Minbari Mondays, In The Beginning, and Introductions

This is a fictional letter (reviewing each film and episode of Babylon 5) that I received from an equally fictional time portal, based on the planet of Epsilon 3, around which the Babylon stations will be in orbit.

Yes, I said will be.

A lady born on another planet, and in another time, on the other side of our galaxy has been asked to send these reports in a rather long letter to her past, about our (fictional) future. Don’t ask how, just yet, please. Some of this may not quite make sense at first, but if you stick with us, I believe that all will become clear shortly. Here is her letter:

Greetings: Nih sakh sh’lekk, sleem wa. 

It means, “I am your friend in peace.”

My name is Mayann.

Originally from the Minbari religious caste, I am now Anla’Shok, or what you Humans call a Ranger.  I shall explain both of these institutions in my next report, adjoining it to this letter each week.  Let me begin by framing the history of the Babylon stations, as it was framed by the late Centauri emperor Mollari II, shortly before his death earlier this year.  I leave you this letter, do not ask how, from your Earth year 2278, and for me, this is history.

This history begins thirty five of your years ago, in your year 2243, when you first made contact with my people, the Minbari. 

  A young Centauri boy (and his quiet sister) demanded to be told a story.   Within this story are wrapped the stories of many heroic deeds, and several tragedies, of which you will learn as these letters reach you from Minbar.  Nearly all revolve around one major question, and around where, within themselves or within their own stories, each person who “loved, fought, and died” in answer to that question, reached for an answer.  Recalling that question twenty years later, the ailing emperor obliged the boy, and his sister, with this story, which I now report to you. 

He told the children that he met with some Humans, thirty five Earth years earlier, who wished to know more about us, the Minbari.   He saw them right away for what they were: arrogant men.  Mollari tried to warn them.  He even quoted one of your Earth sayings, as he told the children this story:  “Pride goeth before a fall.” 

His warning to the Humans was in vain.  In their “stumbling around,” these arrogant men did indeed, as he had feared, awaken “the sleeping dragon” – they woke us, drove us mad, and you nearly all died because of it.

A terrible war began, which the head of The Rangers, as you call us, attempted to stop.  You see, we knew that another, even more terrible war was coming, and that we were not prepared. 

So, as the Rangers were to be needed before the great War prophesied long ago, the leader of our order, Intilza Lenon, demanded to see our supreme leaders, The Gray Council. That body is constituted a bit differently now, but then, as now,  governs all of Minbar and her colonies. At that time the great Delenn was a novice to the council, while President Sheridan, then just a young officer, was serving as a member of your Earth Force. 

Our forces met purely by accident.   Another arrogant Human captain assumed that he knew enough about our technology.  He was wrong.   Our own warrior caste assumed that you Humans, represented by this arrogant man, knew enough about our customs and traditions. They were also wrong.

The sum of these two errors was much needless pain and death.

 As Emperor Mollari put it, “With the death of their leader Ducat, ” we “began a holy war … in which the human race ends with the current generation. “

The greatest tragedy of all is that much of this suffering and death could have been avoided.  But the emperor, then a young Centauri, had his orders.

Mollari was then charged with preventing any cooperation between the Narn, a people you will learn more about later, and you Human beings. You Humans, we did not know, were the key.  Kosh the Good,  later appointed to be Vorlon ambassador, may their memory last long,   then simply an emissary, tried to warn us. 

But, in our anger and our grief, we could not listen. 

So, Intilza Lenon and Satai Delenn, at that point fully initiated into the Gray Council, arranged to have the Narns broker a meeting with you Humans. 

Dr. Steven Franklin was then a renegade member of your Earth Force, having refused to hand over his notes on our biology and thus earned himself a seat in your punishment cells, while then Commander Sheridan sadly masterminded the destruction of our flagship The Black Star. Though he did so to save the lives of his crew, we Minbari still mourn her destruction.  Due to this action, and to Dr. Franklin’s previous contact with us, they and the blessed G’kar, who was then a Narn weapons liaison to your Earth Force, met to try to form a peace agreement.

 Dr. Franklin, Commander Sheridan, and G’kar gathered to negotiate an end to our holy war with Intilza Lennon.  It was Mollari’s order that destroyed their last chance for peace.

Then the war grew worse and everything changed. For emperor Mollari, the courage displayed by you Humans in the very face of death itself was magnificent.  For us, it was mere annoyance.

  Nonetheless, your Earth president’s desperate plea for her pilots to step in “one last time, to hold the line against the night” moved even many Minbari to question the rightness of taking our war to its logical end. 

Each time I think of that historic moment of pain, and of anger, though I was not there, I again shed tears for both of our races.

In that moment, as Humanity saw it’s own destruction, Satai Delenn, was still seeking some way to end the war.  In that desperate moment, she was told by the blessed Kosh that “the truth points to itself.”

She first began, dimly, to understand this when she saw how bravely you Humans fought, even though you knew you could not harm our ships. Satai Delenn then, I believe, came to more fully understand Kosh’s words upon seeing how the triluminary, our most ancient and revered relic, given to us by Valen himself, reacted. That most holy relic showed a key commonality between you Human beings and we Minbari that, had it become generally known, might have destroyed the very fabric of both of our societies. 

Thus was born the famous question which would obsess everyone for the next many years as the late Emperor Mollari put it: “why did the Minbari surrender at The Battle of The Line, on the very eve of their victory?”

And that surrender by our forces allowed your Earth president to put her proposal for The Babylon Project in to motion, to choose life, and to build a place where we could all begin to work toward building peace.

But the story, as the dying emperor tells it, ends incorrectly, if I may be so bold as to venture my poor opinion.

 Emperor Mollari claimed that President Sheridan ran the Interstellar Alliance, with Delenn  ever at his side.  Yet the emperor was away, isolated on Centauri Prime, far from the seat of the Alliance. He could not know that in reality, it was  Intilza Delenn, and then Intilza Ivanova, who served after her as head of the Anla’Shok, having been too young to join your Earth Force during the Earth-Minbari war, who has always been the true Heart of the Interstellar Alliance, with President Sheridan in fact helping her to manage the Anla’Shok.  Together, they both lead my Order, help the Gray Council govern Minbar, and also manage the affairs of the Interstellar Alliance. They have always been equals, and yet, was it not Intilza Delenn who was The Shining Star, and the creator of the Alliance?

One last thing, an answer to a question put to me by one of your fellow Human beings:  As to whether or not Humans may yet join the Anla’Shok:

I am afraid that the common good, for you Human Beings, may need to become more fully inclusive for all of you before the Rangers can accept citizens of Earth back into our Order.

From Tuzanor, on Minbar

Earth year 2278,

Anla’Shok Mayann

–

That was part 1 of Ranger Mayann’s letter: her first report on the history of the Babylon Project, which can be seen from another point of view (as told by Emperor Mollari II) by watching the Babylon 5 film In The Beginning, which I highly recommend.  

  I chose to review this film before the first episode of B5 because Season 1 is so hard to put up with, for so many newcomers to the series, that I wanted to give them a reason to hope!

🙂

  Yes, Babylon 5 does get better, and this film is the proof!   🙂

  Here is  The Gathering, aka the Pilot for season 1 of B5, and it is the next part of our letter from Ranger M.

-Shira

Action Items:

1.) Did this  first review make sense?

2.) Share your thoughts on this Babylon 5 film.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness, & achieve freedom for All HumanKind?

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Click here, on the ShiraDest show and films review Page, to read more of this letter from Minbar, on the Babylon 5 reviews page, or for other posts via the Menu Pages, if you like:

Narrative and Prose Nonfiction,     

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Historical Fiction Serial Stories

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.