How many humans formed the Grey Council?
How many Minbari turned down the role as leader of the Grey Council?
How many humans went to Zah'dum and returned without being controlled by by the Shadows?
Just The One.
When I first watched B5, oh so many years ago, I didn't understand the minbari worker caste. The worker caste seemed to be exploited. Since then I have been exposed to more sources, and Iain M Banks's Culture series got me thinking.
Suppose their technology is so advanced, they have machines that provide for all their material needs. Suppose they don't actually need workers to survive, any more than they need religion to survive.
But some people (I now count myself amongst them) find meaning from work. The worker caste are not doing mindless boring work. They're the architects, the designers, the tinkerers, the sort of things we do for hobbies, is what they call work.
The worker caste are not exploited, they're your friend that likes to knit, the person who writes code for fun, you as a child who drew fantasy buildings they'd like to live in. The difference is, their drawings can be passed into one of their machines and it is made real.
The Rangers provided Minbari religious caste crew and White Stars to fight against Clark. But why didn't they also provide White Stars and human crew to support the religious caste in the Minbari Civil War?
If the Centauri, Narn, EA and the LONAW banded together to fight the Minbari, could they beat them? Or would the be outcome still be a victory for the Minbari, but a longer and bloodier war than against EA?
With O'Hares unfortunate medical problems now widely known, I think most of us can agree that Sinclair becoming Valen was most probably not part of the original plan for the character.
So, I'm curious - in what episode was the title Minbari not born of Minbar first used?
The Minbari stopped the war against humanity because Minbari souls were being reborn in Human bodies. Later we learned it was a deal more complicated than that but nonetheless, the two races are now kin.
What upsets me about Crusade is the lack of involvement of the Minbari Federation in the race to save humanity (with the exception of the Rangers).
The Drakh attacked Earth after failing to release the plague on Minbar. After such a close call, and with all they've been through, it is difficult to believe that the Grey Council would abandon Humanity to this grim fate.
Do the Minbari view Humanity as kin? Do they have any sense of obligation to a race that played such a crucial role in the development (and survival) of their civilization?
Would it make any difference for the EA if the Novas and Hyperions had the same weapons and techs as the Omega Class Destroyer during the war? I don't expect EA to win at all. But maybe stall the war for a couple more months or even years?
Should the CW show have some flashback scenes of the Earth-Minbari where we see Earthforce facing off the Minbari's Sharlin cruisers? In The Beginning, we barely got to see the fighting except scenes where Earth ships getting slaughered. Maybe in this new interpretation, Earth is a bit stronger and can fight back against the Minbari?
So I just started binging the show today as it a was added to Imdb TV.
I'm the pilot episode, Sinclair has to explain what a poem is to Delenn, and she recites part of a limerick that Garibaldi had told her as of the concept is novel to her.
Later in season 1 we find out that poetry is an important part of Minbari culture.
Am I going insane, or was this just a change from the pilot, or was Delenn bullshitting Sinclair?
What if, at the midpoint of season 4, after the Shadow War, a new disease started spreading among Minbari, similar to the disease that eradicated the Markab?
The entire species is basically extinct by the end of season 5, with the few survivors who managed to recover rendered sterile.
The Drakh were not responsible for this plague, but they aren't unhappy about it and are willing to "help" it spread.
How would this plague affect the story?
On the B5 subreddit, I submitted a silly head canon about the idea of various human shows and movies getting remade for alien audiences (like how the British Office has multiple foreign remakes).
One example I used was a Minbari remake of Community.
What would this actually be like? How would the story and characters translate to this alien culture? Do they even have community colleges?
https://preview.redd.it/08r1pgzhyro71.jpg?width=435&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e12da732bb220b1686f4a3a5c4fbd4127dde45b5
In “in the beginning” it’s pretty clear that the EA was broadcasting an unconditional surrender and plea for mercy which the Minbari ignored. Instead of surrendering they could have just granted mercy and left. The fact that they “surrendered” seems to be a key reason for the rift between castes and doesn’t make sense...
Spoilers for the whole series below
I'm on my third Bab5 watch and something just occurred to me and I don't believe it's ever addressed in the show. The Minbari are completely wrong about their souls being reborn in human bodies.
The only evidence for this is when they take Sinclair aboard during the Battle of the Line and use the triluminary on him. It glows, just like it did for Delenn during her Gray Council induction ceremony. It doesn't glow for most Minbari.
They assume it glows because of his strong Minbari soul, but in actuality, it only glows because it is keyed to Valen's DNA. It glowed for Delenn because she is a distant descendant of Valen. And Sinclair IS Valen, having used the triluminary 1000 years ago after stealing Babylon 4.
The Minbari religion is centerated around souls and reincarnation. Lenier states that they have noticed that each generation of Minbari is somehow lesser than the previous, and the consensus was that these souls were leaving their cycle of rebirth.
We don't know what metric they were using to gauge the value of their souls, but the observation could be the classic complaint about how the old generation was somehow greater, or it could be that there is more Sinclair/human DNA in the Minbari population (even though Delenn is perhaps the greatest of modern Minbari and has the most human DNA).
I'm about half way through season 5 in this rewatch, so there may be more information from the later episodes I'm forgetting.
So what do you think? Are Minbari souls being reborn in human bodies?
Aside from the inciting incident of the show, Delenn indicates that that one species that kidnapped Sheridan got the proverbial belt for similar abductions of the Minbari. It makes me wonder if there’s ever a cycle of Minbar responding to attacks on their people or getting wrapped up in a cult of personality with mass murder.
According to the wiki, the war saw only 250,000 deaths, which is less than the war in Afghanistan, and the Syrian civil war.
This war was supposedly the closest that humanity ever came to extinction, and supposedly only 250k died. That's basically nothing. They make it seem like hundreds of millions or even billions of people died, a significant portion of Earth's population, they even mentioned a full scale draft.
What gives?
They're ubiquitous, but definitely have the elegance of Minbari tech. I can't recall if humans were using them before the war or they were given to us after it? As one of the oldest races did they teach data crystals to other races they encountered?
In The Beginning film, Earth Force got wrekt because they couldn't lock onto Minbari ships. However, we see Earth Force be able to see Minbari ship location, range, distance, and course. That's all you need to put rounds on target. You don't need a lock to shoot your guns. The pirates of the Caribbean, the expeditionary force in WW1. the Guards Tank Armies in WW2, the Marines in Vietnam, they didn't have target locks yet they still poured lead on the enemy.
Re a re-watch of the gathering when was it ever explain why the Minbari assassin wanted to frame Sinclair? Like was it ever explained?
Driving me nuts thanks. All that was said is "there is a hole in your mind".
Did the Minbari intend to subdue and occupy earth?
Smash human civilization and leave?
Or actually exterminate all humans?
I originally asked this in r/ScienceFiction last year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/sciencefiction/comments/bt01jq/regarding_the_babylon_5_earthminbari_war_what/
So, was it common knowledge among the Minbari that the Vorlons were "angels" (and totally not glowing space squids).
It definitely seems to be know 1,000 years ago, (I mean, the random Minbari Warriors who boarded B4 didn't drop to their knees in supplication when they saw two of them floating over Sheridan/Valen), but did that knowledge continue until the "present" day of the show? (And they mostly staying in their encounter suits to not be strained?)
I never realized before now that Sheridan's wives each mirror a caste.
Lochley is the warrior, and the one to whom he was least attached. Both admit they were young and naive, and there was too much, ahem, friction between two warriors to work. But they've never lost their respect and friendship.
Anna is the worker, simpler than Lochley and whom Sheridan had the hardest time letting go emotionally. He later regretted that their jobs took them to distant places away from each other. In a sense, she may represent a simpler life that he privately yearned for with her, but one that his destiny would never give him.
Delenn is the religious, the most complex, but whose bond with him is the greatest. The Minbari warrior and religious castes engage in the greatest conflicts. Their relationship was the slowest to develop and intertwined with his recovery from losing Anna. The confrontation about Z'ha'dum was a tense point that could have broken their relationship, but they persevered even into his death and rebirth.
That dog worked his way through em all.
This is something that came up in the season 1 episode "The Quality of Mercy", when Lennier is boring Londo with his life story and he says "And in my eleventy-fourth year I blah blah blah, and in my eleventy-fifth year I learned such-and-such..." People asked JMS about this on Usenet and he explained that Minbari use a base-11 counting system: "eleventy-four" is actually 15, "eleventy-five" is 16, etc. Because Minbari count on the ten fingers plus the head.
I've got two problems with this. Firstly, base-11 is quite possibly the worst and stupidest numbering system it is possible to use. Secondly, if the Minbari were going to use a different numbering system to Earth, wouldn't have been much more fitting if they used base-9 instead? Three times three.
As I was writing this I realised the "eleventy" stuff was probably another shout-out to Lord of the Rings. But my point still stands.
this may sound stupid but why are the minbari always fixated on what the Humans did to them. for such an advanced race why was a whole war fueled on primal rage.
Why do the Minbari disrespect Sheridan with the "starkiller" nickname because he killed minbari during their war, but they are always negligent to mention the sheer amount of destruction they caused the earth alliance they killed a lot more humans than they did minbari but its always about how they had their flag ship destroyed.
It just seems like they treat the war like they were the victims I understand dukhat died in the first place but again they see nothing wrong with how they approached an unknown species...
any ideas?
How does this relate to Valen ?
After watching the Season 1 episode Legacies, it truly amazed me that in 10 years after a war that almost wiped out humanity and violated the Minbari's most sacred rule, NO ONE thought to mention that open gun ports is a normal thing for Minbari ships.
I said it, fight me.
