There are several things I’ve been reading about the Great Machine ever since I discovered Babylon 5
1. The Great Machine was built 500 years ago
2. Possibly by the Vorlons
3. More likely by Varn’s people
4. For reasons unknown
In addition, some people have suggested that the alien intruders in the episode are a race unrelated to Varn’s people and that they may have built the GM.
I just watched “AVitW Part 2”, taking notes and transcribing dialogue and I can say that all of the above (except for the possibility that the Vorlons built the thing) is hooey.
Intruder: “We have been 500 years searching for this place. We received its call signal. This world belongs to us. We are last of our people. Searched 500 years. We will take.”
When asked by Sinclair if the Epsilon 3 belongs to the intruder, Varn says:
“No. Outcasts. Violent. My people cast them out centuries ago. Signal was not meant for them. Was put there to hide from them. Given to me when the rest of my people died. Sacred trust. Legacy for the future. I am guardian. Protector. I live in he heart of the machine. We are one. Five hundred of your years have I waited in the Machine. “
Some people seem to take Varn’s words about “my people” casting the others out to indicate that they are different species. But the intruders are clearly just a renegade group that was driven away by the majority. (I suspect they wanted to take and use the GM for their own purposes, instead of merely holding it in trust for the future. Since they have been searching through space for their home planet, they must have been taken elsewhere and abandoned without technology or navigational aids.)
There is nothing to suggest that the Great Machine is 500 years old. In fact all the evidence in the show is that it must be older than that, probably considerably older. Consider, Varn says “my people” cast out the others “centuries ago”. So his people were still alive when the intruders were expelled. At some time later they died out, leaving Varn as the final guardian, as post he has held for 500 years. How long did it take Varn’s people to die out? 50 years? 100? 500? How long for the others to start searching for the place again? (If they were dumped on some uninhabited and isolated planet it might have taken them a couple of hundred years to develop spaceflight again.)
One thing that the Intruders don’t suggest is that they once had the technology to build the Great Machine at least 500 years ago plus whatever advances they would have come up with in the interim. If anything they should have been more powerful than B5 and an Earth ship, and they should have stood up better to the weapons of the Great Machine.
Nothing in either episode suggests anything about who built the Great Machine. The intruders claim that the planet and its secrets belong to them, but that isn’t the same thing as saying they built the Machine. Varn never makes such a claim. And Draal never says anything about who built it or why.
Finally it is clear that Varn’s people are not native to the planet. He can’t breathe the atmosphere any more than Draal or Londo can. Whoever built the GM must have brought Varn’s people to Epsilon 3 to act as caretakers – and that same somebody probably arranged for the Outcasts to be taken elsewhere when they became a problem.
The Vorlons are certainly excellent candidates. I suspect they started building the GM shortly after the end of Valen’s Shadow War, basing their work and the location on things that Valen had told them. The Machine’s primary purpose was always to manipulate the time rift in Sector 14 in order to send B4 back in tim. The Vorlons probably moved Varn’s people to the planet as soon as it was completed. 500 years later a schism threatened their plans and they moved the dissidents far away – but they didn’t exterminate them, because they knew they would have to come back in 500 years in order to play their part in the events that placed Draal at the heart of the machine.
And we still have no idea where the brothers Zathras came from.
Regards,
Joe