Triluminary

[Joseph DeMartino]

Franklin was just covering his ass. Do you have any idea what malpractice insurance premiums are like in 2262? He threw out that "part Minbari" crap because he knew Sheridan was no xenobiologist and he wanted to make sure his butt was covered in case something went wrong. Besides, Delenn still had the headbone so clearly there was some Minbari coding that was expressing itself in her appearance, even if it was in a section of DNA for bone growth that Humans and Minbari share, and therefore the equivalent of an ordinary Human mutation. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Lennier said two because, at that time in the series, there were two.

The story explanation for Lennier's mistake is that he (like most religious caste and warrior caste Minbari) simply doesn't count the workers. He really thinks of there only being two castes who matter, who run things, who aliens would have any contact with. (In To Dream in the City of Sorrows Sinclair is quite exceptional in trying to engage workers in conversation, and damned near starts a civil war when he lifts the ban on their service in the Rangers.) This actually fits in quite well with the events of the Minbari Civil War, so in retrospect it looks almost intentional. Delenn's concern for the Workers is one of the things that separate her from someone like Lennier, who despite the best intentions is still a prisoner of attitudes and prejudices that Valen never really eliminated, only surpressed. It is his recognition of how much more noble Delenn is than he that makes Lennier so devoted to her. (See his speech aboard the White Star to the Minbari who tried to kill her.) When she gives the Workers the majority vote in the reformed Grey Council, she is completing the Valen started 1,000 years before.

Boy, it sure is nice to write about something besides the damned Triluminaries.

Joe

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

If the answer is "Minbari do everything in threes," then just add that to my list of why the Minbari suck.

That's one possibility. There are others.

1) If there is only one triluminary, it is very unlikely the Delenn's ally on the Grey Council could steal one and slip it to her. Don't forget, the Council never gave her formal permission to undergo the Chrysalis transformation and never "issued" her a triluminary. She obtained one through back channel sources. That's a lot easier to do if there is more than one. Three would seem to be the minimum number.

2) Valen may have consecrated them by identifying the three (equal) triluminaries with the three castes. This would have been a useful bit of propganda in his social reform plan.

3) There are three because Valen brought back three, so the Vorlons knew they had to build three. See, that's where explaining how they were physically created doesn't really help us escape the time paradox. Whose idea were they? Where did concept come from? Somebody built the triluminaries because they knew somebody had built the triluminaries. But who thought them up in the first place?

(Where's that damned Excedrin...)



Joe

 

[GKarsEye]

- I agree with you, Joe, about Delenn being completely human with the equivalent of a mutation explaining the bown. She's like a prettier version of the Elephant Man.
To paraphrase Sagan, a human would have a better chance mating with a plant than with a being from another planet. How do we know Delenn is completely human? She bears a human child.
Heck, maybe Franklin was just wrong. Doctors aren't gods. "Everytime a patient comes in here he expects me to play God!" *shoots up some stims* Ah, better.

- I did mention Lennier simply not counting the worker caste and, I said, I just don't buy it, no matter how "official" the explanation. I have a hard time accepting Lennier shows more respect to the lowest outside of his race and not a third of his own people, especially since he's as arrogant of his own race as any Minbari.

If there is only one triluminary, it is very unlikely the Delenn's ally on the Grey Council could steal one and slip it to her. Don't forget, the Council never gave her formal permission to undergo the Chrysalis transformation and never "issued" her a triluminary. She obtained one through back channel sources. That's a lot easier to do if there is more than one. Three would seem to be the minimum number.

Yeah I thought about this but rejected it because 3 is so small that missing one would certainly be as noticed as missing all 3. This argument would make sense if there were, say, a thousand triluminaries, but if you have 3 of something and one dissappears, you don't just shrug you shoulders and say, "oh well, still got 2."

Valen may have consecrated them by identifying the three (equal) triluminaries with the three castes. This would have been a useful bit of propganda in his social reform plan.

That's some mighty fine speculatin', there, but surely Valen couild think of a lot of other ways to propogandise than schlepp multple cacoon-forming/DNA detection across the time-space continuum.

There are three because Valen brought back three, so the Vorlons knew they had to build three. See, that's where explaining how they were physically created doesn't really help us escape the time paradox. Whose idea were they? Where did concept come from? Somebody built the triluminaries because they knew somebody had built the triluminaries. But who thought them up in the first place?

Right, and who actually thought of the terminator- Dyson used the microchip to develop the technology but he just found it because it already existed in the future.
I hate that shit.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

(though I seem to recall Episilon 3 only being there for what? 500 years, so 1,000 years in the past may be too far back.)

All indications are that Epsilon 3 has been there for much longer than that - several billion years, in fact. The Great Machine is probably much younger, but has certainly been around for more than 500 years itself.

Nitpicker Joe

 

[Alluveal]

Didn't Lennier also say that the last war with the Shadows took place 2,000 years earlier? (In Season 2 opener?) I always thought that was odd as it seemed to me it took place 1,000 years before. Darn Minbari.. never tell ya the whole truth.

 

[hypatia]

Ah, good. Glad to see there is a nice, simple explanation.

It seems like time travel just backs into a corner with me, whenever I try to figure it out. A lazy way out it to assume it's multiple realities. That would explain the flash-forward-glimpses we've gotten which have NOT come true, too.

But it seems this was meant to be a "one time is the only time" deal. And I need to go back and reread the last thirty or fourty posts to see again, but... don't we have a problem with the invention of a triluminary that already exists. *cries*

I don't like this. It's like quantum mechanics. Uncomfy.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Didn't Lennier also say that the last war with the Shadows took place 2,000 years earlier?

No quite. Lennier's other major historical boo-boo was saying that the Minbari population has been declining for 2,000 years:

"It is our belief that every generation of Minbari is reborn in each following generation. Remove those souls, and the whole suffers. We are diminished. Over the last two thousand years, there have been fewer Minbari born into each generation. And those who are born do not seem equal to those who came before. It almost as if our greater souls have been disappearing. At the Battle of the Line, we discovered where our souls were going. They were going to you. Minbari souls are being reborn, in part or in full, in human bodies."

He never says anything about a war.

Presumably he should have said "a thousand years ago" assuming that the Minbari belief that their declining population and loss of "Great Souls" were connected with the Humans was actually true (I don't) or closely connected enough in time to be a plausible explanation for them. However it could be that the Minbari population began to decline 2,000 years ago but that the decline became more perciipitous 1,000 years later, and that this is also around the time they noticed that their greatest souls and greatest leaders seemed to be "missing' Which would be a convenient explanation for the decline of Minbari civilization generally.

There are a number of indications that Minbari society was already in crisis by the time of Valen's Shadow war, a crisis that can only have deepened during the losing phase of that war. It is hard to explain Valen's abiility to reform Minbari society from top to bottom, including modifcations to the caste system, without that assumption. His victory in the war wouldn't do it by itself. Enough Minbari must have felt their society was in need of reform to hand a stranger the keys to their world and create a new religion around him.

The one who raised a signficantly different date for the "last" Shadow War was Delenn. When she first briefed Sheridan about the Shadows and revealed Kosh as a First One she referred to "the last Great War" of ten thousand years ago, "when the First Ones walked openly among us." Some people have mistakenly seen this as a flub on Delenn's part, but it is pretty clear from the series as a whole that Valen's War, the war of 1,000 years ago, was a comparatively small one by Shadow-Vorlon standards, perhaps ended prematurely by Valen's intervention, hence the relatively quick recovery of the Younger Races. (I believe the "usual" intervals between full-scale Vorlon-Shadow fights was closer to 10,000 than to 1,000 years.) 10,000 years ago the First Ones, inlcuding the Zog, openly cooperated with the Younger Races in battling the Shadows. By Valen's War all but the Vorlons had either departed or declared neutrality, and it seems even the Vorlons worked mostly behind the scenes and in - if you'll pardon the expression - the shadows. Valen's War was not, by Delenn's reckoning, a "Great War"

So it seems like your memory combined Lennier's slip-up with Delenn's history lesson.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Bester]

However, that still doesn't explain why they needed three triluminaries. They could have gotten by with just one.

I remember when I was quite new to the series (back in 1996) I assumed that each member of "The One" would use a different triluminary to transform into a different form....


1. Sinclair into Minbari ("The One who was")
2. Delenn into Human ("The One who is")
3. Sheridan into Vorlon-like energy being ("The One who will be")

Each stage above showing the progression of the soul from Minbari to Human to higher being.

Just a bit of old (and incorrect) speculation on my part.

 

[GKarsEye]

I had a slightly different inerpretation of the 1g vs 10g war thing: 10g yrs ago was the last war between the Shadows and Vorlons. The "younger races" may have been involved but not to such a significant degree. After that one, the Shadows and Vorlons somehow agreed on the new rules of engagement: instead of killing each other, they would influence younger races and let their philosophies guide the shape of the galaxy. So the Vorlons started genetically manipulating races, the Shadows used people as ship computers, and they weren't allowed to openly engage each other in battle.

Thus, the last "Great War" amongst the First Ones (yes, including Zog and Sigma 90125 or whatever) was 10g yrs ago, and the two big intergalactic wars- Valen's time and B5 time- are amongst the younger races manipulated by the first ones.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Thus, the last "Great War" amongst the First Ones (yes, including Zog and Sigma 90125 or whatever) was 10g yrs ago, and the two big intergalactic wars- Valen's time and B5 time- are amongst the younger races manipulated by the first ones.

But I think Justin's explanation of the Shadows' modus operandi contradicts this. He clearly indicates that the Shadows have repeatedly launched these wars to stir the pot and advance the cause of evolution. The explanation makes no sense if they had only fought the other First Ones for millions of years and just 1,000 years ago started involving the Younger Races. Wars can't help the Younger Races evolve if they don't fight in them.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

That's some mighty fine speculatin', there, but surely Valen couild think of a lot of other ways to propogandise than schlepp multple cacoon-forming/DNA detection across the time-space continuum.

No, he couldn't have. Because he didn't. He couldn't do anything in the past that he hadn't already done, and because he hadn't come up with a better solution in the future, he couldn't do anything different in the past. I trust I'm making myself obscure?



Joe

"The pellet with the poison's in the chalice from the palace, the vessel with the pestle holds the brew that is true."

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I agree with you, Joe, about Delenn being completely human with the equivalent of a mutation explaining the bown. She's like a prettier version of the Elephant Man.

If I ever meet Mira Furlan, I'll be sure to tell her you said so.

Joe

 

[GKarsEye]

Thus, the last "Great War" amongst the First Ones (yes, including Zog and Sigma 90125 or whatever) was 10g yrs ago, and the two big intergalactic wars- Valen's time and B5 time- are amongst the younger races manipulated by the first ones.

But I think Justin's explanation of the Shadows' modus operandi contradicts this. He clearly indicates that the Shadows have repeatedly launched these wars to stir the pot and advance the cause of evolution. The explanation makes no sense if they had only fought the other First Ones for millions of years and just 1,000 years ago started involving the Younger Races. Wars can't help the Younger Races evolve if they don't fight in them.

Regards,

Joe

No, I'm saying that the First Ones started involving the younger races specifically 10,000, not 1,000 yrs ago, and there were other conflicts between those two wars. The one from 1000 yrs ago was probably the first to involve the Minbari.

 

[KoshFan]

GKE, am I reading you right? You're saying that the war 10,000 years back was when the Shadows and the Vorlons drew up the present "rules of engagement" that Justin tells Sheridan about?

I almost buy it except for the implication that the Vorlons and the Shadows have been fighting each other for even longer than that.

 

[vacantlook]

I almost buy it except for the implication that the Vorlons and the Shadows have been fighting each other for even longer than that.

Yes, they've been fighting each other directly (and with younger races along side them in battle too, probably) for a long time. But I think GKE's saying that it was the 10,000 year ago battle that resulted in them saying, ok, we ourselves won't directly fight each other, we'll just get others to fight for us. This would be one of the reasons the Shadows get so pissed when Kosh gets the Vorlons to directly attack the Shadows in "Interludes and Examinations" because they viewed the Vorlons as having broken the agreement.

 

[GKarsEye]

Right, what vacantlook said. That is my guess.

 

[hypatia]

It's also why the Vorlons got so pissed.

Kosh forced their hands. They had to deal with the Shadows now, there could be no turning back (unless Shadows are the kind that will turn the other cheek).

 

[A_M_Swallow]

"The pellet with the poison's in the chalice from the palace, the vessel with the pestle holds the brew that is true."

Off topic.

That was a fun film.