths from all of the entient races to use as weapons, kidnapped others to use as inquisitors/torturers. And, of course, played on the whole 'angelic being' thing so they could manipulate everybody through their religious beliefs.

Order isn't intrinsically good. It's just tidy.

Re: The apocalypse box...I seem to recall a theory that it's a prison of some sort. I don't recall why and I don't think it's something that came from JMS. It does seem to fit, though.

Jan

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Jan wrote:

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Order isn't intrinsically good. It's just tidy.

It's better than the alternative.

Re: The apocalypse box...I seem to recall a theory that it's a prison of some sort. I don't recall why and I don't think it's something that came from JMS. It does seem to fit, though.

The thought of Gideon (or anyone else) actually being trapped in that thing is indeed quite creepy. As is the fact that its previous "owner" killed himself to get away from it...

[Reverend]

Jan wrote:

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They were both about manipulating others to do what they wanted. The Vorlons decided what they would or wouldn't 'allow' (remember how they murdered Deathwalker?), kidnapped and created telepaths from all of the entient races to use as weapons, kidnapped others to use as inquisitors/torturers. And, of course, played on the whole 'angelic being' thing so they could manipulate everybody through their religious beliefs.

Order isn't intrinsically good. It's just tidy.

Re: The apocalypse box...I seem to recall a theory that it's a prison of some sort. I don't recall why and I don't think it's something that came from JMS. It does seem to fit, though.

Jan

I didn't make the connection until now, but I wonder if the box has any relationship to that entity in TLT? I recall when the DVD came out that my personal theory was that it was a fragment of some renegade Vorlon. An apocalypse box escapee perhaps?

On the other hand, it's a big universe and we already know there are older and more mysterious things out there than just the Shadows and the Vorlons. Between Soul Hunters, that empathic-vampire thing in the sphere and the Thirdspace aliens there's plenty of mystery to go around.

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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It's better than the alternative.

Is it? Perfect order leads to stagnation. As the Shadows put it, the Vorlons are frozen in time, an evolutionary dead-end. Of course perfect chaos is just as bad. It limits development since nothing can gain any real progress before the ant hills get knocked over again.

I think it's very telling that although the Shadow's cycles of chaos had supposedly carried on for many thousands of years, the most advanced younger races were the Minbari & Centauri. The latter apparantly becoming a space faring race just after the last war (possibly even taking advantage of the aftermath) and the former being very new on the scene when it kicked off. Aside from marginal races like the Soul Hunters and the Drakh, no true (non-First One) interstellar power appears to have survived the wars that preceded the last one.

Bottom line, either option is equally bad taken to their logical extremes. The trick is in finding the path between stagnation and self annihilation.

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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The thought of Gideon (or anyone else) actually being trapped in that thing is indeed quite creepy. As is the fact that its previous "owner" killed himself to get away from it...

The impression I was left with was that the box killed him. Not directly, of course, but it appeared to gave him just the right amount of information to get himself killed. It knows things and it lies.

Indeed, my original idea was that it was a sci-fi reinterpretation of a Jinn or some other mythical type of mischievous and malevolent spirit.