Babylon 5
- Thread starter Kail
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I shall look that up.
Delenn somehow had a sense of something, but nothing she could say. A bad feeling. The things have a slight telepathic range and she felt it. Don't forget, the keepers are organic, but not really alive, as we usually define that word, but a kind of device. Like the Shadow's ships and other tech.
I can not recommend the Legions of Fire trilogy enough, for me it's like a half of a season 6. It even makes the last movie, A Call to Arms, make a lot more sense. I don't want to say how, but it does.
I can not recommend the Legions of Fire trilogy enough, for me it's like a half of a season 6. It even makes the last movie, A Call to Arms, make a lot more sense. I don't want to say how, but it does.
t's one of those shows that you either love or hate, and you have to stick with it or miss bits of story that tie into everything else around it. It's also one of those shows that through the medium of fiction covers a lot of issues in the real world. Love this series.
That whole scene as the station is destroyed, and the music is just glorious, and sad, and wondrous at the same time.. The station became a character and I felt so sad when you see her spine break and the explosions. Only if it was so bad for navigation why didn't they just tow it somewhere or fire the retros to take it into the sun, now they had all those huge chunks of metal floating around making more of a hazard lol.
Also what happens to the jump gate? can you move those, the four sections are not connected physically are they? They are all free floating but in the same spot. I did laugh when they turn off the power that it's just in some normal corridor under an access panel that you can shut down the lights and everything. In 5 years no one ever tried to find the "off switch" to do some sabotage... lol
That whole scene as the station is destroyed, and the music is just glorious, and sad, and wondrous at the same time.. The station became a character and I felt so sad when you see her spine break and the explosions. Only if it was so bad for navigation why didn't they just tow it somewhere or fire the retros to take it into the sun, now they had all those huge chunks of metal floating around making more of a hazard lol.
Also what happens to the jump gate? can you move those, the four sections are not connected physically are they? They are all free floating but in the same spot. I did laugh when they turn off the power that it's just in some normal corridor under an access panel that you can shut down the lights and everything. In 5 years no one ever tried to find the "off switch" to do some sabotage... lol
The off switch was probably something they jury-rigged for the occasion.
As for the floating debris, I've been saying that for years. Aside from dramatic effect, there was no reason to blow up the station. A place that was so pivotal to galactic history should have been turned into a museum and protected.
As for the floating debris, I've been saying that for years. Aside from dramatic effect, there was no reason to blow up the station. A place that was so pivotal to galactic history should have been turned into a museum and protected.
Wasn't that JMS doing the turning off? More symbolic and dramatic than truthful -- this was an ISN documentary after all. 
Book 1 is really good, and I wait untill book 3 is affordable
That was mostly for dramatic effect. Despite appearances, it wasn't shutting down the whole station, just the lights. Realistically speaking that was probably just the main breaker for the last habitable section still running other than the docking system. It wouldn't make an awful lot of sense for any internal lights to be on the same circuit as the external lights.
Remember that the rotation systems were still running, as were the docking systems and the main reactor since overloading it is how they demolished the place.
As for why they demolished it: there are several reasons.
1) As stated in the episode, nobody comes there anymore. Oh sure, there's bound to be *some* traffic from random travellers, pilgrims, tourists and the like, but nothing even close to the constant hive of activity it once was (average of 50 ships *a day*!)
2) Running a city in space like that is damned expensive. Not just in terms of material and consumables, but in actually paying a crew to keep everything from breaking every five minutes.
3) By design, it was built in a funny location. right smack in the middle of the Alliance but at the same time, in a ostensibly uninhabited and neutral system (yes, Draal & co. but they don't really figure into this.) As such, if they were to just abandon it, it would be a *prime* setup for criminal groups, raider gangs, smugglers and the like. The last thing the Alliance needs is a pirate city right in the middle of their territory and with easy access to a jumpgate.
4) Leaving a semi-permanent force to guard it from such a thing is potentially almost as expensive as keeping the place running, only with the added bonus of tying up a bunch of military assets (warships) that could be better deployed elsewhere. It'd be like deploying half the US Pacific Fleet to guard some old empty WWII bunker on some nowhere deserted island. The taxpayers wouldn't be impressed.
5) A derelict station is also a major hazard to navigation. It's basically a big lump of structurally fragile metal. Over time, it'll start to break up, spreading *huge* clouds of debris all around the local jumpgate's exit vector, maybe even collide with it. Orbits are never perfectly stable and while operational the station probably had to periodically correct itself. Even a slight brush with Epsilon III's upper atmosphere could either slow it down enough that it eventually spirals down and impacts the surface (best case scenario) or worse, it skips up into an unstable elliptical orbit that could make the eventual breakup even more chaotic.
B5 was never meant to last. It was a last ditch, cheapest bidder attempt to get the Babylon Project off the ground. B4 was the fancy cool one that could be moved and survive for a thousand years in a decaying orbit (though even that was pretty wrecked by the end.)
Not that I recall, but based on the scripts for "To the Ends of the Earth" and "End of the Line", that was never what the show was really about - the eponymous crusade was something else entirely. (Those episodes would have been the equivalent to "Signs and Portents" and "Chrysalis" respectively.)
I'm presently on a rewatch of B5 and I wanted to ask; did we ever get satisfactory answers for Lady Morella (Luxanna Troi's) prophecies that she gave to Londo in season 3 episode "Point of No Return"?
"You must save the eye that does not see."
"You must not kill the one who is already dead. "
"You must surrender to your greatest fear, knowing that it will destroy you."
"If, at the end, you have failed with all the others, that is your final chance for redemption."
The first answer is believed to be G'Kar's eye/person. How that would have saved Londo from being damned, idk.
The second one is either Sheridan or Morden. I don't recall Londo ever being in a position to kill Sheridan, but Morden fits just as well.
I assume Londo's greatest fear was seeing his home world destroyed/covered in darkness. As Londo always went on at length about the Great Centauri Empire. His people not being conquerors with power, and instead being despots with nothing to show for their history, would certainly qualify.
"You must save the eye that does not see."
"You must not kill the one who is already dead. "
"You must surrender to your greatest fear, knowing that it will destroy you."
"If, at the end, you have failed with all the others, that is your final chance for redemption."
The first answer is believed to be G'Kar's eye/person. How that would have saved Londo from being damned, idk.
The second one is either Sheridan or Morden. I don't recall Londo ever being in a position to kill Sheridan, but Morden fits just as well.
I assume Londo's greatest fear was seeing his home world destroyed/covered in darkness. As Londo always went on at length about the Great Centauri Empire. His people not being conquerors with power, and instead being despots with nothing to show for their history, would certainly qualify.
^Londo's "greatest fear" basically refers to his death dream, the one with G'Kar's hands around his throat. Looking at it a little deeper though, one might say his greatest fear is letting go of power, because he's afraid what someone else would do with it in his stead. So yeah, in the end he surrendered to it knowing it would destroy him. It did and he was thus redeemed.
Kind of, but only in broad strokes. The basic gist is that at a certain point (probably early season 2) There would have been a "false cure" from the shady Earth group* that was behind a lot of what Clark and Department Sigma got upto. The crew of the Excalibur would be declared renegades and they'd go on the run for a spell and eventually (probably by the end of season 2 or 3) release the real cure, in whatever form that took.
Kind of, but only in broad strokes. The basic gist is that at a certain point (probably early season 2) There would have been a "false cure" from the shady Earth group* that was behind a lot of what Clark and Department Sigma got upto. The crew of the Excalibur would be declared renegades and they'd go on the run for a spell and eventually (probably by the end of season 2 or 3) release the real cure, in whatever form that took.
* You know, the ones messing with hybrid Shadow tech, the ones for whom IPX is just a front. It's never given a name or a face because it's basically like future incarnation of the military industrial complex that's been around in the west since the 1940's. It's just a bunch of people using a system to further their own ends and perpetuate said system.
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I'm guessing the first "cure" would have been something refined from the organic Shadow tech and my memory might be wrong but I remember some sort of quote from JMS that the cure would be worse than the disease. And since back in the day Luc Mayrand (he did a lot of designs for both B5 and Crusade) made some concept sketches of Shadow/Human Hybrid that would have appeared at some point... it's easy to draw some conclusions. Pretty obvious ones, but still.
I like Crusade quite a bit but there's no closure at all and it may seem episodic given that it was killed about the time the arc was going to kick in. But the characters are great. Sadly (before you ask) there's really no perfect way to watch it since JMS had to try to repair the damage of the re-ordered episodes as well as he could with dialog replacement and editing.
As for the cure, JMS has said that a cure would be found around the middle of the second season but that it might not be everything they hoped. We don't know what that means. From the two unproduced JMS scripts, though, we know that the Excalibur would have become a rogue ship.
The eye that does not see: G'Kar's eye that didn't see Cartagia's splendor (per JMS).
The one who is already dead: Sheridan. Morden didn't die, he was just extra crispy (also per JMS).
Londo's greatest fear has never been clarified but my thinking is that it's either submitting to the Keeper for the sake of his people even though it would destroy his reign as emperor or else his death by G'Kar's hands.
The nice thing (for lack of a better term) is that we can be pretty sure that he was redeemed. For whatever value of the word you use.
My suspicion about the season two "cure" for the Drakh plague is that it would have been morally compromising in a similar way to the healing device in "The Quality of Mercy" -- some must die that others might live but who deserves to live, who deserves to die, and who gets to choose?
One thing that bothered me about that machine was why couldn't they use a cow and have steaks afterwards? Same for Deathwalker's serum, too, what was unique that needed, presumably, the same species for this life transfer to work?
Yeah I wonder that as well......
But with Deathwalker's serum the thing is everyone would want it so much, and as she said they'd climb over each other to get it. It would cause a hell of a lot of damage.
Ah, ok. Thanks. I'll rewatch those episodes when I come to them.
Thing is, Londo was never in a position to kill Sheridan after he died in the season 3 finale. Morden however, was recorded to be dead (by Earth), nearly died when Sheridan nuked Z'Ha Dum and finally met his end when Londo had him killed on Centauri Prime. Morden's death and the destruction of the Shadow vessels is what brought the Drakh to Centauri Prime and their mad plan of revenge against Londo. Of which becoming emperor of a ruined Centauri Prime is what further damned Londo.
I never got the impression that Londo was afraid of G'Kar or death for that matter. I think Londo is afraid of being judged/held accountable for his actions. He wanted the Centauri to talk the talk and walk the walk, but when it came to pay up, Londo waifed on that aspect.
Yeah... After what Londo did, the prophecies from Morella and the Technomage and his own figurehead appointment as emperor for 17 years, Londo certainly earned a redemption of sorts. Haha
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