CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2020 4:54 amIronically, the Warrior Caste is in the same boat because while they exterminated virtually the entirety of Earth's military and space force, they lost a lot more troops than they expected. Then they were forced to surrender.
Despite the technological and physiological superiority of the Minbari, it still strikes me as odd how they waged the war. They got themselves into a protracted ground war in an FTL-setting, which is bad enough to begin with once you apply critical thinking to it and on top of that, decided that every man, woman and children, no matter the age or physiscal constituence, is an enemy that needs to die. This gives humans the excuse not just for a "traditional" total war, but for a total war on an unprecedented scale. You thought the semi-indoctrinated and semi-pressed ganged child soldiers in Germany in 1945 were bad? Child-soldiers in Sierra Leone? You've seen nothing my dear, because you don't just wage a war against a couple million soldiers, you wage a war against several billions and almost all of them will not be frontline soldiers, but partisans behind your back. Germany got itself into exactly that situation during the invasion of the Soviet Union... You don't go out of that unscathed, especially not in a society with apparently low birth rates where a maximum of one third of your population is eligable to being a soldier...
To be fair, the Warrior Caste is also terrible at their job. They've been a ceremonial caste for centuries in the same way the samurai were in Shogunate Japan. Part of what makes them such profound dicks is the fact that their racism combined with their hunt for glory made them wage the war this way.
Even then, we have no idea if they didn't just plan to bomb Mars and Earth to pieces.
Only 250,000 or so humans died in the Mimbari war because they "only" killed every ship's crew as well as invaded space stations. Presumably they did the former with lasers.
Something I feel worth bringing up is that, despite Babylon 5 seceding from Earth, and despite making a big deal about this separation, there's still a Season 4 ep that involves Clarke forbidding travel between Earth and B5 ... implying that, at this point in the series, people can still travel freely between the two, despite the whole insurrection thing. Which is ... weird.
I've always felt that most likely Mr. Morden probably reassured that he and his associates would handle Babylon 5. It is mentioned in a season 4 episode that after the Shadows leave that President Clark is suddenly spooked and wants to begin attacking B5 via sanctions and a misinformation war.
I look at Clark as being incapable of doing much on his own and he only got in power because the Shadows knew he craved it.
Something I feel worth bringing up is that, despite Babylon 5 seceding from Earth, and despite making a big deal about this separation, there's still a Season 4 ep that involves Clarke forbidding travel between Earth and B5 ... implying that, at this point in the series, people can still travel freely between the two, despite the whole insurrection thing. Which is ... weird.
I've always felt that most likely Mr. Morden probably reassured that he and his associates would handle Babylon 5. It is mentioned in a season 4 episode that after the Shadows leave that President Clark is suddenly spooked and wants to begin attacking B5 via sanctions and a misinformation war.
I look at Clark as being incapable of doing much on his own and he only got in power because the Shadows knew he craved it.
Interesting, it does seem strange a despot like him just happened to get in lower around the time of the shadows return.
CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2020 4:54 amIronically, the Warrior Caste is in the same boat because while they exterminated virtually the entirety of Earth's military and space force, they lost a lot more troops than they expected. Then they were forced to surrender.
Despite the technological and physiological superiority of the Minbari, it still strikes me as odd how they waged the war. They got themselves into a protracted ground war in an FTL-setting, which is bad enough to begin with once you apply critical thinking to it
If your goal is to control the place you still need soldiers on the ground, but yeah, if you're just being genocidal nutters it's hard to see why.
The Minbari tend to have a respect for life in general, and are vegetarians as I remember. So it could be a case of screw the humans wipe them out, but those kittens didn't do anything, so let's not bomb the planet to ash.
Something I feel worth bringing up is that, despite Babylon 5 seceding from Earth, and despite making a big deal about this separation, there's still a Season 4 ep that involves Clarke forbidding travel between Earth and B5 ... implying that, at this point in the series, people can still travel freely between the two, despite the whole insurrection thing. Which is ... weird.
I've always felt that most likely Mr. Morden probably reassured that he and his associates would handle Babylon 5. It is mentioned in a season 4 episode that after the Shadows leave that President Clark is suddenly spooked and wants to begin attacking B5 via sanctions and a misinformation war.
I look at Clark as being incapable of doing much on his own and he only got in power because the Shadows knew he craved it.
There is also that Bab-Five is a major trade hub for Earth, chances are that some rich and powerful human backers want it kept open so that they money can keep coming in. Early in his coup Clark would still be relatively insecure in power and liable to removal if enough powerful people wanted it. He needs some time to consolidate power and eliminate the biggest potential problems close to home. Morden and Psi Corps is probably a big part of his means of maintaining power, but not all of it. Plus the Earthforce Intelligence agencies might have hope of using it as a conduit for agents heading to the wider galaxy, to try and obfuscate their origins rather than heading directly out from Earth, and also to place agents into Babylon Five itself to do what Night Watch failed to in recapturing it.
Remember Morden, possibly other Shadow agents, was travelling to and from B5 frequently. We know at least on certain occasions he used standard transports, probably to be there legally so as to avoid questions. It's a convenient place to contact people, sew political discord, etc. He also was making trips to contact Clark and Psi Corps. He probably had them maintain travel.
One of the thing's that occurs in subsequent episodes is that Corwin and the C&C staff give up their uniform jackets for the remainder of the series, but don't get the snazzy new duds. I don't know if it's intentional, but it's actually similar to how it was in the pilot where most of the C&C staff wore shirts instead of the uniform jacket (including one familiar looking guy who was pretty much in the Corwin role).
DanteC wrote: ↑Sat Oct 03, 2020 1:01 pm
The Minbari tend to have a respect for life in general, and are vegetarians as I remember. So it could be a case of screw the humans wipe them out, but those kittens didn't do anything, so let's not bomb the planet to ash.
On top of that they may have not wanted to destroy a perfectly good planet. Someone, I forget who, recently made a video about why the Death Star was a stupid weapon. One of the points was: Why would you want to destroy, or make uninhabitable for a long time, a planet in a galaxy where habitable planets are not around every corner?
CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Fri Oct 02, 2020 2:22 pmThey've been a ceremonial caste for centuries in the same way the samurai were in Shogunate Japan.
I think they're more comparable to the Imperial Japanese military in that they still have a use, but they've rising too far above it and have instead directed their people too much.
The thing is they never got too out of hand. For all that that people joke about the "Minbari don't kill Minbari" thing, the spirit of that mentality might be what kept them from doing stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15_Incident
TheGreenMan wrote: ↑Tue Oct 13, 2020 2:15 amWhy would you want to destroy, or make uninhabitable for a long time, a planet in a galaxy where habitable planets are not around every corner?
