Babylon 5
- Thread starter Kail
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I get it. Which is why part of me wonders if its best to just leave well enough alone. They keep opening up more plot lines now that never get completed (Drakh, Keeper gift for David, plague, Legend of the Rangers..). I will definitely be buying it but I really hope for more than just a Greatest Hits album of flashbacks and alternate universes that don't matter.
I mean I'm not saying it's bad by any stretch (quite the contrary), but to my ears it still registered as someone doing a very solid Zathras impersonation (or maybe it was supposed to be Zathras?) Whereas for the Sinclair voice; it made my brain jump the tracks and for a split second forget that O'Hare is no longer with us and that it was actually him.
Not the worst attempt at a justification after the fact I can think of (not you, the book), but you would think if that really were the case the Shadows wouldn't have gone after Kosh like that. I mean it's not like they knew he was going for a sacrifice play, so the only reason they would show up as they did is if they were sure they could take him.
If we know one thing about the Shadows, it's that they never pick a stand-up fight unless they know they have an overwhelming advantage.
I think we can just chalk this up to one of those minor inconsistencies that are contrived out of the necessities of storytelling.
Right? I wondered at first if they recycled some of his old dialogue. It sounded more like O'Hare as Sinclair than Boxleitner sounded like Sheridan in the trailer, and Boxleitner was Sheridan.
We don't know a ton about the Shadow civilization, so perhaps individual Shadows are somewhat akin to Borg drones, in the sense of being expendable relative to the whole?
Kosh caused the Vorlons to directly intervene in a Shadow attack, and therefore must be killed as an object lesson to the Vorlons and their allies. The Shadows know they can do it, but there will be casualties. The other option is to -not- do it and have Kosh still be alive causing more harm, whereas his death demoralizes his allies, who aren't going to care how many Shadows he took out in the process.
Both personally and in terms of ships, the Shadows were always depicted as being notably less durable than Vorlons.
That could be a doctrinal decision; to an extent, the Shadows need to be beatable for their teaching method to work, while the Vorlons gain nothing from allowing the slightest hope of defiance, and it's in their interest to be as close to indestructible as possible. Or, on the flip side, the Shadows believe making themselves too overpowered will prevent them from benefiting from evolution; if no Shadow can be killed, there's nothing separating the wheat from the chaff, and the civilization as a whole would stagnate (and, conversely, the Vorlons would order their entire society to clockwork perfection with everyone and everything in their proper place, and then never change it again if they had their way).
As for the fight with Kosh, Lorien mentioned that they had an intrinsic advantage in that they were also First Ones. They'd had millions of years to learn how to kill Vorlons, and operated on an equivalent metaphysical level. There were also three or four of them that attacked Kosh, but we didn't see them later; it's possible that all of them died in the attempt and Morden was the only person who walked out of that room alive. Or maybe just one or two of them; Ulkesh saw an impression of Morden and two Shadows burned into the wall of Kosh's quarters, maybe the other one (or two) was killed by Kosh before he went down.
That could be a doctrinal decision; to an extent, the Shadows need to be beatable for their teaching method to work, while the Vorlons gain nothing from allowing the slightest hope of defiance, and it's in their interest to be as close to indestructible as possible. Or, on the flip side, the Shadows believe making themselves too overpowered will prevent them from benefiting from evolution; if no Shadow can be killed, there's nothing separating the wheat from the chaff, and the civilization as a whole would stagnate (and, conversely, the Vorlons would order their entire society to clockwork perfection with everyone and everything in their proper place, and then never change it again if they had their way).
As for the fight with Kosh, Lorien mentioned that they had an intrinsic advantage in that they were also First Ones. They'd had millions of years to learn how to kill Vorlons, and operated on an equivalent metaphysical level. There were also three or four of them that attacked Kosh, but we didn't see them later; it's possible that all of them died in the attempt and Morden was the only person who walked out of that room alive. Or maybe just one or two of them; Ulkesh saw an impression of Morden and two Shadows burned into the wall of Kosh's quarters, maybe the other one (or two) was killed by Kosh before he went down.
I've been going on the assumption for a while now that the Shadows are more hive-centric and not so individualistic given that they appear to have evolved from some kind of arthropod analogue, and typically always show up in groups. Whereas the Vorlons who seemingly evolved from Lovecraftian sea creatures are very individualistic, even in groups.
That's all well and good, but what I'm getting at is about relative physical toughness. Or to put it in theatrical terms: "fight consistency".
Ignore the fleet actions for a second, because those vessels aren't Shadows, they're just tools. Attack dogs. Designed to weed out the weaker races and hone the strongest. We've seen when the Shadows want to get serious they can roll out the planet killers, so it's not a question of technology.
What I'm talking about is that if a Shadow is physically fragile enough (relatively speaking) that it can be killed in a few seconds by a lowly primitive with a PPG, then how could even a dozen of them expect to survive long enough to against a Vorlon in close quarters to do anything more than just piss it off? Remember what it took to kill Ulkesh? DOZENS of security troops laying down sustained fire, plus a high voltage current direct from a fusion reactor, and all that did is crack the encounter suit and get it out of it's shell. It took the last of Kosh and Lorien to actually finish it off.
It's pretty impossible to reconcile the inherent contradiction here, so you just kind of have to hand-wave it.
The closest I can get to a credible explanation is that the Shadows are glass cannons. Weak defences, but way more powerful on the offence. But even that has problems since if that were the case, they wouldn't have needed so many to take down Kosh in the first place.
Like I said, it's a matter of fight consistency. If a bunch of Shadows can get into a brawl with another First One and have a hope of surviving, it shouldn't have any trouble with a jumped up primate that just discovered how to merely throw plasma around with magnets. These are orders of magnitudes apart.
To borrow from another franchise
I have to admit my excitement has cooled for the various post-show Babylon 5 projects over the years. But I'm actually excited to see this. The quality looks incredible, and even if it is a bit of an exercise in nostalgia and the multiverse landscape is a tad crowded these days (hardly JMS' fault), I'm happy to see these characters and this setting revisited in a fresh format that really works.
Everything, everywhere, all at once - so unavoidable, I guess? Multiverse stories make me feel pretty much burnt out by SF. I can't imagine what will revive my enthusiasm, but even a B5 foray - if that is what this is and I don't know - seems unlikely to be provide the necessary defibrillation.
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It’s like getting Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.
The trailer does make me interested in purchasing this*, even if only in the hope that it sells well and we get the same technique applied to rounding off the Crusade story. The B5 story itself is complete, although I wouldn't be averse to either a live-action or an anime remake. I guess I'm feeling less jaded today...
* Depending on how I feel at the time (August 14), I might opt for the cheapest option, which is UHD streaming on Prime at £9.99. The Blu-ray is £12 and the 4K Blu-ray is £20. My ageing eyes have a hard time discerning the HDR improvement offered by 4K, so if I do decide that I want a physical copy, I'd probably go for the Blu-ray. Which means I'll probably end up buying the 4K because it's only £8 more. What a sucker...
* Depending on how I feel at the time (August 14), I might opt for the cheapest option, which is UHD streaming on Prime at £9.99. The Blu-ray is £12 and the 4K Blu-ray is £20. My ageing eyes have a hard time discerning the HDR improvement offered by 4K, so if I do decide that I want a physical copy, I'd probably go for the Blu-ray. Which means I'll probably end up buying the 4K because it's only £8 more. What a sucker...
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JMS has only said it'll come to streaming eventually but didn't even say what platform.
I am going to buy the 4k disc even though I do not have a 4k player. Plus it has a digital copy that I can watch on Movies Anywhere and itunes so that is cool. Must support the movie so that there will be more B5 goodness in our future.
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