Talk:Omega class destroyer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
This article is part of WikiProject Babylon 5, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to all Babylon 5-related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. Babylon 5

Please keep discussions about the articles themselves OFF the article namespace and in the discussion page. Thank you. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 14:04, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Shadow-Technology Omegas

I am continually suprised at the statement, always treated as canonical fact, that the Shadow-enhanced Omegas used technology merely reverse-engineered from Shadow vessels. Clark clearly had direct connections with the Shadows (as direct as anyone, via Mr. Morden). It is impossible to imagine that the Shadows didn't figure out that Vorlon technology had been transferred to the Minbari for use in the Whitestars. It seems much more likely to that the Shadows PROVIDED at least some of the technology used in the Earth Alliance's Shadow-tech destroyers. I had always assumed that this was partially at the core of Ivanova's rage when she attacked the Shadow-tech fleet; she was disgusted with the idea that her planet had cooperated with the Shadows. This cannot, of course, be demonstrated, so I left the main article as is.


[edit] Origin and Size of the Omega Class

Hello everyone! Many fanboy 'facts' exist in the Babylon 5 Universe. It is important that as a factual encyclopedia that we keep conjecture to a minimum when presenting the information for B5. Many assumptions exist from years of non-canon sources spewing forth their own interpretations. The b5tech site is an excellent source of good canon information, much of what is written in their documents are cited and sourced, but alot of it is also conjecture. Things that have not been officially stated by JMS and not seen on screen or implied in dialogue are not canon. Therefore, for the debate at hand, we see Omega class Destroyers in the Minbari War. In the movie "In the Beginning", they are never explained to be anything like modified Novas (this is fan conjecture). So wheter it is a CGI screw up, or not, there they are; and like it or not, this proves that Omegas existed prior to the assumed commissioning date. Dragon1

And interesting arguement indeed. Allow me to poke holes in your little speculation. Not big holes, but holes. I refer you to the JMS posts archived at http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/find/CompuServe/cs96-02/360.html , http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/find/GEnie/jms95-05-15/3440.html , http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/find/CompuServe/cs97-08/82.html , and http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/find/Usenet/jms97-10-usenet/13.html. Specifically:
  • "Not with Alpha, since that isn't a name out of Greek mythology. But the first one off the production line probably would've been the Achilles."
  • "The cap is an Agamemnon crew cap, with a silhouette of the Aggie, underneath EAS Agamemnon, and above OCG 5 (for Omega Construction Group 5, as is traditionally done)."
  • "(OCG-05, standing for Omega Construction Group, Hull 5)"
  • "This is the crew cap for The Agamemnon, Sheridan's ship prior to being assigned to B5, seen in "Knives" and which will be seen in the fifth season as well."
As can be seen at http://www.b5tech.com/science/misc/Omega_Evolution/Omega_Evo.htm , there were five Omegas in the scene you refer to. Five. The sequence you refer to shows four of them getting destroyed almost immediately(as can be seen in the pictures), but one survives. Shortly after, just after coming back from a commercial, an Omega is seen ramming a Sharlin. Most people assume that it's the 5th one seen, but there's no way to tell for sure. The crew cap is mentioned as appearing while Sheridan is having batting practice in the Episode 'Knives', as the JMS posts I reference clearly state. It is suggested once and unequivocably stated that the Agamemnon is 'Hull 5' from the 'Omega Construction Group'. Unless there was someone else building Omegas, this very strongly suggests that the Agamemnon is the 5th Omega hull. If it were the 6th or 7th you could rationalize this off as the five shown during 'in the beginning' being the first five. The only way it could be the fifth hull and have five Omegas at that battle is if it were constructed during the Mimbari war, and survived. Some might suggest that the ship shown surviving that initial onslaught was the Aggy, but the JMS post here: http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/find/CompuServe/cs96-03/127.html , states that "The Agamemnon was not IN the Minbari war; as established in the show, it was one of the first of the Omega class destroyers constructed AFTER the war."
Thus VERY strongly suggesting that the only way your theory could be true is that either there was more than one entity constructing the Omegas, and that the OCG only started AFTER the war, and the others before it... or that they finished the ships out of order. Either one is *rampant* speculation with *no evidence whatsoever*. A *very* strong suggestion that your theory is incorrect, though not absolute proof certianly. The theory that the five ships seen were testbeds was proposed, because as you put it, FX error or not, it's on screen and has to be explained somehow(unless it is at some point retconned out of existance). As it's been done before in real life, it's a perfectly reasonable theory...
The problem however is that any explanation is only a theory, not supported by any canon fact, and thus probably not suited for Wikipedia. The proper course of action is most likely to not include ANY theory as the 'correct' one, and instead state what happened that can be confirmed. Five, maybe six ships using the same 3d Model as an Omega Destroyer appeared during 'In the Beginning', causing much consternation among the fans, as all canon information available to that point suggested that the Omegas did not appear until after the war. Add that many explanations have been proposed, and list a few. However I'm not sure yours can be included as it might constitute 'original research' if it hasn't been discussed elsewhere, and original research is banned from wikipedia. -Graptor

I agree with the lot of what you stated in the fact that anything that we can devise on the topic is idle conjecture. One assumption must be made, at least 5 Omega class DDs existed prior to the start of the Minbari War. Hull numbers or not, what we see is what we got, and provided we never get a further explanation on a later JMS Babylon project, this is the unfortunate assumption we must make.

According to JMS, the Agamemnon didn't serve in the Minbari War. Also, Sheridan explicitly states in "And Now For a Word", that the Agamemnon came off the assembly line after the war. So, that settles that.

As for naming convention, what makes the 'Omega' class Destroyer the 'Omega' class is the fact that the first unit was named EAS Omega. If the Achilles was in fact the first vessel, then the line of ships would be known as 'Achilles' class. Many people try to use the 'Aegis/Ticonderoga' Cruiser example. But, officially the Aegis cruisers of the modern U.S. Navy are listed as 'Ticonderoga' class.

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of faith in the B5 tech site. Most of the sources indicated as 'canon' come from Tim Earls. Tim Earls was the conceptual artist for season 5 as shown in the credits. He was not in fact the show's CGI director as stated on the show. In fact, many figures quoted from Tim Earls directly violate what was stated in the series. For example, Mr. Earls has stated that the Victory and Excalibur were 2,990 meters in overall length when Captain Gideon directly stated in the first episode of Crusade that his new destroyer was a "mile and a quarter long", not a mile and three-quarters. Dragon1

That could very well be. Unfortunately, you're right and until JMS says something directly on the issue, we're kinda stuck making things up. It could be that there were, for some reason, 5 actual Omegas. It could be that they were testbeds, but I've no idea why they'd make five. It could be a combination of things. One might've been converted from a partially completed Nova as a testbed(converting a final Nova that extensively is a bit much), two more might be prototypes, and two more could be more-or-less final production models. Or something. That they were finished, line model, production model Omegas is thrown into some doubt by the fact that the lead ship on the Mimbari scouting expedition was a Hyperion class, and no Omegas were escorting it. On something of that importance, when they've been told that the Mimbari are dramatically more advanced, you'd think they'd send their newest, most powerful ship, right? The fact that they didn't suggests that for some reason, they weren't really considered ready for prime-time yet. All I'm really saying is that, whatever the explanation actually is, whatever we come up with and agree upon, it isn't verifiable fact. The *only* verifable fact is that 5 ships that *look like* Omegas appeared in a timeframe that was several years previous to when it had been *suggested* they originally appeared. Because you're right. All the evidence in Dialog and such suggests but does not specifically state that the Omegas didn't start rolling off the production line until after the war. We all know it was almost certianly an effects goof, but that doesn't fix it now does it? Now if it'd been clearly stated in dialog somewhere, instead of just suggested, we'd probably blow it off(as we did for the Agrippa and Roanoke incident in 'Severed Dreams', though I seem to recall JMS stated in the commentary he supposes it's possible Sheridan got the ships mixed up in the heat of the moment). Which gave me an idea. Commentary. I think the new version of the ITB DvD has some sort of commentary track...time to go check it, maybe he says something. -Graptor 66.161.202.55 17:26, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Nope. Boo. -Graptor 66.161.202.55 17:48, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


To add to this, the original Omega class vessels as seen in the Earth Minbari War are in effect Prototypes under the class of Nova - X. All prototypes were destroyed in the War. The first four destoyed by weapons fire and the last in a ramming action. However the design lessons learned formed the basis of the new Omega class destroyers and so while the Agamenon is one of the first true Omegas, it would be about the tenth ship of that type of design. This is all as a far as I know.

I would like to Disagree on this, the Nova Class and the Omega are 2 ENTIRLY Diffrent ships. Now the theory of the EAS Aggie being the first ship is way off, as Stated earlier the ships class is determined by the first ship built. Now we can only conclude that the ships are built in batches thus the EAS Aggie that would be the first ship of a certain batch, assumeing its Peacetime standards the EA wouldn't mass produce a a vessel class but would build just enough at certain intervals. ~Spaced out~

The theory that the Omega class ships depicted in the movie "In The Beginning" are actually some form of experimental Nova class, like Nova-X or something has already been discussed at length above. There is absolutely no proof one way or the other, and to make up a new class like 'Nova-X' is sterile conjecture at best.

66.15.136.75 Dragon1 66.15.136.75

Might the issue of Omegas in In the Beginning be explained as special effects errors within, and not of, the canon itself? The final episode of Babylon 5, Sleeping in Light, ended with a claim that the entire series was an ISN archive. This could allow for errors in depiction to be errors of recreation of events by ISN instead of paradoxes of the canon itself. However, the point may be moot as co-producer George Johnson seems to suggest interim or hybrid classes between the Nova and Omega classes - http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/guide/111.html. Jason P Crowell 21:00, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Just wading in here with some speculation on the issue. The way I see it, a number of things are possible (either concurrently or exclusively).

  • The Omegas seen in ITB are not actually Omegas, but some other similar class of warship.
  • The Agamemnon, OCG-5, was numbered out of order
  • At least one of the 5 ships seen in ITB is not an Omega, though the other four might be. It could be some kind of prototype or test platform, seperate from the numbered production models.
  • The Omega Construction Group wasn't formed until after the war, the examples seen in ITB being built by some other group, one possibly destroyed during the war with the Minbari and necessitating a clean slate.
  • Sheridan, and everyone else who mentioned when the Agamemnon was built, were completley wrong and talking out of their asses (this seems unlikely, as Sheridan seems like the sort who would know this sort of thing).

Another thought: Do we know if ship classes in EarthForce derive their names from their pathfinder ship? Has this ever been stated on-screen, or are we just extrapolating from how it works in the US Navy?

I'll drop a note on the B5 moderated group to see if JMS feels like answering (he is busy with the new B5 movies, so he may or may not answer), so I'm off.--Raguleader 03:38, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, for what it's worth, JMS didn't respond to my question, presumably because he's currently working on B5:TLT, so we're left with lots of on screen dialogue saying that the Omegas were built after the war, and one brief shot from one movie saying otherwise, with the whole thing being having been presented as an ISN documentary in the final episode. I'm leaning towards what the dialogue on the show said. --Raguleader 21:58, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] EA Destroyers vs. Real Life Destroyers

Since Destroyers as used by the Earth Alliance in the Babylon 5 universe are hardly equivilant to 20th century warships of the same name, I created a stub article for Earth Alliance destroyers. I'm going to begin going through the B5 articles switching out the links, and if anyone wants to flesh out the stub article I created, I'd appreciate it.--Raguleader 00:23, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Design Notes

Cite sources for claims in this section and make it less editorial in style, or I'm cutting the whole chunk out.--Raguleader 00:09, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Design Notes -- WTF?

Thanks for saving Wikipedia from us, the cretinous mob, oh great Ragu. Sorry I coudn't change the article to meet your deadline; I have a job, a family, and a life. Of course, you could have "made it less editorial," you know, rather than just cutting out the bits you don't like.

Is the information contained in the Design Notes section not germane to the topic? And exactly where should one find sources for this? If there were a source, wouldn't someone have "pointed it out," which the article already says has not happenned? Must we reference every nod, obscure reference, and offhand similarity in order to pretend the Wikipedia is professional? Any idiot with eyes can see the similarities noted here.

Will you really rob the article of this interesting little tidbit, simply because someone has not previously stated the obvious? Really? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.174.131.158 (talk) 21:21, 31 December 2006 (UTC).

Article modified to conform to the suggested "less editorial" style, and referenced (albeit in a circular manner).24.174.131.158 21:32, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

You know, I don't really think citing a previous version of the article counts as a cite. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data". If you can't find a source for it, then don't put it in the article. Wasn't that easy?--Raguleader 21:38, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Reverted as it is unsourced, source it so it is verifiable first, cheers. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 21:40, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
I went ahead and reworked the "Design Notes" section into the "Appearance" section. The references to other well-known ships in sci-fi with similar design features is useful for describing the ship, but without some kind of citation to verifiable sources, the rest of the stuff won't work.--Raguleader 21:51, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Nice to see that even Aggies can find a solution sometimes. ;) 24.174.131.158 02:18, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edits on December 22, 2006

I removed most of the unsourced fanwank from the article, and reorganized some minor things. If someone wants to put the stuff back in, use some legitimate sources and use less speculation. A website that itself depends on fanwank and speculation is NOT a legitimate source.--Raguleader 01:51, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../o/m/e/Talk%7EOmega_class_destroyer_250b.html"