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hope and vaseline posted:Is this the first appearance of Kosh 2.0's suit? "Walkabout," where the new Vorlon ambassador arrives, was meant to come before "War Without End," but the broadcast schedule had only two episode slots remaining before a months-long gap, and they decided to hold back "Walkabout" so they wouldn't have to split up the two-parter.
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Dec 2, 2025 22:34
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| # ? Jan 22, 2026 06:41 |
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Stop making jokes about Zathras when the blind watcher hasn't seen him yet. He's only seen Zathras.
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Dec 3, 2025 02:19
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:I'd actually look at the end of that sequence. As Sheridan and Lennier wonder why the Shadow vessel didn't attack ("Why didn't they attack? They must know we're here.") the camera follows Bester as he strolls towards the fore of the White Star's bridge, until he's front and center in the shot. That, combined with the end of that scene with Bester's "That's what they told me" concerning the cargo of 'weapon supplies' seems to imply to me that the show is inviting us to consider Bester in regards to that questioning of why the Shadow ship didn't fire when it ha them dead to rights. I'd also look at the scenes as Sheridan and Lennier are discussing that the Shadow vessel is not attacking -- Bester is there in the frame, too, and while he's not in focus, you can see that his facial expression is thoughtful and composed. He's certainly not afraid or worried or even anxious. “Epiphanies, scene 49, extended: After Sheridan tells him to sit, Bester congratulates the command staff on their victory over the Vorlons and the Shadows. He claims that he helped by slowing reports of them looking for telepaths to use in the war, buying them time. Bester claims that they’d have lost the war if not for him.” If we accept the extended scene as evidence, it’s all Bester claiming credit for their victory. I believe he did run cover; the Shadows knew pretty quickly about the telepaths given that they deployed them in “Shadow Dancing” and there’s more war left after that point. It’s clear Bester is well-informed and he may have helped the war effort, but Shadow agents freely come and go from B5 and the call they put out for telepaths was public. We have different ideas about what makes sense as an explanation and I’d need stronger evidence that Bester on camera not terrified of a Shadow ship to establish he can warn one off, especially given his presence on a White Star intercepting these telepaths indicates he’s actively working against the Shadows themselves already. The ship responds as I’d expect: it detects the White Star is carrying a telepath of sufficient strength to jam it long enough that the White Star could plausibly destroy it, and opts to retreat and report what happened instead of getting destroyed. “Bester said scram and it did” is a stronger claim. I would absolutely accept “Bester scanned it and it ran” as a logical chain of events without any further evidence. I believe an episode of either B5 or Crusade establishes that telepaths in hyperspace may not need line of sight, although the specifics of how that environment amplifies them are never well-defined. So it’s possible Bester can communicate without LoS in hyperspace. It is also possible that a Shadow ship is more vulnerable to telepathic attack in hyperspace and that it bugs out so quickly because of that increased vulnerability. Again, we just don’t know how the amplification works. It could be a deliberate choice by the Vorlons for all we know: the Shadows have the ability to violently collapse jump points, and the Vorlons might have countered by engineering telepaths boosted by the properties of hyperspace. All speculation.
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Dec 3, 2025 05:16
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Narsham posted:We have different ideas about what makes sense as an explanation and I’d need stronger evidence that Bester on camera not terrified of a Shadow ship to establish he can warn one off, especially given his presence on a White Star intercepting these telepaths indicates he’s actively working against the Shadows themselves already. The ship responds as I’d expect: it detects the White Star is carrying a telepath of sufficient strength to jam it long enough that the White Star could plausibly destroy it, and opts to retreat and report what happened instead of getting destroyed. “Bester said scram and it did” is a stronger claim. I would absolutely accept “Bester scanned it and it ran” as a logical chain of events without any further evidence. I think that Bester not being terrified is simply that Bester is someone with a lot of discipline who's in front of a hostile audience and wants to give the appearance of being tough and who has a lot of experience with being in danger. It would be very out of character for the tough psi-cop to wail and collapse onto a Minbari-style fainting couch when danger occurs, we've seen Bester facing down the barrel of a gun without showing fear on several occasions, so I don't think him acting unafraid here is evidence of anything other than consistency. I also interpreted that scene as 'he scanned the ship, it realized there's a telepath, so it decided to leave in case the telepath was strong enough to control it'.
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Dec 3, 2025 15:15
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Ahaha, FFA got to Grey 17 Is Missing and immediately relegated the A plot to C.
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Dec 3, 2025 17:32
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There is a world of difference between Bester not showing fear when someone has a gun on him (due to his status a law enforcement figure, his specific disdain to mundanes, and that a P12 can pretty easily just... prevent you from pulling the trigger) and being under the guns of a warship. Also weird to see the splitting hairs thing: oh, he didn't command it or block it, he scanned it... This still leads back to the original point that he knew about the telepathic weakness and leveraged it in a live fire situation before the B5 crew.
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Dec 3, 2025 20:51
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The burden of proof is on you to prove that Bester DID know about the weakness, not on us to prove that he did not know about it.
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Dec 4, 2025 00:30
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:The burden of proof is on you to prove that Bester DID know about the weakness, not on us to prove that he did not know about it. He knew that the "weapon systems" were telepaths, and he would have been able to garner enough information through his own sources and unauthorised scans to know that telepathy wasn't essential for the "pilots" of Shadow vessels. He could probably put two and two together.
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Dec 4, 2025 01:15
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I've never interpreted that episode as Bester knowing vs it just being fortunate the scanning he was doing freaked out the ship. I checked the Lurker's Guide to see if JMS said anything at the time and he didn't even hint at it.
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Dec 4, 2025 03:09
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Looks thoughtfully at thread title
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Dec 4, 2025 10:24
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Also weird to see the splitting hairs thing: oh, he didn't command it or block it, he scanned it... This still leads back to the original point that he knew about the telepathic weakness and leveraged it in a live fire situation before the B5 crew. Only if you consider the difference between sensors and weapons to be "splitting hairs."
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Dec 5, 2025 03:00
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Its not subtext. Bester straight up says that they've known about the Shadow's for years. The most likely source of this information is that they discovered a Shadow Vessel on Mars. Mars where the Psicorp research facilities are. You don't really need to add anything to the show that isn't already there. edit: I'm currently struggling to get into Season 5 because I hate the opening crawl.
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Dec 5, 2025 03:09
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Hollismason posted:Its not subtext. Bester straight up says that they've known about the Shadow's for years. The most likely source of this information is that they discovered a Shadow Vessel on Mars. Mars where the Psicorp research facilities are. That's explicit, even. I forget if it was Sinclair or Garibaldi, but one of them found a damaged Psi-Corps badge at the Shadow vessel site on Mars.
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Dec 5, 2025 05:04
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Jedit posted:That's explicit, even. I forget if it was Sinclair or Garibaldi, but one of them found a damaged Psi-Corps badge at the Shadow vessel site on Mars. Garibaldi. He shows it when he's having the archeologist tell her story of what she found on Mars.
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Dec 5, 2025 08:07
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Psi-Corp certainly knew about the Shadows because one of them was in Clarke's cabinet meeting with Morden. Whether that means Bester knew is another question.
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Dec 5, 2025 08:58
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Eighties ZomCom posted:Psi-Corp certainly knew about the Shadows because one of them was in Clarke's cabinet meeting with Morden. Whether that means Bester knew is another question. Assume that Bester knows it. He's got enough clout in Psi-Corps to form and equip Black Omega Squadron when telepaths aren't allowed to serve in the military, and he has a direct line to the director's office.
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Dec 5, 2025 09:58
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Looks like Netflix will own Babylon 5 soon, time for JMS to dust off his reboot scripts.
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Dec 5, 2025 14:35
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MassRafTer posted:Looks like Netflix will own Babylon 5 soon, time for JMS to dust off his reboot scripts. JMS has a good working relationship with Netflix. He wrote the hit series Sense8 with The Wachowskis... and I'm being told it was cancelled after 2 seasons.
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Dec 5, 2025 14:46
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Wasn't Sense8 insanely expensive to produce? They were location filming all over the world, and it didn't generate enough buzz or viewers to justify the expense or something? Shame cause I loved Sense8
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Dec 5, 2025 15:10
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Netflix cancels a lot of their series after 2 seasons because the algorithm tells them to.mllaneza posted:Garibaldi. He shows it when he's having the archeologist tell her story of what she found on Mars. Sinclair was with him as depicted in the comics.
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Dec 5, 2025 15:31
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Algeria getting up to z'ha dum! I think they will be very satisfied with that.
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Dec 5, 2025 19:51
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quote:I'm going to watch the finale. Give me answers, show! They did ask.
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Dec 5, 2025 19:58
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:There is a world of difference between Bester not showing fear when someone has a gun on him (due to his status a law enforcement figure, his specific disdain to mundanes, and that a P12 can pretty easily just... prevent you from pulling the trigger) and being under the guns of a warship. Yes, someone having a gun on you is much scarier, since a warship is a distant thing you're seeing through a window or screen and a gun is a personal threat at short range. And Bester has faced down guns held by mundanes who were still shooting at him that he clearly could not just... prevent from pulling the trigger since he didn't, and guns held by telepaths who were also likely out of the just... prevent zone, and wild energy weilded by a telepath who was massively stronger telepathically than him. Also he was literally under the guns of Sheridan's starfury earlier in the episode - and in all of those cases, he still kept up his unfazed cop persona. "Bester not acting worried when under threat" is how he typically acts, it's not an indication of something specific.
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Dec 5, 2025 20:27
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Flowers For Algeria posted:I haven't talked about Delenn and her relationship with Sheridan. Of course he feels betrayed when Anna reappears, but I was a bit disappointed by his reaction. Or rather, I had to suspend my disbelief that an analytical man like Sheridan wouldn't immediately understand the meaning of her reappearance, that he wouldn't see it for the Shadow plot that it was. He did have a telling encounter with Morden in S2E16 (In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum), after all. Yes, he does come to his senses after a while, and he even records a nice message for Delenn, but still. I always got the vibe that Sheridan was never really fooled. Why else would he bring the white star full of nukes? I think he felt that he knew what was up, but he owed it to the chance that Anna is still alive, and owed it to himself to know for sure and certain.
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Dec 5, 2025 21:25
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I think it's pretty clear John never bought the shadow Anna's act. She was his only way in, and he has to figure his way out of his dilemma, not fight himself out of it.
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Dec 5, 2025 21:26
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I got the impression that he was completely shocked to see his wife back and probably thought it was here before they talked, but even in their first big conversation it read to me that he knew it wasn't fully her. He's pissed at Delenn for keeping secrets, is still processing the shock, and wants to use fake-Anna so doesn't let on anything except in the message that only sends after he's left the station, but I don't think he believed this was really Anna, just some kind of simulacrum. He hoped to get some kind of insight into the Shadows from talking to them, maybe had some hope Anna could actually be properly alive, and thought that any information he could get was worth the risk to himself - but didn't believe they were all kindness and smiles, so he loaded up his ship with nukes as a backup plan. And once he's talking to Justin and Morden, he immediately starts talking about Anna as some kind of thing, he doesn't even address her like a person anymore.
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Dec 5, 2025 22:48
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Sheridan is understandably shocked and conflicted when Anna shows up but he clearly knows what he's going to do when he goes to Z'ha'dum. Dr. Franklin showing up after he's left to go "But wait, I told him she's actually evil!" makes it completely clear beyond the nukes and how he interprets what Delenn told him on Centauri Prime that he is gonna nuke the Shadows, 100%.
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Dec 5, 2025 22:58
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MassRafTer posted:Sheridan is understandably shocked and conflicted when Anna shows up but he clearly knows what he's going to do when he goes to Z'ha'dum. Dr. Franklin showing up after he's left to go "But wait, I told him she's actually evil!" makes it completely clear beyond the nukes and how he interprets what Delenn told him on Centauri Prime that he is gonna nuke the Shadows, 100%. nuke'em straight to hell
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Dec 6, 2025 01:21
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I'm sure if Sinclair stayed on, we'd have an interesting character acting moment with zombie Catharine Sakai being out of character and unusually cruel, but there's only so much that could be done with Sheridan's wife since there wasn't room to have her on the show before getting Shadowed. I kinda get the impression that the Sakai/Sinclair romance wasn't really suited to go well from how it started as less passion and more settling, which might've justified a later Delenn/Sinclair soulmates thing.
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Dec 6, 2025 01:47
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In regards to Shadow Dancing, there were White Star squads fighting in the battlle iirc? I don't have my DVDs with me to check, but I think FAA just missed them, right?
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Dec 6, 2025 05:24
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Torrannor posted:In regards to Shadow Dancing, there were White Star squads fighting in the battlle iirc? I don't have my DVDs with me to check, but I think FAA just missed them, right? There were White Stars present, I'm 100% sure of that.
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Dec 6, 2025 13:31
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MassRafTer posted:Sheridan is understandably shocked and conflicted when Anna shows up but he clearly knows what he's going to do when he goes to Z'ha'dum. Dr. Franklin showing up after he's left to go "But wait, I told him she's actually evil!" makes it completely clear beyond the nukes and how he interprets what Delenn told him on Centauri Prime that he is gonna nuke the Shadows, 100%. I don't think it was actually 100% at the time he left - I think he still held hope that something could resolve the war besides massive destruction. He was expecting 'these guys are assholes and I'm taking them down with me' to be the result of the meeting, but I think he had hope that there was other way out, maybe the Shadows actually needed a go-between to sort out peace, or maybe there was some massive misunderstanding, or maybe the Vorlons were actually stirring stuff up. Obviously once he found out that they just enjoyed stirring up conflict and planned to rewrite his brain to make him a puppet he knew it wasn't going anywhere, but I think he was the kind of practical optimist that was willing to put his life on the line for an outside chance at fixing everything.
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Dec 6, 2025 15:41
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How do we know he didn’t always pack a just-in-case nuke or two for long trips? I mean, nukes are like his signature move
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Dec 6, 2025 17:16
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Gyrotica posted:How do we know he didn’t always pack a just-in-case nuke or two for long trips? I have to hand it to the Shadows - when they believed that if anything even remotely Vorlon touched Z'Ha'Dum they would die, they got that bang on.
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Dec 6, 2025 17:35
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I think Sheridan went to Z'ha'dum to hear what the Shadows wanted directly, because understanding that could help figure out a way to end the war. He heard about them from Delenn and Kosh, but Sheridan at that point understood that was just a slanted opinion of the Shadows. He wanted to understand them in their own words.
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Dec 6, 2025 18:16
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I think Sheridan went to Z'ha'dum to hear what the Shadows wanted directly, because understanding that could help figure out a way to end the war. He heard about them from Delenn and Kosh, but Sheridan at that point understood that was just a slanted opinion of the Shadows. He wanted to understand them in their own words. He also told Delenn that he thought the bad future timeline he saw might have been the result of him following her advice and not going to Z'ha'dum, so that by going there, he would prevent the bad future (oops). Also, Kosh had warned Sheridan that if the Vorlons acted against the Shadows earlier in the season, then he would not be there to help Sheridan when he went to Z'ha'dum. But what exactly would Kosh going with him have helped, anyway? There's no way the Shadows would have even met with him if he brought a Vorlon with him. The fact they even let him near the planet with the Vorlon tech of the White Star was strange enough
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Dec 6, 2025 18:46
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I think Sheridan went to Z'ha'dum to hear what the Shadows wanted directly, because understanding that could help figure out a way to end the war. He heard about them from Delenn and Kosh, but Sheridan at that point understood that was just a slanted opinion of the Shadows. He wanted to understand them in their own words. Kosh once said that "understanding is a three-edged sword" - those edges being your side, their side and the truth. It's not impossible that Sheridan might have heard something from them that convinced he they weren't all bad. And he definitely needed to hear the Shadows' motives in their own words before he could come to the conclusion that both Shadows and Vorlons had lost their way, which is what he later used at the Battle of Coriana to convince them to leave. The question is: can we square the notion that Kosh may have seen this and recognised that the cycle needed to be broken with Kosh's own actions earlier in the war?
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Dec 6, 2025 18:49
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Mustard Iceman posted:Also, Kosh had warned Sheridan that if the Vorlons acted against the Shadows earlier in the season, then he would not be there to help Sheridan when he went to Z'ha'dum. But what exactly would Kosh going with him have helped, anyway? There's no way the Shadows would have even met with him if he brought a Vorlon with him. The fact they even let him near the planet with the Vorlon tech of the White Star was strange enough Kosh was wrong, though, wasn't he? He told John to JUMP!, he knew Lorien was down there. Maybe Kosh figured he could've talked Sheridan down from going to Z'ha'dum in the first place, or something, but doesn't his apparition to Sheridan while the Shadows merk him sort of confess that he / the Vorlons weren't all knowing?
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Dec 6, 2025 20:18
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Rappaport posted:Kosh was wrong, though, wasn't he? He told John to JUMP!, he knew Lorien was down there. Maybe Kosh figured he could've talked Sheridan down from going to Z'ha'dum in the first place, or something, but doesn't his apparition to Sheridan while the Shadows merk him sort of confess that he / the Vorlons weren't all knowing? You really think a Vorlon would actually do that? Just go on Babylon 5 and tell lies?
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Dec 6, 2025 20:27
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| # ? Jan 22, 2026 06:41 |
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You stay away from my large, glowing adult Vorlon 
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Dec 6, 2025 20:36
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