Babylon 5 - Part II

While not said in the series, the first book in the Legion of Fire series says that the keeper bonds with a Drahk first, and through that connection, to the entire Drahk collective. It is through that telepathic bond, shared by all the Drahk, that the Keeper is able to warn the Drahk if its host does something it is not suppose to do.

How does it work? In Londo's case, he gets drunk so that he can free Sheridan, Delenn, and David. Then, while drunk, he instructs G"Kar to kill him because if he does not, when the Keeper awakens he will notify the Drahk collective of Sheridan and Delenn's escape. If the Keeper was not telepathic it 1) wouldn't know that Londo had freed Sheridan, Delenn, and David. It was out cold when Londo did that so it could not see him do it. The only way it could know is that it is able to read Londo's mind. 2) it could not notify the Drahk collective. The Keeper does not have a mouth, its only means of communiation has to be through telepathy.

Back to the teeps. The Drahk use the Keeper to punish Londo many, many times. Through the connections to Londo's nervous system, the Keeper is able to send very nasty and painful impulses through Londo. If a teep is capable of preventing the Keeper from sending a message, the Keeper could use this same method of punishment to paralyze the teep and then send the message. I have a feeling that through long term exposure, most telepaths would learn not to block the Keeper because the punishment would be great. It might be a trickier relationship, but I think the end result would be the same.

The episode was War Without End part II it is also covered in the third book of the Legion of Fire trilogy

Well, the Technomage Trilogy first book is supposed to be released in about 4 weeks, I can't wait. The trilogies so far have been pretty awesome. I re-reading the Psicorps Trilogy now. The part the Technomages played in the Centauri Prime Trilogy plus Galen in Crusade have made me really anxious for this trilogy.

Imagine a whole trilogy based upon the Technomages. We will finally get answers to the questions we've been asking ourselves about them since the very first Season of B5 when we got a slight glimpse of them.

Can you tell I'm excited.

I didn't get the impression that the Keeper was telepathic, just that it knew what its host knew and that it could force its host to do what it wanted. The keeper was already hooked into Londo's nervous system, so it had no need to be telepathic to know what Londo had done. It already had access to his brain. After awaking from its bender, the keeper could have forced Londo to tell the Drakh about the escape. No need to send any telepathic messages.

Oh yes! I knew there was something else I wanted to reply about to Ran's post earlier.
Yes the fact that the Keepers were telepathic does follow from the TV show in my opinion- a telepathic link of some kind with the Drakh.

Pah!!! Shame on JMS saying that we must use information not in the shows but in the books only. For one thing maybe some people choose to not read the books, wanting to keep the tv show and movie experience without nuts.

(*grin*)

Sci Fi Channel courting Straczynski
by The Master, Wednesday, January 24, 2001
Scifi.com has confirmed that the Sci Fi Channel has opened discussions with Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski and producer Douglas Netter about possible future TV projects.

Specifics about the nature of the projects were not provided, but the report indicates they may include made-for-television movies or a new series.

Sci Fi has previously said it is happy with the performance of its widescreen Babylon 5 reruns. Straczynski is also the creative force behind City of Dreams, an original audio drama anthology series for Scifi.com's Seeing Ear Theatre.

I have no problem with the books as a source of information. There is no way that JMS could answer all the questions people have about the various characters, governments, and workings of all the different parts of the B5 universe in a five year story arc. There is simply too much there.

While I am annoyed with JMS when he just forgets a character (Sinclair's activities after season 1 for the most part is ignored. Ivanova in season 5) I am not annoyed that he did not spend a ton of time explaining exactly how a Keeper works. The explination would have been borning, ie the Drahk telling Londo how it worked, and that conve5rsatin is not likely to happen. Why would the Drahk tell Londo how the Keeper worked? It would have given him too much information.

That said, I do think it is relativly easy to infer that the Drahk and Keeper are telepathic. How else would the Drahk communicate wiht the Keeper? Someone had to tell Captin Jack to kill number one and make sure that he did. Since there were no Drahk nearby, the keeper had to be able to telepathicly communicate with the Drahk so that they knew what Captin Jack was doing.

The scenes with the Regent and Londo after the regent has a Keeper also indicate a telepathic relationship. There are times that the Regent makes comments out of the blue that make no sense in the context of the conversation with Londo. Who is he responding to? The Drahk. How is that possible, since we do not hear or see the Drahk in the room? Through telepathy.

The extent to which the Keeper is telepathic and the Drahk are telepathic is left in question in the TV show. But everything points to telepathy. The books tell us that the Drahk are highly evoloved telepaths, it is how they communicate with one another even over great distances. The Drahk who is responsible for Londo is able to go into Londo's mind once the Keeper is attached to him, even learning Londo's sexual fantasies. The fact that the Drahk does not know what Londo is up to, ie writing the diary, planning to free Sheridan and Delenn ect..., indicates that the Drahk is not in constant contact with Londo's mind so that it does not know Londo's every move or thought. But if it wants to go looking for info, it can. With something as complex as the mind, it has to know where to look so Londo has ways to hide info from the Drahk.

The books add to the info we already have, which is necessary. Heck, there is 19 years between Objects at Rest and Sleeping in the Light. Within those 19 years there was a telepath war, the Drahk plague (Crusade was meant to deal with this as we all know), and who knows what else. Even with Crusade, we probably would not know alot about what Franklin was up to on Earth during that 5 years. What was Gariablaid up to? What was the Alliance dealing with? It had to be more then just the plague.

The only way to deal with all of that was by writing the books.

Thanks PC, that makes a lot of sense, I may have to rethink my feelings on that.

I would think that a non-telepathic link between Keeper and host would be possible by direct neural connection. Do the books not say what the link is?

It's still fun to try to deduce facts based on the show only, but I guess for those who want to go into detail on events and specific questions perhaps the books are a reasonable source.

The book does not go into detail in that area. (shrugs)

I agree, it is fun to figure things out from the show. For the most part, I think JMS did a good job of leaving us answers, sometimes it requires a bit more piecing together but that leads to cool discussions.

I do tend to find that because there are some areas JMS did such a good job with that when I find a plot hole or something is just dropped it annoys me more then it would if it were another show. I just expect more out of JMS and B5 then I do other shows. So the plot holes drive me batty.

I tend not to be as worried about things like how the Keepers work, there is not enough time to really get into that in the series. And I do think that there are hints to that in the series.

I tend to be more worried about things like Sheridan going to Mars when he is planning the final assualt on Earth.

Someone explain the logic of this again? Sheridan loves his Dad, ok I can buy that, so he wants to save him, again I can buy that. Instead of telling Garibaldi that he can't risk going to Mars and being caught so he is sending, oh say Marcus, he goes to Mars and is caught.

I find this more then a bit problmatice, more so with how Sheridan is written then with the characters motivations. I would have been much more content with Sheridan being captured on the way to a meeting with the Resistance. The resistence wnats a face to face meeting with him to insure that he will free Mars after the war is over. There is a spy in the resistence who reports this to EF security, or EF manages to intercept the message, so EF knows of the meeting. On the way to the meeting, Sheridan is nabbed.

To me, that is much more plausible then Sheridan leaving the war effort to save his Dad. I understand the motivation but I can't see any leader being willing to risk the entire war effort for the sake of one person. Furthermore, I cannot believe that the captian of the Agamemnon went along with this. Granted, soldiers are suppose to take orders and act on them, but this one is a bit out there. The possibility of Sheridan being captured is great, especially with the wonderful disguise he wore down to the colony .

ARRRGGHHHH I cannot get past the fact that there was a better way to get Sheridan captured and to have Garibaldi honk off the Alliance then what was used.

Proving that you can't keep a good chowderhead down:

Bruce "I'm on the Loose" Boxleitner says he's keen on TRON 2.0

"Former Babylon 5 star Bruce Boxleitner said he would be keen to return to the film that first made his name, when Tron 2.0 goes before the cameras.

Director Steven Lisberger is working on the sequel, set several years after events in the original, glowing-light-fantastic Disney film, and Bruce told a reporter he would like to appear in the follow-up. "Steven is doing a script. I hope he remembers his old buddies," he said. "I could be old Tron! I don't know. I read the premise of the plot, and it doesn't even involve the old cast. ... Personally, I think they should get a guy that looks like Bill Gates."