A question of Sacrifice

[Irish Mike]

Hi all, first post, nice to be here. Since I am new, don't know if this has been asked before, so here goes...
Seems that a common theme running through B5 and Crusade is the idea that to achieve something worthwhile, or lasting, a sacrifice must be made. Sheridan sacrifices himself at Z'Ha Dum, Sinclair leaves his whole world behind to become Valen, Delenn puts everything on the line to bring the Minbari onside, Kosh faces his fear of death.
This idea seems to break down when we come to the Techno Mage Galen. He appears to have extraordinary power at his disposal, with no(apparent) downside.
Does anyone here know how this would have panned out if Crusade had continued?

Go Raibh Mile Maith agat

[Jan]

Hi all, first post, nice to be here. Since I am new, don't know if this has been asked before, so here goes...

Hi, Mike! Welcome aboard!

Seems that a common theme running through B5 and Crusade is the idea that to achieve something worthwhile, or lasting, a sacrifice must be made. Sheridan sacrifices himself at Z'Ha Dum, Sinclair leaves his whole world behind to become Valen, Delenn puts everything on the line to bring the Minbari onside, Kosh faces his fear of death.
This idea seems to break down when we come to the Techno Mage Galen. He appears to have extraordinary power at his disposal, with no(apparent) downside.
Does anyone here know how this would have panned out if Crusade had continued?

Go Raibh Mile Maith agat

My first thought is that Galen's powers are a means to an end, not just a goal in themselves. We don't really know for certain in Crusade what his goals really are, but we do know that he was asked to leave the company of the other Techno-mages which would seem to be at least some sacrifice. Don't forget, too, that his lover was killed by other mages.

In the unproduced scripts we'd have begun to get an idea of what the cost of the tech that the mages adopt might really be, too. The Techo-Mage Trilogy by Jeanne Cavelos goes much deeper into this and also fleshes out what happened to Galen's lover. If you haven't read the trilogies, you're missing some really good B5 universe stories.

I'll be interested to see what others think about this question.

Jan

[spikey thing]

This is something which I have thought for a while.

Sheridan having discovered that his wife is still alive, decides that he will go to z'ha'dum and blow the shadows to kingdom come - thus sacrificing his own life for the 'cause' ( if you remember - Sebastian - ' looking for someone willing to die for all the wrong reasons...' )

And then - Sheridan and Lorien discussing things below z'ha'dum. Sheridan discovers the only chance he has of returning to the ones he loves is to 'Kill Himself' - or 're-live his suicidal jump' again. As lorien also says - it may not work. A Leap of Faith?, or an act of Sacrifice.

[DGTWoodward]

Hello Mike,

Welcome to these page...great folks here, I'm sure that you will have a blast.

As to your thoughts re sacrifice in within the show's framework. It does seem to be a long running and consistant element that JMS uses to great effect and, as we all know, in real life everything has a price. How it gets paid and whether the outcome was how it was expected - or even worth it! - is so good to have on the show because similar experience can come out of any person's personal life at any time. It is real.

[grumbler]

People tend to forget who most clearly matched Kosh's dictum that "some must be sacrificed if all are to be saved" - Kosh himself.

Knowing the cost to himself, Kosh not only brings in the Vorlons for the critical demonstration that the Shadows could be beaten, but he also then stands there alone and sacrifices himself to demonstrate that he was not working with the Younger Races when he attacked the Shadows (thus saving the station and the AoL). He knew the outcome of his actions before he took them, and his talk with Sheridan is espectially poignant knowing that it was Sheridan who pushed him to make the sacrifice.

A nice bit of writing, I always thought. You only understood afterwards what Kosh had, in fact, been saying.

[Capt.Montoya]

Galen did suffer through losing his love, as shown in a Crusade episode, and expanded in the Technomage trilogy. The sacrfice of being cast out of the technomages hiding place, to be an outcast among the humans, as pointed out by Jan is another.
And I think that he sacrificed his humanity in more ways than one, but we never got to see how much or if he would redeem himself.
There are some hints that Galen wasn't an outcast for all technomages, but I see him as one, as the one of them that tought their powers were so dangerous that he was willing to go out and make sure others wouldn't misuse them (an aspect only hinted in what we saw of Crusade, but more clear by his involvement in the Centauri trilogy).

[Bloodshot]

<sigh...> sorry to go off topic, but is all this discussion about Galen bumming anyone else out all over again about Crusade suffering it's untimely death?

I hold to JMS's promise that somehow, someway, he will finish the Crusade story.

...back to the Sacrifice topic...