Thoughts on the Races.

[Deepcrush]

After watching the B5 Pilot. I couldn't help but be reminded of where everyone stood when this whole series started.

Londo, I know his people weren't very nice. But I couldn't help but feel bad for him and them. They had such a grand chance for greatness and yet, in the end, they threw it away. Just seeing the look that Peter Jurasik gives as his character speaks to Garibaldi still shocks me.

This leads me to my first race that I'm going to bring up. The Centauri Republic.

At one point in time they were the third most powerful nation in B5. Now, as Londo points out. They are looking to hook onto the destiny of the EA and sing about past glories. How sad it must have been, to stand so tall and then because of vanity to lose it all and crumble.

[Tsukiyumi]

It was greed and excess that really brought them down, IMO. To me, it always seemed like their leaders spent most of their time partying and schmoozing to get ahead. They let politics and ego get in the way of logical planning and improving their society.

[Coalition]

The key that got them motivated again, was the Dilgar War. The Centauri were the ones that invited the humans to FTL capability, and during te Dilgar War, they were too busy internally.

As a result, the Earth Alliance is the force that goes in and defeats the Dilgar, and gets the friendship of the League. You can figure there were thousands of Centauri looking at themselves in the mirror and asking, "What happened to us!"

EDIT - this later tied into the Earth-Minbari War. The Centauri were looking at this small empire that they introduced to the galaxy, defeated the Dilgar (who had overrun most of the LoNAW), and were in the middle of a war trying to get better relations with the Narns.

Figure the Centauri had a threat ranking system. They had a fixed threat level of the LoNAW. The Dilgar began invading and conquering, which makes the Dilgar a bigger threat than the LoNAW. That is not that big of a problem, as those races are centuries are old, and have not changed much. Then earth comes in. In less than a century they went from a single-system empire to a multi-system empire that defeated the Dilgar. The Centauri are looking forward to the next several decades, and their rough projections are very worrying.

Now during the E-M war, the Narn start becoming friends. The Centauri are worried that the narns are going to get lots of Earth personnel, potentially making the Narns just as capable as the Earth Alliance was. Combine that with trade ties to the LoNAW, and the existing hatred of the narn to the Centauri, and add to that the Centauri never helped the humans, and you have Londo's mission. He was there to make sure the Narns didn't become the next big threat to the Centauri Republic. Unfortunately, he picked the one mission that might have gotten peace.

Whoops.

[Deepcrush]

My next thoughts are on the Narn. They always interested me because no matter how much wisdom they seem to be able to pull from their minds. At the end of the day they will abandon it all for a chance to shoot someone.

They built a power house force out of nothing and did so in amazing time. In fifty years they went from being slaves to a dominant power in the known worlds.

[Reliant121]

The Narn's biggest problem is their innate anger and passion. All the anger, bitterness and aggression left from the Centauri sort of never went away. The Centauri did some utterly disgusting things and it seemed to give the Narn a particularly violent and bitter outlook on the universe. Curious because the two that we see most (G'Kar and Na'Toth) both showed very deep thought, and incredibly scholarly behaviour. I think they might well have rivalled humanity for their power base, had the Centauri not crippled them. The Narn adopted a policy of what I like to call "Turtling": taking territory then fortifying it to the hilt and sitting in it.

Although to be fair if they struck outward they'd hit the Centauri or the LONAW. The Centauri, while their grand empire was in decline, still held enough power to wipe the Narn off the interstellar map. The LONAW probably wouldnt pose much threat (maybe the Brakiri but only a minor threat), however they have the ultimate support of the EA. And the EA are not the sort of power that the Narn could afford to anger.

[Deepcrush]

I've got to agree with you. They just couldn't let go of their past. Of course as you said they weren't in much of a place to expand without major conflict. The Centauri on one side, the LoNAW on the other.

Which, unless someone has something else about the Narn to add, brings us to the next race. Or in this case, faction, the LoNAW.

[Nutso]

Do you guys remember these words:

Kosh: They are alone. They are a dying people. We should let them pass.
Commander Sinclair: Who, the Narn or the Centauri?
Kosh: Yes.

What do you make of this?

The Centauri: It's interesting that in the episode where Kosh saves Sheridan from falling to his death, all the aliens saw their respective holy figures save Sheridan, except for Londo and I assume the other Centauri. I suppose the Vorlons never touched the Centauri. Why? They joined with the Shadows on a quest to regain the empire that they lost due to stagnation. Yet in the end, the Centauri Homeworld was sacked and will burn for decades. That was a chilling moment. We watched the Centauri avoid certain death as a Vorlon Planet Killer eclipsed their Sun and then leave, only to watch a couple years later as multiple gateways opened in the sky and rain fire down upon the Centauri.

The Narn: They were agrarian until the Centauri came and enslaved them. They overthrew their masters and set out to take revenge. In the end this drive for vengeance nearly destroyed the Narn. Yet the lesson was never learned. After G'Kar's sacrifice to save his people those people set off on the same path again. Only G'Kar, who was touched by a Vorlon, could see this was no longer the right way for the Narn.

I can easily see Rome in the Centauri. What parallel to real history can be made of the Narn?

[Deepcrush]

Kosh: They are alone. They are a dying people. We should let them pass.
Commander Sinclair: Who, the Narn or the Centauri?
Kosh: Yes.

What do you make of this?

I recall that Kosh was more interested in protecting his two "baby" races. The Minbari and the Humans. He never really seemed to care about the others.

The Centauri: It's interesting that in the episode where Kosh saves Sheridan from falling to his death, all the aliens saw their respective holy figures save Sheridan, except for Londo and I assume the other Centauri. I suppose the Vorlons never touched the Centauri. Why? They joined with the Shadows on a quest to regain the empire that they lost due to stagnation. Yet in the end, the Centauri Homeworld was sacked and will burn for decades. That was a chilling moment. We watched the Centauri avoid certain death as a Vorlon Planet Killer eclipsed their Sun and then leave, only to watch a couple years later as multiple gateways opened in the sky and rain fire down upon the Centauri.

I think, much for the same reasons we hear in the pilot, that the Vorlons don't expect much of the Centauri. Although, we get a great recap of the Centauri through Londo as he expresses his lack of seeing "Nothing, nothing at all", its as if he watches his own soul just slip away and die. Of course from this we see his rebirth as a leader who looks to save his people, instead of saving their past glory.

The Narn: They were agrarian until the Centauri came and enslaved them. They overthrew their masters and set out to take revenge. In the end this drive for vengeance nearly destroyed the Narn. Yet the lesson was never learned. After G'Kar's sacrifice to save his people those people set off on the same path again. Only G'Kar, who was touched by a Vorlon, could see this was no longer the right way for the Narn.

I think a lot of the Narns could see that war wasn't the path. If you look at how much they were involved in trade, including arms dealing and tech dealing. However, like many nations that were once abused and then grew up rapidly on their own. They believed themselves much bigger then they really were.

I can easily see Rome in the Centauri. What parallel to real history can be made of the Narn?

IMO, the Narn fit very well into the early United States just prior to the War of 1812.

[GrahamKennedy]

JMS is on record as saying that whilst the Humans and Minbari made it to Vorlon-level transcendent status in the end, the Narn and Centauri never did. Both species died out along the way, just as Kosh predicted.

[Tyyr]

Interesting. I wonder what killed them off? You'd think the humans and mimbari would have done what they could to prevent either of their extinctions.

[kostmayer]

Maybe each other. They seem to take whatever excuses they can to attack each other.

[Deepcrush]

Sometimes things just die off. They suffer a genetic breakdown, plague, war or natural disaster. They were both so locked on their worlds and so tied to their paths that the loss of their home worlds would just end their races.

[Sionnach Glic]

It's possible something similar to what happened to the Dilgar killed them off. I can see a serious war that went badly forcing them back to their home system, at which point a sufficiently ruthless enemy may decide to carpet nuke their homeworld and kill them off completely, or some sort of disaster fucks the survivors of the war over.

[Reliant121]

We cant discount the possibility that the Human's and Minbari eliminated them both. The Centauri have already shown the capacity to attack EA and maybe in the future they would do the same to the Minbari. Even if they didn't, who knows how the mentality of the evolved humans and minbari will develop?

[Coalition]

We cant discount the possibility that the Human's and Minbari eliminated them both. The Centauri have already shown the capacity to attack EA and maybe in the future they would do the same to the Minbari. Even if they didn't, who knows how the mentality of the evolved humans and minbari will develop?

If that was based on the DVD "The Lost Tales", where the Centauri ships are shooting up the Warlocks, there might have been another reason for the Warlocks to be destroyed. Look up the fiction behind the Warlocks, and you'll figure out why.