JMS on GEnie - 8/1/97 - Poisoning Kosh
John Hudgens (Fenn)
Joe posted this early this morning... I figured there'd be a real
interest for this one here...
********************
Sigh...look, if this is *really* going to be an issue, and I guess
I'm going to have to deal with this sooner or later....
In any book or script, there's the list of things you know you have
to hit along the way, and the thing you'd like to hit if you have time
and circumstance. Kind of like visiting a big city. You may know you
have to go by the Natural History Museum, the Civil War Memorial, and a
few other places, and if you have time, places A, B and C. This thread
falls under the latter category.
It doesn't need to be known to accept the sequence of actions as
shown in the pilot and series, and there was never really a chance to gt
into it. But if you *have* to know....
Deathwalker was sheltered by the Wind Swords, the same radical
military caste clan responsible for the attempt on Kosh. Deathwalker
was one of the Dilgar, who spread chaos and destruction in the course of
their war, wiping out whole worlds.
Sound familiar? Survival of the fittest. Sound familiar?
Thoug the shadows were still "sleeping," their servants were still
out and about, doing a lot of their work. There was a Dilgar/Shadow
connection in this way...and if anyone's going to know how to poison a
Vorlon, it's a Shadow. This information would've gotten to the Wind
Swords through Deathwalker during her years of protection by them, and
when they decided to sabotage B5 and undermine the whole thing, why not
use this to turn the Vorlons against the whole operation? (Since only
the shadows would have this information, and if they could make it
appear that Sinclair was responsible, that would mean Sinclair = shadow
agent, and that, as they say, is that...though that's one reason why
they wanted or would have preferred to bring him back to Vorlon to check
this out more carefully.)
Remember that direct conflict and violence between the Vorlons and
the Shadows was prohibited by their agreements...they could act only
through intermediaries (until Kosh took it to a new level and all the
gloves came off).
The only problem with the above is fitting it into an episode a
year or two after the fact and having it not look like a mass of
exposition tacked on. You can't just go, "Oh, by the way, you remember
when...."
It was the sort of thing I couldn't work into an episode that long
afterward, and always figured it was okay to leave that one tiny little
corner unexplained in detail, though I felt there was enough there to
hang together without it. But there was always a logic behind it.
jms
jean...@pacbell.net
John Hudgens (Fenn) wrote:
>
> Joe posted this early this morning... I figured there'd be a real
> interest for this one here...
> ********************
otherwise his responses would never be so complete. This also prevents
a lot of pre-editing in his head. Woohoo! We can get more info that
way. Thank the "Great Maker!"
Daniel Damouth
In article <33E21F...@genie.com>,
John Hudgens (Fenn) <sf-hu...@genie.com> wrote:
>Joe posted this early this morning... I figured there'd be a real
>interest for this one here...
>
>to hit along the way, and the thing you'd like to hit if you have time
>and circumstance.
> It doesn't need to be known to accept the sequence of actions as
>shown in the pilot and series, and there was never really a chance to gt
>into it. But if you *have* to know....
[...]
> It was the sort of thing I couldn't work into an episode that long
>afterward, and always figured it was okay to leave that one tiny little
>corner unexplained in detail, though I felt there was enough there to
>hang together without it. But there was always a logic behind it.
>
> jms
In Zelazny's short essay "The Parts That Are Only Glimpsed" he says:
"In writing anything of length, I always compose -- either on paper
and then destroy it, or in my head and let it be -- a scene or scenes
involving my protagonist (and possibly separate ones for other
important characters) having nothing to do with the story itself --
just something that happened to him/her/it once upon a time. I
accept it as a real experience, a part of the charater's life
history, and I may even refer to it in the story itself. But I
never include it. I do this under the belief that the character
should be larger than the present circumstances indicate, should be
defined for me in terms of a bigger picture of his life than the
reader ever sees."
While this refers to written stories of length (in which it's
possible to convey much more detail than on TV), the idea that
there should be a fully fleshed out part of the story that is
only for the writer's benefit definitely applies to B5.
I think we are seeing the benefits of JMS having written parts
of the story that we will never see.
-Dan Damouth
Tim Skirvin
"John Hudgens (Fenn)" <sf-hu...@genie.com> writes:
> Deathwalker was sheltered by the Wind Swords, the same radical
>military caste clan responsible for the attempt on Kosh. Deathwalker
>was one of the Dilgar, who spread chaos and destruction in the course of
>their war, wiping out whole worlds.
So, the Dilgar were Shadow agents. Cool. I can see it. That
adds quite a bit to the reasoning for Kosh to take down Jha'dur and the
serum - they're attacking the Shadows, too.
Of course, this also raises the question of whether the immortality
serum actually came from the Shadows...
- Tim Skirvin (tski...@uiuc.edu)
--
<a href="http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin">Skirv's Homepage</a><*>
<a href="http://www.killfile.org/~daemons/">The Killfile Dungeon</a>
Joel Mathis
Rumor has it tski...@uiuc.edu said...
> "John Hudgens (Fenn)" <sf-hu...@genie.com> writes:
>
> > Deathwalker was sheltered by the Wind Swords, the same radical
> >military caste clan responsible for the attempt on Kosh. Deathwalker
> >was one of the Dilgar, who spread chaos and destruction in the course of
> >their war, wiping out whole worlds.
>
> So, the Dilgar were Shadow agents. Cool. I can see it. That
> adds quite a bit to the reasoning for Kosh to take down Jha'dur and the
> serum - they're attacking the Shadows, too.
It makes sense. The whole Dilgar War was a first strike. They just woke
up, they were cranky, they started a war to see who the powers in the
galaxy were.
> Of course, this also raises the question of whether the immortality
> serum actually came from the Shadows...
Well, they do seem to have a thing for biological weapons.
--
Joel Mathis
-----------
Vote in my weekly Babylon 5 poll at
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/3533/
Tim Skirvin
jma...@gate.net (Joel Mathis) writes:
>> So, the Dilgar were Shadow agents. Cool. I can see it. That
>> adds quite a bit to the reasoning for Kosh to take down Jha'dur and the
>> serum - they're attacking the Shadows, too.
>It makes sense. The whole Dilgar War was a first strike. They just woke
>up, they were cranky, they started a war to see who the powers in the
>galaxy were.
If that was the purpose, it sure wasn't very effective - none of
the major powers got involved one way or the other, just the (at the time)
minor power of Earth. I'd tend to think that this was just their standard
operation, just a little stretching of the muscles... Of course, I don't
think the Shadows were awake at the time, we're talking about, what, fifteen
years before?
Regardless, it should be noted that the Dilgar war did accomplish
the Shadow's objectives perfectly - one race fell (the Dilgar) while one
race got much stronger (Earth).
- Tim Skirvin (tski...@uiuc.edu)
--
<a href="http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin">Skirv's Homepage</a><*>
<a href="http://www.killfile.org/~daemons/">The Killfile Dungeon</a>
[ NOTE: About 40 years actually. - JAD ]
Ron Sharp
Joel Mathis <jma...@gate.net> wrote in article
<MPG.e157ddce...@news.gate.net>...
> Rumor has it tski...@uiuc.edu said...
> > "John Hudgens (Fenn)" <sf-hu...@genie.com> writes:
> >
> > > Deathwalker was sheltered by the Wind Swords, the same radical
> > >military caste clan responsible for the attempt on Kosh. Deathwalker
> > >was one of the Dilgar, who spread chaos and destruction in the course
of
> > >their war, wiping out whole worlds.
> >
> > adds quite a bit to the reasoning for Kosh to take down Jha'dur and the
> > serum - they're attacking the Shadows, too.
>
> It makes sense. The whole Dilgar War was a first strike. They just woke
> up, they were cranky, they started a war to see who the powers in the
> galaxy were.
According to what we've learned, the Shadows didn't wake up until the
Icarus landed. (I bet the Shadows have one of those *cheerful* doorbells.)
That would have been shortly before the pilot. The Dilgar war was a few
years before the Earth-Minbari war, say 12-15 years before the pilot.
Interesting, the original Icarus died because he flew too close to the Sun.
The ship Icarus died because it flew too close to the Shadows...
Ron Sharp.
scott conrad davis
On 8 Aug 1997, Ron Sharp wrote:
[snip]
> Interesting, the original Icarus died because he flew too close to the Sun.
> The ship Icarus died because it flew too close to the Shadows...
>
> Ron Sharp.
>
>
Icarus died because he ignored caution and advice from his father. He
was reckless. Et tu, the ship.
Always ask the Y priniple. Why did the writer do this in the first
place? Nothing is accidental in literature and B5 is literature with video.
Scott
Will Crawford
On 17 Aug 1997 04:04:05 -0400, Rodger Burns <ala...@gte.net> wrote:
>> It makes sense. The whole Dilgar War was a first strike. They just woke
>> up, they were cranky, they started a war to see who the powers in the
>> galaxy were.
>
>Except that the Dilgar went on their initial offensive because their
>homeworld's sun was about to go nova, and they needed elbow room in a
>big way. Are we supposed to believe that the Shadows engineered the
>Dilgar nova in order to start the war?
I wouldn't say that this is totally out of the question...
We've seen examples of some pretty advanced Shadow technology, even in
the hands of their minions... I wouldn't think that destabilizing a
sun would be out of the question, especially since they could have
spent years working at it. Of course, it normally takes several
million years for a star to "prepare to nova" but I suppose it could
be sped up with, say, highly shielded and very powerful gravity
generators? Not out of the question, at any rate.
Will
+----------------------------------------
| William Crawford, Data Express Software
| wi...@dexs.com http://www.dexs.com/
Rodger Burns
Joel Mathis wrote:
>
> Rumor has it tski...@uiuc.edu said...
> > "John Hudgens (Fenn)" <sf-hu...@genie.com> writes:
> >
> > > Deathwalker was sheltered by the Wind Swords, the same radical
> > >military caste clan responsible for the attempt on Kosh. Deathwalker
> > >was one of the Dilgar, who spread chaos and destruction in the course of
> > >their war, wiping out whole worlds.
> >
> > So, the Dilgar were Shadow agents. Cool. I can see it. That
> > adds quite a bit to the reasoning for Kosh to take down Jha'dur and the
> > serum - they're attacking the Shadows, too.
>
> up, they were cranky, they started a war to see who the powers in the
> galaxy were.
Except that the Dilgar went on their initial offensive because their
homeworld's sun was about to go nova, and they needed elbow room in a
big way. Are we supposed to believe that the Shadows engineered the
Dilgar nova in order to start the war?
This doesn't rule out the possibility of Deathwalker and other surviving
Dilgar being Shadow agents, recruited after the rest of the race died...
but, IMHO, it's a fairly strong implication that the Shadows were not
working with the Dilgar during the War.
(snip)
> --
> Joel Mathis
> -----------
> Vote in my weekly Babylon 5 poll at
> http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/3533/
--
If you are reading this for the same reason that I am writing it - to
bring some pattern out of the chaos of the last years, to impose some
order on the essentially random series of events that have ruled our
lives for the past standard decades - then you may be reading this for
the right reason, after all.
- Raul Endymion
Rodger Burns
<ala...@gte.net>
Matt Maurano
Why not? They've blown up entire planets.
On 17 Aug 1997 18:22:54 -0400, wi...@dexs.com (Will Crawford) wrote:
>On 17 Aug 1997 04:04:05 -0400, Rodger Burns <ala...@gte.net> wrote:
>
>>> It makes sense. The whole Dilgar War was a first strike. They just woke
>>> up, they were cranky, they started a war to see who the powers in the
>>> galaxy were.
>>
>>Except that the Dilgar went on their initial offensive because their
>>homeworld's sun was about to go nova, and they needed elbow room in a
>>big way. Are we supposed to believe that the Shadows engineered the
>>Dilgar nova in order to start the war?
>
Chris Andersen
m...@maurano.com (Matt Maurano) wrote:
>> I wouldn't say that this is totally out of the question...
>>We've seen examples of some pretty advanced Shadow technology, even in
>>the hands of their minions... I wouldn't think that destabilizing a
>>sun would be out of the question, especially since they could have
>>spent years working at it. Of course, it normally takes several
>>million years for a star to "prepare to nova" but I suppose it could
>>be sped up with, say, highly shielded and very powerful gravity
>>generators? Not out of the question, at any rate.
I've always wondered what would happen if someone opened a jump point
within a sun.