Babylon 5: By Any Means Necessary

[CharlesPhipps]

It should be noted the Vorlon servitor race equivalent to the Drakh is the Mimbari.

[CrypticMirror]

Earth's issues with Babylon 5 basically are that it IS being used as a civilian base of operations when they wanted it as a military base to move troops and rapid response with Starfuries. It's why it's military commanded and we get to see them deploy troops early on with Franklin's dad.

Eventually, this results in the station breaking away from Clarke.

Except that it takes an escalation in threat for Earth to send better defences.

The rest you describe I don't see as any different than the military using a local port as a way point for an operation or for basing a anti-piracy squadron out of.

Now that that's brought to mind, it's odd that B5 only has small craft protecting it and lacks a dedicated squadron of warships to protect it and its surround hyperspace ala the squadrons based out of Chinese concession enclaves like Hong Kong and Tsingtao.

The treaty which established B5 as the UN Building in neutral space essentially said no capital ships hanging around. None of the other races would trust its neutrality if Earth had warships on permanent standby and would want to send their own too, and once one of the other races put a warship on standby then others would insist too, then you've got a lot of warships hanging around some of them belonging to highly antagonistic races, so somebody is going to get hotheaded and start shooting (on purpose or by accident, doesn't matter which). The Narn and the Centauri especially would be tempted to try to leverage a standby warship as a threat to get favourable negotiation status on something.

The only solution is no warships. Of course that ultimately went by the by once B5 declared independence.

[FaxModem1]

The resolution was through the Liberal Facade. EarthGov did not want to be openly evil and write the Law to say "Kill them all" or "Oren the Government stooge has absolute Power, mwah hah ha!" To maintain the liberal Facade, they wrote the Law is vague terms and Sinclair exploited that vagueness.

Question: Why?

What does the EA gain from doing this? Imagine the US having an issue with the UN buildings cleaning staff and using as a reason to kill them all... all so they can look bad in front of every nation on Earth?

This isn't the Boxer Rebellion with Germany trying to come off tough against a mutual enemy of the West, this involves their own people. If anything, EA would be wanting B5 to be running as smoothly as possible to come off looking good while reserving anything like this for their treatment of Mars.

Probably because they're screwing the pooch with Mars. Just a few episodes/weeks ago, Mars was having open fighting/revolution. Looking like you can't control your own colonies might be viewed as weak, so they want to bring down the hammer and make it look like Earth isn't ripe for the taking.

This happened before the Mars rebellion.

Whoops, looking at the episode order, you're right. However, there is still obvious unrest and opposition in the colonies that Mars is clearly falling apart at the seams, and Free Mars is a thing. Babylon 5 having a dockers strike could look to the Earth Senate as more of the same and they want to clamp down on that quick before it gets out of hand and they have another colony make waves of unrest, causing some sort of domino effect.

[Steve]

I don't disagree with that. And EarthGov being a megacorp-dominated oligarchy masquerading as a democratic republic was rather obvious throughout the series.

[CharlesPhipps]

Mind you, I'm from West Virginia and the idea of using force to break up union protests is hardly new or shocking.

[Beastro]

It should be noted the Vorlon servitor race equivalent to the Drakh is the Mimbari.

And are under the influence of the Interstellar Alliance.

It would be neat if the Warrior Caste was supporting a faction the Vorlon set up as a hold out group to continue the fight should the Shadows win the Second Shadow War. That is now the effective successor of Order in the fight with Chaos opposing the Drakh while the IA remains ignorant assuming the cycle was ended permanently when the battle of order and chaos never ends.

If you mean aping Shadow tech, the technology gained by the Shadows is rather exploitative of others. Drakh keepers mind control people. Shadow ships destroy someone's original personality to turn someone into their CPU. Not to mention the mental screaming it does whenever it passes another ship(which can't be healthy for the crew aboard). Such things do not speak well of the culture who uses the technology.

I'm referring to the intended twists that were planned in the successive seasons of Crusade. One major one was, IIRC, Excalibers crew discovering a hidden compartment of the ship and realize that it isn't just a Hybrid of Earth, Minbari and Vorlon tech but also has Shadow tech in it on top of things. Things keep going and they go rogue once Gideon discovers that the Shadow ship that destroyed his old ship and left him adrift for Galen to save was actually a secret Earth warship.

I speak also from a Realist point of view, which I recognize is alien to the B5 universe given how deeply set in a world built to allow Internationalism to actually work, which is what most TV Sci-Fi is, though B5 was more allowing for room of less idealism than Trek until the IA was established (Given that we see in the forwards how it remains in place effectively until the powers that played into it turn into Vorlon-like energy beings and those that didn't "fail").

The treaty which established B5 as the UN Building in neutral space essentially said no capital ships hanging around. None of the other races would trust its neutrality if Earth had warships on permanent standby and would want to send their own too, and once one of the other races put a warship on standby then others would insist too, then you've got a lot of warships hanging around some of them belonging to highly antagonistic races, so somebody is going to get hotheaded and start shooting (on purpose or by accident, doesn't matter which). The Narn and the Centauri especially would be tempted to try to leverage a standby warship as a threat to get favourable negotiation status on something.

It rubs me the wrong way since that isn't how things work in real life with regard to neutrality and its guaranteer as well as to the non-existent nature of neutral territory - See how much of Louisana in New France was directly controlled by France. Anything that isn't terra incognita would be claimed with de facto rule withdrawn once another Great Power established a more direct control of Epsilon Eridani.

[FaxModem1]

If you mean aping Shadow tech, the technology gained by the Shadows is rather exploitative of others. Drakh keepers mind control people. Shadow ships destroy someone's original personality to turn someone into their CPU. Not to mention the mental screaming it does whenever it passes another ship(which can't be healthy for the crew aboard). Such things do not speak well of the culture who uses the technology.

I'm referring to the intended twists that were planned in the successive seasons of Crusade. One major one was, IIRC, Excalibers crew discovering a hidden compartment of the ship and realize that it isn't just a Hybrid of Earth, Minbari and Vorlon tech but also has Shadow tech in it on top of things. Things keep going and they go rogue once Gideon discovers that the Shadow ship that destroyed his old ship and left him adrift for Galen to save was actually a secret Earth warship.

I speak also from a Realist point of view, which I recognize is alien to the B5 universe given how deeply set in a world built to allow Internationalism to actually work, which is what most TV Sci-Fi is, though B5 was more allowing for room of less idealism than Trek until the IA was established (Given that we see in the forwards how it remains in place effectively until the powers that played into it turn into Vorlon-like energy beings and those that didn't "fail").

Finding out that your own government is using their own military as targets to test their new weaponry sounds like a valid reason to be cheesed off at your own government. Especially if you were serving on board such a ship. I'm not sure why you find that problematic for the heroes to be against such actions being done by their own government.

[CharlesPhipps]

The Warrior Caste on Mimbari is interesting because at the end of the day, they didn't fight in the biggest war in Mimbari history.

Which means their whole purpose is up for question.

[Steve]

The Warrior Caste on Mimbari is interesting because at the end of the day, they didn't fight in the biggest war in Mimbari history.

Which means their whole purpose is up for question.

*cough*

Minbari, not Mimbari.

[CharlesPhipps]

OH NO! MY GEEK CREDIBILITY IS RUINED!