Babylon 5/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
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** Because the Minbari didn't surrender for military reasons. They surrendered because {{spoiler|they'd just discovered that humans had Minbari souls, and they were violating one of their highest tenets: "Minbari don't kill Minbari."}} This also caused them to realize that they'd been trying to exterminate an entire race in a fit of blood rage. It wasn't just surrender. It was ''penance''.
* Am I the only one who thinks the Rangers were overhyped? They were a nice touch but the writer could have been more economical about it. And rangers is just to obvious a [[Shout-Out]]; whereas their Minbari name would be cooler.
** The Rangers only ever made up a small part of the forces used by the Army of Light, and in fact their failure to keep the peace in the fifth season was due in part to them not having the numbers or firepower to intervene in standoffs due to being too spread out trying to be the [[Space Police]] (and due to Garibaldi evidently not being a good delegator, making himself a single point-of-failure in Sheridan's whole plan to coordinate the Rangers' movements to allow them to keep the peace between the Centauri and everybody else.) That said, the name is common enough in English throughout [[Real Life]] history, many pre-dating ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' (Both British and American forces had Rangers, sort of proto-Special Ops forces expereinced in wilderness warfare and marksmanship, and later on you had the Texas Rangers in the 19th century and the US Army Rangers in [[World War II]].) Most likely it just became the human name because it was a good word to describe what they did.
* Honestly I thought G'kar was a boor. He never dreamed of being sorry for the things ''his'' people had done or even thought that others might think of him the way he thought of the Centauri. He got better later, but still he was remarkably self-righteous. And the "cybernetic eye peeping tom incident" was a discordant note to the climax of a great romance besides being perverted and stupid. What if the House of Mir had found out? Does he really want to provoke a blood-feud with a race that has ''valets'' that can lift up great human warriors with one hand?
** The cyber-peeping was intended purely as a joke. I agree that it was stupid and perverted and should never have happened, but we weren't supposed to take it seriously. As for G'kar never apologizing for his own people, well, even towards the end of the series his people didn't really have much to apologize for. Whatever bad things the Narn may have done in the past was far outweighed by the things the Centauri or even the Minbari had done. Given that, IMO it would be unreasonable to expect G'kar to apologize for his species first.
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** I understand that, but it's not quite what I meant. What bothers me is, why put the Clark arc ''after'' the Shadow War at all? It just seems to me like the wrong order to do things in. If Babylon 5's plot was created as a series long [[Myth Arc]] in the first place, why not put the conflict with the largest scope and furthest reaching ramifications last, as the climax? As it stands now, everything after the Shadow War feels like an extended epilogue.
** Well there is something to be said for bucking the trend. Putting the Clark arc first and the Shadow War second is what any other series would have done. But more to the point, I think they may have written themselves into a corner. The build-up to the Shadow War was the main focus of the story at that point with Clark as a long-running b-plot. Derailing the a-plot in the middle to suddenly focus on the b-plot would have seemed weird IMO. So they were pretty much stuck with things the way they were.
** Hey, it worked for ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. They had to deal with the main crisis of the series, and then it was time for the Scouring of the Earth Alliance. And the Centauri, when it turned out they had some more time to burn with the [[Post Script Season]].
** Also, consider the first outline for the series, back in the late 80's. In that story, Sinclair never got replaced by Sheridan (as B5's commander and as Delenn's love interest), while Sakai served as that story's Anna Sheridan. In the few final episodes, the Shadows attack B5, destroying it and killing Garibaldi; Sinclair and Delenn escape and eventually end the Shadow War. 20 years later, the surviving B5 crew then go back in time and steal B4; Sinclair goes back in time even further, a thousand years, become Valen and fight yet another Shadow War; also, the going back in time "saves" Sinclair from the effect of his death at Zha'Dum, giving him a second (or rather third) lease on life. So, in that outline, the whole show concluded on a Shadow-related note.
** They needed to get rid of the Shadows first. Clark was aligned with them, if they chose him as the first target he'd have Shadow support and the Vorlons and Shadows would go right on destroying entire planets. If you recall the Vorlons were about to destroy Centauri Prime right as the final battle was taking place and only stopped because their ships were called to the battle as reinforcements. So if they'd gone after Clark first the Centauri homeworld would have been destroyed, and other major races likely would have followed. The Minbari were tachnically aligned with the Vorlons so Minbar might have been the Shadow's next target. So the Shadows and Vorlons were not only the most pressing threat but also a major support line for Clark, the story makes far more sense doing it the way they did.
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