Nine and One(spoilers)

[Mr. Bester]

Remember that the minbari have real big obessions with 3s and 1s and they arrange their councils with nine followers and one leader. Look at the Ranger council nine hooded guys and one Entil'zha and the grey council there are the nine and the One(Dukat, Jenner, Valen). But in LOTR there are only nine crew members. Where is the tenth one?

Theory 1- It is the ship. The ship survived and the crew said whoever survived was the traitor. Now that would imply the ship is sentient since it betrayed the crew and also holds the ghosts its previous crew.

Theory 2- We're going to see him/her/it in the 2nd or third season.


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[EntilSedai]

as an aside:
do we have evidence that minbari ships operate on multiples of three?
the fighters have one, so that fits

they sound plausible
perhaps the tenth spot is left 'in memory of valen' or 'in honour of entil'zha'

CR

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[Jade Jaguar]

The Liandra has a crew of twenty. We just haven't seen all of them.

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You're speaking treason! Olivia De Havilland as Maid Marian
Fluently! Errol Flynn as Robin Hood
You're talking treason! Olivia De Havilland as Arabella Bishop
I trust I'm not obscure. Errol Flynn as Dr. Peter Blood

Pallindromes of the month: Snug was I, ere I saw guns.
Doom an evil deed, liven a mood.

 

[bakana]

The Liandra is Not an "intelligent" ship, so It can't betray anyone.

What was said was that the ship Vanished for about a week of so and was then found with No One on board and most of the computer records wiped.

This implies that, after Murdering the crew, the Traiter met with another ship and they removed all the evidence, including the bodies.

They'll figure out Who the traiter is when they ID all the Ghosts and know whose Ghost is Missing.

One of the mysteries is going to be Why the Liandra was Found.
If it had just been shoved into the nearest Sun with all the bodies aboard, no one would Ever know what happened.

So, either the Traiter and friends almost got Caught and had to run before they were finished with the Liandra, or they believe they still have some Use for the ship.

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Do not ascribe your own motivations to others:
At best, it will break your heart.
At worst, it will get you dead."

 

[Jade Jaguar]

A use for the ship such as planting surveilance equipment on it to monitor the Rangers, or perhaps planting another traitor aboard, as I suggested in another thread. The Hand's minions did let it survive.

------------------
You're speaking treason! Olivia De Havilland as Maid Marian
Fluently! Errol Flynn as Robin Hood
You're talking treason! Olivia De Havilland as Arabella Bishop
I trust I'm not obscure. Errol Flynn as Dr. Peter Blood

Pallindromes of the month: Snug was I, ere I saw guns.
Doom an evil deed, liven a mood.

 

[Mr. Bester]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jade Jaguar:
The Liandra has a crew of twenty. We just haven't seen all of them.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm referring to the crew that we've met. Amazing coincidence that they number in NINE.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Bakana:

The Liandra is Not an "intelligent" ship, so It can't betray anyone.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

How do we know that? Not everyone or perhaps everything is as they seem.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>
What was said was that the ship Vanished for about a week of so and was then found with No One on board and most of the computer records wiped.

This implies that, after Murdering the crew, the Traiter met with another ship and they removed all the evidence, including the bodies.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Or perhaps the ships murdered the crew and wiped all the records.

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[Joseph DeMartino]

Amazing coincidence that they number in NINE.

Not especially amazing, and almost certainly a coincidence. Valen founded the Grey Council with an equal number of members from each caste and himself (a Minbari not born of Minbari, and therefore without a caste.) Because there are three castes, this had to result in the number of members being a multiple of three, plus the leader. It could as easily have been thirteen (which Valen might have considered unlucky, under the circumstances

) or sixteen. (Probably rejected as too unwieldy.)

The Ranger Council was modelled on the Grey Council, so happens to have the same number of members.

The doesn't mean all Rangers units either must or do have nine members plus a leader. It certainly doesn't indicated that there is a "missing" 10th member of Liandra's crew. In fact, there are eleven crewmen we didn't have time to meet during the pilot, as has been pointed out.

Nor have we seen anything to suggest that the Minbari have the technology to create "living" or sentient ships. Even with the White Stars, which were built with th aid or the Vorlons, no one so much as hinted that they were intelligent.

The number of characters that we'll focus on is more an indication of what JMS thinks will work in the series than anything else. I think he found the extremely large cast of B5 hard to manage, so he used only seven primary characters in Crusade. If he's gone back up to nine for this show I'm sure it has more to do with the stories he wants to tell than any Minbari obessession with the number ten.


Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net

[This message has been edited by Joseph DeMartino (edited January 31, 2002).]

 

[GKarsEye]

Well, depends on what you mean by "intelligent" ship. There is some kind of intelligence on the ship besides the crew: those "ghosts." Who knows how they might effect the ship, effectively resulting in a ship with "intelligence," even though it would be by accident.

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"You do not make history. You can only hope to survive it."

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mr. Bester:
Remember that the minbari have real big obessions with 3s and 1s and they arrange their councils with nine followers and one leader. Look at the Ranger council nine hooded guys and one Entil'zha<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well at times there is an Entil'Zha but normally it would be the Anla'Shok Na, however Delenn is both so the tenth member would be someone else, lower in the chain of command.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mr. Bester:
the grey council there are the nine and the One(Dukat, Jenner, Valen).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Well there is only three(four) "Ones" Valen/Sinclair, Delenn, and Sheridan, as said by Zathras, however if you mean in the since of the Entil'Zha there are only four(five) Sinclair/Valen Delenn Sheridan and Ivonava. However there is a leader apart from the Entil'Zha such as Dukhat however after the Grey Council was restablished the center circle was saved in memory of Neroon until the One to come (the one to come according to Zathras) Sheridan leads the Council, however she could have been speaking of another type of "one", in which case the second part of what I quoted is correct.

But to the point I don't think the number of cast member has anything to do with the nine.

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[**DONOTDELETE**]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR> Because there are three castes, this had to result in the number of members being a multiple of three, plus the leader. It could as easily have been thirteen <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I doubt the Minbari would have gone for 4 or 5 from each caste. 9 is 3 sets of 3: it has the number 3 and symetry, and that's a very Minbari thing.

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Never use the expression "I've got your six" to a Centauri, unless, of course, you mean it.

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

To clear things up: Minbari government is separate from the Rangers. They finance the Rangers and have significant authority over them, but the Nine have never fully controlled Rangers, especially when there is a powerful and independent person as Ranger One. Three such persons have been known as Entil'zha, but at four times, as one of them did a Sinclair.

Minbari government:

The Nine = The Grey Council (members known as Satai).
Chosen One = their leader.

Rangers:

Ranger high council (nine members).
Ranger One = Anlashok Na = their leader.
Entil'zha = Ranger One of crucial importance,
one of the three who Valen hinted about.

Examples:

Sinclair: Anlashok Na, later Entil'zha.
Valen: both Chosen One and Entil'zha.
Delenn: member of the Nine and Entil'zha.
Jenimer: Chosen One.
Ivanova: Ranger One.

[This message has been edited by Lennier (edited January 31, 2002).]