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**Jan** · 06-24-2004, 04:31 PM

Oh, that would be nice, wouldn't it?? We can't know until JMS tells us, but it would be fitting, that's for sure.

Jan

**Joseph DeMartino** · 06-24-2004, 06:52 PM

In discussing (obliquely) the ultimate fates of some of the characters JMS made a reference to "Delenn's final journey - a quest involving Valen, though no one believes her."

Tantalizing, that. I somehow suspects that she undertakes this quest shortly after her unexpected television appearance in "Deconstruction", in the 100th anniversary year of the end of the Shadow War.

Regards,

Joe

**Dr Maturin** · 06-24-2004, 11:34 PM

<<Tantalizing, that. I somehow suspects that she undertakes this quest shortly after her unexpected television appearance in "Deconstruction", in the 100th anniversary year of the end of the Shadow War.>>

Or before? Maybe after she'd come out of the shell on TV, she told the story and everyone thought she was just an old kook.

**Joseph DeMartino** · 06-25-2004, 07:51 AM

Or before? Maybe after she'd come out of the shell on TV, she told the story and everyone thought she was just an old kook.

I don't believe she ever returned from her "final journey", so I don't believe she could have appeared on the TV show after it.

Regards,

Joe

**grumbler** · 06-25-2004, 02:43 PM

Originally posted by Joseph DeMartino
I don't believe she ever returned from her "final journey", so I don't believe she could have appeared on the TV show after it.

Yeah, I gues "final" is sort of... final.

Given that Valen also disappeared without trace, I had always assumed that he went Beyond the Rim. Given also that Lorien wasn't there to take him BtR (because Lorien was still waiting on Z'Ha'Dum for someone to find him) I always presumed that Delenn's "final journey" was an attempt to find out if he went BtR and if so how he did it. Because she wanted to do the same.

Is BtR the place where Delenn and Sheridan met "in a place where no shadows fall" (or words to that effect)?

**Joseph DeMartino** · 06-25-2004, 05:24 PM

I always presumed that Delenn's "final journey" was an attempt to find out if he went BtR and if so how he did it. Because she wanted to do the same.

Some food for thought:

1) Within the story:

In nearly thousand-year-old message that Marcus receives on Minbar, the one where the writer (presumably Valen) sends greetings from "both of us", he also speaks of their meeting Marucs again in some future.

The Minbari have different and conflicting accounts of Valen's end. Some say he died but, like Moses, lies in an unmarked grave, others that he vanished, still others that whatever his fate in the 13th or 14th century, he will return again. (Some have taken this as a metaphor for the birth of Jeffery Sinclair in the 23rd century, but many Minbari believe it in literally and implictly. Sheridan's later disappearance is incorporated into the same kind of myth - as he intended.)

In the 23rd century, the Humans have fairly sophisticated hibernation technology. The Minbari are at least 1,000 years ahead of Earth in most areas of science and technology.

2) From the writer's point of view:

Several strands of myth, legend and literature inform the story of Babylon 5, reinforcing its epic character by giving it a "familiy resemblance" to simliar stories. The legends of Odysseus and Orpheus are major influences on the story, as are King Lear, Tolkein and the Arthurian Cycle. None of these inspirations is simply imported whole, of course (or Delenn would have left Sheridan for Lennier, for instance.

) While much attention has been paid to the Rings connection, I think the Arthur story is at least as important in providing the mythic skeleton that the story fleshes out. And Arthur was famously the once and future king. Mortally wounded but not yet dead, he is taken to the Isle of Avalon where he can be healed by the Lady of the Lake and rest, neither dead nor alive, until he returns again in his kingdom's hour of greatest need. Delenn has explicitly figured as the Lady of the Lake in "A Late Delivery from Avalon" as well as Guinneviere in the story more generally.

Time travel into the past is not only considered a practical impossibility in our own time, there are good reasons for doubting that it could make sense even in theory. Not so "time travel" into the future. A one way trip into the future is quite possible in theory, and only technology, not science, stands in our way of pulling this off. A spacecraft with enough acceleration or a cryonic or biochemical form of hibernation could allow us to go to sleep today and wake up in a hundred or 1,000 years.

You have to wonder what Delenn was looking for, how it connected with Valen, and if any old friends - friends for whom time had little meaning - might have still been hovering around just beyond the Rim 100 or so years after Sheridan's passing, just to see there were any other passengers they should collect before leaving the nieghborhood...

Regards,

Joe

**grumbler** · 06-25-2004, 06:47 PM

Those are good points, Joe, and probably much more likely than my own suppositions, and yet...

I find it hard to accept them, for the simple reason that they imply that charactor can be, in essence, "frozen in time' and remain relevant. JMS's stories are about the development of charactor, and the toll time takes on initial enthusiasms. I suppose one could presume the "suspension of charactor development" as a kind of "rest from responsibilies" and yet unconciousness, per se, doesn't bring any sensation of time passing, and it is the perception of passing of time that heals emotional wounds.

I guess I just prefer the idea that Delenn (and Sinclair and Catherine) don't spend the time in some sort of timeless bubble, a la Arthur, because then they stop learning and everything they know becomes obsolete. I prefer the idea that they continue to grow and develop, even if at a slower rate beyond the rim. It is a purely emotional response, of course, backed by nothing in the canon.

**Joseph DeMartino** · 06-25-2004, 09:49 PM

I guess I just prefer the idea that Delenn (and Sinclair and Catherine) don't spend the time in some sort of timeless bubble

I wasn't suggesting anything of the kind, especially where Delenn is concerned. I was suggesting (albeit trying to be subtle about it

) that Valen and perhaps Sakai, having lived for 100 years or so among the Minbari of a thousand years past, may have had themselves frozen and hidden away somewhere so that Delenn could find and revive them - which would thus fulfill the prophecy of Valen's return and also put them all in a position to go Beyond the Rim. That was correctly ruled an impossibilty for Valen and/or Sakai at the apparent end of Valen's life, because Lorien was still living within the depths of Z'ha'dum, and the First Ones were far from ready to wrap up their businesses. But in 2263, provided they could reach that year, that problem would be gone and Valen and Delenn could share the fate of the other "One".

Regards,

Joe

**Dr Maturin** · 06-25-2004, 11:05 PM

<<I don't believe she ever returned from her "final journey", so I don't believe she could have appeared on the TV show after it.>>

I was going on the ** ** here:

"Delenn's final journey - a quest involving Valen, **though no one believes her.**"

**grumbler** · 06-26-2004, 06:09 AM

Originally posted by Z'ha'dumDweller
I was going on the ** ** here:

"Delenn's final journey - a quest involving Valen, **though no one believes her.**"

I took that to mean that no one believed, as she did, that there was anything about Valen to find. I wouldn't take the "no one" too literally.

**grumbler** · 06-26-2004, 06:15 AM

Originally posted by Joseph DeMartino
I wasn't suggesting anything of the kind, especially where Delenn is concerned. I was suggesting (albeit trying to be subtle about it ) that Valen and perhaps Sakai, having lived for 100 years or so among the Minbari of a thousand years past, may have had themselves frozen and hidden away somewhere so that Delenn could find and revive them - which would thus fulfill the prophecy of Valen's return and also put them all in a position to go Beyond the Rim.

Well, suspended animation is a kind of "timeless bubble" as I suggested, but it is also true that, if anyone could suffer the loss of a thousand years of history, it would be people who have gone back a thousand years in time!

That was correctly ruled an impossibilty for Valen and/or Sakai at the apparent end of Valen's life, because Lorien was still living within the depths of Z'ha'dum, and the First Ones were far from ready to wrap up their businesses. But in 2263, provided they could reach that year, that problem would be gone and Valen and Delenn could share the fate of the other "One".

I don't see it as an impossibility for Valen to have gone beyond the Rim after spending time with the Minbari, because a lot of races were going beyond around that time.

However, upon reflection, your scenario sounds more JMS-like than mine, because it allows the fulfillment of... well, not "prophecy," but legend. JMS probably wouldn't have included the bit about Valen returning as a red herring.

**Joseph DeMartino** · 06-26-2004, 08:30 AM

Yes, I think JMS's "no one believed her" comment refers to skepticism among those few she told about her journey not believing that there was anything connected to Valen that she could still find.

I don't see it as an impossibility for Valen to have gone beyond the Rim after spending time with the Minbari, because a lot of races were going beyond around that time.

Actually most of the First Ones departed after the last great Shadow War, which Delenn places at 10,000 years before the events of B5. That was the war in which "The First Ones still walked openly among the Younger Races". By the time of Valen's War (evidently a lesser event, in the grand scheme of things) only the Vorlons were still actively involved. Since they manifestly didn't go Beyond the Rim in the 13th century, and since the other First Ones took little part in the war (they had mostly left 9,000 years before and those who remained were in isolation) it is hard to see who would have given Valen a "lift" out of the galaxy at that point.

Also I suspect that some kind of intimate contact with a seriously powerful First One (or several of them) is required to enable one to pass Beyond the Rim with them. Like Frodo and Bilbo having to grow into the kind of beings who could cross the sea and dwell in the lands of the West, Sheridan earns his way into the company of Lorien and the rest, and he must undergo a gradual transformation to do it.

My point with the cryonics was mostly that you don't need to rift in sector 14 or the Great Machine, or to violate JMS's rule that there is only one major incidence of time travel in the B5 story to get Valen and Sakai into the 24th century.

Regards,

Joe

**Dr Maturin** · 06-26-2004, 08:32 AM

<<I took that to mean that no one believed, as she did, that there was anything about Valen to find. I wouldn't take the "no one" too literally.>>

Not my point. The point was how could no one believe her if she didn't return to claim it?

**Dr Maturin** · 06-26-2004, 08:35 AM

<<Yes, I think JMS's "no one believed her" comment refers to skepticism among those few she told about her journey not believing that there was anything connected to Valen that she could still find.>>

Ah.

Announcement

The Death of Delenn

The Death of Delenn

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