Scriptbook #15 Discussion - SPOILER WARNING

Chris Springob said:

It's not clear that there was originally going to be any kind of "scientific explanation" for why the prophecies would be accurate. (The scientific explanation being that someone brought the information back in time.) I mean, even in the show as filmed, how do you explain Zathras knowing that Sheridan will be "The One Who Will Be"? Or how do you explain the Centauri Seer knowing the future or the Centauri being able to see their own deaths? There's no scientific explanation presented for that stuff. It's just "somehow, the universe knows what's going to happen in the future".

So it's perfectly believable that JMS did not originally intend anyone from the future to go back in time and become Valen, and thereby provide an explanation for the prophecies.

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Not only that, but the outline states that the Warrior Caste interpret the prophecy that references Sinclair and Delenn's child differently than the Grey Council, which is part of what fuels their takeover of the Minbari government and their forcing the Grey Council into exile. They interpret the prophecy to mean that Sinclair and Delenn's child will destroy Minbari society/civilization/whatever.

I wonder if the prophecies the Centauri issue are in anyway related to the form of Vorlon consciousness that enabled Kosh to proclaim things like "You have always been here" and "The man in between is looking for you". I don't remember which scriptbook it was in, but jms said something to the effect that Kosh could see past, present, and future simultaneously to a certain degree. That Kosh's reference to the "man in between" when he tells Sheridan that said main is looking for him is a reference to Sheridan himself at a specific point in Sheridan's life. Maybe whatever kind of consciousness that Kosh has that led him to be able to make those statements pops up occasionally in Centauri too leaving them capable of making intermittent prophetic glimpses of the future.

I don't know if it's in quantum physics or what, but I've heard some scientists on like The Discovery Channel and its ilk say that the math makes it seem possible that, though we only perceive ourselves at whatever given moment we perceive ourselves, we exist at every moment of our lives simultaneously -- past and future. Maybe this little temporal hypothetical is something jms was toying with in his use of prophecies in the story.

vacantlook said:

I don't know if it's in quantum physics or what, but I've heard some scientists on like The Discovery Channel and its ilk say that the math makes it seem possible that, though we only perceive ourselves at whatever given moment we perceive ourselves, we exist at every moment of our lives simultaneously -- past and future. Maybe this little temporal hypothetical is something jms was toying with in his use of prophecies in the story.

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I highly doubt it. Anyway, I've heard people try to use quantum physics to explain telepathy, psychic predictions of the future, and the like, and it's all pretty ridiculous and doesn't really make any sense. I *hope* JMS wasn't trying to go for that. I assume he just had no real scientific explanation for it, but thought it would be good for the story. I'm fine with not everything in the show having to be explained.

Like other psuedo-scientific elements -- hyperspace, for example -- of sci fi stories make any more true sense?

vacantlook said:

Like other psuedo-scientific elements -- hyperspace, for example -- of sci fi stories make any more true sense?

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Well, there's not a whole lot of logic to it, but certain staples of sci-fi don't really bother me, while others do. (And really, it's not just me. There are certain conventions of "scientific plausibility" that were widely accepted by audiences in the '50s, but wouldn't fly today, even though most of it doesn't really make any sense anyway.) Maybe what bugs me about using quantum mechanics to explain telepathy/premonitions is that actual con artists ("psychics") use the same kind of rationalization in the present day real world. But the same cannot be said of, say, hyperspace.

Chris Springob said:

I highly doubt it. Anyway, I've heard people try to use quantum physics to explain telepathy, psychic predictions of the future, and the like, and it's all pretty ridiculous and doesn't really make any sense. I *hope* JMS wasn't trying to go for that. I assume he just had no real scientific explanation for it, but thought it would be good for the story. I'm fine with not everything in the show having to be explained.

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That's precisely what JMS was going for in "All Alone in the Night" with Sheridan's dream and the "man in between." He states as much in Volume 3 of the scriptbooks (one of the few I was fortunate enough to snag). The "man in between," according to JMS, is Sheridan in the moments caught between life and death on Z'ha'dum and the man that Sheridan becomes as a result of "dying." In JMS's words, "the Sheridan that he is one day going to become is looking for him, waiting for him on the other side of his decisions." He then writes:

Excerpt from Babylon 5: The Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski, pg. 54

Quantum physics tells us that time is primarily a matter of perception, that we actually exist simultaneously in the past, present and future. To someone who can step outside human perception, such as Lorien, or Kosh, who transmits this dream to Sheridan just as he does to G'Kar later in "Dust to Dust," all those Sheridans are equally real at the same time.

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So the idea from quantum physics at least inspired the prophecies of Kosh and others who could see outside human perception.

mandragora said:

To quote jms:

"Yes, there's a certain Jungian influence in the shadows, in that the shadow as Jung referred to it was unbridled want, unbridled need, and that's what they appeal to.

jms."

Even though this quote dates from 1996, I think it's safe to assume that this idea was there right from the start, since jms, having studied psychology, would have certainly been aware of it longl before 1996, and I think it's unlikely he would have named them "shadows" without having thought of it.

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However, it is also *possible* that the influance could have gone in the other direction. That the name "Shadows" (or, the original working name of "shadowmen") might have been what twigged the Jungian connection in JMS' mind and got him started moving more in that direction ....... as opposed to creating the Jungian dynamic first and then naming them because of that.

The reason that I think that is a possibility (though by no means a given) is that there is another route to coming up with the working name "shadowmen". They were always the ones who were staying so far out of the limelight that (virtually) nobody even knew that they existed. However, they were still working very actively behind the scenes ..... or "in the shadows", as it were. It's just possible that JMS initially came up with the working title of "shadowmen" from that reasoning, and then followed the name to the Jungian use of the term.