Delen's Rings

In the newest "Asked & Answered" book (part 4), page 1406, the first question on that pages says: "are there any subtle details we should look for in the pilot?"

JMS answers:

"look for a contradiction, numerically, between what Delenn notes in the Zen Garden, and what is actually there...between what she says, and what is...look at the case of rings in Delenn's quarters...note the color of the ring that is at the very top center of the circle of rings (this won't come into play for a long, LONG time, but we had to get it right now)..."

what is the numerical contradiction?

even though the rings were ditched, anyone know what the ring color may have meant?

No idea. Sorry, no one answered so I figured you might as well not be alone here!

Well, Delenn was building the crysalis machine in the pilot, so clearly the ring in question wasn't a "Crysalis" machine. JMS's memo to the studio execs about where the show was going doesn't mention the rings at all, but goes in to a lot of detail about other stuff, but none of it seems to be something that would really relate, or would be really predicated by the rings.

I haven't got a clue, but I'll think on it.

The rings were gravity rings. The Minbari ships had artificial gravity, the connection may be there.

Well, *one* of them was a gravity ring. It's never stated what the others were for.

Matthew said:

"look for a contradiction, numerically, between what Delenn notes in the Zen Garden, and what is actually there...between what she says, and what is...look at the case of rings in Delenn's quarters...note the color of the ring that is at the very top center of the circle of rings (this won't come into play for a long, LONG time, but we had to get it right now)..."

what is the numerical contradiction??

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The numerical contradiction is that Delenn says a "single stone" changes the pattern of the garden, but there are two stones in the garden.

Matthew said:

even though the rings were ditched, anyone know what the ring color may have meant?

Click to expand...

The only other clue about the rings I have seen is Joe's post on May 12th 1993:

jms said:

We'll learn what most of the rings do. The last will be the black
ring.

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Thanks Joe!

I just fired up the original (not special) edition of "The Gathering" and it is indeed the black ring at the very top...now I'm more curious than ever!

As for the stones, why would she mention one when there are two? Since the series changed so much, I'm sure that thread was dropped. Perhaps it was meant to portray that Sinclair and the female Delenn (was male originally) would actually change the world?

Matthew said:

As for the stones, why would she mention one when there are two? Since the series changed so much, I'm sure that thread was dropped. Perhaps it was meant to portray that Sinclair and the female Delenn (was male originally) would actually change the world?

Click to expand...

I'm sure that's it.

We should make a list of questions we'd like JMS to answer.

In fact, I think I'll go do that now...