i dont get this

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Spoilers below:

.
.
.

i just saw "Z'Ha'Dum" and there's
something i can't understand. Before
Anna Sheridan went to Z'Ha'Dum EA found
a Shadow ship under the marsian surface.
They placed a homing device in the ship
to find out where this new race where
from.
Anna Sheridan goes to Z'Ha'Dum with a
group of people and wake the Shadows
from their hibernation. Now if the
Shadows had been hibernating since the
last big war how could they had burried
the ship on Mars? and how could they
send a ship to get the ship home? how
could they do that if they still were
hibernating?

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Possibilities:

1. "The Eye" which controls Shadow vessels is automatic, control can be given to artificial intellect. It would observe and co-ordinate fleet positions and movements, alerting the Shadows only if something would pose a significant threat.

2. Were all of them truly sleeping? Some or even most were -- resting and contemplating what to do next. But some may have been awake, carrying out important tasks, traveling around the galaxy on voyages of observation and intelligence-gathering... keeping an eye on minions and enemies.

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"We are the universe, trying to figure itself out.
Unfortunately we as software lack any coherent documentation."
-- Delenn

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

The Shadows also have minions, the Drakh among them, and Shadow vessels don't necessarily have Shadow crews. The ships can at least travel with nothing more than an sentient CPU - and the CPUs were never Shadows - they were always some minion or slave race. So someone else could certainly have sent a ship in response to the Mars ship's signal. (And while the two ships then went to Z'ha'dum, it isn't necessarily the case that the rescue ship originated there. It may have been another hidden ship which came from somewhere closer to Sol and followed pre-programmed instructions to bring any ships the younger races stumbled upon back to Z'ha'dum for safekeeping.)

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net

 

[bakana]

One question that didn't get answered yet is simple:

The Shadows buried a Lot of their ships on other worlds 1000 years ago when Valen's forces began winning. They scattered the ships around so that they wouldn't have to worry about anyone finding them and destroying them. Even with their technology, ships are expensive to build, grow, however they do it. The ships on Mars & Ganymede were just two of their fleet.

These ships also serve a secondary purpose.
Note that this would have been in roughly the 1200s our calendar.
IOW, Earth wasn't exactly of much concern to them at that time.
But, if Humans cross space to Mars and dig up one of their ships, it sets off an alarm letting them know another space faring race needs to be checked up on.
And is ready to be manipulated.

The one on Ganymede also tells them humans are "out and about" if we find it first.



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The 3 most common elements in the Universe:
Hydrogen, Greed, Stupidity!

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

but why didn't the minions wake the Shadows
themselves

 

[Bab5nutz]

Why didn't their minions wake the Shadows?
There are several possible reasons for this. One, the minions such as the Drakh were ordered merely to keep watch and guard the sleeping Shadows, not do anything else.
The Shadows were greatly weakened during the Last Great Shadow War, and simply didn't have the strength to wake-up.
The Shadows weren't asleep at all, but underground in their ancient cities - we did see a Shadow city in Z'ha'dum. They might have been quite active and awake all this time, but letting others do their dirty work until the time was right.
They were waitng until the younger races forgot about them. We don't know what happened to the other races that helped fight the Shadows a 1000 years ago - many of them undoubtidly perished in the fight against them. Apart from the Vorlons, only the Minbari are really the only race stil around that took an active part in the fight against the Shadows. The Narns were not capable of spaceflight at the time of the last war - probably one of the reasons why the Shadows chose the Narn homeworld as a base. The people there would have been of little threat to them. To the Narns, and other races such as the Drazi and Markab, the Shadows are little more than legends, figments of a superstitous past. Even for the majority of Minbari, the ancient war against the Shadows was little more than legend - many of them did not believe that the Shadows would ever return. Z'ha'dum had for centuries been known as an accursed planet, and no-one ever went there. So, it could be that the Shadows were waiting until they had forgotten about, or some race ignorant of their existance came to Z'ha'dum.

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