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Babylon 4 versus Minbari Knowledge of Humans

At this point, a spoiler warning feels un-necessary, but just in case there are B5 latecomers, this post has season 3 spoilers that are connected to a storyline started in season 1...

SPOILERS



Babylon 4 was taken back in time and given to the Minbari by Valen and a couple of Vorlons. This brings up a couple questions...

1. If the Minbari took over Babylon 4 1000 years ago, wouldn't they have been able to learn about Humans from computer data, signage, technology, aesthetic design style, written language and number system used on mechanical parts throughout the station, etc.? If so, why didn't the Minbari know more about Humankind when they encountered them before the start of the Earth-Minbari War?

2. How did Sinclair/Valen hook up with the Vorlons that were with him on the Station? Did he have to contact them, did they come on the station out of curiosity, did they somehow have knowledge of the future such that they expected B4 to show up, and if not, then how did Sinclair convince the Vorlons to stand with him?
 
1. Maybe the Minbari of 1000 years ago did learn some about Humans, but that information just didn't travel well into the future. I can see data-storage problems popping up to cause the loss of the information. Why would something like that happen? Well, maybe someone remembered that the Minbari didn't know anything about the Humans when they first had an encounter that caused the Earth-Minbari war and in order to prevent that from being changed, that someone who remembered it sabotaged the data storage where most of the information about Humans gathered from Babylon 4's systems was kept. It's just a theory; I have nothing to back it up.

2. If the Vorlons were monitoring what was going on with the Shadows and such and the Minbari's clashing with the Shadows, I think it's possible that they noticed the temporal event that brought Babylon 4 1000 years in the past and thought that it was such a significant thing that it warranted closer investigation and Sinclair contacted them then when they showed up to see what was going on.
 
I do believe Sinclair and Zathras did some refurbishing on the station.

Two people cannot do much... but if one is qualified for commanding the station (good general knowledge) and the other a technical expert (even with a weak skill in multiplication by three) they could rid the station of most records containing too obvious references to Earth.

They might even ask a Vorlon to help them erase/rewrite the relevant data... and I somehow think that Earth computer systems would not be an obstacle to a Vorlon in mood for hacking.
 
I believe somewhere on the Lurker's Guide JMS said the Vorlons were waiting when the station came through the rift, but I can't find it.
 
1. Clearly Valen and Zathras would have purged the computer systems of what little they would have held that mattered. (B4 has just been brought on-line, is manned by a skeleton crew overseeing the construction and is months away from actually "opening for business" so there probably wasn't a hell of a lot of data in the computer system at that point beyond the programs needed to operate stuff.)

Anyway, it has long been my theory that Zathras occupied himself during the long process of Valen's transformation, which must have taken several weeks based on Delenn's experience, by repainting signs and translating computer stuff into 13th century Minbari. :)

The Minbari themselves would not have associated any remaining "clues" with a race called "Humans". That was a word they wouldn't hear for another thousand years. There was simply no reason to connect Valen's station with Earth or the Humans until after the Battle of the Line. The Minbari who served aboard Valen's station were soldiers fighting a war, not archaelogists and cultural anthropologists trying to learn about another species. They would have been busy doing there jobs and would have paid almost no attention to their surroundings, especially since any weirdness about the place would probably be attributed to its association with the Vorlons.

The badly-damaged station was abandoned after the war, and few visual records of the war in general survived. (Plus Valen did everything possible to obscure anything that would affect the future, even forbidding anyone to record his likeness, so there is no way the Minbari could have known anything about the Humans during the period between the end of Valen's War and Earth's intervention in the Dilgar War - the first event that really made Humans known to anyone other than the Centauri.

2. Here's JMS's answer (from The Lurker's Guide to B5's "JMS Speaks" section for "War Without End Part 2":

How did they know to meet Babylon 4? Prescience?

Well, the other obvious solution, since the Vorlons were then out and running around and actively involved in the war of that time period, he just sent out a signal, and they got there first. - jms

Regards,

Joe
 
re: the Vorlons getting to B4, they were already very advanced at that point in time, and a huge space station coming through a "time fissure" (for lack of a better term) would be very noticeable to their sensors. Either that or Sinclair/Zathras sent a signal, or both.
 
Thanks, Joe, that's what I was thinking of. Question now is, was that the first time the Vorlons revealed themselves to the Minbari (in terms of coming out of their encounter suits)?
 
Considering that Lennier recognized Kosh as Valeria very quickly, unless one of the Vorlons that came with Valen was refered to as Valeria, I would say that the Minbari had encountered a Vorlon out of its encounter suit before Valen showed up.
 
Anyway, it has long been my theory that Zathras occupied himself during the long process of Valen's transformation, which must have taken several weeks based on Delenn's experience, by repainting signs and translating computer stuff into 13th century Minbari.

Remember that one scene where Delenn is away on Minbar and she comes back to B5 and goes to see Sheridan in the warroom? She makes a comment that Minbari cities remain the same for thousands of years or something like that, but she goes away for a few days and Sheridan redecorates. :LOL:

Well, I wonder if Sinclair says this to Zathras:
"Geeze, I go into that cocoon to become Valen and you spend the time redecorating." :D
 
Considering that Lennier recognized Kosh as Valeria very quickly, unless one of the Vorlons that came with Valen was refered to as Valeria, I would say that the Minbari had encountered a Vorlon out of its encounter suit before Valen showed up.

Ah, but Lennier didn't recognize "Valeria" to be a Vorlon. Only Delenn and Sheridan knew him for what he truly was... although of course the Shadows could put two and two together.

So the Minbari who came aboard B4 might recognize both Vorlons and Valeria -- but only just realized at that moment that the two were one and the same.
 
Well, Lennier hadn't had as much contact with a Vorlon before. Delenn knew then because she had seen Kosh without his suit before. Sheridan was just smart.

I'm thinking that the Minbari that came to B4 knew Valeria, but saw the two Vorlons that were there with Valen as just other beings of light of the same being that Valeria was.
 
1. Clearly Valen and Zathras would have purged the computer systems of what little they would have held that mattered. (B4 has just been brought on-line, is manned by a skeleton crew overseeing the construction and is months away from actually "opening for business" so there probably wasn't a hell of a lot of data in the computer system at that point beyond the programs needed to operate stuff.)

This made me think what a tough decision Sinclair had to make: He knew the Earth-Minbari war was coming and his knowledge could have prevented that war and the millions of casualties. But had he prevented that war the Minbari would never have captured him and he would have never taken the B4 station back in time. Maybe there wouldn't even have been a B5, let alone a B4 station. So Sinclair/Valen had to be extra-careful with revealing where the station had come from.
 
Maybe there wouldn't even have been a B5, let alone a B4 station.

The recording of Ivanova's potential reality distress call from Babylon 5 when the station was attacked and overcome by Shadows in "War Without End Part One" hints at the Babylon Project as still having come to existance somehow even if Babylon 4 was not taken back in time. Since in order to have the triluminaries attuned to Sinclair, he would have to go back in time, in this potential reality where he did not, humans must have survived through the Earth-Minbari War in some way in order to have created the Babylon Project.
 
The recording of Ivanova's potential reality distress call from Babylon 5 when the station was attacked and overcome by Shadows in "War Without End Part One" hints at the Babylon Project as still having come to existance somehow even if Babylon 4 was not taken back in time. Since in order to have the triluminaries attuned to Sinclair, he would have to go back in time, in this potential reality where he did not, humans must have survived through the Earth-Minbari War in some way in order to have created the Babylon Project.

Nice example of a paradox (the Babylon stations were created as a result of the experience of earth during the E-M wars, which they wouldn't have survived without the capture of Sinclair and the revelation of who he was...) which I hadn't considered before. I am sure we could come up with a scenario which has the desired outcome, but it would be clunky.

Maybe we should take the examples of the dwarves of Moria and not "delve too deeply!" :LOL:
 
The recording of Ivanova's potential reality distress call from Babylon 5 when the station was attacked and overcome by Shadows in "War Without End Part One" hints at the Babylon Project as still having come to existance somehow even if Babylon 4 was not taken back in time.

I think it really hints at JMS desperately trying to write himself out of a corner that the change of commanders left him in, but that's neither here nor there. :)

Since the moment exists, it has to be dealt with within the show. Everyone seems to assume that the existance of Babylon 5 means that the Babylon Project was still launched as a result of an Earth-Minbar War that we someone survived despite the absence of the triluminaries. But consider - if Sinclair never goes back in time, there is no Valen to mediate disputes among the Minbari castes, found the Rangers and ultimately reform Minbari culture by establishing the Grey Council to keep the castes in balance. Without Valen the Minbari would remain the same culture that chose its leaders via the Star Fire Wheel, had no prophecies of the Shadows' return, no Rangers to watch for signs of the event, no Grey Council living permanently aboard its own war cruiser and no reason for that cruiser to be travelling far off the usual Minbari routes on the way to Z'ha'dum and accidently run into a Human taskforce.

There would likely never have been an Earth-Minbar War. Indeed, if they spent the intervening thousand years fighting intermittent wars amongst themselves, the Minbari might not be nearly the power they were in the "real" timeline, less of a check on the Centauri, for instance, who as a result might be less decadent and more powerful themselves. (Who knows, perhaps the Centauri first contact with Humans was hostile, but called off when a Human pilot was captured and looked so much more like a Centauri than any other race they had ever encountered, that the Centauri stopped the war - though they probably didn't surrender. "By the time we discovered our mistake it was too late to start hostilities again. It would have been bad form. Besides, the Earthers looked to be a good market for jumpgate technology, no? So, we let them live and they were so grateful they started that ridiculous 'Babylon Project' and the rest you know. Time for another drink!")

:)

Regards,

Joe
 
That is of course, very possible and logical that without Sinclair becoming Valen the Minbari would not have been anywhere near the strength they were as we know them to have been at the time of the Earth-Minbari War. Valen's prophecies as to the return of the Shadows did lead for the Minbari ship to be where it was when it encountered the humans that attacked and killed Dukhat beginning the Earth-Minbari War. So without his prediction, why would they have been in possition to escalate the starting of the war in the first place.

It is actually something I haven't contemplated that far into before: what could have actually caused the generation of the Babylon Project in the potential reality we get a hint of in Ivanova's message? With it having the same transmission ID that Babylon 5 has, whatever spawned the station's cration must have caused some to feel the movement to eliminate the previous four stations was just. What was that cause and where the ones to take such action different than those that took it in the main timeline?

It is amazing how much this show continues to make me think about things!
 
There would likely never have been an Earth-Minbar War. Indeed, if they spent the intervening thousand years fighting intermittent wars amongst themselves, the Minbari might not be nearly the power they were in the "real" timeline, less of a check on the Centauri, for instance, who as a result might be less decadent and more powerful themselves. (Who knows, perhaps the Centauri first contact with Humans was hostile, but called off when a Human pilot was captured and looked so much more like a Centauri than any other race they had ever encountered, that the Centauri stopped the war - though they probably didn't surrender. "By the time we discovered our mistake it was too late to start hostilities again. It would have been bad form. Besides, the Earthers looked to be a good market for jumpgate technology, no? So, we let them live and they were so grateful they started that ridiculous 'Babylon Project' and the rest you know. Time for another drink!")


:LOL: :LOL: :LOL:
Ideal stuff for a Mirror, Mirror episode!
 
With stories of time travel, apparently, one always runs into a paradox. A storyteller can only try hiding the cracks.

Either the same matter ends up being in two places... or something else funny happens. No point in attempting to write around it.

If one uses time travel, one should use it sparingly... make it believable on first glance, and not worry about the second glance. The second glance will shatter it anyway.
 
It's not really a paradox, depending on how one looks at time as a concept. Since Sinclair/Valen and B4 are the 'closed circle' as the Vorlons say, it stands to reason that their NOT going back in time breaks the circle, but not necessarily the timeline. In the B5 Universe, everything stays the same even though Sinclair doesn't go back...there was still a Valen, still an EM War and still a Babylon project. One thousand years in the past, however, Valen doesn't show up and a new timeline is created, one that branches off in a different direction...different from the 'real' timeline, yet not erasing it. In short, a 'new' universe is created.

I think we perceive time as linear because we're conditioned to and our physics supports it. If, OTOH, we envision all time periods as continuously existing...um, in independant steady states somewhere, it's possible to have both a universe with Valen and a universe without him, neither of which excludes the existence of the other.

Essentially, this is the old SF concept that applies to Alternate Universe stories - every time an action is taken or a decision is made, a parallel universe is created that takes into account the opposite decision or action. For every 'yes' there is a potential universe created where the decisionmaker said 'no'. The 'yes' universe continues on, not perceiving the existence of the 'no' universe.

Whew! Heavy. I need a beer. :)

V/R
John
 

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