Stormtiger

What was the message of this episode?
JMS Responds: The message is just that, that we *all* have to choose to resist from time to time, and that one individual can fight the system. And we are all that individual at one time or another.
-- JMS, creator of Babylon 5, on the episode Comes the Inquisitor
(from: http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/guide/084.html)

I used to think that life was unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse, if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.
-- Ranger Marcus Cole, from Babylon 5: "A Late Delivery From Avalon"

"Figures. All my life I've fought against Imperialism. Suddenly, I *am* the expanding Russian frontier."
-- Commander Ivanova

"But with very nice borders."
-- Doctor Franklin
From Babylon 5 by JMS

Histories are written about the soldiers who won their battles; but songs are sung about the soldiers who fell in battle struggling for a greater cause. What inspires us is the unfinished work, the dream of picking up the fallen standard and taking it ten more feet up the hill, knowing that even if you fall, the next man in line will take it another ten feet, until finally the hill is taken. Humans are constantly throwing their lives away on causes logic tells us are hopeless...but which in time become real for that reason.
-- JMS, creator of Babylon 5

No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by the force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power governments, and tyrants, and armies can not stand.
-- G'Kar, from Babylon 5: "The Long, Twilight Struggle"

It was the end of the Earth year 2260, and the war had paused, suddenly and unexpectedly. All around us, it was as if the universe were holding its breath, waiting. All of life can be broken down into moments of transition or moments ... of revelation. This had the feeling of both.

G'Quon wrote: "There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope. The death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in the moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always paved in pain."
-- G'Kar, from Babylon 5: "Z'ha'dum"

What is there left for Narn if all of creation falls around us? There's nothing. No hope, no dream, no future, no life. Unless we turn from the cycle of death toward something greater. If we are a dying people, then let us die with honor, by helping the others as no-one else can.

I can't understand.

Because you have let them distract you, blind you with hate. You can not see the battle for what it is. We are fighting to save one another, we must realize we are not alone. We rise and fall together. And some of us must be sacrificed if all are to be saved. Because, if we fail in this, then none of us will be saved, And the Narn will be only a memory."
-- Kosh (as G'Kar's father) and G'Kar, from Babylon 5: "Dust to Dust"

Our thoughts form the universe, they always matter.
-- G'Kar, from Babylon 5: "Hour of the Wolf"

There is always choice. We say there is no choice only to comfort ourselves with the decision we have already made. If you understand that, there's hope. If not...
-- Lady Morella, from Babylon 5: "Point of No Return"

Then I will tell you a great secret, Captain. Perhaps the greatest of all time. The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make up this station and the nebula outside, that burn inside the stars themselves. We are starstuff; we are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out.
-- Ambassador Delenn, from Babylon 5: "A Distant Star"

The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest.
-- G'Kar, from Babylon 5: "Survivors"

"You heard?"
     "I heard."
"They need to believe."
     "Not in me."
"You can't save them all."
     "I can try."
"You'll fail."
     "We'll see."
         -- Lorien and Sheridan, from Babylon 5: "Falling Toward Apotheosis"

No, We have to stay here and there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu, Einstein, Morobuto, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes... and all of this... all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars.
-- Commander Sinclair, from Babylon 5: "Infection"

How do you know the chosen ones? No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for his brother. Not for millions, not for glory, not for fame. For one person, in the dark, where no one will ever know or see.
-- Sebastian, from Babylon 5: "Comes The Inquisitor"

Will you follow me into fire, into storm, into darkness, into death? And the Nine said, "Yes." Then do this in testimony to the one who will follow, who will bring death couched in the promise of new life. And renewal disguised as defeat. From birth through death and renewal, you must put aside old things, old fears, old lives. This is your death, the death of flesh, the death of pain, the death of yesterday. Taste of it, and be not afraid. For I am with you to the end of time. Taste of it. And so, it begins.
--Delenn, From Babylon 5: "Parliament of Dreams", reciting Valen's Promise.

Last modified: 2001-Oct-28 16:42:27

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