KABOOM! Shadow battlecrab myth finally bites the dust

[seanrobertson]

All,

Remember the Babylon 5 episode "Into the Fire"? It's the episode in which Sheridan lured the Shadows and Vorlons into a trap at the Coriana system -- the final battle royale of the Shadow War.

As you may recall, at the outset of Sheridan's trap, he set off a few 500 to 600 megaton nuclear devices, donated to the Army of Light by the Gaim. We saw two of these devices go off onscreen. The first went off in a formation of Shadow ships; the second, in the midst of a Vorlon fleet.

The first explosion's effect has always been a source of some controversy. Immediately after the explosion, we see large pieces of debris coming from the general vicinity of the bomb. Babtech has long maintained that the debris was from a Shadow "battlecrab," their largest and most powerful warships.

However, to those of you unfamiliar with Rabid Fivers' crazy arguments, a small contingent of never-say-die types maintained that we did not see a Shadow "battlecrab" destroyed by one of Sheridan's mines.

While the Fivers never had much of a presence at the BBS, even some more reasonable folks here were also unconvinced by Babtech's evidence. Hell, in a fairly recent debate that pitted a Borg cube against the B5verse, at least one poster claimed that Babtech's analysis of the event in question didn't actually prove that one of the nukes took out a Shadow capital ship.

Brian's having some difficulty logging on here, but he wanted me to pass his updated analysis of the battlecrab's destruction on to you. I think this conclusively demonstrates that a 500 to 600 megaton bomb -- of which only some dozen or so megatons actually affected the 'crab thanks to geometry -- can easily mutilate a Shadow warship.

[Jeremy]

Pictures of the ships from starshipmodeler.com
slow motion video


b5tech.com's opinion for contrast:
video argument against BC destruction

From 0:39 to 0:46 the subject is claimed to exit the screen. I can't see it, can anyone else?

[seanrobertson]

Pictures of the ships from starshipmodeler.com
slow motion video

b5tech.com's opinion for contrast:
video argument against BC destruction

From 0:39 to 0:46 the subject is claimed to exit the screen. I can't see it, can anyone else?

Nope. I see what look like spines sometime after Brandon claims he sees an intact warship. In any case, the spines weren't cleanly moving from right to left; they almost appear to be moving in a circular fashion, as if they were blown off a ship and were spinning out of control in space.

I sure as hell do not see an intact ship exiting the explosion.

Frankly, Brandon's simply being as desperate as he was when he petitioned to have the 2 megaton bombs from "In the Beginning" redubbed to "20 megatons." He implored people to watch the new "edited" version when it aired. As I recall, he wasn't very happy when twenty still sounded an awful lot like two

I appreciate that some people think they're the biggest, most loyal B5 fans around. A bunch of Fivers, including some of the more reasonable lot, used to suggest Brian and the rest of us Babtech guys didn't love B5 as much as they did. I sure pissed them off when I suggested the contrary was true

Consider it in a different context, like loving a woman. If you have to see things in her that simply aren't there, you feel the need to change her and/or you force yourself to pretend she's nigh-perfect in every way, that's delusional -- a closer kin to obsession, not love. True love accepts something or someone for what it is, pimples, PMS, battlecrabs with an upper-limit resistance of 10 megatons and all the rest.

[DrStrangelove]

The Rabid Fan of whatever, will always see or hear what they want. Its only when others start repeating/believing them that it is really a problem. Most the rabid fivers I've dealt with rely on their optimistic interpretation of the B5 EU. Although they do like to use the B5tech interpretation of the main canon to support their optimistic interpretation of the EU. But most of what I've seen is EU wank.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Consider it in a different context, like loving a woman. If you have to see things in her that simply aren't there, you feel the need to change her and/or you force yourself to pretend she's nigh-perfect in every way, that's delusional -- a closer kin to obsession, not love. True love accepts something or someone for what it is, pimples, PMS, battlecrabs with an upper-limit resistance of 10 megatons and all the rest.

Yeah. It's utterly silly to suggest that power levels relative to other shows have something to do with the appreciation of a certain scifi show. I don't care if battlecrabs can be destroyed by a 10 kt explosion as long as it is consistent with the rest of the show. I mean, only a stupid kid would think that Star Wars is better than Star Trek because the former has much more powerful spaceships. Anyone past their teen years and having such ideas should take a really hard look at their thought processes. Hell, even in your late teens you have to be pretty immature to harbor such notions.

[Batman]

Case in point-Wars outguns Trek pretty much infinity to one. Guess what? A lot of the Wars EU novels still suck so bad they make a black hole look timid. And I haven't even read any of Traviss' stuff, I gave up on the EU novels halfway through the NJO or thereabouts.
Whereas I have heard a lot of good things about at least parts of the Trek EU.
High firepower numbers, they do not automatically a good narrative make.

[Slacker]

Case in point-Wars outguns Trek pretty much infinity to one. Guess what? A lot of the Wars EU novels still suck so bad they make a black hole look timid. And I haven't even read any of Traviss' stuff, I gave up on the EU novels halfway through the NJO or thereabouts.
Whereas I have heard a lot of good things about at least parts of the Trek EU.
High firepower numbers, they do not automatically a good narrative make.

Indeed, most of the books in the post-Nemesis setting are actually pretty readable, and the series of short stories set in alternate universes are really good. Star Wars really fell off the wagon at the beginning of the NJO series, although god knows there were some bad before (Crystal Star, anyone?) and some good (a few of the later NJO books) later.

Of course, the idea that a particular series was better solely because of the amount of pewpew it made was something of the genesis of Spacebattles and ASVS back in the day, wasn't it? Fortunately we've all grown past that.

[Enigma]

Pictures of the ships from starshipmodeler.com
slow motion video


b5tech.com's opinion for contrast:
video argument against BC destruction

From 0:39 to 0:46 the subject is claimed to exit the screen. I can't see it, can anyone else?

Around the 0:46 mark I do see what looks like a battlecrab being flung from the explosion to the left of the screen but the thing is that there seems to be a discrepancy comparing that youtube video with the one from babtech. The youtube video shows a crab but not the one in babtech and I've done the frame by frame on the latter's video.

Are the B5techies being dishonest and added a battlecrab?

[Target2006]

Hi Sean

Bit of a off-thread request but if Bryan has the B5 script books, what do they say as regards the Vorlon planet killer argument?
How many planet killers were at Centauri Prime in "Into the Fire" Was that supposed to be an asteroid field that the ship was flying through at the start of Falling Toward Apotheosis? etc.

I have no real interest in "crossover battles" but would like to know what JSM actually intended in the script as regards the sfx shots in question.
Thanks

[Lord Relvenous]

Pictures of the ships from starshipmodeler.com
slow motion video


b5tech.com's opinion for contrast:
video argument against BC destruction

From 0:39 to 0:46 the subject is claimed to exit the screen. I can't see it, can anyone else?

Around the 0:46 mark I do see what looks like a battlecrab being flung from the explosion to the left of the screen but the thing is that there seems to be a discrepancy comparing that youtube video with the one from babtech. The youtube video shows a crab but not the one in babtech and I've done the frame by frame on the latter's video.

Are the B5techies being dishonest and added a battlecrab?

I was able to see the "battlecrab" (i.e. whatever they think is a battlecrab) in both movies. It's brief, but I caught it. Look for it around 0:08 in the slow motion vid.