The Man in Between

[bakana]

As for B4, it was destroyed in the war, so the military security theory holds no water.

Actually, it wasn't. It was abandoned when the war was over. There is a JMS short story involving the finding of B4, but I haven't read it and so don't remember the details (though someone else here will, I am sure).

It was in one of the Comic series from DC.

Sheridan & Delenn re-discover Babylon 4.

Along with an alien race which helped fight off the Shadows but which has been out of contact for so long the Minbari don't even recognize them. You have to read the story to understand why.

Delenn's exploration of the station's almost dead computers provides glimpses of the previous Shadow war and Valen's efforts to create an alliance of races to fight them.
IOW, it wasn't just the Minbari and Vorlons.
Many of the other races which participated were evidently Wiped Out in the war.

Oh, that's also the story where the one line appeared which indicates that Sinclair's Personal Reason for going back in the first place paid off.

I've found her. At long last, I've found her.

[CRONAN]

I really would like to know how the heck Catherine Sakai was able to navigate her way through time 1000 years into the past. It seems just a little too convenient.

[WorkerCaste]

Originally posted by CRONAN
I really would like to know how the heck Catherine Sakai was able to navigate her way through time 1000 years into the past. It seems just a little too convenient.

Check out "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" by Kathryn M. Drennan. It explains how Catherine gets "lost" in time. IMO the best B5 book before the three trilogies.

[CRONAN]

Originally posted by WorkerCaste
Check out "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" by Kathryn M. Drennan. It explains how Catherine gets "lost" in time. IMO the best B5 book before the three trilogies.

Well actually I did. However as Catherine's journey through time is only made known to the reader after the fact (to the benifit of a suprise ending), and is entirely not a part of the work (at least to my recollection), it leaves the question of ''how'' wide open. Yes, we know how she gets lost, but how the heck does she get found?

Yeah, it wasn't that bad. The part I found most interesting was the Marcus thread in the begining. And Sinclair's blatant distrust of the Vorlons. It never occured to me the ''Stay close to the Vorlon'' line didn't mean exactly that.

[Capt.Montoya]

"Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer"

Stay close to the Vorlon

There's a synopsis of the comic "In Valen's name" in the Lurker's Guide. (That's my only source for that story, I never saw the comic.)
How Sinclair/Valen found Sakai has never been told, the comic only hints (strongly IMO, weakly according to others) that he did.
Valen's message only says "I found her."
Maybe he wasn't clear because he was referring to Babylon 4. I mean, how embarrasing it would be that he lost the station! That explains why he said "I found her" without specifying.

[Ben-Thayer Dunnthaedt]

Originally posted by Capt.Montoya
Maybe he wasn't clear because he was referring to Babylon 4. I mean, how embarrasing it would be that he lost the station! That explains why he said "I found her" without specifying.

Didn't Sinclair travel back to the past along with B4, inside it, with Zathras? Or did JMS say he traveled back in another vessel and had to find B4? I've always thought it was option 1.

I do remember in To Dream in the City, when Marcus is given a note from the past (from Valen) it says "we" in the text, a veiled reference to Sakai. And when Sinclair confronts Kosh about whether or not there's a chance to find Sakai, Kosh replies "Perhaps". But other questions arise, such as - if he DID find Sakai, did she then use the Triluminary to transform herself into a Minbari? Delenn does say that Valen married and had children, who themselves married and had children. Another mystery!

But I totally agree on the "stay close to the Vorlon" sentence. That one went completely over my head, would've NEVER associated it with Garibaldi's motto.

[Capt.Montoya]

I was joking about Valen losing the station after the war...

We've discussed the Sakai relationship before, but can't remember where. In brief I think that discussion showed that Valen would have fathered children with Minbari women, and only later in life found Sakai. There should be a JMS quote stating that Sakai didn't go through the triluminary conversion and that created a scandal.

[bakana]

Yes, we know how she gets lost, but how the heck does she get found?

It Does answer one of the Big questions:
Why was Sinclair so determined to Go himself?
We have no idea what was in that note he got from himself.
Just that he was Happier after he got it.

As far as trusting the Vorlons, remember that, while on Minbar, Sinclair dealt with Ulkesh.
Ulkesh apparently tried to arrange for Sakai's "accidental death" at one point becaues Ulkesh believed that she was a Distraction and might keep Sinclair from fulfilling his destiny.
Kosh evidently blocked Ulkesh.

The paradox of what the Vorlons knew and didn't know about the whole mess is why so few writers are willing to tackle "Time Travel" stories.
No matter what you do, there are always those little nit picky things that twist your mind into a knot.

Of course, there is also the explanation that, There are No Accidents when a Vorlon is around.

only later in life found Sakai.

Doesn't really work because the comment "I found her" is in the Babylon 4 computer records from during the War.
The condition B-4 was in when re-discovered made it pretty clear that at least one battle was fought with the station in the middle.
By the end of that war, B4 was too badly damaged to be useful,
so the station was moved to an out of the way solar system and placed on standby.
Presumably so that scholars could use it for research or something.

Then, over the years, no one went there any more and the Minbari somehow managed to forget where they'd left it.
Possibly with a bit of help from the Vorlons and/or Valen.

We don't even know how many Years that war lasted.
With both the Vorlons & the Shadows activily and publicly involved, it probably took quite a while.

[bakana]

Noone in France is tossing away stuff in the Louvre (or however it is spelled) and old films of wars are kept and reproduced.

Actually, Librarians, Museum Curators and Archivists complain all the time because such things DO happen.
Some museums have stuff in their basements that the people in charge don't know exists because no one has been into that section of the basement for Years.
They occasionally do find stuff that was once worth Millions destroyed by mold, rats, water leakage, etc.
Usually when looking for some place to store some New "junk".
No successful museum has the room to display even a fraction of the stuff they own.
And they are constantly buying More.

Like those old films. Do you think the water & rat damage to the B5 film was an isolated incident?
It's not.
Many of the warehouses movies are stored in have no air conditioning, heat in cold weather or anyone checking to keep out the rats.
Or monitoring to be sure the roof isn't leaking.

There was a minor flap a number of yers ago when it was discovered that thousands of Hollywierds oldest films had actually become Explosive Hazards because 50 years of summer heat had changed the chemistry of the old celluloid film stock from Highly Flammable to Explodes If You Drop It .

Entire warehouses full of film cannisters were very carefully loaded onto barges, towed out into the Pacific and dumped into the ocean.

The stuff was so dangerous no one wanted to take a chance of trying to salvage any of the movies.

[Ben-Thayer Dunnthaedt]

I was joking about Valen losing the station after the war...

Sorry man...

That's what I get for dashing through the office and posting at warp speed.

[Capt.Montoya]

Originally posted by bakana

There was a minor flap a number of yers ago when it was discovered that thousands of Hollywierds oldest films had actually become Explosive Hazards because 50 years of summer heat had changed the chemistry of the old celluloid film stock from Highly Flammable to Explodes If You Drop It .

Entire warehouses full of film cannisters were very carefully loaded onto barges, towed out into the Pacific and dumped into the ocean.

The stuff was so dangerous no one wanted to take a chance of trying to salvage any of the movies.

I didn't know of this incident, but I should note that the original film used for movies was nitrocellulose, which is highly flammable by nature. Because of this flammability the film material was changed decades ago. I guess the storage conditions may have made it even more dangerous.

You've made me reexamine the question of Sakai and Valen...

Here's a quote that states that Sakai didn't become a Minbari:

http://jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-10743

Given that I always assumed she couldn't be the mother of the Children of Valen, and Sinclair would have had some Minbari wife before finding Sakai... but I found the following:

http://jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-3065

Damn! Now I'm thinking that you are right... Elswehere JMS states that Sakai arrived back in time after Valen did, but maybe not that long after as I thought, but during the war.

[bakana]

Nitrocellulose (Cellulose nitrate, guncotton) is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose (e.g. through exposure to nitric acid or another less powerful nitrating agent).
Uses

* Nitrocellulose was used until World War II as a smokeless propellant, replacing gunpowder.
* Used in plastics
* Used in films
* Nitrocellulose paper is a sticky membrane used for Western blots and immobilizing DNA.
* When dissolved in ether or other organic solvents, the solution is called collodion, which has been used as a wound dressing and carrier of topical medications since the U.S. Civil War.
* Collodion was also used as the carrier for silver salts in some very early photographic emulsions, particularly spread in thin layers on glass plates. To this day it is used in Compound W Wart Remover as a carrier of salicylic acid, the active ingredient.
* Magician's "flash paper", sheets of paper or cloth made from nitrocellulose, which burn almost instantly, with a bright flash, and leave no ash.

Guncotton

Guncotton was first observed by TJ Pelouze in 1838 and more properly developed and also named by Christian Friedrich Sch÷nbein in Basle around 1846. His preparation method was the first to be widely imitated - one part of fine cotton wool to be immersed in fifteen parts of an equal mix of sulphuric and nitric acids. After two minutes the cotton was removed and placed in cold water and washed to set the esterification level and remove all acid residue. It was then slowly dried at a temperature of less than 100 ░C.

The power of guncotton meant that it was adopted for blasting.
As a projectile force, it has around six times the gas generation of an equal volume of gunpowder and produces less smoke and less heating.
However the sensitivity of the material during production led to the British, Prussians and French discontinuing manufacture within a year.
Further research indicated that the key was the very careful preparation of the cotton, unless it was very well cleaned and dried it was liable to spontaneously explode.

Nitrocellulose web site

[nanorc]

Quick, somebody please shoot this guy before he says ''nitrocellulose'' five times fast.

[bakana]

Meanwhile, back on Topic.

Let's all start campaign to BEG Kathryn Drennan to write the Sequel for To Dream in the City of Sorrows so that we can Find Out what happened to Sakai at the other end of time.

Lets see: She's stuck somewhere between 800 and 1000 years in the past.
Depends on whether the 1000 years is Minbari or Human years. I'm not sure.
Anyway, that puts her somewhere around 1200 - 1500 AD.
At that period in Human history, going home to Earth would be kinda rough for a Woman alone.
Almost anywhere she might go, women tended to be treated more like Property than People.
Sakai is not the sort of woman to be happy in that time period. Can you say Independent. "Liberated" Woman ???
She might have a few problems fitting in...

So, what DID she do?

JMS did say:

# How long did Sinclair live after going back?
He lived close to a hundred years as a Minbari; they're a long lived race, and they did all they could to maintain his health as one of their truly great figures.

# Valen did not have any children. And there's some difference of opinion over exactly what Valen's final fate was.

# There are some legends about Valen returning someday, but so far they've been only legends, nothing more.

# The Valen aspect was set up in the first season, long before anything was decided about Michael.

# I'd love to someday tell the story of Valen and Zathras in the most recent shadow war. It's quite a tale, actually....

So, lets take him up on it...

[Dr Maturin]

Speaking of not being into a section for years and alternative weapons...I watched Grey 17 is Missing today...only my second time since I first watched season 3. The Ranger stuff wasn't bad at all, but the Grey 17 thing was...out of place. I did like the Zarg, though. He reminded me of the mutant from This Island Earth.

And someone please tell whether or not sticking bullets into a pipe and running hot steam through the other end will make them shoot.