Something that has always annoyed me about Babylon 5

[SMJB]

So the Minbari fought a war of extermination against humanity in living memory--nay, recently enough that veterans of the war are still serving in the military--and yet things are for the most part hunky-dory between the two species. Humanity does not act like a civilization that came within a hair's breadth of extinction, and not only should humans not like the Minbari, no one should like the Minbari.

Even if the humans had been loyal allies of the Shadows and the EAS Prometheus had been there specifically to assassinate the Grey Council, that would still not have been justifiable grounds for a war of extermination, because do you know what is justifiable grounds for a war of extermination? Nothing!

Pretending they didn't jump head first off the slippery slope, though, the justification for declaring war is pretty damn suspect in and of itself. Approaching an alien spacecraft with your guns drawn, really? Yes, it's supposed to be a gesture of respect within Minbari culture or some such nonsense, but remember: alien spacecraft. The kind of cultural chauvinism it takes to assume aliens you have never seen before will know enough about your culture to not only recognize the gesture but take it in the spirit in which it was intended is mind-blowing. Did it honestly never occur to them that pointing your weapons at someone could possibly be seen as a hostile act? That can't be the case, as they clearly know what weapons are for. The only explanation is that they literally did not consider what was going on from the humans' perspective at all. A theory further backed up by the fact that they didn't attempt to sort out this situation in any way--instead opting to immediately declare war. Because, you know, the idea that this could be an honest misunderstanding, a rogue ship, pirates who got their hands on an EA ship, or even an outside party attempting to instigate an Earth-Minbari war would be just craaazy. It's not like you have a shadowy enemy known to manipulate lesser races that would benefit from seeing you waste your resources on an unjust war, after all.

As an aside, considering that, once again, you have no idea who these aliens are, it would probably behoove you to hold back the ship that has the Grey Council on it. You know, just in case they're suicidally crazy or easily panicked or there's some crazy misunderstanding or something. Furthermore, it is an extremely stupid cultural gesture in the first place. There's a reason gun safety courses tell you to treat your weapon as if it were loaded at all times. The way the Minbari do things, they're one nervous gunner or computer malfunction away from starting an international incident. Which is kind of what happened, come to think of it.

So yeah; at no point were the Minbari in any way justified in doing anything they did in the war.

Speaking of the war, did I mention that the human race was nearly exterminated by it? And yet we see Sinclair declare that the Minbari were too "honorable" to launch a sneak attack. Um, excuse me? There's nothing honorable in launching a campaign of extermination against a foe too primitive to fight back effectively even if you don't bother with stealth while doing so. Ask the aboriginal Australians and -North and South Americans how "honorable" they think White people are.

"Honor" is not a word that should be in the human vocabulary after a war of survival. I guarantee you, Earth Alliance used every single dirty trick in the book to buy them enough time to evacuate as many of their people as they could. They looked over the records of every guerrilla and terrorist organization in Earth's history for ideas. They would have looked at 9/11 and said "Good idea! How do we do this to the Minbari?" Anything that would distract even a few warships from their genocidal crusade would slow it somewhat, which could end up spelling the difference between life and death for thousands of refugees. It would make the Minbari ironically less assholish than in canon if the reason they objected to Sheridan wasn't because he had the gall to actually win a battle in their war of extermination but because he was their Osama bin Laden (though having an admitted terrorist as the hero would be admittedly a bit problematic to modern audiences).

The Earth-Minbari war would have changed humanity's entire outlook. And not just the "terrorism is totally a legitimate tactic" thing.

Sinclair or Sheridan: "What's that, Ambassador Mollari? You want an impartial investigation of the latest incident between the Narn, AKA the only people who weren't too piss scared of the Minbari to sell us weapons and people whose struggle we naturally sympathize with as fellow victims of space alien oppression, and the Centauri, AKA their former oppressors? Sure--we'll get right on that impartial investigation of how the Narn are innocent of any wrongdoing in this latest act of Centaur aggression."

Londo: "Er...on second thought, maybe a different impartial party would be in order."

We would be very friendly towards the Narn, is what I'm saying.

We would also be very frightened and suspicious in general, but this actually provides a good explanation of the Clarke presidency, so moving on.

If selling humanity weapons was honestly something the Minbari would legitimately start a new war over--which would hardly be out of line with the bloody-minded stupidity they've shown up to this point--and the Narn did it anyway, they likely also accepted human refugees, especially since it would give them something they've wanted for a very long time--psychics. Narn space would likely be a prefered destination for the psychic underground railroad as a result--whose to say this human is a runaway psychic rather than a refugee who decided not to come home? The Narn covertly harboring such people would likely be one of the few points of contention between them and Earth Alliance. More to the point, this has major repercussions for the series in and of itself, as one of the major subplots has been erased--the Narn trying to get psychics--and the Narn now have people who can pass as Centauri. The opportunities this makes for spies and assassins is rather intriguing to contemplate.

Anyway, back to trash talking the Minbari--this time, their culture as a whole.

First is the fact that they have a caste system at all and don't consider this to be a mark against themselves as a civilization. They aren't exactly easy to disassemble, much like institutional racism and for much the same reason, but we have no evidence that the Minbari are even trying. No one who embraces a caste system is a good guy, period. Oh, but each caste has three seats on the Grey Council, so they're equal, right? Yeah, if you believe that their civilization is one third military, one third priest, and one third everyone else! No society, no matter how theocratic, needs one priest for every two laymen. In our own nation only ~20% of the population is employed by the government, and most of those are police, fire fighters, and bureaucrats--not soldiers. The religious and warrior castes, assuming they're allowed to take up jobs "related" to their fields (e.g., a cop is "sort of like" a soldier, so warrior caste members can be cops, and a research scientist or a bureaucrat is "sort of like" a priest, so religious caste members can be researchers or bureaucrats), they're probably about 10% of the population each, meaning that one of their votes has eight times the power as a laborer's.

That's slightly disingenuous--I say "vote" in spite of the fact that there's no possibility that the Minbari have democracy.

Delenn is a member of the Grey Council, the leadership of the Minbari, and yet when she goes undercover as an ambassador on B5, no one knows who she is/was. You'd think EA would throw a hissy fit approximately ten billion times as fierce was the Minbari hissy fit over Sheridan if they knew the person who'd cast the deciding vote to exterminate their species was to be the Minbari ambassador. If no one knows who she is...how could anyone have voted for her? The highest level of Minbari government is literally a secretive cabal. The best case scenario is that they're appointed by and answerable to a body with oversight, like CEOs are to the Board of Directors. Perhaps these bodies are democratically elected, but I think it more likely that the religious caste GC members are appointed by the church, the warrior caste members appointed by the military, and the laborer caste members appointed by some sort of guild organization--but it's speculative either way. And even the best-case scenario--the aforementioned corporate structure thing--doesn't make it any less suspicious that the GC itself is shrouded in such secrecy.

So yeah, the Minbari are totalitarian, theocratic, caste-system-having, genocidal warmongerers. Why does no one treat them like it?

[TheFeniX]

Pretty sure the Minbari are the big dogs of the galaxy, aside from the Vorlons (who don't get involved in everyday humdrums such as genocide).

After 9/11, you could find more than enough people who wanted to wipe Afganistan off the map even though the average Joe-6-pack living there had nothing to do with any of the bullshit. And these people are the same species. Adding together that no Minbari ever bothered to mess with a human before Sinclair (and find out, whoops: the guy has Minbari.... DNA? Spirit Energy? Whatever) and their overwhelming technology superiority, and their fucked-up ideology: that they wouldn't have to personally see single innocent human burn to death while they blast ships and glass Earth makes me able to buy how brutal they were in the war.

They can literally just press buttons and we get a -X to the amount of humans in the galaxy. A species they never met and have nothing invested in, at least as far as they know.

This doesn't even mention how fucked up they are, as you noted, to shit on Sheridan for baiting them into a minefield by faking a distress signal to lure them in when their intentions were to murder any non-Minbari they found. This is what happens when you know you're right and you've got the guns to back it up. Who is around to tell them openly to fuck off? A single Minbari Cruiser IIRC is a match for groups of ships among the other younger races. Maybe the Centauri could slog it out, but I doubt it and they have no fucks to give about Minbari wasting time wiping out "not us."

[Adam Reynolds]

You have reached the shocking conclusion that the Minbari are in fact religious nuts. Congratulations.

The deeper problem here is that Babylon 5 is a story rather than a setting. Their religion makes sense as a part of the story rather than as an element of worldbuilding.

This is also why in many ways it would have been more interesting if the Minbari had become the new antagonists after the Shadows were defeated. Their culture was ripe to become the perfect new antagonist. It would have also given Delenn an interesting conflict as she was forced to choose between her homeland and her husband.

[Parallax]

I believe Londo once said, and I'm paraphrasing here, something along the lines of "Once, we were a great power. But not even at our height did we consider going against the Minbari. It would be suicide."

[Parallax]

This is also why in many ways it would have been more interesting if the Minbari had become the new antagonists after the Shadows were defeated.

I could see that happening actually.
The Minbari had been near worshipping the Vorlons for countless years ... and then it turns out the Vorlons are dicks, no better than the Shadows. That's some pretty massive culture shock right there, I can see mass disillusionment happening and a desperate search for something else to help make sense of the Universe.
And that, in turn, can easily turn into a desire to impose sense/order/whatever on the Universe. The Vorlons failed, so let's get things done the new Minbari way.

[TheFeniX]

The Minbari had been near worshipping the Vorlons for countless years ... and then it turns out the Vorlons are dicks, no better than the Shadows.

The Vorlons are dicks, but at least they are subversive dicks: using their technology to subtly groom younger races they way they want while giving them the illusion they evolved on their own and have complete free will. The Shadows form of alien thinking was pretty fucking evil. Mind control, murder, slavery, empire building. The list really goes on. The Vorlons do pull some shady shit, but I don't think they're on the same level as the Shadows.

The Vorlons are more than willing to sacrifice people for the "greater good" bullshit they've been beating on, but their body count, not just in deaths, is way lower than the Shadows. Just the legacy the Shadows left behind with the Centauri outstrips (IMO) anything the Vorlons pulled. How many humans got stepped on as the Shadows threw in with Clark? If not for Sheridan, he would have wiped out stupidly large portions of Earth's population. Not even mentioning his 1984 shtick.

The Vorlons are petulant children, same as the Shadows, yearning for the love and guidance of their daddy. But they aren't bringing nearly as many headless animals to daddy's feet in the process.

[SMJB]

You have reached the shocking conclusion that the Minbari are in fact religious nuts. Congratulations.

Well excuse me for venting. Anyway, my frustration wasn't so much with them being religious nuts, it's with the fact that no one acknowledged or seemed to care about the fact that the Minbari are, realistically, a scary fucking thing to have around the galactic neighborhood.

This is also why in many ways it would have been more interesting if the Minbari had become the new antagonists after the Shadows were defeated. Their culture was ripe to become the perfect new antagonist. It would have also given Delenn an interesting conflict as she was forced to choose between her homeland and her husband.

Now that would be interesting. Don't think it would ever have happened--given the way everyone glossed over the Minbari's flaws in canon, I can't help but think that's an attitude that came straight from the show's creators.

The Vorlons are petulant children, same as the Shadows, yearning for the love and guidance of their daddy. But they aren't bringing nearly as many headless animals to daddy's feet in the process.

Quite.

[NecronLord]

I'm not sure what the point of this rant is? We see people are very anti-Minbari back on Earth, the clarke regime outright stokes paranoia about Delenn in some episodes,and in others there are human groups attacking Minbari. There's no evidence that anyone apart from trained diplomats has actually forgiven the Minbari over the whole affair, and no one is attacking them because of their enormous military power and willingness to exert unreasonable retribution, that's a reasonable deterrent to most governments if you ask me.

While the Minbari war was stated to have the goal of extermination, supposedly they rigorously confined themselves to destroying military targets first and never got on to the actual genocide, which while somewhat implausible, is actually sort of sensible, so really who knows that this is their goal, in universe?

[Parallax]

Morality wise, which was meant to be my focus, the Vorlons are really just as bad as the Shadows. Sure, they used more subtle methods (usually) but both races saw the younger races as nothing but pawns and, when push came to shove, the Vorlons had no hesitation at all to start wiping out entire planets. Why? Because there may have been a trace of the Shadows somewhere on that planet.
The Vorlons were really happy to wipe out Centauri Prime in it's entirety just because the Shadows had a base on one island. They weren't just going to wipe that base out ... oh no, the entire planet had to go.

They're dicks. Complete and inexcusable dicks.
In fact, the Shadows may be a little better - they, at least, didn't pretend to not be dicks and were open about it. The Vorlons got support from others by lying about their true intentions and pretending to be a force for good.

[Adam Reynolds]

Well excuse me for venting. Anyway, my frustration wasn't so much with them being religious nuts, it's with the fact that no one acknowledged or seemed to care about the fact that the Minbari are, realistically, a scary fucking thing to have around the galactic neighborhood.

Sorry, that came across somewhat more condescending than I intended. Anyway, its not like they had a choice. Why did Poland accept Soviet control after WW2?

No power had the ability to do anything against the Mimbari.

[Starglider]

15 years before contact with the Mimbari, Earth Alliance was instrumental in the genocide of the Dilgar species. To recap, their home star was clearly about to go supernova, so their government began a campaign of conquest against assorted nearby species. The humans joined the alliance against them, turned the tide, razed every single Dilgar out-of-system colony (including the ones that were pre-existing before the war) and blockaded the Dilgar jumpgate. Their homeworld was destroyed in the supernova and as far as anyone knows, only a single individual of the species survived (she was murdered by the Vorlons in B5 season one).

Yes, the Dilgar generals did some horrible things. However this is morally equivalent to forcibly deporting every last German on earth into Nazi Germany circa 1945, then repeatedly nuking it until the nation is a glowing radioactive wasteland. No refugees were allowed (every single one was sent back), billions of civillians died, probably mostly innocents oppressed by a brutual dictatorship, and the entire species was erased.

The Mimbari, on the other hand, spared civillian lives and structures in their advance, resulting in relatively light casualties for an interstellar war. They could easily have breeched the defences and hit earth with planet-killing weaponry (asteroids if nothing else) earlier in the war, but they didn't. Many millions of humans had already escaped to 'neutral territory' and it was clear that they expected to be safe from the Mimbari there. Most likely the Mimbari were only planning to destroy earth, and even there likely only in the 'destroy all civilisation and industrial capability' sense. Horrible, but much better than what the humans did to the Dilar.

[Patroklos]

First is the fact that they have a caste system at all and don't consider this to be a mark against themselves as a civilization. They aren't exactly easy to disassemble, much like institutional racism and for much the same reason, but we have no evidence that the Minbari are even trying. No one who embraces a caste system is a good guy, period. Oh, but each caste has three seats on the Grey Council, so they're equal, right? Yeah, if you believe that their civilization is one third military, one third priest, and one third everyone else! No society, no matter how theocratic, needs one priest for every two laymen. In our own nation only ~20% of the population is employed by the government, and most of those are police, fire fighters, and bureaucrats--not soldiers. The religious and warrior castes, assuming they're allowed to take up jobs "related" to their fields (e.g., a cop is "sort of like" a soldier, so warrior caste members can be cops, and a research scientist or a bureaucrat is "sort of like" a priest, so religious caste members can be researchers or bureaucrats), they're probably about 10% of the population each, meaning that one of their votes has eight times the power as a laborer's.

Why do all of these people have to work for the government. Is a career yoga instructor mumbling about karma or an organic farmer worshiping clean nature government workers? Both could be in the religious cast. Or not. You don't know.

[Crazedwraith]

There wasn't exactly no tension between Humans and Minbari in the series. Perhaps not as prominently as you think there should have been. There was a couple of racist attacks against minbari on B5, Delenn's artist friend in season 1 and Delenn herself in Gropos in season 2. There were anti-alien terrorist organisations. The xenophobia of Clarke's government had its roots in it as well. Even before Clarke was in power there was feeling they should rebuilt and kick the minbari's ass in a follow up war (forgetting the only reason the minbari lost was that they surrendered)

Most of the internal strife in the minbari also had it's root in the same war.

Neither Sinclair or Sheridan are really depicted as liking minbari at first, they're just professionals on a diplomatic station trying to do their jobs.

[TheFeniX]

Morality wise, which was meant to be my focus, the Vorlons are really just as bad as the Shadows.

I was arguing morality (as alien as it was) as well.

Sure, they used more subtle methods (usually) but both races saw the younger races as nothing but pawns and, when push came to shove, the Vorlons had no hesitation at all to start wiping out entire planets. Why? Because there may have been a trace of the Shadows somewhere on that planet.
The Vorlons were really happy to wipe out Centauri Prime in it's entirety just because the Shadows had a base on one island. They weren't just going to wipe that base out ... oh no, the entire planet had to go.

Considering how invasive the Shadows legacy was, it's hard to blame them. At least when looking at it from a "individual lives don't matter" aspect that both races held to. The Shadows backed the Centauri on a brutal empire expansion which lead to the enslavement of an entire species. They were more than willing to work with the Shadows. Now, I doubt the Vorlons actually cared about that because they are dicks.

But just nuking the island didn't remove the Shadow influence. The Drahk were still running around and the upper-crust of the Centuari were infected with those... whatever, alien parasite things. So, even after the Shadows were gone, they had influence left around and not for a good thing. I'm not saying nuking Centauri prime was justifiable, but they only cut out part of the tumor by removing the Shadows.

The Vorlons didn't go into insano mode until after The Shadows had been kicking up shit everywhere. Had the Shadows stayed "dead," what exactly would the Vorlons have done? Kept fucking with younger races behind the scenes? It wasn't until the Shadows started their brutal "survival of the evilist" plan in motion and it got out of hand that the Vorlons started resorting to glassing planets.

And mind you, this is after the younger races asked them for help and I recall Kosh saying "You don't want our help, trust me." The Vorlons were more than willing to stay out of this and then they help the only way they knew how: killing the patient to kill the cancer.

If I had to choose one race (not talking about their brotherly argument on how to make the ants become like them) being involved in my galaxy: the Vorlons win by a fucking landslide. Having a Vorlon look like Mighty Thor is a decent trade-off to "hey, we're going to cram mind-control all up in your brain and force all you shitty races to kill each other so only the strongest are left."If B5 was trying to present a "which alien morality is less shitty" argument: they failed miserably. It was only when push came to shove that the Vorlons kicked into brutal murder mode. The Shadows knock that shit out before lunch.

[Borgholio]

The Mimbari, on the other hand, spared civillian lives and structures in their advance, resulting in relatively light casualties for an interstellar war. They could easily have breeched the defences and hit earth with planet-killing weaponry (asteroids if nothing else) earlier in the war, but they didn't. Many millions of humans had already escaped to 'neutral territory' and it was clear that they expected to be safe from the Mimbari there. Most likely the Mimbari were only planning to destroy earth, and even there likely only in the 'destroy all civilisation and industrial capability' sense. Horrible, but much better than what the humans did to the Dilar.

It is true that we never actually see the Minbari kill civilians. They wipe out our military outposts easily enough but many of our colonies were simply bypassed on the road to Earth. Only 10 years after the war we have several major colonies throughout EA territory...that can't happen if those colonies were totally wiped out and had to be started over from scratch after the war. It's mainly the other races who think the Minbari will totally exterminate us.

[Lost Soal]

But just nuking the island didn't remove the Shadow influence. The Drahk were still running around and the upper-crust of the Centuari were infected with those... whatever, alien parasite things. So, even after the Shadows were gone, they had influence left around and not for a good thing. I'm not saying nuking Centauri prime was justifiable, but they only cut out part of the tumor by removing the Shadows.

The Drahk didn't come to Centauri until after the Shadows left and they wanted revenge. The Shadows didn't need mind control because they had their puppet emperor believing he would become a God.

As to the Caste System, Lennier was religious caste and he spent his life as a full time student before joining the Minbari Diplomatic service and eventually being appointed as aid to an ambassador, learning to fight somewhere along the way. He then finished off by joining the Ranger after the war and none of this shouts religious to me. Additionally the White Stars were crewed by religious caste, far to competently to have only just learned meaning religious caste Minbari can also serve on ships as crew. However the Minbari caste system works it does not appear limit its people to such tight constraints.

[Parallax]

I need to make a clarification.
I have, in a general statement, called the Vorlons dicks. I stand by this claim.
However, Kosh was awesome.
But not Kosh II. Kosh II was full dickish Vorlon.

[Q99]

Agreed, Kosh 1 was good.

It is true that we never actually see the Minbari kill civilians. They wipe out our military outposts easily enough but many of our colonies were simply bypassed on the road to Earth. Only 10 years after the war we have several major colonies throughout EA territory...that can't happen if those colonies were totally wiped out and had to be started over from scratch after the war. It's mainly the other races who think the Minbari will totally exterminate us.

Their strategy is reportedly, 'wipe out military force, then go back to mop up after.'

Especially considering that Earth is humanity's keystone- we're like 90%+ there- spending the time to wipe out other colonies is not a priority.


I think the only reason people were willing to forgive them is, one, no real choice, and two, they did help out during the Shadow War, a threat at least as big.