Text 5611, 142 rader
Skriven 2006-08-03 11:22:00 av Robert E Starr JR (6108.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Questioning "Beauty i
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"Angelika Tobisch" <kamyra@arcor.de> wrote in message 
news:44d13c6b$0$24891$9b4e6d93@newsread4.arcor-online.net...
> Vorlonagent schrieb:
>
>> Humans have telepaths by way of the vorlons.
>>
>> The Centauri have telepaths.  Were they vorlon-inspired?  Somewhere 
>> between "possibly" and "probably".  I would need to look at the 
>> vorlon-lab shot from "Secrets of the Soul" again.
>
> According to the short story "The Nautilus Coil" there are no
> intelligent telepaths that developed naturally. (Actually, that's
> exactly why I was asking about the short stories being canon.)

As a personal preference, I almost never accept stories as canon.  Too many 
authors do their own thing at the cost of consistency with the show.  That 
first run of nin B5 novels, not a one is worth reference as "canon" in my 
opinion.  Some were entertaining anyway, such as "Blood Oath".

With any other show it's strictly "never", but B5 is a strange critter.  I'd 
trust Peter David to write a "filling in the blanks" novel from JMS notes 
such as the "Centauri Prime" trilogy.  If he tried to break fresh ground on 
his own, I'd be much more leery.  JMS *is* the B5 the universe so what he 
writes is canon by definition.

OTOH I would not give George Lucas or Gene Roddenberry the licence I give 
JMS.  Both have shown a marked lack of respect for their universes.


>> The Narn have no telepaths, but used to.  Ironic considering they are one 
>> of the races most likley to have posessed the trait without vorlon 
>> tinkering.
>
> Why?

Why is it ironic or why are the narns most likely?

Irony is in the eye of the beholder.

But "most likely"?  That I can expand on.

The Narn had telepaths during the previous Shadow War 1000 years before. 
This significantly preceeds the emergence of human teeps and likley preceeds 
most other races that the Vorlons messed with.

The Minbari are like the Narn in that they also participated in the pevious 
Shadow War.  They've (the MInbari) been a starfaring race for a *very* long 
time.  The Vorlons would have had to introduce telepathy to the Narn and 
Minbari well ahead of the previous Shadow War, which is doesn't seem likely.

To seed the Narn or Minbari races with teleptathy would require seeing the 
future (not unheard-of in the B5 universe, I'll grant).  Lacking this kind 
of foresight, there would be no predicting the Shadow occupation of a 
continent on the Narn Homeworld so it would be impossible to anticipate a 
need for Narn telepaths ahead of time.  Since the Narn did have telepaths, 
it seems likley the ability was natural to the Narn as a race.

Then there are the Minbari.

If Vorlons created minbari telepaths ahead minbari starflight as they did 
with Earth, they would have had to do so well before even the previous 
Shadow War without knowing that the Miinbari would participate in a Shadow 
War that wouldn't occur for hundreds of years.  (My read of the 
thousand-years-ago Minbari warships and their similarity to present day 
warships led me to believe that the Minbari were well-established 
spacefarers 1000 years ago--probably on a par with the Centauri today).  You 
would need to see the future to identify the Minbari as a future ally and 
seed them with telepathy in advance of Minbari starflight.  That said, the 
Vorlons could have offerred telepathy to the Gray Council directly during 
the war, and the Minbari reverence for the Vorlons would have them accept 
the gift and keep mum about the source.

Now for a word on the Centauri...

On the other hand, if the Vorlons gave the Centauri their ability to see the 
future (or it was a side-effect of giving them telepathy) the gift has had 
time to spread to the point of being systemic in Centauri genetics.  It is 
normal and expected that a centauri will have some forsight into his or her 
death.  That means the Centauri would have had to be seeded with telepathy 
ahead of their own starflight, possibly ahead of the previous Shadow War for 
foresight to be so common and well-integrated in Centauri culture.

This all presupposes the use of telepathy as a weapon in the hands of the 
younger races during the previous Shadow War.  If that's the case, the 
Minbari don't seem to have any memory of telepath warfare.  Not even in the 
secret archives of the Gray Council.  It took Garibaldi thumbing through the 
Book of G'Quon to figure it out.  If the Minbari did teleptah warfare in the 
previous Shadow War, Delenn should have known about it.  It would have 
figured at least as large as Babylon 4 in the history of the previous Shadow 
War.  Since some First Ones fought alogside the Minbari and Vorlons against 
the Shaodws, it strikes me they wouldn't feel the need to arm a younger race 
with paranormal abilities.  Thus, any race with psychic gifts at or ahead of 
the previous Shadow War likley had them as natural gifts, not vorlon 
additions.

It's a different story if you're expecting the younger races to resist the 
Shadows alone.  That seems to be the way the Vorlons wanted the current 
Shadow War to have gone.

Cultivating telepathy as a weapon struck me as a "new thing" with the 
current Shadow War.  My read was that the vorlons saw how effective Narn 
telepaths were against the Shadows last time and sought to extend the 
ability to other races in perparation for the next time around.  The Shadows 
apparently identified Humans as a potential major factor in the Shadow War 
and inspired the creation of Psi Corps to blunt human influence and give 
them a source of telepath-resistant ship CPUs.  Sadly, their 
counter-measures didn't pan out completely the way they wanted.

If you just skim the surface of B5 events, you miss this kind of nuance. 
You just see "vorlons created telepaths".  It's easy to be left thinking 
"vorlons are the source of all telepathy in younger races" and write it into 
a story when a thoughtful dig into the matter makes it less-plausible than 
it first might seem.

....which all makes a nice case in point as to why I don't trust books as 
canon.


-- 
John Trauger,
Vorlonagent


"Methane martini.
Shaken, not stirred."


"Spirituality without science has no mind.

Science without spirituality has no heart."

-Methuselah Jones
                                                  
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