Text 5984, 130 rader
Skriven 2006-08-10 23:20:00 av Robert E Starr JR (6481.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Help me out, please?
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@REPLY:
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"Chris Patterson" <chris_s_patterson@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:chris_s_patterson-5FB45B.20313210082006@individual.net...
> In article <poSdnfYI-9a18EbZnZ2dnUVZ_tadnZ2d@comcast.com>,
> "Vorlonagent" <nojtspam@otfresno.com> wrote:
>
>> Our Hero, Martel, gets dressed down and demoted for choosing to retreat 
>> when
>> the tactical situation clearly warranted such a retreat and there was no
>> larger goal present that demanded a suicide stand.  The whole notion that
>> "Rangers never retreat" was silly from the get-go and it is this premise
>> that gets the plot rolling and haunts the show from start to finish. 
>> There
>> is no precedent from B5 requiring Rangers to "die stupidly".  Huge 
>> buckets
>> of Minbari Warrior-Caste macho would have to have been injected into the
>> Rangers over the years between B5 and TLOTR.  If so, TLOTR does not 
>> mention
>> it.
>
> I addressed this back when the pilot first aired. Here is a link:
>
> <http://tinyurl.com/nlnkc>

Very well-reasoned.  I'm not 100% sure I buy it however.

My memory of TLoTR has (mercifully) faded at places and this is one. 
Reading the Lurker's Guide synopsis, Martel's crime is "he survied".  You 
make a very good point that the ethos is to go to any extreme to to stand 
between the common sentient and harm.  On the light side, it's reasurring to 
the common sentient.  On the dark side, it makes enemies think twice about 
tangling with Rangers because they can't expect a Ranger to back down.  Your 
point, as I read it, is Martel potentially harms the Ranger image by 
choosing to flee instead of fighting to his destruction.

The fact that Martel's decision is tactically prudent is a defense unto 
itself.  Ships cost time and money to build.  Crews take time and money to 
train and need lots more time (years for crew, probably a decade or more for 
a captain) to truly season into their roles.  Despite the organic elements 
to Ranger ships, this stuff don't grow on trees.

The Minbari Warrior Caste could theoretically afford to live and die purely 
for apperances because there's enough of them to go around.  They're 1/3 of 
the Minbari population.  (OK, the three castes are probably not split 
evenly. but even 1/10 of of a planetary population under arms makes for a 
hideously huge military. "Crunch all you want, we'll make more")  I would 
doubt the Rangers have that kind of surplus of trained and dedicated 
sentients, along with that kind of surplus hardware.  If you can tell me 
that the rangers are flush with cash, skilled personnel and equipment, then 
Martel's decision could stand some chance of being wrong.  Otherwise, his 
decision to conserve scrace hardware and sentient resources cannot help but 
be correct, barring an overriding factor.  If Martel pulled his ship out of 
fighting while innocents were still in the line of fire, f'rexample, that's 
a whole 'nother ball game.  I don't remember Martel abandoning anyone to the 
raider's tender mercies except other raiders.

So how badly does Martel's retreat really harm the Ranger mistique?

If his ship is chasing raiders, that means there's a cargo somewhere that 
they wanted to capture and failed.  If the civilians knew about the raider 
attack or experienced it, they would be all thankyouthankyouthankyou 
grateful for still being alive with their ship still under their control. 
The fact that the Rangers didn't nuke every last Raider is not likely to 
make much of an impression.  The light side of the Ranger mistique can be 
considered to upheld or close enough for ISA work. If the civilians never 
knew they were in raider crosshairs, then nobody will likely know about the 
ranger-raider dustup but the parties involved, so there is no impact to the 
ranger mistique possible.

On the dark side, the same fact plays center stage.  The raiders lost the 
cargo.  Raiders don't do what they do to be evil.  They do what they do 
because they can earn a nice living at it and have nihilistic fun at the 
same time.  Martel's ship aced them out of their kill, destroyed a bunch of 
fighters (and their pilots) all of which which will now need to be replaced. 
This isn't a loss.  It's a grand-scale screwup for the Raiders.  I don't 
expect that many raiders will get much solace from the fact that their 
backup arrived in time to keep a Cluster-F__k from becoming a total 
massacre.  The primary raiders lose prestige because they lost the kill and 
their backup had to pull their bacon out of the fire, the backup isn't happy 
because the raid came away empty-handed and they didn't even get to kill the 
ship that got in their way.  If Martel *had* fought to his death, I think 
the stupidity of the decision would have raised the morale of the Raiders. 
They bourght down a high 'n mighty Ranger ship.  The actual outcome makes it 
clear to the raiders that Martel's ship had complete control over the 
situation even as it was being overwhelmed.  When Martel decided it was time 
to book and there wasn't frag-all the Raiders could do about it.

In both cases, the ideal for the Ranger mistique is that the Ranger ship 
pursues the raiders and destroys every last one, walking away from the 
pie-fight like the Great Leslie without a crumb on his immaculate clothes 
(or more correctly a scratch on his immaculate ship).  It's nice to shoot 
for something as unrealistic as this, but it's good to remember it is 
unreasonable perfectionism.  If you can't get that (and in this case, there 
was nothing Martel could do TO get it) the aura of invincibility is already 
punctured.  If the civilians were expecting the Rangers to perform 
perfectly, they were going to be disappointed regardless.  Any survivors of 
the raider group would also know that a Ranger got itself seriously bloodied 
fighting the raiders.  You can spin circumstances where the Ranger getting 
destroyed while finishing off the Raiders could play well to some regular 
folks, but I don't think there's any way it would come off as intimidating 
to the raiders who took down a ranger ship.

Martel's crime is making do with second best when his superiors wanted all 
or nothing.  The smart money sides with Martel from every vantage.

-- 
John Trauger,
Vorlonagent


"Methane martini.
Shaken, not stirred."


"Spirituality without science has no mind.

Science without spirituality has no heart."

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