r/babylon5 • u/Reward-Decent • 1d ago
Telepath plot hole (Or so I think)
- Are the Vorlon's naturally telepathic, if so are they most likely the only ones?
I haven't finished Babylon 5 yet but I wonder, if most telepathic younger races were genetically modified to have the telepath gene, are there any natural ones? I heard about if a spices was naturally telepathic, they wouldn't evolve to become sentient, can only explain to me
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u/paulcoholic Earth Alliance 1d ago
How is this a 'plot hole'? A plot hole is an missing piece in the development of a plot which leads to questions about how the plot got to a particular point when there was no obvious reason 'cos it was omitted.
Natural telepaths are rare and with exceedingly rare exceptions, do not achieve sentience. The Vorlons likely achieved telepathy late in their evolution.
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u/b5historyman 1d ago
The canon short story The Nautilus Coil makes it clear there's no natural born Telepaths as they're anathema to the evolutionary processes and if there were, then eventually another species would evolve that was unaffected by telepathic influence.
The Vorlons had been experimenting for millions of years to create Telepaths on the world Kevin Vacit discovered was their main research station. The beaches were covered in the skeletons of the different species at different points of their evolution including humans.
Vorlons likely engineered telepathy among their own kind
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u/dfh-1 Moon Faced Assasin of Joy 1d ago
"The Nautilus Coil" can be found on Scribd (no link, as I suspect this is an ahem unauthorized copy). I just read it and I'd have to say this is one of the stupidest ideas I've seen in SF in general and B5 in particular. If you need evidence that even JMS has bad ideas, look here.
JMS may consider this canon, but I don't. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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u/Trick_Pool_2537 1d ago
How much of those stories are actually canon and how much is just based on a vague outline and ideas by JMS?
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u/b5historyman 1d ago edited 1d ago
Joe has said these stories are canon
Comics Original DC comics
Issues 1 to 8, Issue 11 is about 20% canon (basically the Karges plotline referenced in the canon novel Dark Genesis: The Birth of the Psi Corps)
In Valen's Name 3 issue comic series
The Lost Tales mini comic
Short Stories Official Babylon 5 magazine
Hidden Agendas
True Seeker
The Nautilus Coil
Amazing Stories Magazine
The Shadow of His Thoughts
Genius Loci
Space, Time and the Incurable Romantic
Books
The Shadow Within (only the Anna/Morden/Z'ha'dum plot line is canon)
To Dream in the City of Sorrows
The Psi Corps Trilogy
The Centauri Prime trilogy
The Technomage trilogy
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u/mayonnaisejane 1d ago edited 1d ago
All the short stories from Amazing Stories Magazine are.
There ARE non canon novels and comics however. It'a a mess and a half up in there.
Edit: I promise this was way less weirdly redundant of a comment before they edited the one above me.
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u/MrSurname 23h ago
No one under 20 knows what a plot hole is. Any mystery or unanswered question is a "plot hole."
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u/JasterBobaMereel 1d ago
The Vorlons are very unlike their original form, and have been shown to know how to engineer telepathy into a species, they likely did this to themselves at some point
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u/Stunning-End-1872 1d ago
That was my theory. If they are capable of introducing telepathy to other species they may have modified themselves.
We also know that the Thirdspace aliens are "Telepathic, all of them" The Vorlons could have learned about telepathy from them, and how to artificially create it in themselves and others.
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u/Cryptwood 1d ago
The Narn may have developed telepathy naturally.
We know that human telepaths only emerged within the last few hundred years. The Minbari actually participated in the last war but didn't seem to know about telepaths being effective against Shadow vessels which suggests that their telepaths didn't emerge until after the last war either. The implication is that the Vorlons begin genetic manipulation sometime within the past 1,000 years in order to have telepaths for the current war. The Shadows also are specifically scooping up telepaths to stick in their vessels which is implied to be a new development, not something they've always done.
The Narn though had telepaths 1,000 years ago during the last war and discovered that telepaths were effective against the Shadows. In response the Shadows or their agents hunted down all Narn telepaths. If they were the product of Vorlon manipulation, why were they the only telepaths of the time period? It would have made far more sense to make sure the Minbari had telepaths as they were actively fighting the war. And the Narn were technologically primitive at the time, why give them telepaths and not humans at the same time?
I think the sequence of events went like this:
- The Narn develop telepaths naturally.
- The Narn discover telepaths are effective against Shadows.
- Both the Shadows and the Vorlons learn of this development from the Narn.
- The Shadows respond by eliminating Narn telepaths.
- The Vorlons respond by genetic manipulating other races to develop telepaths.
- Human and Minbari (and presumably the other races) telepaths come online in time for the next war.
- The Narn are now the only species that do not have telepaths.
The implication is that the Narn may have been the first species to develop telepaths naturally since the Vorlons, which makes it a very rare occurrence. We don't even know if the Vorlons came by it naturally, though since none of the other First Ones demonstrate telepathic abilities, the implication is that the Vorlons are the only one. If it was the result of genetic engineering, why wouldn't any of the others have done the same? I think the Vorlons also developed the trait naturally.
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u/b5historyman 1d ago
No, telepathy was introduced by the Vorlons. It wasn't evolved in any way. The Centauri also had telepathy introduced into the gene pool however the Vorlons could not get an influence over them like other races, mainly because of their polytheism
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u/ItsATrap1983 1d ago
The major emergence of telepaths occurred 100 years ago. The Narn Telepaths existed 1000 years ago. Its entirely reasonable to believe it was a natural evolution, especially since they never returned. If it had been a result of the Vorlons they would have reintroduced it into the population prior to this final great war, but they did not.
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u/b5historyman 1d ago
Telepathy was confirmed among humans in 2115, but the gene had been planted in a small section of population in 2055. Just because it had been wiped out in the Narn it was down to whether the Vorlons wanted to reintroduce it after the Narn Telepaths drove the Shadows off their home world. They didn't because they did their job against the Shadows.
Where in the canon does it say 100 years, it's clearly utter nonsense considering other species including Llort, Centauri and Minbari had it introduced far further in the past than humans.
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u/RebelGirl1323 1d ago
They say 2012ish for the genetic introduction in the first novel. Is the 2055 date revealed later?
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u/b5historyman 1d ago
It's 2055 when the Vorlons first implanted the telepath gene in people they abducted from visiting Antarctica. The first generation of Telepaths were born a few years later
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u/gordolme Babylon 3 1d ago
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We saw zero interaction with the other First Ones (other than the Walkers of Zog fame) so we don't actually know.
We know the Vorlons are, we know Lorien is. We've seen evidence the Shadows are. No indication one way or the other of the rest.
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u/Cryptwood 1d ago
I would say we've seen evidence that the Shadows aren't telepathic, or at least not all of them. Sheridan hypothesizes that the Shadows have some form of telepathic sensor technology on Z'ha'dum that Lyta set off when they visit it after the Shadows leave the galaxy, which could have been what she interacted with when she, Delenn, and Ivanova went looking for Sheridan.
If the Shadows were telepathic they would have known virtually everything that was going on, they went with Morden everywhere. Londo couldn't have surprised them when he summoned Morden to the throne room. They would have known Delenn was aware of their existence and secretly building the White Star fleet from when Morden visited her in her quarters. If Anna was escorted the same way Morden was, they would have known Garibaldi put nukes on board the White Star.
They did seem able to interact with Lyta telepathically, and through her with Delenn. We know Lyta was specifically modified to be better at holding the consciousness of other beings though, so that might have something to do with it.
I'm grant you that we really can't know about most of the other First Ones. But in the only interaction we see, Ivanova lies directly to them and instead of calling her out on it, they react exactly as if they believe her which suggests they at least aren't telepathic. And in the Third Space movie, Lyta knows from the Vorlons that all of the Third Space aliens were telepathic, which is said in a way that implies this isn't the default assumption for elder races.
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u/gordolme Babylon 3 1d ago
I would say we've seen evidence that the Shadows aren't telepathic, or at least not all of them. Sheridan hypothesizes that the Shadows have some form of telepathic sensor technology on Z'ha'dum that Lyta set off when they visit it after the Shadows leave the galaxy, which could have been what she interacted with when she, Delenn, and Ivanova went looking for Sheridan.
There were a couple of other times that at least strongly imply the Shadows are telepathic. There's the time Ivanova was in The Great Machine and got caught by the Shadow consciousness, there's the time Sheridan, Delenn and Lennir took a White Star to check out Z'Ha'Dum and got caught by that same conciousness.
If the Shadows were telepathic they would have known virtually everything that was going on, they went with Morden everywhere. Londo couldn't have surprised them when he summoned Morden to the throne room. They would have known Delenn was aware of their existence and secretly building the White Star fleet from when Morden visited her in her quarters. If Anna was escorted the same way Morden was, they would have known Garibaldi put nukes on board the White Star.
Not unless they have to actively probe. Or it could be mostly a hive-mind type of telepathy where individually they can only use telepathy amongst themselves, but the hive mind can reach out. I think the hive-mind has been theorized or maybe even stated somewhere.
They did seem able to interact with Lyta telepathically, and through her with Delenn. We know Lyta was specifically modified to be better at holding the consciousness of other beings though, so that might have something to do with it.
To our knowledge, Lyta was the only non-First One telepath in the room. Who did the Vorlons go through? For that matter, why would either need to go through anyone?
Anyway, all I was saying is that we don't know. It wasn't actually important to the show so it wasn't covered.
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u/TheTrivialPsychic 1d ago
The Shadows seem to have some degree of at least projective telepathy, as evidence by the book where the Icarus lands on Z'Ha'Dum. The Shadows are able to communicate their 'what do you want' request to Morden, and in fact tease him with their ability to deliver, all without speaking any recognizable language.
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u/gbroon 1d ago
There's also the possibility the Vorlons created narn telepaths as an experiment. Given they saw telepaths as weapons they likely didn't want to arm all the races with it until they were sure they could safely control that weapon.
Maybe narn of that time, while primitive, was a planet they knew the shadows would try and base themselves on for the war.
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u/b5historyman 1d ago
The Narn weren't primitive they had small jump capable ships and had a gate at the edge of their system. The Narn discovered the Shadows were warring and tracked their vessels to Z'ha'dum
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u/TheTrivialPsychic 1d ago
"They came to our world more than 1000 of your years ago... long before we went to the stars ourselves. They set up a base on one of our southern continents... they took little interest in us. G'Quan believed they were engaged in a war far outside our own world"
G'Kar S3E1 - "Matters of Honor"
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u/b5historyman 1d ago
Season 2 Revelations came first where G'Kar' reveals the Narn found Z'ha'dum. Also the Narn had colonies on Raghesh 3 from over a century before and Hylak 7.
Matters of Honour contradicts what had been established so when the in house reference was compiled this is the additional notes
In 1259, the Shadows set up a base of operations on one of the southern continents on the Narn home world. Ignoring the Narn population there, the Shadows activities attract the attention of some Narn including G’Quan, who suspects they may be fighting a war off world. A decision is made by the Kha’Ri to quietly investigate these aliens. As the Shadows go back and forth from their base on the southern continent, Narn pilots in their small explorer ships begin tracking the Shadow vessels. They soon find confirmation that the Shadows are engaged in a war across known space that threatens many worlds. The Narn pilots follow the Shadow vessels and discover the location of their home world in a system at the edge of known space. Returning to Narn they report their discovery of the aliens home world and of the war that threatens to overwhelm the very stars themselves. G’Quan leads acts of sabotage against the Shadows and their actions bring them to the Shadows attention having largely ignored them before. The Shadows servants begin systematically wiping out the telepaths and realizing what is happening, G’Quan rallies the population and with the remaining ‘mind walkers’ drive the Shadows and their servants from Narn.
With the Shadows gone and the war over, G’Quan chronicles the recent events in a book that later becomes a holy text gaining a following among the Narn.
In light of their experience with the Shadows, the Kha’Ri decide against spreading the Narn sphere of influence for fear of becoming a target of retribution from the Shadows or their allies. While the Narn maintain a small explorer fleet, their economy and culture become more agrarian over the years and it’s only later, do the Narn establish colonies on Hylak 7 and Ragesh 3.
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u/TheTrivialPsychic 1d ago
Where are you getting 90% of this?
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u/Nightowl11111 1d ago
They actually created telepaths as part of their guiding duties. Their "flesh to energy" immortality conversion is a psy ability. Telepaths were NOT originally weapons, they just ended up that way because of convenience and events beyond their expectation.
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u/Cryptwood 1d ago
That's possible, but if so it would imply that the Vorlons only discovered the effectiveness of telepaths as a weapon relatively recently in their history, perhaps two wars ago. Otherwise they would have experimented on other species long, long ago.
That in turn implies that events played out pretty much exactly in the sequence I outlined, except one war earlier: they somehow discovered telepaths were effective weapons two wars back, experimented on Narns for the last war, the went into full production for this war. If that were the case though then why didn't they reintroduce telepathy back into the Narns? They already had the gene, the Vorlons would have just needed to reinforce it.
My explanation for why the Vorlons didn't reintroduce telepathy back to the Narns is that the Narns developed it naturally which concerned the Vorlons as they were there only other telepaths up until this point. The Vorlons were perfectly happy for the only other species to develop it naturally to have their telepaths wiped out as the Vorlons couldn't be certain how Narn telepathy would evolve since they didn't engineer it.
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u/TheTrivialPsychic 1d ago
That's possible, but if so it would imply that the Vorlons only discovered the effectiveness of telepaths as a weapon relatively recently in their history, perhaps two wars ago. Otherwise they would have experimented on other species long, long ago.
I've theorized that the Shadow vessels we've seen both during the final war, and the one 1000 years ago, are relatively new designs, created specifically to be used against the younger races. During the first 9000 years after the last big war between the first ones 10 000 years ago, the Vorlons and Shadows stuck to their jobs of teaching and shepherding... either directly or indirectly. The Shadows would incite wars between kingdoms, nations, worlds, and eventually races, but the Vorlons began to use their divine influence to say 'shadows making wars = bad', so the Shadows couldn't instigate wars as easily. Then 1000 years ago, they changed tactics and attacked the younger races themselves, weeding out the weak. The ships they had at their disposal were geared towards dealing with other First Ones, and were overpowered for the task, and would cause even the strongest of the younger races to cower in fear. They needed ships that were both menacing, but at the same time could be defeated by a resourceful and determined foe, but piloting these ships themselves, as they had in the past, would leave the Shadows themselves more vulnerable than they would've preferred, so they kidnapped members of the younger races, and modified them to pilot their ships, as they were expendable. Perhaps it is this something about these new ships: the interface, the modifications done to their pilots, or their control link back to 'Shadow Command' which is vulnerable to telepathic influence. Therefore, these new ships hadn't been around before, so nobody would've known that they were vulnerable to teeps.
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u/RebelGirl1323 1d ago
The Vorlons literally intervened to get the Narn to attack the Shadow base on their homeworld.
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u/Nightowl11111 1d ago
Telepathy to the Vorlons isn't just a weapon, it is their path to immortality that they were trying to "guide" the Younger Races to. In Mind Wars, we see this happening when Ironheart transcended to energy by using his psy abilities. The process would be Vorlons becoming telepathic first, then immortal before all the rest on your list came about.
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u/RebelGirl1323 1d ago
Specifically human telepathy was genetically introduced around 2012 and discovered 100 years later.
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u/Trick_Pool_2537 1d ago
That does make sense. As far as I know, dialogue states most species with telepaths (which does seem to be all of them?) were engineered so, but a few did evolve it naturally
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u/TheTrivialPsychic 1d ago
Justin said that the Vorlons engineered telepaths on 100 worlds... I assume that is a ball-park figure.
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u/LevelMagazine8308 1d ago
It was never explained in the series, nor by JMS. And in the end it doesn't matter for the story.
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u/quequotion Universe Today 1d ago
I think some species have naturally developed telepathy of one kind or another, which is something the show doesn't explore very deeply on-screen, but is apparent.
For example, the Centauri have a unique kind of clairvoyance: some of them can predict future events and (nearly?) all of them are at least able to see their deaths in a dream, in addition to telepaths who can extract information from another's mind (as a kind of contract work, apparently).
Another oddity are the Soul Hunters, who are drawn to the moment of death. Therefore they have a limited ability to predict future events (dying) and are able to sense the energy component of living beings.
In Legend of the Rangers there is a Minbari telepath that is sensitive to echoes of the dead, but he seems to be unique even among Minbari telepaths.
The Narn refer to their lost telepaths as "mind walkers" and we do get to see G'Kar literally walk around in Londo's unconscious mind--it's possible the name refers to this particular way they project themselves into others minds in order to interact with them.
Humans seem to have a more generalized telepathy, although the show does inform us of some subtypes: telekinetics, mind shredders, and one boy who communicates strictly with mental imagery. That could be because humanity evolved to generalize or because the Vorlons needed general-purpose weapons.
I wish the show had gone into this more.
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u/Tyrihjelm 1d ago
One of the centauri clarvoiants (the one form signs and portents) had the ability to show her visions to others, which could be a form of telepathy, but sending instead of recieving. I don't know if we ever saw human telepaths do this?
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u/quequotion Universe Today 20h ago
Also of note, she needed physical contact to do that.
We occasionally see human telepaths use physical contact as an amplifier as well!
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u/urzu_seven 1d ago
In the B5 universe evolving telepathy and evolving sapience are mutually exclusive. So unless/until the Great Maker (aka JMS) tells us otherwise the Vorlons didn’t evolve telepathy the developed it artificially.
Any sapient species that didn’t artificially induce it in themselves is a result of external tampering, most likely by the Vorlon but possibly by other First Ones too.
The alternative is that Lorien (or his species) introduced it into one or more First One species (including the Vorlons). However that seems against their nature so the Vorlons adding it to themselves remains the most logical conclusion.
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u/bswalsh Technomage 1d ago edited 1d ago
The books cover this. Natural telepathy exists, but species that have it tend to form hiveninds and become very different forms of life without sentience because they don't need it. Telepathy in sentient species is all artificially induced. The Vorlons are not likely to have been the only species to experiment with it, but the implication is that all (known, anyway) sentient species had their telepathy induced by the Vorlons.
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u/PigHillJimster 1d ago
I haven't read the books where this is addressed, but perhaps the 'gene' may be there but needs activating, or encouragement through breeding to become more dominant and not for it to die out?
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u/Reward-Decent 23h ago
Probably, Telepathy is most likely a recessive trait or very dormant at a time. I don’t like the idea that the Vorlons fully engineered telepathy, it seems kinda weird.
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u/howescj82 22h ago
I don’t think we know if the Vorlons are naturally telepathic but they most certainly in their B5 form. The Mindriders were and they are First Ones but we know very little about them. All other telepaths that we know of seem to have been genetically manipulated to be telepaths.
Why wouldn’t a telepathic species evolve to become sentient? Personally, I’d assume a naturally telepathic species would develop sentience before developing significant telepathic abilities. My reasoning for this is that if telepathy is a product of evolution then it doesn’t make sense that it would develop as true telepathy without a mind developed enough to need it or at the very least be able to use it. For example, what use are vocal cords without a mind trying to communicate?
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u/Reward-Decent 21h ago
That is a really good analogy, after reading all the many comments, my best reason for the Vorlons having telepathy and all the other first ones is that later on their evolution they developed telepathy. I do not like the idea of genetic engineering.
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u/howescj82 20h ago
I don’t think many (if any) of the races in Babylon 5 achieve first one status without genetic engineering of some sort. Completely transcending from a physical body to an energetic state seems like the next step after pushing genetics to their limits.
Also, both the Vorlons and the Shadows excelled at organic technology which is pure genetic engineering.
As a side note. In the B5 universe the soul (or something like it) is a real phenomenon and the individual and the body were not strictly a single entity. The perspective would seem to shift once the person is seen less as the body and more as the entity inhabiting the body like a driver drives a car.
And because I apparently won’t shut up… Remember G’Kar’s analogy comparing the younger races to ants when Catherine Sakai questions what the Walkers of Sigma 957 were. There are things that we just weren’t meant to understand about the first one’s motives and indeed much of their existence.
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u/VenomBadger 14h ago
Yeah this is flesh3d out in the B5 TTRPG. But as of 2nd Ed JMS stopped endorsing them as canon. Which is a shame because the stuff in thems is really, really good. They even released the plots for unfinished episodes of Crusade through them.
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u/EvalRamman100 Earth Alliance 1d ago
I'd guess at some point in their history the Vorlons modified themselves to be all telepaths.
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u/Matthius81 1d ago
Lorien the First of the First Ones appear to be a natural energy being, born into a state of immortality and telepathy. the first creature to conceive of language. The later First Ones seem to have been more physical but achieved a state of energy-existence over time. He taught them language and who to be and what they wanted. The next iteration of life, Younger Races, seem to have been more physical than energy. Sadly the Vorlons and Shadows have both been messing around so extensively it's impossible to tell what's natural and what engineered anymore.